Breakfast With a Heathen EP3 - Prayer, Apologetics, Mixed-Belief Love, and Leaving Faith

 Pour a cup and hang out with Mike Smithgall for a Sunday morning Q&A. You’ll hear my take on “I’m praying for you,” why Christian apologetics fascinates and embarrasses, and a story about a friendly young-earth creationist who pushed me to think harder. We get into belief in a god without religion, the rise of the “nones,” and why a secular state isn’t my goal. We talk through fear during deconversion, mixed-belief relationships that work or implode, and simple etiquette for atheists at religious events. I close with “God of the gaps,” why “I don’t know” is a strong answer, and an invite to call the Heathen Hotline to add your voice. If you’re sorting your views or supporting someone who is, you’ll leave with calm, practical perspective and a few laughs. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:08

Welcome back to Breakfast with a Heathen. I am your favorite Heathen, Mike Smithgall. So go ahead and get yourself a cup of coffee and settle in. We're going to have a little fun Sunday morning conversation. As you can tell, this is a very laid-back conversation where I talk about um different perspectives I have, but a lot of this is just answering some of your questions, uh, the various listeners for the podcast and viewers of YouTube and other random bits of pieces of information that I've picked up along the way. It's kind of a nice way for me to get this out of my system a little bit. And um, but it's not this isn't fiery rhetoric. It's just uh me talking to you and um you maybe, like I said, chilling with your cup of coffee and your Danish, or maybe you've got some scrambled eggs and bacon there, and you're just enjoying a Sunday, a quiet Sunday morning before uh the house gets up, your wife or your husband or the kids or the dogs or whatever you've got going on. So uh so let's jump into some of the questions that we have here today. Got a kind of a lot of different ones from all over the board. I'm gonna start out with a good one. Um, from uh this is from Jimmy Chase, 9485. This is on my YouTube channel. So Jimmy says, I pray that Jesus opens your eyes and removes the unbelief. All right, Jimmy. Thanks, man. I appreciate that. You know, I'm gonna give Jimmy Chase here the uh the ben for the doubt and and uh assume that he means that in the best possible way, that he uh is being absolutely sincere, and because of his beliefs, he is worried for my soul, and he hopes that uh that Jesus will come to my rescue. Um unfortunately, Jimmy, you're probably a little late on that, but uh but anyways, man, that thanks, buddy. I appreciate it. Take a little sip of my coffee here. I feel like I should do a little Slurpee, like uh something for the podcast, right? Like a that probably sounded terrible on the other side of the microphone. Um, but if not, I just say I'm gonna take a sip of coffee. And it's just dead silence for 12 seconds. So anyway, so I'm gonna address Jimmy's real quick again, though. Uh, you know, I you get this. If you're an atheist, you've been told this a million times, and sometimes it's told to you in a not so nice way. It comes across sounding like it's nice, but you know that the the mood behind it is not. And I'm gonna use this as an analogy. If you're from the South, you'll fully appreciate this. Again, I grew up in Florida, mostly in Florida. Um, if you're in the South and you're not from there, um, or you meet someone who's Southern, and they ever tell you, oh, bless your heart, yeah, that's not good. That's almost never good. That that is a slam. It's a polite slam. It's basically telling, oh, you're an idiot, but I'm not gonna say that out loud because I've been taught proper manners. So you're you're you're a complete moron, but I'm gonna say, oh, bless your heart. That's what that means. So sometimes when people tell atheists uh that they're going to pray for us, it's said in the same way. We know that. But I'm gonna give Jimmy here, because this was written. I couldn't see his face, I couldn't hear the tone or the inflection. So I'm gonna give Jimmy the benefit of the doubt here and say that he meant that in the best possible way. Wasn't snarky at all. Let's see, what else we got here? Oh, this is a good, just a general topic. I find this. So, this uh person said that apologetics are embarrassing. Um, to me they are, but they're also fascinating. Um, I'll give you an example. Several years ago, gosh, it was 12 or so years ago, I tore up my shoulder and I had to get surgery. I had labrum and rotator cuff were both torn on my uh shoulder. So I was laid up for a long time. And after I got finished with the surgery, I think it was like two weeks of basically just laying in a chair because I couldn't move the arm enough to even push myself up. It's very painful. I started going to therapy. Um, and I had to go to physical therapy for about four months, twice a week, I believe. And when I first went in to the therapist, so I went to like this, you know, physical therapy office, and I had, you know, four or five physical therapists working in his large sort of room in an office building sort of style, right? And um I met with a gentleman. Um I'm not gonna use his name and you'll see why here in a minute, but I met with a gentleman who was gonna be my therapist. And I sat in his little sort of cubicle area. And as I sat there and and we're kind of talking about, you know, what I did and when the surgery was and all these various pieces and parts, I'm you know, glancing around the cube as one does, and I noticed he's got religious stuff everywhere. Again, this is in Florida. So that's not actually even an uncommon, but it still told me this guy is a very religious person. Again, I don't care. So we have a whole conversation. Then he does, he says this. He says, Mike, I'm unchristian. And if if you don't mind, would you mind if I pray for you? So I'm in this little sort of bit of a crossroads. I'm just starting to sort of come out as a as an atheist, and I'm I'm not really pissy about it, but I do kind of I'm in the point where I'm starting to push back on occasion when it's like, no, that's not appropriate in this, that, or the other situation. But in this situation, my thought was this guy believes in God. Now, I don't, but he does. This guy is going, he has a degree hanging on the wall. He's going to do physical therapy on me. I'm at a physical therapist's office. He just happens to be a very devout Christian, and he believes that if he prays for me, that's going to assist in the overall healing process. Okay, well, I can't really get upset about that. That seems like a nice thing. Is it going to have any effect? No, I don't think so. It'd be no different than if he, you know, waved crystals over me or burned sage or any of the other silly things that people do. But I knew he believed it. So I thought, okay, this is a genuine thing. So I said, Yeah, yes, I said, that's fine. It's not really my thing, but I understand it is yours and go right ahead. And he did, he did a little prayer. And I thanked him. I said, Thank you. That's it because it was nice. So jump forward. So um, so again, I'm going to him twice a week for four months. So we get to know each other pretty well. At some point, though, at some point, as he's like twisting my arm, and I'm, you know, tears are coming down my eyes because it's very painful throughout the process, you know, because it's painful. Physical therapy is not fun. Um, at some point he does ask me, so Mike, are you uh are you a Christian? Yeah, like, oh boy, here we go. Now you flat out ask me. Um, no, man, I'm I'm not. I'm I'm an atheist. Okay. Well, now we're on like Donkey Kong, right? And not in a bad way. He was actually a really nice, funny guy. He was a very nice, funny guy. I liked him a lot. Well, it turns out that he is a Christian apologist. He's a uh young earth creationist. So if you're not familiar with that, that's the guy that believes that the earth is only 6,000 years old. And the reason they come up with 6,000 years is they can take all the different stories in the Bible, walk back until they run out of stories, and that's 6,000 years ago. Basically the genealogy of the Bible. And you end up with Adam and Eve 6,000 years ago, which means everything that you think that's older than 6,000 years has to be explained away. So if you say dinosaurs are 65 million years, well, you're wrong. If you think uh, you know, there's some sort of structure in China or someplace that's older than 6,000 years, you're wrong. If you think you found rocks that are older than six years, you're wrong. Everything has to be within 6,000 years because that's when God created the earth. So the level of what I would call mumbo jumbo quasi science is extreme with creationists because it's essentially a house of cards, right? If you have a way of dating anything, they have to knock it down because if one of those things is true, then their whole worldview is wrong. So they can't take that. So any any example you give, it's just not, they can't accept it. It's all from what God said that you know, six days he created the earth and the animals and blah blah blah blah, till today. It's only six thousand years. Doesn't matter that we think there are cultures out there that are older than six thousand years. That doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter that we had dinosaur bones that would we would say they've been dated, doesn't matter. All that's false. I found that fascinating. We had fantastic discussions, clearly from opposite ends of the spectrum, very friendly conversations. Again, he did make me cry, but it was only because he was twisting my shoulder, hurting me on occasion. But the conversation was really very interesting. But let me give you this, and this is why I said I'm not gonna use his name. Again, very nice guy, and this is 12 years ago. I I was friends with him on Facebook for a while, and he did tell me, uh, he said, look, at some point I'm gonna have to drop you from Facebook. And I knew where he was sort of going with this. He he and his wife were both studying to be um uh physical therapists, or that studying. They were both, they were both physical therapists, they were both studying to be missionaries. And he said, What's going to happen is they're going to put us in a country where preaching Christianity is not at all welcome. We will go in there as medical people. Okay. So he's gonna go to a foreign country, Middle Eastern country, was I think was his intention. I don't know where he ultimately ended up, so I don't know. But he was gonna go to a Middle Eastern country and with his wife and his two, I think he had two elementary school, I know they're elementary school, little girls, if I'm remembering correctly, um, under the guise of them being medical people to help out in whatever village. But the real agenda, which I think is ironic because he's lying, the real agenda was to to mission, to do mission work and to preach the word of God and to convert, you know, the savages of wherever he was at to Christianity. But he knows that he can't have his outside life exposed. So what I'd he'd have to drop off Facebook and any kind of social media, anything that would tie him back to being a Christian, missionary of any kind, or even a super kind of turbo Christian, he'd have to take it off because he couldn't afford for the people that he was going to live among to figure that out and realize that you know that he's there under false pretenses and the jig would be up, right? And it could actually be dangerous, which I found fascinating and alarming. And I have worried about him ever since. Um, I know his name. I've looked him up on occasion to see if he's ever popped out. The name's not so con so uncommon that it's not as easy to find as a lot of people with his name. But I am kind of curious whatever happened. He wouldn't remember me. Um, but that was such an interesting story, and I was fascinated by his level of apologetics in a sense that he would he would have to he had to commit to that bit all the way to the end, to the point that he took his young girls into these worlds that is uh not necessarily friendly towards women and certainly not little girls, under false pretenses that could get him killed. Maybe you could admire the devotion. Um as a father, that was not where I came down on that, but uh it was interesting. It was very interesting. Ah, another little bit of coffee. So that was Christian apologetics. It's a very interesting. If you ever meet a Christian apologetics person, uh sit down and talk with them for a while. It's interesting. Let's see here. Oh, here's another one. Belief in God without a religion. Question mark. That's what they said. Can you believe in God without a religion? Uh yeah, I think you could. In fact, I've got a friend of mine who's actually staying with us uh right now. She's out of the house right at the moment, but she and I were talking the other day. We don't really talk about religion. I know her from my photography days, and um she's a model. I'm actually gonna have a try to get her on as an interview uh on this channel. But we were talking about her belief, and she kind of falls in this. She's not really religious in a sense that she doesn't necessarily believe in God, but she does have a level of spirituality and she feels we're all connected in some way, and which is sort of in the same vein of that, but she's not a Baptist, she's not a Catholic, she's not, you know, a Lutheran or whatever the case may be. I would be more inclined to believe that than I would be to believe a religion. And I I've always said this, and I've said this on this show, and I've said it on other shows. If you gave me some proof, and I don't know what that is, but if you gave me some proof that to me satisfied me to make me believe that there is a God, I would be, I would be amazed. And I think that'd be an incredible discovery, and I would be, I would love to see that be the case. Not because I'm wishing there'd be a God, but I'd be fascinated, right? However, I think coming at from an atheist point of view, I would be amazed there's a God. I think, though, there would be billions of people on this planet if that proof was suddenly made, so to speak, to all of us, that would be thoroughly confused because I can I a hundred percent believe that if there is a creator, a god, that that god has nothing to do with any of the religions that man has created. There's probably, you know, again, there could be a God of some sort, a creature, but that they're probably not a Christian. They're probably not a Hindu. They're not, you know, the Muslim religion, they're not a Scientologist, you know, naming your poison. So could you believe that there's a creator? Could you believe that there's a bigger power than all of us? Could you believe uh there's some so some sort of an afterlife? I mean, yeah, I guess you could believe all that, but not necessarily believe that there's a Jesus and that there was a Noah's Ark, or that there was these horses that drag you across the sky, or there's uh aliens in a volcano, which I think is Scientology, or you get your own planet when you die, like the Mormons. No, I don't think you I think none of that. You don't have to believe in any of that to still believe that there's a creator. And quite frankly, um I'm fine with that. I'm fine with all of it. But that that actually is to me is one of the better versions of of a spiritual, religious belief. Is that you just say, yeah, yeah, there's something bigger than me? I I don't know. Because all I've been told is by the last person who read the Bible what's really going on. But yeah, I believe maybe something created me. Maybe. Maybe something created the world, maybe. Maybe there's a point to my life beyond what I have figured out? Maybe. Do that does that person need me to take communion? No, not at all. Does that person care what I do in my bedroom? No. And I'm the same person, but does that God believe what I do in my bedroom is good or bad?

unknown: 14:59

No.

SPEAKER_00: 15:00

Um, no, I don't think so. So yeah, I think you can be, you can have a belief in a God without a uh without being religious. Oh, here's a good uh political sort of question. Um I say political because you'll see where I'm going. Could there be a wave of atheism slash agnosticism over the next 30 years across countries? Yes, but not to any great degree, would be my answer to that. I think atheism and agnosticism is certainly growing. Um, here in the United States, the nuns, so N-O-N-E, not N-U-N, the nuns, meaning there is they mark down that they have none, no religion. You know, what kind of, you know, what they ask, you know, what are your religious preferences? None. I have none. Uh that group is growing faster than any religion. That's kind of a skewed number because most religions are fairly mature, so they're not growing as quickly. But that also means that there are a lot of people leaving the religion that I just talked about in the last question, and they're sort of branching out of their own and saying, saying, you know, I don't know that I believe in a religion, but they still have a belief in God. But at the same time, X amount of those nuns are also agnostic or atheists because they've concluded that they don't think there is a God. The internet, you know, here's where people hate the internet. I think the internet has helped that to a degree. Uh, the internet has the goods and the bads. It is, it's just a tool, right? But the internet has taken someone that say believes like I do, but they live in a small town and they're surrounded by people that are religious, and it's given them some place to see maybe one of my shows and say, oh, okay, well, that guy is exactly where I am. I see where how he came through it, and he's had the same thoughts I'm having. But now this person can look to me or some of the people that I have on my show and realize that he's not alone, that there are other people like him, which makes him come out more. So he can start to say, you know, I am agnostic. And then usually that journey ends up with he's he's atheist, right? Will that continue? I think absolutely it will continue because it's just a natural progression. People see evidence or they see the lack of evidence and they draw conclusions, but you got to get outside of your bubble to get that different impression, right? If you've never left your small town, you don't really know what New York City's like. You don't really know what Chicago, like I live in Chicago. You ask a lot of my friends, I even have a brother, I bet you he says, Oh, Chicago is so dangerous. Well, I've lived here 10 years and I haven't been killed once. But in his small part of North Florida, yeah, it seems really dangerous because all he sees is people telling him how bad it is, right? That's not true at all, but that's what he believed. I other friends, well, including him, that have never left the country. So they think America is the best thing that's ever happened since sliced bread, right? Yeah, we have a lot of great things, but there are stuff in other countries that are better. They do some things better than we do, or they have different values that I think are better. Doesn't mean that we don't have good ones, but it doesn't mean they're the only, you know, that's the sole domain of uh of uh good ideas is America, right? Same thing here. If you're exposed to more things and atheism being one of them, it's going to grow. Is it going to grow so rapidly where they say in 30 years? No. It's it's not gonna grow so rapidly that it becomes a huge force. I wish it would, but in my lifetime, which is about that much time probably left, no. It's gonna grow, it's gonna get bigger. If anything, if I can do my little part to help normalize it, that's fine. Do I expect it to uh to uh be replacing Christianity? Uh no, not again, not in my lifetime, not in my children's children's lifetime. People I think are predisposed to superstition, and superstition is grown into religion, it helps people, comforts people. I don't think that's going away. I really just don't. Um certainly not going to go away from already existing. Maybe if you create a country out of whole cloth where they didn't exist to begin with, and people were born into a world where it never existed, maybe, but that's not happening. What else we got here? Um this is uh seems like a segue that I did not plan, but it does go with it. Do you think your country should be an atheist state? I do not, actually. Um, I wish it was more atheist and more agnostic, just because I wish that people would make that decision consciously versus unconsciously believing in God. And I say that because if you're on the opposite, if you're listening to this and you're a believer, you can almost guarantee that you, your family, your friends are in the same religion that they started out as babies. Almost a hundred percent. Obviously, not 100%, but almost 100% your religion is the same that your parents had, which is the same that their parents had, yada, yada, yada. Well, that unconscious acceptance, um, and if anything, all you've done is read things that lead you back to that same bias, but you didn't really honestly explore other ones, well, that's that's not really particularly good. Um, that's not how we should do things in critical thinking. We should explore all the different options and come to a logical conclusion. If your logical conclusion means that you're still a Christian and you're still a Methodist, that's fine. But did you explore Baptist? Did you explore being episcopal? Did you look at being Catholic or Jewish or Muslim or anything else? If you really didn't and didn't give an honest, genuine, sincere, experiential look, like you didn't go to the church and go to various services and read the Bible that they say or the Torah or any of these other books, the Quran, well, okay, so you really didn't explore. You didn't do it in terms of a scientific way. You didn't do experiments, so to speak. I would rather there be more atheists in this country because they did that process. They went through a process and that's where they landed. That would mean that we're taking some critical perspective and critical thinking skills and we're applying them to the world that we live in. Do I want every religious person to stop being religious? No. I really again, I don't really care. So, this question of do you think your country should become an atheist state? I don't think it should. We would solve some problems. We really would. But uh, no, I'm not really particularly, I don't, I don't need that. I I don't, it doesn't interest me necessarily to have that. I believe what you want. I don't care. Just stop telling me what I should believe. What do we else we got here? Um here's another good one. This person says I'm terrify I'm losing my religion and it's terrifying me. That kind of goes back to the question um earlier about uh, I think no, I said on this call, uh, about Neo and the um and um what was it, the Matrix. Um there people when they come out of religion, they give up a lot. Not only do they give up their social network very often, but they give up answers that they've always just taken for granted, sort of segued again what I just said. If you've always had an answer for something, you know, where do you go when you die? Well, if you've always had that answer built in since you were a baby, that you're gonna go to heaven and you're gonna see your grandparents again and your old dog and everything else that you think is in heaven, the streets will be paved with gold and you'll live in a mansion, which is very American-centric, isn't it? You know, in terms of just, you know, material goods. But nonetheless, if you believed all that, and then through the process you stopped believing in God, and then at some level your mortality uh starts to hit you. Maybe you have a friend die or you have a cancer scare yourself, and all of a sudden your mortality comes into play. Well, shit, maybe you never really thought about it per se in a personal way. You say, Well, I don't believe in God, so I don't believe in heaven. Well, that's one thing, but when you think, oh wait, I'm I'm feeling closer to death than I've ever felt, and that means I'm not gonna see my grandparents again, or or maybe you've had someone die who's close to you means that I'm never gonna see that person again. That last bit of moment that I had with them, be it two years before they died or two minutes before they died, that was it. That was the that was that, that was the end of it. That can be very upsetting, and it is terrifying for a lot of people because it just throws off their whole path, right? They had a path that they were following, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously. But none of that's true now. That can be very, very upsetting and terrifying. And it takes a while to work through that. Again, for me, it wasn't super hard. I was never super religious. So the idea of going to heaven was just like, okay, I guess that's what happens when you die. I didn't put a lot of effort into it in terms of that's not what I didn't count on it. But for the people that do, and in that study, sudden realization that that's not true, that can be very, very scary. And again, that goes on what I've said in this show before. Also, you're also very often giving up your social network, the people that you know, the people you love, your friends and family at the church. And that's also very isolating. So there's a lot of things going on there when you give up religion. And to some people, those are the things that stop them. Not the lack of belief, because sometimes there are people that attend church the rest of their lives, but they don't believe. But the not believing and the giving it all up is more scary than to just sort of sit there and and fake it and fake it till they make it, which doesn't really make sense because they've already got out of it, but they'll do that. Uh, it's that's unfortunate to me, but that's what they do. So yeah, I I this person's correct. It is terrifying. And I wish I had a great answer for you, other than to say, keep working on it. Just get up every day and talk to people like me, and another, not me, because I'm a specialist in any way, but talk to me uh or other atheists, people that have been down this road to see what we did. How do we get through it? Or was it just at some point you begin to accept and that first newness of coming out is what's shocking and terrifying. But eventually, like everything else that's scary in our lives, usually that fear goes away the longer we sit with it, and the more we go through it and we realize, you know, there's not a boogeyman under the bed. And that sound that we heard when we're laying there half asleep wasn't a guy breaking into the house. You start to realize what the fear is, is usually unfounded. And then you go about your life. I have no fear of dying. I don't want to die. I don't want to miss out. I have FOMO, right? The fear of missing out, but I don't want to die. But I realize the moment I die, the microsecond that I'm dead, boom, I'm dead. And I don't know what happens after that. So again, I fear not being here because I fear seeing my kids get older or your new kids come into the family or just experiments that turn our world around and make us go in different directions. I I would love to see all that. I'm not gonna. That doesn't actually make me happy. At 55 years old, my mortality is closer than it's ever been, right? I don't like that at all. But I'm not terrified of not going to heaven. I don't know if I'm making that 100% clear, but uh maybe you get that. And if you don't, send me a message and I'll be happy to bumble through that even more. Uh, let's see here. So this is a funny one, and you're gonna have to forgive me on the language if it bothers you or bothers you in the imagery. Uh, if God created us, why did he make homosexuality so pleasureful? So I'm gonna say I don't really know specifically. Um, but let's just say we'll we'll move, we'll we'll take the word homosexuality and we'll just say sexuality, because even though homosexuality is very often considered a sin, well, depending on what religious person you talk to, so is sexuality in general, right? If I have sex with someone on one day and the next day I get married to them, and then the next day I have sex again. Well, those two sexes were completely different in the eyes of the Lord. Were they really though? Come on. Because one was premarital sex, and that's a sin. And the other one was 24 hours later, and that's fine. Same sex, same person, same thoughts in terms of I was in love with this person, and she was in love with me. Sexuality and religion is a ridiculous argument because it rages at all the levels, and it's always I always find this the the level of sin, meaning like the level of sex that you find sinful is right about the level of sex that you have, right? I mean, if if you have wild, crazy rock star type of sex, you're like, Yeah, but that's fine. That's okay. I that's fine. It's beyond that, that's insane, right? It's like driving. You know, you're driving down the highway and you're doing 55 because that's the kind of speed you are, you're not really a speed person. You think this is fine, 55, that's fine. And then someone blows past you at 65, and they're an idiot. But if you're the kind of person who drives at 65, you complain about the guy driving 55 because he's too vanilla. He's not as wild as you are driving 65. And then some guy goes by you at 85, like he's an idiot. Same thing with sex, right? Whatever you do in the privacy of your bedroom or wherever you're doing it, which could be the whole other thing, the back of your car, you're comfortable with that level. And if you're a believer, you think that God's comfortable with that level. It's the people that go one step further, they're the sinners. So sex and religion is crazy. But there is kind of a good point. If God made us, he did make sex pretty fun, actually. It's a lot of fun. I've been doing this now for a long time. Again, I'm 55. Um, yeah, it's pretty good. I like it. I'm not gonna stop anytime soon. So if God made us, he made that pleasurable, um, and also a very strong desire, like one of the strongest desires in our human bodies. Why? And to this person's point, if homosexual sex is also pleasurable, why did you do that? Again, that gets into all kinds of craziness. And this isn't really the time or day, so to speak, for some of this deep sex conversation, but it is actually a very fascinating conversation. And uh someone like me who's very open about sort of things, like I can have that conversation as deep as you want to go, I guess. But it's it's interesting. God gives us all these things, supposedly, and then says, but don't do any of it, don't use any of these things that I supposedly gave you. Okay, whatovs, man? I don't know what coffee this is today. I think it's like a bourbon maple. I have a curry, so I have. Like you know, umpteen number of different coffee flavors that my wife buys, and I love them. That's the nice thing about the Curig, I think they're terrible for the planet, but at the same time, I keep using them, so hypocrite much. Uh let's see here. Here's a good question. And we actually had this, I had a party at my house last weekend, yeah. Um, so the weekend before um Halloween, and um we had a couple who so this question says, Me, 29 female, and my spouse, 33 male, uh differ in religion and beliefs. Help. So we had a couple come over to our house that I've met her on uh a few occasions. She's a very nice woman, and she's an atheist. She's in our group of atheists here in Chicago, and she had told me, I don't know, within the last year or so, once or twice, she and I chatted back and forth online. And she said, you know, I'm dating this guy, he's religious, and I'm having this, that, and the other a thought. I'm like, oh, okay. So we kind of talked about it just very casually. Well, she came to the party and brought a guy. Now, I hadn't had a chance to talk to her beforehand to see if this was the same guy. So I was very curious, is this the same guy that's that's not religious? Or I mean, sorry, that's not an atheist? And turns out he was. Um, and because it was a little party of 20-something people, you know, you kind of move around as a host and you talk to different people. So it took me an hour or so before I got a chance to sort to sort of corner him and start to talk to him. And um we started talking, and I oh one of the questions I ask, and I always tell people this is a good question to ask when you're meeting somebody, ask them what they do when they're not working, right? Because most of us take a job and we might like the job, but a lot of times we just take a job because we need the job or we have some level of skill in it, but it's not our passion. You know, we're not doing something we love, like, oh, I can't wait to go start doing some accounting tomorrow, you know, or whatever. I can't wait to start pulling orders at a warehouse. That sounds like so much fun. We don't say that, right? But so if you ask me, what do they do when they're not working? Well, that's what they spend their free time doing. So I asked this guy, what do you do when you're not working? So he turns out he's a Dungeons and Dragons fan, loves Dungeons and Dragons, told me for 20 minutes about stuff about Dungeons and Dragons, things I never knew. And I don't play the game, I don't really know much about it. But he told me all kinds of different stuff. So we had a good conversation. At some point, just in that conversation, I asked him, Um, oh, you're here with with her. I said her name. Are you a uh are you an atheist? Right? No, I say he said, No, no, I I go to church. I'm like, oh, okay. So he told me again, okay, he is the guy she's been dating for a while. Um, I said, well, that's cool. That was it. Then we went back to Dungeons and Dragons or whatever the next piece of that conversation was, right? Because that was all I don't care. It was fine, but I wanted him to be comfortable. And I got an uh my wife actually got an email from uh her later or text from his girlfriend who said he was so happy because he was very nervous about coming, because this was sort of an atheist group of people. And he was very nervous because he was a believer, and you know, we're all atheists, and are we gonna like pick on him? Or I don't know what he thought, but nonetheless, and that wasn't it all. So these people have been together now for a while, I think, a year or so. He's a believer, she's not, they're making it work. Would it always be that way? And in terms of can everybody do that? No, some people are very strong believers on either side. And I'm gonna give the atheist side a little more credit here, and you'll see where I hear in a second. I think it's probably harder for the religious person to date an atheist than it is for the atheist to date the religious person. Caveat being, depends on how strong either side is. But most of the atheists I know have grown up here in the United States. We're surrounded by believers. Most of our family are believers, most of our friends are believers, most of the people we've ever loved are believers. So we're very comfortable dealing with believers. Now, some of the actions that believers take, we might have some objections to that. But nonetheless, we're comfortable being around believers. It doesn't really bother us for the most part, because that's mostly who we know. The other side is not very often true. Most believers don't know an atheist. They really don't. And the assumptions and the baggage that they've acquired over the years of what they believe that atheists are are usually very bad, right? They think that we are sinners and that we are devil worshippers and that we have no morals and this, that, and the other. And as a result, they do not want to associate with us. So if you're in a relationship with someone and they're that kind of Christian, or believer in general, but again, Christian, they cannot see an atheist and not see it as just the worst part of humanity. Again, that that person has no morals and that they're a sinner and they'll just kill you in your sleep because they're not afraid of going to hell or not going to heaven. It's probably not going to work out because that person is always going to be trying to convert you to be a believer. I just don't see how that can some people make it work, of course. People make all kinds of craziness work. But if that's who they are, or they're, you know, 24 hours a day, they're sort of wrapped up in being religious, it's very difficult. I have another gentleman that I have not done the interview with yet, and I've met him now a few times. He was a Pentecostal pastor. And uh he and his wife both. So he was the pastor, and she was, you know, the wife of a pastor, which is a very exalted sort of position in um in a black church, especially, but in all churches, and he's a he's a black gentleman, um, as was his wife, is a black woman. When he stopped believing, and again, he was a pastor, Pentecostal pastor, he eventually stopped believing, became an atheist. And he, you know, he says to her, Hey, I I'm I'm not believing anymore, and I'd like you to to look into this with me and let's talk about it. No, she was having none of that. And unfortunately, it resulted in their uh long-term marriage breaking up. Five kids. They broke up, and she's still a very strong believer, and he is an atheist. That's unfortunate. It's terrible, in fact. But um, yeah, I think that's it's a difficult road to go down. So if you're hooking up with people, and I say hooking up, I mean just you know, that's that's the person you're connected with, and you have very opposite beliefs, and in opposite beliefs in the sense that one believes and one doesn't. I think that's actually the more extreme than you're Catholic and he's episcopal, or you're you're Catholic and she's a Jewish person. I know those cause problems sometimes, but I think you're easier because you're both on the same side of a coin, on two sides of the same coin, I should say. You're both believers. You both believe in God, you both share a framework and a foundation that's different than the atheist who says, Yeah, we don't believe in any of that. So can it be done? Yes. Um, can it be done fine? Yeah. Can it also be terrible? Yeah. I think it can can lead that way for sure. But you know, if you're a uh if you're religious or an atheist and your your spouse or your partner is the opposite, I'd love to hear your thoughts and how that came about. I didn't really have that problem, so it didn't um my wife came to her atheism at a later date than I did, but neither one of us are very strong believers, anyways, so it never caused a problem. Let's see, what's in there? This is a this is this is kind of a silly question, but I understand where they're coming from. I said, What's the social etiquette as an atheist at a Catholic wedding? Um, nothing. Do everything you're supposed to do. You just attend it like a normal person. There's a key and peel, you know, the comedic uh duo, key and peel. Um, they've got a great skit that's essentially the same thing, where um um I forget which one's which off the top of my head. Um Jordan Peel, I think is the uh shorter one. Um he and his family, one of their family members is is gay and he's marrying a man. So they invent, they invite his co-worker who's gay, to come over and talk to them about what you should do at a gay wedding. And of course, it's it's very funny because they're a very funny duo. But people are asking all sorts of questions. It's like, you know, which side of the uh aisle do they sit on? The straight side or the gay side? Like there's like he's like, there's no straight side, gay side, you know, like what kind of gift should we? Is there a gay store we're supposed to buy? He's like, no, you you just go wherever they've registered. This is the same wedding, it's the same as every other wedding. He's like, are we supposed to sing the YMCA song? He's like, Why, why would you sing YMCA? It's a very funny skit. But it's the sort of the same thing here. If you're going to a Catholic wedding and you're an atheist, it's a wedding. You know it's a Catholic wedding. That's fine. But just go to the wedding and you and you watch these people uh, you know, devote their lives to one another and they're gonna kiss at the end. And I don't know, maybe they're gonna throw rice. Like it's been a long time since I've been to a Catholic wedding. Um, you've seen it on TV. Just go along, just go along with it. No one's gonna require you to take communion, no one's gonna require you to go up and you know pray to the feet of the crucifix. Just go along with it. Um you don't have to run out screaming. Um, you don't have to cough or object when they mention Jesus. Just go along with it. That that's just you're being a friend at that point, you're being a family member. The etiquette is exactly the same. I went to a uh bat mitzvah when my daughter was a young teen, as her friend was having her bat mitzvah. And I had never been to a Jewish service. That was really very fascinating. And then they came by, and this has been a long time ago now, maybe 20 years. Um, they came by with the Torah, right? And did people touch it and pray? I something like that happened. And again, this is 27 years ago and the only one time. So I was in that sort of like, uh, I don't think I'm supposed to do anything because I'm not Jewish. Um, but I didn't want to offend anybody by doing it or not doing it. And I didn't know that was gonna happen. So I was in that uh, I'm just kind of looking around the room as they're going around the uh, you know, the um the uh the temple, I guess, right? And I was like, oh hell, I don't know what to do here. But they eventually came to my row and and and somebody else was on the row, and I think they touched it, right? Um, and then the the rabbi, I guess, who was carrying it, just they moved on to the next row, and I just sat there quietly, which is fine. I I guess it was fine. I don't think anybody was offended. But I thought it was interesting, but like that was the only etiquette I had to stress over. Everything else was like, I'm just here. I'm I'm I'm dressed nicely and I'm I'm polite and I'm sitting here quietly, watching this thing play out. No different if uh two atheists got married or two um two uh Catholics got married. In fact, I'm going to an atheist wedding, and I say that because my two friends are atheists, they're getting married in January, and I'm gonna go to that. I'm actually very curious to see how that wedding plays out because I know he, they this is they're in North Carolina now. He comes from a normal Southern North Carolina black family. Um, it'll be interesting to see what how they chose to do a wedding, knowing that they're both atheists, but their family is not. I'm very curious to see how that plays out. But it'll make no difference on how I handle it. I'm just gonna sit there like a normal person. Oh, let's see here. Anything else on here that's pretty good. Um I have one that I was gonna maybe hold, but I'm gonna go ahead. You know what? I'm gonna do it real quick. I'm gonna put another one in because it's a little bit of a downer. I'm about 45 minutes or so into this. So this one is I made a uh a video and an audio and a blog article. So sometimes when I drop what I call the mic drops, I'll do all three. I'll do a podcast like I'm doing now. I also will make a YouTube video, which is very similar, basically the same sort of script, if you will. And then I also will write an article, sort of a companion piece to that. And I do all three of them, usually around the same day, if not maybe a day between them. Um, so this one was a week or so ago. So go back to my go to atheistfil.com and look up the Ten Commandments. So I did a uh an article and everything else about Louisiana hanging the Ten Commandments in every classroom, kindergarten through college. And they were doing that, they got a law passed where they did it, and then they got struck down, and then they took it back and appealed it, and now it's gonna go to the Supreme Court. And they're using the word heritage. They're saying Christianity and these Christian scriptures, such as the Ten Commandments, are part of our heritage. So when we hang them in our classrooms and force every single teacher to hang it in their classroom, we're not doing it from a religious point of view. No, no, that would be crazy. That would be against the law. We're doing it as part of our American heritage. So, okay, we we know that's BS, but whatever. But I also made a comment within there that Louisiana, the same state, and uh Florida and other states, are at the same time, but they're trying to claim heritage, they're whitewashing some of our other heritage, namely slavery. So they're trying to get slavery written down and sort of quieted within the uh books. Do not make slavery so uncomfortable for white kids, which is just ridiculous because it is terrible and it is uncomfortable. As a white person, if you're sitting around a classroom full of black people and they start talking about slavery, you can't help but feel a little uncomfortable. Not that I had anything to do with it, but it's an uncomfortable part of our history, right? It'd be like teaching uh German kids about Hitler. It's uncomfortable for Germans because Germans were on that side. Maybe not that guy's grandparents, but nonetheless, Germany as a whole was against everything good during that era, right? Well, slavery was a white person thing. Now, I say that because here we go. So this guy took exception to my comment about uh whitewashing the slavery, and he did it in the most whitewashing sort of way. So Sebastian Stock on my YouTube channel here uh responded, what I'm gonna read this in his grammar because it's maybe tells you something. What racial injustice are you referring about exactly? The BLM propaganda, the fact that America had only 2% slaves, and most their owners were black. So he spelled their and were wrong. Um, but let me read that in normal language here. So he's he's concerned about what racial injustices I mentioned, which again is I talked about the slavery being sort of downplayed, and then he says the BLM propaganda. I don't know if he means the BLM propaganda, like BLM is the one telling us about slavery. I don't really understand that piece of it. But then he makes these two what he thinks they were are factual points. The fact he says, the fact that America only had 2% slaves. Okay, let's stop right there. He actually wrote three or four more paragraphs that I didn't read, and I didn't read them to you either because I didn't read them at the time, because like this is so stupid that I can't even bother to continue. So, first of all, let's just I'm gonna come back to this, but the two percent is actually inaccurate. But he said, had only two percent slaves. The word only bothered me more than the two percent. Two percent of an entire population were slaves, and you're saying that's only as if that's okay. To give some scale to this, we have 330 million people, give or take, in this country today. That two percent would be about seven million people. Seven million people would be slaves today. And this person would say, well, it's only two percent. It's only two percent. Why would you be bothered by by only two percent? That's that's the the level of ridiculous in that statement. Um but here's the other part of that inaccuracy. It wasn't 2%, it was 12%. 12% of the population were slaves. They did a census in 1860, so we're right there in that time frame. They did a census, about 12% of the population were slaves. That number itself is actually misleadingly low because that 12% is of the US population. Only 15 out of 33 states allowed slavery. So that 12% of the entire US population was relegated to only 15 states. Now, when I didn't do the math, I should have looked that up, is what would that same 12% equal when you strip out the other 33 or other uh 17 or 18 states that didn't have slavery, right? So let's just stay with 12% though. 12% of the population at the time, again, this is 1860, were slaves. To make that scale again up to where we are today, that would be the equivalent of 41 million people were enslaved. That number is staggering. And this person is trying to pass it off as only, in this case, say 41 million people. So again, if you advance us to 15 or 150 years in the future, that'd be someone looking back and saying, you know, the United States only had 41 million people as slaves. It's not that big a deal. I it's an astonishing stupid comment. But also to give you one more context, on just that point, I didn't, I had to look this up. 41 million people would take about 17 states. So take our lowest population states, it takes 17 states. So think about this: every man, woman, and child in these 17 states would have to be a slave to equal that same population. So here we go: Wyoming, Vermont, Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Delaware, Montana, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maine, Hawaii, Idaho, West Virginia, Nebraska, New Mexico, Mississippi, and Arkansas. That's a lot of people. All of those states would have to be completely enslaved to equal the same population percentage that the time. And this guy's just saying, it's only 2%. And then his very next, actually, the rest of that sentence, he says it's only 2% slaves, and most of them were owned by black people. What? That is an insane statement. It doesn't even, it's it's not even close to any level of truth. You talk about apologists. I mentioned earlier. This guy is like a white personal apologist. He's trying to make this as if it's not that big a deal. Again, the irony is he's complaining because I said that these states like Louisiana and Florida are trying to downplay this uncomfortable white history. And he's doing nothing but downplaying playing the white history. It's it's asinine, but this is what he's saying. So I actually had to look it up and like, well, I knew that was wrong. It's just flat out wrong. Any any reasonable person knows that's wrong. But I had to kind of look it up so I could have some numbers because I always like to give people numbers. So here's the number. Roughly at the time, when 1860, there were roughly four million slaves. Four million black people were enslaved. At the time, though, there were black people that owned slaves. The total number of slaves, between 10 and 12,000, that was the estimate. Between 10 and 12,000 slaves were owned by black people. There's 300 and something thousand families that owned slaves that were listed as slave owners in the census. But again, out of the 4 million slaves, 10 to 12,000, which is statistically zero, uh, were owned by black people. So his point that mo he says most of their owners were black. Well, that's just 100% false. But here's the other nuance to that 10 to 12,000. A lot of those slaves were owned by family members because the only way you could keep your family together was to buy their freedom by buying them as slaves. So you might have to buy your wife or your mother or your father or your child, buy them as a slave, and own them as a slave so that someone else couldn't take this person from you. I mean, and for this idiot, Sebastian Stock, and I'm gonna use the word idiot, which I don't use very often necessarily, but that statement is so it's not a that's not a misinformation. You're willingly, willfully, I should say, uh using this side of information because this is more appealing to you than the reality. Because nobody has grown up in this country. I'm assuming this guy's not 150 years old. He's grown up in this country knowing full well what slavery is. He's pretending it didn't exist, or you're pretending it's not as bad as it was, and saying that that most of the slaves were owned by black people. What is wrong with it, idiot? I mean, it's just it's just I was like, oh my god, come on, dude. This is kind of stuff I get sometimes. Like, you've got to be kidding me with this question or this statement. It's it just it boggles my mind sometimes. All right, I'm gonna end on this one. I think we're right about time. I'm gonna end on this one. Um, I think I may have brought this up, if not on this show. I did make a uh um a short on TikTok and on YouTube both about this. It says, nobody knows the answers, but that doesn't make your answers correct. 100%. I don't know who said this, but that's a hundred percent. Not knowing the answer is fine. You coming up with an answer just to fill in the gap, uh, what we call the God of the gaps. And I think I also made a full on a long video and a long uh mic drop on this. The God of the gaps is a terrible spot. Oh, yeah, I did, I'm trying to think. I made so many different videos and uh in and podcasts. The point of that is the God of the gaps. That's what we call it. When you don't know what happened there, so you say, well, God did that, right? We don't know why this exists, so it must be God. That's the God of the gaps. And my point in that video that I made a month or so ago, whatever it was, was that science keeps moving forward and and religion keeps retreating because scientists keep saying, Well, we don't know why this is, and we've got to figure it out. That's the that's the advancement. When they figure it out, religion has to take a step back because there's at some point when the science is so overwhelmingly obvious that religion that used to have a an answer for that has to step back and say, Okay, yeah, okay, yeah, we'll we'll give it to you. That um the person who just fell down on the ground and starts, you know, flipping around like a fish, uh, that's not the demons anymore. That's epilepsy. And we know what epilepsy is. So demons, yeah, it's not really the religious, you know, God version. We have to step, uh, take a step back. You know, uh, isn't is God mad and he's shooting these weird lightning bolts out of the sky, and that's the wrath of God. No, no, that's actually electricity. So we'll take a step back. So religion's constantly in retreat because people keep filling things in. At the same time, you don't have to have an answer. Uh, the number of things that I don't know far outweigh the things that I do know. And I'm okay with that. My white microwave is broken right now. Um, I went to shut the other door, shut the door, and it just stopped working. If you gave me every piece and component in a microwave, but in its raw form, I'd never be able to make a microwave. I have no idea why microwaves work. I barely understand what a microwave is, let alone how you can produce one from pieces of metal. I don't have any idea. And you know what? I do not care. As long as I can heat up my leftovers, I'm totally fine with that. Now that's a small issue. Do I need to know the microsecond that the world began and understand why? Not really. Doesn't really bother me throughout my day to not know that. But what I'm not gonna do is say, well, it must be God. I'm not gonna fill that gap in because it's I don't know that it's God either. I don't know what caused it, but just saying it's God is not a good answer. So you don't have to have an answer. My answer may not be correct, or I may not have an answer, but that doesn't mean just filling it in is a good uh response either. Just saying you don't know, that's totally fine. Atheists are very bad about this because atheists feel the uh feel the need sometimes, excuse me, to uh defend everything. And I've I I say this, I'm sort of preach this. You do not. I uh I have a finance degree, I work in a fintech sort of environment. My wife, my wife works for banks. We've always worked in banks. You take me out of the bank, I don't know what you do. I didn't study that, I didn't study cosmology, I didn't study astrophysics, I don't know. And I'm totally fine not knowing, right? By that same token, I'm not buying your idea that God did it all either. That's not particularly proof uh proof to me, but whatever. So anyway, so that's my answer through the nobody knows the answers, but doesn't make your answers correct. Yes, I totally agree with that. So if that's your idea is to open the book and say, well, it says right here in this 2,000-year-old book that God did it. Yeah, yeah, man, that's that's not enough for me. So anyway, that is me for this Sunday morning for your breakfast with with a heathen. I do appreciate you joining in and again sharing your uh Sunday morning, your cup of coffee with me. So until we go, uh until we meet again, make sure that you have a great day, make it a great week. If you have any questions or comments, I am always open to those. I do love hearing from you. Um again, even if you disagree with me, that's fine. I don't mind that. You're absolutely welcome to disagree with me. Um, you can um also call and leave me a message that I'll play on the on the show if you want. That number is 224-307-5435. That is the Heathen hotline. And uh, I will take those uh those uh messages and get back to you um usually on air. But so leave me a message, you know, be civil and be responsible, you know, be responsible. Come on, you know, don't be don't be crazy. But if that's how you want to get to point across because you feel like it's too much to type out, just leave me a message. Again, that is uh 224-307-5435. And that is me again. I'm Mike Smith Gall. This has been Breakfast with a Heathen. Talk to you later. Thanks for tuning in. I really hope you enjoyed that. If you have a question from me or any of our guests, make sure you drop a comment. We'd love to hear from you. Hey, and do me a favor like and subscribe. That really helps us out and helps us bring you more conversations from beyond. And in the meantime, take care and remember reason and compassion go a very long way.