Breakfast With Heathen Ep4 - From “Have a Blessed Day” to “You Cherry Picked That”: A Candid Talk on Faith and Frustration

In this episode of Breakfast with a Heathen, Mike answers real questions from listeners about debating religion, losing friendships, and navigating those awkward “bless your heart” moments. From being told you’re “taking scripture out of context” to realizing you never truly believed, this discussion explores how atheists and agnostics experience conversations with the faithful.

He also unpacks the emotional side—grief over lost friendships, the desire for belief, and the strange mix of humor and tension when religion lingers in daily life. This episode is for anyone who’s ever felt misunderstood for thinking differently or tired of being told to “understand the context.”

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:07

Good morning and welcome to another episode of Breakfast with the Heathen. I am your favorite heathen, Mike Smithcall, and this is just my Sunday morning chat show where I uh just sort of rid myself of the thoughts that I have collected during the week. Uh the uh the sort of lint of the universe collecting on the cheap blue suit of my mind. So uh sit back, grab yourself a cup of coffee or some tea or whatever it is that you start your Sunday mornings with. I'm gonna drink my coffee out of my Navy Dad cup that I've mentioned before. So hold on, let me take a sip. This is an obligatory sip with a little bit of slurp for the sound. I like to make the uh I like I'm making a commercial when I say that. It's always kind of silly to me, but if you're like, well, if you're listening to this only and you're not seeing it, then how do you really know I took a sip of coffee from my Navy Dad cup? Unless I tell you that and show you or listen. I guess I'm not showing you, but I'm letting you hear it through the sounds of the slurping anyway. So again, if you've ever been here, welcome. Um, this is just a show that I do again as I I get rid of some of the uh thoughts that I've had throughout the week. You know, I do a show um every every Wednesday, I do a mic drop show. And that's that is a little bit more of a social commentary, usually has a little bit more of a bite, a little bit of a rant sometimes. Um, but this show is designed to be just a very chill Sunday morning show. And if you're listening to this on Sunday mornings or maybe you're driving into work in the early part of the week, then hopefully this is relaxing to you. Even the topics that I bring up sometimes that may get me riled up on a different, uh, a different day or a different time, I try to address them very calmly and just uh talk through them versus sort of go in depth. Um, but if you look for if you're looking for a little bit more in-depth, listen to my mic drops on um again. I'm gonna start moving those to Tuesday mornings because I I find that a lot of people like to listen to them, the podcast version at least, uh, early in the week. So I was dropping them on Wednesday, I'm gonna start dropping on Tuesday. But without any further ado, as they say, let's go ahead and take our, I'm gonna take this second question here. Um so this is from Andrew Dobson, 813. So Andrew and I, he's a uh viewer um on my YouTube channel. So Andrew and I had a little bit of a back and forth. It was very respectful. I'm not complaining about that at all, but we had some disagreements. And I'm just gonna read you one thing here. Um, he took exception with my use of the word atheism. Now, my channel is called Atheistville. And as I set this up, let me tell you that. Um, it's called Atheistville. I would say that I am an atheist, by and large, meaning that everything I say and do and think and act is based on the idea that there is no God. What I don't say is that there is no God. And I'm hoping I can make that distinction clear, meaning I don't think there is one, I don't act as if there is one, I don't expect to find one, um, all that sort of thing. So, in a practical sense, I am atheist. But in an intellectually honest way, I guess I'm agnostic, meaning I can't know that there's not a God. I just don't, I don't, uh, I don't think there is, and I don't take any actions that would that would allude to that effect, right? Um, but I can't know it by the same point I make this, and it's not to be snarky, but by the same token, I can't know that there's not a Lochness monster. I can't know that there's not a Bigfoot, you know? I those are things I can't know. Do I believe there's a Bigfoot? No. Do I believe there's a Lochness monster? No. Do I believe there's a God? No. And the reason I say all that is because none of those have been proven to me. Will I allow a certain percentage to say that possibly those things exist? Sure. I mean, again, lots of things are possible in the world. Probable and possible are different. So the way I take and again structure my life is as if there's no God. But I'm willing to see the evidence, and thus far in my 55 years, I've not seen any evidence that convinces me otherwise. But this person took exceptionally. Thank you. Thank you, Andrew, for calling me, sir. Absence of belief, sir, is agnosti agnosticism, not atheism. Atheism requires belief without evidence that no God exists. Modern atheism sadly contained far too much sloppy thinking. Okay. Andrew, Andrew, Andrew, Andrew. Okay. So the word atheism is really not as defined as some people think that it is. And even then, depending on who you're talking to and what their agenda is, they will skew that definition anyways. And I went on to tell him, I said, you look, man, that the word atheism isn't quite as defined as you think. Meaning, um, the term has had actually different meanings, meaning, uh, could it, I've said the little word meaning like 17 times in that sentence. Um, it could mean absolutely that you, and he's saying it requires belief without evidence that no god exists. Meaning, I say I believe no god exists. And I think I'd said that earlier, but I I I sort of uh put a little bit of a caveat there. I believe no God exists in the sense that I don't think about it. I don't assume a God's there. I'm not worried about interacting with a God. So, in a practical and sort of pragmatic view, I don't believe a God exists. But as I said, I will allow that there are a lot of things that exist in the world that I don't know about, have not been shown to me, or have not been proven to me. Where he sort of went awry in our next conversation was this idea that atheism is only defined as that one thing, that you absolutely believe there is no God. And that's not true. It's just not how atheism has been defined over the centuries. And modern atheism and modern atheists mostly, mostly, you can't say 100% anything, most modern atheists will say pretty much what I just said. Their life is structured around the fact that they don't think there's a God because it's not been proven. So they don't operate with any assumption that there is a God. But almost all atheists I've spoken to are absolutely willing to look at the evidence. Now, the evidence has got to be something different than we've seen the last 55 years, or you know, again, in my case, 55 years. If you're gonna show me a Bible um passage, save your save your breath because I've seen them all, I've heard them all. I'm rejecting the Bible uh just out of hand. So that's not gonna work with us. Absence of that, we're gonna live our lives as if there is no God. If you want to call that agnostic, fine. If you want to call that atheism, fine. It actually doesn't really matter to me the semantics. I'm not trying to win a court case here. I'm just I'm making the point here that my life is based on there being no God. So Andrew Dobson, 18 or 813. Um, again, we had a friendly conversation. Oh, you're coming at from different perspectives, but that's fine. But yeah, if you if if you're if you're a believer, you're trying to catch an atheist, you know, catch him, you know, gotcha moment. That I got you, and you're trying to say, no, you're really agnostic. I don't really know what point you're trying to make. Okay, so you call me agnostic. All right, I can live with that. But okay. As as they say, you can call me anything you want, just don't call me late for dinner. I don't really care if you call me agnostic or atheist. I think the words are very interchangeable nowadays in terms of how people perceive it. And again, it's much more of a nuanced uh semantics, but all right, if that makes Andrew Dobson feel better, that he thinks I really am an agnostic and not truly an atheist. I don't know what the agenda is. I don't know why he cares, but all right, Andrew, that's fine. I can live with that. Ah, took another sip of my coffee here. All right, let's see what else we got in here. Um this is a good question because I've um I've used this analogy before. I think I may have used this analogy on this show. I can't remember. But this person says, Does anyone else feel like they woke up from the Matrix? Yeah, and he says, I'm a 19-year-old, I'm 19 years old. I don't think I've ever really believed in it. But last year was a real uh was a year I really woke up. One day I really I literally woke up from my bed and said, God isn't real. And then he goes on to sort of explain that. And if you've ever seen the movie, uh The Matrix, I'm not spoiling it, it's like a 30-year-old movie at this point. So um if you think this is a spoiler, I guess stop now. But come on, you've had plenty of time to watch that movie. But there's a scene in the movie where um the uh character uh Morpheus offers Neo, which is uh Keanu Reeves' character, uh two pills, a blue pill and a red pill. And one is essentially keeps him asleep in the Matrix, which is a world that's been concocted and they believe certain things, and there's all these sort of things. And the other pill wakes him up from all that and he sees life how it really is. So this person, again, he's 19, so uh good for you, man, for watching a video that's uh you know 10 years older than you are, uh, or thereabouts. I can't remember exactly when that movie came out, but it was a long time ago. Um, he feels like he woke up from the Matrix. And I have heard people say that, and I think I've used that analogy before because there's a point where you believe and you think, and all the sort of stories you've heard all your life, you know, the Noah's Ark and the talking snake, and a guy living in a long weekend in the belly of a whale, and Lot's wife, and the stories get crazier and crazier as you kind of dig deeper into them. And then at some point, if you have stopped believing, all that seems like, wow, I was living in a completely made-up world, a world in which a God oversaw everything I did, a world in which um my grandparents were watching me from heaven, you know, a world in which God watched who I slept with and how I slept with him. Um and at some point, if you're an atheist or an agnostic even, and you've given up the belief in that existing, in a sense that I, like I mentioned earlier, I don't believe that God is watching me because I don't believe there's really a God. Prove me wrong, that's fine. But right now, I am not worried about going to sleep tonight and laying with my wife and maybe messing around and having a good time. I'm not worried about a God watching that. I'm not worried about my four sets of or my two sets of grandparents watching that either, which is always creepy when you think about it, because you're you're they always say your grandparents are watching you from heaven. Really? Do they ever look away? Because that's kind of strange. But nonetheless, I'm not worried about any of that. So I'm I I am sort of woken up, I guess, out of the Matrix, right? The world that I was living in at one point is not the world that I live in now. And for the people that have sort of just made that switch, yeah, it can very much feel like The Matrix. It's a great movie, by the way. Now I'm gonna go watch it. I haven't watched it in years, but I've seen it a dozen times at least. Um, go back and actually watch it. If you've not watched it, you haven't watched it in a long time, especially if you're um if you've made that deconstruction where you've come out of religion and you're back down. Watch it again. There's a lot of um symbology there. Is that the right word? Symbology? You know what I'm trying to say. There's a lot of that in there, symbolic language. I'll put it that way until I make sure I'm using the right word. But there's all but there's a lot symbolism. Thank you. That's the word I'm looking for. There's a lot of symbolism. I don't know where I got symbology. Let's just cut that out. There's a lot of symbolism in that movie, and it's very, very interesting. It's a really, really well-made movie. Even if you're not a sci-fi person, it's really well made, and there's a lot of some symbolism in it, and there's a lot of meaning structured and weaven. Uh, geez, my words are woven. I think I need more coffee. My goodness. There's a lot of meaning woven throughout the script. So uh go back and watch that. That's the matrix. The matrix two is okay, the matrix three is just not worth watching, but but maybe if you want to finish the trilogy, that's fine. Let's see here. This is from OK Hat, 3793. I think that would be uh a Reddit person. Says for context, I was having a debate with an evangelical Christian. Well, that's probably your first mistake right there. And I was quoting both the old and new testament for my argument, but she kept responding with, you're just cherry-picking quotes. You have to understand the context. Okay, well, and he goes on to continue that that thought. The idea of the context is a it's age old when you start to argue. And this is why I said at the beginning if you're having a debate with an evangelical Christian, if you want to do it, knock yourself out. But I I've come to the conclusion that it's a waste of time for everybody. And it's really one of the reasons I don't do debates on my channel. A lot of people will come to our live streams or they'll respond in the comments to this show. Maybe not this show as much, because it's a very low-key show, but my mic drops and certainly the live streams, people will come on live and they'll start typing fast and furious with whatever their perspective is. And they'll demand sometimes. I literally had them demand, put me on. I want to debate this. Get your own channel, man. I'm sorry, because the debates in that sort of fiery rhetoric are just not very interesting to me because they never really lead anywhere. Will somebody out there in the listening audience or the viewing audience on YouTube, will they maybe change their perspective? Maybe. And I guess as a broadcast in the truest sense, broadly speaking, I'm going out to a lot of people here. I mean, more than four people worldwide, listen to this. But you get the point. Someone out there might change their mind. But in the meantime, it's just a lot of shouting, if you will, even if it's not truly raising our voices, it's the same type of thing. Someone trying to top the other person and make their points and get a sound bite, and it just doesn't go anywhere. But you know, if the person you're talking to um is willing to discuss, then that's fine. The debate just not going to go anywhere. But let me get back to this other point about the context. Context is a double-edged sword because you can, in fact, cherry pick the Bible and you can say things out of context, and it can make it sound even worse. Unfortunately, you can take pieces out of the Bible and say them exactly how they were intended, and it sounds really bad. I mean, it's really bad. In fact, I did a uh a mic drop, was it last week, week before last? On uh Pete Hegseth had posted a video on his Instagram of him um in front of a bunch of soldiers or sailors um doing the Lord's Prayer. And it was overrun or overlaid with a bunch of military um imagery, planes and bombs, and soldiers and guns and all the sort of military macho man sort of stuff. Well, I have no problem with the macho man stuff. I I love the military. My son is in the military. I am no, I am no problem with the military whatsoever. But when you overlay that over top of the Lord's Prayer and you make this point that they are somehow together, that this department of war, which is how he ended that video, that the department of war and the Lord's Prayer should somehow go together. Well, that is taking it out of context. In that case, Pete Higgseth took the Lord's Prayer out of context because the Lord's Prayer is in the Sermon on the Mount, in the same sermon that says, Blessed are the peacemakers, right? Um, it's kind of hard to say, have Jesus say, Blessed are the peacemakers, and then you end your with your uh your uh video with the Department of War. Okay, that's taking out of context, right? The context was this is a peaceful message. This isn't part of the Sermon on the Mount. This whole thing was about peace and humility. Um, that is not how it was taken. So when Christians and believers in general, we talk about Christianity mostly, because I live in America and grew up as a Christian, when they say you've taken it out of context, you gotta sometimes ask them, really? Well, what was the actual context? And if they try to explain it in a way that is not in the Bible, well, they're taking it out of context. Explain to me what was said in the Bible. Explain to me if you were going to say it out of context. Okay, well, tell me this section and why this section was said, and point to me what chapter, what verse did this come from, and what chapters and verses led up to it that tells you what this means. And very often you'll, well, first of all, you get a lot of blank stares because they don't know. A lot of people that claim they know, they don't know. But also what starts to happen is interpretation. Well, this is what he really meant. We have a president like that, where it's like, okay, well, he said these words, but this is what he really meant. He's 79 years old. He should be able to say what he really means right now. I'm not reading his his his transcripts 2,000 years from now. I'm talking about right now. The guy just said it live on TV. There's not a whole lot of explanation needs to be done. He I just heard him say it. That's it. And we know enough about the man to know what he means, when he says what he means. You know, the Bible's maybe a little bit more wishy-washy than that, but at the same time, show me where it says this, show me why you think it means this. Maybe we can agree on that. But often that's just not the case. The outer context is a simple way of deflecting by saying, no, no, no, when when they said slavery was good and you could only you could beat a slave um and just don't kill them. And if you do, there's a small price to be paid. What they really meant is X, Y, and Z. Like, no, what they really meant is you could beat a human being, and you're not supposed to kill him, but if you do, there's a small punishment. That out of context, all you want, because that is the context. All right. That's a good topic for a Sunday morning, isn't it? All right. Uh, let's see here. What's another one? This is a good question. In fact, I'm gonna have this on one of our live streams because we've got a couple gentlemen on the live stream, Scott and Mike, both that identify as bi. And I always like to run some of these questions by them because they have a different perspective than say I do. Both of them are married to women, uh, but they both identify as bi, which is totally fine. But this person, um, I think this is also our Reddit post, says Christianity will never be compatible with LGBTQ uh values. And so this person says, this is the sad truth that I've learned. I don't want to come off across as angry, but I feel that it's the sad truth of the matter. Christianity, no matter how affirming it pretends to be, will never be an ally to people like us, meaning LGBTQ. I I agree with that. I don't know how, and I know people that are uh within the LGBTQ uh community that do go to church, and I can't really get that. I just don't understand it. It seems to be well, it seems to be like a lot of things in religion and Christianity, again, where it's a pick and choose, but boy, that's a big one. That's a big one to sort of overlook, right? Because you know, sometimes in that very church, they will hold up that same Bible at some point and read um the passage where man shall not lie with a man, and they will have a whole sermon about why homosexuality is a sin and you are going to hell. And I just feel for that person who's LGBTQ and sitting, you know, in the third pew going, Well, I they're talking about me. And how do you how do you reconcile it when you're sitting right there? And you know, you look around and the entire congregation is nodding their head or they're they're yeah, or Amen, or praise Jesus, or whatever they're doing, um, in affirmation of the the minister, the priest, the pastor, whatever who says this, they're holding up the book. There's only one book in Christianity, it's that book. They're holding up that book, and don't tell me it's out of context because we've spent decades telling us that is the context, that you are going to hell if you are gay. You know, you can slice it any way you want, but we we know that that is exactly what virtually all of them say. There are some obviously that don't necessarily go that far, but come on, let's not be naive, right? So, how do the LGBTQ people go to church and ignore all that? It's it's interesting to me. I I I really don't I need to get someone on the show. I've got several friends that go to uh various churches, probably not some of the hardcore ones, probably not Southern Baptists and things of this nature, but I think Methodists is tends to be pretty common with LGBTQ. Um Episcopal, I know, has gay people in the church in terms of the and clergy. So I need to find someone like that and have a good conversation with them because I'd really like to know. Maybe I'll do that as a live stream. So if you're one of those people, let me know. I and I'm I'm being genuinely and very honest. I would love to have the conversation with you. And again, as I said earlier, this is not a debate. I genuinely just would like to know. And if you've got a perspective on that, I I absolutely promise I would have you on and we would have a respectful conversation based on me purely wanting to understand you better because I don't really get it. And I'm willing to have my mind um broadened by your perspective on that. So yeah, let me know about that. I'm now very curious about this. So here's a good one. Do you really believe in testimonies? This is the people that claim they have seen Jesus in their dreams or felt the presence. I do not. I just flat out do not. I just do not believe those testimonies. And I think the reason I do not believe it is because so many of them are just absolutely fake. Uh you know, we've caught not we, like I haven't caught them, but we have seen this, the uh, you know, the evangelical or evangelist, uh good gracious, my words again today. The uh evangelist or preacher, TV preacher kind of guy. Um, do we believe anything those people say? I mean, I certainly don't, but obviously millions of people do because they send these guys tens of millions of dollars, and they believe that they've been talked to by Jesus. And Jesus told them they need to get a Bentley or a Rolls-Royce. There's been a thing recently where a guy pulled up, I want to say it was a Bentley or Rolls-Royce, he pulled it into the church. Come on, man. These other people that say, Well, Jesus spoke to me, man, when people say Jesus spoke to me, it seems a lot like just intuition and just judgment and good decisions. You made a decision to quit law school and go into medical school. Okay, did Jesus tell you that? Did God tell you that? Or you just think, well, I don't really like being a lawyer, it's not interesting. But I like to touch, I like to, you know, help people and feel like I'm having an effect on their lives outside of the courtroom. All right. Well, that's the same decision lots of people make. Or I decided not to go to college and I decided to become a you know a plumber. Okay. That's nothing to do with Jesus, man. You know, I I just yeah, the testimonials, I I can't, I just can't get behind them. I really can't. Obviously, I don't believe in God, so the fact that you're telling me that God told you something isn't really gonna connect with me. But I just feel like a lot of that is um I don't know if wishful thinking is the right term, but I think there's an uh I don't remember the words I'm looking for. They attribute those feelings to God. It's almost like a God in the gaps, which again, I did a uh a mic drop on the God of the gaps. It's almost like God in the gaps. Like, I don't know why I'm coming to this conclusion, but I think it's the right way for my life to go. So it must be God leading me that direction. It could be God leading your direction, or it could simply be you kind of measured it out and you said, That's that's my best decision. I I did a just a very pros and cons set of the matrix and said, you know, there's more checks on the pro side, and that's the person I'm gonna marry now, or that's the path for my career, or I'm gonna move to this new city. You say it's God, I say you just made a good decision based on your experiences and your desires and your needs in life. Um, but as a testimonial, no. Now, when you get to the big testimonials, like, oh, I saw Jesus. Nah, I don't think you did. I just don't think you did. You can tell me you did. That's fine. We could, I don't care. If you think you did, and that makes you feel better, all right, knock yourself out. I don't believe you, but that's fine. That's totally okay. All right, what's the next one? Infinite Drink 1426. I always wonder where people come up with these names. Infinite Drink 1426. Okay. I don't know if he's infinitely drunk, he's infinitely drinking, he has habitual thirst. I just don't know. Infinite drink 1426. I think there's a Redditor as well. Uh, does anyone here wish they believed in God? And he says, I recently lost a friend that could kept pushing faith on me and going about how everyone should be should at least believe in God. And I'm still a closeted agnostic, but to be honest, I guess she took my lack of religious fanaticism as a sign that I no longer believe in my religion. But the way she talked about her faith is magical and her feelings are safety and peace and all, I sort of wish I felt that. Yeah, I get that. I get that. I think I've talked about that on here as well. I think there is some comfort in believing in God. To call back to my very first question, I think we talked about The Matrix. Yeah, if you saw the movie, you know that there's a character in them in the movie. Again, spoiler, there's a character in the movie who wants to go back to the matrix because life was good in the matrix. And in fact, they say, I want to be someone famous, like an actor or something, you know? Yeah. I mean, if you have a decent life and everything's working out well for you, and and you think it's because of God, or you have good health, or you're someone you knew came through a health scare or whatever, and you think it's all because of God and that makes you feel better. All right, knock yourself out. Is that comforting? Sure, absolutely. I've mentioned it before. Would it be nice to see my grandparents when I die? Of course it would be. Those were lovely, lovely people that I loved. I would love to see them again. That would be very comforting and encouraging, especially as I get later in my life and think that, okay, I'm on my last days, even if that means years, but I'm still on the way out. And I know that I'm gonna die and go see these people again. Or I'm not gonna miss out on my family, my children, my wife, or whatever the case may be. I'm not gonna miss out because I get to watch them from heaven. That's gotta be super comforting. The fact that I don't believe any of it, it's not necessarily discomforting to me, but I can see why until you come to that realization and you sort of wrestle with it and you come to that, you sort of resign yourself to say, oh no, those are not true. Those are just, you know, they're they're nice thoughts, but they're not true. You know, it's like fantasy in terms of like, uh, what if we won the lottery? That's great. Take 10 minutes and think about what you would do. And after that, realize you're not gonna win the lottery and you gotta go to work tomorrow, right? Sort of the same thing with me. It'd be nice to think about having$200 million or whatever the lotto is gonna pay me, and I could have a jet and a Ferrari and live on the beach and blah, blah, blah, blah. That'd be very, very nice. And then I realized, well, it's not happening, and I just need to work and I need to save my money, and it means I need to compromise and I need to buy a less expensive watch or whatever the case may be. Same thing with the God. It would be much nicer to believe he's there and he's comforting and he's looking for me and he's looking out for me, he's making good decisions for me. I just don't believe it's happening. I really just don't. But again, I've always said if that helps you and it makes you get through the day, that's fine. All right, next question. Again, and I think a Redditor, Roughbag 8209. Roughbag? Okay. I'm not even gonna I'm not even gonna dig into that one. Roughbag 8209. If you knew that God was real, would you worship? Um no. I don't think I would. Let me see what else he says. Is there uh faith for me feels like jumping off a high cliff, but not knowing if there's water at the bottom of it or not? Yeah, that's that's kind of a good apt description there. Uh a sense of why would I do that, but also would it be fun to swim? But if I knew for sure there's water, then I'd swim for a bit, but not forever. It kind of goes on here rambling. Um, but let's get back to this main title of his question. If you knew God was real, would you worship? I don't think so, because I give you two answers on that. One, as I've said, I've said, I think on this show, maybe even said this last week. I think that if suddenly we all woke up tomorrow and there was just absolute irrefutable proof that God exists. Instead of the 2,000 years ago in a small part of the Middle East that God supposedly showed himself, God actually went worldwide. He broadcast himself like a uh, you know, a uh Taylor Swift video. You know, everybody on this planet suddenly saw, and again, with irrefutable, that there was no doubt that they just saw God. And we all shared the experience. So we all believe. Now we all believe there's a God. I think the second thought after, wow, and this is amazing and maybe scary and the whole that wrapped up. The second thought I think billions of people would come to is, oh goodness, this is not at all the God that I thought we had. This is not the Christian God. This is not the Hindu God. This is not the Mormon God. This is not the whatever I'm leaving out. Uh I say Hindu, uh, whatever. Doesn't matter. Whatever your religion is, it's not that God. I I am 100% guaranteed and believe that if there is a God, that God will look nothing like the God of the man-made religions. So that's my first thought on that. And if that's the case, then what exactly am I worshiping? Because that means that God has required none of that from me. That God has not asked me to worship it. Now, again, I guess if I wake up tomorrow and there's a God in the sky and he's talking to us and he says worship me, I gotta wrestle with what that even means. But let's put that aside. Just the mere fact that I've proven that there was a God, does that mean I need to worship that being? Yeah, I don't really know why. I don't really know why. Here's why I would, under threat of death. I I have nothing necessary to thank them for. Right? I my parents made me, my parents raised me, my wife and kids sustained me in terms of my deed and desire to go on and experience life. Um the planet as it is, you know, would I maybe thank them? I guess, but would I worship them? No. Again, why would I? If worship though is like you need to worship me or I'm going to kill you, which is what the Christian God says. Um again, not taken out of context, because as we all know, was it the first four of the uh Ten Commandments is basically worship me or you're gonna go to hell. So uh we already kind of have that. It's I would label that as coercion, but okay, we can get into the semantics of that. But no, I I have no desire to worship. Um, and I would be terrible at it because I have a disdain for authority. So I would be terrible at worshiping a god that just suddenly showed up out of the blue and said, Oh, here I am, by the way. And again, it wouldn't be a Christian god, it wouldn't be a Hindu god, it wouldn't be uh any other gods that have been formed of the 3,000 or what I mean, and there's like tens of thousands of actual gods over the course of human history. It wouldn't be any of that god. I just I can guarantee you, I'm making I'm putting my foot down right now. There would not be that god. Um, oh, here's a question for you, the listening audience. Um, this person says, this is um, I work at an Arby's. The way it was written, I had to spell it out here. I work at an Arby's. All right, man, I love the Arby's, I love Arby's. Um, yeah, I actually get Arby's every once in a while when I see one, I'm like, I haven't been to Arby's in a long time. I like their sandwiches. Um, but I but I digress. This is is revoking your church membership always so complicated? And the reason I say I'm this is for you, the listeners, is that a thing? I didn't know that was a thing. Don't you just stop showing up? It's like a gym membership, or do you have to like go in and cancel your membership of the church? Because this person says, as the title says, I'm trying to revoke my church membership, not uh not just because I'm having problems with beliefs, but also because I don't see or um see why or how a church membership is biblical. Okay, but I thought you just stopped going. Now, maybe they're trying to make a point to take me off the rolls. Good luck with that. That's I mean, maybe like taking me off of some sort of mailing list. It's never gonna happen. Do I care that I'm still on their list as a member? I don't. As an atheist, you know, as an atheist as sort of in my my phase of atheism, I don't care. Put me down. If that helps you recruit someone that says, you know, we've got 3,000 members versus 2,990, whatever. Knock yourself out. Am I ever going to attend your church? No. Am I are you wasting a stamp if you send me something? Yes, you are. I had a I got a uh letter in the mail, I don't know, two, three years ago, I guess. I'm still living in California from a um, what do you call it? Uh Jehovah's Witness. It was a handwritten letter. It was actually addressed to the previous tenant in that building. Um, but I got it, it was handwritten. I was like, what is this? Like, but I could tell it was like, because it said like uh it was a Spanish name if I remember. But say it was like Jose Gonzalez, or current residence, but it was handwritten. Like you could tell it was physically handwritten, not just printed to look like it was physically handwritten. So I was like, all right, well, I'm a current resident, let me open it. Um, and they had Jose's name and his address, and this is a Jehovah's Witness, which I just pictured this person in essentially like some sort of self-imposed sweatshop cranking out handwritten letters, and I of course attached one of those little watchtower tracks with it. Dude, take Jose and me off of your list. You're you're wasting your stamp and your five, ten minutes or whatever it took you to write that out and your little tract. Does that work for anybody? It seems like the biggest waste of time, but whatever. But yeah, I just don't know. Tell me if that's true. Tell me in the comments is revoking your membership from church, is that actually a complicated process? I did not even know that was possibly a thing. I literally just thought you stopped showing up. That's what I did. But I was episcopal. Maybe maybe they're not really strong on that. Um I will tell you now I stopped going, and this is the 80s, right? So maybe things are different now, but we didn't really tithe. I think tithing is a thing in the Episcopal Church. We gave money at the offering plate. So our tithing was when we showed up, right? Um, there was nobody, uh, we weren't on a mailing list. There was no ACH withdrawals from our checking account or you know, credit card with like Amazon. I mean, you just show up and you put your$5 or whatever it was, my parents did, in the offering plate and you moved on, right? Maybe nowadays, though, everything's much more high-tech, right? Maybe you have to sign up for some sort of subscription service to God. And getting out of that is a pain. Okay, I could see that being the case. I would be sort of outraged, but I could see it being the case. All right, here's another one. Um, this is actually a different one because this is um this is from Positive Vibes Only, 95. My Christian friend keeps disrespecting my Hindu faith. Should I end this friendship? I'm a Hindu woman from India, and I wasn't very religious growing up, but in the last few years I've become more spiritual. I read the Bhagavad Gita, I think I say that correct. I always mess that word up, and follow Dharmic teachings. But I also um respect all religions and believe we can learn from each other. I've met a white woman from Texas, she's a Christian, talks about her faith constantly. At first I didn't mind, but soon every conversation started ending up about the Bible. When we first met in 2020, I was at my lowest going through a breakup and struggling at work. I was emotionally vulnerable, and she told me about my suffering would end if I accepted by accepted the Bible and followed God. And you can see where this went. Um, and to this person, I say, Welcome to the club. I mean, you're I I swear I'm not making this up. This, you know, again, positive vibes only 95. You can go to Reddit and look this person up. Um, it sounds like uh sounds like a stereotype. You met a woman in Texas who was a apparently very evangelical Christian, and they couldn't stop telling you that all your problems be solved if you would just go to church and accept Jesus. Welcome to the club, Mrs. Uh, whoever, positive vibes. Um, yeah, that so my Christian friend keeps disrespecting my Hindu faith. Should I end this friendship? Well, I wouldn't know, sorry if I would end it, but I would push back on it because that's not gonna get better. I obviously know that you're a different religion. This is where it drives me insane. As an atheist, we get this constantly and we're kind of prepared for it. So we know it, and we've been down the road a thousand times. Everyone's always saying we're gonna go to hell and we're sinners and they want to save our soul or various combinations of all that. Again, as atheists, we know that's going to happen. This person as a Hindu may not have experienced that before, but you're in Texas around an evangelical Christian. You just gotta buckle up because this is what's going to happen. You are, and I don't mean this in a disparaging way, but maybe I do. You're behind enemy lines, right? You're a Hindu in Texas. You're you're you're on a minority on that one, right? And a person like this person is describing will not stop themselves. They are convinced that you are listening to a false God, and it is their job, their main function in life to stop you from doing that and convert to their God. And it is insufferable. Uh this person is let not letting you, first of all, it's at work, but that's a whole different conversation. But just leave alone. I as I've said, you're listening to this channel because you want to. Whether you agree with me or not, you're listening to it because you want to. You're never going to find me on a street corner with a bullhorn telling you to become an atheist. You will never find that if you do come up and tell me I'm a hypocrite, but you're not going to do it. I'm I'm in no fear and danger of being told that because I won't do it. I am not trying to convert. You won't see me going door to door with a book from Richard Dawkins trying to read to them. Um, you'll never see me going to a courthouse, you know, and trying to get a law passed that says, you know, it says right here in this Christopher Hitchens book that yada, yada, yada. But that is not the way it works with many, many, many Christians. Not all Christians, obviously, because a lot of Christians just don't care. They just want to live their lives, raise their kids, you know, love their spouses. They don't care. But unfortunately, there are far too many who make it their life's mission to convert every person they see to their God, and specifically their God. And I say that meaning not the Christian God, I mean their God, the one that attends their church, which means they believe what they believe at their church, which is not necessarily what they believe in the next Christian church, which in Texas is on the next block. So, yeah, or down south at all. I was telling uh someone on our live stream the other day, my friend Scott was on it with me. And he and I live about a we lived about a mile and a half from each other in Florida. We counted between that mile and a half, there were seven churches, Christian churches in that mile and a half. So uh yeah, yeah. When you're surrounded by all sides, so to speak, um, you're you're behind enemy lines there, and you're going to be try to be converted to their version. Why do they need seven churches in a mile and a half? It's because that's seven different versions. And someone from each one of those churches is going to try to convince you that their version is right. And being a Hindu, you're really far outside of it. You're not even Christian. So you're really far. Not as far as me, because I don't believe at all, but you're pretty far out. So again, should you lose them as a drop them as a friend? No, not necessarily. But tell them, you know, listen, I appreciate that you believe in Christian God. I believe it. I mean, I get it, I understand you do. I believe in a Hindu God. That should be full stop. It probably won't be, but it should be full stop. That should be enough for that person to stop. I'm gonna guess, unfortunately, for uh positive vibes only 95. I'm going to guess that your Christian friend is not gonna drop it there. In fact, if you push back, they might take offense. I'm um I'm calling it now. I don't know what the over or under is on that, but uh, I'm calling it. Unfortunately, I just I've been there, it's the way it works. Oh, let's see here. What's another one? Passive aggressive triggers. Have a blessed day. So that's their is it me or is have a blessed day always used by Christians as a passive aggressive dig because it feels that way to me. Um, no, I don't think that it is. I understand where you're coming from, but no, I don't think it is. I think I and I'm gonna maybe I'm being um overly optimistic here, but I do believe, and I've said this many times, the average everyday person, Christian or not, is just a good person trying to get through their life. They really are. It doesn't matter what religion they are, it doesn't matter if they have no religion, they pretty much get up every day and again, they want their kids to be better and they want to love their spouse and their spouse loved them, they want to feel as few amounts of aches and pains as they possibly can and have some level of comfort, and then they expect to die. It's you know, play it out out however you want, but that's what most of us want. So when someone says a blessed day, um that's not necessarily a snarky response. So atheists that think that, stop thinking that. Just stop thinking that because don't look at everything as a fight. Not everybody's out to get you. A lot of people are. I understand why you might think that, because again, as atheists, we kind of get it from all sides. Every religion doesn't like atheists. Muslims don't like Christians, Christians don't like Muslims, uh, Muslims all the time, but they both don't like atheists. It's like they share that. You know, they could want to fight each other left and right, but when it comes to the atheists, they're gonna turn their sights on us, right? Because there are two sides of the same coin. We're a completely different coin. So that line at have a blessed day, I think they just mean it as a have you know good luck, have a great day. It's all the same. Can it be said with some level of snark? Oh yeah. Oh yeah, it can definitely be said with some snark. Um, I liken it to the way that if you're from the south or if you're not from the south, you certainly have to understand this. When someone says, uh, no, I'll bless your heart, yeah. That's not good. Usually there's uh there's something not good behind that. So uh when they say the same thing, have a blessed day, yeah, that's kind of what that means sometimes, but not all the time. I think it's genuine that means have a good day. They just use the word blessed. No different than I guess if an atheist says bless you with when you sneeze. I I don't really say that anymore. I haven't said that in decades. I always say gesuntite just because, for no particular reason. Um, but if I said have uh you know, if I said uh bless you, I don't really mean bless you by God. I just it's a it's a phrase, it's just part of vernacular, right? Say something we say. All right, so here's a good one. Um, I don't have an exact answer for this, but the question the person asked, what is what was the exact moment you lost your faith? Particularly if you're a Christian. I just I'm just curious because I hear people say that they are deconstructing their faith and some demolish it. Um so the second part of their thing about they're deconstructing, it sounds like a journey, right? They're deconstructing their faith uh and some demolish it means they get rid of it totally. I don't know that most people that I know, most atheists that I know, had an exact moment. Usually, though, there was a light switch. There was something they got flickered on that they said, wait a second. But for most of us, we were laid, we were raised in a Christian religion and a Christian household generally, sometimes very strongly and sometimes very casually, like I was as Episcopal. We were very casual about it. But nonetheless, I still believed. My parents believed, my grandparents believed, everybody believed. I went to church on Sundays, so you know, I was indoctrinated from baby, right? Was there an exact moment that I stopped believing? No, there was an exact moment that I still remember quite well that just made me think, wait a second, that doesn't, that doesn't, that's not right. And I think I don't know if I've said this on this call before, but there is a um um I always forget the name. I think it's Danae, a um uh Greek mythology. There's a character named Danae. Um, and that person was locked in a tower. She's a obviously she was locked in a tower, a golden tower, if I remember correctly, but I may be conflating stories here. She was locked in a tower for whatever transgression transgression she had. And Zeus uh materialized through a golden sun ray, if I'm remembering correctly. It's been eighth grade. I'm I forgot to mention that. This was eighth grade, so I was very young. What is that, 12? I don't even know. 13. But anyway, so Zeus materializes into the tower, impregnates her, sprinkles out, you know, however he does, and she ultimately gives birth to Zeus's child, who I can't remember who that would be in Greek mythology. But I remember very well in eighth, eighth grade, Mr. Isaac was my teacher at Stanton College Preparatory School in Jacksonville, Florida. Um, but I remember thinking, wait a second. So Zeus, God, got a woman, a virgin, pregnant, and then that virgin gave birth to his child. Boy, where have I heard that story? It sounds really familiar. And this was again when I was eighth grade, so whatever age I am at that point. And that really was just sort of my first light bulb. It was like, oh, wait a second. And I, and the other thing, I'll give myself a little credit here, pat myself on the back a little bit, was I remember thinking, you know, whatever day this was of the week, thinking, wait a second, we're learning about Greek mythology, which I found very interesting. But it's these are stories, right? Everybody in this class is reading this and and the teachers instructing us, and we're all saying, Oh, this is really fun stories. Look at these stories that these people wrote about what they thought at the time were gods. But now, you know, thousands of years later, we think of them as cute stories and fun stories and very interesting stories that have absolutely no bearing on our life whatsoever. Because, you know, these are just Greek mythology stories. They're not they're not true by any means, right? But four days from now or whatever, on Sunday, I'm gonna go to a building and we're all gonna sit in that building and we're gonna talk about Jesus, the son of a god, the son of a virgin that God impregnated and had his son, Jesus. And that absolutely happened. That's true, that's 100% true. The Greek mythology stuff, that's just a funny story that predates Jesus. But this one, this virgin giving birth, that actually happened. And I remember thinking at that time, boy, that that seems a little suspicious to me. I don't know that this I'm not sure I buy this. This seems a little convenient that this story is the same that predates the one I'm about to hear about on Sunday, but I'm supposed to disregard this one and yet take the absolute other one as absolute truth. And in fact, if I question it, I'm a sinner for even doing so. That was the exact moment that I started to change my perspective. And at that point, like a lot of atheists I know, it's like a dog with a bone. When you get that first bit of reasoning, it's like, wait a second. I don't know if you remember this. When you were a kid, we probably have all done this. You ever find your Christmas presents before Christmas? And then it's a mad hunt through the house to figure out what's going on. Why are your Christmas presents hidden in the attic or in the back of your dad's closet or you know, wherever they may be? Um, and you and that's the beginning of the end in terms of Santa Claus, right? Because you know that's not right. I remember one year I got a little pool table. It was a little like a kid's pool table. I don't know how old I was, probably 10, 12 in that range. And I found it in my parents' uh closet, I think. And um as a typical 80s Gen X kind of kid, I would come home from school and my parents are both at work, right? So I had hours to myself. I would take this thing out of the box every day and play with it. Like play pool on this little pool table in my living room. And I put it all back in the box and package it back up because it wasn't wrapped yet at this point, right? Didn't have a Santa Claus wrapping on it. It was just a, you know, something they got from Sears warehouse. Um, and I put it all back together. And then, of course, on Christmas Day, I was like, oh my gosh, thank you so much, mom and dad. I have pool table. What? Even though I've been playing, I was probably pretty good at that point, like a damn pool shark on my little uh my little uh clandestine pool table thing that I had set up every day. But it's the same thing. Once I realized that, uh it was it was out, right? I mean, I you know, I think by this point I already didn't believe in Christmas, but or uh Santa Claus, but it's the same thing, right? Once you realize it, it's over. The beginning is over, right? The beginning of the end, I guess it's it's over. Same thing with with Christianity. So that's where it does go. So there's very few of us have an exact and all-encompassing moment. There's a moment that starts it and triggers it. And then it's, as this person said, a deconstruction. There's there's a series of things because you think, well, wait a second. Well, if if the virgin birth doesn't make any sense, you know, I'm starting to believe that maybe you can't live in the belly of a whale for three days. And that seems a bit suspicious, right? Or wait a second, why would there be a need for a talking snake? And if you're God and you've created two creatures that's job is basically to do nothing but worship you, why would you even allow a snake in the garden? And if they had never experienced anything negative or bad, how would they know that lying or um you know, lying was bad and talking to the snake was bad because they don't have a sense of right and wrong? It just you know it starts to all fall apart, right? Sodom and Gomorrah. What I heard the other day that a lot of people think Sodom and Gomorrah were sisters. I I never heard that, but I okay, yeah. I that surprised me, but yet didn't surprise me. Uh so uh, but yeah, it's the exact sort of thing. There's a point where it starts to trigger and then it starts to fall apart after that. So um yeah, that's my story of when my exact moment, the beginning of the end, started. Was that uh Mr. Isaac's eighth grade, uh he was my English teacher. Very nice man. I like that guy a lot. He used to call me Clip because I carried my papers on a clipboard. I don't know why. I guess I was trained to be a warehouse supervisor. I have no idea why I did that, but he called me clip. He was a very nice guy. Um, I think that's about it. We've been right at about an hour, 50 something minutes into it. Um real quick, just uh again, this is the show that I do on Sunday mornings, or again, if you're listening to this early in the week and you're driving to work, hopefully you uh it was soothing enough that it it kept you calm on your commute to work if you were having to fight through traffic. It's very cold here Sunday morning. I think we're supposed to get up to a high of like 30 something. Winter has definitely set in on um here in Chicago. My wife and I were out this weekend and it was a little chilly. I I was like, oh, I should have brought my gloves. It was a little chilly. So um, so I hope you enjoyed this. Um, and again, I always ask you, just go ahead and then uh reach out to me if you have any questions or you want to ask me about why I thought something or said something, I'm happy to answer those questions. Also, look for me. I had to write this down in my little post-it note here. Um, I do have a mic drop coming out uh this Tuesday. I look for those from now on. They'll come out on Tuesdays, usually instead of Wednesdays, but that's a mic drop. That's my solo one. Uh, and that comes out on video, on YouTube, on audio, here on whatever podcast um platform you're listening to. And I also generally put out an article as well on these mic drops because again, a little bit more of a social commentary. Um, you are also welcome to join our live streams. Watch the YouTube channel for that and check the live little, there's a little sort of tab across the top of the page that's atheistville.com. Um well, atheistville.com, I should say that is the website, but atheistville on YouTube. Check on the live tab on there. If we set a live up, we always have that up for a week or two ahead of time so you have time to sort of build it into your calendar. And we would love to have you participate. Um, send us a question, uh, pop in live and let us know your thoughts. And also, if you're the kind of person who would like to maybe participate in one of those, um I'm I'm happy to talk to you about that. I the more people the better. You know, I'm not trying to change anybody's minds, but if you've been through this deconstruction or you're going through the process now and you maybe have some advice for other people, that's how we do those shows. Jump in. Those are the unholy roundtables that we call them. Uh, we'd love to have you participate. Again, either as a guest or as a viewer, either way. So, anyways, hope that you have a good rest of your Sunday. Until we talk again, take care.