AS174: Ryan Bell, Part 2

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:30 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Atheistically Speaking. I'm your host, Thomas Smith, and this is episode 174. I want to thank you so much for listening. I also want to take this opportunity to say the live debate I've announced. I know, apologies for repeating myself. I just want to make sure as many people hear about it as possible. That's this Saturday in a couple days, 12 noon Pacific time. It should tell you when you click on the event when it is in your time zone, but I've noticed on the phone it doesn't seem to work quite right, so maybe you need to be signed in or something. I don't know. Anyway, please attend. Please tweet your questions. I'll announce during the debate where you can tweet your question. I can announce it now, but I'm sure you'll forget, so I'll just wait till then.

0:01:20 Thomas: So it's going to be really fun. Justin Schieber, of course. Hey, Reasonable Doubts, it's over. It's no more. Everyone's sad. But now you could hear Justin Schieber debate on this Saturday. So that'll get you a little bit of Reasonable Doubts fix. So thank you guys for that. Again, I really just want it to be successful so that I can have another event and another event, and keep doing it for you guys. I'm not getting anything out of it. This is all free for everybody. But I hope that if I can build support, then I can get people to come back and, and, uh, and keep putting on cool things for you guys. So please, pretty please check out the link in the show notes or on Twitter, on Facebook. I've posted it a bunch of places. So, and you can always Facebook atheistically speaking, Twitter speak atheism, et cetera.

0:02:10 Thomas: So thank you very much. And now after saying that again, sorry for for repeating myself, let's get to the rest of the really amazing interview with Ryan Bell that I enjoyed immensely.

0:02:30 Thomas: What do you think was the state, if you can put it honestly, what did you think about to the best of your ability at that time? So you've just left the church, let's say. What was in your mind? What did you Think about God? If someone said, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Like what in Jesus and all that, like, where were you? Do you think?

0:02:46 Ryan: Yeah. So, I was much more committed to Jesus than to God. I think what seems seems like obvious to me.

0:02:55 Thomas: Well, that seems so funny though. I thought they're

0:02:59 Ryan: It seems so.

0:02:59 Thomas: The same guy.

0:03:00 Ryan: I mean, supposedly, but I mean God, no one has ever seen except Jesus. And, but Jesus, I

0:03:06 Thomas: Well, and some people in the old Testament, I think, but but whereas Jesus is still here. Yeah.

0:03:08 Ryan: Suppose. Yeah. But they're long gone. Like nobody can ask them like nobody's right. Right. Of course. Right? What? Um, anyway, Jesus supposedly, right. You have to remember where, where I was thinking at that time, like, and even, and

0:03:21 Thomas: Sure. Yeah, sure. I, I just making jokes that I don't, I understand.

0:03:25 Ryan: Even Bart Ehrman would say, like we were talking about him a second ago, you know, Jesus was a real person, probably a composite to a certain degree. Uh, lots of things attributed to him that weren't his, um, you know, and the, the whole Jesus seminar is an attempt to get down to if possible, what, what the historical Jesus really, who the historical Jesus really was. But let's say for the sake of argument, there was some sort of historical Jesus. He was at least a person, whereas God is this idea, like this invisible force, you Know? So I, I guess I would have said God is elusive, kind of non-being who is a kind of, I suppose, like a personified energy that kind of creates and holds everything together and that Jesus was sort of his, God's sort of physical manifestation and that there was something redemptive about Jesus' life, whether he actually rose from the dead.

0:04:23 Ryan: I was, had huge doubts about that and all the miracles and everything, but I guess I was at this place sort of a, um, who was I reading the other day that I thought would be, Simone Weil. It's spelled, her name is Weil, but it's W-E-I-L, Simone Weil. And she's, you know, she's a mystic from the early 20th century and wrote about sort of this God who can't be found out, kind of apophatic, if you've heard of apophatic theology. Apophatic theology basically says that we can't actually express the truth about God because the moment you express it, it becomes something less than what it...

0:05:08 Thomas: Hmm.

0:05:08 Ryan: To put it into words lessens the truth of it in a way. It's sort of, again, a way of putting God so far from human reach that it's not falsifiable.

0:05:18 Thomas: That no one can argue with it. Yeah

0:05:20 Ryan: Right. Nobody can argue with it. It's just there and it's sort sort of you have to either accept it on its face or not. And, well,

0:05:28 Thomas: That, I am really fascinated by this description of your, you know, cognitive state.

0:05:36 Thomas: It's, it's such, it's something that I don't think would occur to me, but I very much believe you, obviously, that someone would be so into Jesus and not really into God at all. But now that I think about it, I mean, I do think a lot of people are like that. Um, but it, but doesn't it, what about questions of like, I mean Jesus surely thought he, his point was to die and then rise from the dead, right? I mean it's weird to be such a believer in Jesus, but then, you know, his whole message of of dying and then resurrecting. Like, it's weird to doubt that, but be a huge believer in him, don't you think?

0:06:11 Ryan: Yeah, it's an interesting point. And I actually think right as I was leaving the church, I was interested in something that the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek sort of alludes to. And I Actually Heard Him in Person sort of say this much more clearly than what he says in his writing, that Jesus, in a sense, becomes an atheist on the cross when he cries out, my God, my God, why forsaken me? So it's almost as though the person of Jesus is in a way a depiction of the progress of a Christian.

So and his point, and I think it's actually quite an interesting point, it may be more of a boutique type conversation for some people and not really interesting to everyone, but I kind of think that Christianity is unlike other monotheistic religions, maybe Judaism to a certain degree, but certainly not Islam, but but but Christianity auto deconstructs, like it's a thing which has a time bomb inside of it, that if you take it out to its logical conclusion, it falls apart.

And that in a way, you might be able to say that it's supposed to, that that Jesus leads us to the cross in which his father forsakes him and he dies as a political criminal.

0:06:37 Thomas: Yeah,

0:07:29 Ryan: Criminal, and the movement that was organized around him, you know, goes on to try to change the world in his name and so forth. And a lot of stuff's been added to the story, of course, like the resurrection and everything. So when I see humanist groups who are largely post-Christians, people who were Christians who are now humanists, I always have this feeling like, of course, the next logical step after being a Christian is to become a humanist. If you take Christianity seriously, you'll become ahumanist.

0:07:56 Ryan: I don't know if that holds up to of scrutiny or not, because I haven't spent enough time thinking about it, but it's, yeah.

0:07:55 Thomas: Yeah, well, sure. No, it is a very interesting idea. But, you know, it just occurred to me, and maybe you do not have an answer to this, but like, why did they put that part in the Bible? I have not gotten there yet.

0:08:11 Ryan: Which part?

0:08:13 Thomas: Jesus saying, why have you forsaken me? I mean, I know lots of ink has been spilled over that, and, but I wonder why, why do the the authors put that in there.

0:08:22 Ryan: Yeah, what would have been their sort of apologetic point? I mean, I think it's to show the humanity of Jesus, and it could be that he said it, you know? It could be that he set it, and they wrote it down, and they were like, oh my gosh, even Jesus is complaining that God's forsaken him. You know, what hope do we have? And then, you remember the story in Luke, where where two of these disciples, a husband and wife probably, are walking home to Emmaus, which is about a six- or seven-hour walk from Jerusalem. And they're talking, the story says, that they're taking a walk from Emmaus and they're walking on the way about how they thought he was the one and how disappointed they are now that obviously the Messiah is dead and the whole movement is lost and we thought he was the one to save us from the Romans, but apparently not.

0:08:24 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Huh.

0:09:06 Ryan: And then, according to the story, Jesus appears and starts walking with them, but they don't recognize him. And he starts explaining to them theology from the Old Testament all the way up to the present day about how this Jesus figure really was the fulfillment of all the prophecies. And then they sit down, they get home, and Jesus is still walking with them. They still don't recognise that it's Jesus. They sit down and when he breaks the bread to serve them and say a blessing, they recognise that he's him. In the moment they recognise that it's him, he disappears from their sight. And it's,

0:09:06 Thomas: What a jerk.

0:09:37 Ryan: Yeah, right? It's like, peace out. It's sort of like Aslan. If you ever watched or read the books, the C.S. Lewis books, Aslan is like always disappearing. And I'm like, dude, like they need you right now. It was one of those early moments for me as a child. I'm not sure that C. S. Lewis intended this, but I remember thinking, gosh, that's an awful, like if it's supposed to be this metaphor of God, it is so true that that he's never there when you need him.

0:09:39 Thomas: Yeah oh yeah. Yeah just hang out. Yeah yeah.

0:10:02 Ryan: And then at the very last minute, he swoops in to save the day, and then everybody's supposed to be so grateful. So it's...

0:10:01 Thomas: He's highly annoying. Well, I'm sure you're not aware of this and no big deal, but I do have a podcast where I'm reading through the entire Bible, and I started it about six years ago. It's been a long, long thing, but I have not gotten that far. No one told me that the Old Testament is actually 120% of the Bible. And then there's like four pages that are in the New Testament. I never knew that. I really didn't.

0:10:34 Ryan: Yeah, it's intense, right?

0:10:35 Thomas: Yeah. And so I'm finally to the New Testament, and I'm almost done with Matthew, but, uh, but I, I'm very much looking forward to coming across that part, because that's, that's fascinating. Fascinating, um, yeah, I, I, I, man, why would they put that in? I, I'm, I'm very curious to think about that from now on. But okay, let's see, where was I? So you believed more in Jesus and, but you still would say you believed in God, of course, right? I mean, can

0:11:03 Ryan: Right, I would have said for sure that I believed in God, and that probably God was a common God, like everybody's pursuit of the supernatural or everybody's pursue of the spiritual spiritual was in some way a culturally encoded way of seeking God, even if they called it by different names. So I don't

0:11:25 Thomas: I ask you, do you honestly believe, now or then or whenever, do you really believe that God would have been accepting of gay people? Or sorry, Jesus, would, would have been accepting of gay people? Mm-hmm.

0:11:39 Ryan: Know, because I'm a little torn about it. It's hard to say, because he was accepting of other traditionally cast out groups of people. So you have these stories in the Bible where Jesus touches lepers, and nobody would touch a leper, and he heals them and sends them on their way. And he would speak to women when it was taboo for men to speak to strange women, you know, that women that weren't their relatives. And, um, he would sit and talk to a woman, even women of ill repute, you might say, like people that were rumored to be prostitutes or, or whatever. And he would take time and talk with them. And actually his social standing in the community was always harmed by these encounters. This Pharisees would organize to throw them out, you know, because he is a guy that talks to sinners, and he talks to, to tax collectors, who were also scum and that nobody respected.

0:12:27 Ryan: So Jesus sort of had this reputation in the New Testament for talking to people that no one else would talk to. So I kind of think he would, you know, there's a story where Jesus heals a centurion, a Roman soldier's servant. And I can't pinpoint the text right now in my memory, but there's a story, where a Roman soldier comes to Jesus and he says, come quickly to my house. My servant is dying.

0:12:50 Thomas: Oh, I think I've read this, so it might be in Matthew.

0:12:52 Ryan: Yeah, it might be in Matthew. And he says, come, he's dying, and I have heard that you can heal him. No, Jesus, he says, can you please heal my servant? And Jesus says, okay, let's go to your house. And the soldier says, um, I'm sorry, there's no time for that. He's dying. Like, as we speak, can you just say the word? I've heard that if you do that, it'll be healed. And Jesus says, I've not seen this kind of faith even among Israelites. So he says the word, and apparently the servant is healed. And, and this is a Roman. This is not a Jew. This, this is like a pagan guy, like somebody who believes probably in the Roman gods. And so Jesus is like marveling at his faith. And some scholars feel that the way the word that he uses to say servant indicates that it was a sexual servant or a young boy that would have been his servant, but also his sexual partner at times.

0:13:43 Ryan: And that Jesus was just healed him and didn't ask any questions. It would be sort of like when, I mean, it would be analogous to like a panhandler asking for money and you feel compassion so you give him a dollar. You don't interrogate him about like, well, are you an alcoholic or are you going to use this for drugs? You just think, well here's a guy in need. I'm going to give him $1 and whatever he uses it for is up to him. So that's kind of the approach. I think it's a thin interpretation. Like I don't, you certainly can't go to the bank on that interpretation. It's just kind of a guess.

0:14:11 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, that's a really interesting thing, and I wonder, it's a shame, but I wonder if there had been the, say, if there hadn't been a gay person that came up to Jesus, I wonder if he would have treated it like these other things, where he's like, here, I can cure that. Let me me fix that right up for you.

0:14:30 Ryan: Right. Right. It might be. And I think sometimes, you know, what we see in the Bible, too, is these healings aren't necessarily because the person is bad the way they were, but that the healing would reinstate them into the social standing in the community. So a woman without a husband is of no social significance in the ancient world. Her only social significance and financial stability would be to be attached to a husband, and she was in fact like property of her husband, but he would take care of her, supposedly. So, you know, when Jesus would empower women, it was often to not just to give them like health or whatever, but to give of them social standing.

0:14:43 Thomas: Right.

0:15:15 Thomas: So, man, we still have so much stuff. I'm sure you'll have to go eventually, but I want to ask you, you referenced this earlier, so it may make this question a bit moot, but did you think it was a foregone conclusion when you started your year without God.

0:15:35 Ryan: I thought it was probably, I would say the scales in my mind tipped toward there not being a God. I wouldn't have done the project if I didn't suspect that there might not be a God, I think it was because I was deeply suspicious that there wasn't a God after all that led me into the project in the first place, so that was definitely there, But I, right.

0:15:46 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, but I think that's where people struggle when they're, you know, when people are trying to interpret, or when they were trying tointerpret your original intentions. I think people struggle with that idea of, like, how can you not, how Can you be 50-50 on God, you know? It's kind of, it's not something that people usually are, you know? And so everyone was trying to paint you into, like oh, this is some atheist who's trying trying to get attention, or this is some Christian who's trying to make a point about atheists, or, you know, and everyone was trying to paint you into one of those spots, I think. Was that your experience?

0:16:31 Ryan: Yeah, I think that that's fair to say. And I understand why. I think it's just, and I, you know, with the new work I'm doing now with Life After God, I talk to these sorts of individuals all the time who are, I wouldn't say for sure that they're 50-50 on God, but they feel uncomfortable with all the labels that they've been offered. So they're not comfortable thinking of themselves as Christians or or any other type of religion, but they're also not super comfortable with, based on what they know about atheism, atheism still has with it a kind of confidence or a surety, like we know that there's no God, even though I realize that's not what most

0:17:13 Thomas: I was going to say, is that how you still feel about it, or is that How You Well,

0:17:14 Ryan: Atheists that's how I felt about it back then. Um, but I, I would have to say, like, most atheists I know are, you know, I mean, we don't hold on to beliefs or non-beliefs, we're, you know, at least reasonably sure. And I think most atheists are probably 80, 90% sure there's no God, but there's always this little bit that, you know, of course there could be, um, and these hypotheticals that we can play around within our, our minds? What would it be? People always ask, what would it take for you to believe in God again? What kind of evidence would you be looking for? And that's always a difficult question to answer. But my goal in the beginning was to stay a believer. I wanted to stay in my community. I wanted to find a way to be a Christian in a way that wasn't contradictory to science.

0:18:08 Ryan: And there are plenty of Christians who claim that their beliefs about God are not contradictory to to science.

0:18:14 Thomas: That's an interesting thing you just said. Your goal was to stay a Christian?

0:18:18 Ryan: I mean, my goal was to find out, but if I could have picked, I would have liked to have stayed a Christian. My goal was to find the truth, but I wanted to... It was

0:18:23 Thomas: Yeah. Well, I mean, I've heard your story, but I don't know that I can pinpoint from from my memory, what actually changed your mind? You know, like, where can you remember when your notion that you're, I guess, the status in your mind of the concept of God and your belief in it, when that changed and why?

0:18:54 Ryan: Somewhere along in the middle of the year, I think, in 2014, and it really happened fairly simply for me. I think there are a lot of big questions that as a Christian I put kind of on the back burner of my mind, like the problem of evil, for example. This is a huge problem. You know, can God be perfectly free, perfectly powerful and perfectly good? You know? And I think the answer to that is no. And I think I suspected that that was a big problem for years, but I just didn't go there. It was like, gosh, the people don't, it's like you go into that cave and no, people don't come out, you know, it's they don't come out alive. So

0:19:32 Thomas: Well, I have said before, just to jump in, that I really do think, and actually, I think I've said it recently, so apologies to my listeners if I'm repeating myself, but I really do think that how you feel about the problem of evil really comes down to like, you're just your mood. It's just like a, cause to me, it's just, you can come up with all the justifications you want. I mean, you Can you can Come up in your mind with like a well, you know, free will is important. So that's, that's the thing. And then, you know got free will allowed. There's plenty of stories. Oh, the devil plays a part in that, like he can tempt people. But at the end of the day, I mean, sure, you can come up with logically coherent stories about it, but they're just entirely unconvincing to me.

0:20:18 Thomas: The reason I live in complete, I wouldn't say certainty that there is no God, but I live with no feeling of fear that I might be wrong. Like, I really am not worried that there actually is going to be a God. I would put that at zero zero percent, or at least not any sort of God that we know about. I guess if you, if you want to open it up to some, some other, you know, oh, there might be some deity or something, but at least when I'm talking about Christians, like I'm not, I have no, no fear. I sleep perfectly well knowing that God, I'm Not worried that he exists. But, and the reason is like, just the world and the evil in the world to me is incompatible with that. It just, it just is, you Know, and there's... there's no, And I think, so I'm very fascinated to hear you say this because what I want to pinpoint is why did this year without God change your mind? You know, like why, it

0:20:40 Ryan: I I Agree, right.

0:21:15 Ryan: Because Right.

0:21:15 Thomas: Almost was like you let the floodgates open. It's like you stopped letting yourself listen to these excuses. What do you think?

0:21:15 Ryan: I Did, yeah, I think that's right. What I did was letting the floodgates open is a good way of saying it. I've often, I've sometimes said when asked that question that I stopped resisting and just kind of allowed my mind to go down paths that I had sort of not let it go down before. And see, the the problem of evil is just one thing.

0:21:44 Ryan: I mean, there's So many other things, any one of which by themselves could be the killer argument, but then when taken together, it's just that the odds of there being the God of the Bible are just so infinitesimally small in my mind that I think I just never, in other words, I had the problem with evil in one little compartment in my mind, and I had, you know, the historicity of Jesus in another compartment in in my mind. And I had the reliability of the Bible in another compartment and I had the horrors carried out on the world by religious people in another part of my mind and I knew all of these things were problems. But when I got them all out and made a salad out of them, I sort of put them all together in the same, on the table where I could see them all at once. I

0:21:44 Thomas: Oh, of course. Yeah.

0:22:28 Ryan: Was just like, yeah, exactly.

0:22:29 Thomas: It's, like, you had them all in quarantine, like an antivirus program, you know, and then And you're like, well, I'm going to let those gates up.

0:22:33 Ryan: I had, yeah. And so when it all comes out, and again, I always try to emphasize that it was without malice for me. It was without like, I am going to just totally deconstruct this idea. It is with some sadness that I took these things off the shelf and put them on the table and thought, this is probably the death of me here.

0:22:56 Thomas: Well, and that's what's so, I think, hard to grasp for people, because listening to your story, listening to you talk now, I 100% believe you. It's just such a hard thing when you see it on paper of someone you didn't know nothing about, like, oh, I's going to try not worshiping God for a year. It's like, what? What are you doing? You know, it's like I am very much not mean that as a criticism. I think I think you did fine. Fine. I think that what I'm trying to say is I do think you actually are a very unique person. I just think I think that not a lot of people could do that, you know, and I think it's incredible that you I really do believe you like I really do believe that you approached it this way. And I just think maybe the Internet and in this day and age, it makes me a bit cynical about this. But I think

0:23:14 Ryan: And I think I did not word it well in that opening post. I mean, sure.

0:23:45 Ryan: Sure.

0:23:45 Thomas: That it was hard for me to believe at first, but I really do believe it. And I think it's cool that how you describe it makes sense. So what I wanted to clear up with those questions was, it wasn't so much that, oh, you stopped going to church and you stopped, I don't know, doing a few rituals, praying or whatever you were doing. It's not like, oh, just stopping these few actions can make me an atheist. That's not really what it sounds like. I don't t want to...

0:24:11 Ryan: Right. That is certainly not the whole thing. I And I think that part of, right.

0:24:14 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Oh, no, I know. I'm not saying it didn't happen. I' m just saying saying, yeah, yeah. And it sounds to me like that's maybe not even the important part. It sounds like this releasing of the floodgates, like we've said, it sounds like that, just allowing yourself to actually question all these assumptions that you had and actually challenge these and actually address all this cognitive dissonance. It sounds like, that's the main thing. And the The reason I say that is, don't you think that could just be happening all the time? I mean, if people let themselves, I mean

0:24:20 Ryan: That wasn't the thing that did it. Right. Sure.

0:24:55 Thomas: Who knows why they're not, but like that, you don't necessarily need to stop, you know, it doesn't have to be so formal that you need to, okay, I'm going to stop being religious and do all this and therefore I can examine these things. I wonder why you think it doesn'T happen more often just in daily people's lives. Lives.

0:24:56 Ryan: Yeah.

0:25:10 Ryan: No, that's true. I mean, I think they had people have their protective mechanisms up and their comfort zones. And I the older a person is that the, the cost benefit analysis goes tips the other way too. Like if you're, you know, I just, I've, I talked recently to a guy who's in his mid to late sixties and, and for him, it's just like, look, I mean my whole world, I understand what what you're saying. He's like, I get the doubts that you have and the problems that intellectual problems. I I've read all that. I believe you. I agree with you. It's just that my church doesn't teach all that stuff and I'm fine with it. And, and I was like, all right, dude, like, I guess,

0:25:17 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah I

0:25:49 Ryan: You know, so I, you Know, some people just aren't. And the other thing is I've been a blogger all of my life. I'm a amateur journalist. I, so for me to do this in a formal way where I'm I'm going to take a year and do that. It was sort of just, that's partly my personality as well.

0:25:49 Thomas: Know what you mean. Yeah sure sure.

0:26:04 Ryan: Not everyone's obviously going to do that, uh, I think the not going to church part to come back to that for just a second, that, it does a little bit, but for me, the part of the part of that was, I wonder if God, like, I'm gonna go looking for God. That's part one. I wonder if God will come looking for me. And, and I was always taught like that God would pursue me, you know, that God's been pursuing me all of my life, that he first loved me and planted the seed of love in my heart. And I, my acceptance of God was a response, not a, I didn't initiate that God initiated and the way that, you know. Protestant grace oriented theology works is that God found us where we were in, in pain and in suffering and lost. And like the lost sheep in this, in the gospel story, the shepherd goes looking for the lost sheet and it's out of gratitude gratitude for being found by God, that we accept God's love and become his adopted children.

0:26:10 Thomas: I guess that does make a difference. Yeah and

0:27:02 Ryan: And, and I didn't feel like I was in some kind of relationship with God anymore. And I kind of, part of me was like, I wonder if he'll come looking for me if I stop, you know, asking him so much.

0:27:16 Thomas: Was that a serious consideration? I mean did you it's I think the answer is yes but I just want to hear your thoughts on that. Honestly do you think do you did you think like maybe some some sign will happen. Maybe I'll be shown a sign. Maybe, you know, like, did you think that?

0:27:22 Ryan: Yeah.

0:27:31 Ryan: I didn'T Have any, I didn't have any idea what the sign would be. Like I didn't, if you said, well, what do you think it'll be? And I would have no idea. And even now it seems preposterous in a way to think like, what would it have been that would have convinced me? I have no idea, but yeah, I thought, well of God's God, like God could reveal something to me or give me an idea, like give me a theological insight that I hadn't considered before or, or show me, or even just read a book that I had read before that kind of explained the situation that I was in and made made me go, oh yeah, that makes sense. I can be a Christian.

0:28:03 Thomas: But he, yeah, but also make sure to do it in a way that you couldn't, you know, for sure communicate to anyone else or prove anything with, you know, he has to do that too. Yeah. There's always that.

0:28:11 Ryan: Right, right, right. Exactly. Well, yeah, because otherwise it wouldn't be faith, you know, it can't prove it. Like, and even when I was a Christian, I wasn't trying to prove anything. So yeah, That, that part for me, and I do think that people, they, they are protected against the truth of some things. Uh, and not the, I mean, some people, for instance, some people can accept evolution and the Bible somehow, and it's not not threatening to them. For other people, evolution, the idea of evolution is terribly threatening to their entire theological edifice. And for some people, accepting gay and lesbian people into their theology is fine. There's no problem with that. Other people, it's very threatening. So it all depends where a person's coming from, the experiences that they've had, the trauma. Here's the other thing. For me, as a white male, middle class, overeducated, Christianity is sort of my story. It's a story that makes sense of my life. If you are a lesbian who was abused by the church, pretty soon the story of Christianity doesn't make any sense to you at all, much sooner than it doesn't makes sense for me.

0:28:15 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Yeah yeah.

0:29:19 Ryan: I'm a white male. Western Christianity was made for people like me. People like me made it, made Christianity. And so it's a narrative that makes sense. It's sort of like talking to an undocumented immigrant about the American dream. And you're like, hey, work for me. And they're looking at you like you're crazy because they can't even figure out if they can find a garage to sleep in. You know what I mean?

0:29:45 Ryan: So there Are stories that work for us that when they don't work for other people, we're kind of like, well, it's weird. So I think the reason I was able to stay Christian for so long is that I was I was sort of in the wheelhouse. You know, that was my story. I was a clergy person and I was in charge of the story. I could have some influence over how the story was told. And I.

0:29:44 Thomas: You know, on one hand, I agree with everything you're saying, but But then when I think about it, isn't it so surprising, though, that Christianity is so popular with people just in horrible circumstances? It's almost like it can be two stories, you know?

0:30:17 Ryan: Yeah, because. Yeah. Have you heard of Jeremiah Kamara? He is an African-American filmmaker in Atlanta, and he made a film called Contradiction that, yeah, you and your listeners could look up and he's basically asking this question, you know, if God is so powerful and religion is such an answer to all of our problems, especially in the black community, why is there so much poverty in neighborhoods where there's a church on every corner and say in black communities? And he, he doesn't, he, he does a pretty good job of just being a journalist about it. He goes around, just ask people like, so you're a Christian and you believe in God and, and yet you're giving all your money to the pastor. He's driving like a fancy Cadillac and you're struggling to feed your kids. Like what, what's going on here? Like what? Why is this?

0:30:21 Thomas: No. Oh, I think I've heard of that.

0:30:46 Thomas: Yeah.

0:31:06 Ryan: So he's, yeah, it's, it's really good. It may be on the internet for purchase or something like on Vimeo or something. I can't be sure it's contradiction and it's Jeremiah Kamara. It's like camera, his last name, but there's an A instead of an E. So Kamara.

0:31:06 Thomas: You know, I got to check that out. That sounds great. That was called contradiction, you said. Hmm. So he had to be a filmmaker.

0:31:24 Ryan: Right. Yeah, yeah. He's a cool guy, too. And I've got, yeah, he's, and there's a great Black Freethinkers, I think it's called, chapter in Atlanta that he's associated with and some other great people over there.

0:31:25 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, I might try to get in contact with that guy. That sounds awesome.

0:31:41 Thomas: But yeah, isn't that weird? I mean, it's, I totally, and I was going along with what you're saying. And I also had thoughts of one thing I think contributes to religion or Christianity is that the fact that when you die, we can't hear from you anymore. You know, it is like there is no one alive right now who has died. So all those people, well, okay, sure.

0:32:04 Ryan: Well, there's a couple who claim they've been to

0:32:07 Thomas: I know that sounds stupid, but what I'm trying to say is like, I bet you that once you finally start dying or once someone goes through something horrible, and there are tons of horrible things that happen to people in this world, there probably is a point very close to the end where they're like, what the F? This is not what I thought was going to happen.

0:32:07 Ryan: Heaven. Right.

0:32:27 Ryan: Right.

0:32:28 Thomas: Like Jesus did on the cross, you know? But you don't get to hear from those people after they die. So everyone everyone around now, sure, people have had some awful things happen to them, but they haven't died. You know, like it's, it's interesting that that's a way that I think it can survive, you know, yeah, yeah. You can only find out after you die.

0:32:30 Ryan: Yeah. If you were going to invent a conspiracy, it's a pretty ingenious feature. You can only find out if it's true after you die, but nobody comes back to tell you one way or the other. Except for a few people who make a good living off of a book deal who claim that they've come back. And they all, oh

0:32:55 Thomas: Right. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Oh gosh. Did you, I Have to share, I'll try to let you go soon, but did you ever, did you see that Onion companion headline? It was oh my God, it was funny, it was

0:33:09 Ryan: Yeah, the little boy went to heaven and saw Allah.

0:33:10 Thomas: No. Oh, that's good too, they've done a few of them, but my favorite was, it's so awful, is the one where it's like, don't believe in an afterlife, well this kid stayed there, like he just, the kid just died, yeah.

0:33:25 Ryan: Here's the evidence you need.

0:33:27 Thomas: Oh my God, it was so awful, but it was such a perfect like way of of contradicting the whole thing, or pointing out how absurd it is. It's like this, this kid stayed there.

0:33:34 Ryan: I mean, the other onion piece, though, I thought was really insightful and brilliant in that this idea that whenever we go to this near-death state, our brains start doing really unknown things, right? Like it's a fascinating thing our minds do as we're approaching death. And um, and but you never, your brain only has the data that's been stored in it to work with, you know, you don't have, so if you're, you know, if you've grown up in a white middle-class community believing in a Jesus that was essentially like you, then the image of

0:33:39 Thomas: Yeah. That's why they're so great.

0:33:51 Thomas: Yeah.

0:34:12 Thomas: Miraculously.

0:34:12 Ryan: G that's

0:34:12 Thomas: That's, that's what you see.

0:34:13 Ryan: The Jesus that you meet, like nobody goes to heaven and comes back and says, oh man, Jesus was a like, like an African.

0:34:20 Thomas: Right. Or, or they come back and they talk about some unknown God from centuries ago that everyone forgot about here.

0:34:27 Ryan: Right, right, right. Yeah. God is like Rama or something, and it's nothing like what you've been told. And I've come back to tell you how it really is. It's always like, oh yeah, Jesus of the Bible. He has a beard, just like in that storybook I used to read when I was a kid. Surprise, surprise.

0:34:28 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Well, I, I really could talk to you forever about that. This has been so fascinating. I want to pay you a couple compliments. I want to say, first off, I was going to ask this in the form of a question, but I don't know if we have time now, but, I will say that I wonder if all your training and your years as a pastor kind of contributed to the fact that you're very well-spoken, you're very engaging to talk to, and I think that shows good promise for your podcast, and let's take this opportunity to plug that again, Life After God, and feel free to, if you want want to say any, anything more about that in, in terms of plugging it, uh, feel free to do so now.

0:35:18 Ryan: Sure. Well, first of all, thank you. We all have the tools that we've acquired over the years. And for me, certainly leading a congregation and public speaking and and that sort of thing has been something that I don't know that I was born with it, but I certainly have practiced it a lot over the years. And so I'm happy to use those tools as best I can. And, uh, so I am excited about the podcast. It's, um, everything that I'm doing right now, sort of falls under one heading called life after God. So there's a website lifeaftergod.org and the podcast is linked up there, but we're on all of the main sort of, yeah, Stitcher and iTunes and Spreaker and all the rest. So you can find it there.

We have a fourth episode going up Wednesday and beyond the podcast, Life After God is also an offering of personal coaching for people that are going through this sort of exploration of their beliefs and transition out of religion and out of belief in God, uh, that really awkward, difficult middle space that we've spent so much time talking about in the last hour or so is that this place where people feel neither this nor that they don't feel very sure of themselves one way or the other.

They don't, they just feel like I'm, I'm lost. I'm in like a no man's land. And that's a really scary and lonely place to be. And people have been there, You know, I would say hundreds of thousands of people are probably have been through that space and many, many are right now.

0:35:35 Thomas: Yeah, sure. iTunes, all of, yeah.

0:36:52 Ryan: So we have I have a Facebook page and then there's a secret Facebook group for for people to be able to talk who aren't

0:36:58 Thomas: Well, not anymore. You just told us about it. So that, there goes that.

0:37:01 Ryan: Right. Right. It's not, it's not a, yeah, there it goes. Sorry. Dang it.

0:37:04 Thomas: Yeah. Shoot.

0:37:05 Ryan: All those people. It sort of like the clergy project though, except I sometimes joke that it's like the pew project. It's people that are people from the pews. Um, So it's, you know, people who aren't out to their families and need that added level of, um, privacy. So we have that and coaching, and I'm also going to be doing some consulting with, uh, free thought organizations that want to be a little more sensitive to, those that are immediately coming out of religion and how they can foster relationships with people who are on the edge and not quite sure. Sometimes it's nice at our free thought gatherings to sort of slap each other on the back and joke about how right we are and how wrong everybody else is. And it feels good to be among people who you're like, oh, we finally escaped, right? We're all so happy to be free. But it can be that discussion, that kind of conversation can be a little off-putting to people who are like, I don't know, maybe God is really, you know, they're confused.

0:37:05 Thomas: New page. Yeah, right. Yeah yeah. Nice. Yeah Yeah.

0:38:00 Ryan: They don't, and they can walk right out the door and maybe we've missed a chance to have a relationship with them that would eventually lead to something much more fruitful for them. So I'm trying to help foster that type of, uh, environment among some, some groups that I'm a part of. And, um, and I think Sunday Assembly is working on being that type of space though. I know that it's not appealing to everyone. One, So, That That type of work, um, is kind of what Life After God is about, and, uh, it's in the podcast of course, and I'll be doing some retreats hopefully next year, uh, do a couple of, um, I don't know, a little bit longer, two, three day retreats where people that really want to work through some of these issues together in a organized way with some guidance and can come together in a nice space and work on that together.

I just don't think there's a lot of resources for that, that type of intentional work. And people could really use that companionship as they deconvert or as they, even if they're not ultimately going to become atheists. I mean, some aren't going to, some are going to really think things through and say, I'd rather really think I'll stay Christian, but I want to do this deep dive into what it is I really believe in, what all the problems are, and can I reconcile them in some way?

0:38:22 Thomas: Yeah absolutely. Yeah

0:39:12 Ryan: So I just, yeah, that's the kind of sort of coaching and counseling that we want to provide.

0:39:18 Thomas: I'm, I might have to try to sneak in one more question cause that just made me think of something. Do you, in your current position now, I mean, in addition to just the project you're working on, which sounds very admirable, and I hope that people take advantage of those resources and go to lifeaftergod.org, but just in general, do you feel like you want there to be fewer religious people? Do you think that would be a good for the world, or are you agnostic about that? Are you, you know what I mean? Like, cause there, there is a difference. I mean, a lot of atheists actually think that religion is better for the world. Some think that it's worse, of course, and want to try to convert as many people as they can. Where do you stand on that? Do you think?

0:39:22 Ryan: Go for it.

0:40:05 Ryan: Yeah. I, I think that I sort of feel that people's freedom is the most important thing. And I think the most important thing is for people to have the tools that they need to process their questions. So critical thinking skills and, and sort of not that anyone needs my permission to be a critical thinker. They don't. No one needs anyone's permission to be a critical thinker, but some people benefit for some reason, psychologically or whatever, for someone who's been down the road before to simply say to them, it's okay. You can think critically about it.

0:40:45 Thomas: Well, yeah, I mean I, they've likely faced consequences for trying to think critically all their life. I meantime, like you've talked about a lot, a religions aren't very happy with certain thoughts that you might have. So sure.

0:40:51 Ryan: That's right. Yeah. I just like to make the point that no one needs my permission, right? But some people seek that. Some people seek like, I have this thought, is it okay? Like if I, and I'm like, and you're just like, sometimes really all, all a person needs is to have a companion, a friend or, or, or a coach simply say, yeah, let's. And in fact, not only is it, okay, I'll go there with you and I'll walk that path with you. And I, you know, it's sort of like, I'm going to climb this rock face and I, it seems a little bit scary, but if you climb it with me and we're hooked together, you Know, by this carabiner or whatever, like I feel safer, you you know, like questioning, questioning these things. So that's that to me, it's like, it's about courage. How do we cultivate the virtue of courage more among people and among communities? How do We foster the virtue Of critical thinking, and an honesty, like, I really feel like honesty, with oneself more than anything, is is such an important thing.

0:41:01 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But

0:41:55 Ryan: And I really feel that combination. And there's probably more. I know there's more. But if the combination of courage, honesty, and critical thinking, I almost don't have to wish anybody to be anything except honest. I just want them to be courageously honest and pursue whatever questions are on their minds. Cause the question that's on my mind may not be the question. That's on their mind.

0:42:19 Thomas: So much of that sounds impossible to anyone who's fundamentalist or, you know, like, it sounds like, I mean, yeah... It...

0:42:25 Ryan: And right. Sure, sure, sure. And I'm, you know, I'm going after like the low hanging fruit, the people who, the people Who know that they, yeah, the People Who know they have big questions, the people who admit like, I have these big questions, but I'm scared. And so I keep going to church thinking that someday it'll all make sense, right? Like that's kind of how I was. I was like, well, someday it will all make sens. I just got to keep my head down and keep doing what I'm doing. And, and, uh, but yeah, I, I don't have any illusions that I'm going to, uh, convince a fundamentalist to just critically examine the Bible or start with different assumptions about the universe than the ones that they have now. I mean, you really have to begin with some basic that the world is comprised of the stuff we can see and hear and touch, you know,

0:42:30 Thomas: Start small. You'll... Yeah.

0:43:17 Thomas: Right.

0:43:17 Ryan: Like, like that's, it may be more, here's the thing. The universe might, this is what I would say to a Christian, the universe might be more than naturalism, but it certainly isn't less than naturalism, right? So there might be a non-natural, say, supernatural thing out there. Let's just say for the sake of argument, there might be a supernatural thing out there. But there's not less than what's natural, right, we know for sure, you know what I mean? So can we start, let's start there, let start with what we have.

0:43:42 Thomas: Yeah... And Then wait for evidence of supernatural, supernatural activity.

0:43:49 Ryan: Yeah, yeah. Or just spend Spend our time in the realm over which we have some measure of control. I have some control over whether my daughters get educated or not, whether they learn to be generous. I mean, I don't have absolute control over whether they learned to be good people, but I have some control over that. I have absolutely no control over whether or not evolution is true. It's sort of like Neil deGrasse Tyson's like, to say like, it's, you know, the evidence is true, whether you believe it or not, like it doesn't matter. And, and I think there's no, there's so many existential questions that are fun to talk about, but when it comes right down to Monday through Friday, living our lives, being good people in the world, it just, they're not that vitally important.

0:43:50 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:44:41 Ryan: Lately, I've had a lot of Christians coming at me on Twitter and stuff about, um, first cause type questions and, you you know, like, well, what started the big bang there? Everything has to have a cause of course, except for God. Um, and, uh, and so they plead in this special way for, for God to not have a cause or whatever. And, and they go, we go round and round. I mean, it's, you've done the same thing I'm sure with, with apologists and around and around about presuppositions and you just, it's chasing your tail. And eventually I just said to this guy, like look, I gotta go feed my family. Like that's what really, like I, maybe you're right. Maybe I'm right. Who cares?

0:45:14 Thomas: There's Gonna Be no First cause to my family getting fed if I don't stop this uh argument right now.

0:45:20 Ryan: Well, Well, and I even said to him, okay, let's say you're right. Let's say that there's a God something or other out there that banged the, he called it the big bang, the big banger. And I responded, that's what she said. Um, you know, he banged universe and into existence. And, uh, and, and I, and now

0:45:20 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. He Banged The universe, yeah. Wait, Maybe I Want to start worshiping this God. Now that I think about it, yeah.

0:45:39 Ryan: That I think about it, so like I said, let's just say for the sake of argument, there's this big binger that you speak of. Uh, so what, like now what, how do you get to Jesus? How do you gets to the Bible? How do you get to none of that, like, it's, he doesn't even believe in evolution. The guy doesn't, map this guy, this particular guy does not believe in evolution. And yet he's spending hours upon hours trying to convince me that there's got to be a big banger. And I was like, it's pointless because the Big Bang leads you directly into long, long, long epics of history that evolve into what we have today, like, there's no way. Hey.

0:45:41 Thomas: Yeah, Yep. Well, And if he isn't Engaging With the science of biology truthfully, like, why Would you care about how he's engaging with, you know, astrophysics?

0:46:16 Ryan: Oh, no, no. And I eventually told him, he's like, how does the universe come from nothing? And so I said, Look, I'm not a cosmologist. I don't know. Why don't you ask a cosmologists? And he's like, Well, it's I don't, I'm not a cosmologist either. It's just it's just common sense. And I'm like, No, it's actually not common sense. It's not, not everything in the world is intuitive.

0:46:40 Thomas: Right. Yeah.

0:46:41 Ryan: You know that I saw another slogan the other day, which I thought was good, which is that the universe is not obliged to make sense to you. Like it doesn't. It doesn't have to make a certain kind of common sense. Anyway, now we're off on a super different tangent. All that to say, I'm under no illusions that I'm going to work with fundamentalists.

0:46:47 Thomas: Yeah, I know. Well, yeah, it's hard to stop. This has been truly what's that? Yeah.

0:47:06 Ryan: Those people aren't going to seek me out, first of all.

0:47:09 Thomas: Well really this has been truly absolutely enjoyable. I've really enjoyed talking to you. And I also am very, I hope I can say proudly, I think we covered a lot of of stuff that maybe, you know, other people haven't heard yet. So I'm happy for that little accomplishment. And I think that's the reason behind that is that you are a very interesting person and you have a ton of cool things going on to talk about. So, I thank you very, very much for coming on my show.

0:47:25 Ryan: Thanks for having me. It's been a pleasure.

0:47:56 Thomas: Man, super interesting guy that Ryan Bell. Really, really excited for his projects and he's the real deal. I really enjoyed talking to him. So, just one more time, I want to remind you about the debate. In case you snoozed on it, please go click on it. You can kind of RSVP that you're coming, which, you know, gives some nice emotional support to the people involved. So, I would really appreciate that. So, that's Saturday again, this Saturday at noon Pacific time. Much appreciated. If you come on, ask questions, you can grill the Christian, or maybe you can drill Justin Schieber a little bit if you want to. Maybe you're into asking the atheists some hard questions. Who knows? At any rate, thank you so much, and I want to thank my patrons.

0:48:43 Thomas: If you want to become a patron, you can go, of course, to patreon.com/atheist and pledge, pledge like a dollar. You won't even notice it, but the show will really notice it. And it means a lot. So let's see. Did I have any new patrons? Looks like I haven't had any new patrons. But that's okay. Maybe next week. So I will just have to thank my top patrons. That's Zimu Zinu, Jr., Adrian Borschoff, Michael, Jonathan Moyet, Jay Aldenwalt, Bangs90Bits, Peter Skelton, Brian Gareford, thank you Dale, thank Matt Garrett, and honorable mention to Samantha. Thank you guys so much for being very, very kind patrons. Much appreciated. You're the reason the show goes on.

0:49:29 Thomas: Alright, well I'll see you guys Saturday. I hope I'll I hope I'll see a lot of you Saturday watching the live debate. It'll be really exciting to interact with you guys live. So that'll be fun. All right. I'll be seeing you guys next week. And if you can't catch it Saturday, that's okay. You can hear it on the podcast the following week. So thanks for that. And I will see you then!