AS227: Tommentary Time, Easter Edition

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. This is episode 227. I'm your host Thomas Smith. I've got so much to tell you today. I got lots of good topics, lots of stuff action-packed. I am excited to be here. I hope you're as excited as I am. One of the reasons I'm so excited is I have, like, two awesome announcements, I think. Okay, well, okay, I'll start with one. I'm gonna lead into it, I'm going to tease that and say, first announcement, uh, iTunes review count 240, so we're almost halfway to 500. Please go on iTunes and, uh give a review to the show, hit five stars, you're done. That's all. I'll never nag you again, personally, you personally. I mean, I'll nag other people, but you won't have to apply it to you because you'll be thinking, oh, I already did that.

0:01:16 Thomas: So thanks to everyone who has. And with that out of the way, exciting announcement time. Well, I'll go in ascending order of excitement. So iTunes reviews was, you know, that was a little exciting. Not too terribly exciting, of course, for you guys. Second place out of three for exciting announcements. New logo! A lot of T and the B listeners might know that I got a new logo for Thomas and the Bible. Well, I was doing both of these. I didn't really, you, know, tell anybody because there's no reason to, but now it's all set. The logo's all picked. It's awesome. I love this logo. And here's the thing. In no way did he ask me to do this, but the guy who has made all of my logos and the Comedy Shoeshine logo, which is incredible, it's one of my favorite things to just look at.

0:02:03 Thomas: It's the only reason to listen to that show, actually. So go listen. His name is Michael Gartzman, and his website is www.gartzman.net. So that's G-A-R-T-S-M-A.N.net, at Gartzman.net. If you need anything done graphics wise, again, there's no, absolutely no reason for me to say this. I'm not getting anything for this other than he's just amazing. I can't, I, yeah, I completely envy his talent. I can't appreciate it enough because it's just so good. His stuff is creative, every concept is good, and then the execution is also good. He's just awesome. So, I mean, tell him I sent you just in case, I don't know, maybe he'll thank me or something. Let him know that I referred you, but if you need anything done for a website, anything, I would go there.

0:02:53 Thomas: He only relies on word of mouth. He doesn't advertise or anything. I don't know how my brother found him. I have no idea, but he's the best. I would never, if I was doing any graphics, I would not consider using anyone else. So he's awesome. Check out the new logo. You might be already seeing it on your iPod or iPhone or whatever device you're listening to. I'm not sure. Maybe the feed will have to refresh. Sometimes iTunes is a little weird like that, but hopefully everything's refreshed and you're seeing the cool new logo right now. So that's number two. Now, number three, in my view, the most exciting thing. I've booked my first ever speaking engagement. Yay! Now, it's not a big deal. It's, you know, pro bono work, but what are you going to do? That's how you got to start.

0:03:39 Thomas: I will be speaking at the Myth Information Conference. So, I guess it's an annual conference. It goes back three years now, going on three years. And it is, and it's, I mean, don't let the fact that I'm speaking in it ruin it for you. The main event is a debate between Bart Ehrman and Dr. Robert Price, which I would be absolutely ecstatic to see anyway, even if I weren't involved. But the fact that I get to go be involved in this thing and give a talk and then see the amazing speakers after me and Bart Eherman and Doctor Price, that's going to be so cool. I am very excited about that. I hope if there's anyone anywhere near Milwaukee, which is where this takes place in— sorry, October 21st, 2016 is when it's happening.

0:04:31 Thomas: So it's a ways off. I'll remind you about it, obviously, much closer to the fact. But if there's anyone anywhere near there, please go because it's my first ever thing. I promise it's going to be good. I'm working hard on it. The talk is going to me about, I will be finishing Thomas and the Bible right around that time, a little before that. So it is going be about my experience reading the Bible. It's going to be all my favorite things, my funniest, you know, observations and just weirdest Bible stuff. It'll be great. I'm, well, it'll be mediocre. No, I'm just kidding. If you like me, which you might if you're listening, then it'll be good. I can't, if you don't like me yet, maybe you won't like it. What can I say? So that you can just find, if you want to look at it right now, if you want a book tickets immediately, you can just Google myth information conference and it'll pop right up.

0:05:23 Thomas: And you'll see me there. I'm going to give a talk. I'm listed among the speakers. I'm really excited. And I want to say if there's anyone else who, you know, does conferences and books, any of that stuff, I'm available because I am putting together a killer. You guys know I'm writing a book on my Bible thing too. And that's allowed me to organize my thoughts into hopefully what will be a killer talk about the Bible. It should be really funny, really informative to people who aren't already experts at the Bible, but anyway, it's really good, and I want to get it out there. I would love to get myself out there more. If you're in charge of putting together a conference or anything in any way involved, or you know anyone, hey, let me know or reach out to me or something, something, atheistically speaking at Gmail, I would love to talk anywhere and get experience and get my name out there because I think I have some good stuff to offer and it'll be up to people to decide, of course, but the one way to do it is to just get out there.

0:06:22 Thomas: So very exciting, personally, very exciting to finally do something like that. And I really hope to see some of you there. And of course it's a long way off, but when I do see you, I'll be happy to hang out with you and all that. So that's my announcement. I'm very excited. And now I've got a lot of stuff I want to talk to you about for a Tom and Terry Tuesday or Thursday, no, Tom and Jerry Monday, which comes out on a Sunday.

0:06:56 Thomas: Well, in the spirit of Easter, I've got some Easter-themed things for you. It's always fun. My favorite thing about Easter is all the completely mediocre apologetics that come out of it. It really is my favorite. And another thing I thought was funny, I tweeted as much, was that it really is, when you distill it down, it's a couple people wrote in a book Look, I didn't have room to tweet all of this, but here I'll go into more detail. You know, 70, 60, 70 80, 90, 100 years after the fact, a couple of people wrote down that they they knew a guy who knew a who, you know, claimed that that a body was not where it should have been.

0:07:45 Thomas: Therefore, all kinds of supernatural stuff is it really is amazing when you distill it down that. That, look, I pulled up, just for fun, you know, one of my favorite people I like to talk about, one OF my favorite religious people, William Lane Craig. Now, my favorite thing about Craig is that I think he's a genius. Like, I actually think, some of you may disagree with me on this, I think he's smarter than I am by far. I mean, he's amazing at keeping all these arguments in his head. Instead, he does what's really annoying, but it's also pretty impressive. He keeps up with all the science, all the theoretical physics, all this stuff. He keeps Up with all of that. And of course, then picks and chooses the stuff that he thinks, you know, goes with his view and everything.

0:08:33 Thomas: So that part's annoying. But he keeps, he knows that, you Know, the names of all these people and their models and oh, this model says this and therefore that means this. And I mean, he's amazing at it. And he's done a ton of work. He's been around a long time. He's done a ton of debates and all that. And he is very good at it. But what is so funny about it is he's so obviously wrong on this point. And it really just has to do with your prior assumptions, I think. I mean, that's a big part of it, but when I look at... I've seen so many bad apologetics posted today because it's Easter Sunday, you know, and I have a lot on my Facebook for this show, which you can find me, by the way. Facebook, search Thomas Smith, maybe you'll find me. I have Facebook profile for podcasting purposes and for making friends and talking with you guys.

0:09:25 Thomas: I know a lot of you guys already are friends with me, so thanks for that. But anyway, I also have some Christian friends on there, you know, the usual people who've been on the show, Blake Giunta, you know, to name one, Tyler Vela, and it's just so funny because it always comes down to, well, you know, there's only, there're four things that you just can't explain. Here you go, guys, four historical facts, which must be explained by any adequate historical hypothesis. Jesus' burial, the discovery of his empty tomb, his post-mortem appearances, and the the origin of the disciples' belief in his resurrection. And you'll hear things like, yeah, just it's an airtight case. Airtight case. Here's from some apologetics that Craig has laid out. The best explanation of these facts that I listed before is that Jesus rose from the dead.

0:10:14 Thomas: It's incredible. This, of course, was the explanation, quoting Craig, that eyewitnesses themselves gave, and I can think of no better explanation. The resurrection hypothesis passes all the standard criteria for being the best explanation. Yeah, this is very standard stuff. Such as explanatory power, explanatory scope, plausibility, and so forth. Of course, down through history, various alternative naturalistic explanations of the resurrection have been proposed, such as the conspiracy hypothesis and the apparent death hypothesis, the hallucination hypothesis, and so on. In the judgment of contemporary scholarship, however, none of these naturalistic hypotheses has managed to provide a plausible explanation for the facts.

Yeah, it's amazing how much stock people, brilliant people like Craig and others, I mean, countless others. Can put in these words from history from a completely unskeptical time, from a horribly, you know, record kept. That's not really a good way to say that. From a time when records were not well kept, when things weren't well documented. There's contradictory sources. The books were written long after the fact. I mean, there's so many problems with it. And there's so many other examples throughout history of so-called prophets that he wouldn't accept. I means, he doesn't accept Muhammad. It has all the same things.

I mean, all the same aspects that he thinks, you know, Jesus has. He doesn't accept, you know, Joseph Smith. He doesn't accept that. He has all the same thing. It's just incredible, the lack of imagination. That's my favorite thing. Whenever I see this, and I've seen it so many times, oh, well, were they lying?

0:11:52 Thomas: Did they mass hallucinate? Well, no. Maybe at some point, the story was exaggerated. Maybe someone was was mistaken. Maybe the body was buried somewhere. I mean, there's a billion things. There's probably more than that. There is probably a trillion things. If I were to put a firm guess on it, there are a lot of things that I would guess before I would just decide that bodies can be resurrected from the dead, that there is a God, there is all this stuff. I suppose that's why why background assumptions are so key in this. But that always becomes so circular because every argument that you see Craig making, it's always, well, this is, of course, in the backdrop of other evidence. And then you argue about that other evidence, and then that evidence, of course, is in the background of the other evidence you already argued about.

0:12:43 Thomas: And it really is just this self-sustaining kind of delusion. But I think what's so funny is that this whole thing, this this whole holiday, my family, uh, I'm sure a lot of you celebrated Easter. Throughout history, so many people have make a huge deal about this, this little holiday. I know my family is Catholic. Easter is a bigger holiday than Christmas for them. They, they put a lot of importance on it, uh, you know, it's a big deal that they pay all their respects. And ultimately all it comes down to is someone wrote in just a terrible book 60, 70 years out after the fact that they think a body was not where it should have been. And therefore, we have 2,000 years of nonsense from this.

0:13:33 Thomas: And it's just incredible. It's incredible the amount of staying power such a weak thing has had. But there you go. I guess that's why you and I and probably most Most everyone listening is, it's all atheists because we realize that, but it's just, it every once in a while, you know, when a holiday like this comes up, I just think about it like, wow, how are we still doing this in this day and age? But there you go. I actually just listened to, you know, the podcast I've recommended recently, Unbelievable. There was a great debate on that one for Easter that was, and it was good because it was a Jew versus a Christian, so it wasn't an atheist. It was a Jew who, you, know, naturally, because he's a Jew, he doesn't recognize that Christ rose from the dead, so, and he picks apart all this stuff.

0:14:19 Thomas: It's hilarious. And he was just saying, it's so funny because the Christian thinks like, oh, but Paul, a.k.a. Saul, that's actually the part I'm at in the Bible right now over on T and the B. Oh, he, he—this is powerful evidence. He was a Jew. He didn't believe. And then Jesus came down and appeared to him. And then he converted. How do you explain that? He converted and faced persecution. You can't possibly explain that. Well, yeah, no, there's a lot of things. I mean, we're talking about the—humans are so complex. The idea that there's just one explanation and one only, and there's no way you can say that it's not because an actual spirit appeared to someone. It could have been any motivation.

0:15:05 Thomas: You could write any story for Paul's story. Maybe he was unhappy with his place in society, in the Jewish church, or Or Temple or whatever. I'm sorry, I'm not Jewish. But maybe he was unhappy with that. Maybe he wanted attention. Maybe he wanted to have a cool conversion story. Maybe he saw all these people that were Christians and were, you know, like doing certain things, and he said, you know what, if I convert, they'll respect me and I can be, you know, someone of note in that community. Maybe he didn't exist. Maybe his story was, maybe he did exist, but the story was was mis, you know, handed down over the course of 50 or 60 years. I mean, there's any number of possibilities.

0:15:53 Thomas: And it's so hilarious that every one of these cases really distills down to that. Like, are you really so lacking in imagination that you can't think of not just one, but like 4,000 separate hypotheses that could explain this very fact? And, you know, given that there's no independent other evidence for a God existing, then there's NO way in the world you would choose that as the explanation.

0:16:26 Thomas: The next little Easter theme thing I wanted to give you guys was not apologetics per se, but something I'm actually pretty mad about. Now, you probably know by now if you've been listening a while, I live in California, so I don't have to deal with the kinds of things that a lot of my listeners living in the South have to do with living in, I don't know, Muslim countries, really religious countries, listeners all over the world. That's the cool thing about podcasts. But anyway, I had a brochure dropped off or uninvitedly installed in my door, you know, hanging right in my door, where if I had kids, the kid could have just run up to the door and then just been reading this brochure from a church saying, "He is not here, for He is risen," you know, and it's about Easter and all that.

0:17:15 Thomas: But that's not even the worst part. Let me read you guys this. And I also read this on Comedy Shoeshine because I found it hilarious. So sorry for the duplication, but I promise you it's worth it. This was left on my door. And there's a picture of this guy, Pastor Roger, and his family looking happy, you know, just smiles on their faces, you Know, and they're pink. The girls are in pink and the guys are in little suits. And on this otherwise happy and family-oriented brochure, it says the following things. The Bible Way to Heaven. Here's seven steps. One, admit that you are a sinner. Right off the bat, admit I'm a sinner, they don't know anything about me, but now apparently according to their religion, doesn't matter who I am, I'm the sinner.

0:18:01 Thomas: That's already something I would never want my kids to think. And this is what's so frustrating about this. Again, I know, I live in privilege in California. There's very little of this going on. I can only imagine what it's like for some of you. But the idea that someone's just going to put this on my G-damn door to try to hold my tongue for no reason, because this is technically explicit and I do have Eli on this show from time to time. But anyway, on my goddamn door, the ideathat someone is going to just put this thing and think like, yeah, I've done a good deed today. I'm just goingto go ahead and put this one. And it's not even particularly a, like, you know, fire and brimstone brand of church. It's just Baptist, you now. Number two, realize that sin results in death right away.

0:18:48 Thomas: So, you're just deciding that me and whatever kids, children live in this house can read this. This is safe for consumption. This is something that should be encouraged for them to know. They're all sinners and that all results in deaf. Thank you for that. That psychological trauma, assholes. Number three, it just gets worse. This is the worst one. Understand that death is not only physical, but also includes hell or the lake of fire. Thank you. So, you've just put this nonsense on my door, telling again, and I don't have kids, but my cats, telling my cats that they're all sinners, that sin results in death. And it's not just death. No, hold on. Hold on. I'm not done. Not just death, there's more.

0:19:34 Thomas: It's a lake of fire or hell. Thank you. Thank you for that. You've just instilled a fear for no reason in my imaginary children that I could very well have. It's not like they know that I don't have kids. And I'll just go through the rest of the ones because I started them. Recognize that salvation is not earned by our good works and efforts. That's my favorite part. You don't have to do anything good. No, it doesn't matter how good of a person you are. And that's even worse for kids. Gosh, it Doesn't matter. I'm good. You're you have to believe that Jesus died, was buried, and rose from the grave to pay for your sins. Why? Who knows? I mean, they reference Romans 5.8 and John 3.16. I don't know why that would prove that that's what gives you salvation because John 3 16 just... Anyway, accept that salvation can never be lost because it will last forever.

0:20:23 Thomas: Call upon Jesus through prayer to save you. So that's all the steps just to finish them out. But my God, I was so frustrated by this, to find this garbage on my door. I mean, atheists would never do this. Do any of you ever do the equivalent of this? Do any Of you? I mean the, the worst thing that you can say that atheists have done is put up a billboard that just says like, Hey, there might maybe not be a God. Hey, you know that nonsense? Everyone believes in him. Maybe it's not true. That's it. Like that, even that, or just a billboards as, as Noah said back in the day on the show, a couple of years ago, I think, a billboard that just says atheists, like that's even too much for Christians. And the idea that they can just hand this garbage out, paper it.

0:21:11 Thomas: I mean, I'm not saying there should be a law against this. It should just be a cultural thing that we understand that you should not be doing this. I means, there's no law against posting a lot of stuff, but but it's pretty, we through culture we say like, you just don't do that, and this should be one of those things. Someday, maybe we'll get religion to that point, but, uh, it's not there yet.

0:21:45 Thomas: All right, time to switch gears a little bit and talk about the, gosh, an unfortunately common and alarmingly rapid-fire terrorist attacks here. We got Brussels, we got Iraq, we've got Pakistan just today... Man, rough stuff. Now, I've... My views have morphed a little on this, and I know I have a lot of new listeners, so I'll briefly summarize my views. I I've softened on this a little bit in that I think over time I've realized that while you can look at the news, you can definitely steep yourself in some terrible, terrible things that look like they're Islam-inspired, and a lot of times are, and you can do that until you convince yourself it's the biggest problem in the world, but I think one thing that has softened that a little bit for me is just how many other problems there are that have a way higher body count. And even in the wake of these attacks, I mean, when you look at the numbers, most of all terrorism is right in the heart of the Middle East and where Muslims are.

And I think that Americans, a lot of people like Trump and Cruz and all that, I think they overblow it. And I'm resistant to that. And I think that if I have a big disagreement with Sam Harris, it would be on profiling. I don't think his views on profiling are practical.

0:23:16 Thomas: I think that, I don't think they're racist. I think if you could profile for just Muslims and we've, and you could somehow do that in a way that would make sense and would be predictable easily and avoidable, then it might be worth looking at. But I just don't think it's practical. And I've laid that out extensively in previous episodes. So I I won't go any further into that. And I also think that Sam needs to stop saying things like, oh, the right wing is the only side that's making any sense on Islam. Now, don't worry. I am a Sam Harris fan, and I'm not trying to say I don't think he's racist. I don'T think he'S any of the things people commonly say he IS, and that's another topic I want to get to. But I do think in the wake of Trump and Cruz specifically, now, it may have been an okay thing to say some years ago.

0:24:06 Thomas: But in the wake of these attacks, did you see what Ted Cruz said? Ted Cruz says maybe the most idiotic thing I have ever heard. He said, we need to have security forces patrolling Muslim neighborhoods. That's what he said. That that's his response to these attacks. Now, there is no world in which that makes sense. That is the stupidest thing I've have ever heard. First off, what's a Muslim neighborhood? Are there a lot of those here? Can we isolate neighborhoods where there's just all Muslims there? Furthermore, what are these security patrols doing? Are they going to, can they, you know, look in garages? Can they do, what are they going do? Do you think terrorists like show outward signs of what their plans are and what, you Know, are they gonna catch somebody in the act?

0:24:52 Thomas: How many of these security forces, like what, what kind of manpower are we talking about? Are they going to be able to just go in people's houses? How is it going to do anything? Finally, once Muslims know that, do you think they're really planning their terrorism plots in the midst of their Muslim communities? Or do you think maybe they rent an apartment somewhere, a random house somewhere with a clean name and do a lot of plotting there? I mean, who knows? It'd be pretty easy to do. It's not hard to avoid these simple measures. So, it's something that sounds incredibly racist, and even though I know Islam isn't a race, but when it tends to disproportionately affect people who look a certain way, and when you start saying things like we need to Patrol certain communities.

0:25:42 Thomas: That's where you're starting to border on something like bigotry and something like xenophobia, you know, and just scare tactics, you know, the idea that there's one group of people that we need to have special patrols for. It's just, it was completely idiotic. And Trump wasn't any better. And I just think that Sam Harris maybe should avoid saying anything like that now, because now no one's making sense on Islam. That's the thing. It's fine if you want to critique the left on Islam. If you want to say they're not naming it, they're not saying it's Islamic jihadism, they are just calling it extremism, which I think is hilarious. What is extremism? How would you identify extremist vegans? Extremist MMA fans? How do you isolate extremism as a thing apart from the extremities of Islam? I mean, that's, or Christianity too. I mean certainly there are other books that have horrible things where if you are an extremist about it, then it gets bad.

But as Harris has even said himself, sorry this is a little Harris heavy, but as he said, the only thing wrong with fundamentalist Islam is the fundamentals of Islam, I mean that's really what's wrong with it, and there are plenty of other religions where you could be extremist of it and it wouldn't do anything. Anything. So that is a critique. I get that. But we need to stop saying the right makes any sense on this because they have their heads up their asses too. And that doesn't help. I think it's doing more harm than good.

0:27:18 Thomas: But in the wake of these idiotic comments by Cruz, I have to say, now this is, okay, some of you may watch the Bill Maher show. I watch Bill Maher's show as well. I actually like it. I'm not a huge Bill Maher fan per se. I think he's okay, but I do like that he has Republicans on there and he gets into a pretty good debate. I am a fan of any show where there's lots of sides represented and people go at it, and it makes it even better that it's on HBO so they can say fuck all they want. So that makes it better too. Do. But I love watching his show for that reason. And his thing was, he actually endorsed, and he made a whole joke about it, and that it's the best of the worst situation. He endorsed Ted Cruz over Trump. And And I have to say, in somewhat similar of a move, though the opposite result, I'm going to endorse Trump over Cruz right now.

0:28:11 Thomas: Official, atheistically speaking, Republican candidate endorsement between Trump and Cruz, by the way. Kasich is obviously the obvious choice for me. Not that he's great. I think that Kasich is getting a long way on not being either Trump or Cruz because he has some terrible views on Planned parenthood that are very problematic. But if I were to pick between Trump and Cruz, because Kasich is mathematically eliminated and the whole contested convention is a pipe dream, I would actually choose Trump. Now, it would kill me. It would kill me to live in a country where Trump could be president. And in the end, the ability of a person like Trump to be president may be more harm than, than Cruz would be.

0:28:59 Thomas: But I have to say, if it were just, if I forget that part and I forget the fact that I would just, I would want to jump off a bridge to live in a world where someone like Trump with all the stuff he's saying and all the, just the tactics he's using. I don't want to live in a country where he can be the leader. But if I forget that part, look at Ted Cruz, look at the words I just said, or listen to them rather, look at the statement that he said about what he would do just because of an attack in Brussels. He would patrol Muslim communities in the U.S. I mean, we need to remember, Trump is a loose cannon, sure, and it's true, he could be really bad, I get that, but I tend to think, while being awful, he also has been pretty liberal in his life, so maybe he would go a little bit toward that.

0:29:52 Thomas: Whereas we know Cruz would be horrible. We know he would be terrible. He has said he would be horrible, he has given us all the reasons to think he would be terrible, so that's my view. Of course, that's my opinion. I know I'll piss off my Republican listeners, but honestly, I don't know who you guys are supporting. I really don't. I mean, man, Republican listeners feel free to tell me what you think about this. I'd be happy to hear it. Go to atheisticallyspeaking.com, comment, or you can always email me or message me. But yeah, that's my official, atheistically speaking, I would take Trump over Cruz. I really would. And they're both the worst, but I would take Trump over Cruz. Actually, while we're on that topic, I did want to comment on something I found interesting. It's sort of this Rorschach test effect.

0:30:40 Thomas: I don't know if that's a thing. I'm making it up now. I've noticed that because Trump's rise to prominence is so hard to explain, it's very difficult to explain. One phenomenon I've noticed is everyone takes their own pet issue and just says that's the explanation for it. It's really funny. So, and this goes both ways. This goes, Republicans say, well, it's Obama. Obama brought Trump on us. That's what it is. Obama is so bad. And this is even Republicans who hate Trump. They're like, well it's still, still Obama's fault. You know, he was so bad, he brought Trump up. And then on the other side of the aisle, you get the aforementioned Bill Maher. He says in his, I think it was two weeks ago by now, he said that the self-esteem movement has has brought on Trump because of the way Trump aggrandizes, self-aggrandizes in the statements about him.

0:31:35 Thomas: And I just found that to be completely bullshit in my view. I don't think there's any connection. And I also think the self-esteem movement is more on the left than the right. I think the right people who are conservative tend to not be raising their kids in that way. I just thought this was a real case of, I don't know if he was just trying to be funny or, But there's no need to make that leap unless he really believed it, I think. And I really think Bill Maher was just trying to link two things he doesn't like. Well, what's responsible for this thing I don't like? Hmm, let me pick another thing I Don't Like, and let's link them together and just hope that they're actually related causally. Because I just, I find that unconvincing. I think that Trump is a cult of personality, and that's why he's so hard to explain.

0:32:21 Thomas: Explain. That's why no one can explain it, because it's not really, like, it's not really based on views. I mean, he's been on both sides of every issue. It's more about this weird cult of personality combined with, now here's my thing, now you can go ahead and accuse me of saying this is my pet issue, but it actually hasn't, I don't, I know if I've ever brought it up on this show, but I just, in thinking about it and reflecting on this Rorschach test thing that happens where everyone looks in the tea leaves and sees, you know, divines what they think is the reason for Trump. And it just so happens to be what they have already said a bunch of times. When I looked at this and I thought, okay, let me try not to do that. Let me just do my best again. I'm, I'm just, I am who I am.

0:33:07 Thomas: I have my biases and stuff, of course, and I could definitely be wrong, but let me do my best to try to think what actually, what I believe actually is causing this and not work backwards, not work the other way and say, here's what I don't like. Now, this is why that causes Trump. If I look at Trump, I see his appeal as being the whole, a part of the anti-government sentiment, the no trust in government. And I would think people would have to concede that's a big factor because he's an outsider. He's always a businessman. He'll show all these government people, these establishment people how to get things done. And, I also saw a stat, or I think I heard it on NPR, that the word establishment has been used in this election cycle on both sides, actually.

0:33:56 Thomas: Way, way more than ever. In 2008, it was barely used. 2012, it was used a tiny amount. And then here in 2016, it's all the time. The establishment, establishment is a negative. Trust in government is way down. Now, here's the part where you can go ahead and accuse me of being biased, but I really think this theory makes sense. I think that Fox News has really wrought a lot of this on themselves, which is so funny because I I don't think Fox News is very pro-Trump, but when I look at my relatives who watch Fox News, and I look At how much everything Obama does is exaggerated to be the end of the world. Obamacare was going to be The end of the world, you can't deny this.

0:34:42 Thomas: I don't care if you're a Republican or not, or a Democrat, you can't deny that when Obamacare was about to go into effect, you know, you had Glenn Beck saying there's going to be people dying in the streets. Fox News was saying people will be dying in the streets as a result of Obamacare. Just everything he does, and I'm not, I don't actually, some people make this into a race issue. I don't think it's that. I think the Republicans have been like this for a while now. I think that's, it's a fear-based thing where everything the Democrats do is the end of the world. They do the same thing with Hillary. I mean, I mean, I think they will do the same thing once she's president, which I think is virtually certain at this point. Once she's President, I know Bernie had a good weekend. I'm rooting for Bernie, but there were so few votes cast this weekend that it's a little discouraging.

0:35:32 Thomas: Anyway, once she is president, they will doing the same with her, and I suppose then you could say it's misogyny, but I don't think it is. I think there's so ideological, there's fear and hate based when it comes to critiquing the other side, that they make everything the Democrats do out to be the end of the world. And when you have that culture, and when you've steeped people, and I've seen the effects of it in my family, I mean, they think the world is ending because of Obama, because they watch Fox News. That's the environment that I think has been cultivated to produce a Trump, you know, to have Trump, not intentionally, completely unintentionally, I think, but to have an environment where someone like Trump, who's just total nonsense, is completely unfit for being president in all ways that you could think of.

0:36:26 Thomas: No experience, completely runs his mouth, no real policy depth, just nothing. That paves the way for someone like him because of so much distrust. And I think it's hilarious that the Republican Party is kind of eating itself in this way, and I really think it's their fault. So, there you go. That's my theory. Feel free to tell me how I'm wrong, but I did my best to think from front to back rather than starting with the conclusion I wanted, but we'll see. I could still be wrong. I just really, that one speaks to me as having a real causal explaining power there, and let me know what you guys think on that.

0:37:14 Thomas: Last thing, last topic for the day. Here's one thing that I'm just going to go ahead and say is a new rule in, again, in the spirit of Bill Maher, it's a segment on the show, but not in that way, not a joke new rule. This is what I want to say should be the rule going forward. I saw, and go ahead, accused, we can't wait to be accused of mansplaining or white privilege-splaining or cis-white, whatever, who cares. I I saw on Twitter the other day Greta Christina call Sam Harris a racist, sexist, torture-advocating douchebag, and that she didn't want anyone to bring him up in some thread or whatever. Oh, man. I've had her on the show a long time back, but she probably doesn't remember me, and I haven't really interacted with her much.

0:38:03 Thomas: But I saw this. It was, of course, really disappointing to me. And I just said, do you, do you really believe this? I just tweeted. I wanted to know. I was trying to get a response because you can just, obviously I could just tweet, oh you idiot blah blah blah. I could tweet like that and guarantee either a block or not a response but I thought, okay, let me try a little bit to get a response on this. And I said, I'm something like, I am genuinely curious if you really think he is these things. Do you really think that? And no response and some other people tweeted at her and she didn't respond. And I would have to say my new rule is feel free to have that opinion. Everyone can have whatever opinion they want, of course. I get it. Everyone can express whatever opinion they wants.

0:38:50 Thomas: What I would like in our discourse, in this age of Twitter and being able to spout off whatever crap you want, I understand that I'm living in an idealistic world here, but in my idealistic world, here's my new rules. If you're going to call someone a racist sexist sexist uh torture advocating douchebag, all I ask is that you at least be willing to defend that claim. That that should be a minimum. Now you can, you can say, I don't like him, I kind of disagree with his views here, whatever, I, whatever, you can call people whatever you want, but I would, I would think we would be in a better society if, when someone called someone else a racist, a sexist, and all that, when you say, "Whoa, why are you calling him a racist? Why are calling him as sexist," you should at least have to cite something.

0:39:39 Thomas: Shouldn't that be the, I mean, back in the day, this would have been unheard of. I mean. I think back in the day, words meant something. Insults meant something, I mean, if you called something, someone even like dishonest, oh, you're something like that, that would be a serious thing. That would be fighting words. You would have a reputation to maintain. Now, these insults are tossed out so easily. And really, when you're calling Sam Harris a sexist, what you're really saying is, I didn't like the precise words he used in this one question he answered one time. That's really what you are saying. I mean, look, and you have every right to think that. The specific Sam Harris sexist thing is the estrogen vibe comment he made.

0:40:24 Thomas: I think there was a bad way to say that. I think it was a Bad Comment. I think there is a little bit to it, at least not exactly in those words, but I think there is a reason atheism is male-dominated, and I don't think it has anything to do with with our atheist leaders, because it was that way before they came up. I mean, before New Atheism, atheism was already male dominated. It just is. I mean sorry, but those are the stats. Women are more religious. They just are. I don't know what it is. I think it has something to do with community. It has something with the cultural differences between men and women. I don't care if they're inherent or not. I don't care if they're a result of society. They probably are. That's fine, but there are differences, and they result in women being more religious.

0:41:14 Thomas: And before, long before anyone accused any of the new atheists as being sexist, long before, I mean, if you think back, I think a lot of people have rewritten in their mind, "Oh, they've always been so sexist, they've always be saying these things." No, there was a time before Twitter. There was a Richard Dawkins, there's a long time of Richard Dawkins before Twitter existed, and he put his foot in in his mouth a bunch and said really stupid things on Twitter. There was a long time before that, and still atheism was male-dominated. There's just something about it. So the easy answer, the go-to answer for, you know, a certain segment of atheists is to say, "Well, the reason it's so male-dominated is because of these sexist males who are at the top of it and not being inclusive or whatever." And sure, maybe that's some part of it.

0:42:00 Thomas: It certainly would help, and I advocate that we should be as inclusive as we can. We should encourage having women speak at conferences. We should do everything we can to reach women, certainly. But I can tell you that, I mean, I like to think of myself as pretty in the middle on this. I think of my life as a feminist. I've taken up the cause for feminism a lot. I've defended women from abuse. I've argued with the people on the other side of that a ton. And still, my listenership is overwhelmingly male. Male. Why is that? I don't know. I don't know. If you want to say the easy answer is, I'm just a sexist pig, or there's some sexism problem, I don't think that's it. I think there is a difference, some sort of difference between men and women in our society, largely, that dictates that they like different things and that women, for some reason, aren't too killer into atheism.

0:42:54 Thomas: I don't, don't know what it is. And I don't hate Sam for answering in that way, in a way that wasn't just, "Oh, we need to be more inclusive." Like somehow that magically will get all these women to come be atheists. So anyway, all this is to say, if you're going to call Sam Harris these things, and you're someone prominent, by the way, Greta Christina is someone prominent, she has a lot of followers, if you're gonna use these horrible things, at least be willing to state your case, or even just have a link ready, you know? If you are someone who thinks Richard Dawkins, who thinks Sam Harris, whatever it is, if you think he's a horrible, racist, sexist, douchebag, whatever, and someone says, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, why are you saying that?" At least be able to point them to a link, write a blog post. Should that be the minimum? You know?

0:43:40 Thomas: Minimum. Now, if you're gonna say Bill Cosby is a rapist, that's pretty widely understood at this point, I don't know, that's a different story. But when you're making these accusations that are like, "Whoa, what, where's this coming from?" Really, at least have a link or something. Don't go into silence mode, because you know what that tells me when you go into silence mode? That tells, tells me, "I don't feel like I can argue this." That's what it tells me. Sorry, that's what it tells me. I know you can make the excuse of, "Well, I shouldn't have to constantly defend myself." Well, I don't know. I mean, when you're calling someone these serious things, maybe you should at least have a link. Even if you tweet the same link every time, I don't care, that's fine, that's at least something. But when you go into silence mode, that tells me that you're making it, especially with the emotions you've instilled in that tweet, which is, "Don't bring Sam Harris up."

0:44:29 Thomas: He's a racist, sexist, torture advocating douchebag. Don't bring him up in this thread. You've just charged that with so much emotion that you've made it very difficult for anyone to want to argue with you. And I think that's a self-defense thing. I think that's because when it comes down to it, Sam Harris isn't those things. Maybe he's given some answers you don't like. Maybe He's said some things that have sexism to them. Sure. That's possible. Do you think He's arranging sexists? Do we have to distill everything down down to that, this binary thing of if you've said one thing ever that I don't like, you're a horrible sexist versus he's said some problematic things. Call him out on those things if you want, by the way. Go ahead. Feel free. Go, go ahead. But he's a racist because he thinks we should profile Muslims or anyone who would look like a Muslim that makes him a racist.

0:45:18 Thomas: Do you think he, what does he do that's racist? Do you Think he hates black people? Do you think he hates people who don't look like it? Do you really think that, or do you think he has a philosophy and he has a solution to a problem which I disagree with, by the way, and I emphasize that in my tweet to maybe find some common ground. To be fair, I said I disagree with his profiling view, by the way, but do you really think he's a racist, do you really think he is, or do you think, or maybe that he is worried about terrorism and he thinks the best way to solve that problem on airplanes is to pay extra attention to Muslims. I don't know. I live in a magical world where I think someone could just be wrong about that and not be racist. Maybe I'm in a la-la land, but I think you could be wrong. About the fact or about the question of what's the best way to prevent terrorism.

0:46:07 Thomas: And if your answer is, "Well, I think maybe we should not waste time on old women or young, young children when we're going in the airport and just focus more on people who aren't these people," do some anti-profiling, as Sam Harris would put it, I think he's still wrong, but I don't think he is a racist for it. Well, that's it for my show today. A lot of different stuff, a lot of different topics. I hope you guys have some feedback for me. I encourage it, and I will read a comment on a future show if I get one. On Thursday, I've got a very interesting discussion on GMOs, because that was an issue that split my audience quite a bit. You guys were curious, uh, some of you were, were, were reacted poorly to my saying, uh, Liberals like Bernie Sanders reject the science when they call for GMO labeling, so I've got a bit of a debate on that on Thursday, so that should be fun.

0:46:57 Thomas: I will see you then. Please write those iTunes reviews. Please go to patreon.com/atheist and support the show. And please keep listening, most importantly, because I love having you guys as listeners, and I really love interacting with you. So thank you so much, and we'll see you next episode.