SIO81: David Tamayo of Hispanic American Freethinkers

Transcript

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

0:00:29 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to episode 81 of Serious Inquiries Only. I'm your host, Thomas Smith. All right, well, Mythicist Milwaukee was a disaster. There's a lot of stuff going around about that already. I do intend, I have a lot to say about it, an absolute ton to say about it. There, there's so much, but I only just got home and I need time to process it and write the episode, at least write down some notes for what I want to say and really think it through. I may also be able to get Tom from Cognitive Dissonance on for a little bit of that, So I'm going to try to do that for Thursday's episode. But the first thing I need to say is thank you guys so much. Those who supported me, those who met with me after that was that was a really a really soothing thing that happened.

0:01:16 Thomas: It was it was a terrible experience and it felt so great to meet some people who actually care about being decent human beings. It was, it was really helped. But, but also thank you so much to everyone who pledged. I got a lot of pledges as a result of this, and I can't tell you how much that means to me. And so what I want to do, I'm going to record Thursday's episode early and try to release it as early as I can to patrons, because I really want to give you guys something for the support that you've given me this weekend. So that's what my plan is. I'm gonna record that as soon as I Can. I'll work on it tomorrow. Try to get it out again for patrons as soon as I can, but for everybody else, the big myth information breakdown, what happened, all that stuff. That will be Thursday's episode. In the meantime, we're business as usual here.

0:02:02 Thomas: I have a great interview with David Tamayo that we did before this all happened. David Tamayo is. Founder of Hispanic American free thinkers. And he's also going to be at California Free Thought Day. We had a really cool conversation about atheism in the Latino community, that kind of thing, pretty wide ranging his, his foundation. Organization is doing some really neat things. So let's Let's get over to my conversation with David Tamayo.

0:02:35 Thomas: I'm joined right now by David Tamayo. Thanks for joining me, David.

0:02:35 David: Thank you, a pleasure to be here.

0:02:40 Thomas: So this is another in the series of interviews for the California Free Thought Day, which I'm very excited about. What are you planning to do there?

0:02:48 David: I wish I knew. There's so many things that I could talk about, and I have a few things in the works, but every time that I go to a conference, I want to talk about stuff that I haven't talked about before, because there's nothing worse than to go to conference and see someone that is doing the same talk over and over and over again, uh, you've seen, you know, and these talks, they get put online and and all of that, so I always like to uh do a talk that is uh always fresh, try to do some, and I'm, I think that what I'm going to be trying, just most, most likely right now what I'm gonna be going for is, I'm into science and technology, and I love technology, I should have been born, you know, 100 years from now, assuming there's still a world then, but uh, you know, looking at uh technology and and um, and the issues that we have to deal with, so the pluses and minuses that that has brought us, because you have to admit that technology has been a great thing and has also been a bad thing. And it depends

0:03:04 Thomas: Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah...

0:03:52 Thomas: Especially with this election recently,

0:03:53 David: Tool.

0:03:55 Thomas: Too. I mean, technology is really... we haven't caught up with how it affected this election, for sure. Sure.

0:04:00 David: It's incredible. I think that, yeah, even though a lot of stuff has come out, the fact, I mean, it's still not known the depth of it. Now, I've been dealing with it in the kind of work that I do in a CIO of the company where I am. I mean, cybersecurity is our number one thing, and it's a chess game, really, where you're trying to make sure that you don't get checkmated easily. And so even not playing the game, you can still get checkmated.

0:04:01 Thomas: Yeah.

0:04:30 David: That's the difference.

0:04:30 Thomas: I was Just going to say, I was going to make a similar comparison, topic for another show probably, but I was gonna say one of the problems with Trump and some of the Republicans is they're insisting that we're not even playing a game. So it's hard when they're in denial of the game being played, we have no chance of fighting it off.

0:04:43 David: Well, and I think the problem is that I think we're playing the games. And we've been playing the game except that we're playing checkers and the Russians are playing chess. So the problem is we underestimate the enemy and we underestimate the way they've been attacking us. I think they've become extremely clever in how they went about it in a way that is, you don't have to hack things, you just have to manipulate people.

0:04:53 Thomas: Right, right, right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:05:11 David: And really, if you think about Facebook and you think about all the different companies, they're interested in your mind. Whoever controls your mind controls the money, controls the power. And so what better way than to use social media and memes and other ways to convince, especially people that already are not that bright or not that educated?

0:05:32 Thomas: Right. Well, topic for Another Show, but that's interesting. I definitely like like your approach of trying to keep it fresh on the conference circuit. That is much appreciated as a audience member, you know, not hearing the same thing. I think that it's really hard to do though, because a lot of the times if you're given a 45 minute hour, this one might be a little shorter, I'm not sure, but if you've given a long talk, I mean, coming up with that, people might not realize how much work that involves, but I like that approach you're taking. So I look forward to hearing a fresh topic. But let me ask you this. You are the president and founder of the Hispanic American Freethinkers. Can I just ask you a basic question? Hispanic, Latino, what's the difference? What's the preferred term? I hear both, but I associate Hispanic as a term with more of like my parents' generation and how they used it. And it seems like it has shifted or am I wrong on that?

0:05:38 David: Yeah. Yeah.

0:06:26 David: So it's a matter of usage and words are used in different ways. I mean, we know the word gay was used in a different way 50 years ago. So technically, Technically, if you go and look in the books, it'll say that Hispanic is everyone that speaks Spanish, including Spain. But Latino is any language or culture comes from Latin, which means that in the Americas, it would include the Portuguese. In Brazil, Brazilians speak Portuguese, and it'll include the French Guyanas, et cetera. In the terms that we use it here in the United States, it is just used in one way or the other is the same. The Hispanics and Latinos call themselves Hispanics. And Latinos, the West Coast, California and Texas, they tend to use Latino. They were Latino a lot more in the East Coast. They tend to us Hispanic a lot More. And so it's a it's matter of use. I tend to Use the term interchangeably. And

0:06:33 Thomas: Right. Yeah. That's what I was going to ask. Yeah, okay.

0:07:29 Thomas: Okay.

0:07:30 David: We're talking really what it is, is it denotes this – it's not a race. It's an ethnic group. And under this ethnic group of mostly Spanish speakers that descended – that come from Latin America, you have people from all races. You have blacks, Asians. I had a friend, Carlos Chang. His parents were from China. He was born and raised in Peru. They have a lot of Japanese. So we definitely, when you see someone that is Hispanic, know in California and in Texas, they tend to associate more with the Mexicans that have more native roots. But if you actually take the genetics of the Native Americans from Mexico and the Native Americans from, say, Iowa, they're the same people. They're genetically the same.

0:07:51 Thomas: Yeah interesting.

0:08:22 Thomas: Well, I'm over here in California, so that could be why I'm more familiar with the term Latino. It might be wider usage over here, so thanks for educating me on that. But having said that, cover that basic base. You started this group. Tell me a bit about that. When you started it, um, what you were looking to do with it.

0:08:38 David: Yeah, so real short, in 2010 or so, I became more active as an atheist. And so I went to a lot of different groups, conferences, things like that. And I'm always looking around to see if I saw people with Hispanic names or, you know, how many Latinos I saw around and almost nothing. And so I decided to put to create a group, you know, meetup group just to see who would show up. And after about three months, people started showing up and and everything's fine. It was just a local group. But one day a guy came in and he said, you Know, he sat in the corner and we all went around the table talking about, you know, how did we, how long we've been atheists or skeptics or this and that.

0:09:24 David: And we got finally to this guy who looked like he was a painter and he had been working all day long and, you know, very unassuming guy. And when we got to him, he started talking and saying that, you know, he didn't know someone had told him about this group. He didn't know that, uh, that this group existed and that all his life he had never believed in anything. And everyone told him that he was crazy, that he was an idiot, that this and that. And he had started to believe that there was something wrong with him because he couldn't believe in all the stories that people were being told in churches and things like that. And, you know, most people, you can't choose what to believe or not to believe. You either do or you don't. And so he didn't. He started crying when he was telling the story. And I thought to myself at that point, well, you could make other people feel like this.

0:10:12 David: It'd be worth it. So let's let's do this right. Let's create a nonprofit. Let us do all the paperwork and everything. So when we get donations, they're tax deductible and all of that. And so we started the group locally in the Washington, D.C. area. But shortly after that, we just sort of went national and a lot of with again, with the technology, the Internet and all that, it was a lot easier to do that. And well, a lot people may ask, well, you know, so what? I mean, Hispanics are all Catholics And they're all, you know, they all kind of keep to themselves and this and that. And there are lots of this been, you Know, the Hispanic Heritage Month. I'll give you a few statistics that might surprise you. For instance, there are more people that speak Spanish in the United States than any other country in the world except Mexico.

0:11:02 David: So a lot of people don't know that. But so that's, you know, there are 56, 57 million Latinos in the United States. That's about 17 percent of the population. Now, to put that in perspective, African-Americans in the United States are 12 percent of the population. Hispanics are 17 percent. So there's a greater number of Hispanics in the country. But again, because they come in all races and in all shapes and forms and, you know, flavors, it's tough to to say, oh, here's a Hispanic or here's not a Hispanic. In just another factoid, in 1780, shortly after we had declared our independence here in the United States, more than half of the continental United States belonged to Mexico or Spain. So, you know, at one point, the continental united states was far greater, you now, hispanic officially in the sense that it was Mexico or spain that owned it. And so a lot of people feel – a lot of people think, well, Hispanics are a new thing, and a lot of Republicans are like, yeah, anti-immigration, every Hispanic is – Hispanics have been here since the 1500s.

0:11:12 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah

0:12:13 David: So when you look at Florida, you look at Montana, which the word Montana means a mountain, California, all that used to be Latino, and so the the Hispanics have been in this country since the 1500s. And so to see someone like that Arpaio guy in Arizona that got pardoned for discriminating against people that have lived here since the 1500s, especially in that area of the country, it's terrible. And it keeps happening all the time just because they look in a certain way. Anyway, others, some Hispanics are lucky enough because they're white or they look different. And so me personally, I look I look more Arab. And so I tend to be stopped because of that.

0:12:18 Thomas: Yeah yeah yeah.

0:13:02 David: But as soon as I as soon As they see my name is not Mohammed and is David.

0:13:04 Thomas: That's your enemy number one for Trump. Huh? Yeah.

0:13:08 David: Oh, yeah. But they see the name David and they're, oh, OK, you must be a Jew then go that way. So, you know, but yeah, they yes.

0:13:15 Thomas: Uh it reminds me of that comedy as I found it funny as a kid, but super troopers back from, uh, I don't know, 2000 or something. And one of the characters, nobody can tell what race he is. Cause he just kind of looks like in the middle of everything. And there's all those kinds of jokes about it.

0:13:31 David: Oh, what? What's the name of that actor that is in the movie Baywatch right now?

0:13:35 Thomas: Oh yeah. The rock. Is it the rock?

0:13:37 David: The Rock. Yeah, The Rock, he's always making fun of himself that way because he's like, hey, am I black? Am I white? Am I Hispanic? Am I from Asia? He's got that thing going for him, and so he himself makes fun of that. But, yeah, I have – I'm fortunate that I have some of those faces because when I travel abroad, I tend to – all the street vendors tend to flock towards my wife to sell her trinkets. And I just make sure I'm four steps away from her and they won't come to me. But, yes, going back to – so if you have 17 percent of the U.S. population that believes in magic or believes in all these things because – so the name Hispanic American Freethinkers, it was – it's not an accident. We chose free thinkers – we didn't choose atheists because we wanted to take care of the atheism part, but we also – among the Hispanic community in a lot of places, they still sell – they believe in voodoo type of stuff, a lot of magic, evil eye.

0:13:37 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:14:37 David: And you have the stores that cater and sell magical powders and things of the sort. So we want to teach – we wanted To teach people and fight all the superstition stuff. I mean, anything that is superstition. And so free thought, free thinking was that, you know, because it talks more about being a skeptic question in and everything. The problem with the word skeptic is that, again, it's been misused in our community to denote negativity.

0:14:43 Thomas: Yeah yeah. Hmm.

0:15:06 David: You're just a skeptic, you mean, you're just the contrarian when in fact, no, a true skeptic is not a contrarian at all. It just likes to check facts. So part of what we're doing in our main impetus in the United States is educating kids. Last year, we offered a scholarship. This year, We're doing the same thing. And we have an ongoing program in Northern Virginia where we go to high schools and give the seminars on critical thinking skills, on careers and et cetera, and support groups that are doing STEM and that are Doing math. And so and we also tutor not just the students, but we tutor teachers.

0:15:53 David: And a lot of times the teachers don't know – you have teachers teaching English as a second language that they were not trained to do. And so critical thinking is not one of those – is one of those things. So we try to help them out, giving some seminars and things, doing some magic tricks and to show them that just because you see something, it doesn't mean it's real.

0:16:18 David: That's what magic teaches you. Because, you know, a lot of times people say, well, but I saw this or my aunt saw a ghost and she doesn't lie. So, you Know, who who's wrong here? You or my Aunt that never lied. So the idea is to try to encourage critical thinking. And it's and it's going well. It's going Well, it's never perfect. But the dropout, the high school dropout rate for Hispanics has gone down over the past five years. The problem is now the college dropout rate has increased. So a lot more kids are making it to college. The problem isn't dropping out in college, and now they're actually worse off because they drop out, and now they have college loans, and they still have a high school education. And a lot of it is cultural, and we'll talk a little bit about that.

A lot of that is just opportunities and situation, preparations. Corporations. In this country, unfortunately, even if you go to a public high school, the quality of the high school is determined by the neighborhood that you live. And so public schools are not all the same. And well, we know that public schools in

0:16:18 Thomas: Yeah Yeah. Yeah. Right.

0:17:22 David: The South are not as good as some public schools on the coasts. So I

0:17:28 Thomas: Yeah, there's so much of the, I suppose, just the inequality that goes on at such a level there. The quality of school's choice and a lot of that goes on. I'm curious, anecdotally, I know being in California, I have all kinds of Latino and slash Hispanic friends, I suppose. I'll try to use both terms there just to cover both coasts.

0:17:51 Thomas: But yeah, I have a lot of friends. And it does seem just anecdotally that they do tend to be, in my experience, more religious. I don't know why that is or if that's just a sample size thing, but does that tend to Be the Case, do you think? Sure,

0:17:50 David: Think so. Now, granted that when the surveys are being done by the Pew research, it shows that the number of Hispanics that are leaving religion are becoming nones. Let's not say become an atheist altogether, but just becoming nones, which to me, that's good enough. If you're not feeding the churches and you're not giving them money, then that's good enough, exactly, exactly. Good point, yes, yes. That they're becoming, they're not going to church almost as much as mainstream Americans are At this, you know, the young generation, the young people. The number of Catholics in the United States among Hispanics has dropped. It used to be about 68 percent. Right now it's 52 percent. So only about half of the Hispanics are. But this is the thing. The problem is cultural. In the culture, the mother, the grandmother, they have a high place of honor. They're the ones in the Latino family, they're the ones that are supposed to keep the morality of the family. They're the ones that drag kids to church and

0:18:16 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. And that's N-O-N-E-S, not N-U-N.

0:18:34 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah.

0:19:09 David: The family, and in fact, when the women in the family change religions, or when they stop going to church, or when they become Mormons or Pentecostals or whatever, it starts with the women, and then they tend to drag the man into it, and then the whole family becomes, becomes, you know, Jehovah's Witness or whatever. And so that understanding that they, a lot of the times they may do it just to please grandma and mom and, you know, and be an example to the women in the family, et cetera. But they do it, they do It with gusto. Now, it also has to do with education. Like anything, the more educated the people become, the less religious they become, They question things a little bit more. The least educated, so farm workers and people that are migrant workers, et cetera, they, you know, religion was created for, you know, for accepting misery and promising that don't worry about your misery because you'll be rewarded in the future. So that's the reason you also see it's a a coping mechanism for misery.

0:19:09 Thomas: Right. Yeah. Yeah.

0:20:18 David: And unfortunately, it encourages them. I've seen kids whose parents will take them out of school and take them to go to work as soon as they turn 16, and they legally can take them outside of school to go work and say, no, no. Let's go clean offices. You can be a mechanic like me, and you can just do this. Because no, you don't need education. You don't—would you want to study astronomy or anything like that, that you know, and I've seen kids that are very promising, 4.0, you know, perfect straight a students, and the parents will pull them out, and the kids will not fight it because, you know, it's mom and dad and, you know, a lot of respect. So now, once, not to say that there aren't some kids that are, go sort of the other way, they lose interest, interested in school, and they join gangs, and they go in that way.

But a lot of them, a lot of those kids is because they're sort of giving up. They figured, I'm never going to make it to school. I just want some easy, fast money. I don't want to be cleaning offices and toilets and things of the sort. And look, the building where I work right now, for instance, I've been here for 20 years. Every person that cleans toilets in this place for the last 20 years as being Hispanic. I don't see, now, I blame the culture, not just the religion, but I blame the culture also, and now there's ignorance, you don't know what you're ignorant about.

0:20:49 Thomas: Right.

0:21:45 David: And so what we try to do is educate the parents, educate the kids, because it's a team effort. It's together that we have to get them. And in some cases, religion gets in the way. A lot of the times religion, especially with women, where the girls, well, that's not what a girl does. A girl is supposed to have babies as soon as she can. They're supposed to get married, find a man that would provide for her. And I see a lot of teenage girls in Northern Virginia, Hispanic, that get pregnant on purpose because they want to validate their womanhood or something, you know. So part of it is telling them, look, look, having zero kids is an option. You know, get an education, learn, you can do better for your family. Telling the parents that if they allow this kid to go and get a career and become a physicist, a scientist or something that they're going to be better off in the long run, that you just have to wait and, you know, be longer. So it's tough, it's stuff sometimes but, and part of

0:22:38 Thomas: So it sounds like yeah It sounds like it's a very wide ranging, I'm not sure if you're, if you're talking about your group as much anymore, about the Hispanic American Freethinkers, but if you are, it sounds you have a wide range of concerns that far and above just merely atheism, which which is, yeah, yeah.

0:22:39 David: Yes Yes. Well, and it's all interrelated because think

0:22:58 Thomas: It's hard to divide between like what's culture, what's religion, and what's both, you know, because they feed off each other and build from each other.

0:22:59 David: What, what the, yes it's exactly it's very intertwined, and the thing with religion is, if you think about that, religion tells you to accept things without question, and so fairly often, people, when they're, when they question, question in religion, they feel that they're being traitors to their culture. But, you know, all my family and everyone in my country and everybody. And so patriotism and religion kind of gets together, and they play against each other. And, you know, patriotism to a degree is a bit like a religion. I mean, how many people for patriotism go and die for their country, you know, give up their lives for an abstract ideal?

0:23:14 Thomas: But, oh yeah, I think there's a definite parallel between unquestioning, you know, reverence of your country is, you know, it's just as faith-based sometimes. I mean, and it's rooted oftentimes in the ignorance of your own country's imperfections. And to put it lightly, you know, right.

0:23:47 David: Yes. Well, I have friends that voted for Trump, Believe it or not. I have some friends that voted for Trump and they will say, well, you're being a traitor by not supporting Trump. And I said, really? Were you saying that when you were not supporting Obama? No, no, no. On the contrary, I'm being a patriot because, you know, the Constitution says I should question, you know, what our precedent because it's not above the law. So the idea, you know, this idea that anything and everything can be questioned, it's a good way, uh, because you know there's that factor of fear when it comes to religion, questioning religion, and and the fear of it.

But one of the things that we do, uh, that is very specific to atheism is right now, for instance, we're starting to do audiobooks in Spanish, uh, atheist audiobooks in Spanish, translating some, and some that are already written directly in Spanish. So you may or may not know Dr. Hector Avalos. He is a religion professor at Iowa State University. And he's published a bunch of books. But the first book he ever published was in Spanish, I think the title translates to something to the effect of "Why I Don't Believe in God," something

0:24:08 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:24:35 Thomas: Oh, neat.

0:24:46 Thomas: Not sure.

0:25:00 Thomas: Excellent.

0:25:00 David: To, and now, he was a Pentecostal preacher. He has a PhD from from Harvard University. So, you know, a very smart guy. And so he's allowed us to do his audiobook, his book in an audio format, so we can give it to a lot of these people that sometimes can't even read and write in Spanish. And so the audiobook is perfect, especially if they're working. When you're working, you can listen to an audio book.

0:25:22 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. I absolutely love audiobooks. I think that's great. I think they're a great way to to gain some knowledge, especially like you say, you're working or maybe you're not able to read that well. That's a really cool thing. Yeah driving I love audiobooks. That sounds cool. I got a question. I'm curious from something you said earlier. I don't think this really specifically applies to your group, your free thinking group or anything. But in general, you talked about people becoming nuns. And I'm just curious as an atheist and as someone who does try to spread skepticism, free thinking, is that something that atheists should be happy about? Should we settle for that? Because on one hand, yes, fewer people, I'm pretty sure, you know, fewer and fewer people are going to church than ever, but it doesn't necessarily mean they're atheists, you Know, is it, is that,

0:25:33 David: Driving. Yeah, same here.

0:26:17 David: Right.

0:26:17 Thomas: I wonder how much, is that something we should count as a, as a victory, as, you know, because it could be that they're just becoming bad Christians or bad, you know, like just kind of lazy and bad religious people.

0:26:23 David: Yeah. It's a double-edged sword, in my opinion. On the one hand, them becoming bad Christians or bad religious person just means that they're sometimes, and still believing in the God, I think they're just right for the pickings for somebody else that walks in. Or when there's a tragedy in their family and all of a sudden they want to go back and pray and then that person got better or the tragedy goes away and now they say, "Ah, you see, one-to-one relationship. I prayed, I went back to Jesus, I found Jesus," whatever. On the other hand, if you stop giving them money and you stop feeding the churches, then they start drying up, which means you minimize the proselytizing that the churches are doing. Now, when you look at the Pentecostals among the Hispanic community, or these Pentecostal churches that are going up all the time, they're all very small churches that have 20, 30 people. There's one place here in Virginia, Manassas, Virginia, where there, I'm not exaggerating this.

0:26:44 Thomas: Yeah.

0:27:32 David: There are, last I checked about a year ago, there were 14 Pentecostal Latino churches, literally one attached to the other one attached there. This was like an industrial park where you have all these metal doors in each one of these sections. And when the business went down in 2008, all these, the owner of the property started renting it out to these churches. And, you know, to become a Pentecostal preacher, the only requirement, I believe, is to have a pulse. So if you're breathing and you have a pulse in your wrist, you're good.

0:28:07 Thomas: I don't know much. I'll take the chance to just ask you. I do not know much about Pentecostalism, you know, in particular. How does it differ from your run of the mill Christian or Catholic?

0:28:13 David: Yes. So Pentecostals, you might have heard of them in West Virginia using rattlesnakes in their ceremonies, because there's one part in Matthew Matthew, that says that if you, that if the Spirit of God is with you, poisons cannot kill you. Obviously, it's killed a bunch of people that way. They speak in tongues also. And so they go crazy. They dance. They jump. They do. It's a lot of energy. And, you know, the people get a lot of satisfaction out of it because they feel. And then it becomes kind of a frenzy. And then people start faking it just to fit in the group. But then at one point, they start believing that, yes, this is the Holy Spirit. It's not really me faking it. It is the Holy Spirit doing it, etc.

0:28:24 Thomas: Oh, yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah,

0:28:58 David: And So, and they, of course, they read the Bible and they—but they don't have a hierarchy like the Catholic Church or the Mormons or some of the bigger organizations that come. You know, they all interpret their Bible as they wish. The problem is that they will do things like healings. And, so, I went to interview this preacher in one of the churches where he was bragging that they do these Wednesday the healings and they pray over the people and they heal. And I said, really, so what kind of things do you heal? And he said, well, diabetes, uh, et cetera, cancer, this and that. And, but then the part that made me really nervous was AIDS. Oh, we cure AIDS with prayer. So now, you know, some poor bastard goes there and he thinks, oh, I'm cured. And let me just go have sex with everybody. And now he's spreading AIDS to everybody because this preacher told him that he was cured. So there's dangers to these kinds of mentality.

0:28:59 Thomas: Oh, geez. Geez. Uh-huh. Yeah. Absolutely, yeah.

0:29:50 David: But also, once people stop thinking about God and believing and feeding the churches, and they may become just kind of deists, like, yep, there's a God that must have sort of the explanation for everything, but he doesn't care about this because look at these hurricanes, and look, there are kids dying of starvation, and evil exists. And they start walking away from it that way. And now hopefully their kids are never exposed to going to church or anything like that. Although I got to tell you, I've seen people that are that way, and as soon as they have kids, they start going back to church.

0:30:26 David: Because, well, they got to learn morality. It's like, oh boy, morality is learned at home, not in a church.

0:30:31 Thomas: Do. You know, if, uh, the corresponding, like, attitudes are changing as much as, you know, because that would be a way to kind of measure it. Like, if church attendance is down, but then the kind of the religious attitudes are staying around the same, then, then that might be a way of saying it looks more like just a behavior thing than a real change in, in, uh, beliefs. Yeah.

0:30:53 David: So the problem in the United States is that things seem to go like a pendulum. Pendulum. If you look in the 60s in the United States, it was very liberal, you know, free sex and rock and roll and drugs and all of that. And then you look into the 80s, when the most popular TV show, I think, was Family Ties about this conservative Republican kid. And I knew a lot of my kids, a lot of the people, I went to the college in the 80S, and, you Know, the largest group in college at George Washington University was the college Republicans. And, you You know, when you get a bunch of, you know, kids that are 20 years old and 18 years old and they're all Republicans, you figure, wow, that's you're supposed to be liberal as young and become more conservative as you get old. So I'm always hoping that it's not a swing effect like that.

0:31:38 David: I the numbers show that that we're becoming more European, more like in Europe, churches are being sold. My wife is in real estate. And so, I just recently, I asked her, I said, you know, wouldn't it be funny if you and and I would buy a church and move in there for our retirement years, a couple of atheists, You know, living in the church, and, uh, and who knows, maybe we can come up with our own religion, you know, and, and, uh, get tax-free, uh, church that way. And she and just for fun, she went on, on her computer, I was driving, and she's just going, her computer, and she said, well, you know, within 20 miles from here there are seven churches for sale, and So, I was like, wow, I love that.

I like to hear that. So, yes. Yes, I know, from in Rhode Island, where I grew up, at one point, Rhode Island had the most churches and the most bars per square mile. Now, I don't know if there's a relationship between the bars and the churches, but I know that today there are far less churches. The Catholic Church has closed a lot of churches. And now the Catholic Church is sustaining their numbers, maybe even increasing them a little bit, mostly in China and Vietnam and other places like that where the church – where being a Catholic is a sign of being a rebel kind of thing. And so they're looking at these sort of new markets, if you want to call it. But

0:31:57 Thomas: Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:33:00 David: I think in

0:33:00 Thomas: I was gonna say something like that, it's like fresh ground.

0:33:03 David: States, the Catholic Church among mainstream Americans has been losing ground for a very long time, but their numbers had been kept up by the Hispanics that had been moving in into the country. But as these Hispanics also start losing their religiosity, a lot of them just drop the—you know, some of them do shift, like I said before, but a lot of them are just leaving religion and, you know, becoming lazy. You ask them in the street and they'll say, yeah, I'm Catholic. But when you say, when was the last time you went to church, it'll be like a funeral or a, you know, a baptism or something like that.

0:33:37 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, but I suppose the I guess the key, if we're talking about, you know, free thinking and that kind of thing, would be, I guess, I don't care how much you are going in a building, you know, a specific building on Sunday, But do you believe, you know, does a person recognize equality, gay, gay marriage, that kind of thing, like attitudes towards women's reproductive health, all those attitudes. I wonder if we have any sort of good data on what's happening there.

0:33:49 David: Yes, exactly. Yes. Yes. And there have been some things. So I'll give you a weird kind of thing. So an abortion, Hispanics tend to be sort of 50-50. On the one hand, they'll say, I'm against it, but I'm not for prohibiting it. Uh, and the other. Now, when it came to gay marriage, Hispanic, the Hispanics in the United States were among the first, about 10 years ago, uh, about 10 year ago, they were at about 68 approval of gay marriage and not caring whether somebody was gay or not. So I think part of it has to do with culture where they're like, babe, it doesn't, you know, if you're, if you know, gay marriage, if two, if two gay people want to get together, that's fine, because if you are heterosexual, it shouldn't affect you. And if it does affect you, the problem is not with the gay couple

0:34:12 Thomas: Oh, yeah, that's a big one. Oh wow. Yeah.

0:34:50 David: Getting married. So that's the, so it's not just because you approve one that the other one automatically, it's, it's also by issues like Hispanics, where they sort of skip some technologies. And so a lot of Hispanics were very low on getting landlines. But as soon as cell phones came out and you were able to get smartphones, they actually didn't get cell phones when they first came out. But when smartphones started coming out, they kind of jumped, – skipped the landline and went directly. And so 78, – as of three years ago, 78 percent of Hispanics had cell phones and smartphones and used it to communicate with family in other countries easily. And now it's been better.

0:34:51 Thomas: Yeah, hmm.

0:35:34 Thomas: This is getting back to technology, your other kind of area, huh?

0:35:38 David: Yes. Well, the thing is, once you're in technology, now you get the Facebook debates and the flame wars and things like that. But all of a sudden you put your ideas online and they get critiqued and they gets questioned and they got criticized and all of that. So I can tell you for a fact that Hispanic American Freethinkers, some of our members became atheists because they saw their pastor debating one of us, and the pastor basically couldn't understand, couldn't figure out the reasons they gave for things, didn't make any sense, and all of a sudden they started questioning things. And I've had some that would say, look, I'm an A. I just can't say the word.

0:36:23 David: You know what I'm saying? But I don't.

0:36:23 Thomas: Just because it's too culturally important to them. Or going back to what you said, the mothers and the grandmothers, like it's two. Yeah.

0:36:28 David: Yeah, I have. I can tell you about this young lady. She's, I think, maybe 23 right now, 23, 24. She lives in a Pentecostal community, she's not allowed to cut her hair, she's got long, you know, she's gotta wear these long dresses, uh, no makeup, all of this. And she lives a dual life. When she leaves her house and she goes downtown, uh, in Puerto Rico, she changes, you know, she dresses in other clothes. I mean, you almost can't even recognize her. And she does it to keep her dad, dad happy, to keep her family happy.

She goes to church, except that now she sits in the back and she's like, oh, she will sometimes will text me. You'll never know what the priest, what the preacher is saying, blah, blah. And now with her, she saw a few debates and she, and then tried to make her own debates kind of thing privately. And what really, and different people sort of see the light through different things. With her, it was seeing the abuse of women in the Bible and how women were sort of to blame for everything from original sin to, you know, when they had to stone somebody for adultery, it was the woman, not the guy. You know, it's always the

0:37:01 Thomas: Right. Yeah, yeah.

0:37:38 David: Woman. You know how many apostles were women? None. And, you know, so she started seeing this. And of course, once I realized that, I made sure she knew every single part of the Bible where women were just being abused.

0:37:50 Thomas: Yeah there's no shortage of that.

0:37:53 David: No shortage of that. And so finally she came and said, nope, I'm an atheist, and I'm going to study medicine. And she went to college and finally convinced her dad to pay for school so she can go there. But she keeps it – she still keeps it hidden. No one in her family knows she's an atheist. She goes to church six times a week. That's the other thing Pentecostals do, six times every week. Talk about waste of time and resources, et cetera. Or but you know, imagine if all that money and time would have been spent in, you know, learning about cancer. Exactly.

0:38:15 Thomas: Wow. Yeah yes. STEM or something. Yeah just anything.

0:38:27 David: So that's where I say part of what we're trying to do is, it's all intermingled, it's nothing is in a vacuum. So They Learn

0:38:33 Thomas: Does your Does your Group Try to put on debates or, or what, what? Oh Neat. Oh.

0:38:35 David: Oh Yes. Oh All the time and, uh, Uh, I love the, the debates, uh, we have. Uh, we haven't done it lately because our website got hacked, but, uh, we, for the last couple of years, we did some debates with preachers, all in Spanish, and uh, uh, Once in a while, radio, there are a couple of radio stations, one in California and one in in Chicago, that would call me or call somebody in our group to, uh, debate some preacher or something. And I'll give an example that, uh, some, about a year ago, there was a car in Kentucky or Tennessee or somewhere, where, where they caught, caught on fire. The guy, you know, was able to, the driver was able to escape with some burns. Uh, the fire department showed up and doused the fire and there was a Bible, and only the edge,

0:38:40 Thomas: Cool. Oh, Excellent. Uh, Yeah.

0:39:26 David: You know, the Bible didn't burn to a crisp. It's a miracle. And so the radio station calls in a preacher who's saying, yes, this is God trying to tell us that we need to mend our ways, blah, blah. And of course they called the talking atheist to how do you explain that? Right. And so I, you know, the good thing is I, I mean like I already know what they're going to ask. And And so I thought, wow, how do I sort of disprove that this is not Jesus trying to say something? Then I thought you know what? I bet you this has happened to the Koran, the Book of Mormon, and all these other holy books.

0:39:29 Thomas: Yeah. Of Course. Yeah.

0:39:52 Thomas: Yeah. Good. Good thinking. Yeah, yeah.

0:39:54 David: Well, guess what? Yes, it has. So then I said, oh, good. I had all the things. And I said well, is God trying to fool us or is he trying to play a game with us? Because the same thing and I give him dates and time and I said look it up in the internet. It's not in the newspaper. This is real and able to – so we have these debates. You know, but I've had some fun once on morality. And, you know, I watch and I admire the great debaters that we have. You know Hitchens was one that was amazing and no one can equal him as far as language. It was an art. But Matt Delahunty is a friend of mine, and I would consider him perhaps the best debater we currently have in the English-speaking world when it comes to debating religious people.

0:40:01 Thomas: Yeah.

0:40:12 Thomas: That's Really cool. Right.

0:40:27 Thomas: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

0:40:39 David: And so I'm a great admirer of him, and we try to do the same thing in the Latino community because there are so many priests, and they get that automatic reverence. Oh, you're a preacher. Oh, father. I mean, I'll give you another example. In the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C. Now, this is a chamber of commerce that is composed of all the other Hispanic chambers of commerce throughout the country. They paid the salary of a Catholic priest to be there, present at the meetings, because they needed somebody to be sort of an ethics officer. And I'm thinking, what?

0:41:18 David: This is the same Catholic church that protects pedophiles? So

0:41:17 Thomas: That's Yeah. Yeah. The The Catholic Church record on ethics is abominable, I can't even imagine it's the opposite of a person.

0:41:26 David: Yeah. Not even sketchy It's Just

0:41:29 Thomas: I would pick a random person off the street to be more of an expert on ethics than a Catholic priest.

0:41:29 David: I'm Absolutely. You know, and really, I mean, what is ethics at the, at the end of the day, ethics is, well, what if everybody did this, you know? If you answer that question right there, you get 90% of the ethics solved right. And So

0:41:41 Thomas: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's, I imagine that's a lot of, when you're talking about these debates too, that's the morality debates. Those always really interested me because I was always curious where, how you, how are you getting these morals from, from God? Like what's the process by which you're getting these, you know? And it's like, people do think, And I can understand this because when I was, well, I was never really a Christian, but when I was kind of in that world as a kid, I felt like I understood the idea of like, oh, we need someone in charge, you know, to make sure that they know, they're the be all end all in terms of the rules, you Know, and then when you start to break that down, it's like, but how is that getting to you?

Like, how is that information getting to you? You know, it's the classic problem, but like, you can say you need this authority to be be the final word, but if they never talk to you, then how do you, you know, and, and anytime you try to point to the Bible and point to something inaccurate or something, you know like bad morals and say, well, you know, it's not all the Bible, but we just need someone in charge ultimately. It's like,

0:41:58 David: Yes.

0:42:19 David: And Yep.

0:42:33 David: Actually

0:42:46 Thomas: Yeah,

0:42:46 David: Well, Even, even worse, if you ask a lot of people, well, is God the most moral person in the world, in the, the universe, they'll say, of course, you know, he's God. But if you were to behave exactly like God and kill babies and women and children and drown and all of that, you'd be a monster. I mean, that's sort of our definition of, you know, what made Hitler and Stalin and all these guys be so horrible, that they would kill the innocent for no reason. You know, if you kill somebody in war and battle or whatever, it's seen as OK. But you know. And so I tell, well, why don't you look cup 1 Samuel 15 3, where God orders the killing of babies, even those that are newborn.

0:43:25 Thomas: Yeah.

0:43:26 David: And so usually I show them the passage and I said, now under what circumstance would you agree to kill babies? And put it that way to them, because they're like, oh, well, the rules have changed. Wait a minute. So you're saying God changed the rules? He changes things? Something is a sin before but not anymore, you know, the sophistication.

0:43:46 Thomas: And it all depends. I mean, when you talk about these debates, it all depends on the, the sort of level of religiosity or, or I guess in a way the, The evolution, yeah, I don't know if it's sophistication per se, like I was struggling to find the right word, but sort of just what iteration you're on in terms of how you're justifying this, because it does, that's the frustrating thing about religion and God and these beliefs is that they're so malleable, they're so ill-defined that they can just kind of hide out, well, no, the Old Testament, that's kind of garbage. Yeah, they don't really, exactly, and it occurs to me that I think some of the examples you're bringing up, maybe those are people where, uh, you know, the, they're more devoted to the Bible. Whereas when I, the most of the religious people I know out here in California, you know, it's more like, ah, the Bible schmeibel. It's not really about that. It's more of, it's more of the deism that you're talking or just an obsession with Jesus.

0:43:56 David: And bullshitting.

0:44:13 David: Yes. Like Yeah. Like They Say it's like nailing jello to a wall, right.

0:44:39 David: Oh,

0:44:39 Thomas: Uh, and, and yeah, yeah, right.

0:44:40 David: Or You know, you interpret things and so you say, oh well, it wasn't real babies, it's really referring to the evil that is being born that we need to destroy before it matures. You know, and it's all esoteric, and yeah, of course, if anything, if everything you read is esoteric, then, uh, you can really, uh, well, I call the Bible the multiple choice book, because anything you, anything you want to prove, you can prove with the Bible.

0:44:49 Thomas: Yeah. Right.

0:45:03 David: No problem, but you can also prove with the Book of Mormon and the Quran and every other holy book. And

0:45:04 Thomas: Yeah. And the Bible is, I mean, it's enormous. It's longer than those other books, and there's so much in that you could, you know, there's so much wiggle room in there.

0:45:16 David: And now the good thing is that most Christians or most people that are religious, the normal average person in the street doesn't know, uh, much about their own religion or what they believe and so let's say, yeah, the Bible is this. And so they've done experiments where you take a quote and you say, OK, is this from the Book of Mormon, the Bible or the Koran? And they'll go, oh, that's so violent. That's so nasty. That has got to be the Koran's. Nope. That is your Bible. What about this one? Oh, that has got be – that is sweet. That must be the Bible. Nope, that is the Koran. And so the thing is, you can milk out of those things.

We did a video, and we're going to start soon a series of videos online in Spanish that we did. For instance, we stood outside a church, and when the Catholic church, when the church came out, we stopped people, you know, like to interview them. And we say, hey, can we ask you just a couple of questions? And, you know, most people would say, what about it? And then you say, OK, so you're Catholic, obviously, right?

0:45:24 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:46:11 David: Yes. And you believe in the Ten Commandments? Yes. Do you follow the Ten Commandments? Yes, I do. What are they? Total silence, because they don't know. And well, how can you follow 10 commandments if you don't know them? And now we had one person that knew them, she was the catechism teacher, so it was funny in that way but it's

0:46:25 Thomas: Well, and going back to the, you mentioned the Catholic priest as the ethicist, same thing goes for these idiotic Ten Commandments and government buildings as being, even if you ignore the separation of church, ignore that for a second. Ignore separation of church and state. The idea that the Ten Commandments has anything to do with what we would want justice to be or, you know, because five of them are just about honoring God's, you know, enough to flatter him. You know, it's like it has nothing to do with it.

0:46:56 David: Well, and a lot of them are opposite to the Bill of Rights. So you know, God love God above all things. Well, that goes against, you know, freedom of religion and believe anything you want. And you have to go keep sanctified the day of God. Well, that goes against your freedom of assembly and deciding whether or not to go to church or do whatever you want, et cetera, et, cetera. You can go through, and some of them are really simplistic. Thou shall not kill or thou shall not murder. And you're like, well, kill is different than murder, obviously.

0:46:59 Thomas: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mm hmm. Yeah.

0:47:29 David: And killing, well we are okay with some killings like defending yourself in a war.

0:47:33 Thomas: Right. We've got capital punishment probably coming out of the very building that has this thou shall not kill. So clearly that's not specific enough to give this a...

0:47:39 David: Exactly. And it's silly. It's silly, so thou shalt not lie. I'm like, well, if the Nazis are knocking, asking where the Jewish kids are hiding, I'm going to lie. And I suggest anyone with a conscience and a good heart should lie in that situation. So it's not –

0:47:42 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, or dishonor your parents. Lie isn't one of them, is it? Am I failing that Ten Commandments?

0:47:59 David: Yeah, thou shall not lie, yeah. Lying is one of them. Honoring your parents is the other. And I'm thinking, well, should a nine-year-old girl honor the father that is raping her every night and not call the police? No, they have to earn that respect and they have to earn that honor. So just blanket statements are useless also. And no one follows them. I mean, that's a good thing.

0:48:21 Thomas: Right.

0:48:21 David: No one follows.

0:48:22 Thomas: Oh, are you talking about bear false witness? Because I was going to say, I don't remember. Oh okay, yeah, yeah, I was gonna say I don't remember that count. Because I actually, I got my podcasting start by, I decided back around the time you were talking about, you were in Atheism 2010, 2010, it was around that for me too, where I decided to read the whole Bible for a podcast. So I did essentially an atheist audio book version of the Bible. It took me forever. It actually took me six years.

0:48:25 David: Yes, yes. Actually, yeah, barefoot followers.

0:48:47 Thomas: I ended up reading King James. Yeah, the commandments do vary. I end up reading King James, and

0:48:46 David: Which Bible did you Read it? Because Uh, okay. Yeah, you have the Catholic commandments, you have the Catholic commandments, and you have the, the Protestant commandments. They're different.

0:48:57 Thomas: What amazed me, and you're right on about this Bible stuff, because what amazed me is how little anyone knows about the Bible. Like just your average person. I mean, the Old Testament especially. Oh my God, the old Testament is horrible. It is the longest, most boring, winding, nothing of a book. And you ask someone, hey, what's in the old testament? They'll say, well, it's Adam and Eve, right? It's like, yeah, that's the first paragraph. And then, you know, and then you've got, that is the first three pages is all of that. And then then you've got another 400 to go after that. There's so much garbage in there. And it's also funny, even ignoring just the abomination that is the Old Testament, when you talk about the New Testament, how much this religious right in our country is the opposite of everything Jesus taught.

0:49:23 David: Yeah, Ten commandments. You got Yes.

0:49:48 Thomas: It's unreal.

0:49:48 David: And The same people that, the same people that claim to be so moral, and, you know, and they go to church more are the ones that do the opposite.

0:49:52 Thomas: Yeah. If there were a political party that really took the ideals of Jesus. And really that was their whole thing. You know what? That would be kind of good. Actually, that would be probably a good influence. There's some good stuff. It's not all good, but there's some Good stuff. And, but certainly they don't even have like, they're not even cherry picking Jesus. They're just not even close. They are the opposite, you know, like the, the big business kind of, you Know, as far as health insurance goes, everybody's kind of on their own. I mean, all that stuff is just the opposite of what the teachings of Jesus are in the Bible.

0:49:56 David: Yeah, and You and you point it out, and they won't see it. The dogmatism of politics and religion will not see it, that that, that, nope, these things don't match. Mean, still. And I have one preacher friend of mine who always says, "Oh, well, anything in the Old Testament that doesn't fit what Jesus said, then is misinterpretation, or that was, you know, mistakes that were done in translations, et cetera, et cetera." And I said, "All right, let's talk about just Jesus. You know, what did Jesus say about discrimination? What did Jesus say about pedophilia? What did Jesus said about the racial mistreatment of people because of race?" Or what did it say, what did Jesus say about slavery? Nothing. Nothing about those things.

0:50:35 Thomas: Yeah. Right.

0:51:06 David: Now slavery was all over the place, and when he was talking about, you know, treat your neighbor the same way, that, well, your neighbor was not a slave. A slave was like a dog or a cow, whose property. And so were women. But, uh, a lot of times the lack of context, uh, when, you know, assuming of course if Jesus was real, because that's that's a whole nother another topic.

0:51:14 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, we're right about the normal time. I think that's a pretty good one. You know, it sounds like really cool work you're doing there with, with the Hispanic American Freethinkers. That sounds really cool. And David Tamayo, I am really looking forward to seeing you at California Freethought Day.

0:51:40 David: Excellent. I'm looking forward to meet you in person also. And, uh, anyone, one that I encourage everyone in California to attend this. I hear that the price is right, isn't it? Free, and and so, uh, you know, make it a road trip, and bring some people that you think are on the borderline, and and get them to spend some time with, uh, other heathens, and you'll, they'll realize that, uh, non-believers are just people like anybody else. And, uh, and maybe we'll get a, you know, one or two glasses of wine, uh, while we solve the world's problems, while they're not have free.org it's a place. And of course, we're on Facebook. And if you have any Latino friends or anyone that is in the fans, or even if they're very religious, I love debating people, so send them my way.

0:51:48 Thomas: Yeah. Can't beat free.

0:52:08 Thomas: Excellent. Yeah. And I'm seeing hafree.org. Is there any other plugs we need to throw out for your group?

0:52:26 Thomas: Oh, very fun. Thanks so much, David. It's been a pleasure.

0:52:29 David: Thank you very much.

0:52:55 Thomas: Alright, such a great conversation with David, I really enjoyed that. I'm really looking forward to California Free Thought Day. If you're around, I'd love to see you. I'm looking forward seeing David there. So, yep, that's it for today's show. Like I said, if you go to patreon.com/seriouspod, as a reward to my new patrons, I'm going to do my best to get the Thursday's episode out as early as I can, where you'll get the whole breakdown. There's a lot of people lying about stuff. It's amazing. It was one of the worst experiences of my life, but I'm getting better with the help and support of a lot of friends. I feel much better now about the whole thing. That'll be Thursday. Then we can go back to life as usual, hopefully, and get some good interviews going, some good back to our Trump analysis.

0:53:46 Thomas: I would love to do that, and yeah, so thank you so much for listening. I'll see you patrons soon. I'll see everybody else Thursday. Bye.