SIO123: David Silverman of American Atheists

Transcript

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

0:00:29 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only, this is episode 123, I'm your host, Thomas Smith, okay, well, interesting happenings here, just as I am recording this, the ShitlordCon 2 lineup has been released. Those who know what I'm talking about know what I'm talking, those who don't, you're lucky. I am going to say a few words about it after this interview, but this is good timing because I am bringing you today an interview with somebody who's doing it right. Someone who recognizes that firebrand atheism doesn't mean heartless cruelty, insults, and that sort of thing, so and joining me is David Silverman, first time on the show, but it's long overdue, I'm really happy to have him, it's a great conversation, let's get to it.

0:01:23 Thomas: I am joined by David Silverman, David, how are you doing today?, thanks for coming on, I'm really excited to speak to you. I know there's a lot we can talk about, I actually want to touch on, because one thing that I really valued and I was really thankful for was your response to the bullshit that happened to me at Myth Information, MythCon, so I want to get into that, there's... there's a lot we can get into, but first and foremost, let's talk about the event coming up because I know that's a big deal. It's really cool, and I don't want to give that any sort of short shrift. So what's coming up? What should people know about the big event?

0:01:26 David: I'm doing fine, Thomas, thanks for having me on the show, ah, yes, well, the big event is the American Atheist National Convention, and it's March 30th through April 1st in Oklahoma City, and the, it's going to be a big event because American A theist, of course, has been having our conventions, an annual convention for decades, and, you know, one of the things that we're going to talk about soon is the Mythicon event and other events, and a lot of people are putting on events and, quite frankly, they don't quite know the best way to do it. We do, or at least we try. And the American Atheist National Convention is the largest and most fun atheist convention in the country. And this year is going to be a very heartfelt, very caring and compassionate convention. American atheists is all about the hard line, right? We're the firebrand atheists of the movement.

0:02:51 David: But a lot of people don't understand that the heart, the center of Firebrand Atheism is compassion and humanism and love. And so we're going to be bringing the love this year. We're going to be having a charity event. We'll going to having a food drive, a food packing event. But I think the best and biggest news of the day is that we're going to have an A-list celebrity. We are going to have Hugh Laurie from House is actually going to be coming to the event. And he's going to our keynote speaker this year and that's pretty exciting to me. It's something that I'm really excited about. You know, when I started with the Reason Rally, when I started with American Atheists as president, I wanted to bring in A-list celebrities because I know that they are leaders of the zeitgeist of this country. And I'm very happy that Mr.

0:03:37 David: Laurie is going to come. He's going to speak with us. I'm actually going to have breakfast with him next week to go over the details. And I'm really, really excited about it. The the the thing that I want to take away, oh, the other side of it is, and this is going to be really important, we're having very, very reasonable prices. American Atheist is among the least expensive full price atheist convention there is out in the country. But this year we are having honor roll hardship pricing. So if you can't afford to pay the full price, you simply don't have to. You can just pay less. And we have a $99 rate for those who can't afford the full rate. And it's the same convention. And veterans get discounts.

0:04:23 David: Students, it's only $50 for the whole convention. So I'm hoping that people will spread the word and get the word out there because there's a few main key points here. First of all, we have Hugh Laurie, we have heart and love, and we have uh low pricing for this event, and we're trying to make it the largest event yet. So again, the website is atheists.org/convention2018, and I hope everybody goes.

And we'll talk about it a little bit more because I could talk about this convention uh for a long time. Barry Lynn from the Americans United from the Separation of Church and State is coming. And kind of funny, because Barry, Barry and I have been friends for a long time. And those of you who know Barry know that he's a really nice guy. He's a soft guy. He's soft spoken. He is all about the love. He s all about compassion. And he's all about working together. He's kind of a huggy feely kind of guy. Because he's, he's irreverent. I don't believe he's an atheist. And on the other side of that spectrum, is a woman named Inna Shevchenko, who is the The topless jihadi from the Ukraine, she leads topless feminist uprisings against Muslim clerics and imams. And she has been in jail. She has been chased out of many places. And so we've got some hardline fire coming. We've got sauce coming. And we've Got a fantastic comedy show that we're putting together as well with DJ parties. And there's a rumor of an open bar.

0:05:54 David: I don't know. But there's a rumor of an open bar. And I got to say, Thomas, it's going to be a really fun event and it's gonna be a very heartfelt event. And the reason that I'm really happy to be on this show with you is that the love was inspired, the love theme was inspired Inspired by Mythicon. It was inspired by this idea that used to be a very I used to be the extremist as far as Big Ten atheism. OK. And I used to say, all you have to do is be an atheist to come and to be included. And people would come to me and say, well, Dave, what what about atheist Nazis? And I would laugh at them.

0:06:40 David: I would bro, push them off. I would say, come on, there are no atheist Nazis. What is it? One or two. And, there's a, there's more than one or two and, um, and so I had to, I had to yield the point that, um sooner or later we as a movement need to just pull back just just a little bit. The theme for the American Atheist National Convention is atheists show up for good. That's the official theme. And the unofficial theme is, can I swear?

0:06:52 Thomas: Yep. Ah, sure.

0:07:14 David: Okay. So the unofficial thing is hearts plus brains minus assholes. And that's, That's what we're doing this year. We're bringing the love. We're bringing the firebrand. We're bringing the the fire, we're bringing hardcore firebrand atheism, which is of course based in compassion, but we're not bringing assholes to the stage. And yeah.

0:07:20 Thomas: I love it.

0:07:39 Thomas: There's so much here to talk about, but just because it's really cool that you got here, Lori. I just want to, I'm wondering if you can talk about at all how that came about, because I think popularizing atheism has always been a big challenge. You know, there's such a stigma, there's such a social idea, a prevalent idea in our society that atheists are kind of, you know, they're assholes. They're the people you're talking about right now, and I think that it could be really cool if we can get any sort of mainstream support to the idea that, no, you don't have to be some weird asshole nihilist hater to be an atheist. So how did, how did this work? Did you, I mean, I imagine this must have been a pretty long process, a pretty involved process of trying to seek that, you know, mainstream A-list appeal. Do you want to talk about that, that how that went at all? That's

0:08:33 David: And, and you know what, I, when I created the Reason Rally back in 2012, the idea, one of the main ideas for Reason Rally one, was to get A-list celebrities, and we couldn't get any A-list celebrities. The best we got was uh Penn Jillette via video and Bill Maher via video. And for a reason, and every year since then, I have been trying to get A-list celebrities. And, you know, we've gotten some good names, but nothing, nothing A-list. And you know it's, it's hard to get two A-list celebrities. But in this case, it was easy because Hugh came to us. Yeah, Hugh came to us, Hugh followed me on Twitter and I followed him back and we started talking personally and turns Out he likes American Atheists, he likes fighting God, he likes what we're doing and what we represent.

And, you know, it's hard when you're dealing with somebody who's an A-list celebrity, because they are at the same time extremely, extremely sheltered and extremely busy. And, you know, part of the the art of entertainment is making what they do look easy, but it's not. They work very hard and they have incredibly hectic schedules and they don't know what they're doing one moment to the next. And this is the case for a lot of people. You know, we only, we almost had an A-list. We almost had Johnny Depp before his whole thing fell through at 2016 for the Reason Rally, Reason Ralley 2.

0:09:25 Thomas: Incredible. Well,

0:10:12 David: But he has been really great and he has been forthright and he had, you know, told me when he could do it and we couldn't do it. And we were hoping to get him for 2017, which was this past August, but he couldn't make it, and we were hoping to announce him at 2017 but he couldn't commit. And it's only recently that he is able to, has actually said, OK, I'm definitely in. I'm definitely coming. I agree to the speaker's agreement and let's meet for lunch and we'll nail down the And I've got to say he's just delightful. He is supportive of what we do. And yeah, it is a major event, a major thing, because like you said, A-list celebrities lead the zeitgeist of the country.

0:11:00 David: People people follow A-list celebrities. And what we have tried to do in the past is we have tried to throw money at, at agents to try and bring people in via agents, but agents don't want their people to do this kind of stuff. So it's really hard to, you know, we would love to have a Brad Pitt or an Angelina Jolie or Hugh Laurie to come to our convention. And we've been, you know, we've had a budget that we have offered to A-List celebrities and we have not had success. It's been an effort not just for this. I mean, I want you to understand getting an A-list celebrity to our convention has been something that I've been working on for, well, since I became president. So that was 2010. it's been a long drive. And the reason that it happened this time is because he came to us and that's the only way.

0:11:51 Thomas: Congratulations on that, it sounds Like a major accomplishment, and what you've been trying to do for so long. Um, I know I, I apologies if if this is at all offensive of a question, but given kind of what happened in recent years with, with, with A-listers. What can you, I mean, how confident should ticket buyers be here? I mean, this is a done deal. It's a hundred percent. There's not, you know, how can you reassure people if they're worried that this sounds too good to be true?

0:11:52 David: Well, I'm having brunch with him next week. So he has agreed to the speaker's agreement. And so the the answer to your question is, if he gets some huge movie deal that falls in his lap, he could cancel. But as of right now, we're seven weeks out from the convention and he is having brunch with me next week. He is responding to emails. He has agreed to the speaker's agreement. It is as done a deal as it can be. And so people should come and people should get excited because I'm getting excited. And this is something that I'm I'm giddy about.

0:12:21 Thomas: Brunch seals the deal.

0:12:46 Thomas: Well, that's excellent. Absolutely. Yeah.

0:12:57 David: So I think your listeners should be pretty giddy, too.

0:12:57 Thomas: Yeah, definitely. Yeah, that's, that awesome. I'm really excited about that. Let's, gosh, so much to to tear apart here and and to to go into because I uh I really am glad uh and it and it it honestly at a time that was that was kind of difficult for me this past October, November, um, your statement on Mythcon, uh, I I really liked and and it made me feel a whole lot better. Um, because I I there, it was alarming to see kind of where this division led to, you know, people who you would, you would have thought it would have been easy, the easiest thing in the world to say, "Hey, let's not platform people who sexually harass women online." That seems like a bare minimum for a movement, and and so many people fell short. But you, and and let me know if I I have this wrong, but I think you've described yourself as somewhat conservative, right? At least not, you know, like politically, where do you find yourself?

0:13:06 David: Yeah. Thank you. Yeah.

0:13:58 David: I'm a I'm not a conservative. I am a fiscal moderate and socially very liberal. And I am a loud and proud feminist. I don't allow anybody to take the word feminist away from my name. Name. American Atheist was the first convention to have a comprehensive sexual harassment policy for our conventions, a comprehensive code of conduct. And I'm very proud of that. And we got a lot of crap for it. But I'm Very proud of the work that we have done to create a safe environment and a safe space for everybody to come. And, I'm all about free speech, Thomas, I really am. I I think free speech is of paramount importance, but the same time, freedom of speech doesn't necessarily mean we're required to platform assholes. Freedom of speech, yes, I mean, I am not a Nazi puncher, okay?

0:14:03 Thomas: Okay.

0:14:53 David: You can have your views, and your views are based on your experience, and you can have, say what you want, and people are going to say it back to you, and uh, and we shouldn't get um violent ever, but at the same time, the American Atheist convention and all atheist conventions really should be welcoming places, and what happens is that people get so hyped up or the on the free speech argument that they start to um, that people start, are starting to conflate people who defend free speech and people who support the speech that they're defending. And then on the other side, there's people who are not defending the speech and are looking at the people who aren't trying to squelch free speech as squelches of free speech.

0:15:47 David: It's a very difficult balance and there's a lot of nuance here. That nuance lies, wherever Wherever the lines lay, don't harass people who have been injured sexually. I mean, that's a horrible thing to do, and it's not funny, and it's cool, and it's good, and it's welcoming, and it's unacceptable.

0:16:08 David: In my book, it's not acceptable in my circle of friends, and I had to draw the line when I saw the mythicon. When I saw, now, like I said, I don't, putting, it wasn't just that they they were on stage. It's that they were proud to have sent a really nasty tweet to somebody who had been a victim of sexual assault. Now, I get that this person had done some pretty bad things. I get they were really against this woman who was the recipient of this tweet. And I don't care. I don't care. I mean, I don't hate anybody. I don't hate any humans. But if I had to say, you know, what woman out there do I hate the most?

0:16:56 David: And I don't even like to use that word. I don't hate anybody, but let's just pick one. And I'm just going to say Ann Coulter, just for example, and I'm going to use Ann Coulter for this example. I don't know if she's ever been sexually assaulted. I'm not picking her. I would never send her a tweet telling her that she was too ugly to rape or screw. Screw. I mean, I would never do that. That's that's a that's a horrible thing to do to a victim of sexual assault, even if they're on the exact opposite sides of everything behind which you stand. You don't do that, and I think there's a level of intolerance that was exceeded at at Mythicon, and

0:17:38 Thomas: Has it been like, this is what I want to get into a little bit though, because I think what has been so depressing and what has been a reason that personally, for me, I've been not really too into movement and atheism anymore, is how prevalent this was. It's shocking, and I really worry about it.

And what I really wanted to talk to you about today as well is how I think anti-progressivism has taken over as the most important viewpoint, the most importante cause in a lot, not all, but in a lot of atheism.

And my evidence for this is that, and I've been making a bit of a big deal about this, so my listeners are already familiar, but to the point where Sam Harris is doing an event and has Ben Shapiro on and agrees with Ben Shapiro on the Masterpiece Cake Shop case over the FFRF, to the part where it's atheists are so in love with being anti-progressive and talking to theocrats like Ben Shapira and Jordan B. Peterson to where they don't seem to even care about the the issues that America is facing uh at the hand of theocrats right now and

0:18:50 Thomas: That blows my mind

0:18:50 David: Yeah, they're trying to they're trying to be libertarianist. They're trying to be, you know, free speechers, um, and what that does is it ignores the nuance, it ignors the bigotry, it ignures the fact that we have pressing issues. It places everything on a level playing field and says, okay, if everybody were, even if there was no oppression, then people shouldn't be forced to do business with people that they should, that they're, they should be forced to to uh, shouldn't before to do bills with anybody they don't want to do business with. But that's naive and it's short sighted. And I really wish Sam and I would sit down with me and talk about this, because there's so much nuance here when you, when you're talking about Masterpiece Cakes, it's a great example that no, everybody is missing the entire issue.

0:18:52 Thomas: Yeah

0:19:40 David: It's not about people should be able to work with who they are, because, or work with, to do what they want, because that implies a perfect society of equals. We don't have a perfect Society of Equals. We have a society rife with discrimination, so much so that we have laws against discrimination. If we have laws against discrimination, then why should somebody's religion allow them to break that law? And that's what Masterpiece Cakes is about.

0:20:12 David: It's not about they have the right to not do do business as they see fit. You know what? You actually don't, because we have a society that is rife with discrimination. You're not allowed to say, I don't serve black people. You are not allowed to serve Jews. That's discrimination, and it is illegal. Now, the thing about this is, and it's a bigger picture, the thing about this, is invent their own gods 100% of the time. And this is something that really people need to understand. It's not about Christianity. It is about the individual Christianity that is felt by the individual Christians. Everybody believes in a God that agrees with them. If you hate gays and you are religious, your God hates gays.

0:20:12 Thomas: And

0:21:01 David: If your love gays, your God loves gays! Whatever your thoughts are, your God agrees. People create their own gods. Which means, of course, that gods are fragments of the imagination, which we all knew. And so that means that the fact that you have a religious objection to a law doesn't allow you, and shouldn't allow you, to break that law. Now, you can have a description about whether or not there should be laws against discrimination, but that's not the issue of Masterpiece Cakes. The issue of Masterpiece Cakes is not whether or not there should be laws against discrimination. It's about whether or not your religious beliefs allow you to to break that law legally. It's about whether or not, absolutely,

0:21:41 Thomas: And the the principle would apply anywhere so any anything you don't want to do, uh, because of your religion. If you, if you don't want to provide medical service to an atheist or medical service to a black person because of your religion, that the same principle applies, and that's the the legal part, yeah yeah

0:21:57 David: And it will continue. And this is something that I remember, I mean, the RFRA, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, was the first piece of activism that I campaigned against back in 1996 or 97. It was way when I was just starting out. And, this is what we predicted, a second set of laws for religious people. People. If you're God, if you really and truly believe that your God wants you to drive 70 in the 55 zone, the state has to prove it that you shouldn't be able to. And so we have these laws, we have secular laws, these laws exist for a reason, whatever they are. I don't care what the law is. But the fact that your god wants you to break that law is not the reason for you to break that law. And unfortunately, so many people are getting lost in this argument because they're not seeing that this is not about libertarian freedom. This is not about us living in a utopian, discrimination-free society. We live in a horribly bigoted society.We have a racist society, we have a homophobic society, we have a misogynistic society, and we need to fight that.

0:22:14 Thomas: Yeah

0:23:05 David: And that's why we have laws against discrimination. And newsflash, a lot of discrimination is bolstered by religion. So if we have this idea that religion can go across, go away from, can, can eliminate or can supersede civil law, you're right. We are talking about doctors refusing to, to, service people. We aren't talking about pharmacists refusing to service people, we're talking about everybody being able to refuse to do, to obey laws against discrimination. Discrimination, we're talking about, you know, I guess you could say it's cash trading or negating the laws themselves.

0:23:43 Thomas: And what's, what, what's blown my mind is that I'm used to the to the religious right doing this, like, I I, we we have to fight it, you've been fighting it, you know, you've on the front lines of this for a long time, which, which is awesome, and I'm used to it out of the religious rite.

What, what is so distressing in the last, like, two years, and I I think it really does come down to how divided our politics are today in the US, is that it's atheists are defending some of these people. Atheists are not seeing through Jordan B. Peterson. When Jordan B. Peterson says, you know, you have to, you're borrowing Christian morals whenever you act good, even if you're an atheist, I mean, that's the kind of crap that Christopher Hitchens would have hitch slapped right out of that guy's face. I mean, but now we have the same, the same Hitchens worshipers are now worshiping Jordan B. Peterson, and what, how is that, I wonder if that's filtered through to your work, I mean, have you noticed any, a shift, are you, I mean because what I, what I respect about what you're doing is that it, as you outlined in the beginning, it has pretty much been, if you're an atheist, you're welcome, and I, I get you're making some, some good exceptions to that rule, which I support, but for the most part, right or left.

If you're an atheist, if you're against theocratic laws or theocratic, I guess, exceptions to laws and that kind of thing, you're in. But have you noticed this shift? Have you noticed where this anti-progressivism has kind of taken hold even among atheists to the point where they're supporting Christians? Yeah,

0:24:24 David: I'd like to get in front of that too yeah I've seen it, um, it, and and I wanted to stress to you that my opinion is that although they are loud, they are a minority, um, the atheists that I find at the American Atheist National National Convention, this is just not that crowd. Our crowd is welcoming. Our crowd is nourishing. Our crowd is nurturing. And what I have noticed over the past 21 years of activism is that as we've grown as a movement, all of our segments have grown, including that segment. And they got loud because when a segment, you know, if you used to be 10 people like this, and now it's a hundred, because the entire movement is bigger. And that hundred is kind of, you know, trying to go through the machinations of trying to figure itself out.

0:26:00 David: And they haven't discovered the nuance yet. They've discovered the argument of free speech. They discovered the ideal that we shouldn't have discrimination. And They've Discovered the concept that everybody should be free to do what they want and they defending it. And remember, for the most part, these people people are good people. They're just wrong. Okay. When I say no assholes, I'm not saying that nobody who's on that camp should come. I'm talking about bad people. I'm talking about people who laugh at sending rape-like tweets to people who are victims. Those people, I don't, you can come if you're repentant. You can come, if you want to change your ways, you can try and be nice. But that's not the welcoming, that's not the crowd that we're looking for at the American Atheist National Convention.

0:26:48 David: So your question was, have I noticed it? Has it infected us? Yes, I've noticed it. Yes, it's infected us. Yes, that's why we have our sexual harassment policy. That's one of the reasons. And I believe that sexual harassment policy has pushed away some people from the convention and good riddance to them. This year, we actually had, I

0:27:10 Thomas: It's not just that, though. I think I want to focus in to try to clarify a little bit. I wonder if, as atheists, we failed in a certain way in the 2016 election because frankly, I, I know, I, I'm sorry, I always bring things back to politics, but I think it's vitally important because I think a large segment of atheists who were able to support Trump, I just don't know how you could do such a thing while still, if you, if you fully understood the lengths to which that his administration is going to, to infringe on religious freedom and and essentially make Christianity the law of the land. I mean, I was blown away by that. I was drawn away by how many atheists weren't going to make the obvious choice, which is to vote Hillary. You know, in the case of, did we fail?

0:27:57 Thomas: Did atheists fail to, or maybe you disagree with me, but did we fall to make a choice to make this case for just how harmful this theocratic thinking is, and how prevalent it is in people like Trump and his administration?

0:28:10 David: Don't like to use the word fail, but the atheist movement certainly stumbled and the atheist, um, the atheist in general underperformed in the election. And when we did perform, we weren't critical. We didn't think critically. And I think a lot of what, a lot of what happened is that, um. You know, we, we were worried about 501 status, so we didn't, uh, we didn't tread that line.

0:28:39 David: And And so we kind of all thought it was in the bag. And so everybody relaxed. And I think the atheist movement did stumble. I think what you're going to see in 2018 and in 2020 is a much bigger push for atheist voter. I think the Atheist Voter Platform, the Atheist Voter Program is going to be a much more fervent fixture in our movement for the next few years. And I'm hoping that the 2020 election, 2018 and the 2020 election will be a pendulum swing back to a really great extent. I think we as a country learned a lesson. I think we, as a movement learned a lesson. And I think atheists as a voting block learned a lot. And yeah, you know, there was just so much wrong with Trump.

0:29:24 David: I mean, I would love to say, well, why did they, why in the world would they vote for somebody that's so theocratic? Well, why on the world did they vote for somebody who assaulted a woman and bragged about it? Oh, I mean, that's, that has nothing to do with the separation of church and state. Why, why did you vote for that, uh, uh, American Atheist is a 501c3 non-profit organization. We don't take political positions on candidates, yada yada, but this was obviously a less than perfect candidate. Um, and I know some atheists who voted for him, and a chunk of them are very, very sorry. And I think one of the messages that we have to learn and embrace is redemption. Redemption and repentance has to be a thing. I don't understand why anybody would have voted for President Trump. I do not understand. But if they did and they're sorry, we should seriously, you know, bring them back in. We shouldn't push them away forever.

0:29:34 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, no kidding. Kidding. Yeah.

0:30:26 David: We should be, you know, we shouldn't allow them to say, wow, I'm really messed up. I'm not going to do that again and bring them in the fold.

0:30:33 David: And no, I don't want to, I want to imply that atheists who support Trump today can't be nice people. Well, no,

0:30:40 Thomas: Think There's a very common thread between, as you have talked about, the people who would somehow support sending a disgusting sexual assault-related tweet and being able to vote for someone with sexual assault in their past. I don't think that's too much of a stretch. Yeah, and I didn't mean at all to get you to jeopardize your 501c3.

0:31:02 Thomas: Yeah, but yeah, and I agree with you also on the forgiveness thing, because I think we're just in too fragile of a position to play that level of purity. You know, I mean, we need all the help we can get when it comes to gaining back power in this country. And I'm right there with you with if anyone made that mistake and sees it as a mistake, I'm right therewith you that, you know, forgiveness is an order and welcoming them back into the tent is a good idea.

0:31:02 David: No no, it's fine.

0:31:32 David: Yeah. And that's really an important thing, because, you know, a lot of people right now in the movement are holding grudges. A lot of people are taking a very extreme, you know, you mentioned how the left are looking like the right. Some people on our side are giving a whole George W. Bush, "If you're not with us, you're against us" thing. And, uh, that's not the right way to be. We have a movement, we have an agenda and we have a country to rescue, and we're going to have our differences. And, you know, Republicans and the Democrats and the independents and the libertarians do need to work together to protect the separation of church and state, because the separation of church and state is a synonym for religious freedom. The farther away you get from the separation from church and state, the less religious freedom you have. And we all can agree on that.

0:32:21 Thomas: Yeah, I think so.

0:32:23 David: I.

0:32:23 Thomas: The point I want to make, though, is that I think what's happening now is people, there are a lot of people who aren't keeping that in mind. And while I totally agree that,you know, if your goal is secularism and you're consistent on that principle, then in my book, I know I don't speak for any atheist organizations or anything, but in my work, then sure, you're doing the work of secularism. And by the way, as you mentioned, I think one of the speakers, you don't even have to be an atheist to be strongly in, you know, pro-secularism and pro-separation of church and state. But what I think has really driven me nuts is that people are saying, yeah, we're all atheists. We can all be atheists, we can all I'll be secularist and then, but you know, I'm going to vote for Trump because we disagree politically. Well, then you're not keeping in mind, you're not actually taking into account just how anti-secularist that is.

0:33:13 Thomas: It's totally anti-secularist to vote for somebody like that who's going, it's not even him because I don't believe that Trump gives a shit either way. He just needs to stay in power. But you want to, that's what I want to emphasize is that I don't think people are keeping properly in perspective the just how real and how pervasive the Republican threat to freedom of religion and to secularism is. They're just not, I don't think they're factoring that in, and and do you disagree I mean there's so many issues

0:33:22 David: Right. And I think that and I thinkthat that's that is Where that's where the American atheist movement, the atheist movement stumbled. That's the responsibility of us. Delivering that message to the atheists, that's our job. If you elect this person, this is going to happen. This is what this person stands, this what the implications are, and think about all this stuff. That falls to us. That falls to me and my and the other atheist organizations around the country to deliver that information so that people can hear it and understand what's at stake that, know one atheist who voted for Trump because he was supportive of gun rights, he did not get the message, he did not get the message, and so that falls to us, and that's again going back to the Atheist Voter Program, which is run, run by American Atheists, which is going to raise the awareness of Atheist voters nationwide in the 2018 and 2020 elections, hopefully.

0:33:41 Thomas: Yeah that's that's a really cool thing, I like that. What are some of, um, you know, what are some of the issues, uh, right now in that battle for, uh, secularism and and against theocracy that that that are their highest in your mind? Yeah.

0:34:47 David: Well, I mean, there are just so many. I mean the FEMA, the new budget is including money for FEMA that says in a disaster money can be given to churches so that they can rebuild and make places of worship that discriminate against people. Betsy DeVos is gutting the public school system and is going to use vouchers to create a second class of students, the students that go to Christian schools and the lower class students who get a poorer education. And I can show you how that's going to work. The RFRA itself, which is now being bolstered by the attorney general's office, is now going to, there are attorney, in the attorney generals now, there are religious rights czars. That's new. And these czars are there to protect religious claims against the law. So if anybody makes a religious claim and says, I want to break the law because my God says so, there's a person in the attorney general's office that oversees that kind of stuff and makes sure that it gets the best possible treatment.

0:35:02 Thomas: Yeah

0:35:49 David: And so we're seeing the elevation of religion everywhere. It's not, it, I've never, we've never seen anything like this. I've been in, uh, this for 21 years and I've ever seen so many attacks from so many fronts. George W. Bush was a cakewalk compared to this guy. And as you said, uh, and this is the problem, that he's not religious, he's, I mean, in my personal opinion, Donald Trump's an atheist and people say, oh, don't claim him.

Well, I think he's an atheist, and whether that's good or bad, I mean, I, whether it, it doesn't matter whether or not we want to count him, I think it's true, and I think we have to realize that what we have in the White House right now, I believe personally, my opinion now, is an atheist who is just going to use religion to his past, to his greatest possible degree, he is going to give religion everything that they could possibly want so that they'll support him in his other stuff.

And that's what he's doing. It is the worst case scenario. And it is something that we have to understand. I mean, you and I only have an hour for this podcast. I could go on and on about what Donald Trump is doing to the separation of church and state in this country and the intolerance of atheists in this country.

0:36:15 Thomas: I agree, yeah.

0:37:05 David: And some of the things that we really need to work on are the school systems, are, of course, the science instruction in those classes, the way the sciences are being squelched, the way that religious rights are just going to be used to overrun any laws against discrimination. And that's going to have far-reaching implications, because remember, corporations are people. Don't forget, corporations are people. So corporations can discriminate against people. If the corporation has a religious view, the corporation can discriminate against people, yeah.

0:37:39 Thomas: And and that's, uh, that's what's so so frustrating is that so much of this battle is really the Supreme Court, and that's again right back to, you need, you need, uh, liberals, because liberals nominate non-theocrats to the Supreme Court. And it's frustrating, I really do feel like we, we dropped the ball, and and I think you've highlighted a lot of issues and I really respect the work you're doing. I also, actually, I'm, I saw on your Twitter feed the other day, you know, President Trump proclaims, uh, January 16th as Religious Freedom Day, and then there's a, there's a cross in the, in the flag, and it's like, I don't think you're understanding what religious freedom is, like, I don't I think they think yeah they think it's religious freedom, Christians think that's just freedom to be a Christian, like that's what they think, is a lot of the time yeah yeah, I

0:38:20 David: No, he doesn't care what religious freedom is, and freedom for you to be a Christian, freedom for them to push their Christianity on you because that's their job. Their job is to proselytize, and they want the right to do it with government money and with government funds and with movement push, and they don't care about the other side of the issue, that you might not want to hear it, or that you You might want to proselytize to them or that you might want to live your life as you see fit. It's very frustrating. And at the same time, I'm going to let me just give you the other side of this. I don't know how to put this well, so I'm just going to just say this right out. I'm kind of excited for the fight. I look forward to the I am enjoying the fight, I don't enjoy that I have to fight. I don't enjoy that rights are being trampled and I don ''t enjoy that bad things are happening to good people. I do, however, relish the, I relish the opportunity to defeat it. Put it that way.

0:39:19 Thomas: I get you what you mean, but I think what makes it so dispiriting for me is that it's not a fair fight, it's not, with the, with gerrymandering, with all that kind of stuff, with the just recently the, uh, the gerryandering case that, uh, I'm blanking on which, which court in which state it was, but you probably heard about it, was it uh, Pennsylvania, the one where they

0:39:25 David: Right. Yeah. Yeah, I think it was Pennsylvania.

0:39:40 Thomas: They struck it down and now those justices that might get impeached, they might literally just, oh, they, they decided against the, um, you know, our case, so the state Supreme Court justices, we'll just, just impeach them. Because they have no respect for the rule of law. I don't know how we win in an unfair fight like that without adopting unfair practices ourselves. But I just finished the book How Democracies Die. And that's not a good idea either. We don't want to become the thing that we hate because it actually destabilizes democracy further. Is it just a question of building that excitement, building that voter turnout? Is that really the main way you're fighting back? Yeah.

0:39:52 David: Yeah.

0:40:22 David: It's about voter turnout and it's, it's about Voter Presence. It is about Atheist Voter Presence, it is about making sure that people see us. Part of the concept behind Atheists Voter is is that everybody wears their atheism on their sleeves. And it's not about I'm a secularist, I'm humanist, I'm an agnostic. It's about the word atheist, and it's about wearing it on your sleeve and knowing what it is. And being present and being out there. And it doesn't mean pushing your atheism, it just means wearing it. And saying I'm atheist and I believe this. And making your vision known, making your position known. And yeah, we have to bring out the masses. Not voting is no longer, can't be an option for 2018 and 2020.

0:41:06 David: We have to shame. I personally believe we have to shame the non-voters. We Have to tell them that it's not cool. If you're going to say, oh, it doesn't matter. We're not going to do it because it doesn't matter. No, it does matter. We've seen in this last election in 2017, we saw an election one by one vote. Okay.

0:41:06 Thomas: Yeah yeah I agree yeah

0:41:29 David: I think that was in South Carolina. Um, yeah, something like that. But my point is that these, these one votes do matter and millions of them matter.

0:41:29 Thomas: Yeah and then they threw that out and so it was a tie, right? Didn't they get like one vote? Yeah well how did we not learn that lesson in 2000? I mean, an election that came down to something like 500 votes, I mean, we've seen this before like

0:41:48 David: And, and that's a great question. That's a great question and you know what, and what happened is we lost it to George W. Bush and this time, uh, even though more atheists voted more, even thought we voted as a majority country to vote for Hillary Clinton. This guy still won. And we have to show up. And no, you're right. It is not a fair fight. OK, it's not a fair fight for a reason. It's not fair fight because we're bigger and growing and they're using anything that they can to hold on to whatever pieces of power that they have left, including gerrymandering and impeaching justices and doing whatever they can. But let's look at the other numbers. We are the fastest growing religious demographic in all 50 states. We are about 27% of the general population now, and we're 40%.

0:41:53 Thomas: Yeah right now are you including, yeah, it's interesting, we, we can talk about that, are you including just nuns, are you using that as, uh, as the sure

0:42:37 David: Okay, so when I use these words, when I'm using the word atheist, and I go into this in my book, Fighting God, an atheist is a person who doesn't have a belief in a God. That's the definition. Now, you can call yourself whatever you want. You should call yourself an atheist. 90% of atheists don't call themselves atheists, and that's a big part of the problem. So yeah, when you look at the nuns, you'll see that if you parse out those nones, some of those nones are called secular nones.

0:43:10 David: Those are atheists. And we have to call people what they are. There's secular nones, there's religious nones. Secular nones are atheists, secular other is atheist, agnostics are atheist. And of course, atheists are atheistic. And so if you bunch up the atheists together, together. We got about 27% of the population. That's a lot of people. That is a lot of people and we are the fastest growing religious demographic in all 50 states. And we are 40% of the under 30 crowd. 40%. I'm sorry, 30% of the under-30 crowd and I believe 40% of the under 18 crowd. So we've got, yeah, so we've got the numbers are on our side, the growth is on our our side, we need to outlast this.

0:43:10 Thomas: Yeah

0:44:01 David: As long as we can outlast this, as long as we can fight back, hold our place, and outlast this, we can Outlast Christianity in this country, we can still win, and we can Still win in my lifetime. We can't. It's going to take a while, and We got kicked in the teeth. And when we are old, when I am old, and I'm sitting in my rocking chair on my porch, and WE won, it's going To be a very sweet victory because it was so hard and because they fought so dirty. But yes, I fully maintain that we can win this. And I fully maintained that we will, if we can do this right, if we work together and if we put our differences aside as best we can, and if we try and make ourselves a welcoming environment, and if we focus on the issues, I believe very firmly that even with everything that Trump is doing, we can win this country back.

0:44:50 David: We can do this. And all we, because the numbers are on our side, we need to wait it out. We need to outlast and that will, that will make it work.

0:44:58 Thomas: But by waited out you don't mean, you don't mean being active, we need to, we need to wait it out by voting and just hanging on

0:45:02 David: Oh yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you for correcting me on that. I absolutely do not mean be inactive. I do mean be active, but dig in for the long fight. We all got spoiled during the Obama years. We all got spoiled when, when people were saying, okay, when the country was getting better, this is going to be a long fight. Dig in. Don't get discouraged. Don't pack up and run away. There's a lot of factors against us and they are all working against us to slow us down and they could all bite us in the butt. However, if we dig in and fight, stay active for a long time, gear up for a fight, we are as a movement going to win this country back. We are as movement going take this. And we are, as a moment, we're going to love the the way it turns out. It's just going to be a long, hard fight. And when it's over, we will feel great about ourselves and our descendants will remember us.

0:45:06 Thomas: Yeah yeah right right, right yeah yeah well I admire your positivity for sure, and I think it's a good message. I also strongly agree, I was going to mention earlier, I fully agree that I think Trump is an atheist, but I think he's a perfect example of a lot of what we've been talking about here, which is, it's not about that, you know, the idea that might be somewhere in the back of your mind. It's not about the identity of, okay, you might not be a believer, so that means you're great. And it's about actions. And if your actions are perpetuating the theocratic state in order to gain politically, then you're effectively a theocrat. It doesn't matter that somewhere in his brain somewhere, you know, he doesn't actually have like a religious belief. That doesn't matter. And for me, anyway, I'll speak for myself. If there's a Christian, if there's a Muslim, whatever it is, who wants to be right there with us in the fight against religious encroachment on our laws, I, for one, welcome that.

0:46:51 Thomas: I don't know how you feel about that. You're definitely more atheist branded, but I think secularism is key, and if you're an atheist against secularism, even if you don't realize it, I think you're doing an incredible amount of harm. Yeah.

0:47:05 David: Oh, yeah. I mean, if you're an atheist against secularism, you need to open your eyes. If you're an atheist again, secularism you're fighting against your own rights. Secularism is a secular government, a secular government is a free government. And if you are fighting against it, you're literally fighting against freedom. And It's, it's something that we really need to, to deliver that message. You're not, in my personal opinion, being a good person. If you're fighting against secularism, you're not being a good American. If you're fighting against secularism, um, you, you're literally being anti-patriotic and we need to call that out. That's not acceptable behavior. It's not something that I would want. And sure, I mean, Barry Lynn, a great example of a religious person.

He's a, a reverend, um, who is a strong ally and somebody that I would gladly walk the picket line with, um, and uh, there are lots of religious people who would fit into that, fit into that category. Of course, the American Atheist National Convention is about atheists, um, but Barry is going to come and he's going to uh, take our stage anyways because he's awesome and he has done, he's got 25 years of experience as the uh executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which is a religious-based secularist organization.

0:47:09 Thomas: Yeah yeah

0:48:19 David: So, yeah.

0:48:20 Thomas: That That That's awesome. I, so you know, that's, that's a perfect, I think, note to go out on here. And I just want to give you one more chance if there's anything you wanted to say or plug about the event or your organization that you didn't get to too. Feel free.

0:48:33 David: Oh, so thank you so much for having me on, Thomas. American Atheist is America's oldest non-profit organization for atheists. We were founded in 1963 by Madalyn Murray O'Hair. We're 501c3, and yes, we need your membership. Please join us. The website is atheists.org. For those of you who don't know how to spell it, it's A-T-H-E-I-S-T-S. And the national convention is March 30th to April 1st. It's hearts plus brains minus assholes. Atheists bring the love. Atheist show up for good. We're going to have a food drive, a food packing drive for a local food bank. We'll have a lot of fun. We've got a lot to do.

0:49:19 David: We have a as of right now, is apparently locked and loaded and coming in. And I'm really excited about that. We need butts in seats. We want everybody to come. We have hardship pricing, student pricing, veterans pricing, and Oklahoma resident pricing, by the way. So if you don't think you can afford to come, please go to atheists.org slash convention 2018 and give it a look because you may be able to afford it. It's at the Sheraton downtown Oklahoma City, which is a great hotel. And lastly, my book is called Fighting God. I just got off of a five-country, three-continent book tour, and it's now out on paperback. And I talk about the atheist movement. I talk – the paperback version has an epilogue about Trump and Pence.

0:50:06 David: And I talk about how we as a movement need to gel, need to unify behind the word atheist and behind each other and make this movement a very positive, love based, hard line, firebrand atheist movement. And I think if you come to the convention, you're going to see a whole bunch of people. And I don't know how many people were at Mythicon, but our conventions are large. Usually somewhere between 800 and a thousand people. So I hope everybody comes because if you haven't walked into a room full of a thousand atheists, um, you haven't experienced something and I hope that you all do. So Thomas, I want to thank you so much again for having me on the show. Um, well, that's pretty much it. So, I hope, I, hope to see everybody at the American Atheist National Convention, uh on March 30th.

0:50:52 Thomas: Excellent. No, that's great stuff. I really appreciate what you're doing. And I was, again, really heartened by your response and to MythCon. I'm glad that that's not a road you're going down, not courting the shitload demographic just to try to get some numbers. And so, yeah, I encourage my listeners, check it out. Let's reward the people who are doing good stuff. And I think you're dealing with some really great stuff, so thanks so much for coming on

0:51:18 David: Thank you so much, Thomas. Take care.

0:51:43 Thomas: Can't stress enough how nice it was when David Silverman made the statement he did after the MythCon stuff, and that brings us to what's going on now, which is ShitlordCon 2, aka MythCon 5, just released their lineup, it's exactly who you'd expect, you know, in a perverse way, I'm somewhat impressed, like they were able to take what they were supposed to do, and they were they're doing, the concept they're doing, which is legitimizing shit lords by using centrists as useful idiots, they were able to do that to a T. I mean, it's perfect. There are a couple of people who should know better that are going to this conference, and I'm going to think about maybe the best way to go about reaching out.

0:52:30 Thomas: Maybe it's not me, maybe it's somebody else, I don't know. I also am thinking about what the best course of action in general is. I think it might actually be true that the best thing to do is just forget this exists, allow It's not as though there's much we can do about it, short of trying to maybe reach the people who should know better and see if we can get them to change their minds, but other than that, I mean, it is a free country, it's freedom of speech, they are allowed to do it, of course, they have the right to put on a shitlord convention just like CPAC, very similar to CPAC actually. My biggest fear right now is that even by calling any attention to it, that I would somehow boost their ticket sales in any way, like creating controversy, and I don't mean because of my influence, but because of stirring up the shitlord base, I wonder if the less noise we make about it, the less this shitlord bass will be stirred up to buy tickets.

0:53:24 Thomas: The conference has always operated at a loss, this lineup actually looks like it might be kind of an expensive one, so it might be a severe loss this year and I want to do anything I can to help that. But one thing I have been thinking about that I just want to prepare you all for and prepare myself for is this might be a rousing success, being a shit lord and being a center lord and playing into white victim narratives and doing a conference about how intersectionality is the devil and all that, that pays off, like there's a reason it does, there's a reason these people have hundreds of thousands of YouTube views, there is a market for it, so I just am preparing myself and anybody out there who's under some illusion that this thing's going to fall apart or it'll be a failure or no one will go.

0:54:16 Thomas: I don't think that's true. I actually think it might be a big success. And that should be a reminder to us and a lesson to us that we're facing huge institutional barriers and large. We're going against the mainstream when we fight for things like social justice. That's how it has always been, that's probably how it will always be. On about the state of the atheism movement, and I think this will be a wake-up call. Now, I hope I'm wrong. I hope that this is a failure, it would be great if that was a failure. But I don't know. Be prepared for this to be a huge success. Be prepared to be this to a sell-out crowd. Out because frankly that's the world we live in and that's the way the movement is, at least how I've experienced it lately.

0:55:03 Thomas: And I hope I'm wrong. That's all I'm gonna say on shitlordcon2 for now, I'm going to think very hard, I'll talk to people and consider what, if anything, is the best thing to do, I really don't want to draw attention to it, I know that people listening aren't the kind of people who are gonna go anyway, so I'm not too worried about telling you guys about it, Thank that should be another reason why we need to support things like the American Atheist Convention that's coming up, AACON18, Oklahoma City, David silverman already gave you all the plugs, go to atheist.org, I'm going to try to make it, it's a little short notice, I wasn't really counting on it because, you know, I just haven't been in the state of mind to want to do these things, but I was so encouraged by this interview that I'm really going to to try to make it.

0:55:51 Thomas: Let me know if you're going. I think we should we should make it a hit. You know, this is what we need to do. We can't just be there for the trashing and the very deserved criticism of the people who we don't like. We also need to support the people we do. And And that also goes for the Brew City Benefit I've mentioned before. This is presented by Milwaukee Humanists. This also involves a lot of people who left the terrible Mythicist Milwaukee organization, who cared about compassion and not being horrible online, and this includes Seth Andrews, Alix Jules, Aron Ra, Willando Ra, Callie Wright, me, Jason Love, other people. This is happening Saturday, April 7th. This is in Milwaukee. If you're looking for an alternative to ShitlordCon, this is a good alternative.

0:56:38 Thomas: We need to support those who are doing it right. And that's my message to you. So I hope to see you at AACon18. I'm going to do my best to make it out there. I think it should be a ton of fun, even if I can't make it, which I hope I can, you should go if you can, it seems like it's going to be an absolute blast. So, that's if for now thank you so for listening, thanks again to David Silverman of American Atheist, great interview, great guy, and And I'll see you guys on Thursday.