#19 — Genetically Modified Skeptic | Do We Still Feel the Same Way About Religion?
Within Reason
Alex O'Connor
4.9 • 1.8K Ratings
🗓️ 7 June 2022
⏱️ 77 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Drew McCoy is the host of the Genetically Modified Skeptic YouTube channel, which is, with now over 500,000 subscribers, perhaps the largest atheist YouTube channel in the world right now.
The last time we collaborated was in 2017, arguing that as well as being false, religion is also mostly harmful. In this podcast we discuss our current views on that subject, and examine how they have changed.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, and thank you for tuning into the Cosmic Skeptic Podcast. I'm your host, Alex O'Connor, |
| 0:05.7 | and today's episode is a little bit special. For the first time in the podcast's history, |
| 0:10.8 | I've invited three, count them, three other guests to sit down with me at the table, |
| 0:16.6 | to discuss a topic that is incredibly important to me, and that is the problem of evil for God's |
| 0:22.4 | existence. If there is a God, man, that God does love us, then why is our world so seemingly |
| 0:28.1 | suffused with seemingly meaningless and almost endless amounts of suffering? This conversation |
| 0:34.5 | took place in Houston, Texas, where I was engaging in a public debate with Trent Horn. Trent Horn |
| 0:40.4 | is an apologist and speaker for Catholic answers, and the event was being put on by Cameron Batuzzi, |
| 0:46.5 | who is the founder and face of the online Christian ministry capturing Christianity. Also attending |
| 0:52.8 | that same event was Joe Schmidt, who is the founder of the YouTube channel Majesty of Reason, |
| 0:58.2 | a philosophical channel, but he's also a published philosopher, having written articles and books, |
| 1:03.5 | and it chames me only slightly to admit that he's even younger than I am at the age of 21. He's |
| 1:09.4 | an incredibly intelligent and knowledgeable communicator, and was the singular guest of the |
| 1:14.8 | previous episode of this podcast, which you should check out if you haven't already. |
| 1:19.3 | Now Joe is an agnostic, meaning that when we were all together, we had a Protestant, a Catholic, |
| 1:24.8 | an agnostic, and an atheist, and we decided it would be fun to all sit down and talk about the |
| 1:29.4 | problem of evil from our varying perspectives. In this episode, you can expect to hear a debate |
| 1:34.4 | whether there really is such a thing as the distinction between a logical and evidential problem |
| 1:39.4 | of evil. We also discuss Stephen Law's evil god hypothesis, as well as Robert Nosek's experience |
| 1:45.9 | machine, and why choosing whether to jump into the machine or not is a bit like choosing which |
| 1:50.8 | college to study at for university. We also, of course, discuss non-human animal suffering, |
| 1:57.2 | and whether god has secretly installed biological tranquilizers within wild animals that |
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