Hey everybody, welcome to the AP Experience. We are live. It is Sunday, May 8th, 2016. I'm Matt Dullhoney joining this week. John Iaclady.

Yay! There's actually an audience on the other side of the glass. You won't be able to hear them because I think we've fixed the gain issues on the microphone so it doesn't pick up like rain drops on the roof now.

We need one of those applause signs though for the audience. We need lots of signs. There's a number of things that we'll be doing. I want to look at On Air thing. We've got a grain screen for back here but you know what? Just having books is good enough. I notice though with the lights.

Like this is a we used to be public access show. We've talked before about our public access roots. We're now in our own building and everything's you know, gradually improving to the point where much of the technical aspects of the show are better than we could have ever had in the public access studio.

But I see like this weird band of shadow where there's like light above and below. We are coming to you from the darkness. The darkness that is the dark heart of the Atheist now.

So today's Mother's Day. Yes. And I managed to call my mother and my grandmother, my only remaining grandmother that I can call. And this past week was also on Thursday was the National Day of Prayer which means it was also the National Day of Reason and I managed to make it out to the Capitol for about an hour or so to hang out with some of the folks who were involved with that.

And by the way, the protest there, the National Day of Reason is not necessarily a protest against prayer. You are free to pray to your heart's content. That's part of religious liberty. You can do that. You can even pray at the Capitol. You can even organize an event where you pray at the Capitol. However, there needs to be government neutrality and so government officials in their official capacity shouldn't be endorsing particular religions or encouraging prayers.

And what we're really talking about is a proper application of religious freedom that allows all individuals in society to be represented without bias, without favoritism towards a particular religion or group of religions.

And the National Day of Reason is also an opportunity for us to point out that we would prefer that our elected representatives make decisions based on reason and not based on whatever personal relationship they think they have with some deity or the edicts of a particular religion.

So, well, you had thoughts on Mother's Day? Yeah, I wanted to say Happy Mother's Day to all you mothers out there or anyone who's ever been a mother or anyone who's ever had a mother. Happy Mother's Day. My mom's been gone for 24 years now and I'm Mr. Alot. She used to have great philosophical discussions.

Later in life, she became a Unitarian Universalist Minister. She considered herself a pan-entheist.

So, I was I was ranting and raving one day about something political. It might have been when George Bush elder said atheists shouldn't be considered citizens.

And I was afraid that that was going to have some kind of weight in the government. She said we have separation of church and state. You have nothing to worry about.

It turns out, by the way, that quote can't be sourced or identified. So, there's no way to confirm that that actually ever happened.

Yeah, I realized there's some controversy about that. But in any event, we were talking about that. And she said she didn't like the A word that bothered her.

She didn't really have any issue with me not believing. But she said why do you want to call yourself an atheist? She said why don't you just my son had just been born not long before that.

And she said why don't you just take the love that you have for your son and call that God. And I said I have a better idea mom. Why don't I call that the love I have for my son?

So anyway, I'm remembering mom today and missing her and I want to say happy Mother's Day to all of you out there.

And you know, a lot of this comes up. I have a quote, you know, an idea that the Jen people just represented many times your family if you act like family.

And you know, I'm of course grateful that my parents decided to have kids. Otherwise, I wouldn't be here. But being thankful for that decision by them or whether in some cases it's not a decision. It happens just because.

But I'm not beholden to them in any way. I don't feel that because I was I am blood kin to someone that I necessarily owe them a legion to respect respect is, you know, essentially earned I love my parents in part because they love me and in part because we have a good relationship and we can long we disagree vehemently on the religion thing and to their credit they have not allowed that to be a massive barrier to our interactions.

That's not the case for a lot of other atheists who have lost their family. And while it may be sad that you don't have the connection with your family because their religious views are preventing them from having, you know, a relationship that is healthy with you.

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