Talk Heathen 07.29 with Doctor Ben and Richard Gilliver
Talk Heathen
Atheist Community of Austin
4.7 • 611 Ratings
🗓️ 24 July 2023
⏱️ 93 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Josh from NY claims that prayer is “incredibly helpful” and goes on to say prayer isn’t simply a cure all. Prayer is about a coin flip in terms of effectiveness. You shouldn’t accept something like prayer without evidence that it works. Get checked by a medical professional if you have any illnesses. Prayer doesn’t help, at all.
Amanuel from TX asks how atheists come up with their values or ultimate purpose given we don’t believe in a deity? There are thousands of deities proposed by humans, even thousands of denominations in christianity alone. Any Abrahamic holy book is loaded with immoral laws, proclamations, and values. We’ll stay away from that nonsense.
Martin from The UK claims Christ’s resurrection as described in the bible is historical fact. A retelling of a story in an old book is not evidence of a fact, let alone one written decades after said event. Don’t trust christian apologists, they tend to start with a belief and disregard opposing evidence.
Connor in TX wants perspective on a frustrating religious argument he had, someone questioned his beliefs. Respectfully decline to talk about religion in a professional setting. Arguments tend to elicit strong emotions and reactions. Make it a boundary and involve HR if available.
Latrina in Canada claims there is a placebo effect in prayer, it can be helpful for an individual prayer. We’d rather someone seek medical treatment. Placebo's don’t work on a lot of physiological issues, like cancer or broken bones. The risk isn’t worth any benefits. People have relied on prayer and died, or their condition worsened.
Thank you for tuning in to your community! This week's “Talk Heathen To Me” prompt is: What flier would you not expect to see on a church bulletin board?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Everyone open your Bibles to Luke chapter 11 versus 9 and 10. |
| 0:04.4 | So I say to you, ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be open to you. |
| 0:11.0 | For everyone who asks and receives the one who seeks and finds, and to the one who knocks, the door will be open. |
| 0:17.3 | Let's bow our heads and pray. |
| 0:18.6 | Just kidding, this is an atheist show. We're not going to do that here. And also, when has prayer ever helped anybody? Have people who died from disease not asked to be |
| 0:26.3 | healed? Have victims not asked to be rescued? Has nobody asked for a stop to natural disasters? |
| 0:31.3 | If you think prayer works, then call us, because the show is starting now. |
| 0:45.9 | Welcome to Talk Heathen. Today is Sunday, July 23rd, 2023. |
| 0:47.7 | And I'm your host, Dr. Ben. |
| 0:50.0 | And joining me today is Richard Gilliver. |
| 0:51.1 | How are you today, Richard? |
| 0:52.8 | I'm very, very good, thank you. |
| 1:16.2 | I'm looking forward to this immensely. Oh, definitely. I know this month has been a lot of Richard and Ben. And, you know, we're getting to know each other pretty well. And I think we have some good on-stream chemistry, if you will. So I'm excited to be here once again. Do you have any thoughts about today's show, anything you're looking forward to? I'm looking forward to receiving some good evidence that God exists in reality. Whether we'll get that is a different thing, but that's what I'm looking forward to, and we'll see if it's |
| 1:21.6 | forthcoming. Absolutely. Talk heathen is a product of the atheist community of Austin, a 501 |
| 1:26.5 | C3 nonprofit organization dedicated to the promotion of athe atheist community of Austin, a 501c3 nonprofit organization |
| 1:28.3 | dedicated to the promotion of atheism, critical thinking, secular humanism, and the separation |
| 1:33.0 | of religion and government. |
| 1:34.3 | And talk heathen is a live call-in show, and we have open lines. |
| 1:37.7 | So get your calls in at 512-991-9242, or you can go from your computer at tiny.cc slash call t-h. And while people are getting |
| 1:47.7 | their calls in, uh, we have a couple of things that we wanted to talk about. We do have our, |
| 1:52.2 | uh, talk heathen to me segment, but Richard had a point that he wanted to talk about. And I want |
| 1:57.5 | to give him a minute to, to explain what he's been thinking about this. Yeah, |
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