Talk Heathen 08.13 with Christy Powell and Richard Gilliver
Talk Heathen
Atheist Community of Austin
4.7 • 611 Ratings
🗓️ 31 March 2024
⏱️ 81 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Talk Heathen is a weekly call-in internet show in Austin, Texas geared toward long-form and on-going dialogue with theists & atheists about religion, theism, & secularism. Talk Heathen is produced by the Atheist Community of Austin.
Call the show on Sundays 1:00pm-2:30pm CDT, tell us what you believe and why!
-Use your ☎ and call 1-512-991-9242
-Or use your 💻 and click https://tiny.cc/callth
We request pronouns as part of the call screening process on our shows, and we display the pronouns our callers provide. If you see a caller with no pronouns indicated, this is because they chose not to provide us with any, and we respect that decision.
Don't like commercials? Become a patron & get ad-free episodes & more:
https://www.patreon.com/talkheathentome
The podcast may be found at:
http://tiny.cc/podcastth
-------
The Atheist Community of Austin is organized as a nonprofit educational corporation to develop & support the atheist community, to provide opportunities for socializing & friendship, to promote secular viewpoints, to encourage positive atheist culture, to defend the first amendment principle of government-religion separation, to oppose discrimination against atheists & to work with other organizations in pursuit of common goals.
We define atheism as the lack of belief in gods. This definition also encompasses what most people call agnosticism.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/talkheathenfg
reddit.com/r/talkheathen
NOTES
- 00:00 Intro
- 08:36 Miguel-(UK) | A Confusing Spinoza's God
- 31:59 Lise-(CA) | Why Not Criticize Eastern Religions?
- 49:31 Kat-(ID) | Moving Past Religious Indoctrination
- 1:02:42 Jason-CA | Thank You Talk Heathen!
- 1:09:56 Bill-CA | Nothing Fails Like Prayer
SHOW NOTES
Welcome to a normal old Sunday here at Talk Heathen. No bunnies or eggs on this show and no “he has risen” junk.
Miguel in England subscribes to Spinoza’s views about god, claiming god is everything that exists in the past, presence and future. What we fail to understand is how you get from the universe to someone creating it, not to mention your claim that god created himself. Atheists don’t have any codes or beliefs and we have searched for many gods, all seem to fail to critical scrutiny.
Lise in Canada has seen some other atheists bash abrahamic religions but romanticize eastern religions. Atheists should look into all religions critically but not all atheists are critical thinkers. Most of the callers are christian so this show kind of skews that way. Most of what we encounter is a western version of these eastern religions so they don’t see the history of harm caused by Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.
Kat in Indonesia picked the perfect show to talk about the harms of religious indoctrination, they wonder if they can move past that trauma. You CAN change and in fact are currently changing. These ingrained thoughts will be with you for a long time, but you can heal from them.
Jason in California called in his thanks to the show for helping him deconstruct his religion. Thanks and congrats for doing the hard work to deconvert!
Bill in California shares his experience of losing his faith while watching prayer fail to heal his wife. We’re sorry for your loss and thank you for sharing your story. Happy Co-opting Pagan Holiday Day!
Thank you for tuning in, Heathens! Question of the week is: Why didn’t God ban slavery?
The views and opinions expressed by hosts, guests, or callers are their own and not necessarily representative of the Atheist Community of Austin.
https://www.youtube.com/TalkHeathen is the official channel of Talk Heathen. "Talk Heathen" is a trademark of the ACA.
Copyright © 2024 Atheist Community of Austin. All rights reserved.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/talk-heathen--3195702/support.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Dearly beloved, hello and good morning and welcome to the atheist community of Austin's |
| 0:05.9 | Talk Heathen Service. Please take out your perfectly inerrant holy book of vague ancient poetry |
| 0:12.4 | and turn it to chapter 66 verse 9 and prepare to chant the list of things we all commit to |
| 0:19.1 | before singing repeatedly about the perfection |
| 0:22.2 | of our flawless leader and teacher who we all definitely agree on and honor with our shared |
| 0:28.1 | rituals before contributing your spiritually mandated donation. |
| 0:32.5 | Do you hear how ridiculous that sounds when speaking to a group of atheists? |
| 0:36.2 | We don't have a shared creed. We don't |
| 0:38.2 | have a holy book or holy men or holidays. No agreed upon canon. And we don't have a list of prescribed |
| 0:44.8 | rituals or obligations. As my friend and mentor Dr. Daryl wrote, some claim that atheism is a religion. |
| 0:52.0 | But that poses a problem of what you call people who do not believe |
| 0:56.0 | in Zeus or Thor or Allah or even the flying spaghetti monster. Atheism simply sees no evidence |
| 1:02.6 | of any God. Or as Clark Adams said, if atheism is a religion, then health is a disease. Not convinced? |
| 1:13.2 | Well, let's get into it. Give us a call at 512-991-9242 because the show is coming right now. |
| 1:25.7 | All right. Well, welcome everyone. Today is March 31st, 2024. I am your host, Christy Powell, |
| 1:32.7 | and joining me today is Richard Jolver. Hello, I'm very excited about this. It is Easter Sunday, |
| 1:38.6 | so I'm hoping we get some great Christian calls in. But of course, if you are of any religion, |
| 1:44.1 | you are more than welcome to call, |
| 1:45.6 | and we will have some good, friendly conversations with you. Yeah, absolutely. I'm excited to get |
| 1:51.1 | into it. It's become something of a low-key tradition for me to do one of these shows on Easter. |
| 1:56.5 | I don't know if God is going to charge me overtime for all of those sins when I get to the accounting, |
| 2:02.6 | but I am hoping that we can have some meaningful conversations today and really get into why all of |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Atheist Community of Austin, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Atheist Community of Austin and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

