Have you ever challenged someone's beliefs only to have them say, well, at least I'm not as bad as those people?

That's a common fallacy called What Aboutism and is used to deflect a critical eye from one's own bad reasoning by appealing to the worst consequences of some other belief, hence the fallacy.

But the real danger of this kind of fallacy comes when the more moderate belief actually enables the more extreme beliefs and provides social cover for

those that hold those beliefs. Your moderate Christian friends might talk about how their religion

is all about peace, love, and harmony, but at the end of the day, their God belief is still not

rationally supported. And if an irrational belief is seen as acceptable, simply because the

consequences aren't as bad as they could be, then you're undermining the strongest

tool available for combating those extreme views. So it could be argued that the moderate beliefs

are even more dangerous because they give the extreme beliefs air to breathe. What's your take on

moderate religious beliefs? Are they a stepping stone to a more rational society? Or are they

simply sheep's clothing covering a more

dangerous wolf? We have open lines, so give us a call because the show is starting right now.

All right, welcome, welcome, welcome, everybody. Today is December 7th, 2025. I'm your host, Scott Dickie. And joining me today is the amazing, the wonderful, the man, the myth, the legend. Christy Powell. How are you doing today, Christy? Howdy? I'm glad to be here. Thanks so much for getting us fired up.

All right. All right. Yeah, I want to, so today, in between our calls today, and I do see we have calls

lining up, I do want to talk a little bit about this idea of moderate religion, causing, you know,

providing some kind of cover. Do you have any initial thoughts on that before we kind of get the show

rolling here? Only that I'm kind of fascinated. I can really play both sides of the argument, good, bad, liberal Christianity,

all of these kinds of things.

But always I'll be doing it from a place of kind of curiosity because that shit just

never made sense to my autistic brain.

Like when I was a Christian, I was a hardcore, dedicated, dogmatic, zealous, problematic

Christian. And, you know, now that I'm an atheist, I'm the type of atheist who gives up his

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