The Atheist Experience 29.15 with Forrest Valkai, Justin and Jimmy Jr

The Atheist Experience

The Atheist Community of Austin

Religion & Spirituality, Non-profit, Business

4.6 • 2.5K Ratings

🗓️ 14 April 2025

⏱️ 122 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

00:00 Intro5:26 Lily - (UK) | Hinduism Vs. Christianity
22:33 Caleb - OH | Morality Of The God Of The Bible
29:27 John - CA | The Meaning Of The Lord’s Prayer
42:30 Mike - SC | Intelligent Design
1:24:15 Nick - NC | Religion And Science Can Go Together
1:49:31 John - OH | Evidence For God’s Nonexistence?

SHOW NOTES
Thanks for joining us for The Atheist Experience! Today, Forrest Valkai and Justin discuss Hinduism, the morality of God, and alien intervention.

Lily from the UK asks the hosts if they think Hinduism is more ethical because it lacks a hell concept. The hosts explain that when they talk about the dangers of religion, there’s a spectrum. Even in their most benign state, religious and magical thinking is harmful. Hinduism, as far as the hosts understand, seems more tolerant than Christianity, but at the end of the day, it’s all still dogma, just more or less progressive dogma.

Caleb calls in from Ohio to discuss the morality of God. If the hosts believed in the God of the bible, would they think he was immoral? When the hosts ask him if he agreed with the morality of an unfair punishment by God, Caleb hung up.

John from California calls to say that no one knows what the Lord’s prayer means, but he has figured it out by watching AXP. He considers himself a biblical literalist. He says that the Lord’s Prayer as said by Jesus in the bible contains a Greek word that was never used anywhere else, so we don’t actually know what the translation means. But we have good resources to know how a word was used based on our knowledge of similar languages. John got dropped because he’s a troll.

Mike from South Carolina believes that the world is too finely tuned to not have been designed by a creator. The hosts ask him if there is a reason for natural disasters if they were designed that way. Mike says that they’re punishment because of a fallen world. The hosts point out that his original argument of a finely tuned world fell apart since he had to jump to God’s mysterious reasons for creating things like natural disasters. When the hosts push Mike on all of the terrible things that God has done, like murdering people, he says that it’s not that bad since the people who died went to heaven.

Nick from NC says that science and the bible work well together and that religion was like the first science. While the hosts can concede that ancient religions were ways to explain the world, they don’t agree that current scientific knowledge and the bible complement each other. Nick says that the Adam and Eve story shows that some actions can impact future generations and others besides the individual. You have to really read into the story to get that conclusion. In the bible, it’s straightforwardly about punishment. Nick mentions that he thinks that gods have been misinterpreted and that they’re actually aliens.

John from Ohio asks what evidence we have for the nonexistence of God. He says that if there was polytheism, chaos would ensue. But the hosts can’t agree with that, because there’s no way to support that claim. How could we know that there would be chaos? John claims that the hosts are militaristic atheists and extremists. John lays out a false dichotomy of the universe being created by a god or the universe was always here. Why isn’t there a third choice? Why can’t we say we don’t know how the universe started? He misunderstands modern physicists and thinks that the big bang theory says that nothing gave rise to something.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Do you think that science and the Bible can go hand in hand?
0:04.0	Well, Genesis 1 says that plants inhabited the earth before the sun was created.
0:09.5	Leviticus 11 says that bats are birds.
0:12.4	And 1st King 7 says that pie is equal to three, rounding down by divine command, I suppose.
0:18.3	And of course, there's the global flood in Genesis, which would
0:20.9	require the suspension of everything we know about biology, geology, and more. And none of that is
0:26.1	even mentioning all the parts of the Bible that contradict and disagree with one another, like
0:30.3	whether plants and animals were created before or after humans, or whether the stars were made
0:35.2	before or after the Earth, both of which depend on which chapter you read.
0:39.6	If you ask me, the Bible is hardly peer-reviewed material.
0:43.5	But if you think I'm missing something, then give us a call because the show starts right now.
0:52.3	Welcome, one and all to The Atheist Experience. I'm your host, Forrest Valki, and I'm joined today by Justin from Deconstruction Zone. My friend, it is good to be working with you again. How are you doing?
1:03.3	Forrest, I'm doing great a couple of words to you.
1:12.8	The first is that the atheist experience is a product of the atheist community of Austin,
1:16.4	which is a 5-1C3, nonprofit organization dedicated to the promotion of atheism, critical thinking, secular humanism,
1:21.4	and the separation of religion and governments.
1:23.8	That's the first thing.
1:24.7	The second thing is, Justin, what are you got going on, man? Like, what's going on in your life? What are you up to right now?
1:30.4	Man, I'm spending like half my time working and streaming. And then once in a while, I actually get a little bit of sleep.
1:37.9	But other than that, I'm just gearing up for trying to see how I can watch what's going on at the atheist convention coming up because I can't join.
1:50.2	But I want to watch the speakers, you know?
1:52.5	Which one?
	...

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