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Jamie Foxx is Blessed (plus plenty of listener calls)
Update: 2024-12-30
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Seth has thoughts on the latest Jamie Foxx Netflix special, and our callers bring more good stuff to the show. Enjoy!
ARTICLE: Why You Really, Really Don't Want to Live Forever
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ARTICLE: Why You Really, Really Don't Want to Live Forever
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/thethinkingatheist--3270347/support.
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Transcript
00:00:00
Okay, here we go, standby.
00:00:02
Three, two, one.
00:00:04
The thinking atheist, it's not a person.
00:00:08
It's a symbol.
00:00:09
An idea.
00:00:10
The population of atheists in this country is going through the roof.
00:00:14
Rejecting faith.
00:00:15
Perceiving knowledge.
00:00:17
Challenging the sacred.
00:00:19
If I tell the truth, it's because I tell the truth.
00:00:22
Not because I put my hand on a book and made a wish.
00:00:25
And working together.
00:00:27
For a more rational world.
00:00:29
Take the risk of thinking, feel self.
00:00:31
Much more happiness.
00:00:32
Truth be with you in wisdom.
00:00:33
We'll come to you that way.
00:00:35
Assume nothing.
00:00:37
Question everything.
00:00:39
And start thinking.
00:00:42
This is the thinking atheist podcast hosted by South Anders.
00:00:48
So I have thoughts about something that I just want to unload.
00:01:00
I just need to get them off my chest.
00:01:03
These thoughts.
00:01:05
And I have titled the broadcast after my monologue, even though the whole rest of the show, it's going to be just a popery of whatever the listeners want to talk about.
00:01:15
You know, some diversions and digressions here and there.
00:01:19
But, and I'm going to get to that in just a second.
00:01:22
But I just had the weirdest experience.
00:01:28
This morning I went in for my end of year checkup.
00:01:32
You know, as you get older, you go in and they have to sort of look at you to gauge the speed of the breakdown that is taking place.
00:01:42
You're no longer young and invincible.
00:01:45
Now you have to really monitor things and I've accepted that.
00:01:48
Every six months I go in and it was the same thing this morning they put the thing on your finger to check your blood oxygen.
00:01:55
And they've got the cuff on the arm for blood pressure.
00:01:58
That looks good and they listen to the heart and the lungs and they ask you basic questions and they're doing blood for cholesterol or whatever.
00:02:07
And the technician is there and he's sitting in his chair and he's entering all of this data into his computer.
00:02:15
And he asks me this question.
00:02:21
He says, he says, are you still six foot one?
00:02:30
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, did you, did you just ask me if I'm still six one?
00:02:37
Yeah, yeah, you're still six one.
00:02:40
Yes, yes, my height has not changed since June of this year.
00:02:47
And he didn't even blink like it was a natural question.
00:02:50
Now I have heard through osteoporosis and other things that we do shrink as we age.
00:02:57
But in six months, what kind of change are you expecting?
00:03:08
In June, he was six one.
00:03:10
Holy shit, he's five foot seven.
00:03:13
By the time he's 65, he will have vanished.
00:03:17
Just such a weird question.
00:03:20
Hell cares weird.
00:03:21
I'm just saying.
00:03:22
Anyway, that was my morning.
00:03:27
There was one other thing I wanted to mention before I got underway with the big opening.
00:03:29
Oh, a lot of people are asking me about cats.
00:03:33
And if you have been listening in previous weeks, I talked about his diagnosis of bone spurs, arthritis, limping on one of his front legs, breaking our hearts.
00:03:44
He likes to jump up and down from the elevated master bed, which is hard on his legs and his whole body.
00:03:51
I bought him pet stairs as a little kitty Christmas gift, wondering if he would actually use them.
00:04:00
And that's what everybody's asking me.
00:04:02
Did cat use the stairs?
00:04:06
First day, I put him out next to the bed and he just looked at him.
00:04:12
Like, I am annoyed by this thing.
00:04:16
This strangely shaped impedance to my access to the bed.
00:04:20
I now have to walk another few inches around it.
00:04:23
He was very put out, you know, he just looks that way anyway.
00:04:27
But by day number two, he was walking up and walking down and walking up and walking down.
00:04:38
He was stepping just gliding like a dancer up and down those pet stairs.
00:04:45
It worked and he no longer jumps anywhere.
00:04:49
He just uses the stairs like he was born doing it.
00:04:54
Yesterday, he sat on the top step.
00:04:57
He just sat on the step and he was grooming himself and just hanging out and purring.
00:05:02
And then he would step up to the bed and I would pet him on the head and behind the ears.
00:05:07
And then he would go back to the first or second step and he would hang out.
00:05:11
These are now his stairs.
00:05:13
Yes, he says, I am now the lion on top of this mountain.
00:05:18
This is my domain, the steps belong to me.
00:05:20
He has embraced the pet stairs and it's awesome.
00:05:24
So thanks to everybody who expressed interest and concern.
00:05:27
I did put a video, a little Facebook reel out that showed cat going up and down.
00:05:32
It is so gratifying.
00:05:34
So gratifying.
00:05:35
And it helps my heart to know that he's not jumping under a hardwood floor and jarring whatever's going on in his joints.
00:05:42
So anyway, thank you.
00:05:44
Thank you for your interest and my family is doing good.
00:05:47
You know, and kitty boys using the steps.
00:05:50
Just an update for the curious.
00:05:53
Okay.
00:05:55
Let me talk about what I really want to talk about.
00:05:59
There's this Netflix special where browsing Netflix is killing time and we see there is...
00:06:06
It's not really a stand up.
00:06:08
It was more of an on stage storytelling by Jamie Foxx, the comedian actor.
00:06:15
And I'm a Jamie Foxx fan.
00:06:17
You know, he's in some of my favorite movies.
00:06:20
The latter role is a terrific Michael Mann film.
00:06:25
He was so good and Ray, I will watch Django unchained every time it's on.
00:06:29
I will watch Django every time it's on.
00:06:31
He's even good in not good movies.
00:06:35
Oliver Stone's any given Sunday is a crap movie.
00:06:39
I'll watch the whole thing front to back almost three hours because Al Pacino and Jamie Foxx are in it because they're that good.
00:06:46
I followed Jamie Foxx since the old in living color days and I had been following his story since earlier this year.
00:06:53
He had a major, major, major medical emergency and almost died.
00:06:57
I'm sure you saw the headlines or maybe you didn't, but he was rushed to the hospital.
00:07:03
A mystery illness.
00:07:05
No one knew what happened.
00:07:07
I don't think they know even now.
00:07:09
Weeks and weeks and weeks passed.
00:07:11
A lot of folks had said he had died and there was so much speculation that tabloids went crazy, but he lived and then he did a Netflix special to tell the story.
00:07:23
Well, I'm in.
00:07:25
That sounds like something I would want to be a part of.
00:07:28
I'm going to watch that.
00:07:29
What in the world happened and how's he doing today?
00:07:33
And it starts strong, the curtain parts, Jamie Foxx walks out, the crowd stands up and cheers.
00:07:41
There were in those laughter and smiles and tears and joy this man has survived.
00:07:47
And he's dancing on stage.
00:07:49
He's obviously just delighted to still be drawing breath after what he had been through and to his credit right off the bat.
00:07:58
He thanked the medical staff at the hospital in Atlanta just a few blocks down from where the special was being recorded.
00:08:07
He acknowledged the people who the human interventionist, right?
00:08:12
Who cared for him and helped him get back on his feet and allowed him to be where he is today.
00:08:18
One of the first things he said good for you when he threw out some God is good.
00:08:22
Oh, God is good.
00:08:23
God is good.
00:08:24
All right.
00:08:27
Okay.
00:08:27
All right.
00:08:27
I'm not going to be grudging that whatever.
00:08:29
You know, we understand we're we're meaning making primates.
00:08:34
We are not connecting pattern seeking primates.
00:08:37
We are agency creating primates.
00:08:40
So it's understandable that certainly someone who was likely primed by religious thinking sees that God has spared him to serve another day.
00:08:52
God must not have been done with me yet.
00:08:54
Have you heard that one?
00:08:55
Oh, the Lord got me through it.
00:08:56
He must have had more plans for me on this or oh.
00:09:00
It can sound air again.
00:09:02
Sometimes it just sounds thankful.
00:09:04
Okay.
00:09:05
He's thankful.
00:09:06
Now, as the special progressed, I became the person that other people hate watching TV with.
00:09:17
Every time I hear something that is jaw-droppingly illogical, I point at the TV and say something.
00:09:26
Other people in the room, you know, they're going with it.
00:09:29
They're not bothered by it.
00:09:31
Add is what it is.
00:09:32
We're not going to overthink it.
00:09:33
Let him have his story.
00:09:34
Let him speak his truth.
00:09:36
And then there's somebody like me and maybe like you.
00:09:40
And we start to twitch.
00:09:46
What?
00:09:47
What?
00:09:47
What did they just assert?
00:09:48
I'm so bad.
00:09:50
Oklahoma, right?
00:09:52
Tornados come through here every 10 minutes.
00:09:55
And they'll tear up whole neighborhoods and cities and, you know, people die in meaning makers, pattern seekers, agency creators, find something to draw inspiration and destiny from.
00:10:09
40 people were killed yesterday, but a Bible was found open to an inspirational verse in the book of Isaiah.
00:10:18
Well, we know God is good.
00:10:21
And there are some people who draw inspiration from that.
00:10:26
They will be inspired.
00:10:28
Oh, thank you, Jesus.
00:10:29
And I'm pointing at the TV going, you got to be shitting me.
00:10:33
God said, sorry about the dead people.
00:10:39
Sorry about the $3 billion in damage, the homes and the hospitals and the schools and everything else.
00:10:42
Sorry about that, but I have saved for you some precious pieces of paper.
00:10:48
Opened it for you to the book of Isaiah.
00:10:51
You are welcome.
00:10:52
I'm pointing and screaming at the TV.
00:10:54
I ruined the experience for a lot of people.
00:10:57
Maybe you can relate.
00:10:59
And I tried to hold my tongue with the Jamie Fox thing, but the more he told the story, the less sense it made.
00:11:08
And I'm just going to go through a few of the things.
00:11:11
I'm just going to rant and ramble.
00:11:14
So in April of this year, he has a massive headache, which was obviously more than just a "I need an exaggerant" headache.
00:11:24
If something serious and his sister recognized it, threw him in the car and started driving him to the hospital.
00:11:31
Now, according to the way he tells this story, she did not know where a hospital was.
00:11:38
She just put him in the car and started driving around.
00:11:44
I'm sorry.
00:11:46
You had no destination in mind, in a city the size of Atlanta, with your brother potentially on death's door in the car.
00:11:55
And you were just aimlessly cruising around, hoping a hospital would produce itself.
00:12:03
And since you and I live in this day and age, almost every car has working GPS.
00:12:09
Certainly every phone all she had to do was just hit one button and say, "Navigate to hospital."
00:12:15
It would populate a list of hospitals, maybe even with one to five star reviews.
00:12:22
I'm sorry.
00:12:22
I'm supposed to believe that his sister is just driving around.
00:12:27
Oh, the story gets even better.
00:12:32
And all of a sudden, I don't know where she looked up and there was Piedmont Hospital.
00:12:37
Now, my sister doesn't know anything about Piedmont Hospital, but, and I am going to quote this, "She didn't know anything about Piedmont Hospital,
00:12:49
but she had a hunch that some angels is in there."
00:12:54
Now, what are you saying that there are not angels in the other hospitals?
00:13:00
Or are they short-staffed on angels because all the angels are now at Piedmont?
00:13:06
What did the angels do?
00:13:08
What is their purpose?
00:13:09
They're not wheeling patients into the emergency room.
00:13:12
I don't see them in the operating theaters for surgery.
00:13:15
And I, what's the purpose of the angel?
00:13:17
The angels in there do what specifically?
00:13:20
Well, apparently the angels nudged the car, sat behind the rear bumper, and just pushed this car to Piedmont after a nameless drive in Atlanta.
00:13:31
It must be divine destiny.
00:13:33
The doctor sees Jamie Foxx and says, "You have a bleed on your brain.
00:13:37
We're going to have to crack your skull open to relieve the pressure and remove a clot or whatever."
00:13:42
We're going to have to do brain surgery on you.
00:13:44
They prep him, they wheel him in for surgery.
00:13:47
Last second, the scan comes in and, oh, look, there's no blood on the brain.
00:13:54
You don't need surgery after all.
00:13:57
Oh, you know Jamie Foxx was thanking God for that miracle.
00:14:01
Okay, fine.
00:14:03
All right, all right, fine.
00:14:06
I'm delighted it wasn't a bleed on the brain.
00:14:08
Can you imagine?
00:14:10
Right.
00:14:10
Talk about a life changing surgery.
00:14:12
I'm delighted.
00:14:15
But now my bullshit meter is starting to go to the point where I really am having a hard time ignoring it.
00:14:22
The story gets even better.
00:14:24
He goes blank.
00:14:26
Coma, I don't know what he can't remember three weeks of his time in the hospital.
00:14:36
When he wakes up, he says, "This couldn't have happened to me.
00:14:40
I'm young.
00:14:41
I'm strong.
00:14:42
I'm Jamie Foxx.
00:14:43
I'm successful."
00:14:43
Right?
00:14:43
If things happen in my life, they're going to be good.
00:14:47
So he's in denial, understandable according to his story.
00:14:51
He resists treatment and physical therapy because he's still denying the illness, the stroke that he had.
00:14:57
He'd had a stroke.
00:14:59
And he was going to need physical therapy and he was a bad patient.
00:15:03
And then the story gets really interesting.
00:15:06
They wheel him into physical therapy.
00:15:09
He doesn't want to do it.
00:15:10
And his physical therapist says, "This and again, I quote."
00:15:16
She said, "What's your fucking problem?"
00:15:20
I'm sorry.
00:15:21
This is how physical therapists speak to their patients in hospital because there may be an HR issue, I'm just saying.
00:15:29
But what's your fucking problem?
00:15:31
What's your problem?
00:15:32
You don't want to fight?"
00:15:34
She said, "Jamie, when you walk in this facility, look to the left of you, people that ain't going to get out of here."
00:15:42
Jamie said, "And I did, I looked.
00:15:44
There was a quadriplegic.
00:15:47
There was a person in a wheelchair.
00:15:49
There was another guy's whole side was gone.
00:15:52
She said, "They're not getting out of here."
00:15:55
There was one little white lady all she could do was turn this little pinwheel.
00:16:00
She said, "What do you think now?"
00:16:02
And I wept, crying.
00:16:05
I said, "God, to all the blessings go over there."
00:16:09
And he pointed to where he was indicating the man in the wheelchair was.
00:16:13
Now, what do those blessings look like?
00:16:18
Because I guarantee you the man in the wheelchair was still in a wheelchair paralyzed the next morning and he is still paralyzed today.
00:16:27
Right?
00:16:27
If that description is correct, he's not getting out of here.
00:16:31
What does the blessing look like?
00:16:32
And what are we to infer about the nature of God who would take Jamie Foxx and allow him to walk and dance only months after his major medical event while so many other people will never walk again.
00:16:50
We understand compassion, we understand destiny, we understand why humans do this, but it makes no logical sense.
00:16:59
And then you knew this was coming.
00:17:00
He pretty much went with everything happens for a reason and God has a plan.
00:17:07
He protested, "God, why is this happening to me?
00:17:10
Why do things like this happen to good people?
00:17:11
God, look at all these bad people."
00:17:15
"Look at all these bad people down here, shouldn't those bad people be going through this?"
00:17:20
And according to Jamie Foxx, this is what God said.
00:17:24
"Those bad people already belong to somebody else.
00:17:28
You belong to me."
00:17:32
And the audience cheered.
00:17:35
"I thought, what the...
00:17:37
what?"
00:17:38
"Those bad people belong to somebody else.
00:17:41
You belong to me, which is why you had a stroke that almost killed you and were in a coma or whatever for three weeks and went through months of rehabilitation."
00:17:54
Those other people belong to somebody else, you belong to me, makes no sense.
00:17:58
When he's talking about God speaking to him, you know what God calls him?
00:18:03
The N word.
00:18:04
I'm not going to say it here.
00:18:08
He calls Jamie the N word.
00:18:11
Meanwhile, throughout the entire stand-up, Jamie Foxx is saying, "God damn it, God damn it, God damn it, God damn it, God damn it, God damn it, God damn it, God damn it, God damn it, God damn it, God damn it."
00:18:20
Has Jamie read the Ten Commandments because he is in massive violation of commandment number three?
00:18:27
None of this is making any logical sense to me.
00:18:30
And finally, I just had to walk away.
00:18:33
I just had to walk away.
00:18:37
In my own life right now, I'm thinking of someone.
00:18:41
They are going down to Dallas, Texas to help care for like a 12-year-old girl who's got cancer.
00:18:50
And I am not bereft of compassion in this situation.
00:18:56
My heart breaks for the family, for the little girl.
00:18:59
I'm just horrified that this kind of thing is happening.
00:19:02
But every time I turn around, the people who are going down and they're giving us the reports on the doctors and the chemo and the radiation and all the other treatments and the expenses and the fundraising and the GoFundMe type stuff.
00:19:15
If all that stuff, the Lord is good.
00:19:16
You know what, God's going to get us through this.
00:19:19
We can't always understand His plan, but we know that He is good all the time.
00:19:23
God is good.
00:19:23
God is good.
00:19:25
All the time.
00:19:27
Blessings upon you.
00:19:28
I know there are angels in that hospital, guardian angels.
00:19:32
What the hell are they doing if they are not healing a child with cancer?
00:19:38
And I don't think it makes me a total asshole to ask these questions out loud.
00:19:44
It's a lose-lose, right?
00:19:46
Because if you ask about the logic of these scenarios, when it's happening, when they're going on, they say you are monumentally insensitive.
00:19:55
Why in the world would you bring it up at a time when the nerves are so raw and the emotions are so high and people are in such great pain?
00:20:02
You jerk, right?
00:20:03
But if you then wait and talk about it more in the abstract when nothing specific is going on, then they're like, well, why would you talk about this now?
00:20:10
There's nothing going on.
00:20:12
Everybody's in pretty good health.
00:20:14
Why would this be on your brain at this moment?
00:20:17
I don't understand that at all.
00:20:18
You seem obsessed.
00:20:19
It's just a lose-lose.
00:20:23
Anyway, done ranting for the record.
00:20:26
I will continue to be a Jamie Fox fan.
00:20:29
I will see the movies that he is in.
00:20:33
I am delighted that he has survived and thrived.
00:20:37
I would like to reiterate that it was the Miracle Workers at Piedmont Hospital that brought him through, that recognized the problem,
00:20:49
diagnosed it, treated him, nursed him back to health and got him where he is today.
00:20:56
Thank you to the doctors and the nurses and the scientists and the caregivers and the 24/7 helpers who are doing what God apparently did not,
00:21:07
who are providing the blessings that make no sense if we see them as coming from on high because I don't see shit.
00:21:14
I see nothing.
00:21:18
Done griping, sorry.
00:21:19
I'm done.
00:21:20
I just had to tell somebody.
00:21:23
I had to get it off my chest.
00:21:25
Other than that, a great holiday week.
00:21:27
Other than that, the holiday was wonderful.
00:21:32
Other than that, 40 minutes until I lost my mind and left the room.
00:21:36
We're going to talk to you and see what's on your mind here in these final days of December 2024.
00:21:45
Stand by.
00:21:47
My patrons get to show early in commercial free.
00:21:56
Thank you so much for your support patreon dot com slash Seth Andrews.
00:22:04
We are talking to you about whatever you want to talk about.
00:22:09
Let's go to the phones.
00:22:12
850.
00:22:14
I've got Jack.
00:22:15
Welcome.
00:22:17
Hey, I was calling about I had what you on a program with Matt Dilla, until a while back and Matt had lost some contest or won some contest where he had your cat picture tattooed on his leg.
00:22:32
Yes, and whoever was doing the program, they had a split screen and they showed his leg with the picture and your head on the other side, like I'm seeing now.
00:22:43
And I wondered if anyone had ever commented to you about how it looks like Matt Dilla, and he has your face on his leg.
00:22:52
That's terrifying.
00:22:54
Now I've never heard that.
00:22:56
I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy.
00:22:59
I just wouldn't do that.
00:23:00
That cat picture is so close to your face when they showed it that way, and I just wondered I'm sorry.
00:23:07
Yeah, I made a t-shirt of that cat picture.
00:23:11
Someone asked me if I would go on Amazon and make t-shirts available to the public.
00:23:15
Maybe that would be a way to help fund of the channel.
00:23:18
I've considered it for about eight seconds and got on with the rest of my day, but it's still back there in the back of my hunt.
00:23:24
Do you think anybody would want t-shirts with my cat picture on it?
00:23:30
Definitely, definitely.
00:23:31
All right.
00:23:31
All right, Jack.
00:23:33
Thanks for calling.
00:23:34
We'll see you later.
00:23:35
All right.
00:23:36
Thank you.
00:23:36
Anyone, Matt, Matt Dilla Huntee, with a picture of me on his leg, dear Golden Jake, 614.
00:23:43
Hi.
00:23:44
Thanks for waiting.
00:23:45
Are you there?
00:23:45
Hi.
00:23:45
Yeah.
00:23:45
Thanks, Seth.
00:23:47
Let's talk.
00:23:48
What are you thinking?
00:23:49
I have been encountering more atheists who seem to buy into, like, right wing culture war narratives, and I guess conspiracy theories,
00:23:59
too.
00:24:00
And I guess I'm wondering how you, maybe in, like, your individual interactions, deal with that.
00:24:06
Like, obviously, someone like Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris aren't talking about illuminati bloodlines to the Catholic Church or whatever, but they do, kind of,
00:24:16
go after more so, like, trans people.
00:24:18
And they do Christian nationalism from my perspective.
00:24:21
I guess I first would ask if you also agree with that or have seen that trend or how you deal with that.
00:24:29
Like, what is the root cause of that?
00:24:30
I don't see a trend.
00:24:32
Have I seen known figures who have kind of, you know, in some ways gone off the rails, Richard Dawkins, whose work changed my life, who wrote the forward to my autobiography.
00:24:44
You know, he posted something a few months ago in praise of Elon Musk.
00:24:49
And I felt my heart died inside.
00:24:51
And then I felt compelled to go and do a bullet point list of all the reasons why Elon Musk is problematic.
00:24:58
And it wasn't even a complete list far from it.
00:25:01
But I was like, you know, I hate to do this.
00:25:02
Richard, it gives me no joy.
00:25:04
But check this out.
00:25:05
Here's a long history of on the record awfulness.
00:25:10
And we have seen some known players.
00:25:13
But overall, I haven't seen a right wing shift.
00:25:18
In fact, many of us in the quote unquote movement were in the crosshairs because the angry right wing factions, they were all a bunch of woke sellouts.
00:25:28
Right.
00:25:28
Yeah, I guess trend was the wrong word.
00:25:30
I just like, when it happens, what like, what do you think caused?
00:25:35
I just think people know it's not an ideology.
00:25:38
It's just like, you know, a single position on a single issue.
00:25:42
Being an atheist doesn't mean that I'm going to be any one thing.
00:25:46
It's not a guarantee.
00:25:47
I'll vote a certain way or have a philosophy or even that I'm not flatter.
00:25:51
There's something else.
00:25:52
We've seen the gamut.
00:25:53
I don't believe in God doesn't guarantee anything else about me or my view of the world.
00:25:59
I have though in my own life, and I've seen this echoed in others.
00:26:03
Once I left a high control religion, I did find as I locked on to humanist values, I found that those were more liberal values.
00:26:14
So if I wanted to embrace LGBT people and their rights, then that would be a liberal value.
00:26:18
It's not going to be conservatism in the United States.
00:26:22
If I'm against the death penalty, well, that's not going to be the Republican party.
00:26:26
If I'm going to be a pro-science guy, then that's definitely not going to be the Mike Johnson's and the Marjorie Taylor grain types.
00:26:32
Even the on-the-street rank and file conservatives in my home state of Oklahoma.
00:26:37
So time and again, I did find that I leaned more left, and I think that's been the case with a lot of people.
00:26:43
When I see somebody who sort of bounces the other way, I mostly roll my eyes and move on.
00:26:48
That's fair.
00:26:49
I appreciate that.
00:26:50
Thanks so much.
00:26:51
Happy New Year.
00:26:52
We'll see you.
00:26:53
All right.
00:26:53
I opened that can of worms with the Elon Musk Richard Dawkins thing.
00:26:58
I guess I need to clarify.
00:27:01
I'll just read what I wrote.
00:27:03
I first posted this on Twitter, and it went viral.
00:27:07
I think I saw 1.7 million views on it within the first 24 hours, and then rather than have 20 pieces of a tweet thread,
00:27:17
I converted it to a sub-stack article.
00:27:20
Richard Dawkins praises Elon Musk question mark, and my blog posted his tweet where he said, "On the 12th of November of this year,
00:27:32
I take possibly four Lord hope in the fact that although Trump is a mandatious, malevolent, transparently evil man, and stupid with it, Musk is not.
00:27:44
He is highly intelligent and diametrically opposed to Trump.
00:27:49
He has the welfare of the world at heart."
00:27:54
And I started my response with, "God damn it, Richard, you're killing me.
00:27:58
It gives me no pleasure, but given Elon Musk's history claims and behaviors, I can't let Dawkins's welfare of the world line pass without comment,
00:28:09
sorry for the length."
00:28:12
And then I listed out the bullet points.
00:28:14
Here they are.
00:28:15
Elon pals around with the Cretanus Tucker Carlson, who pals around with the even more Cretanus Andrew Tate.
00:28:24
Google either, if you want to lose your appetite.
00:28:27
In September, Elon posted that, quote, "Atheism left an empty space secular religion took its place."
00:28:36
He also called child-free adults agents of hedonism.
00:28:43
Elon believes the border security bill was a Trojan horse to create Democrat voters.
00:28:49
He blasted the, quote, "evil George Soros" for buying 200 radio stations as propaganda tools.
00:28:57
Elon apparently forgot that he bought X.
00:29:00
He called climate change interventions communism.
00:29:04
In November 2023, he claimed that the Jews promoted white hatred.
00:29:11
He believed acknowledging and teaching the racism of our past equals the hating of white people is attempted.
00:29:20
Political commentaries, including the March 2024 confusion about why NATO continued to exist after the Warsaw Pact had been dissolved.
00:29:30
The Warsaw Pact actually came after NATO.
00:29:34
In March of 2024, he pledged not to donate to either presidential candidate, because in his words April 27, 2022, quote,
00:29:44
"For Twitter to deserve public trust, it must be politically neutral."
00:29:51
Then he went full MAGA.
00:29:54
Elon welcomed Alex Jones to his platform.
00:29:57
I need say no more about Jones and Sandy Hook.
00:30:02
He spread anti-vax nonsense, including the false implication that myocarditis is a side effect of the vaccine and more dangerous.
00:30:11
Myocarditis risks double following a COVID infection, which makes the vaccine the safer route.
00:30:20
He teamed with Joe Rogan to bait Dr.
00:30:22
Peter Hotez in the wake of RFK Jr.'s interview on the Rogan show.
00:30:28
This resulted in hate-male death threats and a guy showing up at Hotez's home.
00:30:34
For some weird reason, he claimed that Muhammad is the most popular boy's name in most European countries, not even close.
00:30:44
He mused him out why nobody was trying to assassinate Biden Harris, and he posted a photo of Fredo's godfather execution with the sentence "They're taking Biden-fishing."
00:30:59
Soon.
00:30:59
And he actually had that picture of Fredo sitting in the boat right before the guy behind him put a gun to the back of his head, blew his brains out.
00:31:08
Elon shared "Batchit Pizza Gate" nonsense.
00:31:13
He wanted to prosecute reputable scientists and public servant Dr.
00:31:18
Anthony Fauci as a criminal.
00:31:21
It was on the 11th of December 2022.
00:31:24
He tweeted, "My pronouns are "Prosacute Fauci."
00:31:29
He signaled boosts, rustled brand.
00:31:32
He thinks SSRIs do more harm than good in the wake of Taylor Swift's Harris endorsement.
00:31:39
He posted these creepy words.
00:31:41
"Fine Taylor, you win.
00:31:43
I will give you a child and guard your cats with my life."
00:31:50
Check out the Super Bowl photos of Musk hanging out with Saudi princes and Rupert Murdoch.
00:31:57
Elon arbitrarily closed down starlink communications during Ukraine military operations.
00:32:05
He controls two-thirds of the world's satellites.
00:32:10
This is terrifying power for one man.
00:32:14
Beyond the Elon praise, another recent WTF moment came this past April when Richard told the world he is now a "cultural Christian."
00:32:25
This is the same man who penned these words.
00:32:27
The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction.
00:32:33
Jealous and proud of it?
00:32:34
A petty, unjust, unforgiving, control freak.
00:32:38
A vindictive, bloodthirsty, ethnic cleanser.
00:32:41
A misogynistic, homophobic, racist, and fantasidal, genocidal, filocidal, pestilential, megalodromyical, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent,
00:32:53
bully.
00:32:54
And of course, that's from his book The God Delusion.
00:32:57
Dawkin says he embraces the religion's aesthetic while believing none of its claims.
00:33:04
Religious media huffed and waived this as proof that even the planet's most famous atheist knows Christianity is good for the world.
00:33:14
If you'll pardon the expression, "Jesus!" Richard Dawkins is decline greaves me.
00:33:21
A once-great legacy is turned into lazy, unhelpful, and often jaw-droppingly wrong-headed claims which cheat his half-decade as an educator and activist.
00:33:32
He helped me in my deconstruction.
00:33:35
This doesn't negate the harm he's doing now.
00:33:38
It hurts the hearts.
00:33:41
Now, I hesitated publishing this in the first place.
00:33:45
I try to keep this community pretty far from drama, I guess, is the word.
00:33:51
We've seen a lot of free-thought communities, you know, activists who were blasting each other and nuking each other from orbit, naming and shaming and blaming and carrying on in the conflicts.
00:34:01
The dirty laundry, it's all very public.
00:34:03
And so I really try to shield this community from all of that as kind of a steward of your time and attention.
00:34:09
You're not here for drama, you're here for content, you're here for community, you're here for relationships, you're here to be entertained, right, to be informed.
00:34:18
And so, you know, this one, it gave me pause, but I just felt like as somebody who's on the front lines, and given the very public statement that Richard Dawkins has made,
00:34:29
I just needed to go and correct the record.
00:34:33
And someone brought to my attention another example of Elon awfulness that I had neglected to include remember back in 2018 and those 12 kids,
00:34:45
they were all part of a soccer team and they went cave exploring and they got trapped inside the cave and then divers were trying to figure out a way to get them back out.
00:34:55
Elon Musk offered to send some submarine contraption to aid in the rescue.
00:35:03
One of the divers was like, this is a bunch of crap.
00:35:05
It's not going to work.
00:35:06
It's just a PR stunt.
00:35:08
And he told Elon, you can just stick the submarine somewhere.
00:35:12
But Elon responded and he tweeted to his like 30 million followers at the time.
00:35:19
He called the diver who criticized him a pedo guy.
00:35:24
His response was to call that dude a pedophile.
00:35:28
He was sued for libel that went to court and weirdly the jury ruled in Elon's favor.
00:35:36
Anyway, that's what the collar was referencing.
00:35:39
Okay.
00:35:41
585 Rochester, New York.
00:35:45
I got rich.
00:35:45
Hi, Rich.
00:35:46
Thanks for calling.
00:35:48
Hey, how you doing?
00:35:50
I'm well.
00:35:50
What's going on, Rich?
00:35:51
What do you want to talk about?
00:35:53
Yeah, I want to talk about the approach.
00:35:55
I seem to we seem to get as atheists.
00:35:58
By the way, I did meet you at the English All's House.
00:36:01
Oh, yeah, I was the honor to be the keynote speaker at the Robert Green Ingersoll Birthplace Museum for its 30th anniversary dedication.
00:36:11
And it was such an amazing day and Rich, it was good to see you there.
00:36:15
So you wanted to talk about about what specifically?
00:36:19
This notion that me as an atheist has to be a cosmologist of physicists that biologists that evolutionary scientists every time someone says,
00:36:30
well, do you believe in God?
00:36:31
And I said, no, I don't believe there's a God.
00:36:33
And they hit me with these 400 questions from how the universe has created to a biogenesis explain all this, explain all that.
00:36:43
And I'm getting to the point where listen, I'm not going through that with you.
00:36:47
I don't need to be a Nobel Prize winner in biology to have this conversation.
00:36:52
No one asked them to be perfect theologians and know everything, but this constant retort of coming at you as if you're supposed to be all of these things in one.
00:37:03
And it gets frustrating in the conversation.
00:37:05
It drives me crazy.
00:37:07
Before anybody in the chance says it, and I know what you meant when you said cosmologists, you mean cosmologists, but I was going to say if if you want to be a cosmologist, my wife says,
00:37:18
I need Botox.
00:37:19
She says, I've got wrinkles coming up here and I'm starting to look like a lurch in Adam's family.
00:37:24
So I could use a cosmologist, apparently.
00:37:26
I write everywhere we go.
00:37:27
Somebody says, Hey, where do you go to church?
00:37:31
Or are you a Christian?
00:37:32
And we say no.
00:37:34
And they approach us all of a sudden with this weird level of expectation.
00:37:37
They start to vibrate.
00:37:39
Like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:37:39
Well, why don't you believe in God?
00:37:41
Well, what do you think everything came from a blah, blah, blah?
00:37:44
You don't look at the trees.
00:37:44
I see them as insecure.
00:37:47
Miss some are just curious.
00:37:48
Maybe someone to save our souls, but I think some people, it's just so weird for them to be in a physical space with somebody who does not believe.
00:37:57
Do you feel weirdness from these people?
00:37:59
Oh, yeah, I feel it all the time.
00:38:01
And they look at you like, what is wrong with you?
00:38:04
Like what is wrong with your humanity?
00:38:06
How you out there?
00:38:07
You're not believing God.
00:38:09
Do you engage rich?
00:38:11
Do you answer them?
00:38:12
Do you take the time to engage in that way?
00:38:15
Every point, but I'm getting to the point, Seth, well, I'm realizing the engagement is just feeding it.
00:38:20
And after Wallace is, it doesn't matter.
00:38:23
I said, all this stuff, all this philosophical arguments don't matter.
00:38:27
All I need is the proof your God exists.
00:38:29
That's all I need.
00:38:30
I don't need all this other trappings and stuff that try to convince me.
00:38:34
It gets tiring.
00:38:35
And I'm just like, no, I'm not doing this.
00:38:37
You don't owe them an answer.
00:38:39
You can give it if you want, but you're not there to keep them comfortable.
00:38:43
You don't have to make them happy.
00:38:44
You don't have to satisfy any gaps in their knowledge.
00:38:48
You choose to or don't choose to, but you know, if they want to believe fine, the burden of proof is on them.
00:38:54
And you can get on with your day for what it's worth.
00:38:56
Okay, Rich?
00:38:57
Yep.
00:38:57
And by the way, thanks for the work you do in being your soul and experience was great with you and you're a good man.
00:39:06
Rich, you're a great encouragement to me.
00:39:08
And I appreciate your call.
00:39:10
Happy New Year.
00:39:11
We'll see you.
00:39:12
I can't tell you how many times somebody said, oh, you're an atheist and they're religious and before you know what I'm being pounded over the head with questions.
00:39:20
You know, they're right up in my space.
00:39:21
Come on.
00:39:22
What about this?
00:39:22
And what do you think about that?
00:39:23
And how did you get there and tell me your story?
00:39:25
And who wounded you and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, it's exhausting.
00:39:29
And then I have a cost-benefit decision about, am I here for this?
00:39:33
Do I want to engage?
00:39:35
Will I miss an opportunity if I don't engage?
00:39:37
Is it even worth it at this moment given the circumstances surrounding me?
00:39:43
Excessing.
00:39:45
And I feel bad about that because engagement is supposed to be part of what we do.
00:39:49
But you felt it.
00:39:50
I know you felt it.
00:39:53
I did a speech on a 10 some years ago where I rattled off right at the beginning of the presentation, all of these apologetics arguments that to somebody may feel fresh and novel and new,
00:40:03
but to you and me, it's just, God, it's just old hats like a broken record.
00:40:09
You know, I'm not a monkey.
00:40:11
My granddaddy was a monkey.
00:40:18
Evolution is just a theory.
00:40:26
The God of the gaps.
00:40:26
It takes more faith to be an atheist.
00:40:26
Teach the controversy.
00:40:26
As if a controversy about creationism exists in science class, you were never a true Christian in the first place because if you had been a Christian, you would have never left Christianity.
00:40:36
You took this verse out of context.
00:40:38
It was a different time.
00:40:41
You need the Holy Spirit to guide you into the proper meaning.
00:40:45
I had a personal experience.
00:40:47
And you can't tell me it didn't happen.
00:40:50
And that it wasn't real.
00:40:52
Better safe than sorry.
00:40:54
Right?
00:40:54
Pascal's wager.
00:40:56
I'd rather believe and be wrong because even then what have I wasted?
00:41:00
And of course you and I are like, well, you wasted your whole life on an untruth.
00:41:05
Which is a waste.
00:41:07
How did something come from nothing?
00:41:10
You've seen that meme floating around, right?
00:41:13
Just a series of straw men.
00:41:16
Atheism, the belief that there was once absolutely nothing and nothing happened to the nothing until the nothing magically exploded for no reason,
00:41:27
creating everything and everywhere.
00:41:29
Then a bunch of the exploded everything magically rearranged itself for no reason into self replicating bits which then turned into dinosaurs.
00:41:41
That's a popular meme that's being shared on religious sites.
00:41:46
It's just so much wrong with it.
00:41:49
A few of the other ones real fast, the human eye too complex to have evolved.
00:41:54
Scientist X is a Christian.
00:41:56
He believes in God.
00:41:58
You say you believe in science.
00:42:00
Listen to that scientist.
00:42:03
All religions deserve respect.
00:42:06
The United States was founded by Christians as a Christian nation.
00:42:10
They discovered Noah's Ark on a mountain in the Middle East.
00:42:14
There are no atheists and foxholes.
00:42:17
You know, if it's not true, why has it been around for thousands of years?
00:42:23
Ignore the Old Testament.
00:42:25
Read the New Testament.
00:42:28
Where do you get your morals from?
00:42:30
Hitler was an atheist.
00:42:33
You just want to kill God so you can be your own God.
00:42:38
It's not a religion.
00:42:40
It's a relationship.
00:42:43
Darwin had a deathbed conversion.
00:42:46
Even Darwin accepted Jesus and rejected on the origin of species.
00:42:52
His own book he discarded as false before he went to be with the Lord.
00:42:57
I had a near death or after death experience.
00:43:00
There are no transitional fossils.
00:43:03
Prove God doesn't exist.
00:43:06
Why are you stealing my joy?
00:43:08
You know, Seth, for somebody who doesn't believe in God, you should talk about him and awful lot.
00:43:18
And then I'll wrap it up with you may not believe in Jesus, but he believes in you.
00:43:28
Yeah, it's hard to engage when people come at you with that stuff.
00:43:34
But I think we need to.
00:43:37
But it's hard, you know, it's just hard.
00:43:40
More of your calls still to come?
00:43:43
Short break.
00:43:44
Be right back.
00:43:46
The new year upon us, I don't know what it is about getting older,
00:43:56
but time is flying.
00:43:57
When I was a kid, if I wanted to do something and my parents said, okay, we'll do it in a week.
00:44:08
I want to go to the zoo or whatever.
00:44:10
Okay, fine.
00:44:12
We can't go this Saturday.
00:44:14
We'll go a week from Saturday.
00:44:17
And I was like, oh my God, it might as well be 10 years.
00:44:22
It's forever.
00:44:23
I can't wait a week.
00:44:26
And then you get to middle age.
00:44:28
A week pass is like that.
00:44:30
Like what?
00:44:32
What?
00:44:32
Where did the week go?
00:44:34
Somebody sends you a text and you look down in days of past and you haven't responded.
00:44:38
Wait a minute.
00:44:40
I thought was I going to respond to that?
00:44:41
Where did the days go?
00:44:43
It was just February and all of a sudden it's January 2025.
00:44:48
Where did those months go?
00:44:51
What's that line?
00:44:52
That life is like a roll of toilet paper.
00:44:54
It spins faster and faster and faster.
00:44:57
The closer you get to the end of it.
00:45:00
Little toilet paper philosophy for you there.
00:45:03
Anyway.
00:45:06
Is it Makayla, Michael, Michelle?
00:45:09
I've got an odd looking spelling here at 918.
00:45:12
Are you there?
00:45:13
Hi.
00:45:14
Please pronounce your name so I don't screw it up.
00:45:19
It's Makayla.
00:45:20
Makayla, thank you for that.
00:45:22
Makayla, talk to me.
00:45:23
What's on your mind?
00:45:24
So I'm kind of from your neck of the woods.
00:45:26
I'm from Northeast Oklahoma.
00:45:28
So I a lot of things that you talk about.
00:45:31
I resonate with.
00:45:33
You know, I grew up going to revivals and you know, I grew up in the church.
00:45:38
And one thing I've struggled with is I have a kid and he he's autistic.
00:45:42
So he was nonverbal for a few years.
00:45:45
He's all cut up now.
00:45:47
You know, he can speak, you know, really well now and all that.
00:45:50
But because of that communication barrier that we had, there's so many concepts and things that are difficult to explain to him because he's still kind of playing catch up,
00:46:01
you know, with communication.
00:46:03
And he's only he's only eight.
00:46:05
He's getting ready to turn nine and recently he started having like these existential crises where he's crying and genuinely like about to have a panic attack because he's afraid of dying.
00:46:19
He's afraid of what happens when we die or what doesn't happen when we die and he spend a lot of time with my family and their Christian and and I that's a concept that I've really just avoided with him because again,
00:46:30
you know, you hung up on certain things and I don't know how to explain it without confusing him.
00:46:36
How do you even broach that subject with the kid, you know.
00:46:40
My goodness, my lack of qualifications when handling an autistic child with these existential questions and play, I'm just I'm staggered by my really,
00:46:52
I am not the guy.
00:46:54
I don't know how would you even broach that with a kid period?
00:47:01
I mean, just anything, any of your thoughts are, you know, my tactic is the same that I use when I talk to religious adults.
00:47:09
You say, well, if you don't live forever, if you know, you're going to die and then it's over, why bother aren't you afraid of not living forever and going to heaven doesn't it make this world meaningless to you.
00:47:23
And I take that as an opportunity to really flip the script and say, this is amazing that we are born against all the odds.
00:47:36
You know, the odds are against us ever existing and look, here we are with our feet on the ground, we're standing under the rays of the sun.
00:47:43
We get to live and love and have experiences and set goals and generate purpose and do stuff and we get to do it for decades, decades and decades and knowing that it doesn't last forever actually makes it even more precious.
00:47:57
And if it was a young person, I would say, look at all the time you have don't waste those moments.
00:48:02
This is exciting.
00:48:04
There's no need to be afraid.
00:48:06
And when someone says, well, what's it like when I die or after I die, I'm always like, well, it's like before I was born.
00:48:13
Do you remember before you were born and they say, nope.
00:48:16
And I say, well, it's it's going to be like that.
00:48:19
Is it Mark Twain who said that I hadn't existed for billions of years before now and I hadn't suffered the slightest inconvenience from it, right?
00:48:27
I wouldn't inconvenience by not existing at all, but it adds an urgency and I think a beauty and a preciousness to the finite moments we have here.
00:48:36
You have a long, exciting life.
00:48:38
You have so many possibilities.
00:48:40
Don't obsess about the end.
00:48:42
Let's get into the now and the tomorrow and the next year on a kind of where I went with him.
00:48:47
Good.
00:48:47
Good.
00:48:48
I think you're in duty as the only thing I could think to say to him was that, you know, you're just a kid.
00:48:55
There's so much that you don't need to worry about right now.
00:48:58
All you need to worry about is being a kid and being happy.
00:49:00
You're going to have a very long life and you have many, many people that love you.
00:49:05
I think part of this too might be a redirecting of energy.
00:49:08
Again, this is just somebody talking.
00:49:11
But for all the time and energy that's being focused toward the end, the end, the end.
00:49:16
I think this might be an opportunity to redirect the focus into something specific.
00:49:22
You know what?
00:49:22
Let's go discover something new today that makes life better.
00:49:26
Let's go find an example of things that are good about being alive right now.
00:49:31
Let's go come up with a goal that we want to achieve in the next six months year, two years.
00:49:36
What do you think you would want to do?
00:49:38
Let's do a positive.
00:49:39
And I think that might be a great redirection of mental resources and focus away from the negative and the scary into something proactive and positive.
00:49:49
And another benefit of that is that it is engagement in the world that we are trying to enjoy in this temporary life.
00:49:57
I don't know what it's worth, Michaela, but that's what I got.
00:50:00
No, I love it.
00:50:02
I really appreciate it.
00:50:04
You're much appreciated and let me know how it plays out.
00:50:10
But I mean, reach out to somebody who actually knows what the hell they're talking about.
00:50:11
So I don't feel so guilty about giving you my advice.
00:50:15
You know, but that's the same advice I would give to anybody anywhere, anybody anywhere.
00:50:19
You know, seize the day, make it the most of the moment.
00:50:22
And I think it applies across the board for what it's worth.
00:50:25
For sure.
00:50:26
Thank you very much.
00:50:27
Get you later.
00:50:27
We'll see.
00:50:29
Yeah, that reminds me of an article that came out years ago in the Huffington Post by a guy named Brett Gallagher.
00:50:35
It was called why you really, really don't want to live forever.
00:50:40
What was interesting is it posted in the God/Christianity section of the Huffington Post, and I thought that was odd.
00:50:51
But let me pull that up real fast because it would be a good way to cap the show.
00:50:57
Let's see, Brett Gallagher, why you really, really don't want to live forever, it says this.
00:51:03
I honestly think humans get so hung up on living forever because we feel like we don't have enough time.
00:51:10
We think that one lifetime just isn't enough.
00:51:13
We cling to the idea of eternity because it feels secure.
00:51:17
I remember a time when heaven was the lens through which I saw all of life.
00:51:23
I was taught as where many of my peers that life here on earth was a test.
00:51:28
Nothing mattered except getting into heaven, nothing.
00:51:32
Suffering was fine as long as we ended up in our mansions and paradise after we died.
00:51:37
Having no friends because we had to weed out all the cool ones who said dirty words, no problem.
00:51:43
We just have Jesus to push us on the celestial swing set.
00:51:48
Dismissing all that inconvenient scientific data because our book of spells told us God made us zap zap style peace of cake.
00:51:58
We knew the truth, everyone else was just a sucker sipping the worldly cool aid.
00:52:04
In the meantime, we were to sit still and vote Republican because the Democrats would usher in the reign of the anti-Christ, just like the Bible said would happen,
00:52:15
which is what we wanted since it was God's will, but never mind that.
00:52:21
Over the years, I would finally succumb to the irresistible seduction of education, people with different opinions, and the ministry of common sense.
00:52:32
Whether you believe in God or whether you only believe in Oprah, I think we can all agree that heaven, at least as traditionally promoted is for suckers.
00:52:43
If you feel a sudden urge to defend your very own pie in the sky that's cool, save it for the blood bath, and by that I mean the comment section.
00:52:54
You may think you want to live forever, but you don't.
00:52:58
You really, really, really don't.
00:53:01
Don't believe me?
00:53:03
Well, let's play this out logically if you live forever.
00:53:07
There's only three possibilities.
00:53:09
Conscious, eternal existence, unconscious, eternal existence, or reincarnation, where you only remember one lifetime at a time,
00:53:20
which do you prefer?
00:53:22
And he goes through these three scenarios.
00:53:25
I'll continue to read here.
00:53:28
He says, "conscious eternity."
00:53:32
This is by far the most widely held belief when it comes to heaven.
00:53:34
Somehow our consciousness will survive the death of our mortal bodies and be transported, sucked up into God, the cosmos, to some other dimension-ish place that somehow defies the known laws of physics,
00:53:49
or at least operates on some plane of existence that's more or less magic by our standards.
00:53:55
We all agree this place is supposed to be at least pleasant, if not borderline or gazmic.
00:54:02
And hey, while that sounds all good and reasonable at first, let's consider just what eternity would mean.
00:54:10
Imagine the longest day you've ever had.
00:54:13
Maybe some of us have been awake for a couple of days.
00:54:17
Maybe even more than that.
00:54:18
Most of us start feeling really weird when we've stayed up all night.
00:54:23
I personally feel like I'm in a time warp.
00:54:25
Other people have started their new day when I'm basically still working on finishing up yesterday.
00:54:32
It's just not right.
00:54:33
We all need closure on our days.
00:54:37
We're supposed to have a beginning and an end.
00:54:40
In an eternal heaven scenario, we would have no need for sleep.
00:54:46
It would just be one super long endless day.
00:54:50
If we did sleep, it'd be an insult to conscious heaven since we'd be choosing unconsciousness.
00:54:57
What would we be dreaming about?
00:55:00
Heaven?
00:55:00
No, we would be awake forever.
00:55:04
Okay, I know you're thinking it would be heaven, so we'd have some kind of super heaven brain that didn't get all weirded out by how long our day would be.
00:55:13
I'm sure we'd also have God bodies that never got tired.
00:55:17
We'd also never be bored ever.
00:55:20
Why?
00:55:21
Because heaven is about being content.
00:55:24
This means that either heaven would give us an unending supply of entertainment options or we'd be forced to like everything we would be doing.
00:55:35
Therein lies an interesting point to ponder.
00:55:38
What if heaven couldn't please everyone?
00:55:42
Now that we can imagine what it would be like to simply exist in a conscious way in this heavenly realm, let's revisit just what it would mean to be there forever.
00:55:52
Humans accustomed to living lives of roughly 70 to 90 plus years would never die.
00:56:00
One thousand years would pass by, one million years would pass by, one billion, one trillion, one hundred,
00:56:12
trillion, 99 trillion, trillion and on and on and on.
00:56:18
Try to perceive that quantity of time.
00:56:21
Impossible.
00:56:23
I know.
00:56:23
Just try.
00:56:25
What if I said something like, and after all that time, you're no closer to X and you feel in the blank than when you have started.
00:56:35
Did you think of the word dying?
00:56:38
Did you think being done?
00:56:40
Did you think not existing anymore?
00:56:43
Did you think to yourself?
00:56:44
Wow, eternity does kind of sound like overkill or at least a little unnecessary.
00:56:51
Honestly, I think a number much, much lower would sound reasonable.
00:56:55
Can you even imagine living for a few thousand years?
00:56:58
Really?
00:56:59
Think about that.
00:57:00
Isn't that long enough?
00:57:03
Maybe today you think you need more time to make things right, but who needs eternity?
00:57:08
That's like saying I need unlimited data from my cell phone carrier.
00:57:12
When realistically I only need like 20 gigs a month.
00:57:17
I actually need much less of course, but give me this one thing he says.
00:57:21
So why would you want to live consciously forever?
00:57:25
If it's anything like consciousness as we know it, it would be hell.
00:57:29
If it's something completely different than consciousness as we know it, then we have no basis to judge its benefits.
00:57:37
I can't wait to experience the joys of something that is completely unlike joy as I know it.
00:57:44
Hooray.
00:57:46
Second option, unconscious eternity.
00:57:50
This one is interesting because we've already done this one.
00:57:54
All those trillions of years that the universe existed before the earth was made.
00:58:01
I have to jump in here by the way.
00:58:03
That's actually a factual error.
00:58:06
The universe is billions, not trillions of years old, but okay, we'll go with it.
00:58:11
That's what unconscious eternity feels like.
00:58:15
I mean, it's not like you were sitting around bored out of your mind waiting to be born.
00:58:19
You were totally okay with it.
00:58:21
Now imagine that you die, but some part of you lives on, maybe with God, or in some type of soul-sleep setup, but you're not conscious of anything.
00:58:33
Honestly, it doesn't matter if you're unconscious for a minute or for 28 universe lifetimes, unconscious existence is all the same to you.
00:58:43
Your atoms and/or soul stuff are free to float about deep space or the 10th dimensional soccer field as long as necessary.
00:58:54
Maybe you'll get a new skin suit.
00:58:57
Maybe you won't.
00:58:58
So while there's not a huge downside to unconscious eternity, there's not really any difference between this idea and simply dying.
00:59:07
If you're not conscious, you're pretty much dead.
00:59:10
If you're not dead, it's still like conscious eternity, a way of living that is so unlike human life, that it's not anything to look forward to.
00:59:19
And finally, reincarnation.
00:59:22
I think this is the most intriguing perspective on living forever because in a way you get three in one.
00:59:31
If you perpetually reincarnate, you may indeed be more or less stuck in a loop of death and rebirth forever.
00:59:40
The difference would be that instead of existing on a linear timeline, you'd be existing in a circular one, for example.
00:59:47
You could possibly be stuck in a loop that is primarily happening during the 18th century over and over and over, but it could go on and on seemingly forever if you reincarnate into a new 18th century human or insect or blade of grass,
01:00:07
American flag, whatever each time.
01:00:10
That hundred years might resemble 13 billion before you're done with it.
01:00:16
What's very interesting about reincarnation is that you don't remember your previous lives, and that way it's no different than living once and dying once.
01:00:27
Wait, maybe atheists are just pissed off Buddhists,
01:00:39
he says.
01:00:42
And if there is even one second between your multiple lives that one second was most likely an unconscious second, so you might as well have never existed at all before your new and hopefully improved upcoming life, since you'd have no recollection of that second you didn't exist.
01:00:55
And when you do reincarnate, are you really you anymore?
01:01:00
If you are Jim in this life and Pam in the next, then is it really you at all?
01:01:07
Maybe we're all the same person or maybe the same universal consciousness making the rounds to everyone, kind of like quantum leap.
01:01:16
So why would you want to live a reboot style life forever?
01:01:19
Do you really want to be the main character in Bill Murray's Groundhog Day without the benefit of the information learned from yesterday?
01:01:29
I mean, isn't the whole purpose of reincarnation to break the cycle of suffering and death, i.e.
01:01:38
to finally die and just stay dead?
01:01:41
In closing, he says, "I don't know if there is an afterlife for what it would look like, I don't, but I do believe in heaven."
01:01:52
I honestly think humans get so hung up on living forever because we feel like we don't have enough time.
01:01:59
We think that one lifetime just isn't enough.
01:02:02
We cling to the idea of eternity because it feels secure.
01:02:07
I've had that same feeling multiple times during this finite life though.
01:02:12
Have you ever felt the embrace of a loved one who kindly whispered to you, you're safe now, or you don't have to be afraid ever again?
01:02:21
In that moment, you didn't need reassurance that trillions of years would pass without a moment of discomfort.
01:02:29
We can experience the miracle of that moment in the temporal way it was meant to be felt, eternity or not.
01:02:38
I think many of us equate heaven with such a feeling, like a hug that's waiting for us on the other side to say that everything will be okay.
01:02:48
The pain is over, you're safe now.
01:02:50
Who wouldn't want that?
01:02:53
I don't ridicule the idea of heaven in general, or think those who seek it are merely small people looking for a way to cope with the fear of death.
01:03:03
I do, however, believe that heaven isn't cheap.
01:03:08
It goes much further than the superficial themes of pleasure and reward.
01:03:13
Heaven is when you carry your kid on your shoulders after a sports game on the way back to your car.
01:03:19
Heaven is when you walk across the stage to take your diploma from the president of the university.
01:03:26
Heaven is emerging from poverty or lowering ladders for others to climb out.
01:03:33
It is a baby's laughter, a negative cancer screening, or marriage vows renewed.
01:03:40
No, I do not believe what we seek is life eternal.
01:03:45
We simply want to leave here on our terms when we are good and ready.
01:03:50
Are you ready to die?
01:03:53
It's okay if you're not.
01:03:54
Just stop waiting for heaven.
01:04:01
Pretty good stuff.
01:04:03
The article written by Brett Gallagher, G-A-L-L-L-A-H-E-R, titled Why You Really Really Don't Want to Live Forever.
01:04:14
Seems like a good way to finish the broadcast today.
01:04:17
Happy New Year, and I will see you back here in a few days.
01:04:21
Take care.
01:04:21
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01:04:24
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01:04:37
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01:04:51
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