Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 796: Intelligent Design Discussion With Seth Andrews

Episode Date: October 7, 2024

 

Get into your Kia today. Come see us at Kia of North Austin and drive one of our all-wheel-drive vehicles. Check out the 2024 Kia Telluride SX Prestige Nightfall, Panoramic Sunroof, Heated and Cooled Seats, 12-inch screen with navigation and Nappa Leather. Drive the all-new 2024 Kia Sportage SX Prestige, Panoramic Sunroof, Harman Kardon Stereo, Blind Spot Monitors, Adaptive Cruise Control, and All-Wheel Drive. Jackpot City is the home of all things casino.

We've built a world-class lineup of classic casino games such as Roulette and Blackjack, and crafted a virtual range of the best slots, including Atlantean Treasures. Everything's online. Everything's ready. Everything's for you. So whenever you're feeling playful, head to Jackpot City and you'll be endlessly entertained. Jackpot City, casino games perfectly made for you.

Proud partner of the Toronto Raptors. Must be 19 plus, Ontario residents only. Please play responsibly. Gambling problem? Visit connexontario.ca. Today's show is brought to you by adamandeve.com. Go to adamandeve.com right now and you'll get 50% off just about any item. All you have to do is enter the code word GLORY at checkout.

Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended. The explicit tag is there for a reason. Recording live from Glory Hole Studios in Chicago and beyond, this is Cognitive Dissonance. Every episode we blast anyone who gets in our way. We bring critical thinking, skepticism, and irreverence to any topic that makes the news, makes it big, or makes us mad. It's skeptical. It's political. And there is no welcome at today is Thursday, October the third and Cecil, we've got a guest, my friend we have on Seth Andrews from the Thinking Atheist.

Seth, welcome back. It's been far too long, my friend. It's so good to be back. You's been far too long, my friend. It's so good to be back. You'll need to forgive me. I'm a little raspy. I've been fighting, it's not COVID, but Natalie and I have both been sick.

It's funny whenever I took a COVID test, right? I took it, I was like, so I went in and that's no fun. I know, let's jam the Q-tip up your nose and do all that shit. But it's funny because I was talking to somebody in my relative circle here in Oklahoma, Bible Belt Jesus Town, Oklahoma. And I'm like, well, it's not COVID.

I took the test and the first thing out of their mouth was, well, you know, it doesn't make any difference. They're gonna say it's COVID so that they can make you wear a mask in public and then quarantine you because freedom, hashtag freedom, that's those liberals. And I was just like, Jesus Christ, you know, I just want to sneeze in peace. Just leave me alone.

I love the idea that like when you're sick, wearing a mask is like, that's just polite. We should have always been doing that. Huge parts of the world have always been like, you know what, actually sneezing right into other people's fucking open mouths is rude. And we're just like, well, I don't know, a bald eagle don't wear no mask. What am I gonna do about my freedom sneezes? I would like to take all of these people,

all of these guys running around with the big Trump flag on their pickup truck and just send them to spend five minutes in Japan. Because long before COVID, Japan understood, right, that it's actually a good thing. If and when possible to wear a mask. We see them do it all the time and we're traveling. It's become a common thing.

And, you know, I don't know. I I say to Natalie that I think if the human species goes extinct, we'll either go, we'll probably go extinct of cruelty or stupidity or both. A combination. It's gonna be both. It's gonna be both. It's gonna be both. I was telling the guys on the dad podcast the other day

that I still wear a mask. Like if I go to like a doctor's office for any reason, like to, you know, for any visit at all, and that if I'm sick, I'm bringing my wife, whatever. If I go to the fucking pharmacy, even I'm going into the pharmacy to like buy, I'm like, these'm bringing my wife, whatever. If I go to the fucking pharmacy, even I'm going into the pharmacy to like, I'm like, these are places where sick people are. And they're just like, no one wears a mask anymore. And I'm like, yeah, but that's insane.

Like we should have always been the idea that I've been raw dogging the world with my fucking face for 40 years. Open mouth and nose the whole world. I just I can't even imagine going into a CVS where people go because I feel like, shit, I gotta go to the, and I'm just like, yeah, let me lick the fucking self checkout while I mean. What is wrong with us? After they're done typing their pin number and you just lick the pin pad. Right. You know, years ago, I used to take this CTA and I used to take the metro out here into Chicago.

And I would be sick. I'd be sick once a month. One time a month I would be sick. After COVID hit, I used to have to go into Chicago for certain things on the CTA. I was never sick once when I wore a mask. Not once. I never got sick a single time. Would you want to have surgery if your surgeon was like, yeah, I'm not wearing a mask? They obviously work.

They just obviously work. Whatever you do, don't get surgery from the surgeon who has American flag gown on. Just don't let us stay away. They've got a bandana. Yeah, if he's got it. They take the tube top and they just move it up and under their nose. Yeah.

Well, it's funny how dismissive they are. We had someone, a next door neighbor of mine, who back when COVID was at its height, he died. He was a man in his upper 60s and he passed away. And I was telling somebody at a family function, it was an outdoor thing, so we thought it was safe. And I'm like, yeah, you know, he passed away. And the first response by a COVID denier on my family tree was, well, did he have a pre-existing condition? And I thought, well, it's so dismissive. And then my second thought was, who doesn't have a pre-existing condition? And I thought, well, it's so dismissive.

And then my second thought was, who doesn't have a pre-existing? I mean, you could have high blood pressure, cholesterol. I mean, it could be anything. Most of us are doing something, especially as we age, mitigating some sort of a thing in our lives. And so this dismissal of someone's death, because, well, hey, sometimes you gotta weed out the weak ones. out the weak ones. I know that kind of deal is really pretty pathetic.

It was interesting that they think that too, because they believe in intelligence design. Why would they think you would need to weed out anything weak? Wouldn't that would that would feels like it wouldn't wouldn't match. And that actually is a great segue into what we reason. One of the reasons why we wanted to have you on today, Seth, is you've been making the rounds with a pretty interesting talk at a bunch of these different conferences. And so we wanted to have you come on

and sort of talk us through this sort of keynote you've been giving at a bunch of different places. So what is it called and what is it? Well, it's based on an audio book that I had narrated for Dr. Abby Hafer. She is a zoologist and a human anatomy professor. And she had written a book a few years ago called The Not So Intelligent Designer.

Nice. Why evolution explains the human body and intelligent design does not. And I noticed that she didn't have an audio book. Well, that's kind of my wheelhouse, you know. And on a lark, I kind of reached out and I said, hey, Dr. Hafer, you're a communicator. You don't need me.

But if you ever wanted to collaborate, I would be honored to voice this audio book for you. And she was like, let's do it. Wait, real quick, when you reached out, I hope you sent a voice memo for that. Because like an email would not have done that justice, like given that voice. Like, am I getting an email?

And at the end of the message I just said, Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. Yeah. But it's such a ripe topic because you and I, we're all surrounded by those people who are like, well, look at the trees. Or you know, if the earth was just a little bit closer to the sun, we would fry and if it was just a little further, we would freeze. It must all be designed with us in mind.

It's kind of that Douglas Adams thing where it's the water in the pothole going, wow, this pothole seems formed perfectly just for me. And so I told Dr. Hafer after the book was published, I said, look, I, I'd like to do a whole presentation wrapped around this sucker. And I'm going to inject a bunch of my own stuff in it. I'm going to lean heavily into your book and the work of other biologists. And so the speech, which is on YouTube, it's called Seth Andrews versus God,

who is the better intelligent designer. And I just go mano-a-mano, you know, two men enter, one man leaves, who has the better design ideas. One imaginary man is Seth Andrews, yeah. And it's fun, you know, I've done two years of pretty heavy material out there. I mean, I did a, I toured with a speech on sexual shaming and purity culture

when we did one called Blood Cult, where we talked about how Christianity really is a blood cult. I mean, in what other fashion would we say, I'm washed in the blood? Are you, you know, I'm covered in the blood. We drink his blood and eat his flesh on communion Sunday. But that was kind of a heavy one.

I actually had people walk out on that speech. Oh, wow. But I wanted to do something that was a little more light. So it's actually, there's a lot of science in it, but there's also a lot of fun. I'm really proud of it. I'm reminded, like, as you're talking, like, if you've ever been to a city which was created over time and entirely by accident, like I'll use London as an example. And you look at a map of London, right? London, just- Paris too, same thing. It's fucking insane, right?

Because there was no intentional design there. It's so London functions, you can learn it if you're the smartest fucking possible person that ever. It's an impossible city to navigate unless you're a local Londoner, you spend an enormous amount. Compare that to something like Chicago, which burned down. And then they were like, well, let's build it with intentionality. And so it's a grid. It's a very simple grid. It's very easy

to look at. It's like the thing that is built just kind of organically is a train wreck. It's a mess. It's like it's a bunch of band-aids covering up other band-aids covering up other band-aids versus the thing that's actually designed is like that's a grid. Yeah. Like that's how it should be. It's just squares. Those are easy. Some engineers make the valid point too that people see something wildly complex and immediately think well if it's complex it must be designed but even engineers know that the best designs are actually boiled down to their essence, right? They make them as the as least complex. You know what I'm trying to say?

They try to make them irreducible complexes. If they're unnecessarily complicated, then it's poor design. You want to really boil things down to the absolute essentials. And so this complexity thing and people are like, wow, look at how crazy our genome is and whatnot. Well, I think it doesn't mean there's design because the best design wouldn't have non-beneficial mutations and other mutations for cancers and all those types of things. So there's no like, there's no inherent elegance to the human construction, biologically.

And I say that as a man who's had back surgery, because like, why are we built like this? Because we're just trash. Yeah. It's very obvious. Anybody who's over the age of 40, who has woken up in a human body has been like, there's no way somebody did this on purpose. Everything about this is wrong. I have a cat.

My cat's entire, his job is to do no exercise ever and lay around and just fucking eat treats. And he can dunk a basketball. That cat, yeah, for real. Like that cat could be like at a moment's notice, he can do like fucking quadruple back flips. If I wake up tomorrow and like my back doesn't hurt, my knees aren't sore, my hips aren't fucked up,

that's a Christmas miracle. And I sleep. It's a will on the next day, for sure. Right. You know what I mean? Like if I have to do anything, oh, I put away the groceries too hard, I need a fucking surgery now.

Like live in a human body literally once. I don't understand that people are like, oh man, that's designed. Did you not wake up inside of you? Everything in this thing is clearly an accident. Anyone who's seen me naked has been like, nobody did that on purpose. I wake up and I'm like, honey, I think I slept wrong. And I'm like, who would have thunk when I was in my 20s that full contact

sleeping would be an injury sport? Right. You're like, I'm on a fucking seven inch memory foam mattress. And I'm like, it hurts. So like, well, Dr. Hafer's book and my speech both start with testicles. Because even if you want to grab someone's attention, you go straight for the groin. Right. You go right for the nether regions. And so that's kind of that's kind of what without being too base.

But I'm like, what the hell? And then I'm able to bring to attention. There are so many other creatures in the animal kingdom who have gotten a better deal than we got when it came to our reproductive organs, both men and women. And we, we get into a lot of that kind of stuff, but you know, it's fun. I start out and I finished the speech with balls and everybody applauded and nobody walked out. I call that a win. I call that a win. So why are balls bad design?

Tell me why balls are bad design. Well, we think about the fact that sperm production has to take place outside the body because the core of our bodies is simply too warm for sperm production. So it's dropped down in this little separate pouch, which I call in the speech. I call it the wrinkle purse. But if we look in the animal kingdom, there are other creatures, frogs have their testes actually up in their core. I think it was hairs and rats and certain mice

can actually draw their testicles up into the body when they're not needed. So I'm like retractable balls. I want that. Give me the little handle and I'll just whenever I don't need them. Just reel in your nuts whenever you don't want them out there. It's real in your nuts.

That's intelligent design. It's funny. I've heard that it's like, well, I've heard the opposite argument, right? Where like the ability of the, the, I've heard the opposite argument, right? Where like the, the ability of the balls to like contract and to drop and whatever, to regulate temperature. And I'm like, or you could just have sperm that doesn't have to be at that temperature.

That's right. Like if you're just like, it's like, it's like, they look at the problem, they look at the solution to the problem without ever supposing that the problem itself is fucking stupid. The problem itself is a stupid problem. Here's my favorite part. The designer then made the scrotum and he said, let's load this sack with Uber sensitive pain veins and then let's place it in a spot that is super easy to kick. Why would you do this bad design?

It really is genuinely the worst design. There's been times like sometimes you just like jump the wrong way or you like accidentally knee yourself in the balls and it's just the worst. It's just genuinely the worst. There's also two other animals. They can sometimes share a lot easier in the, not only the bearing of children, but like there's other animals out there that can,

like the males can help with the actual birth of the child. We don't have any of that. It's just all like, nope, that's just on you ladies. Sorry, we're going to have the really sensitive sack outside our body. You're going to actually do all the other work. It's like we get into the birthing process for women and who thinks that shit up, right?

Where you have to deliver the baby through a circle of bone that is smaller than the baby's head. And certainly before modern medicine, we saw just the process of childbirth was often lethal to both the mothers and the babies. I mean, it was just horrible. And even now in underdeveloped countries,

we see a tremendous amount of damage done, harm done, mortality, those types of things. And it's just bad design, especially when we see other animals that they got a better deal. And what's interesting when I speak to believers is they roll back into Eve's curse in the book of Genesis, Oh, geez, come on.

Because Eve ate the fruit. And so part of her curse, God said that your desire will be for your husband, meaning when she wants to have sex with her husband, it's actually part of a curse. She's now submissive sexually to him. And in pain, you will give birth. And then all of her generations would then have to be in agony to deliver a child,

which means that I guess God shrank the woman's pelvis in the garden. He literally said, okay, fine. And he altered her body so that then it would be agonizing. Not good design. But there's like a zebra out there, right? Who's like, well, why the fuck does it hurt for me? I didn't need a fucking apple

Like there's like every other animal that like clearly if you've ever watched any mammal give birth none of them are like this is cool This is a chill day. It looks like it sucks, right? It just always they either look entirely indifferent so the predators don't eat them in a moment of distress or it looks like what it is, which is like, oh, fuck, this sucks. They didn't like, is there a fucking zebra curse? Was there like a fucking like cow Eve that seduced cow Adam?

Because they're like lowing on the ground being like, oh, this blows so bad. Why like God's just like, yeah. And then all the rest of them too. Thank you for that visual. Thank you for that. I will never extract that from my mind. No, no. When you were, so we know that your past has a deep religiosity to it. When you were religious, was this something that you believed? Did you believe in an intelligent designer? Because I was religious before I became an atheist, right?

And for me personally, I never once questioned science. Like my whole life, I never once had a moment where I thought God is in control of something like that. God was a different thing for me. What about you? Did you have any of this sort of thought that was in your religiosity? Well, just a little bit of a preamble to set it up.

I went to public schools until I was in third grade. And I came home and I told my mother about all the amazing things I had learned in home room about Neanderthal man. Well, you know what's not in the book of Genesis is Neanderthal man. Well, you know what's not in the book of Genesis is Neanderthal man. So mom freaked out and she grabbed us all and she placed us in this little pod, this little individual private school that was straight up young earth, Bible literalist,

Adam and Eve in the garden thing. And it's not just that we were taught this stuff was true. And the science books were a joke. It was this stuff like, why did God make the trees green? I mean, it's a totally, everything's a leading question. God, I wanna know why though. Yeah. I don't remember.

I obviously passed because I got a diploma. You faked it till you made it. There you go. But we were taught to distrust the outside world. This is how cults operate, right? We only receive the information on the inside. That's trustworthy. And then everybody else is dangerous

and they're propagating bad ideas. And this was especially true with scientists. We all had this idea that them secular scientists were all a, they're all a cabal of evil doers. They're down in the star chamber, you know, twirling their mustaches and plotting the death of God. And I'm only mildly being facetious there. But when you are indoctrinated at an early age

to believe fantastic things, and then you are locked into an information silo in that way, especially under the threat of hell, it is common for some people to spend long years believing the unbelievable. So I was, I mean, there was Adam and there was Eve and there was a talking reptile and there was a curse and they were kicked out of the garden and sin entered the world. And I never once stopped to question, does this story make sense? Why would an omniscient God not see that his plan was pretty much fucked the second he

implemented the plan? And why wouldn't he have a different plan? Of course, this is the point when people go freeing well, right? And I just want to throttle them. That's a whole other conversation. But I just, and you feel superior. Oh, you know how lucky I am to have been born into the family with the right religion,

which has the answer to the right questions. And I'm going to heaven while all those slobs are not going. And there's all these other reasons that you just, it took me a long time to actually challenge this. I'm embarrassed at how long it took me. It took me into my thirties before I really got serious about it. Yeah, I, you know, it occurs to me that intelligent design itself,

the idea of it, that sort of backwards working from the human to make the argument that humans were actually created rather than thinking about how evolution works. That sort of, I'm gonna use the word theory here, but people understand what I mean. That theory that they're working on to me sounds like it's trying to capture people who may not be satisfied with just an answer like God said so. God said this.

So they're trying to create a sort of pseudoscience around creation that makes it seem like there is something to this and we did study it and we did test our hypotheses and we came up with this thing and it is equal to science. Does that make sense? It does and I think much of it is strategic when it comes to school boards and the courts of law because creationism was kicked out outright as mythology. So then they went back and they said, and they're Christians. I mean, 99.9% of the time, these people who are intelligent design proponents, the Discovery Institute, et cetera, they're Christians.

And they're selling Christian creation myth as fact. But instead of coming back and saying, we would like to teach the book of Genesis, we come back and we say, teach the controversy. Let's talk about the possibility of an intelligence out there that designed the universe. And this is a Trojan horse for creation mythology to be taught as fact.

It's the book of Genesis that's sort of painted in the guise of being a genuine scientific question when it is not. Well, it's funny because like, I do think that there is a, like to be, to be generous, right? I think we have to address the sense of awe and wonder that the natural world inspires in people. Yeah. Like, because it's, it's, you go into the world and you see the world and you look through a telescope, a microscope, you know, go to Yosemite, just, I mean, be in the world. It inspires a sense of real awe and wonder. The natural world is astonishing. And I, it seems to me that like,

we do have to address that. And there's either a really complicated answer and that answer is like, well, a series of accidents can actually produce a chaos and accidents and pressure can produce these wonders. And then we have to really kind of get into the weeds about how that works. And that's complicated. And that's a bummer because we, that's going to take time to understand. We've got these very simplistic answers. These various like, well, God, you know, why are the, you know, trees green? Oh, God likes green.

It's his favorite shirt and like whatever bullshit, you know, cause it, it answers the question. It just does it like lazily to somebody. I think, you know, there's so many things going on and I'm not a psychologist, but I remember for me, it spoke to my sense of specialness. Everybody wants to be a creature of destiny. You know, I'm not an accident, but I was destined to be here before you were in your mother's womb. I knew you, you know, and,

and the attributes I have are by design and I will be on a holy quest to receive divine reward. You know, those types of things really do feed our sense of self sometimes. And it helps, I think, if we think there is someone in control out there in this chaotic, crazy world. We're great at self-medicating when things don't make sense or they seem random and unnecessarily cruel. And so we say these unbelievably nonsensical things,

we hear it all the time. Everything happens for a reason. Somebody up there is in control. Well, part of this is us self-medicating in a world that doesn't really care. We tell ourselves that, well, it's all part of a master design and we can't see what it is. We're not smart enough to figure it out, but somebody up there is. And one day the mystery will be solved.

I think there's a lot of gears in that machine, for sure. I'm laughing a little bit because there's a tension that I've always just found really amusing, and you've brought both of them up in the same conversation, that on the one hand, one of the answers is destiny, right? Like there's an answer of destiny that is very often, like God has a plan, right? You'll hear this, so that is a answer of destiny that is very often like God has a plan, right? You'll hear this.

So that is a, that is a suggestion of destiny. And another answer to other theological questions in the same faith tradition are free will. And of course, free will and destiny can't coexist. They are, they're mutually exclusive of one another. They can't have a plan. You can destiny and also real and actual free will. And yet both of those things are answers to the same sets of questions You just just like however, we spin the fucking kaleidoscope. Just don't understand the divine mystery Tom. I think that's that's true

A lot of people will tell me when I say, well, why is there so much what John Loftus calls horrific suffering in the world? And they'll say, well, because God gave us free will and we chose poorly. Well, why do so many people not believe in Jesus and believe in a different God or no God at all? Well, because he gave us free will.

Why is he mysterious and confusing? Those types of things. Well, because free will. And I just don't get that because I think I make a free choice with better information. If I know more, then my choice is more well-informed. So this idea that God has to hide behind the bush or speak in parables or riddles

or any of those types of things, dead languages. I don't care. Whatever. And the reason he can't make himself known to me absolutely is because free will makes no sense. If God appeared and proved himself, absolutely, it would still be my choice, but I would be operating. I would be choosing with the best information possible. My will is still intact and their argument falls apart. Well, plus like so many of those who endure horrific suffering,

never even have an opportunity to make meaningful choices around their religiosity. So like, how does that end? And we'll go, but like that argument is nonsensical when it's like, well, what about this, like one year old baby who's enduring famine and, you know, disease and pain and strife? And you're like, well, free will, that baby should have made better decisions.

And you're like, that's crazy. It also is, it makes me laugh a little too, because I think about like my own children. When I think about my kids, if something's really important and I'm trying to explain a concept to my kids, and you know, even my older kids that are 17 and 18 years old, what I do while I'm talking to them multiple times in the conversations, I check in and check their understanding.

So I'll say in the middle, like, am I making sense? Do you want to, can you repeat back to me kind of what I'm saying? So I understand that I'm getting through here and I'm making sense because if something is urgent, it's urgent to me that I'm communicating well and that that understanding is being made. And to your point, it's like, I'd be like, if I told my kids like, all right, this is the most conversation, the most important conversation I'm ever going to have with you in your life. I'm going to do this entirely in pig Latin from behind a curtain and I'm only going to

use every other word. But if you get any part of it wrong, you'll die. You will literally die. And you'll burn forever. Right. That would be an insane thing for me to do to obscure a truth rather than to constantly add more clarity to the truth. For the intelligent design talk though, I want to go back.

Give me some more examples of like why intelligent design. Is there like a tier list? Yeah, what's a bad design? What's the worst design that you could think of? Of the human body. I didn't rank it best to worst because I think it's probably subjective

based on who you are and your own experiences, but some of the highlights, we get into the appendix is an easy one. The appendix does have apparently some use when it comes to gut bacteria. It's not a totally useless organ, which is something that we once knew. But of course, once it inflames and that bacteria party gets out of hand, it explodes in our body and we die of infection before we had life-saving surgery.

That was essentially a death sentence. Well, who puts a little time bomb of doom and attaches it to our intestine? We talked about how 85% of Americans have to have their wisdom teeth out because there's simply not enough room in the jaw with its bad design. Who puts the food pipe in the windpipe next to each other? Thousands of people choking to death who design the plumbing for elimination and sex. Who makes the same canals for eliminating waste, the canals that we use for intercourse?

And the analogy always is, well, who puts the water slide in the sewer in the same exact zone? Our knees wear out when we're 50. I mean, all of this makes sense evolutionarily where we are bipeds, used to be quadrupeds. We developed larger frames, heavier heads with larger brains, you know,

and our joints, we're living longer, our joints are wearing out. But from a design point of view, it makes absolutely no sense. And we just go point by point by point and say, I could do better. I talk about this useless hair on my arms, like, what the fuck is this?

What is that? What does it do? Right? We understand evolution Like, what the fuck is this? What is that? What does it do? Right? We understand evolutionarily, we understand this is a vestige, this is an evolutionary leftover from my primate past. But in terms of why would God give me the hair that, and we look at human beings always plucking and shaving

and waxing and lasering and doing all this other stuff. Why, why do we, we're essentially altering God's intelligent design. And there are so many great examples that Dr. Abby Hafer has in her book about this type of thing. And what I really like about her is that she will often show how other creatures in the animal kingdom have a better scenario.

They got a better deal, whether it's our joints, eyesight, our hearing, how we give birth, those types of things. She's really, really smart and her book's really good. Is there, is there an animal that like is better? Like if I like, which is that? What is the best, what is the best one? Like if like, what's the closest one we like? And it's not the platypus, right? It's clearly not that. I think it's the one that you just regrow everything. Oh, like a hydra?

You just cut off part of me. I could be like, cool, I don't need that. Like a starfish where you're just like, meh, whatever. There's like lizards and shit that can just regrow stuff. Yeah, I mentioned it's called, there's a salamander creature called the axolotl. Those are adorable. I've seen those. If you slice off like a limb or its tail or whatever, it can does it regrow the tail, but it regrows the nerves, the vessels, the muscles and the spinal cord. Well, imagine what the implications would be for human beings. I mean, and scientists are actually

looking at the genetics of the axolotl to try to figure out what the hell's going on because if this of course could be replicated in human beings, say goodbye to paralysis as we regrow the human spinal cord. Well, I would think if we were really at the top of God's list as his children, he would have included regeneration on that, on our sort of feature, uh, you know, on, on the index, it would be like, Oh, look, you can regrown your, your spine and your spinal cord. That seems basic to me. And yet he gave this to lizards instead of us. He didn't give it to us.

Yeah. So it's theologically humans are intelligently designed. This is a stupid question, maybe, but then are all the other living things also intelligently designed. This is a stupid question maybe, but then are all the other living things also intelligently designed? I presume because it's not like theologically, it's just humans that were intelligently designed, right? God presumably designed each and every living thing, right? That's the idea, I think.

Well, the argument is, it's really a silly putty argument because it was a Dave Fitzgerald who said, if you want evidence for evolution, just look at religion, look at Christianity, because Christianity has evolved all of these defense mechanisms to explain the ridiculous. What a great point. And so what we have then is a scenario where if I look at the birth of a beautiful baby, or I see the complexity of the human eye and how we're able to see in all this spectrum of color.

And of course there were other creatures that can see better, longer distances, a wider spectrum of colors. They don't have eye degeneration the way we do blah, blah, blah. But if someone looks at something that they consider to be good, they're like, well, that's God, that is the designer. He specially made that. He was in there in the blueprint room and he drew it up and it's so miraculous. And then you're like, okay, well, how about, you know,

child leukemia? How about all these other things that are poor design? How about animals that eat each other alive to survive? What about the pain and the suffering and the waste? 99.9% of all animals that have ever existed on this planet have gone extinct, according to scientists. What explains this waste? I just wanna say like those were oops.

They were. So what they say is that good design is God, bad design is the fall of man. It's a fallen world. It's Satan. And in that way, they've created a scenario where God never has to be accountable. So the good design is gonna be, hey, high five Jesus,

or God, or Yahweh, or whoever. Bad design is, oh, we suck, and the devil's evil. And it's really kind of frustrating to try to have conversations with people because they will immediately grasp onto the good, a total confirmation bias, you know, and say that the good God, bad Satan or us. So, uh, it is October. So that means that you are releasing a very special episode of your show,

ghost stories, which you do every single October. Tell us about this year's edition. It's funny. I have always been, even when I was religious, I was kind of drawn into like horror films, scary movies, ghost stories. And that has never changed. And-

Were you a hell house guy when you were religious? I was. We do know the church. For those who don't know what a hell house is, do you want to describe it, Tom? You want me to describe it? I've never been to one. I've only read about them.

So you've probably got firsthand experience. All right. Well, I did a whole speech years ago called the copycats that talks about how religion likes to take everything that's popular in secular culture and they make a Jesusy version of it. And then they go and they take credit for it themselves. White people do that to black culture. It's a, I get it. It happens all the time in of it. And then they go and they take credit for it themselves. White people do that to black culture.

It's a, I get it. It happens all the time in the church. It happens all the time in the church. And so Christian churches started creating what they called hell houses, which were October themed haunted houses. But instead of going in and it's the witch and the, and the goblin and those types of things.

You go in and they would take you through real world horrors. And there's a famous one here in my hometown called The Nightmare. And they have Universal Studios production quality. It's remarkable. Really? Oh yeah, this is what they're known for. I don't know how much money has gone into it,

but it's, you go in and you, the first thing that happens is you get on an elevator to hell and the floor rumbles beneath you and light comes in through the cracks in the brick and everything expands and you literally end up in hell. And they walk you through everything from a girl in a bedroom with a gun who blows her brains out to a street shooting by gangs where there's a car overhead, to a drunk driver, to all the horrors of the real world. And they use that to traumatize you.

And then at the end of the hell house, you go in and there's, I swear, Jesus on the cross. His back is faced and then the cross would spin 180 degrees and he's all bloody and he's heaving and then his head drops and it is finished. And then as you leave, there are counselors in the parking lot ready to counsel you about what you've just seen and lead you to the love

of Jesus with the salvation prayer. Holy shit. Yeah, it's hardcore. I mean, they have abortion rooms. I kinda wanna see one in person. They're offensive really. There are some where you go in and there's somebody, an abortion gone wrong and there's a bloody baby.

And I mean, it's just horrifying. What an abortion gone wrong if you were Christian, just be an abortion. I mean, I feel like the gone wrong, if you're like, yes, it's just sort of like redundant. Leave it to Tom to find that little nugget of wisdom. Yeah. You know, this actually, you know, before we get into the ghost stories, I do actually want to have a question Leave it to Tom to find that little nugget of wisdom. Before we get into the ghost stories, I do actually want to have a question that stems

off this. You grew up steeped in Christian culture, so I got to ask, you watch a movie nowadays that has a deep, because a lot of horror movies still have deep Christian roots when you talk about the supernatural. There's almost everything on any kind of, if anybody's talking about any kind of ghost show, it's all Christian ghosts. Like everybody is scared away by the Bible.

It's, there's a constant Christian mythology that seeps into all these, a lot of horror. I'm not saying all horror movies, but certainly many horror movies, especially ones that have to deal with, you know, possession and things like that. Supernatural shit. So do you still enjoy watching movies

that have sort of a deep religious horror to them, something like an exorcist or, you know, something like that? Maybe there's modern movies that are like that too. You know, there have been some people that were like, well, why would an atheist activist tell ghost stories? And I'm like, well, you know, why would I go see the Lord of the Rings? Right. I don't believe in Gandalf for God's sake, but we are creatures of imagination. And it's a nice, it's kind of a roller coaster, not for everybody, but I like to go and strap on

and we'll, we'll strap on a seatbelt, Tom, and we'll suspend disbelief. Or whoever you want. Yeah, and just take a ride. And I, but I do see them differently. There was a time, I'm a product of the satanic panic. So the Exorcist was said to be a film that would actually bring in demons into your life. You know, if you were to pop the VHS tape in

and watch it at home, you might be opening up this portal to dark. So pop some popcorn. We used to we we heard about album burnings because the music was imbued with the back masking baby. That's the stuff. Satan was everywhere. And now I look at it and it's not the religious component

that scares me. It's actually more of a curiosity as I look at how I approached it back then. It's kind of a time capsule. For me, honestly, the stuff that spooks me, and it's rare because I'm so jaded after half a century of watching this shit, but it's rare because I'm so jaded after, you know, half a century of watching this shit. But it's, you know, the stuff I don't see,

somebody walking around the corner and you're waiting for something to happen and you get inside your own skull, those types of things. You know, the blood splattering on the lens and the body horror and all that lazy kind of stuff, I don't really go for, but a good yarn, a good suspense. I'll take that journey. And, and if there's anything religious, I think I'm struck more by the fact that I'm not afraid of it.

I could walk up to my mom's house holding a Ouija board, right? And she would not allow me in the house. You are not allowed to bring the evil in here because to her it's a doorway. And you use the Ouija board and Satan will appear or you will open demons into whatever. And now I look at it and I think it's cardboard and ink. Right? It's all it is, is cardboard and ink.

And it becomes an experience. It's the ghost of Parker Brothers. Like. Yeah. So I find myself looking at them much differently as I've sort of turned that looking glass the other way. But there are some spooky shows out there and I'll take the ride knowing

that it's just a roller coaster. Do you have a favorite ghost story this year? You know, my problem is, is that after 10, 12 years of doing it, I feel a responsibility to keep it interesting for the audience. And you can only do the tropes so many times, you know? The hitchhiker got in the car and then he looked over

and he was gone. And there was a handprint on the bumper, dun, dun, dun, you know? And the little girl floating down the stairs and all they found was an iron hook and whatever else, you know, we've heard on those things. I write a lot of my own material or I'll go and hear a legend

and that's the seed of a story and I'll go and rewrite something on top of that. I think the one this year that I enjoyed the most, it's actually one of the shorter ones, but I hired a couple of tremendous voice actors to be a father and young child. And the story is called On Paws, and they drive by a cemetery,

and the little boy says, "'Hey, look, is that where Grandma is?' And he's like, what are you talking about? Well, the hook of the story is that the boys, they were driving by in a rainstorm, saw grandma standing still in the cemetery. She was not moving. It's like she was on pause, like in his video games.

And the story begins to evolve as to some sinister things that happened to that grandmother while she was still alive. And what will happen one day when she is no longer on pause. And that story I was really proud of and the two actors really brought it to life. I have four or five different professional actors who came in to flesh out the story this year.

So hopefully it'll blow everybody away. And the problem is once you release something of that caliber and they're not cheap to do either, I ended up losing money and Natalie's like, what the hell's wrong with you? This is what you do for a living. I'm like, well, when you fall in love with the project,

you really get yourself in trouble. But once you do that, then the next year you're like, oh crap, I've got to step it up and up. And before you know it, I'm going to run out of ideas and I don't know what I'm going to do. But anyway, it's in the can and I think it's gonna be good this year. That's awesome.

Are you releasing an anthology of these? Yeah, I've got one series of ghost stories that I put in audiobook form that came out in 2018. And then I have volume two releasing right on top of this conversation here on Audible. It's just ghost stories, more original tales and ghostly urban legends. It's volume two and it has 31 stories that I've produced over the last six years. You know, you spend as much time in the editing room as I do, you start to accumulate all this stuff and I just file it away and I take the best and I move everything around

and then when I have enough material, I sort of compile it all for one audio book release and that will be audio book for me, I think it's number 14. Wow, congratulations. While I've produced over the years. Wow, well we'll put a link in this week's show notes to that, to your podcast, where

the ghost stories will occur and a link to the YouTube video where you talk about the not so intelligent designer, Seth Andrews. It was great to have you on the show this week. If people are going to find you anywhere else, where would they look? It's easy to find me. If you want to find the show, it's the thinkingatheist.com. Again, the thinking atheist is not a person. It is certainly not me. I would be the nasal atheist, or the probably the sneezing atheist right now. The heavily medicated atheist,

but the thinking atheist is an idea. It's really an encouragement for those of us who came out of a fake it till you make it faith culture to engage your brain. It's okay, ask questions, use reason. Don't be afraid to challenge out there. And then my personal website has everything else. Just go to Seth Andrews.com.

Thanks so much, Seth. We really enjoyed having you on. It's an honor. Thank you guys. Papa Murphy's has a great deal on summer selects. Large thin crust pizzas for only 10.99 each. So instead of stressing over what to feed everyone, you can keep those chill summertime vibes no matter what pops up.

Whether it's a fun pool party... Cannonball! ...a low-key game night... Hey, no cheating. ...or... Mom, Jess and Marcy are staying over. ...or an impromptu sleepover. You can keep it easy, breezy, and budget friendly

with Papa Murphy's Summer Selects. Large, thin crust pizzas for only $10.99. Papa Murphy's summer selects. Large thin crust pizzas for only 10.99. Papa Murphy's. Change the way you pizza. Why are you running? Why are you running? You owe me money. I have to give me back my money.

So this story comes from CNN. Trump backs out a 60 minutes prime time interview, according to CBS. So for 50 years, it has been a tradition that the major Democratic and major Republican candidate have gone on 60 minutes, they've done it for 50 years. Harris is doing hers. Trump is backing out. Guess why he's backing out. Why is that Tom? Because he says they'll fact

check them. You know, that to me does not instill a lot of trust when I hear that someone doesn't want to deal with a fact that they're right, that they're literally running away from facts. When you're like, Hey, I don't want to be on your show because you won't let me lie on your show. Yeah. That's what the fourth estate is supposed to do, man. We're supposed to say true things. It's okay to make mistakes. It's okay to things we to say things that we are prognosticating that may not turn out to be true. Right? Like I think if I change taxes, it'll have this effect on the economy. Then somebody might say, actually, we don't think

it'll have that effect. That's not lying in the same sense of saying like in Springfield, Ohio, they're eating the Haitian migrant communities, eating dogs and cats. There's a difference between those two types of sentiments, right? Purposely pretending that there's not, which is what Trump does, is just lying. Like it's trying to reserve and carve out a space for him to lie to people. And so, yeah, I was thinking about this when we were eating earlier. Like, imagine going to work and being like, all right, I'm going to try something new today to your boss.

I'm not going to lie to you the whole day. Wouldn't you be fired on this? Your boss would be like, wait a minute. You mostly just lie to me. Lying is not something we should accept or expect. It is so strange that we live in a time where these people are openly saying, I don't want you to look at facts when you're talking to me and then correct me on those facts. But I think they have, you mentioned this a couple shows ago, there is a reality distortion

technique that they use. And so for their true believers, they don't believe that this is wrong because they think that the facts that they are being confronted with are alternative facts or not real facts. They've made this up. The mainstream media has made up a narrative that isn't real, that is just there to try to attack these two political candidates. So Donald Trump, JD Vance, they've both said, please don't fact check me. JD Vance said it on the stage the other night. They didn't fact check JD Vance on all his lies. And if you watch that, that debate, there is lie after lie, after lie, after lie. It was a pretty tame, boring debate, like a really policy heavy, boring debate. But if you pay attention and you know sort of the political landscape we live in,

foreign policy, internal policy, energy policy, all the stuff he seemed to talk about. He lied about everything. I mean, it was genuinely lie after lie after lie. But the one lie they wouldn't let him get away with was the Haitian immigrant lie. Cause he tried to play it again. And then he stomped his foot and he got mad because they fact checked him. He was upset. He was mad that they fact checked him. He said, you weren't going to fact check me. And he got mad about it. But here's the thing, man. We shouldn't be trusting people who walk in and say, I don't want to be fact-checked. But there is a group of people who that does not phase in the least. And which surprises me the most is that if he were to go on 60 minutes, none of his true believers, not a single one of them, would think anything if they fact checked him to his face and told him he was lying.

They wouldn't think anything of it. I think the reason why is because he calculates and knows that if it's a middle ground, he's not gonna win it, so why bother? Yeah, and there's also a sense that I have here that we have for some reason seeded this like technological moment to our political overlord. So what I mean by that is for the first time in human history, we have the ability to do

real time fact checking during live interviews, during live debates. Technology has allowed this. Sure. It's never, this has never been possible before. Right. It's not like you could do this in real time prior really to like these massive nanosecond fast, you're not wrong. Instead of embracing what that means about our ability to hold power to account. This should give the American people in the fourth estate

an unprecedented ability to hold power to account in a way that we've never been able to do before. And instead, what power has done is purposely eroded trust in the institutions that would do that work. So that that work not only isn't done, but when that work is done, that work is automatically distrusted. That didn't happen by accident.

That happened by design. That happened by design. So we have the ability for the first time ever to actually increase accountability for politicians and increase public trust in our politicians. But since they don't want that to happen, they did all the groundwork of destroying the fact check as a policy tool, as a tool to keep policy honest. That's really distressing. We should be distressed by that.

What did you think? You read about the debates. You didn't get a chance to watch the debate. This is two days after that we're recording this. I watched part of it and read part of it. But I will say the parts I watched, I was actually pleasantly surprised that it was just a boring old couple of guys that were talking policy. I mean, really genuinely, it didn't feel like the same sort of vitriol I've seen on the debate stage that happened with the Republicans when they were running in 2016 and there was a clown car of Republicans and the dialogue and the exchanges were so base and unpleasant and they were fighting each other and talking about each

other's wives. Oh my God. It was awful. And then I really feel like, you know, when we watch the Democrats do it, it feels very similar to what we saw yesterday, which are two days ago, which was, you know, two guys who didn't seem like they hated each other, just talked for a little while. They taught they didn't try to talk over each other. They were they responded to each other and rebuttals. I do think and I know that it's easy if you were to fact check J. Vince, you

would see there's a lot of lies and a lot of distortions. But other than, you know, the blatant lying that I'm seeing on one part that doesn't, for some reason, our political system doesn't punish that anymore. I think like, I think like it felt very, very just the same. It felt like, it felt like how it used to feel. I think what was interesting to me about the debate were that the goals of the two debaters were very different going in here. I think that the objective for Tim Walz was just don't do any damage. Don't create any gaffe moments that are really damaging. The Harris campaign has momentum. Harris clearly won by a wide margin, the debate with Trump.

Trump's not gonna re-debate her. Less people watch the vice presidential debate, the stakes are lower. I think the goal for Walls was just get through the debate without any major gaffes, everything's fine. Don't do any damage to the machine. The goal for Vance had to be very different because Trump is losing steam and did get crushed in that debate. And Vance's got some like credibility problems because he's a lying piece

of shit and is subhuman. He had a lot of ground he had to make up. I don't think he made up that ground. I also think there was a big moment at the end of that debate, which has really created a really good talking point for the Democrats that the Republicans literally are unable to counter because they refuse to do it. And that is the question of, you know, and Walls was very clever in the way he said it, like, there's a reason you're here and not Mike Pence. Do you accept the, you Pence, do you accept that Donald Trump lost the last election?

Now, Trump is never-endingly talking about that. That is a fair question, not because like the Democrats are bringing it back up because Trump continues to rehash it. He's still literally litigating it. Yeah. And being litigated based on it. Yeah. And Vance dodged it and Walls called him and said, that is a damning non-answer. And they've been able to take that phrase. It's a damning non-answer and he's making the rounds with the damning non-answer. But he, he did it, find the answer. It, Vance did.

And he agreed. He said he didn't, he didn't lose the election. He said he did not lose the election. He did not lose the election. Holy shit. Cause I actually heard something. So it's a damning answer. Now it's a damning answer.

It was a damning non-answer. I'm gonna find the story so we can actually link it. Cause I did hear something following the debate. It was like a town hall type thing where somebody asked on Mike. He said, hey, you didn't answer that question. And then Vance again dodged the question., Hey, you didn't answer that question. And then Vance again dodged the question. He said, I didn't answer that question. Why didn't answer that question? And Vance's response was I didn't answer that question because

I'm not looking back. I'm looking at forward or some, you know, politician bullshit. So it's, it's interesting to me that he's now answering it. On Thursday, comedian Jason Selvig posted a clip of an interaction he had with Vance on Axe during their brief encounter. Selvig repeatedly asked Vance if Trump won in 2020. The settled issue of who won the 2020 election came up again after Vance told viewers returning to Tuesday's vice presidential debate that he would have helped Trump carry out his alternative electoral scheme to maintain power. Who won the 2020 election?

Could you just answer? Did Donald Trump win? Yes, Vance replied. After asking Vance to confirm that he was saying Trump won in 2020, Vance replied, yep. The comedian then pressed Vance asking if he would concede if he and Trump did lose in the 2020 election. Vance did not answer directly instead just saying, I really feel bad for you, man. And then he pushed again. He said, if your opponent gets more votes, will you concede? After which Vance walked away without answering. You know, I also heard Trump, he was asked, I think yesterday or today,

he was asked something along the lines of, you know, do you think that the election, like it looks good, it's fair, it's not rigged, whatever. And he said, well, we'll see on election day. Basically saying like, I will only accept the results if I win. This is a threat, like we're talking about a threat to democracy, a major political candidate who says that the only viable, actionable demonstration of democracy is when he wins. The only way that you can trust an election is if he is the winner of that election.

That is clearly a threat to democracy. You're not wrong. You're not wrong. And that you expect that sort of thing to happen. Expect that to happen. And, you know, just recently, yesterday, they released an indictment, or at least it was a revised document to show that Jack Smith is trying to say to the DC court, hey, here's all the things that Donald Trump did to subvert the 2020 election and cause that riot, because that's what he's

on trial for there is the inciting of the riot and all that stuff for 2020 in DC. And he's basically saying these aren't official acts. And he lists out 160 page document. Now I didn't go all the way through it and I'm going to probably cover it on next week's lawful assembly, but genuinely just read parts of that because I've read parts of that and you just read part of it and you think there's no way that you can You can watch him continue to tell this lie about 2020s election and listen to how he talked about Sidney Powell while she was on hold making fun of her saying this is that no one's ever gonna believe this This is a total crock that she came up with like he literally didn't believe it himself

one's ever going to believe this, that this is a total crock that she came up with. Like he literally didn't believe it himself. So he didn't believe it then. He doesn't believe it now. He's only saying it for one reason. It's because he only wants power and that's it. And he will not take no for an answer. He has in his whole life. He has his whole life and he's not going to do it again. Here's the thing I'm wrestling with. And I'm curious what you think. I think when he lost the election in 2020, part of the reason the public response was as vast as it was, was because he was at that time, the sitting president, so he had all the power and authority of the sitting president. He right now has no power or authority at all.

He's a private citizen. If he loses the election in 2024, this year, I am of the feeling that there won't be riots, that there will not be the big demonstrations because he cannot, he lacks that same gravitas. He's not the president. I might be dead ass wrong. How do you feel about that? I don't feel any other way because I don't know that? Well, the opposite. I don't know. I don't feel any other way because I don't know how they're going to act. I can't predict.

Yeah. But I will say the opposite of that could be that what they feel instead is that the deep state, the real deep state that he was trying to suppress while he was president is still there and they suppress this vote and they change this vote. And now they want to they're gonna react to it and there may be a riot because they they're seeing the government as the oppressor just as much as they did back then it hasn't changed the the calculus in their mind of who is oppressing who do you still think the

government's at fault do you think his ability to do things like hold a rally oh yeah yes I think that there are there are definite there are definite Do you think his ability to do things like hold a rally at the Olympics? I think that there are definite, there are definite lacks of power. He doesn't have the same bullhorn. He could just hold a press conference, which he did multiple times. He walked out and talked multiple times about how this election was stolen. He can't pick up a phone now and call Georgia and tell him to find 11,870 votes. He can't do that.

What does he, how does he even get his call routed through? Wait on hold for a year. So I don't see it happening the same way. I don't know what the public response will be, but the halls of power at this point, that's not a thing that he has as much access to. So I actually feel a little better about how elections can run. I'm a little worried about those small elections and the certifying of

the election in these small places, these swing states that could really change things. We've been talking about it for weeks. So there is some trepidation that I'm feeling when it comes to those types of things. I don't want to discount the possibility of reaction and violence, but I also feel like he led the Republicans to a major defeat in 2022 in the midterms. He was defeated in 2020. If he looks to be defeated again in 24,

I also feel like the Republican establishment, the House, the Senate, they will not back him. That's his head, I think, for him. This is his last hurrah. And I think that they did in 2020. I think they recognized that he still had a stranglehold on a populace and it had been a population and a voting block that they only had access to through him.

I think that if he loses in 24, they will see that he is a paper tiger and they will not back him in the same structural and institutional way they did before. I think he'll be a lonely, angry man crying in a hotel. I hope so. I hope so. I really, I really think all those things that he had before added up to a bigger sense of power that he no longer just, he just doesn't control it. If he loses and you're in the Senate, you're not going to be like, I'll back him up fourth

time. No, I feel like, I feel like at this point you just don't do anything. You might still stand by him in those places, but I don't, I think you just let him go. I think you just be quiet. Just let him go. I think you just be quiet. Just let him go. Yeah. Happy birthday to you baby. Yes, as you heard, it is my birthday and we're doing a clam boil.

Well, it's not the fancy clam, but if you want to boil your clam, go to adamheave.com and use code GLORY because when you do, you get% off almost any one item, then Adam and Eve loads on the free stuff when they give you one free gift for you, one free gift for them, you know, either clam maybe, one free gift you both can enjoy, plus six free spicy movies, spicy like the clam boil, and all free shipping. Oh wait, and the 50% off almost any one item that I mentioned that yes What are you looking at? Yes, shut up Say glory

Say glory When you go to Adam Eve comm and use code glory, so if it's your if it's Doesn't matter if you're a shrimp, so long as you boil. Thank you very much. Okay. Adam and Eve.com musical glory. Thank you. Bye. FEMA, the secret government. This story comes from NJ.com at the New Jersey thing. Georgians get fast hurricane aid from Biden and Harris, and it's driving Trump crazy. I want to read what Trump said. All right. So here's what Trump said. He said, the governor is doing a very good job. He's

having a hard time getting the president on the phone. The federal government is not being responsive. The vice president, she's out someplace campaigning, looking for money. Let me tell you what the actual governor of Georgia said. That is governor, Republican governor, Brian Kemp. Yeah, the guy, he called for 11,780 votes. Yeah. So here's what Republican governor, Brian Kemp said about Biden and the federal response.

Quote, the president just called me yesterday afternoon. I missed him. I called him right back and he just said, hey, what do you need? And I told him, we got what we need. We'll work through the federal process. He offered that if there's other things we need just to call him directly.

And I appreciate that. We've had FEMA embedded with us since a day or two before the storm in our state operating center in Atlanta. We've got a great relationship with them. Trump is just a lying liar that lies in order to enrich himself. This doesn't enrich the state of Georgia. It doesn't help people in need.

It has nothing to do with people ravaged by this storm. It has nothing to do with driving AIDS. This is only and exclusively about creating a lying false narrative to push his personal agenda of regaining power. That's it. There's nothing else behind this. Yeah. And really what does he, what is he doing down there? Right? You know, when he had the way to the federal government and he was touring sites, great. He's touring sites and he's seeing what's needed. He's got a bunch of people behind him, maybe an executive assistant. He's like, hey, get another generator down here or whatever they do.

Right. A lot of this stuff is photo ops anyway, but, but genuinely when they have those people there, that's when you can talk to the leaders there and then you can make the, the, the, the rep, the reparations and fix things and help fund all the cleanup efforts and pay for all the supplies and help bring down workers and FEMA trucks and whatever the hell you need. Trump doesn't have anything he can offer. He's just a dude. He has no power, nothing behind him. He's literally just, at this point, he's destruction touring. That's what he's doing.

It's destruction tourism. He's literally just walking around for the photo op. I recognize that the other stuff is a photo op too, but I think that there's probably something that happens business wise that helps those people in some way. At least the people who are doing the photo op are controlling purse strings and material and people and they're doing something about it. This guy can't do any, he literally can't do anything. He's too weak to lift anything up.

He's not gonna clean anything. Has he ever cleaned anything in his life? What is he gonna do? Throw out paper towels that he bought to people? He's not gonna do anything. So what he's doing, he's literally there just so he could fucking throw fucking a wrench in the gears by making it seem like the other people

aren't doing anything. Yeah, it's so hypocritical for him to call out Harris for supposedly not working toward aid efforts and campaigning while he's literally the only thing he can do is campaign. He's a private citizen. Yep. That's it. It'd be like if I went down there. Yeah. It's actually worse because it takes away resources.

If I go down there, no one gives a shit. I'm Tom. Doesn't matter. Got a plane, dig on a plane. If I live or die, the world doesn't notice. This guy's got security details. He's got to get fucking motorcades and shit blocked off. He takes resources Yeah, you're not wrong resources. You're not wrong and he's campaigning complaining about how the other person is campaigning

You're not wrong. How gross it is It is it's so funny to watch him down there with no use to complain about people who are actually helping and there's people Out there who will gobble it up Sean Penn is the only one who's allowed to go down there, help people out. You remember that? After Katrina, Sean Penn was like, fucking get me a boat. I'm going to go whatever it is. I'll do whatever I can. Yeah. Speaking of lying, hypocrite pieces of shit, this story is from Newsweek. Matt Gaetz voted against FEMA funding right before Hurricane Helene struck. It's not just that he voted against the funding.

He voted against the broad spending bill to keep the government open that contained FEMA funding. And then he bragged like all these lying pieces of shit always do, then he went to his constituency in Florida and bragged about how he worked to secure funds to help provide aid. And then he was called out for it, which is good, right? Every single time this happened,

I saw Biden's Twitter over the last several years constantly doing this while he was president. Constantly, when someone would vote against something and then go brag about it on Twitter, he would immediately come back and be like, this person didn't vote for it. Yeah. He would just be like, yeah, they didn't vote for it. They didn't vote for it. We were talking, I think it was either the last episode or two episodes ago about voting records. And this is one of those things. If you're one of these people who are

in Matt Gaetz constituency, right? You're one of these people who live in his district. Look at what he did for you. Nothing. Nothing. He didn't do anything for you. What he did was tried to fucking throw a monkey wrench in the wheels of government

so there wouldn't be funding there. That's what he did. He did the worst thing he could possibly do to vote against a bill to actually help now We all know how the majority and the media in this country view the Catholic Church Stories from the friendly atheist and I want to say Genuinely props to the friendly atheist on this article. This is a really well written article. It is a very good article. This is a great article. Pemit, cheers bro.

This, you did a great job. I mean, he always does a good job, but this one was particularly good. Colorado will now make Catholic hospitals say what services they won't provide. This is really important and this passed overwhelmingly in Colorado. Catholic hospitals comprise a vast number of the total available hospitals in this country. Catholic hospitals are a big deal. In some areas, they might be the only hospital available to a region to provide services. Catholic hospitals make a number of treatment decisions that have no basis in medicine whatsoever.

They have basis in their particular insistence on their faith and on shoving their faith down the throats of people seeking care in their hospitals. It's gross. It's dangerous. It disproportionately affects women, minorities, LGBTQ folks. Yeah, for sure.

It's a horror show. Catholic hospitals are a goddamn nightmare. And now in Colorado, you can go to a website, not the hospital's website. You can go to a state-funded website and you can see specifically where they fail to provide healthcare. Yeah. And you can make a decision based on your healthcare.

If you're going to go to that Catholic hospital, one of the things they brought up, which I thought was really just so interesting, you know, you go in for a C-section as a woman, you know it's going to be a procedure. You're going to get a C-section. Like they know ahead of time, they're going to get it. Oftentimes, once they get a C-section, women sometimes will ahead of time, they're going to get it. Oftentimes, once they get a C-section,

women sometimes will say, well, I don't want to do this again. So let's just stop the whole process and let's tie my tubes, right? Let's, let's, let's stop this process completely. It's actually better for women who are getting a C-section to get this process done then, because you don't have to open up the body a second time. You know, you're kind of right there. You know, I can pick up milk on the way home.

You know, it's that kind of thing. And instead, they say, no, we won't do that procedure. We will deliver the baby through C-section, but we won't do that procedure. So you would then have to schedule that procedure at another doctor somewhere else after you've already given birth when you could have done it. And it's actually more dangerous. It's dangerous to do that. So they have issues with male vasectomies. They won't give them a vasectomies in some of these places. I was talking to somebody who works at a Catholic hospital and they have some real problems with trans issues too. They won't do certain things for trans people.

So we're talking about a hospital that gets its ethics and morality from another time. It's not this time. It's another time. It's back when there was other rules and other things that were controlling women and controlling people and subjugating and in you know, in some ways, giving less care to people who need it because that's who was in their in group with their religion.

Absolutely. And right now, there is a group out there, this in Colorado, there's a, like the state is basically saying, everybody's included in our in group and we're gonna call you out when you guys don't provide care for everyone. Yeah, so if you've got, if you are, and here's the thing, when you are pregnant,

and if you're using private insurance, you will often have your choice of which hospital to deliver at. And that's big money. That's big financial pressure. And what this does is it will create a financial pressure because people will choose other services. They will choose other providers. I actually want to go through from this article and list some of the things. They've got a good list here. A lot of people know that Catholic hospitals won't perform abortions, but fewer know how radical that policy is.

Even if you set aside elective abortions, patients who have ectopic pregnancies, that's where the implantation of the egg is in the fallopian tube, right? So if you have an ectopic pregnancy, those women, their lives are at risk. If they go to a Catholic hospital, a normal hospital would just give that patient a drug to induce an abortion or remove the fertilized egg through surgery.

In Catholic hospitals, they may make doctors remove a woman's entire fallopian tube, reduce her ability to get pregnant in the future, even though that's medically unnecessary because their faith dictates it. a woman's entire fallopian tube reduce her ability to get pregnant in the future, even though that's medically unnecessary because their faith dictates it. If a woman has a miscarriage, Catholic hospitals will not induce an abortion to remove the embryonic tissue. Catholic hospitals will require doctors to wait until a woman is infected.

In other words, become septic before they provide treatment. That's an miscarriage. It's not even a fucking living thing at that point. Catholic hospitals will not dispense contraception, which means that if a victim of sexual assault requires birth control, Catholic hospitals will not be the ones that offer that birth control to a woman who has been sexually assaulted. Catholic hospitals, as you mentioned, they won't perform vasectomies. They won't help women get pregnant by sperm donors.

They don't allow and won't help women use surrogate mothers to give birth to biological children. They're also awful at the other end. Like if you're an elderly person dying of disease, you have a terminal disease, you cannot, even though euthanasia is legal in Colorado, Catholic hospitals will not assist with euthanasia. So they'll just require you to just linger and suffer and hate your life and just die in misery and pain and terror and fear.

If you have, if you're a transgender person and you need hormone therapy, hysterectomy or mastectomy, you're out of luck at a Catholic hospital. It's not one or two things. It's not one or two things. There are an entire suite of services and really, again, these services disproportionately affect women, LGBTQ people. That's most people. Most people are women. That's just, it's just true, numerically true. These hospitals are disenfranchising the majority of the people that are in their area of care. They want to control with their faith your access to medical care. This isn't new for Catholic hospital, for Catholics in general. I mean, if you look at the the how they've handled AIDS in Africa

Oh God, you know look at look at the opportunity that you have to help people by just giving them condoms Right. Yeah, you could change the face of how people get AIDS by just providing condoms to people But that's immoral. So instead what they do is they create these other systems to give people drugs after they've gotten AIDS. Well, they never had to get it. Right. They never, we have a vaccine for AIDS. It's called the condom. You got the vaccine, you got to use it every time, but still it's called the condom. You can, you can prevent HIV with, but just by using a condom, they wouldn't do it. They would not do that one thing. Look at, look at mother Teresa, Look at how she made people suffer. You know what I mean? Like this is not new for the Catholic church. This is, this is something that they

do. This is something that they revel in. They make you come in and abide by their rules. This is one of the reasons, you know, when we talked about these people who are pharmacists, who have these very, very strict beliefs and they get a job at a pharmacy and somebody comes in and says, I need a day after pill. And they say, well, my conscious won't let you do it. And you and I have been saying for years, well, then get the fuck out of that business. Go do, go do that somewhere else. Go do something else with your life. Because if you can't provide the standard of care that everyone needs, you shouldn't be doing that job. Well, it's the same thing here. They can't provide the standard of care that everyone needs.

Catholics need to get out of the, of the hospital industry. Yeah. And like, I want to add to some of you just occurred to me is that they may the Catholic, these Catholic hospitals are still fucking charging you. Sure. It's not like it's a charity that's free. Yeah. You're not going to the, just because you go to the Catholic hospital, it's not like it's a charity that's free. You're not going to the, just because you go to the Catholic hospital, it's not cheaper.

Like they may not, they may not turn a profit on paper. They probably don't. They're probably not allowed to turn a profit on paper, but like none of the services are cheaper man. I can tell you from experience having had services at high, in systems that are run by Catholics and systems that are run by private medicine, there's no difference in the pricing. So it's not like you're good, it's not like,

I like, part of me might say like, look, if they're giving away all these services and it's free, then maybe I might feel a little different. Sure, then you could go somewhere else for the other care, right? Or it'd be like, look, they're doing all this good, they're giving, but no, what the Catholic Church is, is fucking rich.

They own a massive amount of real estate, billions and billions of dollars in real estate all across the world. They own a network of hospitals all across the country, probably all across the world. They are not using that wealth to provide services at discounted prices, to provide services that are free of charge. They are using that wealth to enrich the church.

They are not selling off their real estate to help the poor. They do not care. They do not care. Their goal is to be powerful. Their goal is not to help people. I want to thank Seth Andrews from the Thinking Atheist podcast for stopping by. You can check out all of Seth's work at thethinkingatheist.com. You could also check out Seth Andrews.com. You can also go to the show notes, dissonancepod.com.

Check out the show notes for this episode. Check out all of Seth's stuff. We're going to have a link to his audio book that he just released. We're going to have a link to his shows. So go check it out. Seth is a great dude and he puts out a great product. And if you're an atheist and you haven't heard of Seth Andrews, you should go check out his stuff as far back as you can because he has great stuff.

And he's been a great voice for the atheist community for a very long time. All right. That's going to wrap it up for this week. We'll be back on Thursday with a show about J.D. Vance. You don't wanna miss it. All right, that's gonna wrap it up for this week. We're gonna leave it like we always do, with the skeptic screen.

Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno Babylon bullshit. Couched in scientician, double bubble, toil and trouble, pseudo quasi alternative, acupunctuating, pressurized, stereogram, pyramidal, free energy, healing, water downward spiral, brain dead, pan, sales pitch, late night info, docutainment. Leo Pisces, cancer cures, detox, reflex,age Death in Towers Tarot Cards Psychic Healing Crystal Balls Bigfoot Yeti Aliens Churches Mosques and Synagogues Temples Dragons Giant Worms Atlantis Dolphins Truthers Birthers Witches Wizards I think it's bizarre that I haven't cut your motherfucking nuts off. Shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy,

double-speak stigmata, nonsense. Expose your sides. Thrust your hands, bloody, evidential, conclusive. Doubt even this. Thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed the show, consider supporting us on Patreon at patreon.com forward slash dissonance pod. Help us spread the word by sharing our content. Find us on TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, and Pretz, all under the handle at dissonance pod. This show is can credentialed, which means you can report instances of harassment, abuse,

or other harm on their hotline at 617-249-4255 or on their website at creatoraccountabilitynetwork.org. You