The Atheist Experience 27.18 05-07-2023 with JMike and Doctor Ben

Published: May 9, 2023, 2:07 p.m.

In today’s episode of the Atheist Experience, Jmike and Doctor Ben die for Jesus so immorality won’t cause riots from atheists with meaningless worldviews after disconnecting emotionally from religion.

Davis in CO wants to know why people would die for Jesus if it was not true. What does the psychological state of your reasoning have to do with whether it is true or not? When death is the gateway to getting to a better existence, and people honestly believe it, they will embrace it. Huge amounts of people believing in something does not have any bearing on its truth. People are willing to risk their existence for smaller things than a reason for eternity.

Patrick in AR experienced his wife having a vision after dying in his arms. After she was revived, he was told her recovery was miraculous. The treatment used at the facility such as epinephrine and CPR increase the chances of survival. We don’t know medically why someone survives in this state for so long, but we also don’t have a reason to believe it is supernatural. Statistically, the outlier events are going to occur, and there will always be someone who asks why that happens to them. Hug the people around you and love them.

Trevor in MI has some questions about Biblical interpretations when having conversations with his dad. If you want to be correct about something, then you need to have a principle and intention of what was said. How do you validate anyone’s interpretation? You could follow a weird train of interpretation to the original which turns out to be a different denomination entirely. God is seemingly the author of confusion.

Jon in Canada says that god is necessary for morality, and immorality is what causes riots. How do you explain wrong things that occur in god’s world? Can people do good things for bad reasons? What evidence do you have that supports the claim that people being immoral are the cause of riots?

Icon in Canada presents a thought experiment where we attach reasonableness to time, where a belief is reduced by a percentage slowly over time. What metric would we use to assign the percentages?

Adam in Saudi Arabia finds it unattractive to accept life being meaningless as part of atheism. If an intrinsic value is not forced on something, does that make it any less valuable? If everything has a purpose, then can we agree there is a reason for all events, good and bad? When babies die suddenly, are we going to say they need to die as some sort of a sacrifice for whatever a deity needs to prove? It makes no sense to simultaneously have evil and good if evil is the thing that leads to the good.

Shi in the USA asks how to disconnect from religion emotionally after already disconnecting intellectually. What does emotional disconnecting mean to you? You may not need to entirely disconnect in that way.

Thank you for tuning in this week! The question of the week is: What do you think is the weirdest prayer god has ever heard?