In today’s episode of the Talk Heathen, Christy Powell and Kenneth take on callers with questions of belief and truth.

Chloe in PA asks how we should react if religion pushes prosocial behavior. Do you need religious beliefs to do good things? Even if you can get a positive result out of a lie or fiction, it is incredibly dangerous to do so. Why are people just fine believing things they have no evidence for? If you choose to block out evidence and science, you will be using the same broken epistemological tool that anti vaxxers use.

Kaden in FL has evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. Empty tombs, martyrdom, and changed minds can not possibly be used to demonstrate the resurrection happened as the supernatural claim. Even if we combine all the claims and grant them as true, we still have little data points that need a narrative constructed and that narrative is not the most simple explanation. Natural explanations for the claims are more likely than the resurrection. Even if Jesus were to be demonstrated to exist, how is the empty tomb evidence that he rose? Why are the claims of Jesus resurrecting different from the claims in the Quran such as Soloman talking to birds?

James in Canada has some claims about Jesus, the tomb, his true teachings. Can you see the distinction between a claim and the evidence for a claim?

Ryan in KY believes that something does not have to be a scientific fact for it to be a fact and that the Bible is perfect with no things that are untrue. If it is all about interpretation, does it matter if it is accurate? What does it mean to know something? What makes something worthy of belief? Why should we believe anything in the Bible and that god created the universe? Why are faith claims not discussed in simple language? We are encouraging you to be more critical in the way you think about these things.

Otari, in the Nation of Georgia, interprets the Bible literally. How do you resolve some of the obvious contradictions in the Bible? If you don’t read the Bible, how is it that you interpret it at all? How can the Catholic church have teachings aboutmorality that are infallible, while spending billions of dollars settling sexual abuse cases and enabling the behavior for this abuse to continue?

Billy in LA describes legislation that requires all schools K-12, and universities to have the words, “In God We Trust” in every classroom. How is this separation of church and state? The people who write this legislation do not care if there are people who believe in a different god or if there are atheists in the class. These are indoctrination attempts and propaganda. There are some groups that are doing things to push back such as using Arabic to write the required words.

Thank you for tuning in to your community! The question of the week is: What is a great slogan for Satan!

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