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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


 

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