Welcome back to Truth Wanted, the ACA call in show with the highest frequency. This week Dan is joined by rock scientist and former groupie for the Grateful Dead, R Kelley Laughlin! (Ok I made that last part up, kinda)

This week’s Patron of The Week is Gabriel Guerra. We may not believe in angels on this show, but you’re a close second in our books Gabriel. Thank you for the support!

We’ll kick calls off with Scottland, and he makes his case for why a multiverse might indicate that his particular god is real. Not particularly well, but hey, at least he’s a friendly theist! Dan isn’t so interested in deities that exist outside our universe, Kelley throws in a Tolkien reference for all you nerds out there, and somehow we land on John Lennon being a jerk?

Luc’s in Canada, he asks our hosts what sort of evidence would convince them that gods are real. Kelley wants a sandwich in the hand of every starving child on Earth, and Dan wants to see a manipulation of nature that couldn’t be done naturally. We fence with Luc about what qualifies as a miracle, how we might test for one, but he’s not getting it.

Next is Jamie who’s become increasingly intolerant of bullshit. Horoscopes, crystals, you name it, holding beliefs without good reason is dangerous, and Jamie is frustrated. Dan advocates for having healthy conversations in a constructive manner, and plugs Street Epistemology for the 148th time. Kelley is just as curmudgeonly as Jamie, perhaps more, but he offers a few tips on avoiding alienating people we disagree with.

Finally we’ll talk to Gabriel, who asks if classism plays a role in people buying into conspiracy theories. Is Marxism a gateway drug to believing in the New World Order? Dan points out that political ideology tends to be more based on observation than Uncle Frank subscribing to QAnon, but we can definitely see the overlap there.

That’s it for this week folks, if the FBI asks, we definitely have no top secret nuclear documents squirreled away at the Freethought Library. See you all next Friday!

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