No... Not Even Satan

Atheism and agnosticism can sound like scary words. 

These two concepts are often misunderstood as something more nefarious than they actually are. There is a misconception that they worship Satan, or that they hate God. They don’t believe that any god exists at all.

In this episode, we discuss some famous atheists, like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Ricky Gervais. 

We also chat about the discrimination that still exists for atheists and how some religious people feel their faith is under attack. Remember, the burden of proof is on the believer. 

In addition to atheism, we chat about agnosticism (or don’t-know-ism). Perhaps there is a god, but the human brain can’t even comprehend it. Agnostics are often willing to believe in a greater power, but hesitant to believe in specific truth claims that we see in organized religion. 

Secularism and humanism are also closely linked to atheism. Secularism is the removal of religion from decision-making. Religious secularists do exist, however, because Jesus said to love your neighbour!

Humanism is a people-first belief system that affirms human freedom and progress. Humanism dates back to 1500 BCE and it removes the excuse of “god isn’t helping”. Humanists generally do not accept any supernatural beliefs, religious or otherwise.  

Tune in to learn more about these belief (or lack of belief) systems!

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Katie Dooley  00:09

atheist I'm not real. So clearly this episodes, who told you you're not real people on the internet? There was a meme that went out said that atheists don't believe in God, so we shouldn't believe in them. Right? So this episode is not even real.

Preston Meyer  00:32

Okay, there is a linguistic point of view where I can see that what they say, could make sense, even though it's a faulty perspective, you know, of believing in is trusting if you don't trust God, Why should I trust you kind of thing, though, that's not actually socially constructive.

Katie Dooley  00:53

So if you haven't picked up on it yet, we're talking about atheism today. Yay, me.

Preston Meyer  01:00

Hi, I'm Preston, I. Welcome to the holy watermelon podcast.

Katie Dooley  01:06

I finally get some representation up in here.

Preston Meyer  01:09

Right.

Katie Dooley  01:12

Yeah, so we're talking about atheism, and agnosticism. And we've thrown in some other buzzwords terms, concepts that are often linked with those to

Preston Meyer  01:23

help fill out this. This episode.

Katie Dooley  01:25

I said before we press record, and I'll say it again now that record has been pressed is I don't know if I'm excited, because representation or concern that this is gonna be a really boring episode, because I think I can sum it up in my very first sentence of notes.

Preston Meyer  01:43

Go for it.

Katie Dooley  01:45

atheists don't believe in a higher power. No, not even Satan. And no, we don't hate God either. Finn,

Preston Meyer  01:54

atheism as a slightly stronger position than that though. It's the ISM of there is no God. Yeah, like it's a declaration to say I'm an atheist is to deny God not just I don't think so. I don't believe that there is it's there isn't?

Katie Dooley  02:12

No, no. But so often, the misconceptions, let's just tackle them right now, the misconception is that either we worship Satan,

Preston Meyer  02:23

which doesn't make any sense. We don't believe

Katie Dooley  02:24

in just like God, we do not believe in Satan. If God doesn't exist, or the others that we hate God and see former point.

Preston Meyer  02:35

It's the fan club that's hated.

Katie Dooley  02:39

Thank God, we don't believe God exists. So, yeah, now that it's clear, that's about that's atheism bi.

Preston Meyer  02:50

But there's so much more to it. There's a lot of things that fit into this discussion of nonbelief. It's, it's a, it's a heavy bag.

Katie Dooley  03:04

It is. Where do we want to start?

Preston Meyer  03:10

That's a great question.

Katie Dooley  03:11

I do like the Steven Roberts quote, is, I think it makes atheism somehow more relatable. Sure. So let's start there. So Stephen F. Roberts said, I contend that we are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer God than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible Gods you will understand why I dismiss yours. And lots of other famous atheists speak to that point. We collectively believe in about 3000 different gods. So if you follow the Abrahamic religion, you don't believe in 2999. And I don't believe in 3000. And that's the difference. So we're both very similar in that regard.

Preston Meyer  03:55

Right. As somebody who believes in a lot less than 3000 Gods it makes us a pretty easy, common ground to find.

Katie Dooley  04:14

That's it. What else do you want to say?

Preston Meyer  04:16

What other famous atheists do you have on your sleeve?

Katie Dooley  04:19

I mean, my favorite atheist, famous atheist is Richard Dawkins. He wrote a fantastic book called The God Delusion, which I highly recommend if you're sure he's written other books, too, but The God Delusion is sort of his, you know, Pinnacle as well as doing a ton of speaking and He I forget what exactly he did for a living he was like a professor of biology of science and so he always spoke to evolution and and that just turned into him becoming a speaker on I think, probably originally against creationism and then into atheism. So that's how he got

Preston Meyer  04:58

the natural course. of frustration to

Katie Dooley  05:02

write. I love that. Yeah. So he, I highly recommend The God Delusion. If you are an atheist and have trouble articulating, if you're thinking about atheism or if you have someone in your life that's atheist and you think they're slaughtering goats every weekend, probably.

Preston Meyer  05:17

That's the thing for people who believe in God.

Katie Dooley  05:21

We won't do that we're actually really boring people.

Preston Meyer  05:24

You've got a few more of your favorite atheists listed here and what else you got?

Katie Dooley  05:28

Oh, Christopher Hitchens, another one. I haven't read a ton of Christopher Hitchens. But he and Richard Dawkins and speak all the time. I'm less of a fan of Sam Harris, but he's also the only one left alive.

Preston Meyer  05:42

The only other atheist left.

Katie Dooley  05:46

When it speaks so free, and he's written books on it, he wrote a letter to a Christian nation. He got in a big fight with Ben Affleck on Islam. Oh, yeah. Famously. Apparently, he's turned into quite the far right. Extremist, though. So yeah.

Preston Meyer  06:03

A far right extremists that isn't a Christian.

Katie Dooley  06:05

I know. That's what I said to Brian. Because Brian said, you know, he's, like, gone off the deep end. And I was like, Oh, I didn't know that. And I was like, but he's an atheist. Not and we'll get into this, not that there aren't militant or extreme atheists. But anyway, other famous ones. I mean, it's not really their realm, but Ricky Gervais is a very, he's quite open about being an atheist. And is it pen the tall one of the magician's of pen and one that actually Angela? Angela talks a lot as well about atheism. So they're, they're great to, you know, search on YouTube and watch some of their debates and arguments. So I think those are the ones off the top of my head that I gravitate towards.

Preston Meyer  06:54

Yeah. So a pretty good crew.

Katie Dooley  06:59

Unless you think we're all devil worshippers.

Preston Meyer  07:01

Let's see, this just doesn't make sense. That's an entirely

Katie Dooley  07:05

different topic. Yeah. Richard Dawkins, has used the example of a Thor ism. Kind of a parody religion, but it's basically like not believing in Thor. Right to explain the concept of atheism. So do you believe Thor is real? Most people don't I'm sure there are some Neo Norse

Preston Meyer  07:29

well, and you got a handful of people that are willing to accept that Thor may have been historically real person like the historic Jesus. Absolutely. But to be up there in the clouds. That's an entirely different matter

Katie Dooley  07:41

an entirely different matter. So he uses a Thor ism to basically describe atheism. Oh, you don't believe the oars in the clouds with his hammer? Oh, okay. Cool. Neither do we. He's also we talked last last episode about Russell's teapot he says the Russell's teapot example what sense? You can't disprove that there isn't a teapot floating around space. So ergo, there must be a teapot. Yeah, those are some famous atheists.

Preston Meyer  08:18

There's a handful of atheist organizations that have popped up over the years as well for probably not all the same reason, I think there's probably some diversity in the reason there. You've got groups that feel like there's oppression against atheists. If you're familiar with American politics at all, you will definitely have heard that it's not okay to have a non Christian in the White House. Oh, my goodness.

Katie Dooley  08:45

Well, I was gonna save it for you. Go for it, set it up so nicely. So in a God Delusion, and I wasn't gonna dig through the book to find it. But it is in The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. There was a study done, and they pulled people on, who are like how much they would trust someone in a political position. If they were basically anything other than a white man, heterosexual man. So they like, you know, what, how much would you trust someone if they were a black man, and so little less than white man? How much would you trust them if they were Muslim? Okay, well, a little less than that. Then how much would you trust them? If they're a white woman? Well, a little less than that. And it would go and go and go. The lowest, like trust was atheist. So they would trust and I mean, none of these are problems. But when you think of who historically? No, I mean, like, there's nothing wrong with being gay, right? But when you think of how intolerant people can be the fact that you can be a gay Muslim woman, and you're trusted more in power than someone who just doesn't believe in God. Yeah, it was like mind blowing that I didn't realize that it was still such an issue. And again, not that there's anything wrong with being a gay Muslim woman, but, you know, we see it prevalent Islamophobia and homophobia and sexism constantly. So you think people would, you know, statistically have a problem with those more than an atheist when I think, I don't know what stats are for number of atheists in the world, but I think it's quite predominant. That's crazy to me that people just like lose trust, because someone doesn't believe in a deity.

Preston Meyer  10:43

Employers are forbidden from asking you your religion. But there's an awful lot of people who just know in their community, it's a lot better if you put it on your resume, because then you'll get the job over somebody who doesn't. Yeah. And so some of these atheist collective groups that are organized, are actively fighting this discrimination.

Katie Dooley  11:06

Yeah, I think it was The God Delusion as well talked about, or maybe it was just an interview with Richard Dawkins, but that you're talking about how he's like 95% sure that Barack Obama is an atheist, but he had to put on the Christian rent to get elected and like, I mean, the way Donald Trump behaved I don't. Shit if he's a Christian, he's a terrible Christian.

Preston Meyer  11:29

If he was genuinely a Christian, remember when he actually had military and armed forces come in? Tear gas punch people, so you could take a picture in front of a church, or a church in which he had never set foot according to the priests that worked there? If he was a Christian, I think he would have taken a picture in front of the church he attends.

Katie Dooley  11:51

Right? Yeah. So I think that's a problem to pretend to be religious for political gain. Right. I actually have a great example that I'll loop back to that. I mean, honestly, it's the theists who are like, trying to take God out of school, for sure. And

Preston Meyer  12:11

yet people like to blame that on the influx of foreigners in the country. No. Atheists, my

Katie Dooley  12:16

mom did that once. We call her out. She was like, it's these people coming to our country. And I was like, Mom, they all believe in God. It's the atheists. It's me. If we ate this dreaded day, get out. Yes, so there was I never actually watched this documentary on Netflix about a lady who was like at the forefront of taking the Lord's prayer out of schools, just the death threats that she

Preston Meyer  12:44

gets, and people issue death threats over the dumbest things.

Katie Dooley  12:49

But if there isn't gotten schools, Preston will be slaughtering lambs. I don't know what people what do you if you have a problem with atheists? Can you please email me and tell me what you think we do with our free time? I'm just really curious. No, truly, I'm like, I eat potato chips. And

Preston Meyer  13:09

if you're worried about your children, not receiving a religious education in school, remember that as a parent, it's your job to teach your children anything that they're not learning somewhere else.

Katie Dooley  13:22

Great parenting. Yeah, so atheists kind of sort of organized like Preston said, they're groups with a goal, generally. making things more secular and removing religion from them. So they're more accessible to I'd argue all religions. Yeah, right. When you take the Christian Lord's prayer to school, it's more accessible to people of other religions. And atheists and agnostics. Yeah. And then there's, I mean, there's your online atheists and keyboard warriors. I'm not going to pretend like there aren't extreme atheists and I know people have a problem with them. But there's extreme Christians and extreme Muslims and extreme feminists and

Preston Meyer  14:06

whatever. I don't know if there's an idea out there that somebody hasn't taken to the extreme. Like, there are people fighting over which is the best My Little Pony character, the everything, somebody's taken to the extreme.

Katie Dooley  14:26

And but I say, my note is that Katie says what the nurses think that the majority of atheists just kind of chill on their own with no formal organization. We just exist. Okay, so we're kind of boring.

Preston Meyer  14:44

I don't think you're boring. The reason that we're able to do this show together,

Katie Dooley  14:49

you're the best. How about you tell me why you believers are so antagonistic towards us? Just staring into the best thing, but

Preston Meyer  15:06

it's for some Christians, they feel that they are under attack from atheists. I think an awful lot of Christians realize that they're not personally being attacked, but an awful lot do and Richard Dawkins is kind of one of the more aggressive voices out there too. And being a public figure, it's easy to recognize. And it's weird that atheists, especially the non aggressive ones, who are the majority typically just have a simple request. Evidence.

Katie Dooley  15:47

Yes, like we talked about in parody religions, the burden of proof is on the believer,

Preston Meyer  15:51

right. And it's a lack of compelling evidence makes it hard to adopt a new belief. And the vast majority of Christians have gone into this conversation without providing any compelling evidence to their audience, which is super frustrating. And it's more frustrating when the average believer has found enough evidence to satisfy their own demands for evidence. And yet those little pieces of evidence aren't enough for the people they're talking to. That can be very frustrating, until you recognize the nature of your evidence and realize that it's not really usually something that's easy to share in a way that is going to compel anybody else, as we talked about the deal of witnesses and perspective about perception being reality, in our previous episodes, it's you can't force somebody else to believe when your evidence is not meeting the standards of your audience.

Katie Dooley  17:04

Yeah. Yeah, and I mean, we spent a whole episode on this, but and then how people process information. Right, right. So even if you have evidence that would stack up and I mean, we see this now with fake news and, and not fake news that people are either believing things that aren't real or not believing things that are real. So even if evidence does stack up, you still can't force someone to believe because of how, because of their own biases and how they process information.

Preston Meyer  17:36

Exactly. If new information is at odds with something that you refuse to let go of, then you're definitely not going to accept this new information. And that, more commonly a problem among believers and non believers. I really like so Nietzsche is a famous atheist

Katie Dooley  18:03

like the well. He's like the OG atheist, but not really, they credit like atheist philosophy to him.

Preston Meyer  18:10

He's a pretty great voice in the the early discussions of hate No, there is no God. And one of his great quotes that so many people love to just quote the first three words of a much longer, fully excellent, quote, God is dead. God is dead, and people like to stop there. The rest of the quote is solid gold. Okay? And I'm gonna read it for you.

Katie Dooley  18:39

Now the babies in me as well. No, I'm kidding.

Preston Meyer  18:43

God is dead. God remains dead, and we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned, and has bled to death under our knives? Who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement? What sacred game shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become Gods simply to appear worthy of it? This guy was a great writer.

Katie Dooley  19:23

Wow. One Ring to rule them all

Preston Meyer  19:26

right. And so he used this phrase to express his idea that the Enlightenment had eliminated the possibility of the existence of God. How he got there is rather complicated and I don't feel like the enlightenment does eliminate the possibility of the existence of God. But obviously, people disagree with me and that's okay.

Katie Dooley  19:54

That's why we're here.

Preston Meyer  19:57

But what's really interesting is that in this position that he holds the burden then falls on atheists to deal with the mystery of teaching morality in a vast wasteland of subjectivity and relativity. It's a spectrum now. And we have to figure out how we can proceed in this world. Things were a little simpler when I had a god to say what's right and what's wrong. I mean, that the whole of society agreed upon. And now that's not our reality.

Katie Dooley  20:31

Even without atheism, though, that's our reality with the hundreds of 1000s of denominations of Christianity. Right, right. I mean, within Christianity, some denominations say it's fine to be gay, some say it's not fine to be gay. Some say sex before marriage, it's fine. Some say psycho performer and isn't the worst thing you could possibly do. And those are all moral questions. Yeah. So I think this kind of comes back to our, one of our very early episodes on where morality comes from, and what is I think was or what is religion episode? And, you know, I don't think our morals come from modern religions.

Preston Meyer  21:12

And I somewhat disagree. Well, morality isn't one monolithic things. Morality itself is a spectrum. What even the the average Christian would be considered quite immoral to somebody who holds themselves to the old Mosaic Law where eating shrimp is I think you shouldn't do. So it's, it's a spectrum and there's differing standards in different groups.

Katie Dooley  21:47

Right, but then, ergo, it can come from religion alone, maybe that's what all can feed

Preston Meyer  21:57

comes from people. Yeah.

Katie Dooley  21:59

And feelings. For sure.

Preston Meyer  22:03

Because people have feelings.

Katie Dooley  22:04

Yes. We are emotional beings.

Preston Meyer  22:06

Kind of an awful lot.

Katie Dooley  22:10

Anything anything else you want to ask me as I resident atheist like that? We're pretty boring. I think you just don't believe

Preston Meyer  22:18

I mean, it is it's that simple. That's how much further can you dive into a shallow pool?

Katie Dooley  22:24

Wow. What do you say?

Preston Meyer  22:27

There's more to you than but atheism itself is a shallow pool.

Katie Dooley  22:34

Yeah, so I were thinking you were saying worshippers just remember all that the isms monotheism, one polytheism, many pan everything a nothing at all, nothing at all. Satanism is what you're looking for.

Preston Meyer  22:48

And we'll talk about that another day. So adjacent to atheism, we have agnosticism so where atheism literally means no god is agnosticism is don't know ism. Literally,

Katie Dooley  23:07

hi. I wrote that this is kind

Preston Meyer  23:12

of a cop out. But it's a genuine position that a lot of people know. I know. And I find my

Katie Dooley  23:16

agnostic moments to. So basically, agnostic is the idea that we can't know if there's a God or not fair. And Preston made the note didn't What did I make the know? How can we know anything is real or not? Right? It's it's more that if there is a God, we can't comprehend it? And I've made claims that I generally think there isn't. But if there is something so beyond,

Preston Meyer  23:44

it's more complex than the way people present it. Yeah, absolutely. It's not anything that we have. The vast majority of theists tend to agree with you as well. Especially in the Catholic Catholic dogma, it's God is unknowable. We have little snippets here and there, but you're straight. I'm not even supposed to try for most people. Which is also a position that I don't love.

Katie Dooley  24:12

No, because then what's the point? Right, right. And that's kind of where I tend towards atheism, because if it's so profound, we can't comprehend it, then it then goes back to why are we following these rules? Right, because we could be 100% wrong on these rules. If we can't comprehend a higher power, so I digress in that, but

Preston Meyer  24:34

But yeah, basically, the idea is, typically for most agnostics, the human brain can't comprehend God and that we don't know what's going on. Usually agnostics or people who are are willing to believe generally, in some greater creative force, but are hesitant to believe in specific truth claims, especially the more specific you get the more questionable they can be. And thanks to what we've learned in science, you can make some pretty specific claims that can outright be disproven.

Katie Dooley  25:06

Are these the people who say they're spiritual but not religious.

Preston Meyer  25:10

I think some people who say that they're spiritual, but not religious definitely fall into this category. It's the easiest cop out.

Katie Dooley  25:21

I mean, I think this kind of goes, I've said it before. Sorry, everyone. I said before, I don't think you should be moderate in your beliefs. So if you're going well, we can't know either way, like, have you actually thought about it? And I'm not saying you still won't come to the conclusion of agnosticism. But that's always my first question is have you actually sat down and really rumbled with the possibility one way or the other?

Preston Meyer  25:47

One, there's the struggle of you can, through your own meditation, come to accept the idea that, yeah, there's a God and still be bombarded with all of these different voices saying, this is God or this is God or that's God, and not be able to determine where to go from

Katie Dooley  26:06

there. Absolutely. And I think, I mean, most people avoid that. Yeah, most people don't know anything about a religion other than their own. That's true. Because there's a lot and I, I would be curious, what the average whatever, not whatever, just the average believer and not saying any one in particular, what their thoughts would be exploring other religions genuinely. I mean, I know you've done it, but you've always had an interest in it, but like just some random Joe off the street antonym a book on Sikhism, and see what that does for an awakening and enlightenment. Already, because this goes back to Thor ism. If you can read up on Sikhism and go This is weird. Why would anyone believe this now? I think that's something to reflect on. Okay. Well, here's what I think weird,

Preston Meyer  26:56

right? A lot of people have much more difficulty examining their own beliefs than others. Oh, absolutely. Because I believe it because it's true, which is, of course, an argument that gets nobody anywhere at all. Yeah.

27:16

Shall we the teapot,

Preston Meyer  27:18

right? Take a lot of looking because we don't know where it is. It's somewhere between Earth and Mars, I think is where Russell said it was. Yeah, yeah. It's orbiting. So yeah, it's orbiting the Sun somewhere between Earth and Mars. That's an awful lot of space.

Katie Dooley  27:37

We'll find it one day, I believe. Yeah, so that's basically it. Sounds like you're really this is gonna be boring episode.

Preston Meyer  27:50

Like we're making it not boring. And we're definitely informative.

Katie Dooley  27:55

For sure. And now that everyone knows I don't slaughter goats in my free time. I can breathe a sigh of relief. I wanted to throw two other terms. And in particular, so we're going to chat about secularism and humanism, and I'm mentioning both now because often people who are essentially atheist identify themselves as secular humanists. And so we're gonna dive into those terms. And I think part of that is because of all the nasty connotations that come with atheism is to rename yourself something a little, a little nicer,

Preston Meyer  28:34

make it sound like you have an ism that isn't a negative. All right.

Katie Dooley  28:37

But Preston, I were talking about this and I think you need to just own your label, whatever it is, because then it just leaves room for the bad. Sure. Great. We're talking about this. I know someone who calls himself a Christ follower instead of a Christian because of all the the baggage that now comes with Christianity, but I don't think that helps Christianity.

Preston Meyer  28:59

No, it doesn't.

Katie Dooley  29:01

Or we same thing we use the example of this, you know, when we're snacking before the episode of people who say they believe in equality, but aren't feminists Well, that doesn't help the cause of feminism in that it's been historically that women have been at a disadvantage. So to just be like, Oh, equality, this brush is the idea that women have been historically disadvantaged under the rug. So

Preston Meyer  29:26

there's, there's a good reason for both of these people, even if they're not really on board with critical thought.

Katie Dooley  29:39

Get our garbage feminist, but you can't like and there's garbage atheists

Preston Meyer  29:44

and garbage Christians.

Katie Dooley  29:45

Oh, are we going to address Hitler? Let's do it. Cool. So one of everyone's like, favorite argument against atheism is that Hitler was an atheist. Which is like actually debatable.

Preston Meyer  30:02

He was extremely superstitious and believed a lot of things.

Katie Dooley  30:06

Yes. And he was raised Catholic. And I've just bring he was raised Catholic. And one of the arguments, I sort of thought saw where it was like, it doesn't matter if he's an atheist is that he used his Christianity to gain power. This goes back to was Obama actually Christian was Donald Trump actually, Christian. If you're using religion to gain power doesn't matter if you're an atheist, because you're, you're using religion to be a bad person, right? In the case of Hitler. So that's just for everyone who's gonna be like, sending us messages, those messages that says that Hitler was an atheist.

Preston Meyer  30:44

I'm really uncomfortable with the parallels between Trump and Hitler.

Katie Dooley  30:48

Yeah, that's a different episode.

Preston Meyer  30:51

I'm so glad that he's not President. I don't have strong positive feelings for Biden, but they're not the strong negative feelings I had for Trump.

Katie Dooley  31:01

Yeah, so there's the Hitler. Hitler atheist debate that we so frequently hear. Anyway, back to secularism, secularism, we most commonly hear it as the idea of step by step, the separation of church and state. So you live living in a secular country, it means you're removing religion from decision making is sort of more specifically what the term means,

Preston Meyer  31:29

which is intensely difficult to do when you have an awful lot of Christians in your government.

Katie Dooley  31:35

Well, that was one of my points is that? Well, the United States and even Canada says that they're secular countries, because there are so many religious people in power. There's absolutely religious influence in decision making. Most I'd say probably most prominently is abortion laws, is if it were a secular issue, it would be legal. And then if you're religious, and that's against your religion, then you just don't get an abortion,

Preston Meyer  32:03

which it and it should be that simple.

Katie Dooley  32:06

And same with gay marriage, right?

Preston Meyer  32:08

If you don't believe in gay marriage, don't kill gay married

Katie Dooley  32:12

someone of the same gender. So that would be an example of removing religious decision making from we have an awful

Preston Meyer  32:21

lot of public servants all around the world. Not in any one specific country, though, there's, you're guaranteed to find some specific examples. If you look around yourself, that an awful lot of public servants feel that they're not actually meant to serve the public. They're only there to serve their friends. And that's not okay.

Katie Dooley  32:44

Yes. Yes, you are correct. Yeah. I don't know how you fix that. It's just holding your people in public office accountable.

Preston Meyer  32:53

Yeah. But thanks to the fact that say write the laws,

Katie Dooley  32:58

but they always want to get hired again, remember that

Preston Meyer  33:00

they do, which is why they do just enough nice things right before they call an election.

Katie Dooley  33:06

Which is why we need to hold them accountable throughout their term, which Yeah, I mean, you can I'm not great at and I you should be better at. So you can be. I mean, generally, you're not religious, if you're a secular speaker, you can absolutely be religious and be a secularist is again, the idea that you remove religion from decision making, so you can advocate for public decision making. Obviously, if you're religious, you'd probably make your private decisions based off a religion, but you can advocate for secularism in public spaces.

Preston Meyer  33:38

Absolutely. One of the most important teachings of Jesus, according to Jesus himself, is the need to take care of your neighbors, regardless of any reason why you might not want to, you have to take care of your neighbors. That's a pretty good reason to be a secularist recognize that you have neighbors that don't believe the same things you do, and that you still need to take care of their needs. Yes. And

Katie Dooley  34:03

I guess to expand on that, that people wouldn't be all lacking because of their religious beliefs. Same thing, we think of it in public spheres. But, you know, because you're a different religion, you still have access to same health care and education and opportunities that someone maybe the mainstream faith has, it doesn't matter regardless of your religion, you still have the same job opportunities, whatever, you don't need to be fearing for your life, right or livelihood because you are of a particular faith. Yeah. So you're talking about the US and Canada not being as secular as they claim? And I made a note that says to anyone complaining about Sharia law, you better look in the mirror.

Preston Meyer  34:55

For sure. We have religious laws in in pretty much every English speaking country, I can't speak for the others, but I betcha they're there.

Katie Dooley  35:08

Yeah, I mean, I know Russia and China have had like, militant atheist political programs, which are not good.

Preston Meyer  35:16

And yet they both still discriminate against homosexuals, right, which most people like to mostly blame on Christianity.

Katie Dooley  35:26

And I don't know, I know, the Scandinavian countries are predominantly atheists. So I don't know what their political decision making is like to comment particularly. But yeah, you're right. Any, any of these western countries for sure. Western Hemisphere countries, definitely have religious influence in their public decision making

Preston Meyer  35:46

for sure. I think secularism, as an idea is kind of interesting that in, it's a western idea, it's like religion, which the word exists as a western idea, as something that's separate from the mundane. We talked about in Shintoism, how the state of Japan made Buddhism, the state religion, even though everybody was a Shinto list, because they didn't see Shinto as a religion, meaning that there was no secularism, because they didn't distinguish between the two.

Katie Dooley  36:29

Because it was so ingrained, yeah, I wonder if that's because we're younger countries, maybe. Right, because we had our indigenous peoples here. And then we were more diversity of belief. That's what I mean by that, is because we're younger countries were colonized and, you know, basically populate through immigration. Whereas if you look at, you know, I think like Iceland, in particular, where everyone's still blond and blue eyed because they haven't had those levels of immigration, and it's such an ancient country, you wouldn't, you're in Japan to right where you wouldn't necessarily, that's why people in Iceland still believe in ours, because they haven't had the same outside influences, as, again, Canada, United States was, were built entirely on outside influences. Probably unfortunately,

Preston Meyer  37:19

I think it's really nifty that you picked Iceland as your example, that they have changed so little that when they first were colonized, Norse and Icelandic were the same language. And the people of Norway continued to evolve and their language continued to evolve to the point that they're not the same language, but there's some mutual intelligibility there, but the Icelandic language of today is the same as Norris was 1000 and a half years ago. That's why Yeah, it's pretty cool.

Katie Dooley  37:52

Someone a lady from Iceland was telling me about how they name themselves is that you? You take like, so you take your if you're a boy, you take your dad's first name is your last name. And if you're a girl, you take your mom's first name as your last name, so no one has the same last name and a family. But because she grew up in Canada, she has her dad's. Like, it's like her grandpa's first name as her last name. Because we go, we're patriarchal and how we name so she's moved since moved back to Iceland. And everyone's like, Why is this here tonight? That doesn't make any sense because it's son of she her name is son of when it shouldn't be daughter. Anyway,

Preston Meyer  38:38

yeah, that's, that's weird. And that's a easy enough fix. I don't know of any courts, that straight up won't allow you to change your name.

Katie Dooley  38:47

No, but she was born and raised in Canada and intends to come back to Canada. It's just a funny cultural,

Preston Meyer  38:52

it's weird that her parents didn't just stick with the former nomenclature, because you can write whatever you want on the birth certificate, or when a registered kid odd and interesting things. And so the secularists that we have here in the West, are trying to I want to say split, but I want you to understand that I'm not trying to say break. There, there needs to be a division between religious life and secular life, there needs to be a lack of specific religious doctrine in government. When we have such a diverse plurality of people here,

Katie Dooley  39:41

I think part of the problem and this is just off the top of my head is that we also live in such an individualistic society really do us it's even worse than Canada, where we put the individual in ahead of the group. So it's really hard to think of this as maybe where secularism is kind of scary, because we want what's best For us not what's best for everyone when secularism absolutely is best for everyone because it encompasses nothing and therefore, therefore everyone can take part whereas to encompass everything would be very difficult and to encompass one or two is unfair.

Preston Meyer  40:17

It's so weird to me how many people are opposed to the idea of not having dogma forced down their throats? I don't get it.

Katie Dooley  40:33

It's because the people who they would be the ones doing the fourth thing,

Preston Meyer  40:38

and that is the goal that people who seek out power are the people that you don't want to have power.

Katie Dooley  40:48

Right are the people who are like okay without being forced down their throats, because their dogma and they want to force it on someone else come back to my Sharia law comment is like, well, you know, any, you see at any one go on Facebook and told me like, well, we don't want Sharia law. It's like, well, we have pretty, you know, Christian law here. Yeah. So what's wrong with Sharia law? Right? You don't understand Sharia law? B, and B, how is it so different than what we have now? Right? So because it's not their, their version being shoved down the throats, they want their version? So someone else's version instead of having no version, which is secularism. I hope that was a great explanation slash analogy.

Preston Meyer  41:34

So George Holyoke, the guy who coined the word secularism, back in 1851, argued that secularism is not an argument against Christianity. It is one independent of it. It does not question the pretentions of Christianity, it advances others. Secularism does not say there is no light or guidance elsewhere, but maintains that there is light and guidance in secular truth, whose conditions and sanctions exist independently, and act forever. secular knowledge is manifestly that kind of knowledge which is founded in this life, which relates to the conduct of this life conduces to the welfare of this life, and is capable of being tested by the experience of this life. I like that packet of it. I mean, it's a lot of things, but basically, it's to simplify it, it's we worry about the things that we can see in this life to govern this life, that it's not okay to govern somebody else based on something that they don't believe in. And that can also get a little bit complicated if you are trying to convince somebody that murder is bad if they don't believe in bad, but I think most people can understand that there is desirable and undesirable even if there's different standards on that.

Katie Dooley  43:08

Or a spectrum of standards. Absolutely. Take a shot every time we say the word spectrum.

Preston Meyer  43:17

It's a spectrum. So of course, there's, like we said before, there's extremes and everything. You have hard secularists and soft secularists. Oh, right. And so these two categories are actually more similar than they are different. Hard secularism considers religious propositions to be epistemology, epistemologically illegitimate, they seek to deny them as much as possible. Whereas soft secularism is really simple, just all about tolerance and liberalism. Which isn't the big l these are the Liberals lib tard. It's little L liberalism of we should be free to make our choices and take care. Yeah, yeah.

Katie Dooley  44:13

All right. So often, secularism is paired with human it's something like so people identify themselves as secular humanists or you can just be a humanist and I know humanist chaplains exist. So there is some organization under humanism. But again, it's not, I guess, I mean, anything could be a religion, but there's no deity in humanism,

Preston Meyer  44:40

but depends on how you define deity. See our former episodes.

Katie Dooley  44:47

Humanism is a philosophical term that focuses on human agency and intelligence as the best way to progress. So it's a human first philosophy V. Again, religion perhaps?

Preston Meyer  45:03

Yeah, it's, it's been the word humanism has been used in a few different ways by a few different groups over the years. But generally, each of the different movements agree on the importance of affirming human freedom and progress.

Katie Dooley  45:17

Humanism goes, you can do it, no, there's just so much happening. Humanism actually goes as far back as the 1500s. And by 1500s, I mean 1500 BCE

Preston Meyer  45:33

1000s of years old, years old, 100

Katie Dooley  45:36

talking about humanism. And so Confucianism is one that is kind of a humanist philosophy for sure puts Confucius, Confucius, Confucius at the center of it. And then even the Rigveda talks about humans and human agency and things like that. So it's a very old term, but it has become I would definitely say more popular as we try to navigate this atheistic spectrum.

Preston Meyer  46:04

And of course, the because of these ideas, the burden of human improvement falls on us individually and societally so that we can rely on each other and science and not on excuses of Oh, God isn't helping us.

Katie Dooley  46:25

Yeah, I think that's really important. I even see things and I'd be curious, your thoughts on? You know, when people say, well, prayer doesn't work unless you do like so then. If you just do the work, then why do you need prayer? I mean,

Preston Meyer  46:42

there's, do you want an answer to this question?

Katie Dooley  46:47

Is it for this episode, I want to get fits

Preston Meyer  46:49

into this.

Katie Dooley  46:51

That's one thing I you know, seeing where, you know, it's great to pray, but you need to do the work. It's like, well, then stay away.

Preston Meyer  47:00

Absolutely. Well, even even in the Bible, we are told Yeah, go on, pray, and then get up and work.

Katie Dooley  47:09

So then in my world prayer, just like superfluous Sure,

Preston Meyer  47:13

I'm okay with you currently holding that position. Cuz I might have an explanation for you on another day, or next finds utility in prayer, whether or not it actually does the trick.

Katie Dooley  47:29

Interesting. We can do our episode on prayer. Another important note, and I think this is secular humanism, in particular, rejects anything supernatural. So not just religion, but also sort of sciences, anything metaphysical. I have any type of woowoo here. So I could easily identify as a secular humanist. In addition to an atheist. I actually would separate those, I would say I'm an atheist and a secular humanist, personally, but like, some people pick one or the other. But like, like that, it's it's definitely more all encompassing. So you have a note about, oh, yeah, stick humanists.

Preston Meyer  48:17

Yes, there are theistic humanists. There's been plenty of philosophers, especially through the Enlightenment who kind of made the idea popular again, I guess. And there was one fella, and we'll talk more about him later. His name is Thomas Moore. He was sainted by the Catholic Church. He was knighted in England.

Katie Dooley  48:40

See one of these saints you think shouldn't be a saint. i There's no

Preston Meyer  48:44

reason in my mind that he should ever have been sainted. But here we are. Here we are. He was an English fella. And he was a Catholic in a time where it was not so great to be Catholic by the end of his life anyway. He made it his life's mission to prevent the publication of the Bible. He was a Catholic who was sainted. He prevented the publication of the Bible to the point of burning people's lives and livelihoods. But he was also a humanists. Or so his, any of these words, his literature affirms a humanist philosophy. Of course, if you were on the the opposite side of him in literally any battlefield, you were going to have a bad day. Luckily, more modern humanists don't follow his example.

Katie Dooley  49:54

Or otherwise.

Preston Meyer  49:56

Yeah. Right, but he's my Favorite to bring up as a famous theistic humanist? Garbage because he's garbage. The best humanists are definitely secular and typically non theistic or atheistic.

Katie Dooley  50:17

Thank you for the compliment or like the best at being

Preston Meyer  50:20

a human just the best of being human.

Katie Dooley  50:22

Okay? I just thought even like the best people are like, thank you.

Preston Meyer  50:29

And there's also following that line of religious humanists, there are people who treat humanism as their religion, like you mentioned, humanist chaplains, where it's, you have a ministry, this is your life, kind of thing

Katie Dooley  50:44

I mentioned, why I left, why stayed in our epistemology episode, which I think was two or three episodes ago now. And the son that left he became a human humanist chaplain. Because he like the, I guess, like the camaraderie and community that religion gives without having a god to believe in or theology or pretend you are, and just something that could be more open to more people. And I don't think he would have turned away anyone who was religious, it just wasn't focused on a deity or theology, like you said, but more on community and volunteerism. And so,

Preston Meyer  51:24

yeah, there's, there's a bunch of humanist groups. And there's even an international humanist and ethical union that kind of ties a lot of these groups together for larger meetings and conferences and whatnot. And they have an official statement on how humanism is defined. That says, humanism is a democratic and ethical life stance, which affirms that human beings have the right and responsibility to give meaning and shape to their own lives. It stands for the building of a more humane society through an ethic based on human and other natural values. In the spirit of reason, and free inquiry, through human capabilities, it is not theistic, and it does not accept supernatural views of reality.

Katie Dooley  52:19

I would say you're probably a theistic humanist, you don't claim to fall into that definition because of your religious beliefs. But I think you're definitely on the let's make a humane world and build ethics that our company can uncover all encompassing to all people. I would call you, a secular Christian humanists. I'm pretty comfortable with that. Nice. High five.

Preston Meyer  52:47

Yeah. Humanism is it's a weird thing to see somebody speak out against? I haven't seen it yet. But I've suspect that as I continue looking through the world, I might I don't

Katie Dooley  53:06

know if anyone would speak out against it. But I definitely think there are people who aren't humanists. Oh, yeah, I don't think I wouldn't be like, I disagree with that. But there's people who think, Well, God, God will provide right and that would be against that would be not a humanist perspective. But I can't see anyone be liking your humanists Do you must be evil. But yeah, there's definitely people who don't prescribe to it because of their faith or

Preston Meyer  53:33

see the reason I expect to hear somebody revile humanism is there's a handful of spots in the Bible where it says, Don't trust in the arm of flesh, only trust in God. And so the people who prefer to quote that over the more helpful parts of the Bible, are more likely to be anti humanist. Yeah,

Katie Dooley  53:54

and I mean, if you're one of those people who also believe that this is the hell, this is the worst and everything after will be better,

Preston Meyer  54:02

they'll probably be pretty opposed to this movement as well. So in theory, again, I haven't actually found anybody to reach out humanism yet, but if you are,

Katie Dooley  54:11

please send me an email. Any final thought fun all this nonbelief

Preston Meyer  54:20

it ties in with our previous episode on epistemology a few? Well, several episodes ago now I guess, that belief is kind of a complex thing. And if you want to hate somebody for not believing in a thing that you fail to provide evidence for. That's on you.

Katie Dooley  54:43

Also add and when you don't believe in, here's the grocery list of religions and deities. Yeah, for so for someone for not believing in yours. That's

Preston Meyer  54:53

also very nice. You have to acknowledge the validity of their position. Right, and there's loads of atheists It's who kind of suck. But there's an awful lot more atheists that are perfectly fine people as good as any Christian or Buddhist or Muslim or Jew.

Katie Dooley  55:10

I also don't think people, especially if they're on the other side, unbeliever, I also don't think, again, just thinking to like my social media world, people don't realize how many atheists are in their world,

Preston Meyer  55:22

right? If an awful lot of people just don't talk about religion, which makes it hard to tell,

Katie Dooley  55:28

and I think people often assume that, again, especially, I hate to say it, but you know, the average Canadian white person, oh, they're probably Christian. Right? So instead of going, well, maybe they don't believe me, they believe in something entirely different. I think people just sort of project their beliefs on people that look look like them specific. Absolutely. And so when I've seen the odd anti theist comment on my Facebook feed, I'm like, do not realize that there's a lot of us. Right, and we're like your friends and neighbors.

Preston Meyer  56:04

I have enough differences with people in my own religious community that, that I certainly can't go around out in public and imagine that everyone thinks the same as I do.

Katie Dooley  56:17

Cool. Well, I just want to reiterate that we don't believe in Satan. And we don't hate God. Because there is no God. Or Satan. Yeah. That's all I got.

Preston Meyer  56:32

Yeah. Oh,

Katie Dooley  56:33

we have we have to ship things. Ship promo.

Preston Meyer  56:39

We definitely have to promote checkout or Facebook or Instagram. Feel free to email us. What's our email address, Katie,

Katie Dooley  56:46

holy watermelon [email protected].

Preston Meyer  56:49

And on our social media, you can find links to our Discord server where we try to have great conversations. And I think that's about it right now.

Katie Dooley  57:02

Yeah, social media. Oh, leave us a review on on Apple podcasts. That'd be really great.

Preston Meyer  57:08

Thank you so much for joining us. Peace be with you.