Living On Common Ground
Does it feel like every part of your life is divided? Every scenario? Every environment? Your church, your school, your work, your friends. Left, right. Conservative, liberal. Religious, secular. From parenting styles to school choice, denominational choice to governing preference, it seems you're always being asked to take a side.
This is a conversation between a progressive Christian and a conservative atheist who happen to be great friends. Welcome to Living on Common Ground.
Living On Common Ground
Aliens Among Us: Faith in an Extraterrestrial World
When Congressional hearings on UFOs feature military personnel claiming encounters with non-human technology, a profound question emerges: how would confirmation of intelligent alien life change religious beliefs? In this thought-provoking episode, a progressive Christian and a conservative atheist find surprising common ground as they explore the resilience of faith in the face of paradigm-shifting discoveries.
The journey begins with a candid confession about social media addiction, revealing how certain behaviors control us despite our conscious rejection of them—setting up the deeper question of whether we choose our beliefs or if they're somehow hardwired. Could this same dynamic apply to our fundamental worldviews?
Delving into science fiction and theological speculation, the hosts consider how different religious traditions might respond to extraterrestrial contact. While biblical literalists might struggle to reconcile Genesis with alien life, both hosts agree that religiosity itself would likely transform rather than disappear. "I think religiosity is at the core of what it means to be human," the atheist host surprisingly asserts.
Most fascinating is their exploration of beliefs so fundamental we don't even recognize them as beliefs—like our concept of "human rights." What happens when beings deserving moral consideration aren't human? This question forces us to examine assumptions about personhood and dignity that underpin modern ethical frameworks but remain largely unexamined until challenged by the truly alien.
Whether you identify as religious, spiritual-but-not-religious, or firmly secular, this conversation challenges you to examine your own unquestioned assumptions about reality. What beliefs might you hold that are so deeply embedded you don't even recognize them as beliefs? And how might those beliefs adapt when confronted with the truly unexpected?
Follow Living on Common Ground wherever you get your podcasts and join two friends from opposite ends of the belief spectrum as they demonstrate how thoughtful dialogue can bridge seemingly unbridgeable divides.
Does it feel like every part of your life is divided, Every scenario, every environment, your church, your school, your work, your friends, left right, conservative, liberal, religious, secular? It seems you always have to take a side. This is a conversation between a progressive Christian and a conservative atheist who happen to be great friends. Welcome to Living on Common Ground.
Speaker 2:Do you think if we met today, we would still be friends?
Speaker 3:I don't know, but we're friends now.
Speaker 4:A mom is known as a mom because they are with him, man. So what? We won a few games and y'all fools think that's something. Man, that ain't nothing, y'all. And you know what else? We ain't nothing either. Yeah, we came together in camp, cool. But then we're right back here and the world tells us that they don't want us to be together. We fall apart like we ain't a damn bit of nothing, man.
Speaker 5:How are you?
Speaker 3:I'm good I'm. Yeah, I'm doing well. Yeah, I'm in Vegas.
Speaker 5:Where are you now Vegas? Yep, yeah, and look at you taking time to do the podcast yeah, it's a very exciting trip to Vegas. Well at you taking time to do the podcast.
Speaker 3:Uh, yeah, it's a it's a very exciting trip to Vegas. Well, you could be out on the strip.
Speaker 5:Uh huh, sure, I don't know. I've never been to Vegas, so I don't know.
Speaker 3:Oh, you haven't.
Speaker 5:I have no desire. Denise has a desire, but I don't oh it's fun Vegas is fun yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, not on these trips that I take, but it's mostly where I go is sad because it's, you know, it's everywhere except for the strip is just like any kind of suburb that you've ever been in, except every single building has a slot machine in it. If it's a gas station or an office building, everything has a slot machine in it. If it's a gas station or an office building, everything has a slot machine in it. And uh, so that's a little sad, but other than that it's fine.
Speaker 5:Yeah, well, good, how long are you out there?
Speaker 3:Uh, I'm here for one night and then I am flying to Reno for two nights, uh, and seeing people up there, and then I'm flying home. So if you want to get sadder than Vegas, go to Reno. Reno's fine, reno's fine. I don't want anybody to get mad at me, but it's not Vegas.
Speaker 5:I have two books I want to show you that I've got recently. Okay, can you see this one?
Speaker 3:Yes. Yes, I can see this one, uh, yes, yes, I can read that one, I have it and I've read um chapters of it okay, I'm gonna read it, because you uh asked me to reach out to them and I have, but I have not heard back.
Speaker 3:But the them. We should say that did you. Are you trying to keep it a secret? Are you trying to be coy? No, you can say no, I nope, go ahead. Yeah, we reach out to brett weinstein. I have to always have to say, like weinstein is me, brett weinstein and heather heying who do the uh, dark horse podcast and and they wrote the book yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 5:Hunter's Guide to the 21st Century Evolution and the Challenges of Modern Life.
Speaker 3:It's really good.
Speaker 5:It sounds really interesting to me, yeah it's very interesting.
Speaker 3:They talk about hyper-novelty and essentially the theme of the book is that we evolved as a species over at least several hundred thousand years. Species over at least several hundred thousand years. If you want to go back to like common ancestors, you know, you could go back probably a couple million years, something like that, and we evolved to be a thing and then in the last, you know, 10 000 years, just like a blink of an eye in our, in our evolution, uh, we completely changed the entire structure, we, we developed an entire structure of, of civilization, uh, and much of it contains things that we just did not evolve to be able to handle, and so, um, that's kind of the theme of it trying to deal with that.
Speaker 5:Anyway, I think I'm really I'm really excited about reading it, but I've got a couple other books I have to finish first. One of them is this one you can't see it. Uh, star spangled, Jesus, star spangled.
Speaker 3:Jesus, yeah, okay.
Speaker 5:By April. A joy, okay, and he was the other person. That was the other person representing uh, representing persons of faith, with me this past weekend on that panel.
Speaker 3:You should mention what the panel was.
Speaker 5:Yeah, so I had the opportunity to go to Nanacon, which is Nashville nuns convention, and so, basically, you know, they told me it was an atheist convention, but it wasn't just atheists. Um, you know, I think nuns is a better, uh, maybe a better way of thinking about it. So you had all kinds of people there. There were actually at the convention, me, april and one other christian, okay, but but I asked um one of the uh organizers of the event, yeah, and he estimated that about 80 of the people there probably at one time, were persons of faith themselves well, that's not surprising, I mean we live in the west yeah, so we're all cultural Christians, can't do anything about that.
Speaker 5:We could talk more about that sometime. Okay, so a couple things. One is I want to share this just because I want to let people hear how organized we're becoming. You shared with me. Let's see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 episode topics. And did you see that I?
Speaker 3:responded no, you said that you had responded, but I can't find it because I'm.
Speaker 5:I responded right on the document is what I did that you shared with me on Google Drive. I just I just made comments on it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't. I don't know how to get back to that.
Speaker 5:I'll share it with you again. Yeah, you shared it with me, and then you can't figure out how to get back to it. So the whole thing I was talking about how organized we are now we're actually being judged. So a couple of them. I did just say I totally agree with you. So. I'm not sure that well, but I would still be very interested in hearing what you said. Would you have to say about it? Because while I say I completely agree with you.
Speaker 3:I may not. The statements intentionally inflammatory. They're intended to be kind of debate resolutions Because, if you know, I've just been thinking about what. You know, we've talked about this so many times. But what we want this podcast to really be and what we want, well, well, what we want the podcast to be, and and um, you know, my, I keep coming back to that um, I want to model, um, being able to, to be friends with somebody that that you disagree with, and also be able to be in the same room with people who, uh, think differently than you and still be able to. You know, if we're going to have a group, a community that welcomes everyone, you know, outside of what Peter Rollins says, I've been thinking, I've still been thinking a lot about that so if you're listening and you haven't checked out the Peter Rollins episode, I would highly recommend going back.
Speaker 3:I thought his point was really well made, but I'm going to disregard it and just say you know, that is what. If that's what we're trying to do, then I want to be like I. I want to actually model that and kind of be a little you know, try, try to be a little brave here, because not just hang out in the areas where I know that we're fine in and see if we can have some sort of disagreement and then still be friends.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I would hope so. I can be. I guess it comes down to you. I can be, I guess it comes down to you. So I will say this, as I've been noodling what Peter Rollins had to say and I'm probably twisting what he said a little bit, good, no-transcript.
Speaker 3:Well. I mean, but but I think his point is well made, that that, um, the strongest communities are are built around a common enemy and, uh, it's the most bonding thing to our human brain, I think. And so I thought his, I thought his point was so made that, you know, when he was talking about the friend of his, it was like I'm going to have a, I'm going to have a festival where everyone's welcome, and he was like I could list like four different groups of people like right off the top of my head that you're not going to be okay with being there.
Speaker 5:I just started laughing inside because I felt like he was talking about me at that point.
Speaker 3:But it's a good thing to keep in mind and he might be philosophically. I think he's right, I don't care, I guess, that's where I don't care, because I want to do it. I want to try to do it.
Speaker 5:if we can, we'll have an opportunity to further debate him especially. I think, uh, he's going to come back on. Um, I communicated with him a couple times last, last week. He's going to come back on.
Speaker 3:We haven't set a date yet, but and peter, if you hear this, if you actually do listen this, we have no interest in debating you.
Speaker 5:We're just kidding well, no, I, I, I, I do.
Speaker 3:Okay, never mind, jeff wants to debate you.
Speaker 5:Not that I disagree.
Speaker 3:He's going to come out hard at you, Peter.
Speaker 5:Well, peter's smarter than I am, so I will back down real quick. And here's a little tip for anyone If you want me to back down, start quoting people to me, because then I'm out of my element, because I'm bad at that.
Speaker 3:So you did it in the convention, you said, you said when you were there I was locked in.
Speaker 5:I was so impressed with myself. Yeah. That's I'm not good, I'm not good like that. I I can remember things. I just don't remember who said it and where I read it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you remember the concepts and a lot of times you you've got the, the quotes, and if you don't remember the name of the person who cares, honestly, like a lot of that. I'll be honest, I think that, uh, coming from somebody who myself, I usually can remember those things most of the time, for whatever reason, if they're spoken, if I've read them with my eyeballs, then I usually can't remember, but if they're spoken, I've heard it.
Speaker 3:Usually I can remember remembering that or quoting it and quoting the person as such and such says in such and such article, blah, blah it's almost good at that it's almost all ego, though that's just ego, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3:So it's not actually in reality, I think, because I think that it's good. I think that it's good because then I can go back and go like who was that that said that? And then maybe I can like, if I want to cross-reference something, whatever, but that's for my own study. But I think when I'm talking to somebody and I'm like, well, you know, like, uh, like kierkegaard says, and floating over the fathoms and blah, blah, blah, you know like that's just ego, that's just me trying to, you know, sound like I'm cool it was you got the concept, who cares?
Speaker 5:yeah, well, I I know that I was describing what richard rohr uh calls universal christ. I just didn't give him any credit and didn't call it universal christ good, so it was your concept, then it was, and that's when I and that's when someone wanted me to explain why I wasn't a pantheist. Yeah, so which? I loved that all right. So there is one other topic I'm going to add to this list, and we've been talking now for 12 minutes. We haven't gotten started yet, but I, I at point.
Speaker 5:I want to talk about what the EPA is getting ready to roll back.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I would like to talk a little bit about the-.
Speaker 3:We can talk about environmental stuff. That's fine.
Speaker 5:Planet care yeah, and I have someone that we might be bringing on for that one. Oh and April of Joy has agreed to talk about our spangled jesus a little bit, and, okay, her come out of chris. She was straight up a? Um christian nationalist, okay. So yeah, she even wrote a song and performed it, uh cool, I'll try to talk her back into that. See if I can get her back into it, that'll be great, and then I'll do my best to keep her out.
Speaker 3:So all right, hey do you want to know what I did, want to know something that I did this last week. That was, yeah, that I thought you would be interested in this and it was just. It was just terrible. It was just terrible. I was trying to find some information on on some it was some new story. I don't remember what it was, um, but I wanted to see what people were saying about it and what like reporters are saying about it and stuff.
Speaker 3:And so I downloaded Twitter again, Right, cause I've had it deleted for a while, if I've had. I've kept Facebook and Instagram, um, but I, I deleted my, my um, x, my crack, um, my crack, and yeah, I deleted my ex. That's pretty poignant actually to say it like that, and you know instantly, just not. I deleted and re-downloaded it and deleted it probably five or six times in the twitter, uh, these days from certain people because they want to hate on elon, and that's not the reason why I have um an issue with it. The reason I have an issue with is because I love it so much and I love the anger and the and the, the vitriol, and when I say I love it, you know what I mean. I mean I love it in the same way that, like you know, someone loves a cigarette, right Like there's a yeah, well, there's a chemical that you're actually addicted to.
Speaker 3:Yeah, very clearly. And so I finally deleted it again. And then I told Krista last night. I was like I confessed to her. I was like I got to tell you something. She was like what's going on? She wasn't really interrogating me or anything, but I could tell she could tell I was in a bad mood and I was like I really got to tell you that. And then I told her that I downloaded it and then and I was like and I'm just feeling so upset about the friendly fire that I'm seeing coming at full right now coming at Daryl Cooper and you know, um, there's friendly fire happening again.
Speaker 3:It's yeah, and it's good for his brand and whatever you know, but hate it. I hate the friendly fire and but I keep coming back for it, you know, and um. So I just thought that was so interesting that it was like I. It was, I I kept deleting it and then like 30 minutes later going I'm just gonna see again and like re-downloading it and then deleting it and re-downloading it and then deleting it and redownloading it and deleting it and redownloading it. Krista last night Krista was like she wants to post one of those memes. That's like. Other women are worried that he's going to cheat. I'm worried he's going to download Twitter.
Speaker 5:Oh, no. Anyway, and for full disclosure, you know Robbie created for us an Instagram and a Facebook account. Yeah, but I'm the one that's managing right now the Facebook account and he's managing the Instagram. Okay, so I'm sort of on social media, but not really, and no one would find me. Give it time, no one will find me unless they look, because Robbie made my first name Living On and my last name Common Ground.
Speaker 3:So he made it as like a personal, he made it as a regular.
Speaker 5:Yes, he did. Okay, yeah, interesting. So, and eventually I think we'll have to change that, because there's some things I want to be able to do, but I'm not savvy enough yet. Okay, all right. All that being said, yeah, so two weeks ago we promised katherine that we would, so I'm going to play the clip again from that news um about, about non-human intelligence. Okay, so we're going to play that and then we're going to. We're going to talk about a little more specific.
Speaker 6:A House Oversight and Accountability Subcommittee held a historic hearing on unidentified anomalous phenomena, also known as UFOs. Lawmakers heard from three witnesses today, including former US military and intelligence community personnel who claimed to have come into contact with such objects. Natalie Brand has more now from that hearing. We have nothing close to it.
Speaker 2:Retired Navy Commander David Fravor testified before Congress about an encounter he cannot explain a strange tic-tac-shaped object he says he saw in the sky during a training mission in 2004.
Speaker 7:The technology that we faced was far superior than anything that we had.
Speaker 2:Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are digging into the national security concerns and the mystery posed by Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena or UAPs, also known as UFOs.
Speaker 6:Do you believe that our government is in possession of UAPs?
Speaker 7:Absolutely. Based on interviewing over 40 witnesses over four years, I know the exact locations.
Speaker 2:A whistleblower who formerly worked on the Defense Department's UAP task force, David Grush, claims he was denied access to information on a government UFO crash retrieval program, something the Pentagon disputes. Biologics came with some of these recoveries Were they.
Speaker 2:I guess human or non-human biologics. Non-human, and that was the assessment of people with direct knowledge on the program I talked to congress members from both sides of the aisle are demanding more transparency from the us department of defense. A recent report revealed the government is investigating more than 650 potential sightings, but ryan graves of americans for safe aerospace says there's still a stigma around reporting right now.
Speaker 7:We need a system where pilots can report without fear of losing their jobs.
Speaker 2:The witnesses say, better data is needed to determine what the identified objects are and their origins. Natalie Brand, cbs News, capitol Hill.
Speaker 5:Okay. So her question is that if, how, if at all, would the modern Christian paradigm change in light of government disclosure regarding the existence of non-human entities? While she's specifically asking about the Christian worldview or the Christian paradigm, I'm curious to know also would it change the non-Christian or the none perspective? Would it open up the possibility of there being a God, or would it actually further cement the fact that there's not?
Speaker 3:I mean I don't see how it would change my worldview. I mean that's not exactly, that's not correct. I mean it would change my worldview in the same way as, like, if I discovered that I could fly tomorrow. You know like it would. It would disrupt a lot but it wouldn't change my view of the universe. Does that make sense? Like it wouldn't. It wouldn't change my objectively, it wouldn't change my view of um, of whether there um, you know, is it whether there is this thing that we have been calling God. That's like this, the, you know the, the all powerful, all knowing, you know monotheistic God, um, but uh, yeah, I, I like this, this question, because I mean I can tell you what I don't think it would change. I don't think that it would end theism, mono or polytheism at all. I think that is infinitely malleable and it would just form around it.
Speaker 3:Um, one of my favorite aspects of this this um uh book series called the expanse I don't know if you ever heard of that it was. It was uh, uh. It was a TV show Also, they did a like a four season TV show and it was a fan. It's a, it's a sci-fi uh TV show. Fantastic, fantastic show. Um, the and the.
Speaker 3:The short plot is that it's near future, but several hundred years in the future, something like that. Um and uh, and humans are interplanetary, we've gone to mars and then we've gone out and we have, um, we've uh, started to mine the, the asteroid belt as well, and um, uh, and without getting into all the details of it, um, essentially, like humans who have grown up on mars, civilizations that grow up on mars are now thinking of themselves as a different, not a different, species, but they're Martians, they live, they are from Mars, and the people who have grown up and lived in the asteroid belt with zero gravity, you know, grown up in zero gravity, they're belters. So this there's become this new division right, and essentially, this new life form is discovered, and that's the whole like long plot line or whatever. But my favorite aspect of this is that there's this storyline, which is that the Mormon church, the LDS church, has been building this planet, this like spaceship that's the size of a small planet, because, with this new technology that all these humans have that allows them to travel so fast and get out to the asteroid belt, and whatever they've now discovered that or decided that, um, that they can go out beyond the solar system and find this, and I'm not well versed enough in the Behind this and I'm not well-versed enough in the LDS faith to know.
Speaker 3:But there's some aspect of some passages in the Book of Mormon that indicate to some people that there's a planet out there that is where God lives, or where they're going to go for paradise, right, right, at least that's in the storyline. So they're using their technology to create this spaceship to go out to this, generations after generations long, you know, mission to get to this planet. And I just think it's such a great kind of artistic depiction of what I think would happen if we discovered definitive proof that there's alien life and that it's intelligent, comes. It's intelligent comes to earth or whatever we have some sort of encounter with it.
Speaker 5:You know, my feeling is that it would just get integrated into, in, into people's faiths I, I think, um, well, first of all, here's what the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints it comes from. Let's see the book of Abraham, and it says that Abraham saw Kolob, kolob, k-o-l-o-b and the stars. And it says that a little note says that it's not a planet where God resides, but rather a star that is considered near to God's throne and a governing star within the cosmos. And so it must be, yeah, and so one day on Kolob equates to a thousand years on earth, which reminds me of that song better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere. Have you ever heard that song?
Speaker 3:I love that song actually. Uh, and it's the. It's reference to the um for a day is a thousand years. That's the whole like yeah the, the justification for um like evolutionary creationism, right that that maybe god created? Yeah, over the course of millions of years.
Speaker 5:Which I think is a good segue to where I was going to go with this.
Speaker 5:I think that a fundamentalist, I think it would be really hard there would have to be a lot of shuffling of their theology to find out that, um, that there is intelligent life, um, off of this planet, off of this planet right, either either equal to or greater than human intelligence. Because, according, if you take the book of, if you take the first couple chapters of Genesis literally, then I don't think you can anymore and I think that would become very problematic. So for somebody like me who doesn't take that literally and understands it as a I got to make sure I word that right so I don't sound judgy understands it as a poem. It doesn't really do anything for me. I would just be like well, because I can still see where that would all be within god's purview. Sure, like it's, it's fine, because god, for me, is bigger than this earth, is bigger than um. I heard one time somebody say that we talk about like the known universe and god, and god chuckles right like oh, that's all you know. So anyway.
Speaker 3:well, I I will say though I don't know how much shuffling it would take, I one for, even for a fundamentalist, okay. So so here, I do think that there are, there's a lot of people that one might consider fundamentalists that aren't necessarily young earth fundamentalists. I think there's a lot of people that you, maybe you wouldn't, maybe somebody else who's like a progressive Christian would look at them and say, well, they're definitely a fundamentalist, and I think there's a lot of Christians who would say that they take the Bible literally and they're still not a young earther. I grew up in a tradition that I think would probably be called fundamentalist. I never thought of, know I, I just wouldn't have had those terms, but I think that a lot of people would have considered it, um, fundamentalist, at least very conservative evangelical.
Speaker 3:In the Christian school that I grew up with, there were definitely some teachers that were young earth creationists and they were very concerned about teaching evolution and that kind of thing, but it was just like a couple of them, and then a lot of the other ones were just like ah, we don't. You know, the Bible says a day is a thousand years and a thousand years in a day. So we don't really know. What we do know is that God created this right, and so there's like this whole spectrum. I guess my point is that I think someone who considers themselves a whatever you want to call it a fundamentalist, they wouldn't, because that's, that's a pejorative term, but an evangelical, a traditionalist, whatever christian is fundamentalist a pejorative term well, it's created as a pejorative, I think.
Speaker 3:I think there's conservative christians that have taken it on as a, as a um, as a uh, uh, their own kind of identity. Now Do you know what I mean? Sure, it's like Puritan. Like the Puritans never called themselves Puritans, the Roundheads never called themselves Roundheads.
Speaker 3:You know that kind of thing, but I think they kind of take it on, so is traditionalist a better term, I don't know. I think fundamentalist is fine because it defines it. You know what I mean. But what I'm saying is that I think that many people who consider themselves they would say I'm not a progressive Christian, I'm a conservative Christian. I believe that, however they would say it You've heard the terms, the phrases I'm Bible-believing, I'm whatever.
Speaker 3:It is right. I think they who, when they run up against things that seem overwhelming to their worldview and the answers that they had, they can just say well, God's ways are greater than mine, God's mind is larger than mine. I don't know all of these. I can't say that I have all the answers. I just trust in God. You know what I mean and so I can imagine someone. Now, I'm not saying all of them, because I definitely think you're right. There would be a lot of people who would have a crisis. It would be a crisis, for sure, but the Bible doesn't say anything about Denisovians or Neanderthals or—. That's because that's not real.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it also doesn't say anything about bacteria. You know bacteria were never created, right, mushrooms were never created. They're not, uh, they're not part of the I'm going to get this wrong, but they're. They're different from the plants and the animals. They weren't created. You know what I mean. So like, but you know you can squish them in there, kind of you know, and work around it. So I don't know, I don't. I think. I think the vast majority of people would just adapt.
Speaker 5:Well, and I was going to say I think the vast majority of people wouldn't even think about it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think you're right because I, I really do.
Speaker 5:Um, I don't know, maybe I'm wrong on this right and maybe this is just me being judgmental, but I do think that the vast majority of people of faith just don't think about their faith. They just this is what I believe and, um, I there's, I'm not going to question it like, I'm not going to spend any time thinking about it. I'm just going to live my life and go right through it and they're, and they're absolutely okay with that. Um, and sometimes I'm very jealous of that, but I can't I always have to be thinking about something, which which brings me, um, actually to something else. I wanted to ask you yeah uh, so we can't.
Speaker 5:We might be, we might be drifting away from our original topic, but it relates, in my mind, to what we're talking about here I won't tell anyone.
Speaker 5:so, uh, when I was at um the conference yeah, the um the moderator she was setting up a question that she was going to ask about beliefs and, um, she made the statement that beliefs are not something you choose. And so when I had my opportunity to talk, I pushed back against that Um because I, she, could pay. She said she made the comparison. And I could be wrong on this, um, but the way I remember it is, she made the comparison to like your eye color. That, um, it's just, it's just something that you have and there's nothing you do about it. But then the example she gave I could have punched holes in it, but that wasn't what the question was about. She said she believes ice cream is good and even if she is given all the evidence that there's too much sugar in it, even if she's lactose intolerant, whatever the case may be, she still believes that ice cream is good. Be, she still believes that ice cream is good.
Speaker 5:So what are your thoughts? Are beliefs something that you choose, or is it both? Because I'm coming along with I think. Maybe at first you inherit them, but you can choose to jettison them. But then we're also getting into free will and I know all that right, so just skip that for a moment. By the way, I did hear back from Sam Harris's person and he basically said if Sam's interested, I'll let you know. Okay.
Speaker 5:Which was a nice way of saying you need to just drop your expectations, a little sort of yeah, that sounds right, that sounds right, a nice way of saying you need to just drop your expectations, a little sort of yeah, yeah, that sounds. Right, that sounds right, I'll look for another quasi-famous atheist and we'll bring them on. Okay, that sounds good, yeah all right, so go ahead.
Speaker 3:Uh, actually there's a guy in okay, um, so I would generally well okay, the the debater in me is coming out and I want the terms defined first, but I think I know what she means and I think that generally I would agree with her. I think that her example's bad, but if it's the ice cream example, I think that's not the best example.
Speaker 5:But Because I would say ice cream is a preference, not a belief. Well, okay.
Speaker 3:So I think that I agree with her in at a, at a baseline level. I don't think that you can, um, that you can. How do I say, see, this is the problem with it. I think the better way is to think about, to walk through the scenario where you would quote unquote jettison a belief. Okay, because I grew up in my church with pastors saying it's not okay for you to just believe in Jesus because grandma and grandpa believed in Jesus. Right, that's not okay, it has to be yours, you have to choose it right.
Speaker 3:And so there was some idea that, yeah, you get taught from an early age certain things and you just accept it. Children accept what they're presented with and then you kind of put it away in the back of your mind. You don't access it and in some ways it's not accessible in a conscious way. There are certain things that there's layers that are not accessible consciously. They're always there but they're not available to you to pick apart. But there was also this understanding that you're going to get to some age and at that age, whether it's in junior high, that was a big thing. Junior high is the time when you're going to choose this for yourself or not. You need to make the choice for yourself. You need to sit down and really it has to be up here. You've got to think about it yourself. And so I think there is this understanding of what you're talking about, that you can have the beliefs that are given to you and then you can jettison them.
Speaker 3:But what I would say is the reason I would challenge that is, I would go through. What would that mean? I sit down and I go. I'm just going to give an example. My church wasn't really big on um roles of men and women. You know there were. There were like um, uh, there were. There were definitely uh, parishioners who um had ideas about, you know, women being submissive to their husbands and that kind of thing. But it wasn't really something that was taught proactively, right, but let's use that as an example. So you grow up in a church where it's taught women are to be submissive to men or to their husbands, right.
Speaker 3:And then maybe you get into college and you haven't really thought about it, and so now you're sitting down and you're thinking about it Somebody's brought that up, right and you're going to sit down and you're going to think about this. I don't know, I don't really. I see the verses that they're using, see the passages. But then I've been told from these professors or these other leaders over here that there's these other passages that indicate something else. There's this theology, I don't know. Well, I really feel like the right way to view this is mutual submission, and now I have kind of a framework of a theology and these passages that I can point to and I have a background of literature that's been written on this and, yeah, that seems right. And so now I've jettisoned this idea that I had about wives being submissive to their husbands and now I have this idea of mutual submission. And I'm using this because mutual submission, that was a theology in the Church of God, anderson, that we grew up in.
Speaker 3:But what I would ask is what was it really that made the mutual submission idea seem right to you? What was it instead of the wives submit to your husband idea right? What I'm saying is it seems to me like, yes, your viewpoints can change to me, like, yes, your viewpoints can change. Certainly, I have examples in my life where I have held a view and felt confident of it and now I hold a different view. But I would question whether I could have and I'm trying really hard not to get into free will but if that was something I could have chosen or if it was some process by which my belief wasn't chosen.
Speaker 3:I didn't choose my belief to begin with and I didn't really choose this one over here. It's just that this seemed this, this first belief doesn't seem right to me, you know, and maybe I come up with a new theology or maybe I just jettison the whole thing and I just say I don't really care, I just can't, I can't get beyond, you know, I can't get behind that concept anymore. So that's where I would say I think I agree with her, because I do think that everyone's concept of morality comes from a priori positions that just seem right. They, they seem right fundamentally first, and it's not, it's not because of like a logical progression, you know, all right. So that's my thoughts. Sorry, I rambled a little bit no, so I'm okay.
Speaker 5:So are you suggesting that we could actually have been talking about two different types of beliefs? Like is there okay, is there like a um? Are there sort of like these, uh, unacknowledged fundamental beliefs at the core of a person and then from that secondary and tertiary beliefs are shaped?
Speaker 3:I do think that that's a pretty good way of modeling it. I don't know that, those ones that you would consider like the primary or fundamental ones, I don't know that those are like set. I think those could change also, but I don't know that I would have that. I don't know from where I could stand to make myself change those. Does that make sense?
Speaker 5:like I don't know where I could get to outside of right, because I'm even thinking that, that there's a, there's a level of awareness that may not even exist on that level yeah, exactly yeah.
Speaker 3:Tell me, tell me, why go ahead.
Speaker 5:Yeah, no, I was gonna say because I'm sure, go ahead. Yeah, no, I was going to say because I'm sure that there are beliefs that I hold that I've never even thought to question because I'm not even like. They're just so fundamental to who I am that like I can't even imagine who I would be without them. Yeah and so, but I'm not even aware of them. Yeah, absolutely, if that makes any sense.
Speaker 3:I truly believe the less aware you are of them, the more they control you. And when I say control, that sounds prejudicial.
Speaker 5:No, no, no. The more they make you who you are. Yeah, absolutely no, I get what you're saying.
Speaker 3:This is something that I think this happens in cultures too. In civilizations it is the things that how do I put this? One of the things that Daryl Cooper had talked about in his Human Sacrifice and Cannibalism series was that if you have to make a rule about it in the civilization, it's not as fundamental as the things you don't have to make a rule about. The things that you don't have to make a rule about. They've already been accepted eons ago and they're accepted now in a way that nobody even knows that they're accepted. It's just obvious.
Speaker 3:Well this is another concept that is built on so many other layers of concepts that you have to call that. A civilization has to get to first. You have to you, first of all you, you have to uh, get the idea of, um, uh. Well, I mean, first you have to get the idea of what's a human right. What is that I mean? Before you can talk, get the idea of what's a human right, what is that I mean? Before you can talk about universal human rights, what is a human right? You have to come up with a concept of what's a human it's. It's not obvious to an alien, it wouldn't necessarily be obvious to an alien that everyone that we say are the same thing are the same thing. Now, I do think that, and we all think that, we don't even have to think about it. We all think that that we're all the same, right, we're all part of the human race, all right. I like what you did about bringing us back to the alien thing.
Speaker 5:Yeah, that was good, because here's the thing. So if, if, all of a sudden, we had the, um, uh, close encounter of the, uh, what was it?
Speaker 5:close encounter of the third remember that movie, yeah or et, whatever, um, is it at that moment that some of the fundamental beliefs that maybe we're not even aware of are the things that become challenged, and and it's so and like, and for us to sit here and talk about, like, well, I don't think my beliefs would change, or it wouldn't be that much for me, um, that we, we might not even be aware of how it would change us.
Speaker 3:Yeah, oh, absolutely. I think that that I. I that's where I, that's why I hesitated when I said, well, it wouldn't change my worldview. And then I stopped and I said, well, that's absolutely not true. It it would. It would shake my worldview to my core in some ways, and I think you're totally right, it would be in ways that I wouldn't be able to predict. Well, here's something, okay.
Speaker 3:So, going back to that thing that I was just saying about, we assume all humans are the same, okay, and we talk about universal human rights, okay, uh, now we have an. Now we have this other life form, this, this alien. Do they deserve universal? Oh, look, we ran into a problem because we're talking about universal human rights. See, we have an exclusion. We feel that we have reached the pinnacle of universality, if we can say every human deserves exactly the same rights, no matter what. We have reached the pinnacle.
Speaker 3:Oh, except if you now have a new life form that comes in, let's say they look exactly like us, they speak like us, they have the same types of languages. It's not going to be the same language, but it's the same kind of vocal inflections that causes the same types of languages. Okay, they're carbon based. They need water. They're more advanced in technology, yes, but just slightly Okay. They were able to figure out something that allowed them to travel across the stars to get to us. I don't know, make it up in your mind, but they're just like us in that sense no-transcript.
Speaker 5:Can't even agree as humans what a human is and what, what human rights are like. Like if you ask people what, what is? What is something that every human should have the right to? Sure we would like we disagree on that. Yeah, to someone from a different planet, and especially, I mean we can't even extend rights to people from different states and countries Like forget, forget, but I can imagine.
Speaker 3:I can imagine this encounter happening and then, after unbelievable amounts of turmoil, okay, and destruction and death and whatever, independence day where the president gets in a jet yeah and he attacks, yeah, that's right but but I mean, and I'm talking maybe hundreds of thousands of years of this okay, between these two humans and, and, uh you know, alien humans, whatever they are, um, that, whatever comes on the other side of all of that, would have a concept of all of them being the same the, the alien humans, the humans, whatever you know, mixing happens. And you know I was gonna say, especially if you have a romeo and juliet situation well, that's just if there's two right don't let's.
Speaker 5:Yeah, all right. So where have we landed? What kind of common ground do we have on this particular topic?
Speaker 3:Well, you, I mean, how do you feel about my assertion that you really can't choose your beliefs?
Speaker 5:I can accept that, if we acknowledge the fact that there are different categories of belief, like I talked about, the basic, unidentified core belief and then also sort of a secondary, tertiary belief, because I think that what we and don't even get me into going into the like there's a difference between preference and belief, too right, but I think that people can change. Or maybe there's a difference between belief and opinions. I got to think more about that, because what we might be calling a belief in my mind, I can also often interpret or view as opinion, and what I mean by that is I have a belief that there is a God. I have absolutely zero evidence that there is, and people can argue oh, you can see it in the trees, but you can also scientifically explain all of that too, right. But I, in my opinion, god exists.
Speaker 5:So what I might be calling a belief, is it actually just an opinion? Or when someone says that they don't believe that there is a God, ultimately I think you got to just acknowledge the fact that that's really just an opinion as well, because nobody can actually prove a lot of the things that we claim to believe. But I think that there is something at the core of us that is deeper than opinion, and I do agree that there's probably some things that at the core, and some of it is shared. I think that you're absolutely right that some of it is shared. I think that you're absolutely right that some of it is shaped culturally, because I do think that the beliefs that I might share and I'm not talking about religious beliefs either, like I'm talking about maybe human rights is one of those things that we're just sort of dabbling around. A belief, do you know what I mean?
Speaker 5:one of those things that we're just sort of dabbling around to believe. Do you know what I mean? Because I can't. You know like, for example, we may all in the west, at the core, have a belief that there is a saying like there is something special about human life, but I'm willing to bet that there are other cultures that just do not share that we can, mm-hmm that that believes that there are some beliefs. Can we say? Can we say, oh sorry, I'm sorry. No, just say that there are probably some beliefs that I'm not even able to identify, that, um, I just inherited and I didn't choose, and I probably would never choose not to believe it because I would never even know to think about it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, never even know to think about it. Yeah, can we say that our um, our common ground could be that we um, that we do not think that the discovery of alien life would eliminate religion or christianity, but just change it?
Speaker 5:yeah, absolutely. I think. I think that there would be some that would change it. I some. They would just roll with it and just assume it already fit within their belief structure. Yeah. But I don't think it would do away with any, not just Christianity. But I don't think Judaism changes, I don't think Islam changes, I just think that religion is.
Speaker 3:I know that my fellow new atheists fellow they would not consider me a fellow, the new atheists that I really liked the Hitchens and the Dawkins, and them especially Dawkins, he would disagree with this. But I do think that religion is at the core of what it means to be a human. I think religiosity is at the core of what it means to be a human. I think, uh, religiosity is, is at the core of that. So so, yeah, I don't think that we would cease to be human. So I mean, I don't think that we would cease to be a religious species excellent, all right, there we go.
Speaker 5:We've settled it perfect, perfect thanks. Thank you for listening to living on common ground.
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