Easter Sunday, Holy Wars, and the Toddler Who Ate the Apple

Recorded on Easter Sunday 2026, this episode of Breakfast with a Heathen leans into the holiday with characteristic irreverence and intellectual honesty. Mike opens by questioning why ham became the official meal of the resurrection and only gets more pointed from there. The conversation covers religious wars — specifically the religious undercurrents of the current U.S.-Iran conflict and what it means that a sitting Secretary of Defense has openly called it a holy war — then moves into why so many Christians refuse to apply the word "agnostic" to themselves even when basic epistemic honesty demands it.

From personal experiences with atheist prejudice — including a workplace prayer at a major U.S. bank and a decades-long friendship ended over a Facebook message — to the logical collapse of the Adam and Eve story when viewed through the lens of a toddler who's never been told no, to the well-documented phenomenon of atheists outscoring believers on religious literacy tests, this episode covers a lot of ground. It closes where the holiday demands: a sharp dismantling of the claim that atheists reject God simply to avoid moral accountability — a myth Mike argues is not only logically incoherent but disproven by a quick look at who fills the pews and who fills the prisons.

💬 Listener Question

Mike mentioned that some of the strongest atheists he knows became atheist because they read the Bible more carefully. Did your relationship with scripture — reading more of it or less of it — play a role in where you landed on faith? Tell us your experience.

 📑 Chapter Headings and times

00:00 Introduction — Recording an atheist podcast on Easter
4:25 Are religious wars insane? The Iran war and Pete Hegseth
12:33 Why theists won't call themselves agnostic
17:10 Atheist prejudice — a relative, a workplace prayer, and moving on
24:08 The Adam & Eve baby analogy — whose fault is the cookie?
29:03 Do atheists know the Bible better than Christians?
32:58 Virginity, religion, and what you owe nobody
44:50 Living in fear — are God-fearing Christians actually... fearful?
48:12 "Atheists just want to sin" — closing argument on Easter Sunday

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Transcript

Michael Smithgall 0:05

All right, good morning, and welcome to Breakfast with a Heathen. I am your favorite heathen. I am Mike, and today is Easter. So it seemed to be an appropriate day to put out a podcast on atheism. Of course it is. But you know what? I I no disrespect for Easter. I it's a fine holiday, I guess. It's always been a weird holiday to me. It was never very important, even when I was a kid and Christian by default. Uh, you know, as I've mentioned on this show, I grew up Episcopal. You know, it was a holiday. We would go to church, and you know, the family would come together, you know, my grandparents would come over for Easter uh dinner or whatever. You know, I I don't really remember anything too special about it outside of getting your your uh your your Easter basket from the uh from the Easter bunny. That was the extent of it. It just wasn't a really main holiday in in our family. And again, I you know, we were Episcopal. We went to church every Sunday. We were always what I say casual Christians, so Easter was not that big a deal. Um it's an odd holiday. It it just it always brings up the odd uh story uh of Jesus and the resurrection and all that sort of thing. It's it's very odd. I don't know why Jesus had to even be resurrected. I don't know why he had to really die to solve whatever problems that supposedly solved. I don't know why 2026, apparently we're still suffering as a result, but then didn't he die for our sin? It's all confusing. It makes no damn sense whatsoever. Um, it's just a silly story to me. Obviously, as an atheist, I think it's a silly story. But for those of you that uh really, really are into it and believe it, all right, knock yourself out. Have a great Sunday, have uh some uh some ham. I don't know why ham is a thing we do. I I really don't actually know. Is that just an American tradition? I I honestly don't know that answer. I have not grown up in another country and celebrated Easter there. So the Easter ham, are we just sticking it to the uh the Jews and the uh Muslims? Are we eating ham because of Jesus? I don't know. I really don't know. Um, oddly enough that we've chosen ham because I'm fairly certain there's something in the Bible that mentions pork and not eating it. But we eat ham on the day that Jesus came back to life after his long weekend in the cave. So whatever. But anyway, welcome if you've never been here before, welcome for the first time. If you've been here before, then welcome back. Um, and as I I just try to real quickly tell what this this uh channel is, I um I, as you or if you're watching the video, you can see that I am a middle-aged white guy. I'm an atheist, and I have a perspective on middle-aged white guy atheism. But that's the only perspective I have. But what I thought I thought I would do when I started this series is I would go through a handful of questions that people have asked, either me directly on one of my videos or the podcast, or perhaps something I found on the internet, on Reddit or Facebook or wherever I may be trolling around, I guess. And if they had a question, I thought, well, that's an interesting question. I bet a lot of people have that question. Or I kind of identify that this person is going through their own journey of deconstruction. Maybe I've got some helpful tips that I could throw out there and they could take that information or leave it. It's up to them. But uh I thought, yeah, or it was just an interesting question. I thought, yeah, let me think about that myself. I don't know how I feel about that. And very often I have glanced at the question and just said, okay, that looks interesting. Didn't think about it again until this morning. Uh, so sometimes I am formulating these thoughts as I go. So, with that being said, with no further ado, oh, let me take a sip of my coffee. This is part of my ritual, apparently, because this is a morning podcast. Although today I'm drinking tea. I don't know what that says about me. All of a sudden I started drinking tea. I drink coffee and then I also drink hot tea, usually in the same day. That's a lot of caffeine, but whatever. But I'm drinking tea today, so let me take a little sip of my tea. Ah I would have to do a slurp so that the people there at home that are not watching the video can can uh it can be proven that I actually drank something. Not that that really matters, but you know, whatever. Anyway, I thought this wish it was a good question because today, again, is Easter of 2026. And this person, um, I don't know how they say their name, HM Gal or HM Gough. It's H M G-O-U-G-H. I'm gonna pronounce it Gough because why not? Um, their question, are religious wars insane to anyone else? It seems a bit apropos, does not? Uh, seeing that we are in a war with Iran. So let's talk about this a little bit. Um, they say they they start off, they say, let me start by saying I have no religious beliefs and hold zero animosity to anyone who does. All right, HM Goff, you and I are on the same page. I hold no animosity to that either. I can't decide whether I am completely wrong in saying this or am I missing something? But I can't help but feel like the fact that there are still religious wars to this day is absolutely insane to me. Yeah, I agree with that. It is odd. And they go on to say, you know, in the in a day and age where we have autonomous cars and supercomputers and AI and blah, blah, blah, we still have large chunks of the world fighting over religion. And and and again, as I mentioned, unfortunately, as I sit here today, we are six weeks or so into a war that if you believe that there is not a religious component, then you are naive. You're absolutely fooling yourself. If you do not believe that the war that we are in right now with Iran doesn't have a strong religious component. And I'm not gonna overly choose sides here on this. I mean, I'm an American, so I obviously don't want us to uh to lose any sort of war, but we have someone like Pete Heggsath, who's an absolute moron. He's an absolute moron. He was a weekend anchor on Fox. He should have stayed that uh after this administration. I hope he's never heard from again. This guy is an admitted Christian nationalist. He's a zealot, he's very likely a white supremacist. And he has said, he has said that this is a holy war. You can't separate this out, right? This is who this person is. Now, did he start the war? No, he didn't. Donald Trump started this war, and it doesn't even matter what Donald Trump thinks was happening or was happening or wasn't happening. The fact remains that America, which by just default and de facto is a Christian country because of the sheer numbers of Christians here, we are not a Christian country by law. So calm down, any of you that think that that's the case. We are not, but guaranteed, most of the people that live here, most of the people in the military, most of the people that make our laws and everything else, they are by and large Christians. I would say Donald Trump is probably not one of them, actually, but he pretend pretends to be a pretends to be a Christian. So we'll give him that for the sake of this particular argument. The fact that we're going up against a Muslim country, you can't, you can't, again, you can't pretend that this isn't a religious war. It absolutely is. And and I'm gonna be fair here because there is some really bad people on the other side of this. The Iranians are terrible people when it comes in terms of the regime, terrible people who are absolutely fighting a religious war. So we have two countries that have these very strong religious roots, whose arch nemesis are each other, essentially, in terms of their the Islam versus Christianity. And we've also thrown in with the with the uh Israelis. So now we have, you know, twice the military and half the Jesus, I guess. I don't know how you want to look at that. And they, of course, think it's a religious war because the Israelis and the Iranians and anybody else in the Middle East that's not Israeli, they're constantly at odds and bickering and fighting. It's terrible. It's absolutely terrible. We have people dying on both sides that should not be dying because of religion. I don't know what good reason there is to have a war, but religion seems to be silliest of all the silliness. That's ridiculous. I mean, it's just insane. So this person, HM Goff, you make a good point, or you ask a good question in the same way that does it seem insane to anyone else? Yeah, man. To me, yeah, it seems absolutely insane. To people that are not religious, it seems completely bonkers and bananas to think that we're gonna commit human lives, human American lives, human Iranian lives to fight a war over religion. I mean, what? I mean, it doesn't make any sense to me. I'll never understand that. Yeah. Now, if you want to go this step further and say, okay, well, they had nuclear weapons or they didn't have nuclear, we can get into all that. Well, we're not gonna get into all that, but I I understand there was an argument there to be made. And you could say if they were going to launch a nuclear weapon, and again, I'm leaving that as a very loose description of what was being said, not what what is, but that's what's being said. If they were gonna launch a nuclear weapon or create a nuclear weapon and ultimately use it on other people, was that a result of their crazy religious uh zealots? Yeah, of course it was. So they're fighting it just as much as we are. I just happen to live in the United States, so I'm gonna see my perspective in terms of the Christianity side that's driving this uh close more closely than I do see theirs. But either way, we have two religions fighting each other, people living and dying and planes being shot down, and I mean, of a religion. What? I mean, when you step back and you try to remove, even if you're a religious person, you step back and remove that and say, why on earth would I start or fight a war over what somebody else believes happens after they die? Because that's it, right? That's ultimately what happens, right? After that person dies, they go get their 72 virgins, or we go to heaven and get a mansion in the sky, whatever the hell you believe. Okay, all right, what do I care? But both religions have a component of fighting the other one built into their religion. Both religions have a component of trying to convert the other, you know? Now, again, not naive at all. I absolutely believe that Islam today, in 2026, Islam is the more dangerous of the two, right? That doesn't excuse Christianity and the thousands of years of atrocities. I'm not doing that by any means. But Islam, in terms of terrorist activity, pretty damn bad right now. Uh, they're the hardest in terms of the most hard line throughout most of the world is Islam. At the same point, okay, I don't care in the sense that why do we have to go to war with it? I just don't get it. I don't get it. But the next time a Christian knocks on my door, or next time he stops me on the street and wants to convert me, or the next time someone comments on one of my videos, yo, you're going to hell because you don't believe in Jesus, and someday you'll bend the knee. I hear this all the time. You're the same guy, brother. You're the same guy. Calm down, man. You're the same guy. You just aren't quite radicalized as much as maybe that guy is in Afghanistan who's going to chop off someone's head, but you're the same guy. You really are. You're on the same path. You're two sides of the same coin. Me as an atheist, I'm way out there on the outside of that. You guys are those two coin, two sides of the same exact coin. And on another podcast or another day, we could break down the similarities. You guys share a lot of similarities. You don't like to think that, but Islam and Christianity, you guys are really, really close. You're really close. All the things that they hate, you hate. Trust me. So yeah. So HM Goff, totally. Totally, you are right on that one. So this is an interesting question. This person says uh this person is named could be any person. Okay. So they could be any person. Why are most theists afraid to label themselves as agnostic? So this is odd, this is different than I thought they were going to go with that question initially when I started to kind of glance at it. Um it says agnosticism is simply the view that the existence of God or other deities is unknown. Great. Okay, that's that's fair. I think most people, include uh including theists, can agree that religion is based on faith. It's impossible to prove or disprove that any God exists. I'm with you so far, there could be any person. Unless a God comes down to earth and reveals themselves, we can't empirically prove uh their existence. And unless we all become omnipotent ourselves, we can't prove that they don't exist either. Yes, 100%. Which is why I label myself as an agnostic atheist when it comes down to it. If you're trying to pin me down, yeah, I am an atheist in words and deeds and actions and general philosophy. But if you're gonna try to pin me down sort of an academic perspective, then I'm an agnostic atheist, meaning that I live my life as an atheist. But do I know there is no God? I don't know. At the same time, you know, my mother or various people I know, and most of the people in the country that find themselves to be truly religious, do they know there is a God? They do not. They think and they strongly believe, and they have a huge amount of faith that there is a God. Fine, whatever you want to believe, but you don't know it. There's a huge difference between knowing something and really, really believing it, right? There's a is a huge difference. And by its, I mean, they call it faith. Religious people refer to their faith. And faith by its definition is not a known fact, it's something they believe. And they've created these various stories and they believe the stories, and the stories get interpreted, reinterpreted, and changed and altered, and then they they get reinterpreted again on Sunday afternoon, and they take pieces in out and put pieces in. All that would tell you it's not factual in the sense that it can be proven, but they absolutely will say they know it. And the question here is why are they afraid to say that they are agnostic? Well, because their religion tells them they can't doubt it, right? They're not allowed to doubt it. They have to believe it because any level of doubt is basically might as well be an atheist. I mean, that's the weird sort of chink in the armor there, right? Any level of doubt when you're a Christian is considered basically atheism. You're betraying Jesus. You're not going to go to heaven because you're doubting it. So any level of doubt is kind of quashed immediately, right? So for a true Christian, someone who says, I am absolutely Christian, blah, blah, blah, but I don't 100% know that there's a God, for them to say that and therefore say, you know, so therefore I guess I'm a Christian agnostic. Again, they're the opposite of me. They're they're Christian in all sort of ways, but they're agnostic in the sense that they they don't really know that a God's there. They can't do it. They just can't do it. Because again, unlike me, who can allow for yes, there may be a God, probably isn't, they can't allow for maybe there isn't a God. They just can't. It's against their religion, you know? Now they can do all kinds of other things against their religion, but they can't question God. In fact, that's the one thing that Jesus won't allow, right? Think about it. You can kill a busload of nuns, mow them down with machetes, and as long as you accept Jesus in your heart, you're fine. You're still gonna go to heaven, you know? You're not even gonna, you're not even gonna go get a warm spot in heaven. You're just gonna go to heaven like everybody else, like me, say, who lives a pretty good life, who's done a good lot of good things, who I think is a fairly I I think of myself as very compassionate and empathetic. I am not gonna go to heaven simply because I didn't choose Jesus. That's the difference. Not that I'm any better or worse than anybody else on the Christian side, but the main thing, the one thing that Jesus cannot forgive is not accepting Jesus. And I say Jesus, I guess God can't accept that you don't like his kid. So for them to admit that they are agnostic, yeah, it's not gonna happen. I wish they would. I wish they would just acknowledge that, you know, yeah, I don't know it, but I but I'm comfortable not knowing, and I'm just gonna believe. And if I get someplace and I find out I was right or wrong, then okay, so be it. But they can't do it. Which seems a little culty to me. But that's me. All right, so this question, uh, I don't have a name on this person. So uh, have you ever faced prejudice as an atheist? The person says, I hate that we live in a world where even saying the word atheist still immediately ignites some burning hate in people who choose to commit their lives to a delusion. Okay, well, you're starting now a little bit of a hot take there, buddy. Um, as though we're no longer humans, as though we're monsters. And for what? We're not subscribing to a fairy tale? Okay, so he goes on to say he had called off a religious, uh, he called off a marriage doing to due to religious preference. His ex-fiance told him years ago that she knew he was an atheist and she didn't care, but then she started to change. Okay, goes on and on and on. Alrighty. Yes, have have I ever faced prejudice as an atheist? You know, I don't know that I'd say prejudice. I mean, I I've never had any what's the word I'm looking for? I've had problems and I've had some issues, but you know, not so much that I am willing to whine and complain about them. Meaning, I've never been fired, let's say. I've never had a girlfriend that stopped talking to me uh because they found out I was an atheist, um, which would be awkward because I've been married for a long time. But you get you get my point. Uh, I have had a relative, I think I've spoken about this before. I did have a relative who I have known since we were both teenagers, stopped talking to me about seven, eight, nine years ago, give or take. I can't remember what how long ago it was. But I've and so I'm in I'm 55. So this was in my late 40s, and he found out I was an atheist, and he said he sent me a Facebook post or a Facebook message, and he said, Atheist, no wonder, um, deleted or yeah, deleted. I think he deleted. And then he deleted our friendship on Facebook. And I haven't spoken to him since. So, you know, which I was kind of like, where have you been for the last 30 years? I've known you since I was a teenager, since you were a teenager. We were both teens. He's a couple years younger than me, two or three at the most. You just now in my late 40s, figured out I was an atheist. I don't know what clues you were looking for because I was dropping them pretty heavy early on. But yeah, he stopped talking to me. And, you know, I my life is richer as a result. But okay, so I guess you could say that that's some prejudice that was I faced as an atheist. You know, but I've gone through a journey as an atheist to the point where now I don't care. You know, I'm also 55. Uh, maybe that makes a difference. I'm less concerned about people liking me or not, and I'm more concerned about just living the life that I want to live. And I mentioned this a minute ago. I feel like I'm a compassionate person. I feel like I'm a nice person. I try to make people's lives a little bit better. Do I always succeed at that? No, I'm a person just like everybody else. I can be a jerk sometimes if you push me or randomly upset me for some reason that I think is you know an offense. I'm sure I can do all that, just like every other human on the planet. But do I concern myself with having to live every day to please you? No, not in the sense that I care that your religion has a perspective, so therefore I should walk and toe a line based on your religious beliefs. I don't care. You know, if I want to live my life the way I do in a way that I think hurts nobody, if you're unable to deal with that, then I don't care. I've never faced anything at work that I am aware of. There have been situations at work where I have stayed quiet because I was afraid that could happen. Uh, and I am not an activist type of atheist, so I wasn't going to sort of push the issue, let it get out of hand, and then go to HR and make a fuss. Could I have done that? Probably. I mean, I I'm thinking of a specific situation that uh I've probably mentioned it before. We were in a team meeting where the uh manager was very religious, and and I knew that, that was fine. And then she had us all pray at a team meeting for a major bank. I worked for a major bank at the time, like probably the top three, four banks in the United States. Um, yeah, very big bank, and in a team meeting in the office, uh, and I don't even know what we were praying for. It wasn't even like, you know, maybe someone had gotten a car wreck or something, something where you're like, okay, I I can kind of you know let that one go. It was something just give us strength, kind of as we as we face the day of our financial, you know, whatever we were doing for the day. Could I have pushed that issue? Yeah. But I wasn't really in a headspace to do that in the sense like, I'm not fighting that issue, whatever. I obviously didn't pray. I just kind of looked around the room like, are you are we all seeing? This. I was probably the only person looking. But I also wasn't really overtly out about being atheists. So I didn't walk out of the room because I was a bit afraid of, well, how is that going to affect me professionally? Now I don't care. Now I'm kind of looking for a reason to fire me. Fire me. If you want to fire me for religion, even better because I'm ready to not work. And I'd glad to take another$100,000 settlement or something from you, whatever I can get out of your religious ridiculousness. But I'm not looking for that. So uh I don't put myself in these positions where I'm overly uh uh if I don't have face any prejudice. But um, but people do, and they absolutely do. And if they're not in the same sort of position that I am in life, where they, you know, I I've reached a position in my life, uh in terms of how I look at my life, uh, my finances are, where, you know, take your best shot. I got nothing to lose. You know, I'm gonna be fine. I'm not worried about you not liking me. If you think I don't need to work here as a result, okay, we can tangle on that. But ultimately, if you tell me I'm fired and and I have to go my separate ways, I don't really care. I can move on with my life fairly simply. But I'm in a position I can do that. Not everybody can. I again, I've never lost a close family member. I mean, I mentioned the one guy, and he was close enough, but you know, I didn't cry over this. It wasn't like I lost a wife or lost a parent over it or a child. I mean, I've got two children. One's religious, one's not. You know, they're still fine, you know. So yeah, it's it's tough. I I sympathize with you if you face that. Um, but and maybe you'll get to the point where I am where it's like, all right, fuck it. You know, I'm gonna live my life and you're gonna accept me the way that I am, assume that you're trying to be a good person. And if that person still says, you know what, I don't need you in my life, they're doing you a favor. Leave them out of your life. Totally leave them out of your life and move on. Go find it in this case, go find the next girl. There's like four billion girls on this planet. Go find that girl, date her. You don't need the other one. Hope that helps. All right, here we go. Another one. Um another name I can't say. Lin Mehua. I'm probably butchering that because it's probably some real word in another language that I don't understand. Spelled L-I-N underscore M-E-I-H-U-A Mehua? I'm gonna say Meihua. And if you uh know what that actually is or means, uh I am more than happy to uh be told how to pronounce that and what it means. So maybe it means something, maybe it means nothing. Anyways. Um, and they're questioned. I love this question because I've thought about this over and over throughout the years. Weren't Adam and Eve equivalent to literal babies on knowledge, yet they still got punished. Yeah, weren't they? I mean, we we have this whole story, and they go on to basically explain the story. But you're he's absolutely or he or she, they're absolutely right, right? You've got these two people that are without sin, to the point they're rocking around naked, hanging around in this Garden of Eden. They know no sin, they know no nothing wrong, all they know is good. And this is where the story starts to take a weird turn. Um, the devil, in the shape of a serpent, apparently, a weird serpent. If you look at the Bible, it's a weird serpent, um, tempts Eve with the apple, right? And if she eats from this apple, and guesses this is the tree again that God has said, we can you can do anything you want here, you know, as long as you don't eat from that tree. Now, again, you're telling two babies, people that have have no experience, they have no parents, they've not been raised, they've never done anything wrong because there is no wrong, there is no sin. So imagine you have a toddler who's never been told no, because they've never done anything wrong. And you told that toddler, by the way, don't eat from that cookie jar. What is the first thing that toddler's gonna do? It's gonna eat from the cookie jar because quite frankly, they want to eat from the cookie jar. And secondly, in this case, they don't know that that's really wrong because they have no concept of wrong, because they've never done anything wrong. They live in a world where there is no wrong. It's the fault, it falls apart right there. Absolutely falls apart right there. The other bad thing about that story, the bad thing, as if there's not a thousand bad things wrong with that whole story. The whole story is ridiculous. But then, of course, we have now blamed Eve for all eternity for eating this apple. And what else did she do? She hands it to uh Adam, who's right there with her. He had no problem eating it, but we blame Eve. Adam's just as guilty. He's like, oh, well, Eve's got the apple. Like, I gotta, I gotta, I've gotta eat the apple. I can't turn Eve down because she's hot and she's walking around naked and she's the only woman I've ever seen. I guess I don't know what his logic was. I mean, I can understand that'd be my logic. Maybe if I was on that in the little Garden of Eden, but he's just as guilty as eat of eating the apple as Eve was, but yet we heap all the uh the burden on Eve to have saved uh uh the all humanity. But again, this is like blaming a toddler for eating a cookie, and all humanity has to suffer in some way, shape, or form because a two-year-old ate a cookie. Does that seem insane to anybody else? It's a crazy story. It really is a crazy story, and I don't really know where what the um the moral of the story is, other than not not to uh disobey God, but like you couldn't come up with a better story than that. That's a that is a ridiculous story. It really doesn't make any sense. It just it just it doesn't work, it's a dumb story. I'm not a a great writer, but I could have written a better story than that. I'm sure I could come up with something this afternoon. That's a better story than that. Yeah, that's a dumb story. And they were they were literal babies, which actually always brings up another question. So they just poofed into the Garden of Eden, full grown adults. I don't know if there's anything the Bible says in that indicates how old they were. Obviously, child child bearing ears, whatever that means. Of course, this is the Bible, so they could have been 400 years old. I have no idea. We always sort of picture them as young and virile and good-looking and muscular and supple breasts, because that's the picture, oddly enough. If you think about it, anytime you've ever seen a picture of Adam and Eve, they're always these very good-looking young people frolicking around naked in a Garden of Eden. Some weird eroticism built into that, isn't there? They don't ever seem to be these uh middle-aged people with gray hair, you know, you know, but anyways, that's the religious perspective and image that we have. So, very strange. Yeah, so Lin Mehua, if that is your real name, I agree with you on that one. That's an odd story. All right, the next one, main car 9653, main car 9653. Am I the only one thinking that most of us atheists know more about religion than a lot of their followers? Yes, that's absolutely true. And I don't know it's because it's not because we're smarter. That's not the case. I'm not that guy that says, oh, we're smarter because you know we're we're atheists. That's that's stupid. But I will say that a lot of us um end up reading more of the Bible critically. And that's the key difference, right? Uh, and I am actually not one of these people who's read the Bible uh cover to cover. I I don't need to ride the read the Bible cover to cover. It's not gonna convince me. I know enough of the Bible in the last 55 years that reading an extra passage here and there is gonna convince me, but I do read it uh here and there, especially when things come up. I'm like, you know what does the Bible actually say? I'll grab the Bible that I have right here. Let me see if I can pick it up. My King James Bible that I flipped through with my fingers formally wrinkled from holy water, and I look to see what it actually says in this King James Bible. I don't care that that's the right or wrong version, doesn't matter, but it gives me a sense of where we're going with it. But that means I also read things that I bet my mom, who is 76, I think, 77, uh, and died in the Wool Southern Baptist. Does she know that? Probably not. Has she ever read uh have you read that passage? Oh, I can guarantee you there's a lot of passages she's never read because why? Because she doesn't actually read the Bible. And that's not a knock on her. She is like every other Christian I've ever met. They don't read the Bible. They go to Sunday school and they go to Sunday church and they're told what's in the Bible, and they're told what they're going to study this week. It's never come back after you've read the first three chapters. You know, it's not like that. It's not like a uh you know, a book report in uh eighth grade. They're told what to read, and I I guarantee you they kind of dance around all the stuff that's uncomfortable, the stuff that doesn't make sense. They jump around those parts. So atheists tend to read more of it in a more critical way, and also we tend to read it as a uh defense, I guess, as a defense mechanism. Because someone will say something and we'll say, okay, but hold on, because it says right here in that same book, you know, that you should also not eat shellfish. So when you're railing against gay people, don't forget, skip a few pages and put down the shrimp, you know, put down the pork, get that cotton wool blend sweater off your back. You know, we know those things because we use them as a way to counter the arguments that come at us. So, yeah, I think I think the person's true. What is it? Main car 9653. They're right that a lot of atheists do know the Bible better than their counterparts uh that are sitting in the pew. Obviously, not better than every one of them. There's people that actually do study it very thoroughly. But there are many, many atheists that uh that are very well versed in the Bible. And quite frankly, um, a lot of atheists, a lot of atheists turned away from religion because they read the Bible more, which I always find just irony of ironies, right? Because so, oh, you should sit here and read your Bible. Well, be careful. Be careful what you ask people to do. Because if you sit home and you read the Bible from cover to cover, you're gonna start to find out it doesn't really make sense. And the things you were told aren't exactly how they were portrayed. And there's a lot of contradictions and there's a lot of bad stuff, and there's a lot of nuttiness that doesn't really work once you sit down and read it. So a lot of atheists came from a religious background, and then they got super religious, and then the result of that super religiosity is they became atheists. So yeah. So yeah. That's a good question. It's a good point. I agree with you, buddy. All right. Then this kind of question comes up a lot. I feel like I end up with this question every other, every other uh call. Um, I don't know why I refer to this as a call, it's a podcast, but nonetheless. Um, this is from born cartoonist 7247. Um, I'm a 29-year-old virgin. Okay, so there we got that going. I've spent my whole life waiting until marriage due to religion, but after a few sexual experiences, I no longer want to. Hmm. I've never had a boyfriend, but I have really recently started dating intentionally, and I've been going on dates. Do I tell the person I'm dating, I'm a virgin? Why or why not? Okay, so they're actually hitting kind of two different but related points here. One, they um are they are a virgin. You know what? Does it say she? It doesn't actually say she, right? I don't know. They don't actually say she. Let me speak, let me read this again. I spent my whole life waiting until marriage due to religion, but after a few sexual experiences, I no longer want to. I never had a boyfriend, but have recently started dating intentionally and have been going on dates. Do I tell the person I'm dating I'm a virgin? Why or why not? All right. I'm gonna assume that they are a woman for a few reasons. One, they're using the fact that they grew up religious as a reason for their virginity, and they don't mention being gay. So if you were, if you were holding off having sex uh because of religion, then your religion would also, I'm sure, have a hand in the fact that you admit or do not admit to being gay. So I'm gonna make some assumptions there. Um obviously they could be getting married, they could be dating, blah, blah, blah. But I'm kind of using that. So maybe I'm missing I'm off on that, and that's fine. Um, my advice is gonna be very similar either way, but it's one less sort of component if we say that this is a woman uh dating uh a man. And she does say never had a boyfrior or the person says I've never had a boyfriend, right? So the first part of that, the religion uh kept them um from having sex. There's nothing wrong with that, right? Uh, I'm a very sexually open in the sense that I uh live your life. Again, as I mentioned earlier in the in the show, live your life. If you want to do something with your body that doesn't hurt someone else, do it. You got one body, trust me, there's a shelf life on this thing. It goes bad faster than you think it's gonna. Uh, and when you lose it, you lose it, right? So at 29 years old, oh gosh, do I wish I had my 29-year-old body and vigor and everything else that went along with it? Yeah, I absolutely do. Probably most people do. But this person's weighted now all this time, and I say all this time, this person I'm assuming is here in the United States, 29-year-old virgin is uncommon. It just is, right? Most people, most of us, me included, lose their virginity in their teens and very early 20s, usually at the most. As you get to your mid-20s and now into their late 20s, here almost 30 years old, virginity is a very rare thing. I would argue that's just fine because virginity is a really sort of a made-up thing. What does it actually mean? I mean, really, what is virginity actually? What is it? You've not had sex, okay. I was like, I'm saying I've never played, you know, badminton. Okay. What what what am how am I different or how is this person different the day after they've had sex? We can set aside hymen and stuff like that. But literally, the person, the human being, how are they different the day after they've had sex? They've had an experience. I mean, I've had lots of experiences of doing all kinds of things. There's food I've eaten, there's activities I've taken place, there's places I've been. Those are all experiences. Sex is another experience. I've had plenty of that as well. Did it change me the next day? Not really. It's just one more experience. I was glad I did most of the time, probably all the time. But people put it off because religion says, oh, you can't do that. The problem I'm always fearful of, and you can kind of hear it in this person's thing the longer you put off having sex because of religion, the bigger the issue becomes, right? Because most of us, most of us, and probably all of us, will look back on our first sexual experience and say, Yeah, okay, that was okay. If you've had more sex than just your first time, you'll look back on your first one and go, Yeah, that was okay. I mean, I'm happy I did it. Was it the best sexual experience I ever had? No, no, not by any stretch of the imagination. Um, I like to think I gave that girl the best 30 seconds of her life. Did I? No. If that woman's talking about me right now, like I'm talking about her, uh, yeah, I probably don't want to be in the room. I'm embarrassed about it, right? Because I was a kid, I was like 15 or whatever I was. I didn't build it up though for the next 15 years in my head that it's gonna be this thing and I'm crossing some big boundary by finally having sex. So I feel bad for people because they've created this sort of monster in their head, you know, they're crossing this major line and they're gonna do this thing. And and my gosh, what what if God's watching me? And what if I'm not married? I'm it's so much pressure and so much negative pressure to accomplish what? What happens? What's the problem with that? And I'm not saying go out there and have sex. If you want to wait, wait. I have no problem with that. But wait for the right reasons. And even then I'd say if you're waiting, why are you waiting? What is it you think you're giving away that you don't retain? You know, this isn't a uh finite resource. You have pretty much as much sex as you want to give away, you can give away for for most of your life. You can give away your sex in the sense that you can have sex with somebody. It's a renewable resource like that, right? So, what is it that you're saving? You know, and we teach girls to save it as if, again, they're protecting some treasure that is going to be depleted, which is just dumb. So the misogyny that's built into that whole thing is wrong. And we know misogyny in the Bible hand in hand, right? So there's a lot of this this person would have to unpack, right? But now at 29 years old, they've had some boyfriends and apparently they've been doing some sexual experience. They just says they've had a few sexual experiences. We don't know that means, but okay. Whatever they've done, and I I do like this. I said, uh, you know, I spent my whole life waiting until marriage due to religion, but after a few sexual experiences, I no longer want to. Yeah, I get it. You go, girl, right? I mean, yeah, so she started to have to start to fool around, as a lot of us did say as teens, and she's like, Yeah, I'm ready. I'm ready to go. But there's a voice in the back of her head, it's like, yeah, but don't do that because you know, God's watching, which is creepy as it is. And then their final question. So we have all that, but then the second question or the the question actually takes a little bit of a turn because she's dropping the religious part of it, and she just says, Do I tell the person that I'm dating that I'm a virgin? Why or why not? And that's a really good question. And unfortunately, I've got two answers that uh are conflicting on this. The 55-year-old father, husband, man, citizen of the world says you tell them if you want to. It's none of their damn business, but you absolutely tell them if you think it's somehow germane to what you do the next minute with your body. I would argue it has, as I've just made a little rant on, it doesn't matter. It's nothing that that person, trust me, it is nothing that person's gonna know physically. They're just not. I mean, they're just not. I mean, you know, they're there, we can get into some of the TMI issues that could happen as a result of your first time, but in a general sense, they're not gonna know. They're gonna know because you're nervous, they're gonna know because you're freaking out, maybe, if that's what happens, but they're not gonna really know. So, do you need to tell them? No. Part of me is wanting to say, tell them, tell them, sure, you want to share this experience with them. Fine. There's another part of me that says, maybe hold on to that bit of information. And I'm trying to think of how the best put that. And here's the deal guys get weird about religion. I'm sorry, not religious. Guys get weird about virginity and they get weird about too much lack of virginity, if you will, maybe meaning too many partners, and they get weird about not having a partner. I don't know either guy you're dating, and I don't know if he's gonna be weird about that. I don't know if he's gonna see conquering this virgin as a quest that he is gonna um feel like he needs to uh to do. There are guys like that. They they're kind of gross, and I don't like those guys, but there are guys like that, and I'd be cautious if that's the case, so that you are ready to have sex when you're ready to have sex and not be someone's trophy, because that's not necessarily going to be the best feeling in the world. So that's sort of my caution on that. Um, and and this is just a bit of an aside. I see the exact opposite when someone has had multiple sexual partners, which again, I'm like, fine, have as much sex as you want with as many people as you want. Why should it matter? But I caution women and girls from saying that because too many guys are ridiculous and they're stupid and they're immature. And they think as if if you've had 50% of the partners that they've had, that you're a slut. If you've had more than they have, well, that you've been run through and all these sort of terrible terms, when in reality is none of it matters, but guys are just insecure and stupid. Most guys. Not me, of course, not your friendly uh neighborhood heathen. I don't care about that, but many people do. So religion, or I keep saying religion because this is what we're talking about, but virginity and the lack of virginity, these are very big issues that sometimes can have a lot bigger effect on their relationship. But, you know, I would I keep trying to go back and forth. As I said earlier, sometimes I'll read these and I don't really think of them through until I start to read them, and I'm kind of going back and forth in this. You know, if you think this is a pr a good person, he's a good guy, and you think he won't hold it against you nor look at it as some sort of conquest, um then tell him. There's nothing wrong with that. At the same time, if you think, you know what, I'm just gonna do it because I want to get it out of my system, and I'm not gonna tell him, that's fine too. You do not owe anybody an explanation about your body and your virginity and your lack thereof. And if he turns out to be the first of 50, that's fine. On the 50th guy, you can tell him you're the first time. It doesn't matter. You tell him whatever you damn well please. It doesn't matter to anybody else, and I will die on that hill. Your body is yours to do with as you want, and you do not owe me or anybody else an explanation of how you use it. So go forth and have sex, my young friend. And hope you enjoy it. Spoiler alert, it's probably not gonna be the best you've ever had. I'm just gonna say that right now. Don't put too much stock in your first time being fantastic. It probably won't be. Now, one saving grace is you're gonna be having sex, hopefully, with a guy, give or take your age. So he's had sex before. That's probably better than having sex with another 17-year-old when you're a teenager who also doesn't know what he's doing. But, you know, that's the way it is. So good luck with that, boring cartoonist. I really do wish you luck. All right, so here's another good question. Sudden T 560. When you were a Christian, do you feel like you were always living in fear? You know what? This is actually, I'm actually curious about that. I'd love to ask some Christians about this. Um, and they go on to say, Were you always living in fear of doing something wrong or pissing God off? Were you ever content when you were a Christian? And I'm gonna guarantee you, I'm just gonna throw this out there and I'm gonna assume it's the case, and you can tell me if I'm wrong. Most Christians are gonna tell you that no, that they live their lives just thrilled and happy, and they they're just, you know, ble bathed in the blood and they're so happy because they have God, and then they'll say they're God-fearing Christians, which is like, didn't you just tell me how great life was because you're a Christian, but yet you're a God-fearing Christian? You fear going to hell. You've told me that I'm going to hell. Therefore, I should be scared of that. I should be fearful of that, because I'm going to burn for all eternity because I don't accept Jesus. So, which is it? Are you thrilled or are you in are you scared? You know, it's it's like a like a child. And I'm not saying childish. I'm saying it's like a child who you're holding a belt over them and you're saying, you better do good, or I'm gonna beat you with this belt. Well, wouldn't that child just be scared? That's why I'm not really a big person on in corporal punishment. Um, because you're just putting fear into someone. That's not the same as respect, that's fear. And if the person's only reason for not doing something is because they're afraid you're going to beat them with something, that's that's just not the way I live my life. It's not the way I've raised my children. You know, do what you want. But isn't this the same thing? You're fearful of God, you fear God, you fear what God will do to you if you don't tow the line that God has put forth. It's no different in the parent-child relationship that some people use fear as an intimidation tactic and as a as a uh discipline tactic. It's really no different. But yet they'll say, Oh no, I don't live in fear. You do live in fear. You've told me you live in fear. You've told me I should live in fear. I think that's one of those weird things that Christians have twisted in their head, and you know, Christians and all religions, but Christians are certainly very good at this sort of cognitive dissonance, and they will turn this little piece off and say, No, no, that's not how it is at all. And then again, they'll go out and they'll tell you that you should be fearful of God. You should be God-fearing Christian. It's weird. It's weird. So uh Sudden T 560. Uh, I was never a uh God-fearing Christian, but I know many, many Christians that are. And uh whether they admit it or not, there is fear built into their religion. And those of those, those, those in there that live religiously in terms of that's their that's sort of their main personality trait, is their religiosity. Yeah, fear is a big part of that. Through the smiles and the, hey brother, how are you? Welcome to the church. There's fear. And they will not hesitate for a moment to try to turn that fear onto you, if it means that you'll start doing what they tell you according to their book. And if you don't believe that, look at the comments on my videos and my uh podcasts where people tell me I am going to hell if I don't start following God. So I just don't choose to believe that. All right. So I figure let's go ahead and end on this uh this last question because again, today is Easter. So since Jesus died for our sins, let's talk about sin. So Impressive Flawn 411 says, the idea that atheists just want to sin doesn't make sense. So here we go with this one. Hey everyone, as someone who is personally a progressive theist, but has grown up in a community with theologically traditional Christians, I've seen this nonsensical claim come up a lot. It's usually something like atheists don't believe in God because they just want to sin or they don't want to be accountable to God. But this explanation doesn't really hold up when you think about it. And they're absolutely true. Um, I have heard that a thousand times. It really is, it's it's such a common trope from hardcore Christians, which I find hilarious. There's a handful of reasons. First of all, we're atheists because we disbelieve that you have proven there's a God. And I've said this before. I don't know if there's a God or not. No God has ever come to me. What I'm really not believing is you, Larry. I'm not believing you, Linda. You've not proven to me that there's a God. If God wants to prove to me there's a God, God can come down and prove it. But right now I'm rejecting your claims, Larry. Okay? So that's the first part of it. So I'm not trying to get out of sin. I'm just saying I don't believe you, Larry. But let's talk about the sin part. Uh, today is again Easter Sunday. There are thousands, probably millions, I guess, millions of people in churches throughout the United States. Guaranteed, absolutely guaranteed, there's a large percentage of those people right now that committed adultery this week. Maybe even as much as as uh recent as last night, they committed adultery, right? There are sinners sitting in every pew of every church in every town in America. So you don't need to become an atheist to sin. That's a ridiculous statement. It just it's a stupid statement. As we've mentioned earlier in this show, are we a are we a Christian nation by law? No. Are we a Christian nation just by the sheer number of Christians? Yeah, we are. We have more Christians here than any other religion, by a de facto Christian nation. Who goes to jail most often? Christians who fills all of our jails, Christian, who commits most of the crimes, Christians. So when you talk about murders and rapes and pillaging, who's doing this? Mostly Christians. So sinning isn't the exclusive territory of atheists. Religion. Christians do a hell of a lot of it, and they seem to be quite happy with doing it. Then they get to go to Sunday and say, you know, I forgive myself because I think God's forgiving me right now. And uh yeah, then how about we hook up later, Linda? And quite frankly, I don't think I'm telling tales out of school here. Some of the people committing these sins are standing at the pulpit telling us not to commit sins. So the idea that atheists are are atheists so we can get out of having to feel bad for sinning, that's just dumb. I don't need to do that. I I'd be perfectly okay going in on Sunday after having sinned all week, right? It's just it's a dumb statement, but it makes um super Christians and turbo Christians feel morally superior. And they tell us this all the time that atheists have no morals because we don't have a book, right? Okay, well, I don't need a book. I I'm moral in the I'm moral in the sense that I feel I'm moral because I'm a good person. I want to be a good person. I want to be a compassionate person, empathetic person. I want people to like me. And and I am not trying to get into heaven. I'm not trying to have my sins washed away when I die. I'm trying not to commit sins that are hurtful to people today, because I have to face them today. I got one shot at this life. And if I'm a bad and terrible person, I'm going to suffer for it today in the world that I live in. I don't get to wash all that away. So, from for the most part, me as an atheist, I'm trying to keep the bad things I do at a minimum because I don't want to have to live with the consequences. I don't have anything to uh to live for after my death. I have to live the life that I'm living right now. So that keeps me from being an atrocious and terrible person. Again, because I don't want to hurt people's feelings. And I don't have a get out of jail free card like some people that go to church every weekend. So so yeah, that's that's a stupid statement. Just want to avoid uh they just want to sin. It's just dumb. It's just dumb, but it's not it's not uncommon. So yeah, so Impressive Flawn 411, which now I'm very curious what kind of flaw you have that's so impressive you would make your name that. But uh yeah, Impressive Flawn 411. Yep, I agree with you. It's a dumb statement, it doesn't make any sense. And we're gonna end on that. So again, I hope you enjoy this. Uh, let me know if you have any questions or comments. And and I always say this uh please let me know um if you have a comment on it, whether you agree or disagree, as long as you're respectful. I used to just say, if you agree or disagree, let me know and I'll respond to you. But some people are just dicks, quite frankly. If you're just gonna be a dick, then I'm gonna ignore you or I might give you a snarky comment back. But mostly I'm just gonna ignore you because I don't have patience for you. But if you have a complete disagreement and you want to have a conversation like I'm having now, then let's have that conversation. I'm happy to have it with you to see. Um, we may never agree, but we can talk through it. I I'm happy to do that. So uh leave me a comment. Let me know if you had a disagreement or go if you agree with me, that's fine. Or if you have your own questions that you'd like me to answer or give you my perspective on, absolutely happy to do it. Go ahead and also uh like the con uh like the channel, like the uh podcast, give us a thumbs up um and tune in for the next one. In the meantime, take uh take care. Hope you have a great rest of your Easter weekend. If you celebrate, or if you don't celebrate, then you go out and you do whatever you want on this uh on this great Sunday and have a great rest of your week. Take care. I really hope you enjoyed today's show. Before you go, make sure you like and subscribe to the show and tell a friend, it really helps us grow. If you'd like more great content from us, be sure to check us out right here on YouTube. You can also find us wherever you get your podcast, and check out our blog at atheistville.com. Until we talk again, remember reason and compassion go a very long way.