Religious concepts like hell and the Noah's Ark flood story evolved through cultural syncretism, combining elements from ancient Greek mythology (Hades), Zoroastrianism (judgment after death), and real geological events (the Black Sea flood around 6000 BC). The number 666 in Revelation was originally 616, referring to Emperor Nero. Understanding these origins reveals that religious narratives often blend multiple cultural traditions rather than being purely divine revelation, and that scientific inquiry can provide alternative frameworks for understanding humanity's place in the universe.
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Where MYTH and EVIDENCE collide - Barry Evans
Added:Hey everybody, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate you being part of our community and so glad to be kicking off a week of some interesting and really amazing interviews. I'm so excited. So, please keep an eye out for the uh other live streams also coming. You can always click on the uh link that on the on YouTube there that says alert me when a live stream is starting. I think it gives you a heads up when it's like 30 minutes before the live stream and then it'll tell you again when it's started.
Um but we have some great people coming including today's guest. Today we're speaking with Barry Evans. Barry, thank you so much for joining us today.
>> Hey, this is uh this is really fun to be on this show.
>> Well, I appreciate you being here.
You're an early You're out in California and can you tell us again how early do you get up in the morning?
>> Oh, well, our local uh Starbucks, my wife likes me doesn't like me uh saying Starbucks because they're corporate, but they're just lovely people there. They open at 4:30 in the morning and they're like five blocks away up the road. We're in Eureka, California. Uh right on on Hanul Bay.
We're actually half a block from Hanold Bay here and I walk up there and I'm always there at 4:30 in the morning when they open. So I'm 4:30. I I get going at at 4:30.
>> I'm jealous. I used to do that to some extent. I was up more like 5 5:30 a lap, but I' I've slipped a little bit, but um I need to get back there. That's a great habit. Um, in terms of just kicking us off here with an uh a bio, I'm going to read a few quick things and then if you could correct me if anything's off, and then I'd love to hear, you know, some fun things about you, some hobbies. But Barry is a science writer and author, and he's a retired civil engineer. His work brings complex scientific and historical ideas down to earth with humor, skepticism, and wonder. He writes a regular science column for the North Coast Journal in Hanulk County, California. He has produced science segments for his local NPR affiliate and has written numerous histories of Northern California. He's the author of The Wrongway Comet and Everyday Wonders.
And his newest book, which is what we're going to talk about today. Here, I'll bring the image up. His newest book is called Amazon to Zodiac: 101 Scientific Curiosities Across Time and Space. And so, we'll get into that shortly. Uh but through these 101 short chapters, Barry explores anthropology, evolution, engineering, exploration, health, inventions, language, mythology, mathematics, and space, and a whole bunch more. Uh it's it's quite a quite an interesting mix. And his writing is driven by love of evidence and a desire to show that science is far more than just a collection of cold facts. Uh it's obviously one of our most powerful sources of amazement, discovery, and intellectual adventure. And again, as Barry mentioned, he lives in Oldtown Eureka with his wife Louisa. They love they like to kayak and ride their bicycles and they have a stuffed gorilla which I'd love to hear about but tell us more about yourself Harry.
>> Uh well I'm I'm Welsh according to uh 24 and me and 94% Welsh. Mom and dad had moved from Wales to Souththeast England right before I was born. So I'm from Maidstone Kent in England. And so I grew up there, went to uh University of London, got an engineering degree and ran away about as far as I could go to New Zealand. I was out there for four years.
>> Uh was that >> uh 21 20 21? Yeah, 20 I think >> and then um because in England an engineering degree is only three years, here it's four because we don't do any electives. and then uh ended up in Vancouver, Canada, met Louisa 51 years ago and we bounced around from Vancouver to Boston to Charlottesville to Seattle to Bellingham to Palo Alto and here we are up on the north coast of uh California. This is Redwood Country.
That's how people know it. Sasquatch country if you happen to be a a mythologist and we've been here for the last 20 21 years >> actually. It's it's it's kind of funny.
We um we'd we'd been we'd been working our asses off in uh Silicon Valley during the dotcom era and we basically we uh we wore ourselves out and we we took off for nearly two years on a sbatical and um when we came back uh the ba San Francisco Bay Area had had gone I Either we had changed or it had changed and we we ran away. It's the story of my life running away and we ended up here in this this uh small town community and we needed somewhere to just stop and catch catch up with our lives. So, uh we we rented a home here that we said, "Well, it's a it's a small apartment.
This will do for a month or two." And we're still here 20 21 years later. So 25 25 years later.
>> Is your wife from the UK as well?
>> No, she's um I guess she's really from the east east coast. Both her parents were from South Carolina, but she doesn't think of herself that way because uh her dad was um a diplomat. He was in the US foreign service. So she grew up in Hungary and Ecuador and Pakistan and so she thinks of herself more as an internationalist.
But >> yeah, you're world travelers. That's awesome.
>> Uh we are. Yeah. Let let me grab water here. Tim just a second.
>> Yeah, no worries. And for anyone that's joining us in the um comments, welcome.
I say accident agnostics in the building. Thank you so much for joining us. Um, Barry, I'd love to get to your book in a few minutes, but before we do, I I it always is helpful for me to kind of hear people's backgrounds. Before we touch on anything at all related to your to your new book, could you just tell us where you were coming from in terms of religion and your worldview? What were you taught as a kid? Uh, what were you taught growing up regarding the Bible?
And you know, in terms of the context of my channel, did you have what we would have called a relationship with with God through Jesus death and resurrection?
>> Golly. Uh, no.
I I grew up in in in England and in England um God is um England is is officially a uh a a Christian nation and the the the monarch ever since Henry VII has been called the defender of the faith and the faith in this case was originally Catholicism, Roman Catholicism. But when uh Henry VIII broke with uh Rome as a result of he needed an heir and the pope wouldn't grant him a a divorce from Katherine of Araggon. So instead he said well who who needs a a pope? I can do that job. So he became the official defender of the faith. So the Anglican religion is like I think of it as Roman Catholic light. It's got uh it's basically Cathol Catholicism without the the pope. So uh growing up uh in and educated in a a grammar school where every morning we would have a service.
We would sing lustily. We would sing a hymn of it was often quite jing jingoistic. I remember, you know, there was a lot of uh where uh Britain was basically still had thought of it as a a top dog nation kind of sad in in retrospect.
>> Um so, uh God was I guess I guess God was kind of like like gravity, you know?
I mean, God God was there. We didn't really talk about it. He just took it for for granted. And we we sang our our hymns and I was in the Boy Scouts. Best that was the best part of of growing up, by the way, was the Boy Scouts. Uh but that was the the Boy Scouts was uh definitely a a Christian or organization. And every so often you'd be I I think the uh every time we met we would say you know and uh for God and and country or something but it was never a contentious thing. However, um during my teen years, probably from about 11 to 14 or so, I went to Crusaders.
And Crusaders was a young person's evangelical organization.
And this was uh Hellfire and Brimstone.
And but I don't think it really took I I went uh I'm not sure honestly I'm not sure why I went but every Sunday afternoon uh we would go and we would be uh there was it was a social it was a social thing but it was >> definitely there was definitely an element of uh you got to you got to be you got to be right with Jesus because when you die you you either go or you know so >> terrible.
>> But but uh you know I I know your your your channel Tim is uh very much about uh people who've decon converted. But for me there there really wasn't very much to decon convert from. It was always it was always God light or Jesus light or um uh I I suppose I believed as uh you know as a a lot of people you know if if you ask them are you you know if if if you check into a hospital you know and they say what's your religion you know in case we have to administer the last rights or something uh you You know, I suppose most most people would uh identify as Christian, but that that's it. There's a lot of difference between identifying as a Christian and being, you know, and living and believing as a Christian.
>> As you got older, >> it's a long answer.
>> As you got older, like as a teenager, did you ever get exposed even more heavily to fundamentalists and did you get invited to be more radical for Christ?
When when I was in New Zealand, I I lived next door. I was in a a little group house and we lived next door to a couple of Mormon uh missionaries. You know, these are young young young lads from England, like 20 21. And uh they they they used me as a guinea pig and they uh they they practiced on me.
So, I I I got the full Mormon thing, but it was always a bit silly to me. And uh Yeah.
>> But I was I guess I was was being nice to them, but uh >> it was never so good that you didn't get caught up in the garbage.
>> Yeah. Uh it was I mean, it's it's lovely. It's it's lovely stuff. It's you know, if if America needs a religion, we need a a Jo a Joseph Smith. If there hadn't been a Joseph Smith, there would have been someone else to >> Yeah, for sure.
>> to come along, a William Miller or someone, you know.
>> Well, well, I'm just so glad that you didn't get into the uh whole religious trauma that so many of us talk about. Um I would love to jump into your book now.
Um you've obviously written some other stuff, but we're here to focus on your book again that I'm going to bring up the uh picture here for anyone that didn't see it earlier. It's called Amazon to Zodiac: 101 Scientific Curiosities Across Time and Space. And I'll bring up some other images throughout the interview from the book.
But before we jump into some specifics, and we've got some uh some here that we're going to jump into for sure, but be can you just give us a minute or two of overview? What prompted you to write this book? And what what are you hoping to get across with it when people read it?
Oh, I uh I'm a I I'm a recovering civil engineer as you mentioned and uh when at some point I realized I could I could write uh which is an unusual trait for an engineer in my experience. Um, and I got into writing uh I I'm also an amateur astronomer and years and years ago I got into writing uh I I think monthly articles on astronomy. the the prompt for that was Hal's Comet in 1986 and the local we were living in Bellingham and the the local uh editor of our our paper there asked if I could write about Hal's comet and I enjoyed writing about it so much that I I went to him I remember after it had come out and said can I do a regular regular something on the night sky and that's that's how it got started and so I had a self-synicated column that got into I think about 40 40 papers in the end. Uh and anyway, um long story short, I we have a local excellent local weekly paper here called the North Coast Journal. And in uh 2008, I started writing a weekly column uh on that. And by that time I'd I'd written I'd written this this book if you can see it. Can you see it?
>> Yeah. The Everyday Wonders Everyday Wonders. And uh that was a a bit about everything. So uh everything's sciency.
Uh I have a short attention span. So, uh, my writing tends to be somewhere between 600 and a,000 words and then I'm on to something else. And this is all about taking some fairly uh interesting to me but a complex issue and trying to re reframe it for a lay audience. So um so when I started writing this uh week weekly column it's called field notes uh the the trick was to uh surprise my my my readers. So I always came up with some something different every every week. So uh so after um uh nearly 20 years of writing this I I had quite a quite a collection. I had about 500 uh sciency articles. Everything well you you gave a bit of the the spectrum of stuff that I talk about. Uh but but I had something to to to draw from. So I ended up uh putting together 101 of these what I consider my best or the most interesting columns. And these are really these are appetizers. I I want people who uh perhaps aren't really familiar or maybe have been put off science at at school or uh need a a bit of a nudge to be reminded science is fun. You know there's there's a lovely quote there um uh uh Albert Mikkelson are you familiar with the Mickelson Moley experiment?
>> Anyway, this was this was 1890s and it led to pretty directly to Albert Einstein and his special theory of relativity. But he he was asked uh why why do you do science? and he starts going into this long explanation of uh trying to understand nature and seeing the the magnificence of the universe and and and suddenly he he stopped himself, >> you know, it's just because it's so much fun >> and that's and that's that's about where where where I'm at every every week. I I I have fun with this. I love researching. I love talking to uh to scientists.
>> Well, let's dive in. Let's let's give some people a little taste for what they would get if they bought your book. Um let's kick it off with a story we all know and and love. The story where our our loving heavenly father decides to kill all of his children in Noah's Ark, uh the flood story. Um that's obviously, as you mentioned in your notes, it's the one time in the Bible when God admits to messing up and has to hit the reset button. Um but could you unpack that?
what are some of the insights and and uh interesting tidbits that you'd want to share with people to wet their appetite to study that more?
>> Well, yeah, it's it's it's a unique story and I mean this is uh this is I mean the Bible is nothing if not weird.
I mean, I don't know how many weird stories, you know, you have God and Satan playing dice for for God's soul and virgin birth. And I I Anyway, but the weirdest of all is the one time that God admits to [ __ ] up, you know, and basically after I think we're 10 generations in after Adam and Eve, and he says, you know, I really screwed up here. I made a mess of this. Uh uh all all these these humans are running out and they are they are sinful and uh I I need to uh basically press the reset button on this and rather sadly not just humans but all the the beasts of the earth and the fowls of the sky and the things that crawl on the earth. I'm going to wipe them all out.
And so he he announces to to Noah that uh he's going to do this and Noah should build a big boat.
Well, this uh the story is uh as I'm I'm sure most of your your your viewers will know had its antecedance many many years ago. uh Giggalish which dates from something like 22 2300 BC has almost exactly the same story almost word for for word of of how the the Noah story is is told in Genesis and the same size boats and two of uh all animals to come on on board and it's just Utna Pishim who was a king at the time was told to build this this boat and to bring just just his immediate family on board exactly as I think it's Noah and his what four sons and uh and wives and one of every living thing on on earth and then they after 40 days I mean this is almost word for for for for word from the geek Gig Almish story. 40 days later, the the waters subside and uh you're left with a rather small gene gene pool to to get things going going again. Uh don't get me started on incest and the problems that uh that that brings in. Um but just you know as a uh I'm an engineer uh by by by training so the first thought is well what would it take to flood the earth? Well it turns out if you melt all the glaciers and all the the the the ice caps Greenland and Antarctica and everything the uh the sea level would rise by about I think it's about 250 ft. So you're far from covering the the the earth with with with flood waters. So just uh but one very interesting thing about this is that uh it may have been based on an an actual geological uh event that happened about uh 6,000 years ago or or rather 6,000 BC.
And the um what it looked like is that the Black Sea was a a a huge freshwater lake and the the rivers feeding it had dried had dried up and so the sea level fell by about 300 ft and at some point so there's the the Mediterranean here and uh 300 feet lower there's the the Black Sea and it broke through. There was a a a sill of of rock that broke through and when it did the the the flood waters would have been unimaginable. Someone figured out it would have been like 50 Niagara Falls over several years filling up this huge huge basin. uh at which point any any farmers and and herders uh who'd been living around the the sea of the the shores of the sea would have been flooded out and and possibly killed because it was was so fast.
And maybe there was this oral tradition that just carried on through through the years that there had indeed there was indeed a huge flood. And I uh it the I I think it this says something about the power of oral trans transmission indeed that you can make a very good good case that Noah's flood and the flood that previous writers had been writing about were actually based on a a real a real earthly flood.
>> Yeah. It's amazing how that this idea of the flood has been become such a lynchpin topic for so many people such as Ken Ham and all of his literalists and it's you know you either take Genesis 1 and the other sections of early Genesis very literally that the earth is uh exactly the way it says in terms of how old it was and how it was created, how many days it took and Noah's flood and how that started or you don't and it's it's amazing how like there's just no scope for the imagination. Number one, to think maybe some of this isn't literal. It's poetic.
It's clearly written in in certain sections as a as a poetic uh piece of literature, but also the idea, like you're saying, that it's copied. It's copied. It's a it's a new iteration of an old story that they all knew and shared many times. It's also interesting that that story of Noah is the aftermath is such a lynch pin for so much racism. Um, when I was growing up, they would often talk about the whole issue with Noah's uh son Ham having exposed Noah's nakedness as black people and that therefore God had cursed black people. And I think that still exists quite a bit in certain circles, which is just horrifying that it's still an issue in this day and age. But it's just it's it just the whole thing is this lynch pin of literalism and racism.
And you just you wish people could step back and think that the Bible is like if you go back to it as a as a piece of literature and not as a worldview guide, but it's just another piece of literature like the Epic of Gilgamesh that you can actually think there's some interesting things here and maybe scientifically maybe something did happen back then that looked like a pretty big flood. Maybe not worldwide, but it was a pretty big flood. A lot of people probably did die and at least had their homes removed and so forth, their crops gone. And it was probably horrific time frame where a lot of people were devastated, but it's like it's just part of human history. It's not something that Yahweh did, you know, in time and space. But, um, in terms of when you when you talk about that with people, what are most the the most common insights that people are like, "Oh, I didn't think about it that way."
What are the the Eureka moments for people?
Well, you know, you my my audience I I I think I'm I'm often preaching to the to to the choir here that uh I think very very I I don't I'm I'm not in the business of trying to convince uh died in the wall evangelical Christians that maybe if you look at things from a slightly rational point of view, Maybe that didn't happen quite the way it said or if it did it was based on earlier stories or something. Uh yeah, you would you would know that that bit better than me. I don't put it this way.
I don't usually hang out with e evangelicals because I find them kind of silly. Uh >> agreed 110%. Yeah. There there are channels, you know, I'm I'm sure you know this, but there a lot of channels where people like me would get on and debate Christians. And I don't do that because I find that it's just not worth it in the sense that for the most part, they're just not ready to be uh unplugged. You know, they're not ready to face the reality of it. And it's it's one of those things where when you're in it and you're stuck in it and you're just you have so much vested interest in this, you've doubled down and doubled down again and you have that inherent um what would you call it? sort of an existential dread that like if an atheist is in any way correct, if nihilism is in any way accurate, then therefore I've wasted my life and I'm not going to see uncle so and so and my great-grandpa who is already dead. I wish I could. I can't wait to see him again in heaven. Oh, maybe that's not true. That is so terrifying to some people that they just can't imagine it.
So, they just have to stay on this hamster wheel. And it is very sad. But one of the things I love, I just add this quickly. The Noah story in many ways became one of the lynchpin stories for me in escaping Christianity. And I think a lot of other people would would say this too. So I'm sort of preaching to the choir here, I'm sure, with my audience, but you know, when you look at the the horrific nature of Yahweh and you say, if this had been true, if this had been a real God who said, "I'm going to drown all of my own children." Is that really a good good father? And for me, for example, when I was a Christian and very very fundamentalist Christian, uh the the the lynch pin story for me was Joshua and Jericho where they walk around seven times, the walls come tumbling down, realizing I'm about to teach my kids a fun little quirky song about it, but that someday I'll have to explain that my my God defends genoc or commands genocide and land theft and slavery and child brides and stoning and worse. And I like I have to defend all this to my kids and say sometimes genocide is a good thing because where God commands it and the no Noah's flood story. And I've I've gone to my kids at times and said to them, can I ask you if a daddy were to hold his kids under the water? Not even kill them. Just hold them under the water for like a minute or two where they're coming up gasping for air. Would that be a good daddy or a bad day? Oh, that'd be horrible. What if he actually drowns a kid? That'd be horrible. He's a murderer. Well, what if he drowns a whole bunch of kids? Well, that's obviously like horrific beyond words. I'm like, then how could that be a good daddy? And yet for Christians, they're going to literally know that song. They know that that story. They might even have toys in the nursery of, you know, Noah's Arc, Fisher Price, you know, little little toys for the kids to play Noah's Ark. And while they're upstairs in the sanctuary singing that God is a good good father. And it's like, at what point do you say to yourself simply, you believe horrific things. And and >> this like you when your hero Yahweh is a monster, it's turning you into a monster. And that's how you can literally say, "I believe in a God who drowns his own children and yet he's a good father." It just is so sick.
>> Isn't there a uh didn't someone build an ark replica in Tennessee or or someone?
>> Yeah, that was Ken Ham and his creation group. Yeah, >> it was. Okay.
>> Yeah, they did.
>> Yeah. So, so what how did how did they explain it all? Yeah. Yeah. No, no, live. But what about every, you know, don't aren't they just in in inviting uh uh awkward questions? I would put put the whole thing.
>> They are the the big the big thing that most Christians would say to those things is simply uh you do not understand the white hot holiness of God. And if you saw reality the way he does, which is in their opinion, of course, the right way to see reality.
>> If you saw the horror of sin, he has the right to destroy anybody and anything he needs to to preserve his holiness. The most important attribute of God is his holiness, his purity, and he will destroy sin and he will destroy the sinner. And so they would defend that at all costs. And that's what they that's how they basically uh defend it and say that, you know, God God has the right.
You know, of course, there's a book uh in the New Testament, Romans. Romans nine says he's the potter and we're the clay. And doesn't the potter have the right to do what he wants with his clay?
Can't he make a take a piece of clay and make it into a vessel of honor?
Something you might, you know, make into a cup and drink out of it. This is good.
And then take another piece of clay and say, "Oh, it's lumpy. I think I'm going to destroy it and start over." Doesn't he have the right? He's the potter. And so they just they put that all in this worldview and they do they basically are are making themselves into monsters, you know? It's crazy.
>> What can I say?
>> Yeah. Well, um, in terms of going on to another topic, uh, 666 is a fascinating one. Uh, you talk about that in a 616, I should say, but, um, could you could you tell us what you've done some interesting uh, adventures on that topic. Tell me what you think about it.
>> Well, it's it's uh, it was 666. you know the uh this was the number of of the beasts and John of Patmos was uh wrote the book of revelation. Actually he he wrote one of the many many uh apop apocalyptic uh books that were coming out in the the first uh first and second centuries AD. And for some reason, we don't really know why his was the only one that that made it into the uh the uh 39 books of the New Testament, is it?
Yeah. And uh he uh he has this this this reference to and 666 is the the number of the of the beast. And that has has sort of stuck and it's been uh you know the the the Omen the movie. Oh anyway there there's all sorts of uh cult cultural references to 666.
Anyway, in um 1998, uh some uh researchers were looking again at uh papyrus fragments that came from a site in southern Egypt. And did did you get that uh that little uh slide that >> I sent you?
>> Which which one is it called?
>> It's it's got papyrus. It's just There you go. Okay. So it's it's just a a a fragment here and it's a fragment from the book of Revelation and this dates from about 300 AD and they refer to the number they're talking about the the number of the beasts except that if if you transliterate these the symbols uh chai iota sigma I I think it is uh and it it's it's basically it's a a Jewish way of expressing uh numbers in letters. It turns out uh 666 is actually 616 and this has actually been known for a a long time. uh uh Martin Luther Martin Luther's Bible, you know, he he did a who's one of the most awful people who have ever lived. Anyway, Martin Luther uh he he used 6 616, so it never really was 666. And uh I just I just love love love the fact that we now have the oldest reference to the oldest scrap from Revelation that that we have refers to uh 616.
>> So so much for 666. Sorry. And so if if if you had a a tattoo on your butt when you were, you know, when you were a kid, sorry, you it's the wrong number.
>> Now, you actually went uh to the to the aisle of Patmos, uh you and your wife, uh the the Greek Greek island. Um what did you sort of become uh convinced of in terms of that? Like how did how did that story how did how did he come up with this book? Well, they make a big deal. So, you can you can visit the the cave where John of of of Patmos, who is not, of course, John of the uh of the Gospels, uh lived and and and wrote uh his his version of uh the apocalypse.
And uh so I remember sitting at the mouth of this cave and you look out on these you can see the Mediterranean in the the distance and there are olive groves and the green fields and you know it's the most buolic it's the most lovely scene you can imagine and all I can think of is the the island is is known for a particular uh brand of magic mushrooms there and all I can uh can assume is that he'd ingested some or he regularly ingested magic mushrooms and he came up with these uh you know really vivid uh uh scenarios. But the thing is that uh it's been pretty much shown by biblical scholars that he was actually the whole thing is um reference to Nero that Nero was the bad guy the the emperor Nero uh in Christianized he persecuted uh Christians probably more than any other ro Roman emperor and so that the whole thing is actually an illusion to uh to Nero. And this is borne out by the fact that when you take either 666 uh in the Greek version or 66 616 in the Latin version, they both transliterate to uh Nero Emperor. So it's pretty sure it's pretty certain that he was the this whole thing had nothing to do with uh what h how god was going to uh arrange for the uh the the glorious end of the of the world as we know it. But really he was he was just down on on Nero and the the the Roman occupation of uh of his country of Palestine.
I wanted to also just go back to the idea that you mentioned about the mushrooms. Um are you familiar with John Allegro?
>> No.
>> Uh John Algro wrote a book called The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross. Uh for anyone that doesn't hasn't heard that, it's very uh very interesting. Um some people heavily agree with it, some people strongly disagree with it, of course. Um but he it's an interesting book where he proposes that Judaism and by extension Christianity were originally fertility cults that were centered around this sort of sacramental use of the mushrooms magic mushrooms uh ammonita muscaria and so forth. And he argues that these religious stories and figures including Jesus were not really anything historical which I would I would agree with. I'm a mythicist, but they weren't historic, but they were like coded myths that were designed to conceal the the hallucinogenic properties and the rituals of this cult.
And you know, the bis he argues that the uh biblical texts are in many cases often just uh these very uh sort of stealthy linguistic puzzles derived from the the word play of ancient neareastern uh you know, esoteric cults. they were just sort of describing the life cycle and effects of the mushroom. And it's really interesting. Um, again, some people heavily heavily disagree, some people agree. I I tend to think there's some truth to both sides of it, but it is fascinating to think about how much mushrooms like you literally gave your life Christians, you gave your life to basically a mushroom cult. And it's very possible that that's what this whole thing was. So is the idea that people would have the same sort of hallucinations I mean were they sort of led led to were they would they be sort of stoned and then someone would would get up and put these these pictures in in their minds.
>> Yeah. I think it was basically idea of the mystery cults where there were there were mysteries especially for example things like the book of Enoch where you're having visions of heaven and going through the the gates of the different levels of heaven and they would guide people through these mysteries through things you know the uh ecstatic experiences of mushrooms and extensive fasting as well as sexual practices and a whole bunch of things that basically took people to higher plains of existence so to speak and they think that g the Jesus call was probably originally one of those and I don't necessarily think it was just that, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was involved in some way that there was at least some crossover. It's it's hard to imagine. I mean, I don't think that I think there's a lot of evidence that the Essins were involved in early Christianity and I don't know that they were doing these magic mushrooms. So, I'm not sure we could just, you know, chalk it up like to what John Allegro says and yeah, it was all just a mushroom cult. But you you do kind of wonder when you see these people seeing these crazy dreams and visions. Uh I would argue that it's at least extensive fasting and you know things that you're doing to your body to make your mind kind of go crazy for a while and obviously mushrooms becomes a possibility that it could have been that. But um >> this is this is one of the uh the the thoughts but behind Dante and Dan Dant is in in inferno and everything that >> uh I I' I've heard that uh he he he basically he was he was high when he was he was writing this and it's wonderful stuff you know the the allegorories are so rich and I mean it's just fun stuff you know I If if nothing else, we are we are we are are talking about stuff which is entertaining if if nothing else, you know, it's just it's just scary scary when it goes from allegory to well, this is the real thing, you know.
>> Yeah. And eventually it's your fundamentalist worldview and now it's your political party.
>> Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Could I ask you an interesting topic that you touch on is hell and how it relates to the epic of Gilgamesh and how the story evolves from there. Um I'm so glad again like we started from I'm so I'm so glad that your story did not include you actually thinking hell was real. You escaped the mythology before it even got a chance to get on into your soul so to speak. But um it still is a fascinating topic you know academically and historically. How did the story of hell probably start and evolve?
Well, uh, hell is, you know, the the word hell isn't isn't used in the Bible. I think it's gea and >> gea. Yeah. Um, >> right. So they probably picked it up.
The um Christianity was was built on the back of uh of ancient ancient uh Greek writing and uh Hades for the for the the ancient Greeks was this uh this is where everyone went there. There was no uh sheep and and goats. everyone uh when everyone died they went to Hades and uh Hades were you know we have very rich descriptions in uh well both in in Homer in uh where Odicius went and then later in in Plato and it was it was this rather sad gloomy place where uh people had mostly lost their their memories. Uh there was nothing to eat there. Um uh in the uh in in in the Odyssey, I don't know if it's in Ken Nolan's film. I haven't seen it, but uh Odicius goes down to hell and meets Achilles, who was the greatest warrior. you know that he was he if it hadn't been Achilles there would have been no Iliad no no no no no no Troy to destroy and uh he and he says this must be wonderful you are you're you're king here you're you're king of of of Hades over all these other you know rather sad sad boring it's not boring boring souls and Achilles says I would give anything just just to just to be a a plowman a plowman enthralled to the to to a lord than than to be here anything than to be here. So it was a really sad place and it was uh later on that uh they figured out yeah but this isn't fair. You you can be an evil person in in life and you end up in Hades, but you can be a really really good person in life and still have a horrible life, but where's your reward for for being a a good person? So it at at some point uh the it it morphed into well maybe there's a a better place and somehow uh we we ended up with uh with with heaven and and hell and uh in Revelation I I guess this well Jesus of of course talks talks about uh you know you you end up uh burning in the in the fires of hell. Is is that right?
It's in >> there's different interpretations of it, but yeah, it's it's interesting. Have you ever studied Zoroastronism?
>> Well, yeah, it's it's it's in there there too. I mean, in fact, isn't zoraserism supposed to have been a a lot of what what Jesus if if there was a Jesus who who knows was uh was was about that uh it it came right down between Zorathism and the Greek the Greek gods we we ended up with Christianity.
>> Yeah. Yeah, I mean I would say it's at least the this this topic of hell at least seems like there was an influence because like you mentioned before the the the ancient uh Jewish concept of hell was more just like a >> a place of the dead, you know, shield, the place where you kind of just go as a zombie until the end of times or something. But in zoroastronism, you know, the the the soul lingers, you know, near the body for three days and then on the fourth day it goes to this bridge to face judgment and then your your your life is kind of mirrored by your you know your conscience gets revealed and you're either um you know going to this wonderful place that what they call the house of song u or they're going to the place called the house of lies where it's just darkness and suffering. It does there. The Zoroastrinism doesn't have an an endless hell like Christianity does. There is eventually uh a time where it's there's going to be a final savior and everybody's going to be restored to to a horamazda in this sort of perfect renewed world. But it is still a place where there's going to be this trial by fire for a while at least where you're going to get you're going to get punished and pretty severely for doing bad things. And it's fascinating that the Jewish people didn't have that really woven into their theology and esquetology for so long. And then they get taken away to Persia where the Zoroastrian religion is obviously very heavy. And then when they come out of it, lo and behold, here's your hell and here's your division. Obviously mixed in like you're talking about with the Greek Greor mystery cults, um, which were already, you know, in existence before Zorastronism, but they kind of intermingle and and eventually you kind of get this this big synretatism. And I think no matter where we kind of guess as to where certain aspects came from, I think it's an interesting dilemma that Christians ignore by and large is to say, can you not see, do you not have a scope for the imagination that this stuff really was synchretatized, that this came from, you know, a little piece of this, little piece of that? You know, it's like the the menu at the restaurant. I'll take a little bit of fried rice, a little bit of mugo, gyan, whatever, and you know, you just you take a little bit of this and a little bit of that and you end up with your platter. Like that's exactly what Christianity did. But Christians like, "No, no, it's all original." You know, no, this came down from God. We weren't borrowing or or if they were a borrowing, they were just, you know, God was using this, but it's still the truth.
>> Or Satan planted the Sat Satan planted the fake mythologies in advance. He went back in, you know, back in time. He knew Jesus would come and explain the truth.
So, he took the truth and Satan knowing that would come 300 years earlier or thousand years earlier, planted these fake ideas so that you would kind of think Jesus was a copy. And they just have no concept that this is just what humans do. They take old stories >> and they repackage them. Uh I mean everything even to current day you look at even Star Wars like you can see the old stories being repackaged and yet we're just so oblivious. We're so I mean that's that's the nature of childhood indoctrination is you just put your fingers in your ears and say I'm not listening. It's it's very sad. Um were there any other insights about that?
>> And and and of course you know that that's uh the childhood depending on where you're brought up. I mean, did does does no one say to um you know, the hard and fast believer, but if you were brought up in another country uh with Islam or Judaism or Buddhism or something, would you not believe what your your parents believe? What how how do they res respond to that? I mean, I'm I'm no scholar of this, obviously, but it's it's a a mystery to me how you can hang on so so tightly uh when someone says, "But this is what you were taught."
>> Yeah. Yeah. It is crazy. It's one of the hardest things to do. Uh it's I mean, it's really the the bravery it takes to basically stand in judgment. Number one, you're standing in judgment of this God character who you think has been always judging you. He's looking down at you and judging your life and your thoughts.
And suddenly you're saying, "I'm not really judging you. I'm judging the text." But in a sense, it feels psychological like you're judging him.
>> And then by extension, but you're saying you're you're really judging your parents and you're judging your church.
>> You're judging your your background. And it's you're judging your culture. It's really hard to do it. It's really hard.
>> Yeah. By the way, I I should say just re relating back to to hell. Again, I I think the word that is used mostly in the the new I understand in in in the Old Testament, there's there's no reference to to hell. In the the New Testament, the word that's mostly used is gehenna. and uh gehenna uh gay means means uh valley of so the the valley henna which is an actual place or was it's it's built up now was um a it's where it was the uh the garbage dump of Jerusalem where lepers had had to live you know they were they were excluded from from living in uh in the in the general community. So, uh, and you know, you would they would typically burn their their garbage. And so, you can sort of see how how, you know, this this this actual place was transmogrified into uh into something was pretty scary.
>> Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing how we've twisted so much of it. And and you do you do wonder too how how Christians are like so dedicated to Jesus. Like I just want Jesus. I want to honor him in every way. He's my Lord and Savior. He's the King. He's the son of God. And everything's about honoring him. And they don't have a scope for the imagination to say maybe Jesus meant something different than what you think he meant. And therefore by diverging from fundamentalist evangelical Christianity, you're actually getting back to the real Jesus. And maybe there if you have a wider scope for the interpretation that maybe like Gehenna, he didn't mean a place we're going to burn forever in the afterlife. He was talking about the actual uh like you said the the the trash heap there in Jerusalem. Maybe we should interpret this differently. And it just it's amazing to me that they they want Jesus so badly, but they just they have to have the Jesus that they were in they inherited, not the Jesus that maybe would have been in everyone's interpretation in 200 AD or 300 AD. And all of a sudden, you know, because we've changed it so much to to where we are today, we have to have that new Jesus.
And like, but but don't you want the original Jesus? Like, why do you want the evolved Jesus? Why is he more important than the original Jesus? They just can't see it. It's so so messed up.
>> Of course, if you're a mythicist, this this must get really, really involved.
>> It is. Yeah. I mean, I think to me to me that this is where the the thing that came in with mythicism, man. We're diverging here. I'll bring us back to your your book in a second, but mythicism is the idea that it's it's it seems like there's a really good likelihood that that they made up these stories. And when you look at the the fact that so many of the stories in the gospels are either copies from the Old Testament, you know, he's the new Adam, he's the new Moses, he's the new Joshua, he's the new King David, whatever. Um, all that stuff. He's the new Elijah.
He's just the new Old Testament character. They're rewriting him. Or you can see that he's rewrites from the from Homer's Odyssey, you know, Dr. Jennis McDonald's great works on that, revealing that, you know, they copied literally over and over from from the Odyssey, which I want to see that new movie. I know it just came out. Um, but I wish I wish they would have consulted with Dr. McDonald's for that movie. It would have been great. But, you know, you see that and then you see the Grecar mystery cults woven in and you're like, at what point is there anything that's just original? And yet in the book of John, it says that Jesus was changing the world. But he was just there the whole world turned upside down because of what he did and what he said. If if you could try to write down everything he ever did, you know, you all the books in the world could not contain it. Like okay, so if there was a guy who really did amazing things, then why copy from all these other sources? Just tell us what he actually did. And the fact like 99% of what's written is copied from other sources makes me think then then where's the rest of the stuff? Where's the stuff that says this is what he actually did? stop copying from the Old Testament or from Homer's Odyssey for this. Just tell us what he did. The fact that we never see that apart from maybe, you know, like the Gospel of Thomas. It just makes me think that that either he wasn't there or they radically changed him like he was a guy that was very esoteric and just kind of spoken like Buddhist kind of things sayings and they just somehow shifted him, you know, to more of a political figure in some ways.
But it's sad that Christians, they really don't want the original Jesus.
They want they want the evolved Jesus.
They're just they're so addicted to it.
>> I understand you can make a a pretty good case that uh Jesus was actually a Buddhist and that's Buddhist teaching come of the by by the way the the reason I'm I I'm on your your show is as you know is that I'm a great friend of of Dave Fitzgerald who lives eight blocks down the road here.
>> Nice.
>> Be behind me. So I I I I hang out with Dave. So I get the the mythicist uh point point of view uh for free you know anytime anytime uh we have coffee which is a reg a regular date you know what what are you writing now? Well let let me tell you about why Jesus didn't didn't actually exist. So >> well while we're talking about David I'll just make a plug for tomorrow's interview. Uh I am interviewing him and his co-author Caris about their new book uh Clearly Written by Boys. It's wonderful. The book, you know, just exposing the Bible's extreme extreme patriarchy and misogyny. So, please join us for that. But yeah, David's been on the channel twice and this will be his third visit. So, I'm so glad for him and what he does and I love uh his his you know, colleagues like Dr. Dr. Richard Carrier. But going back to your work, >> wait a minute. Are you are you saying the Bible is has any ref has anything to do with with with the patriarchy? Oh no.
Oh. Oh. Be happy. Be still. You know, >> it's it's a crazy it's crazy. It's amazing too that when you think about how many women grow up in a fundamentalist church, like you can you could understand the women that are like, I don't like this, but I'm going to do it because it's it's like the right thing before God. But when when they get married and have their own daughters to think my daughters have to grow up under this and then and they don't just say you should do it, but let's cringe together. They're like defending it like no, you need patriarchy. You need your man to be your covering. You need your man to make your family vote the garbage. All the garbage is coming out with that now. And it's like >> it's so sad. I mean, it makes sense that men would defend it, but the fact that women would defend patriarchy is beyond me.
>> Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. You said it well.
>> It's crazy. Um, in in your discussion on evolution isn't progress, >> you sort of take apart this image that we have that evolution is a ladder >> that culminates in us humanity. Um, why is this belief that humanity represents evolution's sort of intended destination so difficult to process and even to, you know, to to stop thinking it that way, especially when you're looking at it from a religious worldview? But, I mean, is it do you think it's true that most people see humanity as like the pinnacle of where evolution's been heading? And how do you unpack that? How do you how do you deconstruct that?
>> Well, it's it's it's pretty hard for any of us. I mean, we're all the center of our our own universe. And so, it it starts off with a sense of self and and then it you can expand that into okay, I'm I'm I'm special, you know, I'm a narcissist and then it's at some point hopefully early on life you you realize, well, everyone else is a narcissist too, you know. So we and you expand that into well uh humankind is uh is is is pretty special. look at uh you know I mean we we can talk we can do all the things which uh all these things which uh animals can't and then you get from that into well we're living here on on earth. So earth must be the center of of everything, you know, and and God has smiled on on earth. And then uh and really until um Galileo and Kepler and Capernicus Capernicus came along, the general thinking is that earth is the center and this and that the sun revolved around the earth etc. Well, you know, that was uh we were de centralized when it was realized well actually the earth's going around the sun. And then it was only likeund uh 20 years ago that uh we started figuring out that well maybe the sun isn't the the center and we're just one star in a galaxy in the Milky Way galaxy. Uh and then uh we got um basically uh Edwin Hubble figured out, hey, we're just one galaxy of uh a zillion. And until then it was they were pretty sure during the the scientific revolution up until about 1930 that the general thinking was that the the Milky Way was the was everything was the universe. I know this was the the the long way of of answering your your story but it's it's it's all about uh de des deentralizing uh uh everything. What was your your question?
>> Well, just the idea that and I think you're you're you were thinking too that the two chapters >> I get on a roll here. Sorry.
>> No, you're you're good. The one I think you're talking to more is the one the chapter called are we the world. Um but could you also touch on at the same time the one that's evolution isn't progress.
>> So any thoughts on that with humanity being the the pinnacle? So uh until Darwin or uh Darwin is is the poster boy for ev evolution but they've been uh pre predecessors and uh and there was a a a co-iscover officially of evolution. Uh until he he came around it was pretty obvious that uh everything here on earth had been put here by a a higher power.
uh whatever religion you you adhere to. And then uh uh ev evolution basically showed that uh actually uh this was all all about you you could to to get where we are today.
It took a long long time. But going from one generation to the next and each generation having uh the the the spawn of each generation, some of them would be better uh adapted to the environment they found themselves in and they would be the ones that carried on and survived and reproduced.
And this is how evolution evolution worked. But even then uh do you happen to have that slide I sent you showing? I think I think it's called e ev evolution even even that that's it.
Now uh can we can you bring it down a little bit so we can see the top of the tree?
>> Doesn't let me zoom in but I can which part of it trying to zoom in. I can try to bring up another >> the very top.
>> The very top. Give me just one >> the very top of of the trees. So this is 1864. This is the the book on uh evolution following up on on on Darwin's origin of the species. And you can't quite see it there, but um >> this is this is e ev evolution as was thought of by by by Darwin that indeed at the very top of the tree which we can't quite see there is man and and here I can there we go.
>> There you go. Okay. So, so where in the place I I I think think of this the place usually reserved for the star at the top of the Christmas tree. So, man is is is right at the the very top. So, we are are are special. Well, that's how uh evolution was thought really. I I I guess it's still thought in a lot of ways that it's this tree which culminates uh in in man, but it really doesn't doesn't work that way. Uh a much better representation of evolution would be as a branching tree where it you've got you've got branches all over the the top and there's nothing that special about us. I mean we we we've lived over a tiny fraction of the period that say ants had lived where uh um we we we're here by a a total fluke. You know, if if an asteroid hadn't collided with with the Earth 66 million years ago, dinosaurs would still be be ruling the the Earth. The fact that um of of life arose in in the first place, the you can sort of almost calculate the odds. It's very very unlikely.
So, uh when We're not special from an an evolutionary point of view. We we happen to be one of maybe uh 10 million named species and who knows how many un unnamed species on Earth, but we we are a a a species and each of and we all go go back to a single ancestor. We're all We're all cousins, you know, whether you're talking about algae or ants or the tree in your backyard or a a snake or amibo. We're all cousins. We're all cousins here.
>> I think one of the things that's interesting uh well, two thoughts. Uh number one, it's about humans directly.
It is interesting that in some ways we have become the apex predator and just because of our brains um you know we're not obviously the the aim and the goal that evolution was taking. Evolution is not a thoughtful process. It's just you know who whoever is able to survive the most and reproduce the most and so forth um stay the strongest. But in the same sense we obviously are now the apex predator and also the apex destroyer of the planet. Um, but it's interesting how with that the the that evolution, we're the only ones that we're sure of have, you know, the level of consciousness that we've come to. And it does make you wonder I've heard this described before by a different um scientist where they say if you look at uh I think Neil Degrass Neil deGrass Tyson was the last person I heard say talk about this but if you look at the difference in DNA between like the higher primates and then us as the the highest primate perhaps the DNA difference is really small and yet look where it took us and you think well what if what if you could have another 1% above humans like what would that look like? Would we look like to primates? you know, we would look like the chimps that swing from the trees compared to where the next evolution could take us. It's fascinating to to just try to wrap your mind around what could be what could be in the next, you know, 500,000 or million years. Um, >> but it's also interesting to think about, like you were saying earlier about the fact that we're just one little piece of it. Uh, just bringing up some stats here. The universe, the observable universe is estimated to contain about two trillion galaxies. And they say that there are an estimated one septillion stars. That's 10 to the 24th power. 10 with 24 zeros after it, stars in the universe. And because most stars do hold uh multiple planets, they estimate that there are hundreds of billions of trillions, again, hundreds of billions of trillions of planets. Uh and that's just the observable universe.
And it's crazy to think about how we not just think of ourselves as the center of the universe, but that specifically of this whole big universe, God not only chose this planet, but he chose that one specific tribe in that one specific location in the middle of the desert.
And instead of speaking to all humanity at all times, and they're all in all their languages, he chose to speak to one tribe in just one language, he, you know, supposedly wants so much to to reveal himself, to make himself known.
And yet he ignored the Chinese. He ignored, you know, everyone else in Asia. He ignored all the islanders in the in the, you know, Pacific region. He ignored so all the people in, you know, the Native Americans. He ignored them all. And he spoke to one little tribe in their one little language at a time when most people in that part of the world were completely illiterate. He wrote to those specific people and ignored everybody else. And we're just it's it's a it blows my mind that we're like, "Yeah, no, that that that sounds right.
That sounds about right. That sounds like what what the the most brilliant God of the universe would do. He would speak to one little tribe in one little language when they're mostly literate and everyone else is around them and just just go go to hell and you know we don't we're not going to talk to you.
It's just crazy that we defend this garbage so thoroughly and think that that that sounds logical. That's my god.
You know, >> makes sense to me.
>> Oh, sorry.
>> It's crazy.
It's crazy. Um, speaking keeping on the topic for a minute of evolution, um, Christians would maybe claim that evolution >> would certainly explain selfishness, but it would not necessarily be able to explain altruism.
>> Um, are are there evolutionary explanations that you would see say for see for generosity, for empathy, for cooperation that sort of directly challenge the assumption that you need God for morality? Yeah, I think I think there are several lines of uh of of thought about that. One is that um our our forefathers lived in in in tribes and they think tribes between maybe 100 150 people that you were related to. you know, you didn't uh it was it was the the you were the the inroup and the uh the tribe across on the other side of of the valley was the out groupoup that you were competing with. And so uh if if you uh if you gave your life, say say you were you were out out hunting and you gave your life to to defend another another tribal member. Yeah, your your own genes wouldn't wouldn't get through to the the next generation, but his or hers would. And because you shared essentially the same genes, then you're doing this. This is about uh keeping we are basically we are here because we are vessels for our genes to get from one generation to the next. This is what Dawkins selfish gene was was all about.
They're they're all about. I mean, if if you imagine if you can anthropomorphize genes, then they're all about getting getting to the the the next generation, whatever it it takes. And whether uh the genes are in me or in my sister or my my brother, the genes don't don't care.
It's that the genes want to want to get to the next generation. This is I mean this is the I'm making it sound as if there's some teological process going on here but no this is it's it's just random but uh that's that's how you get uh genes carrying on through the generations is not from the the the individual's point of view but from the genes point of view. So, al altruism works. Also, of course, um if you're looking for a a mate, if you look really really generous in the eyes, say I'm I'm trying to impress uh a young woman in in my in my tribe.
If she thinks I'm I'm a generous and a really, you know, mench there, then she's she's going to think, "Yeah, this this guy might be worthy of of of hook hooking up with." Whereas the selfish guy who who displays no altruism at all, yeah, it's this who I really want to mate with and have have help raise my my kids. So you you can come up with with all sorts of objections. I've I've only mentioned two, but >> it's interesting how some people want the some people want the bad boy, though. It's it's crazy how our minds >> Yeah. Yeah. Rough. Go for the rough, right? Yeah. Yeah.
>> Sometimes I think our uh we just we need to admit horniness does some some crazy things to our mind sometimes. And I uh >> Oh, I would I wouldn't know. I wouldn't know. Yeah.
Um I did want to ask about a a very interesting uh chapter you have your chapter on agriculture.
>> You sort of are asking there whether our civilization's foundation on agriculture and how much it changed everything uh was really also our worst mistake or at least the beginning of our downfall. Did agriculture liberate us? Did it imprison us? Or did it sort of do a little bit of both? And how how do you see that now since it's evolved from where it started from?
>> Well, yes. Yes. And and and yes, you could you can make a case for all three.
um something like uh 10,000 years ago uh people who'd been uh hunters and gatherers noticed, you know, we imagine that they they noticed that when they dropped uh extra seeds on on the ground that that that they grew and in instead of uh you know so until then probably the tribes have been nomadic following following game of following, you know, fruit when it when it uh when it it it became ripe.
And when they've figured out that hey we don't have to keep moving because we can actually grow our own our own food food here uh suddenly uh instead of keep mo moving in in small numbers it it allowed uh it allowed uh societies to grow and with the growth of society you started getting a hierarchy of societ society and not just between uh the the strong and the weak but between men and women.
That's that's uh how a lot of um anthropologists consider uh um the patriarchy evolved when when we were hunters and the gatherers.
uh more or less kind of sort of the men were the hunters and the women were the with were the gatherers. Well, when the guys didn't come come back with with any game that that they they hunted, the women w were there with with some food with some tubers and nuts and and berries. So you the idea is there was egalitarianism when we were hunters and gatherers and that gave rise once a agriculture came along to all sorts of bad things like a stratified society uh where you could you could actually uh attack other other other groups. uh warfare. Uh the uh a a patriarchy where the guys became where women became sub subservient to to to men and uh it led to ci civilization which has given us um has has given us uh the ability to talk to each other. You're in Georgia.
crimeing in California. Uh uh but it's also given us nuclear weapons and uh shall I go on? No, you I can I can I can list the the ills of of society easily, you know. So um um I don't think we're any happier. Uh I I I suspect if if anything uh because uh everything these days is about getting the next the next thing, you know, getting the next newest car or or getting the the next sexual conquest or um whatever it it happens to be. It's always out in the future there.
I I think we've uh we've made ourselves unhappy by by this constant quest for something else, something new. You know, there's someone said the one the one characteristic of uh American society is that all of us believe there's always something better. You know, we can never we should never be satisfied with what we've actually got here.
Yeah, that's very true. Especially it's so much easier to slip into that in the Instagram era. Uh, for sure. Um, I did want to get to the comments in a few minutes, but I wanted to ask you a question to to sort of sort of zoom out.
We've zoomed into some of the topics in your book. Sort of zooming out to a little bit of a bigger picture and then we'll go to comments. But, um, you know, you talk about a lot. You talk about Atlantis. Uh, you talk about the Voinage manuscript. to talk about. Uh, is it pronounced Zing? Zinghi. How do you pronounce that?
>> The Zahi. The the coin. Oh. Oh. Z.
>> Zinghi. The explorer.
>> The the explorer. The the Chinese explorer.
>> Yeah, I'm probably mispronouncing that, but you know, I mean, and the sort of the, you know, you talk about the pre-Colombian crossings, you talk about the Zodiac. You're entering so many areas where there's all these stories, these thrilling uh concepts in in many cases where we have these ideas about maybe what happened, but we don't have all the evidence for how to interpret it obviously where there's there's only so much we can do. Uh we can speculate to to a great extent, but we don't know for sure a lot of answers as to how things happened in the past and so forth. But we seem to be sort of attracted to these forbidden histories. Um especially like Atlantis, you know, we wonder is it possible that there was that kind of city somewhere? Uh the lost civilizations, lost technologies, how did they create the, you know, the the the great pyramids and so forth with, you know, technology that had to have been there for them to create that, but the technology wasn't there. So, how'd they do it?
>> Um we are obviously really attracted to these forbidden histories and these ancient stories. Um, how can we look at this and both be skeptical about uh, you know, certain um, conspiracy theories, skeptical about things that we can't prove, but also to have keep, you know, ourselves just wondrous and and amazed at like this is these are such great topics and like how do you do that when you're like I just you can only go so far with some of the the science and some of the archaeology and yet you just want to wonder and also have an imagination and kind of have a little poetic license to How do you approach that?
>> Well, well, I think we can recognize that we're uh we we love stories, you know. I I I think it's it's in our our genes both to both to listen and appreciate stories and to to make up up stories because they're they're there's something larger than than ourselves. the uh you know Homer with the Iliad and Odyssey. We we we have a we have a tradition uh going back as far as you can we as far as written uh history goes of telling of of telling stories and telling telling yarns and I think we just love being entertained.
Uh but uh I I'd never seen uh science as being uh a problem with this. I mean if if my my my first book was uh called Everyday Wonders and it's about science and uh you know uh I think I think we're all born as as little kids with this um this sense of curiosity and and and wonder. Um unfortunately um Neil Neil Postman was a educator and a philosopher. He he had this damning line. He said children go into school as question marks and come out as periods. And uh I think what he he meant by by that is that uh we we're almost encouraged to lose our sense of of wonder and and curiosity by because so much knowledge is pumped in in into us facts and and figures at school. So, uh I think uh I think if if it isn't uh if it isn't driven out of you, I think we all have this natural sense of of of wonder. I mean, all you've got to do is all anyone has to do is just lie underneath a tree or or something and if uh and just look look up and notice the the fractal nature of branches or something and uh you know whatever your beliefs are some something h something happens you know or you um so um I I I've I I think somewhere in in the book I say the two uh essential traits for as a science writer which is how I I think of myself is a huge sense of of of wonder but also a huge uh capacity for skepticism and they go hand in in hand.
uh this isn't an an eitheror and if you you can be skeptical and curious. In fact, skepticism drive drives wonder and wonder drives skepticism. So >> yeah, in many ways it's it's it's a correlary to the idea of just saying I want as many true things as as I can in my life and I want to get rid of the false things. And that doesn't kill wonder. It just makes you want to not have fake wonder. Uh, you know, it's it's an amazing thing when you leave Christianity and you've, you know, if you spent decades in it as I did, you've looked up at the night sky, you know, hundreds, thousands of times, and you've always thought to yourself, the stars, the universe, therefore Jesus, therefore, Yahweh, therefore, heaven and hell, therefore the biblical worldview, it's all part of his creation. And when you lose that, it kind of shakes you up a lot. You know, you get you get disillusioned. You get numb. And it's just like, what what is real? you know, the the carpet's been pulled out from under my feet so badly. This is such a weird experience. But you get settled.
You eventually get get used to it and and you realize there's a beauty of looking up finally at the night sky and thinking the night sky, therefore, and and you don't plug in that blank with therefore Yahweh or therefore Jesus. You just think therefore I'm part of a grand story. You know, as a Christian, I thought like I was part of God's grand story of salvation and redemption and what he was going to do with with, you know, eternity in the future. and you realize you are still part of a grand story. It's just not theological. Um, you know, spirituality is sort of a weird offshoot of of our consciousness.
You kind of feel spiritual, but the reality is you're just you're part of something that's that's very very physical and very uh now conscious of itself. It's like the universe has become conscious of its own existence through you and you're reflecting on it, but you're like you realize you're more connected to to time and to space and to the earth than you ever imagined. You're part of nature. you're part of evolution and it's it's such a crazy cool thing to open your eyes for the first time and think this journey is so different than the journey I thought I was on but it's still amazing and eventually you realize it's it's a lot more amazing the idea of kind of shrinking your worldview down into this little ancient Middle Eastern desert you know demigod like that's your that's your vision that's your your your binoculars to see the whole universe like you you drop that you lose those binoculars and you wow there's so much more to It's just it's just amazing. Um, so I I love it. I do want to make a quick plug for your book and then we'll go to comments. Um, the link for for Barry's book is beneath this video. I'm going to read the just not not all the chapters because there's a lot of them. Some of them are pretty small, but some of them are larger.
>> 100 101 >> 101 uh not 101 Dalmatians, 101 chapters, but the the the you've you've broken it down into subsections and I'm just going to read them real quick. anthropology, engineering, evolution, exploration, health, inventions, language, myths, numbers, space, and uh just, you know, a bunch of other things woven in there.
But that is just so amazing. You've covered so much there. I love it. I really, really love it.
>> Um, >> like I say, I get I get bored easy, so I have to go on to something to totally different the next week.
>> Well, that's great. I mean it's it's it's you've also given yourself a launching pad for endless other books where you could take any one of those topics and kind of expand it if it piques your interest. So you got >> lot in front of you. Um if you I'm going to just read a lot of these uh qu comments quickly but if you want to jump in with any comments feel free and then if you could also be thinking if there's anything I didn't ask you about that you had hoped to get to feel free to mention that here in a minute as we get to our wrap-up. Uh Randy says yep Church of England. We were talking about that earlier. I'm part Scottish Irish. That's how we got here. The Catholics and Anglicans both hated us. Uh not like the United States. Well, we we have a lot of hatred here through religion. Um yeah, different but similar. That's something I lack at. Physics is a bit over my head. Uh yeah, local flood most likely.
Yep. Susanna in Scotland says, "Hi everyone. Great to see everyone. Lovely to meet Barry." Uh Randy again. Hello.
And I was thinking of Ken Ham and Ron Wyatt. Yeah, the fundamentalist young earth creationists. Uh, Susanna says, "Randy, I am Irish and living in Scotland." And Randy says, "Nice to meet you." Um, Susanna says, "Started at the beginning to get the background of Barry. We'll skip the catch up now." No worries, Susanna. Uh, let's see here.
Randy says, "I'm from the Appalachians of Tennessee. I think snake handling started in my state." Yep. Yep. That's crazy. Have you Have you ever seen those videos? You know what he's talking about, Randy?
>> Oh, yeah. Yeah.
>> Yeah. Scary.
>> It is. I've seen videos too where like a pastor does it and then they say he basically ends up being dying from it.
>> Yeah.
>> Where's your god?
>> There was a famous case, wasn't there, that someone >> Yeah, >> he did it and eventually it cost him his life. Randy says, "I can't believe I ever believe that stuff when it's drilled into your head as a child. It's hard to think against your family."
Yeah. Uh Susanna says, "I'm so sad for my two brothers who are still within Christianity, indoctrinated and conditioned." Yeah. I was stuck and fully believed for 47 and a half years.
What a waste. Yeah, Randy says that's my family the same way. Um, me too. About the same amount of time I'm 58. Wasted most of my life with magical thinking nonsense. Made me hate everything and everybody. Yeah.
>> Oh, that's hard.
>> It's the hatred that is is hard.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah, >> it is. A lot of us were certainly um in general uh you know hate hating every other religion but certainly like we were homophobic as well. It's sad.
>> Um Mark also in the UK says Randy Susanna me too. 58 years believing nonsense. Um but still here we are. So we're not complete idiots. Yeah. Glad you made it out and we're here. Um let's see here. I'm going to skip a few here.
Looks like a few more personal comments here. Um, Kif Webb, if I'm pronouncing your your handle there correctly, it says, "It's laughable that people still believe in such nonsense. It's 2026 for [ __ ] sake." Yeah, it is hard to believe that people still believe this. I mean, you can be talking snakes and talking donkeys. Like, really, virgin births?
Aren't we done with that at at this point? But >> well, but is isn't the the motivation really it's it's about dying and not not wanting death to be the the end of it.
So we'll we'll we'll glom on to some I mean this is someone said this is the killer app of all religions is that when you die you don't die. So I mean wi without that there isn't what's is isn't isn't isn't that the real the real draw the the idea that there is more there is more more than than life.
So it it sort of I mean kind of makes sense you know >> it does. Yeah. and the desire to avoid pain and to uh find a reward at the end to the idea that connected connected to a bigger story >> that there's justice if someone's done a gross injustice to you that that will be reversed at some point. There's there's a higher court.
>> Yeah. It all blends together and it's just it feels like there's there's just got to be something bigger here. There's got to be some bigger story. Honestly, it's once once you get past a certain age, it's really hard to to see it because you convince yourself uh like a madman who's made up a, you know, like the beautiful mind. Like you just you see God. You see God everywhere. It's not like it's not like you're continuing to try to find more evidence for him.
You're just like, I I just I talk to God and I sense his presence. I feel his warm arms around me. I know he's at work in me. And of course, you're right off the whole planet. But God's the Buddhists are all deceived. The Muslims are all deceived. The Hindus are all deceived. But my God is real and I've sensed him. His presence is real. And once you think that you have seen and tasted that the Lord is real and good.
You think he's like just another person in your life. Your your mind makes it real. It's it's crazy how it works. You just It's so hard to say. I mean, I remember realizing when I deconstructed and decon converted the day I left like it was just it was this basic thought like oh my god I I think this might not be real and that was like a novel thought like is it possible that this isn't real? Is it even is it even it blew my mind like and I just kept thinking through it all within one hour like and my immediate thought was well there's no way that that that many Christians have been deceived millions of us for for you know for centuries millennia and I thought well we believe the Hindus have been deceived for centuries and millennia Buddhists and all that if there's millions of them that were deceived why couldn't we be deceived too and once you get past that point like so many humans have been deceived I could have been deceived, too. And once you admit that that could be true, then you're like, well, where's the evidence lead? Like, the evidence does not lead to Yahweh and Jesus in the Bible at all.
>> And it's like, oh my god, I'm the sucker in the room.
So, um, so for you, I mean, was this this like the antithesis of Paul on on the road to Atarsus? You know, that it was it was a a a very it was an immediate uh did it just happen from like one one day to to to the next or >> it it was in a sense I I describe it more as like a three-year deconstruction and a one-hour deconversion. I was I was looking at mythology.
>> Um I describe it too as like if you imagine your world view as a set of dominoes and you can kick one, they all fall down.
>> But if you're kind of a mile away as you're taking steps, you're deconstructing, but you're not close enough to kick your worldview down. And eventually you just take one more little step and little do you know, you've traversed that mile >> and that one last step is enough to kick the whole world view down. And that's what happened um with me. But it was, you know, CS Lewis, >> um, he was he was a former atheist and he he talks about how he just did not want to admit it that Jesus was real, that Jesus was the one true mythology, >> that the Bible was real, it was from God. And he says, "I went kicking and screaming into the kingdom."
>> I would say, "I went kicking and screaming out of the kingdom. I did not want to believe uh did not want to admit that this isn't real."
But what's what's so what's so interesting to me is is how fast the final step step was. I I wonder because for for me as I say, you know, my my Christian my the Christianity I I grew up with it was never a a a big deal. So it sort of seeped away over the the years. There was never a a moment when when I said, you know, one moment I was believing and the next I wasn't. It was like became an a non-issue and I there there was more in interesting stuff to to a fine. But I I'm this is I'm I'm trying to imagine what it would be like to go to bed one day a believer and wake up up the next and think, "Oh god, what was what was I thinking?" It was crazy.
It was a, you know, the probably a good experience, a good example would be, you know, in the movie The Matrix when Neo is being taught kung fu and jiu-jitsu and all all they do is that, you know, they got the they've jacked him into his the jack is in his head >> and he just the guy at the computer pushes the button and bam, 10 seconds later, he knows kung fu. And it was like that. It was just like all this just uploaded and flooded. And I I I I like to say that it was like a like I was on the beach of a of a tri of a of an island and there's like a a savage tribe in the middle and you start to hear that jungle beat and you know they're coming for you. It was like that and the beats getting louder and louder and I I literally my head was saying to myself as I was talking it out in that in that literal hour I was saying say the words Tim say it. Say the goddamn [ __ ] words. And eventually I said it's not real. And the minute that I said that, it's not real. I was like, that makes more sense of 43 years as a Christian than anything else I've ever thought through. It makes more sense to it's not real. I was like, boom, just mind blown.
Oh my god, there's no God. It does not.
And it's or at least certainly not Yahweh and Jesus. And as soon as I admitted that, all the other things crumbled. The house of cards. I was like, wait a second. The earth might not be 6,000 to 10,000 years old. [ __ ] We might have evolved from primates, other primates. like, holy [ __ ] the earth might be 13.8 billion years, whatever.
It's like just it all came flooding in one hour. And it was it was a crazy ride. But I was also immediately laughing because I said to myself like like, "Holy smokes, I could have gone to my deathbed easily thinking this was all real." I mean, you know what really you know what really causes it for a lot of us is hardship. You go through a hardship in life and you're like, "God, I thought you were going to provide. I thought you're going to heal. I thought you're going to do this. And then you you start to question God and you say, "God, this I thought you were going to show up big." And you didn't show up big. Like, what happened? And you you push that away. You say, "God, I I trust you no matter what. You you can slay me and I'll trust you. You're the king of the universe. You will always do right."
And you keep pushing it away and pushing away, but eventually those things just keep agitating. And you realize that the hardships of life have made you think twice and and 10 times and a 100 thousand times, why doesn't this make sense? Why is this wrong? Why is there a splinter in my mind? And eventually you realize if you hadn't had those, if life had go, you know, you thought God was going to show up and then you thought he did show up. He was going to heal you and he did. He was going to help you financially and he did. Like God keeps showing up and showing up more and more evidence. The hardships make you think twice. And so you kind of just like as a Christian you would have rejoice in your sufferings because they're making you like Christ. You rejoice in your sufferings because they make you think Christ isn't real. There's a reason for this. And I'm so I'm kind of glad that a lot of our journeys are so rough because they make you question your beliefs enough. But if if everything had been smooth, if it been a smooth Christian journey, >> you could have we could have all gone to our death beds thinking this whole thing is real. And that's that's why I was laughing. I was like, >> "Oh my god, I could have easily gone to my death bed thinking this whole thing was was just a legitimate worldview."
But >> So you you were born again.
>> Yeah, born again. Again, >> as it was >> born again. Absolutely.
>> Right.
>> Crazy. Um, let me read a few more here.
Britty the apostate. By the way, I recently interviewed Britty. Uh, please check that out. Uh, just just a few weeks ago. Britty, you did a great job.
Thanks, Britty for being here. Hello, fellow apostates. Um, we are, by the way, proud apostates, proud heretics. We are glad to admit that, uh, that it's not real. We're glad to question when things don't make sense. So, um, and we're not af we're not afraid of Christians or their claims. Randy says, uh, there are people that literally want to repeal the 19th Amendment. Yeah.
Yeah. Um, we're not as special as we thought compared to the animals. Yeah, we all share DNA. Uh, Guitar Dog says, "Yep, God ignored 99% of the planet.
Didn't really care about them." Yeah, for sure. Uh, most words are to steal resources for corporations. See here.
Skepticism drives wonder and wonder drives skepticisms. Skept skepticism, excuse me. I'm having that one. That's awesome. Yep. Critical and creative thinking.
Mark says, "It rs me up when people say my sense of wonder is spirituality. I hate that word. It has connotations of believing the unbelievable of credul of makebelief.
>> Do do you have any any response to that?
>> Yeah, I am I avoid that word. It's uh it's a a trigger word. I I've been a a meditator for god most of my my life for 56 years now.
I I meditate in fact and I don't even call it meditation. And I I call it sitting quietly because meditation come comes with with baggage. And one of the baggage one of the bits of baggage it it it comes with is this notion that there's something spiritual about it. I mean I'm a materialist to the to the hilt and um it's this is you know these neurons there's a lot of them. there's trillions of neurons in our in in our brain. But that's that's what's what's what's going on. So as soon as soon as you use the word spirituality, it implies some something other. I think it implies a dualism, you know, a soul or or something something outside of the material uh being beings that uh I I think we are I'm a determinist too, you know. So that >> I I I I became a a determinist. It sounds like your your hour of of of going through of um uh when you you had your your huge uh uh born again again experience uh many many years ago. I dropped acid for the first time and in in uh the six or eight hours I I became a determinist.
I I saw I saw myself then as a thoroughly mechanical mechanical being and free will went out out the window and determinism came in and it's it's been there ever since and it it it only took a few hours you know so >> it's interesting to think now with the advent of AI that in many ways we are basically just humans are the AI of the animal world. We are, you know, the goal is for AI to think for itself. We are the primates that learn to think for ourselves. We are the AI that just we just got better math and better codes stuck in our heads >> um by accident and it just it ended up working the way it did. It took a lot of time, but you know, our our AI evolved over a couple hundred thousand years, but it did it took us to a level of consciousness. And it's it's weird though you even though I don't use the word spirituality either. I'm an idiist and a materialist as well. I do think that there is a certain sense in which you almost have to pretend that spirituality means something. Not in the sense of like angels and demons and God, but just in the sense that you feel this this connection to something bigger than yourself. It's sort of like like when I was a Christian, I got out of bed every day saying, "I need to make a difference. I need to make a difference for God, for the kingdom of God, for the future, for people getting to heaven. I have to make a difference.
You have to rest. You know, God sent me to the sent me on a mission, a yard from the gates of hell. I want to go to the hard places. I want to go to the dark places and I want to rescue people. I want to make a difference today. That was my motivation for decades. And you say, well, now that you're nihilist, did you lose that? Well, I kind of did. But at the same time, even though I would say nothing really matters, I do wake up every day thinking I need to make a difference. But I know that I don't need to make a difference. It ultimately won't matter. In a few generations, no one will know any of us. and then no even our even our own grandkids won't great grandkids won't really know us and it'll eventually kind of die off and our names will be lost to history and it won't matter it just won't matter but I don't live that way I live as if every day counts I sees the day it's it's directly an offshoot or an inheritance from my Christian worldview but I think spirituality can feel like that to us where we feel like we're you need to be connected to a bigger story even if we on the belief level know that we're not our worldview says you need that and I don't mind placating that enough to make to feel safe in my own skin, you know.
But I also just wanted to add for our audience, I'm interviewing Britt Hartley this Thursday. Um, she is the author of the book, Noonsense Spirituality. Um, so that'll be an interesting discussion as well. I know there's been some heated debates about her interpretations of it, but >> did you have anything to add to what I said before I go into the next comment?
>> No, go ahead.
>> So, let's see here. Randy says, "Great show, Mary. Glad I tuned in." Thank you, Randy. Appreciate you being here. Uh Mark, same thing. Uh good to meet you, Barry. Uh Mark says, "Religion equals a ritualized panic over death." Yeah, for sure. And uh probably mix mix mixture in there of some uh some people figuring out a way to get some extra money. Mark says, "Oh my god, >> it's it's a business. If if you start seeing it as a business, everything makes sense." You know, >> have you ever seen the Simpsons clip where where um Bart's friend, I forget his name, is he asking is he asking Bart what like why would they make it up, Bart? Why what would they possibly have to gain? And in the back, you can see the pastor like putting the coins in the coin sortter. You can hear the coins going through.
>> Right. Right. No, it's if you see it as a business, it it's makes total sense, you know.
>> Yeah, it is. It is. It's I mean when you add in the bigger picture like you said like the fear of death but then way to control money, control women's bodies, control your access to sexuality. Uh it just it just goes on and on. It's it's it's obviously just it's it's men that want more power. Um and see here, Mark says, "Oh my god, this might not be real. Epiphany so relatable. It's an incredible moment." Uh same here, Tim.
Then it started flowing. Uh very cultlike. Uh Mark says, "The final step to conversion is like stumbling out of the mist at the top of the mountain."
Yeah. relief.
>> Master relief.
>> Randy says, "I feel so much better and have more morals." Yeah. Yeah. When you lose uh the psychopathic nature of Yahweh as your as your moral guide and your hero figure, you realize life is so much more beautiful. You don't have to defend genocide and and slavery anymore.
Uh Mark says, "Is when you actually take God at his word, then you discover he doesn't turn up. No, yes, no, or maybe.
Just deafening silence and blind indifference." Yeah, I too am a materialist. Uh Kevin Cameron, great to see here. Says, "Loving the discussions.
I left Christianity in my 50s.
Spirituality is a trigger word for me too." Yeah. Well, I was going to say for anyone that does join us on Thursday with Brit Heartley. Hope hoping that that uh does take place. If it if we have to reschedule it, I'm sure it'll happen soon. But that'll be some interesting discussions with Brit about spirituality. And hopefully we'll come to a place where we either agree or at least agree to disagree and keep it friendly. Um, Randy says, uh, gives meanings to places and things. Yeah.
And, u, sorry for the background noise.
My, I've got a new puppy. Uh, some of you all know that a little golden retriever named Lady and she was sleeping through this interview, but she's finally woken up and she's sort of chewing on some stuff. So, we'll say, >> hey, lady.
>> Mark says, last comment here. Mark says, "Determinism is also liberating because it asks the question of what causes our destructive behaviors without making moralizing judgments." Yeah, >> exactly. Mhm.
>> Well, um I know we talked about a lot of topics, but did you have anything that we didn't touch on that you were hoping to get to before we wrap up?
>> Um I I just had one one thought. So, uh, when I saw your, uh, David Dave Fitzgerald introduced me to you and, uh, my first thought when I saw your, uh, your email was that you're a harmonica playing atheist because I saw harmonica atheist.
I thought that's very clever combining, you know, having the the two. So, uh, I do you play the harmonica?
>> No. Um, split split the words separately as harmonic atheist, >> not harmonica.
>> Yeah, I harmonic atheist.
>> It took me a couple of days to to realize this. Um, for what it's worth, I I don't call myself a an atheist. I mean, we're obviously we're all basically agnostics because no one no one knows, you know, we're, you know, how however however much faith or unfaith you you you have, we we can never be totally sure. The the problem with calling myself an atheist is is that it implies that I know what a theist what what theism theism is. And I had no [ __ ] idea really, you know, you know, if if someone says, "Do you believe in the god?" My my sort of quick answer was, "Uh, which one?" You know, and I mean, or you know that that line about we're all if you you can say to a a Christian, well, we're all uh atheists. Uh I just believe in one less God than than you do, you know. So, um, the word atheism implies to me that, uh, I have a pretty good sense of what what it is that I don't believe in. I don't know what I I don't I don't believe in because it's so [ __ ] weird.
>> Well said. Yeah. Yeah, I think too the the I think you touched on this earlier, but the um the the the weakness of of words and linguistics of our language to describe things in many ways we're scratching at the surface, but there's also a lot of of um there's a lot of baggage. You know, when you say God, a lot of us immediately think of a he, you know, a male deity. Um we we don't immediately think God >> in the concept of she or we don't think of it as neuter as God it or the force.
Maybe we do now with Star Wars, but we don't think of it immediately as God and and think God meaning we really mean gods. Like the Hindus like there's we think of God, but we're actually we say God. We're really meaning, you know, a plurality of gods. We don't do that. We don't go there. We think of God, the man, the man, God, Yahweh, the old man with the beard. And it's it's like it's so hard to dissect that. I almost feel like we need to take some of these words away, even some basic words, not not big, you know, gigantic philosophical words, just like basic words, replace them and explain them. And once you do, you realize you're kind of you're you're still not sure and and you're still carrying baggage. You know, I mean this I had someone recently just even the last two weeks tell me he was a fundamentalist Christian and he was he's sort of deconstructing but he said for the first time in his life he's admitted that maybe he needs to envision that God could be more of a female or feminine, you know, personhood. And it's like it's like like that's fascinating, you know, but it's like that's it's a big deal to break from where we've our tradition. Um many ways we can't.
>> Years ago, I remember someone uh someone asked me if I I believe in in God. And I said, "Uh no, I don't think so." And he said, "Well, do you believe in nature?"
I said, "Nature? Yeah, I guess I do."
"Well, then you believe in God." You know, I mean, damned if you do and damned if you don't. Yeah, I think the beautiful thing is, you know, we're we're in many ways um like you said, we're just we're we're not aware. We're agnostic. And it's a beautiful thing to have true humility. As Christians, we were had the fake humility of, you know, you know, God, I don't know anything, but I'm going to take your wisdom through the Bible. But to have the true humility to say, I just I don't know, and I don't need the God of the gaps to to make my life beautiful. But I'd rather live with the question marks and say, I don't know, than to say, I don't know. Therefore, I have to have something fake and something made up to just have have some, you know, foundation. Um, it's weird to live live with the carpet pulled out from under your feet, but I'd rather I'd rather live in uncomfortable truth than a comfortable lie, you know. And I think a lot of us have realized that as our deconstructions occurred, like I don't want the lies anymore. I'd rather live with the nuance.
>> As as as Socrates said, the one thing I know is that I know nothing.
>> Yep. Yep. And uh what's the other phrase? The uh the unexamined life is not worth living. Yeah.
>> So, well, I appreciate Mark says Tim on the harmonica. Maybe someday I'll take some lessons. Uh maybe that's maybe that's uh providential from God that I need to learn how to play the harmonica and play some worship songs for you guys. Just kidding. Um well, uh Barry, could could you wrap us up with just a final word of of uh plug your book, tell us why people should buy it, and tell us maybe your next project in the next year or two as to what else is on your radar?
>> Um it's a fun book. Uh I' I've had a lot of people look at earlier versions of this and like I say, it's based on columns. People people uh it's it's entertaining. It'll it'll teach you, but it's also I think it's a a lot of fun.
It's in short segments so you can read it on your commute or um you know when you have five five minutes to to spare.
This isn't a a deep long uh like I I keep saying I have a short attention span and that's how how I read. So >> you know what that that goes well because we used to be addicted to devotionals. Do you know what a devotional is? Where you'd read like a little three or four paragraph thing just reminding you about something with God.
>> This is a sec secular devotional for you all.
>> There you go. It's secular devotional that that I think that's the the uh title of my next book. Thank you so much.
>> Absolutely. Well, on that note, is there any other projects on your radar?
>> Oh, yeah. I'm always writing always. You know, I'm uh I'm 83 and I get the question fairly too often. Uh so are you retired or I assume you're retired? Are you kidding?
I wouldn't know what to do with myself if I was retired. So >> that's awesome.
>> So I write I travel. My my wife and I travel a lot. We have a home in in Mexico. We're uh we're we're out there.
Yeah. Yeah. Life is life is good. Good, man. That's awesome. Well, everyone, >> in spite of it all, in spite of the real world.
>> Yeah. In spite of it all, in spite of the current craziness. Well, um I'm so glad you're writing. And again, everyone that uh is interested, please check out the link beneath this video to go check out Barry's book and order it. And Barry, it's so good to meet you. Thank you so much for joining us today. Barry, you got up real early for this. I know you're an early riser, but se I think 7 a.m. is in your time zone is the earliest I've ever had an interviewee sign up for it. So, you I think you get that early award. Um but thank you so much. How long have we we been talking?
>> Uh just short of two hours.
>> You're kidding.
>> Yeah, my my timer is an hour and 52 minutes.
>> Half an hour is my limit usually. So, thank you for for keeping this thing going. It's been a lot of fun.
>> Yeah, likewise. You know, it's funny sometimes when you really get into some of these topics, you realize that you're just scratch still still scratching the surface. I had a lady years ago that interviewed and before the interview, she said, "I'm not sure I could even fill one hour. I know you typically do two hours, but one hour seems like a problem. I'm too boring. And um we we talked and and the interview went for about two and a half hours and when it was over, she said she said, "I we literally have just scratched the surface." I was like, "Yeah, there's so much more."
>> Yeah, >> it's it's amazing. But well, thank you so much, Barry. Really great to meet you. Everyone again, please uh check out the book beneath this video, the link there. Um and let's do it again, Barry.
But thanks again. Have a wonderful day.
>> Thank you for having me on your show.
>> Thanks, everybody. Bye-bye.
I might be lost again.
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