Podcast #142: Does God Want Us to be Atheists?

33 March 26, 2017 by

Episode #142 of Drunk Ex-Pastors begins with a listener’s suggestion about a DXP pub meet-up, to which we respond by reminding everyone that in January we will be on a floating pub in the Caribbean Sea (also known as a “cruise ship”) and everyone’s invited. We then turn to spiritual themes, discussing whether prayer works, whether staying evangelical is worth it, and why God constantly tries to make us all atheists by pretending he doesn’t exist. Our Feeding Friendsy segment will almost make you want to start reading your Bible again; Jason is biebered by silence, while Christian’s bieber has to do with people who don’t suck enough.

Also, you have a 3-minute limit for voice mails. It’s not that hard.

33 Comments (click here to leave a comment)

  1. “I think that I don’t need prayer. … I don’t need prayer to remind me that God is in control.”
    Says the apostate who stopped praying! Haha

  3. Christian trolls a Christian chatroom searching for podcast fodder while Jason offers up rote fundamentalist apologetics re the problem of evil. The self-righteous hypocrisy still far outweighs the irony, homages to the latter notwithstanding.

  4. Yeah, except it’s not a Christian chat room. It’s a reunion group for people who went to Calvary Chapel Bible College (which I did). There are Buddhists, atheists, agnostics, Christians, etc. And I’d hardly call what I said trolling, but I get that you need to make it sound that way to try to make whatever point you are attempting.

  6. Chat room, reunion group, potato potato. You know you are trolling those jokers, though you admittedly don’t know what point I am making (assuming, for the sake of argument, for which you are a sucker, that I am trying to make any point at all), though I get that you need to pose as though you get whatever. meta-meta, bitch.

  7. When I ask my kiddos to help me with yard work it’s the same thing. They don’t really NEED to help. It will get done either way. I certainly don’t require their help (if anything they slow me way down). But there is just something about working with them that builds a good relationship and helps THEM become better people. I think that’s how prayer works. God wants us to work along side Him through prayer. Not because it benefits Him, or that He NEEDS prayer to be in control, but because He wants His kids to work along side Him for OUR benefit

  10. • I will join you in spirit, but I quit drinking, get violently sea-sick, and am pretty convinced that the cruise ship I step on will be the one to get the violent vomiting and shitting virus or be the one to break down in the middle of the ocean with all the toilets backed up.
    • Also, I’m trying to pay off all of my debt. We’re halfway there.
    • No, the phrase is, “Friends help you move, real friends help you move bodies.”
    • You could do a three minute episode:
    “Jason”
    “Christian”
    “Drunk Ex-Pastors”
    “Drink?”
    “Drink.”
    “Job?”
    “Still unemployed.”
    “Religion?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Politics?”
    “Still sucks.”
    “God?”
    “Dick.”
    “Bieber?”
    “TV. Bieber?”
    “Also TV. See ya.”
    • If the outcome is equally random for the Christian and the non-Christian, then we don’t need to add God to the results.
    • There is no perfect will of God for your life. Love God, love your neighbor, otherwise do what you want. You want to be a programmer? Be a programmer. You want to be a doctor? Be a doctor? You want to walk the Earth like Caine? Walk the Earth like Caine. There is no perfect spouse, no perfect job, no perfect life. Life is messy, difficult, shitty at times, and great at other times.
    • We’re religious because we’re social animals and religion fills a need to belong to a tribe. It also, absent better information, allows us to explain the world around us. It also allows us to have a civilization absent a strong government. People cooperate because God or the gods want them to do so.
    • Or why couldn’t God just send the Holy Spirit and keep Jesus here on Earth as His presence. It would be easy. Have a question? E-mail Jesus.
    • Or write “We apologize for the inconvenience” in giant fiery letters on the moon.
    • Looking strictly at nature, it would make more sense to believe in a pantheon of fallible gods like the Greeks or Norse or Celts did.
    • “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it…”
    • We can’t reduce humanity to reason because we have millions of years of brain evolution that programmed us with automatic responses and primitive reward systems to get us to behave in a certain way. Reason and willpower are more recent editions.
    • In the context of a Bronze Age tribalist society, it made sense to kill foreigners because that was how you accumulated wealth and resources and fought scarcity.
    • True, but then Paul or one of his disciples came back and said, “Forget that no male or female in Christ, only dudes can be priests. Penis-only club, Timothy.”
    • Ah, but we have an ancient song lyric that suggests that a fetus is a person, so… there.
    • Yes, but if you’re God, you don’t HAVE to create a world where cause X leads to cancer. Maybe cause X leads to puppies instead. Live near cell phone towers, here’s a litter of puppies! Eat a ton of chocolate, no diabetes, instead you have fuzzy kittens!
    • Unless you’re gay. If you’re gay, you’re definitely out.
    • Refutation of a literal Evangelical interpretation and inerrancy: Leviticus 11:13-19: “Moses” says that bats are birds.

  11. You shouldn’t express opinions that don’t conform to the majority viewpoint. It’s impolite to force others to face differing beliefs… might make them think… doubt even.. and besides, we all know you’re only an agnostic because you want to sin.

  12. Haha, I love how “The Canaanite genocide never happened” is “rote fundamentalist apologetics re the problem of evil.” Whatever fundamentalist church you went to sounds pretty chill about the whole inerrancy thing.

  14. Chistian Jason of the Old Man Shadow, yep, the fundies I know are super chill about it all. Its the not so ex-evangelical in ya’ll that gets panty twisted, one current event at a time. Most docs will confirm that there are prescription meds for what ails ya, pop ’em down clowns.

  15. Then they aren’t fundamentalists. Biblical inerrancy is one of the core foundations of fundamentalist Christianity.

    Once you discard inerrancy, you move away from fundamentalism to a more grounded, progressive Christianity.

  17. No dude, inerrancy follows from everything Christians have said since the time of JC (AD). Its the libs that are in knots about this, since the time of the enlightenment; not that ya’ll have any grasp of your own history. Keep spoutin’ those shibboleths, though; ex-evangies have a lot ‘o sucking up to get on with. Open-minded, yeah, we’re allright—jason said, then immediately pointed out that he said, something so enlightened yeah he’s (ibid) allright! Dick Bush sucks prog ass. Peace motherfuckers.

  20. Oh, you dumb, dumb man, that presupposses the very thing
    in question–i.e. p.p. (just ask Christian he is up on mispronounced Latin),; you don’t have a brain, just a participation in libtard shib-train, which is not the same thing straw man (the individual, not the fallacy). You suck worse than Chad Toney.

  21. lol prayer does accomplish all that. You just can’t see it because of your sin. Obviously 😀

  22. That would require a commitment … and as an agnostic, can he really be sure if he should change his name?

  25. So where did y’all find the twenty something model versions of yourselves for the new brand?

  27. Regarding the caller asking why God didn’t make himself more obvious.
    I have a few takes:
    1) The trade off with having an apparent unreasonable god, might be eternal life (I’m unreasonable, but you get to live forever).
    2) Some of the weird screwing with us stuff (gravity, death, disease, destruction, hate, shitty coffee) may be a cooperative game (we must work together).

    Love the show.

    Jordan

  28. Into a more useless Christianity that inspires no one and conforms to whatever whimsical culture you happen to live in. Literally the least respectable of all religious options. Better to embrace religious weirdness and live with tension than to be an apostate that didn’t have the balls to admit atheism

  32. Conservative, universalist, distributist nirvana. I hope we get into another argument someday though.

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