Radio Debate: James White vs. Brian Lynch

With us here in the studio are Brian Lynch, who represents the

American Atheist Center, which is located in Austin, Texas, and Jim White, who's been with us many times before from Alpha and Omega Ministries here in town, and I want to welcome both of you to the program today.

It's good to be here. Hi, Tom. I wanted to talk a little bit, as we get rolling here, about your position,

Jim, that atheism is a religion. Now, I'm an atheist myself, and I'm not going to take sides in this debate.

You and I have gone at it before. Yes. Well, we haven't really gone at it too much on this topic.

Not this one. Someday, I'm sure we will. Yes. But I've heard this argument before from callers and other atheists who've debated.

Tell us why you think atheism is a religion. Okay, I'll give you a chance to catch your breath there, Tom. Thank you.

Basically, when I, for example, have made the statement that I believe atheism is a religion,

I am defining religion in terminology that is given to me, for example, by Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, which

I have a photocopy from here. One of the meanings of religion is given as any specific system of belief, worship, conduct, etc.,

often involving a code of ethics and a philosophy, as the Christian religion, the Buddhist religion, etc.

Loosely, any system of beliefs, practices, ethical values, etc., resembling, suggestive of, or likened to such a system, such as humanism, is his religion.

And that is the example given in Webster's. And so basically what I'm talking about when I talk about atheism being a religion is,

I'm not saying that atheism teaches that there is a god, per se, because obviously atheism would be very upset if I said such a thing.

But basically what I'm saying is atheism represents a worldview that includes within it beliefs, such as materialism, rationalism, things like that.

It includes within it, in the worldview, a certain set form. It has, over the years, developed similarities to, quote -unquote, religions in the theistic realm.

When I say theistic, I'm talking about God. And atheism basically is a competing philosophy with, for example,

Christianity, or Buddhism, or Islam. And what we see today is an attempt to have theism as a religion removed from, shall we say, secular education from the public schools.

And yet we want to have complete freedom to have atheism in its place.

And I believe both are worldviews. Wait, wait, wait. They're teaching atheism in schools now?

Is that what's happening? Well, when I say atheism, I'm talking about a removal from the public school system of any type of system where theism is acknowledged.

And yes, atheism is the call of the day. Well, this is interesting then.

What you're saying is then that religion is being taught in schools. Excuse me? Are you saying religion is being taught in schools?

A certain kind of religion, yes. Atheism. My goodness. Not to my knowledge.

I went to public schools and we never learned atheism. You're absolutely so totally wrong in your definition of religion and your understanding of atheism that it's incredible.

Okay. Atheism is not a religion because religion is, by definition, something that attempts to relate man and human beings to some sort of a super entity through prayers, beliefs, rituals, and so on and so forth.

Atheists have no belief systems. This is one thing that characterizes atheism and that characterizes no religion.

There is no such thing as an atheist ritual. There is no such thing as an atheist practice.

There's no such thing as an atheist belief system. In other words, I don't say

I am an atheist because I believe there is no God. I say there is no evidence to support a belief in God.

Therefore, the belief in God is irrational, foolish, and useless. Now, wait a second.

There's another thing. Sure. Religion actually comes from a Latin verb, which is religare, which means to bind back, to tie down, or to fasten.

And this is essentially what religion has done to the human race. It has bound it, it has tied it, it has held it back, and it has continually tried to assert itself in society, and the effect has always been detrimental.

Throughout the entire history of the human race, there have been people who have posited various gods, various ritual practices, various worship forms, and various activities that people should engage in because somebody has said it's good for them.

Now, what the atheists do is they say this is worthless, this is foolish, there is no reason to engage in all of these religious practices.

We want to make sure that the people who do want to do this separate themselves from society and go off and play with their little toys, go off and play their games, go off and live in their fantasy world, and don't bother the rest of us.

We are not imposing anything on society. We are simply saying we don't care to live under your religious stricture system.

Okay, I'd like to respond by that. First of all, in reference to religion, yes.

If you define religion specifically as something that involves a deity or a supreme power, a supernatural power, then obviously by definition you are saying atheism is not religion.

I read to you the definition that I was following. It is a looser definition. I'm the first one to admit that.

But even in, for example, here in the aims and purposes of the American Atheist, you recognize this of course, this is from your own organization.

That's our publication list, right. Publication list in the back under the aims and purposes. It directly says that atheism is a, well it doesn't use the word belief, but it says that they believe or accept materialism, which declares that the cosmos is devoid of imminent conscious purpose.

It is governed by its own inherent, immutable, and impersonal laws, and so on and so forth. And in fact, to become a member of the organization, one must check off what he is.

An atheist, a free thinker, a humanist, a rationalist, an objectivist, a unitarian, so on and so forth.

But one must agree to this aims and purposes, this, well for lack of a better word, a creed, if you want to use the term.

No, no, no, you're wrong. Because, now wait a second. No, you're throwing around terms loosely and you're not using them properly.

A belief in something is accepting something without evidence. We deliberately don't use the word belief because we only accept that for which there is evidence.

We do not say we believe in science. We do not say we believe in materialism.

We do not say we believe in anything. We accept these things because they can be demonstrated to be factual and useful.

And this is a very important distinction which you are deliberately trying to blur, and which all religious people deliberately try to blur.

Well, let me respond to that by mentioning two things. This is nothing but an attempt by you to dissemble the listeners. Please, sir.

I have no desire to do that at all. I'm just mentioning the fact that, for example,

Webster's Dictionary defines atheism as the belief that there is no God, and as an atheist is one who believes that there is no

God. No, no, an atheist is not someone who believes there is no God. An atheist is one who maintains that there is no evidence that warrants a belief in God, as I've just told you.

Now, shut up and listen to me. Brian, I did not come here to argue with you. Yes, you did. I was invited here to discuss this.

No, no, no, you were not invited here. You pushed your way onto this station. I am not going to. You were not invited here. I was. You were the one who screamed and yelled like a little brat and said, you have to put me on this show with this atheist.

I cannot believe that this is being said, Tom. Well, that's the way it was presented to me. It's interesting,

Tom. This is the seventh time I've been on KFYI. I am a fairly regular guest here, and it's amazing that Mr.

Lynch has said it, because it's completely untrue. But I refuse to respond to you in the same manner you respond to me, and that's just the difference between us.

But from a book entitled What on Earth is an Atheist? by Madeleine Murray O 'Hare, she says,

We atheists try to find some basis of rational thinking on which we can base our actions and our beliefs. No, she doesn't use the word belief.

I have copies of that book, which I'll be happy to send you. We accept the technical philosophy of materialism. It is valid philosophy which cannot be discredited.

Essentially, materialism's philosophy holds that nothing exists but natural phenomena. Materialism is a philosophy of life and living according to rational processes with intellectual and other capabilities of the individual to be developed to the highest degree in a social system where this may be possible.

There are no supernatural forces, no supernatural entities such as gods or heavens or hells or life after death.

There are no supernatural forces, nor can there be. We atheists believe that nature simply exists.

Matter is, material is. Pages 40 through 43. It doesn't say believe. Now, basically what

I'm saying is that if a person says, I believe in materialism,

I accept materialism, that is in itself a belief. Now, if we want to get into a discussion of what

Mr. Lynch has brought up in reference to whether a belief in theism is rational or atheism is rational, then that's fine.

But I just want to make sure to lay the foundation that both of us are representing a worldview.

One accepts materialism. Another accepts theism. But those are still two competing worldviews, and they need to be treated as such.

Yes, they are two competing worldviews, and I think that the reason that you people feel so threatened by us atheists is because when we say there is no

God, what that immediately means is that there is no rational basis or need for religion, and there is absolutely no reason why the church or religion in any form should have a voice in how our society is structured and run.

That's where you're really coming from when you get right down to the central core of this issue, is that there is really no room or no need for you to be here.

Well, actually the root core of the reason that a theist such as myself would take the time to enter into a discussion such as this is due to the fact that I do believe that there is rational reason to believe in theism, and that there are many instances where theism is misrepresented in regards to what it teaches and what it believes.

And I think when a public forum is opened up, such as we have here on KFYI, and I'm glad that FYI at least is brave enough to tackle subjects like this.

There are other stations that won't talk about things like this. We know that. Yes. That both viewpoints can be represented and presented to the audience, and we can discuss it in that way, and I would hope that that is what we'll be able to do.

All right, we're going to take a break here, and we are going to come back. We're talking with Brian Lynch of the American Atheist Center and Jim White of Alpha and Omega Ministries.

Now, more pot talk with you and Tom Likas on FYI Radio 910.

Get into the conversation. Call 258 -KFYI. That's 258 -5394.

Once again, here's Tom. 424 -FYI Radio 910. I'm Tom Likas here every afternoon from 3 until 7 o 'clock.

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258 -5394 is our telephone number. The number on the phone is starting to light up, and we'll get to everybody as we progress here.

258 -5394. I just had an argument with an operator on the phone. One day we'll do a show on this, okay?

So, mountain bell operators, beware. It's coming later this week. I'm going to describe my attempts to make phone calls.

It's unreal. Jim, I wanted to ask you this one question, and, again,

I'm only asking from my own perspective, and I'm trying not to get involved in this debate here. I'm going to leave it to you two guys.

But it seems to me, and correct me if I'm wrong, that folks who fervently believe in religion are troubled by atheists to the point where they, if not feel threatened by atheists, certainly want to make every effort they can to turn an atheist into something he or she is not.

Would that be accurate? Well, I think what you're describing is the fact that, and normally you're talking in reference to Christians when you're talking about a religious person.

I don't think I've ever heard you talking about a Koran thumper before. I've never heard that. Have you ever heard of a

Koran? Well, the Koran is not thumped on this show too often. Okay, all right. There are Koran thumpers.

Oh, I'm sure there are. They're not in the United States for the most part. I'm aware, but Tom... I have had the Baha 'i faith after me, though,

I want to tell you. Okay. But in reference to your question,

I think that, yes, it is true that people who would take the Christian viewpoint obviously, as you have undoubtedly heard before, the

Bible commands Christians to share their faith. I don't see that atheism itself has a huge flock of Christians following it around, at least the

Christians that I know. There are obviously certain people, but I don't see it as being the largest subject on the chopping block.

Actually, many atheists will tell you that they are in a vast minority, and they do not receive as much attention as I actually feel that they probably should because they bring up many interesting facets, many interesting things, that I feel that especially a

Christian should be prepared to deal with, should think through on their own grounds, should examine the information that is brought forward, and take a look at it.

Unfortunately, that is normally not done a whole lot. So, in answer to your question, yes, there are a lot.

I don't think it is really because of fear, as you would describe it. It certainly isn't in my case.

Mine is more in an evangelical, interesting way. It is an interest of mine.

Why is it that Christians not only seem to exhibit some sort of uneasiness around atheists, but also go to the point of trying to convert them?

Well, like I said, a Christian will try to convert anybody. It is sort of built in with the system.

It comes with the territory. It comes with the territory, and I am the first one to admit that. When you say uneasy, actually, to be perfectly honest with you,

Tom, if the first 20 minutes of this program were indication, I am not uneasy. I don't have to worry about this situation.

Well, you have been around me before. You know me, Jim. You don't have to worry about it. Well, that's true, but Tom, you can't make yourself representative of almost anybody.

I mean, look at the calls we get here on the air. People call here virtually every day of the week. I get letters threatening me with the lake of fire.

They're telling me I'm going to die and telling me that God's going to get me. I mean, why don't they give up?

One woman called up and said that if I don't cleanse myself in a shower immediately and start repenting,

I'm going to be in big trouble. Why is this? What is this all about? Well, I think that what it is, Tom, is that somewhere along the line, every person does not believe that there is a

God. Every person is an atheist when they're born. They're born without religion, and religion is something which is laid on them as they grow up.

And I think that everyone goes through the stage that I went through and that every atheist

I know went through when they started to ask questions and found that the answers really weren't very satisfactory.

You know, they said, well, wait a second. Here's a contradiction, I think. If God created the world in six days, why are these scientists saying that the world wasn't created?

It was formed over a period of millions of years, and these people seem to have their data, these people seem to have their facts.

You know, how can the religious people and the scientists be right? I think that people try praying and find it doesn't work, and then they say, well, why should

I continue to follow this system of saying prayers since the prayers aren't efficacious? Why should

I continue to go to church since all they seem to do is ask for money and they build huge buildings with it? And I think that at some point, everybody comes to a position where they say, religion is all make -believe.

I don't feel any God. I don't sense that there's any great spirit.

I don't sense that the Bible is the only source of ethics. I don't sense that the Koran is a good ethical guide or whatever they use.

And I think that for fear of being ostracized, they jump back into the belief system, and they never really bother to explore their doubts or to find answers to their question.

They just say, oh, well, everybody else around me seems to believe this.

Therefore, I better shut up and go along with this, even though deep down inside,

I'm not really satisfied. And I think that atheists walking around personify these people's doubts and are living actual proof that the gods posited by religion are not real.

Since we walk around, we don't get cast into lakes of fire unless some religious person decides to throw us into one.

We don't have horns sticking out of our heads. We don't go around doing terrible things to people or ourselves.

We are perfectly well -adjusted, normal, everyday people. And everything that people are taught that they need religion to accomplish seems to be accomplished by atheists who have none.

I would respond to that by saying that basically I'd take a position about 180 degrees opposite of that.

Which, of course, obviously is to be expected in reference to the discussion that is at hand.

I do not, of course, agree that a religious person is a person who has jumped back into a faith system that is simply a blind faith.

My faith is not a blind faith. My faith is grounded in and rests upon solid historical fact and evidence.

And I do study what I believe and what other people say about what I believe. And so I do not believe that, since I'm speaking as a

Christian, the Christian faith is a blind faith that is something that just simply is a crutch for mankind.

I believe that when a person will look at what the world has to offer, look at what materialism has to offer, look at what atheism has to offer, what is the meaning of myself, what is the meaning of my life, my relationships with other people, that they will come to the conclusion that this is a pretty dreary place or there's got to be something beyond what

I've experienced so far. And when one looks at the world around him, when one looks at the complexity of the world,

I believe it is very rational to look for something beyond myself.

And there is something beyond myself. I do not, by doing that, say that I, in my humanity, am simply a speck of dirt or something like that.

But I realize that I have a higher being and a higher purpose than just simply an animal that's walking around the

Earth that might get squashed by a Phoenix Transit bus on the way home, and that's it. There's nothing more accomplished than that.

And so I would take an opposite viewpoint at that juncture. This is what's so intrinsically sick about religion is that it teaches people to hate life, to hate the world, and to hate experiences as it presents themselves, and to seek their solace and to seek some kind of state of mind salvation in a fantasy world that doesn't exist, that is totally made up and totally outside of reality, that has no relationship, really, to the world that people live in.

And this is so sick, it's incredible. This is why I maintain that the only really effective way to deal with religion is to absolutely root it out of society altogether and just throw it into the rubbish can of history along with all the other bad ideas that have come up.

Well, notice, Tom, that I've heard you many times talking about the biasedness of religious people, the fact that we are unwilling to allow any other viewpoint to exist, and yet I think it has been very well demonstrated by Mr.

Lynch, and I thank him for bringing it up, that the atheistic viewpoint goes, I believe, far beyond even the

Christian viewpoint in reference to the fact that atheism cannot exist along with theism.

No, it's not that it can't exist along with theism. What I'm saying is that just as racism is a bad idea, just as sexism is a bad idea, just as the idea of slavery is a bad idea, and just as the idea that we shouldn't help the poor is a bad idea, there have been many ideas which have been pushed by the ruling classes in various societies which have been extremely harmful to the human race, and religion is certainly one of those ideas.

And the problem with religion is that it works very subtly in our culture, attempting to seize each rising generation and indoctrinate it with the same irrational beliefs that have been around harming the human race for several thousand years.

Most of the religious ideas found in Christianity actually have their origin five to fifteen thousand years ago, as far back as we can trace cultures.

The idea of a savior god, the idea of sacrifice, the idea that there's a spirit world, the idea that there's a life after death, all of these ideas are found extant in cultures from the

Middle East, from India, especially in India. The idea that there are rites that people can indulge in, the idea that there are certain sacred or holy days, the idea that there are certain sacred or holy places, the idea that there are certain books which have to be read because they're sacred and inspired, these are all very, very primitive ideas that were invented and thought up when people were really just emerging from the ape stage in the period of human evolution.

Let me respond to that by saying the first section concerning the role of religion in society, what you just said is nearly a quotation, very, very close to the teachings of Hegel and Marx, and we see the result of that in the

Soviet Union and other nations today. And then in reference to the fact that there are elements within Christianity that you would identify as having been borrowed from non -Christian sources, yes, there is in man the innate understanding, the innate need for a relationship with his creator that does not in any way invalidate

God's revelation of himself in Christianity. That obviously,

I think there's a real logical flaw in attempting to say because other religious systems have certain elements in them, that any religious system that has those elements in them is therefore necessarily false.

I don't think that logically follows from the argument. Well, that's not quite what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that these ideas were thought up in a primitive age by the ruling elites in a society to control the population, to keep them at a subservient level, and to deliver them to future generations of a ruling class in a state of mind that would allow them to be controlled, governed, and told what to do, and to ensure that there would be a permanent kind of underclass in society.

And I think we see this over and over and over again when we look at the teachings in religion, and especially the teachings in Judeo -Christianity.

There's an awful lot of admonition to obey authority, to simply sit in church and listen to what a preacher tells you.

You aren't taught in religion to think independently. You're not taught to go out and question things.

You're not taught to challenge and investigate things. You're just taught to accept things on faith, which means accept things either without evidence or in spite of contrary evidence.

That's totally false in the fact that Christianity does not teach a person to not think.

It does not teach a person not to examine one's faith, and to represent it in that way is simply to misrepresent the

New Testament teaching concerning that. I have examined my faith. I am open to examination of my faith as a

Christian. If you talk to anyone who has been in any seminars that I've done, any teaching that I've done, they will tell you that that is a big thing that I harp on, is that Christians should examine their faith, should examine why it is true.

Faith in Christianity is not a denial of truth. Faith is an acceptance of the truth that God has revealed, the truth that we see in the world around us, and it goes beyond simply the truth to provide a framework upon which we can live our lives.

But see, this is the whole thing, is that Christianity is basically a lie. There is no historical evidence that Jesus ever existed.

There is no historical evidence that the New Testament is anything but a set of extant writings that were around from about, oh, maybe 100 or 150 years before the alleged time of Jesus that were simply gathered up later and became the basis for the

Roman Catholic theology in 325 A .D. Let me mention something to you, especially at that point.

What I wanted to bring out was this common atheistic claim that Jesus never existed.

The reason I want to bring it up, aside from discussing the historical evidence that he did, since there is a vast amount of it, this sort of is a religious belief.

It really is, because anyone who has examined the historical documents has to come to the conclusion that there is a large amount of evidence that Jesus did exist, and so forth.

As many atheists as I have heard say this, to believe this, it's almost like it's become a cult belief amongst atheists that Jesus never existed, and this is in spite of the vast amount of evidence that he did.

This is the kind of situation where you have a belief system overriding the critical examination of historical facts, and this is where you have a similarity, at least in a way, to how some religious systems operate.

That's interesting to me that this would come up, and I expected it did. In reference, Brian, if you'd like to expand on what you said concerning that, if you'd like to say something more about that,

I'd like to before I get to the evidence in reference to that. Okay, the criteria for evidence is something which is really not subject to dispute.

In other words, do you have artifacts that were actually written by Jesus? Do you have an artifact like a body, for example, that you can say, well, this is

Jesus' tomb, or this is Jesus' body, or this is Jesus' remains? The other criteria would be human experience and things which can be validated and corroborated, and none of this applies to Jesus.

Okay, I'd like to respond to that by saying that if what you said is true, that that is indisputable, then we do not know that Julius Caesar, Plato, Socrates, or anyone up until about 25 years ago ever existed.

No, that's totally false, because we do have material evidence that these people left. Such as what, sir?

We have their tombs. We have the evidence that was left from what they did with their soldiers.

In the case of the Caesars, we have the writings of Plato. They are absolutely, definitely attributed to these people.

However, there is not one piece of paper that we can attribute to Jesus. There is nothing that Jesus ever wrote.

There is nothing that anybody can demonstrate was actually taken down by even a scrivener who knew

Jesus. Well, that's obviously untrue. Let me mention a number of the facts, aside from the

New Testament. I'll get to that in a moment. For example, Tacitus, who died in 117, mentions

Jesus Christ. Suetonius mentioned rebellion in Rome in AD 49, which he attributed to Christ, even though obviously

Christ was not alive at that time. A pagan philosopher by the name of Mara, I was reading his letter just yesterday, in fact, in AD 74, discussed

Jesus Christ. It's interesting that there are references to Christ in, for example,

Pliny's writings and things like that. These events took place in what was a fairly insignificant corner of the

Roman Empire. For them to actually gain mention by Roman historians, by philosophers writing at the time, and those manuscripts be extant still today, is very interesting.

Let's look at the actual content of those manuscripts. What they really talk about is they talk about cults of believers, they talk about people who have a faith in a great leader, and in some cases,

I'm not sure if it was Mara or if it was Suetonius, they mention the followers of the teachers of righteousness, and that man was a man who lived about 100 to 150 years before the alleged time of Christ, and he was the leader of the cult known as the

Essenes, which were a strange, proselytizing sect of Jews. Yes, so Brian is making reference to the teacher of righteousness found in Dead Sea Scrolls.

That's right. The Essenes community at Qumran, of course, that is not what Mara had in reference whatsoever.

No, no, no, what he's talking about is a body of believers. Did you read the letter, Brian? I don't know if I've read the specific letter you're referring to, but I have read some of his writings, and I know for a fact that they are not referring to an actual living, breathing person named

Jesus. There is the writings of Josephus, which are often cited.

These are known to be an interpolation and a forgery. Josephus never wrote them. Let me mention something,

Brian. And this is something that we see over and over again in Christian scholarship, is that it is all based on fabrication.

It is based on misrepresentation. It is based on deliberately taking things out of context and trying to piece them together to establish something which is false.

Again, let me point out that I've read the letter. I have the letter. You can look at it yourself, and you'll see that Brian's wrong.

You don't have to take my word for it. I don't want anyone to take my word for it. Check it out yourself. Don't take

Brian's word for anything. Don't take my word for anything. No, don't take my word for anything. Check these things out, and you will find that there is no evidence for Jesus.

Okay, then we go on from the fact that he is mentioned by numerous writers, such as these

Roman historians and philosophers that I was mentioning, and you can check them out for yourself, to the existence of the

New Testament. Now, Brian had made the charge that the New Testament was nothing more than a compilation of documents that might have been written,

I hope I misunderstood you. You said possibly 100 years before Christ? Many of them were written 100 to 150 years before Christ, and some of them were written as late as 150 to 200 years after Christ.

I see. Now, let me ask you, Brian, do you know anything about the subject of textual criticism? Yes. Do you know anything about the

Byzantine manuscript tradition, Alexandrian, anything like that? Yeah, let me go on with something here, because I think we're on to something important.

No, no, you're wasting time. You're wasting valuable air time asking me a bunch of useless rhetorical questions.

What we're talking about here is we're talking about sets of documents that were used by bodies of believers who believed that they were the inspired word of a deity, and it was common in those days for these believers to think that, well, every word, every letter, every sentence, everything was inspired by a deity, therefore it must be correct to take these and recombine them in any form to establish any proposition.

This was something that was common in all of these little cults of believers. They were known as the

Christiani, the Christus cults, or whatever, throughout the Roman Empire. And it was very common for them to take a piece of this document, a piece of that document, and simply invent their own gospel or their own book of acts, their own letters, whatever you want to call them.

And these were gathered up in about, what, 250

A .D. by Eusebius, who decided to pronounce certain of these the absolute true word of the deity.

And his proclamation created a lot of tension, a lot of bitterness, a lot of hatred, a lot of animosity in the early church.

And finally, in 325 A .D., Constantine saw it would be politically useful to him as a ruler to gather all these leaders together and say, well, let's all agree that we're going to have certain books that we're going to use in our theology and certain things that we're going to teach these people.

And that's basically what the Council of Nicaea was all about. Finally, over periods of hundreds of years, various books were voted in and out of the

Bible. And the King James Bible, which most Protestants in this country are familiar with, or the

Douay version, which many Catholics are familiar with, were not actually declared canonical until about the 1600s.

And that was by a vote. They simply took a vote in the Church of England.

This is what the King James Bible is. It is something that was simply decided by a ballot.

A bunch of people who were religious leaders got together and said, okay, let's vote on which books we want to include.

And they said, do you want this one? Yes, no. And if they said yes, it was included. If they said no, it was thrown out.

It was simply a matter of vote. If I tried to enumerate the number of historical errors in what we just heard, it would take me the rest of the afternoon.

It's absolutely amazing. Let me point a few things out. A, there is not one shred of evidence that any

New Testament document existed before the lives of the writers who Christians maintain wrote them.

B, the New Testament documents were written between the period of time of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and approximately 70 to 75

A .D. Dr. J .T. Robinson, in his book, Redating the New Testament, has expressed his views on this.

There are just, I could name scholars coming out of my ears. Well, I ought to tell you something right there.

If nothing was actually compiled until 75 A .D., then there aren't any eyewitnesses.

Sir, I did not interrupt you. I did not interrupt you at any time. And I would like to at least ask you the same courtesy.

Okay, you got it. I appreciate that. Now, I'm going to have to interrupt you, but I will let you continue when we come back.

I want to just finish in reference to what Brian had said. First of all, Eusebius did not live in that century.

You're about a century off on that. The Council of Nicaea had nothing to do with canonization. It had reference to the deity of Christ, as the

Nicene Creed would reveal. The canonization issue was settled in 393 and 397 of the councils at Elphantine and Carthage.

In reference to something about voting or something like that concerning the

King James Version of the Bible, the canon had been set up many years before that. The Roman Catholic Church reacted against the

Protestant Reformation by, at the Council of Trent, adding the Apocrypha to their canon. But concerning the books that were included in the

King James Version of the Bible, that is not even a debate as to what was involved there.

I would really challenge people, for example, to pick up a book by F .F. Bruce called The New Testament Documents. Are they reliable?

He is one of the greatest scholars in the field. I think you'll get a straight story from that. Let's get

Don from Fountain Hills on the air. Hello, Don. How are you? You're on the air. Go ahead. Is it

Jim from Alpha Omega? Yes. And Brian from? He's from the

American Atheist Center in Austin, Texas. Okay. I'd like to address Brian.

Brian, I was an environmental science major a number of years ago, and I took earth science and molecular biology and all kinds of stuff until I got more than the average individual, unless they're in a scientific field, would get in a lifetime.

And something that always bothered me was the origin of life.

Have you studied that at all? Have you looked into that? Yes, I have. Okay. If you have, then you realize that the odds, and I'm not talking about creating life,

I'm talking about creating simple DNA or simple protein, the odds of creating that in a hostile environment like they claim the earth once had are so astronomical that it defies...

Oh, I'm familiar with this argument, yes. And the response to it is very simple.

What we had is billions and billions and billions of combinations of atoms and molecules going on at once over a large period of time.

Okay, now wait a second. No, no. Okay. I know the rap you're going to give me, but...

I know the rap you're giving me, too, and it's a totally invalid one because it's the argument that creationists use to try to debunk the second law of thermodynamics, which they do wrong because they assume that all living organisms are closed systems that don't interact with their environment.

Wait a second. In order for something to be a scientific fact, it has to be repeatable in the laboratory, and all the laboratory experiments dealing with the origin of life are rigged experiments.

There are very careful quantities of ammonia and carbon dioxide and other things mixed in a container, and they come up with a simple amino acid, and they say, voila, we have the origin of life, and it doesn't work.

The system is the odds against creating. You cannot have life without DNA and protein simultaneously.

No, that's correct. The odds against that happening, I've got a little figure here for you.

It's 1 in 10 to the 270th power. Okay, see, now that's a spurious figure because nobody has been able to do the experiment you just said to create this gene, therefore nobody has any objective data to come up with that number.

By random chance, and if you want, you can check that figure out in the ASU library because I did not pull it out of a creationist text.

I pulled it out of an ASU textbook that's on the shelf of that library. Let me tell you who writes our textbooks in this country.

Who does? The major capital interests who finance the publishing companies, and the chief concern of the publishing companies, we have been told this over and over and over again every time we've looked at textbooks and every time we've gone to state boards, is how many can we sell and how can we lower the resistance to selling.

Under pressure from religious groups, our science textbooks have been degraded over the last 20 years.

It was written during the 70s, my friend. That's right, it was written during the 70s, 10 years after the religious began their attack on education.

The problem with atheism, and I really believe that atheism is a religion, is that it's based on the same blind faith that you accuse

Christians of. No, it isn't. The experiments that you claim prove your cause do not prove it.

They're rigged, and they can't go past doing the most simple, you know, they can get maybe one or two amino acids, but when it comes to making

DNA or any kind of protein by chance, the whole system falls apart. And if you can't get past the origin of life issue, then for you to go on and say billions of years of evolution is pretty irrelevant.

Don, let me also point out, let me also point out, Don, that back billions of years ago, when

DNA and some of these organisms formed, the environment was quite a bit different than it is now.

The organisms that we have today could not have survived in the initial environment.

Will you shut up and let me finish? I'd like some time, but I don't want to hear the same old canned statement.

Don, Don, let me... Well, the same old canned statements are about all I can give you, because I can't go back three billion years, and I'm sorry, but that is just a physical impossibility.

Don and Brian, maybe I could find some middle ground here somewhere. I agree in some ways in reference to the fact that anyone who wants to discuss the origin of life is going to have to, and this is where I believe there is a problem with atheism.

Leave scientific fact, because science has admitted itself, it works with that which it can experiment with, and you cannot experiment with something that happened three billion years ago.

But Sir Fred Hoyle, the former atheist and eminent scientist Sir Fred Hoyle said this, in reference to evolution, in reference to spontaneous generation, he said the trouble is that there are about 2 ,000 enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in 10 to the 20th, which equals 10 to the 40 ,000th, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup.

No matter how large the environment one considers, life cannot have had a random beginning. Troops of monkeys thundering away at random on typewriters could not produce the works of Shakespeare, for the practical reason that the whole observable universe is not large enough to contain the necessary typewriters and the waste paper baskets required for the deposition of wrong attempts.

The same is true for living material. I'm sorry, that is not a valid analogy, and I'll tell you why.

It's because once you start... They're considered valid in the insurance industry. Okay, we're not talking about insurance.

What we're talking about is the combination of atoms and molecules which are not as random as you may think.

No, no, no, you be quiet. There are certain ways that atoms and molecules will combine and certain ways that they will not combine.

Therefore, there are only certain combinations that will form with certain atoms.

You cannot make organic compounds out of silicon and xenon gas, for example.

It just doesn't happen. And it's the same thing when you talk about building living enzyme chains or living protein chains, that there are certain combinations that simply will not work and are predetermined by the arrangements that have already been constructed.

And while we have not been able to perfectly simulate the conditions that life arose 3 billion years ago, there is a fossil record, there is a chemical record that suggests that these chemicals did, in fact, form into genes and that these genes adapted some way of protecting themselves from attack from their environment.

That they were self -sustaining, they were self -perpetuating. Don? Yeah? This is Jim White. I agree with everything you just said until the last point and that is that you're exactly right.

There are only certain combinations that, for example, carbon can enter into with other things. And that, by itself, increases the difficulty of the probability because even random, you no longer have just random joining.

Now you have to have specific joining which makes the probabilities even more outlandish. No it doesn't, it actually makes them higher.

And the second thing I'd like to say is the fact that what you're saying, you said somehow, in some way, we don't know how, that is just as feudistic as the faith you attempt to charge

Christians with. And that is the exact same thing. And if you want to be honest enough to admit, hey, we don't know, we cannot make it happen in the laboratory, we're taking it completely on faith, at least to be honest enough to say that's what we're coming from.

All right, Don, I want to thank you for the call. We're going to move on to 258 -KFYI. This is Mildred.

Hello, Mildred. No, Mildred went away. All right, we'll try

Marge in Phoenix, a first -time caller. Marge, thank you for holding on. I wanted to ask

Brian a question. At the very first, he said that humanism was not,

I understood him say that humanism wasn't in the school. That's correct. How long has it been since you graduated from high school?

I graduated in 74. 74. And I was never taught humanism.

It's about the time in the last, I believe in the last 10 years, it's really began creeping in.

Well, I have brothers and sisters who are still in school, and they're not taught humanism either. And they're going to public schools.

I have been interviewing teachers. I'll tell you why. I have two wonderful little grandsons and a granddaughter, and I have been going around to school teachers because I've heard about the humanism coming into the schools, and they say that it's definitely in there.

Marge, I'd just like to say from my own experience in the public school system, yes, it most definitely is.

I have a book here, for example, by Dr. Robert Morris. Maybe we have different definitions of humanism here. Dr. Robert Morris, for example, gives a number of instances where, in his schooling in the public school system, that it wasn't just humanism, it was pure atheism.

And there are many examples of this. I even went to a Christian college that in the science department,

I majored in biology as well as Bible, the science department utilized textbooks that were not in any way

Christian textbooks. They were secular textbooks that assumed certain philosophical viewpoints that I would identify as humanistic in reference to a lack of any reference or acceptance of or anything of a deity in any way, shape, or form.

And so I would just say, hey, go in and look at the textbooks yourself. If this is just a semantic problem, well, fine, but I think as you and I understand, and I'm assuming you're a

Christian, as you and I would understand it, yes, the humanism is definitely there. If you want to define it out of there, that's fine, but as far as you and I are concerned as Christians, yes, it's definitely there.

I'd also like to respond to that and say that whether or not you choose to accept biology, biology is a fact.

We are biological organisms. We do function according to the same general rules,

I guess you could say, that all other animal life on earth does. We metabolize our food the same way all other animals do.

We synthesize proteins basically the same way all other animals do. Our gene structure might be a little different, and our phenotypical manifestation may be a little different on earth.

But I think that to go back to what this other caller was trying to say before, while some things are taken as assumptions, and we're gathering data to prove it, we're also willing to say that we do not have all the answers.

And this is the thing that the religious person cannot deal with. Psychologically, they're not prepared to say,

I don't know, but I think this, or I don't know, but there's circumstantial evidence that seems to establish this.

And instead of doing that, they will say, well, I'm too intellectually lazy to go out and get the real answers, so I will just say that God did it and try to make everybody else believe this.

And if I can get enough people to believe this, then it will be accepted as true. And this is not the way that atheists, and most of the humanists

I'm familiar with operate. A humanist or an atheist will simply say, this is what we know, this is what these facts seem to imply, and here's an experiment to test it.

Now let's see if we can do this. You know, a hundred years ago, it was considered absolutely impossible for a heavier than air craft to fly.

And yet today we know, because they weren't using the best of mechanical devices, because they didn't have as good an understanding of the principles of aerodynamics, because they didn't really look at what it would take to get these things off the ground, they couldn't do it.

Today we can do it because we do understand the principles of aerodynamics and so on better. Obviously, I do not function as a

Christian in the way that Mr. Lynch just described Christians as functioning, and so I would say that's just obviously not true in reference at least to myself.

I've got to take a break here. We're going to come back with Brian Lynch of the American Atheist Center, Jim White of Alpha and Omega Ministries.

Back to the phones, this is Steve in Tempe, a first -time caller to FYI Radio. Hello Steve. Hi.

Yes. I'd like to address my question to Mr. Lynch. Go ahead. It is a fact that the documents exist, and a demonstrable fact that documents exist as to the existence of Jesus Christ, the man, from both sympathetic and hostile sources.

I'm wondering what criteria Mr. Lynch uses to decide which of these documents that they are going to adhere to and which they are going to throw out the door.

Can you answer that Mr. Lynch? Yes. As I said, what they refer to is bodies of believers who followed teachers or who followed cult leaders, and they don't make any specific reference to any person.

I would disagree with that. There also are eyewitness accounts included in those documents.

No, there aren't eyewitness accounts. I think we have to recognize that the Bible was known to be an apocryphal set of documents when, not the

Bible, I'm sorry, the Gospels were known to be apocryphal even as early as about 200

A .D. Could you provide a documentation for that please? Yes, the documents were not actually written in a form that is familiar to us until at least 75 or 88

A .D. in their current form and as late as 160 A .D.

So obviously none of the people who wrote these things could possibly have been alive when this person

Jesus was around. And in any case, I think that it is very obvious, as I said before, that these documents and these works were compiled from sources that predated them by as much as 150 to 200 years.

Steve, I need to respond to that. Go ahead, I would love you to. You keep saying it's obvious, Brian, and I ask for documentation.

I am very familiar with the history of the New Testament, with the subject of textual criticism. So am I. And I am aware of the fact, for example, that we have scraps of John that would far predate 160

A .D. There is absolutely positively no evidence whatsoever that any of the

New Testament documents were in existence in any way, shape, or form before the time of Christ. Ah, you are wrong. In fact, you should watch our television show, the

American Atheist Forum, which is shown here in Phoenix. We have a series coming up with John Allegro, who is one of the

Dead Sea Scroll translators. He is one of the people who actually sat down and started piecing these documents together in the 1940s and 1950s.

And he said he was astonished to find out that these documents that were 150 to 200 years older than anything that they had ever seen and predated the existence of Jesus by 100 to 150 years were almost identical to the

New Testament. And this was the shocking revelation of the Dead Sea Scrolls, is that Christianity was nothing new.

It was just the same old junk in a new form. Steve, what is being referred to there is, as I'd like to refer you to such people as Drs.

Estrada and White, and Dr. Miller Burroughs, who is the worldwide expert on the

Dead Sea Scrolls. What is being referred to there is the Doctrine of the Essenes in reference to the

Teacher of Righteousness. This has nothing to do with the New Testament documents themselves. There is absolutely no historical evidence whatsoever that the

New Testament documents were not written by whom they claim to be written by at the times they claim to be written, since they were written before 70

AD. Obviously someone who was alive in approximately 30 AD, around the time of the life of Jesus Christ, would only be 40 years older by the time they were written.

So obviously there is not one bit of historical evidence whatsoever that would cause a non -biased individual to reject the authenticity of the

New Testament text. There just isn't. It is based completely on the German rationalists of the past century.

It has no archaeological evidence to it whatsoever. For example, the Book of Acts is wonderfully historically accurate.

It was obviously written by a contemporary of the things that were going on there, and any archaeological research into that area at that time demonstrates this is so.

And this can be examined. I can give you references. I can refer you to John Warwick Montgomery, History and Christianity.

FF Bruce, our New Testament documents are reliable. Yes, but you see, these people are all apologists for Christianity. They are not historians.

They do not know what they are talking about. That is false. That is completely and totally false. No, that is totally true, because these people are nothing but people who are trying to continually brainwash the people to accept a bunch of nonsense.

Notice, Steve, what we have to do now. When a scholar, when many scholars, the entire group of scholars comes together, now instead of accepting the actual evidence, now we have to attack ad hominem arguments.

We must attack the people and say they are perverting the evidence. This is solid archaeological evidence. These people have not done their evidence research.

They do not have their evidence. All they have is a faith, and what they have done is they have selected bits and pieces.

No, I haven't. You've read John Warwick Montgomery. Look, this is supposed to be a discussion on atheism. This is not who's your author.

Well, I'm just pointing out to you that you are demeaning men that you know nothing about, and you have no evidence that they are not scholars.

No, what I'm saying is that these people are like so many other people who we've read, and every one of these is nothing but an apologist for a religious faith system.

What they do is they select what evidence they want to look at. Who is selecting here, Mr. Lynch? I'd really like to know who is selecting.

That's what I'd like to ask. Each one of these new ideologists come up with an explanation for the

New Testament. Archaeology comes along, and it's a relatively new science. It comes along and just shoots holes in each one of them.

That's right, because the archaeologists examine actual documents, actual physical evidence that you can hold in your hand, not just a bunch of belief systems and a bunch of philosophical claptrap.

I'm not talking about belief systems. Yes, you are. I'm talking about the same documents that you are talking about. And if you look at them in true textual criticism, in the light of true textual criticism, the evidence falls far in the favor of those who are on the side of Christianity and the existence of Jesus Christ.

No, it doesn't. I'm sorry, the actual physical evidence that you can actually pick up and hold in your hands refutes

Christianity vehemently. That is completely and totally false. The only thing that supports Christianity is a faith, and that is faith in nothing.

For example, Luke mentions 54 cities, 3 islands, and a number of rulers, and never misses so much as one thing wrong.

Oh, come on. These are cities we can go to, we can find them. This is like Gone with the Wind mentioning Atlanta and getting

Charleston, South Carolina. Give me facts, Mr. Lynch. This is a fact. If you read the book

Gone with the Wind, you will find the names of actual cities, actual states, actual counties.

And I suppose that on the basis of your acceptance of the Bible, your criteria for accepting things, we would have to assume that Gone with the

Wind is an absolutely true story. There's a truly wonderful example of logical absurdity.

No, no, it's not absurdity. You're the one who's being absurd because what you're saying is that you read something in a book.

Mr. Lynch. Will you shut up? What you're telling me is that you read something in a book and you are going to accept it simply because you read it.

And I am saying that before you can accept it, you've got to actually have something that demonstrates that the book should be taken seriously in the first place.

Right, Steve. You're exactly right. What Mr. Lynch said was that actual archaeological evidence completely and totally refutes

Christianity. I respond by pointing out that that is completely false and he had to go into Gone with the Wind. That's, again, what you have when you get into a discussion of the historical evidence of Christianity.

I have brought up many scholars. There is no reason whatsoever to doubt their... Ignore one or two.

And not only that, but I'm talking about people who are not... not all these people are Christians. They are not apologists of the faith.

I would say to someone, go to the archaeological books. Go to them yourself. Ignore me and Mr. Lynch. Go to them yourself and you'll find that Mr.

Lynch does not know what he's talking about in reference to this. I'm sorry. I have to refute that and say that I do know what I'm talking about and we have the books...

With facts. ...right here at the ASEAN Center. With facts. Yeah, we do have the facts. We do have the facts.

Okay, let's sit down. We have the facts in the Atheist Center. I don't have them with me because I don't bring all my religious stuff to...

on vacations and on trips. Okay, Steve, I think you can see where we're coming from here.

I keep referencing... Oh, I know where we're coming from, Mr. Lynch. Okay, what we're talking about here is atheism. And let me tell you a couple of things.

What we see in this country is we see that religion... Right. ...religion is being used in this country the same way it has been used in every culture in the history of humanity.

It is being used to deprive people of rights. It is being used to teach people to accept a bunch of garbage so that they can be ruled easily.

It is teaching people to accept sick and irrational ideas. We are using artifacts like Bibles and other written fables that are supposed to justify this faith and which are bandied about as some kind of great historical truth despite the fact that the actual physical evidence refutes it.

And the only thing we have are the assertions of religious people, and that is not evidence.

Steve, I would again say that I have brought up the evidence. He's failed to refute it. And in reference to what he just said...

In reference to what he just said concerning religion being used to help rule people,

I'd like to point out to you that the country that has a lot of trouble ruling its people and knocks off millions of them a year called the

Soviet Union is the one who is the great backer of atheism and a very great proponent of that.

And I think anyone who looks at it, I'd like to ask you, how many atheist hospitals for blind children are there, sir?

How many atheist hospitals in Africa, sir? How many worldwide hunger things do you do?

I'm glad you're bringing this up because every religious hospital we have ever looked at is financed with tax money.

Oh really? Oh yes. They're all started with tax money too, right? Any money that is used to treat these patients comes through government aid programs, and it comes through the welfare agencies, it comes through the health and human service agencies, and it's a fair statement to say that all the so -called religious hospitals are not self -supporting, they are run as profit -making businesses, and they are run for the churches.

And if you look at the church exemptions that are taken, they are all taken in the religion category because the religions don't want to have to pay their fair share of taxes even though they consume all the services provided by government, and they are using their hospitals, they are using their daycare centers as cash sources.

This has been proven over and over and over again. We have a six -inch stack in the

Atheist Center of computer printouts listing all the property in Austin, Texas, in Travis County that's owned by churches, and all the businesses that receive state money from the state of Texas.

And every one of these church hospitals, church daycare centers, church whatever you want to call them, church old -age homes, are profit -making businesses that claim exemption from taxes under religion, and they are nothing but holes that our tax money is going into.

Now notice, Steve, that there is no answer to the question because the answer is, the attack was, we must attack the way that it is run.

And I'd like to point out that I have a little thing here. From the American Atheist Press, it is the publications list, and on the back it says, non -profit organization,

U .S. postage paid. Now someone else is taking advantage of the non -profit status, and all donations are tax -deductible.

Hold on, it's okay there, but it's not okay when we do it. Let me explain the difference. We are a non -profit educational organization under 5013C.

Churches are non -profit religious organizations under the same thing. The difference is that we pay...

Christian -educating organizations in this world, he'd be the first to do it. Let me explain how the

IRS does this. Hang on here, because Steve... We pay property taxes, we pay ad valorem taxes, churches pay none of these.

Alright, Steve, we've got to run, I've got to let you go. We're going to continue on the other side with more calls and more opinions at 258 -5394.

Brian? Yeah, we've been talking an awful lot about the historical evidence for Jesus. And before we go,

I'd just like to mention that Madeline O 'Hare will have a book out next spring called, Jesus Christ Super Fraud, which will be available to the public.

This is a book that she has had to completely rewrite because it was lost on some computer disks that were unfortunately erased.

So she spent the last year going back through her notes and rewriting this book, which we hope to have out actually two years ago.

I'd also like to say that one thing we seem to be missing here in a lot of the calls that we're getting is that we're focusing on areas that are really peripheral to atheism.

The origin of life is not a serious, burning, everyday question that an atheist must answer.

And therefore, it is not the substance of American atheism.

Basically, as we see it, religion promotes dependency and it promotes the idea that people cannot make it through life on their own.

The atheist position is that yes, you can make it through life on your own. You don't need someone telling you how to get through your life.

The sum total of human experience has been that people can make it through life. And we don't need to throw on a lot of philosophical stuff.

We don't need to believe in spirits. We don't need to imagine some external world that we can all escape into when we die.

And in fact, I would maintain that these things are the elements that you find in sick societies.

I think one of the reasons why we have so many people trying to escape reality on drugs is that there is this subliminal message in our culture that says, escape reality, believe in religion.

And I think that it's pretty clear that the drug experiences are often very similar to religious experiences.

And I would cite as evidence the experiences that Timothy Leary has related to us when he was doing

LSD experiments in Harvard. He was originally doing work for the

CIA and the National Security Agency. And in his experiments with LSD, he published a paper in the early 60s where he said, well, it looks like drug experiences and religious imagery are very similar.

Therefore, it is possible that drug -induced psychosis is very similar to a religious experience and perhaps the two have something to do with one another.

And this is when he suddenly started to become attacked. And I would maintain that religion is essentially a drug, although it's a self -induced drug treatment.

It's a psychologically unhealthy mental state. It's a mental state that is of no positive use to the individual.

And therefore, it should not be encouraged in the culture. Let me respond to that.

First of all, you've made the same errors that your predecessor Karl Marx made because he said the exact same things you did.

Karl Marx is not my predecessor, incidentally. Well, and what you just said is exactly what he said. And so I would say you're making the same mistakes he did.

I would respond by saying that Christianity, religion, is not the sign of a sick mind.

I believe that a man must actually work on suppressing his natural understanding that this world that we live in is not just simply the happenstance of chance.

Mankind intuitively knows that. Yes, it's true that atheists do not like to talk a lot about the origin of life and things like that because it's something that atheism has no answer for.

It must go along. Religion has no answer either. It must go along. And the atheists are going along. I did not interrupt you, sir.

No, but you're trying to slander me. You talk for a long time about something, and I want to respond. Thank you.

Well, you're responding wrong, and you're trying to put words into my mouth. Religion does not create a sick mind. It is not simple dependency.

It is recognition of authority, which is, of course, something our society is losing track of a lot these days.

And I would just respond by saying that if how you see religion,

Mr. Lynch, is simply a system, simply morals, simply codes, then you know nothing of the

Christian faith. You know a lot about externals, but you know nothing about a Christian faith. Well, everything you've said has only confirmed what

I said, that religion is authoritarianism, that religion is a set of strictures that have to be imposed on people, and you have also said that religion is an escape from reality.

No, you just said that in your last statement. Did I say that? Can we run the tape back there?

You said that you had a problem with living in the natural world and accepting it as it is.

Therefore, you had to escape into religion. I never said anything like that. There is not just a natural world.

Well, that's okay. Let the people judge. They can hear what you're saying. It's exactly like what you said at the beginning of the program when you talked about how

I supposedly got on this program. It's just false, and the people know that. All right, we're going to take a break. We're going to come back with Brian Lynch and Jim Whiter.

Kelly is a first -time caller from Phoenix. Hello, Kelly. Hi. I just have one question and a comment.

Go ahead. Both directed towards Bob. No, you're Brian Lynch. Go ahead.

Yes, I'm sorry. I feel that he, if he would like to persuade people into his beliefs or non -beliefs, as he thinks,

I think he needs to show a little bit more respect towards people. Some of his comments have been, I think, rather hateful and disrespectful toward them.

And also, just like him, too, what does he think is going to happen to him after he dies?

Okay, the first part of your question I'll respond to in just a second. Nothing happens to you after you're dead.

That's it. Life is over. And as far as the issue of respect and all that,

I'm not attempting, really, to persuade people to become atheists. I think that every atheist I know has thought this through on their own and has reached their position on their own.

And I think that they are fed up with the kind of slander that's directed to them by the religious community. In my personal opinion,

I don't think the religious community deserves the respect that they've often received in the past. I think that this is a spurious kind of respect.

And the idea that we have to respect ideas that are inherently insane or useless is really ridiculous.

Quickly, Tom, I'd just like to point out that there is a big difference between the way that I would approach

Mr. Lynch and the way that Mr. Lynch has approached me. I have a reason outside of myself as well as inside myself to respect him and to treat him and not to lie about him.

I would just ask the audience, does atheism provide a reason for him to treat me with respect?