>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Welcome to the Cross examiner podcast, the Internet’s courtroom in the case of rationality versus religion. Here, our host uses his experience as both an attorney and an atheist to put religion on trial. We solemnly swear that it is the most informative, educational, and entertaining jury duty you will ever do. And now it’s time for the cross examiner. Welcome, welcome welcome to the Cross examiner podcast. I am your host, the cross examiner. I am an attorney, I am an atheist, and I am alarmed. I’m alarmed by the massive amount of misinformation that is powering the rise of christian nationalism in the United States. Today, I’ve got a special treat. Some, of you may be familiar with my guest today. Today known as godless engineer. I met him due to my work on the atheist experience. I host the, atheist experience and other shows for the ACA, and I found him to be an absolute delight to speak with. And, we decided to get together and have a conversation today to get to know him and to discuss sort of topics that are of interest to him. I hope you’ll find him as interesting and enlightening as I do. So, without any further ado, here is the first part of my interview with godless engineer. So welcome, godless engineer. Thanks so much for joining us, aka John. How are you doing today?

>> Godless Engineer/John: I’m doing pretty good. You know, it’s a Saturday, so there’s been no work, so, you know, I don’t have that stress. But, you know, just been playing video games. That’s usually how I relax.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: What are you playing these days right now?

>> Godless Engineer/John: Destiny. my wife. we play that a good bit, and then I’ve been trying to play through elden ring. I’ve had it since it came out, but it’s one of those games where it’s like you’ve really got to be dedicated to playing it.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Yeah, a friend actually gifted it to me when it first came out, and it has also sat on the shelf while I have played other things. So I feel you very much there. well, I wanted to introduce you to my audience specifically because I think they’d be fascinating to know what you’re doing on your channel and know your background. so first of all, I guess we should say, where can people find you?

>> Godless Engineer/John: well, they can find me normally on, YouTube, just godless engineer. I believe it’s just YouTube.com godless engineer. I actually had it for so long that it was back before they started doing the different kinds of URL’s for different channels. yeah. So it’s just godless engineer here. I’ve also got a fairly substantial, I guess, Facebook page. and it’s just got, you go there by godless engineering is how it is on Facebook. and I think I’ve got like, 100, I think 140,000 people that still like the page there. It’s up there, yeah. and so, you know, I post there. Usually, I try to post there at least once a day. I’m kind of, I’ve been slapped on the wrist, I think, three times in the past year. And so they’re like, we’re restricting your account, like, organically for a while. And so I think that I just have to wait for some of those violations, I guess you could say, to fall off before they’ll allow me to really get, anywhere. Because I used to post and, you know, stuff would, would get, really popular kind of quick, but now it kind of gets stuck in a hole unless it’s, like, incredibly popular.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: So, that’s the infamous, Facebook jail.

>> Godless Engineer/John: Yeah. Yeah. And it’s like, it literally is a shadow ban right now because, like, if I look at my account, it says everything’s fine. But then, like, if you get to a certain page, it’s like, well, you’ve had too many violations, so we’re restricting your organic reach. And it’s like, oh, thanks.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Right.

>> Godless Engineer/John: but, anyways, ah, so that’s, those two places are normally where you can find me. I’m also on tick tock, but, you know, that’s either going away or something like this year. I don’t know what the status of that is, but, there’s that. and then, I’m on. I mainly, have been posting on threads, which I’m just godless engineer over there. Oh, Instagram. Just all the social media is like, I’m just godless engineer.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Well, you’re everywhere. And, I could probably take a few notes from you on how to expand the reach of your message, but I got to know you by seeing, you appear on, programs for the atheist community of Austin. So, talk even, and atheist experience and all of that sort of stuff. So you can also find John over there as he hosts as the godless engineer. But I guess we should also answer the question of now that people know where to find you, why should they find you? So what is your presence all about? What are you advocating for?

>> Godless Engineer/John: well, mostly I do content, that’s centered around either atheism, or, like politics as far as like ah, religion, in society, religion and politics and everything like that goes. And then also science, where science kind of intersects with religion. and so like content in the science realm would be you know, a lot of like origins of the earth kind of thing like what we’re, you know, where did earth come from? evolution or in human origins and all that. I also really like to discuss history, as far as like christian origins goes. like history of Christianity, historical reliability of like the gospels and just the Bible in general. I’m pretty involved in talking about that. but I mean, over on my channel I mostly stick to things that I really know, pretty well. And I would say that that includes, you know, talking about, I guess, atheism, and whether or not God exists. And then also the historical reliability of Christianity. And those are my two main topics. But I also don’t shy away from any of the scientific topics or the political topics.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Right, right. Yeah. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to introduce you to everybody in my audience, that you, you’re you cover a lot of ground, but you also cover things that my audience tends to be interested in, which is christian, the intersection of religion and government in the United States specifically. So the rise of christian nationalism. But you also have this expertise of having done some deep dives into the science aspect where my expertise is lacking in that area. Like I know the basics of physics and cosmology and all that stuff. But I remember just this week, I think it was the atheist experience, if I recall correctly. And you got a call from somebody making a argument from complexity regarding DNA, and you took them to school, even though they were a chemist. You had the numbers and facts and figures at your fingertips and it blew me away. So I highly recommend people go take a look at that because there is a, ah, brand of apologetics in Christianity where people will throw facts and figures at you. It’s not quite a gish gallop, it’s more of a I know more than you type of thing from a science perspective. And you seem very well armed to push back against that. Did I remember that call correctly?

>> Godless Engineer/John: Oh, yeah. I mean, it was basically an argument from like big or small numbers. And they typically will just only focus on the big or small number without actually taking into account like the, the field of statistics or mathematics or anything of that nature. And that’s typically what you find with a lot of creationists is that they’ll, only give you half of the equation. I guess, they’ll only reveal to you what they want you to know. That seems to support their conclusion. And once, you actually take in the entire context, which is, I guess, typical of most apologetics. Once you’ve taken the entire context of whatever you’re talking about, you realize how flawed their arguments are.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Gotcha. Gotcha. I remember in the call, I was, sort of shouting at the screen, about answers, and you were giving them the same information right away, like, it seems fairly obvious once you are exposed to those arguments. For example, hey, how did life come about? You’ve got this primordial soup of the ocean. What are the odds that, we would get a strand of rna or just a molecule that could self replicate? And I’m sitting here thinking in my head, what’s your denominator? Like, how many times do molecules or atoms bump into one another in that over every second? And then you were sort of talking about the exact same thing. So I was glad to hear you sort of take him to task. And the result of that was, he admitted, oh, I need to go away and think about this. Like, you just gave me, actually, information. He couldn’t cite any numbers. He just came in and just said, well, everything’s really big. Like you said, the argument from big numbers. So I was really impressed with that. Thank you for demonstrating how to handle that situation.

>> Godless Engineer/John: yeah, m I’m glad. normally, whenever I talk about very, I guess, mathematic, mathematically heavy, or scientifically heavy sort of topics, I usually make a mistake or two. So I was totally expecting the chat to read me over one thing that I got wrong or I said wrong. but I mean, that’s pretty much, I guess, sort of the. The name of the game, you know, for, anybody that does any kind of content, like on YouTube, specifically in the realm of science and all that, you get people that nitpick one thing or another, instead of looking at, like, you know, the. The main picture or the. The main argument that you’re trying to make, and they. They’re just like, well, let me nitpick here and there. I was expecting that. So I’m glad that I didn’t exactly, you know, allow that to happen. Maybe there’s people in the comments that are correcting me on something.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: I don’t know. I didn’t go back and, look, that’s a good idea. That’s a good idea, but let’s, let’s talk about that. That’s an interesting observation because it’s something that I felt as well, and it’s somewhat unique to this particular subject matter, sort of debating or having dialogue with people who oppose your views on a particular proposition here. The proposition is that a God exists, but also it’s live television, so to speak. Right. You’re, you are live streaming a conversation where you’re, making these assertions and trying to defend your position. And you and I have both had that experience of you’re on the phone with somebody who, and they are, they’re making these claims. And in order to push back, you have to sort of dig deep into the brain and try to remember some biology, try to remember some chemistry, try to remember some physics and say, and then, and then you are so careful that you don’t want to come out and give the other side ammunition by being obviously wrong, that I will, at least for me, I will couch it in, well, I seem to recall x. Correct me if I’m wrong, but why? Just so that if you don’t remember the exact number or the exact experiment or whatever it may be, the, callers or the theists on the other side won’t, like, do a victory lap and say, see these idiotic atheists, you sort of feel, I sort of feel the pressure of representing a side of the argument, so to speak. Do you have that, that sensation?

>> Godless Engineer/John: Yeah, but I, I guess I kind of use that to my own maybe sarcastic me, ends, I guess, because in that, in the call that you’re talking about, on the atheist experience, I actually, I was like, hey, let’s just do a quick search real quick. And I slowly, like, read out, like Google search that I was doing to get the numbers for.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: I remember that.

>> Godless Engineer/John: How many planets, you know, are in not only the, just the Milky Way galaxy, but in the universe in general, and then compare that to these numbers that he’s throwing out. And, you know, it’s just, I like using that for, I guess maybe a comedic effect, because it’s like, it’s easy to just say, you could just google this, you know, and I obviously don’t have this knowledge just like, you know, banked in my head to be able to pull out whenever I need it, because I have Google or, you know, I have the ability to just quickly look up things so I don’t need to, like, waste space, you know, in, you know, things that I keep at the forefront of my mind, right. I could just google it. So it’s easy to say, oh, just go and google it. But it’s funnier if I’m like, here, I’ll do it for you. Let me google that.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: I was. It was. I mean, I, that moment was like chef’s kiss. Perfect. Because he’s sitting here for a decent amount of time. I don’t want to exaggerate, but it was on screen time. Screen always makes things feel longer. But it was a long amount of time of him making abstract arguments, and you had to back him into a corner to say, okay, so what is your denominator or what numbers are we dealing with? Because you’re talking about statistics and probability. You need to know a numerator and denominator. So he didn’t know. So you literally were like, let’s google it together. How? And you read out the query how many planets are in the galaxy? And then you did the math and gave him a number, and there was like dead air for like 3 seconds while he was like, he didn’t know what to do with that. Like, it had never crossed his mind that instead of getting on the air and arguing that, well, it’s just a really big number, so the odds are really crazily big that one could actually attempt to do the math. Of course, there’s a lot of estimating, but you could at least attempt, and I think you demonstrated that to him, and he sort of had to go away and say, well, I’ll come back later, which is, I mean, I respect that. That’s a good answer. He didn’t try to bluff, but it was, it was a very good demonstration for the caller and for the listeners of, hey, it took me 10 seconds to come up with this. You could have done that before you even called us.

>> Godless Engineer/John: Right? Yeah. And, it amazes me that, so many people, especially somebody who claims to be like a, ah, chemical engineer, is what he said that he was. It’s just amazing to me that somebody that would go through the, the rigorous, you know, work of becoming an engineer of any kind. But whenever he comes across these arguments, he doesn’t think, oh, well, how likely actually is it? Like, think about it in a more statistical kind of mindset, because even for my computer engineering degree, which I’ve got two degrees, I’ve got, which you can, you can’t really see over back my head, but I’ve got my degree up there, but I’ve got a computer engineering degree. And a software engineering degree for my computer engineering degree. that’s the bachelor’s, that I have. And you have to take statistics. Like, that’s one of the things, at least, that I took. Maybe. Maybe that was, more of a math elective. Not everybody had to take it, but, I mean, at least in my engineering experience, like, statistics is an important part of, like, just engineering in general. So you would think that somebody would. Would think to do that. But, sometimes people need to be reminded, and just showing how easily it is done, I think, is a really good demonstration of what people should be doing before they think that they have, like, a gotcha. You know, it’s like, okay, well, let me. Let me think out how would they respond to this? And, I think that more apologists need to start doing that.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: I agree. I agree. And it speaks to something I’ve wondered about a long time, for a long time. And it goes to evolution, it goes to abiogenesis. It goes to, fine tuning arguments. It goes to a lot of things. And that is, people will come at this with just the end number. Like you said, it’s an argument from large numbers. But the underlying, I think, interesting point that I see in the theistic, or, not skeptical audience is that they seem to have missed the part of math where a whole bunch of little things can add up to a big thing. And that’s sort of this. This permeating theme. And I haven’t really been able to wrap my head around it and vocalize it in a. In a concrete manner to sort of identify the issue. But when you look at their objection to evolution, they are. They’re all willing to say, yeah, well, things change all the time. Yeah, yeah. The allele frequency in a population will change, but not to the point of creating a whole new species. Like, they can’t imagine that a tiny little change every generation, over a million generations, would add up to a big number. Or that in this case, where we’re talking about, abiogenesis or evolution or the origins of life, we’re talking about, what are the odds that this molecule would self form? Well, we, you know, if there’s a ten to the 70th, interactions, and the odds of it are ten to the 69th, it’s not going to happen. Well, that’s still a really big number that you’re left over with. Even though they’re both big numbers, the space you have for it to happen is a large number. And I think there’s a general. There’s a book called enumeracy that talks about this, about there’s a lack of sort of math skills in the population of the world. And I’m wondering if, that plays into the types of calls you got. But to your point, he was a. Claimed to be a chemical engineer. All they do all day long is math. So, I don’t know where that leaves us with him.

>> Godless Engineer/John: Well, yeah, and the thing with evolution, and them not understanding how small changes over a long period of time can add up to big changes, like morphological changes. I think that a lot of them have this concept of evolution as either sort of pokemon evolution, or they. They think of literally one species giving birth to a totally morphologically different species. Yeah.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: If we descended from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?

>> Godless Engineer/John: Right, right. Yeah, yeah. They can’t. It seems like they can’t grasp, grasp, like, small changes in organisms where they’re not so different, you know, from the predecessors. But then on down the line, they become so different that, like, they wouldn’t be able to interbreed. Like, ring species is a good example that, like, they. They. They can’t understand how that is an example of evolution. But the fact that you can take one species, put it in different environments, and then they adapt to those environments, and once they adapt for long enough, they get, to a point where they can’t breed. Like, both populations wouldn’t be able to breed with each other, but they can breed between, you know, you know, the steps that they go through right within their own populations. And so, like, they just. They can’t.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: For the listeners who may not know a ring species, typically the way I envision it is you imagine a very large lake, and you’ve got species a at 09:00 and then you’ve got different species around the lake in a clock pattern. And any given species can interact with and reproduce with the species that are adjacent to it on the lake. But if you move far enough away, for example, across the opposite side of the lake, those species can’t reproduce. And we find that today. And the only explanation that anybody’s ever posited that actually explains it and makes predictions about it that are accurate is evolution.

>> Godless Engineer/John: Yeah. And, another important thing for anybody that’s really concerned with having these kinds of conversations with, anybody, typically they expect, organisms to break what’s called the law of monophyll. And that’s, basically, you can organize organisms into these different clades that are pretty much morphologically descriptive, like, of a group of organisms. And, you know, you’re talking about, like, canines, are part of a clade. And whenever we talk about evolution, we’re not talking about like, a canine clade branching off into the feline, right? That’s what, creationists, expect. But anytime an organism evolves, still going to be part of the clade. So no matter what dogs change into in the future, they’re still going to be part of the canine clade. There will probably be other clades that we could probably, that we could organize them around in the future, but they’re still all going to be part of that one clade. And that’s one thing that creationists don’t understand either, is the fact that the law of monophile II prevents a lot of their arguments from being, I guess, reasonable.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Yeah, I’m going to, when I edit this right now, I’m going to put up a picture of Kirk Cameron’s crocoduck to demonstrate what they think can happen. And so for people who are listening, Kirk Cameron of eighties tv fame partnered up with Roy Comfort, who was an australian Christian, apologist who runs a program called the way of the Master. And they went on a tour talking about how horrible, scientists, and atheists are and how great Christianity is. And they got into a series of debates. And what they kept repeating over and over again was, if evolution is true, where is the crocoduck? And he would literally hold up a poster that had a picture that was, obviously photographed, photoshopped, half crocodile, half duck.

>> Ray Comfort: Now, what I’m about to show you does not exist. These were actually created by our graphic artists. But I, want you to keep your eye out for this, because this is what evolutionists have been searching for for hundreds of years. All right? And if you find one of these, you could become rich and famous. So here’s some transitional forms. This is called the crocoduck. Can you see this?

>> Ray Comfort: Crocodile and a duck. All, Right, let’s try another one. This is the bullfrog. Half bull, half frog, or of course, the sheepdog.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: And the famous video of him doing that had the audience just laughing at him because the audience knew enough to know, well, that’s ridiculous. Nobody’s claiming that that should happen. And evolution doesn’t predict that will happen. But here he was making money, and to this day, it still makes a lot of money off of christians who follow him, makes movies. him saving Christmas was the last one he made, putting, this stuff out there and to the point of why you do what you do and why I do what I do. They still say stuff like that. They’ve been corrected on it. Roy comfort has been corrected on evolution a hundred times on air. We have evidence of it. And yet he still will repeat the same misleading or false information. Which leads one to ask, are you, are you lying or just incompetent? And, but yeah, when you, when you start talking about that, my, the crocoduck just sprang to mind immediately.

>> Godless Engineer/John: Yeah. you know, I’m actually a featured antagonist on one of Ray comfort’s quote unquote, movies.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Oh, really?

>> Godless Engineer/John: yeah. yeah. If anybody really wants to see it, it’s it’s on the living Waters channel on YouTube. And it’s called the amazing agent atheist. And basically, yeah, he, he pits me against another atheist that he interviewed. And like, I’m the horrible atheist, the other guy’s the good atheist. And like, the interview that I had with Ray comfort, I’ve actually got a couple of analysis videos on my channel, kind, of describing how he changed things a little bit in the interview to make me look worse. And but in our interview was fine. Like, I was, I was perfectly like, respectful to him and everything. Like, I wasn’t mean, to him or anything like that. But I think the problem was, was that after he interviewed me, he went and he looked at my channel and I had done a video, responding to like one of his, it was like, what was it? He had like a booklet that he was putting out there and I, or something. And so I was criticizing it and then I panted mimed, what I, how I characterize like prayer, and worshiping Jesus as, fellating Jesus. And so I pantomimed fellating Jesus. And apparently that, that just nearly made him vomit. And so, like, I’m pretty honored that I almost made him vomit. Vomit. But at the same time, I just, I find that it’s really weird that he would demonize me for, you know, the interview that I gave him just because I have other content that I wasn’t doing to him.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Right.

>> Godless Engineer/John: you know, exactly like not to his face or anything.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Right.

>> Godless Engineer/John: But I was doing it for my audience because I cultivated a certain kind of audience and. Right. M. I mean, that’s just how my mind works. I mean, I don’t know. I don’t know what else to say about it.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: well, I mean, I had no idea that you had that interaction with ray comfort. When I brought him up, it just sort of naturally came up. So now I have to go. Go watch that if I can stomach. Ray comfort. again, I haven’t had to deal with him in about ten years, so, he’s still out doing his thing. I have, I see him pop up every once in a while. So that’s a great segue into why you do what you do. Right. We’ve got people out there like Ray comfort, and others who are better at it out there arguing, not only that there is a God, but that the God is a christian God, like the yahweh God, and that Jesus is the way to salvation. And then finally the latest step over the last ten years has been, and we need to change the United States into a christian nation. That’s sort of where we’ve ended up. Now, I don’t know about you, but that’s sort of what inspires me to do what I’m doing. is, is that a concern of yours? The rise of christian nationalism? Is that something you address on your channel?

>> Godless Engineer/John: Oh yeah. I mean, so on my channel, typically every week I do a live stream on Fridays. I’ve actually had to shift that, when we’re recording this, I’m actually going to be doing one tonight, of this recording. but typically what I’ll have is like a sort of a news segment that I kind of do at the very beginning of that where I highlight like christian nationalist news or anything along those lines. I’ve even had like little segments where I highlight somebody who’s like, you know, influencing politicians. He’s not in the limelight himself necessarily, but he, like him and his ideas are influencing people, that are like in the national I guess discussion over this, and so, you know, I’ll highlight those things. I’ve done several videos where I respond to people that are just blatantly lying about like the founding of our country and well, the United States, of America. And so yeah, it’s definitely a concern of mine, and I’ve been concerned about it, ever since I started doing like the godless engineer thing, which has been about twelve years now.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Wow.

>> Godless Engineer/John: I believe, yeah. and so, it’s a pretty big concern. but I guess my concerns initially came about because like I grew up and I had never encountered like somebody that didn’t believe, and it was always portrayed to me that if you don’t believe in a God, then you’re evil or bad or that’s just a bad thing to be. Right. And so I’ve always tried to, I guess, be sort of like a beacon in the fog or, you know, something like that, for people that are either doubting or have never thought to doubt what they believe. And so I’ve, I’ve always tried to make sure that I craft, like, either memes or videos so that I can teach my audience in a way that they’ll remember, like, you know, teach them about good arguments against God’s existence, trying to use, my own kind of brand of humor and everything like that, because I know I find it easy to remember things whenever it, you know, entertains me. And so I try to do that for people. I try to find interesting videos, where I can cover a certain topic and I present my own, like, arguments against them or try to present reasons why they are wrong about things, but, you know, with my own kind of comedic flavor. And, you know, that’s kind of where I’ve really focused, is just trying to, you know, add my voice to the plethora of voices out there that are having this discussion, about God and religion and all of that. And I guess sort of, attacking that first. And, I mean, that’s where I started off at. And then once 2015, 2016 rolled around and we started seeing more and more and more and more christian nationalism creep in, that became more of a focus, at least than it was before, because now we have politicians that are saying the things that, you know, these crazy apologists were saying just like five years prior to that. And so now you have people that are just full blown. They’re advocating for theocracies, and, you know, they want to force, people to be a christian. They want to force other religions out of the country. They want to force women, ah, to stay in the kitchen. They want to force people, to adhere to their own particular status quo. And, they’re using religion in order to do that. And a, lot of times they’re, they’re abusing people’s religious sensibilities in order to convince them that they should also want these things. And so that’s why I try to do content, where I point out, you know, christian nationalists that are saying crazy, wacky things, it’s to raise awareness that these are things that are being said and that, and I typically try to provide good counterarguments or good counter, information that shows why they’re wrong about these things. Like, for tonight’s show, there’s this guy that’s actually drawing an analogy between how the constitution was written and the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus. Like, apparently those things are analogous to each other. And so now I’m rolling my eyes.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Trying to think, okay, so is, is the war that we fought to win the constitution? Is that the passion? I’ll be eager to hear what you cover because that’s kind of out there. You’re right.

>> Godless Engineer/John: Yeah. well apparently the passion part happened prior to the writing of the constitution.

>> Godless Engineer/John: So that I guess that would be the revolutionary war and writing like that leading up to 1787. and then he portrays the writing of the constitution as happening in three days, which is similar to Jesus’s three days in the tomb that apparently they’re getting.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Okay.

>> Godless Engineer/John: Yeah, they locked themselves in, ah, what he calls a tomb for three days and then came out on the other side with the constitution totally not informing the audience that oh well, there was three months of like debating, right, and crafting of, I believe it was 23 articles. And then this period of time he’s talking about is when they whittled it down from 23 to seven. And that was in a time span of less than four days. But then when you consider Jesus wasn’t even in the tomb, like you know, supposedly in the gospels for like a little more than a day and a half. So like none of it makes sense.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: I know there was a, you probably familiar with it. There was a channel years ago, he’s still doing, he’s changed his format called Mister Deity. and he would do these shorts where he would have three people be him playing God and Jesse, who was Jesus? And I forget the name of who was the holy spirit. But there were, there’s one episode where they’re talking to Jesus about how he needs to go down and get crucified. And Jesus is really not into this. He’s like, no, no, no. And he’s like, yeah, but three days dead, he’s like, you know, go in on a Friday night, we’ll get you out Sunday morning. It’s a quick, I don’t know, 26 hours. That’s exactly what happened. So, oh that’s great. I we laugh about it, but I’m glad you’re covering it because ten years ago or more, if somebody like that had gotten up on a stage and gave a speech like that, it would have been a big fat. So what are you, are you like, what’s your point? And who the hell is going to listen to this? And now I realize how naive I was back then because I know that people will listen to it. They will sit there and listen they will nod their head and go, oh, my gosh. The parallels are stunning. The only explanation is that this is a God inspired country, because look at the numbers. They’re all the same numbers that this guy came up with. So, thank you for covering it. Sometimes I do those episodes, and I sort of sell it as I watched this, so you don’t have to.

>> Godless Engineer/John: Yeah. And, I mean, the. The christian nationalist narrative is, rapidly changing, and it’s. It’s rapidly, I, would say, evolving into, like, more and more crazy things because, like, another. Another story that I read, the other day was, a liberty university guy who was quoting, Jerry Falwell, like, the senior, and basically saying how the separation of church and state is alive from the devil to prevent christians from inserting their christian doctrines into law. And that was said back in the seventies or the eighties. And so, it’s crazy how we’ve gotten to this point where the crazy things that people didn’t really put a lot of stock in before, they’re now coming back around and it’s like, oh, okay, well, yeah, it’s a lie from the devil, because you have so many politicians now that, that claim that the separation of church and state just isn’t in the first Amendment.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Correct.

>> Godless Engineer/John: Clearly is. And, so this kind of thing has been years and years in the making.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Yeah, yeah. So my background is, I’m an attorney. For those of you who may be viewing this elsewhere, that’s. That’s my background and my distinct memory of the first time I heard that argument that, oh, the constitution doesn’t contain the phrase separation of church and state, which then gets mutated into, there is no separation of church and state in the constitution. Was Michelle Bachmann back when this was like, 2012 or something like that, when she’s in the mix for being candidate for vp or president or something like that. And she was speaking in front of a group of students that were law students. She was at a law school, and she then said, separation of church and state isn’t in the constitution. And the entire class just laughed at her. And she had this embarrassed look on her face like, whoa, did I say something funny? She had obviously just been told this as if it means anything, because this is something that I observe all the time on my channel, is the way that a lot of christian nationalists will get by with what they say or justify what they say is they will tell you something that is true and then leave a whole bunch of information out. It is true. The phrase separation of church and state does not exist in the constitution at all. She’s absolutely right. But neither does the phrase fair trial, things right to privacy, and all of these other rights that we all agree are enumerated in the Constitution, even though they don’t use these shorthand phrases, they exist in the constitution. I don’t think she understood that. I think she literally thought that it was a brilliant point to point out that the words separation of church and state don’t exist in the constitution, and then she got laughed at. Unfortunately, she’s a better politician than we are, because she realizes her job is not to convince those law students. It’s not to convince me or you. It’s to win a few people who might have been in the middle and really never paid attention in school and kind of go to church, and they know about God, and God is good, and Jesus is good. That’s what I’ve been told. And, oh, wow. There’s no separation of the church and state. I heard this thing that Jerry Falwell told me the other day that somebody said about what you just said, that. That it’s a lie as well. I guess it’s just a liberal lie, and that’s how it works. They have no problem putting half truths out there, because they know that if you repeat it long enough, the middle one or 2% of the country that could lean either way might lean to their side, and that’s all they need to take over the country.

>> Godless Engineer/John: Yeah, they’re. They’re definitely not trying to convince more educated people, because they. More educated people are going to understand how wrong they are. So they’re definitely speaking to somebody that is not educated, at least in the area that they’re trying to swing them. and I guess in this case, it would be education and, like, us history or us law.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Yeah. Yeah. Well, let’s talk about education and background for a bit. we know what you do and where your interests are, but where did it come from? So, if you’re comfortable, do you mind, explaining to my listeners what your journey was? Were you. Were you raised in a religious household? How did you come to realize that you would use the word atheist to describe yourself?

>> Godless Engineer/John: Yeah, I mean, that’s a. That’s a good question. so I grew up. Yeah. so, I grew up catholic, a very catholic family. My mom would later leave, catholicism for a different denomination, but my. My dad’s family remained catholic, and, so I grew. I grew up catholic, and it was just kind of, like, automatically assumed, like, God exists, Jesus is a son. I went to catholic school until about the fourth grade, fifth grade, I started going to public school. and so I wasn’t like, deeply religious. I was religious, but, you know, in the sense that, like, oh, I know I’m supposed to go to church on Sundays, and we go to church on Sundays until like, you know, family dramas happened and we left the catholic church. And then it was kind of like, we go every once in a while kind of thing. So it got lax there for a little bit. And then I would go in and out of being deeply religious or trying to be deeply religious, but that was because I felt like that’s what I had to do. Like, oh, this is a point in my life where I’m just lacking this whole religiosity aspect. Like, I’ve always been told that I need to be, like, religious, I need to go to church. Like, I just thought that’s what you were supposed to do. And so, like, I, I never considered the idea of not believing, you know, and, it had always been portrayed to me as a bad thing, you know, to not be christian.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: And who portrayed that to you? Was that mostly in your family or was that sort of the, the catholic church that you were exposed to?

>> Godless Engineer/John: I mean, some, some in my family, I guess, we really didn’t talk about that particular aspect too much. It was more, I guess, the society that I grew up in because I, I live in north Alabama, you know, the asshole of the Bible bell. And around here, like, church is pretty important to, like, everybody. And so, like, portraying people as godless, godless heathens or, pagan, wicca, like those things I kind of grew up around. And people regularly look down on people that, that were part of, those other religions or not. No religion at all. And so it’s just kind of portrayed to me just in general as, you know, if you don’t believe in God, then you’re not a good person or something. And so I just kind of believe that. And so for the longest time, you know, I didn’t question my beliefs. You know, I actually regularly felt pretty guilty because I wasn’t going to church more or I wasn’t, I guess, maybe dedicating my life more to God or Jesus or something like that. And so, like I said, I would bounce in and out of being deeply, deeply religious. And like one particular time I was bouncing in and out of it and I was pretty unsure. I, had a friend, who, after a church softball game, actually you know, I confided in him and he was like, well, you’re not really a Christian if you don’t believe in the Bible from COVID to cover, like, as the inherent truth of God.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Wow. And, and he was, do you know if he was Catholic or nothing?

>> Godless Engineer/John: Oh, no, he was a Baptist. I think he’s non denominational now. He actually runs like a faith healing sort of ministry out of Florida, the last time I looked him up. It’s kind of crazy stuff. but, he basically said, you’re not really a Christian if you don’t believe it. it’s the inerrant word of God from COVID to cover. And I’m like, well, then I guess I can’t be Christian because there’s no way that I can believe in everything that is in the Bible, like as inerrant word of God kind of thing. Right. Right. Then I had to figure out what I did believe. And so I spent a long time really trying to figure out what I believed, why I believed it, what my reasons were for believing in certain things. And so I spent a lot of that time either listening to, like, lectures, either from atheists or religious people, or listening to debates. And I felt like I got a lot out of debates. And I guess that’s maybe why I really like debates or like the call in shows stuff that I do, because I really get, I feel like with debates, you really get to see both sides sort of pitted against each other. As long, as long as you have two, two people that are, you know, I guess, knowledgeable in the area and can have a good debate where both I, where both sides are kind of fleshed out and you in the audience can compare which ones are more compelling to you. I feel like that can really help you make a decision. At least it helped me make a decision. I came out, of that not believing in a God. And I have to say the hardest thing for me was actually admitting that I was an atheist because it had been drilled into me for so long that, if you don’t believe in God, then you’re a bad person or you’re going to be a bad person or something like that. And so the hardest thing for me to do was admit that I no longer believed in God. And then after I was comfortable admitting that, like, it’s, I guess it was, it was, it was like my eyes were opened to, like, how much religion, you know, penetrates our society and how important it is to, like a lot of societal things because, and I don’t know if you’ve experienced this, but, for me, like, as soon as I say that I’m an atheist to somebody, like, new that I, I’m just now meeting or something like that in my local area, they go from, like, faintly, religious to, like, uber super religious, like, really quick, like, as if, like their entire, like, their entire life they’ve done nothing but, like, praise God and Jesus and all that kind of stuff. And, like, it doesn’t matter. Like, before then, you know, they were doing all this weird, crazy stuff, m you know, with me, and then it’s all of a sudden, oh, yeah, I’m an atheist. It’s like, oh, how can you be an atheist not believing God? Why are you such a bad person? Kind of thing? And, you know, they just get immediately, like, uber religious. And it. That’s a, that’s a curious reaction.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: it really is. I have not encountered it as much, but I think it’s probably because I am much more reserved around, like, people that I know I’m very open with about, but I don’t. It doesn’t tend to come up too much in, in my particular community, probably because I’m fairly old and my kids are getting grown up and I’m not meeting a lot of new people. You know, it doesn’t, you know, and I’m kind of, you know, I’m used to being, you know, sort of not political, but, you know, that polite rule of don’t bring up, you know, religion, taxes and salary and all that stuff in conversation. But I have, on occasion, had people, even my own family members once. I sort of talk about an issue. If they ask me about it, you can see them sort of questioning, like, they want to know what you like, really, because in their head, they’ve been told, just like you, that atheism equals bad. That’s all I’ve been raised to believe for the vast majority of Americans is, the word atheist is synonymous with bad. In fact, I’ve heard people call. People call me an atheist. Ah, communist, and even an atheist muslim, if you can believe it, because all three of those words are just synonyms for bad in the, let’s call it christian nationalist or MAGA crowd these days. So they just throw them out there without really thinking about what they. What they mean. And I’ve had to, had lengthy conversations with friends and family to explain the subtleties of language and what I truly believe and sort of say, well, so it’s not the label that matters. It’s what you actually are what propositions you’re making, etcetera. to the point that just yesterday I sat down to record an episode that was just an explainer episode to say, okay, I have found that as an attorney and as somebody who is interested in conversations and debates specifically about religion, you don’t get very far unless you define terms. You just don’t. And that’s the nature of human interaction. It’s the problem with human language. So let’s define terms. And I started talking, I had an outline of just some terms I wanted to explain, and I looked up and it had been two and a half hours of me talking and it’s like, it’s practically unusable. Right. I’m not going to put out a two and a half hour episode where I just talk about, you know, the mind body problem and all of these things that come up when you start talking about beliefs and, confidence levels and evidence and all of that sort of stuff. But you have to, if you really want to convince somebody that you’re not Satan, you have to say, in short, I just answer the question, do you believe in God? With I’m not convinced, and you can even add comma. Yet. I found that sort of puts people at ease. It’s almost like in the seventies when people would say, I’m not an atheist and I’m an agnostic, and people still do that today. But back then that was like the pat answer, I’m not an atheist, I’m an agnostic, when really they were an atheist. Because if you lack a belief in God, that’s kind of the definition. But if you say, I haven’t been convinced that there’s a God yet, that sort of, I’ve seen people sort of visibly relax and be like, oh, so you’re not saying that there is no God. I’m like, no, that would be a positive claim that I’d have to support with evidence and argument, and I’m not prepared to do that at this time. Like, there might be gods out there that I haven’t been proposed to me, and you might be able to give me some evidence that God might come down and just write it on my heart. But until now, nobody has convinced me that there’s a God. But I’m open to new information, and that’s a lot of words. That is a long conversation to have to put somebody at ease. And that is what the christian nationalists and the MAGA hats depend upon, that we’re not going to have those conversations, that we’re just going to hear atheist, you’re going to think bad and then you’re going to vote for the God fearing whomever is on the ballot. So I’m glad that you’re out there having those conversations as well. I, sorry you had to go through that. Growing up. How did you handle that transition you were talking about, you know, coming to accept the fact that it was okay to use the label atheist? Did you, did you go through an angry atheist phase like a lot of people do, or did you, did you transition right away into this sort of advocacy that you’re doing?

>> Godless Engineer/John: Well, I mean, I guess I did go through kind of a, ah, angry atheist kind of phase. you know, just I guess, generating like, images or memes, for shock value maybe. and even when I started doing videos, I wasn’t afraid to really put like my thoughts out there and, you know, growing up in the south and everything like that and around, especially around my family, like, you know, even though my family’s like religious, like they love to throw out curse words. And so, you know, some of my brand is, is how I just simply don’t hold back on, like using a full range, I guess, of the english vocabulary and you know, whenever, when I did become okay with you know, using the label atheist and explaining to people, you know what I mean when I say that I don’t believe in goddess. some of my family members, they took offense to it and they took offense to it because like, on Facebook, I was very open and out about it. Like I wasn’t, I’d spent my entire life being shy, you know, of putting my own opinion out there.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Yes, that’s a great way of saying it. I think that, I’m sorry to interrupt, but a lot of people, especially in the south, go through that exact experience, so I’m glad you use that word. I’ve never, it’s never clicked before. But being shy in the context of this religion, even your personally, but, yeah, okay, I’m sorry, go ahead. But that really spoke to me.

>> Godless Engineer/John: Yeah, well, I mean, that’s, that’s what I felt was very, very shy about putting my opinion out there, especially opinions on religion and everything. And so I guess I just kind of decided that I wasn’t going to be that way anymore. Like I, you know, I, I’m secure in my convictions about what I don’t believe in and what I do believe in. And, you know, I’m just going to be confident about it because I feel I feel like there’s a lot of people out there that aren’t confident, like, in that kind of way. So I wanted to be like somebody that people could look up to and be like, oh, well, you know, you know, if that redneck can get up there and he can, you know, be confident about this, so can I sort of, you know, kind of inspiring people to be more confident about not believing in goddess. And so, but with that in mind, like, my family didn’t take too kindly to it. And so that’s how godless engineer actually got spun up was because, you know, I had liked and followed some, like, like, Facebook church pages and whatnot. This one church, page put up something about describing Jesus. And I described Jesus as a mental crutch or something like that. Or, a crutch for the weak minded, I think maybe is what I said. And that really rubbed some of my family members the wrong way, and they unfriended me. And then I had somebody that was like, hey, I get it. You don’t believe anymore, but, you know, you’re chasing people away. Maybe not do that. And so, like, at that point, I was kind of, I guess, in the position of, well, I don’t want to not say anything, but I also want to, you know, stay true to what I had set out to, you know, accomplish. And so that’s why I created the godless engineer page and then to keep peace in the family and amongst friends. I didn’t exactly, I wasn’t as blatant on my personal profile, so I kept it on the, on the ge page, and I only, I would only randomly mention things like on my, on my personal profile. And, that seemed to calm things down, a little bit. But, you know, as time went on, you know, things, you know, I have.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: A question for you at that point. Sorry. so the question I have, sorry to interrupt, is the other side, quote, unquote, is not shy, right? They, they’re the ones wearing the crosses around their neck. They’re the ones with movies about, how evil atheist professors are when they teach, evolution. They’re the ones preaching every day in church that they, that everybody that doesn’t believe what they believe is evil and a sinner and is going to go to hell. Right. They are not shy at all. but they demand shyness of you. How does that make you feel?

>> Godless Engineer/John: I mean, it, it definitely turns on that, that anger part, you know, of, I guess, the angry atheist face. you know, people expected me to shy away from, you know, adding my opinion to the mix. I think that generally that, that angers me. Even, even today, I think I feel like I’ve actually been through therapy and you know, I feel like I have better ways of expressing like my anger now, which people that watch like the the Cullen shows that I do, maybe they would disagree with me, but I feel like I have better ways of expressing my anger, on occasion. And so, I mean, I just express it differently now, but it’s definitely, anger, when people expect me to just sort of sit there quietly and I quote unquote, let the adults talk, you know, about things. I actually had that happen to me, the other day. I was on a, I was watching this guy’s TikTok live and I was commenting and this actually goes back to your definitions thing. I was asking them to define what beauty is and like the criteria for considering something beautiful. And in the call they said oh, we don’t have to define what beauty is. Everybody knows what beauty is, so we don’t have to define it. And I’m just sitting here like, wow, how can, how do you have a conversation about beauty and how it proves that God exists if you’re not going to define what you mean by beauty or give me some kind of criteria to identify something as beautiful? and it would have to be in an ah, absolute or objective way that you would be able to identify something as beautiful. But they were just going with this sort of intuitive notion, of beauty, which is, would be subjective by nature, which I felt like that couldn’t be what they were talking about. But all this to get around to say that eventually got to the part where they were like, have you ever studied any kind of philosophy or anything like that? Like I know you’re an engineer, but have you studied philosophy? And I’m, I’m like, I mean I’ve been having these discussions for twelve years or more. I’ve heard the argument of beauty many times over. Like I don’t have to have a degree in philosophy in order to have the conversation. And so, but that really did sort of anger me a bit to be treated like, oh, you’re not good enough to have this conversation or you’re not educated enough to have any kind of philosophical conversation. And you know, you have christians now that do that. But you know, when I was coming out of Christianity and everything, people really, or at least, in my perspective, I wasn’t, I guess I wasn’t enlightened to the more apologetic side of Christianity.

>> Godless Engineer/John: That was something that I discovered, as I was losing like my religion or my faith, as I was losing it, that’s when I discovered the more apologetic side to the discussion. Because prior to that I just had no experience with people that were like pushing back on different religious ideas. Like I don’t know if it was maybe similar to where, where you are, but around here, like everybody just automatically knew each other, believed in God and Jesus. We were all christian and we really didn’t discuss it any further than that. Like, oh, well, what church do you go to? And, you know, people. Yeah, blah, blah, blah church, you know, kind of thing. And like, nobody, nobody had serious discussions on theology or philosophy or anything like that. And maybe that’s just because, you know, I’m in north Alabama, but you know, that was like a totally new side of things that I had just never seen before. And so, like, whenever somebody expects me to just shy away and be quiet about, you know, the ideas that I have, I mean, it really does sort of, you know, anger me and, and depending on the situation, I can blow my top about it. But I typically try to, I guess, respond in a very strong way that, my goal is to show, anybody that’s watching to not allow somebody to shame, you into silence, just because either you’re not professionally trained or anything like that. But just the fact that you’re in the conversation, in not allowing them to shame you into, you know, sulking away and not having the conversation again, that makes me more mad when people do that. That’s why, like on the call that we were talking about earlier, I’m so glad that the person called in, but also didn’t, take like me bringing up counterpoints as getting them to stop, like, you know, saying anything, but rather to reconsider what they were that to reconsider their position and what they were saying. And I’m glad that was kind of the result was like, well, I’m gonna have to go back and think about that. Like, that’s always my goal is to get people to critically think about their position and to critically consider the counter arguments and all that kind of stuff. And when, if somebody’s goal is just to shame somebody into silence, like, I feel like that’s not the way to have the conversation. And like I said, it makes me angry.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Yeah, I had, similar experiences to you. Not here. I live currently sort of in between Washington and Baltimore. But I was born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina, and my mother’s whole side of the family is from Texas, so I do have a lot of exposure to the south. And you’re right, the question is always, what church do you belong to? Nothing. You know, are you christian? It was just presumed that you went, that, a, you were christian, b, you went to church. And that was just sort of a how’s that weather going today? Type of conversation. It was just something you said to start a conversation and make small talk. And it always. I always found it funny because when I grew up, my, my family was not religious, but my mother did take us to church occasionally. But that’s, that’s about it. I went to a school that was religious school, but just because it was a private school that my parents managed to get me into, because South Carolina schools in the seventies were crap, but that was it. And then people would just presume that I knew all of this stuff and I didn’t. I didn’t know how to take communion, I didn’t know when to kneel, when to pray, and how to sing psalms and all of that sort of stuff. So when I would go to these events, it was very awkward for me. And there was just this presumption that you would know, and it sort of permeated society. I felt very different, a very different vibe when I moved up here. This was in 19, 83, 84 that my father retired from the navy. We moved up here to DC area because he was going to be a contractor. Very different culture. Very, very, very diverse culture. And I never, ever felt, anybody making that presumption or even bringing the topic up. It just wasn’t something that was done. so I think I sort of escaped a bit. But I can relate to that sort of sense of shyness from back when I was in South Carolina, where it was, oh, I’m just. I’m the minority. I’m supposed to sit down and shut up. I’m uneducated. There’s obviously something out there I’m missing because I’m not convinced there’s a God, but all these other people are. So they’re gonna run the show, and I’m just gonna. I’m just gonna sort of sit at the kitty table, as you sort of alluded to. and going back to that comment you had about, the beauty, you know it when you see it. it reminds me there was justice potter on the supreme court. There was an obscenity case back in, I forget, this is a long time ago. and he famously, It wasn’t the exact test he enumerated, but he used shorthand of, I can’t define obscenity, but I know it when I see it. And that was some. Some people actually lauded that as a. Like, a brave thing to say, like, he’s being honest. But a lot of people criticized him for the same reasons you’re criticizing the person about, not being able to define beauty yet. Holding people accountable for knowing what it is, is. It’s ridiculous. You can’t. You can’t move forward in an organized fashion without defining your terms. If you’re. If you’re going to say, I believe x because of beauty, or it is beautiful, and you can’t define beauty, you haven’t made a cogent argument. You haven’t made sense. Okay? So thank you. That was a great interview. part one, I should say, from godless engineer. I really do appreciate the time that he spent with me. Please stay tuned for the next episode, where we will delve into mythicism. What is it? What is the evidence that supports that position? Is there anything that. That argues against it? It’s an interesting conversation, and one in which godless engineer is a bit of an expert. So I hope you stay tuned for part two, which will be coming up right now. Why did I say right now? So I hope you stay tuned for part two, which will be coming up next. Have a good one. This has been the cross examiner podcast, the Internet’s courtroom in the case of rationality versus religion. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider subscribing. See you soon.