Welcome to Nice Ashes, I'm Mike.
And I'm Nate.
What are we smoking today, Nate?
Alright, we are smoking a Kristoff Connecticut.
And I alluded to this last episode, but we never anticipated smoking this stick.
I had gone down to the local tobacco store, Tobacco Grove, not a sponsor, but a wealth
of knowledge nonetheless.
And I was looking for a different stick for one of our upcoming guests and they were sold
out of that stick and I told him that Mike and I were getting a little bit more into
Connecticut on our podcast.
And he was smoking this stick in the store and he recommended this one.
And it's a Kristoff Connecticut Matador.
Okay.
Now if you look at this stick, Mike, you'll see that it's got the pig tail on the cap
end.
Yes, yes it does.
And what the guy told me at the store was you simply twist that off and you should be
good to go and you can cut it if you want afterwards.
And I know we smoked another stick with a pig tail on it and neither of us really knew
what to do.
We just cut it.
The other thing to note of this cigar, and I haven't tried twisting it, have you tried
twisting it off?
Oh, I did after you told me I twisted it off and there's a little hole in the end.
Yes, there is.
So we can keep it as is or we can cut it with our cigar cutters.
I'm going to keep it as is.
I will keep it as is as well.
Now the other thing to note, if you flip it around to the business end, you'll see that
they actually wrapped tobacco leaf over the top of the end there.
And this gives you the flavor right away of the full stick.
So I guess we just light it up as it is.
So we twist it off the little pig tail.
You don't even need a cutter for this one.
And then you light the leaf that's been wrapped around the tobacco on the inside.
This looks like a more expensive cigar than we are accustomed to smoking.
It was about $14 per stick.
Maybe 15.
So it's a little pricier than I guess what we normally smoke, but maybe only because
we shop discount.
We shop discount.
Yeah, a lot of the sticks we smoke are probably like a $10 cigar at a cigar shop.
Yeah, so this one's a little bit more.
This would be kind of like the Rocky Patel.
A lot of our Rocky Patel cigars that we smoked were involved this price range.
And they're good.
So I'm excited.
So we're going to light this up.
We had a good conversation.
I can talk about that after we light up, but I'm going to light.
Wow.
I feel like this one lit a heck of a lot easier than most other sticks do.
Mine lit right up.
I usually don't have a lot of problems.
No, no.
I didn't mean like problem-wise.
I just meant like, you know, because you always want to get it even lit.
But I feel like this one just kind of like just went and the little hole, the little
draw hole is nice.
The flavor is nice right off the bat.
Yeah, it's nice.
It's so yeah, it's mellow.
He said this one was as far as Connecticut's go, his thing was, you know, a lot of people
think Connecticut's are bland.
But I said, well, that's not really what Mike and I have been finding out.
I mean, certainly there's bland ones.
And I told him we even smoked one of the Bin Maduros you have over here.
But that was more bland than any Connecticut we've ever smoked.
But I was like, but what do you expect from a Bin Maduro?
But he called this a medium Connecticut, you know, like more medium bodied Connecticut.
It's got good flavor right off the bat.
I'll tell you that.
It does.
Yeah.
This is a really good draw on this one for me.
Yeah.
You know, it's surprisingly good.
Yeah.
I wouldn't throw a fistful into my traveling Maduro and take him fishing.
But yeah.
That's the five Vegas and my perennial favorite Kentucky shrew is for.
Yeah.
But the only reason you wouldn't throw a fistful into a travel him to go fishing is probably
the price point.
Yeah, that's, that's right.
I'm not going to like a hook a big fish and throw this out into the water.
Very true.
Yeah, which I had done before.
I believe it.
So we know it was a good conversation and he was asking about our, he was asking after
our podcast.
And so he went and I saw him add it to his little podcast thing as I was checking out
and paying.
So we might have a flavor by the way.
It does.
So we might have a 10th listener.
Well, there we go.
We'll see.
And you probably listened to this episode as the first one.
Maybe so Christophe.
I know I've smoked to Christophe before.
Okay.
I think I might have got one for Christmas this year, but I haven't smoked it yet.
Okay.
And you know, I don't know all of the brands that are out there.
So I didn't even know this was really a brand until he said, and I've kind of got, and I
shouldn't because I am a cohost on a cigar podcast, but I don't really know all the cigar
brands out there.
So you know, people are like, oh yeah.
And he was like, oh, and this one and that one, he's like routing all these off.
But he's like, but I'm smoking this one and it's great.
I'm like, well, I'm going to grab two of these then.
Yep.
So I'm glad that we're able to get them and smoke them on the show pretty quickly actually.
And they're long.
This is going to be a long one.
Yeah.
They're long, but they're tasty so far.
We said we were going to talk about what happened to me at Christmas for this episode.
Christmas time, sweet Christmas time.
And our last episode, we talked about Mike's favorite person in the world, Marjorie Taylor
Green and how she doesn't want people with differing opinions from her.
And Mike and I are of the belief that having people with different opinions is a good thing,
I guess within reason, right?
If they're combative, then probably not.
But if they're open-minded and willing to talk and chat and all this stuff, then yes,
very much so.
I am for the diversity opinion.
Yes.
And so this one will be a little more personal for me because I'm going to walk you through
some of my beliefs and my journeys and late nights and early mornings.
But I don't think it's anything that you haven't heard before or that you haven't been prepared
to hear before from me on this podcast.
So we'll just dive right in, shall we?
Absolutely.
Okay.
So we have some friends.
Strange, I know, but we do indeed have some friends.
And that was me taking another puff of my cigar, not waiting for the sympathy laugh
from Mike.
Is it we, me and you, or we, you and Sarah?
Oh, you and I don't have friends together except for Viking Dan and NASCAR or Nat or
whatever.
Our mutual friends are kind of like my Sarah.
And then that's kind of where it ends.
So I do know James vaguely because he helped us move that one time and I wasn't sure what
was happening, but I was happy to have the help because moving sucks.
Yes.
So anyway, we have some friends and this one friend is, let's just say very religious,
not combatively so, but more like Minnesota passive aggressively so.
And we do a meal exchange with them and they've got like, so every time we do this meal exchange,
we got to like make 10 freezer meals, right?
And then we go and we get 10 freezer meals back that are different because there's 10
people in the group.
And so we went and did this and she gave us Mike clothes from her kids or whatever for
our daughter.
And she told, and Sarah, my Sarah went over there and ran and dropped out the food and
came back and she's like, oh yeah.
And so by the way, she said that there's also like a Christmas present in here for us.
And so I'm like, oh, okay, cool.
You know, like thinking maybe it's like brownies or you know, who knows what it could be?
Well, we dig to the bottom of this bag and there is a book.
And in this book, there is a letter.
And this letter says, hey, I know that, you know, and so there's some other conversation
stuff that happened between us and this friend about this topic that isn't relevant to the
story.
So I'm just kind of, I'm going to paraphrase what this letter said and then kind of get
into what happened after because that's all anybody really cares about.
So they were like, I know you said you don't burn books and I really want us to all like
hang out in heaven together drinking mimosas.
Side note, I don't think there will be mimosas in heaven.
Just going out on a limb.
Again, I'm an atheist, but do not think there will be mimosas in heaven.
That oh, I'm sorry, dude.
That was so fucking funny.
All right.
I got it together.
Okay.
So trying not to kill Mike.
So anyway, the thing goes on like, hey, I think you'll like this book.
It's written by an atheist who found God and then decided to write this book about his
journey.
So for some of you, you may already know what this book is, but the book is called The Case
for Christ.
Okay.
And so it's written by, fuck if I can remember now, but it's written by this guy and...
CS Lewis.
No, not CS Lewis.
I've read some CS Lewis and I've read Mere Christianity and the Screwtape Letters.
I actually enjoyed both, though I'm not a Christian and don't really believe what he's
selling, but I felt his conversational tone or his writing voice to be mostly welcoming
and engaging.
But this guy, I don't know, I guess it'll kill me.
Oh, it's Strobel, Lee Strobel.
So he was, let's put air quotes around investigative journalist, but he was a journalist, right?
And so he wrote all these journal articles, newspapers and whatnot.
And so the premise of the book is he's turning his investigative journalist skills upon Christianity
because his wife came home one day and said, I'm a Christian and I'm joining this church.
And so he had an inner moral struggle because he was an atheist and so on and so forth.
Now, let's get into the crux of the matter or the crucifix of the matter, if you will.
Because normally I would have said, hey, great, whatever, donated the book and moved on with
my life, right?
That's the normal thing.
If you've already gone through your faith journey and came out an atheist, why would
I read the Case for Christ?
Are you ever truly done with your faith journey?
And maybe that's a good question.
But here's the reason why I did what I am about to tell you that I did, is I had just
a couple days before, because I subscribed to a daily Stoicism email, where it's a couple
of paragraphs and just talking about whatever, how it applies to modern day life or different
stories of different people that kind of...
They might not be Stoics themselves, but they kind of embody some key takeaway or thing,
you know?
And this isn't meant to be like, let's go huge into Stoicism and delve into different
philosophies.
But point of the matter is that this email I'll digest was basically one of the Stoic
philosophers was quoted as saying, you know, like it's very important to read, but more
important to read things from people you disagree with.
Yes.
So, and since that was fresh in my mind, I thought, you know what, fuck it, I'll read
this book.
It's not that long.
I'll read it.
So here's what ended up happening is I read the first two or three chapters and I sat
there because he laid it out as he was doing a completely objective investigation into
Christianity, right, and Christ and Jesus in particular.
And I was just shaking my head and I'm like, this guy used to be a journalist.
Well, no wonder he doesn't do that anymore.
So I found out that somebody else felt the same way as I did about this book, but they're
a New Testament scholar and also an atheist now and believe that Jesus never existed.
And he was so pissed off about Lee Strobel's lack of, I don't know what you would call
it, like academic.
Academic integrity.
Yes.
That he wrote the case against the case for Christ and he went chapter by chapter and
basically tore Lee Strobel to shreds.
So Lee Strobel doesn't tell you, but what this other guy does, Robert M. Price, and
he does a lot of like Cthulhu novels, but he also is very active in the New Testament
circles and things.
But what he tells you is by the time Lee Strobel got around to writing this book, he was the
pastor of a megachurch.
So he's not going, this is not his initial study.
And if you know that and you're paying attention, you can tell because he kind of drops hints
that he's recreating his initial journey.
But what Robert Price says is that Lee Strobel was never really an atheist.
He was like a lapsed Lutheran.
You know what I mean?
Like he just kind of stopped.
Right.
He was a cafeteria Catholic.
Yeah.
He stopped going to church on Sundays, but he still like wanted to believe.
And what really threw me at the very beginning of the book was Lee Strobel says, he put a
little asterisk.
He's like, I'm going to interview all of these scholars.
And then there's a little asterisk and you go down to the bottom of the page and the
asterisk goes, that the interviews have been edited for content and time.
And it's like, oh, okay.
So that gives you basically a way to have them say whatever you would like them to say.
Not that I believe that any of the people he interviewed said things he didn't want
them to say, because he didn't actually interview anybody who had anything other than what he
wanted them to say.
Yes.
Well, it was fascinating because despite me not believing what Lee Strobel is trying to
sell, I still learned a huge amount about the Bible and religion just in general, regardless
of if you believe it or not.
But one of the chapters, and so, you know, when you're writing a college thesis or something,
right?
Like you have to have the opposing, you have to acknowledge the opposing viewpoint to have
a strong essay, right?
Yes.
You know, generally speaking, you know, like.
Well, I went to school for history, so most of mine were making an argument or you take
a position on the topic and then you present evidence that's the topic.
Yeah.
But you would still kind of prevent like the counterpoint.
Yeah.
You have to sprinkle in anything that contradicts and why what you're saying is correct versus
what they're saying.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
So he did a chapter for counterpoint and he goes, so there's this rogue group out there
that doesn't believe Jesus ever even existed.
And to bring counterpoint to my argument, I am going to interview somebody from my train
of thought camp and not actually somebody from this evil organization that I just mentioned.
And then he goes on a whole chapter about how evil this organization is just because
they don't believe Jesus existed.
Right.
But they're still like religious scholars.
But heaven forbid he interviews one of them to get an actual counterpoint to his argument.
He interviews one of him to just discredit this other group instead of actually interviewing
this other group.
Right.
You know what I mean?
And so, exactly.
And so I was like, what in the actual fuck?
And so this is just, I mean, everybody can believe what you want to believe.
And the whole time I was reading Lee Strobel's book, I thought to myself, you know what,
if I believed in Jesus Christ, and I thought I did for, I don't know, close to 18 years,
16 some years, would I need actual historical evidence that he walked on water or turned
water into wine or raised somebody from the dead?
Would I need actual hard hitting historical evidence to justify my faith?
Like, let me guess.
What's your guess?
Probably not.
Because if you read the actual Bible, if you doubt Jesus or God, you do not truly believe.
That's the whole, that's the whole linchpin in religion.
And here, Lee Strobel is trying to go through and historically prove that all of these things
happen.
And as a history major, Mike, I want to ask you, and this is one of his big arguments,
but before we get into the big argument, do you know what an apologist is?
Yes.
Okay.
Would you mind explaining it to our listeners?
An apologist and apologetics is somebody who, in Christianity specifically, they kind of
acknowledge the weakness of the arguments for Christianity, but they engage in a style
of argument that tries to make excuses for those weaknesses or ignores the weaknesses
in the arguments and says they basically making, they make an ends justify the means style
argument.
Precisely.
And this could be anything, not just Christianity.
There's all sorts of apologists out there.
Any sort of apologetics, it's usually making excuses blended with an ends justify the means
style argument.
Yes.
If they try to throw up like a weak smoke screen apology or explanation for some inconsistency
in what's being seen in the Bible, they will make some kind of, and usually it's nonsense
about why it exists.
Yeah.
One of the interesting thing about the Bible is that it's so full of inconsistencies and
maybe that's why there's a vast swath of apologetics or apologists out there for this.
And just a super drastic like tone shift and kind of almost like tenant shift between the
Old Testament and the New Testament.
Right.
And a lot of the Old Testament is historical recordings of events and ideologies at the
time.
And fire and brimstone.
Right.
I mean, it's recording their ideology.
Yeah, yeah.
It's not really, it was harsh times and people had very harsh attitudes about life.
Yes.
You know?
Let me go into, I don't know if it was the biggest kind of like laugh out loud moment
of Lee Strobel's book.
I'll let you judge that, Mike.
And then I want to go into kind of like some of the stuff that I ended up learning through
this because I did actually learn quite a bit.
Not necessarily from Lee Strobel himself, other than that there are people out there
that believe what he's typing at his computer at home, but through the counterpoint book
and just having like two experts, let's use kind of air quotes around one of the two people.
But you know, two people that claim to be experts in this subject matter and having
them kind of like having one explain why the other one is completely wrong.
Let me ask you a quick question.
Yes.
Did you give the book against the book to your friend?
I will save that for the end of this conversation.
I would love to hear the conversation that either has taken place or will take place.
It has already taken place.
There will be closure.
There will be.
Mike is our first sponsor, ladies and gentlemen.
We have gotten a nice Ashes sponsor.
No, so this story in my mind is all resolved.
It's all wrapped up.
We have an epic conclusion or a non-epic conclusion depending.
I'm not giving anything away until we get to that point.
I want to talk about the books first, some of the stuff that I learned, and then I will
end cap it or bookend it with how it has been left between our friend and us.
As a history major, Mike, going back to.
We're going to drink mimosas in heaven.
Yeah, I'm not sure if it was mimosas or if it was margaritas or it was one of those M
drinks, but regardless, like they don't have booze up there.
I'm sorry.
Unless you're Catholic.
Maybe.
I mean, that's a good question.
Maybe, I mean, like, you know, if Jesus is there, he just, you know, do some intervenous
stuff and you got his blood, which is wine.
Right.
There we go.
You know, it reminds me of one of my, not one of my favorite, like those memes, but
like it's definitely up there where it's like, you know, Jesus is addressing the 12 at the
last supper, you know, take of this cup for it is my blood and this wine.
And then he holds up the bread, you know, here's this bread and it is my body and partake
of this.
And then Jesus holds up the mayonnaise and the disciples go, no, no, no, stop, stop,
stop.
Naughty naughty.
I know.
So anyway, this chapter was the one that kind of like, maybe, maybe egregious is the right
word to describe it, but I don't want to taint or sully your opinion coming in because unlike
least trouble, I would like to be objective about this.
So what he did was he said, well, he tried to go through and say like, okay, were the
writers of the gospel truthful and honest and did Jesus actually exist and what proof
do we have and did he live there and this?
And so he was trying to pin down whether or not the writers of the gospel were truthful
and honest.
And he's like, cause you know, they included some stuff that wasn't so like nice to themselves.
Right?
But he was operating under the, under the, under the assumption that Matthew, Mark, Luke
and John were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
And they were written within 20, 30 years of Jesus's death.
Okay.
And that does not seem historically accurate.
That is 100% not historically accurate.
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were all written by anonymous authors and they were written,
I don't know, a hundred ish years past the events they depict.
And there's the explanation that I've heard over and over again is that it's between 80
and 130 ish years.
They're not quite sure because I know I picked a hundred because it was kind of splitting
the difference.
Yeah.
They're not sure because Christianity was like a cult.
Yeah.
Undergrown, illegal cult.
Yes.
And we'll get into some more of that kind of stuff here in a little bit, but you know,
there's also evidence that to all of the, the, the four main gospels that they consider
the main gospels that they kind of all kind of launched off of one, right?
And they just kind of further embellished what was in the first one.
Yes.
They are slightly different versions of the same story.
Yes.
And we don't have to get into all of that, all of that stuff, but so let's just, you
know, I just had to explain that because Lee Strobel is, is mounting his case under the
assumption that Matthew sat down and literally wrote Matthew and Mark sat down and literally
wrote Mark and so on and so forth.
So he's trying to say, Hey, look, are Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, are they honest?
Are they good recorders of history?
And I'm not even going to talk about the census thing that nobody can find that called for
whatever reason, called Joseph and Mary back to their like ancestral home and not where
they actually lived.
And they had to make this huge journey for some weird bullshit reason.
That's been recorded by the Roman authorities, even though it was their own territory.
Yes, exactly.
And like when, when the United States does a census, I don't have to travel back to
my birth town, right?
Like I can just stay where I'm at because that's what makes sense for a census and census
polling hasn't really changed for eons.
So but anyway, it's counterproductive to a census to have people move around before
the census.
You want to know where they're at now, not where they, you know what you and I know this
apparently to the apologists, it was a different time back then.
And this totally made sense.
And I'm not, look, I'm not trying to rain on your parade if you're a Christian and if
you believe everything in the Bible, I'm really not trying to rain on your parade.
The whole point, the whole thing, it was very fascinating for me to read this book and to
read the counterpoint book.
And I did learn a lot about religion and passing on the stories and how that stuff happens
and how some of this stuff might have come about.
And it's very fascinating.
And I think if you're interested or if you're religious or if you're not religious, I would
suggest reading both the case for Christ and the case against the case for Christ and starting
with the chapter in case for Christ and then reading that chapter in the case against the
case for Christ.
And you can get kind of the point and counterpoint.
And it was very, very fun thought experiment for myself, but I've been stalling enough.
So here's what his objective investigative journalist decided to ask.
He was asking if these writers of the gospel were being honest.
And the guy he was interviewing, I don't remember who, but they were all apologists through
and through, said, well, yes.
And we have archeological proof that they were honest.
Now that doesn't raise any eyebrows for a history major, does it Mike?
Okay.
I'm not sure if people can hear the tone of my voice.
I heard the eyebrow go up.
Okay.
I would like to see this evidence.
Here we go.
This, this, this will blow you away and it will, it will instantly convert you.
And then we're going to turn into a Christian podcast right after this episode.
Evangelical?
Lutheran?
Okay.
It doesn't matter.
Okay.
It's all the same as long as you're in with the big JC, right?
So anyway, he was, you know, and he's, and so Lee is trying to play the, the skeptic
card, but at this point he's already a pastor at a mega church.
So he's already fully committed to his bit.
Right.
And, and you know what?
And just because Lee Strobel is an apologist doesn't mean that every Christian is an apologist.
So there's also that just as a caveat, I don't want somebody to say that our podcast needs
to move to a different color state or something because we don't share the same values and
we can't vote for five years, but I can vote third party anywhere.
Yeah.
Anyway.
Jesus, so, so here's the archeological proof.
Okay.
And here's, here's what they hung their entire point of this chapter on is they said, well,
okay.
And I don't, it doesn't matter.
Pick, pick one of the gospels, right?
Pick one.
And they were writing about this fountain or bath or something that had, I don't know,
12 or 13 columns.
And like they described this, this like structure in pretty intricate detail, right?
Okay.
And nobody's, nobody's found it.
And, and so they're like, well, okay, you know, it doesn't exist or whatever.
They're just completely fabricating everything and yada yada.
Well, the archeological evidence is they dug the thing up and they found this like fountain
or town square or whatever it was.
And they had had the same amount of columns that they said in the gospel.
So ergo everything in the gospel is true.
And that was the argument that they made.
And I, and I thought to myself in that instant, I thought, well, independence day is a hundred
percent true then because it took place in Washington, DC.
And I know that's a real place.
So that has to be a hundred percent true.
That is right.
Right.
Isn't that amazing?
I can tell you that Pontius Pilate was really the governor of Judea as well.
Yeah.
So, I mean, he never, he never made reference to Jesus.
I don't think.
Not in any official recordings.
No.
Yeah.
He had his whole, he had his whole wax cylinder and he was laying down sick diss tracks about
Jesus Christ.
Right.
And the little festival that was never mentioned in anything.
Yeah.
So, you know, it's like, that's your, that's your archeological evidence that everything
in the gospel is 100% true because they picked a landmark that was well known at the time.
Like how many of our fiction books, like how many like Harry Potter is true because it
takes place in London partly?
Well, Anne Race, that was, that's what came to mind to me.
She describes like New Orleans before the flood pretty well.
Well, I picked, well, I picked Harry Potter because Christians hate Harry Potter because
witches and wizardry is a sin.
Yeah, that's true.
Yeah.
I forgot about that.
You know, but it's like, but by that argument, then Harry Potter is also true because London's
real and I've seen that station, that subway station, like it's literally there.
Right.
So, you know, by that logic, there's a lot of true things that we all thought were false.
So we have a big worldview reckoning now to take place because.
Black quarters even has a little plaque in the station now.
Yeah.
It's like commemorating the brave wizards that went before.
Yeah.
God forbid that it gets buried in some horrible accident and then it gets unearthed 2000 years
from now and they find that.
Man, future archeologists are going to have a hell of a time because they're going to
find like these bodies of these dead, like gamer cat girls.
Oh yes.
With those like butt plugged tails and be like, was this like, what was this for?
Was this to help them balance or no, they're just perverts.
Yes.
That's awesome.
By the way, I don't want to break our train of thought.
Yeah.
I am two inches into the cigar.
Yeah.
I still have the ash on it.
Nice.
Nice ash.
And it's lovely.
Oh, it's really great.
But it reminds me of the archeologists who uncover the burial sites and it's like two
dudes, right?
And they can tell by the skeletal structure and they're like, oh yeah, they must have
been roommates.
Right.
They were gay lovers.
But they always say like, oh, I think they were roommates or they were brothers or something.
And it's like, nah, they probably weren't though.
Yeah.
Who fucking knows?
They died at the same time.
That chapter really kind of like threw me for a loop and I was like, okay, I'm reading
some like serious hardcore fiction right now because that's not really how proving something
works.
Like this place existed.
They wrote about this place that existed.
Therefore, everything else they mentioned is then true.
Right.
And it's like, no.
That's not how reality works.
Yeah.
And speaking about the discrepancies in the timing of the writing of the gospels versus
the timing of the alleged crucifixion of Jesus, he did spend considerable printer ink on talking
to experts who said, wow, most conservative people say within 30 to 40 years of his death,
but I've got evidence that it's probably within 10.
And then they pull out some weird like because of the fountain thing or because of that thing.
And it's like, but they're all operating under the assumption that the people that the gospels
are named after actually wrote them.
Right.
And, you know, I mean, in modern times, we don't think, especially in America, we don't
think of things like a fountain being something that was built and it was intended to be there
for a thousand years.
But when you build a fountain out of stone and your population is static, it was intended
to be built basically for the duration.
Over long people are going to live there.
That is supposed to operate.
It was intended to run for 500 years.
Yeah.
So if they did write it, let's say 120 years after Christ, the fountain is still there
and working probably identically in every single way to what it was like 120 years before.
Technology didn't change that fast.
And even if it wasn't, it would still have been a story, right?
These fountains are supposed to last.
So if the fountain is no longer there, they'd be like, oh man, you remember that sweet,
sick fountain that was in that town?
I'm like, yeah, that was badass.
And it'd still be like within the, you know, because you know what?
I don't know if a hundred years after 9-11, we're still going to be talking about the
trade towers.
I mean, they're ugly, you know, but it was the events that surrounded them and we'll
still be talking about it.
So it's still going to be a historical thing.
So you know, but then guess what?
A thousand years beyond 9-11, nobody's going to be talking about 9-11.
But if you were going to go do like a fan fiction piece or something or a fictional
piece set in 2001, you'd be like, oh, okay.
Yeah.
I remember like you just do it like Google search.
Okay.
Yep.
There are some twin towers and they fell and you just like write that.
And then somebody would be like, oh man, he was totally there because he wrote about that
thing that was there.
Like I can verify those things were there.
But you know, it was, and it was a lot of it was word of mouth back then, right?
Like writing was cumbersome and time consuming and you had to have all this like super thick
paper and papyrus or what have you.
And so a lot of it was oral tradition, but people have done studies on the Bible and
they can tell because everybody has their own unique writing style.
And sure, nowadays you can emulate somebody else's writing style.
Like you can pretend you're writing like as Stephen King and probably get pretty close.
But unless you're an expert who specialized in like writing styles and writing voices,
you know, like somebody would be able to tell it wasn't actually Stephen King, you know,
they'd be like, well, they use too many like thes or they use too many of this and it's
very, very close.
But I'd have to say with these discrepancies, it's not Stephen King writing this book.
You know what I mean?
Or even if you have like an AI trying to write a Stephen King book, an expert in the written
language would be able to analyze and say, I don't think this was Stephen King.
It's very close, but I don't think it was.
And people have analyzed the gospels and tried to collect, correct, correct.
Ah, fuck.
Yeah, cooperate.
Both that they know that some of these people have written and it just doesn't match up.
And some of the gospel books have two distinct writing voices.
They know it was written by two different people.
And you know, it's just, and if you believe it doesn't matter because you could say, well,
it's all oral tradition passed down.
So if it was 100 years after 200 years after, it doesn't matter.
It's still the gospel according to God and the Holy Ghost like help them write it or,
you know, whatever.
However, you want to explain it.
Are these, well, they never, this confront the fact that the Bible is an edited work
that was created by a council of elites on purpose to like codify the religion.
And it's over, it's overseen by a council.
And every time there's a new translation or new update, not like update, but like a new
tradition, like new footnotes or whatever, and when there's new, and they actually, they
voted on which there's a big, and that was part of, and they never talked about it in
the case for Christ, but in the case against the case for Christ, he was talking about
the council that actually voted on which gospels got included because, you know, there's like
the gospel of Ruth and there's other gospels out there that they elected to not include.
And other writings of-
Council of Nicaea.
Yes.
And then what a lot of them seem to forget is the reason that the King James version
is the most popular version is because King James was an absolute lunatic and ordered
all copies of the Bible collected and burned, and then he put out his version of the Bible.
And that's why we have the King's James version.
We don't really have many other versions of the Bible, at least the Christian Bible.
Not in English.
Yes.
Yeah, exactly.
You know, and that was kind of the other thing is like Lee Strobel was saying like, well,
this word in Greek means this or that.
And the case against the case for Christ is like, well, I don't know what word Professor
Strobel was reading, but I have like a doctorate in Greek studies and this is what the word
actually means.
So, you know, I mean, like, so Robert was a little sassy with his critique of Lee, but
I guess if you've been educated in the New Testament and you speak the languages and
you devoted your life to it and somebody like Lee Strobel comes along and publishes something
that says, well, because the fountain was there, Jesus also was there.
You would be a little upset too.
So.
Right.
Interesting.
So that's that.
I mean, there's some other things in there that we could maybe like delve into, but I
don't really want to get into a huge like book review because you didn't read either
of them.
But you are a history major, so I figured you'd be able to give enough input on some
of what Lee Strobel claims to be facts.
Well, I know that the fountain probably there's an argument style.
I haven't called it argument style.
There's like a line of research where they try to corroborate events in the Bible to
see what's true and what's not.
Yeah.
So there's a list and I don't know how many things are there, but scholars have come up
with a list of things written in the Bible that they believe the preponderance of the
evidence says are true.
It's basically things that either are corroborated with outside sources or things that happen
in the Bible that are mentioned in a context that would lead you to believe that it's true.
Right.
And almost none of them involve Jesus directly.
Yeah.
Right?
And that was, so that was one of the other like key takeaways because so Robert Price
doesn't believe Jesus ever existed, at least in the form.
And so they talk about, well, and even Lee Strobel is trying to draw the distinction
between like the gospel Jesus and the historical Jesus, but he's trying to reconcile the two.
And so Robert Price basically says that through his studies, and he doesn't go into huge detail
because he's in this book, he's just refuting Lee Strobel.
He's not really laying his case out for whether Jesus did or didn't exist.
But he gave enough little things where it's like the reality of it is that the early church
probably picked some wandering pastor, right, some wandering minister, some wandering, whatever,
preacher and kind of like invented or co-opted part of their life into the Jesus myth and
use that as a basis for-
There's a lot of similarities between Jesus and religious figures out of India and out
of China.
Yeah.
And there's a lot of similarities between the religious stories in the Bible and religious
stories in other religious works.
And especially paganism.
And there was actually a chapter in this book where Lee Strobel was trying to claim that
Christianity happened before paganism and paganism is stealing from Christianity.
What?
I shit you not, my man.
That is insanity.
How, what?
So what existed before Christianity then?
It was Christianity because it was the Old Testament.
Were they all atheist, pre-Christianity?
God invented everything, right?
He created everything and that was Christianity.
And then he sent his only son and the rest is history and everybody else is a poser and
a copycat.
It is my understanding that early Judaism was a small cult in the Mesopotamian world
and the very first Jews believed that Yahweh was one of the gods in the pantheon of the
Mesopotamian god systems.
And that is why there are so many references to the Mesopotamian gods in the Old Testament.
Because if you read it and you know what you're looking for, they mentioned the moon goddess
and they mentioned the god of war and they mentioned all these other Mesopotamian gods.
Yeah.
I mean, giving detail and richness, their name dropping the other gods from the Mesopotamian
pantheon.
Now we don't really, who knows who these people are?
I don't know the name moon goddess, you know?
No, yeah.
But they're using it.
Yeah.
So.
You know, and it's just, it's ridiculous stuff like that where it's like, look, you can believe
what you want to believe if like me, you wanted to believe but didn't believe and then went
out and tried to research this on your own.
You know, early days of the internet and talking with other groups that were religious and
had strong faiths and still not getting the answer and still getting the run around.
Like with some of these questions that I was asking, you know, because I'd ask like, so
like, you know, in the Old Testament, God straight up says like, I'm a jealous god.
Well, that implies the existence of other gods.
Like there might be gods out there that aren't jealous.
But no other god before me.
Right?
So, you know, but I would ask these questions and be like, well, no, no, he's just saying
like, you know, he's jealous.
I'm like, well, but he tells us not to be jealous.
So like, what's that about?
Like, isn't he perfect?
And is jealousy being imperfect?
So like, what's going on?
Well, they don't like those questions.
Yeah.
Why can't the god of the universe forgive?
Why was he so angry in half of the book?
And then he was like, super chill.
I mean, not, I mean, he still wasn't super chill.
Don't get me wrong.
But why did he mellow out in the second half of the book?
Yeah, weirdly, the story happened in a massive empire where there was order.
And the first half of the book happened in like a fucking war zone.
So I mean, that's the explanation, but why would God need to change or why would God's
attitude change just because of the conditions on the ground temporarily?
Yeah.
Or like he made people, but then he decided to wipe them all out except for one dude in
this boat.
Right.
Yeah, this one dude's family.
Come on, man.
It's a little weird.
Yeah.
It doesn't make any evolutionary sense because then we'd all be deformed.
Right?
Like you can't from two people, like even from Adam and Eve, from two people, you just
can't.
Like, I'm sorry.
There's a lot of weird questions.
Where are the daughters of Adam and Eve?
How did one of the children of Adam and Eve get banished and then had children?
Where did this woman, that is, where, how?
How did that work?
Yeah.
How can a banished son have children when there's one?
I mean, maybe he was a they.
I don't know.
But anyway, I mean, so there's all these questions, right?
And the other thing is the line that kind of gets quoted the most where people are like,
well, was Jesus really the son of God because why would he why would he shout into the sky?
Why have you forsaken me?
If he knew he was going to get crucified, which he alleged multiple times before he
was actually crucified, like why would he scream into the sky like, Father, why have
you forsaken me?
If he knew and believed in all of that.
But I think that only happens in one of the Gospels, one of the four Gospels.
It's not in every Gospel.
And there's a huge amount of discrepancy between when he who he reveals himself to after coming
back from the dead, you know, and one of them, it's just the women and one of them, there's
no guards there and one of them, there are guards there and one of them, it's the disciples,
you know.
So, it's just kind of like all that to say and I'm not trying to tear down Christianity.
All of this is to say for Lee Strobel to try and write a book, trying to come in as an
atheist investigative journalist, he sure asked some pretty softball pitch questions to all
of these people.
And I don't think he fully understood the scope of the discrepancies within the Bible,
which most Christians will tell you if they've read the Bible and if they're open-minded
and you say and they're like, hey, why are you atheist?
I'm like, well, okay, I mean, there's this, that and the other thing.
I'm like, yep, I struggle with those parts too and here's how I kind of rationalize this
to myself but I understand if you can't because it's a huge leap, it's a leap of faith, you
know.
And that's kind of where I was like, I'm not sure what Lee Strobel is trying to do with
this book because it's certainly not going to convert people to Christianity.
And that's when I kind of came to the conclusion that the case for Christ is not for atheists
and it's not for Jews and it's not for Muslims and it's not for, you know, Buddhists.
It's for Christians who are struggling with their own faith and it's for Christians who
are finding themselves having difficult conversations with people in the general population who
have access to the internet and know how to do research.
That's who this book is aimed at.
Like this book is supposed to sharpen your tool belt as a Christian so you can combat
some of these negative things people say about our religion.
Yeah, a lot of the evangelicals, I'm not an atheist and we have discussed that before,
but I'm very critical of evangelical Christianity.
I view it as a scam largely.
And I think that this person knowing that he's a mega church pastor gives me, because
like I say, I just view a lot of mega pastors as scammers.
It's been proven that many of them in fact are scammers actively.
I'm sure that there's one or two that are not trying to actively manipulate people, but
the faith healers and this and that and the other thing is definitely a scam.
And I don't know all of them, but I know we talked about Tammy Faye.
And I think, you know, just to briefly recap, she was a huge scammer through her husband.
And I think once she kind of realized that, she broke away and she was the first person
to like give somebody with AIDS a hug on live TV.
So she's done some really good work.
I think, right?
But that was after she kind of had the wool pulled away from her eyes and realized what
her husband was doing.
And I'm not saying she wasn't an accomplice for a lot of time, but you know, who knows?
I think she tried to make some retributions for that.
That's the only one I really have experience with.
I watch a YouTube telltale and he is a converted Jehovah's Witness, a former Jehovah's Witness.
And his channel focuses mainly on the extreme Christian type stuff and his criticism of
them.
And it's hilarious, mostly mega church types, you know?
And I strongly dislike the mega church pastors.
No, and I strongly dislike the mega church pastors too.
And it was interesting because I wanted to check, right?
Because the whole premise of the book is an atheist investigative journalist searches to
find out if Jesus was real.
And you know, of course, the book says why yes, Jesus was real.
And the last chapter is how can you find Jesus faster kind of thing?
And like, where can you give your money to find Jesus?
And where can you worship to find Jesus?
And all of this mega church bullshit.
But you know, if you look at the publishing date on the inside page of the book, and I
had the movie edition, right?
Because they made a movie out of this book for somehow, I don't know how.
But they did.
Like, so why wouldn't they?
There's not a whole lot of, you know.
Dude, there is a huge Christian movie market.
Yeah.
It's insane.
Let's write one.
We'll write one together.
We totally could, dude.
Yeah, we'll call it like how the snake lost his legs or something.
It'll be a POV from the snake.
And so you can kind of like, you can kind of peek under Eve's like fig leaf, just enough
to get the Christians like hot and bothered, but not so hot and bothered that they boycott
the film.
Yeah, we got Hercules to come in and he can play whoever.
We'll make Eve, you know what?
We'll make Eve something appealing to the Christians.
We'll make her like 12.
And then they'll be sexually attracted to her.
Naughty.
Oh my God.
Sorry.
I don't mean to be offending a whole bunch of Christians.
I just, like Lee Strobel, I guess, is fairly divisive.
So you're either like on his side or he's just a complete and utter hack.
Yes.
Oh, so anyway, if you look at the inside flap and you can see the published dates.
So you see like the first published date, right, of the book and then you can see like
this edition published date.
And then all you have to do to figure out where he's writing from in his headspace is
go to his Wikipedia page because it tells you the date that he accepted the, the pastorship
at the mega church, which was well before this book was ever published, like four years
before this book was published.
And the other thing is I don't get what it is about Christians wanting to read a book
about a converted atheist.
Like I was an atheist, but then I found Jesus and they're like, I will pay you a million
dollars to read this book.
It's like some kind of weird fan fiction for them.
It is a fetish.
Yeah.
It's kind of like the, it's like the, oh, what's the same Dave Rubin effect, right?
Like I'm, I was a homosexual liberal and now I'm a homosexual conservative.
Yeah.
It's like a weird.
It's a very weird, it's not healthy.
It's interesting.
It is a thing though, for sure.
Oh yeah.
It's like a gay conversion that it goes on.
I watched a video from some damn comp, a bunch of people who were clearly homosexuals who
were saying they weren't anymore.
Yeah.
It's like, ah, you're still a homosexual.
I don't know how to tell you this, but I can see that you're a homosexual and hear that
you're a homosexual.
I don't know whatever you need to say, but.
Yeah.
You did not get rid of your homosexual thoughts, my friend.
Yeah.
You may have consciously forced them out or you're like consciously not acting on them
anymore, but I mean, they're still there.
Oh yes.
Very interesting.
So like, you know, some things you can change in life and about yourself and some things
you can't, you know, and some things you shouldn't, you know, but.
Yeah.
Some things about yourself you just have to learn to live with.
Yeah.
You know what?
We'll just leave that there.
Right.
So anyway, it was a very interesting thought experiment and oh, so they were saying that
the early writers kind of maybe based the Jesus character, you know, and they knew they
were creating a fictional character.
But to them, it wasn't so much a deception, right?
They needed somebody to embody their tenants.
And it was kind of like understood, I guess in that era where it was kind of, you know,
it's like the myths, right?
Like Hercules or Sisyphus rolling the boulder up the hill or.
Well, when you read Herodotus or Livy, you have to take the stories with a grain of salt.
A lot of the history that was written was supposed to be allegorical.
Yes.
It wasn't supposed to be.
And that was exactly the point of the case against the case for Christ was the writings,
the gospel writings clearly match that allegorical hero style of other allegorical hero style
writings of the time.
And so for anybody to actually sit there and think that it was 100% true, like even at
the time, that probably didn't happen, you know.
They knew it wasn't literally true.
It's Herodotus.
It's really fascinating that we're finding more archaeological evidence for Herodotus
because for a long time, a lot of his history, which is kind of discounted as mythological.
And we're finding evidence of the Amazons and we're finding evidence of not Atlantis
in a literal sense, but there's some pretty advanced technology in Egypt that he might
have been taught.
You know what I mean?
It's not like literal fancy, our idea of Atlantis type stuff.
Yeah.
Well, it was interesting because Sarah and I went to the Egypt sunken city exhibit that
was here at the, I think it was at MIA, the Minneapolis Institute of Art.
And they brought in all these things and they had a full boat that they uncovered from the
sea outside of Egypt and it was this lost port city.
But the reason why it was so contested was because it went by two different names.
And so everybody thought it was two different cities, but it turns out if you were Greek,
you called it one name and if you're Egyptian or whatever, you call it the other name.
And they uncovered it and they uncovered all these things and it was all in the sea and
it was very fascinating.
And they found like this tablet that had four different languages on it or something, almost
like a Rosetta Stone kind of thing.
And there was like plaques and stuff.
So they had all these, they're like, yep.
So it was a city of religious freedom.
And so they had statues of the Greek gods and the Roman gods and the Egyptian gods and
they all coexisted.
And then they said the Christians came down and threw all of their religious statues into
the sea and put up their own so they wouldn't allow any opposing religious views.
So I guess even back then they were kind of addicts to other religions.
Right.
Yeah.
Iconoclasm was rampant.
Yeah.
Which is, I'm against it.
Pretty easy thing to be against.
Well, yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know, I don't know.
I mean, I guess it sounds like we're really bad at this.
I don't know.
Christianity and I'm not, that's not really my intent.
It's a fascinating history.
The apologetics of whoever, a mega church pastor.
Well, and the people that don't have open minds.
And that's true of anybody, you know, like a football team, a political view, any, anything,
you know, food you like or don't like.
The evangelicals, the ones that are out there trying to convert, convert, convert and you
have to believe in Jesus, you're going to go to hell and we're not going to have a
most as in heaven.
You know, those kinds of people by and large, if that's their sole purpose in life is to
make other people feel bad because they don't believe what they believe, then that's bad.
But that's, I don't know, it's very distinct in Christians or it can be.
Maybe that's a bad rap Christianity has because the people that are those, those types are
so vocal, you know.
It's a very vocal minority.
But I know it's not indicative of the entire Christian, Christian beliefs.
So I just want, I wanted to make that clear again.
Like it's,
Methodists aren't going out there and like, rabble rousing largely.
So this is not the war on Christmas.
This episode, I'm just, this is, this is my thought experiment.
On this.
So I think I'm halfway, maybe a little more halfway.
Okay.
Maybe, maybe a bit more.
I've been, I've been talking more.
So I have three inches left.
Holy shit.
Okay.
So I'm double that, but I'll, I'll puff.
So you must be liking it then Mike.
Oh, it's wonderful.
Yeah.
Very good.
Yeah.
It's great.
Yeah.
That ear, change for me.
No, but it doesn't need to cause this is solid.
I really, you know what?
I didn't know if I would like it.
Uh, cause in the, in the store and he's like, Oh yeah, you just twist the pigtail off.
There's a hole.
I'm like, what?
In my mind, I was like, what?
I didn't say that to him.
I wasn't sure about it, but I'm digging it.
It's good.
Um, and I love,
Spicier too, by the way.
Yeah.
And I love that they, they've folded over the leaf over the end.
Oh yeah.
That was a really nice touch.
It's a, like I say, it's a,
It's a full bodied and spicy.
I like it.
Yeah.
Not crazy spicy, but,
Oh no, it's, it's just enough.
Just enough.
Um, it's not, it's not sweet.
You know, a lot of Connecticut's I guess are sweet and he called this on a medium body
Connecticut.
So,
Well, for a Connecticut,
I mean for a Connecticut.
Yeah.
It's not going to go against a full bodied Maduro or something, but,
No.
Uh,
So I think, you know, the medium body was not medium body Connecticut, but just medium
body for cigar in general.
Right.
But yeah, I'm digging it.
It's really good.
It's good.
It's not terribly expensive.
And, um, I didn't even check, uh, check online to see if you can get these in bulk, but I'm
sure you can.
Yeah, possibly.
I'll look for it.
Um, cause I think they've got other sticks too.
Uh, but this one,
This one is a little bit more expensive.
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
They make a bunch of stuff.
They're a reputable company.
So,
Yeah.
Very interesting.
So, did you, uh, give the opposing book to your friend?
I did not.
And I've got a couple of reasons of why it does.
Uh, first off, does that surprise you?
Uh, I don't want to say that it surprises me, but it does make me sad.
It does make me sad.
Yeah.
And it might make you sad and it would make probably a younger me sad.
Um, I'm trying to be a little less confrontational with people.
Sure.
Uh, in my life, just in general.
Um, because it doesn't really do me any good.
Like, you know what I mean?
Like I could, I could sit there and say, like, here's all the reasons why Jesus never existed
or why Lee Strobel is a mega church whore and on and on, but it's not really going to
do anything for me.
It's not going to change my life any.
Um, you know, and two, it's like, you know, do I want to, do I want to start like a war
with a, with a friend, you know?
But I didn't, but I didn't hold back either.
Really I wrote, I wrote a response letter and mailed it to them.
It was, it was interesting because I had some friends read, uh, the original letter and
my response letter.
And uh, I got some positive feedback, you know, in the letter, uh, they said something
like, you know, they said like drinking ramosas in heaven.
And then they blamed my atheism on my dad's divorce because I had told them that after
the divorce, my dad found Jesus again and was trying to talk to me about Jesus.
And he, and he, and he said, if you don't want to hear about any of this, you can tell
me to stop at any time.
And I said, stop right now.
And so they felt that, um, because my dad didn't handle trying to introduce me to Jesus
very well, that that's the whole reason.
And so basically I just said, look, you know, I grew up Lutheran and I never really believed
it and I saw the people in church believing it and I just didn't.
And so when I went to college, I joined voluntarily a Bible study and I was doing a, a kind of
a mini like book club with a friend who was the daughter of a pastor and very Christian.
And we read all like the screw tape letters, uh, mere Christianity.
We read, um, how there's one other one about a Christian, uh, singer who died in a plane
crash and his wife wrote this biography of him and that was very fascinating.
And so I was like, I was actively trying to do research and like figure out how I could
make this make sense for my life.
And it was, it was, uh, the church of the gods, um, von Daniken and he's a, he's a
known criminal and a fraud and a hack.
But he is a Catholic or was a Catholic and a devout Catholic.
And he believed that by writing his book saying that all the miracles in the Bible were aliens,
uh, that he was still a devout Catholic.
And I didn't really believe that everything that happened in the Bible was aliens, but
I believed it more than I believed it being some kind of omnipotent invisible person in
the sky.
And that was kind of what triggered or set, you know, like set me like, Oh, if I can believe
like aliens more than I can believe in a visible person in the sky, maybe I'm not religious,
you know, like that's kind of what, what the catalyst.
Yeah.
That's interesting.
Well, you've, you've said, you've told me that before and I, it's an interesting way
to break away from Christianity for sure.
Unexpected.
Everybody's, everybody who quote unquote loses.
And typically it involves doing personal research.
Yeah.
So, yeah.
And I was actually trying to prove, prove my faith, um, which ended up having the opposite
effect, but it kind of led me to believe that I never had that faith and it just took that
long to realize it.
You know, like, I don't, I don't feel like I changed any other than like acknowledging
what I was not acknowledging, I guess.
Yeah.
I, you know, I lost faith way before I left high school.
I was an atheist, I think when I went into college, going in and it was, uh, I went to
church camp for like seven years and I went to catechism and all that was the process
of learning about the history of the Catholic church and Christianity that led me to believe
that it was just a scam.
Yeah.
Wealthy people to control poor people.
And I didn't really become a Unitarian until I got older and I continued to do research
about other religions, religions other than Christianity, personal psychedelic experiences
and other things of that nature.
Yeah.
Allegedly.
And, uh, and, uh, yeah, you know, which is something that is, you can't make a book about,
right?
Like that's just, uh, what I have experienced thus far.
There's definitely some magic out there.
Yeah.
Magic in my own mind.
Not, not necessarily.
It's not even necessarily real.
It's real enough for me, I guess.
Yeah.
And, you know, there are so many unexplained things out there still to this day.
Sure.
And, and, uh, I don't know who's right.
Is it, uh, mysticism?
Is it, uh, quantum physics?
Is it science?
Is it, you know, it could be, it could be anything, you know, and I've got my thoughts
on what will explain it and other people have their thoughts.
But the fact of the matter is there's no proof yet.
So right.
Yeah.
I know what, I know I've told you this before, but if you go far enough into the woods alone,
you know, you will meet the fairies out there.
Yep.
Yeah.
We talked about that in our, uh, hunting episode.
Yeah.
It's like, it is true.
I mean, it's not like literally you're talking to fairies or anything weird like that, but
you start to see like the magic of being alone in the forest our ancestors wrote about.
Obviously that grew in defensible tales with time, but there's definitely some interesting
things out there.
Oh yeah.
So yeah, unique.
I, I, yeah, it all depends on how aggressive you, I didn't expect you to have written a
letter to your friend about it.
Well, they wrote me a letter with the book and, um, so, and I read it on ebook and it
was a little bit more money than I wanted to spend to get a copy of it to send to them,
only to have them not read it.
You know what I mean?
Like I guess they expected me to read what they gave me and it was just, and it was just
cause I got that one email that said you should read the opposing viewpoint.
That's the only reason I read it.
Cause I wouldn't have.
So it was a very slim margin that I even read it or chose to read it.
And I just knew I could just tell, and maybe I'm not, maybe I'm doing them a disservice,
but I could just kind of tell that they were not going to read something, the case against
the case for Christ because I know that they, and honestly, I don't know if they've read
the case for Christ.
I think they just heard it was an atheist who found God and sent it to me.
I don't think that they, I don't think that they actually read it.
Possibly.
Well, like I say, it was a good opportunity and still possibly is to be like, not only
did I read it, I was so interested in reading it.
I read the book that was written in opposition to this book.
Oh no, I mentioned that in my letter.
I wouldn't, I mean, it was probably like two page letter.
I mean, I didn't go into like huge detail, but I did mention that I read one chapter
in the case of Christ and then the opposing chapter in the case against the case of Christ.
And then I did tell, I was a little snarky and I said my favorite part in the case of
Christ is when he said that the fountain thing existed, so therefore everything was true.
And I don't remember if I referenced like Independence Day or Harry Potter or something,
but I made a little like cheeky comment about that where it was like, this is not really
historical fact.
Right.
So this is a total-
But I tried to be diplomatic about it.
You know what I mean?
Like just kind of like diplomatic but firm.
Like I read it, it was important to me to read this.
We're still friends and I value our friendship.
I'm still not a Christian.
I looked up online this cigar and you can get it online and it's about 9.50 a stick
for the Churchill, which is what we smoked.
Okay.
What we're smoking.
And that's right in line with the Rocky Patel vintage series that we had.
Okay.
Yeah.
And some of the bigger edges, you know, which are, this is every bit as good as a Rocky
Patel.
Yeah.
Oh, that's very good.
Oh yeah.
I did want to mention one other thing that I added and I added some Bible scriptures
in my letter as well.
Not in like, not to be in like a condescending way, but I know that that's kind of what they
trade in.
Yeah.
You know, I wanted to reference because if they value our friendship so much that they
want to smuggle booze into heaven, then I wanted to like reference something about that.
And so I said, it's like, you know, I don't know for sure if there is or isn't a God,
right?
Like, I don't know, maybe I'll be surprised.
Who knows?
But there's the whole thing with the unborn children or the kids who die before you can
like talk to them or, you know, tell them about Jesus and do they go to hell because
they never knew Jesus.
And you can get into the whole like, you know, a lot of like Lutherans and stuff baptize
babies right away when they're born because if you're baptized, then you can get to heaven.
But Baptists wait until they're adults and they choose baptism because you have to choose
Jesus and like you can get into that whole thing, but you know, the prevailing like Christian
thing is people who haven't had the opportunity to hear about Jesus still have the opportunity
to get into heaven, right?
And there's a couple like, a couple of bits.
Oh, and the scripture that I quoted, I think it was from Matthew and he was talking about
Sodom and Gomorrah and God or Jesus was saying that they will be a lot more lenient on the
citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah than they were on the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah that God
basically nuked into oblivion if you believe the story.
And so, you know, my whole point was I'm just trying to live the best life that I can live
and be the best person that I can be.
And if that's not enough for your God, then that's not really on me.
That's a, you know, it's hard to.
I mean, I'm not trying to sound like a dick.
I hope that didn't come off as like dickish, but you know, you can only-
Well, it's easy to shit on Christians in America.
You can do as good in your life as you can, you know, and you can constantly try and improve.
But if that's not enough for some like omnipotent being, I guess I'm sorry for that.
Well, it's a common theme in our country, especially for the hardcore Christians to
use their religion as an excuse for bad behavior.
And it's very easy to point that out.
You know, like I say, growing up Catholic, the sins of the church are unbelievable.
Unbelievable to the point where the modern church largely exists to protect criminals
who are members of the church and spend that way forever.
The Borgias were that way, you know, the Medici's were that way.
It's not like it's a new phenomenon.
No, and it's not really a secret for those who know how to research.
It's not a secret to the people who are members of the church.
There's huge cynicism amongst Catholics about the Catholic church itself.
It's very interesting.
But of course, around here, it's all cafeteria Catholics.
Yeah.
Well, those are probably the most common.
Oh, yeah, especially in an organization that's that large.
Yeah, well, and maybe for any religion, you know, and it's like the pastor, if they're
a firecracker of a pastor, they'll try and guilt you into being more evangelical.
But I think by and large, and just like with politics, like by and large, the majority
are just trying to live a good life.
I hope so.
Not politicians, because they don't give a fuck.
But you know, like most people, like whether they're like, they consider themselves like
a staunch Republican or a staunch Democrat, but you take some of those like ideology quizzes
online, right?
And most of them come back like, oh, you're a little left of middle or you're a little
right of middle, you know, like there's a reason it's called the middle because that's
where the majority of people are, you know.
But they get riled up by the evangelicals, whether it's a political evangelical or a
religious evangelical.
Right.
Now, they stream cases, online videos about anything.
They're going to take edge cases and try to get you all worked up about it.
Yeah, it's entertainment.
And I would consider church to be an entertainment industry largely.
Yeah, just like the news.
It puts the fear mongering, you know, bleeds, it leads.
Yeah.
So, so I want to talk about snowmobilers.
OK, because due to the snow.
And this happened a while ago.
OK.
Snowmobiles always fuck with property.
Have you ever seen Mad Max?
Have you ever seen the Road Warrior?
Yes.
OK.
The way I look at snowmobilers is the gang in the Road Warrior, you know, just riding
around in their snowmobiles, vandalizing, stealing stuff, doing drugs and having homosexual
sex out in the woods.
That's kind of their MO.
Yeah.
Everything that I see.
One of the main reasons I never got into snowmobiling.
Well, I'm not into most of that.
The sex of the gangs for sure, but the vandalizing is where I draw the line.
Exactly.
But I went over to my parents place and this fucking snowmobiler has been through their
yard, you know, here they go through.
But a couple of weeks ago, some snowmobiler jumped my road approach and hit my wooden
fence.
OK.
And it's fucking dented.
The one you haven't taken down the Christmas wreaths from for like five years.
Well, they probably did you a favor, buddy.
Yeah.
They dented that cedar post and it's tipped now.
They had to have damaged their sled.
Oh, undoubtedly.
Yeah.
Oh my God.
I can't believe it.
But yeah, they jumped my road approach and hit my fucking fence.
I was like, God damn it.
I may have to try to push it in the in the spring.
Oh, yeah.
Still soft.
Did they leave a visitor congregation pamphlet or something?
Oh, no, no.
This is just a random aside.
It's a random aside.
OK.
It makes me so mad because they knock.
Obviously, they knocked the snow into the driveway and I have to go out there and chisel
it out with a shovel.
Yeah.
We said you were calming down, though.
You're all riled up and you said you were calming down.
I am calming down.
I'm pretty calm about it.
But yeah, it's just every year, every year.
We haven't had any like super far into the property from what I can tell.
OK.
They kind of stayed within, I don't know, 150 feet of the road.
And that's good.
But one year, oh, one year they went out into the woods.
Came in and did a bunch of shitties or whatever in my yard.
OK.
And then went back down my driveway to the road.
There's vandals, those guys.
Yeah.
You know, and what?
There's not enough trail out there for for them to do stuff.
I know.
It's crazy.
We had a guy.
Oh, this had to have been four years ago.
Hopped up on meth, drove his car into the driveway, blasted through the yard and then
plowed through my neighbor's fence and drove through his cattle field and then out onto
the road on the other side.
And it reminds me of the snowmobilers.
He did it in a car.
Yeah.
So there is somebody out there that did a lot of damage to their sled on my fence.
And like they say, they dented that cedar log.
I couldn't believe the dent in it.
Yeah, that's pretty hardcore.
Oh, man.
I couldn't do that with a sledgehammer.
You'd have to hit it hard a lot of times.
That's a hundred and twenty miles per hour.
Mm hmm.
So.
Oh, I got a quick question for you.
Are you are you are you completely done with your cigar?
No, I am not.
OK.
Is your little pigtail hole kind of expanding?
Yes.
OK, mine is too.
It's getting weak on the edges, but nothing's coming out.
Yeah, nothing's coming out.
I just noticed it was kind of getting getting a little larger.
Gaping might be the term.
Oh, jeez.
But what a explicit tag on this.
I put explicit tags on all of our episodes.
That's probably wise.
Yeah, because, you know, like what I just think, like, well, what if I don't put one
on there and then I missed us saying fuck once and then somebody gets upset about it?
Right.
So I'll just mark them all as explicit so that we don't really have to worry about self
censoring on the podcast.
Life is explicit, you know.
Life is explicit.
One of my favorite punk lyrics is, you were never a virgin, you were fucked from the start.
That's a I like that.
Yeah.
It's actually on a concept album by this punk group and it's set in the Civil War.
And the album is called The Monitor, which was the Civil War submarine that the South
had.
And the band is called Titus Andronicus.
So they are well read because that's a Shakespeare play.
So nice.
Heck yeah.
Oh, that's great.
Back on the Christians.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I worked with a very hardcore Mormon, very conservative Mormon.
Conservative isn't only three wives instead of four or?
Nah, he had one wife, but he was definitely a believer.
And one day he showed up and he was drinking an energy drink.
And they can't do caffeine.
Well, all right.
I'll let you finish your story.
Adam, you're drinking caffeine.
I thought Mormons weren't allowed to do that.
He's like, oh no, I'm not drinking caffeine.
I'm not drinking caffeine.
I don't want to do that.
He's like, oh no, they just came up with a new thing and you can drink cold caffeine.
You just can't drink hot caffeine.
So I was like, what the?
There was another guy who was also a Mormon, but he was a Jack Mormon.
He's like, the Mormon Church bought a share of Coca-Cola.
Well, that's like they do the soaking.
Did we talk about that on the show yet?
I know what you're talking about, but I don't know if you talked about it on the show.
I don't remember either, but we'll just bring it up.
The Mormons will do soaking where it's not...
So premarital sex is a sin to Mormons, but according to Mormons, sex is defined as the
act of thrusting.
So what these Mormons now do is they insert themselves and then they have buddies, I guess,
on the bed to simulate the thrusting, but because the person or persons engaged in the
act of insertion, I guess, are not actually they themselves thrusting, it is not considered
sex.
But I guess it's just as fun, but a little more awkward because your best buddies are
there.
Mormons just have anal sex before marriage in that way.
It doesn't count.
Yes.
I'm not sure if that's 100% true.
I've heard stories about it that are about individuals where that was true for them.
Yeah.
Well, and maybe we'll have to get a Mormon on the show and then we can find out.
Coincidentally, my former coworker, who was a hardcore Mormon, was heavily into crypto
and like penny stocks and stuff and he lost his ass.
Mormons are not allowed to gamble, but they are allowed to play the stock market.
And the stock market is basically just gambling and he lost so much money that he freaked
out and he shot up one of his employers when he got fired.
I did not believe that story, but it did make a newspaper.
I will not tell you where it happened, but it made a newspaper and I got sent the article
at one of our mutual associates.
So you have more historical evidence that that was true than Lee Strelwell has about
that fountain proving that Jesus existed.
Right.
Oh yeah.
I saw his mugshot and I read the article.
And that is what historical researching looks like.
Yes.
Yeah.
Cause I was like, what?
I don't believe this.
So interesting.
Yes.
Very interesting.
Very, very.
What's the worst their behavior is.
What's that?
I found in life that the worse people's or the more people restrict their behavior, the
worse it becomes.
Yes.
It like bottles up and it explodes.
Yeah.
I have found that to be true as well.
The more you restrain somebody from doing something, the more they want to do it.
And it might just be out of spite, but I think, I think the, the, maybe the key takeaway is
that like abstinence, it doesn't have to be sex, but like abstinence is not really an effective
teaching tool.
You know, I think teaching people to have healthy relationships with things is more
important.
I agree with that.
I'm not done either, by the way.
I'm not done either, but I don't know that I have much more to talk about without vamping.
And this is going to be a long episode regardless.
So that's true.
I have, oh, I'm an inch and a half ish right now and it's still quite good.
Yeah.
Why don't we call the episode and you and I can just chat a little bit longer, but we'll
pick everybody else up next week.
Sounds good.
I highly recommend the Kristoff.
Yeah, it's phenomenal.
It is wonderful.
Thank you to Tobacco Grove.
Yep.
Thank you.
Not a sponsor, but if you'd like to be, you know how to find us.
Be safe, have fun.
That was out eager.