Abhijit: Hello, everybody. Thank you for joining me. Welcome to Rationable. Today, we have a very, very special guest who I'm interviewing today, and that is Seth Andrews from The Thinking Atheist Podcast. Now, I started my journey into atheism back around 2010. I think I've told you guys about it on different occasions. I'll go in-depth into it in a dedicated video if you want, but Seth's podcast was one of the first I started listening to. It really had a really nice approach to it. It was very down to earth. It was very real, very human. It didn't have any fancy philosophy. Things like Matt Dillahunty throws up or anything of that sort. We love that too. And hopefully, I'll have him on the show at some point. But Seth had a very nice, approachable voice, and he had very real, down-to-earth conversations with a lot of people. And his ideas were very relatable. There were some very powerful ones, especially dealing with grief without God, which was one of the episodes that stuck out.

And, of course, every Halloween, he has a Ghost Stories episode, which is amazingly entertaining, and I make sure I listen to it during the day because sometimes, they're really powerful stuff. But Seth, thank you so much for joining us on Rationable. It's such a pleasure to have you.

How have you been doing?

Seth Andrews: I'm well, and it's an honour to be here. No, we're doing well. At the time you and I are speaking, we've had a winter storm here in Oklahoma, which is rare for us. And so there's ice all over the roads. The dogs refuse to go outside. So, by the way, speaking of the dogs, at any moment, well actually, at some point, there may be a doorbell that rings, and my little dogs are going to lose their minds and go and try to attack somebody at the ankles. I'll have to go and answer the door if that happens; my apologies in advance. No, no, life is good. Things are good. It's an honour to be here. Thanks for the invite.

Abhijit: It's totally our pleasure. And I really wanted to kind of get into the weeds of your journey, even though we've heard about it many times on the podcast, but I'm sure that on the Indian side of things here, people who might be watching, who might not have heard about your podcast. Of course, I've heard about your conversion story, and there's a book that you've released called Deconverted.

You've been a radio and media professional for most of your life. What catalyst drove you to start the Thinking Atheist Podcast in the first place?

Seth Andrews: The Thinking Atheist is an icon, and I always like to make sure people know that it's not a person.

It's certainly not me. I'm not a great thinker. I'm just an everyman. But coming out of fundamental Christianity, a literal Bible. My parents were hardcore Christians. Adam and Eve were real, and they lived in the garden, and the snakes spoke to them. And Adam, you know, Noah built an arc, and Jesus arrived and was born of a virgin, blah, blah, blah.

And that was my normal; I just never really did my own thinking about any of it. I was so thankful I was born into the right religion at the right time. How lucky me, fortunate me, you know, and I was, you know, a student leader, and I was kind of a crusader. I guess that's my personality. I just wanted to go out there, stir the pot, be a part of things, and change the world, and I was a young man of great confidence.

So much confidence that it bordered on arrogance. I simply wasn't curious to know about many things that I had learned to ridicule; you know, atheists were evil. Evolution was a lie of the devil. Science and scientists were all in collusion to try to make us a godless society. But it's funny, as you get older, I think sometimes, you become less interested in keeping other people comfortable. You know, you're not as interested in fitting in. You don't have quite as much patience with all the BS. As I approached midlife, this whole idea that I needed to go along to get along, I just became more and more dissatisfied. Under the surface, there had been some things that happened that just didn't make any sense. It just doesn't wash; I can't reconcile this. And at 37, I finally said, “I'm going to figure this out. I'm sick and tired of sitting on my hands. I'm going to go back; I'm going to read the Bible. I'm going to get into a lot of the stuff that I've been warned is a lie of the devil. I'm going to find out for myself.

And man, my whole life opened up. It was hard. It was a very difficult journey. If you're asking me about specifics, forgive the long answer, my friend. There was the death of a popular Christian recording artist in the nineties, 1997. Rich Mullins was his name, horribly killed in a car accident.

I remember being on the radio telling everybody that God had called him home, and it just made no sense. I was on the radio, and in my skull, I was thinking, this is a bunch of crap. This, this doesn't, this doesn't wash. 9/11 was big for me. You know, as everybody's invoking the name of God, and people were asking me, the Christian, to pray for our nation, pray for God's hedge of protection. And a lot of people were blaming gay people, atheists, secular humanists, Muslims. I don't know. They were blaming everybody and that and a whole bunch of small things. So I was doing a ton of work. I used to be a video producer. After I was an FM radio broadcaster, I went into video production, and most of our clients were churches. So I was traveling all around the country. And it's funny because you'd go into a church, and you'd see the culture, meet the people, hear their specific doctrine, and meet their pastors. And, I think it became kind of a social experiment where I thought, wait, so much of this is just manmade.

Finally, you know, all the dominoes fell. And it was around 2008 that I just said I don't buy it. And then, I created an online community and a channel to help me hopefully be a beneficial part of that conversation and maybe help other people going through the same thing.

Abhijit: So this was around when you were about 30 years old. Was it?

Seth Andrews: I was about 37 when I got really serious. I was working, and I stumbled across Christopher Hitchens' debate video. I think this was in early 2008, I think. And he was debating a rabbi, and I was just, you know, doing some mindless graphic work.

And so I watched this video, and after 90 minutes, I was struck by the fact that it was the atheist who made the most sense. Wait a minute, that's not supposed to happen. I'm not Jewish. It's not like the rabbi was my cup of tea, but certainly, he could defend God, and instead, it was the heathen, the Godless man, who made the most sense. It was just, I just rattled. And before I knew it, I started to click on other videos, then I bought books, and then I read articles, and I watched more debates. And man, that unleashed the whirlwind; it just changed everything for me.

Abhijit: Yeah, it's a very familiar story.

It's the thing I've been very fortunate not to have been brought up indoctrinated in any particular religion. My parents have been from the Brahmo Samaj, a reformist Hindu sect. It's actually closer to Western religion than the Abrahamic religions than it is to Hinduism in many ways.

Like it's actually, the founder had read the Bible in the original Aramaic, and he read the Quran in Arabic. He'd read the Torah, pulled some good stuff from all angles and put it together. It was not really a monotheistic ideology but more like a pantheistic idea where God is everything. God is life. So, as unfalsifiable as anything else but relatively more realistic, like if you, if there's ideology, it

Seth Andrews: Doesn't Hinduism have thousands of gods?

Abhijit: Exactly. Yeah, we do; they do, I guess I could say,

Seth Andrews: is there a hell or, like, damnation, that kind of thing? Heaven and hell and Hinduism, forgive my ignorance, but

Abhijit: No, no, It's actually, there is a hell in Hinduism.

But it's more like the underworld, like in Greek mythology, but the main engine of the moral fabric, which I'm still trying to unravel here because it's very confusing. After all, we have so many different books, and we have epics. We have all sorts of other things coming together, all claiming to be the central books of the religion. There's a lot of stuff to parse out, but one of the main engines of this is karma. So it is the good deeds that you do in life that determine whether you get reincarnated into something else or someone else, or you get freed from it and achieve nirvana and moksha, which is the freedom from the cycle of reincarnation, which is what everybody strives to achieve and probably fails at because then you get reincarnated as somebody else an animal, a person. If you have bad karma, you'll get reincarnated as somebody from a lower caste, who is underprivileged, has no money, and is living on the street. So you can see how this starts getting very problematic when you start digging into it and seeing that when you see underprivileged people and poor people, who we have a lot of, you start justifying it as they must have done something wrong in a previous life.

And that is how people's minds automatically work. So this is something that you are extremely well-read in the Christian religion. You've read the Bible; you can, you know, all the passages. On the other hand, I don't even know where to start. So because we've got multiple books and multiple interpretations of every single passage.

As one of the atheist podcasters in India, Vimoh has mentioned: Hinduism is very slippery. As soon as you debunk one thing, somebody says, oh, I don't believe that at all. You know, like, I think this now, try and debunk that, so it just gets very uneasy. But around the same time, when I was about 30 years old, I started questioning what I believed in. And on my side, it was ancient technology and ancient archaeology, ancient civilizations that were, apparently, extremely technologically evolved. So, we have the legends of Ramayana and Mahabharat, where we have flying chariots, and exploding arrows and all sorts of fantastic stuff.

And I thought, whoa, they had missiles, they had planes. They're just calling it in poetic terms. And because that's what we were entertained with on Sunday mornings. Sunday morning entertainment was all these epics, like televised versions of these. So I grew up believing that. But then when these kinds of things started, I, when I had to start writing a dissertation for my university, which was supposed to be a science fiction novel, I thought it would be, you know, for I, you know, we'd go to a different planet. You find humans because of ancient technology, and humans built a spaceship. They moved to a different planet because something was going to happen. The calamity happened, and all of civilization was lost.

But first contact is with other humans—you know, that kind of thing. And then I found out that all of this was crap and that there was not a shred of evidence for any of it. So then my worldview from that perspective started crumbling. So I stumbled onto your podcast. I stumbled onto Skeptoid and the Sceptic's Guide to the Universe.

And I started more along the non-religious, but more sceptical, critical thinking path because I never had a beef with Hinduism, at least, and that is a pun that the Indians will get because they're not supposed to eat beef. But what was the catalyst that finally made you think, I've got to get this message out there.

Like, I've got to tell people about my story, tell them what I've found, and start that podcast. What was that? What was that final catalyst that flipped that switch?

Seth Andrews: Well, there are a few gears in that machine; I think back in 2009, when the website launched, there weren't nearly as many resources for people like me.

Now you'll find a lot. There are YouTube channels, and podcasting has exploded. And I also think that the idea of atheism has become a little bit more normalized in most of the culture here in the United States. It's not quite as scandalous as it was. It still is, but not like it was back in the day. But I, you know, live in an extremely religious part of the United States. The state of Oklahoma is I could throw a rock out my window and hit three churches, right? I call my town Jesus Town. Yeah. It is such a Jesusy area. And I felt alone. I think I think the main reason most people stay in religion and don't, even if they're biblically illiterate, they'll stay in a Christian Church is really a sense of belonging and community.

And if you leave that, you feel like you're twisting in the wind. Is there anybody else out there who gets me? How many people are judging me? And I, you know, I had people in my own family, they lost their minds. You are going through a midlife crisis. It's an attack by Satan. You are just living in sin.

You know, anything but, hey, maybe Seth has a point that it's stupid to believe that donkeys could speak Hebrew in the book of Genesis, right? And you know, I was partially seeking a sense of belonging and community, partially wanting to help create that for other people, especially back in 2009.

And again, I'm an activist by nature. I was on stage as a high school student for Jesus. I was talking on stage. I was a spokesperson for a youth organization called Youth for Christ. I started as an FM radio broadcaster in 1990. I was used to being at the front. I was out there; I was a ham. It's weird. I'm introverted in many key ways, but I love people, and I'm good on stage. You know, it's a weird combination, but then I also retreat to a dark room and recharge my battery. And I'm like, everybody, leave me alone. I'm that way, but I think I was mad. I felt like I'd wasted so much time. I was irritated that nobody seemed to be listening to my concerns in my naivete. I thought to myself, well, if I talk to all my believing friends about the stuff I've just discovered over the last year, it'll blow their minds. They, so I would go in and be like, "Have you read this? Have you seen the contradictions here?

"What about this verse?” And this doesn't make any sense. And this has been scientifically disproven, and holy cow, there was an echo in a previous religious text. So this has obviously been a…", and I would go in. Not only would I have no luck, no success, but my interlocutor would double down and say, "well, now I doubly believe, and you're doubly wrong". And I felt like I need to get this out. It was part of my own process. Maybe that's the best way to say it. My early work was a lot more naive, honestly. I should have just shut up for a few years, been a sponge, and learned and listened. But instead, I just wanted to get out there. So I made a lot of bad arguments. I was pretty angry at not just the time wasted but the way I was being treated by believers, like the broken thing. And after a few years, I calmed down, you know, I started to centre myself.

And I find this is the case with a lot of people. A lot of apostates, when they come out, they think, I have believed nonsense; I have wasted time. Everybody's treating me like I'm the problem for doubting, and you just get angry. And that goes on sometimes for years, but for most people, I think that begins to subside, and then you start to balance yourself out a little bit.

And it took me some time, but I got there, and now, you know, I have my moments of anger. I can get snarky; I can go for the jugular, I can do that, but I really have become more interested in de-escalation. And let's not attack each other. And I'm tired of the drama and the bickering and the awfulness.

And is there a way where we can maybe start with a softer voice in good faith and try to approach each other first as human beings? It's not always possible, but I think that's been a goal in my own life.

Abhijit: Yeah, that's something that I've always gravitated towards. So when I read the Manual for Creating Atheists by Peter Boghossian, the cover was very different from the actual contents.

And I quite related to that approach. And then I watched Anthony Magnabosco actually practising that on the streets. I almost met him. I was at the FFRF conference in San Antonio, Texas. And apparently, he was there, but I missed him.

Seth Andrews: Anthony Magnabosco is, he's a gem.

He's lovely.

Abhijit: And I'm going to have him on as well at some point.

Seth Andrews: There may be a few people who may have no idea what we're talking about, but the book, A Manual for Creating Atheists, promoted something that has come to be called street epistemology. Epistemology means how do we know what we know? How do we come to knowledge? Street epistemology would have people engage other people in good faith using questions, the Socratic method. So, instead of saying, "you are wrong; this is stupid," you say, "well, how did you come to that knowledge? And why? How, what? Why? Why do you believe that? Can you tell me more about it? And what would you think about this?" Since you lead with questions, which helps keep people off the defensive, I've incorporated a lot of street epistemology in my own journey. You know, it's. It's funny; sometimes, I can get a little snarky.

It's like, you're at a party. Before you know it, they'll say something they heard on Fox News, a wildly conservative, highly religious nightmare of a media group in town. They'll talk about how we need to have the 10 Commandments on display in our courtrooms, which we have in the United States. They put the Biblical 10 Commandments on the wall in our secular courts. It's so frustrating. So I'll say, "well, you feel like those should be on display?" "Yes. Yes. I think that's, yes. Yes." "Well, why, why do you think?" "they're important. They're the most important rules ever given to us by God. They're the 10 commandments". And then I'll reach in – I shouldn't do this – I'll reach into my wallet. I'll pull out whatever I have in my wallet, 20, 40 bucks, put it on the table, and say, "I will pay you $40 if in one minute you can name 7 of the 10 Commandments". I haven't had anybody. I've done it six times. Not one person. Not one person has been able. And you know, it doesn't necessarily achieve a great result, but I'm trying to prove a point. And that is, you don't know what it is, but we have to have it posted in every courtroom in the United States. It's so freaking frustrating.

So I'm sorry to take that detour, that bunny trail, stream of consciousness there.

Abhijit: So, in India, like every single news channel, almost every single news channel is like Fox News. The different degrees of Fox News of going absolute batshit crazy to relatively reasonable, but still very conservative and biased. So that entire panorama is covered in most of the Indian news channels. It's absolute madness. So I totally relate to that. I have a rather annoying habit of waking up, and the first thing in the morning I watch is Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert, and my wife is like, oh, turn that off. I'm getting a headache.

But that's

Seth Andrews: take the temperature of whatever insanity has been going on, on this side of the planet. I fear for this country.

Abhijit: I know! I have a kind of schadenfreude kind of thing about watching the politicians in the US do all such horrendous things, but at the same time, it's very real. I realize it's very real. When Trump was getting elected, I remember sitting in a pub where there were a bunch of people. I was like, "you know, Trump's going to be an absolute disaster. Why on earth is he even being able to stand for elections? Like, this is ridiculous."

And then those guys from another table saying, "oh, this is going to be fun. We want to see what happens." I'm like, "dude, this is not only an entire country that is going to be subjected to his nonsense for four years, but as a consequence, every country in the world will also have to deal with it because the US has a very privileged position of having a lot of power over a lot of other countries and it's not going to be fun for anyone."

Seth Andrews: but well, Trump, I believe it was today or yesterday on Truth Social, had re-share, I don't know what you call it, re-truthed, whatever he calls it, on his social media platform. But he had shared a comment by someone who threatened physical violence. If the MAGA conservatives don't get what they want, if Trump is not re-elected, he actually said something like physical violence, physical force, and war in the streets. There was a growing concern that we're going to see more and more and more of that. We have more firearms than citizens in this country. So we have a gun culture. We have an entire culture of Christian Jihadists calling for Holy War because they believe that everybody who's not them is the devil.

We have Q Anon Conspiracists spreading crazy lies about everything from child trafficking and democrat paedophilia to drinking children's blood. All that is just crazy stuff. This is the end of the world. The antichrist is coming. And I am waiting with fear and trepidation for the day that some catalyst, whether it's Trump actually saying, take to the streets with your guns and take this country back, or whatever will happen. I have a lot of fear that we're going to see a literal civil war in the United States, probably, maybe this year. I don't know.

Abhijit: I hope not. But haven't you been tempted to make those, you know, you had those little videos that you had on your YouTube channel.

"You got to be shitting me!" I love those. Those were hilarious.

Seth Andrews: I used to do a lot more video production. You know, it's funny, I started out on the Thinking Atheist page as a video producer who occasionally did podcasts and then it transitioned. I became a podcaster who occasionally does videos. But a lot of the early videos were fun to do. But I was spending weeks at a time on one four-minute release, and I just came to the point when I just could not sustain it. But I wish I could. I think, one day, I will be able to subcontract out. I could write it and have graphic artists, and we could work and produce, but right now, I'm busy doing so many things.

I'm preparing for a speaking tour in the spring, going to Wichita or Orlando. I'll be in Phoenix for American Atheist. I've got a second podcast I just released, so I've just been flying the idea. It's just a new endeavour to help keep things fresh. I've been doing the Thinking Atheist for 14 years, and you can only debunk the book of Genesis so many times. I still love what I do, and I love my community, and I'm so honoured to be a part of it, and I will continue on. But I wanted a fresh challenge, and how do I make this a short story? I will make this a short story. There was a world-renowned broadcaster-storyteller named Paul Harvey. Every weekday, he used to release a four-minute true story. He called it The Rest of the Story. And people would stop their day. It was so good. They would stop whatever they were doing and listen to the whole thing. It was huge. And he'd tell this tale about something. That could be something that happened a hundred years ago, or it could have been last month. It could be weird news or celebrity trivia, or true crime. Who knows what it was going to be, but it was true.

And at the end, he'd pull the rug out from underneath you and give you a piece of information that was a surprise. And you'd go, "oh my gosh, I had no idea". And he passed away in 2007 and nobody is doing his show the way he did it. I looked everywhere, and I decided, well, I could carry that torch. I'm not going to be Paul Harvey. I've got my own vocal style, and I've got my own storytelling style. I'm me. So it's definitely my show, but it's inspired by him. His ghost is all over it. They're five-minute vignettes where you just jump into a real thing that happened, and at the end, you kick 'em a little bit, and people feel like they really went somewhere.

So it's called True Stories with Seth Andrews. If you're interested, the website is truestoriespodcast.com. You can just subscribe on pretty much any app. But they're fun. They're fun stories. I just wrote a story that's going to release, I'll just spill the beans for you about a young girl, a first grader in school, and she couldn't hold still, and the teachers were monumentally frustrated. She was bouncing around. She was always distracted, and they thought she had a learning disability, so they told her parents, "we think she may have a problem. You need to go to a learning and behavioural specialist for children". And so the mother took her daughter to the specialist, and the specialist interviewed everybody and asked all the questions.

And then he asked the mother to leave with him, and they left the little girl alone in his office, and he turned on a radio. And as that door closed and they were looking through the glass, the little girl all of a sudden, as soon as that door closed, jumped up and bounced around the room and jumped on the desk and started dancing and carrying on. And she was just very physical. And the specialist looked at the mother and said, there's nothing wrong with your child. She is a born dancer. This is how she expresses herself. You need to provide an outlet for that. And the mother immediately enrolled that girl in dance school. She went on to join the Royal Ballet. She ultimately became the woman who choreographed Cats and Phantom of the Opera. Such a good story. And that's the kind of stuff I get to release three times a week on True Stories. It's a lot of fun.

Abhijit: That's fascinating. I'm definitely going to give that a shot. And amongst all my the sceptic podcasts and everything that I've,

Seth Andrews: I think it's hard for content creators to keep up with other people's stuff too. You know, people are always asking me, well, what do you like to listen to? And I'm like, oh God, I try to listen to and watch other stuff, but when you're making things, it's so hard to carve out time, you know?

Abhijit: Absolutely. I've got a whole bunch of audiobooks sitting around, including Deconverted, and I think you've just released a new book, which

Seth Andrews: Yeah. It's called Christianity Made Me Talk Like an Idiot. 

Abhijit: Yeah, I watched your talk about that. So this is a

Seth Andrews: Yeah. It's based on the speech. You know, I get into the fact that these types of religions, probably like Hinduism, Islam, and so many other superstition-based religions, can cause people who are not dumb to do and say really dumb stuff. The abnormal becomes normal. And so, you know, I get into a lot of the strange stuff I did as a part of the church that I thought was profound and amazing at the time. And looking back, I'm like, I was just an idiot. That just makes no sense.

And so it's light-hearted, but it's also a targeted exposé of the culture and how it often promotes unreason.

Abhijit: I'm really looking forward to that because I found your talk entertaining and relatable. But there's one book which I would recommend, not only these but one book, especially, which I think most Indian listeners will relate to, which is Sacred Cows.

Seth Andrews: I just glazed over Hinduism a bit in Sacred Cows, not being from that culture, even though I felt like I tried to vet all the information.

I'm very self-conscious like that. What did I miss? You could write an encyclopaedia on Hinduism and still not cover remotely everything. It's so deep, and there are so many branches on that tree. It's crazy.

Abhijit: And we've got some weird stuff. Like I made a presentation to SKeptiCal: Californian Skeptics.

And I was talking about the weirdest covid quackery that we had in India. One of them, which I had saved the best for last, I kid you not, people covering themselves in cow shit and urine and sitting in the sunshine with it on and saying they will absorb vitamin B12 through their skins.

Well, you could just take a tablet. One, your wife won't run away from you. You can still be hanging around with friends without people.

So just switching gears here a little bit, and this has been something that I've been debating with myself and asking around with a bunch of people.

Where do atheists get their morals from? I figured I'd ask you because you have a much more grounded, sensible mind space as far as I can make out because Matt Dillahunty will just go off into philosophy land, and I can't understand anything he says after a point. Well, what do you think?

Seth Andrews: Well, first of all, I find it terrifying that someone would have to be told that murder, theft, rape, et cetera, are wrong by an outside sources. This whole idea that you could not come up with that organically. But how I like to frame it is this, if we look back to our ancestral past, if you killed everybody around you if you harmed other people, if you tried to go it alone, you were more likely to starve to death or die of the elements or be killed by predators. Cooperation with other animals, with primates, actually, was a way for us to ensure that we would survive and thrive. Pro-social behaviours allowed us also to feel a sense of community. It created a pleasure response in us, and helping other people helped the tribe, and that came back to help us.

And so, I see us as evolved primates that are the product of behaviours where being pro-social, where creating community, where doing the right thing actually fosters an environment that helps not just other people but comes back upon us. In that way, I think an evolved ethical system makes a lot of sense, and it's a lot more sensible than, oh, some cosmic wizard said, don't kill people. Meanwhile, that cosmic wizard executes millions upon millions of people and then tortures everybody else in hell. It makes no sense to me, but yeah. I don't think it's all that hard. "Where do your morals come from?" is actually a jab, isn't it? When a lot of those people say that, some people are genuinely curious, but a lot of times, what they're saying is, you heathen, you wicked person, you're less righteous than I am. Where would your morals come from without God? It's almost an insult. That's how I hear it sometimes. 

Abhijit: I was actually very surprised actually to encounter an Indian. I assumed from his name that he was Hindu of some sort and that he said, "wouldn't all atheists be just corrupting society and raping, pillaging and killing, and having all sorts of violence just like they do in the West?" I was like, "what about the West? Like, what are you talking about?" He said, "what's happening in the US". I'm like, "what is happening in the US?" They said, "oh, there's so much corruption. Their entire society is going down the drain". I said, "You do realize they're still the most powerful country in the world. Also, it's statistically proven that most of the crime and most of the residents of most of the prisons are actually Christian. And there's no denying that. And the Scandinavian countries are by far the least religious. They have the highest levels of prosperity and the lowest levels of crime recorded on the planet. So, how do you relate to that?" "But isn't that the atheistic position?" he said. "Absolutely not. We are nice people, or most of us are. I'm sure there are atheist assholes everywhere. There'll be nice atheists and middle-ground atheists who are nice sometimes and assholes at other times. We have an entire spectrum of humanity."

Seth Andrews: Question there is, you know, the reality that the most secular nations and we look at places like New Zealand and Japan, and you know, they are much less warlike. They have much less violent crime, and they are, in many ways, much more prosperous and advanced than we are.

I wrote a chapter in Christianity Made Me Talk... No; it was actually Confessions of a Former Fox News Christian about this notion that Christian Americans like to chest thump. That we are number one, we're the greatest, we're the greatest. And so I say, well, how would you qualify that? Are we the best in terms of the cost of living? No. Do we have the least violent crime? No. Is our healthcare system the best? Not remotely. Do we have the biggest army? No. And that would be freaking China. You know, we go through wellness, happiness real estate just go point by point, and we fail on almost every metric.

Absolutely. And in fact, as a religious nation, we're actually one of the more warlike, certainly one of the most warlike first world nations on the planet. You know, it's just chaos. Just chaos.

Abhijit: And still one of those, still one of the most religious countries in the world. I think; still, I think probably the Nones are at, maybe, around 30% or 27% or something of that.

Seth Andrews: We're approaching a quarter, the non-religious, not necessarily atheist, but people who simply don't align with the religious or faith tradition. Mm-hmm. They may have a god belief or be spiritual, but it doesn't matter. They're not really engaged. It doesn't, that number's about, I think it's about 23, 20 4% or higher, and it's growing all the time.

Covid has certainly allowed people a great excuse. They stopped having to get up Sunday mornings because they cancelled. Then they realized, Hey, this is pretty amazing. I can get my Sunday mornings back; I don't really need them. And a lot of people never went back. And the churches are having a real panic attack over membership, et cetera. They're doing whole campaigns; how do we bring people back? And I'm thinking good luck with that.

Abhijit: Oh, absolutely. And you know, speaking of religious societies and coming back, another thing that I wanted to talk to you about was The Handmaid's Tale, a show I heard about so much on your channel. And there was this one episode, which is like, if you haven't watched The Handmaid's Tale, do not listen to this episode. And I skipped that episode and kept listening to everything else until I finally managed to watch it, and my wife and I were hooked. Like she finished off season one in one night. Like she just went at it. She watches everything in fast-forward. I don't know how she does it, but we finished it. And finally, at the end of season four, just a couple of days after that, the US forces left Afghanistan, and the Taliban took over. I was like, "oh my God, it's happening in real life." 

Seth Andrews: We're certainly seeing the war on women in this country, which is, yes, for those who aren't familiar with The Handmaid's Tale, it's based on a Margaret Atwood novel about dystopian theocracy. These fundamentalist religious zealots men take over the halls of power and oppress women.

They strip them of their humanity. They make them not even secondary citizens in many cases. And then those in a culture where it's very, very, very difficult to have children, they find fertile young women and essentially make them sex slaves. And they bring them in to be impregnated, to help further the species, and then indoctrinate the children.

There's a whole bunch of stuff going on, but, you know, the Handmaid's Tale was reaching as a television series on the Hulu network, a massive reach. Right when we saw the Supreme Court strike down reproductive rights in the United States. So the war on women is a very real thing. A lot of times, we're like, oh, come on, it'll never happen.

It's just fiction. And then you see the right-wing Christian nationalist, zealots, and theocrat Dominionists doing what they do. You're like, it's possible. If things continue, it might even be likely, and it's terrifying.

Abhijit: Absolutely. And it was, it, it's a horror show by, you know, by, it's not, it's not a drama show, it's a horror show.

It really is infuriating and scary as hell because even in India, we don't have, fortunately, don't have similar ideologies, at least associated with our religions. Maybe a little bit with Islam, but we've still got an extremely Loud fundamentalist clan, the Hindutva clan, as at least a school of thought.

I can't even call it a school of thought. It's, it's very thoughtless because they think that Hinduism is a very conservative religion and that wearing jeans and eating CMA and going out late at night, you know, women going out late at night and just asking to be raped. So rape victims just get ignored because they were asking for it. After all, they were wearing dresses. They were wearing all sorts of revealing outfits.

I'm like, you know, women in saris, and in burkhas and hijabs, they get raped too. It's not like it doesn't happen. It happens all the time. And these western ideologies have been coming in, like modern medicine and, you know, just modern culture and drinking, et cetera, et cetera. A lot of these fundamentalist Indian politicians, and especially because now we have a very strong movement in the central government, which is now very fundamentalist Hindu and very nationalist Hindu.

So it's very much like the MAGA crowd in the US, and they're trying to enforce this. Not only a very strong sense of Indian culture being corrupted by the West but also dividing the Hindus from the Muslims. We've always had a division between the Hindus and the Muslims. That's why Pakistan got formed.

That's why Bangladesh got formed during the partition. But now they're driving a wedge even deeper between the two cultures and trying to. There's, they're totally happy with it because they're like, you know, first of all, they have the Hindu majority country, so they'll get voted in again and again and again, and they can do whatever they want.

So with every term the Prime Minister serves, he's getting even more. Not him; he never says anything politically incorrect on the camera, but all his cronies are managing to do all these weird things and getting deeper and deeper into it. Into the weeds of doing, you know, separating our country and driving in very deep wedges of separation, which is absolutely horrendous.

Like, it's, it's horrible, and it's very much like a dictatorship in many ways. Like, media is being silenced. There have been people who have been taken off banned on Twitter and banned on many social media because they're speaking out against them. And my family keeps telling me I shouldn't mess around with these guys.

But now that I've started talking about atheism, there's a chance that I'll be targeted as well at some point in time. But so far, so good. The atheist YouTubers and podcasters are, so far, safe, but did you have Sanal Edamaruku on your podcast at some point in time? He got exiled to, not exiled, but he had to take asylum in Finland.

Seth Andrews: We may have done a feature on that. Forgive me, I've done 650 shows, and they're all blurring together at the moment. But yeah, it's very possible that we featured that.

Abhijit: Yeah, because apparently, I could be wrong about this, so if there's anybody who's watching who knows that I'm wrong, please let me know in the comments. But there was a statue of Mary that was crying what seemed like blood somewhere in the south of India, and everybody was absolutely aghast. All the people were congregating, and they were touching the blood and kissing her feet, and it was flowing all the way down her. And when there was an investigation, though, they found that there was a sewer line which had broken behind the statue. The rusty, dirty water was seeping through the plaster of Paris in the statue and coming out at the thinnest point, which was the inner sight of her eyes and then dripping down her body.

And I was like,

Seth Andrews: Ugh,

Abhijit: it's horrible. But when he debunked that and exposed it, he said they needed to clean it up; he got death threats, and now he's had to take asylum in a different country. So we're kind of in the same boat in some ways. I have to say, it's very unfortunate.

Seth Andrews: You know, people who take a belief personally are then confronted with the reality that it doesn't make sense.

Yeah. It's like you've insulted one of their children. They just, it, it's, I always like to use the example of Mother Teresa. Everybody's like, well, lovely Mother Teresa. But when you dive into the reality of who she was, the very troubled person who celebrated poverty and, and took said, God takes pleasure and the suffering of those who are, you know, going through tremendous difficulty.

And meanwhile, she was a total hypocrite jet-setting with junk bond millionaires. Yes. And if you talk about any of that stuff, people lose their minds. Why would you ever say she's Mother Teresa? And so my test for them is, okay, fine. You tell me three things about Mother Teresa that have nothing to do with the fact that she's Catholic or where she was born. All right. Tell me anything specific about Mother Teresa? No one knows the thing, but they still have an emotional reaction. They still freak out and double down because they fell in love with the idea of Mother Teresa. They cherish it, they protect it, and people do. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. In the miracle, the quote-unquote miracle of her sainthood was totally manufactured.

Tons of ink has been spilt on that debacle, but I think this is often true when it comes to anything like that. Whether it's a religious belief or a political belief, people protect it, and they're more interested in protecting it and keeping it safe and insulated than ever exposing it to light or heat.

And that's a challenge for those of us out there, including ourselves. When we look at ourselves, you know, and do I believe it because it's true or because I, or do I just have a belief in belief? That kind of thing.

Abhijit: Yeah. Absolutely. Now, I know you have places to go and people to meet. So I just wanted to end with one last question. What has it been like? You've had a lot of shows, and you've interviewed a lot of people. You've talked on a huge variety of topics over 600 episodes now on your podcast and made many appearances as a speaker. So what has been your finest moment or your most cherished moment as an atheist activist over the last, over a decade now?

Seth Andrews: Boy, that answer would change depending on what time of day you ask me. That's a good way to be. I'm going to cheat; I'm going just to throw a few out. 

Abhijit: Yeah, go for it. 

Seth Andrews: I think the opportunity to be a part of the conversation, to be able to present from the stage and have an audience respond to the material, is hugely gratifying.

I'm struck by the people that I've been able to meet now. I'm interviewing Pen Gillette of Penn and Teller. I'm about to interview primatologist Fran Deval. He is one of the, if not the most famous, primatologists on the planet who has done massive work. I got to meet John Delaney and interview him a couple of times. He played Q on Star Trek. And then everyday people who are, they're just so freaking generous. A quick anecdote; this will be a good way to cap it. My relationship with my mother and father is very troubled because they believe I am spiritually sick. It affected our relationship, and they would cross boundaries all the time. They would send me messages and sermons and health threats and all this other; they just wouldn't leave it alone. And I, at some point, drew a line, and for a couple of years, we didn't speak. I'm like, if you continue to do this, I'm going to have to enforce this boundary because you're not allowed.

I do not give you permission. And they would not abide by that boundary. And I drew the line. So I was giving a speech in a little town called Wichita, Kansas. And during the q and a, someone asked me about my relationship with my parents, and I was like, it's pretty bad; they're pretty ashamed.

And when I was out in the lobby afterwards, a lovely woman named Brenda came up and looked me in the eyes. She said, “I just want you to know that if I were your mother, I would be very proud of you.” And I started weeping. I just started crying, and I gave her a big hug. And it took me a while to compose myself. I guess I hadn't realized how much I was looking for that. That's the nature of the people I've been able to run into. They're so much good will, and there's so much goodness. And it's the kind of thing that I wish a lot of really fundamentally religious people could see.

I wish they could see the connection, the human connection, hear the stories, see the smiles, get the hugs, and feel that sense of connection beyond superstition, but in a more meaningful way, which is simply human. And having that kind of family all over the world. I've got family all over the world.

I'm struck by it. I'm honoured by it. I will never take it for granted. That is probably the single best part of being privileged to do what I do, is my connection. People have taken me into their family, and I've taken them into mine. We are part of the human experience together. I know it sounds like a greeting card over the holidays when I say it that way. But I really do mean it. It's just a lovely and amazing thing to have in my life. So that would be number one.

Abhijit: That is so amazing. Thank you so much, Seth. It has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for being on here.

It has been something that I've been looking forward to for a very long time. If you scroll up on the Facebook messages, you'll see that I messaged you back in 2018, hoping that you'd turn up at CSICon or if I could have met you somewhere outside. And before that, I met Adam Reakes in Australia, and he said he'd met you.

Seth Andrews: So, yeah, we had a great time. We had a couple of mutual points of contact. Well, I hope I get a chance to shake your hand in person someday. I hope I didn't talk too much. When you invite a radio host on your show, get ready for a, 

Abhijit: I was counting on it. 

Seth Andrews: Long-winded bloviating guy, you know. But no, it's been a real honour, and I appreciate the invitation very much.

Abhijit: No, it's been our pleasure completely. Thank you so much for joining us and for everyone who's watching and listening. Thank you so much for joining me for this very special interview. It's definitely a landmark in my career, for sure.

I will put all the links down below, including all the books that Seth has written. They will be affiliate links because you'll be helping me out, and by buying the book, you'll be helping him out.

So thank you all very much for watching. See you next time. Until then, be rationable.

Affiliate Links to Seth’s Books & More:

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• Christianity Made Me Talk Like an Idiot: Kindle: https://amzn.to/40VAYG1 | Paperback: https://amzn.to/3Iq8FrV

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