In today’s episode of the Atheist Experience, Jim Barrows and Secular Rarity take on calls about divorce, single parents, trans women, and technology before Armin Navabi flies in to help.
Andrea in FL calls to claim that atheism leads to higher divorce rates and that Christians have more satisfactory sex lives than atheists. How do you explain the Pew Research Center studies that contradict this claim? Is it more important to stay married and be miserable for the children or is it better to teach them about happiness? What is it specifically about being married and not getting a divorce that makes people better?
Otari in the nation of Georgia proposes that children of single parent households are more likely to be delinquent. What studies do we have that single parent households are radically problematic? Could the problem be linked to only one income for the household and poverty? Other than income, how are two parents raising a child better than one? Is the real problem divorce, or is it socioeconomic status? Would abortion cut down on single parent households?
Nate in CA asks if trans people competing in sports would have a physical advantage, and what the difference is between sex and gender. Some cis women can have naturally higher levels of testosterone than other cis women. In sports, why are we testing women for testosterone levels but not men? People can be born intersexed, and also be born with different gendered brains. We would rather be on the side of inclusivity to give everyone a chance to participate.
Corey in TX asks how technology changing our environment affects our evolution, and is it causing it to speed up. We may be able to evolve to handle higher levels of pollution, but how rapidly do the pollution levels change? There can be a new species of hominids that evolves alongside homo sapiens.
Theist in the USA claims that theists have better lives than atheists. There is nothing about community building that is better with religion, and there is no link of intelligence to either atheism or religion. There is no data to demonstrate that atheists are more likely to go down a bad path. If an action increases the overall happiness, then it is good. The evangelical stance on LGBTQA increases the number of suicides in that community, and that is a bad thing. Do NOT Google dolphins having sex with blow holes.
Mr. Porter from IL asks what the worst evidence for god is. Jim mentions to look at the trees and Armin says it is the argument for chicken.
Kathy in IL calls as an atheist attending the Unitarian Universalist Church, and explains how their model is not conversion, but cooperation. Compared to other religions, this may be good, but secular humanism is a better instrument. When a church seems loving and tolerant, but accepts bad ideas, we must oppose that.
Thank you for tuning in this week! Question of the week is: What should the Norse have had a god of, but didn’t?
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