The Atheist Experience

Atheist Community of Austin

The Atheist Experience is a weekly show in Austin, Texas geared at a non-atheist and atheist audience. The Atheist Experience is produced by the Atheist Community of Austin.

The Atheist Community of Austin is organized as a nonprofit educational corporation to develop and support the atheist community, to provide opportunities for socializing and friendship, to promote secular viewpoints, to encourage positive atheist culture, to defend the first amendment principle of state-church separation, to oppose discrimination against atheists and to work with other organizations in pursuit of common goals.

We define atheism as the lack of belief in gods. This definition also encompasses what most people call agnosticism. read less

The Atheist Experience 27.10 03-12-2023 with Forrest Valkai and JMike
Mar 13 2023
The Atheist Experience 27.10 03-12-2023 with Forrest Valkai and JMike
In today’s episode of the Atheist Experience, Forrest Valkai is joined by Jmike!Frank from the USA claims that if you don’t believe in God, your life is meaningless. The first premise of this fallacious “argument” is the existence of objective morality. Here’s my advice, slow down and think this through.Chris from SC wants clarification on the difference between sex and gender. Cliff from Canada wants to ask, eventually, why we ought to worship God assuming it is real. Mr. Warlight is calling in with an argument for the supernatural that our hosts just CAN’T HANDLE. Abhishek from India wants to know why it’s so important to question religious beliefs and focus on its problems when it does have benefits. Andrew from Canada’s argument for God is the same processes science textbooks go through when they are updated. Why revamp the bible? If it’s outdated in terms of its conclusions about reality, why would it be useful to go back and rewrite it with our current scientifical findings integrated when the bible has nothing to do with modern science? Instead of having a story with inaccurate claims about reality, you now have a story with some inaccurate carry-overs, because they have to be there for the bible to still be the bible, with some modern scientific understandings sprinkled in. Chuck from HI believes that matter, space, stars, and Earth are all eternal. Oxygen is as eternal as everyone’s excitement about Marvel’s Eternals. I would add more, but anything I say would detract from whatever just happened.
The Atheist Experience 27.08 02-26-2023 with Johnny P Angel and ObjectivelyDan
Feb 27 2023
The Atheist Experience 27.08 02-26-2023 with Johnny P Angel and ObjectivelyDan
Welcome back to the show! Please welcome today’s hosts of the Atheist Experience, Johnny P. Angel and ObjectivelyDan!Dave from WI wants to know if our hosts believe that there is any validity of prophecy. The caller seems to think so.Jon from Canada claims Atheism is a religion because they are woke and believe in things that are based on their own ideas. So is being woke at all relevant? So does that mean that Christian fundamentalist denominations are not actually religions?Frank from NC asks what our hosts think of the idea that God is actually source-energy that jumpstarted the big bang.Michael from UT has faith that aliens exist but in a super unexciting way. We have an example of a planet that can sustain life, therefore it is possible that another planet somewhere in the universe might have life of some variety on it.John from IA had a mystical (hallucination) experience that lead them to agnostic atheism.Pablo from Spain asks why finding the truth is important. Why hunt for the truth when the search for it might negatively impact humanity in the process or disrupt the status quo?Jonah from TN wants to know if reforming the church is an attainable goal. It's one of those things that as an institution will always be lagging behind, but I’d rather work to reform it and get half of its followers to fight for progressive issues than not and have all of them work to maintain injustice.Kennedy from CA asks if became possible for us to scientifically investigate the possibility of life after death, would that sway people away from religion?
The Atheist Experience 26.51 12-18-2022 with Jim Barrows and Student Doctor Ben
Dec 19 2022
The Atheist Experience 26.51 12-18-2022 with Jim Barrows and Student Doctor Ben
Welcome back to the show! In today’s episode of the Atheist Experience, Jim Barrows is joined Student Doctor Ben at the Freethought Library!Kevin from GA disputes the reliability and double standards of social constructs. From a social perspective, the caller asks why it isn’t acceptable to kick down someone’s door to steal food from others if we are hungry? If humans are animals and other animals will take drastic action in the name of self-preservation, why is this any less acceptable? Jon from Canada has ultimate proof of God. It's the force. Jon, are you 100% sure that it isn’t the Schwartz? Paul from Canada is calling to ask about what the terms: gnostic, agnostic, theist, and atheist mean, and how and when to use them. Seth from ID believes that atheists get the meaning of separation of church and state wrong. The caller claims that the statement was to prevent a specific sect of Christianity from becoming the dominant faith in the United States, not that religion and government should be separate. Oh boy... Olivia from IL has some beef and feedback for the show. Gotta shut down the theists at the name of their God. Audience Question One asks how certain anti-choice individuals who also believe in free will get around it when it comes to situations involving for example, rape, something that clearly violates the mother’s free will. Brittany from GA is a questioning Christian who despite discovering holes in the faith they were indoctrinated to believe, is still struggling to cope with the fear of a Christian hell. Hank from TX argues that slavery is a part of what makes humans special compared to other species. Why do humans only take moral issue with humans enslaving humans and not humans enslaving animals?
The Atheist Experience 26.50 12-11-2022 with Jmike and David Warnock
Dec 14 2022
The Atheist Experience 26.50 12-11-2022 with Jmike and David Warnock
Welcome back to the show! In today’s episode of the Atheist Experience, JMike is joined by Dave Warnock!Davis from CO is calling to ask about what God or what kind of God atheists are rejecting. The caller states that they do not have enough faith to ascribe to “the atheist worldview” whatever that is.Julian from FL has a question about Job 38:16 and how it predicted the recently discovered geysers in the sea. How did we get to that out of this vague verse?Bear from WA claims that God’s glory is indirectly derived from permitting a world, he created, where there is both good and evil. If he is either capable of creating a world where there is no evil or stepping in when evil is being committed for the sake of his own necessary glory, why should anyone think of this God as a self-centered, pacifistic thug? And unfortunately for you, without evidence to support the existence of this God that would otherwise act as your ideology’s meat shield, your beliefs Bear, are abhorrent and disgusting on their own merit.Johan from FL presents a two-pronged argument that people should just support the broad concept of well-being, regardless of religious or non-religious belief. There needs to be a specific definition in order to actually assess the concept because well-being as a term is far too vague to make any judgment call. Well being for whom and based on what?James from AZ asks if science or atheism requires faith. Science is based upon evidence and testing and therefore doesn’t fall into the same category as faith as its used when theists talk about God. Previous determinations of science do not become pseudoscience because they are proven to be false. They just are no longer the current determinations for a particular scientific field. Pseudoscience differs in that is not falsifiable (i.e. psychics).
The Atheist Experience 26.48 11-27-2022 with Student Doctor Ben and Adam Elmasri
Nov 30 2022
The Atheist Experience 26.48 11-27-2022 with Student Doctor Ben and Adam Elmasri
Welcome back to the show! In today’s episode of the Atheist Experience, Student Doctor Ben is joined Adam Elmasri!Jon from Canada is calling to ask what is one’s purpose in life if the person doesn’t believe in God or if there isn’t a god? And also education about trans people is apparently the equivalent of genocide, and no they won’t defend that.Jaime from TX wants to know how to criticize Islam without coming off as Islamophobic especially with the history of that in the U.K. Make it general about the core foundation of theism, and engage specifically only if the conversation shifts to a specific religion. Even then, don’t attack the religion or its culture but instead, focus on getting them to defend the claims made in the book.Rick from Canada is just calling to tell us that if we don’t agree with God’s genocide of the Canaanites and Amalekites or else were the evil ones? Because inbreeding? Whaaaaaaaat, why? Lot of genocide talk so far today.David from Romania is calling to talk about how their mother claims to have seen God and offers the follow up question of how our hosts would react if they found themselves in her position.Michael from GA wants to ask if God was determined to be real, does their existence correlate to the validity of their moral pronouncements? Is what the God says objective, or is it just another slew of subjective moral judgments but this time being made by someone who is potentially smite happy.Henry from Estonia is calling to present an argument that pulling people away from religion is causing harm. Specifically, the caller saw read some articles and watched a video saying the religious people live longer than atheists, but didn’t read the actual studies.
The Atheist Experience 26.46 11-13-22 Forrest Valkai and Jim Barrows
Nov 14 2022
The Atheist Experience 26.46 11-13-22 Forrest Valkai and Jim Barrows
Welcome back to the show! In today’s episode of the Atheist Experience, Forrest Valkai is joined by Dave Barrows!First up is Victoria from Chile is wondering if religion or religious practices, given their predominance across modern cultures, may have first formed prior to the emergence of homo sapiens.Next is King from AK is calling to present evidence, that at least to their friend, that Atheists converting to Christianity such as C.S. Lewis and Anthony Flew is evidence for god. The evidence would be based on their reason for the conversion, not merely that they became Christian.Joshua from NC believes that gender and sex are the same for biological reasons. Forrest can explain this far better than I can even if I had an unlimited character count so listen to him. Jim’s Recommended Link: https://www.nature.com/articles/nn.3988 Frisco from AZ is working hard to figure out the mind-state of Atheists, but not too hard because we’re weird and the worst of human beings. Yes. We are laughing.Amanual from TX is calling to address the constant atheist question, “why won’t God reveal himself to us?” Why would anyone worship and follow the rules attributed to something whose existence is not at all demonstrable?James from OH is calling to present the biblical prophecies as physical evidence for God. Even if the prophecies appeared to have come true, that doesn’t evidence that these said events were caused by a religious reason, a God.
The Atheist Experience 26.45 11-06-2022 with Kenneth and Dave Warnock
Nov 7 2022
The Atheist Experience 26.45 11-06-2022 with Kenneth and Dave Warnock
Welcome back to the show! In today’s episode of the Atheist Experience, Kenneth is joined by the one and only Dave Warnock!Michael from CA is calling to claim the prophecies in the Bible are in fact accurate because the Euphrates River is drying up, waters in China are turning blood red (not actually turning to human blood.) and that there are wars and rumors of wars.Jay from NY presents the double slit experiment and the observer effect in order to demonstrate that conscious observation actively affects the particles of our universe.Drew from CA claims to have biblical evidence that the Bible is true, specifically that the New Testament and Old Testament stories align and fit with each other.John from CA comes fully loaded with threats about our going to hell and a claim that the bible is smarter than you about deciding who is saved or not. Lots of preaching with this one.Diana from CA wants to point out the correlation from the psychological tactic of love bombing to some of the methods used by religions to gain and maintain the interest of children through tactics such as gift giving.Jaime from TX is calling to ask if there is ever a situation where any books should be bad. Books, even if dangerous, should be allowed to exist with the hope that the “bad” books should be critically analyzed with the intent of education and learning on why the bad ideas presented are in fact detrimental. But banning is a slippery slope based entirely on the dominant ideology in power.Amanual from TX claims the New Testament apostles were credible...because they died brutally? Doom Guy brutally rips and tears through the demonic armies of hell. Does the gruesomeness of their deaths portrayed in DOOM in any way prove this demon army exists?