Daniel (00:00)
Hey everybody, it's Daniel and welcome to another episode of There is No God and we're all gonna die. Let's start the show.
Daniel (00:31)
Okay, so welcome to There is No God and We're All Gonna Die. I am your host, Daniel Cartier. I am a gay, liberal atheist living in the Bible Belt. And I'm glad you're here. You don't have to be gay. You don't have to be liberal. You don't have to be an atheist. You don't have to be anything to be here. Like, no matter what you are, even if you are totally conservative, totally straight, and totally hate everything I'm saying.
I'm still glad you're here because you're a fellow human being and it's my job to be the love I want to see in the world and so I'm glad you're here. This is not the I Hate Religious People podcast. My best friend is a Christian. I love that people have their faith. I just don't happen to have that type of faith myself. I have a lot of faith in things but not in the way religious people do and that's fine.
So there's a lot of stuff I wanna talk about today. Firstly, I wanna hear from you guys. I am gonna be talking about this all through the podcast. I love getting voicemails. As many of you know, my favorite part of these podcasts is to hear from listeners. Listeners call in and they leave me voicemails and then I...
answer the voicemails I just give people my thoughts on what they think and I've had people call in saying that they don't like me I've had people call in and talk about all sorts of stuff random things firstly this is how you call me it's very easy it's not complicated go to Daniel that's my name Daniel Cartier like the jewelers cartier.com DanielCartier.com
and click on podcast it's right there in the menu and then there's a little button and you press that little button and it says leave a voicemail you can get to it just by going to my website it's so easy and
you can pretty much talk about whatever you want as long as it fits into 90 seconds. yeah, just let me know what's on your mind and you will probably hear yourself on a future podcast because let me tell you, this is a little fledgling podcast. This is not Joe Rogan or anything like that. This is a very small...
Podcast that only a handful of people listen to at the moment and maybe that's all it'll ever be that's fine I'm not trying to be the most famous podcast host in the world I may just be some guy who's talking to a handful of people and that is okay, too I'm not doing this for any other reason than I'm a guy who has a lot of thoughts and so Doing this podcast is a way for me to get some of those thoughts out of my head but
In doing so, also want to hear what's on your mind and I want to hear your thoughts. And so then I get to answer questions. Maybe you want to call in and tell me what you think of something that's happening in politics right now or something that you're grappling with. Or maybe you just want to call up and like blab about whatever.
I'm fascinated by all of it, so I invite you to call up. Anyways, so again, danielcartier.com then go to podcast, it's just a page on my website, and hit the button that says leave a voicemail, Anyways, so I'm very happy to be here.
this is what I want to talk about first. You know, I just went to this amazing convention last weekend and I shared about it in my last episode. I went to Nanacon. So basically, Nanacon is this big convention of... I don't want to call it an atheist convention.
Although there certainly are a lot of atheists there. There's atheists, agnostics, humanists, free thinkers, and even a lot of people who happen to be of quote unquote faith. There's Christians that went there, but they happen to be very progressive Christians. And so what it really was was kind of just a big meeting of hundreds of like-minded people happening here in Tennessee. It happened just about a half an hour.
down the road from my house And yeah, it was a really beautiful weekend. got to see a bunch of people that I saw last year and I don't know, it was really nice to know that there's a lot of other people out there in the world that share the same views that I have. And I think my one takeaway from it is I understand why religious people like going to church because, you know,
I think one of the things it does give them is a sense of community and as an atheist, it's not like we have these big churches we go to every week or these huge mega churches or anything like that. A lot of times, these type of conventions are the only times that we get to see a bunch of different people who share our values unless we go out and try to make community either by
hosting game nights or meetups or anything like that. And so this podcast is also another way for me to stay in contact with people who share my views because I will say there's something really nice about being around a bunch of like-minded people. And I understand that. I mean, there's a good side to it and a bad side to it. The good side to it is that you get that sense of community. You feel like you don't have to explain yourself every five seconds.
Like, I didn't have to.
explain the fact that I was an atheist and apologize for it every five seconds, you know, I was around a bunch of other people who shared my views. And I imagine that when you're going to church, that's also a feeling that people in church get that they're around people who, share their same views about the universe and all that stuff you know, on the negative side.
I think that's why some guys who if they feel, like isolated and maybe they were raised a certain way and they don't have a lot of friends or something. And so then they find a community in something like the proud boys or like the far right neo-Nazi extremists. I think a lot of times what happens is really young kids who
they find a sense of community in that and that's the thing that gets them attracted to it. you know, so then all the ideology is what they adopt in order to be part of that. you know, and then some of them probably are just flat out racists. so I think that sense of community can, work both ways. It can be a really beautiful thing, but then it also can bring people together for the wrong reasons as well. But anyways, that's another topic for another day. That's me getting.
way off topic right now. So before we go any further, I think what I want to do right now, because this is such a beautiful thing to be able to be communicating with you guys again,
I wanted to talk about 10 things that I just find kind of amazing right now and that I think anybody could find amazing even if they weren't an atheist or gay or liberal. This is just because honestly, can we just say those are just three labels? I'm also a dog dad.
I'm a partner, I help guys in recovery, I am a neighbor, I'm a brother, I'm an uncle, So the gay liberal atheist, I just say that so that people know.
that
I'm coming to this conversation from a very specific point of view. But anyways, man, I am really getting off topic right now. Let's get back to this list. Who gives a flying fuck what I am? Here's 10 things that I think are amazing right now. Here's 10 things that I think are amazing. Yeah. Okay, so here we go.
I just think it's really amazing how huge the universe is. You know, somebody told me recently that there are more stars in the observable universe than grains of sand on the earth. Now think about that. Think about how many grains of sand are on the earth. And there are more stars. Apparently, it doesn't even seem like that's right.
I could understand like if there was more stars in the universe but in the observable universe but this is what somebody told me. If somebody could maybe Google that I can't Google it right now because I'm talking to you guys but if somebody wants to Google that and maybe next week if I have to correct myself I'm happy to do that. This is not the Daniel is always right about everything. I know that there's a lot of stars in the observable universe and apparently there are.
I according to a couple things that I read, there's more stars in the observable universe than there are grains of sand.
on the earth. so then the funny thing about that is that meanwhile, you know, I'm sitting here in Tennessee sometimes wondering why somebody on Facebook was being a douche bag to me. Like that's the thing I'm focused on, you know, not the fact that I'm living in this universe that is so huge my brain can't even comprehend it. I'm focused on, you know, somebody said a bitchy thing about my podcast or, you know, somebody, you know, called me a libtard or whatever. Like they called me a
faggot or whatever and and I will just focus on that and I won't focus on the fact that that person's opinion of me is if I'm this small in comparison to how huge and beautiful the universe is then people's opinion of me is even smaller it's like almost it might as well be non-existent and yet we spend so much of our time chasing after acceptance from other people and trying to
I don't know, get other people to change the way they think or change who they are or whatever. it's really, you know, it's a losing proposition. The best we can do, I think, is show up and just be the best versions of ourself that we can possibly be. And people may like it and they may know for me, I have to just let it go. I've made it a practice of letting it go, like just let go of what people think of us. Who cares?
Like seriously, who cares? just focus on the love. Focus on the love. Am I being loving? That's the big question. Am I being loving?
Thing number two, we are made up of dead stars. is crazy right there. you know, there's that song, are stardust. But we are, we are all just basically made up of stardust. the universe that we know of has been around for, they say like 14 billion years, give or take. stars have been formed and they've exploded and they've died and they've shot,
out into space and about 4.6 billion years ago, a bunch of that stardust started circling around this star that was forming here, the sun that that grows all our food now and everything. over time that formed into this blob of, you know, this chunk of rock.
And it became Earth. And over time, like meteors crashed into it and, you know, filled with ice but the matter that makes us up, it all came from other stars. You know, so you literally are the remnants of stars. I mean, that's not, I mean, any scientist will tell you that. And yet, again, I'll be walking around focused on the fact that, I don't know, like,
I don't know, that, like I'll just be walking around sometimes just taking everything for granted and feeling like, you know, like bored or restless or I don't know, like pissed off about some really stupid thing, like that somebody cut me off in traffic and I'll let it ruin my day. And meanwhile, I'm frigging stardust in my car, you know, like, and the person who cut me off is stardust. My partner Cory, he has a book called The Pamela Diaries,
And he has a short story in it. First of all, you should read the Pamela Diaries. It's amazing. It's by Corey Michael Smithson. That's my beautiful, hunky partner. Check it out. It's on Amazon. It's an amazing book. It's a collection of essays that he wrote. But he has this story about being pissed off at people in traffic and then realizing that everybody he's pissed off at is actually stardust.
It's actually, it's a beautiful story. Anyways, I'm not doing it justice. Check out his book. Again, it's called The Pamela Diaries and it's by Corey Michael Smithson. On to the next thing. Number three.
It's kind of amazing to me also how short human life is Okay, so like I said...
the earth was formed about 4.6 billion years ago. And then it took about three billion of those years, actually longer than that, for life, microscopic life, to start showing up. the earth had to cool down first. And I think it was like maybe like about a billion years ago. I might even be, it might even be less time than that. Like,
single cell organisms started forming and over time, over millions and millions of years, simple life forms developed into more complex life forms and then started crawling around on the land and amphibians and then the dinosaurs, the dinosaurs lasted for 167 million years. And mankind's been around, think homo sapiens.
Homo erectus has been around for about 2 million years, give or take, which is nothing compared to like the dinosaurs 167 million years. And you know, the 4.6 billion years that the Earth has been here. I know I've said this before, like if you condensed the Earth, our timeline into 24 hours,
that mankind would show up in the last couple seconds or in the last second. And so our lives, my life, my 57 years, it's nothing. It's nothing. And again, you know, look at all the amazing things that happen even in this short blip that we get to experience. You know, I've gotten to experience art and, you know, music and friggin' Billie Holiday and
Star Wars and disco music and punk rock and sex and food and dogs, know, and petting dogs and friends and love and I don't know, like pinatas, like whatever the fuck. We get to experience all this stuff and yet it's just a blip. It's just a blip.
we fucking take it all for granted. Because it's more important that this douchebag from, I don't know, like Santa Fe or Los Angeles or whatever wants to argue politics with us and tell us that we're idiots than we have to tell them that they're idiots. And you guys, I'm guilty of this. I know I'm talking a good talk right now, but I still fall into it all the time. I always say I'm not going to, it's just kind of like when I go on these diets and I say I'm not gonna eat tortilla chips and then.
start fucking eating tortilla chips. Yeah, I will have, I guess you could call them civility relapses where I suddenly am not being civil to people anymore and I'm telling them, you know, you can take that fucking opinion of yours and you can lube it up and you can shove it up your ass. Like I've literally said that to people before and I'm not proud of that. That is me not on my best behavior. That is not my best self. And it's something I'm trying not to do now.
But
I get a little mad sometimes when somebody's being homophobic or racist or sexist or transphobic. And then, I don't know, the fighting words come out in me and I start seeing really mean things to them and I don't know what I expect to accomplish by doing that because it's not going to change their opinion. That's me being a control freak in a world I have no control over. That's what that is. So anyways, number four, the mystery of consciousness.
Why does any of this feel like anything like why why am I mad when I see people being douchebags or why am I happy when I? See my dogs or Why am I even thinking at all? now some people could say well because God is you know gave you your thoughts I I Actually, just think it's you know our bodies are formed and we were formed with a brain and our brain is just
doing what a brain does. creates thoughts and if it didn't create thoughts, we wouldn't be able to survive. So I actually think it's just a survival thing. But for all the people who do believe that there's something more out there, I just want you to know, I think that's really beautiful. I'm never gonna make fun of it. In a weird way, I'm kinda jealous because it would be nice to think that there was some divine energy that was, I don't know, giving me my thoughts.
I mean, I don't think that, so I'm not gonna pretend that I do. But I love that other people do think that there's some other, like otherworldly thing making their thoughts happen. And you know, isn't it cool that we can coexist on the same planet and have such different views about what gives us our thoughts? I think that's pretty amazing as well. And we can be friends with people who have very different views about it. Like we don't have to like be compartmentalized. Like I'm only gonna...
hang out with people who think exactly the way I do. Like that's just fucking crazy and life's too short and then we're probably missing out on a lot of wonderful relationships if we do that. Look at me with my little list. I actually have a list. Number five, how lucky. my God, you guys, cannot read my, I just bragged about my list and now I can't even fucking read what I wrote. How lucky to. What?
How lucky to... East? You can't see this, like maybe some of you can see this. I can't read what I wrote.
I don't know what number five said. I'm going to go open up a little text document on my computer to see what I wrote, because honestly, you guys, I don't know what the fuck I just wrote. That is that is me. How lucky.
okay.
how lucky we are to exist. Sorry, I couldn't read my writing, you guys, and you're going to get that from me sometimes. Sometimes I'm not going to be able to read my writing and that's okay. Yeah, it is pretty amazing that we exist, isn't it? Think of like everything I just said.
the 4.6 billion years that it took to create this moment right now when we get to be here in it. And this moment will never be replicated again. this is it. Like this moment is happening right now and then it's gone. And every second that we're here is a irreplaceable second that is never going to look exactly like that in the history of the world. There's never been a second just like this one. And yet, man, it's like, what are we doing with these moments?
And number six, I like to think that maybe somewhere out there there's somebody else hosting a podcast, maybe their version of a podcast, or making music, their version of music or art. I don't know what life is like on other planets, but I guarantee you there is life on other planets. It would be stupid if this infinite universe, and then there's just this little tiny blue dot that just has us, and then there's all the rest of it is just like
this dead space with no life in it. Like that wouldn't make any sense. So I honestly think I think there's probably billions of planets out there, billions that have life on them. And so do any of them have something like music or do they have like art, or do they have,
I don't know, politics or religion, like what is it like there? Is there any civilization that kind of resembles what humanity is here? And what would that look like? And how would it be different? I mean, they clearly would be speaking a completely different language, I don't know. like, thinking about stuff like this puts things in perspective for me, and that's why I'm doing this today, because I was really stressed out about...
posting this podcast and so I need to remind myself that this podcast doesn't even matter. It's just a fucking podcast. I mean, I'm glad people are listening, but at the end of the day, you know, it's just one more podcast out of millions that are being posted. And you know, if it's good or bad, it's gonna,
just
be something that exists right now. A hundred years from now, it's not going to matter. A thousand years from now, it's really not going to matter. A million years from now, like I guarantee you, nobody will even remember that I posted this podcast. So I hope they don't. They should be worried about their life then. I mean, if humans are still even around. Number seven, why humans are so obsessed with certainty? Like, yeah, that, that I was thinking about that too. Like, why do we need to have everything be certain? Like,
I mean, I get it. think that's also a survival thing. But at the same time, there's something really nice about just kind of letting go of certainty and letting life just kind of happen. You know, of course, that doesn't mean we don't work towards things or, you know, we need to make sure that we're safe and that we're taken care of and that we are paying our bills and showing up for ourselves and showing up for our health and for our loved ones. Like, I get all that, but.
So little of it is out of our control. mean, control is really an illusion. I like to say that I'm a control freak living in a world that I really don't have much control over. I can try and try and try to make things happen. I can try to even make people like me or agree with me. And, you know, they may never like me. They may never agree with me. And the things that I work really hard towards may never come to fruition. But, at the end of the day, am I still
doing my best and am I still enjoying the process? I think that's really important. am I hurting anybody along the way in my quest to get this, that, or the other thing? Earlier in life, I can honestly say I probably did hurt a lot of people. And you know, when I got sober, I had to, you know, look at that and make a lot of amends. like I had to mend a lot of bridges, but...
Today, the goal is to wake up in the morning, do the best I can, and then when I go to bed, when I look back over the day, think, have I hurt anybody? and you know, sometimes the answer is yes. Like I mentioned being an asshole to people on Facebook. Yeah, that's being hurtful. it's almost like we live in a society now that tells us that.
divisiveness is a requirement for existence and it's not. not. It doesn't mean that I need to cosign bigotry or hatred or intolerance. I certainly don't. But my job is to still be the love I want to see in the world even with people that I vehemently disagree with because I may be the one liberal voice in their life or the one voice of compassion towards marginalized groups in their life and maybe they'll, I don't know.
Some of it will rub off on them. I don't know. Anyways, that's not for me to say. That's just, that's really out of my control. Again, I don't have any control over any of this really. Number eight, I just want to talk about the fact that I love the birds in my yard. since I last posted episodes last year, one of the things I did in the break, the long seven month break is I became a very avid bird feeder.
And it all happened because we had this huge ice storm and there was like four inches of ice all over Tennessee. Like literally, it was just ice for a couple weeks. And the birds, the poor birds couldn't get to any food. And so I saw a bunch of birds. There was like a little scrap of food and this bird had it. And I don't it was probably a crust of bread or something.
like 20 birds were fighting over it and it broke my heart because I was like these poor birds like they they have nothing to eat right now like they can't get to anything it's like all that the ground is completely frozen there's like a sheet of ice all over everything and so I went out and I got like a little bird feeder and I've never really been somebody who fed birds so anyways that was back in January and now I've got like
for bird feeders in my yard. I've got like a bunch of bird baths. I've like made my own suet treats for them. I really kind of went haywire with it. so, yeah, now birds have become kind of like my new social media every morning. Instead of scrolling Facebook in the morning when I get up, what I do is I have a cup of coffee and I sit in my rocking chair and I look at the birds outside and let me tell you, you guys.
It really puts a lot of stuff in perspective because they have their own community. Like there's the morning doves that come, there's the blue jays, there's the European starlings, there's the finches, there's the cardinals. I've identified 25 or 26 different species of birds just in my own little dorky backyard and
So
I'm not saying everybody can go and feed birds. and then also the squirrels come and the squirrels come and they try to get into the bird feeders. And it's really fun to watch because, you know, know some people wouldn't like that, but I love watching them because I'm kind of always, I'm rooting for the squirrels to get some bird seed. They really, they'll do these back flips off of trees trying to get, and sometimes they actually get some of the bird seed and I don't know, they're just fun to watch. And number nine.
Number nine, everybody's the result of, this is a really short one, everybody is the result of two people doing it. So I think we can be, you know, I don't know, I guess I brought this up because I feel like humans just have this really weird obsession with sex. And it's like this taboo thing. We're all the result of it, you know, and yet,
We love to focus on other people's sex lives and demonize people and then demonize sex as an act and it's this thing that we all need to be ashamed of even though we're all basically sexual creatures. I don't know where I was going with that but I wrote it down as number nine. I don't really have much more to say about it. Just don't be a prude. Get over yourself.
Number 10, we're all stuck with each other. You guys, this is it. Nobody's going to another planet, nobody's moving off planet Earth. If you don't like a group of people, sorry, they're not going anywhere. If you're a racist and you don't like black people, well, there's billions of black people on the planet and there's no other planet they can move to. If you're a homophobe and you don't like gay people, well, guess what? There are millions and millions of gay people on the planet and we're not going anywhere.
If you don't like this person or that person or, you know, people from different countries, dude, nobody's going anywhere. We are all here. And so we're all kind of stuck with each other. And I think that humanity is still very, we're a very young species, as I said before. And I think we're acting like a young species. We're a very immature species. For all of the...
technological breakthroughs we have and the intelligence we have, we are still really stupid about a lot of things. you know, the fact that we think that we can survive as a species by being so mean to each other, that's not sustainable. Eventually we're going to have to come to terms with one another and accept the fact that we are all here. And aside from a bunch of people killing a bunch of other people or some disease coming and wiping a bunch of people out,
You know, your neighbor that you disagree with, or your aunt or your uncle, your child that you disowned because he happened to be gay or transgender, like all these reasons we find to not approve of other people or not like other people, at the end of the day, they're still here on this planet, and you're still here on this planet, and we're all still here on this planet, and I don't know where we think the other person, the quote unquote other person, is gonna go.
Newsflash, they're not going to go anywhere. They're going to still be here on planet Earth. So, wouldn't it make more sense for us to figure out ways to all get along? I will say one thing.
the lecture that I gave at NanaCon this year, it was all about that. It was all about getting along with people in our lives who did not share our views. Like, how can we still be loving to people who, you know, I'm very liberal. How can I still be loving to somebody who thinks Donald Trump is great They love everything. MAGA Can I still be loving to those people? I mean, I do struggle with it.
and I'll be the first to admit it. But I do have people in my life who I love, who I know voted for him and yet I know that
They have beautiful things about them too. I'll get into that maybe next week, but I can understand why some people need to just build a wall and not the Mexican wall. I don't mean it that way. An emotional wall where they need to just block out everybody who's conservative or whatever. And I understand that there are some people who are truly just toxic and we can't have them in our lives for our own sanity.
You know, like I said earlier, sometimes I kind of feel like, I still willing to be an example of what it means to be a loving person who happens to not share your views? Am I still willing to be that in somebody's life? And you know, if it's not killing me, I might as well still be cordial and gracious to them because again, they may be questioning some of their own beliefs and then here's their gay liberal
atheist friend Daniel who's like being a nice guy to them and you know that's certainly better than me being a flaming asshole to them. I don't know. So some of you may disagree with me on that and that's fine. I'm not here to be universally agreed with. This is just something that I've had to navigate being who I am living where I do in the Bible Belt surrounded by so many people who do not share my views. So anyways.
You guys, I was going to go on and talk about assholes of the week, but I've been talking for so long and I really do want to get to the voicemail. So I'm going to bypass. I was going to do assholes of the week, but I'm going to bypass that. I'm going to get straight into the voicemails again.
If you want to call and leave a voicemail, just go to danielcartier.com and then click on podcast and then click on leave a voicemail I would love to hear from you. So please give me a call and leave me a message. Okay, let's see who called.
Daniel (34:18)
Aww. Well, Greg, it's really nice to hear from you and you know I love you to death. Not n no pun intended. yeah, listen, I'll be the first to say that one of the wonderful things about my belief system, you know, as an atheist who doesn't believe in an afterlife.
It's just not how my brain works. I'm very literal. So when I hear about net near death experiences, I'm always a skeptical. I'm I'm always looking at the scientific thing like, well, that might just be their brain losing oxygen or something like that. But here's the beautiful thing about my my personal beliefs. And I I love this about my beliefs. Actually, it it makes me so happy to say this. I hope I'm wrong. Like it's one of the few times where it's like, man, you know.
If I'm wrong and there is life after death and I get to go somewhere else and fly around in the sky and there's people I've miss who I haven't seen in decades or you know, pets that I, you know, miss, like my dog Banjo and a phantom that just passed away in June, and or you get to see my parents again, and maybe Jesus or some dude in a robe is there flying around. I don't know. it sounds like it would be amazing.
So honestly, when I think about near-death experiences, that's about as far as my thinking goes, I love that other people contemplate this. I know for me, if I'm spending time thinking about that too much.
I think it's gonna be like thinking about a Rubik's Cube or something I've never been able to solve a Rubik's Cube. My brain just can't solve those type of things. And so I think I'd be kind of making near death experiences into a Rubik's Cube problem where I'm trying to solve it and then meanwhile I could be playing guitar or I could be snuggling with my dogs or
going outside and filling my bird feeders or making art out of junk or even filming this podcast. yeah, I I I don't want to spend too much time thinking about that only because I think it's time better suited doing other things. And that's just for me. Other people thinking about it, I think it's great. So long as when they think about it, they're not being like, and because I think.
believe in near death experiences. It means I also believe in this dogma and this dogma states that you shouldn't be gay or you shouldn't be this or you shouldn't be that. That's the only time I ever take offense with any of it. But otherwise, yeah, question all of it. I mean it's I think it's beautiful that people question stuff like that. And I just really liked hearing your voice. you have a very soothing voice to listen to, That was my
Very talented friend Greg, he's a brilliant artist. Let's see what else?
Michelle.
Mm-hmm. Nihilism. Well, sweetie, you are talking to a lifelong punk rocker who grew up listening to hardcore music and goth and everything else. So nihilism has always been, you know, I wouldn't say nihilism, but definitely like I've gone through periods in my life where I definitely was very destructive. so when you say nihilism, that
That could be that could mean a lot of things, really. I wish I had an assistant now because I would have them look up the definition for nihilism. You know, I'm gonna look it up here just so I can be sure Nih I'm gonna spell it wrong. I don't even know how to spell it nihilism.
Nihilism meaning. Okay, so this is the definition of nihilism. Nihilism is a philosophical view that rejects the existence of any inherent or objective meaning, purpose, moral value, or truth in life. Derived from the word Latin word nihil, meaning nothing, it states that the universe is empty of higher rules and that traditional values are groundless.
You know, in a weird way, I guess maybe I am a nihilist, although not like a nihilist in a sense like whenever I think of nihilism, I think of like people just like total anarchy and, you know, people just taking what they want and, I don't know, like killing people just to get what they want and that there's no repercussions So I guess no, I don't believe in nihilism in that sense of the word, because that would be unsustainable. I like living in a culture where
People are civil to each other. I I know I said in my very first episode that because I would have religious people say, Well, if you don't believe in God, how do you know right from wrong? And I we said, Well, because of evolution, we evolved into the concept of right and wrong. You know, when when human beings first started out, there was no right or wrong.
When human beings first started out, we were like any other animal on the planet, like basically like I mean, I hate to say it, but it was kill or be killed. So if you were like a prehistoric human and you had like a deer carcass and you were gonna feed your family with this carcass of this animal, and I saw you and I needed food for me and all the people living in my cave.
I'd probably just I might smash a rock over your head and take the carcass and bring it there and I probably wouldn't have any I'm assuming they didn't have really much feeling about it like that like this is what we do to survive. And you know, as humans learned the power of banding together and farming and having community and that, wow, this actually
makes us into this super species because we're banding together and we have the ability to create these cultures. Well, if in these cultures we're still hitting each other over the head and taking whatever we wanted, none of those cultures would have lasted. Like if my neighbor came back from Walmart and I, killed her and took all her groceries, that wouldn't be sustainable. that would be like Lord of the Flies. And so in that respect, no, I'm not a nihilist.
But on a more existential, like kind of what I was asking before, like what does anything mean? Like it might not mean anything. Like this might just be, you know, existence might just be shit happening. This is what's happening right now because this is how all the molecules are interacting with each other, and we happen to be here right now, but I mean
The dinosaurs were going about their merry way, and an asteroid came and wiped them all out. and then that was that. I will say this, this is kind of a nihilistic thought. we always say that we're destroying the earth, and we are, we're destroying it for ourselves. Like, you know, if we keep going the way we're going, I believe that the earth will not be inhabitable for humans. But, like, if we I don't know, if we went out of our way.
to to destroy all life. Like if we set off all of our nuclear bombs and took all of the chemicals we have and we like threw into the ocean and we crashed all our satellites and we literally killed everything.
You know what the Earth would do? Nothing. The Earth would keep rotating around the sun. blowing up all our bombs. We're not even powerful enough to stop the Earth from rotating around the sun. It would just keep going. And I don't think it would have any opinion that we did this. I think it would just be like, okay, well that happened. I'm just gonna keep revolving around the sun and
Billions of years would go by and you know, at some point there might be some other life forms that would find that habitat very hospitable to their life. like radioactive bacteria or something, and suddenly that would be the thing all over the earth, and then maybe some other life form would spring up out of that. that's about as complicated as I make stuff
Like I look at it in a very literal way. And so even when I'm talking about something like nihilism, I I think
I can basically let it go and think, okay, well maybe this doesn't mean anything but does it mean something to me right now? does it mean something to me and the people I love right now? And can I still make the most of even if none of this means anything in the big grand scheme of things and we are all just, specks of dust that are, you know, forming together and then, we just disappear and that life is like actually meaningless.
Even if that's the case, can I still find meaning in these moments? And can I still find love? Because I feel love, so that must be mean something. Anyways, I love thinking about stuff like this, so thank you for asking that question. weirdly enough, it's actually a beautiful question when you start thinking about it. Hopefully I didn't sound crazy when I was answering it. Okay, let's see who else called.
look you guys, look who it is. It's my wonderful partner called.
All right, let's see what Corey has to say.
Aww Well, for those of you who don't know, that was my wonderful partner Corey, and he usually calls up, 'cause I make him. I'm like, honey, I need more voicemails. And so then he'll go in the other room and he'll leave me a voice message. So apparently he left me that voice message. Thank you very much for leaving that message. You know I love you back. when have I been pleasantly surprised recently?
You know, I was pleasantly surprised when I gave that that lecture at Nanacon at this this convention that I was just at, because I was expecting it to be all one type of person. I like about a hundred people showed up for my lecture, which first of all I was amazed that that was the case. But
Then I was really surprised at how interactive the audience was. I don't know. I actually approached that with a lot of self doubt. Like I was like, you know, they're gonna think this is stupid. or or I was worried that they might take the lecture as me just saying, can't we all get along? Because that was kind of the gist of my lecture. I'm simplifying it, but you know, that
How can we coexist with people who don't share our political views? Or maybe they go to a church that discriminates against people, but in their eyes they think it's, you know, it's d they don't actually discriminate. You're you know, but when you look in the church doctrine they do, or, you know, they vote for people who, well, we've always re voted Republican and and so they kind of like gloss over a lot of the
the homophobic or transphobic or racist things and and how can we still, you know, give those people love and be loving people in their lives. And sometimes we have to let them go with love and and it they're they're too toxic for us to coexist with. Anyways, that was what my topic was about. and being, a gay liberal atheist living in the Bible belt
living around a lot of people who I do love but who do not share my views, I I mean I just have a lot of experience being around people who don't see life the way I do and still having relationships with them. So that's kind of what I was sharing about. Anyways, what I was pleasantly surprised about was just how enthusiastic people were about the topic, and we split up into groups.
So there was a bunch of groups. There was probably, I don't know, like twelve or fifteen groups of people. And they were all talking amongst themselves. And they were talking about who in their life they were really having a lot of problems seeing eye to eye with
What do you think that person who has these views that you find difficult what fear is behind that person's views? 'Cause a lot of times it's fear that causes people to be, I don't know, racist or sexist or homophobic or whatever. and then there was like kind of two parts to it, like what could we do moving forward to either still be a positive
Voice in that person's life, and also what are our boundaries? Like, what are the things we will absolutely not tolerate? what are the lines that people could cross where we, have to say, okay, this is a relationship that I can't afford to have in my life. And so I was really blown away by how.
enthusiastic the participants were and they they came back with a lot of amazing things. One of the things that really stuck out with me was this woman at the very end, she was one of the last people to share from her group and she said, you know, we we decided as a group that we can't stop being angry. We have to be angry because so much is on the line right now. We have to still have this rage,
Because right now the Trump administration and all of those people, they're they're really trying to destroy so much in, our democracy and take away people's rights and a lot of these like crazy Christian nationalist politicians they're proposing legislation that would be really damaging to LGBTQIA people, to, you know, transgender people, to immigrants coming over and, you know, like people getting shot by ICE I mean, I could go on and list a ton of stuff, but anyways.
She said, you know, we need to continue being angry about this stuff because we deserve to be angry but we need to stop being angry at the wrong people. like our aunts or our uncles or our parents who are getting all this bad information from places like InfoWars and Fox News and all these Q ANON conspiracy theory
YouTube channels and like all this stuff that is basically feeding them garbage. We need to get angry at the people higher up, the billionaires who need America to be divided, so they're they're pumping a lot of just really bad information into people's heads and getting people to believe all sorts of things about their neighbors. Those are the people we need to be angry at.
and so, you know, our neighbor who happens to be getting really shitty information, if anything, we need to stay in their life and and be loving to them because they are getting shitty information from people much higher up. I was pleasantly surprised to see that people's thinking was very focused about this.
that's just made me feel really happy to see people being really receptive to this concept of, focusing our anger in the right direction and focusing our love in the right direction whenever possible as well. And sometimes the right direction might not seem like the right direction because we're focusing it at people who we may not like all the views they have, but we're still trying to
And again, I'm not saying that we can always be the sometimes we have to let people go. Anyways, I I've already said that a zillion times in this episode. I'm gonna go on to the next call. you guys, I'm I'm almost winding down too. let's see who else called.
I think that was it. I know who that was. I recognize that voice. That was my wonderful friend Johnny, who I absolutely love. He is such a beautiful human being. Johnny, I no, it just makes me so happy to hear your voice. and
it would have been fun to have you at this convention I just went to because there was a lot of the people you're describing, like people who I mean yeah, there was definitely some pissed off atheists like you know
You're gonna find it pissed off people everywhere. I don't care if you go to like a religious place or a you know wherever, like a mini golf course, you know, there's gonna be pissed off people wherever we go. so certainly, you know, there was probably some pissed off atheists at this atheist convention. Although to be honest with you, I didn't really talk to any. All the atheists I talked to and humanists and free thinkers and even progressive Christians who were there, everybody kind of had the same
philosophy, which is this, it's a really cool philosophy. I don't care what you believe. I heard people say this over and over and over again. I don't care what you believe. I just care what your values are. And man, that was echoing through this whole thing. Because what we believe, you know, as far as if w whether we believe in something out else out there or we just believe this is it, that's different from what our values are.
like values of compassion and kindness and empathy and grace and dignity and service and being humble, and also cheering each other on and being supportive and if I have an extra dollar, maybe I'll give it to you because I don't need that dollar. You know, I'll be okay if you know if I don't have that dollar.
Or $10 or whatever it is, you know. you know, and I do believe that there is examples of human beings being their best all the time. We like to talk about human beings being their worst. I mean, I was just on it TikTok earlier. Was it TikTok or it might have been Instagram or it might have been threads? I can't remember. It was one of those social media channels. But all these reels kept coming up of like people just being
Awful like, you know, racist Karen and accost this person or these two guys, get in a fight or whatever. And it's like all these clickbait reels, and we're we've reached the point now where you don't even know if they're real. They may be AI reels, So there's that. but
I don't need to see people being mean to each other you know I've I've seen a lot of it and I've certainly been guilty of it myself I know I'm going kind of all over the place with this but I like what you're saying a lot like I I I believe that for me yeah I'm an atheist but
At the end of the day, that's I I tell people I'm an atheist just so that so they know. Like d to get it out in the open so we can move past it because it's really such a small part of who I am. a bigger part of me is just a human being. And you know, so if I'm around other human beings, like how am I treating them? and do I want them to have nice things? Do I want them to have health care? Do I want them to be able to have safe roads to drive on?
Clean drinking water? do I want their kids to be able to go to school and actually learn about real history, not like some whitewashed history, so that we don't have to repeat really horrible moments in time later on because kids didn't learn about stuff like slavery and, you know, the Trail of Tears and like all these really horrible things that happened, so we don't have to go through those things again. I mean, I I really hate suffering. I think that's one of the things if you know me.
And you spend some time with me, you you will know very quickly that the thing I hate more than anything is suffering. I can't stand seeing something suffer. I mean, even like if there's like a fly trapped in a window, I have to try to set it free. Like I gotta open the window and because it's gonna, you know, die between the two glasses of and I don't like thinking about something stuck somewhere in suffering. Like I'm just and it's the same with people. I don't like thinking about people suffering. I think that's why
as you know, somebody who's been sober now for seven and a half years, you know, I just went to a friend's memorial service this weekend, a beautiful man. he just h he touched a lot of people's lives, but you know, for whatever reason, he needed to go back out and you know, he had to drink one last time. He had to you know, he he was he wanted to drink and you know, and it was or used. I don't know what his drug of choice was, but
You know, and now he's not here anymore. and that's irreplaceable, you know, so I don't know. I still have to subscribe to the I don't do this perfectly, but can I subscribe to the belief that everybody everybody
Has beautiful things about them. man, I I d I struggle with that because I don't feel that way when I look at friggin' Donald Trump. I I mean all I see is somebody that I fucking can't stand, you know, so I don't know. Maybe I still need to evolve a little. Did that answer your question? I don't think it did. but maybe it kind of circled around the answer. And if that's all I did, hopefully that's still good enough. And
Again, I just liked hearing your voice because it makes me happy to hear from my friend Johnny. let's see, who else? gonna play one more and then we're gonna call it an evening. Remember, DanielCartier.com, click on podcast, leave me a voice message, and then I can play your voice message on this beautiful show. This beautiful, important, vibrant show.
Who is this? It says Samantha. Let's see what Samantha has to say.
Samantha Gosh I loved hearing that voice message. Thank you so much. And yeah, I do remember meeting you. that was a lot of fun at Nana Con. I w I kinda wanted to do it again right away. And it did make me jealous of man, the friggin' people at church, they get to go to these big churches and then they get to do it again the next week. And you know, as an atheist we kinda don't have that privilege.
Gotta wait until the next year. But here's the deal. It just means that we need to figure out ways as a community to still get together when we don't have a big convention. I know that there's like meetups happening in Nashville. I'm thinking of starting a little group here where I'm from in Dixon. I I I I've been really kind of jonesing to be around some other people who share my beliefs, you know. And
I don't know, like having like a like a monthly coffee meetup or something. And so if I do that, I will let you guys know and maybe you guys can come meet me at a coffee shop in Dixon, Tennessee, and we can talk about you know, just we can talk about concepts. Wouldn't that be nice? Talk about concepts. But yes, it was lovely meeting you. I'm not saying that you were stoned when you left that message, but if you were, girl.
I hope that you're smoking one for me. I can't smoke anymore. I'm I'm in recovery, so I'm a clean teen. I can't do anything like that. I am one hundred percent chemical free for the last seven and a half years, but I love the fact that other people can still enjoy that. I please, please, please keep enjoying it. I am not a prude when it comes to that. I am not the the pot police or the booze police or whatever. I'm actually, weirdly enough, okay, I'm getting way off.
Tangent. I'm kind of a libertarian when it comes to drugs. I kind of think they should all be legalized, like all of them, so we could tax them all and we could put all that money into communities and education and community building because I think what causes addiction a lot of times is hopelessness. And I'm not saying that you're addicted. I'm sorry. Like I didn't mean to get off on this tangent, but you mentioned being stoned. yeah, I kind of I'm I'm I'm I'm a big
believer in legalizing things so that we can tax them so that we can use that revenue to actually fight hopelessness. And yeah, maybe some people are just gonna use pot recreationally or do acid or whatever. I don't know. It's it's really none of my business what people do with their bodies. but I think it would be great if instead of like these
drug cartels getting money, like it would actually be going into some system that would be paying for I don't know, community centers or after school programs or education or public schools or, you know, funding for the arts or, vocational training or, public education, like college giving people, you know, tuition to college. Yeah. Providing hope for people. If you want to
Fight 'cause addiction, like true addiction, like how I was addicted to drugs and alcohol, that's desperation. Like the the desperate people do desperate things. And one of the ways that you combat desperation is by giving people hope. So man, when I look at all the money that we spend on things that like are just so hopeless, like you know, just like this big war industrial complex and we could be putting all that money into giving people hope. And if people had hope, I think that we would live in a much different
world. And maybe that's simplistic. Maybe that makes me like completely idealistic and naive. But you know, I wouldn't want to be anything other than who I am. So that is what I believe. if you think that's ridiculous, feel free to let me know in the comments or call up again Daniel Cartier dot com slash podcast. Or just click on podcast in the menu, Daniel Cartier, C-A-R-T-I-E-R.
dot com podcast. When you get to the podcast page, leave me a voicemail. And then you can say, you know what, I heard you talk about legalizing drugs and I think you're an idiot. And I would love to hear from you. Tell me why you think I'm an idiot because then I can, you know, I can respond to it. And I might agree with you. I I might be like, you know what, you you're you're totally right. I wasn't thinking that through. I will be the first person to admit when I'm wrong about something. I I I have no
I'm just telling you what I think right now at this moment in time, but could it change? Absolutely. Change my mind if you really feel you need to, or try to. You might not succeed, but you might, you never know.
And with that, I'm gonna leave you all with a bunch of love. There was a whole other segment I was gonna do on Assholes of the Week, and I was gonna list off a bunch of assholes. But you guys, this has been long enough. I'll do it next week. I am bidding you adieu, and I hope that you are reaching for the stars and being the beautiful people that you are. And I will see you again next week. Alright. Bye.