A Christian and an Atheist Walk into a Bar

Send a text In this episode we look at several leaders of the New Atheists, including Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Alex O'Connor and more. What valid critiques of Christianity do they have? Do they reflect adequately on some of the shortcomings of historical atheism? How is their fascination with a cultural form of Christianity and antipathy toward Islam consistent with their atheistic belief...

Send a text Since we did an epiphany special last year, this isn’t quite our third annual Christmas Special, but close enough! This year we take a look at the story of Jesus' birth from Luke chapter 2, which (surprise surprise!) is just as challenging to the status quo of wealth and power as chapter 1.  We also explore how to reclaim gift giving as a meaningful act in the age of hypercommerci...

Send a text In part three of the Dumb and Christendumber trilogy we look at the Christian Nationalist attack on empathy. We had this crazy idea that the concept of empathy would mesh well with Jesus teaching in the gospels that we should treat people how we want to be treated. Who could have imagined how right we were? We take a deep dive into some critiques of empathy, explore some notoriously ba...

Send a text In Part II of our "Dumb and Christendumber" mini series, we look at the origins of Christian Nationalism, the connection between Christian obedience cults and Christian Nationalism, and what Christian Nationalists ignore from the Bible.   For our Bible passage we wish literalists would take literally we discuss Genesis 17: 15-22 where, in promising the birth of Isaac, God als...

Send a text This is the first in a three part series exploring how the United States got to the current multi-faceted crisis.  In Part I, we discuss how most of the moral and theological questions leading to the Civil War never really got resolved and have now come roaring back like a virus that's mutated into a stronger strain.  In Part II, we'll look at the rise of Christian Nationalis...

Send a text We’re back with Season 3 of A Christian and an Atheist Walk into a Bar and our theme is (totally coincidentally) Dystopian Non-fiction. In Episode 1, Neil gives us an update on the impact of the fires in LA and we discuss the efforts to dismantle the Federal Government. We’re also introducing two new regular segments: 1) Bible passages we wish biblical literalists would take literally...

Send a text SPOILER ALERT: All the spoilers! If you have not watched the amazing series Reservation Dogs , just hit the mute button now!  So we've finally reached what we are considering the final episode of Season 2 . The world is on fire literally and figuratively and so yeah, we're going to spend an hour talking about our favorite TV series maybe ever,  Reservation Dogs . If you'...

Send a text In Season 2 (ish) Episode 6, Neil relates an encounter with an unhoused person in LA, Dan (or Danzilla), who offered a very unique take on one of our favorite films, The  Big Lebowski . We then take a deep dive into what Phil considers to be perhaps the most Big Lebowski story in the Old Testament, Judges 17-18, wherein Micah, a Levite, and the tribe of Dan very confidently get everyth...

Send a text We were determined to do another holiday special and this year we wanted it to be about the Magi/astrologers in Matthew 2, which is technically not Christmas but Epiphany. The season of Epiphany begins on January 6 and runs all the way to Ash Wednesday (which this year is also Valentine's Day, so Ash Valentine's Day!) so we are getting this baby in right under the wire! In th...

Send a text We wanted to do an episode on Critical Race Theory because it’s one of those phrases that has come to mean everything except what it is. We draw a careful (and we would argue obvious) distinction between discussing the history of race relations in the U.S. and Critical Race Theory as a  discrete legal movement addressing racism in the American system of justice. Along the way we dive i...

Send a text With both the writers and now the actors who play Neil and Phil on strike, it’s taken a while to get this episode (which was recorded on Easter Sunday 2023) out. Fortunately, the episode was completed by AI and we think you’ll notice a big improvement over the organic episodes.  In Season 2 - Episode 3, “Neil” and “Phil” discuss the increasing brazenness around racism and fascism and e...

Send a text Humans don’t like being told what to do. Shocking, we know! In Episode 2 we explore one of the three freedoms David Graeber and David Wengrow postulate in The Dawn of Everything , the freedom to disobey.  We start with how the freedom to disobey is expressed in the Old Testament prophets' relationship to the priesthood and the monarchy, and do a deep dive into I Kings 22 where Aha...

Send a text Season 2, Episode 1 is finally here! And y’nz are not gonna believe it, but we have…A PLAN! This season we will use the amazing book by the late David Graeber and David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything: a New History of Humanity to frame many of our discussions about  the Bible. We love this book — enough to shamelessly crib from the title for the name of Episode 1. We spend a good bit...

Send a text In this bonus episode, Neil and Phil compare the story of Hannah in the book of I Samuel to the story of Mary in the gospel of Luke and draw out some themes that turn out to be important throughout the Bible. In the course of the conversation, they discover that the Old and New Testaments have surprising parallels to the Peter Green and Buckingham/Nicks eras of Fleetwood Mac. And speak...

Send a text We said Episode 10 was the season finale, but then SCOTUS unleashed a series of really stupid and damaging rulings and we needed to talk about it. One of the questions we keep hearing is, "Why do guns have more rights than women?" It seems like an obvious logical contradiction, but historian Kathleen Belew has shown that within the white power movement lots of guns and  compl...

Send a text Our Season I Finale was delayed by supply chain issues, but it's finally here! In episode 10, Phil and Neil discuss whether aliens exist, why they may or may not believe in aliens, and how belief in aliens may have more in common with belief in a deity than we thought.  In the triumphant return of "Should I Really Care About This?" Neil and Phil squeeze in a convo about...

Send a text In this episode we get down into the weeds discussing the philosophical problem of dualisms touching on the work of Hermann Dooyeweerd (Dutch Neo-Calvinism), Graham Harman (Object Oriented Ontology), and Emmannuel Levinas. But hang in there! We also delve into some very concrete expressions of dualism as found in Terry Gilliam and Tool, and it may even help us understand why the intern...

Send a text In this episode of ACAAAWIAB, Neil and Phil discuss how plutocrats use philanthropy for image laundering as well as to protect their power, an emerging movement of entrepreneurs who have embraced the idea that treating your workers well is both the right thing to do and good business, and how to move toward a just society so that we need less philanthropy. This isntallment features a l...

Send a text In Episode 7, Neil and Phil take a deep dive into Bart D. Ehrman's Heaven and Hell: a History of the Afterlife . They'll talk about how dualism effects both ideas of heaven and of hell, Biblical concepts of embodiment, pan-psychic notions of consciousness, and more or less spoil the final season of  The Good Place (you've been warned!).  In "Should I Really Care Abo...

Send a text In this episode of a Christian and an Atheist Walk into a Bar, Phil and Neil read and discuss Leo Tolstoy's  The Gospel in Brief.  Much like Thomas Jefferson, Tolstoy wanted a version of the gospel that preserved the teachings of Jesus without referencing what we usually refer to as miracles or the supernatural. So is Tolstoy's "demystified" Jesus an appealing moral...

Send a text In this episode of A Christian and an Atheist Walk into a Bar, Neil and Phil dig into the Scopes Trial and reassess the competing legacies of William Jennings Bryan, H.L. Mencken, and Clarence Darrow. Along the way they’ll talk about memes that have nothing to do with kittens. In “Should I Really Care About This?” they expose the injustice of serving appetizers in odd numbers.   Beers...

Send a text In Episode 4 of ACAAAWIAB, Neil and Phil explore the meaning of freedom of religion. What is  is it? What are some common ways it's misunderstood? Can real belief even exist without it? We'll discuss British theologian Leslie Newbigin's distinction between de facto and ideological pluralism and how it applies to contemporary society, the parable of the blind men and the...

Send a text In Episode 3 of ACAAAWIAB, Neil and Phil explore how there is often a difference between what we say we believe and what we really believe. Maybe we participate in institutional religion and maybe we don’t, but either way we may find that aspects of our experience such as economics, science, or technology (or all three) begin to function as unofficial belief systems. We’ll discuss idea...

Send a text In this episode, Neil and Phil talk about the Levitical Jubilee (Leviticus 25), how the concept of Jubilee gets transformed in both Old and New Testaments, and the implications of Jubilee principles on how we think about ecology, debt, justice and more. Along the way they discuss ideas about debt and society by David Graeber, Louis Althusser, and more. In "Should I really care abo...

Send us Fan Mail In the premiere of A Christian and an Atheist Walk into a Bar , Neil Newton and Phil Thompson talk about their back stories and how they came to hold their beliefs, the general idea of belief systems, common grace, Emmanuel Levinas, empathy, and more. For this episode’s “Should I really care about this?” segment, Phil and Neil will hold forth on VAR/Instant Replay.  Beers appearin...