00:00:00:05 - 00:01:25:23 Beth Blick I'm Beth Blick Uh, the, um, uh, the director of, uh, uh, of Able Media. Um, and we've been in, uh, we've, we've been together as an organization since 2019, and we decided that it would be good to get something like this going, um, in order to uh, sneak it on in, uh, in places where it's not where uh, the issue isn't being taken very seriously, such as in, you know, the uh, corporate media and uh, and in, in lots of other places and, and, and to become more of a household name of, of an organization and Dan Barker used to be a uh, minister and decided uh, you know, the, you know, one fine day 00:01:25:23 - 00:02:15:08 Beth Blick that, you know, that. What's the point that what was the point of being a minister when you don't have the proof of, uh, God, you know, when uh, you know when to when it hasn't been outright proven um, you know, for, for that matter. And he's, uh, a co-president with Annie Laurie Gaylor from, um, uh, uh, the Freedom from Religion Foundation, which has been around since 1978 in Madison, Wisconsin. 00:02:17:02 - 00:03:20:01 Beth Blick Uh, uh so uh, they uh, you know, our, our, our in uh right place uh, for, for the right time and you know, one of their major concerns the, you know, like uh, the concerns of any um for any commonsense person is keeping uh, state and church, uh, separate All right, Beth, you want to let Dan finish introducing himself or you're. 00:03:20:12 - 00:03:47:02 Dan Barker Yeah, I'm done. Okay. Well, hi, Beth. Thank you for having me on your show. It's a pleasure to get to know you. Um, so, as Beth said, I'm Dan Barker, and I used to be a preacher for 19 years, and you can read more about my story in depth if you want to apply. I'm interested in why I changed my mind. 00:03:47:13 - 00:04:18:23 It's in the book that I wrote called Godless How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists. And as Beth just said, the Freedom from Religion Foundation works to keep state and church separate and to educate the public about the views of non theists. That means atheists, agnostics, secular humanists and so on. And we have a newspaper, we have a national TV show, a national radio show. 00:04:19:08 - 00:04:41:14 Dan Barker We publish books. We have ten full time attorneys who sue the government. And that's really fun. We sue the government when they violate the Constitution and we win most of our cases. And we're in fact, today we were we're deciding whether we will take a case in West Virginia. We haven't filed yet, but we usually have eight or 12 cases at a time. 00:04:41:23 - 00:05:04:22 Plus, we write more than a thousand letters every year and have some victories without going to court. So it's everything from high schools to mayors offices to governors. We're suing the governor of Texas right now, Greg Abbott, and we're winning over a speech, free speech free speech violation. So it's the funnest job in the world. It's a lot more fun than than preaching. 00:05:04:22 - 00:06:33:06 Beth Blick I have to tell you that that's all righty, Beth. So it's up to you where you'd like to start. Your questions for Dan, get the conversation started. For the evening. So go ahead. Yeah. What? Um, you know, other than, you know, deciding, you know, that that you, um, you know, that that there was no scientific, um, proof of there being a God, you know, made you an atheist, was it that you just sided, that you couldn't stand the, uh, uh, lack of, um, of, uh, open mindedness of what was going on, you know, where you were preaching out or uh, get, get you to where you were or was or was it, uh, something else that 00:06:33:11 - 00:07:01:08 Dan Barker that got you, you know, in, uh, quitting the whole kit and caboodle? Well, a good question. So I was a true believer. I was not faking it. I prayed. I felt those. I felt the Holy Spirit. I saw what I thought were answers to prayer. I thought I saw miracles. I thought Jesus was coming soon. Uh, you would not have liked me very much back then. 00:07:01:08 - 00:07:20:18 Dan Barker I was really pushy. Uh, you would not have wanted to sit next to me on a bus, let me tell you that I would. I was that kind of a preacher uh, Richard Dawkins. The scientists wrote the foreword to my book, and he said, you know, he would not have liked me either if he had sat next to me on a bus, he would have changed seats, you know? 00:07:21:08 - 00:07:42:21 Dan Barker But, uh, and so since I was such a strong evangelical born again Christian, you don't just snap your fingers one day and say, Oh, silly me, there's no God. I went through a really grueling four or five year process of revival waiting, not thinking I would end up at atheist. Um, I just thought I would be a different kind of Christian. 00:07:42:21 - 00:08:13:01 Dan Barker I moved across the theological spectrum, and I'll make a long story very short here and say that at the very end, it was just me in my thoughts. I didn't know any other atheist. I didn't know if I would like any other atheist. I realize that there's just a complete absence of evidence. There's a number of absences. The first one is the absence of a coherent definition of a God People can't even agree on what the definition is, and some of the definitions are mutually contradictory. 00:08:13:01 - 00:08:36:15 Dan Barker It's like arguing for a married bachelor. Let's say this such God can't exist. The second absence is an absence of good evidence. If there were good evidence, we wouldn't need to talk about it. We wouldn't need debates. We would just know. But there's no good evidence for a God. The third absence is an absence of good argument. And, you know, theologians and apologists have been trying to argue for a God. 00:08:36:17 - 00:09:01:22 Dan Barker It's interesting if there's a God, why would he have to be argued for anyway? They used like the first cars argument or the design argument or ontological argument or the moral argument or you know, and so on. And there's no good arguments, really. They're all they all basically beg the question. The fourth lack is there's a lack of agreement among believers about the nature of this God or its moral principles. 00:09:02:09 - 00:09:29:09 Dan Barker And the fifth absence is that there's no good add, sir, to the problem of evil. If there's a good benevolent God, why does why does gratuitous, horrendous evil exist? Another absence is the absence of compatibility with science or with history, like the holy books, like the Bible. They are there. You know, there's a little bit of truth in them, but basically they are not historical they're not scientific and they're not even moral. 00:09:29:17 - 00:09:47:15 Dan Barker I wrote a whole book called God The Most Unpleasant Character in all fiction, showing that the God of the Bible, at least is really, uh, it's a good thing he doesn't exist, because if he did, it would be one of the most horrible creatures in the universe. And finally, there's an absence of need. There's no, there's no need to believe in a God. 00:09:47:15 - 00:10:28:19 Dan Barker There's tens of millions of people in this country, hundreds of millions of people in the world who live good, happy, moral, productive, meaningful lives without believing in a God. And so I ended up thinking, well, I guess I don't believe in this being anymore for a very good reason. And that's I would describe me as an atheist um, good um, yeah. 00:10:28:19 - 00:11:07:19 Beth Blick So it sounds like, uh, you you know, um, you know, you know, began, uh, you know, deciding that you, you wanted your own, uh, independence and uh, and you, you know, knew that, that, that it was no longer for you and, and it was a way of growing. And of course. Yeah, that's true. I mean, we are the freedom to think your own thoughts bottom up rather than have somebody top down. 00:11:08:01 - 00:11:26:12 Dan Barker Tell you what you must think there's nothing more exciting than being able to be your own authentic person. To think your own thoughts come to your own conclusions. And when I became an atheist, I didn't. I thought I was might've been the only one. It wasn't like somebody was telling me what to think. I came to those conclusions just on my own. 00:11:26:12 - 00:11:35:11 Dan Barker And there are I know more than a thousand other clergy, priests and ministers who've done the same thing. And there's a group of us now it's called The Clergy Project. 00:11:42:21 - 00:12:23:09 Beth Blick Yeah. That's interesting that you say that because I think you know, from some of my own readings, you know, I wrote, um, you know, I had, had read something about that and uh, you know, at the conference in Boston, I said, you know, picked up a little something. And since it didn't apply to me, I, you know, thought it would collect another piece of paper since I'm not a, uh, you know, in those categories that it was a no for anyone in you know. 00:12:23:14 - 00:12:57:02 Beth Blick Well, I guess, like, you know, it, you know, I couldn't think of any one that I could refer anyone to, but, you know, I, uh, you know, can imagine that the, that, that there would be a group, uh, online or so for any, for, for anyone who knows, uh, minister priests, uh, or rabbi to refer them to that group. 00:12:58:00 - 00:13:20:22 Dan Barker That's the clergy project. Borg if anybody's interested. There are ministers and priests right now who are in the pulpit and they've lost their faith, but they're kind of stuck and they need an exit strategy. So about a fourth of the members of the clergy project are still in the ministry wanting to get out. And so we are a support group for them. 00:13:21:14 - 00:14:07:04 Matt Thiede And maybe one of your listeners is in that same situation. You're welcome to contact us at Clergy Project dot org a So I'm if I may, Beth, I have a question. Um, oh, go ahead. So in terms of, you know, the fact that we focus on disability on this show, I'm wondering, I'm sure you have experience with this Beth, but I think sometimes faith has been used to sort of undermine people's freedom of thought for themselves. 00:14:07:07 - 00:14:38:06 Matt Thiede Or their independence. And I'm wondering what from your point of view, Dan, atheism, agnosticism or just in general, that freedom of thought that comes along with some of these ideas, how do you see the intersection of some of those ideas of perhaps control intersecting with the the balance of independence and interdependence that's so important for people with disabilities? 00:14:39:14 - 00:15:02:20 Dan Barker Yeah, because even though we have our individual thoughts, we are a social species and we we most of us, most of us who are, you know, within the bell curve, I guess, of, uh, you know, sociability, we need each other and we, we we survive with friends and with family. And so and some of us really can't survive without them. 00:15:02:20 - 00:15:28:20 Dan Barker So that's very, very important. And it's probably a distribution where some people need it more than others. But generally we all are social animals. And so when it comes to faith, you mentioned the word faith. I used to be a faith healer. I people, people with illnesses used to come up to me thinking I could heal them. And I actually believed that it was possible and a couple of times it actually happened. 00:15:30:03 - 00:15:47:07 Dan Barker We were down in Mexico City with a singing group, a quartet, and the big the big bass in the group. Gary was his name. He was supposed to sing and preach that night. And he said, Hey, you guys, I can't. I can't. I lost my voice. I can't. I can't talk. Yeah. And you know, he really couldn't talk. 00:15:47:07 - 00:16:05:08 Dan Barker He was something was he was really sick. So I laid my hands on him before the meeting. We were in the back room before we going out on the stage, and I laid my hands on Gary's shoulder and I said, Dear Jesus, I want you to heal Gary. In the name of Jesus, you promised to answer prayer. And I said, Gary, in the name of Jesus be healed. 00:16:05:17 - 00:16:30:21 Dan Barker And Gary said, Praise the Lord. And then he went out, and he he sang and he preached. And you know what? It looked like a miracle, didn't it? And that actually happened since then. Somebody told me, you know, you might have been out of suggestion. It might have been, you know, and when people get up the energy to rise above those temporary setbacks. 00:16:31:10 - 00:16:58:12 Dan Barker But somebody once told me that there's a thing called the laryngeal spasm, your larynx. When you're when you're tired or nervous, it can actually kind of freeze up or spasm. And that if you can relax, that you can then regain your voice. So maybe it was something like that that happened. But in any event, during my life, I saw some of those things that I thought were faith healing, but that was maybe five or ten times in my whole life. 00:16:58:12 - 00:17:25:10 Dan Barker And you tend to remember those, right? You forget the other 99% of the times when you prayed and nothing happened or when the person got worse, even and I and I can recall some of those situations, too, where I was in Arizona, I was praying they brought this woman up to me. She was all shriveled. And I don't know what her illness was or disability, but her hands were all like turned in and she was hunched over and shriveled, an older woman, and they thought that I could pray for her. 00:17:25:10 - 00:17:50:10 Dan Barker So I did the same thing in the name of Jesus be healed. Well, nothing happened, and everybody was waiting for something to happen. And I feel so bad about this. I mean, I'm really embarrassed or ashamed about it that what I did was I. I put the blame back on her. I said, Well, woman, let it be according to your faith, meaning she didn't have enough faith, so she couldn't be healed. 00:17:50:18 - 00:18:22:03 Dan Barker It wasn't my fault because, God, I believe the guy was powerful. So most of the time, prayer didn't work. And the time in the few times that it did, you could find a plausible, natural explanation for it. So faith might help some people feel better. You know, I don't doubt that if you have faith and if you pray, it can help you psychologically, but you don't need faith or that atheist agnostics can get the same thing through meditation, through relaxation, through deep breathing. 00:18:22:14 - 00:18:43:18 Dan Barker And I think any of us, whatever the vehicle is, if you're religious, you're going to call that faith in prayer. But if you're not religious, you're going to call it meditation or natural therapy. You know, in the end, results are going to be the same. If you have some confidence and I think if you're if you're breathing deep breathing, bringing oxygen to the brain, that can help you relax and it can make you feel better. 00:18:44:02 - 00:19:00:13 Dan Barker You it can make you feel quote unquote, healed. So, um, I don't know if that fully addresses your question, but I can see how it's a matter of how you frame the situation. If you're a believer, you frame it one way, and if you're a nonbeliever, you frame it a different way. 00:19:05:17 - 00:19:06:07 Matt Thiede Thank you for that. 00:19:09:23 - 00:20:39:05 Beth Blick Beth, do you have another question? Oh, um, yeah, one, um, oh, let me think. I'm you know, concerned about the way, um, you know, ah, let, let me rephrase that. How do you feel about, you know, the history of how, um, people with disabilities have historically been treated by, um, you know, the religion system, i.e., you know, the, oh, you know, like their churches, um, or some demagogs, um, other components of their QUOTE-UNQUOTE community, um, have not been accessible or, you know, for example, you know, they've been forced to use cups, uh, you know, get uh, you know, money on it, into them, you know, to uh, you know, because they were living in poverty, it's 00:20:39:11 - 00:21:32:06 Beth Blick charity, um, kind of thing. And it winds up, um, you know, not, not being uh, whose system of dignity. I don't know if I'm, you know, if what I'm asking is, is making any sense Well, like once like give you an example of how when I was much younger, when I was going to uh, Catholic school, I, I, once, you know, had water thrown in my face because I was really upset and pissed off and, uh, and of course, uh, you know, the nuns who did it to me got away with it. 00:21:33:13 - 00:22:03:01 Dan Barker Yeah, well, I will say this. You we cannot paint all religious believers with the same brush oh, no. And I'm not trying to do that at all whatsoever. And what you're saying is absolutely true. There are horrible stories we're hearing about these deaths of children in these Native American homes run by Catholic missionaries, you know, that are in the news now, and the sexual abuse of children by priests and ministers. 00:22:03:01 - 00:22:12:23 Dan Barker And by the way, Catholic priests represent about 40% of the clergy who are sexually abusing children. 00:22:15:08 - 00:22:39:05 Dan Barker And most of them are actually Protestants. About 60% of the cases are Protestant ministers who are sexually abusing children. However, Catholic priests represent about 10% of the clergy. So Catholic priests are like four times more likely. A Catholic priest is about four times more likely than a Protestant minister to be a sexual abuse of children in of other other people. 00:22:39:24 - 00:23:01:08 Dan Barker But for every for every one of those horrible stories that we can talk about, there are also some wonderful churches. There are some good believers who are, you know, their kind in they're caring for the disabled in the and, you know, they're just as shocked as anyone else about the things that are going on. So we have to be careful not to badmouth all religious people, but. 00:23:01:09 - 00:23:20:00 Dan Barker Oh, and I don't. Yeah. I know. I know you don't. I'm just saying it for the record here that, um, our organization is, you know, we're mostly atheists and agnostics. We acknowledge that percentage of believers who are truly doing good things in the world, but it's a very small percentage. It should be it should be all of them. 00:23:20:05 - 00:23:51:07 Dan Barker If religion is so powerful, why isn't it 100%? You know, why are the why are there all these problems within, you know, within Christianity? One of the problems I think that happens is that the people who are ill or disabled, they get blamed like like they'll say, God is punishing you for the God is punishing you for your sins and in your you are ill or disabled because God wants to draw your attention back to him. 00:23:51:16 - 00:24:13:05 Dan Barker That's what and I think that really that makes a lot of people pretty angry. They think I'm just ill, but I'm now I'm being blamed for it. Like I like I did something wrong and now there's something one of my friends, one of, you know, um, Joy Berry is her name. She's a well-known children's author. She sold millions of books around the world, and we're still good friends since since 1970. 00:24:13:22 - 00:24:34:12 Dan Barker She got cancer and some of the church ladies came to her hospital room and said, Joy, you, you are sick because God is trying to teach you a lesson. And she threw them out of the room because there's no one here that I'm sick because I got sick and I'm trying to get better. I'm not going to pray. 00:24:34:12 - 00:24:59:16 Dan Barker I'm going to use medicine. She's an agnostic, and, you know, she would have nothing to do with that. But you can you can see how that might really damage some people who do believe thinking that, well, it's my own fault and religion plays into that a lot. And I think that's very damaging oh, it is it can agree with you. 00:24:59:16 - 00:25:42:03 Matt Thiede There Dan, is there anything that you would share with people who are, um, maybe some advice for people who are trying to figure out where their affinity lies in terms of how they identify themselves along the spectrum of religion? Or agnosticism or atheism? Any advice for people that are trying, that are kind of questioning that are in that space? 00:25:42:17 - 00:25:44:06 Matt Thiede I'd be interested to know about that. 00:25:46:07 - 00:26:10:07 Dan Barker Well, I guess what we said earlier, I think you said it too earlier, the most precious thing is to think for yourself. Don't let somebody tell you not your preacher. You're not your parents, not you know, we we can accept advice from anybody. I mean, we all we all welcome advice, but don't let anybody tell you what you must think, because otherwise you don't own your own thoughts. 00:26:10:07 - 00:26:32:21 Dan Barker If somebody else is telling you what to think, you're not free. You don't. You don't. And if you do want to embrace Jesus or Muhammad or Joseph Smith or whatever, or Krishna, if you choose to do that on your own, then that's your choice. It's not because you were born into it or because you're you know, you're being coerced in some way. 00:26:33:09 - 00:26:48:17 Dan Barker So my advice is that you think for yourself and don't and don't let me tell you what to think. Don't let anything don't let the Bible tell you what to think. You decide whether you think it's true. And in fact, when I was a preacher, I was encouraging people to open the Bible and read it and decide and make a choice. 00:26:49:00 - 00:27:06:11 Dan Barker So there you go. I was encouraging people to make a choice. And if you don't have free will to make your own choice, you're not thinking for yourself. And if you can't have the freedom to say yes, if you don't also have the freedom to say no. Many of us say no. And we exercise our freedom to say so. 00:27:07:12 - 00:27:33:02 Dan Barker Atheism, by the way, is not a belief. Atheism contrasted with theism theism is is not a knowledge of God. That would be Gnosticism. Theism is just a belief in God. That's what theism is. So atheism is just the absence of a belief in God. Atheists are not people who necessarily say, I know there's no God and I hate God or whatever. 00:27:33:09 - 00:27:57:14 Dan Barker An atheist in the most general terms is simply a person who says, I don't have a belief in God, but by whatever definition, there could be a thousand definitions. But if you can't answer the question honestly, do you have a belief in God? If you can't answer that question with a yes, then you are by definition if not by label, you are by definition an atheist. 00:27:57:14 - 00:28:23:10 Dan Barker You were a theistic, you were without theism. Some people are atheist, but they don't want to call themselves that, and that's fine. We can label ourselves whatever we want. There is a subset of atheists that you might call a capital a atheists in as opposed to lowercase atheists like lacking a belief. There is a smaller subset of capital atheists who say, I know there is no God and I believe there's no God. 00:28:23:22 - 00:28:54:17 Dan Barker And those are usually the atheists that you think about in the media. You tend to think that there are these really positive, you know, people, and I am a capitalist, atheist, depending on how you define God. If you define God as the God of the Bible, well then I'm a capital atheist. Not only will I say that God doesn't exist that God cannot exist logically and morally, but there's other definitions of God where I can't say anyway, you know, I would be lowercase atheist. 00:28:54:17 - 00:29:19:18 Dan Barker I just don't believe in them. I don't believe in leprechauns, I don't believe in elves, I don't believe in a lot of stuff and I don't believe in God. So, uh, you know, and then of course the question is where does agnostic fall in there? And agnostic really is a totally separate thing. You can be both an atheist and an agnostic because agnosticism deals with knowledge, atheism deals with belief. 00:29:20:05 - 00:29:42:21 Dan Barker So you can say, I don't believe in a God. And I don't know if there's a God. You can say both of those. So there's two kinds of agnostics. There's there's agnostics who are atheistic like me, but there's also theistic agnostics. There are people like Blaise Pascal, the famous philosopher, who said, we don't know if there's a God and maybe we can't know if there's a God. 00:29:43:00 - 00:30:04:15 Dan Barker But I'm going to believe anyway because it's safer that the famous Pascal's wager, right? Because what if you're wrong? I'm going to go ahead and believe so. You would call those people and this is honest. I think you would call them theistic agnostics because they are there are people who don't know, but they're going to believe anyway, whereas I am a person who doesn't know and I don't believe so. 00:30:04:15 - 00:30:34:12 Dan Barker I am an atheistic agnostic I've heard the term non-theist tossed around, too. Is that the same thing as atheists? Non-theists? Yeah, it's it's the same thing. Just another way to say atheist non theist seems a little gentler because the word atheist has suffered from bad PR like the word atheists in a lot of people's mind is like this big o bugaboo. 00:30:34:12 - 00:30:45:04 Dan Barker You're an atheist, but when you say 90 is that just sounds a little bit gentler for some reason, but it's the same thing Okay. Thank you. 00:30:50:07 - 00:31:50:14 Beth Blick Okay. Well, Beth, we've got about 10 minutes left. Do you have any other questions for Dan at this point? Right. Um, yeah. I was going to suggest that if you, you know, if, uh, f a r up is interested in trying to get some books I, you know, and I am writing one called the, uh, myself on uh, called, um, the hardship of being, uh, Jewish, disabled, uh, uh, feminist um, online I, I mean, no, it's, I'm writing it and uh, um, and it's taking a while so far. 00:31:50:15 - 00:32:40:20 Beth Blick Uh, as usually, you know, when you write a book, um, you know, uh, and I'll submit it, you know, when it's done, um, you know, I would, you know, just uh, looking online uh, to see if there are any other, um, books that, you know, are written by uh, um, disabled atheists. Uh, probably, you know, uh, that FFRF might not know about, so I don't know, you know, you are welcome to submit an article to our editor of our newspaper, PJ Slinger, and that might be an avenue to go. 00:32:41:10 - 00:33:07:24 Dan Barker I do know that, um, I do know that David Warnock, David Warnock is a former preacher, conservative Christian preacher who's now an atheist. He is he suffers from ALS and is gradually degenerative. And he's he's dying and he's on a tour called Dying Out Loud. Where he's we had him on our TV show, for example, and he's talking about what it's like when, you know, the life is at an end. 00:33:08:15 - 00:33:28:22 Dan Barker And he has written a book and it's a wonderful book. And now I the title escapes me. I think it's almost ready to be published about his history, not just his illness, but his history as a former preacher and why he left and all of that. And then, of course, his current situation facing the end of life, very close now. 00:33:29:14 - 00:33:46:22 Dan Barker And in fact, I like that so much. I wrote a blurb for the book when it does come out. So we'll probably have him on our show and we'll certainly plug his book as well. Um, you know, I guess I'll look, I'll look up the title again and maybe we can post it somewhere so people can find it. 00:33:48:10 - 00:34:22:03 Dan Barker Yeah. If you could, you know, have it put on in the next, uh, paper, I don't know how to get, um, track of your, um, radio program unless you have it online. Yeah, it's online and we broadcast around the country, but it's also a podcast and on our website ,FFRF.org, you can look under new look under the news and then radio show and then you can, you can find the current podcast if you want. 00:34:22:03 - 00:34:43:12 Dan Barker And then you can go back in history and you can look at different guests that we've had. We just did our 824th radio show this week since 2006. So uh, and a lot of people would rather hear a podcast because you can't, you don't know when it's going to air in your area. So uh oh yeah. Right, yeah. 00:34:43:20 - 00:35:13:23 Dan Barker You're in Madison okay. Yeah. I would like to see the book listed in, um, you know, along with your other books yeah. Well, we'll put it out and uh, if your podcast has some kind of a place where we can put some links, um, I could, I could, I could ask Dave if it's okay to put his book up because it deals with atheism and with his, his illness. 00:35:15:00 - 00:35:51:14 Beth Blick What is a lot stand for? I mean, what, what it's, is, it's, it's um, it's commonly called the Lou Gehrig's disease. Oh. Yeah, I've heard of Lou Gehrig's. I know so little about it. I have epilepsy, and then I you know, I've got a math learning disability, and then I've. I, uh, deal with uh, depression, like it's what I call situational. 00:35:51:24 - 00:37:01:08 Beth Blick And when I was much younger, much like Joe Biden, I had a stuttering, uh, disorder. So hard to believe, but I did it looks. Looks like you found ways to cope. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I you know, they had me going to somebody, uh, uh, in my school to, uh, do you a counselor to deal with that you know, when when Joe Biden was talking about it, you know, while he was doing his campaign, I was like, oh, god, I'd like to meet you and tell you about mine too, oh, well, so anyhow, uh, uh, Dan, I can, I can send you an email if you want to send over a link to, to the, the I 00:37:01:08 - 00:37:30:03 Dan Barker believe you said it was an article. Um, we can post whatever you'd like in the in the description of the podcast episode, so we can definitely do that. I don't know if his book is out yet. Um, okay. I know he, it's written, the book is written, I don't know if it's published yet, so. Okay, I'll find a great right All righty. 00:37:30:03 - 00:38:00:12 Dan Barker Well, so much. Dan Yeah. Thank you very much. Well, this was a lot of fun. I enjoyed meeting both of you. Oh, good. I enjoyed meeting you too. Someday. Come on over. You're in Minnesota. Come over to Madison, Wisconsin, and we'll give you a tour of our building. Now that we love to see it, we're finally ADA compliant. Oh, yeah, that's good. 00:38:01:07 - 00:38:38:12 Dan Barker Well, I know you're going to be having your conference, um, about you know, the year after this. This year, back in Madison. Yes. Yeah. You're having your next conference this year in Houston, Texas. In San Antonio. I mean, San Antonio. Yeah, sorry about that. And if we if I have a if I have a minute to plug, we're going to debut something really exciting. 00:38:38:24 - 00:39:19:22 Dan Barker One of the most exciting things in my life. It's called Godless Gospel. We are and I know I'm I'm glad you laughed, but these are these are gospel musicians, as in black gospel musicians who are now agnostic or atheist. They're fed up with the gospel music industry and they don't believe anymore, but they still love the music. They love the music and so we have written I've written a few and and Andre Forbes, he's written some songs, some gospel music, but with secular ular lyrics, like one of them is "I Don't Need Jesus," and 00:39:19:22 - 00:39:41:09 Dan Barker another one is "Joy to the World, There Is No Hell." And it's a hand-clapping, you know, gospel choir music, but with atheist agnostic words. And so we're going to do it. We're doing demo next week. And then in San Antonio, Texas, we're going to have the debut concert of God, Godless Gospel. Wow. They're able to turn it around. 00:39:41:21 - 00:40:10:07 Dan Barker Yeah. Yeah, I can see where that we're that, that, that kind of thing can be done. You know, they can still be musicians and yeah. Turn it around. They're liking and everybody else is liking. Well, if you love the music, you're going to love this kind of music. And it's not a joke. I mean, these lyrics are Oh, no, I'm sure it isn't. 00:40:10:08 - 00:40:27:02 Dan Barker We're not just doing it to say, look at us, we can do gospel. The lyrics are very meaningful. They are very powerful. Yeah. You know, secular or atheist or humanist words I like much better than the traditional gospel music anyway. Huh? 00:40:31:04 - 00:41:10:24 Dan Barker Yeah, great. And thank you to Darrius, our sign language interpreter, thank you, Darrius. It's King Darrius, right? King Cyrus? Uh, Buddy King Darrius was the king who let the Jews go free from Babylon. So I go back to Jerusalem nice all right, you guys, thanks so much. Thank you. You're welcome. Okay. Time for dinner. Yeah. Yeah, good enough. 00:41:11:23 - 00:41:15:02 Beth Blick All right. Bye now. All right. 00:41:17:06 - 00:41:17:17 Thank You.