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Neil Newton and Phil Thompson have been talking about religion, philosophy, politics, music, sports, and pretty much anything they felt like talking about every since they became friends while working together at the University of Pittsburgh in the 20-teens. Though Neil is an Atheist and Phil is a Christian, they found that they agreed on more things than not, especially the evils of instant replay! ACAAAWIAB will explore topics like debt, heaven and hell, the Biblical Jubilee, philanthrocap ...
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A Christian and an Atheist Epiphany Special
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42:26
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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…
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Critical Race Theory: What it Is and (mostly) What it Isn't
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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 syste…
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The Creation Story and the Freedom to Disobey
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48:18
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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 braze…
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Corporate Prophets and the Freedom to Disobey
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55:52
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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…
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The Dawn of Everything: Introduction to Season Two
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1:01:02
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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 na…
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A Christian and an Atheist Christmas Special
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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/…
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Recent Supreme Court Rulings and the White Power Movement
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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 move…
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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 squ…
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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 …
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Philanthrocapitalism: Why You Should Distrust It
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1:00:40
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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 phila…
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Holy Forking Shirt! Neil and Phil Discuss the Afterlife!
1:11:42
1:11:42
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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 …
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Phil and Neil Read Tolstoy's "The Gospel in Brief" So You Don't Have To
48:47
48:47
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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…
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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 servi…
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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 …
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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 unoffic…
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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 m…
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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…
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