Join host Edouard Tahmizian for a fifty-minute interview with long-time biblical scholar and Jesus mythicist Robert M. Price on whether the concept of predestination or determinism can be found in the Book of Acts, whether open theism is plausible, and whether some of the more miraculous events depicted in the Qur'an are credible. Tahmizian proposes a number of questions about these topics to Price. For example, given that a word sometimes translated as "predetermined" crops up in a discussion of events to come, did the author of Acts believe that God causally determined/necessitated Jesus' murder, or that those who brought about his death had the freedom to have done other than what they did do? What do open theists think about the possibility that God doesn't know the future exactly, but just knows about what might happen? Is the open theist position on this question biblically plausible? Tahmizian also asks Price about the origin of the story of Muhammad splitting the Moon in the Qu'ran, whether or not there was a historical Muhammad, and how and when the texts of the Qu'ran came to be put together. Tune in for a wide-ranging discussion about these and other intriguing issues with a noted biblical scholar!

Tune in for about an hour for a return interview with Los Angeles constitutional lawyer Edward Tabash by Freethinker Podcast host Edouard Tahmizian about the future of equal rights for nonbelievers and adjacent threats to the US Constitution. Ahead of general election, Tabash argues, we stand on the threshold of two possible futures. One is an expansion of the Enlightenment values of the equality of believers and nonbelievers before the law and of the passage or upholding of evidence-based laws and regulations unhindered by ideological hostility to modernity and commitment to theocracy. The other is an onslaught of oppressive laws passed by the US Congress, various state legislatures, and other local branches of government that overtly favor religious belief over nonbelief and ignore science to appease special interest groups. Back in 1987 (in Edwards v. Aguillard) a Louisiana law requiring that creationism be taught in the public schools alongside evolution was overturned by the US Supreme Court in a 7-2 vote. Now we have a 6-3 supermajority on the Court and a quarter of all federal judges sympathetic to the aims of the Religious Right. Anti-science decisions, like Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo (2020) and South Bay United Pentecostal Church v. Newsom (2021), have seen the Court strike down health regulations designed to limit the spread of COVID. In West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency (2022), the Court ruled that the EPA does not have the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. And contrary to the promise of limited government intervention into the personal lives of citizens, the Court has made a number of decisions undermining abortions rights since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022. That year the Heritage Foundation also took up restructuring the executive branch to undermine the federal government's authority over public education and allow more religious proselytization in the K-12 classroom. The Project 2025 plan to defund Planned Parenthood and repeal existing LGBTQ protections centering around marriage equality and workplace anti-discrimination laws is just the tip of the iceberg. Quiet efforts to replace the US Constitution by invoking Article 5, such that two-thirds of States can call for a Constitutional Convention, have continued unabated. To date 19 state legislatures have fully passed a resolution calling for such a convention, and in 7 other states at least one state house has passed it; if successful, such a convention could easily establish a new Constitution that declares the United States a Christian nation and revokes the civil rights of atheists, among other things. Tabash urges every American citizen to treat every presidential and US Senate election as a referendum on the Court: whether future justices to the Court will uphold the separation of church and state and advocate for science depends on who the US president is and who is in the Senate when a Court vacancy arises.

Atheist and Executive Director & Editor-in-Chief of Internet Infidels (the maintainers of the Secular Web for nearly three decades) joins Dale Glover's Real Seekers podcast to provide his own skeptical take on near-death experiences (NDEs). The dialogue includes a review of neutral ways in which near-death researchers can collect testimony of near-death experiences (NDEs) that could provide compelling evidence that something leaves the normal physical body (or that some other paranormal process occurs) during such experiences—though such tests also have the potential to fail to do any such thing.

For various freethought musical compositions, check out Edouard Tahmizian’s musical works for piano or guitar: The Infidel Cha Cha Free Sheet Music by Edouard Tahmizian for Guitar | Noteflight. The Infidel Cha Cha, composed by our most excellent Vice President & Freethinker Podcast Creator Edouard Tahmizian, has now become the official theme track for Internet […]

Check out Freethinker Podcast as host Edouard Tahmizian is joined by freethinking historian Richard C. Carrier for a little under an hour to discuss the reliability of the canonical Gospels, including Luke's gospel and the Book of Acts, and whether Papias can tell us anything about New Testament authors that isn't ahistorical. After speaking to the "genre" of the Gospels and to which historical period he would date them, Carrier addresses the historical reliability (or lack thereof) of the Gospel of Luke and how we know that the Book of Acts is "fake history." The discussion then turns to whether a historical Papias existed and, regardless of the answer to that question, whether we can believe that anything in the writings attributed to Papias provide us with any credible information about a historical Jesus. A lengthy discussion about why some gospels include a story about Jesus transfiguring into a shining, radiant being ensues, followed by a final discussion on John Dominic Crossan's comment that N. T. Wright's reconstruction of a historical Jesus makes for good reading, but is entirely fiction. Tune in for a casual discussion with our returning historian on some particularly problematic conundrums for taking New Testament accounts to be more than ahistorical!