Life22: We Who Have Not Found God (Day 13,775[1])

We who have Not found God... Yet...  Not Yet...  
Check us out on Transistor.FM: https://life22.transistor.fm  
★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★ Reply on Bluesky
 
  

Creators and Guests

Host

Dr. Rev. Kevin M. Dougherty

Life22 Founder and Podcast Host. Father of 4 and Husband of 1.

What is Life22?

This is My Life! It's not Easy, It's Interesting, and It's Cereal!

"Satire is not a fabric in reality, but it can exist as part of the fabric of reality." ~Kevin M. Dougherty~

Check us out on:
Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/C/Life22
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Life22.Life22
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Life22
iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/life22/id1451429535
Spotify: Search "Life22" on Spotify
Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kevin-dougherty/life22
Google Podcast: Search "Life22" on Google Music
Player.Me: https://player.me/Life22
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Life22Studio
Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/life022
Myxer: https://mixer.com/Kevin8134

Disclaimer: The views of this channel and/or any of its posts or postings reflect my personal views and do not represent the views of my employer.

Day 13,775(1) - We Who Have Not Found God.mp3
Transcript
00:00:08 Kevin
Hey gang, Kevin here, Life 22, and it is beautiful, rainy December end of the year evening.
00:00:23 Kevin
So I've been doing a lot of these little like short videos and a lot of them have been getting some traction just because they're just simple thoughts and they've been building to something and I'm starting to like this build that I'm doing.
00:00:36 Kevin
So if you feel
00:00:38 Kevin
If you follow the channel at all and you're feeling kind of filled in, we did one the other day about lying, right?
00:00:47 Kevin
And not lying and striving not to lie and trying your best not to lie because everybody else lied to some degree, right?
00:00:55 Kevin
Because the truth is ever changing, right?
00:00:57 Kevin
Like if I talk to you about something and I kind of present you with some facts and then I can back up those facts so you can say, okay, he's not lying to me.
00:01:04 Kevin
then you can absorb those facts.
00:01:06 Kevin
And all of a sudden, like now that you have new information, like something that you believe to be true may be true still, but be slightly, slightly perceived differently, right?
00:01:17 Kevin
Like, and then realizing that still and sometimes being reminded that two things can be true at once, which is another one that we will be releasing.
00:01:28 Kevin
And but this all kind of builds, right?
00:01:31 Kevin
This builds to a bunch of different videos that are going to be coming out and these that haven't been recorded yet.
00:01:35 Kevin
Some have been.
00:01:37 Kevin
This also builds to today's topic.
00:01:39 Kevin
So today's topic is something I like to call we who have not found God.
00:01:57 Kevin
Yeah, I mean, it's a pretty easy concept to talk about or to think about.
00:02:03 Kevin
it's not easy to talk about.
00:02:05 Kevin
A lot of people will, if you tell them that, like, you don't believe in God, God's not real, God doesn't exist, God is dead, according to the New York Times in the, what, 1980s.
00:02:16 Kevin
People who believe in God will look at you, like, they'll look down on you, know what I mean?
00:02:21 Kevin
Or at least that's the vibe that you get.
00:02:24 Kevin
Which is, there's a difference between somebody like me
00:02:27 Kevin
who I've come up with this category, we who have not found God, right?
00:02:31 Kevin
And it's kind of a play on words on Jordan, Dr.
00:02:35 Kevin
Jordan B.
00:02:35 Kevin
Peterson's new book, which I'm halfway through, which is We Who Wrestle with God, right?
00:02:42 Kevin
Like, and it's an ambiguous title where mine kind of puts a little pin in it for now.
00:02:50 Kevin
It is a snapshot.
00:02:52 Kevin
It's a moment in time, right?
00:02:53 Kevin
So
00:02:57 Kevin
We've been doing these things about being honest and being truthful and being all these other things.
00:03:02 Kevin
And so to people out there who are trying to understand who Kevin is, they don't want to be ambiguous about that.
00:03:09 Kevin
At this moment in time, I am one of these people that I have not found him.
00:03:14 Kevin
And I'm sure you've seen those people that say they found God, right?
00:03:17 Kevin
And I'm stretching that narrative to say the reverse, like I have not found him.
00:03:23 Kevin
But what makes me different than like your atheist or your, it makes me more into the agnostic camp is that I'm not saying he doesn't exist.
00:03:35 Kevin
I'm not saying he's a he.
00:03:36 Kevin
I'm not saying it's a she.
00:03:37 Kevin
I'm not saying it has a gender.
00:03:39 Kevin
I'm not saying, and that's, and if you watch the show, you know that I'm not a non-binary they, them, is, zizzer, sizzer, Xerxes.
00:03:48 Kevin
You know, that's not, that's not my forte.
00:03:51 Kevin
So
00:03:53 Kevin
But to say I'm throwing out the concept, to say that it does not exist, I have seen evidence for and against.
00:04:04 Kevin
You know what I mean?
00:04:06 Kevin
The existence of a higher sentient being that is all-knowing and omnipotent and like directly, you know, the head of the head, right?
00:04:16 Kevin
Like I just, I don't see
00:04:23 Kevin
It's like, I don't like, who's to say, this the whole theory on, the God that everybody's praying to in, Islam or in Judaism or in Christianity, like who's to say they're not the same guy written about differently, the same entity?
00:04:48 Kevin
Who's to say that they're not
00:04:57 Kevin
Who's to say that this, it's, like it's not like a general amongst the gods, right?
00:05:04 Kevin
Like Greek mythology, right?
00:05:07 Kevin
Like you had Zeus was the king of the gods, and they kind of made him more prolifically, you know, being.
00:05:14 Kevin
Maybe it's more like nation states, like there is a sentient
00:05:19 Kevin
force in the universe that takes care of 1 quadrant of the universe.
00:05:23 Kevin
And then there's another one.
00:05:25 Kevin
And then there's a higher arcing entity or collective mindset that runs that.
00:05:33 Kevin
I mean, there's so many different possibilities.
00:05:35 Kevin
And I'm not trying to discount anybody who is an atheist.
00:05:40 Kevin
I'm actually more likely to, and I'm not trying to discount
00:05:46 Kevin
discount anybody who has a firm belief in their religion, and that may be mono or polytheism.
00:05:52 Kevin
You know, I'm just, I'm questioning.
00:05:55 Kevin
I'm ever questioning.
00:05:56 Kevin
As the great Einstein, he once said, never stop questioning.
00:05:59 Kevin
And that's kind of where I'm at currently in the world, is more of the agnostic camp.
00:06:04 Kevin
I'm not saying that I don't believe in him or her or whoever.
00:06:08 Kevin
I'm not, but I'm also not there yet.
00:06:12 Kevin
I haven't found him, so I can't say that I've found God.
00:06:17 Kevin
and until you find you can't believe, right?
00:06:20 Kevin
But as I get older, and it seems to be like, I seem to be hitting that exponential point in the curve where I'm listening to a lot more religious people lately and getting their takes and their point of view.
00:06:37 Kevin
And if anything, I may be more discounting the belief system
00:06:43 Kevin
Because everything is a belief system.
00:06:44 Kevin
If you believe in God or you don't believe in God.
00:06:46 Kevin
If you believe in gods or you don't believe in gods, right, each are a belief system.
00:06:54 Kevin
As much as atheists want to say that it's not a belief system, like, atheism is a belief system.
00:07:01 Kevin
It's a system of beliefs that says that you don't believe in a god.
00:07:04 Kevin
That's it.
00:07:06 Kevin
I mean, ta-da, you are a belief system.
00:07:08 Kevin
And a belief system is typically a religion.
00:07:10 Kevin
So it's your religion of
00:07:13 Kevin
no gods.
00:07:14 Kevin
You know what I mean?
00:07:15 Kevin
So you just haven't defined your religion yet.
00:07:18 Kevin
You know what I mean?
00:07:19 Kevin
Each individual has not defined what they, they're atheist about, if you will.
00:07:24 Kevin
So, but I want to have this talking point out there and I want to open the door for conversation because I'm more likely to
00:07:37 Kevin
That's why I'm listening more to people that have religious beliefs and then have a belief in gods or a god.
00:07:46 Kevin
Because if you look at Christianity, for example, or Judaism, you've got these different pathways in which to live your life and feel fulfilled.
00:07:56 Kevin
And there's something to that.
00:07:58 Kevin
And you can't discount it.
00:08:00 Kevin
And I don't want to discount it.
00:08:02 Kevin
And I want to struggle, as Jordan B.
00:08:04 Kevin
Peterson has in his title,
00:08:06 Kevin
with God, with the thought of God.
00:08:09 Kevin
As you can hear in the background there, those are my children.
00:08:12 Kevin
And I have to grapple with these thoughts, and everything is for the betterment of them, if that makes sense.
00:08:21 Kevin
I have to grapple with these.
00:08:23 Kevin
I have to ever question.
00:08:24 Kevin
I don't want to follow a blind path, just blindly taking a leap of faith, if you will, and saying, I believe in something that I honestly don't, and I want to be honest.
00:08:34 Kevin
And my
00:08:36 Kevin
being honest is the act of telling the truth versus being untrue.
00:08:42 Kevin
So, if we can juggle these two thoughts around and all of a sudden, hey, I've outweighed the amount of reasons that there is a God, then I change my point of view to, not to avoid using a leftist term, but it's inevitable.
00:09:00 Kevin
my truth would have changed, right?
00:09:02 Kevin
Like the truth that I know to myself of facts to be true would change my truth in the perspective of the word.
00:09:12 Kevin
My perspective would have changed because I have information or whatever that I believe to be true.
00:09:19 Kevin
And that may change, but like you cannot, and I'm more likely
00:09:24 Kevin
to side with somebody who has a belief system which leads them to a fulfilling, wholesome life and has something going on that's right than somebody who does not have anything laid out and they are more wandering down the road of chaos, if you will, right?
00:09:41 Kevin
Like there's order and chaos in the world and you must order life out of the chaos.
00:09:45 Kevin
And so somebody who has a religion that has a lot of it laid out and a lot of it has good points and there are some bad points.
00:09:53 Kevin
I'm not going to say that all religion is perfect and great.
00:09:56 Kevin
And those bad points also feed into the thing that we are human and we are flawed creatures.
00:10:04 Kevin
And so, to keep going with that topic, I mean, it's really just, I'm more likely to follow somebody who is following a pathway made of cobblestones, pulled these different pieces of...
00:10:20 Kevin
of chaos and formed them and made them into some sort of order and then laid a pathway, an ordered pathway into the chaotic abyss that is life than I am to just have, just kind of float around in outer space.
00:10:36 Kevin
Hey, you can float wherever you'd like.
00:10:37 Kevin
It's like, yeah, but what's the purpose?
00:10:39 Kevin
What's the point?
00:10:40 Kevin
Why should I never, why should I just sit here and unquestion and just get stoned out of my mind and stare at the ceiling, which is ever, ever the same?
00:10:48 Kevin
except time's grasp on it.
00:10:50 Kevin
it's just, I hope I don't offend a lot of my viewers, but then again, my podcast is not about your offense or non-offense.
00:11:03 Kevin
So I'm just, that was not my intent was to put out a podcast today.
00:11:07 Kevin
It was my intent of my podcast was to
00:11:10 Kevin
kind of lay where I am currently, my balance sheet, right, my snapshot in time of where I stand on religion and God.
00:11:19 Kevin
And that's where I am currently, but I'm...
00:11:22 Kevin
I've got a guest coming on the show, and I wanted to kind of get this podcast out before he came on, not for him to watch, but more or less so that my audience had a view, because he is a man of faith.
00:11:40 Kevin
And I just finished reading his book, and it's inspired, and I'm sure it'll come up in our conversation, but it's inspired me to read the Bible.
00:11:49 Kevin
I've never actually read the Bible.
00:11:50 Kevin
I've read excerpts from the Bible.
00:11:51 Kevin
I've taken excerpts from the Bible.
00:11:53 Kevin
It is a very interesting book.
00:11:55 Kevin
And, you know, just from the excerpts that I've taken and just living in a Judeo-Christian society, you get a lot of it, and you get a lot of it kind of foisted upon you as a kid, and you don't really think, you don't think much about it, you know?
00:12:13 Kevin
You could go your whole life without, in our culture and never watch Star Wars.
00:12:18 Kevin
But who Luke's father is, right?
00:12:20 Kevin
Like I could just say that.
00:12:22 Kevin
And almost everybody knows.
00:12:23 Kevin
Anybody who was born like, you know, post 1970s, you know what I mean?
00:12:27 Kevin
Like it's Luke, was it the 1980s?
00:12:30 Kevin
Jesus, see, like late 70s, real early 80s.
00:12:36 Kevin
I don't even know when Star Wars came out.
00:12:37 Kevin
Because I didn't watch it until I was in high school.
00:12:39 Kevin
So I mean, you got to think that was post 2000 when I was watching the first episodes, because the second episode, the second series was coming out within the series, the second group.
00:12:51 Kevin
And it's one of those, like, what do you, what do you do?
00:12:56 Kevin
Like, you just, you get, you get things in our society are foisted upon you, so you don't have to read.
00:13:06 Kevin
Man.
00:13:08 Kevin
There's a lot of fire trucks going around.
00:13:16 Kevin
Oh, anyways.
00:13:27 Kevin
It's got me curious.
00:13:31 Kevin
The mic picks it up and puts it in my headset louder than it is.
00:13:34 Kevin
So it kind of got me curious because we've got a wood burning stove in the living room and
00:13:39 Kevin
I stoked it before I walked in to do this, but some time had passed and I didn't think that it was, and like the temperature's dropping, it's nothing, there's not like there would be a chimney fire or anything, but it's just one of those things you just, it burns in your head.
00:13:55 Kevin
You're like, did I leave the, did I leave the stove on, right?
00:13:58 Kevin
And it's starting to get fainter in my head, but this mic picks up quite a bit.
00:14:04 Kevin
So anyways, back to my,
00:14:06 Kevin
My story, there's things that are foisted upon you in our society.
00:14:08 Kevin
And those things that are foisted upon you, like the Luke, Luke's father, right?
00:14:13 Kevin
Like who is he?
00:14:14 Kevin
Right?
00:14:14 Kevin
Like those Judeo-Christian values that our society is based on are also foisted upon you.
00:14:19 Kevin
The same way that, you know, there's a lot of Islam that is foisted upon you and Muslim like cultural ideas if you live in like, you know, Minnesota.
00:14:32 Kevin
right?
00:14:32 Kevin
if you live in Dearborn, you're going to get a lot more foisted upon you from, like, Islam than, here in Western New York.
00:14:43 Kevin
Like, it doesn't mean that there's not Muslims in our area.
00:14:45 Kevin
It's just like, you know, it's the dominant culture.
00:14:49 Kevin
So,
00:14:54 Kevin
But I've been doing these, the same way that if you follow Jordan B.
00:14:59 Kevin
Peterson, the doctor, if you follow him, you're also seeing that he's doing more and more on trying to uncover the truth and why we're here, right?
00:15:09 Kevin
Never stop questioning.
00:15:11 Kevin
That angst inside of you that says, we might, you got to keep exploring.
00:15:15 Kevin
You have to explore.
00:15:16 Kevin
You have to, what is this brave new world in front of us, right?
00:15:21 Kevin
And then there are people that have come before us that have kind of
00:15:25 Kevin
had snapshots of things that you haven't seen and then conveyed them in timeless stories, right?
00:15:29 Kevin
That they can kind of convey to you different things that like you wouldn't have seen because you didn't live in their shoes, right?
00:15:38 Kevin
Like, but they lend you a pair of their shoes and a pair of their spectacles to be able to view the world the way they did by conveying it in a story or in
00:15:48 Kevin
in an autobiography and conveying different facts and stuff, and to never stop questioning and that exploration that we all have inside of us.
00:15:56 Kevin
I know young men do.
00:15:58 Kevin
I know I do.
00:15:58 Kevin
I know old men do.
00:16:00 Kevin
They still, they kindle that flame.
00:16:02 Kevin
And then there's a lot of people that sedate themselves and just sit around all day and get high, and they just, they don't.
00:16:09 Kevin
They kind of suppress it.
00:16:10 Kevin
I'm sure it's there.
00:16:11 Kevin
It's just, it's suppressed.
00:16:13 Kevin
They have other things that they're concerned about, not exploration, not shooting for the moon.
00:16:18 Kevin
Right?
00:16:19 Kevin
And that's to each their own, man.
00:16:21 Kevin
But I tell you, there is, I just, I wanted to get this out there just so, I wasn't one of those podcasters, like, there's still a lot of questions to be had about, like, somebody that I follow, like Jordan B.
00:16:40 Kevin
Peterson, like, you know, how religious is he?
00:16:43 Kevin
Where is he in his religion?
00:16:44 Kevin
There's a lot of people that ask those questions.
00:16:46 Kevin
And I watch enough of them that I have a pretty decent idea.
00:16:49 Kevin
And here know thy enemy.
00:16:55 Kevin
Well, yeah, because it would have been a character of his place.
00:16:59 Kevin
And to thy own self be true.
00:17:06 Kevin
Anyways, now I'm rambling off Shakespearean quotes.
00:17:11 Kevin
Yeah, those, if you
00:17:17 Kevin
A lot of people are like me out there, and they question things, and they haven't nailed it down yet.
00:17:26 Kevin
And it's not that we're behind.
00:17:28 Kevin
Maybe we see something that you don't see.
00:17:31 Kevin
Maybe you see something that we don't see.
00:17:36 Kevin
And so I'm kind of following the same path that Dr.
00:17:39 Kevin
Jordan B.
00:17:39 Kevin
Peterson is following, where
00:17:41 Kevin
I am, I'm watching his series on Exodus.
00:17:44 Kevin
I'm watching his series on Genesis.
00:17:46 Kevin
I'm watching, I'm reading into Islam.
00:17:49 Kevin
I'm checking out these different things because there's also a lot of political climate that I'm, we're being, we're being foisted into, right?
00:17:56 Kevin
Like you have all this stuff going on in Dearborn, Michigan, where like, you know, and Minnesota as a whole, where like all these Muslim populations are popping up and they're all, they're like, they're anti-American.
00:18:08 Kevin
They are,
00:18:10 Kevin
they're, you have to, this is your system and we're all here and we're going to breed you out and we're going to vote you out and this is what's going on.
00:18:16 Kevin
And it's like, well, I mean, that's, I think you found a loophole in America that allowed, you know, like, hey, we'll welcome people here, but you don't get to, you come here and become one of us.
00:18:28 Kevin
You don't get to like come here and make us one of you.
00:18:30 Kevin
Like that's, the, you know, my culture slowly, you know, the Irish culture slowly kind of,
00:18:39 Kevin
melted into the fabric of America, right?
00:18:43 Kevin
Like, I think like, if you're saying America's a fabric, it's like, it's not a stain, but maybe it is a stain.
00:18:51 Kevin
And, some stains are good things, right?
00:18:54 Kevin
Like a tie-dye t-shirt is an entirely stained shirt, and that's what it's designed to be.
00:18:59 Kevin
So maybe that's what it is.
00:19:02 Kevin
But you don't get to just like bleach it, you know?
00:19:07 Kevin
And not that's not like a white thing, right?
00:19:09 Kevin
Like a lot of people relate bleaching to whitening and whatever else.
00:19:13 Kevin
I'm saying bleaching is in like you are taking something and pulling all those stains that were intended to be there, all those things that made-up the color of that shirt and you were just ripping them from the fabric and creating a blank slate.
00:19:29 Kevin
That's not how America works.
00:19:31 Kevin
And so like for somebody to find a loophole that like essentially acts as bleach and is, you know,
00:19:36 Kevin
stripping the color out of America in a non-racial context.
00:19:42 Kevin
I mean, that's why a lot of people are concerned.
00:19:45 Kevin
But following these different religions and seeing these different things are helping me on a path to further define to myself whether there is a God or there is not.
00:19:57 Kevin
And these are things that I'm constantly questioning.
00:19:59 Kevin
And it's not to put anybody off.
00:20:01 Kevin
It's not to do any of that stuff.
00:20:02 Kevin
It's my own internal struggle.
00:20:05 Kevin
Because we all internally struggle about a lot of things.
00:20:08 Kevin
And some things are just stuck in our head.
00:20:10 Kevin
And sometimes you just, like you go seek other research to just, and try to constantly be cognizant of confirmation bias and all these other things that like, well, I've already believed this and I should just keep listening to that.
00:20:21 Kevin
And it's like, well, then you're just going to just be in an echo chamber and just keep hearing yourself over and over again.
00:20:26 Kevin
And you're one of the victims of the cave that Plato talks about.
00:20:28 Kevin
And you're just, you know, and
00:20:31 Kevin
There could be a greater thing out there, that's preventing you from seeing certain things.
00:20:37 Kevin
I don't know.
00:20:38 Kevin
That's kind of where I'm at, as I'm in an, I don't know.
00:20:41 Kevin
I haven't found anything yet, but I'm not saying that there's nothing to be found.
00:20:46 Kevin
And that is where I'm going with this podcast.
00:20:49 Kevin
And so tell the truth, be honest.
00:20:57 Kevin
The truth will set you free.
00:21:04 Kevin
It surely will.
00:21:05 Kevin
That's John, what, 18.
00:21:10 Kevin
So with that said, guys, I will hope to see you guys here in the next day or so.
00:21:15 Kevin
We've got some more shorts that are going to be released.
00:21:17 Kevin
We've got a lot of juicy information out there that is going to be unveiled as well.
00:21:24 Kevin
So I just wanted to lay my cards out on the table with different definitions of terms, with where I am
00:21:31 Kevin
in the world on religion because a lot of people are discussing it and that has that is kind of like a side shoot for an upcoming guest but it is not like the trajectory in which I am speaking just previously about upcoming kind of like tea that is going to be spilled and just being honest and then like building your bridges out of like fire retardant material and said man build them out of concrete and
00:22:00 Kevin
Concrete encased steel holds up better.
00:22:04 Kevin
It's better fire rated.
00:22:06 Kevin
Look at your local building codes for industrial steel.
00:22:08 Kevin
And you'll understand my metaphor, I suppose, because, you know, strong friendships and bridges can't be burned.
00:22:18 Kevin
Proper maintenance, you always have to have proper maintenance.
00:22:21 Kevin
And with that said, guys, this is the we of the we who have not found God signing out.
00:22:29 Kevin
and we'll see you next time on Life 22.