A Christian and an Atheist Walk into a Bar Neil Newton and Philip Thompson

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 Ahab and Jehoshaphat plan a battle with Aram. Only one prophet, Micaiah, is willing to say anything contrary to what Ahab wants to hear. (It’s a wild passage and Phil has never heard anyone preach on it in a lifetime of church attendance.)
We then explore how the freedom to disobey applies to contemporary issues like voting rights and in particular, the many problems with taking away the franchise of convicted criminals—even after they have completed their sentences. 
No beers for this episode. Neither of us were in the mood to drink, which is a shame really.

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 of time discussing the book and why it’s important, and we give particular attention to what Graeber and Wengrow describe as three freedoms that are a common pursuit across human history and prehistory. They are: 
freedom to move away or relocate from one’s surroundingsfreedom to ignore or disobey commands issued by othersfreedom to shape entirely new social realities, or shift back and forth between different ones.But the big question is: what does this possibly have to do with the Bible or religion or Christianity? After some general examples of where we see these freedoms expressed in the Bible, we dig into a truly wacky and wonderful passage from Genesis 30 in some detail. We think it turns out to be a fairly fruitful approach and we hope you’ll agree. 
What we’re drinking
Neil: XinguPhil: Dragon’s Milk White

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 speaking of music, as an homage to Vince Guaraldi’s classic music for A Charlie Brown Christmas they’ve composed a jazzy, Christmas Special theme featuring Phil on electric guitar and drums and Neil on mandolin and electric bass. 
Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year to everyone!

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  complete opposition to abortion form a twisted sort of coherence. 

In this episode 
we spend a lot of time talking about Belew's book, Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America (in fact you should probably just turn off this podcast and go get a copy right now), Phil digs into Psalm 139 and explains why it can't possibly mean what the pro-life movement thinks it means, and Neil makes his first foray into biblical exegesis by examining how Exodus 21 gives us some context for understanding the Bible in relation to arguments about abortion.

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 Wordle just in time for the full Wordle backlash to begin. 

What we're drinking: Hitchhiker Brewing Company's "Clouded Distraction" Imperial Smoked Coffee Stout

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 internet is so frequently awful! On a more serious note, understanding and dismantling dualism can give us tools to help confront white supremacism. 
Beer appearing in this episode: Cinderlands Spirit Clean Triple IPA
Should I Really Care About This? We recorded a segment of SIRCAT discussing whether protective gear in American football can in fact, make the game more dangerous. We concluded that it does but talking about CTE just wasn’t as lighthearted as these segments usually are. So, should I really care about how protective gear in football can make the game more dangerous? Yes, for sure. We’ll be back with a new SIRCAT in the Episode 10.