Every Religious Person is an Atheist... | Joe Rogan

One of the things that I really enjoyed about your book was when you explain to people that everyone who practices a religion is an atheist. You're just an atheist in regards to Zeus or Apollo. Yeah, all the 999 other gods. Yes. And that's a home run with this argument. Yeah. Because... Some of us just go one god further. Yes. Yeah. Because this concept of... Me and my friends jokingly would always say praise Odin when anything would happen that was pretty good or cool. We say praise Odin and I started doing it online and people really got into saying praise Odin about certain things. I rather like that, yes. Some people got mad at me. They actually got mad that I was... You're mocking Christianity by saying praise Odin. Of course you are. Why not? I wasn't even really. I was just having fun. I was having fun because Odin seemed like a cool god. It's an old school god. I mean, it's the god of the Vikings. Douglas Adams wrote a lovely book called The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul in which the Norse gods are part of it. Odin in that book has got old and senile and he just lies in bed all the time and asking for clean sheets every day. And Thor is out there doing mischief with his great hammer. At one point Odin sees Thor super glued to the floor and thinks it's a wonderful story. The vast number of different religions, I mean the incredible number. How many actual religions are there? Thousands. Thousands. Yes, I did. I forget how many thousands. And many of them share similar belief systems. And it's really interesting when you see how they're... Noah's Ark story is very similar to the Epic of Gilgamesh. There's so many that you see like, oh, they probably told this to someone else and these people moved and traveled on. It's just amazing that that concept is alien to people. When I was a boy, I was raised Catholic and I had an aunt who was Jewish and my uncle married my aunt and he had to convert to Judaism. And it was like a big deal in the family. Everybody would talk about it. There was no anger. Everybody loved my aunt. She's a great lady. But it was just strange that he was converting to this other religion. I remember I was five years old when this was going on and I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What do you mean another religion? Yes. I was like, what's going on? And they were like, oh, she's Jewish. I go, what does that mean? What do you mean she's Jewish? And they had explained it to me. And I go, okay, but she believes in God? Like, yeah, they believe in God. Okay. So why is it a different thing? Well, they believe Jesus was a different kind of a thing. It was they don't they don't necessarily believe he was the guy that we think he was. But if it had been Hindu, they don't have to explain to you. They believe in hundreds of gods. Ishnu. Yes. And then we'd have to go way back. Yeah. It's just when you first hear that, I mean, that was probably put the first seeds of doubt in my head when I was a young boy. When I was like, wait, well, there's more than one. I'll never forget that moment because we're all sitting around the dinner table. And I was just a little kid. And I'm going to think, what do you mean? There's another one. I think that's a very powerful way of getting to children is to just simply tell them that. Yes. Telling them nothing but facts. You're not indoctrinating them. Right. You're just telling them there are lots of different religions and Hindus believe in hundreds of gods and Jews will even one God and Muslims believe in one God and they don't believe in Jesus and just lay out all the different religions. That would be a very good educational exercise. Has there ever been a civilization that existed without belief in higher power? I don't think there has, no. Of course, there are plenty of individuals who educate them to not believe in higher power. I think probably true to say that every – I mean, anthropologists might deny them and there might be some tribe that doesn't, but I suspect they all do. Well, there's been some tribes that worshipped animals and particularly animals that they survived off of. Yes, yes. Yes. And river gods and thunder gods and moon gods and sun gods and fire gods and things, yes.