Cass Midgley and Matthew O'Neil converse. Cass and Bob had Matthew on the show back in March of 2017, episode 142. Matthew is a prolific writer, activist, theologian, and teacher. He has an MA in Theology from Saint Michael's College and is a certified Humanist chaplain and celebrant. He is the author of several books including his latest, “Attrition” (through David G. McAfee’s publishing company Hypatia Press). It’s a fiction book that sheds light on the awful nature of the God character in the Bible as well as playing with the ideas of free will and determinism. We interview people you don’t know, about a subject no one wants to talk about. We hope to encourage people in the process of deconstructing their faith and help curb the loneliness that accompanies it. We think the world is a better place when more people live by sight, not by faith. Please subscribe to our podcast, and leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. Also, we offer these podcasts freely. And your support truly makes a difference. You can support us monetarily in two easy ways: you can pledge a monthly donation through Patreon. that’s www.patreon.com/eapodcast,  or leave a lump-sum donation through PayPal at our website, www.everyonesagnostic.com. We taped this conversation on Oct 17th, 2018.The intro music is by Dave Weckl called "Just Groove Me" The segue music on this episode is "Handyman" by AWOLNATIONThanks for listening and Be a Yes-Sayer to what is. Matthew O'Neil's books:    "What the Bible Really Does (and Doesn't) Say About Sex: The How, When, Why, and With Whom of Scriptural Prohibitions and Permissions." "After Life: Solving Science and Religion's Great Disagreement" "Adam and Eve: Questioning the Historicity of Biblical Human Origins" "You Say That I Am: Jesus and the Messianic Problem." "Judas" “Attrition”  You can also find Matthew on Twitter. If someone were to ask me what the most central and solid truth is I would say "life is hard." Everything we do is in some way a form of coping with its hardness. 24 hours a day. Even sleeping. But awake, working to give ourselves meaning but even more important, money. Laughing to stay sane, learning to add tools to our belt, skills to propel us forward and above the pack. Drugs, alcohol, religion, porn to make us forget how hard life is. Constantly hurling through  space. Ever since the Big Bang when our slumber was interrupted. When our unity, connectedness, oneness and belonging was blasted into a billion pieces hurling into space at the speed of light. Are we expanding or contracting? Every atom always moving, gyrating, bouncing, bounding. The nucleus full of positively charged particles, and negative charges surrounded it, just like our lives. Electrons move in large empty space of an atom in set orbits. sleep, wake, eat, shit, work, play, fuck, read, watch TV, sleep, wake, etc. They say even the atoms of a wooden table are always moving. But never touching. We never touch anything. Particles are, by their very nature, attracted to particles with an opposite charge, and they repel other similarly charged particles. This prevents electrons from ever coming in direct contact, in an atomic sense and literal sense. Their wave packets, on the other hand, can overlap, but never touch. Nothing ever touches anything. We try, we press, we make love, we wrestle, we hug, we dance, always moving, never touching. We attract and repel. We have a love/hate relationship with everything. We delightfully bask in the warmth of the sun as it burns our skin and creates cancer. When we're tired of being alone we crave being with loved ones only to soon crave being alone for the fatigue of being together. We hate humans smells and love them. We love onions and hate arm pit odor. We're repelled by skunk smell but love the smell of coffee, we hate the smell of farts but eat hard boiled eggs, (and we rarely pinch our nose at our own farts), we eat cheese that smells like smegma, and what's our relationship to fish