Annie Laurie Gaylor and Dan Barker fill us in on the news out of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. We’ll hear Dan’s “Salt Lake City Blues,” and then they’ll talk with Utah attorney Mark Naugle about how he has helped more than 3,000 people leave the Mormon Church, mainly as a result of the LDS church’s position on same-sex couples.
We’ll hear a track from atheist rapper Greydon Square called Stockholm syndrome followed by a Skeptoid by Brian Dunning that looks at the psychological condition the song references. Is “Stockholm Syndrome” really a thing? We’ll also use the song as a springboard for another conversation. Does Greydon Square’s comments about Islam and Muhammed in the song make him an “Islamophobe”? Hehment Mehta has a look at that term and what it means.
Sinclair Lewis said “When fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” Trumansburg blogger Gordon Bonnet wonders disquietingly whether we haven’t already begun”the gentle smooth slide to being governed by the worst people in the world.”
Finally, in hour two, Luke Muehlauser interviews Tom Clark of the Center for Naturalism. What are the implications of accepting a worldview premised on the idea that existence in all its dimensions and complexity is a single, natural realm, not split between the natural and the supernatural? What happens to human free will and moral responsibility? Would a society that rejects the reality of so-called “contra-causal free will” be a degenerate one or healthy one?