186: David Smalley | Why You Should Challenge Your Beliefs

Transcript for David Smalley | Why You Should Challenge Your Beliefs (Episode 186)

Jordan Harbinger: [00:00:00] Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with my producer Jason DeFillippo. I'm always impressed with people who can form a great argument, seldom lose their cool, and cause their opponents to paint themselves into a corner time and time again. Today's guest is no politician and certainly no angel. He's actually a comedian and a talk show host in the field of religion or atheism to be specific. David Smalley is second to none when it comes to challenging belief structures and knows his opponent's counter-arguments as well or better than they do. He's built a career combining comedy, interviewing, and challenging beliefs in bad thinking. On today's show, we dive into David's use of persuasion, rhetorical devices, and empathetic conversation to develop a dialogue with others who have opposing views and entrenched beliefs. This episode will definitely ruffle some feathers, but if you find yourself getting angry or irritated by the content of David's arguments, I strongly encourage you to think about why and be respectful in your disagreement and, of course, ideally also in my inbox, if you don't mind.

[00:01:00] If you want to know how I managed to book great people for the show and manage my personal and professional relationships. I've got a course about this. It's totally free. It's what I wish I knew 20 years ago and it's at jordanharbinger.com/course. All right, here's David Smalley.

[00:01:15] You've made a whole career on challenging bad thinking and religious claims, and comedy, of course, and acting. That's a fascinating mixture. I kind of wonder like why did you get into this? Because you could've just been like, "Hey, comedy is better, more fun." Why is this important to you?

David Smalley: [00:01:32] I started in podcasting because I was listening to radio. I was listening to Christian podcasts. I would call into Christian shows and ask them questions. Because I was still sort of going on my journey. Like I started as a believer and I was sitting down with theology professors, pastors, preachers, lay Christians who were in congregations of different churches. I go, "Hey, is Jesus the Son of God or is he the same as God?" And the guy would give me an answer and show me scripture and prove it. And then I would switch over and go talk to another friend of mine who went to a different church and he'd be like, "No, no, no, it's definitely this instead." And he would show me scriptures to prove it and I was like, "You guys can prove anything you want with this book.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:02:07] Yeah.

David Smalley: [00:02:08] And so I started listening to Christian radio. I love listening, like the more conservative the better because I wanted to hear what the other side was saying really. I didn't want to sit here and make arguments against something that I didn't really understand. I didn't make any sense. I had to understand what they were saying. So I started listening to Christian podcasts and I couldn't call in the radio stations. A lot of times you get a busy signal or you couldn't get through.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:02:29] Sure.

David Smalley: [00:02:29] Podcasters, even if it was live internet radio, they maybe had 40 people listening at the time. And this was a long time ago, this was back when you started your podcast. That's how long ago it was. And so I would call in and then I got to where I was recording my conversations with them because I would ask them a question and they wouldn't really be able to answer me. And then they would just hang up on me and then they would shut the showdown, edit it out, and I would listen to the final podcast and my question won't even be in there. And I was like, wait a minute, they're trying to shift the narrative. Like they weren't challenged with that. After this happened several times, I started recording my conversations with them, sort of like to be like, well, I'll go comment on their blog and be like, here's the clip of what you cut out of the show. So there are nine people who would see it and we could get into a debate online.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:03:16] Yeah.

David Smalley: [00:03:17] That's really the original plan. On top of that, I had Dogma Debate as a forum where I was just posting an atheist argument as a challenge. I'd be like, "Guys, there's something that doesn't make sense to me in the Bible. What's the Christian answer to this?" And on almost every situation, other websites that I saw, either Christians were dog-piling atheists making fun of them calling them names or atheists were ripping on Christians going, "You guys are stupid. It's Santa Claus for grownups. You're ridiculous." And I didn't see a lot of productivity. So I made it a point that my platform was going to be a safe place for people to disagree, get passionate, but let's not result in name-calling. And so when someone would do something really nasty or leave a nasty comment, I would leave it there. I wouldn't delete it, I would leave it there. But as the moderator, I would comment and go, "Do you think this is the best way to get your point across?" And I was employing the Socratic method to other atheists going, "If you're just going to be an ass, what do you think is going to open the door for them to want to listen to you?"

Jordan Harbinger: [00:04:18] Right.

David Smalley: [00:04:19] And it became a really teachable moment. So the blog on its own ended up blowing up, getting really popular. So I started posting the audio clips of me talking to these other Christians on their podcast, on my show, and I was like, "Why don't I just record conversations with Christians?"

Jordan Harbinger: [00:04:32] Sure.

David Smalley: [00:04:33] It'd cut out the middle managers and then the studio and that's how it was born. So I've been doing it for seven years now.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:04:38] Yeah, that's a long time. Did you grow up religious? Did I miss that?

David Smalley: [00:04:41] I did, yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:04:43] You lost it right? Because otherwise, it's like, "Geez, how, how much passion can you muster for something like this?"

David Smalley: [00:04:49] My mom wasn't like overbearing with it. I'll say she was about one thing. One thing that sticks out to me, and I've said this in a couple of interviews. She already doesn't like that I talk about it. I was trying to see the good in just about anything. And I remember I was in the bathroom, I forgot what I was doing, but I was thinking, I was like five, four maybe. And I thought, what if we could get to demons while they were babies and teach them that being a demon is not the right way to go? And maybe while they're still innocent demons, we could help them. And then I thought, no grownup is going to be okay with contacting demons unless they're cute. So I ran out of the bathroom and went, "Mom, do you think baby demons are cute?" Because I'm trying to save the world at four or five years old. She grabbed me, walked me to the bathroom and stuck a bar soap in my mouth, and literally washed my mouth out with soap and water for saying, do you think baby demons are cute?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:05:50] That's crazy.

David Smalley: [00:05:51] And she was afraid that the devil had possessed me and all this other stuff. She wasn't normally a super fundamentalist like that. But there are a few things that really weird her out, like the number six, six, six freaks her out. Even though it's a mistake. The actual number in the Bible is six, one, six. Most people don't know that. They think it's six, six, six.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:06:11] I never heard of that.

David Smalley: [00:06:12] If I'm ever on a quiz show and they asked me that, I'm going to answer six, six, six because that's what they think the real one is six one six by the way. But that part really stuck with me. I think that maybe a reason why I'm like even just believing stuff can have negative ramifications and people were always like, "Why do you care what other people believe? Just leave them alone." Look, if you believe that a virgin gave birth and a guy died, came back to life, and floated up to the sky, you might also believe that that Nigerian Prince really needs your bank. Again, you might really believe that the psychic medium down the streets contacting your Nana and you're going to fork over money. You might really believe that this crystal healer is going to wave some rocks around your face, you paid them $100 and you go away feeling better. Or some sort of healer somewhere is going to ding bells around you and this, this therapy is going to make you suddenly feel better and you're shelling out money. I mean I had a woman in studio right here one day who paid $100 for a stick because someone told her it was a magic wand.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:07:06] I'm definitely going to talk about that exact episode because I heard that and I remember thinking this is -- that was actually maybe the first episode I listened to of your show --

David Smalley: [00:07:14] Oh okay.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:07:14] -- and I was like, I can't wait to see this. Spoiler alert, the premises was, this woman was like, I can feel the energy from crystals. And you're like, "Cool, I've got a bunch of rocks and you have a bunch of your crystals and we're going to blindfold you and see if you can tell the difference."

David Smalley: [00:07:27] Absolutely.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:07:27] And I'm not going to surprise anyone with the results of that, but I'll let you tell it in a minute. One thing that I'm curious about. So you said, "Yeah if you believe this and maybe you believe in Nigerian Prince wants your money."

David Smalley: [00:07:40] Because taking advantage of it is easier and care about your stability and mental state. So I think you should be believing as many true things as possible. That's it.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:07:50] I think that that's a good point. And I noticed that a lot of times, and this isn't universal, I know tons of religious people that are super nice, smart, intelligent, whatever, of course. So I want to throw that caveat in here so people aren't like, "Jordan thinks all his religious listeners are dumb, unsubscribe, one star." You know, what I have noticed is often when I see a negative argument that it kind of lacks cohesion and isn't well thought out. Or somebody puts words in my mouth and then proceeds to like skewer that straw man. I'll often go, okay, you know, I'll have this conversation with you just to see what's going on. And like eight times out of 10, maybe six, seven times out of 10, it'll be like, "Well, you know, I'm Christian and dah, dah, dah." And I go, I'm certain like to think is there a correlation -- and I guess this is a question for you. In your experience, is there a correlation between people who have generally nonsensical arguments or like believe in these weird ground truths about like all kinds of nonsensical things and then religious belief? Because I've started to notice that and some of that's probably confirmation bias on my part, but I noticed that there are people that have like a certain set of assumptions and I go, I wonder if this person would have that same set of assumptions if they didn't also believe in like all of this very metaphysical, religious kind of -- what's the word I'm looking for? Spiritual isn't even the right word. Like literally like the fairy tale version of the Bible where everything is taken literally, the talking donkey that we mentioned on your show. I always wonder if they would have that same set of assumptions if they were purely rational or at least more rational.

David Smalley: [00:09:24] Well, this is part of the conversation where we have to do that not all disclaimer, and let me just run through it.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:09:30] Yeah.

David Smalley: [00:09:31] I know plenty of Christians who are really smart people who were skeptical of other things and don't get taken advantage of in any situation.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:09:36] Right.

David Smalley: [00:09:37] The problem is a lot of people think they are that person, but they allow themselves to get taken advantage of without realizing it. There are also atheists who believe they can contact the dead, who believe they can control rainbows, who are flat earthers. I hear from them in my inbox.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:09:53] Yeah.

David Smalley: [00:09:54] They exist. It's not the norm though. Most of what you're saying tends to be the case. So we're talking about a bell curve, generally speaking, three or four deviations outside the norm. Yeah, there's going to be that thing. But the vast majority, you're pretty on point. It's simply because once you challenge that ultimate authority and go, "I don't know that there is a God, I don't think I believe that. I don't have enough evidence for that." And you start to back out of that and ask for evidence, then you start to go, "Maybe I need to do this in other areas of my life."

Jordan Harbinger: [00:10:24] Yeah. Exactly.

David Smalley: [00:10:26] And then that starts to happen and you start to ask, when a car salesman walks up and says something to you like, "Oh, this thing is dah, dah, dah. Can you show me the paper?" Oh, this thing's never been in an accident. I had that recently because I recently wrecked my car and was shopping for a car. I walked up and says, "Ever been in an accident?" And the guy goes, "Nope. Never been in an accident." I said, "Can I see the Carfax?" He goes, "Yeah, yeah, they're printed. They're in the car." I said, okay, and I grabbed it and most people heard that. Hear that he has evidence and don't question it. I flipped through and read line by line and this certain car had been rear-ended. There was no frame damage, but it said in Carfax. It was rear-ended at a stoplight, and I was like, "This has been in an accident." He goes, "Huh?" I didn't even think he knew he was lying. He wasn't being malicious. He just had been taught by his supervisors. No accidents. This is fine. It couldn't possibly be a certified pre-owned vehicle if it had been in an accident. It takes one flip. It was on the top of page two and there it was. My skepticism makes me dive a little deeper and I'm sure you know about these. We talked about social engineering on my show and you've been talking about that car salesman get trained in how to manipulate the way you think.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:11:32] Every salesman does, to be fair.

David Smalley: [00:11:34] Sure, especially the cars guys. You know when they want to show you the car, they'll start talking and then walk away from you. You will naturally follow them so you can hear. So you become the follower in this situation. When you get in the car and you're driving, you feel like you're in control. What do they say? "Turn right here, turn right here. Make a left here. Turn right here. Pull in right here. Let's pullover. Let's stop. Let's take a look at the car." The idea is they're conditioning you to do exactly what the salesman says line by line by line. So that, when he says sign here, you do it.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:12:05] I never even thought about that being a compliance ladder.

David Smalley: [00:12:07] Nope. Oh, absolutely, the whole thing as a compliance ladder. And the same thing is true when they look at your car to see how much they're going to give you for it. It's, "Hmm, I don't know about that. That's not really a popular color." It may be the most popular color. It doesn't matter. He wants to make you feel like your stuff is devalued and his stuff is super amazing and there are all these little manipulative tricks. Knowing these tricks. I like to throw wrenches in it. I do it on purpose. The guy will tell me to turn right and I'll go straight to the light. "I told you to make it right."

Jordan Harbinger: [00:12:37] Yeah, I was going to say I want to test drive.

David Smalley: [00:12:39] I go, "Oh, I'm sorry." Of course, I play dumb. "I'm sorry I didn't hear you say that." And then, "Okay. Make a right, right here." "You know what? I'm going to go left. I want to pull into this parking lot real quick." "Oh, I need you to make it right." "You know what? Hold on just a second for me, bud." And I tried to be nice the whole time. Sometimes I let them off the hook and I tell them I know what they're doing and other times I just keep playing with them because it's fun.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:12:57] Sure. It sounds fun actually.

David Smalley: [00:12:59] The connection to religion is that when you've been told that that is a man of God. He's special. He has powers. You're not allowed to have. You have to give money over because the godly man said so. God's watching you. So your behaviors are duress based, not ethically based, right? You think it's ethical, but you're being good because daddy's watching, right? So you've got this series of events in a certain way. You're believing a certain way, you're behaving, that when someone else shows up and says it's never been in an accident and he's wearing a tie and he speaks with that confidence and he's got that charisma. You have been conditioned in your religion to believe the smart, attractive, soft-spoken guy. So you do it or a well-spoken guy. I firmly believe you're more likely to get taken advantage of quicker if you have a preconceived religious belief.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:13:50] It's funny, this reminds me of, I interviewed this guy who escaped from North Korea and I think he's 24 now. So he escaped and he was 17 and he was talking about buying a car and he got raked over the coals because he trusted everything that the sales guy said just at face value, you know, completely. And I thought, oh, it's big because he's never had to deal with like a complex financial transaction. And part of that was true. The other part of it is he was raised in an absolute compliance totalitarian, the most totalitarian regime probably that's ever existed in the world, honestly.

David Smalley: [00:14:27] You want to compare those with the Nazis, but --

Jordan Harbinger: [00:14:28] Yeah, maybe not, not like an actual concentration camp.

David Smalley: [00:14:32] Sure.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:14:33] For sure, the most totalitarian regime in terms of like a government.

David Smalley: [00:14:37] Sure.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:14:38] Maybe not the same sort of prison situation, but damn close.

David Smalley: [00:14:42] Right.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:14:42] Really close to it.

David Smalley: [00:14:43] The mindset for sure.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:14:44] Yeah. Yeah, good point. So the most totalitarian regime outside of an actual prison camp probably.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:14:50] And I hear they have those, by the way.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:14:51] They do have those. They have concentration camps there too. But he had been through these and he believed everything that those guys had said and he had to learn how to like question authority at all. And you know, it's interesting he became religious the second he got to China. And I hadn't thought about why. I mean, he said he had this epiphany and all this stuff. I have this half-baked potential theory that people who come from an extreme situation of belief like that will fall into another situation like that to replace that feeling of the beliefs. Is that a thing that you've observed?

David Smalley: [00:15:28] Absolutely. And atheists do it too.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:15:31] Yes.

David Smalley: [00:15:32] Here's where it gets a tad political and if it makes you uncomfortable, we can back out.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:15:36] No it okay.

David Smalley: [00:15:36] But I know so many atheists, and I've seen them do this. I've seen them leave a religion, be conditioned to believe, overpower that, ask questions, not find the evidence they thought they were going to find, and give up on their belief and celebrate their skepticism. And then begin to act in a way that is religious again, for whatever political movement they've chosen, whether it's libertarianism or extreme leftists and whatever it is. These people who demanded evidence and said everybody has a right to speak at the table. 10, 15 years ago when atheists weren't invited to the prayer breakfast and atheist were invited to the interfaith meetings and atheists weren't allowed to give an invocation, a secular invocation or whatever, they were like, "We deserve a seat at the table even though we're the least popular view." And that's what we built the atheist community on. And then a whole extreme left-wing branch of those atheists started breaking off, getting a little more control because we did. We started to be recognized. Obama started inviting atheists to interfaith meetings and prayer breakfast. Atheists all over the country started doing secular invocations at their city council meetings. And whenever there was some sort of Jesus invocation or specific Muslim invocation, atheists would show up and demonstrate by sitting down and refusing to stand for whatever God was being invoked. This idea that it needs to include everyone and a secular invocation includes everyone. It's about the people. It's about progress. We're not going to pick one particular God to pray to because there are people in that town that don't believe that. Yet, they're paying for you to be there. It's not fair to use their tax dollars in that way. And so we built this idea on, everybody gets a seat at the table, even if we disagree with them when their views are unpopular.

David Smalley: [00:17:20] But as soon as this extreme left-wing version of our liberal views got some clout, they started going, "Oh, now we taste that power." You're not allowed to speak. You're not allowed to speak. You're not welcome at the table. And if you show up, we're going to throw rocks, we're going to spray you. We're going to beat you with shields. Okay, there's a group of young conservative, young Republicans marching in Oregon. They can just call them fascists. They can just call them right-wing, Nazis, or neo-Nazi. They just label them whatever and then like sheep, they just follow and show up in black-clad masking. "Let's destroy them because we're doing something good. We're ridding the world of evil." Stop and realize that you're acting religious. Those guys are allowed to march even if they are racists. They're allowed to exist and be disgusting people. We've got to battle those ideas in the public sphere, not with literal rocks and gas canisters and shields. Do you know what I mean?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:18:25] Yeah.

David Smalley: [00:18:25] We've got to address it with the public and with voting and with other ways because otherwise you're treating this like a third world country and you're beating people with sticks and rocks and it's insane.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:18:35] It is.

David Smalley: [00:18:36] To the point that some guys were showing up with like Antifa or black bloc supporters who look like me and were getting attacked by their own people because they thought they were racist because they had shaved heads.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:18:48] Oh geez.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:18:48] It is insane. It is insane. Fighting each other saying, "Stop your performative bullshit and stop compromising. There is no compromise. We're destroying them." It's a very war-like mindset and the vast majority of these people are secular. They are atheists who said they were over religion. And what's dangerous about it, Jordan, is they honestly think they have overcome religious belief. So they think they're immune to it. They think there's no way I could be tricked --

David Smalley: [00:19:19] That's more dangerous somehow. It is because now they don't even realize it. I've been attacked by the same folks on social media. I can tell you now, man. When someone goes, "Attack David, he's part of a secret Nazi group." I'm going --

Jordan Harbinger: [00:19:34] It's secret. You even don't know about it.

David Smalley: [00:19:36] And pretty damn secretive. It's got to be. People who were my listeners, people who I know are skeptical thinkers who came out of religious households and became atheists are just believing it and going, "Well, I'm canceling. I'm not going to subscribe. I'm not going to support this Nazi." And I'm going, "What happened to you asking for evidence? Because that's how you build your life. It's requesting evidence and being a skeptic. How are you falling back into this religious mindset?" So yeah, it's not only the religious people who can do that, but it's also people who are formerly religious, leave that behind, and then fall back into religious thinking without realizing they're a part of another religion.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:20:13] You're listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest David Smalley. We'll be right back.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:20:17] This episode is sponsored in part by Skillshare. Skillshare is an online learning community for creators. With more than 25,000 classes in design business and more, you'll discover countless ways to fuel your curiosity, creativity, and career. And Jen has been really into this lately. Honestly, she's grabbed classes, WordPress for beginners that you could see the results of that on our website. Arduino projects, which are like making these little circuits and using little tiny little parts. It's really kind of funny watching my wife build these circuits that do custom things like blink lights or control things. She also took a class on laser cutting, cookie icing decorating. So you're kind of getting an idea for the breadth of what is in Skillshare. Whether you want to start a new hobby or starting a side hustle or you're actually gaining new professional skills, Skillshare can hook that up and make it easy.

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Jason DeFillippo: [00:22:48] Don't forget we have a worksheet for today's episode so you can make sure you solidify your understanding of the key takeaways from David Smalley. That link is in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com/podcast. Thanks for listening and supporting the show and to learn more about our sponsors and get links to all the great discounts you just heard, visit jordanharbinger.com/deals. If you'd like some tips on how to subscribe to the show, just go to jordanharbinger.com/subscribe. Subscribing to the show is absolutely free. It just means that you get all the latest episodes in your podcast player as they are released so you don't miss a single thing from the show. And now back to our show with David Smalley.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:23:24] I see this, I see this at the micro-level too. That was a much more intelligent sort of version of the example that I have. There's a friend in particular where she left the Jehovah's witnesses and now she's like, "Oh, that's all a bunch of BS, but you should see. I can write and the spirits are telling me what to," or like, "Oh, there's this psychic healing thing." And I was just like, "Maybe there's something when you are forced as a kid to believe things that really your mind knows don't make sense, you just then don't develop may be the ability or the habit of questioning --"

David Smalley: [00:24:03] I would say habit over ability.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:24:05] Yes, I think the habit.

David Smalley: [00:24:06] I think everybody's got the ability. My friend Pete Boghossian wrote in his book that some people just aren't welcome at the adult table. He's like, "If you can't even fathom that, you might be wrong. You don't belong at the adult table." And I say send me those people because I'll sit with them and I think they are. I haven't said this often. It's only been one time -- I was actually talking with her before the show and she was like, she wanted to talk about the ex-gay person that I had on my show.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:24:35] Oh, we're talking about that.

David Smalley: [00:24:36] Yeah. Just very briefly, just like two seconds in. And she has asked me about him and I remember saying before that show, I was like, this is a rescue mission.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:24:45] Let's give a little context because I heard that one too. We listened together. And for me that was heartbreaking. Can you give us the premise? This gay Christian Guy, but I was just like --

David Smalley: [00:24:55] He's clearly gay.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:24:57] A hundred percent, yeah.

David Smalley: [00:24:58] He's so gay. But he said he hadn't had a sexual attraction to a man for 28 days --

Jordan Harbinger: [00:25:03] Which is like, you know, come on.

David Smalley: [00:25:06] And he's like, believe me, I've tried. Okay. I, because she mentioned that to me. I told her, I was like, I put a reminder in my phone tonight to go back and find him and do an update and have him back on my show.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:25:17] Yeah.

David Smalley: [00:25:18] Because I'm fascinated. I want to know where he is and if he's gotten the support he needs because I think that's all it is. And that's why I'm not nasty to these people. That's why I'm not mean to them. I think they are victims.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:25:29] He certainly was.

David Smalley: [00:25:30] Absolutely he is. I think most of the fundamentalist Christians I have on my show are, had been victimized in some way. Something has been taken from them and they've been convinced to believe this lie and I want to help them. I don't want to make fun of them. I don't want to beat them up for it. I honestly think I look at it as a rescue mission. So I want to save them from it. And you don't save people from stuff by punching them in the face.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:25:52] Right.

David Smalley: [00:25:53] And so these guys, let's say these guys were racist and they're marching in the streets, do you think punching them is going to make them rethink their ideas? It's going to make them want to punch you back or kill people. They have been brainwashed into thinking somehow that the white race is superior. I don't know why they're that damn excited that all the fun got sucked out of our DNA. That it's difficult for us to clap and dance at the same time and they think we're special somehow. I don't get it. But somehow they, they think they've been brainwashed. So they're victims of thinking this. So treat them like that and go, look, we can fix this problem instead of beating them up. That's why the whole punch a Nazi thing is just ridiculous.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:26:30] I was thinking of that exact same thing. Everyone loves that video and there is something, of course, that's always satisfying about seeing somebody you really don't get punched. But all that did was go, "Look, see, we're right about all these idiots. Look at him get punched. He's on the news. They're sucker punching him. We knew those people were --"

David Smalley: [00:26:47] Then it became a free speech thing and you're not allowed to say whatever. So this gay guy came on the show and says that he's ex-gay. That he hadn't had an attraction in 28 days, and he probably heard it in my voice, I was incredibly heartbroken for the vast, vast majority of the show.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:27:04] He said the attraction went away because he asked God to take it away and now it's gone forever. He's sure of it.

David Smalley: [00:27:09] Right. Which means we know how biology works.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:27:13] Of course.

David Smalley: [00:27:14] He is definitely attracted to people. He's suppressing it.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:27:17] Sure.

David Smalley: [00:27:17] He's lonely. And there's a reason why LGBT suicides are much higher than folks who are not gay, straighter or, or lesbian or whatever and or trans. And that's the thing is that our society that's doing it, is it whatever's making them gay that's doing it? We don't know but we're certainly not helping. If you already feel less than, if it religion has told you that you're broken if your mom and dad have kicked you out or you refuse to pay for college or refuse to help you with bills or disowned you because you're attracted to the same sex, and then somebody else comes along and goes, "You know, if you weren't gay, you could have this job," Or, "If you weren't gay, you could have this one," and you just feel broken and you start to hate yourself.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:28:03] Sure.

David Smalley: [00:28:04] You start to think that you, you somehow did something because it's never God's fault. You did something that made God put this on you. Like when the Pharaoh wouldn't let the Jews out of Egypt, it's because God hardened his heart. And when I challenged them and go, "Why didn't God just unhardened the Pharaoh's heart? So we'd let them go?" "No. It's because the Pharaoh did something to deserve having his heart hardened." So he held all these people's slaves and then in order to convince him to not do that, God went around killing the firstborn of everybody in the village until the Pharaoh finally let the people go. And the murdering of all those kids. That's the miracle of the Passover that the Jews celebrate, by the way. That's his wonderful thing. We're all supposed to celebrate in the Jewish tradition. It's horrific. It's disgusting. But that's how we dealt with it. So whenever I bring those stories up and I connect them and I go, "What do you think you did as a gay person to be for God to do this to you? And why would you worship a God that would torture you like this and why?" That episode was really difficult.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:29:09] It was hard.

David Smalley: [00:29:09] I felt bad for the guy the whole time.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:29:11] I mean he basically had accepted and we'll link to it in the show notes because I think it's a really good one. Are all your episodes available or do they have time -- they sort of expire?

David Smalley: [00:29:18] Because my deal with PodcastOne after 60 days they go behind that thing. But they can get it on my Patreon. It's a little more cost-effective, but I also have the ability to take shows and re-air them as well.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:29:29] We'll link to it in the show notes. And honestly, I mean, you can support a Patreon. It's like, what is this?

David Smalley: [00:29:34] There's a dollar one and there's a five-dollar.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:29:35] Yeah. And it's worth looking back at it a lot of the past episodes. When you talked, you said, well, because Pharaoh is this and the Bible, the difference is you're not just going, you know, all this stuff is stupid. You know this stuff really well. I mean, I think there have been several episodes of your show where you're like, well actually it's, I think it's this, this and this versus I had known nothing about this. And you'll be like, and I think it goes something like, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And the guy's reading it and he's like, yeah, that's pretty much it. Yeah. You know, the Bible much better than, or as well as any of these fundamentalists Christians do. There's a common concept on the show that I say, in order to be worthy of having a strong opinion, you have to know the argument or the counter-argument as well as the person making it. Then you actually are one of the few people that do that.

David Smalley: [00:30:23] I appreciate that. I pride myself in that. There's a thing called Rapoport’s Rules and Dan Dennett wrote about this in one of his 7,000 books that he's published. And basically Rapoport’s Rules, there's a few of them, the only one that really matters to me is you're not ready to form an argument against someone until you can reword their argument back to them in a way that they would go, "I wish I would've thought of it that way." But It has to be so well thought out that they go, "Yes, exactly. I wish I could have said it that way." Then you're ready to tell them why they're wrong. That rarely happens in today's society. You say something, I straw man your position, vomited it back to you and you go, "That's gross." And then we're just vomiting back at each other. Nothing makes sense. I don't represent my side well, I don't represent your side well, and we just end up fighting and that's ridiculous. So I make it a point to learn and to read the Bible, to do Bible study, to sit with people who know the Bible. I've read the Bible twice, by the way. I've made a ton of notes. I published a book on it in 2010. And I agree with you. That's why I listen to all the conservative radio and a lot of the Christian. Anytime I'm driving through town or I'm on some sort of comedy tour and I'm just doing nothing or driving, I just hit that seek button until I hear the preacher, the local preacher at the church talking about something. I'm fascinated by this stuff.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:31:40] It's funny that you're fascinated by it. For me, it also, I don't know what it is. Some of it freaks me out a little to hear it because I go, "Who's listening to this? And it's like, 'Oh yeah, that's it great.'"

David Smalley: [00:31:49] Well a lot of people.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:31:50] A lot of people.

David Smalley: [00:31:51] Which is why I feel the need to be on the front lines doing this because as much as I love my comedy career, I'm like, this is something that I feel like still needs to happen that people. Because there are a lot of people that do that and then they go, "I wonder what the atheists are saying." And then they tune into my show. So I pick those clips, I play the clip on the show and then go, "That's a complete misrepresentation of what this is." You met K.T. earlier, my co-host K.T. Tatara is a wonderful stand-up comedian. He was in studio with me last week and he heard me say something at the end of the show and he died laughing. And all it was my guest said, I think, it's like, "Most of the stuff that you've quoted, David, is out of context. People need to read their Bibles." And then K.T. kind of looked at me and I said, "I agree. Read it. Everybody should read it. The more I read it, the less I believed it." And as soon as I said it that way, K.T. literally fell over laughing. He was trying not to be rude and laugh at the guest and he wasn't. He told me after the show, he goes, "Dude, you were just so confident with that. It was so nonchalant." Like, "Yeah absolutely everybody should read it." He's like, "You just turned it around," and I go, "It wasn't a ploy. I wasn't being a jerk about it."

Jordan Harbinger: [00:32:56] Yeah.

David Smalley: [00:32:57] I'm dead serious. Reading the Bible makes atheists. People think -- and here's the thing, Jordan, I definitely want to say this on your showman, because you probably have a lot of religious people listening or watching --

Jordan Harbinger: [00:33:08] I think so, yeah.

David Smalley: [00:33:08] And that's fine. And I probably should've put this at the top of the show. I'm not against all the things you love about your religion. I'm against the stuff you don't know it was in there. Because people normally associate their religion with loving your neighbor, being kind to each other, helping the less fortunate, and living a prosperous life onto another life for internal happiness and seeing your dead loved ones again. And they think that when I say atheist that I'm trying to rip all of that out of your life. I want you to keep every bit of that. My only argument is I think you can have that without the divisive stuff that comes with fundamentalist religious belief. And I have an analogy for that.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:33:53] You talk about -- is it called secular humanism?

David Smalley: [00:33:58] Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. So secular humanism is this idea that there is something greater than you. Do you believe in anything? Yeah, I believe there's something bigger than me. I do. But I believe that that thing is you and your wife and everybody listening to humanity as a whole, the collective human species.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:34:18] So it's not like a metaphysical.

David Smalley: [00:34:19] No, but there's a bigger machine at work and I have to understand my place in it, but also understand that I have the ability to change my place if I choose. I can, I can do comedy. I can do acting. I can do a podcast. I could quit all of this and go to work in a machine shop and have no public voice. If I get tired of the public lifestyle, I can go be private, do whatever I want. I can change my lane, but I can't pretend that I am the reason I'm here and that everybody -- you know what I'm saying. I can't believe like that's a Hitler type thing, right? I'm going to fix it all. Calm down. That's not okay.

David Smalley: [00:34:55] So here's the analogy I like to pour out for all the religious people. I really want them to imagine something with me for a second. Imagine that on this table here, I have a glass an empty glass, you can see right through it. And I grabbed a dark cola. I'll let you name the brand if you want. You pour a dark hole in there.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:35:12] Are you afraid to just say like Coca-Cola?

David Smalley: [00:35:15] Yeah, I would never say that because I was writing it in my book and my literary agent was like, you're going to get sued. You can't say any brand name. You have to just say cola.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:35:24] Really.

David Smalley: [00:35:24] Yeah. Because of how the analogy goes.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:35:27] Oh got it, okay.

David Smalley: [00:35:27] You'll see and if you need to edit that out, it's up to you.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:35:32] Nah, it's okay.

David Smalley: [00:35:32] So I pour the cola in the glass. And so you have this glass of dark cola in front of you. I go, "If you're dying of dehydration, this can save your life." That's true. It can. If you're really hungry, it can make you feel full. It can. If you need to pass gas and you're unable to medically, this will help you pass gas. It will give you gas, it will make you burp or whatever. There are some benefits to this. It's not all bad, right? But it also comes with a lot of sugar that's going to make you gain weight. A lot of syrup that's bad for you. It comes with a lot of other chemicals that are bad for your teeth. It's got dye in it. Because most colas are clear if you know that. I used to work for one of the major manufacturers --

Jordan Harbinger: [00:36:19] Crystal Pepsi back in the day.

David Smalley: [00:36:20] Yeah. Well, they all look like crystal Pepsi. They just make them dark because nobody buys clear sodas unless they specifically go for 7 Up or Sprite or Sierra Mist. Got to get them all in there. Yeah, they just won't do it. I used to work for one of them. And they used to bring by samples for us to try off new colas, every one of them, they looked like a little NyQuil, like shot glass thing. Every one of them was clear. They add the color right before it goes out to people because people just won't buy.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:36:44] Right, it sort of inflates the value. If it looks like water, it's like I'm not going to pay two bucks.

David Smalley: [00:36:48] Yeah, that's a good point.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:36:49] Yeah. I assume that's why.

David Smalley: [00:36:50] Which even Sprite and 7 Up both have gone with like a green tint in their bottles for that reason because Crystal Pepsi failed ridiculously.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:36:57] Right.

David Smalley: [00:36:58] Even though it was just basically Pepsi without the coloring in it.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:37:01] I remember an SNL skit about crystal gravy.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:37:04] I never saw that one.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:37:05] They're just dumping like I guess -- well I go to my friend's dad who knows a lot of stuff, just like weird factoids. I go, "What is that?" And he goes, it's got to be like high fructose corn syrup. That they're pouring in their mouth and they're like dipping chicken and it's like crystal gravy. And they had like the Right Here, Right Now theme song.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:37:21] Oh, that's great.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:37:23] But Crystal Pepsi failed miserably probably because consumer expectation just didn't match.

David Smalley: [00:37:30] Right. So imagine you've got this glass and it's got some life-sustaining things in it. Yes, it can save your life. Just going to make you feel full. If you're hungry, it's got some stuff in it that's decent for you. And by the way, you do need a little sugar. So I guess to some degree if you take a sip of that, it's got enough sugar in it probably for a day. And so you know you've got some good stuff in there and now imagine that I could reach in with this magical syringe and I could suck out the syrup and the sugar and the dye and all of the crap that makes you fat and rot your teeth and just all the horrible things for you. All the caffeine that makes you jittery. I pull everything negative out of that. What's left in there?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:38:05] Sparkling water.

David Smalley: [00:38:07] Not even necessarily sparkling. What if I even took out the carbonation, so you don't get gassy. And it's just pure water that's still life-sustaining. That's all the good stuff in it without the bad things that what you have left is humanism. It's the life-sustaining water without all of the crap. Like my church is better than your church. Here's the way the animal must be facing when you slaughter it. Here are the animals you're allowed to eat. Here's who is allowed to be in your bed. Here's who you can have sex with. Here's what you're allowed to eat on Fridays. Here's who you should kill. Here's who you shouldn't kill. Here's who can be slaves. Here's who shouldn't be slaves. The Bible is filled with divisive stuff. So what I tell religious people, I never want to rip something out from under them without a safety net. What I want to say is look into secular humanism. Look at how it is a pure glass of water, where you can love your neighbor, you can bring happiness to the world, you can do charity work without all the divisiveness that comes with organized religion.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:39:09] You're listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest David Smalley. We'll be right back after this.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:39:14] This episode is sponsored in part by MedMen.

Jason DeFillippo: [00:39:17] For almost 50 years, April 20th has held a special significance. It's more than just a date on the calendar. It's a holiday, a yearly ritual that brings us together to celebrate cannabis in all the ways that improve our lives, and this year it gets even better. Because thanks to the new normal, the time for cannabis is now. You don't have to wait for April 20th. In fact, at MedMen, we've already started celebrating and you can too. Starting April 17th shop at any MedMen cannabis retail store nationwide and the more you spend, the more you save. This is your chance to try new brands and stock up on your favorites. And that's just the beginning. There are some big surprises still to come to visit medmen.com for more information and to find a MedMen store near you. But wait, there's more to celebrate, we're bringing health and wellness to the sunshine state. Keep an eye out for MedMen stores opening soon in Florida. Terms and conditions apply. Keep out of reach of children for use only by adults 21 years of age and older.

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Jordan Harbinger: [00:42:14] What about somebody -- as a counter-argument, and I'm not going to be great at this because I'm not religious --but what about somebody who goes, "Yeah, but look, man, I get that that's in there. I don't have slaves. I don't hate gay people. I cut out all that stuff that's negative. That's basically what I'm already doing with my religion." A lot of people are thinking right now.

David Smalley: [00:42:32] Sure they are. The problem is you still worship a God that did those things. At Malachi 3:6 says, "I, the Lord, did not change." So if God at one time was okay with slavery, he's okay with it today. So you literally worship someone who authorized slavery. You literally worshiped someone who authorized the murdering of millions of people. God kills over two million people in the Bible. And I think Satan kills like 10 in the Bible.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:42:58] 10 people?

David Smalley: [00:42:59] Yeah. 10. Yeah. Yeah. I think the numbers are right. People can fact check me on. I'm pretty sure God kills two million. By the way, he also flooded the entire earth. He said he regrets making human beings. These aren't things that people talk about in church. The preacher isn't saying this type of stuff. So even though you've let go of some of those things, all that means is you're inconsistent with your own religious beliefs. You are rejecting parts of the Bible that you say are God's word. Is it God's word or not? And if you say, "Well, some of it's God's word and some of it's not." Well, then we have a whole new problem. What about the parts of Jesus coming back to life? Is that God's word? Yes, because it makes you feel good or yes, because it actually is. How do you know that wasn't some sort of metaphor. How do you know? And if, if we admit then that there are human errors in the Bible. We go, "How do we know which parts to take literally? Which parts are poetry?"

Jordan Harbinger: [00:43:43] Also the ones that I want to be.

David Smalley: [00:43:44] The ones that you want, right. And like I said, no one's ever said, "I know God disagrees with me on this, but I'm going to stick to it anyway." No, they always think God agrees with their political view or whatever it may be. And if you're God and your imagination lives in the same place, maybe you've imagined your God and you've built your God because the God of the Bible doesn't play that shit. He's not okay with you cherry-picking. You break once in, you break all sin. You take all of this, you take none of this. Don't take one, not one jot, not one tittle shall be a really erase from the law or you shall be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven. I mean, you can't take anything away from the commandments or anything. By the way, 637 Levitical commandments. We're not just talking about the 10 that people like to put up in front of the post office. We're talking about in 637 things. That's the old law. And that's what Jesus was to when he talked about it.

David Smalley: [00:44:32] So even though you, you may have removed those things from your life for one, that just makes you inconsistent with your belief, but it also means you still believe things that are lacking evidence. And that's still a problem because like we talked about earlier on, you can be taken advantage of, you could be tricked. It's just better to ask for evidence and to keep on moving on. So I think secular humanism, having a skeptic based mindset, regardless of what the topic is, is a far more productive and happy lifestyle. And when you realize that you don't get a second chance in some sort of afterlife, this life becomes so much more valuable. It becomes so much more precious and you have this desire to take good care of it and to love people and to treat them with respect. This might be our last interaction.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:45:15] Well, you almost died last week.

David Smalley: [00:45:17] Literally.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:45:17] After we scheduled this. I was like, how dare you, it's taken us so long to get this on the calendar and you go and almost get killed.

David Smalley: [00:45:24] I really just didn't want to do this show so I was like, oh, there's a guardrail. Let me slam into that.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:45:29] Yeah. The brief context for that for the listener is you, you're tired of stripped or something in the middle of the road at 70 miles an hour and you hit a guardrail. And we're lucky to be having this conversation. Well, you're lucky to do anything.

David Smalley: [00:45:39] I literally almost died. It's on my Instagram, davidcsmalley. If you want to check that out.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:45:43] We'll link to that in show notes.

David Smalley: [00:45:44] All the pictures and the story is there. There's a detailed story. My publicist wrote a detailed story on my Facebook page too.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:45:50] I saw that. I was just checking Instagram like before we went to bed, I don't know, like last week or whatever, and I saw this just totaled Mustang and I went, "Whoa, what's this?" And I was like, "Oh, David Smalley got in a car accident." I told Jen, she goes, "What? Is he okay?" And I was like, "Oh, the pretty gnarly potato-sized bruise he's got here, but he posted this. So I guess he's not dead." But if someone said this was the result of the drunk driving accident and four people died, I would have been like, dang. Like it looked that bad.

David Smalley: [00:46:20] I got a lot of internal damage. I had a bruise left clavicle. I've got some internal stomach wall bruising, chest bruising. My arm and leg kept going numb, my left arm, and my left leg.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:46:31] You have that checked out I assumed.

David Smalley: [00:46:32] Yeah, I did I went to the hospital. They haven't got numbed in probably three or four days now, so it's getting better. But yeah, a lot was banged up. I was very banged up.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:46:38] I assume you've gotten a lot of emails that are like, "Well, God saved you for some reason." Or like somebody had to throw that out at you.

David Smalley: [00:46:45] Only atheist being assholes, like joking. Yeah, just joking with me. I think one person said something about -- some atheists get kind of spiritual and they'll say, "We still need you. You have a purpose here. We need you to fight the religious monster. The universe knew you were still necessary," stuff like that. It's all come from secular people mostly.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:47:09] Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. I know you're a comedian primarily. Did you get into comedy because of religion somehow? I mean, is that or is that too tenuous of a connection?

David Smalley: [00:47:20] That's funny that you say that, that I never, I never thought that until right now. I did stand-up comedy about 14, 15 years ago, one time. It didn't go very well.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:47:30] Okay. Yeah, I mean as your first time is probably --

David Smalley: [00:47:33] It was awful and then I didn't do it again for like 10 years, but for several years I did a lot of speaking and like in the atheist circles, I go to conferences for 1200 people, 400 people. I was giving talks. I always made my talks funny. I would always write jokes, and sometimes I'd have a presentation behind me and I would say something and then I would click the mouse and something would happen behind me that I pretended not to know about. I put on a show for people. I mean I made sure they had a good time.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:47:56] That's a good idea.

David Smalley: [00:47:57] I always wrote jokes in this stuff and made it fun but I tended to make my focus of basically kind of what you were talking about on my show. Here are ways to talk to people without being a jerk. Here are ways to diffuse situations. Don't make people's walls go up and make them be open to your guidance. Using the Socratic method. I would teach these things at atheist conventions. So seven, eight, maybe nine years of me speaking and sort of being funny on stage. And then I was asked to emcee The Comedy Store at the Reason Rally in 2016 and I went, yeah, I'll do that. And I'll just do like five minutes of stand up. And I wrote religious jokes and went out and did five minutes and killed with 500 people there.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:48:38] It feels good doesn't it?

David Smalley: [00:48:39] It felt amazing. Yeah, it set the bar pretty high because then I came to LA and bond a lot and got better. But it set the bar pretty high. Yeah. And believe it or not, I'll tell you now, now that I've been doing it for several years, and I have my own show at The Comedy Store and I have this recurring thing and I go on tour and start doing comedy.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:48:54] Where can we find out more? Just so we put that in the show notes.

David Smalley: [00:48:56] It's all at davidcsmalley.com. There's a big button that says comedy and they can watch some of my clips and then see where I'm going to be.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:49:02] Yeah, we'll have that because I listened to your show and you are really funny. I told Jen, I was like, it's like that other one. We used to listen to the one that you always get compared to. And I was like, but he's funnier. Well, he's funny. I don't have to think of it he's not funny.

David Smalley: [00:49:18] A great guys, just not a comedian.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:49:19] Right. And I'm like, so it's kind of like if Rogan had really well-reasoned arguments about something that I cared about, it's like that. So I'm like, this is really --

David Smalley: [00:49:26] Wow it means a lot to me. I appreciate that.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:49:28] We're like super hooked on it. That's why I was like -- because I was doing prep and I was like, "Oh man, what am I going to ask this guy?" And then we just binge listened to like 12 hours of a talk or a debate. And I was like, "How is this not more popular?"

David Smalley: [00:49:40] Yeah. That's cool. I appreciate it.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:49:42] I mean it is popular don't get me wrong.

David Smalley: [00:49:42] It should be more though. It should be more popular and hearing you say that means a lot to me with all the success you've had on your show. So I do appreciate that. So yeah, your listeners should go subscribe.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:49:51] Yeah, definitely. We'll link to it in the notes. And I know I just cut you off, but I wanted to get the comedy thing in there.

David Smalley: [00:49:55] What was I saying?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:49:55] You were saying you killed it The Reason Rally, you came to LA and bond a little bit.

David Smalley: [00:49:57] Yeah I bond a little bit and then I started to notice something. I started bombing because I quit doing my religious material. Oh, okay. I was like, people are going to get mad about that. I'm not going to do that stuff. And so I stopped doing it and then one day I was like, screw it. I'm going to do my material. I'm going to see what happens. And I decided to do this when I was on the road with a comedian. I was on the road with Ian Harris. He took me into his feature. He was headlining and we're in Cottonwood, Arizona.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:50:22] Oh man, this is already, I already see where this is going.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:50:25] Cottonwood, Arizona, and I don't usually get nervous before a show, but I was, I was pretty terrified because I'm like, we're in the middle of nowhere. It's a one-night-only show. This place is packed. It's a small town. So they have what they call a community center. That's where the dances are. That's where elderly couples go. That's where the 19-year-olds go. They let 16-year-olds in, but they sell alcohol. So kids have like X's on their hands, little kids, older people, every, it's the only thing to do in this town. And I'm like, here we are in a very conservative state in a small town, everybody from the communities in here and I'm the first comedian.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:51:00] Oh man.

David Smalley: [00:51:01] There's not even an emcee or an intro. Normally there's a couple of openers and I'm the feature and then we have a big headliner. Just me.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:51:08] Oh man.

David Smalley: [00:51:09] And so Ian grabs the mic backstage and he goes, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome David Smalley. It's Ian, the headliner is backstage with a wireless mic. I walk out on stage and as I'm walking and I hate doing this, I always at least want to know my first lines.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:51:25] Sure.

David Smalley: [00:51:26] I didn't know what I was going to say.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:51:27] Oh, that's so terrifying.

David Smalley: [00:51:28] I was like, am I going to do my religious joke or am I going to warm them up a little and then throw it out? And I, as I was standing there, I set my beer down on a barstool and I had a hoodie on and I put my hands in my pockets and I just stared at them and they all thought it was part of the act. I was literally trying to decide what I'm going to do and I'm looking around at them and I just thought in my head, I went, fuck it. I'm just going to do it.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:51:52] Yeah.

David Smalley: [00:51:53] And I said, "Hey, do you think when Christians get braces for their kids, they're finally admitting that God fucked up." They died laughing. It killed.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:52:04] Massive exhale.

David Smalley: [00:52:05] Yes. And I grabbed the beer and I was like, "Good. My people showed up," and they started clapping. Applause break on the first joke. Ridiculous. And I literally, I relaxed. I took a drink of the beer and I thought, because Ian is also an atheist, I was like, it must be like a bunch of atheists here. After the show, we hung out, start talking. Everybody was religious.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:52:27] I'm sure they just have some sense of humor.

David Smalley: [00:52:28] I started asking and they were like, "Oh, I love your stuff." And then I was like, I wonder if that's a thing. I wonder if, because they are in the religion, they find it funny to make fun of. So when I came back to LA, I started doing my religious jokes and it was killing. So I don't solely focus on that. I have a lot of those, but I talk about the way I look yet being liberal. I talk a lot about a lot of different stuff. I mentioned politics. I don't even talk about Trump. I think it's low hanging fruit at this point. But whenever I do my religious material in front of religious people, it's the biggest laughs I ever get. I went to Fort Worth. I was on the road with Jon Reep. Do you know Jon Reep? The Dodge Hemi Guy, that thing got to hit me. That dude. He was on sitcoms and stuff and he did some Good Luck Charlie stuff. I was his feature five shows in a row, Fort Worth, Texas near my hometown.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:53:12] Anything in Texas. I'd be like, I don't know. Everybody's armed.

David Smalley: [00:53:15] I did it. And they loved it.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:53:17] That's great.

David Smalley: [00:53:17] I did jokes about -- I did that joke a little bit differently. I did jokes about talking to racist people. The whole spiel went on all the fun gets sucked out of your DNA. That's a bit that I do and I did that. They were dying. All white crowds, red net conservative. They really loved it and well, it says something about our society that you can walk them into their turf and talk to them about how ridiculous their views are and they laugh about it because they understand it's a comedy show. In a weird way, religion is kind of why I'm a comedian, but yeah, I didn't mean for it to happen.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:53:50] Okay. I was wondering if like maybe there was something in your child where you're like, Oh, I dealt with that because through comedy or something, you know --

David Smalley: [00:53:57] No, I've always been outgoing and a nut and I do improv and I do acting and I do stand-up comedy.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:54:02] It must be nice to be able to do that because comedy is kind of a license to pretty much, as long as it's at least got an element of humor, you can kind of do almost anything.

David Smalley: [00:54:11] Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:54:11] It's when stuff's not funny and only offensive that people are like eye roll and then it just gets to be annoying.

David Smalley: [00:54:16] Well, every comedy shows somebody does get offended.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:54:19] Fine.

David Smalley: [00:54:19] They do.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:54:20] That's fine.

David Smalley: [00:54:20] You just never know. And that's --

Jordan Harbinger: [00:54:22] They came they're looking for that.

David Smalley: [00:54:23] That's kind of our job. If it weren't for comedians pushing the envelope, where would the line be?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:54:29] Well, it's funny because that's exactly my point on this. I went to North Korea on a trip and I've been there four times.

David Smalley: [00:54:37] On purpose.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:54:37] Yeah. It's was a thing that I used to do is go on tours there and I remember asking about comedy and they said, "Yeah, we have comedy shows." And I was like, "What do you all joke about?" Because usually, we joke about politics, politicians especially. Like, do people tell jokes about like Kim Jong-un? And they were like, "Whoa, no, not at all." And I thought, huh, because here, that's a whole thing. Like you make fun of the authority figures, you make fun of the government, you make fun of the inefficiency of this. And they're like, "Nope, that is completely off-limits." Like they can't joke about that at all. And that goes to your point where you're pushing the envelope, they're like, "Nope, that envelope stops right where we want it to. You can make all the jokes you want as long as they're not about these, like actual sacred things."

David Smalley: [00:55:25] I guarantee you when those comedians aren't on stage and they're in the green room or they're at home with another comedian friend, I bet you they do. And I bet you that's the hardest that they ever laugh. And somebody is going, "One day, I'm just going to say it, man. One day I'm just going to say it." "You better not, you're going to die." "Yeah. But one day I'm going to say it."

Jordan Harbinger: [00:55:43] Yeah. Well as soon as the whole thing collapses, we're going to have a wicked comedy. Like the top North Korean comedian is all about here's all the stuff we couldn't say for the last like 70 years. You made an interesting point on one of your shows actually that people in Hollywood are a little bit more like, I use the term woo-woo, but like what I really mean by that is willing to believe stuff that is just not founded in reality. And I wanted to know why you think that is because I used to think it was just California and then I moved to North Cal. I was like, "Oh, it's this California thing," but man, is Hollywood just loaded with this crap. It really is.

David Smalley: [00:56:24] And I understand and I don't want to say I give them a pass, but I totally understand it. I don't know if you've ever done any acting. Have you ever done any acting in theater or anything?

Jordan Harbinger: [00:56:34] Not really. I mean like video game voiceover. It's not the same thing.

David Smalley: [00:56:37] Okay. Yeah. It's not the same. I do voice stuff, but for me, I was religious for a long time in my early years, talked to God, thought I had answers from God. I felt something sometimes, but never felt like I did when I was acting. Becoming another character -- and if you take it seriously, I'm not saying a commercial where you're just like, "Tide, the best product ever." Like not that stuff I'm talking about embodying a dramatic character that is a serial killer or that is a wife-beating maniac or an alcoholic or someone who is severely addicted to drugs. When you have to embody someone else, especially if you apply like a method acting sort of thing --

Jordan Harbinger: [00:57:26] Were you basically live the role?

David Smalley: [00:57:27] Yeah. But not always. Like you don't have to live the role that way. You can method, act, and leave it on the stage. It's so hard to put into words, and this is why I think they get really spiritual. There are skeptics out there listening going bullshit. There's no way because they don't understand it. And one of my quotes that get passed around that I'm quite proud of is that skepticism isn't just refraining from automatic acceptance. It's refraining from automatic rejection as well. So when you just go, "Nope, bullshit," you're within reason, right? You're being hyper skeptical about it. You're refusing to even look at evidence that might prove you wrong, which then puts you in confirmation bias and now you're flowing back into religious mindsets again, right? So I want people to remain open to this, the skeptic or secular listeners. When you have to embody another person, there's a certain feeling that I can't really describe. I'm convinced it's all happening in my brain. I'm not saying I'm having a spiritual experience, but I will tell you is the closest thing to a spiritual experience that I've ever had. And then I hear people talk about being embodied with the Holy Spirit or the holy ghost or whatever. Usually, because of the way I look, I tend to get cast in roles that are alcoholics angry, angry customer, the guy who beats his wife or whatever. And so all these characters that I listed off, the guys with mental illness or the psychopath or murderers. I've had to play all of those parts. And I remember playing a part of a guy named Mark. It's from Emily Mann who wrote a play called Still Life. And it's a part where Mark, he's talking to the audience. He just stops and looks at the audience and has a whole monologue. He breaks the fourth wall. He's like, "I want you guys to know something about what's going on." It's almost like you're walking with your friend and he's going through life and he turns to you and goes, "It wasn't always like this. I thought of killing people when I back." And if you want to look at the monologue, it's called -- I think it's called I thought of Killing People, Still Life, Emily Mann with two N's, you'll find the exact script I had to follow. And he's basically talking about almost killing someone with a Coke bottle at a party when he got back from war. So he's this damaged veteran who's trying to get better, goes to alcohol, tries LSD, gets super messed up, and it goes to a party and tries to kill somebody out of anger.

David Smalley: [00:59:49] And as he's talking about it, as we all do, if I'm telling you about something, my sister said that really pissed me off. Like, and then she had the nerve and then I started getting more animated because I'm angry about it. If someone's struggling with a mental illness and also drunk or high and they're recalling something that sent them into a sort of a meltdown, they start to break down again. So I start to, in this monologue breakdown in the middle of the thing, because I'm imagining killing someone, almost killing someone. I say that I killed him and then I go, "Well, in my mind I cut his throat in everything," and there was this really deep, that's not how I delivered, it's a little more passionate, but there's this moment of me like literally envisioning being this guy so that I can play this role. And then the director goes, "Cut." Where does David begin and Mark end, right? And so it takes a psychological toll on somebody and I will feel myself literally get chills. I'll feel myself, be like "ah," like my eyes will water up, and I'm like I need a second, and I just got to take a walk. I just go outside, I get some water, I leave for a second and I come back. It's not that I can't go in and out because sometimes he would have me stop, give me direction, and say do that line again. But a character that's that heavy -- by the way it ends, the line ends with, "I think my wife is scared of me." He had a Southern accent. He would go, "I think my wife is scared of me." Okay. I read the entire play because I was just doing that one scene. He ends up beating his wife in the next scene. So then I started saying it in a threatening way because I know it's coming, so instead of, "I think my wife is scared on me." It was, "I think my wife is scared at me." And I would just stare into somebody's eyes in the audience and it made people really uncomfortable. I did it for auditions. I signed an agent with that, looked at them, and made them uncomfortable. They were like, "I believe you. You're making me feel weird. Let's sign a deal."

David Smalley: [01:01:45] My manager same way. I got my manager the same exact script when I stopped being Mark. I don't know how to explain this to skeptics. When I stopped being Mark, there's something that happens in my body, I think it's in my brain of course, but I can understand actors going, "No. I became that guy." I understand actors going, there's more to life than my brain because it doesn't feel like it's happening in your brain. You feel it in your toes. You feel it in your chest and your arms. It's an amazing experience. It's all happening in the brain as far as I know that, I understand why Hollywood people tend to in the metaphysical tend to believe that rocks and crystals and the magic wands and these things can do stuff to you outside because stuff happens in your body when you're an actor that you cannot explain.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:02:31] Ah. And you think that opens them up to more sort of metaphysical type --

David Smalley: [01:02:37] Absolutely.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:02:37] -- beliefs, spiritual beliefs. Because the crystal rock experiment was the one that I think I mentioned. I heard probably the first episode of the show that I heard where this gal thought she could tell the difference between crystals that she had brought and rocks. She was like, "For sure I can do it." I'll link to it in the show notes and then when it goes behind the paywall it's worth getting because it's really, it's really, really interesting. She was just convinced and then you can hear in real-time on the show, you're like, well, this was the rose quartz or whatever, like the most powerful energy one. And she goes, "Oh, well the reason I didn't get that one was because that one was like from my ex-boyfriend." And you just hear like going through these gymnastics and then eventually she's just like, "Okay, I can't do this. Okay. I admit that I cannot able to do this."

David Smalley: [01:03:21] Yeah. Yeah. And here's the funny thing about that -- a little insight that people don't know. Almost every time that I have a Christian on -- I'll inevitably, I will hear from another Christian that goes, "That wasn't a real Christian. That guy was an idiot. Have me on and I'll have you bowing before Jesus by the end of the episode." And I go, "Awesome. What Friday can you record?" And that's how we continue the show. So without them -- I'm not trying to say don't do it. That's how we get our guests with people going, "That guy was wrong. Let me show you real Christianity." "Great. That's the way it works. Come on." I had a crystal healer. Listen to that episode and reach out and go, that chick was fake. "I'm the real deal. I'll be able to tell the difference. I can feel the energy." And now, she wants to come in the studio and do it, to prove that she is right and that that girl wasn't legit, which I can't wait, but we're adding another thing. Nobody knows this yet. This is the first time I'm saying it. We're bringing in ouija board.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:04:16] Oh yeah. That's great.

David Smalley: [01:04:17] We're bringing ouija board in here and by the time this airs, we may have already done that episode. So I encourage people to go look for it. Assuming nobody cancels on me.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:04:27] Right.

David Smalley: [01:04:27] But, yeah, we're bringing ouija board and I'm going to throw them a curveball.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:04:31] I can't wait. I mean, these tests are so great because you see in real-time the process that people must be going through when they're trying to justify irrational beliefs. And when they're really ridiculous, like the crystal healing thing, it causes you to go, "What kind of weird-ass beliefs do I have where I'm like doing the same thing? But I believe it because I'm just thinking about like my finances or my business."

David Smalley: [01:04:53] Yeah. But what you're doing right now is really the mark of intelligence.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:04:57] What's that?

David Smalley: [01:04:57] It's really good. What you're doing is you're going, "What could be wrong with me if I see other people doing it?"

Jordan Harbinger: [01:05:02] Right.

David Smalley: [01:05:03] Okay. It was Aristotle who said, "It is the mark of an educated mind to entertain an idea without accepting it." You can entertain the idea that you have some flaws without accepting exactly what they are. That's okay. The people we're talking about the ones that go, "It's impossible for me to be wrong. God's in my head. Screw you." I like talking to those people because I asked them a series of questions and then they have to go, "Oh, I don't know why that is and I don't know why that is," and then they start to see that there's an issue, but if you come to the table thinking you have no issues. That's why I like to do things with the physical stuff like the ouija board or the crystal healer or whatever, or the girl who spent $100 on a magic wand.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:05:37] Yeah, the magic wand by the way, which is a stick --

David Smalley: [01:05:40] That was blessed.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:05:41] -- but somebody blessed it so it's worth $100.

David Smalley: [01:05:43] Blessed. It was shiny, it was smooth, and has a machine at home that --

Jordan Harbinger: [01:05:47] A buffer.

David Smalley: [01:05:48] Yeah, some kind of buffer.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:05:50] That buffs stick.

David Smalley: [01:05:51] So she's a sweetheart by the way.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:05:53] She was super cool about it.

David Smalley: [01:05:54] She was super cool about it, and she was really open to it and she's like, "No, this is ridiculous. I'm not going to do this anymore."

Jordan Harbinger: [01:06:00] I love the fact that she did that because that could have been super embarrassing for her. Instead, she was like, "Nah, I'm just going to learn from this."

David Smalley: [01:06:06] Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:06:07] What sort of rhetorical devices are you using on the show to create understanding and change people's minds? We sort of touched on the Socratic method, which I think is great. You're really good at asking people questions and getting them. And I told you this on your show, getting them to kind of paint around themselves and then by the time you go, you ask the final sort of clincher question. They just kind of metaphorically look around and go, "Crap, I just paint myself into this corner like really tightly." You're really good at that. And it's cool to watch, well, listened to, because Jen and I are like, "Oh look, he's making her do this. He's making them say that. Oh, I can't wait to see how this guy tries to wear him out of this. And then you go, 'So how do you reconcile those two things?'" And then dead air and I'm like, "Oh, did I accidentally hit the pause button?" No, the dude's just sitting there thinking I am fucked right now.

David Smalley: [01:06:57] Sometimes I actually have to go make the silence shorter so that people don't think the podcasts shut off. And people have accused me of inserting silence and I go, it's the exact opposite. If they're dead silent for 11 seconds, I make it only like four and a half because I think that people are going to be like, "What's wrong with my podcast app?" And they think that it just went dead. That happens a lot. And that's the knockout question right there. How do you reconcile? And here's the thing, we talked about intelligence at the, at the top of the show, Christians are very, very smart people, very smart and really smart people are really good at justifying really bad ideas. And they will take a concept that sounds ridiculous. They know it sounds ridiculous, but they use enough words and talk themselves into the situation. But what they're doing is they're sliding in a bunch of non-sequiturs. These things aren't related but they'll go this and then you know some non-sequitur here and then they go to another thing, part B, and then they go some other non-sequitur. And then that's how I get to part C. You see? And that's enough for them to go, "And that's why I believe it." And all I do is go, okay, so A, B, and C. I remove all of their non-sequiturs and go, "How do you reconcile A with C?" Because when it's a direct question, they're supposed to be able to just answer it and they go --

Jordan Harbinger: [01:08:10] Like, it doesn't track.

David Smalley: [01:08:11] It doesn't track properly. You can't jump that. And that's why that that Christian cop I told you about when he talked all about the story of Balaam and the donkey and we went through it all and it sounded magical and poetic and beautiful, but he's a police officer. And I said to him, "It bothers me that you believe a man and a donkey had a conversation and you carry a gun for a living." And then his response was, "Well, when you put it like that, I sound ridiculous." "You put it like that. I just removed all the fluffiness that you tried to stuff between it. I just take part A and part C and put them together and go, what do you do with this? Because this doesn't make sense to me." That's all I really do.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:08:48] Yeah, and it's questioning. You're like, you're not telling -- I strongly encourage people, even if you don't think that you'd care about this, you're not interested in atheism, you're not interested in religion or you're religious, you don't want to hear it. Just the argumentation structure of what you do is like, I've heard lawyers do stuff. I went to law school. It's really good. Like you said you almost went into law. You'd have been really good at it because what you're doing is getting people to ask questions of themselves by asking them questions. Like, you never really tell anybody anything. They just question their own beliefs after you ask them things about what they're saying.

David Smalley: [01:09:23] Well, a lot of times they've never had these thoughts before, right? They've never challenged themselves. They've never been challenged. So they've never had to think about it. And that's why I don't beat them up if they don't know the answer. I let them off the hook. Just write it down, think about it. Come back next month with an answer and we'll see where you are with it. Because they've never had to come up with these answers before. And a lot of times, I forgot who said it, but some, some quote was, "How do I know what I think until I hear myself say it?" It's one of those things. You have these ideas, you have these beliefs and then until you have to verbalize it, you're like, "Oh, when I hear myself say it out loud. Yeah, I'm not so proud of that stance anymore."

Jordan Harbinger: [01:09:57] Exactly. Yeah, you're really good at that. You're really good at the argumentation and I'm going to link to a bunch of these in the show notes. Thanks so much for coming on the show. It only took us a year and a half or whatever to make it happen.

David Smalley: [01:10:06] Awesome.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:10:07] I'm glad.

David Smalley: [01:10:07] Well, thank you, man. I appreciate it. I had a blast doing it. Thanks for having me on.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:10:12] Interesting episode. David is just such a clear thinker. I really liked that about him. Even if you disagree with what he says, you got to admit his use of argument is very, very, very sharp. And if you listen to his show, I think you'll enjoy it, especially if you're interested in the topic of atheism or religion or anything like that. He's just such a good debater. Great big thank you to David Smalley as well. His show is called Dogma Debate, and you can find that on PodcastOne or anywhere you listen to podcasts.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:10:38] If you want to know how I managed to book all these great people and manage tons of relationships in my personal and professional life, check out Six-Minute Networking. That's a course I made for you. It is free. It's over at jordanharbinger.com/course and don't say you'll do it later. The problem with kicking the can down the road, you can't make up for the lost time. When it comes to relationships and networking, I see people not digging the well before they get thirsty and that is a huge problem for them later on. It is inevitable. Trust me, go find it. It's free jordanharbinger.com/course. Speaking of building relationships, tell me your number one takeaway here from David Smalley. I'm at @JordanHarbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. There's a video of this interview on our YouTube channel at jordanharbinger.com/youtube.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:11:18] This show is produced in association with PodcastOne and this episode was co-produced by Jason "Walking the Dog Mutt" DeFillippo and Jen Harbinger. Show notes and worksheets are by Robert Fogarty and I'm your host Jordan Harbinger. Remember, we rise by lifting others, so the fee for the show is that you share it with friends when you find something useful, which should be in every episode. So please share the show with those you love and even those you don't. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show, so you can live what you listen, and we'll see you next time.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:11:48] A lot of people asking me which shows that I listen to and/or recommend, and one of those is The SDR Show with Ralph Sutton. I've got my friend Ralph here with me today. Ralph, you recently had DMC have Run-DMC on the show. That is kind of a throwback. What happened there?

Ralph Sutton: [01:12:03] Yeah, it was great. I actually became friends with him. It's his second time on the show. And I thought, this time, let's do something different. So my co-host and I, my co-host is Big Jay Oakerson. I said, "What if two 40-year-old Jews who've never tried to rap in their lives have a rap battle and we let DMC judge?" So Jay and I wrote rap lyrics and we had a rap battle and we let DMC decide which one of us was least awful.

Jordan Harbinger: [01:12:24] That's funny. I won't ask you who won because people have to listen to find out what it is. But I think that's a great idea by the way. If I'm ever short of topics and I happen to have a musician on the show, I'm just going to have an impromptu music contest of some kind. Rap battle is probably the easiest one to do without any instruments. The SDR Show, we'll link to that in the show notes. Thanks a lot, Ralph.