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Belief and the Absurd

59:49 recording · EN · 6 speakers

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Brief overview

A best-of episode showing how Dutch believers and atheists have grown milder toward each other's worldviews.

  1. Atheists have grown milder, not louderLubach, Tim Hofman and others moved from mocking believers to caring only that religion does not block equality.
  2. The absurd divides and unitesLubach rejects faith because it is absurd; Vinkers believes because it is, credo quia absurdum.
  3. Searching can replace findingTyphoon says the search gets made holy because finding brings responsibility and forces a choice.
Executive Summary AI
  • Host David Bogert opens episode 313 of the unbelievable podcast, the first of four best-of specials drawn from seven years of archive, with the most beautiful religious conversations at its centre.1:00
  • Cabaretier Arjen Lubach, invited for the very first episode because research showed more than half of the Dutch no longer call themselves religious, calls faith the permission of the unproven and compares debating believers to a tennis opponent who grills the ball in a tosti-iron.1:52
  • Herman Vinkers argues the opposite, that Catholicism is not a course you reason your way into but a heritage, and defends the church through his great-grandfather Jan Finkers, who spent his life among the Indians in South Venezuela.12:50
  • Writer and musician Aafke Romeijn, raised in what she calls an atheist nest, says religion is an attractive alternative to a dull and dry worldview, and asks why someone who dyes her hair blue would not dare take that step.18:38
  • The episode closes with poet Lieke Marsman, who died of a rare cancer on June 3, describing how while walking through the rainy Veluwe forests she felt a power with her that she still knows was real.49:33
Key Quote
“You close the door for allowing things that you cannot prove.”
— Arjen Lubach2:09
Key Quote
“Why would I not take this step, say?”
— Aafke Romeijn21:15
Key Quote
“But I think it's the easy way to not do it like Jesus.”
— Tim Hofman27:08