After the two laughed, Ritchson assured Maher that he didn’t come on the podcast to convert him, which Maher said he knew. Then Ritchson added, “If I could have my druthers, I want less vitriol in the world, and I want the Christian community not to be the one that’s known for making outliers and monsters of others.”
“There is a growing number of Christians who feel exactly the way you do,” Maher affirmed.
Throughout the conversation, Maher continued to express his religious skepticism, at one point saying, “I preach the gospel of ‘I don’t know.’” In response, Ritchson argued for the plausibility of Jesus’ resurrection, noting the willingness of the apostles and other early Christian to be martyred for claiming they had seen the resurrected Jesus.
“There are things that have happened historically that are verifiable that I think go to show that people who were very close to [Jesus] very much believed this,” Ritchson said.
Maher denied that the deaths of the apostles were historically verifiable, also casting doubt on the Apostle Paul’s encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus. Ritchson conceded that affirming that Paul really encountered Jesus requires a belief in the supernatural but added, “I believe that that kind of magic is real.”
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The two went on to briefly explore the doctrine of the Trinity before Maher joked, “Well, I’m glad we straightened that out.”
