 Hello and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio Hour and WOZO Radio 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We're recording this on Sunday morning, November 5th, 2023. I'm Larry Rhodes or DJ Douter 5, and as usual, we have our co-host Wombat online with us. Hello Wombat. All day, all night, all right. All the time. WOZO Radio. And our special guest is Dred Pirate Higgs. Welcome, Dred. Oh, a special guest yet. Yeah, nice. Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism and the sciences. And conversely, we'll also talk about religions, religious faith, post-sopharianism, God's holy books and superstition. And if you get the feeling that you're the only non-believer in your town, well, you just not. In Knoxville, here in the middle of the Bible Belt, we have a group of 1,100 of us. We're the Atheist Society of Knoxville, or ASK. We'll tell you more about us after the mid-show break. Be sure to stick around. Wombat, what's our topic today? Beyond the 1,100 lost souls that exist now in the Tennessee area. We are going to be talking about revisions, early revisions of the Bible. And ideas that, the idea that, you know, necessarily the stories that we have, the Bible stories we had. Wait, wait. Go for it. How can the unerring word of God be revised? Because we only have the final revision. That's the problem. There was a bunch of plots that just are left on the cutting room floor. I think what we have are the final versions that actually were. Well, probably the final five versions, because you can get the new living Bible. You can get the Old Testament, New Testament of the King Jerry. Let me get out the description of the show. Let me get out the description of the show. We'll get into it. But the idea is, what would the earlier versions of these stories look like? What would be the earlier drafts that God had tried that didn't work? That are still on the cutting room floor? And piecemeal, how we got to the situation we're at now. It's going to be a really weird, but fun topic of the show today. However, before we get into that topic, how about we throw it up, throw in Dreadpower Hicks for a weekly invocation. Sightly, our newly lord who art in a calendar, I'll dente be thy noodles, thy blood be run, thy sauce be um, with meat as it is with vegetables. Give us this day our garlic bread and forgive us our cussing as we forgive those who cuss against us. And lead us not into ketoism, but deliver us some carbs. For thine are the noodles and the meatballs and the grog whenever and ever. Rob. Larry, I've been having pretty busy. Recently came out with a new song, really happy with that postage. Very nice. Special group. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Was it called 2am? Yeah, that was it. That was more you made it at 2am. Yeah. One or the other, one or the other, right? The other thing I've been making is this weird. So I've been watching this show called Gundam, the witch from Mercury. And I've had a really fun time. Watching a show that I felt has engaged me intellectually as well as just astonished me with the animation quality at the same time too. Highly recommended. I watched Gundam since I was like a teenager, but it fell off of like cartoons and anime for quite some time, got back into it. And I was really impressed with the care of how they wrote written so well. So many different women on the show. It's like a female cast, but it's it's not it's not written for the sake of male entertainment. Like all the women have things to say things to do very, very strong purpose, very strong ideology. And it's just a very well crafted show overall. And of course you get giant robots, which are also awesome. It's just called Gundam. It's called the witch from Mercury, but it's part of a franchise that's called Gundam. And they also make model kits for all their toys. So you can like, oh man, I love seeing this thing. I want to build it myself. And man, it's just so diligently put together. You don't have to use glue. You don't have to paint it. All the parts come in these frames that you just snip off and snap together. And it's just a really fun way to build a model. And what I want to do is build a multi-layer cy改 and look at the artร whysh. Car met or car toy manufacturers play manufacturer to follow the same suit along with that went rock climbing yesterday. Had a good time, but I didn't do as well as I wanted. I wasn't able to top as many boulders as I wanted to. And so I fell a little down, but I did feel like I made progress in terms of. Trying to hit a higher caliber of climbs. harder stuff. So even if I don't get as accomplished, at least I know I'm trying to do harder things. And so that made me feel at least a little bit better. But I did find this thing called a kilter board. I don't know if you've ever heard of one of those things before, but it's a climbing board that has light up holds. And you can program your phone with an app to basically download a set of holds from a library of holds are all available because all kilter boards around the world are more or less the same. And you can functionally train yourself on a customized path and then share your path or your rock climb setting to other people to give critiques on and improve or modify your climb or change the angle of the wall. Like you can you have a standardized way to retrain a wide variety or wide gradient of difficulties as you get from one level to the next level. And so I'm working on that. And I was almost thinking, man, it would be great to have a place where I could basically have my own. Yeah, it's looking it up. It's like 12 feet by 16 feet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a big thing. Yeah, they make some that are also like seven feet by like four feet too. So you could even have one inside your kitchen if you wanted to. But if you got a home, there's an option for it. And I saw some for that. So if I was ever planning on getting a home, that'd be like one of the things I'd be thinking about. Larry, how have you been? Oh, fine. Just taking it easy. Easy. Yeah, waiting for my knee surgery to come up. That'll be Thanksgiving week. So I'm gonna have a good Thanksgiving line around. Nice. What kind of people are you talking about? Is it a knee replacement? Knee replacement. Knee replacement on one or both? One. They don't recommend you do two at a time nowadays. Okay. Okay. Okay. Going full cyborg. We love it. We love it. We love it. Yeah, I'm getting a head replacement next week. Resistance is futile. Yeah, yeah. Dred Power Higgs will throw it up to you. How you been? Not too bad. Last week, I traveled down to another city there to do my emergency medical responder upgrade. So now I'm qualified to work on an ambulance. Nice. Very useful. On an actual ambulance. So you're calling from an ambulance right now? No, I'm calling from my MTC. But you know, this upgrade, of course, it means more money and we have to go through a licensing board. So I have to do that in January. And then that will put me in, I won't be in a truck. I'll be in a like a medic shack, you know, which is basically a, you know, it's, you know, a sweet trait. So it's got a bed and a bathroom and a kitchen, TV and all that good stuff. So and that's where I would stay. Is it true that? Yeah, definitely. I was wondering, is it true that in Canada, the ambulances have sirens that warn other cars that they're coming and they don't just scream, is there not the way like they do in America? Right. Yeah, you're right. Yeah. So polite. And sometimes people pay attention. That's an extra bonus. It could happen. It could happen. Yeah. But yeah, yeah. So I just got back yesterday. It took me, it was a six and a half hour drive. And then I had to get my unit here, had to get it ready. And then I had to drive out to camp last night. And then this morning I was here right out in bushy tail. Nice. But this is great because, because it's eight o'clock here. We don't do time change in Fort St. John. So I see. So it's eight o'clock for me, which means when I showed up here for, you know, before seven 30, you know, I signed everyone in and I'm all clear. And unless I get paged out for an emergency, I should be good. Very cool. Good. I can only hope that daylight savings time becomes increasingly more unpopular in the US that we can effectively get rid of it. But if you get called out for some kind of a kid with an emergency, you need to wear that hat with you when you go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. By the way, for the radio audience, he's got a track horn hat on. Yes. Think of it as like a higher hat if you don't know what a track board is. Well, yeah. And just, you know, I was in class with 11 other people and three of them were Sikhs all wearing their religious headwear. They're religious headgear. So yes, I would actually wear this in the ambulance on Fridays as per my consistent with my religious beliefs. So good. As you should. I wanted to throw out a topic for today's show that's a bit heady. So hear me out. Unairing Word of God revised. What do I mean by that? The idea that the version of the Bible that we have or the version of the Word of God that we have is the unairing word because it's only the final version and that there was, in fact, multiple instances of many different Bible stories that just didn't make the cut to get into the Bible. Earlier attempts by God to get his plan across that didn't hit the mark. Potential failures on his part that he didn't want to advertise. And I can throw out no better example. And we can use this as a model of the board than the Adam and Eve story. We know the Adam and Eve forbidden fruit in paradise, talking serpent, explaining to Eve, you should eat this thing. It's good for you. And Eve doing it, being con what is that word sent to the dark side by the ability to think for herself. We know women aren't that and then finally conversing, coercing Adam to do the same thing, too. What if that was just the final version and God in his attempt to maintain paradise first made like a forbidden diamond that he buried a thousand miles underneath the surface of paradise and was like, don't you dare dig up that forbidden diamond and Adam and Eve look at each other and think, well, we don't have any digging tools. So yeah, that's fine. That's fine with this. Like God's like, dang it. They were supposed to dig up the forbidden diamond. I made this. I made this trap too hard. And whatever you do, don't go to them. Don't get the apple from the fruit from the tree on the moon. Yeah. Adam and Eve like, well, we don't have spaceships, God. So like, I guess good, good move, good job making this trap door and paradise so far out that we'll never fall down it. And God's like, ah, that's a good point. That's a good point. I should have made this easier. But wasn't the moon thing the premise of 2001 a space Odyssey? Really? Oh, yeah. The obelisk on the moon. Which can only happen when they have the technology to do it. Okay. Okay. So now we have another example where they said, okay, well, I'm just going to put the forbidden fruit on a tree, but I'm going to put it a thousand feet up on the tree. And Adam and Eve are like, well, we don't have climbing equipment. That's really high to climb. And for whatever reason, our bodies keep getting scratched and scraped up because we're not wearing clothes. We didn't come from monkeys. We didn't come from monkeys, God. He's like, you made us in your image. He's like, oh, dang it, you got me again. Oh, geez. This isn't going to work well on a Bible. I need to make this so easy that you guys can just reach up and grab the thing that I told you not to reach up and grab and eat. And so he makes the fruit at arms distance on a branch of a tree. And even then Adam and Eve are like, well, you told us not to eat it, so we're not going to eat it. So, and God's like, God, oh, me darn it. I have to make another animal to point in the direction. So he makes a serpent that's like a long pointy serpent. That's the pointing at it. And he's pointing at the forbidden fruit and still Adam and Eve aren't eating it because they're like, well, he doesn't talk. He's just pointing at the fruit. Like all these animals are pointing at something. It's like, okay, fine. I will make a talking snake just for you, just so you can eat this forbidden fruit. And so he makes a talking serpent that's like, hey, isn't this thing amazing? He was able to share the truth of it with him. Yeah, it's a damnation, by and back, guaranteed. I guarantee you. Well, go ahead. Well, here's, here's a thing, right? You know, when God said, don't eat the fruit, lest ye surely die. So God lied. And the serpent told him the truth, right? Yeah. The serpent said, oh, you won't die. And they didn't die. True. The bad guy was telling him the truth. The good guy was telling him I lie. Yeah. The whole thing about the Bible is it doesn't, it doesn't strike me as a story that was written by a good guy trying to be good. It's like a bad guy who's so convinced that he's good and is very unfortunately convinced a lot of people that he is good. But it's the, it's the autobiography of a tyrant, more or less. Well, to me, it's written by people who was writing a story about a guy who's so powerful, he can make you do anything. Right. Right. And if you, if you don't obey, then the punishment is, is incredible, terrible. Not only will he punish you, but he'll punish the rest of them. And it's eternal. Yeah. Forever. And, and generational. It's, it's, it's sickening. But you got punishment for finite crimes. Right. You got Adam and Eve during that paradise. They have a fruit that's now at Aaron's length. They have a talking snake that's like, you need to eat this thing. I'm calling your name. I'm talking to you in the one language you know, I've explained to you that this is the thing that you need to eat. And then finally Eve takes it, eats it, gives it to Adam. And God's like, aha! You have fallen into my trap finally once and for all. He even took it a step farther, walking around in the, in the garden, looking for him like he didn't know where they were, versus an omniscient being. Adam Eve, where are you? Why are you hiding? Like he's just playing games with him at that point. But now we finally have a version of the Bible that like can be the unerring word of God. Because we finally have a draft of all this, this weird mechanisms. This, what's the Rube Goldberg device? Ask players of complexity just to get two pieces of fruit into two bodies that you can then blame the bodies for. Because you didn't set it up for failure. They went against your word, even though they didn't have an awareness of what was right or wrong in the first place, that that's what the whole point of the forbidden fruit would give them. The ability to recognize right from wrong, which is, which is a strange thing to punish someone for after the fact, right? Like if you are capable of understanding morality, ethics, understanding authority, understanding anything, and you're just a, you're just an automaton, just doing whatever God tells you to do. And then you finally eat something that gives you the awareness of yourself, doubt, sentience, morality, consequence of your actions. And now finally you're like, Oh, wait a second. This is a problem. This is the one person I love. And then God's like, Hey, you were supposed to do that. It's like, you, you didn't explain the rules in a way that we could understand them until we ate this thing. And now that we have you in this thing, you can't, you can't blame us for that. What's up there? Right. It gave them the knowledge of good and evil, which is also the knowledge of right and wrong. And they didn't have that knowledge before they ate, before they were put through the test. Correct. Whether they should eat the, the whether that's right or wrong to eat the apple or disobedience. Go for it. Go for it. What it comes down to is, how can people still be so silly as to believe that story? I know. Well, because one, okay, good point, Dred, because people wrote that story trying with the impression of this is what happened, right? Meaning that there was a point in time where people did not have enough frame of reference or literary understanding of just like basic good ways to write stories or at least an awareness of how other people think to make a story that's so relevant to today's reality or understanding of how things operate in, in terms of how we understand the world today, that if you were to take someone who was born today and you put them in the middle of a desert or like a forest or just somewhere where they have no interactions with other people and you close off their interactions with different kinds of people and different kinds of mental thinking or, or ethics or moralities or perspectives, et cetera, they can come to the conclusion that this is real because they have nothing else to reference it off of because all it takes to believe something that's not true is just a low standard of evidence. The people who wrote the Bible had the same affliction today as people who are born in a society where it's not inclusive or integrated with many different kinds of people. They are closed off to other perspectives in such a way that their standards of evidence are super low because they've never had a chance to challenge them. It's true for the people who wrote the Bible and it's true for the people who still believe the Bible up to today. And the way you get out of that is by reading more books, understanding different people's perspectives, integrating yourself without ego and understanding that, hey, you don't understand everything in the universe and the universe is actually a really big place. And as you understand that more and more you realize, oh, geez, all these small things that I've come to put a lot of reliability in and confidence in are just facile models that have no impact on the greater realm of of unknowns that exist in the universe. And it becomes more and more obvious that it was written by people who are ignorant. Yeah, scientific fact in the natural world. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The fact that they have to use fairy tales to explain. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the only thing that we can be certain of is that agency is something that is self evident, but that it has to be an invisible being is not self evident. I mean, if if there was really a God, why would you need missionaries to go spread the word? It would it should be just so evident that there's an omniscient being out there. And if you're in the middle of the forest with no people around you, it should just come to you that, hey, man, there's clearly an omniscient being here running this thing because it can't be otherwise. But that never happens. You know, cultures are introduced to religions. They're not spontaneously generated. But on top of that, we're still trapped if you were to follow the Christian model in this weird rude Goldberg device of strange circumstances falling on top of each other towards the end goal of having God have a bunch of people worship him at the end of the day. Like the whole setup from Paradise with Adam and Eve is a domino effect that leads towards people worshiping God in heaven with him. And I always think to myself, why didn't you just make that from square one? Because you already made you know, you've proven you can make a Tom and the Tom's you've proven you can make a universe. Why did you make the paradise with the talking snake to the Jesus to World War One to hurt now with Internet? What all these all these random things just to get to like the point where you have billions of people worshiping you? Like, is that the end goal? Couldn't you just done that from the start? Well, that's not counting all the suffering that's going on, you know, through everyday lives of all those people before they get there and the end of the world. Yeah. And Larry, you're only thinking about one planet suffering like we live in a universe filled with multiple galaxies are suffering potentially all across potentially billions of different planets around the universe. Yeah, it's all for humanity. It's all for humanity and just these chosen people somewhere. It's like, it's like any good sales pitch, right? Yeah, you create a problem and then you sell the solution. That's what religion is all about. OK, OK, create a create a center and say, well, the only way you're going to get through that is if you believe in me and I got the solution for you drink this. Oh, man, it's it's an interesting story. It's an interesting story. Anyway, Larry, do you have more time for another example? Yeah. Go for it. Noah's Ark. We love it. It hasn't gone away, especially if you believe in Kentucky. Speaking of which, I don't know about this too well, but I do know that the finances for the the Ark that they build up in Kentucky are beginning to get a little one can can hams thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's getting a little wonky and they're actually asking for state support to be able to offset the the costs operating costs for maintaining that. I am not surprised. Yeah. I mean, how many I'm going to stay supported. They have to have in the form of tax benefits and land grants. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Think about all that land. Think about all that land just to build a weird, weird boat. I've had people in Tennessee and even at the gym, why died with excitement say, oh, we're going to the Ark, we're going to the Ark. And I'm like, how do you, how do you, as a person who's like, maybe, you know, older than me as a functioning adult, look at me with excitement and say that it just blows my mind. Though I can smile back and just be like, oh, that's, I'm happy for you because I'm happy for him. But at the end of the day, if it's just a sad, it's a sad state, either way though, Noah's Ark, you know, built that boat to very specify parameters, right? What if what if we were going to talk about Ted's boat or Brandon's boat or Billy's boat? And you're asking me, who's Brandon? Who's Ted? Who's Billy? These are all the people God went to before to try to build a boat, but got the dimensions wrong. He's like, oh, it's a little too narrow. I can't fit pigeons on this boat. And we got to have pigeons. All right. All right. Next guy. Next guy. All right. You made it. I gave you cubic. Oh, I didn't explain the units very well. You don't know metric system. Okay. Next guy. Next guy. Next guy. And so like systematically just going from one person to the next, Frank's Ark, Brandon's Ark or Brandon point two Ark, different last name, Melissa's Ark. He tried some women a couple of times and he's just like, you guys know, you made it way too big. It's like, God, it's supposed to hold every animal on the planet. I have to make it big. It's like, no, you're supposed to make it to my specifications. Next person. Noah, you're the only person who followed my rules. Congratulations. You will be the person that has my, my boat. Yeah. What kills me is that at that time, there are countries that had whole navies, you know, China and Egypt. Oh yeah. You know, several other company countries, but they didn't survive. I mean, that boat, that big boats, but we had to have one little Ark with all the animals on it. Yeah, but the thing was, children's story, their names are too hard to pronounce. God was like, oh, I can't call this they were worshiping the wrong God. It was like, no, no, no, no, no. We need like a guy that we can at least assume would be a white guy nowadays. That's the person I'm looking for to build this boat. I'm not going to have zebra swim across the ocean. Are kangaroos. So it can't be Australian. You're breaking up. The fact that it comes from the, go ahead. That it comes from the Gilgamesh, that it comes from Gilgamesh, which was like a thousand years earlier. You know, it's, I mean, it's just so obvious that, you know, it would be silly to, you know, say it doesn't. I suppose. How many need to take a break? We're pretty close to the bottom. But it wasn't, it wasn't as bad a story. No, though, I just wonder like how many boats were attempted? How many people did he go to before we found out? Sorry, that always blows my mind. He's like, you only went to one guy. You're the guy who made the paradise fruit thing and you're telling me you did that once. That was your final plan. You had to have gone to at least 30 other people. It's like people are like, I tried to build a boat, but I made it out of cheese. I made it out of spaghetti noodles. Like, no, I told you would. I told you would. All right. Go for wood. Welcome. I'm sorry. We're going to take a break here. This is the digital free thought radio hour and W O Z O radio 103.9 LPF. I'm here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We'll be right back after this short break. Okay. Hello, and welcome back to the second half of the digital free thought radio hour. I'm daughter five and we're on W O Z O radio 103.9 LPF. I'm here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Excuse me. Let's take just a moment to talk about the atheist society of Knoxville. ASK was founded in 2002. We're in our 21st year now and have over 1100 members. We have weekly in person meetings every Tuesday evening in Knoxville's old city at Barley's taproom in Pizzeria. Look for us inside at the high top table, or if it's pretty outside, outside on the deck, you can find us online on Facebook, meetup.com or at our website, KnoxvilleAtheist.org, or you can just Google Knoxville Atheist is just that simple. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you should still go to meetup and do a search for an atheist group in your town. Don't find one. Well, Matt, where do you want to pick up? I wanted to get more into stories aimed at highlighting the idea that what we have is the Bible could not have possibly been the final draft that they're made for the unawaring word of God. We simply have many different attempts on the cutting room floor that we've probably never seen before, just by virtue of the fact that if we were made in God's image, we know that our final drafts are not our first drafts. And I also want to highlight another story that's not as popular among criticizing funny stories from the Bible, but the Tower of Babel. If you're not familiar with this, this is a story about an ancient civilization that God just said, hey, listen, you're getting too close to me. So this ancient civilization decided to. We need to back up a minute. Go for it. The bedrock of this is that all of the nations of the earth spoke one language. Yes. And that they were able to get together and do a massive earthwork called the Tower of Babel. Yes. And go ahead. No. Yes. So it's a bunch of people who all speak together, don't want to have their cultures get scattered across different places. They want to come together and they want to work together. And in fact, they have a group project that they're all really excited about working with. They're not under conflict. They're all actually cooperating with each other to do one thing, build a thing that's so big that will reach the heavens from earth. Right. And God and God said, oh, I don't like you guys working together. In fact, I'm going to actually purposely scatter you across the world and give you all these different languages and destroy the thing that you guys try to work together on because he's a loving God. And he's not afraid of you approaching him and he's not afraid. So the ideas behind this was maybe maybe you have to imagine like we have so much more test, stronger, taller buildings nowadays. And we have like these super powerful microscopes that are telescopes that can see things. Right. There was no chance that like a building that was made back then would have made any incremental difference as far as getting closer to God. Yet a bit of an overreaction on God's part, though he presents that as if it's his final draft of him being so awesome. So like what was on the cutting room floor? Like was this a story of God literally existing like maybe a hundred feet above people and it was just like, hey, guys, how are you doing? Don't get close to me. I'm doing a party. I have pizza. It's not for you. And the people were like, we want some of that pizza, please. We will build a hundred foot tower. That's pretty easy. Let's just all get together peacefully. Except everyone from everyone, different corners of the planet. I agree with the fact that we have a common interest. I agree of the fact that we can work together in pleasant, respectful conditions. And with no slavery involved or anything like that, just construct something as a uniform expression of our gratitude for one another and our ability to cooperate as a singular, you know, identity. Like that isn't that amazing. And God's like, no, it's my pizza. Just dance it out. It's like, and by the way, now you know French and you know English and you know Spanish and you know Japanese and and everyone's like, I can't understand this anymore. Oh no, chaos. Man, what a what a terrible what a what a funny story to host by a God that claims to be all good and benevolent. So what's on the cutting room floor, though? I mean, what would you try first? Yeah, I would say cutting room floor was maybe this is an identification of God trying to hide the fact that he was so close to the ground and was available and had like a really awesome pizza party planned, but he just didn't want any people to show up. Maybe that's it. Yeah. Yeah. God's on a crane. Like there might have been a point in time where we're saying like we can't see a guy we can't because he's you know, like we we want to mourn his life. There might have been a point where he was literally just on a string and just like hovering around or if I'm just like, Hey, how have you had wings? Yeah, are you working me yet? Okay. All right. All right. All right. All right. It's like, actually, you guys are getting way too close to me. I got to get out of here. It's too clingy. It is interesting how, you know, that God, the God of the Babel story is one that's kind of elbowing his way into the crowd of all the other gods that people believed in pushing them out. Right? Just assuming control. Like, you know, like Oh, I think you put yourself on mute, Dredd. They're way in there and take over. I see. I see. And I always just consider it such a weird story because in the in the only interest that these guys had were to get closer to God physically, right? Which in my mind is not a horrible thing because you would have to in order to put in the effort to build a tower like that you have had to have at least believed in that God, right? And it's different people coming together to work together, which I think is also a good thing cooperation. So like you have cooperation, you have people who are clearly vested interest in getting closer to God, yet God was like, nah, just tears it down and lets him apart. Knowing full well what happens when you when you do stratify humanity or maybe it's it's just part of the plan. But what a terrible what a terrible story overall. It's one of those divide and conquer. Yeah, it's one of those stories when people like bring up the book of Job, for example, like, and this is how awesome God is. Let me bring up the book of Job. We've had I've had someone do that to me before on a radio show before. Yeah. And I'm like, why? Yeah. Why would you bring up the Joe book as an example of why God's good? Because it's literally a story of him betting with the devil on how much they can screw up a person's life. That was a genuine follower of him. Like there's nothing good about that story yet you somehow interpreted that in the exact opposite way that anyone with any modicum of critical thinking would would come to that conclusion. Larry, what do you think? Not only that story, but the story of Abraham killing his son. Yeah. I mean, that is a terrible story. Right. No, anybody that tried that today would be in instantly arrested and sent to jail or agree. Exactly. No, even even the same with the same with the general mutilation, right? Like skin on their on their peepees. But and as much as we count out to that, the whole story of Jesus is a human sacrifice of a guy's son for someone else who didn't ask for consent to it. Like, here he is. Sure. Yeah. It's like, I didn't ask not to mention the the symbolic cannibalism, right? Sure. Sure. There's some really terrible things that my body drink my blood. But also like if someone took their son out on a lawn, got erected two pieces of wood and started hammering their son's body to that wood. And then a neighbor comes in like, Hey, what are you doing? Your kids screaming out loud. Hey, it's like, don't you understand that I'm doing this for you? They get arrested for that insanity. You'll thank me later. You'll thank me later. Or if you don't, I'm coming after you too. You're next. So, you know, we know for a fact that we have higher, you know, standards, morality. Yeah. But Christianity can't turn a blind eye to this. Anyway, I wanted to talk another one. This is called Jonah and the Great Fish. You guys might be aware of this. Yeah, I'm aware. You're sure you're aware. Larry, you want to do a quick intro? What's what's you know? Oh, well, I don't really know why he got into the fish in the first place. You didn't get into it. You got swallowed by it. But okay, go for it. Yeah. Well, okay. But why did God make the fish swallow him? I don't know. Maybe, I think maybe his ship went down and he was at sea. But if anybody knows the story about it, me and go for it. So, Dred, do you want to take a crack at it? No, no, Big Fish. So, Jonah was a guy who was essentially not a he was a prophet or he was a what do you call it? A salesman of God. But the problem is he had to have a test of faith. And so he got he was on the ship, ship crash, or ship went through a big storm out in sea, got swallowed up by the it's called whale and some version of the text. But because now we know how whales work, it's called Great Fish. And so in some versions of the book, it's called Great Fish. Here's the bottom line. Bible was not written in English or Latin first. It was a spoken word story. And we we point at things and try to come to our best conclusions and a lot of stuff. But either way, got swallowed up by fish for three days, got spat out and was like, thank you for that test of faith. God, I never lost faith in you. Now I'm even more confident overall more of the story is regardless of whatever situation you're in, keep believing in God. However, what if that was just the final version that worked out? What if there was a Ted and the Great Fish or a Jennifer and the Great Fish? And these are all just people who actually just got swallowed completely into the the big fish and never ever came out. And they're like, God's like, ah, dang it. Another one. Or a shark. Maybe you tried for shark first. Yeah. Oh, no. That was the wrong fish. Jonah and the giant octopus like, oh, no. We need a we need a fish that has like a big Pinocchio s stomach that maybe has like broken pieces of ship in there. And maybe it works sometimes, but they they stayed in the fish too long. And like God's like, ah, they need food and water. This is this is getting too complicated. I'm going to try again. This fish whose belly isn't full of digestive juices. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, I'm going to have to come up with a whole new animal again. And maybe it's a one time use animal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So like the Bible is filled with a bunch of one time. Well, and and they're all predicated on their on the ignorance of the natural world, right? Like you just said, like fish have digestive juices that break down food. How else, you know, but they didn't know that at the time. Right. They had no clue. Right. You know, of the many things they didn't know back then, but also the idea of you need to eat in three days, or you need to drink water in three days, or you're going to be at least water. Yeah. At least water, at least water. And it can't be salt water. And it can't be salt water. It can't be salt water. No. So, but again, you know, the the common excuse would just be, well, you know, it's God magic and it's God faith getting into the situation. Fair enough. But how many other situations were attempted before we got to the point where we're at now where we have Jonah and the big fish? That's that's what I wanted to see. So cutting room floor probably filled with a bunch of other animals and a bunch of other people who tried it. But when Jonah and the great fish got finally got spit out, now we have our conclusion. Now we have the one that works. Going out next one, David versus Goliath. You guys might be aware of this one. So David, future king, Goliath, just a big stud, big, huge guy, at least as big as, you know, stories we'll have that be claimed that. But overall, bully with a really good at melee weaponry and essentially started a fight with David, who had ammunition or projectile based ammunition. And it was supposed to be set up as a story of an underdog versus like a very strong warrior. But eventually, David won despite having much better weaponry and the best tag team partner of all time. God, God. Yeah, yeah, literally God, literally God versus Goliath. It was a tag team fight against just one dude with a sword. Not fair in the big grand scheme of things. But what was left on the cutting room floor in this in this example? Because I could imagine some case where they're like, Goliath was like, I don't want to fight you. Let's just do a spelling bee instead or dodgeball. Yeah, let's play dodgeball. It's like, listen, man, you're tiny. You want to just play dodgeball? You want to play some disc golf? Well, and we'll sit on again just like, no, we got to fight to the death. We got to fight to this. Like, I don't know, man, I feel bad for you. Like I won. I can't see that giant guy that you're talking about. But like, I don't know, like you want to just skip rocks for a little bit. Oh, skip rocks. Get rocks closer to something. We're getting closer to something that I'd want to do. Yeah. Dredd, you want to get back in? Where's the dread? He's getting himself on mute. Yeah. Oh, there you go. There you go. Had I done that? Have you done what? Did I mute myself? No, no, I'm muted. You had some radio chatter going on in the background. David and Goliath going on. Do you think they tried out some other games? Like maybe they tried making some pasta. Maybe they tried a rap battle ahead of time. And God's like, not as marketable as the battle to the death. I don't know, David, why you're doing all these extracurricular tactivities. Let's just kill him. Just kill him. He's like, no, he's a really nice guy. He's inviting his friends. We got, we're going to play tic-tac-toe. Yeah. I mean, you made the good point that, you know, the whole idea is it's supposed to illustrate how the underdog overcomes, you know, superior weaponry and, you know, better odds. But of course, he's got the omnipotent God there with him. So how do you lose that one? I feel like it was sort of a situation where Goliath was, let's do a race. We'll just race and then Goliath won. And David was like, OK, best out of two. And then they, you know, did arm wrestling. David lost again. And I'm like, OK, best out of three. It's like, man, how many times? Rock, paper, scissors. Yeah. Rock, paper, scissors. Rock, paper, scissors. Let's do this. And then he keeps losing. And God's just like, OK, I don't know. I don't know. Dude, just kill him. Just kill him. He's like, he was like, you want to fight to the death? Winner takes all after like losing 17 times. And then after he kills Goliath, God's like, that's the only story we're going to show. It's just that one. All the other stuff we're not talking about. You lost the rap battle, the fashion walk, the dance battle. Like you lost so many times, David, you're so bad. I had to literally give you a gun for this to work. Game of gun to a knife fight. You have to give you a gun to a knife fight just to make this work. And that's the story that got into the Bible. Do you understand my perspective on the Bible now? Like I see every story like this. In my mind, when I read the Bible, I'm like, how many weird things had to have happened before we got to this crazy, absurd conclusion? Well, yeah, especially since there are oral stories and you know how a game of telephone tag goes or a telephone where you just get a story you think you understand and you pass it on the way you understand it. But it gets changed and changed and changed. And that's before it ever gets written down the first time. Well, you know, yeah. And it's interesting because all these stories are the Old Testament stuff. But I listened to a lot of Bart Ehrman, who is a New Testament scholar. And scholars have clearly determined that there are changes even within the New Testament over the space of 200 years, not to mention the thousand years that the Old Testament was around beforehand. Between 1st and 2nd Corinthians, Paul goes through a change about what he believes the afterlife is going to be and whether or not he's going to be around and alive when Jesus comes back. So these things were changing right on the fly as Christianity was actually being developed. The significance of the cross, the significance of why Jesus had to die in the first place, you know, was he just a rabble rouser that the Romans got tired of? And then they turn that into some great story of resurrection and afterlife and all the rest of it. Nobody believed that before. Like even the ancient Jews, they just figured you go to Sheol, which is like a damp, dark place that you're not even really aware of. And then it transitioned into this whole idea of hell and heaven and eternal life and bawdy resurrection and all the rest of it, right? Definitely it's changing. It's not even being left on the cutting rim floor. It's included right in the Bible as contradictions that you can kind of point to and say, that doesn't make any sense beside that right there. Andred, I want to throw in another stick in this in this in this contraption of how we got the Bible in that this English thing that we have, that's a book that's in everyone's home, if you were to go back, now let me see if I get my math right, 600 years and you had a personal copy of the Bible and a church authority knew about it. Am I going back to not far enough? Let's say I go back a thousand years just to be safe. If you had a about 600, 700 years, yeah, you had a version of the Bible and authority knew about it. You're not being burned at the stake. You are being burned at the stake before. Because I didn't want they didn't really want you to know it was in it. They wanted you to under to believe what they said was right. The Bible was the Catholic Church. Yes. For most of its history. Yes. Yes. The Bible is effectively a book in Latin that was just read at you. You didn't even have to speak Latin. It was just a book that was read at you and then followed up by what an authority of the church would say it meant when they when they after they rehearse some lines to you at Latin. That's such a crazy scenario. Hey, Larry, what's up? I was just going to say that change. 1536. Yes. Got my math right. Nice. Change is not the only thing that happened to the Bible over time. There's also exclusion. There are books, Gnostic Gospels out there that were not included in the Bible, simply because the decision was made not to include them. I think it was at the Council and I see it back at about 400 AD. There are books of Judah. There's a book of Judas and Mary and Thomas. Literally. We don't see those. Yeah, they just left them on the cutting room floor. Absolutely. So you have basically a book that I just wanted to. So you have a book that's in parts and pieces left on cutting room floors. You also have a book that's written only in Latin and then took and then technology advances and people are like, I want a copy of this book and they're being killed and burned for it because the church authority says only we have those books until eventually the technology became so widespread that King James is like, you know, you can just have a book. In fact, make it in English and put my name on every copy of the book. I'm going to call this my version. And so they have to say, OK, well, we have to translate from Latin to old English. That's that's rough because we don't even have. We're going from a language that has very few words to one that is still developing as a language to begin with because French is way more advanced than English at this time. Are you sure you want this in English and not French like I want old English? I speak English. OK, fine. And now we have to retranslate the book from old English to now. Like these are these are huge, huge wellsprings of information or communication translations that we're going to do. Just just from one jump alone, many things can change. So to take this in any form of literal truth is is a bizarre circumstance or just a waffle demonstration. So. William Tyndale was convicted of heresy in 1536, strangulated and then burned at the stake. And that was for translating the King James Bible. Translating the King James Bible, the one that already existed that was approved by the king into what language? Well, he no, he created the King James version of the Bible. Tyndale. Wow. And he was burned at the stake for it. Oh, wow. Strangulated and burned at the stake for it. Not popular. Wrong time, guys. Now, you know, there's another book that King James wrote, theoretically wrote. It's about demonology as well. It's called demonology as well. OK, Larry, how much more time do we have in this show? We have less than 10 minutes, but that much anyway. Less than 10 minutes. So here's I'm going to do one last takeaway in that. I do think that it's interesting how if we are if we take the Bible as true and we consider ourselves as made in the image of God, we know that we don't jump to final drafts. We we try things out. We're creatures of trial and error. We do our best and we try to learn from mistakes as best as we can. One of the examples of the Bible, if I were to really take it and have this is like the true demonstration of like, what's the nature of Satan? What's versus nature of God? I have an example where Jesus is on a trek with his boys. He goes up to a top of the mountain says, you guys stay here. I'm going to the top of this mountain to continue to keep praying. And Satan comes up next to him like the the the evil mastermind himself. And Satan goes up to Jesus and says, listen, you don't have to keep doing this God thing. You know what's going to happen down this road? How about this? Like we both see the plan. We've seen the cutting room floor. You and I both know what's going on here. How about this? If you just worship me, look down on this mountain. I'll have all these people worship you, which is what you want at the end of the day. You want people to worship you. And I'll give you all the riches and all that stuff. You can have that as long as you just worship me. And how how that work out for you. It'll be pretty good and get what you want, right? You get what you want. I get what you want. We both win, right? No wars, no suffering. Let's just do that. It'll work better. And just look at the devil and said, I'm not going to worship you. You dirty, dirty, you dirty, you terrible human being. And say, it just takes us all at face value and it's like, and you know what he does after Jesus tells him off? He's like, OK, he walks away. That's the end of the story that is in the Bible. The story is devil asked Jesus to worship him. Jesus tells him off and says no. And the devil accepts it and doesn't punish him for lack of worship. Just says, like, OK, it was a choice. Walks away, continues doing his own thing. Jesus keeps doing his own thing. And I'm stunned as an atheist now with the critical awareness that I have now when I'm reading the Bible that God doesn't follow the devil's example with regard to worship. Because I would love to have a God that comes to me and says, hey, you should worship me. And I'm like, actually, I don't know enough about you to worship you and I don't want to worship anybody. And God's like, that's cool. I'm just going to keep doing my own thing. Have fun. It just goes off like the flying spaghetti monster follows more or less the same principles. Yep. Why can't God get on that same page? Because that would, if anything, substantially improve, I think the quality of understanding for a lot of religious people, if they could have a God that they could follow as far as, oh, you don't believe the same thing I believe. That's fine. I'm just going to keep doing my thing. I'm not going to force my beliefs on you. It was an option. I was asking you if you wanted to come to my temple or church. How great would that be? You know what seems so just so bizarre in the light of Hamas and the Israelis is that, of course, they all believe in God. But how come they haven't just haven't figured it out that God isn't answering anyone's prayers? That if he exists, he is completely absentee because these people are just killing themselves wantonly in the name of God. But he's not paying attention to any of them. And I don't know why they just don't get it. Dredd, have you ever had an amp CT before? Have you ever sat on the front porch being like, oh, my dad's coming and he's really awesome. He's in the special forces and he's a doctor and he's a baseball player and he's going to come. He's coming around the corner, come soon. You guys can hang out with me. It's going to be amazing. He's going to be candy. He's got that's the Santa story right there. It's the Santa story. But in my opinion, it's even sadder. It's just absentee fatherism taken to the right level. We all have the capacity for it. That's all I'm saying is like we it's it's the part of the human condition to want more than what we have. It's just natural to have. I mean, we all grew up and we had parents and and to lose the parents and not have an authority figure in our our life. It's a it's a great loss. A lot of people can never get past that. So they turn to religion to have a father figure there and to gain a complete family. The father, the sisters, you know, the nuns, the brothers of the the conversation congregation, you know, and it's another whole family. I mean, they sell the concept of family in the church as well as well. Plus, there's of death and group. The one thing you will do if you can hear this one thing you will do is die. And that could be scary for a lot of people who haven't come to terms with that. And if you live in a society like ours, you're oftentimes never given the opportunity to because you always are forced to have an answer and not think about things that are coming up down the road. So I understand. I understand. Dude, I speak sign language. I got it. I get it later. But my main thing remember Epicurus. Epicurus had very good thought about death. He said he said, you know, I'm paraphrasing. Death is the one thing you will never experience because when you die, you won't know it. There'll be nothing to regret. Nothing to remember. It just it's the one thing that will not happen to you. So there's no point worrying about it. Right. That's that's the that's the frame of mind I put myself in. My other matter. I wouldn't want to be dead. I wouldn't want to worship a God that would punish me for being intellectually honest or expect me to worship him. And if there is no God, then I haven't lost anything. And if there was a God that wanted me to worship him under punishment, if I don't, that would have been a God I want to worship anyway. And if there was a God who was cool with it with my state of mind, then I'd be like, oh, you were the one that was cool to begin with at the beginning. So like I'm all good with regard to like my spiritual existence. I don't need anything else beyond that. Larry, we're sorry for taking up your time. He's literally cutting his head off. What's up? Let's take it out to show. Yeah, at the end of the show, we need the last words. Well, that was my last words. Larry, take us out. Oh, Dredd, what are your last words? My last words are ramen ramen ramen. OK, that'll work. Just a reminder, you can find this show on podcasts everywhere. Just search for Digital Freethought Radio Hour. And if you're watching this on YouTube, be sure to like and subscribe. If you're having trouble leaving religious beliefs behind, you can find help at recoveringfromreligion.org. My content can be found at digitalfreethought.com. And be sure to click on the blog button for Radio Show Archives, Atheist Songs, and many articles on the subject. My YouTube handle is doubter five. You can buy my book. You can find my book at Amazon. It's called Atheism What's It All About. Remember, everybody is going to somebody else's hell. The time to worry about it is when they prove that heavens and hells and souls are real. Until then, don't sweat it. Enjoy your life. And we'll see you next Wednesday night at 7 o'clock on WOZO Radio. Say bye, everybody. Bye, everybody. Bye.