 103.9 FM, WZO Radio, Knoxville. Ladies and gentlemen, Digital Freethought Radio Hour. Welcome to Digital Freethought Radio Hour and WZO Radio 103.9 LP FM, right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today is Sunday, July 12th, 12th, that is, 2020. I'm Larry Rhodes, or Doubter 5. And as usual, we have our co-host with us, Wombat on the phone with us. Hello, Wombat. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. It's a good song. It just doesn't have a lot of lyrics to it. I just, I can tell. The chord progression is really good. What's up, Jake? Our guests today are Judd Pirat Higgs, a red leader, George Dot Fire. And did I miss anybody? Oh, hey, Jake. Welcome. Yeah. Nice to be here. Yes. I guess I covered everybody there. So 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 religion, religious faiths, God's holy books, and superstition. And if you get the feeling that you're the only non-believer in Knoxville, well, you're just not. There are several atheist, free thinking, and rationalist groups that exist right here in Knoxville. And we'll be telling you how you can connect with them right after the mid-show breaks. And did you know that there's a streaming atheist call-in TV show? Did you know that? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Over 10 years. Yes, I'm so glad you brought it up because we're just about to finish the last couple of chapters. Haikyuu, or volleyball in Japanese, is a story about Hinata Shoyo, who's like this really short volleyball player, who wants to be the best in the world, but he's so tiny, but he can jump. Or as he says, toy masu, he can fly. And it's a show chronicling his time through high school. No, it's not. And all of his team members think, you can't jump higher than us, and he works hard and he does it. And it's the manga's down to its last couple of chapters. It has nothing to do with volleyball. Unless it's an atheist volleyball team. It might be. But no, it's a TV streaming video show that's been going on here for over 10 years in Knoxville. And we'll be telling you how you can connect with that and watch it after the mid-show break. If you'd like to interact with us during the show, go to Facebook and search for our digital free thought radio, Wower page, and you can use the messaging function to send us questions or comments. What about what do you have for us today? We're going to be talking about some really cool things. First, when we're talking about, is it natural for us to conflate our impression of reality with reality itself? We'll be talking about identity, and then we're going to be going through a lot of listener feedback questions. But before we go through all of that, I'm throwing it over to our own Dreadpire Higgs for our weekly invocation. Our... Our noodley lord who art in a colander, al dente be thy noodles. Thy blood be rum, thy sauce be yum, with meat as it is with vegetables. Give us this day our garlic bread, and forgive us our cussing, as we put up with those who cuss against us. And lead us not into ketoism, but deliver us some carbs. For thine are the noodles, and the sauces, and the grog, whenever and ever. Ramen! Ramen! That collides all of us. Alright, so I'm going to throw it over to our own doubtfire. What was your first stop that you wanted to go over today? Yeah, so I've been dealing with this throughout the week with different folks at work and online, on social media, stuff like that. I just love talking about this kind of stuff, but conflating our perspectives with reality, right? So, I don't know if you guys noticed, but a lot of people feel very certain and very entrenched in their ideas, whether it be politics, their religious views, you know, anything, right? Like, everybody feels like, you know, it's really weird, but I just get the impression, and this might be my own impression, but it's that everybody feels that they don't have a perspective. They just see reality as it really is, and they're operating based on that, right? Do you guys notice that kind of normalcy? Sure, you could say perspective is your reality. If I understand you right, I want to throw in my own origins on this, which is that I was raised an atheist, and I was taken to humanist lectures when I was four years old. And my mother was a political activist and a union organizer and like that, but she was not an activist about atheism. It just was, you know, it's just like God was simply not a presence, not a thing, nothing to be rejected. It just was not there. So I don't know if that's what you mean. That's actually a pretty good question. Like, what do you mean by reality? And what's the difference between that and subjective reality? Dredd, what do you think is the difference between the two? Pardon me? I think you hit the nail on the head. Boo, I'm trying to with a screwdriver, man. Dredd, what do you think the difference between reality and subjective reality? You're putting bikes on my head now. Well, I mean, certainly our senses are the filters through which we perceive reality, and those can be affected by various, you know, in various ways. I mean, that's a, I remember reading one of the Socratic dialogues, or, you know, Plato's dialogues there, where he talks about, you know, how, you know, circumstances or deficits in your senses can affect the way that you perceive reality. But that doesn't mean that it doesn't mean that there isn't an objective reality independent of how well you sense it or not. Right. There's a difference between, you know, our epistemology and the ontology of what reality really is, right? Man, there are a lot of big words on that right now. Yeah, so epistemology meaning like how we know things, and I think it's kind of like what you just said, kind of piggyback off that. It's kind of like a guy who's wearing rose-colored glasses. You ask him, what is reality, or what is the nature of your glasses? Well, he's going to answer it based on looking through his glasses, you know, it's kind of hard to, so I guess the work that I'm trying to do that I've been doing since I left religion is to kind of take a meta perspective, to kind of get out of my own perspective, to see things, or at least acknowledge that I have a perspective. I don't really know reality as it really is. As I thought I did when I was part of religion, I was part of Jehovah's Witnesses for years. Oh man. And so it was kind of like, I'm working in IT now, so the analogy is kind of like, you know, they run off a certain operating system, you know? But in order to change, you know, if we really want to step out of that and do work to see what reality is all about, we might have to change more than just operating system, but maybe the bios, the basic input output system. But that's kind of dangerous. Yeah. Because if you start messing around with your bios, you'll mess everything up, you know? Scott, I'm going to ask you. Well, Doubtfire, I just want to emphasize something that you just said. I'm partial to a system of typing people's reality systems that is similar to what you just said. In other words, that we all look at the world through a color filter. And my color filter is different than your color filter is different than Dale's color filter, for instance. But each of us perceives the world through that filter and then reacts. See, that's the part I want to add to what you just said is that people take actions based upon their misperception of reality. Absolutely. I'm also going to throw this out to everybody else. Jake, what do you think about objective reality, personal reality? Is it possible that objective reality is a little overrated? It doesn't seem like we'll ever be able to see it for what it actually is. Objective versus sub-objective? Or objective versus your personal perspective. At a certain point, you'll never be able to view objective reality without your personal filter applied to it. If you can get close enough where the difference is nominal, doesn't that make objective reality somewhat overrated? Close enough. Yeah. It kind of all adds together. If I know fire is hot, do I really need to know the exact degree fire is? It's just like, it's hot. Just don't touch it. That's my personal experience. Yeah, it's hot. Everybody kind of commutatively experiences that the fire is hot. Their subjective reality is all correlated enough that we can kind of see that everybody is experiencing the same thing that fire is hot. We're all experiencing it. We have these certain ways of determining that everybody is experiencing this and it becomes objective reality. Oh, it becomes objective reality. It becomes objective reality or it just becomes a shared subjective experience. Yeah. Okay. And there's an objective utility. If you're raised in a fundamentalist Christian community that runs on a fundamentalist Christian bios, for example, then will you really get along very well if your bios is atheism or Islamic or something like that? Are you really going to get support from your community? That's a good question. Can you get a job? Can you get things like that? It's a lot harder to step out of that if there's no utilitarian value to it. I'm going to throw a question out to Dale because I think that's a good subject. Dale, is it worth embracing an objective reality if you're already really comfortable with your perspective already? Say you're comfortable with your subjective reality. Is it worth at that point going for an objective reality? Yes. The first thing a smart man says is I was wrong. So I don't think that anybody that's really confident and comfortable in whatever they believe should be considered all of that objective. So, no, I don't really understand all of this. It seems to me that the idea that someone has a subjective reality as opposed to what actually is there seems like no one knows what is actually there. And here's ministers and Fox News are capitalizing on subjective reality in order to influence the masses. I believe somebody was talking about how somebody could behave in such a way and you couldn't understand it. Professor messed up in the head. Maybe that's another way of saying a bearant subjective reality. But I was curious about how oncology comes into it. Yeah, that's a good question. Scott, what do you mean by oncology? Yeah, so oncology is really talking about what really is the case about reality. I mean, and you know, I'm sorry, I have to stop you. What is the word that you're using because I didn't quite catch. Yeah, I was oncology is cancer, right? Yeah, oncology. Ontology. Yeah, oncology is like ultimately what is, you know, the case. Like if I had a layman's dictionary, what would it say if I open it up and there's like pictures of stuff like what's the spelling ontology with it? Yeah. Okay. What's the really, really layman's explanation of what ontology is? Do you have one? It's kind of like fundamental reality. Like what do I need mushrooms? You've got all these interpretations. Yeah, it's easy to conflate epistemology with oncology. I'm starting to figure out with most people because we're talking about what is reality. And then, you know, if we don't, you know, my perspective is we don't really know what is reality really ultimately. And then that's why we have science. Science is trying to figure out what is reality. Scott, I'm going to try to make a quick definition of this. In some way. Scott, I was trying to make a quick definition. Larry, let me know if this sounds accurate. I figure epistemology. How'd you figure that out? Ontology. Okay. But what is it actually? Right. Ontology being more a study of the nature of being. Right. Yep. Exactly. Larry, what do you think? Exactly. What I was going to say was that can any person ever divorce himself from his perceptive perception of reality and actually experience reality as it actually is. Larry. I mean, there are things like a coffee cup. We can all look at it and say it's a coffee cup. We can touch it and we can lift it and we can weigh it and measure it. But it doesn't really. Right. That looks like a teapot to me. It doesn't really evoke emotions with us or a perspective of it as different than the actual physical object. But there are a lot of things like seeing a person mistreat an animal. Yes. That raises a lot of emotion in us and it makes us feel like it's a wrong thing. It's something that philosophically we have to address. And I think that we carry all of this philosophical and emotional baggage around with us all the time. There's no way that we can really divorce ourselves from it. But we still have to strive to see reality as it is and weed out the wrong perceptions from the correct ones. And I think that's a lot of atheism is all about. We have these supernatural claims and we can't support it evidentially. These supernatural claims. So we try to enforce it from our worldview. Right. And we end up with a more or less naturalist view. I can hear a lot of religious people listening to this right now. And saying how do you atheists know that your perspective is right and mine is wrong. Aren't you just as aren't you kind of self refuting yourself when you. Well evidence supports our view. It doesn't really support their view. Also right. And I'd also say just before we go back one thing one thing one thing I'll say this to as an atheist. I don't care about the conclusion. So like maybe I'm am wrong but I am interested in the methodology that I'm using to determine if things are right or not. And I'm totally fine with that. I don't know as an answer until I do know until I have a good reason to believe that. So my position is I'm working with the best methods that we have right now to know what things are true. And what things aren't true. And until we have a better method then I'll choose my conclusions accordingly. So I don't know if my mains are right. But I do know that my methodology is reliable. And I would wish for her to make supernatural claims that at least presented me a reliable means to come to their. Well said. I want to address. I would go on that. George go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah. I want to address what Larry what Larry was talking about. No I don't. I kind of doubt that I will die knowing everything and knowing what the truth is. I doubt it too. But however I think that I can damn well try. And that is my goal in life really the first part of it is to know myself you know is to try to know myself as absolutely well as I can. And I'm never going to get there. But I'll I'll be further along the path than I am now. Okay. That's about as good as I can do. Larry was working on wordy dirties. Did he just wordy dirty. Did we just got a wordy dirty from George. Or is that good. All right. All right. All right. You're my guide. You're my FCC guide. Just as no we go on the radio. Try not to curse please. It saves my editing time. And I should know you are on time out George Dale what you got you got the rest of this time. Good leader. You sound like you want to say something. Well I think I believe that for the Christians to say that you're no more close to the reality than they are is pretty valid. I mean after all you've got time to think well the universe burst forth from nothing. So that it was a dream. Yeah. Let's take that a second. Occam's razor says that we shouldn't multiply entities. In other words we shouldn't add things that where we don't need them in an argument. It's either it's either the universe burst forth nothing or God burst forth from nothing and created the universe from nothing. So I mean we're adding extra stages to it that are not necessary. Also I'm also going to say there's a difference between a scientist said the universe came from nothing versus science says the universe came from nothing because once actually open all the scientists will actually say we don't know. Yes. And I'm a scientist and I can tell you I'm into this as well where no one's saying nothing because we don't have a very good definition of nothing. We don't have nothing. Exactly. I was about to say. But the best thing we have are layman explanations of the Big Bang that have been taken so seriously by people who don't have the context of what actual science. And as a result we have these bastardizations of what actual scientific principles are. We don't know. We just know that I don't want to get into the Big Bang. I don't think that's worth it for this radio. But it's not. Because we don't know everything. Yeah. To someone who challenged. Atheism is just a perspective equal to the Christian perspective is to say that my atheism the way I'm defining it is my atheism which is an unbelief in just God is informed by my agnosticism. So it's not really an answer to the question one way or the other. It's just saying it's just admitting that I don't know and it's kind of taking the meta perspective that I'm not going to let my personal opinions sway me because I may personally feel like hey the trees prove God you know maybe that resonates with me but I'm going to step out of that bias and just admit that I really don't know and that's a bad argument. You know. And I'm also going to say one more thing before we go to Jake because I haven't given a chance to say things but atheism is not the belief that the Big Bang theory is the absolute model reality. It's just I don't believe you theists yet please come up with a good argument because the default position is I'm not going to believe you until I have a good reason to. So if someone says hey atheists say this and atheists say God it's like no no no atheists just say I don't believe the theist when they say there is a God. They have more work to do. Jake what do you think about the idea of reality and what when people shoot horned arguments what do you think about the Big Bang. What do you want. Floor is open to you. What do you want to go with this. Well what about when people talk about reality like everybody's got everybody's got their own their own vantage point of reality and they're interpreting the stimuli that they're getting differently and coming up with their own story of just kind of what makes sense that like like ultimately you know street epistemology. I love that the tic-tac example of like bringing up the box of tic-tacs like what is real how many tic-tacs are in here. Can there be even a number of tic-tacs or an odd number of tic-tacs in this box at the same time. Is it is a subjective. Is it. Can we determine that. Can we test that somehow and and like ultimately I think that. We can we can test stuff. We can figure things out and it seems that your old lines with my reality when we're talking about when we're talking about like like things that we can test like we can test stuff. We can figure things out and they line up and you know they're consistently lining up that you know just whatever aligns most with reality what aligns most with what we can test seems to be what reality is and people seem to have these different like subjective views of reality of like oh this is my reality this is your reality why I'm experiencing this differently well like ultimately like one I believe the one thing is happening like we are all kind of on the same track here as far as I can tell and we're all in this together and we have methods of determining things and those those methods if they prove to be reliable that is what reality is is is once we can reliably determine what's going on and I'm just like I like what I'm just going to capstone what Jake was saying it's basically knowledge is demonstrating something and if you can't demonstrate it you don't know it so it's worthwhile to be able to demonstrate with testing rather than just being lucky that you're right and there's a lot of claims out there that either don't have the demonstration to back it up or it might be true but they got there through complete you know coincidence and as a result it's really important to think about that methodology that we use to arrive at a conclusion because that demonstrates that knowledge is demonstration. I like the definition of evidence as prediction prediction predictable novel predictions testable and novel predictions that you can observe repeatedly. Somebody may say that you know evidence is just objective to though what you see is evidence that might not be evidence for what you're attributing it to but so I like the testable predictions that you can verify over and over. Evolution has you know hundreds and thousands of predictions that it's made and that's why it's a good theory. The hypothesis was this and if this is true then this should be the result that was made beforehand. That's a inside joke about evolution but yeah. Joe, what do you think? I just thought it might be interesting to point out that sort of a non-scientific understanding of the word theory is different than the scientific definition of theory and that people often conflate the two. I think that that's an analogy or you know it actually is a good metaphor for this idea of perspective. That's true. From a subjective point of view is reality true or is there an objective reality out there and that's almost like the difference between the layman's understanding of the word theory and the scientific understanding of the word theory. In my opinion I think there's a scientific idea of theory and then there's one that fuels opinionated YouTube video idea of theory. We're actually at the bottom of the half hour though. Larry, why don't you take us out? We'll come back. This is a great topic Scott. This is Digital Freethought Radio Hour and WZO Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville Tennessee and we'll be back right after this break. 103.9 FM WZO Radio Knoxville. Digital Freethought Radio Hour. Hello and welcome back to the second half of the show. The Digital Freethought Radio Hour and WZO Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville Tennessee. I'm Doubter Five and this is Sunday, July 12th. The second half of the show as I said, let's talk about the Freethought groups that you can join right here in Knoxville. First there's the Atheist Society of Knoxville. Founded in 2002. We're in our 18th year. ASK has over a thousand members and you can find us online at KnoxvilleAtheist.org or you can go to meetup.com or even Google and type in Knoxville Atheist and you can find us that way. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you should still go to meet up and search for an Atheist group in your town. Don't find one. Start one! Start one! Another large free thinking group here in Knoxville are the rationalists of East Tennessee. RET has been around for more than 20 years. Just go to rationalist.org. Click on upcoming events to find out what they're up to. Earlier in the show we said we'd talk about the Atheist call-in television show. Well, it used to be called Freethought Forum when it was actually on TV, but it's streaming online now on YouTube channels as its own YouTube channel called Free Thinkers United Coalition of Knoxville What? Such a long name! Say that again. I already forgot. Do it again. It should have just been Atheist Society of Knoxville. Ask. You had the perfect word. The reason they call it Freethinkers United Coalition of Knoxville is because it's made up of ASK, RET and other free thinking groups here in Knoxville. Embrace the A. Just get it out. It's a coalition. I agree. It's a coalition of people who are all the same thing. They're all Atheists. Just embrace the A. Larry, you're with me on this. I'm with you on that. That's why I started the Atheist Society of Knoxville because the other groups wouldn't use the A word. Let's go. Anyway, if you're interested in getting involved with the TV show or this radio show, just come to an Ask or RET meeting once we start having actual meetings. Or you can contact us online by the above methods. Let us know and you might be our next co-host or guest. With us on the show, we have Wombat, Red Pirate Higgs, George, Red Rider, Red Leader, sorry, Jake. We had a couple of topics. I think we rounded out our discussion on basically the nature of subjective reality versus objective reality. It seems like it's good to be able to demonstrate things. It's good to know the methodology of how we arrive at conclusions. And I think if we focused more on that methodology, that epistemology, our ontologies or how we know what things actually are or what things actually are, would be a lot better because at least then we would have a reliable way to get there. What we're going to do now is some listener feedback. You guys have been doing some really great... Dred, what did you do with it? Dred, I can't find it. Where did it go? Where did it go? Where is the love? Where is the love? Where is the love? Where is the love? Thank you for hearing that. All right, so this is the listener feedback session of the show. We've had a lot of comments in the last two episodes. Sorry we weren't able to get back to you guys. But this one comes from Vaughn McHugh. He posted on our YouTube channel. You can post comments and we'll be happy to go over them on the show itself. He wanted to know, how can I get into Rational 101 in college? What are the costs? And is pasta a former currency? Dred Pyre. What? We're asking you about your... How can I get into Rational 101? Oh, yeah, yeah. Is pasta a former currency? Pasta. Is pasta a former currency? Well, it's up and coming. In the afterlife? Yeah. In the afterlife. And it's right next to the stripper factory and the beer volcano. Say I'm not in Canada. How can I get access to this school? Well, I mean, it's still in development. Am I quite loud? Sorry. Yeah. It's still in development. It'll be going through Salkirk College, probably on a video or virtual platform in October. Dred, I'm going to make a recommendation. Sorry for interrupting you, but this is something I've learned every single time I've went to a seminar to give a talk. You always, always, always make a backup video and backup audio of your own talk. They'll say they record it for you. That doesn't mean they'll give it to you in any timeframe that's acceptable. You always... I remember you having that issue, yes. Yeah. So, yeah, definitely all that will be the case. I'll record it in-house myself and then, you know, if Salkirk has something as well, then that'll be on them. But, yeah, so anyway, we're looking at October, so... Okay. And what would be, like, is there a... If you were to record yourself, would you post that on, like, maybe your channel? Like, how would someone get... What would be the cost barrier or, like, the access barrier and can they mail you? So, because I am working with the college, we'll have to determine what the price is and, you know, the schedule and all that kind of stuff. I have to work within their sort of administrative guidelines to pull it off, so... I'm gonna throw something out at you that might be really interesting. You're gonna have some video presenters. I know I volunteered for that. Yeah. Zoom, if you're doing it over Zoom, they have a waiting room feature that basically lets anyone call in but not be a part of the video call. They can still hear. They can still, you know, spectate. Okay. But it's just extending the class through online services without any, you know, imposing on me doing whatever I'll do to help you or your class. I think that might be a good option, too. Yeah. Okay. Thanks for that. Yeah. Cool. And it's pasta for my currency. Pasta for currency. Yep. All right. We prefer bowtie pasta. Uh-huh. Which some people just say is not pasta, but, you know... It's not. Yeah. But it's cool. And can your institution accept American currency? Well, I imagine it would. Yeah. Because pasta's good. We love American currency. Yeah. Okay. Uh, I'm going to throw this out to George. You've been on this show long enough. I'm hoping you can answer something kind of close to this, right? But Josiah Swims would like to know, can someone explain what street epistemology is? Because I was the person who asked last time. Yeah. And... We're first shows in. What's your impression of what street epistemology actually is? Well, I have to really make this down home. Okay. Essentially it's talking your truth on the street. On the street. To an ordinary daily conversation with individuals, one to one. Okay. Just having a conversation with people, more or less. No, that's how I understand the term. I really don't. OK, that's fair. Larry, what do you got? What do you think street epistemology is? Well, epistemology is how we know things. It's studying the methods of how we receive and validate knowledge. Street epistemology is basically taking that methodology to the streets and talking to individuals, usually over a table, over coffee, something, where you. Hey, coffee. You bring up a subject, and they give an opinion that they show what their beliefs are about a particular thing. And then you, as through a series of questions, you get them to examine the methods that they arrived at that conclusion with. Not bad, not bad. Scott, if you're still here, what do you think street epistemology is? You want to feedback on that? Yeah, I think it's just people, just to piggyback off what Larry said, I agree with everything he said. But for me, when you're on the street and you're talking to people, people have a chance to tell you what is their most cherished beliefs or what is important to them as far as the belief or it could be political, religious, whatever it is. And then just asking them questions as to how did they arrive at that conclusion. Right. And seeing how confident they are in their beliefs. And there's just certain questions from that point onward to figure out how do they know what they claim they know. Right. And I would also say, I look for confidence, but I also look for openness. Like if I'm willing to change my mind, then it's cool if I'm really confident about something. Because at least now I have a standard for what it would take to change my mind. It's OK to be confident about things, but I don't think it's as good to be close-minded about something. Jake, I'm going to throw this out to you. What do you think Street Epistemology is? So I think Larry put it awesome. It's a study of knowledge. Epistemology is the study of knowledge, and the street just says that it's on the street. It's happening with your neighbor. It's happening with anybody you're talking with. In an elevator, yeah. Yeah. And I'm using Street Epistemology, like the tactics of it, like every day in conversation that I'm having. It's a lot of asking. It doesn't so much focus on the what of what somebody's talking about, but a lot about the why and how that they determined that that's an accurate thing to believe. Sure. I would say, just to add to this, tactics of SC, the basic tactics of it is, in my opinion, keep the conversation positive, make it a conversation, and then let the person do the thinking. Don't tell them what to think. And so it's not a teacher-student dynamic. If anything, the person who's doing SC is trying to learn from the person who's espousing about their belief system and how it works. So it's not a teaching tool. It's more of an understanding tool where you just try to put your own biases aside and try to emulate the kind of openness that you want the person that you're talking to to follow as well. Dale, I'm going to throw this out to you. Have you ever heard of Street Epistemology? If you do, what do you think of it? I really don't have much of an idea. I've been trying to listen to people talk and try to figure out how this could possibly relate to me. And the only story I have was I was down in Atlanta, walking or flucking down the street. And I had these religious people. I forget which church they were from, but they were actually assigned each block. So if you were walking down and they said, would you like to hear about Jesus? Well, of course, I go, yes, I'd love to. Let's keep walking. And then they would stop. And I was crossing the street. And they said, well, no, I'm only supposed to be on this block. Sorry, that's funny. I'll cross the street wearing the same yellow t-shirt. They're from us too. So I crossed the street. And then this person continued to talk to me. And we were going to the zoo, I think it was. Anyway, it was almost there. And I stopped and I said, well, I'm a deist. And your God is nonsense. And here's why. Wow. And I talked about how their God was absolutely nonsense. And that's the way we deists do it. And all of a sudden, I was a street preacher because the people walking by who have been going up and down that street had been irked by these people in the yellow t-shirt stopping being on every step. So I had a crowd listening to me talk to this single person in the yellow t-shirt who could not get help from the other yellow t-shirts because they were assigned to their blocks. So just so I can wrap this up. Just so I can wrap this up. So basically, you heard someone say, hey, I believe in a God and this God actually lives. And you're like, no, I believe in a God and this God's dead. Let's argue. And everyone was listening to you guys. And if I was there, I'd be like, what is there a possibility that both of you guys might be wrong? In this instance, I would wonder, street epistemology isn't necessarily a combative technique. I'm really not trying to figure out how someone's wrong. I'm trying to understand how someone's right. And if I can't work with them to figure out how they're right, that says way more than me saying, hey, you're wrong and this is why. Or that's nonsense and that's why. It's both of us working together towards a path. And if we keep hitting nonsense, then it's like, hey, man, I'm working with you. And we keep hitting nonsense like, oh, yeah, I should get a better way of figuring this out. That's exactly what street epistemology is. Dredd, what do you think? I think we got you already, right? Did we are? OK, Dredd, wrap it up. What do you think street epistemology is? Well, another way of putting it is Socratic engagement, right? Or examination. Socratic examination. So using the dialectic of Socrates in trying to examine an argument and get to the truth of it. That's why we've got to keep it light. We don't want to end up like Socrates did. You mean famous? No hemlock here. Famous? The ultimate G? All right. I was thinking, because the tic-tacs were brought up. And couldn't you have actually like Schrodinger's tic-tacs, where there is both an even and odd number? No, Dredd, you're really going to trigger me now, because we just talked about misunderstandings about the Big Bang Theory. I don't want to get into the misunderstandings of Schrodinger's. Everyone doesn't understand Schrodinger's lie. And it's really unfortunate that that's the case, too. All right. Oh, it burns. OK. Hey, this question comes from Tough Truth. It goes right into what we were talking about before. He wants to know, what do you say to someone that says, what do you mean by true? Scott, we're going to fill this out to you first. What do you say to someone who says, if you say true, why do you know if it's true? And if someone says to you, well, what do you mean by true? Scott, how would you answer that? Right. I would say that true is just what I know to be the case. That would be the truth. Like, I exist. I think, therefore, I am. I know that I exist because I can even form that question. That's an example of truth. And it seems like it relies on the mind definition of no, which means I can demonstrate it to be the case. Right. OK. OK. I'm fine with that. Jake, I'm going to think about that. Jake, what do you think? What is truth? And how would you respond to someone who says, what do you mean by true? I think it was Matt Dillon on to you that said it. But I really like this answer. Truth is that which most conforms with reality. Yeah. He says, comport. But yeah, I like conforms when I come forward. I like words that have the same number of syllables but mean the exact same thing and are not as opposed. So I like conform. I don't like into Lockwood or I like interview partner because more people are going to be, oh, I know what an interview partner is, right? So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, like we can see it in reality. If we can see it in reality, cool. If we can see reality, if we can demonstrate it, if we can show there's a correlation here, that's more true. Red Leader, what's your opinion of what's true? How would you respond to that? OK, first of all, I thought we had already established that there was no reality in the first half of the program. Oh, really? I'm just fading away. Where's my Obama face when I need it? So when it comes to people asking stuff like what is true and what is reality and all of that, happens a lot at Ask Me. But what's your definition of truth? What's your definition of dog? It seems like we're always defining things. And I don't do that. I just say get addicted to it. You want to know what true is or what the word truth means. Get addicted to it. There's probably a dozen different definitions for it in there. That's my opinion about a lot of these defining things. OK, appeal to dictionaries. I don't like dictionaries as a way to demonstrate things. I just think dictionaries only show usages. So I could read up rocket science in the dictionary. Doesn't mean I know anything about rocket science. It just means I know how people define rocket science. So I worry about when people say, well, Merriam-Webster Dictionary says that. Blanklet Blitz is like a gory hole. It basically says that the dictionary says that people use it like this. Exactly. That's all that thing means. That's all that book is. Larry, I'm going to throw this out to you. What do you mean by true if you ever said, if you ever got asked the question? Well, I'm with Jake and I'm with the atheist experience out of Austin, Texas. They say demonstrated true belief. I like that. And comport with reality as much as we can demonstrate that it comports with reality. It's true. Yeah, if I can demonstrate it that it's part of reality, then that's true. And that's what we were trying to get to. Maybe we can't get there exactly, but I'm fine with saying, hey, it's pretty close. Or we can test it. We have a really good test. You could be in the Matrix. Yeah, we could be. But I feel like that's a really old movie that people haven't watched in a long while. If you saw that movie, you'd be like, no way to sing. That's a dot matrix font. We have much better things than that. George, throwing the same question out to you, how would you define true? I don't want to even try. Fair enough. My head is just not there. I'm sorry. Fair enough, guys. Jared Pirate, last one in this roundtable. How would you define truth? Justified belief. Justified belief. So if someone killed my father, right? And I'm like, time to kill them and justify. I have the justifiable right to take my samurai sword and take their heart. I think you're competing in justification with justice. Well, I mean, it sounds like similar words. I'm justified. That's true. What a belief that's justified. Holding a belief based on evidence. So that justified in the sense that it's supported by evidence and testable and all that good stuff. Because we live in a world where people have different connotations for different words. Maybe validated belief would be better or validated. Maybe, yeah. Sure. Validated belief, yeah. It means to think about. I always worry when we try to take things down to just one word. Leads the problem. All right. Hey, I think, so here's another question that we have from Crazy Manman. How do you respond to someone who refuses to define their beliefs? He says, for example, I'm talking to a theist that refuses to define God because they feel they don't know or can't know a true definition of God. Yet they continue to believe in a God. I'm not sure how to proceed since they don't make any definitive assertions. So how do you respond to someone who refuses to define their beliefs? Scott, have you ever talked to someone who was a bit wishy-washy? And how do you get past that? Oh, yeah. Just ask questions. Just kind of hone in on what it is that what's important for them. Just ask the question. Just try to isolate it down to the right question to get quicker to the point. They could be wishy-washing. It gets really weird and catagoutous, like definitions and blah, blah, blah. Usually what I say is, is it the God of the Bible? Oh, that's good. Because if they do, then you've got a lot of things that they will define it, whether they own to it or not. And if they say no, then I say, does it have any holy book? Because you're eliminating all the other religions. And if they do that, then I assume they're basically a deist. And at that point, they have no dogma. If they have no dogma, I have no problem with them at all. Yeah, it's a bit of a new thing. Leave away. Yeah. Wait, you might want to follow up. Does your God communicate in your head? Do you have a personal communication with them? It's like, they'll say no. Then it's like, OK, you're good. We'll work with you. Jake. What do you do with someone who has a wishy-washy belief? How do you how do you handle that? Well, if they're struggling to define their their belief, I might ensure them that that like these definitions, like we can always we can change them. We're open to reinterpreting what that means. But we can work with a kind of a working definition. Like, what does it mean to you? Yeah, yes. Very good. I like that. Yeah, I'm not writing anything down in stone. I'm just trying to start a conversation about how you got your to your conclusions. I'm not even challenging what you believe. I just want to know how you got there. But we don't know what direction we're going unless we define at least in a basic sense where the destination is. So can you help me out with that? Yeah, that could work. Dale, you're a resident deist. Have you ever talked to anyone? Maybe another deist that is a bit wishy-washy with their statements and how do you get about that? How do you go about that? I don't personally know any deists. But when it comes to a wishy-washy dogma, they're not doing me. I really don't care. Let them go about their way and believe whatever they want to believe. However, if they're knocking on my door and possible pricing to me or they're running for political office, they are fair game. OK, OK. I wonder, can we apply this to, like, go for it? I've got a question. How do you define deist? I don't get a dictionary. Oh. Very easily. OK, the word deist is the same thing as the word theist. One's Greek and one's Latin. Exactly the same thing, except that the word theist is reserved for those religions where God talks to you, has some sort of interaction with you. Deist does not have any interaction with God. It's like di-ist, yeah? It's like God isn't around. No, it's like de-ist. It's like, not identical, but it's like God is dead. Many of the founding fathers were deists. They didn't believe in a specific God. They're also slave owners. We shouldn't hold them as a high regard. They believed in a creator God and that was about it. One that's not around or doesn't have a communication with us. Let me tell you something. The God they talk about in the endowed by his creator with certain inalienable rights. Supporting free will of slavery of people. Yeah, like that's not a that's not a that's. Second, endowed by the creator with certain inalienable rights. Now, regardless of whatever else you want to throw on them, the creator that they're talking about is the deist God, the God of nature. So you're welcome. All right, George, what do you think about? What were we talking about? Truth? How do you define it? You said you didn't want to talk about that. I think no, no, I don't feel qualified to talk about what have you ever talked to someone who has a wish you watched your belief? I'm quite sure I have, but not about it. Oh, interesting. OK. Hey, in the future, if you do talk to someone with a wish you watched your belief, I would say spend some time to try to just define what it is they're talking about. I like how Larry supported it with just like a binary. So here's my impression of what it is. Is it yes or no in this category? At least that way, I have an idea of what you're talking about. And then you can work your way down there to get a better understanding. And you can work in very general concepts like, is your God in this holy book or is he not in this holy book? He can't be in both, right? So like, Izzy, is that I like that. I really like that approach, Larry. And Dredd, I'll follow this up with you last. Do you have any wish you watched your beliefs that you've tried to penetrate? And as a straight epistemologist, how have you actually gone about it? Yeah, for sure. I remember one conversation I had where, and usually I set up the appointments, not like someone randomly coming up to me. I arranged my chats over coffee so people show up. And so one conversation, the girl showed up and I said, so what would you like to talk about today? And she says, well, I believe in love. OK. And so. Yeah. Ooh. Yeah. Perfect. What I'm doing is I'm just like, great. You want to talk about something else? But it was a really, I mean, it was a good conversation eventually because we sort of unpacked what she meant by that, specifically relating it to something that was important to her, not just sort of that nebulous notion that love is the foundation of the world or existence or whatever. So yeah, I mean, it's just about you just got to keep penetrating until you get to what's actually inside that box, right? You got to dig. Got to dig. That's what the SCD does. He digs. That's what it's all about. And you guys, we are at the end of the show. Dred, where can we find your stuff at? Well, on Sunday mornings at 8 o'clock, this is streaming live. Which time zone? The time zone is PST, Pacific Standard Time or Daylight Time, whichever. So yeah. So and that's something I neglected to point out there previously is that we're actually streaming on Sunday, not Wednesday. And you can find me on YouTube at Mind Pirate, M-I-N-D-P-Y-R-A-T-E. Pirate with a Y. Yeah. Pirate with a Y. Cool. Dale Newman, would you recommend any books or I know you like the dictionary, so we can probably pick that up too. But like, is there any other kind of media or resources that you think we should check out in the next week? No. I've been watching Michael Shermer's podcast, listening to Michael Shermer's podcast. Very, very nice. Nice. Very cool. I want to mention your book. Yeah. Do I? Your book. Your book. Oh yeah. I've written a book that has Jesus existing just as the Bible said he existed and just as he did, exactly what he said he did, but how the magician's tricks were done using technology of that day. No technology, basically. Very cool. Very interesting. Yeah. Scott, would you recommend any piece of media or it could be even your stuff that you would check out, that we should check out? Yeah. Something to kind of stretch it is kind of related to our topic from the first half hour. There is a really good perspective on this from here in Irvine. He's a university professor. And his name is Hoffman. Damn, I just had a brain slip. I forget his first name, gone on it. But he was on Michael Shermer. If you key in Michael Shermer and Hoffman, it'll pull it up. They had a deep discussion about this very topic that we're talking about. I saw it a few weeks ago. Pretty cool. Pretty nice. Episode number 85. Whoa. Episode number 85 of Science Salon with Michael Shermer talks about all of the different ways to communicate with someone when they're being ridiculous or whatever else in order to communicate with them and draw them in your conversation. Very. Would you repeat that, Dale, please? I believe in episode number 85 of Science Salon podcast. Cool. Yeah, I like that. OK, cool. George, I'll say that's yours, unless if you have something that you'd like to plug. No, I don't. Fair enough. Check out that Science Salon. On my Let's Chat, you can find me where you are looking at right now. This is my channel. More than likely, if you're listening to this, it's on the Let's Chat podcast here on my YouTube channel. Feel free to leave a comment. Also, thanks very much to my patrons. Listen, it's been a crazy year with the sheltering in place. Thank you guys for all your continued support through this. And I can't wait for one as a nation for us to get healthier, as a world for us to get healthier and to mitigate this threat so that I can also go back out and continue doing what I love, which is talking to people about what they believe. And looking forward to that very much so. Until then, I'll see you guys next week. Larry, why don't you take us out? OK. Dale didn't mention the actual website to get to his book. It's howjesusdidit.com, howjesusdidit.com. I can't believe you got that URL. OK, go for it. My book, on the other hand, is called Atheism, What's It All About? It's available on Amazon. Also, you can visit our blog at digitalfreethought.com. And for our radio shows, Atheist songs and many articles on the subject of atheism. If you have any questions, send them to askanatheistatnoxwellatheist.com.org, sorry. And I see, remember, I'd like to remind everybody at the end of the show that everybody's 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. We'll see you next week. Take care. Bye-bye. See you, guys. All right.