 103.9 FM, WOZO Radio, Knoxville. Ladies and gentlemen, Digital Freethought Radio Hour. Hello and welcome to Digital Freethought Radio Hour on WOZO Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today is October 18th, 2020. Larry Rhodes, your Doubter 5 and as usual we have our co-host Wombat on the line with us. Hello Wombat. Life is like a hurricane here in... ...Doubter. Knoxville. Knoxville, let's go. And our guests today are Wave when you hear it, Doubter Fire, a Red Leader, and Red Pirate Higgs. Welcome all. Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a talk radio show about atheism, freethought, rational thought, humanism and the sciences. And conversely, we also talk about religion, religious faith. God's holy books and superstition. And if you get the feeling you're the only non-believer in Knoxville, well, you're just not. There are several atheist, freethinking 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 break. Also, did you know that there was a streaming atheist called in video show here in Knoxville? Did you know that Wombat? Yeah. And what's great is they actually made a reboot of DuckTales recently. So if you want to get back into the series, it's going to be really good. I think they have Ben Schwartz as one of Huey Dewey or Louie. I can't tell him apart. But they're really good, and I highly recommend it. Yeah, I would too. That's not our show. Well, that's not it. You haven't found it yet. After 10 years, you haven't found a show. How long have we been doing this show, Larry? 10 years. No, wait. It's not been 10 years. Don't make me feel bad. It hasn't really been 10 years. It might actually be. Yeah, then I actually overtake you. No way. Don't make me feel bad. Anyway, we'll tell you more about that after the mid-show break. Right now, if you'd like to interact with us during the show, and it's Sunday morning in October, what was it again, 18th? At 11 Eastern, you can do so by going to Digital Freethought Radio, our Facebook page, and use the messaging function to send us questions or comments. Wombat, what's our topic today? Today, we're going to be talking about a really awesome question that Doubtfire himself proposed, which is, can a contradictory God logically exist? And I think that's going to be really awesome. There's my cat in the background. Hey, what's up, buddy? Ben, what's up? How you doing? But before we go into it, I'm going to throw it up to our own Dread Pirate Higgs for our weekly invocation. Our pasta, our turn of colander, hallowed be thy noodles, thy sauce be rum, thy blood be yum, with meat as it is with vegetables. Give us their stay, our garlic bread, and forgive us our cursing, as we forgive those who cuss against us, and lead us not into ketuism, but deliver us some pasta. For thine are the noodles, the pasta, and the sauce, whenever and ever. Raw man. Raw man. It's hard, so hard not to crack up during that. It really is. Dread, I want to go around, see how everyone's doing. We missed you last week. How you been? Where were you? Or were you doing something awesome? Well, like I said, I performed a wedding the day before and, you know, carry it on a bit. So I didn't wake up until 1030 my time, which is two and a half hours after the show starts. Right. Canadian beer tends to have that effect on people. Though, how is a Pasifarian wedding and how does it differ from, say, like the more traditional, I would say, Christian variety? Well, actually, it wasn't a Pasifarian wedding. I'm actually an appointed marriage commissioner through the Ministry of Vital Statistics. So it was a traditional wedding. But, you know, they still carry on. Okay. Well, that's still beautiful. That's still beautiful. Nice. Okay. Doubtfire. Loving that shirt. You got to... Salmon is an unappreciated color on men. And I respect that people represent that. And I will go to the gym representing that all the time. How you been? Doing good, man. Doing wonderful. Where exactly do you do your videos from? It looks like you're outdoors enjoying like a really nice sunny day. Yeah, I'm right here. Right here on the porch of my place here and see all that. It's like beautiful Santa Monica. Yeah, it's in Irvine, California. Nice. Nice. Oh, it's pretty close. My nostalgia. My nostalgia. I grew up in California, so it's just like... Oh, yeah, that's right. Nice. All right. Larry, how you been? Like I said, it looks like viewers can't see or listeners to the podcast can't see this, but it looks like you get a really nice, specific haircut going on. Oh, yeah. Nice little mane in the back. Well, I haven't had a haircut in like four months. Most of it's behind me. Oh, there it is. Push it behind me. Yeah, I don't go to barbershop because of COVID. I don't want someone standing that close to me cutting my hair. My daughter said she'd cut it for me, but she's yet to make an appointment for me. So I'm waiting on that. I'm trying to stay away from people to embrace social distancing. I was at the gym yesterday and literally empty everywhere except for one dude who decides to do the elliptical literally right next to me. And there's like other ellipticals in the row, but he picked the one right next to me and the whole time I'm like, what is going on with this guy? Like, no mass, no, what's it? Nothing whatsoever. And just focusing on his workout. So like some people just need to be competitive with the person right next to be motivated to do gym work. I'm not a part of your program. Get me out of here. Dale, good to see you again. Your beard is coming in beautifully, by the way. It really is. Yeah. I've been working very hard on it. Good, good. It's like it's new level. Yeah. You're gonna have to grow a beard. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or get a snap camera thing to just take it off when it's too inconvenient to shave. Doubtfire, I want to fill this out at you because you presented a really awesome topic for talking today and that it seems like science's opinion on God's is we don't have an opinion because we can't measure God's. But that doesn't necessarily mean that there is God. However, it also doesn't mean that we know for a fact that we can say that there is no God. So it's just a complete unknown. But that said, we do understand logic. And so if you have a God that defies logic, that's problematic and makes us more inclined to say that God probably doesn't exist. And you phrase it as like, well, can a contradictory God logically exist? Would you mind talking about that? Because I think that's really, really interesting. Yeah, sure. So I think when we make statements, contradictory statements, then they can't be true because they don't, they don't can't exist in reality as the way that you describe it. So if you have a God that's blue, but he's also red or blue and not blue or not blue or maybe a square circle, you have a Mary bachelor type of God, then you've got a problem. So yeah, and I've actually been talking to a lot of Jehovah Witnesses this week about that topic. That's why I brought it up because, you know, kind of going through the normal questions that I have for Jehovah Witnesses doesn't seem to always work. So I kind of did an internal critique and ask questions based on seeming contradictions to see what they would say. And it kind of stumped them and then using the logic that, you know, if there's a contradiction, it can't logically exist and they would agree from the outset. So then if you showed them a contradiction about their God, Jehovah, then it raises questions and that's what's the whole point. What kind of contradictions are you talking about? I thought Jehovah was perfect. Oh yeah, exactly, exactly. So, you know, we have script, you know, they go by strictly the scriptures. So if you go to John 4.9, it'll say God is love or the Greek word agape. 1 Corinthians 13.4 would say love or agape is not jealous and it's not wrathful. But then you could read in Exodus 34-14 that Jehovah, whose name is jealous, is a jealous God. And that's pretty good, Deuteronomy 4.0. So you've got a big problem right there. And so yeah, that's an example of a seeming contradiction. Same thing with Islam. Islam in Surah Al-Alak 96 verse 2 would say God created man out of congealed blood. But in another spot in 1526, he would say he created man from clay. And then also he created man from a drop of sperm in 16-4. So we've got a big contradiction there. So how can all of those things be true? Not one of those statements are wrong, but if you're going to accept all of them as absolutely true, which they do, then it just can't be something you can take as reality. Nice. Larry, I'll throw this out at you first. I think there are contradictions with how God is depicted in the Bible or any other holy texts. And should that be credence to reduce your confidence in whether or not that God exists? How much time do you have? Well, apparently we had 10 years to go over this. There's a few contradictions. Let's just take one of my guess. It's not like you wrote a book on the subject or something. Well, I mean, we're supposed to have free will. One of the biggest problems or one of the biggest claims of Christianity is that we have free will and we have to choose right or wrong. God has given us the criteria and all that stuff. But if God knows everything, if he's an omni-god and he's omniscient, he knows everything that everybody is ever going to not only do but think. And if that's true, then there is no free will because we all have to conform with what he has already thought we're going to do. So there's no free will. And it goes even farther. If he knows literally everything, then he knows what he's going to do, what he's going to think, and all of his actions in the future. So he has no free will. So that's a contradiction right there. I also feel like a god that knows everything essentially set this test up to fail. If this is a, hey, I'm waiting for you to do the thing that I know you did, that I know you're already going to do so I can punish you for it after you've already done it. So not only are the victims still getting punished through the person's actions. Yeah, like not only are the victims still getting hurt, but the person that's doing the crime is free to do the crime while God watches is like, ooh, I'm going to keep letting you do this assault. And only until you're done, am I going to be like, ooh, I have a perfect plan for you that I already planned ahead of time because I already had planned for you to do that assault. Ooh, it's such a, such a, such a terrible thing. Not a thing that a benevolent God would do. Yeah, he claims to be benevolent at the same time too. No, Dred. Welcome, George. Welcome, George. Can you all hear me? Yeah, you're coming in just great. George, just to catch you up, we're talking about is it possible for someone to believe in a, is it, is it contradictory God capable of logically existing, right? And so we're talking about some contradictions of gods that are depicted, you know, in popular contexts and asking, okay, since there's a contradiction here, is that credence for us to reduce our confidence that this God exists? Because right now we have science that can't test gods and can't say, hey, this God exists, this God doesn't exist. We don't have a God-o meter. But we can look to see if this God has contradictory and say, logically, this doesn't make sense. Like the nature of this God would have to change in order for it to be applicable to reality. Dred Pirate, I want to throw this out at you. Do you have contradictions that you can think of with regard to popular gods? It doesn't even have to be about the Christian God. Does the Pasifarian God have contradictions? Oh, no, no, no, the flying screening monster is perfect. Yeah, there's no contradictions there. Really? Really? Is the who? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, I got some contradictions. I'll throw some things out at you. Okay, so here's the thing. So Pasifarian God, I'm sure, is open to all forms. Does Pasifarian... Okay, here's a stupid question. Does Pasifarian God eat bacon? Of course. Okay, okay. He created bacon, so... Okay, pro carbs and protein? Like, what's going on there? Seems like a contradiction. Pro carbs, pro protein, pro beer, pro inches. I feel... I didn't use that last one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, is the Pasifarian God generally a progressive God, or is it just like a non-kink shaming God? Like, it doesn't seem like there's a problem either way. Like, how do you interpret the idea of a stripper factory and wenches and stuff like that? Like a part and parcel. Well, when you say progressive, I don't know what you mean in relation to... Equal appreciation of legal rights of all sexes, stuff like that. Well, strippers are not forced. It's not a sex thing. You know, there's male strippers. There's female strippers. There's unisex strippers. Okay. It's not about genitalia. It's about stripping. Are there animal strippers? Oh, man. Favorite. You're getting closer. We're getting into a rabbit hole here. How about the more commonplace gods? Can you think of common contradictions that it could be found with regard to Jehovah, Allah, and maybe Greek gods? And think, oh, go for it. I mean, the idea that God is all love, but was capable of creating the angels, the devil being one of them, who is the font of evil. So that's a pretty big contradiction, I'd say. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely some of that makes me reduce my confidence. Dale, here's my question for you. I'm not sure if you're aware of more broader or older terms of gods, like from Roman or Greek pantheons. But the idea of having multiple gods gave you the ability to have very vulnerable and poor gods that are very human in nature, like gods that were jealous, spiteful, revengeful, terrible beings. And when Christianity came out, it was like, hey, you don't need all these different gods you can talk to. We have this one big god that's already perfect, which is better than your assembly of gods that are each imperfect in their own way. And that caught on, along with a lot of swords and blood spilling. But the idea of like, hey, you know, Aries, this guy has some problems. He has daddy issues. But his contradictions are at least relatable. Do you think like, if you have a contradictory god, does that make it more emotionally more able to relate to? Do gods have to be perfect? That's basically what I'm asking you. Or is it possible to actually fall more in love with a god that actually has some chips on its shoulder and obvious problems? I have no idea what you just asked me. Cool. Will however make a comment. Will however make a comment. Kerry Kinthaw, who is a predominant metaphysician, his first law of metaphysics is nothing unreal exists. So that's all I got to say about this comment. Cool. I have no idea what you're talking about. I want to throw that question at you. Do you think that a god that is not perfect is actually more relatable, and maybe we're putting too much stress on the biblical god having contradictions? Like, does a contradictory god actually make it more appealing? We have a president that's not very logical in the first place. People tend to love him. Do you think that's the appeal? It could be. People like superheroes and comic books. And those seem to be like the kind of gods that are comparable to the Greek gods and pagan gods. They're not perfect, but they're super. They're meta. They're all these things. But I think in our culture today, we tend to gravitate more towards the all omnigod, because it has more explanatory power. They think for things that they have mysteries or things they want to know about. Yeah. I also wonder, like, maybe the appeal of Jesus is that you get the best of both worlds. You have the omnipowerful god, but then you also have the human who understands the human experience, who gets angry and really hates fig trees. Yeah. He's like... Yeah, avatar. Yeah. George, why don't you take yourself off mute and join in? I saw you wanted to sit chip in. Yeah. You know, the contradictory God... I like your concept of a God-O-Meter. I want one. Yeah, me too. It would be so great if I did. Yeah, we don't have Radio Shack anymore. Can I buy one on Amazon? I mean, I really want a God-O-Meter. It would always register zero, though. I mean, it wouldn't be much. You know, I mean, do they make them in China? And can I buy it on Amazon? But, you know, to me, it's like the God of the Old Testament is like Donald Trump. It's Donald Trump, the God of the Old Testament. And our people worship him. Gotta give me some words. Gotta give me some words. What do you mean by that? I mean, the erratic behavior, the vindictiveness, you know, he's like a dysfunctional father. That's about as much as I can underscore on this, because every time I try to read the Bible, I fall asleep. I have not been very successful at reading the Bible. Well, here's why I fall asleep. Yeah. And we'll go to Scott right after this. It seems like the God of the Old Testament is very much the flavor of God's that are around during that time, which we're very much, I'm powerful, and I'm telling you what needs to be done as an authority figure to you. And then as we get to the New Testament time, it's like, man, these Romans are really, really, really destroying a lot of stuff. We need a sympathetic God that, like, understands us and is willing to forgive some of our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Perfect, Jesus. And now we have almost like a new, new version of God, which is like, he loves the math rock that you love. He loves. He has no problem with gay people. He wants you to go out and just, you know, love people and be okay. And maybe it's spiritual. Maybe it's not spiritual, but hey, you know, reach out and make friends. Scott, what do you think? Yeah, I was just to kind of piggyback on what you just said. It seems like the God's come from. So if you were to take a look at, say, ancient Hebrew culture, right? You know, slavery in the Middle East was a common practice. Yeah. And so God Yahweh or Jehovah back then allowed for slavery and regulated the practice of slavery. And so this is kind of a contention point with a lot of Christians today, as you just pointed out, because that idea of humans owning other humans is considered immoral nowadays relative to our culture today. And so by bringing that up, you're kind of like bringing up a contradiction, because they just can't imagine that God would ever allow something immoral like slavery. And God is defined, as a Jehovah witness told me last week, Jehovah is morality. He is ethics. And it's absolute. He's immutable. He's absolute. He's the metaphysical primary, as they told me. The metaphysical prime? Wow, you know these terms really well. Wow. Yeah. Oh, yeah. The beautiful word that means nothing. Yeah. That means absolutely nothing to me. Next time someone asks me what I do for a living, I'm just going to be like, I'm the metaphysical primary of my organization. It's like, oh, yeah. Whoa. Wow, that's important. Yeah. Larry, you want to fill in? Yeah. I was just going to say, maybe Dale, when he talks to his JW people, he's been, has a lady he'd been talking to a bit. He can bring up slavery and ask her about that. Yeah. No, one of the oldest illogical attributes of God, as we see it, was addressed by Epicurus and his riddle of Epicurus. It says, if God is willing to prevent evil but not able, then he's not omnipotent. If he's able to prevent evil but not willing, then he's malevolent. If he's able and willing, then why do we have evil? If he's neither able nor willing, then why do we call him God? That kind of thing. Right. So this riddle has stood the test of time for over 2,500 years. Yeah. One other thing that has come up recently in some of my conversations that points to a non-evil caring God is that people will tell you that evil cannot exist in the presence of God. He's so good that no evil can exist near him. But then they also tell you he's everywhere at once all the time. An evil word is evil come. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, that's good. I'll tell you another one. Right there. Dred, you're next on the, let's spot our contradictory problems, but here's mine that I like. The idea of worship or the contradiction of worship. And the idea behind this is anything that is deserving of worship would not ask to be worshiped. And it's as simple as that. And so worshiping is essentially putting something above you and lauding it as a thing greater than yourself and doing whatever you can to appreciate it and like loving it more, more so than like your car, your, your wife, your moms, like this is worship. I am worshiping this being that beyond me, anything that's actually truly benevolent or deserving of worship, wouldn't ask you to do that or want it or expect it or demand it. But it has its own problems saying we can, Hey, you want to talk about contradictions with Buddha? Like let's talk about women's rights and Buddhism, it's essentially non-existent, no one gets a free pass here on the digital free thought hour. But yeah, like if there's a being that's asking to be worshiped, it's typically not we're demanding, demanding for sake of punishment. Where was Jesus on this? What was Jesus on? What? Where was Jesus on being worshipped? I think so, like all over the place. Yeah, Scott, why are you feeling? Yeah, so Jesus says, I am the way, the truth and the life. Yeah, I'm the sword. There's no way to get to the Father, except that through me, which, by the way, creates a contradiction in Islam. Now that we're talking about contradiction, contradictory gods. So and Muslims will say that Jesus was a truth teller. He spoke nothing but truth because he was God's prophet. Yet Jesus said, no one comes to the Father except through me. I'm the Savior. So Muslims, the Quran says that no, Jesus was not a savior or a Messiah. He was just a prophet. So now we have a contradiction. So was God telling the truth or was Jesus telling the truth or was he not? Yeah. And if it's possible for people to get it wrong, how do you know you've got it right? There's so much stuff going on here. Dred, I was going to give it to you, but he's now he just went off to say, oh, he's back. Dred, anything else you'd like to weigh in on? Yeah, I was. Well, you know, Scott was explaining their different ideas about how Jesus demanded worship. And there is the one one verse there where those who would not essentially those who would not kneel down and worship me, bring them before me so so that I may slay them. That's a pretty big contradiction for a guy preaching all love. Yeah. And how many times has he referenced himself as the sheep herder among sheep and that you guys have to come to his flock? Like that mentality of like, I am a I am a essentially a better organism than you. You need to come to me if you want help. Like there's on the order of magnitude of a sheep to a sheep herder. That's how he saw himself to other people. He is making some really big acts all go for it, Dred. Yeah, so just one comment here from one of our viewers, that is trading room. He says logic would imply that if evil cannot exist in his presence and he is all transcendent, then what we consider evil is actually God's love. Yeah. Oh, that went dark. That is doubt fire going ahead. Well, yeah, that took a drop. Larry, that was arguing for me. And I end every series going like you're going to somebody else's hell. Who made who made that comment? The Joker? No, no, that's right. Oh, no, no, no, no. Nice one. I was going to say that it kind of goes into the definition of God. And some people would say, well, God is that thing that you worship that is worshipable or or qualifies to worship. You know, it's my God. Money is my God. This is my God. You know, the universe is my God. It's it means that it's worthy of worship is God is one definition people use for God. But if that's true and if God is also the first cause of everything that exists, including evil, then does that qualify as something worthy of worship? Do you worship something that would create evil? I mean, really? Yeah. So I mean, well, maybe maybe some people are just like that. I don't know. One thing I find with a lot of the religious believers that I talked to is that they're not familiar with the concept of not worshiping, you know, they'll come to an atheist. So you worship Dan Barker or you worship science. You know, somebody is the God of the prophet of atheists and you worship them. We don't worship anybody. We don't believe in the concept, generally, of worship. You know, why would we all praise anything at any time? I once had an Indian girlfriend and we were talking and she was saying like, you're an American, like, who do you worship? And I was like, I don't worship anyone. She's like, well, what do you mean by that? Who do you worship? I was like, I don't worship anyone. This is like so like Jesus is like no one is like no one. No one, literally no one. And it took a while. We were sitting in front of each other and just like took a while for me to like after the third time to be like, oh, you don't worship anyone. I remember her response like, that's fantastic. And I was like, oh, my gosh, I love this person. That's its own topic. That's its own topic. Eric, it's so good to see you. Welcome, Boudreau. Who do you worship? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're actually going to head out to a break and then we'll come back and we'll get Boudreau's thoughts on this amazing topic that Scott brought up. Doubtify, why don't you take us out? Sure. This is Digital Freethought Radio Hour and WOZO Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. And we'll be right back after this short break. 103.9 FM WOZO Radio, Knoxville. Hello and welcome back to the second half for the Digital Freethought Radio Hour and WOZO Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. I'm Doubtify and this is Sunday morning, October 18th, 2020. Let's talk about the Atheist and Freethought groups that you can enjoy right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. First, there's the Atheist Society of Knoxville, founded in 2002 or in our 18th year. ASK has over 1,000 members and you can find us online at KnoxvilleAtheist.org. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you should still go to Meetup and search for an Atheist group in your town. Don't find one. Start one! Another large freethinking group here in Knoxville are the rationalists of East Tennessee. Just go to rationalist.org and click on upcoming events to find out what they are up to. Earlier in the show, we said we'd talk about the Knoxville Atheist call in TV show. Well, it's kind of a streaming audio. Now we were on TV for 10 years, but now we've got a YouTube channel. It's called Freethinkers United Coalition of Knoxville. Go to YouTube and search for that. And if you want to see our archives of the old TV show, search for Freethought Forum Knoxville. Okay, also if you're interested in joining us or getting involved in the TV or the radio show, come to our Facebook pages or ASK Facebook page, the Atheist Society of Knoxville or the Freethought, what is it? Digital Freethought Radio Hour of Facebook page and let us know you want to be involved. And where do we leave off there one bit? So we were right in our second half of our Jeopardy Challenge. Eric was leading with an amazing $5,000, but now we have our next question coming up to the bat. I want everyone to be very, very, very, very close attention. The question today is, this is a powerful emotion that recently get lost. I was rushing to write this one out, got lost. All right, we're going to throw this up to Dred Pirate. It looks like he's chiming in. Dred Pirate, what is your answer? Remember to answer in a phraseable question. Go. Oh, Dred Pirate, out of time, unfortunately. All right, I'm sorry. No one else got the answer. That was the last one that looks like Eric's our champion. The right answer was, where is the love? The love, yeah. Where is the love? The love, the love. The listener, love. All right, so. There was a deer in the headlights there. It's OK. Got it, love. You can come back in the next one. Tell us not. Yeah, you can tell. So we are actually going to go over some listener feedback that we had. We had some good episodes. I had the page up right now. I'm sorry for you guys being so unprofessional. Let me, we had like seven comments from the last show. The last show's topic was, let me just pull it up here. I had a near-death experience. And we talked about how reliable our near-death experiences and the people who claim to have them. And we got a number of chats or another comments. The comments are, of course, posted on my YouTube channel. That's Let's Chat on YouTube. Just search for Let's Chat. I'm one of the first things to pop up now. Dada's, oh, I'm sorry. iash139 says, hey, Taron, I don't know how old you are. But when you were talking about Haley's comment, you might have been referring to Halebop's comment. Because Haley's comment was in 1986, whereas Halebop's comment was in 1996 and won't return for a few thousand years. No. So I did mention I had seen Halebop's or I said Haley's comment, but I guess I meant Halebop's comment. And that showed up when I was around 11 or so. So that's cool. That's cool. And it won't show up for another thousand years. So I'm glad I saw it when I did. And Nathan Matthews has love for Doubtfire and George versus love for Doubtfire. Good points, Doubtfire. During this episode, it's always helpful to have terms be defined. Real in the context of a near-death experience can simply mean an experience that had an impact. And acknowledging someone's position is a great way to start a wonderful conversation. And here's some love for George. George, I share your hesitation with unfamiliar topics. I tend to sit back and listen. In healthy settings, I'm trying to push myself to form and share my own thoughts. Conjecture is just another word for hypothesis. So it's OK as long as we continue to challenge ourselves. And you have my full support. That's really nice. Scott Williamson. That sounds familiar. That sounds like a familiar guy. What was that about? That was big. Yeah, Scott says, wow, looking back at the video, my devil's advocate for near-death experiences or aliens seemed pretty strong. I almost seemed like someone who believes in the afterlives and little green men. That wasn't the overall impression. I just wanted to leave my thoughts to you. OK. No problem. And I was kind of cringing. I was like, oh, no, no, no. It sounded good. And plus, like I said, I think you texted me ahead of time asking to be a devil's advocate in these talks. And that's what was actually. Exactly. All right, so let me do one last check. Data's trading room, Ever the Faithful. If you hadn't said anything about rattling audio in the background, which there was some in the last episode, I never would have caught it. So you guys did good. Oh, wow, I did it. OK, he wanted to make a mention about ghosts, though. We made a comment that whenever you feel very cold, it's a ghost passing over you. And so his response to that was, oh, wow. So now I know why it gets cold at fall. Mass migration of ghosts. Yeah. Hey, real talk. I was in bed. We were starting to get cold snaps through Tennessee, just this week. And I was literally shivering in my bed, because I like to keep it really cold. And I'm like, why am I so cold? I remember this conversation and even that comment. I'm like, there must be ghosts in my room. Ha, ha, ha. Anyway, comforters will stop that. It's no big deal. All right, so we were talking about contradictions in the Bible, and particularly related to the subject of God. And the reason why we were saying that, and I'm directing this towards Eric, because we were saying science doesn't have an opinion on whether or not a God does exist or does not exist. We don't have a God meter, right? But we can look at the God claim and see if there's contradictions there. And if there's contradictions, we can at least say, logically, it doesn't make sense for this thing to exist. We can reduce our confidence based on how many contradictions we can find with a particular God claim. And the Bible is a really, really big book of God claims. That, along with many other holy texts. But we are all people here, Western. We tend to really know the Bible very well, and it's very popular. So it's worth knocking down a couple of pegs. Would you mind, if you had any contradictions that you can think of, presenting some that makes you less confident about the God that's proposed in the Bible? Yeah, I'm kind of with George on religion in that. I was raised Catholic, but I never really studied much. So I don't know a ton about the Bible. I've never actually read it. You're Catholic, and you never read the Bible? That never happens. That's a bad joke. No, and I've read parts and chunks of it. I've read a lot about interpretations of it. So I'd say the one that jumps out at me the most, I mean, obviously, the time frame of everything is wonderful. I was talking specifically about God claims. The fact that the Bible seems to kind of flip between monotheistic or the fact that I'm the only God or there are other gods. You should not worship other gods. But then again, other parts of the Bible make it seem like God is the only one. And the whole idea that the devil can stood up to God and did so powerfully such that he had to ban him to hell, it just seems like I don't know. I'd say the big one would be that, that I mean, how many gods are there who were there? Or any of that. So it's weird when someone tells you. Yeah, it's just like, hey, you're my only girlfriend, but don't talk about my other girlfriends. Yeah, there is, I think in the commandments, like don't worship any other God before me. It's like, what do you mean other gods? It's like, I am also the only God. It's like, what, George, go for it. Yeah, that was Boudreaux, right? I don't know what to say about that. He said he's like me, but I was raised with no religion. Yeah, well, I guess that's what I meant. I mean, I'm like you in that. I didn't grow up with super knowledge of the Bible. I'm not the first one to be able to jump in and quote Bible. I have really no frame of reference. And I hear you say that a lot on the show, well, yeah, I don't. You know, when I was six years old, my mother said to me, she said, look, we've got only so much money. I'll give you Hebrew lessons or music lessons. Which do you want? What the hell kind of a choice is that? Please, please, please. So I became a child prodigy in music. Did I become a child prodigy in Hebrew? Hell no. Well, yeah, so it does kind of seem like the Bible teaches a plurality of God's and some sections. I think the Hebrew word Elohim is a plural word for God. Oh, Lord of all like, yeah. Yeah, so like when you read in Genesis, let us create man in our image. Like, who is he referring to? What other gods were there that were creating things? And the Hebrew word was Elohim. And that's why we have the translation we in our and it follows throughout many different verses. But then in other sections, you hear about God as the singular. So you have the Y H W H, which is short form for Yahweh or Jehovah. And so in those sections, God is the only God, the monotheistic God. So a lot of scholars that I've read about tend to think that the Bible, the Old Testament Bible was kind of cobbled together from earlier texts. And it came from a Canaanite religion that worship Elohim. That's where the word actually comes from. So Israel came from Canaanites and it just gets, you know, really contradictory there. Yeah, like plurality. Larry, what do you think? Well, we kind of started talking off about or talking about illogical gods per se with, you know, the attributes of the gods being illogical. But now we kind of got off into the Bible contradictions. And since we've opened that up, I'd like to offer at least one. And the one is a basic contradiction, illogical. It's the original sin where God, I mean, God tells Adam and Eve not to eat the apple and they eat the apple. Yeah, but the apple contains the knowledge of right and wrong. Good and evil. Right. Right. So they wouldn't have even known that disobedience was wrong or bad or evil. But a knowledge about the apple. I've been never in a knowledgeable God would have known that. Right. And if he had wanted them to know the difference between right and wrong and good and evil so that they would understand not to eat the apple, he would have just given them the knowledge that they had been forgiven, I mean, forbidden to get. So it makes no sense. It's also perfect. They were perfect beings. And it's and it's not a surprise on God's part that that happened. And if he claims to be benevolent, yet trap made such an obvious trap. It's like putting a snake, a poisonous snake in the playground for the bunch of kids is just like, let's see what happens. Like you clearly put a trap door in paradise. That's no longer paradise. Speaking of paradise, they're free will in heaven. Yeah. And he's supposed to be everywhere. So where was he when the snake was watching it, probably controlling the snake? Probably just like it was a trap. Yeah, it was a trap. I want to talk about heaven for a quick bit or paradise, because we just brought up the idea that heaven can be a great place to be for eternity with the mindset of there's also a hell. So like if people go to heaven, what is the nature of a person that can go to heaven that's OK with a hell existing where people are burning for all of eternity, right? Like that seems to be contradictory. Like how can it be so good to go to heaven but be OK and complicit with the idea of hell at the same time? Hell, heaven's either empty, completely empty or or heaven is hell because those are the worst people in the world that I'd rather be with. And if I had the choice of be like, oh, I don't want to go to a place where people are OK with people burning for all of eternity. I saw a lot of hands raised that fire. Did you want to say something? Yeah, I was just going to say really quick, heaven doesn't seem to be the place that that is purported to be in other places in the Bible. Like in Revelation, there's no sorrow, there's no tears, there's no suffering, heaven is just blissful. But then we read about how there was war in heaven. Yeah, Satan was cast out like if there can be war in heaven and war is full of suffering and tears and death. And like, how does that not be a big contradiction? So man, these are some great predictions. George, it sounds like you want to weigh in as something. Well, do you remember what you're going to say or want to say? I forgot. I forgot. Oh, yeah. I mean, to me, the whole concept of hell is so bizarre. I mean, if if if God is God, why does he put up with this? You know, why does he put up with the devil? This is all bullshit. This doesn't. Hey, wordy dirties. Guess who's on mute? Which? What's our time? The old radio, man, blow it again. Here we go. You're uncourgable, George. But what do you got? Did you want to weigh on this as well? I really like Doubtfire's point about is there free will in Garden of Eden or heaven or any of the places that that's interesting to me, because if there is free will, wouldn't have God known that these people were going to make these choices? And if there isn't, then we're just all sitting back watching a movie and none of it matters. So it's it's just. The idea of eternity, too, is just bizarre. That's a contradiction, because yeah, I mean, the eternity forever. Yeah, I could imagine you going crazy. Yeah, so like there'll be a point where you don't even recognize who you are anymore or even remember what you did like it's guaranteed. It's infinite. Well, excuse me. Apologetics would be that there is no time outside of the universe or whatever. But then you have to ask yourself this question, which raises another contradiction. Does God think sequentially? And if he does, which apparently he does in the Bible, then he's temporal. He's one thought leads to another thought leads to an that's time, right? Then he's subject to a lot of time. Hmm. Right. He created time at the same time, too. That makes no sense. Exactly. That's all your hand raised. You want to say something? Go for it. Yeah, I was just about, you know, free will in heaven. You know, if heaven is a place that all good people go in order to love and worship God, do you do you have free will? And if you don't have free will, are you still the same person you were when you were on earth? When you did have free will, right? And that's the question. Yeah, I will say this and this is a weird point. I know the story of Job is not literal, but we've had conversations on this show where we've where I've talked to Christian apologists who believe that not only is that story literal, but is the best story in the entire Bible. And the problem with that is it's a really horrendous story on a moral, horrible, moral front, but it begins with the devil being escorted to heaven to hang out with God. And, you know, and and that is objectively, at least from the Bible perspective, the worst person hanging out with objectively the best person to do bets on people's lives for fun. And the weirdest part, I don't know the outcome. And the weirdest part is I feel like if anything, this is a story of the devil's trying to secretly show people who are reading the Bible with an awareness and a critical thought of like, look how screwed up this guy is. I'm going to go up to his home and I'm going to bet on the lives of the people he created and he claims to love. And it's going to make it look like I'm the bad guy and I was wrong. But the real moral of the story, if you're actually looking at it right, is this is the evil dude, this God guy. He's the real bad guy. He's the person betting, doing terrible things. And when he wins, he just makes new wise and new children and new sheep and says, ah, you're basically net. Basically, you have the same amount of property. Property, yeah. And and again, yeah, like I think Larry, you hit it on the nail. They said the bet with you hit the nail on the head. You hit the nail on the head. You, yeah, I thought we were looking at that, too. So it's like, is that right? Dell, I want to hear from you. Do you have any comments on hell or the devil or anything that we talked about today? I was just thinking of Mark Twain thinking, making a statement that actually heaven involves a whole lot of things that most people try to avoid on earth. Like church, like church, like singing, like singing hymns and such as that. I'm, I'm, you know, this, this Christian bashing is really just going in circles and going in circle. Well, let's look at some contradictions of the atheists. One of the primary thing of the atheists now is that are this been proposed is that the universe came from nothing. Is that who's I don't say that I'm an atheist. No, well, you're not. Larry knows about it. Lawrence Crowley, some that do. So some people say things, but how does that represent atheism? It's like, that's right. It is. Well, it is a position on God, though. Yeah, it's not it's not that claim at all. That's the problem does seem like a contradiction. And I just believe that the matter of the universe has always existed and it's more and far more another. I don't think it came from nothing. And I think time is necessarily based on objective phenomenon. So if you can't observe it, time exists or not. But you have another easier to say, easier to say atheists are wrong. Yeah. Well, often, often, you know, the atheists should come up with it with a good answer for if there's creation, why is there no creator? That would be a creation is a word that is loaded and usually used by people who believe in a creative whore. Well, when you have a cup, the cup has been created. When you have a tree, the tree has been created from the history of the genes that are in the tree or the. Well, you can say it along back to use the word creation. There is a creation. There are creations when there is a creator. Now, trees weren't created, per se. They were they weren't. They are the descendants of the previous trees that came before them. And there was a time when there were no trees, according to. Right. And they evolved according to. Yeah, they evolved. So what I'm saying is creator is a loaded word. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Agency is OK, too. Yeah. And you can you can easily fall into a special pleading fallacy because then you would say if well, if everything has to be created because that's in our experience that everything had a creator. So there's a contradiction. Well, if you're going to say that, then who created God? Yeah. You can't say everything. God. Right. Yeah, that's an old song. I'd say what's really unfortunate is when someone claims that atheism is making any more of a claim than I don't believe your God exists, please come up with better evidence. And there's no other statement in the grand book of atheism than that. Like, if you look at atheism and if it was a instructional booklet for atheism, it literally is a thousand page document with one sentence on the first page is like, I don't believe you. And that's the only thing that's right. Today's credit. Yeah. Just real quick. Today's credit, I will say that some atheists, I do find contradictions, like, especially not what they call Gnostic atheists. When they say there is absolutely no metaphysical reality. Well, that's a metaphysical claim in itself. Yeah, that's also a non addition, non right. A Gnostic, exactly specific to the Gnostic atheists. Yeah. And I don't like it in general. Whatever it is, it is me, neither. We there's a question that came to my mind about atheists. And perhaps you could help with this. I've heard it said that the weak atheist or the moderate atheist, if you will, believes that only makes the statement that I see no evidence for a God. I see no evidence. But even very, very high atheists and you ask them, what evidence would you accept to believe in a God? And I've heard plenty of atheists say there's no evidence whatsoever that you would give me that would make me believe in a God. I don't. So it seems like a circular argument in that I have to see no evidence. And furthermore, I will not accept any evidence. So. So we have like three minutes left in the show. So just to respond to this, just because it is an old hat argument that we've heard. The idea of people say this, therefore, it represents the the thing that the label that you believe are two different things. It's the same thing of scientists say this, therefore, science says this. And there are atheists that say I don't like bagels, but that doesn't mean atheism is about not liking bagels in the same sense that I can wear a red hat. It doesn't make me a Republican. I can just wear a red hat. So we have to look at the idea of there are individuals and many groups, many people in a particular group that can say something. But what is the common denominator of this group? And the common denominator of atheism is I don't believe you when you say you have enough evidence for me to be compelled to be convinced that you believe that this guy actually is real. Or I don't believe your God. That's all that means. And everything else on top of that is atheism plus something else. Dredpire, I'm going to give it to you. Oh, Eric, you went through the trouble of actually getting props. Let's go over your props and then we can close out the show. Yeah, I think it's just a lovely, lovely argument to hear. But basically the dock and scale. And there are other scales that get exactly what Dale is saying. Gnosticism and atheism are two different dimensions. And I think everybody here that is arguing for atheism is a Gnostic atheist. They they are an atheist. They don't believe in God, but they don't know there's no God. You mean agnostic, agnostic, right? Agnostic, yeah. Sorry. Does that that's what I meant? Yeah. And then I'm not I'm not an agnostic. You're not an agnostic atheist. No, I'm an atheist period. OK, but we're talking about two different things. Yeah, it's OK. It's a confusing thing for a lot of other people. But when you talk to them in a short as a five minute conversation, you'd be surprised how much we agree on these really, really basic concepts. We have unfortunately a history of a lot of loaded words and we have a language based on those loaded words to try to communicate with. It takes the effort, especially in a big group, conversation to parse what we mean by what we say. And for what I'm hearing from certain people is I don't understand where you're coming from. This is my impression of where you're coming from. It doesn't make sense to me. And it's like, I agree that doesn't make sense, but that's not where I'm coming from. That's generally this entire Zoom conversation in a nutshell. But hey, listen, like I said, there are some atheists that don't like bagels. Atheism is not about not liking bagels. Even though many prominent atheists probably say they don't like bagels and I like bagels. So what's our thing that we have in common? That's something that we should look for. And there are contradictions in the Bible. We just went through a lot of them. So logically, it doesn't seem like that is a good basis for believing in a Christian God. But we see these same things. Contradictory fallacies in Greek Rome and all of them. Joe, when it's yeah, it typically is the case. All the basic line is if something's asking you to worship it, probably doesn't deserve to be worshipped. And that's that's something that I always like to keep in my back pocket. Larry, you yelled at me at the beginning of the show that we were under time. So guess what? I did. You got you got a full five minutes after we're done with this. Dred Pirate, where can we find your stuff at? So I'm in Western Canada. So for me, it's two hours ahead of your guys's time. And so I live stream this on my YouTube channel at Mind Pirate, M-I-N-D-E-Y-R-A-T-E at eight o'clock a.m. So come check it out and participate in the conversation as we stream it stream it live. Cool, George, I'm going to say you screwed up because not only could you have done Hebrew school, but you would have been able to have all the Yiddish phrases in your back pocket along with your New York accent. You could have been like, no, no, no, no, no, no, it's Meshugana. It's a bunch of Yiddish. Narples. That's offensive. I apologize. Yiddish is a it's a cultural thing. So I got some Yiddish. OK, OK, good, good, good, good, good, good. Eric Boudreaux, I want you to not have any pressure on you with producing content. But if there was, I want to know what that you're doing a cover band of, what was it, Bad Omen? Bad Religion. Bad Religion. How's that coming along? I think we're done with the recording. They're mixing it and their video editing in it. So should have it next week. If you're comfortable with it, we'd love to put it on the show. It has a mid-show break. Yeah, a fun connection between Dale and Wombats comments. Samuel Clemens, also known as Mark Twain, was born and died and got to see Haley's comment twice. Whoa, very cool. Well, nice. One of very few people that. Doubtfire, I'll throw it out to you before we head out with Doubtor Five. Is there anything that you'd like to recommend that we check out? This is a great topic, by the way. Yeah, sure. Just meet me where it's going down, man. And at my Facebook page. Scott Williamson. Nice. All about it. Feel free to leave a comment on the show, guys. I'm much chat. Doubtfire, take us out. Excuse me. This has been Digital Freethought Radio Hour. Be sure to visit digitalfreethought.com and our blog. We have a radio show archives there, Atheist songs, articles on the subject. By the way, my book is called Atheism. What's it all about? It's available on Amazon. If you're having trouble leaving religion and religious beliefs behind, there's a group out there for you called Recovering from Religion. You can find them RecoveringFromReligion.org. Thanks to Dale for bringing up these questions about atheism. They're very important. We do need to address them as they come up for sure. If you have any questions about the show, you can send them to AskAnAtheist at KnoxvilleAtheist.org and we'll answer them on the show. If you're watching this on YouTube, be sure to like and subscribe to be notified of new episodes. And 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. We see you next Wednesday. Say bye, everybody. Bye, everybody.