 103.9 FM, W.O.Z.O Radio, Knoxville. Ladies and gentlemen, Digital Freethought Radio Hour. Hello and welcome to Digital Freethought Radio Hour on W.O.Z.O Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today is Sunday, November 29th, it's 11.15 I believe. Larry Rhodes, board Outer Five, and as usual we have our co-host Wombat on the phone with us. Hello Wombat. Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. That's my gobble call. So you survived Thanksgiving then? Yeah, that's my festive call-out to all the Turkey's sector fetishes. Very good, very good. And our guest today is George, hello George. Hi. Welcome. Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism and the sciences. And conversely we also talk about religion and religious faiths. God's holy books and superstitions, excuse me. 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 here in Knoxville and we'll be telling you about them after the mid-show break. Also did you know that there's been a streaming atheist call-in video show broadcasting here in Knoxville and has been for over 10 years? Did you know that Wombat? This time I actually did look it up. I did find our show and I think it was really good. I think Keanu Reeves is really good at it. I love their little green text that flickers in the background and he's like, I know Kung Fu. And he does that whole background thing. It's like, I should have been paying attention to this this whole time. I did raise a lot of questions, but there wasn't our show. Our show is, well, we'll tell you more about how to watch it after the show break. And maybe give Wombat some more directions on how to find it. Anyway, Wombat, what do you have for us today? It's for his topics. Hey, today we're going to be talking about the figs. We've got a food related show we'll start with. But really we're going to be talking about overthinking. Figs. Parables in the Bible. That's what we're talking about. Figs. Figs. Figs. It's all about the figs. Sure. What did you guys eat for Thanksgiving? Hey, yeah. Let's dig around the table how everyone's doing. George, what did you eat for Thanksgiving? I ate gefilte fish. Oh, what? I ate gefilte fish. Traditional Jewish fare. Okay. Holidays. This is new for information for me. It wasn't as good as my grandmother's. It came out of a jar from Israel and they skimped on the fish. Oh, did they? Oh, that's not good. Yeah, they skimped on the fish because the traditional way of doing it here is they use like three different kinds of fish, you know, pike, white fish, and carp. And this, they only use carp. And as I understand it, carp is a horrible fish that if you have to... Carp tastes like carp? Tastes like it sounds. No, I mean, what I mean when I say horrible, I don't mean horrible tasting. I mean, it's a horrible creature. It's like having Donald Trump in a pond. It goes around and it destroys all the other fish. Ah, man, that's not good at all. That's not good at all. I don't know. I enjoy catching them on a fly rod because you get a two pound carp on a fly rod and you've got a battle. What is, how do you pronounce it? It can get filled to fish? Yes. You've got to write. You've got to write. Okay, get filled to fish. We're going to have to look that up. It's a mixture of three different kinds of fish all ground up. Oh, wow. I don't want to eat that. No, it's very good. I don't want to eat that. All right. It's a developed and learned taste. Moving on. I developed and learned it. Larry, how was your Thanksgiving? Oh, traditional. Traditionally, yeah. Dressing, gravy. With your family? The family together. Sheila did a great job and it was awesome as usual. And we loved it all. It was great. Cool. My mom is very thankful. My mom's up in Virginia right now with my sister. My sister was able to stay with her. And I did not travel this holiday because of, you know, the COVID thing. I didn't want to have anyone be risk. I'm in a different biome here. Biome meaning like, you know, different people coughing on each other. And I don't know what I'm used to or what I might be carrying without realizing it. And I don't want to go over to my mom and accidentally make her sick. So I gave her a really nice good phone call and then had some fun eating whatever I wanted to eat over Thanksgiving. So I had lots of steak. I had enchiladas. I had meatloaf. I had like anything you can manage. You're just like, sure, I'll eat that. I'll have scones. I had some masala chai. I'll have all sorts of stuff. It's really great. Yeah. And then I had some stuffing too. Try to keep it traditional. But today we're going to be talking about figs, baby. Figs. Figs. So I'm thinking, this is what happened this morning. I'm sitting down thinking about like, hey, what do we want to talk about today? And there was something that had always been nagging me in the back of my mind. Like, if we just sat and thought about any story from the Bible, just like any random story from the Bible, just like literally critically think about it for like a minute or so. It typically falls apart both in what it's trying to message and like the logistics of what happened and the character development of what's going on. And I think I try to give myself like a really innocent story where it's like, Matthew, let's see, book of Matthew. Let's see if I can get the actual verse. Matthew where Jesus is going to a fig tree. And the fig tree is like, hey, what's up? I'm a fig tree. I'm out of season right now. I don't typically have any, you know, figs on me. Yeah. Matthew 21, 18 to 22. 18 through 22. There you go. And Jesus is like, man, I can really go for some figs right now. And the fig tree is like, I don't have any right now. And Jesus is like. It's out of season. It's out of season. And you know, like the people who cultivated me took all the figs off me. And so like, I don't have any things right now. I'm sorry. And Jesus is like, you will never grow a fig again. I am cursing you. And the tree immediately withers at that point. And everyone's like, whoa, Jesus just killed that tree. Jesus hates figs. And all the clarity of the world passed that down to our modern times. But the thing is. It's also in Mark 11. It's, I think it should be touched on in each of the Gospels, right? Or they vary though. But the big thing is Jesus goes up to a fig tree, no figs for him. He kills the fig tree. And it's supposed to be, in a sense, a parable for like, hey, you know, like Israel, you had your chance to love me, but you didn't. So that take it or leave it. There you go. That's what you get. And I'm like, isn't that, isn't that inherently anti-Semitic? But even beyond that, it's like Jesus is a character. Jesus is described in the book. Like if you take that book, literally true, is a person who is capable of making food appear out of nowhere. He can take water. He can turn it into wine. He can add tannins and sugars and a whole bunch of secondary metabolites to make water literally turn into wine. He can take fish and bread and multiply it out of thin air and feed. But he can't make it. Lots of people. He can't make it filter fish out of it. So what does he do? He can't make it filter fish. I know. But he can't like look at a fig tree and be like, one, he's surprised the fig tree doesn't have figs in it, even though it's out of season. It says it in the Bible. But he's just like, fig tree, make some figs for me and then help me feed my friends and stuff like that. He's like, no, not only my surprise, but I have to kill this fig tree immediately after the fact that it won't feed me figs. Yeah. Well, let's talk about a couple of things there. The Mark version, Mark 11, 12 through 25 says specifically it's out of season. Yeah. Secondly, it says that each curses the tree, but it doesn't die until the next day when they come back and look at it. Ah. But he said, may no one ever eat fruit from you again. Right. And it goes off and the next day they come out and it's wilted and died. And in Matthew, it immediately wilts. Right. The line there is like it immediately wilts. And I think there might even be another gospel where it's like it doesn't wilt at all or something like that. And I've just been completely glossed over. Right. Three. And also, like you said, at that point, he says have faith in God and if you talk to a mountain, you can say go throw yourself in the sea and it will do that. And it's a point you made this morning when we were talking that why didn't he just tell the tree to grow fruit? Right. Did he not have enough faith in the tree? Yeah. In himself and God to make your fruit. So here's my, we're getting a little bit ahead of ourselves, but here's my thought while I was reading the story. It's like, what is this story trying to tell us inadvertently? Because on the surface it's trying to show, Jesus is so strong that if a tree doesn't give him fruit, he's able to kill it with his mental magic powers. And I'm like, wow, that's cool. And when I was a kid, I'm like, this guy is super powerful. But in the back of my head, it's like this guy should have had the ability to do that, make a fig just grow or be patient enough with the tree because it's out of season anyway. It's sort of like walking into a Dollar General in April and being like, there's no egg on the noggin here. Where's my egg nog? I need some agog in here. I'm burning this place down. It's like, dude, it's not critical season. We don't have it. And he's like, I want eggnog now. You will never serve eggnog again. How dare you? I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, Jesus, calm down, calm down. But he's killing basically an innocent tree for no good reason. That probably is used as a source of food for the people that grew it. Like fig trees don't just grow everywhere. Like someone planted that, probably harvest it. It takes good care of it. He killed somebody. He destroyed somebody's property. Yeah. He just goes around. It's like, I don't like you. Feed me. It's like, I don't belong to you. That's another thing. Like in the one in the temple, when the lenders were in there, that he just tried to set a good example and talk to them and tell them that you shouldn't do this in the God's house. What did he do? He threw everything off the table. He went off and built his own scourge. He went off and designed and built his own scourge, came back and destroyed the tables and upturned them and beat the money lenders. I mean, when you have to ask what would Jesus do, one of the options has to be violence. Yeah. Or throw a temper tantrum. Did you say he built his own storage? Is that what you said? Scourge. Scourge. It's like a short whip that has little things in it that will tear your flesh. Oh. Scourge. He went crazy. Or there's a really unfortunate term called Karin. I don't know if you've ever heard of this before, but I've been watching on YouTube compilations of basically entitled women having fits in stores where it's like, I ordered a parfait one minute ago and I still don't have one in it's McDonald's and they're just like, we are literally putting the nuts on it right now. the nuts on it right now. I waited a full minute. Let me talk to the manager. Are you guys having fun in the park? You don't you know, you need a permit to be out here. I'm like, it's a public park. What are you doing? I'm calling them the cops right now. It's just like, what is this lady doing? There's a great video of a Karen knocking all the face masks off of target because targets selling face masks now. And she's, and she's like, I don't think you have to wear a face mask. I'm throwing all of these on the floor. It's oppression by the government. You don't need to be selling these it's Karen. K-A-R-E-N. What is that? It's a name. It's a, it's a, it's a serious kind of a meme about a, a meme is an idea. It's a meme of a white privileged middle class woman in America today. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, like, let me talk to the manager because I'm not satisfied with my service or my product or whatever. Yeah, I'm uncomfortable. Is this based on that woman in New York who? It's probably based on one name. There was a woman who came upon a black guy in Central Park with her dog and the dog threatened the guy off the leash. He was, he was a black guy who was watching birds. He was a bird watcher. Uh huh. It sounds like it, but sounds like it sounds like it's just one of many. She called the cops on him. So the thing is you don't just have to be a white middle class woman in suburbia with a sense of entitlement. You could also be the son of God and throw a Karen fit at the same time, too. And what we're seeing here is an example of just like Jesus, that victory isn't supposed to have figs for another like seven months. Well, you know what? I call my, uh, I can't take this. We're not going to fix anymore. Where's manager? It's like, you're the manager. It's like, well, you're not going to fix anymore for the rest of my life. Where's the farmer? Next time I want through here, I want figs. I want figs and I want them now. You know what? I don't even want figs anymore. I'm not even hungry anymore. So, uh, I did want to say this. Larry, you were touching on this and I thought those was a really good point. Um, at the end of the parable, at least from Matthew's version, um, Jesus makes a tree wither and all this friends are like, Whoa, how did he even do that? And then Jesus turns around and is like, Listen, if you just believe you can do anything. You can make, you can like walk on mountains. You can make things grow. You can do whatever you want as long as you pray for it. You can literally have anything you want. And so then back in my head, it's like, he's giving a lecture to his friends, despite the fact that he just threw a fit and his moral of the story is if you pray for it, you can get it, but you just did something where you could have prayed for a fig and you didn't get a fig. So why don't you just pray for a fig rather than destroy someone's property? Is he in fact hiding? Well, did he in my head? This is how the story probably went. Jesus tried to make a fig happen. It didn't happen because he didn't have enough faith for it to happen. And he's like covering it up by using a lower power magic skill, like a level one burning witherings plant withering spell. And at the end, he's just like, you know, I could have totally made that fig happen, but you know, that tree was a jerk. Anyway, if you pray for it, you can make it happen though. Like that's that's what it's all about. Yeah, there are several ways that go to happen. And the most common, the most likely is that this is a story made up by his disciples later, or is the preachers who are trying to show how super Jesus was going farther forward. But my friend, and Dale wrote a book and wrote a page in a blog. How Jesus did it? How Jesus did it, which explains how any magician back in those days could have done it. He could have come back later and saturated the leaves with a certain oil that would have caused them to wither and die overnight. And then the next day he just came out. So you might see my work, the type of thing. But just just all kinds of different ways that this could have happened. But the most likely one is it was just an embellishment on the Jesus story that was added later. Yeah, and my thing is a legend as it were, if we take this as a literal truth, and we take every sentence in all these different stories that don't even that don't even coalesce with each other. Like they have conflicts even within themselves. But if we take this narrative as a truth and say this happened, it makes no sense from a character perspective of like who Jesus is supposed to be purported as like as a forgiving embodiment of all knowing being to be surprised that figs don't have figs, fig trees don't have figs in the weather time, in certain weather time. But if it's a little truth, it makes no sense. Like this is very incompetent, short tempered God that's throwing a fit. You know, that's not cool. I'm not deserving of worship. But if it's a parable, why are we using this as a parable when I mean, if we can come up with a better better narrative to explain things. Sure. And what is actually the message trying to be explained here? Like, are you saying like people who don't immediately give you what you want aren't worth your time? Like is that the parable? Some people interpret that as like a message of Israel not being open to Jesus. And therefore, you know, like he's able to just wholesale wash them out because he can look for people who will listen to him. But that's not the case. What is what is the better moral and if you have more freedom to make up the dynamics of a story that can better engineer expressing a particular point of view, you don't have to wrap your whole religion around this weird victory story. It just seems like make up a make up a make up like a thing about a bear and trying to get some money or something like that. A lot of the the apologetic apologists out there would say that either Jesus is a liar or he's a lunatic or he's our Lord. And I throw one more L in there. He could be a legend. It's like King Arthur, you know, King Arthur, if he existed, would you really, if we found out that he existed, would you really think that the magic and Merlin and dragons and all that was real or was it just legend that grew up around this figure? Exactly. Yeah, same with Jesus. Exactly the same as Jesus right there. I also feel like how do I put this? We are really desperate to believe something that is true. Even when it's so remarkably improbable or absolutely not true. I can go to my lab right now and I can tell someone, Hey, I just developed plant withering powers, right? I prayed for them and it happened and they won't believe me. No one would believe no Christian will believe you that. Hey, I can make this plant whether just by thinking and praying about it. But if I said, Hey, there's a story about Jesus doing it. No, that totally happened. Like without without a second thought. Yeah. And there are people out there today. You if you go online and look up people that are currently raising people from the dead, religious leaders on different continents and different nations, you will find them. Yeah, there are many of them out there, but you don't believe those as a Christian. You wouldn't believe those are Muslim. But those particular religions like Hindu, I want to throw it to George because I feel like we're leaving him out. Well, go for it, George 20. First of all, I just looked up the woman in Central Park. Her name is Cooper. So she's not a Karen. She might still be one. I just want to tell you what happened was that go for it. She paid a price for what she did. She called the cops on this guy. And he brought suit against her. And he won. So good. Good. It was for her, you know, for wasting police time, essentially. Yeah. Yeah. So she she got what she deserved. Now I forgot what I was gonna say. George, I'll throw the story out at you. There are there are stories of like Jesus resurrecting the dead and we can talk about this too. But you know, if if the I find the fig tree story so hard to believe just on its face value that of course I wouldn't go on to believe the raising people from the dead story. But there's less contradictions in the guy who's in control of life and death and raising dead people story than there isn't just the borderline. Here's a fig tree that got destroyed. How do I put this? Even though it's a fig tree that's getting destroyed, you know, which is an easy thing to do. It's so out of character. It's so nonsensical. It makes no sense. The setup makes no sense whatsoever. That it's like, even if this is true, literally everything in this Bible makes no sense. If I have to Exactly. Exactly. I agree completely, you know, and the actually I was gonna I remembered what I was going to say. I wanted to ask a question based on something that Larry just kind of danced around. Go for it. The the disregarding of people of another religion. And you know, so so the question in my mind is, and this is almost a topic for a show is, does every religion regard all the other religions as cults? I want to say every single one of the individuals themselves, how they regard it. But I would think I've heard so many people say, we all we all worship God in our own way is how they dismiss the other religions. Yeah, but they won't finish that sentence and say, but they're all going to hell anyway. Yeah, because they don't worship in my way. Right, right, right. And it's always like, hey, my like, I don't know what this, the Third Street Baptist probably think the Second Street Baptists are going to hell in their own way, or the Protestant think the Catholics are the Hindus, or it's all I think I think there's extremes even within the same denomination. So the Unitarian Universalists think everybody's going to heaven. So there's different religions that believe different things. Yeah, I even say you use or universalists would somewhat also argue that there is no such thing as heaven or like there's no good reason to believe or souls for that matter. Hey, don't get Larry started on souls. This is a fig tree show you did. Hey, Larry, you did touch on something and I just want to touch back on this again. I can't believe the fig tree story. So of course, I'm not going to believe the raising from the dead story. But I do find the raising from the dead story a bit more palatable for a God story. Like that seems like something that God should be able to do bring people back from the dead. Absolutely. I mean, certainly, you would think So what's your problems with that story, Larry? He'd have power of life over death, you know, theoretically, if you create life from nothing, then he could create life from dead. What I want to know is what happened to all those dead people? Yeah, what happened to all the people they're never mentioned again, like Lazarus comes up, you know, he might have said something later in the Bible, but nobody ever asked him, where were you when you were dead? What was it like? Nobody goes into that at all. Not only that, but getting to the resurrection story about the time that Jesus supposedly came out of his tomb. Graves, according to Matthew, graves opened up and and the occupants came out of the graves and went into town and talked to many people. Yeah, nobody ever says what they said. Nobody ever puts down all we ask them about the afterlife. Nobody ever mentioned a parade of zombies coming through Nazareth, but I'm sorry for taking this this topic on the rails, but I'm thinking like this that thing that you're telling me we're like, people are saying dead bodies rose up is like the same tone as what I hear is when I hear people say, well, no one was counting the ballots in Michigan. How do you know it wasn't a conspiracy? Don't you know Hugo Chavez was XYZ? It's like these people are saying it's like people can say anything man. Those judges weren't weren't having faith that it was a fraud. It's the same thing. We haven't changed in 2000 years. We haven't changed. We're the same people. We're the staying. I was not raised religious at all. Right. So I have to acquiesce to you guys in a way about the indoctrination. And I'm I mean, I'm just stuck on one thing. Sure. And that is this. The whole concept of the devil and the whole concept of hell is what makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to me. And that is the proof that there is no God. End of story. I mean, it is since you're Jewish, since you're Jewish, really, the Old Testament came from the Jewish Torah. I understand that the afterlife was just where you went to sleep with your ancestors like right most of the the Eastern religions do. But it wasn't until in the words of Hitchens, it wasn't until the Jesus meek and mild brought hell to the earth until he taught us that that if you don't go through him to the kingdom of heaven that you will end up in hell. And then Dante, of course, fleshed it out for us. And you know, it's also you know, to continue what I was what I was getting at is that I mean, it's so basic. If God is God, if God is the ultimate of everything, why in hell would God tolerate hell at all? And why especially would God tolerate the devil? You know, especially if he's love, like everybody says, God is why would even create a hell? Or literally, I mean, it goes even, oh, man, we can talk about this. We have, we're going to have a break in the second half, but we do have a break. There's so many things I want to talk about. Larry, why don't you give us a quick break? We'll come right back. Okay. This has been the digital free thought radio our first half. Anyway, we're going to take a short break and we'll be right back. Hello and welcome back to the second half of the digital free thought radio hour. I'm doubter five and we're on w o z o radio one of the five nine LP FM right here in Knoxville Tennessee. Today is Sunday November 9. Sorry, 29 2020. Let's talk about atheism free thought groups that you can join here in Knoxville. First, there's the Atheist Society of Knoxville founded in 2002. We're in our 18th year. ASK has over 1000 members and you can find us online at Knoxville Atheist.org. Or you can go to meet up or Google and search for Knoxville Atheist. It's just that simple. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you should still go to meet up and search for a group in your town. Don't find one. Start one. That's right. Another large free thinking group here in Knoxville, the rationalists of East Tennessee, they can be found at rationalist.org. Be sure to go there and click on their upcoming events to find out what they're up to. Earlier in the show, we said we talked about the Knoxville Atheist call in TV show. Well, it's called Free Thinkers United Coalition of Knoxville. That's too long of a name. That's too long of a name. Come on. Atheist Society of Knoxville. It's beautiful. Just pick that stick with it, man. Yeah, but go to YouTube and search for Knoxville Free Thought. And I'm sure you'll find a bunch of their shows, like I say, they've been doing them for over 10 years. Also, if you're interested in getting involved with the TV or this radio show, just go to Facebook and look for the Atheist Society of Knoxville, rationalists of East Tennessee, or even Free Thinkers Coalition United of Knoxville. And just say you'd like to be on the show, either as a guest or co-host, then we'll see what we can do. What if they're not on Facebook? If they're not on Facebook, then they can go to our website, which is KnoxvilleAtheist.org and leave a comment or send us an email. By the way, anytime anybody wants to send us an email at the show, send it to askanatheistatnoxvilleatheist.org. Or just leave a comment. Fine. Where do we want to pick up there one bit? So it's Christmas season already, guys. Now that we just got over Thanksgiving, isn't that great? And you know, my favorite Christmas song is 12 Days of Christmas. The first song, the first day of Christmas goes like, I'm a first day of Christmas. My true love gave to me. Where is the love? Where is the love? The love. Because I didn't get anything on the first day of Christmas. You only get something on the last day of Christmas. I'm tired of living in this, you know, entitled country. All right. So Loma, we're listening to listener feedback from last week's show, which was can spiritual healing save us from COVID? And we talked about how there are so many. When I looked at spiritual healing centers just around me, I found like, around 15, maybe even like, like, around 10 to 15 different centers where I can go to, to not only get spiritually healed, but get a degree in spiritual healing. Thank you, National. Loma says, Hey, I found 15 results for spiritual healing on Google Maps in my city of just around 84,000 people. There are massage therapists. And one is a shop which sells native art from the region. My country is in Canada and others. And I was like, wow, that's a lot. Thank you for posting. I asked people to post how many were around their areas. If they Google map spiritual healing, Loma had 15. Ecocentric Homestead said, Hey, my father was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer at 52. He decided to trust God for healing instead of medical treatment. It grew slowly over the years. When it really started causing problems, he had an operation and chemotherapy but died with a very painful bone cancer at 64. And that is a sad story. That's only 12 years later. And we were talking about like how people will delay real treatment for like the spiritual treatment that is advertised as an effective way to get rid of real diseases. When in reality, there's no evidence to support that. And so we encourage people to, to rely on the scientific process. Because in my mind, science isn't like a conspiracy. It is knowledge. Science is knowledge. It is a system. Right. Yeah, it's verifiable and repeatable. And if it, if it's not been, it's not science and the only way to refute science is with more science. Yeah, because science is knowledge. It's not another thing. It's not another, it's not a, it's not a technique on a shelf. It is the shelf. It is the thing. It's what we know. It's the most reliable way to know things too. I think that Steve's jobs is the poster child for spiritual healing. That's unfortunate. Yeah, it is. They're about, they're 15 places around Knoxville. I just did a Google search on it. Hey, 15, 15, 15, there must be something to that. There must be some sort of weird mafia conspiracy going on. Hey, I want to tell you about conspiracies. We're talking about Bible stories that makes us irk a little bit when we think about them just a little bit longer. I wanted to get into the granddaddy of them all, I think, which is the Garden of Eden. We're talking about God claims he's good, claims he's loved, but then does some really bad things. And in my opinion, there's no worse thing you can do than basically create a paradise with a trap door in it. With people who you specifically did not give the wherewithal of knowing what's right and wrong to, and you told them, and you still told them, don't eat this thing that I left in hand reach on a plant that's edible, that will make you know what's right and wrong is. And I don't want you to do that. And I know you don't know. I know it's supposed to be everywhere. He's supposed to be everywhere at once. Yeah, here's everything. Here's the crazy thing. Like not only did they not eat the apple, but it took like, like Adam didn't eat the apple. Like who's like, Adam's like, Hey, listen, I know you don't know right or wrong, but don't eat that apple. Now I was like, I don't want to eat the apple. I'm totally good. It's like, dang, he's not eating the apple. Let me make a person that I'll tell him to eat the apple. It's like, that didn't work. Let me make a talking snake. To tell him to eat the apple. He finally ate the apple. Thank goodness. And then I went really out of my way to make this work. Yeah. Okay, you guys are all kicked out now. It's like, what? Well, you said there's nothing worse than that. But I don't know killing everybody on the earth. That's and all the plants and all the animals. That's kind of worse. It's it's it is morally reprehensible. But I just find the whole setup, the whole setup of why everything else happens in the Bible. Yeah, it's like, you you plan this all out from the get go. And even when Adam was like, Hey, I don't want to eat that apple. I'm totally good. It's like, I'm just going to name the animals. Like, what kind of a job is that to name the animals? Like, because we don't speak the language Adam spokes. Adam is literally sitting on the ground cross-legged looking at a line of ants going like Tim Bradley, Stacey, Sally, Jennifer, like he's doing that for eons. I don't know how long he was until this happened. But like, that's his job. What a meaningless purpose in life. Think about this, though. God, especially, I mean, initially expected Adam to find him a mate among the animals. He didn't. Oh, I'm going to have to create him a help meet so that he can have a mate. What's going on there? What's going on there? You didn't think this all out ahead of time. It's like, no, I'm freestyling, baby. It's kind of reminds me of like a freestyle rapper who like, isn't very good at rapping. There was like a guy who calls himself the hip hop eponymous. And it's like a famous line is like, I'm hip hop eponymous. My lyrics are bottomless. And then he's just quiet for the next four minutes. It's great. It's like, you ran out of all the good ideas at the get go. Like you made the earth great. You made some plants great. When you started making humans in this whole paradise thing, like everything falls right off the shelf. But you planned this stuff from the beginning. George, I'm sorry if we're going off on a tear. I was going to ask what's what's next on your list of questions. Next of our list of issues with the Bible. No comments from listeners. Oh, we we wrapped up. We wrapped up the comments. Thank you very much for leaving a comment on the on the on our YouTube channels. By the way, if you leave a comment, we'll be happy to go over them. And Lauma and Ecocentric home said, thank you for leaving those comments. But we are talking about, it's all about the figs today. And I think we hammered home that a lot of the stories when we think about them in the Bible don't make sense. Here's the take home, though. If they're literally true, that's unfortunate. But if they're just parables, they're trying to teach us a lesson about the nature of human nature, we can come up with better ones. And I think if you were to look at like any episode of the Twilight Zone, like or, you know, uh, Alfred Hitchcock or like some good movies that just speak about the human experience, you can get way more fulfilling spiritual development, if you want to call it spiritual development, but just watching good shows from people than from this ancient story that's been translated so many times that a lot of the components don't. Well, thinking about the moral stories that are from Shakespeare. Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of good moral teachings in Shakespeare, things that we can take away and live in our everyday life. Absolutely. People always say that the Bible is inspired because of all the great moral teachings in it, but you can find those anywhere. Right. In any book, in any, in many movies and TV shows and even radio shows. We have a radio show. Going back forever. It's not a special source. Matter of fact, I've written articles about how religion gloms onto things that it likes. Anything that's good and moral in the society will glom onto it. I call it hijacking. And that's us. We did that. I think that, you know, one thing that religion has to offer in this context is that it's, every church is a social club. Yeah. And every religion for that. But every parishioner goes on Sunday morning and joins a group of people within which he is accepted as a member. I think there's a great amount of power in this, you know, the psychological... Yeah, but it's hardly unconditional, as I would say it is. No, of course. But I mean, it is inclusive that it's accepted. Since when does somebody go to a church and get thrown out? Yeah. Before they know you. Yeah, until they realize you're an atheist trying to ask questions through their congregation. Though I would say this, I think you're touching on to something absolutely true because a lot of people will live their life, you know, if they're a single bachelor, for example, they will be like, hey, you know, I do what I have to do. I go to work and come back home. And maybe I have a smoke for friends, but I don't have like a social club where people feel like I feel like I understand them on a fundamental level if my religion is my fundamental, you know, purpose in life. And like when you go to church and you're brand new, people are hugging you. There's like physical contact. There's even like parts where you're singing and it's like, I want everyone to get up and shake hands with somebody that they haven't talked to before and go around and just do that. That interaction is very, very... It touches something very deep in like a person's mindset who doesn't have a lot of physical contact with people. And when you... There's also... Go for it. There is also the power of the repetition of the experience. It will happen every Sunday, you know. I can look forward to this. If I leave a lonely life and I hunger for contact with other people, it will happen. As people do, as humans will. You know, we have a desire to congregate. But you have to remember you don't need religion for that. You can find multiple outlets for that. You can join a theater group. You can join a community center, a charity. Get in a meetup group. There's a whole thing called meetup.com. Yeah, meetup.com will help you. When I moved to Knoxville for the first time, the first thing I did was go on meetup and I tried out volleyball. I tried out poetry clubs. Just groups all over the place. Knoxville is a pretty great city. And then I was like, you know what? I'm an atheist, but I don't think there's an atheist meetup group. There's no way that's going to be a thing. Type in atheist meetup. Boom! Found Larry. And I'm like, oh, are you guys still open? Send an email and they're like, yeah, you want to come on by? I was like, this is perfect. This is great. Or COVID, we're met every week. Yeah, it's not hard to find a group anymore. We don't live in that society. I think the only difference now is like, if you're way out on the wilderness, you know, like, you can still find like an internet group. You can still find a social club that's willing to talk to you over the video conference once a week or whatever you want to do. It's never been more easy than now to find people who want to hang out with you. And so you just have to make the effort to do it or start a club yourself. It's totally possible. And yeah, you're right. Monopolies on social interaction have been, to an extent, hijacked by religion. They don't deserve to have that that character. They don't deserve to have that. And so we should work really hard to, if you're an atheist and you're now atheist, be open to other atheists that are around you because it's a hard community to be a part of by yourself. And religion's waiting to get people like that on their side. They're just willing to sell them like, Hey, let me tell you the story about fakes. No, you're interpreting it all wrong. This is the meaning of it. Now hang out with me and give me 10% of your paycheck. It's going to be great. It's going to be awesome. I would say the you touched on Noah's Ark. When I was in Lexington, there is actually a museum built for the Ark. It's like supposedly a one to one model. And I had gone up there before with Boudreaux and we've done interviews because every year there's a protest because the Ark always finishes in the red because no one ever wants to go to it. But they're subsidized by the state. The state gives them tax money to stay in the block, which is unconstitutional. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. So there's a protest going on every year and we went there one of these years and in my head, it's like we are celebrating basically the genocide of an entire planet for the most part, like except for a whole family. Like it's in the same sense of how people wear a cross as like, Hey, this is the symbol of my love for my for my God. It's like that thing is the thing that killed the thing that you love so much, right? The Ark is a representation of like this is this is how God, you know, cleanse humanity. It's like this is a story about how God killed literally everyone except for one family and women, children, plants, animals, everything, everything except for one boat full of stuff. If that story was true, it's it's a nutty thing to celebrate. That should just be like the most terrifying symbol. And it's a child story. I mean, you find it in every single biblical children's book and just doesn't bring the message home that what a horrible thing it was. Yeah. It's just a really bizarre thing how we're able to. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Like we're able to what is blinders blinders blinker it or just focus on the thing that we want to care about and not think about the context of the situation. It's like Jesus has magical powers. You can burn trees. It's like, yeah, but why did he burn an innocent person's tree? Why that tree was alive? And it's not even the season for making figs. Didn't you know that? Like people are telling them that like Matthew is like and he went up to the victory, but it's not even the season for figs. Something's weird or like with Adam and Eve. It's like, hey, I didn't tell these people right or wrong. And then I told them it would be wrong if they ate this apple that'll teach them right and wrong. It's like, oh, that's all on its head. You should fix that. You're in like four layers of a logical problem. But there's every story has another thing about the flood is that it's not like he was the only person on the world who had a boat. I mean, boats were embedded before that. And there were whole societies and nations that had navies and with huge boats. But according to the Bible, you know, he was the only guy with a big boat and only because God told him to make it. So George, are you really familiar with the Torah? Are you aware that if the Torah has a flood story in it as well? And like any of the specifics about it? I was raised an atheist from the get go. OK. And whenever I try to read the Bible, frankly, I fall asleep. And I'm blaming you. I just can't stay awake for the damn thing. I just it's a problem. I did. I did say I would I think we all go through this. And in fact, this is like the path that it took me to my atheism myself is like you'll say you'll sit down and you'll read the Bible from cover to cover, right? And I've done it twice. But the first time it was when I was just absorbing it all because I was trying to remember everything and Bible study just accept everything. And the second time was after college where I'm like, let me really sit down and try to figure out what what the hell I'm taking for granted here. And story after story after story from like the two different versions of Genesis that aren't compatible to numbers, which is like this only adds up to about 6000 years. We need more people. If this is literally starting from the beginning of time to like now, we need more people in between here. We're missing some steps here. Like, well, no, they all live for like 5000 years. I was like, that makes no sense. Either something else is weird. You know, there've been certain times in my life when I have said to myself, I'm living in this huge cult. And I should know what these people believe. So I better read the Bible. Sure. It doesn't work. I mean, I fall asleep every time. Yeah, it's not an exciting book. And I think it might be engineered. It might have been originally engineered to not be easily read because it wasn't designed to be read from cover to cover. Like you can tell that from the way how the book is situated. Like it was made before books were even an evented thing. It was designed to be a thing that someone tells people to read. And if they have a problem, they know the verse to go to specifically to be like, Oh, no, here's your here's your little piece of the Rorschach test that I have here. Here's a little butterfly. You said there's no butterflies. Here's a butterfly. And then someone says, I thought it was a tiger's. And you go to that person. You flip four pages and you're like, no, there's a tiger here too. It's totally fine. These that's what it is. And you if you do that enough and there's a big enough organization, you can have like a couple of guys at the top who are like, we know what's up. We just need the money from the people to funnel up to us. That's basically it. And then what's funny is that you're supposed to be able to pray for anything if you have a little bit of faith and it come true. But none of the preachers seem to know that they can pray for money. Yeah. Well, I have a have a friend had a friend who was watching TV in California one day, one night, rather he was watching a Bible Thumper on cable TV. The Bible Thumper was in a city called Concord, which has a fairly religious sort of place. And the guy was hustling for money. And so my friend called him up and he said, tell me, do I have to pay God to be God? What? And the guy shot him off. That's funny. I'm also thinking like, so there's so many parallels between religion from the old time and then just how easy we're able to fall into dogma in the modern times. And I think the dogma that we're that's being pronounced right now is like, hey, this election that we just had was a farce. It was a fraud. And I'm not conceding, no matter what. And we're going to keep fighting. There's emails that Trump has been sending out to his supporters, despite being in a lame duck session, where he's like saying, this is our last opportunity to fight for America. Please send money now, so that we can take back this election and our rights and our freedom. And he's sending it out to people, despite the fact that I think he is very much aware that this is over, but he doesn't want to be in any position of debt or losing opportunity to make money. He's using it like he's used everything in his entire life to make money, whatever pretext that he can push out there and support, get support for, he will. Right. And the thing is, his followers are sincere. The followers, despite the fact that they're they're a bunch of knuckleheads. They are polite. They are so sincere about thinking that this is the guy who's here to save our interests, right? This is the guy who's going to, you know, help my family and be out there for me. And it's the same sense of like, hey, God's on my side. My man, my minister is asking me for money. I'll give my minister money because somehow that helps God somehow or the community that I'm in. I'm ambiguous about that, but I know I need to give this guy money. Trump, I need your $200 because I'll pay my lawyers to help to bring this case to the Supreme Court. It's like, is it only $200 to do that? It's like, whatever. I'll just give money to Trump. Yeah, but evangelicals are raised from earliest childhood to obey for obedience to an authoritarian figure. Yeah. Especially ones that are approved by the church. Right. As sanctioned by the church. In church. Churches all over the country have been approving what he's doing or what Trump is doing. And it's weird. They're just following. They're following in line. No, you're right. Because if you don't have, how do I put it, independent thinking is not something that you're born with. You have to train it. Like critical thought is something you have to work on to get good at and you have to keep working on it. And if you never have the opportunity to think for yourself or to assess things critically on your own, you'll never just wake up randomly as a great critical thinker. You might be calling yourself a critical thinker. You might even believe it when someone calls you a critical thinker who's just using you for money. But it's something you have to keep working at. And it doesn't feel comfortable when you're doing it and you run to a lot of unknowns. But it's a rewarding experience because you know what's true, things and false. And that's one of the reasons why faith so often dies in higher education in college. That's where I learned better than just to have faith things I needed to learn to figure them out, study them, research them. And they also taught me how to research things in college. And it also, it didn't take me until grad school to like lose my faith. I don't believe so. Well, to call myself an atheist, yeah, that took grad school. But for me to not believe in the Bible anymore, that was first year of just undergrad. That was just, hey. First year, first quarter for me. That's a different, yeah, yeah, yeah. Literally like first year, like first ethics class. And I'm like, I know what morality is. It's like, no, you don't. It's like, oh, geez, this book isn't useful. Well, let me get this ethics book and said, this is much better. Oh my gosh. I can't go back to this. I can't read this. I don't know what I am anymore. Don't call me the A word. And now I'm like, just call me the A word. This is the easiest thing in the world. It's not a dirty word. It's not a dirty word. Hey, listen, we're five minutes before we got to close. My I'm Let's Chat. You can find me at this YouTube station if you're watching it. If not, I'm on Let's Chat on YouTube. And I post these podcasts as well as videos called Socratic Examination where I talk to people about how they come to believe things and whether or not that method that they're using is reliable or not. I found it's a really good way to talk to people about how to have an argument or debate over sensitive subjects. And if you want to check that out, go for it. Feel free to check it out on my channel. I have a bunch of videos. George, what's one thing you'd recommend we check out this for next week? If you can think of anything. I'm putting it on the spot. You got a favorite song? You got something? No, but I just want to say let's all be open to new information coming in. So I just want to share that here in rural Tennessee, I had gefilte fish for Thanksgiving. Don't want to hear anymore. Don't give me the wilderness where you are. Yeah, in the wilderness where I am, there are two supermarkets that sell Jewish foods. And I don't know who's eating them. I'm afraid to look up gefilte fish, but I recommend people watch it. Maybe you stake out. I'm sorry, you do look it up, but maybe you stake out the store and watch the people coming in and going out and introduce yourself. No, I'll say because I just have to share this with you. I'm building a new. No, it's gross. It looks as gross as I thought it was going to be. It's nasty. That lists all the churches in my county and the adjacent county. And there is 167 Baptist churches that I have counted. Just the official Baptist churches. And then there's hundreds of other churches. Well, the only synagogue because I wanted to know who is eating all this Jewish food at the supermarkets. I found three Jewish entries among the churches, but guess what? They're all fake Jewish synagogues. They're not real. They're Jews for Jesus. They're evangelicals. And so I still don't know. It exists. They're there. It's rough. It's a rough. It's a rough life, man, because it is rough. It's hard to find places that you can village in the right way. That suits your interests. I don't know. Sorry for that. Hey, Larry, why don't you take a step? We're getting close to the end of the show. What's going on? If you have any questions for this show, you can send them to ask an atheist at knopswellatheist.org and we'll answer them on the show. If you have any trouble with screw velocity that is leaving religion behind, I recommend going to recoveringfromreligion.org and find some help there. If you're watching this on YouTube, be sure to like and subscribe or even as a podcast. It's available on podcasts at iHeart and podcast.com and all different kinds of podcasts out there. Be sure to like and subscribe. Also, be sure to visit digitalfreethought.com for our radio show archives, atheist songs, articles on the subject of atheism. Also, our Facebook page, we have a digital free thought radio. Facebook page, you can leave comments there as well. My book is called Atheism. What's it all about? What's it all about? And it's available on Amazon. This has been the digital free thought radio hour. Remember, everybody is going to somebody else's hell. The time to worry about it is when they prove that heavens and hells and souls are real. Until then, don't sweat it. Enjoy your life and we'll see you next week. Say bye everybody. Bye everybody. Bye bye. Beltfish is gross.