 103.9 FM, WZO Radio, Knoxville. Ladies and gentlemen, Digital Freethought Radio Hour. Hello and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio Hour on WZO Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today is Sunday morning, June 27th, 2021. I'm Larry Rhodes, or Douter 5. And as usual, we have our co-host, Wombat on the line with us. Hello, Wombat. Now, the trick to a long drive is the hips. You got to throw with the hips. That's the secret behind it. Nobody tells you that. Welcome to the Disc Golf Channel, guys. Yeah, welcome to the Disc Golf Channel, guys. I'll give you all the tips. Stay tuned. And our other guests are Scott Williamson from Exploring Something. I can't see the rest of it. Exploring epistemology. Exploring epistemology. There it is. I'd shrunk my window down and cut it off. And Dreadpire Higgs. Oh, hoi. And George Brown, two and a half. Hey, George. Oh, hello. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism, men, the sciences. And conversely, we also talk about religion and religious faith. God's holy books and superstition. Nice. What's our topic for today? God speaks to me. And we're going to be talking about that the entire show. Say what? God speaks to me. Direct people who are convinced they have a direct line of communication with God in a mental voice inside their heads. And we had a really interesting conversation about that. I want to delve into that a little bit and maybe talk about other examples we may have heard from other people who've made it, told us the same thing. But before we get into all of those meat and potatoes, I'm going to fill it up to our own Dreadpire Higgs with our weekly invocation. Oh, it's changing his hats. Okay, there we go. Our noodley lord, who art in a colander. Al dente be thy noodles. Thy blood be run, thy sauce be yum. With meat, as it is with vegetables. Give us this day our garlic bread, and forgive us our cussing, as we product with those who cuss against us. And lead us not into ketoism, but deliver us some carbs. For thine are the noodles, and the sauces, and the grog. Whenever and ever, raw man. Dread, you do weddings, right? You do weddings, right? Hold up. Dread, you do weddings, right? Yes. If I ever get married, I'm going to have to fly you down to a nice place in America so you can do our proceeding, right? But that's too good. Catching up on everybody, we're going to do it quick. You won't even manage it and how fast it is. This is going to be so quick, and then we'll get right on the topic. You won't believe how quick this thing will be. How's everybody doing? We'll start off with our own Scott Williamson. You're putting out new music. I can't believe how much I've been learning about since in the last couple of days. I'm learning about phase controls and stuff like that, the idea of sound. I'm overwhelmed. There's just too many good options right now. And maybe I can ask this. How did you get into music? How did you get into your music? Maybe that's probably a good way for you. Oh, wow. So my family was always in the music. My brother was a lead singer for a really popular group in the 70s and 80s called Atlanta Rhythm Section. Nice. He was the lead singer for their tours through the 80s and 90s. And then, of course, my sister sang too. She sings blues and she's actually going on a tour starting October. Wow. Albin's and stuff. It's in the whole family. Yeah, they tour all around the world. They live the life. I'm not so lucky. But that's how I got into music. But my interests went another way because I grew up, you know, unlike my brother, I grew up in the 80s. When I started getting interested in music, so the really thing that hit me was the whole rap movement. Sure. Hip hop and electronic music and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. So that's where I came. Really interested in it. Became a DJ from that. You know, a DJ in clubs all over the place and then wanted to produce my own records, my own electronic records and hip hop records and what have you. And moved to Europe and did just that over there and then came back over here and do it here. So that's how you just said you never had the opportunity to go everywhere. And now you're just like, yeah, then I went everywhere. There wasn't really touring there. Actually living a few years as a lowly little peasant in Germany. Hey, that's awesome. That's the place to be. I can tell you my favorite thing about the quality of learning about synth music now is that I'm listening to music differently. And it's not just, oh, that probably came from a keyboard. It's more of like, oh, that sounds like a sine wave, but it's fatter, right? Choppy start. That's almost a percussive little start. And then it fades out to the end. Yeah. That's how we listen to it. Yeah. Like how could I relate to that? Yeah. Like how can I make that if I had the opportunity to make that? Like I'm hearing it differently now. It's great. All right. George Brown. I'm so happy to see you. How you been? You're on the top of the electrical, electronic spectrum. Like you're standing on like the masterclass of Silicon Valley right now. How are you coming in? Well, I'm living on the edge here, running Linux as my operating system on my computers. Nice. And that is living on the edge for me. That is on the edge. Linux not being corporate is a tower of Babel. And I won't get into a lot of detail about this, but it's, it's really a like learning Linux for me is like holding onto my chair and, you know, holding onto a bucking horse. So anyway, it's an adventure. Yeah. I just want to say, you know, in response to what, what Scott just said, you asked me how we got into music and I just want to restate what I said last week in a different way that my mother, when I was six years old, my mother gave me a choice. You can have music or you can have religion. Right. You know, and I said, what kind of choice is that? Fantastic. I studied music for the next 22 years. Yeah. Hey, that was the outcome of that. Speaking of, yeah. I see that Casio keyboard behind you. Have you started having more cracks at it? No, no, I haven't. That was the first instrument I played was piano and I played it for a year. And then I switched to woodwinds. Now I'm finding that I, I'm being drawn back to the keyboard as a desire. And I, so I have to go back to the very beginning, you know, take, take baby steps. Sure. I've always wanted a keyboard. Yeah. I've always wanted the keyboard. You know, this one just about dropped into my lap. It's an old one. I just want it to sound like a piano. Yeah. I mean, it does old stuff, but I just want to play piano. I started with keyboard myself and then I fell in love with guitar. And now I just, I have live in a room swamped with guitars. And it's so easy for me to make music on it. But going back to piano is, I think about when I play guitar, I still think about it with a piano mentality, like in terms of how all the notes are. Yes. And the chord structure. Yeah. Yeah. This makes a lot of sense to me, Tyrone. And one of the things that I studied in college was music psychology. And that was a mind blowing experience for me, you know, because I really feel that in conservatories, we should be teaching music psychology as the first option and then music theory after that. Interesting. We're going to have to talk about that more. I'd love to know more about it. Yeah. It's, you know, it's, it's like, it just keeps coming back to me over and over and over again. Speaking of things keep coming back to you over and over again. What about the tide of the high seas? Dred Pirate, can you tell us about that? I can. What's coming on the high seas with you, matey? Well, just recently, Australia, our sister church there. And she was the captain and she had just gone before the South Australian Commission. Just let me bring it up here. The South, South Australian civil and administrative tribunal. You can read this little news item here. Which is acronym is SACAT. It's number 2019 slash SA001521 filed by Australian citizen Tanya Watkins. And this is something we're going to be, we have a template letter now that churches around the world will be submitting to their respective Australian ambassadors or Australian consulates in support of their case. As a result of the case, SACAT decided to deny Tanya Watkins the administration of a non-profit, pastafarian religious organization on the grounds that pastafarianism is allegedly a parody religion. This decision as well as the basis for its adoption caused some bewilderment in me as a believing pastafarian. Pastafarianism is a true religion recognized in many countries and having followers all over the world. How can a religion that is real in one country be a parody in another? How in principle can a religion be recognized as a parody? Faith in the Creator is a purely personal matter and a person from the outside cannot assess the reality of personal religious beliefs. This is precisely what is laid down in the principle of freedom of religion without which a free democratic society is inconceivable. I ask you to assist in the reconsideration of the Tanya Watkins case and in the adoption of a decision on the registration of a non-profit pastafarian religious organization in Australia. With all my heart, we wish you and all the Australian people happiness, peace, prosperity, and delicious and nutritious food. Rahman. Rahman. Rahman. Rahman. Rahman. Rahman. Rahman. Rahman. Rahman. Rahman. Rahman. Rahman. Rahman. Rahman. Rahman. Rahman. Rahman. Rahman. Rahman. Rahman. Rahman. Rahman. Rahman. Rahman. Rahman. Rahman. Rahman. Rahman. Rahman. Rahman. Rahman. Rahman. Rahman. Rahman. Rahman. Rahman. Rahman. Rahman. Rahman. Rahman. Rahman. That brings back bad memories. Yeah. You guys aren't wearing those things. You're with me guys. Why not just like a little macaroni around the neck? Now I feel like that's pretty good. That's pretty good. Anyway, best of luck. You're finding a good fight, Joe, uh, Dread Pirate. I want to keep it up. Dread Pirate, can you, could you elaborate on that a little bit? Give us some an overview of the case that's going on in Australia? Well, in Australia, it works a little differently than it does here in Canada. It's upside down. They don't apologize. And the water goes the other way. So here in BC, our church is a registered society under the Society's Act in British Columbia. And as long as you meet the criteria, it doesn't matter what you do. As long as it's not about hate mongering or molesting children or whatever, you're good to go. In Australia, it's a different, clearly a different thing. And so in South Australia, it actually, you have to go before like a commission who then looks over your application and then decides whether it merits recognition as a non-profit organization. Religious or not. And so this is the decision that came down, which we need to support her in. Yeah, absolutely. And it's interesting because, you know, so a couple of the members of the IPCC who were on with me yesterday, the head of the Taiwanese church, so they're recognized in Taiwan. Taiwan, you are so with it. They are. They just legalized game errors like earlier this year too. You guys got something good going on there. And Russia. And Russia. Russia's got a registered church. Could not have, you know, there you go. And of course, in Canada, we don't. So while we all shake our fist at Putin for messing with democracy. Who is still bad? Who is still bad? Yeah. Who is still bad? But even bad people can do good things, right? Yeah. Exactly. We're going to broken watches right twice a day. That's right. Exactly. Where can we find out more about this Dread Pirate? Is there a link or a search that we can look up? Yeah, you could probably just go to www.benganza.org. You're going to have to give us the Google search. No one's going to type that in. I can't. I've already www.no one ever does that. No one does that. Well, hey, just type in, type in flying spaghetti monster and you'll get all the links. Perfect. Fantastic. Okay. All right. Doubter five. Listen, I've been playing disc golf. I've been working on my swings. I just did my first 300 foot throw yesterday. Wow. And I feel really good. I can even do that. Oh man, imagine throwing a rock 300 feet. That's crazy. But do it with the disc. It takes a while. Most people can do like pros can do like 600. But like to be able to make it that milestone, I'm happy. And I've only been doing it. I don't like to brag, but talk to me and golf. He can hit a ball 300 yards. Good point. Good point. Where's that? You do have to get your hips into it. Oh yeah. You do have to get your hips. Hips are the key. How have you been, my friend? This week, I've been kind of sick. I'm still a little under the weather. I think it's summer cold. I don't have any temperature or anything, but it even might tell it in my voice. It's a little low, even for me. But I'm getting along. I hope it just lasts the regular time and goes away. So we'll see. Yeah. Isn't it better that it's not COVID though? Oh, I hope it's not variant or anything like that. No, no, no, no, no. But like you already got vaccinated. You're good. I'm glad. You can still get the variant if you vaccinated. I mean, we can talk about that later, but like I felt a little sick today and it was just good to feel ill without the concern of, oh my gosh, is this it? Is this it? Is this what's happening right now? Do I have to start calling work and vaccinate for the next two weeks? Dred, what's up? I just wanted to make a point there about the variant. One thing that some people don't understand is that, say you have a donor or Pfizer and you're 95% resistant or immune, whatever, or vaccinated, you know, it's still, previously, you were only 1% likely to get it. So now it's 5% of the 1%. So it's not like you're 5% likely to get the variant. It's your 5% of 1%. Oh, well, that's cool. Yeah. So it's very slim. Very, very helpful, very, very helpful to still get vaccinated. All right, guys, you know what else is really helpful is talking to God through my brain or the direct connection to the supreme, all-powerful being. Guys, you wouldn't believe. I actually went over and played some disc golf with my friend. We did nine holes together. I had two over par at the end of nine holes. As a beginner, that's pretty good. That means you did the whole course and you only have to throw two extra putts. That's pretty, pretty good. He got plus eight. I'm just, I'm looking at the elbow a little bit. He got plus eight. But I got a pretty good score. We go out to McAllister's, which is a deli, and we have a conversation and we're just talking and I'm trying not to make the conversation about something religious. So I'm talking about literally anything else. Yet this guy keeps going to philosophy and then religion and then the one true base of all truths to base all of morality on. I'm like, I'm going to have to tackle this. It's going to have to be a thing. So I pull up my phone and ask, may I record this conversation? And he's like, yeah, sure. Of course, I'd love to talk about this. And I'm like, great. And so I put on my Socratic Examination hat and we're going to start to talk about how he knows for sure that the base of all morality is given to us by God. And his answer was very straightforward. My God talks to me, he says, like, my God speaks to me. And that's how I know what's true and what's not true and what's moral and what's not moral. It's like, I had that direct connection with God. And I was like, this is fascinating because, you know, I can't tell you how many churches we drove past just to get from this golf park up to the deli. And how amazing would it be if we could figure out a way to be like, actually, it's this one God, he's talking to this person, watch, we'll roll four dice and the God will tell him what the dice is will be before we even roll it and boom, boom, boom, perfect. And we can test this as many times as you want. And yet God can tell him what his name is, and we can put him on a lie detector MRI. We can make sure that this is the guy and this is the God and we can save ourselves so much frustration and confusion among all these different denominations. We can finally get post-afference and wear their hats if the God wants it or whatever. But we'll know which book is the right book, which God is the right God. And everybody will be so happy and think of all the wars that will stop as a result of this. This guy, this guy sitting me in front of the deli is the key to answering all of humanity's problems, at least on a religious front, right now, right here. And I'm like, I know you're a great guy. This is awesome. How, how would you like to just test this out for like 15 minutes? We can just do it right now. Maybe this, because I'm a scientist, you're a scientist. Let's do it. His response, well, I don't want to test it. Who am I to test the voice to ask it to do something for me? And I'm like, why would you not want to test it? What is the harm that can come from testing something that's true? Because at the end of the day, you just have more veracity that it is in fact true. Only lies, in my opinion, are afraid of being tested. The truth wants to be verified. The truth is there to be tested and rigorously so. Lies don't want to be tested. Lies have, well, not today. I'll call you back. My Canadian girlfriend is on the phone with me and I'll come back. Dredpar, you may not know this, but there's a stereotype in America where you say Canadian girlfriend as like, yeah, that's not a real girlfriend. Nice. Anyway, yeah, I have a girlfriend, but she lives in Canada. It's like, yeah, you don't have a girlfriend. It's okay. Doubter five, I'd love for you to weigh in on this. The idea of God speaks to you. Why wouldn't someone want to test that if they have a direct voice in their head? Well, it's built into the religion. Having been a Christian growing up that you can't test God. You don't test God. And now that we're atheists, we understand why they say that, because there's no test that will prove that God exists. So don't test it. What gets me, I'd like to make two points, is how do they know that the voice that they hear in their head is God? They believe in a worldview that has several entities that could also put a voice in their head. Angels, a soul, somebody else's soul, Satan, it could be any of those. You know, how does he identify the voice of God? Two, can you imagine how dangerous it is for you to believe that anything that happens to pop into your head is the voice of God? I mean, you cannot disobey. I'm a threat of hell. So you have to do anything that pops into your head. It's just a very dangerous situation. Rob a bank, right. Kill your son. So yeah, there are some horror stories that are true of like, you know, moms actually doing that to the kids. They had a psychosis where they believed. But even Abraham. And yeah, and I wouldn't say he's the poster child of good mental health either or good parenting. But as far as God goes, if we're comparing Abraham to God, Abraham not as bad of a dad. Scott, I'd love to get your feedback. The idea of God speaks to me. Have you ever spoken to anybody like that? And as a Jehovah Witness, did you ever have a similar experience? Well, Jehovah's Witnesses don't believe that there's those kind of experiences are possible that those are from the devil. Because the Bible is the special revelation from Jehovah. And that was enough. So for them, their belief system is, you know, these people that tell you they speak to God, they're just of the devil. Ignore them. But as for say, like evangelicals and a lot of people like that that say they speak to God is quite common. But it's always weird to me. Why does God, when you hear about people talking about God spoke to me, he's always telling them to go kill somebody or do something bad. Why doesn't he ever tell them to go pay your taxes or go stop telling people that evolution is a religion. Go outside and pick up some trash, you know, right? Something nice. Something nice. Go buy it. Go buy your mom some flowers. It doesn't have to be a word. Oh, thanks, God. Or, you know, in a weird way, I know this sounds really silly, but we tend to associate hunches or gut feelings and put voices on them ourselves. It's just as easy for us to misconstrue that we're talking to ourselves. Then it would be before I imagine for like the devil to actually be talking to you rather than God. And I feel like even when I'm sitting down in a room, I hear my voices talking to myself. I hear my left brain talking to my right brain. And it's like, I want to, I want to, I literally, for right now, I literally want to get my tax, not my tax, my passport form renewed so I can renew my passport. And my other brain is like, I want to draw. Can we draw instead? It's like, oh, well, we got to do the passport stuff. No, I want to make music right now. It's like, oh, jeez. I'll do 15 minutes of each, guys. Everyone calm down. Dredd, have you ever had, I'm going to ask this, have you ever had an internal dialogue in your head that kind of surprised you? And does it seem likely that someone can have an experience like that and associate it if they come from a climate where there is a God belief associate that with a God speaking to him? Well, I can't say that I've ever had an internal dialogue that surprised me because certainly all the information I have access to, I know about interest, not like, you know, it's not like there's some hidden compartment that, you know, I stumbled upon and opened up and went, oh, jeez. I have that knowledge. I know how to speak Latin. Wow. Great. You know, but no, I, I mean, when we talk about good people hearing voices, I mean, you know, schizophrenia, of course, is characterized by the hearing of voices or that sort of dissociative conversation that happens with what they don't recognize is themselves. Right. It's the sort of the externalization of that internal dialogue. So, you know, it's, I mean, the DSM has a pretty good definition of what that's all about. So, yeah, I don't, I would not trust anyone to be confident in any way that conversation they're having with God is something that could even be real. All the voices are in our own heads. I'm going to throw this question out to George Brown. You're the untainted atheist. In my head, everyone's born an atheist and you eventually are convinced that it gots true if you, depending on who your parents are or what place in the world you're living in, you never had that choice. You have that, you have the choice actually, but you chose music. You had, you were right. You went down the music trail and I'm wondering, you know, sometimes you might be listening in a Bach and you might have like what some people would refer to as a spiritual experience where you just feel so overwhelmed. And if there was a, you know, if there was a voice behind that, that was like, George, I'm God. Keep doing what you're doing, bro. You're all right. Like if you heard something like that, right? How would you feel and how would you even know like who it was? Would you feel like you have an awareness to know what, if God wanted to do talk to you with through a voice, would you be able to actually recognize it as an authority? How can I answer you? How can I answer you concisely? I will try. How are we on time, Larry? How are we on time? Just want to make sure. Yeah. I wish that I had a God that said that to me. That would be very nice, you know. It would be comforting to have God tell me this, but God has not deigned to condescend to speak to me in this way. Now, I have known a woman who was schizophrenic and I admire her, frankly, because of her challenges that she has had to deal with to live in reality, having these voices come at her constantly. And so she has raised a child and, you know, done her best to be a good parent to this child, having these voices coming at her all the time. And so what she has chosen to do, now she's an old woman now, is to take medicine, you know, to take these different medicines that stop the voices in her head. But these medicines have a horrible physical consequence that she has to then live with, and she does. So, yeah, she put up with that. So she would take pills and make her sick just so it doesn't have to do with the sickness she currently has. Yes, yes. You know, and she's told me the side effects. They're so horrible. You know, I just, I have to extend my deepest sympathy and respect to her. So, but on the other hand, I was just looking up, trying to find this fellow named Baruch Goldstein, who God told him to slaughter a whole bunch of people in Israel a few years ago. So he did. Oh, my God. He followed him. He did what God told him to do. And of course, how that holds up in court. Yeah. Well, there was no, there was no court. There was no court, because the other parishioners beat the bloody hell out of him right after that, and they killed him so far. Guys, on that note, how about this? A little touch of justice. We'll take a break. We'll come right back and we'll go to Scott with some feedback. Okay. This is the digital Freethought Radio Hour on 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. Welcome back to the second half of the digital Freethought Radio Hour. I'm doubter five and we're on WOZO Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today is Sunday, June 27, 2021. Now let's talk about the atheist society of Knoxville or ASK. Founded in 2002, we're in our 19th year. ASK has over a thousand members. And we have weekly Zoom meetings during COVID, but we are also, again, starting to meet in person. And that would be a Barley's Tavern in Pizzeria in Knoxville's Old City out on the patio. Come down there Tuesday evenings, after work, say 5.30 until about eight. You can find us also online on Facebook, meetup.com or KnoxvilleAtheist.org or just Google KnoxvilleAtheist. It's just that simple. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you should still go to meet up and look for a atheist group in your town. Don't find one. Start one. That's right. Well, I'm back where we want to pick up. So we were talking about the proper way to drive a disc golf. So you really do want to make sure you get your hips engaged, that you plant your foot down, and you transfer that momentum down the length of your chest, like this. I'm doing this movement. And Scott's going to give us all the feedback on it. Scott, what do you mean? Make sure your feet are on the ground. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. No standing while you drive a disc golf. Scott, well, what we were talking about was a nature of different God beliefs and essentially like speaking, having a God speak to you. And we were talking about like, is this a kind of psychosis, perhaps? And George opened up with a story about a friend of his who was dealing with schizophrenia and taking medicines to deal with it. I saw you wanted to have a comment on it. What's up? Yeah, that's right. I think it's very important when we talk to people that say they've had these religious experience or mystical experiences or speaking to God kind of scenarios to understand that the brain is a very powerful and mysterious thing. And so you have to give them a little slack that this is compelling to them. They can really feel that this experience is real and they can very easily misattribute it. An example that I wanted to give you just to kind of illustrate just how weird and powerful the brain can be. This is like a real life scenario back in 2015. There was a German lady. She's a 37 year old German woman who suffered a traumatic accident as a young woman. And the doctors diagnosed her with cortical blindness caused by damage to the visual processing centers in her brain said she would never be able to see again. She was totally in the dark. She needed a seeing eye dog to guide her. And she grew accustomed to that dark life for years, like decades, right? But then she started to come down with a mental disorder called Disassociative Identity Disorder. And this thing caused her, one of her, they call altars or personalities, was able to see. Get out of town. Was able to, yeah, was a didn't need to seeing eye dog, was able to describe everything perfectly, put her in an MRI. They said that her brain lit up, that she was actually seeing things and and it restored and the doctors were just amazed, didn't understand how this could even be possible. And of course, that this is a really well known case at this point in that area. But that just kind of lets you know just how powerful the mind can be and how compelling it can be. A person like that, imagine what if a person like that attributed it to God, how convinced they would be? Absolutely. Because I mean, what other explanation is going to provide evidence for not being a God? You said the damage was to the brain, but not to the the optics. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, just to her cortical brain damage. I think the brain has the capability of regrowing certain areas, you know, repeating certain areas in other areas, you know, if they get damaged, and that may very well have been what happened in that, you know, it created another site center, as it were. Yeah. And then the funny thing is, when she goes back to any of her other altars or personalities, she's blind again. Only on that one altar. Get out of town. How bizarre is that? Wow. So strange. George, I'd love to hear what you got to say on this. I forgot what I was going to say. Hey, I'll tell you this. I know people who've had lobotomies, and we know that memory components and motor functions that are related to the brain in certain areas. And if you cut them out, oh my gosh, there's a recovery period. And yet, a lot of people, even people who have complete half of their brains taken out, develop the motor functions on the other arm again, and can still remember things that happened in the past that would normally be associated with that side of the brain. And that was not one of the first scientists who recorded that, but it was also more proof that a lot of the memories that we have are just our brains coming up with this really great video editing software and being like, okay, so what do you want to wear? Red t-shirt? Okay, sure. Birthday candle with five candles or birthday cake with five candles. Got it. Good. All right, everybody's here. No, wait, too many people. Let's take them out. Lights, camera, action guys. And that's your memories. Like a lot of your memories are essentially just reconstructions that your brain is doing with the sense of confidence that, oh, and this is what happened. And that was, when I read that, that was kind of like shaking, but your brain can compensate and can do it for motor functions. Yes, indeed. I was going to say, the woman I was talking about, one thing that she's been able to do is to recognize the, let's say the real voices from the fake voices. And she talks back to the fake voices. You know, I know you're not real, kind of think. Wow. And somehow she's managed to get through her life. She's managed to navigate through this mental chaos. Good. She talks back to the voices. She talks back to the voices, but the things that she can recognize, the falseness of those voices. Now, if the people who hear God in their head could do the same thing, I think we'd be, we'd be okay. Talk back to the God voice. Hey, who are you? Goldstein? You're not real. Goldstein, he would not have killed all those people in Israel. You know, it's like, solve this mass equation for me. Hey, how about that? What if the next time you get talked to a God, it's like, solve this math problem for me first. And then I will do what you tell me to do. Why do people trust a man of the cloth who says he hears God as opposed to themselves hearing God? Because they demonstrate themselves as an authority figure, and people love authority figures. That's all there is to it. Also, when you speak like this, and very clearly and very calmly, people pay attention to you. That's it. Dredpire, what do you got? Well, you know, if I heard a voice in my head that said I was God, I would ask him how much change I have in my pocket. If the voice came back and said, and I didn't know, you'd be like the thing being surprised by knowledge. If I didn't know how much change was in my pocket, and he could tell me, we've got three quarters, four nickers, two loonies, and two toonies, I'd be a little more inclined to think there's something to it. No, I think you're absolutely onto something really great here. Like, there should just be a preliminary question that you asked the voices that you aren't familiar with before they tell you. I'd really go with a lottery number. Yeah, there you go. Exactly. So, I brought up this case here, and the person was named BT, the German name in 2015. So, her blindness was what they call a psychogenic blindness. So, it wasn't something done to her visual cortex or her optic nerve or eyes. It was what they call a psychogenic blindness is a type of conversion disorder, a physical condition that cannot be explained by physical damage. And so, it wasn't about her brain compensating with other regions of the brain in order to help her see, but just that the, you know, the division of her personality into these different personalities just allowed some of them to access it and others not. So, it was still based on a traumatic instance that this all started to develop. And imagine a person who doesn't understand that, like a person who's experiencing the blindness, who doesn't understand what's really going on. All they know is they're blind, and they're blind all their life, or most of their life. Then all of a sudden, they have this, this associative ID that can see it. That would be fascinating toward to the person. So, I guess, for sure. Imagine a person who hears the voice of God, it's kind of similar to that. Their brain is doing something that they don't understand or have no knowledge of. All they know is I'm hearing this voice. It's compelling as heck. And so, I know God exists. So, you can kind of understand the logic there, I guess. Yeah. I can tell you this. We spoke about this in the past. I have voices in my mind that help encourage me to do things that I know are in fact very hard, that feel like of being coached through like either hard workouts or focusing during tests, or being able to stay calm in situations where I can feel my panic or anxiety go up. I have like a voice that assures me, encourages me. And as long as I have voices like that, with that kind of tone, I'm totally fine with them. And I talk back to them too sometimes. But I can also tell you this, Dredd. I also have voices in my head that legitimately make me laugh. Like they know the rules of comedy and they can give me sort of like an expectation and then subvert it in such a way where I'm like, that was funny. What are you thinking about, Ty? I don't know. What's going on there? What's going on at that time? It's like, yeah, I don't want to talk about it. It was just a really funny thing. You just randomly started laughing one day. I was like, yeah. Yeah. My voices in my head, so like I understand that there's a lot of, you know, schizophrenia is a real disease. Paranoia is a real disease. Like there are things that come with having voices in your head that you can control that are very taxing, exhausting. However, if you are fortunate enough to have positive voices in your head, that you can put like a mute button on or do not disturb button on. And maybe sometimes when you, even when you forget about them, they come back and make you laugh every now and then. That's in my opinion, like a wonderful thing to have, but demonstration that the mechanics are still there for everybody. And it's just whether or not you have the mental health to have supportive voices or uncontrollable, crazy voices that are mean or hostile to you, like it's still the same thing. It's the same tools, but it's completely different tone. It's a question of how you can control that. Dauder 5, what can someone who is encouraged or what can someone who knows that the voices in their head may not necessarily be God due to actually confirm that. And I don't mean that in so much like, what kind of test can they run? I mean, more of like, how can they prepare themselves to realize that it's actually not the God belief? If they already have an incline beneath that, like they have that starting to have enough doubt to be like, well, you know, if I sit down and flip the coin 10 times, maybe the voice won't talk to me, but maybe I was wrong just because the voice didn't want to talk about that. Well, I mean, playing the lottery, and I mean, guys, if you think that the voice might be God, you know, he should know everything, ask him some questions, ask him questions that physicists are dealing with. Problems on physics. Thing about it is, real help is out there. See a professional, you know, go to a psychologist, schedule some therapy time to discuss it with them, tell them what's going on and see if you can get a real valuable medical result out of it. Hey, that's not bad. And if they say there's not a problem and it actually is God, maybe then you can be more confident. But otherwise, they surprised you some pills, maybe you should take them. I did want to go to Dredd because he raises him. Dredd, what's up? Well, just one of our viewers here on the live stream, Dada's Trading Room, he says, I have an internal dialogue, even can do it in two languages. But he doesn't hear voices. Okay. Does he understand the other language? George, we'll see how he responds. Dada, thank you for the comment. George, what's up? Again, I've forgotten what I was going to say. You will remember it in 30 seconds flat. I'll throw this out as a fun thing. My mom is hard of hearing, respecting her privacy. She does have for a period of time an internal sign, which is not like you hear it. It's a nonverbal communication. And if you practice ASL enough or American Sign Language enough that you will develop cases where you are thinking in signs and not so much with words or text. It's like I feel the signs that I need to make in order to convey this expression that I'm trying to make. And it's a very interesting thing. George, anything you want to add? Well, I'll comment on that. I was once in a room that had a few deaf people and they were telling jokes to each other. And I wasn't dead on it because I didn't know the sign language. I've been in a room with deaf people who are yelling at each other. And I was just like, really? Very awkwardly quiet. And it's just two people like from across the room. And I was just like, oh, no, what's going on here? Can we just all get along with each other? Calm down, guys. Be quiet. It's like, no, your idea is quite as you can get. Okay. All right. So listen, guys, we're at McSallysters. We had that conversation with, hey, why don't you test it? I know you're a good guy. This definitely resolve a lot of conflict, resolve wars, solve potentially a lot of humanities problems. And he said, well, I didn't want to test it. And I gave him that whole spiel. And I think at the end of it, in fact, we recorded it. So I don't have to guess. But he said, you know, I really just feel like I'm afraid to test it because there's a choice. There's a chance that if I do test it and it doesn't work, then I'll know that it's not God. And that would be a life-changing recognition for me. And maybe that's why I'm afraid to test it. And I'm like, I let him sit on that. I didn't really add anything else after that. But in my head, I feel like that's the root of the issue. Because if you were to take a not the simplest approach, but what approach leads to the least number of assumptions, is it A, he's actually being spoken to by the supernatural being that created the entire universe that only speaks to him at certain times and doesn't want to be tested, despite the fact that he's having a one-on-one communication with one of the subjects. Or maybe he was just raised as a Christian and is afraid to test the grounds of his upbringing really, in a sense, because that will make him leave to ask a lot of uncomfortable questions about the nature of the universe and what would happen to him after he dies, if anything. And it seems that the least assumptive path is the one where it's just based on fear and an unwillingness to ask critical questions, which tends to be the case for a lot of these mysteries, right? And so it was an hour and a half long conversation. I didn't push it any further than that. But how would you guys, I'll ask this, we'll do a quick roundtable. Dred, if you got to that point in the conversation, would it be anything else that you would ask at the end of that? And how would you go from there? Well, you know, I would probably, you know, just ask the person to reflect, or if they were willing to reflect, and then maybe we could have another conversation in a week or so. Man, that's great. I should have asked that. That was wonderful. Yeah, I mean, because, I mean, that kind of subject, you really have to grok it, right? Yeah. Well, okay, you're gonna have to explain that. I know it's a post-faring term, maybe grok it. No, no, no, no. Grok is from Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. Classic science fiction. Anyway, groking is a term that kind of embodies a sense of understanding, but so much more deeply. So, you know, on big, on big questions of philosophy and whatnot, I tend to use the word grok for trying to really absorb a concept or really try to, you know, hit around it. Nice. I love that. I love that. I love it. So, like I say, so, you know, I would encourage that person then to grok it for a while, and then come back and see what they had to say. That's really good. The invitation to come back, I think, is a really good touch. I will work on that. Scott, what would you recommend? That was a great question you just asked because I asked Anthony Magnobosco the same question regarding that in my interview with him a few weeks ago. And he told me that probably from the outset of the conversation, the first thing you want to know is, are they interested in knowing the truth or not? Are they more interested in the truth or are they more interested in their beliefs? And if you can get them to say, well, no, I want to know the truth, then at that point you kind of have license to talk about, you know, kind of explore why then do you not want to test it? You said that you want to know the truth and how are you going to, what method are you going to use to get to the truth of this? And because if you don't want to test it, then it seems like what you're saying, you don't have to say this, but it just seems like what they're saying is they don't really want the truth. They want their belief. They want their belief. You know, I did ask that plainly. I was asking like, hey, do you want your beliefs to be true? And he was like, what do you mean? It's like, do you want everything in this holy book, the Bible, to be true? And he's like, well, I just know they're true. I don't think whether I want them or not is a factor. So you don't know if you want this to be true. It's like, I just don't think it's an important point. And I'm like, how bizarre is it that there's a Christian who doesn't want the tenets in the Bible to be true? Like how I've never heard of such a meeting before. It's like, okay, well, yeah, yeah, I want them to be true. It's like, you want them to be true. Like, that would make sense to me, right? It's like, yeah, it's like, okay, well, I feel like there's clearly some bias then if it was conflicting opinions or conflicting facts, if you have a desire for something to be true, you know, from a scientific perspective, you have hypotheses, but you're not married to the hypothesis. It's just a, I need to set up a test and I'll figure out if it fits or if it doesn't fit, but I'm not committed to either one. I'm going to try to test as objectively as possible. But if I want something to be true and I am faced with evidence or facts that it's not true, I might, due to my ego or bias, try to ignore those or look for more information. Confirmation bias. It's confirmation bias at the end of the day. No. Doubter five, you have a more argumentative approach, but you also, you, you got your nice hearty moments. If you got to the point where he's a guy who believes he's not who God admits that, maybe I'm just afraid to find out that I'm wrong. How would you go from there? I don't know. I mean, if he's afraid and he admits that he's afraid, all you can do is accept what he says and move on, I guess. Just don't keep it open mind. But if it's, if I might mention the things that I mentioned early about how dangerous it is to think that you have the voice of God in your head, hey, that's not bad. You know, but after that, you know, that's up to him, I guess. Yeah. How about this? And next time God tells you to do something and involves hurting somebody, call me. Yeah. And talk about it first about that and take some time to grok it and we'll come back to it later. Sure. George Brown, does this whole conversation sounds incredibly foreign to you or alien to you? It does. And it doesn't because now you all know that I live in the Bible Belt here. And as a person who's spent most of my life living on the coasts by the ocean, one place or another, being here in the Bible Belt is kind of a shock. It's taken me a long time to acclimate to the prevailing winds of reality that are unreal around me. So, you know, there are places around here that have signs that say the truth shall set you free. And that's not my truth. That's somebody else's truth. And, you know, so there's the question, can we even have a dialogue? Can we even have a dialogue? We can definitely try. Yeah. And we're here in a country where this is a democracy, you know, and we affect each other with our beliefs at the voting booth. And so there are real consequences to what people believe. And I don't have an answer. I'm stumped. I also feel like there's a responsibility for the diet of information that you allow to ingest. And a lot of that comes with like cable news as your means with informing yourself or, you know, taking a bit more responsibility and trying to find better-sighted news sources or opinions or and stuff like that, or being able to parse opinion and entertainment from factual sets of dates and stuff. And the internet is loaded with websites that have very slanted information on them. Oh yeah, absolutely. And there's always an agenda. So you have to be able to see like, where's that agenda and where can I lie with it? And then ultimately, what's the most important thing for us to be able to do as a country? Because democracy, if we didn't learn anything, is fragile and deserves to be protected. So is our atheism a religion, in fact? George Brown, I'm going to throw it out at you. Is there anything that you'd like to recommend that anybody check out before the end of before before this week for this week? Would you recommend anything for this week? Yeah. Try to find wisdom within the belly of the monster. You know, you can you can find wisdom in better places, but sure, why not? There's lots of places. You can go to Walmart and find some other words. Go go go go into go into the the inner workings of the Catholic Church, for instance, and see if you can find some wisdom in there. I'll bet you can. You could. But I guarantee you the same wisdom that's there is freely available in every other place you look for wisdom. And that's I've been reading. Why do you need the Catholic Church? I'm I'm I'm very fond of Sufi teaching stories. I find a lot of a lot of old time wisdom in some of them. So that are five. What's up with you? I hope you feel better by next week. Oh, thank you. Yeah, yeah. Keep sniffling. Get all those germs out and crank it up and then you'll get a grok. I'm there to I'm hoping I can just will myself back into normalcy. Scott Williamson, keep me updated on this on these sound engines and control box and synth waves and stuff like that. What's something that you'd recommend for us to check out before the next week? Yeah, just, you know, my new record release came out last week. So I put it up on my dub shine dot bandcamp dot com site, man, I put a lot of passion and oh yeah, imagination into a lot of my music. And I want people to check it out support me. You know, it costs us a few cents to download one. That would make me feel awesome. You know, and I've been getting a lot of downloads and people commenting and things like that and contact it. So I'm just really grateful for that. Just encourage people to keep doing that. It's like the engine for me, you know, doing it. Yep. As a name again, would you? Uh, it's a dub shine dot band camp dot com for online content creators, a little bit of love goes a long way. And sometimes that's just a good comment. That's like, Hey, I listened to your stuff and it sounded good. If I got a comment like that on the music that I got to be like, wow, that's awesome. I'm still making the music for me. But it's so nice that there's other people who are into it and also enjoying that as well. And that just is such a great motivator. So take some time, spread some love and, uh, on the things that you like, make sure you let the, the otters, artists or the creators know. Dred Pirate Higgs. I've been spending this entire day watching that little, uh, plus you toy stare right back at me. Our newly Lord. Yeah. What would you suggest that we check out before the, before next week? Okay. Well, I've got a couple of things. I mean, you can find this live stream on Sundays at eight a.m. Pacific standard time. I'm also now the new Pastafarian, um, correspondence for the global atheist news, which is produced through a free thought, um, through, uh, John Richards. Uh, Gratz on your, uh, recent interview with him, Scott Williamson. That was, uh, it was good. Uh, and good news here. What are we looking at? It's blurry. What are we looking at? It's blurry. What's going on? Well, on my four, on my forehead, we've been following this story for three weeks. So you're going to pull this out when we only got one minute left. It's the FSM, the FSM. It's a tattoo. It's a tattoo. It's with the, with the flying spirit monster symbol on it. So that's official. It is official. Yes. So it's the wedge. It's the wedge into that, uh, tiny, tiny crack. They left open and I'm driving that baby. Oh, love it. I love it. All right. So now, now you graduate the headband or something like that. Cause now I was just like, let me do the tattoo. It's not like you got a thing. Now I got to come on and, and we started the man. If I lived there, like I said, I'd be right there next in line being like, you just let that guy with the tattoo do it. That's right. Exactly how it's going to work. Black. What are you doing? I'll make it uncomfortable for everybody there. Trust me. All right. So, uh, check me out on what's chat. You can, uh, see you playing in my videos and this show regular every week. And, uh, thank you so much for listening. They're doubt or five. Why don't you take us out? Right. Um, my own content is for, is found online at the digital free thought radio. I'm sorry, digital free thought.com. Be sure to click on the blog button for a radio show, archives, atheist songs and many articles on the subject. My book is atheism. What's it all about? It's available on Amazon. If you have any questions for the show, please send them to askanatheistatnoxfilatheist.org. If you're a member of clergy, a preacher, pastor or priest, but no longer believe in the claims of religion, you're no longer trapped. There is help for you at the clergyproject.org. That's theclergyproject.org. And if you're watching this on YouTube, be sure to like and subscribe. 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 say, bye, everybody. Bye, everybody. Ramen. Ramen.