 103.9 FM, WOZO Radio, Knoxville. Ladies and gentlemen, Digital Freethought Radio Hour. Hello and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio Hour on WOZO Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today, as usual, we have our co-host on the line, Wombat, hello Wombat. They can take our lives, but they cannot take our weekly radio podcast. They cannot do that. And today's guests are George, Red Leader, Boudreau, and Dot Fire. Welcome Paul. Dredpire Higgs is on his way in apparently. So we'll get right on with it. Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism, and the sciences. And conversely, we'll also talk about religion, religious faith, God's holy books, and superstition. And if you get the feeling that you're the only non-believer in Knoxville, well, you're just not. There are several atheist, free thinking, and rationalist groups that exist right here in Knoxville. And we'll be telling you how you can connect with them right after the mid-show break. Also, did you know that there's a streaming atheist calling video show broadcasting here in Knoxville and has been for over 10 years? I don't want any spoilers. I just barely caught up to the first tournament arc where Naruto is about to fight Rock Lee or Sasuke or something. I don't know who's going to win, but I'm really excited to see what this ninja's going to do. I think he's going to make, I think he's going to do big things. It's going to be amazing. Not our show. The only fighting we do is atheists against theists and conversationally. Cool stuff. So there's no fighting. And we'll tell you how you can watch that after the mid-show break as well. And if you'd like to interact with us during the show, go to Facebook and search for Digital Freethought Radio Hour and use the messaging function to send us questions or comments. What are we talking about today, one minute? Oh, you asked me that question. I was asking the question at the start of the show. Apparently you get like a bunch of free candy and money when you become an atheist and you want to talk about how much money it's like a Nobel Prize, you know? Yeah, it's just like you are now smart. Here's the other one. So we're talking today about what should you expect when you become an atheist? If you were to become an atheist. Yeah, not only that, what do you get out of it? You're sitting comfortable on your fiest chair. You're like, hey, I got God on my side. I got all the things that I need in my life. I'm ready for some sweet extra stuff. What do you got on the table, atheism? Anything good? Anything that should attract you? One of the things is you're sitting in your sweet fiest chair, you know, God above watching everything that you do. Your best friend has a plus side. You know, he's watching out for you, right? Yeah, absolutely. He's also watching everything you do like Santa Claus and every thought that you have in your head, which is extra legal for Santa Claus, you know, he doesn't even do that. And he judging you and ready to condemn you to an eternity of hell if you do the wrong stuff. If that even exists, right? And is that a recipe for paranoia or what? There you go. Matter of fact, is it not the definition of paranoia? Yeah, I mean, there's definitely some drawbacks. I want to see though, Dread Pirate, now that you're here, you got a really big day tomorrow. I want to do just a quick round table of how everyone's doing. Dread, you got a big day tomorrow. You mind talking about it? Are you able to communicate? Yeah, absolutely. You can hear me all right? Oh, yeah. Awesome. I wasn't able to get the YouTube thing set up. In fact, I was running around trying to find my charger in order to be here today. Well, we appreciate you. We appreciate you. But yeah, so tomorrow I go before the Supreme Court of British Columbia to petition the court to order the Human Rights Tribunal to hear my case against the ICBC, the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia, which is a Crown Corporation here. They had refused to take my picture wearing my tricorn. Right. It's just a pirate hat. Think of a pirate hat. Yeah, it's my pirate hat. The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster of British Columbia. And whereas members of other religions are allowed to wear religious headgear, we have been refused. So anyway, that's the fight. And I'm taking that fight to court tomorrow morning. Nice. Supreme Court. Supreme Court, yeah. So I asked you this before. What can we do to help you or support you in this endeavor? Is there anything that we can do? Well, I think just to spread in the word of pastitarianism and that we're all about keeping church and state separate, that we are against institutionalized religious privilege, which that represents, amongst other things. You know, the fact that religious schools are subsidized and given the fact that the last poll, 25% or 35% of the people in British Columbia identified as irreligious. Right. So that should account for something. And so that's part of what we're standing up for. George, you want to weigh in. Also. Yeah, I just want to tell you, Dread Pirate, that I will pray for you with all of my heart and soul. The Newtley one will listen. Dilan slash the man of many names, many mysteries. What do you think about the idea of religious regalia in driver's license? Maybe we should just abolish all of it and just have clean faces. What do you think? Yeah. Right. I don't know. I don't know. For the question of what do you, what do we get out of being an atheist? I would say that, you know, for my part, I just don't like to be fooled, you know, I don't want to fool myself. And I definitely don't want anybody to teach me something that is, um, that has no basis or reason for believing it. So really the plus side of being an atheist is just being genuine, you know, just like anything else. But for me, it's just being genuine. And, uh, you know, um, searching things out for myself, being skeptical. And this may be more of, I don't know, maybe a value of being a skeptic rather than being an atheist because I think you have to be a skeptic first. And then that leads me to, um, atheism. So just being skeptical, being a healthy skeptic is a big benefit for me, I would say. Cool. Nice. Yeah. I think there's a lot of things you can get. I agree that you get the benefits of skepticism. In my opinion, I feel it's almost like you had it to begin with, or at least the potential to be a skeptical minded person. But then when you become religious, it's taken away from you. And the only thing that you get when you return to atheism is the chance to get it back. Um, I want to throw this up to Dred Pirate. What's up real quick. Well, I just, could you pass me a recording permission? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And Eric, uh, I want to throw this out at you. Uh, one, it's been a while since I've seen you, man. It's good to see you. Uh, I want to know how the bro ship is going. What's the, how's the bromance that, uh, uh, do we finally have a house that's been flipped? Or are we still waiting? Like what's going on? No, no, no. My bromance is on hold because, uh, cause Chet's, he's, he's real busy. He's actually, this house is coming along nicely. And I think, uh, I think he hopes to get more than he expected of it. So this is a good thing. Uh, I just gotta be a little patient and, uh, we'll, uh, we'll get back to it. Everything's been wonky last six months. Do we have time for the weekly invocation? Absolutely. Absolutely. I'm going to throw it to you, Dred, but I want to, I want to, I want to deal into my love for Eric Green for just a little bit more, just real quick. Eric, you know, we had COVID come your, your, your, our teacher, um, has, have you felt like you finally adjusted and now that we're, we're slowly coming back out of it, how's Kentucky doing as far as like coming back out of the COVID situation. And has your secular outlook helped with any of that at all? Like as praying, have you found help to get rid of any vaccinations or help people recover? You're an atheist that survived the pandemic. That's kind of impressive. Right. Right. Yeah, it's interesting. So I, I do, um, so when this all started, I was teaching remotely through zoom, but it was only, you know, March, April, May, March and April really. Um, so it was all kind of shock then, but then the fall started and I haven't had to do anything teaching wise, which, which has been great, but UK has opened, uh, in Lexington and all of our Fayette County public schools are closed. And it's kind of a weird, there's, there's something, I don't know if it's political or what, but it, there's something at play here because open up the schools moved us into the red. Now, um, we were, we were doing great. We thought in, in least in Lexington and, you know, college kids, uh, I mean, they can't social distance. Right. So bars open. So it's just, I have such mix. I got two young children. I'd love for them to be in in person schools, but it's just, that's not a good idea right now. And, uh, I think this, the UK opening has kind of made it all worse. So it's, uh, but I mean, how does it tie into atheism and skepticism? I think there's so much, you know, just misinformation and bad information and everything out there. I, I feel like I, I can trust, I can trust my team a little bit right now. And I, I don't know. Maybe, maybe that's an echo chamber, but I also feel like, boy, we have kind of a lot of smart people on our side. So, I feel pretty comfortable there. There's still stuff that I, I scratch my head and wonder, you know, you know, but historically. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know. It's, I feel comfortable. I feel more comfortable being in a, a place of atheism because I know that this just happened and it wasn't, you know, if you were, if you were a God believer right now, yeah, you'd have to have a lot of questions for like, why did you do this? And why is it attacking elderly? I mean, what is, why is my friend dead? Yes. Yeah. 200,000 people. Yeah, it is. That's, you have a way to, you have a way to not just rationalize, but understand the world that's going on around you when you have atheism in your corner, or at least just a better belief system or not even a belief system, lack of a bad belief system to inform how the world works. George, I want to throw this out to you real quick. How you been doing? You're not stretching anymore this morning. Are you feeling all right? Oh, I will. I will. Here we go. How's everything going with you? How's in the house? I'm doing fine. I'm doing fine. Yeah. I've, I've started physical therapy in the office and all the home people are gone. Okay. My, my home healthcare people are, are out of my life now. Yeah. Including the ones I really liked. Ah, heart's broken now. Yeah. But, I mean, I'm doing fine. Yeah. Okay. Your question was what to expect if I'm an atheist, right? Yeah. I want to know. Is that it? Yeah. I don't expect much of anything to be honest. Yeah. You were born atheist or I don't know what it was, but you were raised atheist. I was brought up atheist. Yeah. So, you know, I've been thinking about the end of life because I'm 78 already. You know, I don't have that much time left. I don't think, and, and yet, it's fine. You know, I'm going to cease to exist. And that's going to be that. And I'm okay with that. So, I always think there's like a really beautiful romance to the idea of like, if there is an alien civilization of immortals, or if there's a point in where technology becomes, Hey, you're going to live forever. Like they're going to look back at this time and be like, how did people, how did people live day to day knowing they would die? It's like, Yeah. You know, I just do. I just do. I don't, I don't think about it. You know, it's just, I exist. You know, Larry, go for it. Well, it just, one thing that gets me is the average person, even if they're a theist doesn't have any qualms at all of thinking that every other living thing on the planet dies. And that's it. But humans, we have to be exception to the rule. We have to live forever. Yeah. And Christianity, you never die. Whether you go to heaven or hell, you just change your address. And that sounds like, yeah, it's a change of address. Yeah. I was saying, I was telling that to a friend of mine. My friend died. I don't know if it was COVID related or not, but he was a young man. It was like, only like 32. And I was telling my friend who was my sister, who's a Muslim and she was saying, I'm, I hope he's in a better place. And I wanted to make the point. I was like, no, his better place was when it was with his friends and family. You love them. It's not a change of address. Like Larry would say, it's okay to be sad. And I just wanted to let you know that I was, I was down and no dumps for it. And she's like, okay, thank you for putting that. So yeah. Um, anyone else want to feed back in on that? Well, I have a question. Hey, go for it. Which is simply do religious people really believe really believe that they are simply changing their address and going to heaven with all those other trillions of people who have lived before? Yeah, I'd be awful crowded up there. I never thought about the crowds, but yeah, I honestly believe that when I had it. Is that similar for everyone else? Yeah, free. Well, yeah, as a Jehovah's Witness, um, in my past life, I think that, um, we lived forever on earth, uh, in a paradise. And that was our heaven. So to speak. And we truly believed it. And it was what motivated us to go door to door and spread the news so that others could also live forever. If they were only receptive to the message. And, yeah, it's a strong motivator that, that whole thing about living, we all want to live. We don't want to die. Um, but, you know, I think, um, what's kind of helped me after I became an atheist, because that was one of the questions I had very, the number one question I had was, what's in it for me if I become an atheist? Yep. Cause now my, my hope for living forever is gone. So what's the point? Would I rather live? Yeah. Like, when I rather live, um, at least hoping and getting through, you know, I could never imagine how do people live? Knowing they're going to die and they'll never see God. They'll never see their loved ones. They'll never breathe again, have an experience. And they'll never, you know, enjoy the life that they live. You know, no matter how bad it is, people don't just kill themselves. People want to live no matter how bad it is. So always wondered what's in it for the atheists. Are these people crazy? What's going on right there? What's your answer now? Yeah. Well, my answer now is, you know, is, uh, it took a long time. I mean, it sucks. You know, it never is something that. People really want to die still. I mean, just not being religious doesn't take that away. There's still that psychological need of wanting to live, but, um, I've kind of come to terms with it and also looking at. You know, the philosophy of mind and things like that to understand that my ego, um, is kind of an illusion already. You know, I'm not really real, so to speak. I'm pretty much a story that I tell myself, like my history, my identity, all of that stuff is kind of an emergent property. It's not something that really exists like a world out there, something like that. So in a way, I never really exists to begin with in a sense. So I never really die, you know, in that way. So that's kind of a way to look at it and just say, you know, so what am I? Well, I'm an experience. You know, I'm just, um, an observer of my brain and my thoughts and my neurons firing and the world around me that I'm perceiving. It sounds like I know you from my experiences with you from the stories you told me, jokes you told me, times we've had talks, times we had good times, bad times. And even if you aren't physically here, I still have those experiences. I still have the same stories. I still have the same texts. And so it's more of like, yes, you do exist, but you also have a legacy and the legacy will live on, even if there you go as a human being. I had a friend who was a Buddhist priest. Nice to work with the guy. And we used to talk about this subject all the time. And he was a Buddhist priest and he identified himself as an atheist. And we had this discussion about death and life and karma. And he said, you know, the real pure teaching of karma, at least the way he understood it was, you know, if you mistreat people in your life when you're dead, it's still going to suck for them. You know, you've done your damage or you've done your good. You've done what you leave behind. You know, your karma or the things that you've caused other people and other things. And so that is a way of living on in a way is your karma, you know, which is just a fancy word or a traditional word to mean cause and effect as far as his religious teaching was concerned and kind of makes sense. And it goes back to what you just said, you know, you kind of live on through the memories of others and what you leave in the world. So hopefully I'll leave the world a better place. Yeah. You're here to cater to your own legacy. And that's what lives on past you. And that could be an impressive amazing thing that can have a lot of positive cause of effects, even moving them forward. Dale, I want to ask you, what are you getting out of X? And I'm saying X because I don't know what your religious persuasion is this week. Would you mind filling me in this week? You, you sound like you're just a little bit last week you were bright. What I'm getting out of my religious persuasion is this. Okay. Which is called. I've decided I've tried to encompass the best pride. The best highest standard of atheism possible. Okay. And this week what I've gotten out of it is a sense of community. You mentioned vaccinations earlier. I've went ahead and volunteered for the, for the drug trial, the vaccination trial. So I'm at least trying to contribute in that manner. I don't see any reason why one would not be part of the community. You also mentioned life after death in heaven. I would recommend anybody watch Michael Shermer's or listen to it. Episode 20 of science salon. He discusses in great detail what kind of immortality would occur. If it was in heaven or the type of immortalities that we are trying to achieve. Now what with downloading yourself into a computer, that sort of stuff. The others. Oh yeah. Also the JW fellow. I got a call from the JWs and they left me their name and their phone number and invited me to call back. So I'm going to do that. And that's all I got to say about that. Please record it. Yeah. I'd be interested. I'm talking to JWs now myself. Well, my mom's one. At least multiple times a week. Yeah. It was interesting. So you definitely get a lot of things out of religion, but if it is not true, then man, that's a lot of false hope. It's like someone saying, hey man, you have a bunch of imaginary money in the bank account. Why would you want to not believe that? Because it doesn't mean anything. I'd rather have an honest bank account. Plus religions don't have a monopoly on hope. You can hope for any kind of afterlife you want. Absolutely. Nobody knows anything about the afterlife. Speaking of that, I know someone who believes in a really awesome afterlife that I have no problem with. It's our own Dread Pirate Higgs beer volcanoes. What was it? Every Friday is a holiday. Unmute yourself, my friend. And why are you weighing on that? And then lead us on our weekly invocation when you have some time. Sure. So yeah, looking forward to the beer volcano and the stripper factory. Those are things. I could pass on the stripper factory, but yeah. I don't even like beer to be honest with you. I just like volcanoes. It's al dente, al dente. Nice. All right. I have a, I have an invocation. And it seems to students are humans possessed of a soul with heaven as its object and goal. But if it's not this life's all we got, it is what we ought to extol. Very good. And he writes all these on himself. Isn't that great? So what are you getting out of atheism? It seems like you're getting back what was probably taken away from you when you were indoctrinated. And I find like that to be its own value. But if you really just want to list the cool things, maybe you are an awesome religion and maybe that religion is true. Who knows? I can tell you the benefit from atheism is I get to not, I get to have slightly less bias with the way I look at the world. And that is particularly in situations where there's pandemics or if I have opportunities to help my community by volunteering for vaccination trials. I don't have to bring baggage along that with me. I could have a clear minded outlook. I can have a skeptical look and I can use that to benefit the world. Larry, what's up? Yeah, I knew one atheist online. So the first thing she said after she decided that God wasn't real was I don't have to hate anybody anymore. And that's kind of funny coming from religion supposedly based on love. Yeah. It was telling her that she needed to hate homosexuals, et cetera, et cetera. And she didn't have to anymore. There's no dictate that she exclude people from her life. Yeah. Larry, as an atheist, as an organic atheist, I would like for you to explain to me what this hatred is about because it's not organic to me. Sure. I don't know what you mean. Are you talking about the hate that she was talking about? Yeah. What do you mean by Christians hate things? Well, it says in the Bible that homosexuals are worthy of death. And you should take them to be stoned. I can't think of others right now, but maybe you can. But there are several types of people, races or whatever, that the Bible has a problem with. And if you're a follower of the Bible, then you, quote, have to hate them. Yeah. Now, a Christian or somebody who follows the New Testament to the exclusion of the old wouldn't have a lot of that problem. Jesus didn't say anything about homosexuals. But the New Testament is based on the Old Testament. You can't just throw out the Old Testament. You'd throw out the Ten Commandments as well. So, you know, it's problem. Udra, what do you think? Yeah, that's that ties into something I was thinking of as you guys were talking. And I know I've heard a lot of tales of Christians that when they've left Christianity and found atheism, they also dropped the political ties to it to the Fox News, kind of that Fox News Christian motif. And again, it's not, you know, it's not to say all atheists have to be liberal. I mean, there are plenty of spectrum there, but there seems to be a group, a pretty big tie between a Christian Fox News watching where they hate gays and they don't want anyone to have abortions and that whole package. And when they leave Christianity, that all kind of falls away. And Seth Andrews from the Thinking Atheist just released a book called, Some to the Effect of Tales from a Former Fox News Christian. And he really talks about how that hatred fell away when, when he left. Because I mean, he just, all of it just just dropped and it was so easy for him to see, you know, that it was all lies and hate and I don't know. Yeah, just to add a little bit to what Larry was saying, yeah, there's a lot of parts in the Bible that are explicitly racist. Like there's a very much us, we are the chosen group, and these aren't Romans, Samaritans, Jews. These people are dirty and bad. And oh, we found one good Samaritan. We'll make a story about that, but the rest of them are terrible people. And that's not even touching what it says about slavery and what the cast that it comes up with with regard to your good people. You are the same breed of us, but you're on a lower level. So those kinds of mentalities, when they're carried in your holy book, can very easily be indoctrinated into the people who have them. And it makes people be like, oh, we're the Third Street Baptist Church. We don't have to deal with the Fourth Street Baptist Church like animals. What's going on here? Also Christianity media, like what Boudreau was saying, it's kind of like a magic trick. Like once you see the trick and understand what it is, you just, you find nothing about it palatable anymore. And you drop it like Fox News and the 700 Club and Christian radio stations. Even though they have jams, you're just like, I can't stick with this anymore. That far. It's not like you want to add in. Go for it. I was going to say, I think the one thing I became open to when I became an atheist was doing an internal critique of the Bible and different teachings or interpretations of the Bible. Because there is kind of a dissonance there. When you look at the flood of Noah, you know, Jehovah God is drowning babies. And, you know, the Amalekites, their infants were to be torn apart, you know, for the evil sins of their fathers, you know, and these things are not very merciful and loving. And I don't see how infants are responsible for the sins of their father. And you kind of ignore those type of things when you're a Christian in it. And you just focus, you start cherry picking and you focus on the New Testament and Jesus is all loving and, you know, it's all mercy and no justice at that point. And, you know, you forget about all these other stories, but once you come out of it, all of a sudden I noticed myself back then. Really focusing in on those really bad scriptures, the really quote unquote bad stuff. And I think that was one positive thing I could say is I became more real with it, you know, and accept and embrace that, hey, this is an old, bronze age notion of morality and ethics that just doesn't find a place in today's world. Right. Yeah, our cultures evolve too much. Del, you want to weigh in? Yes, I was about to be hate dropping away. I'd like to comment that there's a documentary called the brainwashing of my father involves a daughter's experience with her father watching Fox News. And there was a number of people that said that when they stopped watching Fox News, that they did notice that hate and animosity went away. It's quite obvious that Fox News is trying to perpetuate that sort of thing because there is hate is more powerful than love. Oh, that's all I got to say about that. That's a great job. You know, I'll just throw this in. They're not there didn't always used to be 24 hour news channels. So we're not just lambasting Fox News. I'm I'm I'm lambasting the idea of there's news 24 hours a day and a talking head that has to tell you things and sell dog food immediately afterwards. I think that was Ted Turner's invention or his son's invention where he's like, hey, we're just going to have a couple of channels that CNN that just do news all day long. And we're going to make sure that we use the same advertising techniques and tricks to keep people who are engaged. And we found that it's a lot easier to keep people engaged when we give them a huge headline and don't tell them any of the information, but maybe mislead them a little bit or just tantalize them with some facts. And now we're at the point where there's multiple channels doing that and everyone's just trying to get your attention. And it makes essentially the entire concept of trying to stay informed about your surroundings of very taxing and exhausting endeavor because you have people who don't want to tell you the thing that happened. You want to keep your attention with any sort of provocative news possible. It's crazy. Dale, what's up? Yeah, Fox News is different. Fox News literally uses hate and anger. There's no doubt about that with Hannity or Riley and all of those just like Alex Jones does. When you see the commentator getting all upset and red faced, that sort of anger actually induces the release of the flight or fight response in you and it releases endorphins. And now it is an actual literal visual addiction. A visual addiction. I got to say about that. Oh, I like the way how Dale's mic dropping at the end of all this. Telecommunications. That's all I got to say about that. Yeah. Hey, Larry, we're at the bottom of the half hour. Why don't you take us out and we'll come right back after. This is the digital free thought 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. We're on Dowder 5 on WOZO Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today, Sunday, September 27th, 2020. Let's talk about the 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. We have over a thousand members and you can find us online at KnoxvilleAtheist.org. Or you can go to Meetup 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 Meetup and search for an Atheist group in your town. Don't find one. Start one. That's right. Start one. Another large free thinking group here in Knoxville are the rationalists of East Tennessee. Go to rationalist.org and click on upcoming events. Earlier in the show, we said we talked about Knoxville Atheist. Call in TV show. It was a TV show for about 10 years. Now it's gone online. Go to YouTube and search for Free Thinkers United Coalition of Knoxville to find their new versions of their new videos. Or you can look for the archives of the 10 years that they did on Public Access TV by looking for Free Thought Forum Knoxville. Also, if you're interested in getting involved with the TV or the radio show, just come to an Ask Meetup or RIT meeting and talk to us about it. You can be our next co-host or guest. Let's go to the show. We have the Wombat. Hey, freedom. Boudreau. We were talking about life. We're talking about Star Wars. No, we had a really great conversation about Star Wars through the full first half. And I think one of the most iconic scenes is like, yeah, like when Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader were fighting each other in like the Death Star and like Darth Vader is looking down at Luke and he's like, this is something Obi-Wan never told you. Luke, where is the love? Where is the love? Where is the love? Where is the love? Where is the love? The CIA, the crypts, and the bloods and the KKK. Hey, nice. We got some great listener feedback and I'm going to share with you guys. First one's from, we got shout outs to Larry, Dred Pirate and George on this one. That's what I love this the most. So Pixel 917 says, hey, shout out to the audio podcast. Larry sends us the audio every week and we put it in the RSS feed. You can subscribe to digital free thought radio hour on most podcasts, searching services. Very cool. Remember digital free thought radio hour. Nice. This one goes out to George. All right. So he's, it's from our own, our old friend, Nathan Matthews. A repeat commenter on the show. Thank you so much for your support, Nathan. He says concerning the feedback on secular groups with congregations, I think he made some really great points. There are clearly benefits to this structure, explaining their prevalence and explaining, there's clearly benefits to the structure of congregations, even for secular groups. And that would explain their prevalence. I'm going to give it a shot. I think it's time to make some new friends. And sorry, George, my local ethical society is in Missouri, not New York. It's a branch of the same name though, or the same ethical culture tree. So says Nathan. And also a comment from, I don't eat my friends. This one goes out to Dred Pirate. Question. Do you have any advice on how to approach someone when they are factually wrong? For example, someone says, we eat bacon to get fiber. Science says so. Of course, I could easily show them an article about the lack of fiber and bacon, but is there a better way or more epistemological approach to addressing things like that? I think an SE conversation over bacon and its fiber content would be awesome. I would love that. I'm down for that. Well, it would be your approach. I would wonder about that because there is that major reaction of like, no, you're wrong. Let me just look this up. You don't necessarily want to attack the conclusion, right? I think the first thing I'd be interested in is trying to determine how sound the source is. So what are they relying on to get their information? And does that have some spillover into other aspects of their life? So if they're watching Fox News and Fox News is selling the idea that there's lots of fiber and bacon, well, maybe we examine that and determine whether or not that's a reliable source of information. Okay. I'm going to throw this question out to other people too who've done SE, our own Scott and Eric and maybe even Larry too. I'll throw out my approach. Whenever someone says science says so and I know in my head as a scientist, no, I always ask the clarification question of what do you mean by that? Which is a really great open-ended question because oftentimes people say science says this when what they really mean is a couple of scientists have said this and there's a very big difference between scientists saying something and science saying something because just my point and that's enough to let them think about stuff like that. Scott, we're going to throw this at you first. How would you respond to someone saying we make him to get fiber science says so? Yeah, I'd be like, you know, first I'd try to establish like how confident they were about the claim and I would pretty much ask them what would it take to change your mind? What kind of information would make you lose confidence in that? Possibly, like you were saying, you said science, what do you mean by that? Is this just one scientist or is this, you know, is this all of science or how did you come about them maybe then and then ask them what would it take to, would other science that contradicts your confidence? What is it, you know? These are really great questions. Oh, no, did I lose my connection? And see what they come back with. But I think both of your answers are certainly valid and what would be a good way to prove. Yeah, go forward. Welcome back, Ty. Hey, welcome back. I think my cat's playing with my Wi-Fi router. I thought you were just deep in thought. Yeah, when everyone's frozen, it's a weird thing like should I stay quiet or should I be like, help, help, help. Are you going to cry that too? I want to know because you've done SE with me, especially when we went out to the protest of the ARC Museum way, way, way back when and we had that beautiful setup. We even saw Seth Andrews, I believe, and it was a good time. I remember we did interviews with him. It was great. If someone sat at our table and said, hey, I believe Bacon has fiber, science says so. Like, I want to believe in that too. But how would you address that? That'd be great. Yeah, it would be wonderful. I think I would just agree with him and say, let's just assume it has a fiber and then wait for someone to prove it's wrong. I mean, come on. No, maybe to take a different approach, since I'm not as SE tools aren't as sharp as you guys. What if you just said, all right, let's do this. Let's eat an insane amount of bacon all week and just see what our constitution schedule is like. And then the next week, let's eat a bunch of apples or a bunch of things that other science says has fiber. And let's just see the difference. See how regular you are. You're asking? I like apple flavored bacon. That probably has fiber. I was saying like, it's a great thing to ask. How can we test that? It's a great open end question. It's one of those things where you don't have to set up a whole bunch of different flow charts. You could ask like, what do you mean by that? See what they say? How can we go to the package and look for the fiber content? Now, that's that would be empirical. It's empirical, but it also brings up the, oh, you can bring stuff to the table. Well, let me bring forward different articles that say nutritional facts are wrong to the table. Like you want to try not to bring evidence to the table. Think about that methodology they're using. Just ask about the method because typically if you waiver that, you're good, but you can always bring paperwork and have like a legal battle. But you're just like, Leading the label is methodology. But it also directly challenges their conclusion. And you're going to make them be like, oh, well, if that says I'm wrong, I got four things that say I'm right. And you don't want to have that in an SC conversation. I really want to think about like, is your reasoning for this valid or not? And you can have that conversation. You don't need paperwork or evidence. And by the time you're coming in with a caseful of evidence to prove someone might be incorrect, you're already working too hard in SC. You're probably not doing SC at all. Consider that could be as easy as just asking, what do you mean by that? And how can we test that? And if you don't get a reasonable, reliable answer, you don't have to believe them by default. Or you know, they, and they should realize, oh, I don't have a good way of testing that. And I don't know what I mean by that. That's a problem. That's probably where I fail in SC all the time. Gavin, just let it flow like water, baby. Eric, what were you going to say? Well, just kind of interesting because my wife works in label review where she literally reviews labels on packages for pet food mostly. But it's my understanding the way the process works is the company puts whatever they want on the label. So the company decides, they want to say now with 100% fiber, they can do that. And then the label gets reviewed. And the scientists review the labels and decide whether or not they're allowed to make those claims. So you're just introducing another scientist if you point to the label. Yeah. You can get murky. There's a really simple approach, which is just like, what do you mean by that? How can we test that? And is there a room for you to consider what it will look like if you're wrong? Boom. Boom, boom, boom. That does marvelous things to someone's thinking process because that's all you're trying to make them do. Think critically on their own. Not think for them and bring the evidence that they should be looking at themselves. You want them to do that thinking. And you can do it as simple as you can find them. Teach them how to fish, right? Teach them how to fish. Figure out like, hey, am I being reasonable? Do I have a good way to test that? Should I trust this? Is this actually science? Real great counsel around. Maybe we'll throw this out to George. If someone told you, hey, Bacon has a lot of fiber and science says so, how would you respond to that, George? I have a feeling I'm not very good at this. Forget about it. Because I was remembering a conversation I had recently with somebody where they made a claim that I knew was false. And I said, where'd you get your information from? He said it's on Facebook. It's true. It has to be. It's on the internet. Right. And I, you know, I knee-juck responded to him. I said, well, Facebook is full of crap. I appreciate you sensing yourself there. That was really great. Well, it wasn't quite the right thing to say. But I'm not sure I know what the right thing to say was. How did you figure that out? And they say Facebook is like, is that a reliable source of information? Is there any chance that that could be wrong? Like you can just ask really, really simple clarification questions, speculative questions about the nature of how they figure out stuff. If Facebook is right 100% of the time, then I'll believe whatever Facebook says. But is Facebook right 100% of the time? Is there any information that we can find on Facebook that's not true? Yeah, sure. I was like, okay. And how confident are you about this? 100%. Even though we know Facebook is 100% accurate. Okay, we'll find out 80% Tyrone. It's like, great. You can walk yourself down. Like you built the momentum yourself, but you thought through that yourself. And that's all that matters. Dale, throwing this out at you, is this question entertaining to you whatsoever? If not, you're free to move on. But if someone said, Bacon has fiber, science says so, how would you respond? I think I'd find it is a good opportunity to start explaining the way science works as opposed to getting that one little issue. For example, Fox News wants to look at both sides of the issue. If there's a thousand scientists on one side and two scientists on the other side disagreeing about climate change, then the problem, then it is not equitable to look at both sides of the issue as if they are equal, which is one of the things Fox News does. So it might be a good opportunity to start talking with the individual about how many times people lie to them every day. And it's not only Fox News, a lot of others. That's all I got to say about that. I appreciate that. I do like how science is not a popularity contest. And there was a time where there probably was just one scientist saying, hey, I think climate change is happening. We should probably work on this. And everyone else was like, nerd. So like some situations you may have one scientist versus the world who's like, hey, I think the world's around. Hey, I think there are these things called germs. We'd probably try cleaning our hands if we're delivering babies. Hey, I think plate tectonics is a thing because I feel two inches, my home is two inches more to the left than it was. After that really big earthquake, I think there's something going on here, guys. The methodology matters more than the number of people who promote it. And we need to focus on that methodology, not the number, but the methodology, which is what science is. Hey, what do you think, George? Oh, Scott. Sorry. George first, then we'll go to Scott. Sorry. My bad. Bad hosting. I'm trying to remember what I wanted to say. I think that there is a trend right now toward mistrust and discounting of science altogether. Oh, absolutely. And experts. In the event that it doesn't say what you want it to say, because when science agrees with what you're overall clean, everyone wants it. You know, I was thinking of having this conversation with a certain person and what I was going to say to him in my mind is, you know, when you had those stents put in your arteries, did you go to your car mechanic to have it done because he was cheaper? Or did you go to a doctor? And why? And what? And why? And why? Yeah. Yeah. So your doctor is educated in science. He's, you know. We got about an anti-intellectual way that's been going around. Dale, I have you way on. Yeah. See, I think we have to deal with the emotion. You know, we're trying logic all the time. And so in our atheism, a lot of us are using logic to refute the other viewpoint that we were indoctrinated in. And I'm aware right now that logic is not where a lot of people live. They're living in a space of emotion, of fear, of, you know, hatred, of love, they think. And I think we're in a period when this is on the ascendance. So how do we deal with that? I don't know. I don't know the answer. I don't know. It's a great place to start because it's the least biased place. But one of it just comes from being willing to talk about these matters in an open way. Because when people don't want to talk about the benefits of education and learning and critical thinking, ignorance wins. Because ignorance survives in darkness. Dale, I will throw this at you. We're going to say something. I don't want you to forget. Yes. George just sparked this idea of distrust of science. The U.S. Department of Agriculture are the ones who spearheaded that Mapolio vaccination thing we had. But they consisted of about 700 scientists. And they have about 90%, excuse me, 270 or so, about 90% of them have been fired. Have been given the choice of relocating or quitting or finding other job. And it's amounting to about 90%, 80% of them are actually being fired from the USDA. Also the Department of Cavuto, the Department of Health and Human Services spokesman who has no training whatsoever in medicine or science is making the statements that the FDA, the CDC is putting out. So if our leaders are not, as a matter of fact, one of our politicians said, I don't trust science. It's going to get warmer or cooler. I don't trust science. You don't have to wear a mask. When you have your leaders saying something like that, then you must be a little bit sympathetic to the guy who thinks that, you know, that bacon has protein, excuse me, fiber. That's all I got to say. That's all I got to say. Delon, I'm going to ask you a question. A man of many mysteries and names. What do you think about anti-intellectualism? And is it getting worse in this country? Is it getting better? What's your opinion on this? It seems to me that it's getting worse because of the lack of trust in science and institutions that are anchored in intellectualism. So, and I think part of that is because people give into their credulity so much, it's like the scientific method is to actually get past, you know, our biases and our purse. Is he still there? I think we lost him. I'll just follow on at this point. Like, there is that culture where, you know, as fewer people than we've benefited, but a lot, but today, you know, everybody's kind of forgetting about that. And they kind of want to believe what they want to believe and they form echo chambers and support. And people are driven by their emotions and what they feel and what makes sense to them. This doesn't make sense, you know. But I think Neil deGrasse Tyson said something like, the universe has no obligation to make sense to anybody. Exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, the hardest thing about getting smart is you have to recognize where you're dumb because you can't fill in holes if you're blindly pouring cement, right? You don't know what you don't know. You don't know what you don't know. And sometimes you need someone to tell you, you don't know this. I'm going to teach it to you. Get ready for it. Well, I think Fox does a very good job of that. Dredd, what do you think about the idea of like, hey, you have to get, you have to recognize you're dumb to get smart. What do you think about that? Well, you know, I think it, I was going to make the point that teaching critical thinking I think is probably one of the best cures for bad thinking, right? You know, if people can learn to evaluate the evidence, you know, based on how likely it is to be true and have that toolkit for critical thinking, then that is the guard against all this anti-intellectualism. Yeah, Eric, I'll throw it out to you. There's my mic. Nice, nice. I heard George say something that I didn't hear who you said does a good job of this. I said Fox News does a very good job of telling people what to think, you know. And I think they're like, we've sort of stumbled on here and there today is that they're doing this on an emotional level. There's a gut punch involved in this. We're in a world where this is reality more and more, I think. So what it made me think of when we're saying this distrust in science and facts. Daniel, do you guys remember, am I alone in this? Snopes used to be like the go-to place, like boom, here's Snopes, clear this up and people are like, oh man, wow. I guess Mr. Ed wasn't a zebra after all. That's amazing. But now it seems like Snopes is like a joke. It's like if someone puts a Snopes link to like liberal media bias. So it's a liberal media bias. A liberal bias. Now it's like Snopes doesn't even work anymore. It's like that. It used to be like the perfect conversation ender, but it's not anymore. And there's not. Guess what it is? It's going to be critical thinking at the end of every day. There's no shortcuts to critical thought aside from doing it. And that's how you get better at it. And you can start to look at Snopes and be like, I think some of these articles aren't coming from a factual or reasonable point of view. I did want to make one last mention about getting smart. If you're stronger than someone, it's a pretty obvious thing. You might be thicker. You might have more bulges on your body. And people are like, that guy's stronger than me. I'm not going to get in a fight with him. If you're faster than someone, you probably won't get caught. You might have a body type that shows that too. And if you're richer than someone, it's like, well, he has a fancy car to me. That makes sense. He's richer. I'm willing to accept all these things. But if you're smarter than someone, that's the thing. That's the last thing someone's willing to accept. They're like, but he's not smarter than me. He's got four PhDs. Well, I know how to disconnect my bidet in my bathroom. I did that in like a half hour. Can he do that? I can grow a weird facial hair thing. Can he do that? People, because the idea of getting smart is you have to be vulnerable to new information. And you have to be willing to accept that and allow that to supplant things that you may have already believed ahead of time. And become very, very comfortable with the idea of, I don't know this. I have to work hard to know it. And it's not something that shows in your body. It's something that shows in your intellect, your behavior, your conduct, your character. And these are things that we can ascertain in like a quick glance at a person. And because of that, the idea of like an intellectual is like this weird, scary, mystical thing that a lot of people are more willing to reject than accept. Because it seems like such an arduous task for them to take on themselves. But I highly recommend it because if I can do it, anyone can. I think like, if anyone can get to the point where it's like, hey, I want to know this, I have to recognize that I don't really know that much about it. I want to open up a book or maybe hassle and tell me about it and learn more. Yesterday I was playing guitar with a friend of mine. We, I've been playing guitar for five years and I didn't realize that you're supposed to mute certain strings when you're playing open chords. I had no idea about that. And Eric's like, what? That makes no sense. But in my head, I was like, I'm just playing the chord. I don't know how this works. And I could have been hot. Just don't play those strings. Yeah. Right. Right. And I could have been hotty and been like, don't tell me how to play guitar. I've been playing this thing for many, many years. I know exactly what I'm doing. I have lots of songs. I have things on Spotify, blah, blah, blah. No, no, no. Thank you for telling me this. Because this is only going to make me a better person and make me better play. You need to have that kind of attitude when it comes to learning. And that is a character reflection on character. And there's no substitute for that. And I can tell you, because I'm an atheist, it's a lot easier for me to shed the baggage of the religious right that I have on things. Like, well, God's on my side. I could just say, hey, I don't know what kind of guys are out there. I'm just going to do what's best for the mutual benefit of everyone. That takes us close towards our end. I want to do a quick roll call. Does anyone have anything they'd like to plug? We'll start with Dred Pirate Higgs. No, you got the coolest thing. We're going to save you for later on. George, was there an album, a book, friends that you want to shout out to? A really cool neighbor that you have that you get along with? Anything you want to shout out? I can't think of a single thing. Fair enough. Fair enough. Fair enough. Be well, and I'll hope to see you next week. I'm Scott slash Dylan slash Williamson slash Scott dot fire. What do you got to plug? I guess I could shamelessly plug my music stuff. Do it. Do it. Do it. Yeah. Look for Dub Shine on SoundCloud. Dub Shine on SoundCloud. I'm checking that out. I'm already writing it down. What kind of music do you make? It's electronic music. Different genres of electronic music. Some mellow, some fast up tempo, different stuff. Very cool. I also throw this out in other musical things. So I went out to a friend's place to play guitar with him. He's a Christian and I'm like, do you know any easy songs? And I'm like, I know a bunch of Christian songs. We play through those. Even though he knows I'm an atheist because I, for me, it's no baggage. If it was like a Islamic guitar song or a Christian pop rock song, because for me it's just music. And so like if, if I can, you know, just appreciate being with someone and playing music with them, that gives me more freedom than someone who's like, well, I can't play that song because that goes against my religion. It's like it's music, baby. All right. Eric. I'm from my. Yeah. Play cat Stevens. Cool. Eric, is there anything that you would promote or plug? I, yeah, two quick things. Cause this one, I can, I keep promise you guys stuff and then I don't deliver. I'm, we're going to deliver this one. I've met up with some friends on a Facebook page for my favorite band of all time, bad religion, which is pretty, pretty topical for this group. Bad religion has been abandoned since the 80s and they put a book out recently. It was just fantastic. If you like the band, love the book. I met up with these guys on Facebook and we are going to record a bad religion cover. We're going to do infected. I'm going to play drums on it. So I'm actually going to lay down the tracks today and hope to put that out in a bit. And then I got a plug. My buddy's book here, Larry, this is fantastic. And I'm reading this book and I get to the part where you talk about the things that should have been in the Bible. And that was a beautiful section, by the way. I, I, you were reading my mind cause I've said at summit before, maybe even when Ty was there, I said, why didn't they give you the ingredients to soap in the Bible? So many lives. You know, just put it in there. Yeah. That and contraception for crying out loud. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Cause there's enough people already. Right. All right. And what temperature to cook or two? That would be great. Yeah. Cause bacon is delicious. Hey, you know what, I don't even throw. Oh, I don't want to start that argument again. Dale, is there anything that you'd like to plug? I like that statue in the background. You're a really, really good sculptor if that was here. Yeah. Oh, he's on mute, but he's, he's looking through stuff and he's talking. I can hear you too. There you go. No. Okay. Cool. No, that is a really cute sketch that you in the background though. Does it have a name? It's actually called the dying gall. It was first done in around 10, 20 BC or excuse me, AD. It was to, it was actually one of the first war protest pieces of art. Cool. Very, very nice. All right. Dredd, I gave you this time. You have all of our love and support for what you are going to do tomorrow. Thank you. Just want to know you have our backing. Yeah. I do have, I've made contact and been keeping contact with the major provincial newspaper. So he's going to be interested in the outcome of this story as well. So if it comes in my favor, or in the favor of pastor fairings everywhere, I will be celebrating long and loud and we'll definitely share out with you guys on, on either way, either way it turns out, but hopefully it's going to be a good one. And worst case scenario, just tattoo a hat on your head and be like, well, now what are you going to do? Exactly. A little trike on here. Just, just to mention too, that I do have my YouTube channel, Mind Pirate, P-Y-R-A-T-E. So I will, once this is uploaded or whatever turned into a recording, I'll post it on my channel. Nice. Wonderful. All right. And you can find me at Let's Chat. Feel free to leave comments on that channel and we'll go over them in the next week's episode. Likewise, we also have a subreddit group, r slash street epistemology. Feel free to comment on that and we'll go over them on this show too. Thank you so much for all the love, guys. I'm looking forward to talking to you again next week. Larry, why don't you take us out? This has been Digital Freethought Radio R. Please visit our digitalfreethought.com for radio show archives, atheist songs, and many articles on the subject. My book is called Atheism, What's It All About. You wrote a book? You can find it on Amazon. Dale's book can be found and read free online. JesusDidIt.com and talking about how he did his miracles. As a reminder, Cosmos Series 3 is now on TV, the third series of the Cosmos, and it's on National Geographic. Do a search for it. Broadcasting now. If you're having trouble leaving religious beliefs behind, there's an organization for you called RecoveringFromReligion.org. Check it out. If you have questions for the show, you can send them to AskAnAtheist at KnoxvilleAtheist.org, and we'll answer them on future shows. If you're watching this on YouTube, be sure to like and subscribe. Remember, everybody is going to somebody else's hell. The time to worry about it is when they prove that heaven and hells and souls are real. Until then, don't sweat it and enjoy your life. We'll see you next Wednesday. See you later. Bye-bye.