 103.9 FM, WOZO Radio, Knoxville. Ladies and gentlemen, digital free thought radio. Welcome to the digital free thought radio hour on WOZO radio. 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today is Sunday morning, June 13th, 2021. I'm Larry Rhodes, you're got it, Bob. And as usual, we have our co-host Wombat on the line with the fellow Wombat. No, you see what you're doing. You're using the driver as a putter. You got to use the putters for putters and the drivers for drivers. There's the right tool for every throw. That's true. I've never used a driver for a putter that much. But I'll take your word for it. Okay. With us today, we have Doug Farn, George Brooklyn, George two and a half. And, um, oh, John Richards, the John Richards. I was looking on my page for your name and I didn't have it set up right. Anyway, digital free thought radio hour is a talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism and the sciences. And conversely, we'll also talk about religion, religious faiths, gods, holy books and superstitions. Wombat, what do you have for us today? Hey, if Dredd was here, we'd normally start with our invocation, but since he is currently away or temporarily away, what I would like to start with is my favorite quick, quick, quick, super fast won't take any time at all. We'll be done before you even think about it summary. Oh, it's already over. Sorry, sorry, sorry. A hash on how everyone's been doing since last week. We'll start with our own John Richards, who looks like he's in front of the Tower of London. What's, what's the cast? Yeah. What's the castle behind you and how you've been since last. One of the gatehouses of Aaronville Castle. Wow. Very cool. So how you been? The bit in the back is the castle itself, the tall bit. Yeah. Thanks. I've been fine. Thank you very much. No serious inconveniences to report. No serious inconveniences, though, I heard there's a story about cooking going on right now. What's going on? Yeah, well, very often I'm, I'm required, it's my turn to cook on a Sunday. But there's one thing that did happen since we last met, which is I had a birthday. I'm not telling you how old I am. So forget that. Don't ask that question. Happy birthday. Happy birthday. Thank you. It was Friday. So since I had a birthday, they cooked for me and I had, you know, cake and candles to blow out and stuff. And that meant that instead of having a normal Friday takeout, we had takeout last night and we ordered too much. So we're eating it again tonight. I don't have to cook. Very fantastic. Yeah. You know, I kind of enjoy the process of cooking too. So if you want to cook for your birthday, I think you're old enough to go for it. You can do whatever you want. You can do whatever you want. But happy birthday. That's great to hear from you. Scott. How you been, buddy? What's going on in the music scene? Music scene is exciting right now. Today I'm going to go perform on a yacht. Yeah, out in the place called Crab Island in the Gulf of Mexico. So it's going to be fun. Okay. So you've been giving me some synthesizer advice. I've been looking at a microcord. If you guys don't know, it's a keyboard, but it's got like basically a calculator on the top, just a bunch of buttons and knobs and dials and stuff. And I got to be honest with you, I first heard like electric music, electronic music. It all kind of sounded the same to me. I didn't know what I was listening for. And now I realize that it's not so much like the bass music. In a sense, it's more of like the tones that are being chosen, the sounds that are being crafted, and like that's the craft behind it. And now I'm getting an appreciate a lot more. So yeah, thanks for opening up my eyes to that. What's your second to be like? Oh, I'm going to play a few of my own tunes. It's going to be kind of like, it's going to be an EDM. It's supposed to be an electronic dance music party. So it'll be like DJing. So I've got a little DJ setup and then also all my equipment, like my drum machines and synths and stuff like that. I'll be playing live. And is it a one man show? Like are you just like a one man show? Yeah. Nice. Nice. How do you stream that or at least have some sort of video record documentation of that helps get out? I know that'd be great. I'm trying to get my sister to come. She's got a better phone than I do. My phone is really chunky. I need to get a new phone since if I'm going to start doing this kind of stuff, that'd be cool. Okay, cool. Is your kids getting into it? Yeah. I'm going to try to get them to come on the next one if I can. We're supposed to be doing them like every other weekend and they want me to be there to do it. So my kids want to come along and they can't do it today, but they want to jump in. They'll probably do it maybe next weekend. Hopefully. Sure. Yeah. If you start them now, they'd probably be your vocal. Oh yeah. Moving in into the future. I can see that. They'll be my little dance crew. Yeah. Yeah. That's what you need. There you go. And I had Anthony Magnobosco on Friday for my show. So I had you on the weekend before last on the Exploring a Systemology show. And that's when I interviewed you. Where can we get these shows or what's a place that we can access these interviews that you're doing? Yeah. So go on YouTube and it'll be the Borg skeptic channel. The Borg? In my particular show. Skeptic? Borg. Borg. Borg. Borg. Star Trek. Borg. Borg. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So yeah, go to that channel on YouTube and then look for Exploring a Systemology with Scott Williamson. And that's where I'll have all my interviews and I'll be doing SE next week with a Chris Elmo. I think we had Elmo on this show one time. Yeah, we've had Elmo in the past before, friends. That's where I met him. So yeah. Cool. Nice. Nice. George. Happy to see you guys. You look great in that sweater. It's so many different mics in your house. I think we've lost count by now. Well, how have you been? You're all lousy. They're all terrible. I like that one. Yeah, that one's pretty good. As you all know, I've been having an awful time trying to get connected through Zoom. And I'm not sure what I did to achieve success this morning, but there was a change in one of the menus that I presented with. Nice. So I took it and, you know. Yeah. Some of you know, I use the Linux operating system and Linux is like a tower of Babel. It's not like Microsoft or Macintosh where, you know, there's sort of one unified pipeline for everything. Unix is a free-for-all. Yes. And there's 2,000 versions of it. Yep. You can go down the rabbit hole easily. Yeah. I've found. So all I can say is I'm still struggling with it and I achieved some success this morning and I don't know what I did and it's just so maddening. I'll give you some props. Go ahead. You're using Linux, maybe even Ubuntu or something like that. I can't get my mom to basically know how to end a phone call, you know, just to like read lines like, how do I, how do I hang up? This makes no sense. It's a, it's a break. Yeah. Block. How do I hang up this phone? You know, your league is an above, like you're probably in the top percentile of most people who have computers being able to use it. Well, you see, I used to be when I lived in the Windows world and, you know, I came at this from DOS. Oh, shoot. Yeah. In 1984 and I have been. War. Very computer literate. Nice. There were. Yeah. In the Microsoft world, but now I'm in Linux. I'm a baby. I don't know what the hell I am doing, you know. It's always very frustrating. Command line. Is it command line or GUI? No, no. I'm not using the command line. I'm just using visual interface. I use the command line when I'm in real trouble and need somebody to help me. The shield. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. You used to be a computer dude, way back land, right? Right. Programmer. Nice. Did you ever play around with Linux? Did you have a good time with it? Well, the only time I ever used Linux was when I got into the blue, sorry, blackberries, the raspberries. The little computers. Yeah. The little computers are like, what, $100 for a kit and you can load Linux on it and run all kinds of software. But it was basically for entertainment modules, you know, showing movies and listening music, things like that. So I didn't really have to use cameras or microphones or anything, but it worked really well for that. Not bad. Not bad. Did you ever use the Linux kernel called the Holy Book? No. There's no command line. You just have to worship it without that. And praise. A lot of praise. Yes. As long as you do that, all your files are safe. But if you don't, it's going to come and get you. It's going to come and get you. Burn all my files. Burn all your files forever and ever and ever and ever and ever. It will suffer for all of eternity. But not if you worship it. And I think that kind of brings us into kind of what I wanted to talk about the show. I'm going to do one quick summary of what I was up to before we jump into it. I'm getting the disc golf. Not so much like becoming like a fanatic about it. But I did do my first 18 holes or poles or whatever you want to do. Talk about yesterday and it was really, really fun. I can tell you this right now. I did not expect to enjoy it. I saw a YouTube video that was like four hours long being like this golf. And I'm like, I'm not watching that video. Is that like frisbee golf? It's like frisbee golf. It's exactly that. And I'm like, I'm not going to watch this four hour long video. Next thing you know, I'm watching three of them. I'm like my whole weekend's over. I'm like, how did this happen? YouTube algorithm. How am I? And then, you know, Amazon has your shipments ready. I'm like, what do you mean my shipments ready? There's disc golf in here. What's going on? So it's been a love affair. And I'm having some fun going outside. Good exercise. Yeah. And enjoying being outdoors since COVID. Yeah. It's been wonderful. It's been wonderful. Guys, got a chance to go outside. Do it because, you know, we've been, we've been locked up for a while. But I'm not worshiping disc golf. So I wanted to talk about a quick story from a old book. I don't know if you guys heard about it, but it's called the Bible. It's kind of popular. I've heard of it. Are you sure? Should I do like a rundown on it? No, I don't think so. No. Okay, okay. So there's a verse in the Bible where basically Jesus is, you know, starving himself for 40 days and 40 nights or something close to that. And Satan comes and visits him. It's like, hey, Jesus, you don't have to do that. If you worship me, I will give you, you know, basically all the kingdoms in the world and all their glory. I'll give you all those things if you just fall down and worship me. And Jesus says to him, away with you, Satan, for it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and him only you shall serve. Technically talking about himself too, right? Yeah. Then the devil heard that and he's like, okay, and he leaves. And then next thing you know, the angels from God come down and administer to Jesus in his daily moment. But I thought that was a great, and I'm doing it a quick disclaimer here. I don't think Satan's real. I don't think the character in that book as that's called God is a real God. And I'm suspicious even of like a lot of things that even Jesus did. I feel like he's an amalgamation of a lot of different things put together. But if you make it general, then I don't know what you're talking about. But if you're talking about that specific character in that specific story, no, I don't believe that's a real thing. But I do think that it is a great example of a supernatural being taking no for an answer and being cool with it and just disappearing. And to get that from Satan is kind of like an ironic sentiment because here you have Satan being like, you don't want to worship me? Okay, cool. See you later. Whereas if you did that with Jehovah or like the main God, he's like, well, now let me punish you for all of eternity. And it's very scary or not scary, but startling recognition of my part that one of them asked to be worshiped with the intent of if you don't do it, I'm going to punish you. I need you to worship me. And I don't want to ask you to be worshiped. And it was like, but if you don't want to, it's totally cool. I got other things to do. I'm not going to pressure you to do this. I was trying to help you out. And it brings to me two things. Why do we worship? And two, what does it say about the ability to take no for an answer? So Larry, I'd like to highlight you first. Do you see value in the concept of worship? And as far as taking no for an answer, wouldn't that seem like what a benevolent God would do? No, I see no real use or value in the concept of worship. I mean, you can honor things like I honor truth and scientific truth and politics, truth and interpersonal relationship, but I don't build alters to it. I don't fall down on my knees and clasp my hands together and praise it. I don't see the value in worshiping anything. It's like an over-the-top reaction that's undeserved. Sorry about that. That's a great answer. And then what about the idea of like, hey, if you're a benevolent God, is it okay for you to take no for an answer? Or should you not even be asking to be worshiped in the first place? That's my two cents. But no one God would say, you know, I want what's best for you. And if you feel that worshiping is not good for you to grow as a person, fine. But that would be a benevolent God. John, throw that out to you. What would you anticipate as an answer if a benevolent God had to consider asking its creations to worship it? Would it go through the process of asking it and punishing them if they don't? Or is there something that my limited, even mind can't comprehend at this moment? Well, punishment doesn't sound at all benevolent to me. I think we have a contradiction right there. Okay, okay, okay, okay. You're a benevolent parent. What happened the last time you asked your kids to worship you? How about that? I got to roundly ignored, I think. But the thing is about this, I was, I got an old friend who's very religious. And he belonged, he was brought up in some of the, one of the more obscure Christian sects, Plymouth Brethren or something like that. And the other day, I haven't seen him for some years, but I was chatting to him and I said something vaguely disrespectful towards the Christian God. And he said to me, bend the knee. Oh, did he do it in an English accent? Because that would be fantastic. I might actually do it at that point. A northern English accent, Liverpool. Bend the knee. Nice. Nice. I love it. And I was, I was quite astounded, really, because I hadn't seen him in that mode. And so it was quite novel for me. But worship, no, it's, my, my feeling is that this comes about because of the context I'm going to use. Sure. What is, what is frequently a theistic trick and talk about, you've got to, you've got to consider it in the context of the time. Talk to me in context. Yeah. I'm open to context. Give me some context. Drop some context bombs on me. This particular religion was invented a few thousand years ago, wasn't it? Sure. At the time, there were, there was less civilization than there is now. Absolutely. Absolutely. And, and what ruling there, there was being done was done by force. You know, there were a few warlords with big swords and they, they were the boss guys and they insisted that you should be submissive towards them. Right. Or, or they really did punish you in, in some, you know, very severe way. It was an effective system for sure. Yes. So I suspect that since that's when these religions were created, they incorporated that scenario that, you know, the way life was then. And if, if you're expected to bow down to your warlord, then surely the biggest warlord of all would expect you to worship him. That's, that's the sort of reasoning I'm coming to. Well, help me, help me out with the history. Why then do we have terms like benevolent God or God that loves you or God that accepts you just the way you are or kumbaya or like, you know, the loving God, like where did, where did this, you know, happy go lucky, everything's cool, but you still got to worship me. That's the fine print. Where did that God come from? Because it doesn't seem like to be the one from Old Testament or you're like black and white New Testament. Do you know about anything about that? I think it's a marketing ploy. It's the carrot and the stick, isn't it? Yeah. When you realize that the stick doesn't work for everybody, let's throw in a few carrots. You know, this is a loving God, this one, loving God. The fact that he only loves certain people. Yeah, there's that too. There's that too. There's that too. It's chosen people and he doesn't seem to care about, for example, babies that are born with a genetic defect too much. You know, that you've got to gloss over that. Sure. Right. Yeah. That and kids that like to correct other kids' grammar. Like he doesn't seem to do anything to stop that from happening either. Just like the jerks of the world. He does nothing to stop the jerks of the world. Seems like a God would want to stop that. I'm also, Scott, love for you to weigh in on this too. The character of Satan is such an interesting character for me. Because you can look at it at face value of Satan's the bad guy, God's the good guy, right? Like that's what the book tells you. But in every, literally from chapter one, like if I didn't know anything about these two characters and I have to pull facts out of a hat, the one that, the fact that I pull out where it's like character A drowned all of humanity and including all the babies and impregnated woman in Mesopotamia Bronze Age and expected her to figure out her own father situation as if that was like a suitable thing to do. Or, you know, literally feeds people to lions or sacrifices son in the most torturous way possible to forgive other people for rules that he himself created. And then you have other character, character A's, like told a guy to eat an apple. And I'm like, oh, I don't know. It's like, how do you tell which one's the bad guy and which one's the good one? Like, Scott, what do you like, what do you think about that as like a system or as a, as a phenomenon of the Bible? Like you have these two characters, good guy, bad guy, but they don't seem to match up whatsoever. Yeah, it's, it's so many ways you can go with that. So you can do what you call an internal critique of that whole story, which is you're just jumping into the worldview of the Bible. So you're kind of considering what did the Bible writers mean? What did they, you know, what's consistent or inconsistent within the text itself? So you have to figure out what is the text really doing here? And so part of understanding what the text is doing is to kind of understand a little bit about this historiography behind it. So I think like in the, the writers of the Bible wanted to automatically assume, you know, Yahweh or Jehovah is the good guy. So that's right off the bat. That's like a bait-in assumption from the beginning. And then so everything he does is going to be good by definition. And if you think about the historiography about it, think about how, what they, what were the values of people back then? They value people that were powerful, that could kill as many people as possible. Those were the heroes. Those kings were worshipable. Scott, I'm going to throw something out at you. Perhaps that may not have been the prevailing opinion, but maybe just the opinion of people who had the power to distribute books. Like I'm pretty sure women may have had a different opinion, but they simply due to their position and caste didn't have the opportunity to express what they wanted to see in a God. And so what we see in God is just powerful people coming up with the most powerful person and like unempathetic people coming up with the most unempathetic supernatural being and misogynist coming up with the most misogynist. Larry, what do you think? Well, I think you landed on when you said powerful. The Old Testament really didn't show much of a love, a loving God. He was the powerful God. He was the creator God. He was the boss of us all God. The loving God didn't really come around until the New Testament when Jesus was there to hype for him and say that, you're a father and heaven will have a home for you. He's all about love and all this stuff. But that wasn't really the message of the Old Testament. Truth. Truth. The message of the Old Testament essentially is, you know, it's a pretty nice life you got going on here. Be ashamed if something bad happens to it. No, I think that's the New Testament. That's the New Testament. That's the here's the Jesus story. The Old Testament is just, I'm doing bats. Obey or die. It's really nice if you obey me right now. George, does this confuse you at all? Lifelong atheists, like the idea of, like, people would worship. Like, when you figured out who the God character was in the Bible and you're like, is this who people are worshiping? Did that ever surprise you? Well, you know, to new viewers or listeners, I will give you a context. I was brought up without God. Yeah. And no big deal. I mean, my mother was not a militant atheist. She was militant about other things, but we simply didn't have God, you know. And if anything, I was dragged off at the age of four to humanist lectures, not understanding a word of it, at the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture in New York. And so if if I have any religious context, which is a non-religious context, it's that. And so to me, the whole concept of a devil proves there's no God. The whole concept of a devil proves there's no God. Please elaborate. I feel like I don't want to connect these dots for you. Okay. Very simple. It's very simple. God is omnipotent, right? Yes. He's the boss of everything. If he is the boss of everything, he's not going to tolerate the devil at all. You're going to strike him down with a thunderbolt. That's going to be the end of the whole damn thing. With a lightning bolt. So, yes. You know, of course, if he really is something that there won't be any devil to begin with, because he won't allow it. Now, Scott, you might be aware of the apologetic of necessary evil. Have you heard anything? How would you respond to George's statement? Right. So, if I was to put my Christian hat on and argue about it, I would say that in order to have free will and to show love, there has to be some opposite to work from. So, you know, if we only have the option to do good things and live a pleasurable life and all of that, then there's no free will. It's like, if there's nothing but evil, then there's no chance to do good, then God's made it impossible to do good. You have no free will. You're stuck into that mode of you're either have no, you have only the possibility to do good, choose good things, worship God, or you have the option to not worship God and never do good things. So, either way, so you need a balance. You need a little and a little good in order to work from. You need some kind of contrast. That's the apologetic there. And so, my response on top of that would be you're the boss of everything. There's no there's no justification of, well there needs to be a balance. It's like, no, because you have the choice when you're making the universe of saying, nah, there doesn't need to be this kind of balance. It could be I asked the boss of everything, had the opportunity to make that. Yeah, I chose this particular system. And so then the next level of apology could be like, well, you just don't know because you're an invaluable human being. And that's very frustrating as an argument. But I can't, hey, George, what's up? Go for it. Well, I had something else to say too, but I mean, our topic is balancing words and I need to go back to the dictionary and find out what this word really means. Yeah. And so what do we mean by worship? We can handle that in the second half because we were almost not able to cut into the break. Though I do want to say I think just before we rerun on this topic, I am totally fine with there being good and evil as Scott has outlined and the Christian apologetic, like if there's necessary evil and necessary good for that balance to occur, I can though by reading the Bible clearly see that God is not the good one. Yeah. And if I had to make the assessment of like which of these two characters are the most evil, there are literal stories where it's the Satan going up and being like, hey, you called me up to heaven, what's going on? It's like, God's like, God's going to destroy his entire family when destroy all of his livestock. I'm going to kill all his wives and he's going to totally not curse me. He's going to be like, oh, y'all love you so much, God. Check this out. That was like, oh my gosh, what's going on here? You won, God. Good job. It's like, yeah, now I'm just going to give him some new people. Like there's your new family. All right, we're done. Go back to hell. I'm like, that's my bug. And yet, can I tell a story? Well, we're at the break. Okay, I'll do that. Larry, Larry, sorry for going long. That's okay. This is the digital Freethought Radio Hour on WZO Radio 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We'll be right back after this short break. 103.9 FM WZO Radio Knoxville. Hello, and welcome back to the second half Freethought Radio Hour. I'm doubter five, and we're on WZO Radio 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today's Sunday morning, June 13th, 2021. Now let's talk about the eightieth society of Knoxville or ASK founded in 2002. We're in our 19th year. ASK has over a thousand members and we have weekly meetings both on zoom and in person. The person meeting takes place at Barley's tap room in Pizzeria in the Old City every Tuesday evening after work and goes until about eight o'clock. You'll also find us on Facebook, meetup.com or just go to KnoxvilleAtheist.org or just Google KnoxvilleAtheist. It's just that simple. Also, R-E-T, the rationalist of East Tennessee can be found at rationalist.org. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville you should still go to meet up and search for an atheist group in your town. Find one. Start one. That's right. Wombat, where you want to pick up? Actually, we're going to start with George since he wanted to tell a story in the first half of the show. Our topic of the show today is why worship? What do you get out of it? Why you ask for it? What's the value? What's the deal with worship? Anyway, George Brown, what's your story? Well, this is my simple worship story. You got to understand that to me the whole concept of religions is just absurd this is how I've lived my life. What in the hell are these people doing? Where are they doing it? But you see, the way I'm wired, I have a hard time doing arithmetic. I have always had difficulty doing math and learning certain things in the classroom. So I was in high school and I was having a hard time with whatever math I was supposed to be doing. It just doesn't work for me. And I was walking down Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn. Flatbush Avenue? Flatbush Avenue. Flatbush Avenue. Yeah, it's a real street. And going to the subway or something. And there was a man on the sidewalk with the little table and he had these little tiny bibles. And there was a sign that said Free Bible to any Jew who will promise to read it. I said, I'll do that. Now these were, these were short pocket size bibles. Like just the New Testament? Yeah, they're the given bibles basically. I think it was the whole thing. I think it was the whole thing, Larry. Regressed pocket? Yeah, real thin paper. Real thin paper. And I thought, Yeah, I'm just I'm flunking there. I'm flunking math. I'm desperate. Are you sure he's selling you bibles and not astigmatism? Well, I got this Bible and I, you know, I start opening it up. I think I'll pray to the Bible and maybe I'll pass math, you know. And so I prayed and I prayed and I prayed a fucking lot. I'm sorry, guys. I knew it was going to happen. I knew it was going to happen. I knew it was going to happen. We have to edit this out. We have to edit this out. Who's guys? Who's guys? Yeah. Well, anyway, I prayed and nothing happened, you know. And so that's some total of my worship. I'm done. I don't even know where I put that little Bible, but it's the end of my story. John Richards, what do you got? Well, we've been talking about worship and you mentioned misogyny, I think. Yes. And it struck me that worship is almost entirely a male thing, isn't it? It's very sexist. Oh, jeez. You know, in the grand scheme of things you only ever asked, a man only ever asked for worship. So, yeah, well, there are plenty of Roman gods that are goddesses. Diana and Aphrodite and Freya, Freya, I think was Norse. But there are a lot of them and multi-god. But like if you go even to that tier of gods, if you go into like Norse gods, it's like King Odin who's like asking and telling all the other gods, I'm the boss. You were, I'm the end game guy. Like you can ask for good weather from this person, but I get the final say so. Like there is that misogyny layer. Sorry, John. What? Since you've gone back to the Roman gods, my favorite is the female god that was responsible for keeping Rome's sewers flowing. She was well worth worshiping. I'm trying to think of her name. It'll come to me later. Okay. Okay. The point I wanted to make, it's Roman Catholicism that sort of breaks this rule of worship being for men because they, the Catholics tend to worship the Madonna quite a lot. Ah, no. Jesus is well. And there's an interesting story about a Madonna statue which you may or may not have heard which suddenly started to weep tears from its eyes. Yeah. And this became a tourist attraction. Lots of people came along to worship the weeping Madonna and stalls were set up to sell them food and drink and so on. It became a very profitable enterprise. And then one day somebody was called in to do a plumbing job in the church behind the statue and it was discovered that the toilet was leaking and the tears were coming from there. Well, you know, one of my builders told me the real reason the statue was weeping was because she was sad that people were worshiping her and not God. Is that the story? That's the real reason I was told. I'm also going to throw this out too. I don't like the concept of the Madonna worship because they don't worship, they're worshiping a woman for being a woman, right? Like is very much Mary is a virgin. Mary is quiet. Mary is obedient. Mary did what God told her to do. Mary followed orders and Mary gave birth and that's all the virtues that we had to a man, the best man and had a son and that's all the virtues we bestow on the opposite sex. And that's it. We don't care about what she liked her favorite music issues she had politically when she menstruated. None of that matters. You're obedient, you're quiet, you gave birth and you're a virgin. You're the best version of a woman possible. And in my head that's such a pigeon holing of a character of what a woman can be. And so when I see that I don't see that as a healthy I don't see worship as healthy anyway but I also don't see that as a good target. I just see that as another misogynistic example of like hey wouldn't it be great if all women that gave birth were virgins? That's the most perfect woman possible. Really that's such a small aspect of it but I was trying to make an analogy in my head while we were thinking about this but it would be like qualifying Mary as the best woman is qualifying Mickey Mouse as the best black character on TV and it's just like they're like so many layers and questions apart from each other. He's got mostly a black face he's got the big black ears and stuff that's not even close to it. Anyway, George thank you for that story Like I said it didn't work I still can't I still can't do arithmetic all I have to do is say praise Jesus for calculators Yeah, so I'm going to go back to another story with Satan too like the whole idea of Satan was that he was sent to hell because he thought he was more beautiful than God and God got upset about that essentially, right? Is that the story? Correct me if I'm wrong. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong but essentially it was a sense of vanity and God's major plan of like hey you know no one can think they're better than me and Satan's like but I'm at least cuter than you right? I wear this beard better than you wear that beard right? It goes back to what do we mean by worship and you know when you look at the Bible what did they mean by worship and it was very very much a vain type of concept because the other word for worship that was synonymous with the word worship in the Bible was glory glorification so like first Timothy first Corinthians I think it is 1031 or whatever so whether you eat or drink or whatever you do give all glory to God do it all for the glory of God and so God is a jealous God and he doesn't want you giving that glory or worship to other symbols you know because he's jealous he wants all that to himself you know his vein and I feel like it's more of like insecurity like if you told me hey plot twist the God that we've been worshiping or God of Christianity is actually the God of insecurity this whole time I'd be like it makes a lot of sense and someone just gave him the keys and next you know he's just turning all the keys and be like worship me or I'm flooding this or I'm burning this village or I'm turning this lady into salt or I'm like wait did you say turn a lady into salt I'm turning the lady into salt I like salt and he's like okay okay he got the salt key guys he has all the keys what are you gonna do just worship him what value okay let's let's try to steal a man this best that we can then what value could a being possibly get from being worshiped John I'll throw this to you first what possible value is there in being worshiped ooh I don't know an inflated ego okay yeah I imagine you have to have if God's powers were ego based like he had to have a certain impression of himself to be able to do the things that he does I can see the value in that like there's some weird twists in there what do you think the trouble is it sort of assumes that he's a bit neurotic and needs to have an inflated ego to be constantly massaged especially if he punishes those who don't worship him yes indeed yes yeah sounds like a certain politician I know of sounds like several yeah well there is a Christian apologetic for it though talk to us so the Christian apologetic for why should God be worshiped and they will say because what is entailed in worshiping God is doing God's will and what God's will entails is treating others with love with respect with loving your wife as you love yourself you know all of these supposed virtues and things like that so it's for our own good that we worship God Larry that's the perfect jump off to you how would you respond to it's for your own good to worship God that's the benefit I'd say I don't understand the correlation why is it good for me how is it good for me or I would see I can see the correlation but I don't I'm not I you have not demonstrated the causation for me like I can see that you're connecting dots but one's not causing the other I can be good to my wife I'd be a good person without worshiping God and so this is just an extra step that's not needed though you can correlate them there's no cause showing that doing this makes the other one happen there is a causation in the apologetic though and that's because the reward for doing that is going to heaven so anyways and staying out of Hill what do you got well I've remembered the name of the Roman goddess who looked after the sewers oh this thing again okay yeah it's close enough she's well worth worshipping you don't see no there's a bacteria stream named after her is that really your name well yeah it was yeah very often we use Roman and Greek words to name things in biology don't we wow well there's a there is a that's like shining a light and like two years my biochemistry class is at war like well yeah yeah it's like realizing Monday's named after the moon and Sunday's made after the sun you're like the whole time yeah but it sounds it sounds to me like a brand of cookies it's going seen it's seen it I wanted to I wanted to ask Scott what's the difference between apologetics and spin there's no difference I always like to put it this way this is pretty sarcastic but I think apologetics exists to make believers not feel stupid oh man that's the best quote for today Scott you got the best quote for today you got to put that in the song if you play an entire electronic set and end on that phrase apologies exist so Christians don't think they're stupid that's so mean that'd be like my face is frying so good religious religious people in general I feel like apologetics also exists for people to have an excuse not to think about what they believe because we know the result of what happens when you do that people become more skeptical and it tends to be the case that the more skeptical you are the further way you run from religion and people don't like that so what's the best thing that they can do is they can say oh these answers have already been solved they're in a book or they're in a youtube video you don't have to see the youtube video they exist so just keep doing what you're doing and if you ever do want to see them you can and you can see them you can read them and they feel good they feel like they make sense but they're not engaging you to think about the process of how they came up with that conclusion they're just an explanation not an answer they're just an answer not an explanation George take yourself off mute come back yes um you know I've been thinking about this to me living here in the bible belt is a very confusing experience you know so I think I think that what is at the root of this is an emotional thing people are comforted by the familiar and if they're raised with this belief system they want to keep on returning to it it's a source of comfort George I need a more extreme version of that I wouldn't even say people are comforted by the familiar I'd say they're afraid of change I would say they're absolutely absolutely it's the opposite the change is frightening you know it's also guaranteed yeah it's also guaranteed the one thing that we will constantly that's the way out is change yeah so life is scary basically but the tendency to resist change is because it's comforting to know how everything works and once things change we don't know we're in a situation of doubt once more and this is why in my mind the religious tend to be in alignment with conservatism they don't politically they don't want change can you say more about that I'm curious well in the states it's the republican party isn't it most evangelical yep but it wasn't always that way right wasn't that certainly until 1960s and anti-drug Nixon era that suddenly became we're going to need the south on our side so let's become really religious yes yes it's not the same republican party it was way back at all no no but yeah I hear what you're saying yeah now it's not even the same poverty it was eight years ago right like it's it's devastating to see what's going on but I mean conservatism in my head is sort of a harken back to traditionalism sort of like old people have figured out the problems for us we just have to basically do what they do you don't have to think about it just what they're doing just stay on this course and it's okay yes well that's that's another tendency isn't it the appeal to authority hmm yes we like authority we like a hierarchy we like a big god at the top I don't who is this leader you're talking about humanity who is the most worship worthy the big one at the top dang general humanity for for possibly even making that true it's probably the case yeah but yeah I hear what you're saying though I still comes back to the main question of like why does worship have to be an option I would love and I've talked about this before there's versions of God on a show called chicken soup for the soul or packs or something like that there was a show called chicken soup for the soul where was not so much it was a very much an interventionist god but it wasn't like in your face you have to do what I want it's more of like oh um you got a flat tire well because you know you were nice to people those people have found you on the road and can came to help you fix your tire up again and it was just through your own machinations of putting good in the world that that good came and helped you out so that you can continue on your way and like that would be an episode of chicken soup for the soul and it wouldn't even be like a god character it would just be like wholesome good things that can come about through being you know an uplifting inspiring person in the world and I was like if you told me that in order to make this work there was a god pulling levers and keeping track of like good values and being like okay put in this good we're now cashing this good check and now good things are going to happen I'd be like okay at least that god is interventionist is working in people's lives in a benevolent way and isn't asking to be worshipped like that in my book would be like oh okay this is the benevolent god that I've been always hearing about but that is not the character that's in the Bible and it still doesn't explain the value of worship even as a concept because it seems like you'd be just as capable of using a supernatural powers to help whether we worship or don't worship and I'm brought back I'll lose this is my final point there was a there's a philosopher who says basically I don't even want to misquote him because I don't know who it was but essentially there's if I if I don't worship period and I'm punished for it by a god that want to be worship that wasn't the god that I wanted to worship in the first place right and if I end up not worshiping anybody and the guys like yeah you're free to go to the good place they'll be like oh cool awesome because that's that is the kind of god that I want to that I would want to be with is one that wouldn't demand worship from me in the first place seems like it's such a extreme thing to ask for Scott what is the thing that you got closest to worshiping you mean as a as in life in general even if it's a concept what was the thing that you've gotten close to worshiping most well I used to be Jehovah Witness so I definitely used to worship that religion but that's true outside of that now I guess now nowadays what's the thing that you nowadays even if it's actually even if it's momentary maybe skepticism maybe I worship that I think it could be it could almost be and I notice the tendency in myself to where I like I've become so comfortable in embracing of not knowing things and being skeptical about things that I've almost I almost want to not know things and want to not be skeptical about things like just there's a side and I have to keep that in check like I have to always watch it because I might be acting on cognitive bias just like anybody else so but yeah I've seen myself go down that road nice and I wouldn't even say you worship it I just say like that's the thing that you you can get a lot of positive returns from when you invest time into it so that's a good trade off John same question to you what's the thing that you found that you not worship but get as close to possible and it can be a thing a person the concept even if it's temporary like a good song that you heard for like three minutes and you're like now I'm going to go off to the next thing what was like something where you like that was that was that was it Eric Clapton Eric Clapton I'm surprised you said him isn't he American no no he's British he seems like he's American and that's a that's a conversation for another time we all do don't we I'd love to be able to play the guitar like him oh yeah yeah he used to be known as God of the guitar many years ago yeah I aspire to his skill as well yes but it's worship is an anathema to me because I'm a retired science teacher and we don't have any respect in science we don't have any respect for people at all we have respect for ideas yeah and we're we're willing to challenge any person no matter how high up the hierarchy absolutely we think their ideas are 40 yes and that's how you know science works because it's constantly just yes I don't believe it no no worship it's not part of my hmm so it does sound like you have an appreciation for the scientific method if anything like along with Eric Clapton scientific method is also like I will go to bat for this I'll fight for this I'm in the same boat if there was a conference where it's like we're gonna decide whether or not I'll tell you quickly when I went to Kentucky to the textbooks center to see what the University of textbooks had said about biology just as a lark and none of them were good in terms of describing evolution they were either a three paragraph thing in a big old textbook or literally had words like capital C creator made blocks and I'm like this is startling to see this in a science textbook well that's Kentucky isn't it Kentucky's out of the south I think I feel like it's just help me out I don't know it suppresses me either way but yeah the other thing I wish it would be freedom of speech I think anybody should be able to express themselves without being censored we can talk about that I feel like censorship I feel like words do have the capability of hurting in ways that we may not even anticipate especially with libel or twitter like it's very easy to witch hunt or kill people in like a public sense and if we don't have means of censoring that or observing that or controlling that to some extent we may have something like a president who will tell a bunch of people to go into the capital building and kill people or the vice president and like that news source like Fox News yeah yeah yeah like if there's ever a demonstration of why censorship is useful it's that like that and that should be like not something that's up to one CEO it should be like a systematic we don't accept that block that as we have decided to turn that George Brown sort of like a final thought section what's the thing that you love the most well I think if there was a master race in the universe that came back to earth and said gee we've overlooked these people for so long should we let them live or should we just bomb the hell out of this place as a failure and what do they have that's worthy of saving they make wars they kill each other all the time you know and and so the one thing that we have that is worthy is art our art and to me of course the art that I know the most is music so who do I worship in music Bach Pachelbel Palestrina Charlie Parker on some days Joni Mitchell and James Taylor nice nice so expression through art I think that saves us it saves me saves you expression through art powerful statement George Brown Larry, thing you love the most don't say trolling on the internet truth you know I did worship golf for about 20 years hey that's not bad I was saying if you get close to worshiping truth you're one third of the way of worshiping Superman because he's truth justice and the American way that's pretty good I don't know about the American way anymore it's kind of coming to question with all that's going on here especially with the right being so far gone so I will say this too just as a maybe as a my last inspiring pick me up but the problems that are been going on are not new in America and they are finally getting to the reckonance or the radio stations that everybody's listening to and because everyone's groaning at the same time and it's not just you know a group of minorities that are groaning that is a good thing when everyone's like oh my gosh look at this problem that's so much better than that one person in the room who has the problem being like this is a big problem guys and everyone not listening to that person anymore so it seems like now more people are aware of things that we need what do you mean groaning pale face oh that's right I think we're getting close to the end of the show Larry Scott where can we find your stuff at oh yeah dubshine.bandcamp.com sweet John Richard something alliance there's some sort of alliance out there with a bunch of atheists it's like an atheist alliance of some sort what's going on out there well I'm no longer part of that so you're asking the wrong person I resigned from that I resigned from that back in January now so I've now got free thought productions which is my youtube channel and you've been on it and Eric's been on it and I've also got Dred coming on on Saturday he's going to spend an hour with me chatting about things and anybody else who'd like to come on would be welcome I had no problem double dipping on that show just tell me an invite I've never had anybody refuse to come back great George what's something you recommend we check out for next week maybe what's the best Bach song you're asking me yeah best Bach song oh my goodness well he didn't write he wrote aria an aria is a song and boy I you caught me on unguarded you got 10 seconds but I forgot to mention Mahler Gustav Mahler's song cycles very very powerful very cathartic okay enough out of me fair enough you can find me on let's chat youtube Larry why don't you take us out my own content is found at digitalfreethought.com be sure to click on the blog button for our radio show archives atheist songs and many articles on the subject of atheism my youtube channel can be found by just searching for Larry Rhodes or doubter 5 my book atheism what's it all about is available on Amazon if you have questions for the show you can send them to askanatheist at noxvilleatheist.org and we'll answer them on future shows if you're having trouble leaving religious beliefs behind you can find help at recoveryfromreligion.org and if you're watching this on youtube be sure to like and subscribe this has been the digital free thought radio hour for another week remember everybody is going to somebody else's hell the time to worry about it is when they prove that heavens and hells and souls are real until then don't sweat it enjoy your life and we'll see you next Wednesday say bye everybody bye everybody bye bye