 103.9 FM, WZO Radio, Knoxville. Ladies and gentlemen, Digital Freethought Radio Hour. Hello and welcome to Digital Freethought Radio Hour on WZO Radio 103.9 LP FM, right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today is October 4th, 2020, on Larry Rhodes or Dowder 5. And as usual, we have our co-host Wombat on the phone with us. Hello, Wombat. The roses are red. Violets are blue. Trump has COVID. My thoughts and prayers to you. Oh, especially prayers. Yeah, all my thoughts and prayers. Every single last drop. Just squeeze it out. And I guess today are Dread Pirate Higgs, George, and Red Leader. Welcome. Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism, and the sciences. And conversely, we also talk about religion, religious faiths, gods, holy books, and superstition. And if you get the feeling that you're the only non-believer in Knoxville or each Tennessee, well, you're just not. There are several atheists, 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 breaks. Also, did you know that there was a streaming atheist calling video show broadcasting here from Knoxville? It has been for over 10 years now. Yeah. Yeah. But some people call it human chicken fighting. And I'm like, you have some of the best martial artists using all the different fighting styles. Yes, they're fighting in a cage. But like, listen, it's really, really hard to do that punching and grappling and jiu-jitsu and all that stuff. It's really cool. So I would check it. I would recommend to check it out. We need to put them on zero boxes. I will. But it's not the show that we're talking about. It's not an atheist calling streaming video. But we'll tell you more about how you can watch that after the mid-show break. And even maybe get involved with it. If you'd like to interact with us during the show, go to Facebook, search for a digital free thought radio hour, and use the messaging function to send us any comments or questions. Wombad, what's your topic today? I don't need evidence to believe in God. That's a topic today. But before we jump into it, how about we lead it to our own Dred Pirate Higgs for our weekly invocation? Well, I haven't been working on Limerick lately. I just got back from up north. But I do have a quote from Christopher Hitchens, which is kind of related to what we're talking about today. Religion is not the belief in a God. Religion is the belief that God tells you what to do. Now, deism isn't really a religion, per se. And that's a belief in God. It's not the theism, per se. But Dale has more experience in that than I would. He might be able to speak to it. Speaking of which, why don't we go around the table? Oh, I forgot to say, we've got to lead us on the final ramen, Dred Pirate. Ramen. Okay, okay. So how about we do a walkthrough? Dale, you might want to help us out for new listeners. What is deism and is it a religion? Yes, it's a religion. It's a recognized religion is classified as one. It has some differences to it. For example, we do not embrace tax-free religious privileges. It's a belief that there is a God, but he doesn't do anything. And we, well, as a matter of fact, I guess I should announce it now. And I know this is going to disturb Larry because he's really worked on me for years. We must have had, what, one or two conversations about deism versus atheism. One or two whole conversations. Oh, my gosh. I doubt I'd get upset. Go ahead. So, I'm afraid I've got to disappoint you with what with everything going on. I've realized that during the founding of our country, there were a lot of deists of which I turned my back on in recent weeks. And now I'm beginning to miss my friends. And now I realize that our democracy is in huge, huge trouble. And, in fact, we may lose it. And I would really hate for this fine deist experiment to go down in flames without there being at least one of us there to go down with it. Therefore, I am officially returning backsliding to deism. And when the country goes down, there will be at least one of us. It was either that or change your name to John Hancock. Like you have those two options and you're just like, it's got to be one of these two things. George, how are you feeling? I've never had a problem with deism. I mean, they don't have any dogma. They don't cause any real problems in the country. So, welcome back. Thank you. George, you're looking splendid. You're at a higher frame rate and better clarity than I've ever seen you before. What's going on with you? Well, my former computer has crashed. Oh, no, I'm sorry. I went to a website that attacked my system. And so I'm back on a real computer this time. The one that I used to be on is my beater computer. It's the one that I really beat around. And this is a more serious machine, so everything is different. I just got it running now. I mean, just for this meeting. Nice. So everything is strange. Everything is a brand new setup, basically. Well, it's a brand new used computer. I never used new computers anymore. Okay, okay, okay. Fair enough. Yeah, it works. Anyone who's watching the video play of this, Joe, we're just coming in at near 4K quality. Like, I feel like I can reach into all the textures on his forehead and just dip my fingers into them. Really, really nice. So we got some new folks here. Eric, you just joined us. How you been for the last week? Hey, pretty good. Yeah. Welcome, Boudreau. Yeah. Welcome to our Boudreau. Looking good. Also, Jake, with the face mask on and everything. Man, it's good to see you. How you been? I've been fantastic. Cool. How is the life of coffee shops? Is it like a bustling business? Super busy back there. It looks like everyone's enjoying themselves. Yeah, it's super busy. Thank you very much. Yeah, I ordered brunch toast. It's a little bit more than a coffee shop I found out. It's a brunch and lunch place. Nice, nice, nice. Wow, look at you. Okay, that is the... Being in a digital free thought radio hour podcast while in a brunch lunch place is the most... How do you eat it in a restaurant with the face mask on? Yeah, how do you do that? Slowly. I'm eating it on for a little while until I get my food. What city are you in, Jake? Where are you coming from? Missouri. What Missouri? Springfield, Missouri. Okay. I just wonder where our reporting was from. Isn't that where they filmed The Simpsons? Sure. It was one of the contenders. Sure it was. All right. So now I'm moving it up to our own Judd Pirate Higgs. How have you been? What's the legal turnaround? How are you feeling? So I showed up at court but had failed unbeknownst to me to file what was called a notice of hearing. And so the master was not even aware that the case was at hand. And so I've had to reschedule to sometime in November, week of the 16th of November. So... Okay. But a part of finding that out is that the lawyer friend that I've been consulting with, I can request of the master to have him sit at my table as a consultant, who can whisper in my ear and shuffle papers, can point his finger at different things on the table. He can't speak, but as a retired lawyer, he can certainly intimidate. Yeah. So I'm looking forward to that. Yeah. November is not too far away from here either. It's not. Yeah. That's not too bad. That's not too bad. You also said you went up north, which I thought was funny because it's like, how much more north is there after Canada? North Pole? Like Alaska? Like where else can you go? Where else can you go? Halfway up. So I'm at the very bottom of British Columbia. I'm just giving you a bad... I'm giving you a bad time. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I didn't mean that seriously. Tyrone, he's right. He's right at the Montana border. I know. I know some geography. I could do that good. So... Okay. Sorry. I just wanted to hear Dred Pirate say reschedule again one more time. Yeah. Reschedule? Yeah. I love it. I love it. I like saying schedule sometimes, too. And we say roof is not rough. I don't agree with that. Oh. Okay. You've lost your privileges, Dred Pirate. Larry, how you been? It's good to see you. Oh, no. His volume is out. What's going on? Okay. So there you go. No, I'm doing fine. Everything's cool. Just spending a lot of time on Facebook and playing World of Warcraft. I'm retired now. Speaking of Facebook, I heard you saw some really interesting comments made on Facebook that you might be wanting to talk about. Yeah. It kind of got this topic started. A guy said, I made a post that said science says that never once has the answer been magic. And I posted the meme. Guy came back to me and said, yeah, well, that's a claim. The claim that there's never been magic is a normal. And I tried to go back to him several times saying, no, it's just they can't claim that they cannot investigate magic because there's never been any instance of supernatural entities or things that they could investigate. Right. And he started coming back to me. And no, I went back to him and said, okay, well, what about all these claims of Christianity? And I, I listed 27 claims that I have on another meme. And he says, I don't make any claims about Christianity. I just believe. Yeah. So like basically he's saying like, hey, I'm not saying Christianity is true. I'm just saying I believe in Christianity or I believe in the Bible. I'm not saying anything Bible is true. Yeah. And the thing about it is, you know, he might be the one person who says that or maybe even 10 or 12, but every preacher makes these claims. Every authority of Christianity makes these claims that a soul exists, the heaven exists, the hell exists, sin exists. One thing after another that God can mate with a human and have a hybrid child. Just one thing after another, all these claims, supernatural extraordinary claims. And he's saying, we don't make any claims. Yeah. That's just dumb. So I want to clarify the delicious part of what he said because he's not saying the Bible doesn't make claims. He's saying the Bible does make claims, but being a Christian doesn't mean that you have to believe that they're true. You just have to believe the claims. You don't have to say that you don't have to repeat the claim. Yeah. You just like, hey, I'm not saying whether or not it's true. I'm just saying as a Christian, I believe whatever this book tells me. And that is an interesting thing. I find it to be potentially dangerous because what if the Bible said something really, really bad? Or what if a person had a holy book that says some really horrendous things about how to deal with it? Like you should kill Gaze or something? Oh, well, I don't think anyone would ever write that down in a holy book. But yeah, in the grand hypothetical sense, yes, yes, possibility. Or like you should own slaves and beat them in certain parameters. Equally improbable. I want to go around the table. I want to think about I'm trying to format like a really easy question. But like, can you be a Christian and not believe and and and also not believe anything that's in the Bible? But just no, he does believe it. He just doesn't claim that it's true. He doesn't claim that it's true. So can you be a Christian and and say you believe the Bible, but also not believe that it's actually true? Or there's something here. What do you what do you think? I'm going to throw this to Boudreau first. Maybe you can help me format a question we can go around with. But do you feel like what I'm trying to ask? Like it seems like he's trying like this invisible line. We're going with this. This sounds a little bit like the the notion of her where you have someone who's a great scientist, you know, five, six days a week. And then on the, you know, Sunday, they go to church and then they just kind of they ignore. Like there's something in their brain where they separate, you know, the evidence based work they're doing here. And then on Sunday, they just kind of take it all on faith. Yeah. So I'm wondering if that's kind of part of it. It's like a schizophrenia almost or some kind of cognitive dissonance. Maybe. Yeah. So OK, you, yeah, you, you, I think, I think there are plenty of Christians out there that believe the Bible, but they don't actually literally believe the claims in there. They don't live like the claims are true. They're like somebody's watching their every move because they do. Yes. They're illegal or immoral all the time, even though they say they got a morality is watching them 24 seven. I think that's very true. I don't think Christians, both for the most part, do act as if they believe the Bible or true, or else we would see a difference there. I wonder, Jake, you're about to put food in his face and he's put himself on mute. You don't want to talk right now. Do you think Christians believe or act in a way where they actually literally believe the Bible is true? Man, I don't know. I don't know anyone that acts as though the Bible is literally true. There are people, of course, that, you know, make the claim that they believe that parts or the whole Bible is literally true. But I think it's actually impossible to act like it's literally true. What do you mean by impossible? There was a claim. I want to know about that. What do you mean by that? Well, because it would be inconsistent with one's own behavior, wouldn't it? I mean, you know, if you believe that these supernatural things, you know, have happened or can happen, but don't act like in the real world, you still work within the confines of, you know, physical limits and all the rest of it. Sure. People don't walk off buildings with the expectation that God is going to lock them up. So the idea that you can believe in the supernatural or act like the Bible is true in that supernatural respect is not consistent with how people actually behave. So it's like people still go to the doctor. People don't buy, people don't invest in running shoes when they need to fly across the ocean in the plane. They're just like, no, I'll just walk across. I'll just really believe on this day and then just run right across. It won't be a problem. Exactly. Exactly. Okay. There's some, there's some merit there. So it seems almost like you can't say, well, none of this is true. I'm just saying I believe it, which is two separate things. It seems like there is some like cross section there. George, if you're available, do you think Christians actually, act in a way where they take the Bible as a literal truth? When you say, if you're available, what do you mean? Oh, because your video wasn't showing up and I didn't know if you, Oh, can you see me now? No, sir. Am I visible? Yeah. Jeff Pirate, what do you, what do you want? I just, one of our viewers says fake it till you make it. Fake it till you make it. I hear that a lot too. Well, to answer your, to answer your question, I don't have an answer. I don't know what Christians believe. That's true. I, I, but you can tell from their actions of whether or not it's consistent with what the Bible promotes. I don't know if you're familiar with the Bible even as a lifelong atheist, but it, are you seeing a drill every time? Every time I try to read the Bible, I fall asleep. I've, I've tried many times. I just, but the language it's written in is insane. It's not English. I don't know what the hell language is the Bible's written in, but it's not English. Yeah. There's a lot of versions of Bible that are hard to get through. Also numbers is really hard to get through worse. Third Genesis, worse. Third chapter of all times. Second chapter of all time. Deuteronomy is second, right? So it has to be third. Anyway, Dale, I'm throwing the question at you. I'm going to try to format this. Feel free to change it if you need to, but do you feel like Christians actually act in a way that is consistent with someone who believes the Bible as a literal truth from cover to cover? I understand your question. Well, I'm back. George, you might want to try the new international version of the Bible or the contemporary English version if you would like more contemporary language. And you might get through it a little bit better. Wombat. Yeah. Or yes. I don't know. Or yes. I'm sitting here with this question. But back to you, Wombat. Fair enough. Fair enough. Jake, I'm going to put you on. I know you're enjoying some delicious pancakes right now, but I got to figure out this from you. In fact, I'll throw out a specific example. I believe there's a verse in the Bible where Jesus is saying, hey, I stood on top of a mountain and I literally saw the entire world, which seems to me like an impression that like the world's flat. And we've been having some conversations about this a while back ago, and I'm wondering like, OK, there are Christians who believe in a younger that is also flat. That is part and parcel that comes with it sometimes. But do they actually behave in a way that the world's flat? Like are they cognizant of the fact that there's, even if you don't think planes are actually flying around the world, there are still planes that are doing it. There are still satellites that are doing it. You have a cell phone. Your clothes fabric had to come from somewhere. This lettuce wasn't grown in this country. How do you think this all works? What's going on? When you call someone and they say it's not 3 p.m. here, it's blank, blank, blank time. Like how do they compartmentalize it? Have you talked with flat earthers who maybe believe things that are in conflict with reality but are consistent with the Bible? Like how do you go about that, Jake? You don't need to have the answer to the question that you have. You just need to question it. And so it's not so much that the earth is flat. It's that it's not what they say it is. You think it might be flat. You think that's our hypothesis. It's not what they say it is. And you know that. That's our starting point. I don't need to know how planes work. Just that they're probably lying. They cover something. They're lying about how big the blueprints are on the fuel tanks to say how much fuel they can carry. Yeah, it's worldwide conspiracy with 90% of the people. Yeah. And just to provide some context before we get to George, Jake and I have been talking about flat earthers and their arguments for flat earth. And some of them are biblically based. And I'm wondering like what are the logic that flat earthers are using to compartmentalize clear, obvious evidences versus the idea of maybe it's just a conspiracy. And it seems like what Jake was saying is you start off with the premise of you can't trust science. Something fishy is going on. And then from there, you just throw in some very comfortable half truce that fit the conspiracy model, but also don't meet half the necessarily answer all the questions just enough to be like, hey, it's good to be skeptical, right? Great. Let me tell you about steel beams and jet fuel. George, I'm throwing it up at you. You want to say something? Well, I've been, you know, I've been looking at the issue of science being under attack in the United States recently. You know, we have what a quote, alternative facts. Sure. From the mouth of somebody famous. Go ahead. Go ahead. Well, a woman who works for our president. Yeah. But anyway, so I was having an, yeah, I was having an imaginary conversation with my neighbor about COVID-19. Okay. The statistics from my county have been going up and up and up in terms of infected people. Oh, yeah. And, you know, a lot of people, when I talk with a certain person in my neighborhood about COVID, he always discounts the statistics in different ways, you know, by saying oh, they're not considering all the people who have recovered from it or the people who are, the people who have died from other causes that are included in the statistics. There's always a way of discounting it. So my imaginary comeback to him is, what's that? Moving the goalposts. Yeah. Yeah. So my, my response is, well, you had stents put in your arteries. Did you go to your mechanic to have the stents put in? Did you go to your minister to have him put in the stents for you? Or did you go to an expert, a scientifically trained person to put the stents in your arteries? Did you go to a doctor? Did you pray them away? To have the stents put in? Yeah. Yeah. Dale, what do you got? I see you raise your hand. That's my imaginary conversation. Yeah. Dale. What if you're wrong? Wombat. And the Bible is right. What did I say that I could be wrong about? Well, what's the claim that I could be wrong about? Well, you were, you were casting doubts on the idea of Jesus flying to an exceedingly high mountain and seeing all of the nations and all of the kingdoms on earth, right? Okay. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know that you are not thinking out of the box or not using your elastic thinking. Okay. Perhaps what the Bible is saying is actually true. And I think I figured out the way it is. Oh, is there a book that we can figure that out that you'll plug at the end of the show, which is the best time for us to look at this? Well, it's my book, but I don't need to be plugging it. No one's looking at it anyhow. However, the largest mountain in our solar system is Olympus Mons. Now, if you stood on that an exceedingly high mountain on Mars, you would effectively be able to see all of the nations on earth, or if you No, you wouldn't. No, you wouldn't. Yes, you could hang on, buddy. If you stood on even a small mountain on the moon that faces the earth, then if you sat there for about 24 hours, you would see all of the kingdoms on the earth. But not at the same time. Maybe you should look at some of these things in the Bible as being a brain teaser for riddles and maybe see if there is a way by which it may become true. Back to you at Freethought Headquarters, Wombat. Sure. Actually, now I'm going to have to do my math on this, but Neil deGrasse has to probably argue that it'd be more than 24 hours because the moon Actually, it'd be less. It'd be 11. 12 will do it. But the same face always faces the moon. Not more, less, 12. Anyway, Wombat's right. There's a far side of the moon. Yeah. I said on the side facing earth, the moon does not rotate. One side always faces us. OK, OK. It's all about location, baby. OK. Class over. It's flat. Doubt fighters have been waiting patiently. Doubt fighters have been waiting patiently. Doubt fighters have been waiting patiently. Doubt fighters have been waiting patiently. Doubt fighters have been waiting patiently. Do you have to be more cautious? When I was younger, I said, hey, I'm not sure that I would say this, but I think the Bible is other than one person who is a Christian who, when confronted with claims that the Bible is making, said, hey, I'm a Christian. But I don't have to believe that the Bible's true. I just have to believe the Bible to be a Christian. I know. And so we were talking about like one of the replications of a person who has that sort of mindset and is his life consistent with someone He can't believe the Bible is true without believing the Bible is true, which is Bible is true to other people. I don't know. Yeah, he's saying belief isn't a question. He's saying like, I don't need evidence to have this belief. I'm just saying I believe and it's like, okay, okay, later I get your point is but the question still is is like, why not believe in things that are true? And what are you really saying when you say, well, I don't believe. I don't I'm not saying I agree with these claims. I'm just saying I believe them. So it's like, what are you really trying to say about the Bible at that point? That far I'm going to give you some time to authenticate on this. What do you think? Okay. That sounds like some sort of presuppositional type of position. So it seems like a lot of people that say stuff like that, and I've talked to a lot of Christians lately about that very thing. And they'll say, well, you presuppose that science is the best way to know things. And or I may state that or someone say, well, science is the best method to know things are true. And they and you know, the question would be then, well, how did you figure that out? Science? If science is the best way to know that, how did you know that? And so you kind of it's kind of a circular argument. And they'll say, well, just as you're being circular about science, why can't I be circular about my Bible beliefs? So it kind of gets philosophical. So for me, I can just kind of briefly tell you what I think about that whole thing is that, well, first of all, I know, what do I know? Well, I know that I experience an existence. So I exist. And from that, I can figure out, well, I can infer things, right? That's part of my experience in logic, cause and effect seems to work. And so from there, I can kind of do inference to the best explanation of things. Science seems to work when it's done right. And we seem to build on that. And so that's evidence, you know, we can make predictions. And those predictions can, you know, be verified. And if they are in their repeatable, then I think we have justification to believe things. As far as the Bible presupposing that, well, can we make predictions on the Bible? Can we say, well, if this Bible thing is true, can we verify it and repeat it and everybody can observe it? And we can all kind of share in that verification. And so then we have a problem because we have over 6,000, or really over 10,000 Christian religions that all have a different interpretation of the Bible in itself. So we're kind of, you know, and everyone's free to believe what they want, in my opinion. I mean, I don't have a problem with that. But I don't know, for me, just speaking for me, I would want something that that I could verify, you know, predict and see repeated over and over and over. Not sure that's going to improve. Yeah, I think that it proves over time. Dred, you raised your hand. I'm wondering what you think. Yeah. So I was just thinking about the comparison of faith to science and that there's a tautology being employed by science in the same way as being employed by faith. And I would disagree because science is a methodology. Yeah, it's it's, you know, faith is not a methodology. There isn't a prescribed path that you take to faith. It's just belief in the absence of evidence, whereas science relies on verifiability and methodology in order to determine what's real and what's not real. Yeah, I can summarize faith in one sentence or one verse. I can't do that with science. Science is a much more complex set of tools to figure out how the universe works as best as we can. It's by definition, a methodology. All right. Hey, we're going to take this to the break and then come back with some really cool things. Larry, why don't you take us out? Hey, this is digital free thought radio hour and W O Z O radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We'll be right back after this short break. 103.9 FM W O Z O radio Knoxville. Hello and welcome back to the second half of the digital free thought radio hour. I'm doubter five. We're on W O Z O radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today is October 4 2020. The free thought groups that you can join here in Knoxville while there's the main one is the atheist society of Knoxville. We've been around for 18 years or 1000 members. You can find us online at KnoxvilleAtheist.org or you can go to directly to meet up and just search for Knoxville Atheist. 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. Don't find one. And with us on the show today, we have dread pirate pigs, Jake, George Dot Fire and Boudreaux and Dale, our red leader, excuse me. What were we talking about there? So we were going over the classic Shakespearean play Romeo and Juliet, which I found to be very impressive from all the poetry that Shakespeare's ran. I think this is the epitome of true romance. And the classic line that I love the most is like when Juliet's sitting there on the balcony, she's like, Romeo, Romeo, where throughout the love? Where is the love? Where is the love, the love? So we're going to go over from our audience. We're going to get some love from our audience. First one comes from our already. So this is after our last week's topic, which is, hey, you know, what do I get if I leave religion? What do I get out of it? And on Reddit, constant variation says one less pattern of thought amongst other things, which I thought was like a very concise way of saying that. Nathan Matthews adds, what do I get if I leave religion? I cannot overstate how freeing it was leaving my religion that had an in and out group. As Doubtify said, I don't have to hate anybody anymore. So much time and effort focused on being in the right group and judging the wrong group, I don't have to worry about that anymore. I am free of the inner conflict over how to treat others and how to treat myself. I think that's a real true state. Really, very good sentiment. Thank you, Nathan Matthews. Really great quality comments, man. Thank you. Dada's Trading Room says, Hey, I had some trouble hearing Doubtify on his last broadcast, but I am subscribed to Let's Chat, which is my channel right here. And I get notified about the reposts. By the way, Dred is coming in loud and clear on the video playback. So you have a fan, Doubtify, who's who's who wants to just hear you and that's great. I love that. Thank you, thank you. Loma says, I want to say that I hope Dred loses the legal action because I don't find religion to be a valid argument for any legal case, but I'm not certain whether he wants to win or lose. Can he elaborate more about his goals and does winning or losing have any bearing? Dred, why don't you fill us in on that? Sure. I think the idea here is to draw a very stark attention to the fact that there's institutionalized religious privilege in government, in court, in law, and essentially in practice right across the board. And this is what we're trying to draw attention to. So in trying to establish arguments for religions that are non-Christian or non-Muslim or non-Islam is really to demonstrate how ridiculous the whole thing is. And so if we can, you know, make a sound argument that one judge eventually says, you know what, you're right. And let us have at it, then that just gives us the platform upon which to draw attention to the fact that the whole, the whole institutionalized religious privilege thing is, is ridiculous. It's going to stop. You're spending putting an effort to normal, to normalize the idea that there's a silly thing afoot, because right now not a people are exposed to this standard that government has to say, you're a real religion, you're not a real religion. And so whether they approve it or disapprove it, you're shedding light on an issue that most people don't even concern themselves with at this point. Larry was also pointing to what you just said about the government should not be in a position of pointing to a particular religion and saying, this one's valid. This one's not. The governor should not be in that position. It was stated in the Constitution, there should be no establishment of the of any religion by a government. And it's it's unconstitutional on its face. So pointing out what dread pirate points out with the flying spaghetti monster is doing just that. So exactly. And the idea. So the in Canada, we of course, we have a kind of constitution, but it does pretty clearly state in in the Charter of Rights and freedoms that the freedom to express one's religion is guaranteed there. And in practice, it's not. So, you know, again, as long as you conform to one of the 10,000 sex of Christianity, you're in. But if you don't, well, then you're not. And one of our viewers actually says, I guess we have 10,001 Christian religions now because Moon Jesus has entered the arena. So we got big energy and Moon Jesus. Oh, I'd love to see a fight between those two in the US. That would be fantastic. Okay, so here's a quick little SC tips. I mean, we are, we do a lot of SC socratic examinations, street epistemology, whatever you want to call it. I think it's good to just remind ourselves that we can talk to anyone about anything. And there's there's good means of doing it. And a lot of people on this call themselves have tried to learn how to incorporate SC a bit into how they talk with people and found some really good productivity from it. And my small tip for this SC corner today is you can summarize a lot of SC down to just three questions that you can repeat over and over again, or in any order you want. The first question I like to ask is, what do you mean by that? And I find that that is a great clarification question to figure out what someone means when they say things that obviously means a lot to them, but never really had a chance to think about critically, like try to get them to define that in their own terms, not from someone else's words, but from someone else's words. So, what do you mean by that? Second, how can I test that? Or how can we test that? Don't make it a group project. And that is more of a question that doesn't match with the way on their claim that they're making or on them personally, but really about their methodology that they're using to get to their conclusion. How can I test that claim? How can I know if it's true? And then the last question is, is that test reliable? Because if it is, that's great. But if it's not, that says a lot more than you telling them that their own terms are wrong. And so if you just do variations of those three questions just by themselves, you need to do some marvelous progress on your SE. What do you mean by that? How can we test that? Is that test reliable? Fantastic way to go about it. And everything else is improv and your own personal input. Jake, you've done some SE before. I've seen you do some, we've done some talks before. What do you think about those three questions? What do you mean by that? How can we test that? Is that test reliable? I think you nailed it. I love summaries like that. Etsy, it can be kind of hard for me to wrap my head around sometimes, like where we're going. So little summaries like that really help jog a conversation in the right direction. And yeah, those three points, what do you mean by that? How can we test that? Yes. It's excellent. I use that when I'm having difficult conversations with my family members. Yeah. And I think it helps because they're talking about what they believe in rather than me questioning it so much. It's just, you know, where are you coming from? What led you to where you are right now? Yeah. I also want to emphasize that it's not about playing dumb when you ask what you mean by that. It's trying to understand what they mean by a word that you have an impression of because you guys might be using the same vocabulary, but completely different dictionaries. And so it's worthwhile to understand what they mean when they say words. That way you can come to a better, you know, understanding of each other. I'll leave one more last question before we get to our main topic. Boudreau, you've done Etsy with me before. We've gone out and done it before. You have a really great friend who's busy flipping houses that I'm sure you have a lot of deep conversations with. Have you ever asked him, what do you mean by that? How can we test that? Is that a reliable test? You know, that's an excellent point because my buddy Chad and I have had a lot of conversations around this whole area of topics and we generally agree on most everything, but there are topics where we kind of bounce ideas off each other because I'm not certain. I believe it's the same way he believes, you know, particularly he's a little more Buddhist in some of his thinking. But I've never thought of actually trying to use SE on it, but I think that would be really interesting and a good exercise. So I'm going to take these three, you know, canned questions and give it a spin on our next talk. Ooh, I'm excited. Maybe record it. Yeah, maybe record it. Anyway, so thank you so much. Oh, Del, feel free to weigh in. You're muted right now, sir. Very good. There we go. I'd like to say that your SE stuff, while it seems to be very, very modified from what the ancient Greek philosophers were doing, it's very, very similar to what you would have in a psychiatric environment where all you're doing is you're asking questions in order to get the person to pull out and examine his feelings or whatever else he needs to be examined. You ask questions in order to get for them to look at some different aspect. How did you feel when you stabbed your wife? What was going, was there anything that was happening between your wife and you before you stabbed her? And why didn't you invite me to the wedding? And the whole idea is you get the person talking by asking him questions rather than challenging him, and that's been, we've been using that for a long time, and it's pretty successful, but that's not what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to talk about Moon Jesus. Okay. That offends me. Hey, nice transition. It just so happens that the Moon has been claimed already by the deists. We were the first religion to put set foot on the Moon, and it is ours. Is that how that works? Is there a documentation or a military to support that? Yes. There's a flag there. There is a national flag there, but I'm telling you, the first religion on the Moon to set foot on the Moon was a deist. All you have to do is look up what religion is Neil Armstrong. But it was him, even Christians, that put them on the Moon in the first place. And that's all I have to say about that. Good. Can I ask what he means by that and maybe how we can test it? He's using that. Oh, damn. He's oh, oh, oh, isn't he? I'm melting. Yeah, what it means about that is Neil Armstrong. We've got to show it to do it still. Neil Armstrong. We are going back to the idea of, do you need to, is there a difference between having a belief and needing evidence for that belief? When I hear someone says, hey, I don't care if the Bible is true. I'm just letting you know that I believe whatever it says. I feel like that's an admission on their part that they don't actually believe that the Bible is true. I feel like that is a clear, implicit statement about the lack of a recid, what's the right word that I'm looking for, lack of coherency in the Bible and that it just feels better to believe whatever it says. They're making like somewhat of like an argument from comfort. As long as I don't have to think about it, and as long as I get to still be called a Christian, I get to reap all the benefits of having a Christian card. And it doesn't matter whether or not I actually take it literally or not. Hell, I can't even tell you what chapters in the Bible or what books are in the Bible. I just feels good to me to believe that there's a God looking out for me. That's such a lack of intellectual honesty, my part. Dredd, before I get on my rant, please stop me. Make me feel, make me feel peaceful. What do you think? Well, just a comment from a man who's been a regular believer here. You know, he suggests that, you know, learning about other religions is a good way to combat religious privilege. That being one thing, how familiar is anyone here with anything other than Christianity? My mom's Jehovah's Witness, my sister's... Well, I'm familiar with nothing. Okay. Hey, that counts. That doesn't count as anything. One thing we need to clarify is that which Christianity? I mean, there's Catholicism, there's Protestantism, there's a thousand or 10,000 different sects of Protestantism and Orthodoxy. I mean, there's not just one Christian. There used to be different versions of Catholicism, but they killed all the other competing versions. And you didn't even ask about Jewishness or... Okay, but those are all Abrahamic. Those are all Abrahamic. I mean, there's Sikhism, there's Buddhism, there's Buddhism. You know, are we just talking... Are we just trying to... Are we just discounting and talking about Christian religions? Or are we also talking about religions generally speaking? I'm talking about all theist space religions. All theist space religions, because there's even religions that don't have a God principle to them. Well, there's some atheistic religions as well, right? Yeah, the Eastern religions that don't worship a God. Sikhism. Buddhism. Buddha wasn't a God. I'm going to throw out a quick little analogy that I've been using that I'm working on whenever I hear someone say, when they realize that there are other religions, that, well, they're basically all believing my God in a way. It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, there's other people, but it's basically all just my God with different hat, or they're just seeing it wrong. It's like when you go to the zoo and you have a deep and personal relationship with zebras or something like that, and when you take it to the giraffes, and you're like, oh, those giraffes, they're basically zebras. I mean, their necks are longer, but they're basically zebras. When we take them to a lion, we'll take them to the lion. I get that a lot of time. Ah, go for it. All the other religions are also worshiping the same God, but they're doing it in their own way. Well, that's a kind of a kumbaya approach to the whole thing, but they don't, in their next breath, they'll tell you that those other religions are going to hell. Yeah. You know, they don't have, through morality, they're playing both sides of the field. And what I say to that is I have a sticky bit of analogy, but I found that I would be better off not using it, because whenever someone says all those other gods are basically my God with a different hat, or they're just being worshiped differently, go immediately to, well, what do you mean by that? And how can we test that? Because now they have all the burden of evidence to demonstrate. I don't have to come up with an explanation. They made a claim. They made a claim. What do you mean by that? How did you test that every other person's God is your God? And is that test reliable or not? Because if it's not, that does more work on my part than for me to come up with a crafty flow chart to show you it's an unreasonable thing for you to say. What do you mean by that? How can we test that? Is that test reliable? Fantastic way to immediately do some quick SE. Doubtfire, we've been talking a lot about do you need evidence to support your beliefs? Now I'll throw it out at you. Do you need, as a non-Christian, do you need evidence to support your beliefs or would you like to have those? Yeah, I would like to have as much as evidence that I could that base my beliefs on personally. Trying to think of an example of something I believe that isn't just obvious. What's wrong with an obvious belief? Yeah, I mean, of course. And that makes a good example for people, I guess, when you speak to them. I can say, well, I can claim I believe that the earth is round and then we can talk about the science behind that or we can talk about really anything. But it comes back to how can we test it? How can we know it's reliable? Is it repeatable? Is it verifiable? But at the same time, those type of conversations can get tricky, right? You may be speaking to a flat earther who thinks it's just obvious that the world is flat, right? And then that's when you get into the whole thing. So I don't know. It gets kind of tricky. I'm going to throw out something that touched on what Dale was saying. Yes, people have been asking people questions to figure out what they believe since Greek times even before that even. But the difference between that and say like Socratic examination or SE is that it's not a teaching technique, it's a conversational technique. My goal isn't to show someone why they're wrong. I'm trying to understand how they're right. They have all the burden of evidence to bear and I'm not assuming they're right by default. So they have to get me there to the claim. And so it doesn't really matter what the claim is. It's the path that they're leading me towards to the claim and if that path is reliable or not and all the focus is on the path. And if the path is reliable, I'll follow into whatever conclusions there. We stop at every dead point. It's like, oh, this is the dead end. We can't go any further from here. We still can't get to your conclusion. Oh, then I was trying to help you to get there. I'm asking these questions. I'm trying to find out how we can test this. I'm trying to figure out how reliable it is towards believing it as well. But if we can't get there together, that says way more than Mr. Me's saying it's wrong. And I'm not teaching you that. I'm just trying to understand it with you. And it turns out that we both can't get there together. So why are you saying you're there and how confident are you really? I feel like there's worth in that. It's a conversational technique, Essie. It's not a teaching technique. And because of that, you don't have to worry about someone saying the earth is flat and trying to prove them wrong. Can you just be like, oh, the earth is flat? Maybe it is. How did you test that? What do you mean by that? Is any of the tests that you're doing reliable convince me because you have that burden? And we can talk about values. People can say, hey, how do you prove this is valuable to me subjectively? You can't. That's for each person to decide. But say someone says, well, I believe in God. And you start going down that line of questioning and then they start giving you a description of God or a definition of all their own. What do you mean by that? What do you mean by God? Well, I mean just the universe. Or I just mean nature or reality. That's God. And then you can always ask, why would you use a different word for reality or a different word for universe? And they may say, well, I have some utility with it. I find some subjective value in that. How is that wrong to do? No, is that a reliable thing to do? Find useful in a word and then just say it's the word? Like is that a reliable way to apply labels? And could someone do that in the wrong way? You're still asking the three main questions. Is that test reliable? But you're just using different words. Dr. Green, I'm sorry. How dare I call you on a first name basis? I apologize, sir. I'm so sorry. He's only in the classroom. I got a question for you. Since you do the summit, have you found value? Have you ever found a time where you want to ask someone like a list of questions that are like really, really long but you don't have the time or the capability of doing it in a big crowd? And do you see value in maybe just like a three? Like what do you mean by that? How can we test that? Does that test reliable? Like is there room for that even in the summit setting? Summit, by the way, is... Yeah. You might want to describe what summit is ahead of time. Sure, sure. And so summit is a gathering that we used to have indoors. Now we're having it outside and spread out in fewer people. But just a group of 10, 15 people sometimes, some food. Yeah. And everyone sits around and we kind of take turns talking about different topics similar to this. But it's in-person, somewhat moderated. But it focuses on religion and science and things like that. A lot of fun and it's something I love to do. It's interesting because Ty, I'm sorry, Dr. Wombat. One of the first times you came, you actually did a little SE on Paul, I believe, one of our Christian members of summit. And it didn't go over well, I think, because it was so different from what we normally do. That was years ago and that was before I knew anything about SE. It could be something we can kind of incorporate into like a phase. We usually meet for three, four hours. The first hour is just kind of chatting and getting maybe a topic here or there. But then maybe stop and say, all right, for the next 30 minutes, we'll do a little kind of one-on-one with an audience. Maybe something worth trying. Yeah. Or I'm thinking of like, if the question, if you're dealing with what I found with SE or the summit is it has the tendency to, if one person thinks something as an outlier, everyone sort of gangs up on that one person. And they ask a lot of series of questions of this one person that go off on different trails of thoughts and like different flow charts and different arguments trying to get to some sort of logical trap. And it would be nicer if it was just, if we all agree as a team that if anyone's, if we're ganging up on anyone, but if we formatted a question suggest, what do you mean by that? Could you just be clear? And then someone else can follow up with, how can we test that? And then someone else can follow up with, well, is that test reliable? Like I think you guys could get to more productive grounds than the independent paths, which could be a little, could be, I wonder if that could potentially to a blowback effect to the person who still believes it. Because I imagine Paul's still very much a Christian even after multiple summit trips. Oh, yeah. No, I think you're right. And well, summit is different than what we're doing here and what you guys do on panels. And one of the nice things about it is maybe we don't take it as seriously. And that's, I don't know, for better or for worse there, I leave a lot of summits going, man, I really wish I could have drilled down on that question, but I want that person to come back. So I don't, you know, kind of want to corner people too much, but it's interesting. I think elements of it could be tied in to parts of summit. So I think it might be worth trying and I can report back. Yeah. This was a fantastic conversation. Thank you for everyone for coming. This is a full house. I don't know if my screen can handle any more tiny little screens of dudes talking to me. But we're more or less near the end of the show. I'm going to ask for some plugs. How Jesus did it dot com by Dale. Find out all you need to know about moon Jesus. Isn't that right? Oh, it's not in that book. Okay. Which one should we check out? Moon Jesus. Moon Jesus is not in how Jesus did it. Okay. Oh, which I go to how Jesus did it dot com and read for free online. Yeah, I get it. You can get that book for free online anyway. Eric, what do you got on the table? What do you think that we can look forward to in the future? I hope to have my bad religion cover ready next week. We're waiting on vocals and lead guitar, but we got everything else tracked. So nice. It should be fun. Very cool. And then I want to I want to leave with the moon is actually atheists now because Neil Armstrong was an atheist. So checkmate. I need another different show. All right. All right. All right. All right. Okay. So doubt fire. What do you got? Oh, man. Nothing much. I can't really say much that's going on. Hopefully we'll be back next week. You can plug something. You got George already know you got nothing, but I'd still say check out New York. Well, if I had something, I would say something. But yes, I want to plug early doctor who episodes with Tom Baker. I really like them. Nice. Very cool. Jake, do you have anything that you'd like to plug or recommend anyone check out over the next week? Oh, man. Well, you asked what's on the table. What's what's on the future in front of me? I mean, oh, beautiful. Yeah. No, no, I appreciate you guys very much. You tie. You've taught me a lot about S.E. personally. And yeah, just I appreciate your content on let's chat. So I'll plug you, man. Thank you, man. I appreciate that, dude. Thank you so much. Dred Pirate. I'm wishing you for the best in November. It seems like either way, you're going to have some great stuff. Because if you get really told to go home, it's like, oh, that's perfect material, baby. And if you said, OK, you're right. It's like, ooh, that's perfect material, baby. No matter what, you're going to win. You just need to show up. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It's a win-win. Yeah. It's a win-win. And everyone knows it. So it's just like, ooh, come back later. You get your win-win. I just want to plug the fact that we are live streaming on YouTube right now. It is. We do that Sunday mornings at 8 AM, PST, or Piss of Extender Time or Daylight Time, depending on where it is. And we've got the sound working. So please come on. Have a listen. And you can find me at Let's Chat. Feel free to leave a comment. We'll go over them in the next week's show. We'll also post of this broadcast on Reddit at r slash 3, the epistemology. Feel free to leave a comment. We'll go over them on the show as well. And you can check out more of my stuff in Let's Chat. I'm releasing more videos from Politicon. Just released a guy who thought we should all have universal health care, really good bid, and I'll be putting out more stuff very soon, too. They're all ready to go. Larry, all to you. Hey, this has been the Digital Freethought Radio Hour. Be sure to visit our website at digitalfreethought.com and our blog. We have our radio show archives there, Atheist songs and many articles on the subject of atheism. My book is called Atheism, What's It All About, and it's available on Amazon. I want to welcome all the old and new guests back to the show anytime. You're welcome back. If you're having trouble with your leaving religion belief behind, go to recoveringfromreligion.org. They have help for you. If you have any questions for the show, you can send them to us at AskAnAtheist at KnoxvilleAtheist.org, and we'll try to answer them on future shows. If you're watching this on YouTube, don't forget to like and subscribe, and to be notified of new episodes. And remember, everybody is going to somebody else's hell. The time to worry about it is when they prove that heavens and hells and souls are real. Until, don't sweat it, enjoy your life. Say goodbye, everybody. That's it. Goodbye, everybody. That's it. Bye-bye.