 on this. Hello and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio Hour on WOZO Radio 103.9 LPFM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We're recording this on Sunday morning, August 20th, 2023. I'm Larry Rhodes or DJ Douter 5 and as usual we have our co-host Wombat on the line with us. Hello Wombat. It's me the Wombat. It is and Dred Pirate Higgs is with us today. Welcome Dred. Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a top radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism, post-deferianism and the sciences. And conversely we'll also talk about religion, religious faiths, God's holy books and superstition. And if you get the feeling that you're the only non-believer in your town, well you're just not a bet on it. In Knoxville, here in the middle of the Bible Belt, we have a group of over a thousand of us and we're the Atheist Society of Knoxville or ASK. And we'll tell you more about us after the mid-show break, so be sure to stick around. Wombat, what's our topic today? We're going to do a Meetings of the Minds or at least talk about what it would be like to meet some of the greatest minds and religious bodies in a one-on-one interview maybe on a talk show or something like that. Sort of like what they did with that show that you referenced. What was the name of that show again, Larry? It was Steve Martin's Meeting of the Minds. It was done back in the 60s I think. Steve Allen. Yeah, so I thought that'd be an interesting thing to go through. What happens if you have the likes of Charles Darwin, followed by God, followed by Jesus, followed by blind spaghetti monster, all sitting doing talks and figuring out what has come about with the things that they may have discovered or presented to humanity and how would they react to advancements that have been made or recent revelations if you will. But before we get into that, let's call that the meat and potatoes today's show. I would like to start with our own invocation now that we have our noodley pasta pirate representative here. Dre, would you mind leading us? Not at all. Our noodley lord working on a colander, I'll dente be thy noodles, thy blood be run nice, soft be yum with meat as it is with vegetables. Give us this day our garlic bread and forgive us our cussing, as we forgive those who cuss against us and lead us not into ketoism, but deliver us some carbs. The nine are the meatballs and the noodles and the grog, whatever and ever. Hey, Dred, how have you been? Working like a dog, man. I could tell. I could tell they made you get rid of the beard. Well, yeah, that's actually been a while. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I just have to be able to wear a respirator. Yeah, yeah. Working on the oil and gas industry here. So you have the respirator face look right now. Like it's like, I got rid of the fist, but they let me keep this. I'm still keeping this. Yeah, yeah. Believe me, I look like, I look like 30% of all the guys here. Okay. Just by virtue of that fact. How has been the work and how's the fire situation recently? I know a lot of smokes. Well, yeah, it's not too bad. Actually, where I live, my Western Canada. Yeah, yeah, Western Canada. She sent me some photos of the smoke that's been coming in there and it is that I, you know, they have to wear masks going outside because, you know, it's like the entire exterior is like the inside of a burning house, you know? Right, right, right. You know, if you are young, if you are young, say like 30s and you have some disposable income, invest in a good respirator mask. You don't necessarily need the cartridges right now, but similar to how everyone was hoarding face masks and they were suddenly off the market and like 10 times worth of price. And the things that you could get were substandard and quality because they were just making them in bulk to basically make a profit. It's always good to just have a good respirator on hand. It's one of those really valuable PPEs that you don't want to compensate or compromise on quality, particularly in a rush of an emergency. And you never know when there might be a big fire or some weird climate change or deal that causes you to absolutely need one. My two cents. Dread or you can pray. That's always a good option too. Much more, much more cheaper, much more available, but effective, we'll find out. Well, Larry Rhodes would love to catch up on you. How you been? You look like you spent some friends. I'm sorry? You look like you got some friends. Yeah, I did. I mean, I met with Eric yesterday, Boudreau from Kentucky. He came down to pick up Tesla. Nice. Yeah. So we have a dealership here in Knoxville. So we got together for lunch with his parents. I mean, his wife and his father. So it was a good meal, a good company. Yeah, I'm surprised there's not one in Louisville or Versailles or in any of the other areas in Kentucky. It's Knoxville. Knoxville is the home of Teslas. Don't knock Tennessee. It has so many big cities. Yeah, and the big cities are blue. I remember that. True. The rest of it is rural red. It is. The big cities are blue. And not only that, but like most everybody in Tennessee is really, really nice. Like even it's just a really, really nice state to be in and no sales tax. So people. Wait, wait, wait. What? What? No, no state. So no state, no state tax in Tennessee. Income tax. No state income tax. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No state. Yeah. If you buy a lot of stuff, you're going to be taxed. Sure. All right. Got it. But when it comes to turning in your taxes, it's no default, like 20%, 30% out of your paycheck. You're like, what? That makes no sense. The federal government already took what they wanted. All right. John Richards. Hello, John. Welcome. We have a show today. Sorry. I'm sorry. I'm late guys. I've been collecting the family from the airport. They've just got from their homes. Okay. Okay. I'm glad that England also calls them the airport too and not like the ferry floaters or something like that or like another term that I would have to learn as an American. Nice to see you, Dredd. And surviving the fires too. Truth. Yeah. But you want the bad news. Okay. Sure. Spain, Spain beat England. No, in what? Football. Three different sports we just said. Soccer, football and cricket. It's one of those three. One of those three. Okay. The mystery is still out you guys. Women's World Cup football. Condolences. Okay. I didn't even know we had a women's football team. That's amazing. So like they have a lot. You have a US women's football team and it's quite good. Are they kickers on the team? Surprisingly. Okay. Okay. That's wonderful. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Field goal kicker. They got the quarterback and everything like that. It's wonderful. Water boy. No. Water girl. Excuse you, Dredd. Water girl. Yeah. John Richards, how have you been? Cheer man. Cheer man. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cheer person. Yeah. Yeah. John Richards, how have you been? What's going on with you? I've been fine. Thank you. Yeah. Wonderful. Wonderful. Today's topic, John, is meeting of the minds. You remember that old show from the 60s and 70s? Steve Allen, the meeting of the minds. And he had people on there that would like play historical figures and talk to each other. I'm not sure that it aired over here. Okay. I'll put the link in the chat. You can check it out. And for those listening, I've got the link down below or I will have. Yeah. I'm aware of Steve Allen, but not that particularly sure. I did see in the chat there. So he basically hosts late night talks with actors pretending to be historical figures. Cleopatra as well. Stuff like that. And I was wondering what if we can make that real, which we can't, but let's just pretend we could. And instead of having the likes of Cleopatra, we had Charles Darwin or Jesus or Muhammad or even the flying spaghetti monsters sit across and talk about, hey, it's 2025, 2030 sometime in the future. Let's talk about all, let's talk with the father of evolution about all the advancements we've made since his initial discovery. I'd love to know how those members in his conversations would react to built on revelations after the point of their discovery. Some would actually be pretty open to it. For example, if you were to bring this up to Charles and say, hey, we found these things called germs. They're like tiny little animals and they evolve very quickly or because they rapidly produced Larry. What do you think? And he would be interested in knowing that we found the mechanism for evolution. He did not know what the mechanism was. Right. Exactly. Yeah. He'd be like, wait, wait, is that in me too? It's like, yeah, it's in every cell. In fact, some cells even have multiple of them in every living thing on Earth. Yeah. Like it's really cool. This is like, it's like evolution. Awesome. But we also found like some things don't take a long time to evolve. Some things evolve very quickly. Like even large animals, we call it punctuated equilibria. And there's like this environmental nature nurture. And we found out absolutely humans are a asset of evolution. And we actually use it to make better medicine for people, just based on like what their body types are and where they come from. Like we can look at someone's historical family record and recognize that they're at more risk for heart failure or different kinds of cancer, just based on like their genetic profile of how much melanin is in their skin or how much they work, like going at Larry, going for it. I was just going to say, we could also say how we could also show how closely we are related to other animals. Like we can see how close what our nearest evolutionary cousin is. I like the Bonobo ape or other apes and prove it. He would have loved that. He would have loved it because he'd be like, man, everybody gave you a hard time about this. I knew this was going to go somewhere. I'm so glad you guys kept working on it. He would be open to hearing about all the things that spell off from his original idea. Exactly. And medicines based on it, whole theories of medicine. And of course, he was aware of artificial selection because they did quite a lot of breeding back in those days. He knew that happened. Right. But the idea was, he wouldn't be so personally offended that we found out more things. I don't know. And that he was wrong on some other aspects that we just lacked clarity on, because he didn't know the tools or the mechanics, but he did have the observations. Right. And so the idea that we kept working on it would be like, he'd be open to it. What do you think, Dred? I was going to say too that I'm sure he would be impressed by the fact that the model that has been generated through the theory of evolution has been applied to other non-biological systems. Correct. So evolution is present in many different aspects of reality, not just strictly biology. Like, iterative changes based on what the environment is selective towards has been a consequence of culture, how music is developed, politics. Algorithms, yeah. We make AI now sort of like based on this iterative process. And he's like, what's AI? You're blowing my mind right now. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. There's this great Jesus app in the future. But going in later. Speaking of Jesus, isn't he part of our round table? He is. He is. But he's coming up. I want to do one more scientist first before we start the Jesus bandwagon. If we rock Galileo in and he's like, hey, I made some telescopes. And I have you guys figured out how to make refracted light more effective at seeing past Jupiter or Mars or anything like that. It's like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, oh, great. So there's like, there's an extra planet. It's like, dude, there's like six, there's probably like 10 extra planets. And we have classification for planets now. And we have planets that used to be planets, but we have to change the system of nomenclature just because there's so many of them. So now everyone's like, how many planets are there? It's like, there might be a lot of planets, guys. And we know the things. Oh, go ahead. Go ahead. Can you imagine the moons like Jupiter has 72 moons and 72 Saturn is about as many. So I mean, he knew that Jupiter had like four moons. Yeah. Yeah. And but to 72, like now, that is a very specific number. And it reminds me of a number of virgins for some reason. Maybe that's why it's stuck in my mind. All those terrorists are going to Jupiter. Oh, man. So the Heather O Moon. I think what would be really great to show Galileo is that picture of the deep space telescopic image of basically just here's one segment space at high exposure. And all of these dots are galaxy. And he's like, what in the world is a galaxy? It's like, oh, boy, do I have things to tell you. And I can't imagine. I imagine it would be like world shaking from. But to think that this is the this is the path that we went on since his initial discovery would both be like uplifting and wreck and a reckoning for him in that, oh, we're way smaller than I thought we were. It's like true. But we've been using your method to be able to figure out more stuff about reality, which has been really useful. And we've been working on this. We have come to know the cosmos. Yeah, we've come to know the cosmos is like, oh, wow, I feel so small, but I'm happy that you guys weren't working at this. Using his technology. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's really, really interesting. Okay. So in some aspects, I wouldn't think he would have the ego to be like, well, that's wrong because there's only Jupiter. It can only be Jupiter. You guys are wrong. Like something's wrong with your machines. Like no, I think he would just be open to the idea that this is science advancement. Thank you guys for keep working on this. I'm not happy about the result because I'd love to think that we are more special than this, but I'm actually more fascinated with what can come up with the future. Like my idea, what the universe is, it was actually small and not so much myself, but you're exploring something far bigger or grander than I could ever think is fantastic. It's interesting, though, that people have never come to the notion or the realization that they're smaller. They've never set out that way. They've never set out to be smaller or less important. It was always a function of the discovery that made them change their mind about it. Natural human ego centrism. Yeah. Would Galileo say, just wait till I tell the pope. Okay. Okay. Okay. All right. So we can have some religious people come in. I would like to remind people that we have some listener comments that we'll get to in the second half of the show, but say we bring in Jesus now. All right. So Jesus comes in, he sits down, and what could we potentially present to Jesus with regard to something that would show that, hey, some of the things that you were talking about, we were continuing to work on? I'll leave it up open to the round table. Larry, I saw you move your hand. What do you got? No, I was waving back to the little person. Larry called improv, improv and what do you got? What do you got for Jesus? I don't really have a lot of questions for Jesus. I would tell him that a lot of people have either misinterpreted or reconstructed his messages so that they call themselves Christians, although they do exactly the opposite of what Jesus taught. But they're called the far right now. It's chosen people. What are you talking about? Yeah, I guess. It's like, I personally think he would be very surprised at what happened, at what happened. That was never the intention, right? Some of the things you read about him, like give up all your wealth because the end is coming imminently. But it was going to happen anytime. You're probably saying this is 2,000 years after I left? Really? Yeah. And you've got more stuff than ever. What are billionaires? What is this? John Richards. So like they can afford four goats? I'm being pestered. The kids are back. Yeah, I was going to say about Jesus, would he believe that in his homeland, the Jews and the Arabs are still fighting and they haven't got Christianity yet? So there's an idea that I have in the back of my hand of Jesus would love that there's still conflict on earth because one, that's what he spoke to. He foresaw this, right? And he wouldn't want the word to be a complete world peace because that's what heaven's for, right? So the fact that there's still conflict, that there's still billionaires, that there's still unbalances in wealth, and that there's still people who are fighting is all part of the plan as far as like what he did. What he provided was a path for salvation, not so much the solution for all strife and conflict on earth, right? And so he could sit back and be like, good, good, good. So people are still angry, still people are fighting, and there's a bunch of disparities. I'm glad my death has even more meaning now that there's even all of these further injustices out in the universe. Larry, what do you think? Well, yeah, I think the point you made off camera before was a really good point in that he would be amazed at how many splintered religions come from his words. There are literally thousands of Christian religions out there, but he might look around and see somebody wearing a crucifix with him on it. Oh, yeah. I think it went on a lot of other things. What's this? Yeah, yeah, I hate those. I hate those. Remind me of the worst day of my life. Yeah, yeah. So I basically have like this big binder of like, or Jesus would have this big binder of Christian denominations, and he's just flipping through the churches. He's like, no crucifix, no crucifix, just flipping through. It's like, all these have crucifixes. I hate these. I hate these so much. Don't people realize that? It's like, ooh, could have been a good person, but I had that bracelet with the cross on it. I hate crosses. I'm not about those. For those who don't know, a crucifix is a cross with Jesus on it, where a cross is just a cross. Right. So there is a difference. One's cheaper to make, so guess which one's more popular. Dred Pirate Higgs, it looks like you're holding back. Anything you can tell to Jesus as he sits smugly, just being like, there's problems. Hey, solve for X. Solve for a hex? Solve for X, like algebra. Solve for X, okay. Solve for X, just that it would be so beyond his ability, given the time, right? They didn't have math. They didn't, you know, he's a carpenter, right? So he's trying to figure out the sides of a thing. So, you know, one side is two X. Right, right, right. He may not know algebra as well. He wouldn't be able to do it. You don't think he'd be able to do it? I feel like a dad would not be able to do it. I feel like Jesus' dad, John, would actually be able to solve for X, because he probably makes good tables, whereas as a carpenter, he can actually probably like, okay, how much wood do I need to fit inside this building? Jesus, come over here. Let me show you how to do math. No, I'm busy dying for your sins. These teenagers are teaching these preachers the rabbis. I don't know what's up with this generation. I don't know how to raise kids. I just, I make tables. I make tables. John Richards, anything you want to say to Jesus? He's getting off pretty much scot-free right now. This is crazy. Yeah, if I could meet him, I would ask him when he's actually coming back. Jesus says I'm back now. And by the way, I expect there to be bifurcations because there's only one true path to me. And it's easier. It's going to be hard to make. I made it deliberately hard to follow my word. It's like passing a camel through an eye of a needle. I didn't say it was like passing a beach ball through a giant hoop in the air. No, I made this deliberately hard on purpose because this life is a trial. Did you not understand that? Didn't I say that in your book? Well, he was referring to rich people. I'm talking to everybody. I'm talking to everybody. No one, everyone, all your values mean nothing. The only one true value is me and my path to utter salvation. Anyone else going to say anything? Or am I off scot-free? What are you going to do, right? Interesting, interesting. So like, none of the natures of what we've learned better about philosophy or anything what we've learned about how law or how to better treat people or that the diversification of life not only applies to people but also cultures. And there are a lot of different valid points of view and we can work better with it. That we have systems where we've shown that women who have access to education can actually substantially improve the environments that they're in for everybody. That people of different colors or different backgrounds can actually get educations and have more influential positions in government. This idea of a tribalistic one chosen person is not a good system for setting up for anything. I don't think he'd have the references to deal with it. What's that? Sorry. Go ahead, John. As I say, those weren't his policies, were they? He didn't, according to what we know about him. He didn't insist on any of the things you've just listed. So I would actually say like he's made comments where what belongs to Caesar belongs to Caesar. If you got to pay taxes, pay taxes. I'm not here to overwrite the laws that exist. I'm here to present my one path to salvation. However, with such an influential figure that clearly his influence has affected not only government in America as we have today, but like the multitude of lives who sacrificed themselves for his messages and stories, he had a wonderful opportunity to enhance our culture by saying, hey, listen, if you stop slavery or if you just said, don't own people as property and keep up with what you're doing, we could have had a much better system. Why continue the corruption? Why play part of it if you had such an influence on people to begin with? Larry, what was your thought? I agree with what you were saying. I think good points all. However, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that he tried to bring compassion and empathy to a world sorely lacking in it. And it's a good message. Most of his messages were good. But I would tell him that in the 2000 years since his last visit, with all the advances we have had in science and biology and medicine and electronics and all that, we've never found any evidence that there was a soul or an afterlife. And how did he come to that conclusion and make him consider the fact that maybe he was wrong in his most emphatic or number one of statements about the path of the afterlife is through me. So I think that there's a way more reliable way to the truth than that is true because we know scientific methodology, not just faith, spiritualism. Now, here's the part where I start thinking Jesus will get off this chair a little bit and lean forward it and be like, what do you mean I have messages about peace and how to love everybody? That's not what I'm about. If you read Matthew 10, it's don't think I've come here to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace. He says it twice. I'm here to be a sword. I'm here to set men against their fathers, daughters against their mothers, daughter-in-laws against mother-in-laws. I am here to make sure that there will be foes within households. I'm here to bring the fire. You guys are all going to hell. I will go into churches or synagogues and start knocking down things and being like, you guys need to start worshiping me towards your path to worshiping my father. That's a good point. I am the son of God, like straight up. For people who are cherry picking the Bible, anybody can pick what they want to out of it. The hell and a brimstone fire preachers are going to pick that portion of the people who want to love and cherish each other. They're going to pick another portion. Do not call each other sinners if you have sinned yourself, etc. He's stuck up for the little person and the downtrodden, etc. But there are words in the Bible that will support whatever view you have, which makes it a Rorschach test. He said, of course, that he endorsed the Old Testament. Every God in total. I'd ask him why. Why did you endorse the Old Testament? Have you read it? Is the argument then that he just has bad propaganda guys or his marketing team wasn't very effective, but he's perfect? It's like, listen, guys, I'm telling you from the beginning, I was perfect from the get go. If my market, if my human mortal marketing team couldn't get the message across, that's that should be expected. They're not as perfect as I am. I have to work with what I can. You know, when you, when you work with other people, you have to expect a lower degree of quality. It just is what it is. It's the nature of marketing and management. Sorry about that. He never, he never wrote anything down. So I never wrote anything down. That's right. Send your complaints to Matthew, Luke and John. How do you know your mother was a virgin? Oh, that's that's fire. That's fire. And how does that square up with meeting, you know, like being the end of prophecy, like being the line of David? Joseph was the line of David, but he wasn't your father. So you're, you know, I love the way they try to trace his lineage through David. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then he can't be because Mary wasn't. So there are actually two of them. Yeah. Larry, why don't you take us out? Sure. This is the digital free thought radio hour on W O Zio radio 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We'll be right back after this short break. Hello and welcome back to the second half of the digital free thought radio hour. I'm doubter five and we're on W O Zio radio 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Let's take just a moment to talk about the atheist society of Knoxville. I'll get it out. ASK was founded in 2002. We're in our 21st year now and have over 1000 members nearly 1100. Now we have weekly in person meetings every Tuesday evening in Knoxville's old city at Barley's Taproom in Pizzeria. Look for us inside at the high top tables or for the pretty weather outside on the deck. You can find us online at Facebook meetup.com or at our website, KnoxvilleAtheist.org or just Google Knoxville Atheist is just that simple. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you should still go to meet up and do a search for an atheist group in your town. Don't find one. Star one. That's right. Well, I'm about where do you want to pick up? I think my takeaway is if we brought Jesus on the show, it'd be really hard press to show him anything that he'd be genuinely excited for as far as development. It would largely just be, Hey, you didn't get my message right. I'm still perfect. I'm not wrong about anything and any problems that you see with the way how the message was delivered was either someone else's fault or your problem, but not me. I'm good and keep trying because I'm the one true path and see you later, guys. Gets up, walks out the door, you know, like we could talk about slavery. We can talk about abuse against women. Yeah, Mike drop or flies out the open window nearby. Even if we make the point that, Hey, the material that you provided us to be able to understand what you're about is dramatic is absolutely objectively contradictory even with itself. Like we keep doing that. Well, that's not my problem. That's my, I had different people have to, I had to show it to different people and they just wrote their interpretations and different people are imperfect and just, it's their problem. I'm, I'm the path. It's like, well, how do we, how do we know what follows? Like, you know, because I'm telling you, what else do you have to say? The fact that I'm here, it's the same message I've been giving for 10,000 years, the message that's in this book that's completely in Congress with itself. It's not my problem. That's that way. I had people write that so that you can understand it. Jesus out. Jeff, my job walks out. So for like Galileo, Charles Darwin, I think there would be some deeper appreciations for some of the, the newer revelation that we found out, but with Jesus, it's the same story, same brand. And you know, I would be hard presses here and say, Oh, wait a second, gay people aren't evil. Oh, we shouldn't have slaves. Oh my gosh, geez, I should have been more clear about that. I should have taken like one moment to just explain, Hey, don't have slaves or don't have people or here's a website or I'll talk about some sort of technology that exists in clear enough terms that we can absolutely know objectively that I know what I'm talking about in the future rather than scrolls and demons and dragons. We no longer have any lepers and the mental illness, the craziness is not right. Or instead of the instructions for like how to, I don't know, damn figs. Instead, just hey, that magical healing thing that you're doing. Can you just write the steps for that in a book so that we can have that as like a means for medicine for us? Like how do we, how do we effectively do that? How can we effectively treat it? How can you help people not suffer? Things like that. Your job is to suffer. I like dredge point. He wants a mouth swab. That way we can find out. Oh, yeah. And that's the chromosome or not? Yes. Yes. Yes. Let's see. Let's get a mouth swab. Can we at least get that figure that out? Because otherwise it's it's actually parthenogenesis, right? Right. Right. Right. And you should be a girl. Right. Where's your mitochondria from? Where's your mitochondria? And he should be a boy. Yeah. I want to see what your genes look like, man. All right. All right. Next guest. You know him. You love him. He's made out of noodles and he's ready to canoodle. It's the fine spaghetti monster. All right. Everybody comes down from the ceiling in a big pile or just like one big plop of noodles fills up the chair. Then the meatballs come one after the other. They land and then he's just like points like, yeah, it's that. The meatballs have to drop, right? Dred, I don't want to speak for your God. I would like to hear your. So, you know, recent advancements that we found out, like posthumariums would love to have more support in trying to figure out how to get their pictures even in driver's license. It doesn't seem like from a from a spiritual side that they're getting the assistance that, you know, Jesus and and the likes of God are giving to their followers. What's up with that? Why aren't you supporting your followers more? You know, you know, because I guess it's you have to, you know, almost meet the definition of delusional under the diagnostic manual. What's that manual called? The DMT, the psychological one. Yeah, the CD, Cadbury's dairy milk. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So anyway, I mean, there is a definition of delusional in there that, you know, very well defines everyone who fervently believes in whatever God they happen to. Yeah. And just because pastafarians are not as, you know, fervent, we're not taken as seriously. But, you know, the idea is that it's it's as good an explanation as any and any supernatural, you know, if we can embrace the idea that there are some unknowable elements or aspects to the universe. That we can, you know, celebrate in that way. Sure. Celebrate our own ignorance, in fact. And just kind of poke fun at our tendency to take ourselves so seriously that we exclude the possibility of becoming aware. Are you saying to better understanding, right? As flying spaghetti monster, are you saying then that you don't mind not winning right now? That is absolutely correct. Okay. Okay. Is it a race for you at all? Because if I be honest with you, like the Jesus, the West Barrow Baptist Church people, even the, you know, the more obscure, you know, Christian denominations, they have more or less a complete latchhold on this, like, trophy of privilege. Well, you have to consider, as flying spaghetti monster was drunk in the creation of the universe to start with, so he doesn't remember much. That's why it's a, that's why it's a mess, right? Okay. It's not, you're saying it's not your fault or you're saying it is your fault? Yeah. It is fault. But it's squarely on me, for sure. Okay. Okay. Okay. You took some responsibility for that. I can appreciate that. I can appreciate that. But, you know, people do have the beer volcano and the stripper factory to look forward to in the afterlife. Sure. I would say this though, we happen to know a lot more about pasta now than we did, perhaps even back then. We know these things about gluten. We know about carbohydrates, excessive carbohydrates in the body, producing more fatty residues and veins, leading to more cardiac failure. We know people are dramatically allergic to allergens that might be present in starches, like it's gluten, as I referred to before, I believe it's protein actually. And, you know, just the idea of a good proper diet is actually more protein based. And that the way how we've structured a food pyramid that's sold in America is entirely manufactured by corn lobbies and wheat dairy people paying politicians. So you need more carbs. You need more carbs. This pasta dependency that we have is completely counter to a healthy lifestyle. And not only do you do pasta, but you also do beer. So like these are two additional forms of carbs. Why are you trying to poison us all? Yeah, you know what you're saying, Ty. The spaghetti monster is evil. It sounds like it's not a balanced meal or breakfast. So if I had nothing but pasta and beer, like that's a problem. If you've got meatball and you've got your protein, you've got your vegetables because there's your tomatoes and your mushrooms. Which are, you know, it's very nutritious, but you have to do everything in moderation, right? And you can't just eat spaghetti. You've got to change it up. There's lasagna. The shape is different. And usually you have a salad too. So I mean, oh, you can have salad sometimes. That's a well balanced meal. It may be a good bed for your body, but this body is temporary. He's wanting us to go ahead and enjoy this life, eat all the pasta and whatever we need to have our heart attack and move on to the next life. Yeah, but is that reliable? He's thinking of us all the time. Larry, is that reliable? And my taxpayer dollar is paying for your stints in your heart, you know? Like if we all go out and get heart attack. It's all temporary. Don't worry about that. Oh, we're going to start a religious war on this show right now. Look what you're doing. Give us some clarity here. John, I need to know more about the spaghetti monster after life. So you didn't know. So it's pretty straightforward. It's, you know, there's a beer volcano and it's much like earth, but there's a beer volcano. So you can drink as much as you want and not worry about the deleterious side effects of, you know, overconsumption and then a stripper factory, which is, you know, opportunities. Yeah. And you just use your imagination on that because, you know, it's not like, it's not like sex slaves or anything like that. It's that's not the way it looks. So I see. So it's like, and unlimited pasta. It doesn't sound kid friendly. For like, for like sober asexuals, it also seems like it's going to be a pretty hard sell. What, what, what is this? What is this flying spaghetti monster? You got the pasta, you got the gluten, you got the unbalanced meals, you got all these like is it's just like earth is like I'm already on earth. What's going on? Like give it, give us, you're letting us down. Not only that, but you're saying you don't want to win. We like winners. You're getting left and right. What's going on? What's going on? This is messed up. It's not a race to the top. Everyone knows that, you know, pasta farion has the God back guarantee. Right. Okay. What's this about? So you dry pasta farion is for, for 30 days. And if you're not fully happy, your God, your old God will likely to take you back. So. Okay. Okay. I did you have any conversations with Jesus in the back room? And what was your opinion of him at all? And he was, he was fried. He was, he was. I don't know what to add back in Israel for, you know, hallucinogenic plants, but I think he was on. What were your thoughts on Charles Darwin and Galileo? Good guys. Good guys. You could hang out with them a little bit. Okay. Well, you're just trying to penetrate the enigma of, of what, you know, what the flying spaghetti monster is and how it all happened. You think about now, that around the event horizon of a black hole, matter going in undergoes a process called spaghettification. Yep. So anything leave in this world is, or this universe, this reality is going to be spaghettified. So that, that is the end. So. Yeah. Yeah, I, my, my only concern would be as, as we wrap up the show, I'd love to see more gods admit that they were, they were lacking in their capability of effectively communicating with their followers because it leads to a lot of confusion. And even when it comes down to, Hey, it's your fault because you, I, I chose these people to write these books. It's like, well, if that was your plan and you're, you were all knowing to begin with, you could have done a better job. And if it came down to this, you knew the amount of suffering that came out as a result. You should have wrote it yourself or given us better tools because we have better tools now. And if you had just given us better tools to come up with a better story, rather than forcing it then at the moment, we would have been a lot better off. And I wonder for like these flying spaghetti monster, you know, we may not win the race and fevrancy, but what I am representing is an appreciation for ignorance and, and pursuits for science. And I think more gods can learn from me in that respect. No, I don't have all the answers, but that's also something that I advocate as well. So how amazing would it be to just have a more lenient god that's willing to say, I don't know at some times, doesn't make you any weaker, doesn't make you any less for God. And yeah, now that you learn more about diets, hey, don't force yourself to eat gluten. If you don't, if you can't handle gluten, we'll make gluten free pasta. That's a new technology too, but I'm going to support pasta because I think it's cool. And you have to eat it every meal. No, everything should be in moderation. If you got, if you need to drink water, you can drink water. If you want to drink beer, you can drink beer. And if you want to discuss strippers, we can make a stripper that could be exciting for anybody, anytime, anywhere, you make even kid friendly. I don't know. Don't delve too deep into that. There's the way how I'm framing it. I'm just saying I'm here to make people feel appreciative and ask and wonder. And I think that could be a good thing. You know, ultimately, pasta farion isn't too, does not have to be examined too closely. It just doesn't hold up to it. It doesn't need to. Right. It's just the way it is, especially since the the object of pasta farionism themselves says, how did you create the universe? I don't know. I was drunk. Right. Guys, we got the wrong guy. Got some listener comments that I'd love to go through. So I typically categorize the comments for the show in, hey, that's a nice little feedback. And they're typically like one sentence such as like, hey, I love the show. And so Apollo 11 says, hey, I love the show. I think it's brilliant. Love your content. So thank you very much for those constant feedbacks. And we really appreciate that Apollo 11. Then we get our other ones, which I like to call the quibbly nibblers, which are just people who have umbrage with some of the statements that we've made and would and not necessarily would love clarification, but just make a statement of why we're wrong and then move on with the rest of their lives. So old seer 7610. John Riches, I'm going to throw this one out to you first, because you, I believe, made a comment that made someone angry in the last episode with regard to how the universe was created. His comment he has as John Richard's colon, biblical creation is not the creation of the material universe. The things of creation are metaphors for spiritual nature, not material nature. So over time and experience, old seers have actually found that the spiritual interpretations are correct. And therefore material and correct creation is incorrect. And so the idea is, and this is why not to paraphrase, but I believe you had made a mention that God created the universe and was doing so jokingly, but those who follow these old seers advice is would say that the Bible's creation is talking about spiritual creation, not material creation. So you can't apply science to this. So get off their, get off their backs. Well, first of all, I'm very glad that this person agrees with me that the material world has not been created. Okay. Okay. And, and now if he's claiming that the spiritual world has been created, then I now want some evidence for the existence of the spiritual world. Oh, interesting, interesting, interesting. Jed Pyrite, what do you think? How does he know what they were writing for? He does a follow up. Who told him that the way he's looking at it is the correct way? Well, Jed Pyrite, here's your follow up comment from the same person, old seer7610 says, listen, there's only two distinctly opposing understandings of biblical creation. There are no other possible. The universe contains only two things that everything can be derived from. Material nature and spiritual nature. Therefore, it must be spiritual creation. No other interpretations are possible, but these two is as he says. Right, right. And as we pointed out before, that's a false dichotomy, right? It is a false dichotomy, but if he can point to spiritual things, and he can point to material things, then therefore there must be only two possible processes to create them. Show me your evidence of spiritual. Right, right. This proves spiritual things. He's pointing and he said it in a YouTube comment. That's evidence. You asked for evidence, he provided it. I made a YouTube comment that said spiritual evidence exists. That's my evidence. That's proof. He has a pretty low bar. There's my problem. That's my problem. It's not so much the evidence is there. It's the lack of qualifying evidence. My standard of evidence is much higher than the YouTube comments and the book and what your pastor said once. Like Carl Sagan said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And that is a very extraordinary thing. I just wonder what it leaves us with because we're still left with a material universe. So like we still have the question of what created that. And that seems to be the one that we care about and interact with on a more regular basis. Larry, this is a question for you. I like it's by Andre Christian 1529. I'm swear I'm not making these up, but they seem to always have a Christian start and a number in the background. But either way, I like all of your ending remarks. This is for a comment when we were talking about the roles of women and men when we were talking about biology and previous episodes. Larry, I like all of your ending remarks on women, except the part where you think that Christians think women are low. That's actually very incorrect. We absolutely think of our women being more precious than rubies. And then you make some quotes or citations to Holy Bible facts and real Christian faith facts. Real men of God could never overpower our women. We have we all have specific orders that creates harmony in the home and outside of the home. Bless. Yeah, that's why it took you about 100 years after the country was formed 120 something years to give them the vote to allow them any kind of equality. Your Bible still says they can't teach in church. Should have no leadership positions. That just it's just false. What you're saying is false. You may put them on a pedestal, but you can heck you can put a pet on a pedestal. Yeah. And in fact, it's an objectification. Yeah. It's not valuing them as people, but as objects. Yeah. So like I can value someone as a ruby, but it's still way less than I would if I value them as a people as a person. A personhood is like the highest standard of value that I put into a person. It's like, oh, I value like my favorite trading card in my Pokemon binder back from third grade. It's like, oh, I don't want to be that. I want to be a person. I want to be able to vote and have my own autonomy and have rights and stuff like that. I don't need to be your favorite thing. I would rather just be a person that you know, you know, John Rich is any comments on that? No, I think you said everything I was going to say. Okay. Okay. Okay. Those were the listener comments from the show. Thank you so much to our guests today. We had Charles Darwin. We had Galileo. We had Jesus. We had some pasta people. Hopefully inspired some thinking from your own part. Larry, before we close out the show, I'm going to do a quick ground table. John Richers, anything that you'd like to plug before next week? Or yeah, I've got some update news for our latest event. You remember in June, we staged changing minds in changing times in London. And the videos of that are now almost completely uploaded to the public on our channel, which is Atheism UK channel on YouTube. There's one more to go, which is where I present Richard Dawkins with an award. And he has a chat with Lawrence Krause. And we auction an oil painting of Christopher Hitchens. That will become publicly viewable on Wednesday. But the hot news is that we're doing another one. I think I've told you about that, which is at the end of September in the Midlands, near Birmingham. And tickets are selling. We've sold a quarter of the capacity already. And Richard Dawkins has just lately joined in. And initially he wasn't going to be part of it this time, but he's commissioned us to record an episode of his latest venture, which is the Poetry of Science. He's got a new podcast and channel that's called Poetry of Science, in which he interviews people. And we're going to record, we're going to do a Dawkins at that event. Very cool. Very cool. Well, I'm happy for you guys. That's awesome. And keep us updated, because I'd love to know how the results of a show like that. Dread Pirate, before anything else burns down, or a private agency, a private I agency calls you, or the oil and gas industry calls you, or a security detail needs you, or whatever else you do. Because you have your hands in everything. What else is on your plate? Well, we have finally got a lawyer, a proponent, to push us forward. And we have a number of legal points to argue. And we're going to fire a cannonball across the bow of the ICBC, and the Ministry for Public Safety. Just saying, cease and desist. Let this guy do it. It doesn't affect the license or the integrity, just being dicks. Stopping. And I agree. That's where we're at. And as much as possible, every week, I have been recording short sermons or benedictions, which I then upload onto my channel, just so that the activity there is regular, and there's always new content. Fantastic. I'm glad to play a part of that, because you're using my corporate account in order to do that, and I support it. Thank you. You're more than welcome. I get a weird little notification every single time that goes to my Outlook Unbox, and then it goes to my watch. And I read it, and I'm like, Dread Pirate Higgs has joined my Zoom channel. I'm like, keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Do what you got to do. Don't get mine pirate at mine pirate on YouTube. Check it out. Nice. Wonderful. Wonderful. All right. For me, hey, so Larry did go out, have fun with Boudreaux and Buffalo Bill. I went out. I did some rock climbing and had some fun, and frankly, needing new places. My whole thing is treat yourself. Enjoy yourself. We're in a really great time for summer. And before it gets too dark too soon, and we start closing our doors, or some new pandemic comes around the corner, find a good way to treat yourself well and enjoy good moments from this year. Because we're about to enter a new political cycle. I don't know if you guys knew about that, but once that happens, it's hard to even keep your TV or new channels or internet feeds on without finding something to be depressed about. So remember these good times. Make some good memories. That would be my recommendation for this week. Larry, feel free to take us out. One thing I'd like to say is listeners, if you have any, I mean, what do you think of our meeting of the minds format? This is what historical people would you like us to have on future shows? I think I like it. I think it's a good idea. It creates a lot of good questions, a lot of thought. My content can be found at digitalfreethought.com. Be sure to click on the blog button on it for a radio show, archives, atheists, songs, and many articles on the subject. My YouTube channel handle is at doubter five. You can find my book, Atheism What's It All About on Amazon. If you're having trouble leaving religious beliefs behind, and many people do, you can find help at recoveringfromreligion.org. Remember, everybody is going to somebody else's hell. The time to worry about it is when they prove that heavens and hells and souls are real. Until then, don't sweat it. Enjoy your life, and we'll see you next week. Next Wednesday night at seven o'clock. Say bye, everybody. Bye-bye. Bye-bye, everybody. See you later, guys.