 Hello and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio Hour on WOZO Radio 103.9 LPF. I'm here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We're recording this on Sunday morning, March 5th. I'm Larry Rhodes or DJ Douter 5. And as usual, we have a co-host Wombat on the line with us. Hello Wombat. Hey, it looks like John had a, all right, he got a bottle of water. So good job, man. Water. He got a bottle of water. And our guest as you can hear is John Richards from England. Welcome. Hello. Thank you for having me. My mother told me to say that. Oh, cool. Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism, Satanism and post-apherianism and the Oh, nice. Conversely, we'll also talk about religion, religious faith, God's holy books and superstition. And if you get the feeling that you're the only non-believer in your town, well, I guarantee you're just not. In Knoxville here in the middle of the Bible Belt in Tennessee, we have a group of over a thousand of us. That's just one town. We're the Atheist Society of Knoxville or ASK. And we'll tell you more about that after the mid-show breaks. So be sure to stick around. Wombat, what's our topic today? What's in an afterlife? And I think it's going to be a good one. But instead of about talking about the afterlife right now, let's talk about how we've been for at least the previous week. We'll catch up on the week previous. John, how you been since last week? I hope you've been well. Yeah, I've been well. I've been doing my usual mischief. We had an AUK, Atheism UK Council meeting this morning online. And we discussed a number of things because religion is hot news here at the moment, largely because we've got a split, imminent split between the two factions of the Anglican communion, the global Anglican communion. That's about to happen if it hasn't already while I've been, you know, closing my eyes. And we've got a move to disestablish, to get the spiritual lords out of this building. Oh, yep. And we've got the, you'll be unhappy to hear that the, the chrysm, the oil that's used to anoint the monarch during the coronation. The recipe has been changed. Oh, no. Yeah, yeah. I'm not sure whether, whether he's been consulted or approved of this, but the thing is that it's no longer containing any animal extracts. So what they've done is they've, they've squeezed juices out of plugs instead of squeezing out of animals to make this oil. And it's, it's outrageous. I wouldn't think that God would be pleased with that. He loves the smell of burning meat. Yeah. Yeah. Was any of the oil from poison Ivy, because you can, you can always like really great. Oh, it was in one. I'm going to have to ask you to go into what a spiritual Lord is. Well, poison Ivy hasn't crossed the Atlantic. We don't have that plant here. But we have seen that was instead, but the Lord's spirit tool, there's 26 of them in the upper house of the houses of parliament, the House of Lords. And we don't elect them. They are there of hereditary, no, not hereditary right, but appointment right by the Archbishop of Canterbury. So he's got 26 representatives in the House of Lords. That can vote. Oh, that can vote. Yes, it's not a policy making house, but it can modify and reject policies that are created in the Commons. Not good. Not good. Also, that's what a weird job. That's basically a no job. You have a no job for life, basically, if you're there. Except that there are only 26 voices in I don't know how many hundreds. So, so that can tip it. Yeah, yeah. You know the way how it shouldn't be a voting block there in the first place is always my main thing. Especially with the cultural, you know, momentum of where England's going. It's, it's one of those things that, hey, if we want to evolve society, let's get rid of these, you know, old hat concepts and and I got 26 of them I can point out right now. Are they making a budget? Are they on a budget? Are they getting paid? Of course. Well, yeah, they get paid. Yeah, they only get paid if they turn up. And the last I heard, but this is some years ago and it's probably increased with 300 pounds a day. There's 778 members of the House of Lords and there's 26 of them are spiritual members. Wow. Wow. 300 pounds a day. That's pretty good money. That's at least 1500 a week. If they work five days a week. Yeah, that's pretty darn good. Yeah, it's not it only play. It only works. It doesn't work on Fridays as far as I'm aware. Give the money to homeless, feed a supporter. They don't call it working. They call it sitting. And that's probably what they do. All right. So when it comes time to vote. Speaking of oils, I got one called Russia all I think it's called it's an oil that is on poison ivy guy spring has arrived at Tennessee. And I know this because I woke up about two weeks ago after this crazy storm that we had that was the last cold storm that we had in Tennessee. And we had like a immediately followed after a tornado watch immediately followed after a week of like no sunlight. And then I look at my window and I see two birds fighting once drowning the other and like this tiny little puddle that showed up in the storm. It was an Eastern bluebird. They're beautiful birds. And this one is just being aggressively drowning the other one like on top of it. So I'm on the second floor of where I live. I go down to the first floor. I go down to that green and I try to shoo them away. They get up and they fly away together and in my head, my mindset I realized they weren't fighting they were just fighting. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's just my own thing, you know, like that is, they're not a type of duck. I would gather. No, no, no, it was just that is that is normal duck behavior. Oh yeah. Yeah. In fact, the, the female the duck gets piled upon by about four drinks. So try to submerge her in their efforts. Yeah, it's they have they have incredibly large members to like, oh yeah, oh yeah, I'm aware but I've never seen it with that particular breed of bird before so. And they're cork screws as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And so I was saying like a what happens between consensual birds is fine, but if anything, if there's birds out and they're having fun and if there's bees out and they got the carpenter bees out to spring has officially come and I'm super happy about it. So outside, things look great. There's still some remnant storms. So that's why Bujo is not be able to be here. But I'm happy that we finally have some good weather. We have a daylight savings time rollover coming up as well. We're going to continue to have them for at least a couple more years because it wasn't a band in the house. So get used to it but at least we'll have some sunlight. That's what I'm looking forward to Larry how you been. I've been fine. Just playing computer games and working. Not time quite yet to get my motorcycle out. Not time quite yet he says okay won't won't be long. Good. Good, good, good. It's been it's been locked up for too long. So, you know, here's a, here's a fun conversation that I had while I was on discord. I was, I was talking in a ASL class. I'm, I have, oh by the way, speaking of spring, I got hit by poison ivy like the plants are blooming and fresh poison ivy is like the worst. Got my first blister for the year. You know, there, there are people that aren't allergic to that. There used to be them but the problem is it's not so much a it's not so much a you're not allergic it's just your body hasn't figured out that this is a allergen yet so like you can touch it there's nothing inherently toxic about the oil. It doesn't seem to affect me. Right, it just takes a while for it just means you're you're a little slower. I think I'm good. Screw it. We got other things to worry about it's good. The oil works as a mimicry mimicry molecule for more poisonous stuff. That's all it is. And so it can trick. It's a bunch of the oil is about compose a bunch of catacombs and other alkenes that combine with proteins. Those proteins can be triggered or seen as antigen responsible response from the immune system, because they'll freak out and think oh what the hell is what the heck excuse my language what the heck is on this protein I need to destroy it. That's all it is. But other than that it's perfectly, you know, it's just a mimicry molecule at the end of the day but as as a result. If you had it once if you cover yourself in oil once and then wash it off you'll be fine. If you do it maybe two times or three times a week, totally fine. But after a point your body's going to figure it out, build that antigen response and next you know every single time you even brush up against it you're going to get that really bad reaction and I had that for like four years, or with poison oak I've had it for the longest time where I've never had a reaction. And I was like I can get your stick for you I can get your your ball for you and I'll just walk through the bushes pull it out and be like I'm Superman. And this is like one of my first poison Ivy blisters and it's like oh no I've been in Tennessee for too long I've been in Tennessee for too long I've lost my parents. It's worked for a while. I'm just not enough of an outdoor guy. Okay, so had a good conversation with a Christian who was part of an ASL class that I had a couple days ago maybe last Thursday, and he brought up that he has conversations with atheists to does know what an atheist is. So we didn't have to go through that fundamental conversation but he did bring up a really funny analogy they brought up where he's like, I'm trying to tell atheists about an afterlife and tie I know you don't believe in an afterlife. This is the conversation I typically have with the afterlife like I'll ask an atheist well where do you think you're going to go when you die. And the atheist will always look at me confused me the Christian confused and they'll be like, I don't know where I'll go, but here's another question, what color will you paint your house after it burns down. And then, in my head I'm like, yes, exactly. And then he says, and don't you see why atheists just don't get it. And I'm like, don't you see that was a great analogy that that guy just gave you. If you have to die before you get to paradise. Doesn't that doesn't that strike you as an interesting clause of concern for any sort of contract was like, Hey, by the way you'll die but I'll give you a Lamborghini afterwards it's like who cares who cares what's going on here. And so what I want to talk about today was that nature of the afterlife, and why we call it an afterlife and not an after death. I'd like to get that upset. John, what do you think. Well you're absolutely right. It's misnamed isn't it. It's the same. It's the same with the anti abortionist who refer to. We don't want to kill babies. Well, they're not babies yet. They're fetuses they only become babies after birth and some of them don't survive. So you can't start calling them babies prematurely. And it's the same with afterlife. It's as you say, correctly, it's after death. Right. There's no life about it. That euphemism won't catch on as well I think I feel like you have to focus on the life concept. But like if you're already living how can you have it after life think about that so like if I'm already alive what do you mean by afterlife it's like after this life then you get the next What happens in between. There seems to be like a very important thing that's going on between there. Larry Rhodes, you have a poem you have a comment on this before we delve into the idea. Well, you know, it's according to Christianity you go directly to heaven. It's the same life. You don't really die you you just change addresses. I mean, how can you respect the fact that our life comes to an end. If you don't believe there's ever an end. And I mean, what do you plan to do to celebrate your one trillionth birthday. You know, listen to your album again and painted every kind of art huh. Yeah, like you're right. Like, in my opinion, there could be if I am who I am now, if I am who I am now, I'm not built to live for an eternity, because I'm going to get bored. And there's only so many things that I'm capable of doing suicide is not an option. Yeah, like I would like I get to meet my family was like that's great I'm tired of the meeting them I met them for the last I wouldn't work for some people. It's not really a carrot to some like there are some guys for example I know live in Alaska who are just like hey I had a life in the states but I decided to list live out in the middle of nowhere build my own cabin and just like eat porridge and hunt for the rest of my life like I wouldn't even do that forever they'd get bored of that too, but there's like a mindset of there's only so much that you can do and I do feel like boredom is like one of the most curious things that we do experience along with fear. What do you think Larry. Was he going to hunt. To heaven. Do they create animals just for us to hunt. Yeah. What's up there and nobody knows and every religion says something different. And it matter of fact every preacher says something different if you ask a preacher. Will I be able to do this in heaven. The answer will probably be yes. You know it's so it's created as they go. Yeah, if you like it because if you want to go to heaven they'll be like, can I have sex with my partner is like. It's more complicated right. Right. And the other thing is, if you go to heaven and people you love or some of the people you love are in the hell and you know about it. Right. They would possibly be happy in heaven. Right. You know, they would have to change who you are right for you to be happy. You know, I removed the, the, the biggest happiness given thing in your life your children from your, let's say that if I went to hell because I'm an atheist and my mother's in heaven. How would she possibly be be the person she was if they take her memories of her children away from exactly, exactly. I have a weird story about this too. Once I was in Virginia, and we went to a Mexican restaurant and the guy there didn't want to shake our hands or touch touch us because we had like a vibe that you might have been racist. And so it colored the entire time that we were in the restaurant. And that was like years ago. And now every single time my mom brings up the state of Virginia. She brings up that incidence like hey remember that time in Virginia when that guy didn't want to touch your hands at that Mexican restaurant, but the immediate follow up sentences. Yeah so I went back to that Mexican restaurant, and the food was so good. Remember the store the guy whether you don't want to shake your hands. Yeah I went back there again last week it was so great yeah the food sales like in my head it's like mom why do you keep going back to that store. Why do you keep supporting that store. If we had such like a terrible experience there from the waiting staff. And in my head it's the same idea of like, if how can you enjoy heaven if you know that there's like this hair in the soup of the people that you do love but weren't good enough to make it to where the people that are suffering in in all of eternity right now. Maybe it's just, maybe it's the thing that people don't think about is the, the lack of empathy for that, you know, brief moment in time, where people don't think about the fight. I'm concerned with having the sense of closure or the security of knowing that they won't die for actual for real. And not so much the empathetic impact that it has on the wherewithal and well being of other people that are around them. And that's the scary thing that religion can do to it can cloud people's empathy. Sounds like you had a point. Yeah, yeah, well, you've opened the counter worms here guys because if if you're in heaven. Yet you know that your friends are in hell. The question arises, how do you know that is there some special communication speaking tube. I think it'd be like if you look around. I'm like, hey, where's Jake, and you can't find him. Like, I literally spent all of eternity looking for Jake. This is kind of concerning. I can't be concerned. I'm in heaven. I have to be happy. Where's Jake. Oh, he's not here. Well, I don't know how I feel about that. If you do, if you do know what's going on down there in hell. Is there any other special information you have access to, like the future. It seemed it seemed weird to me that people in heaven would be okay with there being hell and wouldn't want to spend more of their time in hell trying to get the people out of it. Like, it seemed it seemed like hell heaven would have to there's a there's a movie that exists that Steve Carell addition for but he didn't get the part. You know, he's like a famous actor, but the idea would be like heavens only has enough room for one person because it only be perfect for heaven is perfect, but it can only be perfect one person because everyone's experiences are subjective. And so heaven exists as like a lazy boy chair that you can sit in that has like this perfect massage settings and you just sit and you're like, oh, this is pretty. Oh, yeah, this is wonderful. You can't recognize that anyone else around you is suffering in hell because you're the only person in heaven. And so once you realize that you have to get out of the chair. You have to leave and another person has to come in and enjoy the chair for you, because it can only one at a time. It's only one at a time only one person can fit because like hey, it's perfect for you once it's not perfect for you we have to get the next guy in. So in that movie, how did you qualify to be then is there a queue. I don't know. I don't know. I'm going to get that far. But I enjoyed it was a nice. It was a nice student film. Anyway, I want to go into the different kinds of after lives real quick, then we get some feedback I know we touched on the Christian version of the afterlife. And then the last chat GPT, which is a fairly neutral party in this conversation, what are 10 different kinds of after life, and then also what are themes that are common around them, I'd like for us to explore those things but for first Christian afterlife in Christianity the afterlife is divided to heaven where the righteous go and hell where the wicked go. But in the Islamic afterlife, the afterlife is divided into paradise where the righteous go and hell where the wicked go. And through Norse mythology, Egyptian mythology, Roman mythology, Greek mythology, every single one seems to be, for example, in Greek mythology afterlife survived into two realms, the leasing fields where the heroes and virtuous people go and the underworld where the wicked people go Roman afterlife, similar to the Greek afterlife you have the call the place called the fields of Asphodel where order people go and then you also have the bad place the underworld where the bad people go Egyptian. So Cyrus decides where do you go to the good afterlife or the bad afterlife makes a judgment on you. Hindu has reincarnation, but they have a karma structure system to determine whether you go up or down. And I think Jewish people don't care so much about the afterlife it's not a major focus of the religion, but there is some commonality with a lot of the spiritual beliefs that there is a judgment and a place you go after you die hey what's up Larry what's up. Well Mormonism, you don't have a bad place I understand you have different levels of heaven. You know so if you're really really good and you support the church and all this other good stuff you go to a higher level. But I wanted to correct miss a misconception that you started with that in Christianity, good people go to heaven and bad people go to hell. No, believers go to have non believers go to hell. It doesn't matter how good they are. A cell morality they sell the fact that they have morality and that they have the best morality, but morality does not enter into it at all. Well said, well said, there are stipulations and an asterix on the word righteous to go to heaven. And it's a lot more than you would think it to be. Where God and Homer and Hitler are in heaven according to their theology. Yeah, yeah, because they believed. Yeah. So which religion is it that has that when you die you get a whole planet which one is that Mormon Mormonism. Yeah and I can be honest with you someone if I went to the afterlife and Mormons are like there's no such thing as a bad after life but they all have planets and I don't. to say I got, I got, I got, uh, swindled. I'd be like, uh, no, no, no, I don't know. I don't believe this. It's not that they just, you have a planet. It's not that they just get a planet. I mean, they could give you a planet tomorrow and you wander around being bored for the rest of your life. No, they get to be a god over a planet. Right. Yeah, but which, which sort of planet is, is this Mercury or Jupiter? If it's Venus, you're in trouble because they're not there, but acid, acid rain. Yeah, it's pretty metal up in Venus. I can say this to, um, if a planet, even if it was just like a dead rock planet compared to an Applebee's coupon, if I had to share this with you, I almost still got over a lifeless planet in the middle of the void of dark space. Yeah. Hey, you could create volcanoes. You can make some. Okay. Are you? All right. All right. All right. If you can make that, that's not pretty fun. It's just the acts of God. Yeah. If we had a choice, if you had a choice, I would think Mercury's a bit toasty. Venus, the rain is acid. Don't like Venus. It's actually harder on Venus, right? Yeah, yeah. But, but, um, and Mars is a bit cold and then you get into the gas planet so know where to stand even though the gravity is crushing. But they have lots of moons out there. You just have lots of moons. But it's a lot colder than from is the planet, not a moon. Pluto. You get Pluto. Pluto's not a planet. No, okay. So, given a choice, I mean, I don't know whether we have a choice, but the planet I want to end up with when I die is Earth. Right. Right. In a different dimension. So, everybody gets an Earth in a different dimension, right? I'd still be that mean the Chris, the Mormon God is an ex-Mormon because, you know, there's a God of Earth, right? Yeah, exactly. And also, what do you exactly do as a God of a planet? Not to get too much into the Mormon belief system, but like, what is your job? Do you just apparently knock up versions? Yep. Physics. Okay. Yeah. All right. Okay. Only, only if you're a bloke, though, of course. Sure. Sure. Sure. Like, you could, you could, you could watch sports games, I guess, but like, for the most part, it's going to be for the vast majority of your existence. I mean, it's going to be quite boring, unless if God made sports just for entertainment, like, I don't know where we go with that. And anyway, would we be forced to learn how to play the harp? Yeah. The idea is, you know, why do you care about what you paint your house after it's burned down? If you have to die to enjoy these things, what does that tell you about the thing that you're trying to enjoy? Because once you die, you have to consider that you might lose the most important thing that you have, which is you. And none of these afterlives that I'm reading seem to have a lot in answering that particular thing. What's up, Larry? Well, I was just going to say that since all religions sell you some kind of afterlife as a hope for it to continue your living after you die. And all the religions say that the one thing that atheism can't give you is hope, because we don't believe in an afterlife. Well, that's true. We can't give you hope, but there's no reason you can't have hope. Right. In other words, if you want to have hope for an afterlife, go ahead, nobody stopping you. We're not stopping you. And I personally would make up an afterlife to hope in that doesn't involve a hell. Right. It seems as if religion or these ideas of the afterlife are no different than my alkaline lotion that I use for my poison ivy. It's not a cure for the poison ivy. It's not going to magically get rid of the blister. But it does provide an anti itch soothing sensation on the blister. So I don't scratch it as much, but it doesn't. Right. The honest time you wanted to turn your skin pink. It's not a bad color. It's not a bad color. So I'm saying if we have basically a bandaid put on the idea of fear, but if we can yeah, and a fear of death, fear of the unknown. However, if we were to try to evolve our society, so we would come to terms with that much more early and realize that like no one really wants to live forever as they are. Like that's also a bad thing too. So try to have an enjoyable rewarding life in your present moment. Then maybe you can get yourself to a position where you can be happy that you died without regrets more so than that you'll die at all. And with the anticipation of going to an afterlife. I find like that the former is way better than the latter. Well, I've got something that's even better and it's what Woody Allen, when he was asked what he wanted written on his tombstone, he replied he didn't die. Okay. Woody Allen always an interesting character for me. Interesting person people still bring up. But yeah, I think we're at the bottom of the half hour. How about that? Let's take a break and we'll come back. When we come back, we'll do themes from the different afterlives and then some listener questions. Right. Be sure to stick around for the second half of the Digital Freethought Radio Hour on WOZO Radio 103.9 LPF. I'm here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We'll be back right after this short break. Welcome back to the second half of the Digital Freethought Radio Hour. I'm daughter five or Larry Rhodes and we're on WOZO Radio 103.9 LPF. I'm here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Let's take just a moment to talk about the atheist society of Knoxville and make sure we're recording and make sure we're recording too. Right. And make sure we're recording. ASK was founded in 2002. We're in our 20th year and have over a thousand members. We have weekly meetings in person every Tuesday evening at Knoxville's old city at Barley's Tap Room in Pizzeria. Look for us inside of the high top tables. We also have a Tuesday evening Zoom ASK meeting. If you'd like to join us on Zoom, email us for details at AskAnAtheist at KnoxvilleAtheist.org or let's chat s e at gmail.com. You can also find us online on Facebook or meetup.com or go to a website at KnoxvilleAtheist.org. 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. Start one. Right. Wombat, where do you want to pick up? All right. So we just talked about some religions and quick passing as well as the idea of the afterlife. And the theme of today's show is what's in an afterlife doesn't seem to be particularly appealing, but that's because we're coming at it from the perspective of one, an organic atheist by John Richards, like born an atheist, never indoctrinated into the fold. And as separate as he was, looks at the idea of an afterlife and thinks, why would you even bother? Like, what is this? Larry, you have an interesting perspective on the afterlife. It's not just, hey, I have a way for you to, and I have this similar one, it's not just a way to stop worrying about the death and have some security about the continuation of your life. It also comes with a bunch of baggage. Oh, it does, especially Christianity. Guilt, being a sinner, talk about it. Well, it's not enough that you just believe. I mean, they sell you this baggage that you're a born sinner, to your flawed from birth, that you inherited sin from the first humans that ever lived, and that you have to spend the rest of your life apologizing for being human and carry the guilt of all the preceding humans that have sinned along with you. Right. You are a bad person from the time you're born until the time you die, and the only thing that can save you is believing as they do. And the problem is, and another problem, I mean, that's a huge problem, but once you start getting into the mind frame that your belief has now exempted you from all that sin, you are now better than everybody else on the world in your hypocrisy. Right. Oh, I mean, the sheer hubris and self-righteousness of that type of belief carries on in your life and ends up making you a bad person. Yeah. I mean, we're just the opposite of what they're supposed to be doing. Absolutely. Yeah. So the interesting thing here is that before you're born, where were you? I mean, that's an equally valid question to after you're dead, where do you go? Yeah, Mark Twain asked the same question. Yeah, yeah. He said I was dead for billions of years before I was born and I would be dead after I alive. And it did not inconvenience me in the least, that's what he said. That's right, yes. I didn't mind not being alive before I was born. It was painless enough. Yeah. Yeah. So, but the Christian way says that not only were you in this nonexistence before you were born, but it was a bad place because you, when you were born, you brought all this guilt and sin that you'd, you know, somehow accrued on the way down the birth canal. But it's also some one of those own motivating factors because the more Christianity can swell someone's ego to make them think they're more and more special. The harder it is for them to realize that that can end one day, right? Because now I'm the creator of the universe is my best friend. I'm going to live forever. I'm better than every other person that's on the planet that doesn't think the way how I think. But now I have to give all of that up to to come to terms with secularism and humanity and all that. Like, no, thank you. I will live with my delusions. It seems like it's one of those things that can make like it's like having a toxic friend that just keeps giving really bad advice. But it sounds good in the moment, but long term only sets you up for more and more failure. And the odd thing about this is the Christians, which you've explained, have all this hubris because they're special. They're the ones that accuse us of not being humble. Right, right, right, right. Because ego doesn't like other ego, right? Or all problems seem to be coming from, you're attacking my ego. Therefore, you're the problem. Arrogance. They blame us for being arrogant because we don't believe the way they do. They say the sheer arrogance of the atheist is not to believe in God. But when you think about it, which is more arrogant saying, I don't know if there's a God out there, but I don't believe any. Or believing that God is your close personal friend who killed his own son for you and will do anything that you ask him in prayer. Which is more arrogant? Yeah, and also think about it like this. A lot of atheists aren't saying we don't believe in your God. We're saying we don't believe you when you say you have a God or that a God exists. You mean to what we... Or any other creature on the planet or any religion. We won't say that to anybody else. We don't believe the person who says that a God exists. Maybe that God exists. We don't care. That's not even an option for consideration at that point. It's the person who's making the claim that we have to look at first. Right, and the follow-up question from them would be why? And of course the answer is there's no evidence. It's just stories. They're just trying to claim something and then claim that it's true. And I would say you do have evidence, but it hasn't met the extraordinary nature of the claim. The evidence that you're pointing at is just a book of claims or an experience that you have, all of which are inherently subjective and we are subjective beings, but you are objectively describing something that impacts my universe, everything about reality. And I don't understand where you get the frame of reference to be able to pull that out. You're going to need more than a book to establish that. Right. Right. You can't put them off their stride by asking them which God because they then assume they've got the only true one. Right. And so they then accuse you of being disrespectful towards the one and only God. Sure. So there is something interesting because they might bring this up and I'd love to hear this. Well, then if my God isn't true, how is it that, or if my idea of the afterlife isn't true, how is it that cultures from across centuries and globally separated from each other have all come up with more or less the same concept of a continuation of life where the evil will be judged and the good will be rewarded for their actions on this earth? Like, how is that the case that separated globally and from centuries apart that these different kinds of cultures can come together? And so what? Oh, John, it's not like you had a comment. Well, I had an interesting conversation last night in free thought with my co-host Tercea Duclesi because we had a guest on his name is Bryce Cornell. He's in Philadelphia at the moment, not too far away from you guys. And he's an ex, he's a veteran of the US Air Force. He identifies as black and he was saying that he was a Christian originally, but he lost his faith by reading the Bible. Okay. Which is common. A lot of people do. Yeah, yes, indeed. It's commonly the way that that happens. But we were talking about afterlife with him. And I'd like you to watch the show. It's really good. Sure, sure, sure. So the idea would be why is it that these differently separated, both in time and physical location cultures come up with the same concepts about the afterlife. And so I asked Chet GPT, who's sort of like our third party neutral advocate. And why do these different religions all seem to have similar themes across the different afterlives? And so Chet GPT said, hey, firstly, it's important to recognize that these beliefs and mythologies often arose in response to universal human concerns and experiences. And I thought that is the nail in the hammer, right? Because for example, the fear of death and the desire of some form of continuation after death are all common to humans regardless of their cultural historical context. And as such, it's not surprising that many different religions and mythologies have developed similar themes and beliefs regarding the afterlife. And so if you are, you know, in a tribe in the Amazon or in a castle in Medieval England, you are noticing that people that you love might be dying around you and you realize you're a person too and you need to come up with a way to like rationalize that in order to maintain some sort of degree of sanity if you don't want to come to terms with it. And some cultures may have like, you know, recognized and dealt with it in different ways but there is that discomfort of the unknown. And so it's probably the only probably the only common thing between religions. Again, with Bryce last night we were talking about because he's been in the military we were talking about travel and he left his little local parochial area where he was raised into Christianity and discovered as he went to different countries with the military there are other religions, you know there are other people with other beliefs and that made him challenge himself as to why he happened to have been born into the right one because he could have been born in Iran, you know. Right. In which case he would have been a Muslim with an entirely different sort of afterlife to look forward to. Right, right, right. So, you know, this commonality that we see is in justification that it's actually true. It's more speaking about something more fundamental with the human condition in my opinion, which is wishful thinking. It's wishful thinking. And when you have a common fear among all these different cultures, right, even if the individual basis some people may come to terms with it. It's going to show a common salve for that fear, which is these afterlives which are colored based on what each culture has around them. It's why Egyptians have Hippo gods and why Romans have gods that were togas and you go to each place and it's like, oh, black gods are in Africa. The white gods are over here and where white people are. This seems to be geographically tied to each other. Larry, what do you think? Well, it's true. I certainly believe that. All the way talking about where, you know, people not knowing the answers and starting to come up with answers. That's all well and good, but that alone doesn't explain the priest class. We're talking about a class of people who took those beliefs, you know, even rudimentary as they were and then ran with them to be able to gain more power in their society. Right, right, right. To be able to interpret what the God wants when, you know, all all around them are just questions. And of course, they capitalized off that. So it's marketing and war really why certain religions have just become dominated with certain very popular ideas, right? But the religion, I think, like, like Larry, I think it's an opportunity to earn off the vulnerabilities of the rest of the population. They are called men. The ignorance and the superstition of the rest of the population, especially back then. Right. It's still going on. But if you also think about it, like if you had, for example, humanism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Jainism, like, these are all atheistic religions where there's no central deity. They also don't immediately resolve the, well, I'm afraid of dying question. How do you how do you fix that? Whereas if you go to the other side, it's like a junk food aisle while you're about to check out from a grocery store. And they're like, after life, now with 1000 percent more calories for assuaging your fear of death. And you're like, oh, that's exactly what I'm afraid of. I might pull a little bit of that from that rack and like, check out with that instead of the more healthy grocery foods items in the background. But there's also another problem layer that I was touching on before. It's not just that Christianity tries to enforce a structure. It tries to actively make the one life that we may actually have, the one that we are experiencing right now worse. Yeah, devaluate. Yeah, by virtue of devaluing it, by virtue of not letting you fully express yourself or taking away things that might actually be, you know, good experiences for you, bacon for one. I don't know. Like, it's pretty awesome. But there's a bunch of other stuff that they like to get their fingers into control with a sense of paranoia every waking hour of your life. How much time did Muslims spend praying that they could be doing more stuff they would enjoy? Think of the holy men in most societies. I mean, they cloistered themselves away with a book for most of their lives doing menial tasks. Which is if you choose to do that, that's fine. It's your choice. But think about what they could have done and accomplished and experienced had they not bought into this superstitious structure. There's a religious place. For one half hour a week, maybe two times a week, I would be in school learning some new field of science. And it would be like physics or chemistry. And I'd be doing it back to back with other classes. It would only be like an hour a week more or less because it was just two half hour classes. But after the end of like a four-year block, I became very good or well versed in a particular area of science just due to that repeated checking in. I learned languages that way. I learned how to interact with a lot of different people and explain things and model them in a really interesting way that I can now use as part of like my career. And if you don't keep reiterating, you'll lose it. It's like I used to play the guitar. I can't now. That was 40 years ago. Oh, interesting. Very interesting. OK, so very interesting. Yes. So if I were to have, you know, that Sunday afternoon or Sunday morning back, if I had a lifetime of Sunday mornings back to me, what could I do with that time, particularly in like my later age? Or, you know, the times that I could have spent praying. When I stopped praying, that was that was a very hard period of time for me because that would happen to me when I was in college because I had this neurotic relationship with God where if I had done anything bad, I would just do prayers in my head over and over again because it made me feel whole. But when I realized I didn't have the spiritual fortitude to maintain that prayer, I just decided to stop. And it was this weird gap where I realized there's silence in my head. I'd never really had a chance to appreciate before. It's hard to break that conditioning. Yeah, like once the conditioning was like broken down and I just had time to think about like I did something bad. Let me rationalize what I need to do. Oh, let me just apologize to this person and just silence immediately afterwards. And I'm like, oh, I'm just going to do that. That's so much easier. Now I have more and more time to think about more of the cool things. Shut that one down. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The energy I could have back is just amazing. For me as a lifelong atheist who looks at other people in various religions like I look at zoo animals in a cage, Christianity seems to me to be the most evil of the religions because think what it does. It starts by destroying your self-esteem by telling you that you're born sinful and are worthless until you've adopted their control freakery. Then later on, it tells you that real life isn't cracked up too much because the afterlife is going to be so much better. So it's devaluing your existence today. And after you've had a few years of this suicide or martyrdom seems quite a reasonable option because then you get there quicker. Yeah. And you're speaking of this as a male. Can you imagine how much worse it is for a female? In many of these religious societies because religions are male chauvinists. Exactly. Well, if you're asking me to imagine I'm a woman it's not going to work. No, but I think the fact that we can't should also, we can't but we can also recognize how much that would suck. Like I can't know it like how they would know it but I can recognize that that is a terrible situation to be in and all the more reason why we need to pull ourselves out of it. I always said that the last not the last but the next big step for humanity is the age of new reasoning the reasoning age that we can get into and it requires people to start to remove these dogmas from their lives start interacting with each other on a global basis and realize all these weird stipulations these arbitrary lines of separation that we put up across each other don't really exist and we have far more in common let's work on these goals together and do so with the best models of knowledge that we have available and hopefully we can get to a higher standard of life for everybody rather than this us versus them mentality we can I want us to be able to see through or as soon as someone tries it and realize our leadership doesn't need to do that in order to control us anymore we can be molded by good leadership that's interested in our own interests rather than you know making us fight against each other so that they can pick up whatever scraps or smoke comes out of it so yeah and yeah go ahead I don't know in a takeoff on an old cartoon if atheism isn't real and we make a why don't we make a better world for nothing yeah that's a great point what if we made a better world for nothing it's true so to my Christian friend who brought up the example of the house what color would you paint your house after it burns down better luck in the future I hope you understand where we're coming from by that because I do think that's a good analogy I do think that's fair and the idea is like there's not much to an afterlife if you gotta die for it right after I die I don't care anymore so let's do what we can with the current life we got because we can all agree we're experiencing that and there's some measures that we can take to make sure that this life is good and as Larry says what if we made the love world good for nothing it's like better for nothing it's like that's the reason why we want to make this world better for nothing for us yeah right anyway just wondering how what's your house has burned down and it's all black and ashes I mean how are you gonna paint it exactly right and what if all the ashes like swept away in the dust is now transcends the paint that we need do we need trends we need paint that goes through a higher plane would that make your car your sprayer would that help your correspondent to get the point do you think if you actually thought about how he's going to do the painting I think thinking is the problem I think thinking is the problem we need to get that ego and thinking there's a lot of stuff there John Richard where can we find your stuff at free thought channel on youtube and there's lots of lovely stuff on there I recently started doing global atheist news in three bits so we have throughout the week instead of just having one compilation at the end I do a little bit of news at the beginning it's probably on Wednesday I do a bit more on Thursday and then I do a bit on Saturday which I stick together in a roundup of all the news of the week so you've got more global atheist news but shorter nice cool and Larry before I sign out I just want to say I'm let's chat thank you guys for oh no we did have that one quick question from discord want to throw this one up at to John Richards you're right you're right sorry guys John Richards I have a question from our discord channel this one came from anonymous he'd been waiting two weeks for this answer I'm just curious where you guys are getting your information America is becoming less religious from my experience I'm seeing more people join churches more advertisement for churches and progressively more religious based politics seems like religion is still a big part of American life oh definitely but it's they're fighting back because it's weakening it's they're they're in their death rows and they're trying to make it as hard as possible I'm sorry go ahead John John I can I don't know the details of the U.S. situation but I can tell you that in England and Wales we had a census a couple of years ago and it's revealed that only 46.2% have described themselves as Christian which is down from 10 years before that when it was 59.3% so that's a 10% drop in yeah 10 years right polls the answer is polls well yeah but census is a bit different from a poll right true people tend to answer it more seriously yep and it gets gets everyone whereas the poll is just a thousand people right and if you want to if you want to talk polls they also show that the decline is it is a trend and that the increase in nuns is right huge right and it's been shrinking for a while for decades in fact so I mean I mean imagine when it was first founded to like where we're now it's massive but like every steady decade we see less and less right identifying as Christians that's good okay sorry for that Larry go ahead and take us out sure my content can be found at digitalfreethought.com be sure to click on the blog button for a radio show archives atheist songs and many articles on the subject of atheism you can find my book atheism what's it all about on amazon and my youtube channel handle is at doubt or five if you're having trouble leaving religious police behind like Ty did when he stopped praying you can get help from recovering from religion.org go there and find it if you want to of course I remember everybody is going to somebody else's hell the time to worry about it is when they prove that heavens and hells and souls are real until then don't sweat it enjoy your life and we'll see you next Wednesday night at seven o'clock on WOZO radio say bye everybody bye