 103.9 FM, WOZO Radio, Knoxville. Ladies and gentlemen, Digital Freethought Radio Hour. Hello and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio Hour on WOZO Radio 103.9 LP FM. We're right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today is April 18th, 2021. I'm Larry Rhodes or a Doubter 5. And as usual, we have our co-host Wombat online with us. Hello Wombat. Oh, it's the Wombat. It sounds more like a wolf. Yeah, I know. I'm figuring it out, figuring it out. Our guests today are Dot Fire at George Brooklyn and Dred Pirate Higgs. Hello all. Hi. Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism and the sciences. And conversely, we'll also talk about religion, religious faith, God's holy books and superstition. So buckle up. What's our topic today there, Wombat? I have two topics. One, we're going to catch up and then we're going to double dip. Before we get into even more details about that, I'll throw it up to our own Dred Pirate Higgs for a weekly invocation. Perfect. So I'm going to read the invocation given by Barrett Fletcher at the Kanai Peninsula Borough Assembly in Alaska. This was delivered sometime in September 2019. And here it goes. So I am called to invoke the power of the true inebriated creator of the universe, the drunken tolerator of all the lesser and more recent gods and maintainer of gravity here on Earth. May the great flying spaghetti monster rouse himself from his stupor and let his newly appendages ground each assembly member in their seats. I thought you were going to say Bacchus. I thought he was going to talk about Bacchus. I got him wine. Or Cthulhu at this point. Dred, I really like your headband. What's going on there? Well, this is, I was, I was in, you may recall, I had talked to a vote being asked to go in with my trichorn to get my license renewed, which I did. And then they promptly sent me a letter saying that it wasn't allowed. And so, of course, I had a temporary paper license that, you know, I had to go get renewed and get another photo taken. So as it turns out, through a little investigation, I realized that ICBC actually has a combination for people wearing head accessories. So not head coverings, but head accessories. So, and so working with some fellow Pastafarians here, we came up with this headband, which exactly conforms not as a religious head covering, but as an allowed and acceptable head accessory. Okay. And so I went to the driver's license service thing. And they actually kind of put up a fuss for a while. But I had in my hand the actual sheet of paper, which look at that. And this is printed by ICBC, right? So yeah, I just handed it to him. I said, look, I conform to the acceptable standards for head for head accessories, take my photo. And so I'm going to see here probably in a week or so what they do. What is ICBC? Oh, sorry, that's the insurance corporation British Columbia, which is the government drunk corporation that is responsible for driver's licenses and for health cards. So it's like our motor vehicle bureau. It's like our DMV. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So any fuss that I get from them, we're going to have other people go in wearing similar headbands or head accessories with like a Jesus fish or perhaps some sort of a Sikh symbol, just so that if they argue, we don't allow symbols, you know, we're just making a fuss. Okay, great. But hold on. Did they actually take your picture or not? Yep. They took your picture for a license. Yep. Good. Good. Whether or not they're going to allow it. That's the thing. I'm getting a letter. So I'm not aware of the process. You mean they can take a picture, give you the license and then review kit after the fact. So what they do is the picture goes to review. And so right now I'm sitting here with a paper copy and I've been doing this since 2016. So it's been a while since I've had a photo ID driver's license. But as you know, I have other forms of ID that like my firearms license that do depict me with my holy tricorn. Just as a quick update for anyone listening, Dredd doesn't own a gun. His arms literally turned into fire. So that's the Canadian version of firearms, just letting you know. But anyway, Dredd, so you will get essentially a letter saying, yeah, we accept this. You're good to go. Here's your full on license in the mail. Yeah. So essentially what we're trying to do is let them paint themselves into a corner out of which they can't get out of unless they get their feet all wet and stick. Sure. Because if they say you can allow headbands and even allow Christian iconography headbands, then what the hell, or excuse me, what the smag is going on? Otherwise, oh my God, look at that line. It's so silly that I get upset. Yeah, Larry, what is that? Does Canada have an official religion? Well, of course, because we are a Commonwealth country. We fall under the Queen whose religion, of course, is the Church of England. So it is a de facto state religion, although our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, you know, gives a certain lip service to the idea that the freedom of expression of religion or voice of religion is a guaranteed right. But clearly there are exceptions to that rule. Yeah, nothing exclusive religion. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Scott. I know a guy who really loved to eat Canadian bacon. He was a real ham. Scott, we'll throw it up to you. How you been? What's going on with you? Missed you last week. How you been? Yeah, last week I took a plane, a pink airplane, and flew down to Tampa, Florida to visit my cousin. Yeah, it was a real good time. I've never been to Tampa, Florida. So I got a chance to check it out. It's a really nice place. Mm hmm. I imagine. Actually, yeah, I've never actually, I think I have been to Florida, but only driving through it. There's this really weird route that takes you into Florida and back up into Georgia again. That's the only time I've ever been in Florida. It is, it is as south as America gets, but it is like so insanely south that it doesn't feel like the south anymore. It's very bizarre. It's very bizarre. It's like California. California is to the west of the west. You know, the west is east of California. Yeah. To me. Yeah. You grew up there, Tyrone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did a lot. I think as soon as I moved out of California, it was like, oh no, we're all the Mexicans. I feel naked. And why is the food so much worse here? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But there's. But yeah. Scott, any cool things that you'd recommend that we check out if we go to Tampa, Florida anytime soon? Wow. So I would go, I would definitely hit the beach scene. That's what we did. We went to the boardwalk. They would, it's such a big, it's a lot bigger than I imagined it was going to be. Yeah. Huge place. And it just go, and it's a really clean, you know, it's not like where I'm staying. Like I'm living in Florida now, but I'm in another town. And here's like a, you know, a church on every corner, a liquor store on every corner. You know, it's one of those kind of towns. Sure. But Tampa is more modernized. It looks like Irvine, California. Yeah. It's really, really seen it really beautiful. The people are cool. It seems pretty progressive. You know, it's a cool place. I'm thinking about it. Metropolis here. I'm thinking, yeah, very metropolis. Yeah. I think it's a function when you start bringing in people from different places to work and be around each other. The dogmatic attitudes fall away. And like this idea of like, Oh, we got all work together. We're all different. It's not that big of a deal. We have a common value and common work. Yeah. Of course. This is our new standard. We're not going to do this in a single time. That's why Atlanta. I love that kind of. Yeah. Yeah. Or like New York, New York, for example. Amazing. And then you drive up to like Rothschester or just like 50 miles out of. Like New York proper. And you're like, whoa, this is just woods. What in the world is going on? Larry, I'll throw it up to you next. How you been? What's going on with you? Don't say Facebook and trolling. with you. Don't say Facebooking and trolling. What's going on? Oh, I don't troll. I do argue with people on Facebook. I'm a member of a lot of atheists slash theist debate sites. So I spend a lot of time talking about certain topics and referencing material that I know about to help. But I spend about as much time playing computer games. So yeah, I see you. I see you on a line quite often. Oh, I'm on there a lot. Um, I'm seven. I'll turn 71 next month. So I'm enjoying retirement in three years. You can run for president. It's amazing. I'll think about it for three years and then I'll let you know. Okay. Okay. I know that's what Biden says. He was like, oh, I'll let you know, uh, I don't really have a stomach for talking to people arguing online. And I found this website called discord. There's a SE server in discord. And you would have, you would hope that it'd be mostly people that want to talk about like the nature of like how to talk to people and have reliable conversations. And I've, and that used to be how it was, but like I haven't been in that fight in quite some time. And now it's sort of devolved into a say something so I can argue with it in the worst, most frustrating way possible. Maybe it was like, uh, there was a guy who was like, um, so, you know, intelligence is entirely genetically inherited. And I'm like, how did you find the citation for that? It's like, no, but I think it is, if you have smart parents, you're going to have a smart kid. I'm like, don't you think there are like environmental factors that play into that hormones that might play into that? Like how the kids raise, what schools are they go to? Like, can't they develop? It's like, no, it's just genes, dude. It's like, which genes? I have a suspicion that it's some genes, but I don't have to pull the genes out. Let me try to ask you. It's like, oh, this is so frustrating. Well, why can't I just say you're wrong? You believe it? And then we look it up and we can be fine with it. Uh, I think we can all agree that maturity is not a requirement for debating on Facebook. Yeah. I just don't have a stomach for it though. I don't know if I can, I don't know if it's worth developing one or if I should just find a better audience. And I found like the best audiences I've found have not been over the internet, but have been like outside because outside people tend to just be a little bit more. Well, they're not anonymous. They're not anonymous. They're right in front of you and they have to own what they say. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. Plus, they have to have an inclination to not stay indoors all the time, which seems to foster the worst echo chambers. Being outside and talking to people tend to be the best sort of people that you can talk to. So, hey, if you want to talk to people, go outside and talk to people. There's higher standards of conversation out there. It doesn't mean that it's bad if you only talk indoors. Go outside and talk to somebody. You can do it. Uh, George Brown, talk to me. How you been? That's a great shirt that you got on. Did you put it on just for this radio show? I did. In fact, it's hideable. It's hiding the shirt that's under it. Our listeners, you have to imagine George in like the most beautiful, decadent collared shirt. George, how you been? What's going on? Your shoulder's good. You got double shots from vaccines. You're looking healthier than ever. You got black hairs now again. What's up? You're regressing in age. Yeah, well, I hope so. I'm a lot older than Larry is actually. I'm afraid to say how old I am, but I am discovering the joys of physical exercise. Nice. I'm finding, you know, that it's, what is this called? The body is the temple of something? Anybody know? The body's temple. In religion. Yeah. But when I get old enough, I might start exercising too. Well, yeah, I had to drive to Knoxville to see a medical specialist last week. And to me, driving in Knoxville is horrible. It's like, you know, I'm used to driving in New York City and in the San Francisco area. And to me, it's like driving in Knoxville is horrible. It's worse than me. No. Because when they rear-end you, they actually get out of their car to apologize. Well, I haven't been rear-ended. I'm just talking about the confusion at 60 miles an hour. The signs are awful. But like the signs in New York City are terrible too on the highways. Sure. I think, what is it? You just stay off college drive. That's the only thing you have to do. Isn't that the moniker thing? Well, I was going to the University of Tennessee medical center. Yeah. You got to stay away. That's the road you stay away from. That's, you stay away from all the roads that lead to the university because they're all here. That's where I had to go. You're a walk. You're a walk. That's how you get there. You're a walk. You don't drive to the university or else you'll be parking in the middle of the street in the middle of the, especially during the game. You'll never get anywhere. I'll never get anywhere. Well, I went on for the first time to be really serious about this. I went on Google Street View and drove my way around the roads on the campus over and over and over and over again. And I saw a sign that let me know that nobody else told me that it cost $2 to get out of there. Wow. You have to pay an exit toll to leave in your car. But what it didn't say on Google Earth or Google Street View is that the view is old and the price has been raised to $3. Oh, that's funny. Yeah, that's funny. So I did my postdoc at the University of Knoxville at UT University of Tennessee. And what's funny is the first time I got there, I knew the building that I'd be working at was in the small veterinary building. And so I drove up to the building that says small veterinary building because there's a lot of veterinarian stuff there. There's a lot of agriculture taught there, right? And are like big animal testing. But the funny thing was is there's a small veterinary building and then a big small veterinary building. And by that, they refer to the animal size. It's not the size of the building. It's the size of the animal that they're describing it by. So when I said, oh, it's in the small veterinary building, I thought, oh, I should look for a sign that says that. It's like, no, you should look for the sign that says we work on small animal buildings, which is actually the bigger veterinary building. And the small veterinary building is for the big animals. And I'm like, this makes no sense. But I found where I needed to work long story short. But yeah, signs are very confusing and stay away from the campuses if you're in a car. That's your pro tip for all the Knox billions out there. Guys, I had a really good weekend. I'm having a good weekend so far yesterday. I did my first sign language SC session. I walked into a meetup group that was hosted in New York, had a bunch of people from all around the country. It was about maybe 30 ish people all together. We did breakout rooms just chat with each other. It's basically like, hey, if you're deaf and you're looking for a community, especially with COVID, come in this, come into this like meetup group, sort of like the meetup rooms that you run with a society in Knoxville. And then you do like breakup rooms and you'll stay there for like 10 minutes and then you meet together. And then you break up again with a different group of people. And I did three sessions all together. First session I was kind of rusty with my ASL be honest because I was just nervous and I knew what I had to do a lot of introductions. And the topic that I jumped into was already ongoing. And so they were talking about pet peeves and they're like, what's your pet peeve time? And so I'm like, I don't know the sign for pet peeves. So I asked them to spell it. And I was like, pet peeves. Are we talking about pet peeves? They're like, yeah. And then I was like, I don't know what really bothers me. I lived my entire life trying to like shed away the things that do bother me and I don't even have any of the things that I do like. So I was just like, like, what am I around? Bananas, light bulbs? Do light bulbs around me? Like, what can I say to like make myself seem normal? And then that conversation was awkward. But ASL, pretty good. I was able to understand most of the people, but the second ones, I had much better time. And I talked about the nature of like our where is where you're born defines you. And like, how can you determine the bias of your own upbringing? And, and, and what's the best way to determine that for like the anybody. And like, traveling helps a lot. They brought up traveling as a means to do that. I was like, that's really good way to contrast where you are. Someone mentioned joining the military and realizing what you miss and what things are taken away from you in terms of like, oh, but I did like doing that, but I can't do it anymore. This is bizarre, right? And then the very last conversation we had was about gun control. This was in a different room. And someone had mentioned, okay, so who should own guns? And they say in order to own guns, you should have to be in the military or at least have had military service. That's how you can earn having a gun. So if you're in the police office, if you're a police officer, you had to have done military training, been disciplined, and only you can own again. And I was thinking like, that's, that is a, that is a very interesting proposal. We had a really good topic conversation. I know, I know I'm, and my role wasn't to like really defend or endorse it, it was just to try to like really engage myself in some sign language and get to know people better in this new capacity. But I'd say this too, as a community, deaf people can't have a much smaller selection pool of people they can have very deep conversations with. And oftentimes they have to rely on a church to be the foundation of their community. So they are oftentimes very religious. And because of that, they don't have an opportunity to really critique like their beliefs a lot. There's not even a word for atheist in American Sign Language. You have to say not believing person. Like that's the word. It's three different signs. You have to combine to say atheists. What does he mean you're an atheist? Like I can spell it out and be like, I've heard of that, but I don't really know what it means. I'm like, this is bizarre. So there are communities like how there are communities that are worth reaching out to. I'm going to try to continue to work harder to reach out to this community. But we should just be mindful that not everyone is blessed with being able to like reach out to friends like this. Larry, what's up? Well, I taught a class, a combined class of deaf students from Knoxville School of Deaf and KCCD. And we had several, it was a computer class and they didn't have certain signs like they didn't have a sign for carriage return. Well, so we took an R and we did this. We like did this kind of a semi like a return. Yeah, we did a cursor was like a light, you know, like that. But we did this because a cursor was blank. So what you might do is create a sign for atheism. Right. What is, what is a this? A is this. Yeah. And then you can just do the, the sign for the atheist day with the circle around it. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. That's not bad. Publicize it. Yeah. That's not bad. That's not bad. I actually like that. I'll think about that next time. Yeah. All right. So we got five minutes in this first half, but I want to do a double dip in dualism and have Scott lead us in that convo. So how about, hey, Larry, would you be cool if we mark the show half a little bit early and then give us more time for the second half? Sure. Sweet. Let's do it. Scott, we're going to get right into you after this half. Let's do it. Okay. All right. This is the digital free thought radio hour and W O Z O radio 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. And we'll be right back after this short break. 103.9 FM W O Z O radio Knoxville. Hello. Welcome back to the second half of the digital free thought radio hour on W O Z O radio 103.9 here in Knoxville, Tennessee. I'm doubt or five and this is Sunday, April 18th, 2021. Let's talk about the atheist society of Knoxville just for a moment founded in 2002. We're in our 19th year. We've got over 1000 members and we have weekly zoom meetings to keep our community going as it were at this time of COVID. You can find us online on Facebook or at meetup.com or Google simply by typing in Knoxville Atheist. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you should still go to meet up and search for a group, atheist group, free thought group in your town. Don't find one. That's right. I want back where you want to pick up. Hey, we're going to do a double dip into dualism. And why I'm excited about this is because I wanted to have Scott in the original conversation. So Scott, open doors, dualism, what's on your mind? What is dualism? We talked about what is dualism last week, George. Come on, come on. Yeah, we did. We did. I don't look surprised. You sure? Come on, come on. I'll play. I'll give you the link to the video of you explaining it to us. Explaining it. Yeah. Yeah. So just as a reminder, I would say dualism, the way I understand it, is for some particular thing to have two fundamental kinds of categories or aspects of itself or principle about itself. So like maybe in theology, you could say there's good and evil, there's God and the devil. That's a kind of dualism. And then there's the mind-body problem. There's the mind, and then there's the body. But it's all... What we talked about last week mostly was the mind-body dualism. Yeah, the identity issue of mind and body. So first of all, mind or body? No, it's like I'm on my mind or my body. Are they in fact the same thing or are they two different things possibly? Yeah, or is there two different aspects at least to it? So it's kind of an endless debate. It's been going on for centuries, of course, and really when it comes to consciousness science, there is no consensus on that. But what's your opinion? That's what we want to know. I think we discussed the general last week. We want to really know what individually we think about it. And that's what we're looking for the second half. Where are you on dualism? Are you convinced that? I would say that ontologically I don't know. So when I say ontologically, I mean metaphysically or whatever, the grounding of it all, I don't know. I have no idea. But I can say that I observe a difference between behavior and experience. You step on my foot, I say ouch, that's behavior. But then that says nothing about what's really going on in my brain. It may not hurt at all. I may just be saying that. So there's a little difference. There is a different aspect to the same thing going on. So at least in that sense, there's a dualism going on, I think you could say. But if you're talking about, well, is there a soul? Is there this thing thing outside of the physicality? I don't know if that's the case. I don't think that it seems like I have any reason to think there is. But there is this odd little, there is these conceptual gaps, though. That's the problem. And I think we have a philosopher of mine called David Chalmers, who's made this, he's kind of coined the phrase, the hard problem of consciousness, which basically highlights that conceptual gap that, you know, yeah, we have a brain, we have neurons, we have that interaction. That's all easy stuff. We can easily correlate those things. Nobody, even a dualist would go along with that. That's part of dualism to say, yeah, there's the brain, if you affect the brain, it's going to affect the experience. Nobody cares about that. That's the easy problem. The hard problem is, why is there an experience in the first place? Like, why is it necessary for there to be an experience of it? Let's put a phenomenal experience of consciousness. Yeah, because I feel like both my mind and my body have different dialogues within me, right? And I can wake up in the morning with my alarm clock going off and my body's like, I want to sleep more. But my mind's like, you got to wake up and go to work so that we can afford to keep this alarm clock working. My body's like screw the alarm clock, let's just keep sleeping. And I can hear, either I am part of that conversation and I'm one of those identities, or I'm listening to this conversation take place between with that. And I'm just like a spectator in it. But I have felt and heard or experienced that dialogue. And I'm like, which one of these is me? Or are they both me? But they are very much at odds with each other. They don't feel like they are compatible identities. They just feel like my mind, body arguing with each other. And then the overlay, the Venn diagram overlay of that is my, is me, the identity of myself. So I, the question of like, why do we would have those experiences in the first place might be a really, really interesting question. Like, why do we talk to ourselves? Why can't we just behave automatically and get the things that we need to get done done? What is the value of this inner thought process that we seem to develop, maybe evolutionarily speaking? Right. Could, could it be like, could all of this stuff go on in the dark, so to speak? Like, you know, if we have, if we create computers that, you know, run algorithms and do things, do those things, do we think those things have to have an experience to go along with it? If we assume that they do not, then why do we have an experience that goes along with our computing and algorithms that we run in our brain? And a lot of people will kind of contradict themselves and say, well, evolution saw it fit to give us experience because it kind of motivates us to avoid pain and go towards what feels good. But then again, we can create computers to do the same thing. There's no real necessity there. And then some people would argue, well, maybe it's a byproduct, like, you know, kind of like, you know, we have an appendix, it has no real function, it just kind of comes out of the evolutionary process. But then that opens up a lot of questions too, though, you know. If you don't want me interjecting, George wanted to ask something, Ben Dredd, Ben Landry. George, what do you have to say? Okay, George. Well, my first question, my first question is, when Tyrone's cat asks himself this question, what answer does he give himself? And my second question is, does Tyrone's cat even care? My cat has a name. But yeah, I don't know. I don't know what your cat's name is. Vinny. It's Vinny. Vinny? Yeah, Vinny, like my cousin Vinny. I love it. Yeah, okay. Yeah, it's my cat Vinny. Yeah. Who knows? I don't know what my cat's processes are. We don't. We'll never know unless we put electrodes in his brain, you know. Even then, we just tell us, it only tells what the electrodes tell us. It wouldn't necessarily tell us exactly. So you can put electrodes in my brain and still not know what I'm talking about. Who knows? Dredd, what do you got? Well, I was just going to follow up to Scott there to say that there's actually a growing body of research that indicates that our body knows what it's going to do before our brains do. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. You know, different monitoring gadgets and electrodes planted in the brain, ECGs and FMLRs or F functional MRIs are showing where different activity is being fired up in anticipation, like milliseconds or microseconds or whatever, before we actually perform the action that we think we're doing a volition. Yeah, like the cognitive experience is very much, I'm thinking things that I've already figured out. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I already knew I was going to make that response before I can make the words to make the response. Exactly. And this is always certainly this is my problem with the idea of dualism is that it actually precludes the idea that there's a homunculus inside my body that's, you know, kind of watching the Cartesian screen like Dennis talked about the Cartesian theater. But then the suggestion goes like the Russian nesting dolls is that who's the homunculus within the homunculus? And that goes on and on. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's the inside out problem. It points to dualism though in a way some would argue because it would say, well, you're kind of detached from the physical processes that are coming up before you're aware of the decision you made. It's almost like seconds after your body has done this thing, there's this other thing called an experience that that confuses the two that says I made a decision. Scott, I'd like to get Larry's response and then you can get everybody's Larry. What was the thing you want to say? Well, I think I think you say why do we have these experiences? I think it's a survival value. We have these actual detached thought processes that we can run through our run scenarios through our minds before we actually experience those scenarios to hopefully take us to some kind of objective or and where we can see that it's going to end badly or good. Right. What really concerns me or really makes me wonder is what about the uncontrolled virtual experiences that we have in dreams? I mean, that's another whole world. We got all these experiences while we're waking and we have virtual experiences while we're thinking about it. But then we have these uncontrolled virtual experiences on dreams, which I can go in your direction at all. Yeah, I would recommend a really good book. I just finished reading it from Paul Davies, who's an astrophysicist. It's called Demon in the Machine. And it's really a stab at trying to figure out what the what the source of consciousness is and that it may be based on a reality around information or a dimension of information. It's very, very provocative. I would highly recommend it. Okay, definitely. Scott, I'd love to get your feedback on this. So like the idea of what Larry was saying, is this a conversation that we're having with ourselves just a survival mechanism? Or is it, you know, are we just voicing things that we've already processed, but are trying to maintain like sanity by giving it like a dialogue? And can cats do it too? Can my cat do it? Yeah, right. So I was, I can only appeal back to people that know more about this stuff than me. So I read like a lot of stuff. There's a book from Donald Hoffman. And he's like a neuroscientist and university professor in Irvine, California, by the way. And he has a unique perspective. But yeah, he says that consciousness is a survival technique. And it's for procreating and passing on our genes. So he says that in evolution, we did not evolve to know the truth about the world or the ontological reality, but to know how we can pass our genes on to the next generation. So he gives examples of like, I think like beetles and something where there are a certain color, like a kind of a goldish, tannish color. And they, their conscious experiences of this color, and that's how they mate and procreate, because they see other beetles of this color than they know to go mate with that beetle. But they did an experiment. They put down beer bottles, which are the same color as these beetles. And they found that all the beetles got onto the beer bottle and tried to mate with it. So the consciousness didn't get them the truth, but it gave them just enough to try to pass their genes on within their environment. So this kind of shows that the consciousness, the function of consciousness is to kind of lead you into what's going to be better for your species. As for the dream thing, what Larry was saying, that kind of reminded me of what Sam Harris said one time. No. Okay. Yeah, Sam Harris was like, because Eric isn't here. Yeah. Sam Harris said, I think he said, what's really odd is how can I have a dream about a joke and I catch the punchline and think it's funny? Like if it comes from me, then why would I find the joke funny, or why would I like find something novel about that within my dream? Sure. So it's kind of weird, but he never says anything particularly great. He just does things slowly that people are like, oh, wow, Sam Harris said that. But it's like he's the Bruce Springsteen of people who are saying things in front of mics. And it's like the thing about Bruce Springsteen has a podcast with Barack Obama. It's called something like Rebels or something like that. And it's like the conversation is like, you're talking to Barack Obama, the president of the United States, Nobel laureate, you know, Peace Prize winning strongest person or most powerful person in the world. You play a guitar, yet you're talking as if, yeah, we both did cool things, didn't we? Yeah, it was pretty awesome when you did a cool thing and I did a cool thing. We're basically the same person, right? It's like, no, you are not. Don't even pretend. And I feel like there's a lot of that from people. Anyway, that's my little getting off of it. Yeah, I think dualism is an interesting concept, especially with that idea of like, what's the value of it since we do it all the time? Dredd? I have a question. I was going to just mention another book I've read by Daniel Kahneman, who is a very prestigious neuro scientist who has this book called Thinking Fast and Slow. And he talks about system one and system two kinds of thinking. Yeah, system one being the one that's, you know, you know, very reactionary, instinctual, and that the other one is the slow thinking so that it actually happens after the system one thinking has already transpired. And so it was, it's a very interesting, because that gives you the sort of sense of dualism, but it's actually a process that's being undertaken by your brain, because that's how the brain is constructed. That's how the brain works, right? It's just a natural, a natural function of it. I follow? George? You know, I'm, I'm thinking about the relationship between these concepts and the situations that are troubling us in the world today. We got a lot of really severe problems going on. I feel, can we apply any of this knowledge to dealing with the troubles that are facing us, you know, the, the potential for the planet to burn up, the political leanings that are emerging in different societies and different countries around the world toward authoritarianism? How do we get a message of sanity out into the populace when they're listening constantly to a different drumbeat through different media? So George, I'd like to touch on what you're saying, because I think that touches on why I personally think dualism exists. I kind of touches also on what Larry was saying, but it's more pessimistic in a way, but also still valuable. So I think we have these cognitive conversations with ourselves, not so that we can construct models or evolutionarily, the value of it came from not from trying to figure out ways to, to, to procreate or, or like find like ways to improve, prove or get like benefits. It was to avoid bad things that hadn't happened yet. So like if you almost get, for example, in a car accident, like say you just barely skid past it, you didn't get in a car accident, you're still on the road, the like the cars were passing, you are fine. But in your head, you can process, huh, I almost got on a car accident. Why did I almost get in a car accident? Did I make sure the light was running? No, I was on my cell phone. I need to make sure I'm not on my cell phone because I can get in car accidents. You're having these conversations separately all the time. Yeah, almost as a way of looking back of like, was there a tiger really in that bush? Maybe I should be out here. Do I assume the, do I assume the Russell is a predator or do I assume it's the wind? People with the wind are not going to be the ones that survive. Now, just to finish this up, touching what George was saying, like, hey, the temperature is getting hotter. I'm not on fire yet, but why is the temperature getting hotter? Why is there more pollution in the ocean? Why are they okay? And I'm thinking, I'm thinking of the psychology of the society that's around me. Yes. As I speak right now, a different kind of dualism, perhaps, but it's a mental process that divides people into us and them. But we, but I feel like that is, that is the, that's the application of the topic that we are dealing with right now, which is why are we having these conversations is because evolutionarily we developed this for danger recognition. And so when we are having these kinds of conversations, these dualistic sort of like, what's wrong, that will be wrong in the future, what's going on wrong now, that'll be a bigger problem later on. That is our core and it touches all of our fear and like, you know, adrenaline, hormonal stress triggers. I feel like it's that is because this dualism process that we go through is for recognizing dangers and trying to avoid them or at least inform ourselves of the danger so that we can come up with a better behavior. Because otherwise we will continue to be stressed out by them. And I can guarantee you, I can at least guarantee at least this is my final point. Should we solve the problems that we are currently aware of right now, we will find additional problems to supplement that biological thing because it's core to who we are as organisms right at this point. It's not just a, oh, there's a problem that's fixed and now there's no problems. It's what's the next thing we need to look for because that's a mechanic in your brain that's constantly looking for things to be recognized as danger and try to improve it because that's evolutionarily beneficial for us to constantly improve. But yeah, great point, great point, because I think the brain doesn't know the difference between real situations and simulated situations. Sometimes just remembering a bad traumatic could be just as bad. You relive that. You're in my head right now. Yeah, you're absolutely, I feel like there's so much truth to that. Your brain does have problems like, oh, I remember that time. It's like, why are you remembering? Why are you, why are you reminding me of that right now? I'm shaving. And that was like 16 years ago. It was like, yeah, you farted in third grade. It's like everybody farted, man. Like remember that? What's going on? Yeah. Remember that time you ate birthday cake and the thing fell off your spoon and it was like, oh, you're wrecking my whole day. Why would you do that? Brain is like, just letting you know where you are in life. Bring it back down to earth. Yeah, don't get too cocky. There's beneficial for you to recognize. And how do I talk with my neighbor across the street? Yeah, yeah, you know, when he when he espouses racist BS at me. Hey, yeah, yeah, you're good. You're saying you slid. But I mean, I mean, you know, the monkey on my back is just yelling at me constantly right now. How do we save the planet? How do we write? You know, you have a monkey on your back saying that and you have a lizard in your brain saying like, just how do I, what can I kill? Just tell me what to kill and what we can eat and what we can have sex with. That's the only thing I care about. Yeah, right. And then you have soaring. And then you just have you in the front, peak front support test being like, what's going on with all these monkeys and lizards? I gotta do work. What's going on over here? I'm just trying to walk. See, the dualism in my mind in a way is I'm looking at a dualism in the society and the country around me is that the people I'm, I like to hang out with are people who take pleasure in our differences, you know, in, in, in all the different experiences that each of us bring to the table from our own backgrounds, our own ethnicities, our own, you know, religious upbringing, whatever. And, and I'm, I'm opposing this in my mind to people who just see all of this as a threat. Right. I am my last. So that's a different kind of dualism, right? Yeah, it's a different kind of dualism. Different kinds of course. And I'd actually touch on this. I'd say, you know, very, way back when we used to solve every problem by eating the thing that bothered us or killing the thing that bothered us, right? Like that was a solution to every problem. Like, I'm bothering you, just kill us. What are you doing? Just move on. But now we are rapidly developing societally, but not so much biologically such that we still have hangups from, you know, you know, cave in times thousands of years ago as part of lack of mental functions. And this new idea of people living with each other, respecting everybody and treating them how they want to be treated and understanding that they're not going to think the same way you're going to think that that's okay. As long as you can figure out means of working together in a productive society, that is not a new, that is not a thing that we are physically prepared for. It is a thing that we have to teach people very much in many senses of the way. Like, this is how you conduct yourself in society. This is why you're going to public school. You can get into a couple of fights and realize punching hurts people and getting so you don't become a little monster. You gotta know where you are in life. You're not very strong, fragile. You don't understand that. And then I feel like just over while we're having these conversations now we're documenting them. But if we are around say 50,000 years from now, I think this will be videos like this will be very interesting because the evolved humans will look back and be like, what are they talking about? I had a conversation with myself saying I was upset. It's like, why don't they just push the button to make them happy and resolve everything and ask the computer to figure out everything for them? It's just like, because back then we didn't have that. We just had this. This is the most powerful thing we had. And this wasn't perfect yet. And so we have to, there are some weird, evolutionary hangups and hooks, but for the most part we're making do with what we got. And I think as long as we know that there are processes and not reality, like as long as we understand the models to construct society and figure out how to treat people better and not reality as it is, and that we can improve this process, I think we'll come out of it. Okay. Yeah. Ironically, talking to my my Zen Buddhist friend from years ago, he, of course, you know, in Buddhism, they don't believe in dualism, you know, they don't even believe in a self. They think that the self and dualism and all that kind of stuff, free will, all that kind of stuff is illusion. And so they also believe in the principle of compassion. And so they say that this sort of dualism, this sort of separate separation of mind, body, this kind of philosophy increases less compassion, instead of more compassion. They said when you kind of see everything as a one, a oneness, then you kind of want to increase the, because really in their philosophy, it's all about experience, you know, human experience, that, you know, that's what, that's what we're aiming for and trying to make better. Yeah. So you have principles of well-being, principles of suffering, just this attachment, things like that. So Buddhism has the idea of like the biggest illusion that exists is separation, because like really everything is one thing. And so you have a vested interest in treating things around you well. Correct. Correct. And I can understand that logic as well. I do think it's kind of cool that the material that needed to make my body was here, even at the beginning of the universe, and will still be here well after I'm done. It's just arranged differently. So like at that point, it's just like, I was here since the beginning. It doesn't feel as scary anymore. So like, yeah, I have an vested interest in this universe because I'm a part of it. Yeah. That's the karma. The karma. No, that's not the karma. That's the particles in space and I'm fine with it. That's right. No entropy. We're getting close to the end. Dred, I want you to keep me updated on this headband, shenanigans. The second you get your clearance card, let me know, because that's great. Absolutely. You bet. Because the whole, the whole past varying community around the world is, we're all watching each other. So they're certainly watching this. So yeah, I'll definitely share. Here's my thing. Slightly bigger headbands each time. Just slightly. It turns into a turbine. Look at this picture. You approved this last time. You're saying one millimeter bigger and you're not going to let, what are you saying? What are you saying? You let the Christian get through. Come on. Pretty arbitrary to me. Yeah, it sounds pretty bad. Sure. The camel knows under the tent. Yeah. Scott, safe travels. I hope your cousin's doing well. I hope you have a good time. Thanks for teaching us. I've already been. That was last weekend. Yeah. I just hope you, you know, it's a, it's a travel again in the future. I hope your cousin's health stays well. You know, we're still in a pandemic, you know, like traveling and health. I got vaccinated. I'm supposed to travel next month to Cancun, Mexico. Nice. Nice. So I had to get vaccinated. I got, my vaccine was done last month. So yes, my mom just got her second vaccination. So I'm really happy about that too. Yeah. How old are you, Scott? 53. Okay. I'm 56 and I'm probably still two months out. That is ridiculous. Come to America. We'll get you shot up. George, what's something that you'd recommend we check out before next week? This here, this is great coffee. Coffee? No, coffee. This stuff is really, really good and it's very affordable. Larry and I were talking about coffee and I just want to recommend this stuff as a wonderful espresso. So far, Alissa, what are you holding? I am holding a bag of Pilon, P-I-L-O-N. It's in a brick and it's very easy to find. It's a great espresso coffee Cuban style. Very cool. Very nice. Very nice container. Nice. Yeah. And I'm used to really good coffee and this stuff, you know, really is worth it. Nice. I have my opinions on how we have normalized certain psychoactive ingredients as like a common thing, but I will hold it until next meeting. Maybe we'll talk about that because I feel like we just don't realize some things are just like, come on, guys. Larry, I'll tell you this, Larry. I really, really, really wanted to know what this thing called atheism was. And I found a book about what it's all about. It's called The Bible. Have you ever heard about it? It says basically all atheists are going to hell. And I feel like this tells me everything about what atheism is all about. Is there any other? But I love the second opinion. Love the second opinion. Any other book out there for me? Well, the Bible also says all atheists are fools. But I mean, it's not a big surprise. The book that says you've got to read it and got to live by it and believe it also says people who don't are fools. Yeah, surprise. Yeah. Anyway, my book is called atheism. What's it all about? And it's available on Amazon. You can go to my website, though, and read most of the contents. It's digitalfreethought.com. Be sure to click on the blog button. We have archives of our atheist songs, radio shows, this blog, I mean, many articles on the subject that are in my book and actually more that are on the digital freethought blog. If you have any questions for this show, you can send them to askanatheistatnoxfilatheist.org. We'll answer them on future shows. If you're having trouble leaving your religious beliefs behind, having emotional troubles, physical or whatever, you can go to recoveringfromreligion.org for help. And if you're facing abuse or something, I'm sure that they can point you in the right direction. If you're watching this on YouTube, be sure to like and subscribe. This has been the digital freethought radio hour. Remember that 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 here next week at 7 o'clock on WZO radio in Knoxville, Tennessee. See you later. Say bye, everybody. Bye, everybody. Check me out. 8 a.m. on Sundays. Mind Pirate here. Oh, do we forget you dread? Yeah. Mind Pirate. Got to check them out. Mind P-Y-R-A-T. Yeah. I'll make sure that makes it in. Yeah, me too. Me too. See you. What kind of time, what kind of time on Sunday? Eastern? Eastern? Yeah. Central? 8 a.m. Pacific time. 8 a.m. Pacific. All right. Be early.