 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 right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today is Sunday, June 6th, 2021. I'm Larry Rhodes, or a Doubter 5. And as usual, we have our co-host, Wombat, on the line with us. Hello, Wombat. Hello, everybody. Thanks, Kentucky. Let me see your shirts. Thanks. We've got banks at the top of Kentucky. Let's go. Let's go. Yeah. Wow. There's a lot. There's a lot on that. There they are. More than extra. For our audio audience, we had some t-shirts showing thanks to Kentucky. Yeah. Our guests today are George Brooklyn, George Buffalo. Buffalo. And you're at Pirate Higgs. How are you? 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 religions, religious faith, holy books, gods, and superstitions. Wombat, what's our topic today? We're going to be talking about something that I don't think many gods are very good at. And I think that's turning the other cheek. Why it's important, funny stories of when we've done it in the past and why gods should be more prone to doing it if they call themselves perfect and benevolent. But before we get into all of that, before we get into all of that, I got to throw it up to our own, Dred Pirate Higgs, for our weekly invocation. We're going to have the proper head here. Well, be me captain. I shall not want. He may give me to float in salt water. He steereth me through glassy seas. He fell with my bowl. He steereth me through the straits of noodliness, for goodness' sake. I, though I sail through the heaving of tempestuous waters, I will fear not sinking. For thou art with me. Thy mast and thy rudder, they comfort me. Thou preparest a feast before me in the presence of me, mates. Thou quenches my thirst with grog. My goblet runneth over. Truly, past and grog shall follow me all the days of me life. And I will dwell in the galley of the quad forever. Wrong. Wrong. Pasta Luya, everybody. Pasta Luya. All right, so, hey, turning the other cheek is what we're going to be talking about, but I want to go into one of our favorite segments for the show. What you guys been doing, what's on your plate? Dred, you always got something interesting. What is the status of Operation Chaos? Yes, well, unfortunately, so the latest letter has not come back yet from ICBC with respect to, because I argued, of course, that the letter I received from them suggested that the last time I was at ICBC, I was trying to get accommodation for my religious practice when, in fact, the band was just a hair accessory, which happened to have the symbol. Right. And we've talked about this having, pitching it out to my mates there to go with a similar hair accessory. If I lived in Canada, I would be first in line to do this. Yes, yes, I would happily do this. So we're still there. I'm just waiting to hear back from the Mucky Muck at ICBC with respect to whatever response he may have to offer before taking it to the next level. Cool. George, you got some comments. Why are you at time? Yeah, I just, for the listening and viewing audience, I want to explain a little bit about what Dred Pirate Higgs is talking about. And he has, he's actually Dred Pirate Higgs, why don't you do the explanation? Because I'm a little foggy and you'll do a better job than me. The explanation of what? Sorry. What is, you're involved in illegal action. If I remember right, explain to our listening audience what this is about. Well, so really it's about what we perceive as institutionalized religious privilege. Discrimination. And it's discrimination, of course. So I've gone into ICBC wearing my tricorn as an ask for accommodation based on my religious beliefs in a similar way that Muslims wearing koofies or Sikhs wearing turbans are allowed to, allowed to and are given accommodation for their religious beliefs. And of course, they exclude us. They discriminate us against us. And for the most part, without a really good reason. Right. They've said that while we're making this accommodation for religions that prohibit you from removing your headgear. And I've demonstrated time and again that there is no religion that prohibits you from removing your headgear. All religion is a choice. And if we started accommodating people based on prohibitions in their religions, well, we wouldn't suffer witches to live either. Right. So, you know, picking and choosing what you're going to make accommodations for is patently absurd and arbitrary in every way, shape and form. In a sense, it was like the state government's like, hey, we have driver's license, but also no hats. Just no hats. But if you're religious, you can wear a hat. But only if you're these religions. Exactly. There you cross the line. Because now are you deciding which religions can and which can't. And you're not in a position to be able to do that. And governments shouldn't be in the position to do that. Although there are governments all over the world that have state religions and authorize this one and not authorize that one. America is not one of those. It's in the Constitution that we have this constitutionally supported separation of church and state. And all these local and federal agencies are ignoring that. And that's what we're against protesting. Buffalo, want to weigh in. What do you think about that situation? Well, it makes no sense to me. It's not logical. It's unreasonable. And somebody has to stir it up in order to make a change toward something that is more reasonable. That's why there's red part with the big spoon. And listen, if I told you, if I was in Canada, you would you tap me and I'd be like, all right, just tell me what to wear. I'll get a new driver's license. I don't care. This is sound. This is fun. A lot of people. I hope you have fans that are helping you out with this. Like, do you have a community that can like assist you in Well, we have. I mean, we are a registered church. I mean, or we're a registered society here, the church of British church and flying spaghetti monster. So there are warm bodies. You can tap to be like, please. Sometimes it's, you know, it's like hurting cats, right? Pastifarians by by nature are not typically down conformists. We're pirates, right? So we're kind of free spirits and so give it some goodie. Be like, Hey, if you do this, let's we'll give you free alcohol for the next month. Like there you go. That's Canadian beer. That might, that might register. You got to invest a little bit. Anyway, just letting this in. George, I want to hear from you how you've been since last week, my friend. Go ahead and pick yourself off mute. George Buffalo or George Brown? My bad. My bad. Brooklyn, George, you're raising your hand and you're on mute. What's up? George Brown, the two and a half is me. And I just want wanted to mention if it wasn't obvious to our listeners that although most of us are in the United States, dread hired dread pirate Higgs is actually in British Columbia. And and so he's subject to a, I will say a different tyranny than we are here in the United States. He suffers the Queen's tyranny. Isn't that right? State religion, church of England. Independent. I should say Canada has a state religion. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they do. So you asked me, well, I, you know, my memory can be very short and right at this moment. The only thing I have to report really is that I have been jousting with bureaucracies in this last week. Oh man. I don't, I don't appreciate customer service that is based in the Philippines. Oh geez. Shots. Okay. Yeah. I mean, the people are perfectly fine. I've got, you know, I've got nothing against. Yeah. The good customer service is hard to find it is, but I tend to find that the ones that have the best customer service also have the worst business operating practices. So like, amazing customer service. Everybody's happy, but then Chick-fil-A is like very, very sure. Religious. Don't want to hire gay people like very, very almost optimistic in terms of their placement of people in their positions. It's just like, oh, Walmart, great customer service. Like everybody, you know, it looks at least sleepy, which is not bad, but Walmart. But you know, like a whip. I mean, on the technical side, I have to say that I once went to Walmart. Yeah. To look up one product online. Okay. Those mofos put 115 cookies on my computer. And that is abusive behavior. Wow. That's crazy. Also, you're recording the language that you're trending the line. George. All right. I know. Buffalo, George, how you been? Good. I've been fine. Thank you. Not bad. Not bad. Not bad. Any states and science, are you still connected to that? Yeah. Yeah. I still am because I still have a lab with a couple of people. I've got a grant that's running out at the end of this year. And then I'll finally toss in the keys to the kitchen. Okay. Yes, I am, but I've sort of removed from the general faculty of the university anymore. I interact with some people in, in my immediate area. But yeah, I am. Cool. Cool. The, the interesting thing that came out of that was that we had a discussion just the other night with a bunch of colleagues about why Kentucky was so good at handling the delivery of the vaccine, the corona vaccine that they were early on. And I mean, I had my shots in January. Sure. Yeah. Really. And nobody really knows why, except I had this very, I don't know if I told the story before, but I had an interaction. I went there to volunteer to help with the vaccination effort. And I spent 60 hours there actually at it. But I met a guy from Pfizer from the company and he's involved in the epidemiology, the logistics of virus delivery, virus, all aspects of it. And he had a lot of interesting things to say. One of which was that they selected, they were looking for places with Pfizer that had cold storage facilities. Makes sense. Since that one is very sensitive to temperature. Right. And they picked University of Kentucky and they, they picked the University of Louisville. I know they're cold storage labs. I've been inside them. So yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that made sense. But what was interesting then is that doesn't necessarily explain the very efficient logistical effort to get the vaccine out early, set up the facilities and so forth. And that apparently came because they hired the CEO of Chick-fil-A. Oh, the CEO of Chick-fil-A. Mr. Fil-A. Yeah. And he apparently organized the, the, you know, the systematics of it early on and got it going really fast. Or let's be, let's be clear. He got his staff who are unnamed to do the work and he took the credit. That's, that's how a CEO does it. But, you know, but why that CEO? I'm not sure. Sure. I had nothing to do with this, but I thought that was very interesting. Yeah, that's great. Great, great, great, great, great. Good job for everybody. Good job for everybody. I'll stop the story at that point. This guy said a lot of other interesting things, but yeah. Yeah. Typically it was like, CEO, how do you turn a wrench? I don't know. I pay somebody to do that. That's, that's how, that's how you do it. Larry, love to know how you've been. Oh, I've been fine. I've been staying home, staying in. Actually, I've been going out and eating a lot more than we used to for the last year. Yeah. And that's been great. It's nice to kind of be able to ignore those people that don't wear their mask because they may be vaccinated. They may not be, but you are, that's the important thing. Because as long as you're vaccinated, you're protected against COVID. And I hate to think that half the people walking around out there aren't vaccinated, but they're not a threat to me. They're a threat to each other, which is a problem. Yeah. But no, I've just been staying busy on online editing video and audio and talking a lot on Facebook. Larry, I got a hot take about vaccinations, and then we'll get into your trolling. Okay. But like, the idea is at a certain point, vaccinations are available and uniquely very available in the United States of America. You're going to reach a point where the people who want to get vaccinated are vaccinated and the people who don't want to get vaccinated and have been exposed to the education to why they need to be vaccinated still will not get vaccinated. And at that point it's like, are we going to hold back society for these people? Or are we just going to continue to move on and let the consequences fall wherever they need to be? Right? Because at a certain point it's like, we need to continue to be a country. Well, we do what we can as far as spreading the word, but ultimately the responsibility is theirs and we need to move on. Right. And that choice comes with risk like all other choices. Even vaccinating had like a marginal risk. And we decided it was nominal and we decided to take it anyway. People who decided not to get vaccinated are like, ah, I'll take my chances. Like, great, I'm not going to hold back an entire economy because, you know. Okay. Well, I have one thing to ask about that. Yeah, go for it. What do you think Japan should do? For the Olympics? Yeah. For the Olympics? They're still hosting the Olympics. They're still hosting the Olympics. There's a less than 2% inoculation rate in their own country. Really? Right now? And they're about to invite 150-something other countries there. So here's my opinion. Or yet they're not going to require the athletes to all be vaccinated. That doesn't make any sense. No, it doesn't. That's nutty. That's so nutty. Okay. I didn't know that. You guys are, They're extreme right now. Anyway, so I'm thinking my other issue with the Olympics issue with the Olympics is that, uh, we should, I know this sounds bad, but we should just have them like one of three cities for the rest of our lives or the rest of the Olympics, LA and then like two other cities from around the world because that's where the broadcast is coming out. That's where you can have an Olympics and not worry about a town falling bankrupt immediately afterwards. Just like pick the spots where the cameras already are. They already have the airport there. They already have the infrastructure and just fly them out there and do the thing and then they can fly back home. That's all you need. Um, so trolling Larry, you're a notorious troll. You love starting. I don't troll. No. You love spreading the fire. You know, when somebody says something that you don't like, you're like, well, let me make some posts. Well, that's not trolling. It's throwing something out there and, you know, that's not true or just inflammatory and then, you know, sitting back and letting people tear themselves up. I don't do that. I respond. Oh, it's not trolling. It's responding. I try to identify true trolls, actual trolls. If they're actual trolls, I'd bother with them. So this is, that's the thing I want to talk about. I want to talk about turning the other cheek. Sometimes in life, a message doesn't deserve a reply. And I have a big, I have like, I have enough of a YouTube channel with an audience where every day I wake up with at least five or 10 comments that are like, yeah, I don't want to respond to these. Yeah, there are several things that I don't respond to. And one of them is insults. If somebody is, if I'm talking to somebody and they insult me or use a snide backhanded remark. Yes. Yes. Okay. And learning anything, they just want to protect the religion and, and, and smack people around. So, right. Forget that. I'll move on. No, no, no. Absolutely true. I want to talk about like good times when to turn the other cheek, especially on the internet. We can probably start with that dread. We've had instances where people have just been kind of rude. What do you look out for in terms of like, I'm not going to respond to this. I'm turning the other cheek. Well, any, any ad hominem, I mean, when it comes down to attacking me or my person, it's that that's a, that's a game-ender right there. I, you know, back earlier when I first got on Facebook, you know, I guess I was not really prepared for how bad it can actually get sometimes. And I allowed myself to, to respond. And then quite quickly learned that, oh, I better modify myself. Otherwise, I'm just going to be an angry person and likely to develop the same kind of behavior that I am not liking having, you know, put on to me. Okay. Good points. I wonder where you draw the line. So if somebody said, so yeah, I don't take advice from beer from Canadians, but Dred Pirate, he, he's one of the good ones. Like, would you accept that as like, oh, he's making fun of my country. Like the thing about, thing about what we just did this morning where it was like, uh, the queen is in charge of Canada. Like, do you take that as like a, hey, come on, oh, Canada, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. No, not, not at all. I'm not, I don't consider myself a patriot. Um, it's, I mean, I just don't go there. Uh, I think the whole idea of ideas being, uh, you know, able to be scrutinized and, and made fun of it is open game. I mean, we all have strange ideas. And, uh, if someone can point out the flaw in something I'm thinking about or, uh, some idea I have, I see, good. There's an opportunity for me to learn. It's when it's personal attack, specifically on you and not just some things that you might call me a retard or you know, you must be brain damaged because you're on edge. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It's stupid. Nobody likes that. Whatever. Yeah. Nobody likes that. You're a heathen or heathen. Yeah. What about that? Have you been called? That's accurate. Yeah. I've, uh, Larry, Larry, Larry. I'll be heathen. I'd be like, yeah, that's awesome. I had someone, I had Joe of his witnesses come to my door in a van and they were hopping out just as I was pulling up. They're hopping out. And the guy said, yeah, this one older fellow is hopping out and he says, Hey, I just wanted to talk to you about, you know, the Lord Jesus Christ. And I said, Hey man, I'm an heathen at Foxhold. Hey, I said, get back in your van and get out of my driveway. Wow. Powerful. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. That's great. Um, yeah. So when the job when this is not on my door, they're more like, Hey, how's your mom doing? Cause my mom's one too. So it's all part of the family. Hey, Buffalo, what's up? I practiced, um, turning the other cheek just the other day. Um, nice. And I don't mean to go back to COVID, but it was a COVID situation. And that is, I asked just, uh, inquired with a person in our building who's really the manager of the building. And he also is the fabricator in the building. He's been there for 45 years. So that means he's sacrosanct as far as the university, uh, is concerned, um, about anything he might do is going to be kept quiet. But anyway, this guy, I asked him whether or not he's gotten his, uh, his COVID shot. And it was just an insane question. And he said, no, I've gotten a die. And I asked myself, well, how should I respond to this? And I didn't. Uh, and so I turned the other cheek, I think, but, uh, you know, recently, I think, uh, I don't know if he's going to get a shot, but his mind has changed because he's probably one of the, maybe 2% of people in the building who don't haven't gotten their shot. And he knows that. So when we pass each other in the hallway, he doesn't say anything. And so I consider that having been a victory for myself. And then I was able to not say something, speak. Hey, that's a great story. That's a great story. I found that if you were a, uh, vindictive God, that probably would have gone a lot differently. And there's so many great examples of that. George Brown from Brooklyn, do you have a story of turning the other cheek that you can share with us? Well, I, I, I don't really, um, I, the way I'm wired, I have a problem. I don't always recognize when I'm being attacked. Okay. And, and so turning the other cheek for me sometimes is, is really difficult because I don't even realize that I'm in a position to, to choose to do that or not. So I might get pretty angry in response, you know, like 20 minutes later when I realized what has happened. So it's like, it takes time to register even though after 20 seconds insults. Yeah, exactly. But when you do find out that you were insulted, do you then go out of your way to cause justice in the universe and, and flatten some tires, or do you just be like, ah, it's not worth my time? Cause that is turning your other cheek. Yeah, it's more like I deliberate as I mean, yeah, I'll feel hurt, but, um, I'm also deliberating over how I'm going to respond. Do I want to wound that person? Yeah. Would that be appropriate? You know, emotionally or, or physically. Yeah, you got your options, right? Yeah. Yeah. So, um, I mean, recently I was attacked by a therapist. Okay. How did it feel? Well, um, it was funny cause she used a technique that a therapist should never use, you know, a real classic abuse tactic. I mean, just, just because somebody's a licensed therapist does not mean that they are a good human being or a good therapist or a good therapist. That's right. Well, you need to describe this more because it's sounding very provocative. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's true. Well, unfortunately, I, I, I don't want to right now. So sure, sure, sure. George Brown's on the rails. That's it's true. But the thing that I want to, that I want to do is to come back at this woman and say, you are a disgrace to your profession. What, and you, or you could leave a bad Yelp review. Like Yelp tends to be the passive dress of way for people to remember it's not, it's not slander. If it's true, it's and you can defend it. Right. Well, I'm here in, in the boon, in the boondocks of, you know, wild Tennessee. And, and I, I, I keep on learning, despite the fact that I've been here five years is that there's a lot about the South that I just don't understand. Hmm. There's a lot. And for me personally, George, there was a lot about the South where I had to learn how to turn the other cheek on a lot of things, especially coming from California, and it was in terms of like just weird comments I would get from people. And in some cases, I'd have to go out of my way to correct it. Like I would have people be like, Hey, you sound white. And I'm like, Oh, you sound like someone who has not gone and spoken to enough black people to know that there is a whole spectrum of different people who have, you know, communication skills. And the ones that maybe you don't know, don't reflect everybody, but that's not their problem. That's your problem to be able to go outside and meet more people. So it's not that I sound white. I sound like me and I'm a happy, proud black guy. And so like you should go out and just talk to more happy, proud black guys. That's more reflection on you. Like I would go out of my way to explain all of that to somebody because I find that very irritable as a comment. But I've also gotten comments of like, Hey, you look like you can play basketball. Oh my gosh, I hear that so many times. Or then eventually it changes from basketball out of football, which is more of a question of my body dynamic is like, okay, I'll take it. I'll take it. I'm not going to go out of my way to correct them. Like, sure, they have a lot of black football players and a lot of black basketball players, but just because you're tall doesn't mean you play sports. If it's because you're tall and black doesn't mean you play a sport on TV or something like that. I'm actually. Yeah, well, you know, it's like I have to ask myself, do I really understand where this person is coming from? Who are talking with? Because what I'm finding, I mean, I'm, you know, I grew up in New York City and I lived in the San Francisco Bay area for 40 years. I'm used to an urban context and one that's very diverse, yes, in terms of people. And I enjoy that. And, you know, I enjoy the diversity. And so I'm going to read the point. You're touching on a good point, George, because you have to read the intentions of the people who are offending you, right? And determine if whether or not based on their level of intent, is it worth turning the other cheek or is there is the ignorance that they're coming from so potentially dangerous or critical that you have to go out of your way to correct them, whether kindly or in an aggressive manner and be like, hey, not not today. Well, there's a little more. There's a little more to it. I'm talk to me. You know, maybe I am in a in an environment which has a an us versus them view of the world. Sure. And then how do I make my point in response without being perceived as a them sure and discounted completely because I'm one of those guys. Sure. You just find common ground and try to, you know, enlighten that area, what you have in common with the person you're talking to. Thank you, Larry. Yeah. And there's also the idea in my head of like at a certain age, there's it takes more and more resistance to change like a personality. And is it my job to do that for every single person who I see, or should I be like, you're a grown adult. You should know better how to act than that. I'm not I'm just it's easier for me to just take you out of my, you know, viewfinder in terms of like people I care about or need to deal with on a daily basis and continue to move on because there's so many other people that I could be spending time with and enjoying time with them, the the rascals or the knuckleheads of the world. And so I find that when I look outside my window and I see like what's going on in the world, people tend to trend towards the the silent sane people, the silent sane majority. But then when I turn on like Fox News or like some sort of radio station, it's like the crazy fringes that I'm hearing. And I'm like, this does not reflect what I am saying. And I'm glad that that is the case, at least for now. It used to be I was scared for both. But now it seems like, OK, things are a lot better in the long term. But I got to choose my fights. And that's why I need to turn the other cheek. Larry, what's up? Larry, it's about time for the break. We're halfway through the show and you probably need to take that now. Yep. This is the digital free thought radio hour and WOZO radio 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We'll be right back after this short break. 103.9 FM WOZO radio. Knoxville. Hello and welcome back to the digital free thought radio hour. I'm WOZO radio right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. And this is a Doubter Five, Larry Rhodes. And this is Sunday, June 6th, 2021. And I'd like to talk about the local atheist group in Knoxville. Atheist Society of Knoxville or ASK. We found it in 2002 or in our 19th year. ASK now has over a thousand members. We have weekly Zoom meetings and in-person meetings. So be sure to go to Meetup or KnoxvilleAtheist.org and find out more about it. Our in-person meetings are at Barley's Taproom Pizzeria in Knoxville's Old City on the patio. You can find us in Facebook, Meetup, KnoxvilleAtheist.org or just Google KnoxvilleAtheist. It's just that simple. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you should still go to Meetup and search for an Atheist group in New York. Star 1. Where do you want to pick up there? I'm back. Hey, we're talking about turning the other cheek. I want to talk about why don't gods do it more. I think we can pick. I think we've picked on the Christian God so much times, but it's always a classic. I don't get old. I doesn't get old with me. I have noted a number of times that Christian gods or including the Jewish God and Islamic God, basically variations of like the same Abrahamic God, to be honest with you. Or just depending on what version you update, you're talking about even like Mormon gods, which are its own offshoot, but very, very not in the mindset of, yeah, you did something bad, but I'll let it go. Like that's not that kind of flavor. And I feel like gods that don't practice turning the other cheek or at least holy books that don't depict their God being willing to do that afford humans the the the idea that they don't have to either, especially if they're being told to be as godly as possible. And I feel like if you are perfect and benevolent, being able to forgive without any sort of recompense, it should be a mark of your benevolence. And if you lack that, that's a problem. Dredpire, what do you think? Well, it's interesting and I hear this a lot amongst people interchange between turning the other cheek and eye for an eye those two phrases are arbitrarily interchangeable, depending on the situation they want to justify. Right. And it's as you say, it's a justification for other people's behavior who are basing their morality and on on a book rather than on found good reasons. Sure. George Brown, what do you think? Well, I want to ask you, Dredpire. About that sense, you know, an eye for an eye and turn the other cheek when a when a person flip flops back and forth between those, how do you respond? Good question. Well, I just I mean, I pointed out the the the the contradiction. Nice. I say, you know, how do you determine under which circumstances you apply the one or the other? Is it based on how you feel about it or is there some objection? And has and often and often that often that question sometimes is jarring enough there. You see the eyes kind of go up and to the right. And the the aporia, you know, the the censor. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. I guess I never really thought about it. Thoughtful moment. Do you think you got through? Hard to say, you know, most of the times I don't. I you know, once people know where I stand on it, they don't come back at me. I'm interested. And I'm not going to put up with it. So unless they're willing to have a conversation about it, then then they just don't even bother talking to me. So I'm interested in hearing from Larry on this. What do you think, Larry? Well, on the turn the other cheek or talking about, you know, picking two different passages that are polar opposites. I've always felt that the Bible was like a more like a Rorschach test. You know, those ink block tests that it really doesn't have an image on it. But the the viewer supplies what they think the image says. And what you go to the Bible and you come back with says more about the person reading the Bible, the Bible itself, because you can you can pull love, you can pull hate, you can pull discrimination, you can pull destruction or creation, ignorance, willful ignorance, anything, anything you want out of the Bible to justify your previously helpings, God concedes. Yeah. The other thing was that I've got a cartoon that I like to post. It's a little kid in Sunday school and raised his hands. You know, it says if God tells us to to forgive and turn the other cheek, but then he turns around and roasts his enemies forever, you know, he punishes them. He doesn't forgive or forget. You know, if you don't believe in them or you do wrong to break a commandment, you know, he put you in hell and tortured you. And it's not taking off on it, but hell is not a remedial punishment like the Department of Corrections. You know, it's not supposed to correct your your behavior. It's a terminal point for the eternal punishment for finite crimes. Yeah. And it's it's just pain for pain's sake. Yeah. You know, it's it's just torture period. Now, Larry, I'm glad you brought this up. I do have some opinions on hell, because if you were to tell me that there was a there was a whole all of all of human histories, grammar Nazis are probably so annoying that they'll probably go to heaven. And I don't want to go to heaven with them, right? If heaven exists. And so if you're going to ask me like, who's in heaven? Well, it's probably Republicans. It's probably West Federal Baptist Church protesters. It's probably grammar Nazis and people who use coupons at grocery stores. Because oh, why are you taking up all my time? What's going on here? Whereas hell? Who said hell? It's like you got the rock stars. You got the eSports players. You've probably got ping pong guys. You got the cool people there. I'm like, OK, between these groups and I have to spend an eternity there. Yeah, I'll get used to the flame. I'll get out. It won't burn after after a certain point. I won't bother me. And if it does bother me, then I'll be like, at least I'm not around a bunch of grammar Nazis, just me. Just like that's not a bunch of Tyrone. It's around and there's special exceptions for believers versus. Yeah, yeah, I'm like saying that I since since it was a Christian, he was Catholic. You know, he'd be in heaven where all of the Jews that he killed would be in hell because they didn't accept Christ. Exactly, you know, it just makes no sense. And so I was joking around before, but I think this is my most salient point, like two things. One, I could not be around people for eternity who are OK with another group of people burning and suffering for all of eternity and are OK with it because they're in paradise, like in my head, knowing that other people are suffering for all eternity for a finite crime and I'm experiencing paradise. I can't experience it. That's in my head, complete contradiction. And like any of the people who are happy and if you forget or if you are some of the worst people ever, in my opinion. If God makes you forget those people so you won't be tortured by their memory. Are you still you? I mean, my mother knew I was in hell and she was in heaven. But God made her forget me. Yeah, not the person she used to be. Yeah, you just tinkered around on a brain and now that's not even the person anymore. That's what I'm saying. I'm impressed. Buffalo, George, I would like to hear from you. I haven't heard it. I haven't heard for a while. What's up? I've often I've often wondered that maybe the Christians believe that heaven is the other cheap and it's always there, but of course, you have to believe to get in there. But the thing that's a question that's always been of interest to me is how do the Jewish people handle this? Because they don't really believe in heaven. Yeah, they got she all and some other thing going on there. Right. What does that? What does that mean? I don't know. Well, you know, you may love making up words. So it's but, you know, Shana, no, no, no, no, I don't know what heaven is. Well, I don't know. I'm not talking about secular Jews. I'm talking about, for example, the very strict Jewish people. What's there? What's the counterpart? Well, we have a Jew. What we have a person who has raised Jewish here sort of George Brown. What do you think? Well, that's why I raised my electronic hand just now. You know, I really don't know. But my son, who's checked into this more than I have, tells me that there is a sort of a Jewish heaven and a vague concept of it. Hell, that's what my son says. I really I couldn't care less myself. I think the idea of both is just totally absurd. And and to me, if there is such a thing as a God, the God would not allow a hell to exist. So the whole damn thing is so contradictory that. Hey, loving God. Yeah, yeah, I would also say this, too. The things that make God upset are rules that he himself made up. It's sin in the sense. And like, if you write the book on what is a sin and what isn't a sin, you have control of what is essentially making you upset or what you're choosing not to do, yet you make beings that are capable of doing the sin. So like if flying 30 feet in the air was a sin, don't give us, don't give animals wings. But if you know, I don't know, flipping the bird is a sin. Don't give us middle fingers. Or is that double park stuff like that? Like we're making homosexuality gay. Yeah, but then having people born into homosexuality. Yeah, yeah, stop making gay people if you don't like gay people. Like there is a way to manufacture that through nature rather than making it the thing and then saying there's something wrong with you your entire life. Yeah, I think it's I think it's because Christianity is stuck in a long history. That is, you got to you got to maintain the history or you lose the whole concept and the pews won't be as full. Sure, you got to keep those pews full. But I also feel like the idea of turning the other cheek is not a particularly attractive idea for a very powerful being that you should have a lot of authority for. Right. Like from our big, ambiguous authority figures, we like to have decisive actions, clear consequences, even if they're harsh. And you can use that if you're on the lower end of the totem pole to say, well, don't do the thing I don't like you to do because God doesn't like you to do that thing. And that's very, very powerful. Like a truly benevolent God that is, you know, willing to forgive without, you know, sacrifice in their own son, a bloodily on a human sacrifice cross is just like, no, you don't need to pray for that. Like that's not even a big deal. That's a very hard God to convince people to join the military for or to to to persuade people to buy some kind of food or ship the economy in a certain way or keep mega churches funded. That's a hard God to sell. And I think that goes a long way with it. I don't think that. Go for it, George. I was going to say, I don't think that Christianity can ever accept evolution because it's turning a lot of this over to nature. And and that's a problem, of course, because I think because of the long history that the Christian religion has to maintain in order to keep useful. Sure. Yeah. I also feel like it affects parenting as well. And I I don't have parents parenting, parenting to have God as a model of like the ultimate father, but to have this, you know, sort of addictive, jealous, explicitly jealous being who doesn't turn the other cheek to like any sort of offense, like even if you worship a different God, that's a punishable crime worthy of being sent to hell for. And it's like my way or the highway, you got to you have to respect me or nobody else. That's a if we had a more forgiving God, if we had a God that's more likely to turn the other cheek, I think we'd have parents that would be able to instill that in their kids a bit more and we'd have a less polarized society, maybe a society that's willing to, you know, manage offenses if they can understand the intent of where they came from. George, what do you think George Brown? I forgot what I was going to say. Oh, all right. I'm going to throw something out at you. What do you think if God was the Christian God, if he was a little bit more Canadian? Would that be? Yeah, what would that look like? And how would that be better? Well, you know, be apologizing a lot more for the bad stuff he did. And God that apologizes is a huge step. That's incredible. That blew my mind. It's like, oh, geez, I made all these gay people. But I oh, OK, well, I'm sorry about that, guys. OK, gay people. I'm sorry I didn't I'm sorry I didn't do enough good good enough job on you guys. Like, how can I make it up to you? Yeah, it's like as the God I want. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, then have nature be your God. There you go. Then have nature be your God. Well, that's that's the essence of it, right? Yeah, it is. We change over time. So, you know, not that we're necessarily getting better or that we're on some rung of a ladder, right? But and I'm actually reading a very I think I mentioned the book. I'm reading How the How the How the Mind Works by Stephen Pinker. Yeah, and right now he's talking about life as a bush rather than a ladder. And it's really, really fascinating reading. I found that there's no facts always beat fiction. It's just a question of you have to learn the fact. And so like when you look at God as as like this fictional character and in many holy books, it's like, yeah, it's very cruel, very powerful. But if you look at nature, whoa, like some of the most not necessarily cruel, but like the most uncaring destruction of complete series of animals every day. It's like, ah, you made yourself a little bit too brown. This whole extinctions like a huge bio biosphere, several extinction events that have taken more than 90 percent of the entire life on earth. I see. Yeah. But it's totally uncaring. It has no direction and no conscious, no entity, right? No agency, like a fun game. You know, maybe a fun game, a fun game. Wow, that's for fun for nature. If it was an anthropomorphic being, but like that's a fun game. Oh, yeah, survival is the game we're playing right now. And we can get so used to surviving with the comfy chairs and air conditioning that we forget that we're doing it right now. But that is what's going on outside every day. Hey, what's up, Larry? Larry, I see it. Yeah. Oh, we were talking about evolution and it's a bush, not a not a ladder. One of the things that kind of get to me when I'm online is that so many people think that we have evolution has ended with us where here we are. Right. You know, this is we're the best because everything else was earlier and older and not not as good as us. The dinosaurs were around for one hundred and fifty million years. That's what you're doing. I want to know what you're doing. Million years. No, no, I didn't need to think about the lowly cockroach. It's been around the termites there. There have been a lot more prolific that we are there. A lot of success successful evolutionary ends, if you call it in because it's now, but evolution is continuing even for us. We don't know what the next humans are going to look like with. They'll probably be bio was electronically enhanced going forward. We'll do our own evolution at this point. But it doesn't mean we'll stop biologically evolving. Exactly. Everything else that will that's in the biome. And it's interesting, too, that Steven makes this point is that we may Steve be seeing a slowdown in biological evolution because we do occupy every ecosystem on the planet and in that our evolution is now driven largely by culture and so evolution is taking place right before us. And it's a Darwinian evolution is just not in our genes anymore. It's in our memes. Right. Absolutely. Yeah. And I absolutely believe that human beings have a proclivity to be very egocentric when we look at history. And so we think history began when humans are humans began when history began when humans began, we can even see that at microcosm. I've seen world history textbooks that have started at 1942 because they're they're taught in American schools. Yeah, it's just like Columbus sales, the ocean. We've been around at least 200,000 carbon dating. You're breaking up that. So the information about humans and the fumator and everything goes way back because we can we now know how to interpret it. And there were at one time on Earth history, there were at least five humanoid species we were just one of them. And there have been 10 or 12 that didn't overlap in time. So, you know, we're just the ones that won the battle for supremacy, basically. Right. But there have been quite a few other humanoid species. But I'll tell you. Even the meaning of Neanderthals. Yeah, I know I have a small percentage in my DNA. So all these people with Neanderthals in their bodies, this is this is bizarre. This is a bizarre concept. OK, well, I'm going to have to look this up later on. But yeah, that's kind of bizarre that everybody just knows they have cavemen in them. That's crazy. No, really, I've sent off my DNA to have it analyzed and it came back with like two percent Neanderthal. Nice. Well, that would be on your mom's side. Right. Don't talk about my mom. I'm talking about a congealed DNA. It's all right. It's OK. It's OK. All right. Hey, I would say this, though, we were talking about the intent of offenses is what dictates whether or not I determine if it's a means for me. To step in and try to make a correction or to let it go and just move on and just either write off the person and just write off the action. Right. It's about the intent. What I found with what nature does is there's no intent to what nature is doing. So like when a bad thing happens in nature, like a thunderstorm happens and I lose power, I'm not angry and I don't need to turn the other cheek to that. It's sort of just like I can't be vindictive against nature. It's just a thing that happened. But if somebody came and cut my power cables to my home, I'd be like, I need to have a conversation with you or call the cops. That is when I'm not willing to turn the other cheek because you've you've made my life inconvenient. You may have caused me harm. And so if I can avoid needless harm, I will do so. But if I can't avoid needless harm, I'm going to step up and make a correction. I would think that would be my standard. Dred, we're talking about what's your standard for when you decide to go for an eye for an eye or turn the other cheek. For me, it's can I avoid needless harm? If I can't, then I'm going to step in and make a point that what the harm you're causing me is not necessary in my life. I'm either going to write you off right off the edge. Right. For me, I'm I'm I'm really not I don't like confrontation. So I tend to, you know, tend to let go a lot more than perhaps I should just to my own best interest. Because of course, sometimes people take that as a sign of weakness. And then double down on their intent to harm or malign you in some way. So it's it's a bit of a balancing act to try and figure out or to consider what the repercussions of acting or not acting are. And then, you know, apply some thinking to that to ultimately come to an answer. But there certainly isn't just any hard and fast rule. It's it's. George Brown, your thoughts. You know, I I'm going to throw out a little mini topic here. We would I think the word troll came up earlier. I used to be involved in a free software group on use net, very lively discussion. And we were invaded by a couple of trolls. And these people were extremely disruptive. They attacked people. And what happened with me was that one of the trolls adopted my persona. And in my persona, attacked other people. Wow. Oh, that is rough. And now what would you guys do if that were you? Yeah, you turn the other cheek. I mean, this is it's like exploding in my head. So like, in my opinion, thoughts, words can cause harm. And and if someone's using my my personality or information to to to represent my me in a way that I didn't consent to, that's harm. I'm going to go out of my way to figure out a way to fix that, but also apply protection so it doesn't happen again in the future. But that's something I would not turn another cheek to. Dred. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I've certainly had that happen and somebody taking over my messenger and chatting with my friends to be me and and say, well, you know, I just won one hundred and seventy five thousand dollars. You just got to send me a check for four hundred. I'll catch you in on it or, you know, like just that kind of crazy stuff. Some weird skin. Typically, it's the consistency of a person's behavior that I know. And when something, when you see something in a messenger, if you know the person well enough, you figure out, you know, this isn't this is sounding off. This is this isn't Thai. I wouldn't speak to me this way and or Thai's grammar, for instance, might be, you know, I know that you have good grammar and you're spelling is good. And so if I see words that are jumbled or syntax that isn't correct, it's always a good. Yeah, it's a world skeptically, even from your friends, even text messages from your friends by a healthy amount of skepticism, too. And I think that's absolutely more of a demonstration of why skepticism is very important, so that's a great point to try. That's not how you solve the problem once you've gotten that label. Hmm. Yeah, you got to put protections on after the fact, too. You know, yeah, of course, change the password. I would say this, I like the idea of consistency, because I do have. I have friends that do not raise my blood pressure. I have friends that do, right? And whenever I have an engagement with a friend that does raise my blood pressure, I'm always like, why am I friends with this person? Right. Right. I have friends that not only do they have to earn your friendship, they have to earn the right to keep it. Yes. And for a while until even like graduate school, I realized my friendship has value and I can make friends with anybody. So why am I making friends with people who are deliberately causing me harm? Health wise, mentally wise, that's not good for me. It's easy enough for me to preen the number of friends that I have so that I just have the core that I do trust and care about. Or family, for that matter. And family, too. Exactly, if they're destructive or as acidic towards you. I'll tell you, this family isn't just blood, you know, family is people that you choose to be with and have deep relationships with. Absolutely. George Brown, what do you got? Um, you know, I just wanted to say that at my advanced age, I've learned that I simply need to eliminate toxic people from my life. Nice. I can't afford to have friends like this, even if they were very interesting to me, they're still toxic. That's actually why I left the band I was in. I'm like, send the blues and we've been playing together for a couple of years. And every I was finding that every practice we practice for two hours. But the first half hour would be taken up in, you know, kind of calling down groups of people and it got worse and worse. To the point, it was just like it was outright discrimination and bigotry. And then there was a whole angle of pseudoscience, homeopathy and all these crazy things that I would spend then, you know, the first half hour of a practice either saying something, I was the only one in the band that, you know, came at it from a skeptical point of view. So I would be, you know, trying to have them like epistemology to in street epistemology. But then it just it got so tiresome. Yes, you know, I dread I dread going to band practice. And so eventually the last day I said, OK, what do you so and so want to play or shall we start playing? Because I've had enough this conversation. And so of course, as the singer, I was picking the song. So I put so we did stuck in the middle with you. And that was my last practice. Yes, sometimes cultures evolve like we've talked about that before in the show. And if they become toxic, it's good to remove yourself from because there's so many other cultures and you can make your own culture too. And I think that's a really important point. And that's a good way to show that you turn the other cheek because you didn't go in there with, haha, this is my last practice and I'm pumping in gas. That's toxic into this room. We're all going down with me. It's like, no, you're just like a room itself in the situation. You guys be you, right? I like that. And there's good examples of that. God, learn from that. OK, whichever God heard me, Larry, that's the end of the show. Would you mind getting ready to take us out? You can play the ending music and start the lights dread. Where can we find stuff at? So you can find me on my YouTube channel at Mind Pirate, P-Y-R-A-T-E. And I live stream this show on Sunday mornings at 8 a.m. Pacific Standard Time or Pacific Daylight Time, depending on what it is. And yeah, please sign up and I need 10 more subscribers and I can do some, you know, do some monitoring of my channel and whatnot. So if you like it, sign up and I'll be here every Sunday as long as we're doing the show. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I love doing the show. Buffalo, what's you said you had a lab? Is there a good science thing we should check up on before next week? Is there anything that you would recommend like, hey, here's something cool. Chick-fil-A guy CEO, should we Google that? Like, what would you recommend that we look into before next week? How can we better ourselves through education? Oh, I don't know. I've been reading some stuff on how how the DNA of a child can, in fact, be changed by because of serious trauma. Whoa, that speaks to the fact that, you know, that's a nature versus nurture thing. Yeah, that's a lot of marketing. But that the post-translation or once the DNA makes the protein or just in between those steps, there can be modifications and they can be altered by extreme behaviors. Nice. Nice. That affects criminality, that affects a lot of things. But it's an up and coming area of science. That's the question of how, you know, our DNA is not fixed and how can it be changed by nurture, by extreme nurture? And there is evidence for it now. That's pretty interesting. I dig it. I follow it. George Brown, I hear you breathing on the mic. I apologize. And I assure you, I will try to use a directional microphone next time I come in. Following up on what George Buffalo just said is I have been looking into cluster B personality disorders. That's a psychological criteria. It's very interesting to me. And what I wanted to do was just recommend learning about people who have a very negative effect on the rest of us. Well, not bad. Then coming to terms of that, yeah, Larry, I think that's a great point. Larry, why don't you take us out? We've got like 20 seconds. Where do we find your stuff? Don't worry about it. You're already on that channel. Larry, what do you got? Well, my own content can be found at digitalfreethought.com. Be sure to click on the blog button for a radio show archives of atheist songs. These are articles, these shows, all of that will be found on digitalfreethought.com. If you if you go to YouTube, you can find my channel by searching for Doubt or Five or Larry Rhodes. My book Atheism, What's It All About is available on Amazon and electronic format or paperback. If you have any questions for the show, you can send them to askanatheistatnoxfilatheist.org. We'll answer them on future shows. If you have trouble leaving religion behind, you can go to recoveringfromreligion.org and find people that will help you. If you're watching this on YouTube, be sure to like and subscribe. This has been the Digital Freethought Radio Hour. Remember, everybody's going to somebody else's hell. The time to worry about it is when they prove that heavens and hell's and souls are real. Until then, don't sweat it and enjoy your life. We'll see you next week. Say bye, everybody. All right, everybody. Bye, everybody. OK, see you.