 That was you. Hello and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio Hour on WOZO Radio 103.9 LPFM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We're recording this on Sunday morning, August 21st, 2022. I'm Larry Rhodes, our daughter five, and as usual, we have our co-host Wombat on the line with us. Hello Wombat. The Wombat is in town. What's up everybody? Yay. And I guess today is the John Richards from over in England. Welcome to the show. And we've got to flex our muscles now. Is that the new thing? There we go. Do both. Right, Bosch. Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a talk radio show about atheism, freethought, rational thought, humanism, and the sciences. And conversely, we'll also talk about religions, religious faiths, gods, holy books, and superstition. And if you get the feeling that you're the only non-believer in your town, well, I'm betting you're just not. In Knoxville, in the middle of the Bible Belt, we have a group of over a thousand of us, 80th Society of Knoxville, or ASK. And we'll tell you more about that after the mid-show break. Wombat, what's our topic today? Why you be virtue signaling God and all the fun stuff that comes with that. This is a topic that I wanted to do for a while. And I'm glad we finally have the opportunity now. With Dreadpire gone or out for at least this week, I do want to throw up a nice little roundtable discussion called what's your life story or what you've been up to? I want to see how everyone's been up to, you know, in a while back. You got 30 seconds. John Richards first, go. Well, I went to London. This place behind me, on behalf of atheism UK. And I spoke at an event which was called Stand with Salman. And it was where we all spoke our sympathy and solidarity with Salman Rushdie for standing up for free speech and getting stabbed for the privilege of it. Wow, wow, wow, wow. Very impressive. Always doing cool things, going to London, standing up for everybody. Like you have, so like it's cool how the, when I check back in on everybody every week, it's like Dreadpire, what are you doing? I'm slowly breaking down the false premises of our church state separation biases that we have in our state by like tattooing spaghetti to my head and getting a picture of it. And then John is like, hey, I set up 14 new channels today. And this one is interviewing the president. I was like, oh my gosh, this is cool. And then meanwhile I'm here and I'm like, well, today I did cook spaghetti and I didn't use a microwave and that's, that's, that is my own. I've got a couple of other things I could report that happened last week, if you like. Go for one more, one more, one more. Well, we also had the AGM of atheism UK and the opening speech was done by Professor AC Grayling. Nice. Oh, very good. Cool. So this weekend, I was always looking forward to doing some work in my car. I took some PTO on Friday and did some car repair and I had problems and I overcame them and I have a working car now, which is not something that was the case Friday morning. And you know what, I didn't pray, I didn't ask God to help me with one bit of it. It was just one whole weekend of nothing but engineering science and problem solving. And it felt really, really good to accomplish something entirely on my own. If God gave me that problem, I resolve them and that's what science does. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not only that, but I reached out to my mom and she was just like, she was problem solving with me and none, and she's very religious. She's an overwitness, but not once did she say, well, I'll pray for it. I'll think about it or anything like that. She's just like, okay, well, first of all, it's got to have a cool head, you know, take a break, get stay hydrated, it's hot outside. I call very, yeah, all very rational things. And now she's back in her meetings, but like it's cool to see that even when there is an issue with her own family, she's willing to like step this push aside the religious spectrum and just be like, all right, so let's, let's critically think about how to resolve this problem. It's like she's still got it. She's still got it somewhere there. Larry, what's up with you? Well, I use my motorcycle riding time on Saturday, taking my car to the shop so that I wasn't that fun. But it's stuff I couldn't do. And I don't usually work on my own car, but it was like aligning the front, the front end. And I could rotate the tires, I guess, but I couldn't balance them, things like that. Just stuff taken care of. I have been watching this series, all only murders in the building. That's fun. They're in their second season now. So that's about it. There's not only murders in the building. Yeah. What is this? You just can't casually say that on an eight years radio show. Martin Short and Steve Martin, and this lady can't remember her name, but the three star and kind of a mystery series where they, they live in this building in New York, and it's a huge building. It has a lot of people in it. And, but these people started a podcast to figure out who caused the murder, who was the murderer in this particular case in the building. And somebody else asked them if they'd look into another another murder and they said, no, we only do murders in the building. So that's where the name came from. But it's pretty funny. Not bad. Now I get it. That's actually kind of sounds enjoyable. So I mean, the link to that one we're done with this. Guys, you know, being charismatic is something that we all love. Being funny is something that we all love. You know what else we also love? Things that are all powerful, all knowing, and wholly virtuous completely. And I always ask myself, why is that the case? Why is it that these are the things that we apply to God characters in holy books as if that's a good thing? Because if you were to ask me, a lot of that stuff isn't actually worthwhile in characteristics that I would apply to something that I would have as like the best thing ever. Like, is it really that important to be powerful? Is it really that important to be all knowing? And is it really that important to be completely and wholly virtuous? Larry, what do you think? Well, I think they're just taking the opposite to the extreme. Like, you don't want to be unknowing. You don't want to be ignorant. You don't want to be powerless. You know, so it's these are things that you would just like to, you'd like to have some power. You'd like to be knowledgeable in a situation. And then if the best person would be the most powerful, the most knowledgeable, etc. So I think they just, you know, try to create something that would have all of those attributes, much like they created Superman back in the 50s. Yeah, but if you look at Superman, now think about this Superman nowadays is being pushed more in a different direction. But superman was essentially a guy who, you know, lost his planet, lost his family, found a new planet and a new family on earth was just raised with some good gumption and good knowhow from like local folks. And while he has the ability to block bullets, the OG Superman was just a really nice guy who was willing to help out people. And when the people were like, well, we're going to shoot you. It's like, you can shoot me, but I'm still a nice person, like fundamentally still nice guy. Didn't become the president of Bolivia. He became just a news reporter. He's working slightly above minimum wage. Doesn't drive the best car. He doesn't date the most attractive woman. Like he's always just a really humble, nice guy. And I feel like that's what people try to connect to. It's like he has every capability to be the world's most strongest human dictator possible or alien dictator possible. I'm sorry, did I say I said human and John Richards is like, excuse me. I was like, true, true, true. But he has humanity behind him. That's what I'm saying. And that's, in my opinion, the appeal of Superman, the fact that he has the humanity that's holding him back from being a complete jerk. That's, that's the cool thing, the limitation there and the fact that, you know, like he makes mistakes. Like he, he has weaknesses that we all are aware of. And he, he, and while he is, you know, faster than a speeding bullet, he's not as fast as the flash. While he, while he has strength, there's other characters that can punch harder than him. And while he, you know, he can jump over single buildings, like there's characters that already can fly and probably even better than him. So like, it's good to see that, you know, we, we have this, we have this automatic, you know, transfer of, of willingness to worship to characters who have these like three tenants. But I wonder why we give it to them. John Richards, just saw your hand up. What's up? Yeah, well, he does make a mistake, which does turn him into a complete jerk, because he wears his pants on top of his trousers. Yeah, his fashion sense isn't very good and primary colors. Come on, dude, what are you doing? So I'll also throw this out too. I have an opinion that there's a concept that I like to call machismo, right? Machismo is the guy who is like incredibly confident and super ultra masculine, never apologizes, always is right, can do anything, including kickstands, drink all the beers, gets all the women that he wants. Like that is a really, you know, to some degree toxic, but also like a very stereotypical ideal that people who don't have those qualities aspire. And if anything follow in the sense of, well, if I, if I, if I placate myself to someone who does have that, then maybe I through just osmosis can also claim association as well. Exactly. It's, it's cool by association or virtue by association or power by association. Yeah, that's why bullies in school, you know, will have their followers. Sicklefans, if you will. Yes. And it's always, yeah, go ahead, John. Well, now we're into a pronunciation contretown because I would call it machismo, but if maybe machismo is something else, maybe some cheesy impression. Well, pants in America is different than underpants, you know that. True, very true, very true. So basically we got this idea that, you know, you have people in Mesopotamia who don't have a lot of things who aren't very rich, who don't know a lot about the world, who don't have a lot of power. And so they've come up with this character God who has all the virtues and all the things that they want to have. And Egypt, you know, they're projected on their pharaohs or they claim the pharaohs claim it. John. Well, I've got a theory as to how that arose. I'm not, I'm not an anthropologist, but I suspect, and I've got an anthropologist who comes into our group sometimes, but and we might meet him later on tonight, you and ITI in Global Atheist News Review. Because I think it's all a product of tribalism. I think that a tribe has to have a leader. Yep. And everybody is subordinate to that leader. So they have to worship that leader. And that leader becomes a role model. Everybody aspires to always copying whatever that person does or deems to be desirable. And so we've ended up with a Lord culture. And when you want to invent a God, naturally, he is that supreme Lord. He has to be on top, right? Unquestionable. I also feel like on top of that, there's like a pack mentality behind that too, right? Like if you have a tribe, you will, you also have like a pack with a specific sort of leadership structure. And as you get, so where everyone's at, that's who everyone can congregate. But at the next level, you don't lower levels, don't talk to that upper level. And maybe they have a particular representatives who help transfer that level. But for the most part, each striation of power is smaller. And the access to it gets smaller and smaller and smaller and that in its own right as a power to the point where I feel like at the very top of that peak is God. But then one guy who says, yeah, I talk for God. I'm the guy that talks for God. I was very lucky in that I chose some very good parents who weren't religious. Very good for you. They gave me everything they could, but they failed me in one respect. They weren't royal. Yeah. And you know, I see you have to do better next time. I also want to highlight an idea that the pack mentality can be given to people without their consent. It could be straight up a you will worship my God, you will join this pack, or I'll burn your village down, destroy your stuff. So like we're expecting 20% of your grains or whatever each year, because now you're you listen to me and I talk to God. Do you understand how that works? Like, all right, fine, whatever, whatever it takes. Like, I'm sure that proposition has been given to people in the past. But now that we have some ideas of like, why is the fact that God being or any gods, most gods are, we'll just stick with the Christian God, all powerful, all knowing, all virtuous. Now that we understand like the idea or the mindset of people who would make a character like that. I also, and I think we've maybe touched on the idea that maybe that's not all it's cracked up to be, at least in previous episodes. I did want to bring up an interesting idea in that I don't actually think God's all powerful, even if you were to take the book literally as true, right? There's literally a lot of things that are overlooked when a God is all powerful that God can't do, right? And then also want to knock down the all knowing. I also want to knock down the all virtuous. But I don't want to be the only one talking. Maybe we can do all knowing first. Does anyone have examples of why God may not be? I know you wrote a book on it. All right, Frank, Larry, you can go first. I'll do one second. John, get some time to think about it. Well, apparently he didn't know that a serpent was going to invade his garden. And he wasn't powerful enough to keep it from happening. And he wasn't omniscient enough. I mean, I'm not present enough to be there when it happened. Right. He's supposed to be everywhere at once. So just that one example. It's also it's also the idea of like God knew we would get to this point by the end. So he set up everything at the very beginning to basically lead us to this point with the goal of having people worship him. Yet we have such little reliable information aside from that book to support a belief in a God, right? And there might be some very willing atheists who would just be like, hey, listen, if I just had a reliable way to get to your your your claim that you exist, if you just had a better system or a better methodology for me to reach that conclusion, I would totally believe it. And I think most atheists would believe in God if they just had a credible way to reach that point. But if you make faith, the method to arrive at a conclusion, when people use faith to arrive at many, many conflicting and contradictory conclusions, you had to have known that was the system at the very beginning. Like you have to God has to know how I think about things and still came up with his process. And if he is truly a God who had the end goal of I want people to worship me, I want everybody to generally be saved or at least have the ability to. What a terrible system to put it in like that's not the way you would do it if you if you knew how or if anything, it'd be a really terrible way to set up a reality. I will throw out one more too. Well, I want to I want to come in because I want I want to query the use of the word all, because you've got all powerful, all knowing, all virtuous. And I think that that's come about the idea of him being all of these attributes, you know, perfect in every way. That's come about because previous gods had specialisms, you know, they weren't they were rain gods, they were sitting, they were farm gods, they looked after the cattle, they looked after the crop, or they they cured you when you were sick. They just had their own special little thing that they were good at. They weren't good at everything. They weren't all gods. But that, of course, isn't a very good business model because your God, whatever God you support, you worship, can only supply one sort of need. So he doesn't get called into action very often. It's only when people are sick or when there's a drought or when there's drowning. Yes, exactly. So people back in those days wanted a better it's it's like, you know, the the early days of selling vacuum cleaners, all they did was suck the dirt off your floor. But then people realized that they could make them more desirable if they could also spray paint and dry your hair, you know, so they turned them into the machines of all purposes. It's very true. Very true. This is the same. Go ahead. Yeah, my vacuum cleaner now like rolls on tiny little wheels and like chirps at me and like like avoids, you know, my socks on the floor is just like there's more technology in that than you know, there isn't my laptop at the moment. And I can't imagine when that thing flipped. There you go. And now it's my house. It's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you've got a God that can do everything, obviously you can sell more vacuum cleaners. Exactly. Yeah. Or are a higher cost, right? Larry, what's up? Well, that brings us on the problems with it when if a God is all powerful and things go wrong, then it brings into question whether or not he's all good. Why would he allow children to get cancer or whatever? That's not good. That's Satan. He knew Satan would exist. So like it's just weird. Yeah, it's this weird conflicting thing where it's just like I've both made paradise and a trap door in paradise at the same time too. Or I've made the poison and I made it look just like all the delicious other apples. It's like there's something you can't be both. Back in the days when there were multiple Gods, they worked at cross purposes a lot of times and they would use humans as their sport. They would give them a certain pass. And you could explain things going bad because this God is trying to best that God. But when you've got one God in charge of everything and he's all virtuous, why do bad things happen? That is a problem because my favorite God, Goddess actually from the days of polytheism, is Chloe Cena and her job. She had one job. And that was to keep the sewers of Rome flowing. Yeah. So she only got blamed when they were blocked and the rest of the time she wasn't needed. Right. I also throw this out to this is sort of a nuanced idea. But the idea of God being all knowing he can't know everything because I know what it feels like to forget a song that I used to love and just recognize that I'll never hear that song again. So when I was a kid, I had a cassette tape and I loved and I used to record songs off the radio and I had this really eclectic appreciation for old school jazz. And I'd record a bunch of stuff that came on a classical public radio station. And I had some great tracks there, but there's no words on there. It's just all, you know, solos and improvisation. And when I came back and I found the cassette tape like 20 years later, I put it in my cassette tape player. I had to buy one and all the magnetic strip on that tape is gone. Like there's just no feedback. It's all just a blank cassette tape. And I'm like, that music is gone forever. And I used to like define my childhood based on the songs that are on there. And I don't know how to like find that music again. I just have to recognize that I now know what it's like to forget something forever. And God does not know what that feels like if he is all knowing that is a thing that I know that God doesn't know what it feels like to forget something forever and just like recognize that that's that is a feeling God can't know. And I'm like, well, God, then you don't know everything. What's going on there? Larry, I saw your hand. What's up? Well, you're the age I would think that those songs may have been midi format, you know, just computer tunes. No, they're orchestra. They were like an actual trio sometimes. And it was just played over the radio. Yeah. Okay. We didn't call it a playlist then, did we? No, it was what you call a mixtape. That's what he used to do back in the day. I, you know, when things like that happen, it's sad, but it's also a recognition that, hey, you know, I did something God can't do. And I know I have a feeling of empathy that I feel like God wouldn't necessarily have either. But like when you lose someone forever, or like when someone dies in your family and you lose them, or and they're not just moving to a different place like heaven or something like that, but like, you will never see them in your life again. That's like a sadness. I feel like God doesn't know when you lose a song, that's like a song you don't know when you have a pet that dies. That's a feeling that God doesn't know, because he knows only, you know, that death is a change of address, not necessarily a permanent loss, permanency of loss is something that I've just feel like God doesn't know. Right. Here's the thing though. God can't be omniscient and omnipowerful at the same time. Talk to me. Because if he knows everything, then he can't change it. Because if he did change it, he wouldn't have known it. Ooh. Yeah. But if he can't change it, if he can alter it, the future, then obviously he's all powerful, but not omniscient because you certainly didn't know it, because he didn't know he was going to change it. And I'm going to throw this up before we go out to the break, but like why, before we touch all virtuous, why is all powerful and all knowing even extolled on such a pedestal? Like I'd be happy enough. Listen, one of my favorite heroes growing up, one of my favorite heroes growing up and this is this is a obscure pool, but it was a guy whose superpower was getting tomorrow's newspaper today. That was his only power. Like you'd wake up in the morning, you'd open up his door and there'd be a newspaper from tomorrow in front of him and he has no powers. He has nothing except for just being able to read it and see who's dies or what bank it's stolen and just does his best with his own human two feet and goodwill and borderline charisma to just try to stop or talk with the robber out of stealing the bank or trying to find that kid and make sure like, hey, don't go to the park today, kid. And we're doing whatever we can to make sure the best stuff in the news doesn't happen and he gets no money for it. He gets nothing for that, but like it works out for him. Seeing a guy struggle, like I feel like the underdog tale, the Rockies, the Luke Skywalker's, maybe not, well, I guess to an extent, but like I feel like we are attracted more to underdogs and because we can recognize the ethos and the pathos and the struggle of trying to do good in a world that's not necessarily in your best interest or in your favor. So when you have this, when you have this being that's all powerful and all knowing, I'm already so disinterested in this character. It's like this character has no weaknesses. Why do I care? Why do I care? And why would I ever worship that being? Like it makes no sense to me. I think that's only some of us though. Some of us relate to the underdog, but there are other people and I'm thinking of a former president of America who do not relate to the underdog at all. Why? Humans, man. Larry, what's up? I'm intrigued. I hadn't heard of that person with the superpower, but getting a newspaper. Can you come up with the name? Can you remember the name? Gary Hobson from Chicago Express. Gary Hobson? Yeah, I believe his name is Gary Hobson. He's not a superhero. Like I said, he's just a regular person. But yeah, I mean, it's a TV show that came on and his, let's say, Hey, how about this? We go on a break. I'll look it up and we'll come right back. I looked it up. It says, Gary Hobson, early edition. Yes. That name is tattooed on my brain. It's another example in my head of guy who has power, but doesn't use it in a bad way, is limited in his capability, limited in his knowledge, and relies on other people in a great deal to help him get basically good things done. Yeah. And I feel like that is comedy drama is what it's called from 1996. Yeah. And I just love that. But I guess you're right, John. There is a cast of people who don't want that in their, in their, in their heroes. They want the all powerful, they want the all knowing, they want the all virtuous. And we'll talk about why God isn't any of those things to hopefully get those people off that bandwagon in the second half. Larry, why don't we take a step? Sure. Stay tuned for the second half of the digital free throw radio hour. We're on W O Z O radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. And we'll be back right after this short break. Okay. Okay. All right. Very good. I don't need to go anywhere or do anything. Nope. Can I to Hello and welcome back to the second half of the digital free thought radio hour on W O Z O radio 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Let's talk for just a moment about the atheist society of Knoxville. ASK was founded in 2002. We're in our 20th year now and have over 1000 members. We have weekly in person meetings. If you'd like to join us in Knoxville's old city at Barley's Taproom, Pizzeria. Look for us inside at the high top to tables or if it's pretty weather outside on the deck. We also have a Tuesday. That's every Tuesday evening, by the way, I didn't put the day of the week in there. Anyway, we also have a Tuesday evening zoom ASK meeting. If you'd like to join us, if like, can't get to Knoxville or can't get out, join us via zoom. You'll need the link though. So email us at askanatheistatnoxvilleatheist.org or let's chat SE at gmail.com. You can find us online on Facebook, meetup.com or go to the website at eighth, I'm sorry, Knoxvilleatheist.org or just Google Knoxville atheist. You can get it to us that way. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you should still go to meet up and do a search for an atheist group in your town. Don't find one. Where do we want to pick up? Some quick little comments, not little comments, big comments that we love. Dottus Trader Room said from our last episode, mail bag when we went over a bunch of mail comments. Christians often use the false false Christians often use false psychotomies that either the universe came from nothing or God created it. The question to ask them in such a case is, what did God create the universe from? Because if matter had not preceded God, then God must have created the universe from nothing. Yeah, absolutely. You know why I also say that? There's also this idea of a false dichotomy is presented when you don't know what all your options are. And so you pigeonhole yourself as the one that you hope is right and a bunch of other ones that you'd already know are wrong. And you only examine the ones that you know are wrong. So that by the default position, the one that you're right, the one that you want to win wins. And I'm working on an analogy. It's long. I'm not going to go into too much here. But essentially, like, if you don't know what a sock is, if you have no idea what a sock is, how can you be so confident? I don't even get into it. I won't even get to it. I'm going to have a much more I'll bring it up. Okay, Larry's like, just say it. All right. All right. So basically, like, the idea of like, you only know, you need to have a good frame of reference that the problem with when someone presents the false dichotomy is that they lack a frame of reference. And, and the frame of reference can be easily presented to them by just showing them like, Hey, if you don't know what something, if you think God created the universe and everything's created, can you point to something that's not a creation? Because if everything is creation, you have no idea what something that's not a creation is, then you don't know what a creation is from what something isn't a creation. So if you don't have that firmer reference, how can you claim that anything's created? The premise behind the false dichotomy in this case is there's no or no recognition of what something that's not a creation is, there's just a claim that everything's created. Larry, what's up? I was going to say, like the watchmaker argument, you know, the watch on the beach, you look at the watch, you say, you know, that's created. You know, so how could everything else not be created? Well, then how do you tell the difference between the watch and the sand if everything's created? I mean, what makes it stand out is different. But you are claiming that it is different. So you yourself are saying that there's a difference between what's created and what's not. Right. Like if I had, I'm going to try it again. If I had a clothing drawer and I pulled out something that I claimed with a sock, but I don't know what socks look like or what they don't look like, right? Like, can I really be 100% confident that the thing that I pulled out was sock and not like other some other garment or shirt or pants? And I need to know what something looks like and what something doesn't look like. I need to have that frame of reference before I can claim anything. And so if I claim the whole universe is created, I'm in that universe smack dab in the middle somewhere. How can I look at something that's not created as an example so that I have a frame of reference to recognize what creations are? If I don't have that, I'm just working off the premise that I believe someone when they told me that God created everything. I don't have a way of testing that myself. Until then, you can't go forward with that. What's up, John Richards? Well, the thing here is that we know that the watch you find in the desert is made because we know that there's an agent behind it. We know that there are such things as watchmakers. But the rest of creation, we don't know what the agent is. There's no evidence for any agent. So that's nature doing it, not creation at all. It's a natural outcome of processes. Another example of that would be if you took me to an alien planet, just outflung on another planet, and I saw like a spire. I couldn't tell you if that was by nature just through the dynamics of that world's physics or an intent by some culture that I don't understand. I would need to have a frame of reference of what life on that planet was capable of and what sort of weather patterns they're experiencing before I can tell you if this cylindrical rock was made either by intent of people or by nature. I need to have a frame of reference before I can claim anything's created. It could be an anthill, couldn't it? It could be an anthill, right? So the argument of the false dichotomy is not to tackle them with more challenging false dichotomies or how, let me see, what did God create the universe from? You're going to go down to deeper levels of turtles at that point. Just ask them if they have a frame of reference for what a creation is because once they realize that they don't, that takes away the false dichotomy completely. It works really, really easy. Speaking of which, I got another comment from Philip Ziegler who commented on the balloon analogy, which is a street epistemology video I have way back in the day. The idea behind the balloon analogy is people hold on to their beliefs in the same way that people hold on to balloons. There's like a little string and that string is held to the balloon, which is their belief. And the more you try to attack that balloon, the more people hold harder on that string and maybe even pull that balloon closer to them because that balloon is valuable to them. It's how they think they can be a good person. It's how they're judged by society. It's how they make sense of the world and how they get comfort. Like that balloon is them. So don't tackle the balloon. Don't try to poke it with like a needle and be like, I'm going to pop your balloon. Instead, look at the string. Make sure that string is good because less people put a lot of attention in the string and they only care about the balloon. So if you talk about the methodology people use to arrive at their conclusions, without attacking the conclusion itself, you get a lot better mileage in your discussions. So whenever I talk about things with people about there's deeply held beliefs, I'm always talking about the methodology they're using to reach their beliefs, the string, not the balloon. And Philip Ziegler says, great way to clarify the difference between a challenging a person's belief and exploring the reliability of the reasons for their confidence that the belief is true. Instead of people getting defensive to protect themselves, they become curious about their own methodology, which in most cases, they have never really examined. And if you participate as genuinely, if you and if you participate with a genuinely curious partner, the conversations can be transformative for both people. I agree completely. Great comment. Great comment, Ziegler. Before I go for it. Paley's watchmaker analysis analogy, rather, I think it's an attempt to sidestep the real question by putting it into a false dichotomy there. They're saying, I don't have to show you the agent. Right, right. They're avoiding the real question is, you know, show me the agent because I can show you a watchmaker. You show me your God who does this creation stuff, and then I'll believe you, but they don't say that. They don't, they try to divert your attention away from into the area of is this or that. Also, different societies have different gods. So, I mean, you have competing theories for the same creation. So, I mean, why should I believe your God did it when this society said their God did it? You know, and the scientists say, it could happen naturally. This God's giving away free candy. What can your God do for me? It's quite, and you mentioned, what was it, everything being made from dirt? Was that it? You said something about me or what did God make it from? There must have been some stuff there beforehand. And of course, that's what they argue is a weakness of the scientific explanation, because they say you're claiming that everything's made from rock. Well, we are not claiming that, but they are. They're claiming that Adam was made from dirt. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Why is there still dirt? Again, yeah. Again, listen, when you talk to someone who believes very hard in Star Trek or Star Wars, there's always some other when if you putting out some like why do lightsabers only stop three feet? If they're light, they should just keep going. It's like, no, no, no. The crystals from the Mandalorian are all it's like, there's always going to be some weird, more nuanced level of swamp for them to go down. Why don't they just pass through each other instead of stopping when they. Again, that's like attacking the balloon. They're just going to put an extra set of hands on it to protect it. You got to attack that string. If they use a false economy approach, it's a frame of reference to dismantle that, because if they're curious, if they're genuinely curious, they will realize, oh, I don't have a frame of reference for understanding what a creation is from what it's not. And yeah, I should be able to recognize what something isn't before I claim with 100 percent certainty that it is. If I don't have that, what the hell? Why do I believe that? I need to come up with a better way to reach this balloon. That at least gets them to a better methodology to reach their balloon, which I'm cool with. If they have one that works, I'll believe that too. But if they don't, at least they got rid of a bad methodology. And when you cut that string and the balloon keeps flying away, hey, that solves the problem too, because you got rid of a bad conclusion. Nate also let the comment says, you're the dude, Dr. Wells. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Thank you guys so much for all the comments. We go through them each week. Feel free to leave them on any of our channels. We'll go over. I'm here at Let's Chat. Feel free to leave some comments. Guys, we got one last one. Let's buckle up. Buckle up. It's the big one. God is all virtuous. We talked about the problem of evil a little bit earlier on in the show. We talked about the intentions of a God who would make terrible things happen. And here's my thought process. If God is all virtuous, you have the system where he waits for bad things to happen, lets them plays out and then says, well, I will punish that guy in heaven. I'm like, you know what, though, you could have stopped unneedless suffering if you just stepped in now. One of the things that I love to watch is police interviews of people who definitely did a crime and are being tricked, essentially, by the police officer to confess about these crimes to alarming detail. And in my head, it's just a staggeringly brilliant process of interrogation, but also this cunning that makes this person explain step by step how they thought about this murder or this assault that they were about to do, all the things they did to prepare for it, and just them casually explaining to this officer of law about all these premeditated stuff they were doing leading into this final thing. And I'm like, the police officers doing their job, they're bringing justice to something that was out of their control, that they had nowhere with all of, that they had no way of stopping until the bad thing happened. But God knew the whole step of the way. God knew when the guy bought the axe from Amazon, that he's like, oh, this guy's probably going to try to kill a guy. I'm going to wait for it to happen, though. And then I'm totally going to punish this guy. And he stabbed in the person or he's like waiting for him outside of a bush. He's like, God's like, oh, that guy's totally going to stab that guy with the axe and hack him into 40 pieces. But I'll let it happen, because I totally am going to punish this dude. Then he does it. He's like, oh, that's so terrible. Oh, well, I wish there was a way I could stop it. Anyway, I'll let him finish. And then after he's dead, maybe, unless if he turns around and uses the blood of my son that I killed on a cross to forgive him. Larry, what's up? I'm sorry. No, I was just going to say that in America, we have laws against knowing about a crime before the crime happens. And not doing anything about it, not reporting it. And you can also be an accomplice after the fact as well. Yes. But so that makes God an accomplice before and after the fact. Yes. So he's culpable for a lot of these stuff because obviously he can act, you know, according to every believer on the planet, he can act to interfere with human affairs, but he doesn't. It's criminal intent. That's what it's called, at least in the United States of America. You have the intent to do a crime, but we stopped you from doing it and we can still punish you to a different code, but we can still punish you for it, maybe even give you rehab for it. We can punish you for knowing about the crime and not doing anything about it, even if you didn't do the crime. But if you knew about it beforehand, didn't notify the authorities or didn't step up, then you can be held culpable for that. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I want to throw out, if God did one sting, maybe even like one sting a year, just like it's God's sting. Like, hey, listen, I left some gold out, but I told you not to steal. And if you think about stealing it, I'm going to like turn you green and just be like, I'm God, this guy's criminal intent to steal, but you can forgive yourself. I'm just letting everybody know I exist. Does everyone be cool? This is criminal attempt to sin. Criminal intent to sin. Then everyone would be like, oh, God does exist. That's fine. That's pretty virtuous. You stop the crime from actually happening instead of letting it happen completely, even if it costs needless harm or the expense of a person's life or their well-being. Like, I can't imagine anything worse. John Richards, you want to weigh in on this? Sure. Yeah. Well, I'm wondering if his book is anything to go by, how can he be described as being all virtuous? I mean, in chapter one, he drowns everyone except Noah's family. Right. Babies, too. Yeah. I mean, literally he tells people to go kill other people. How virtuous is that? You know, the saddest thing for me, too, is when I hear and I've had this conversation recently, it was like two weeks ago, I was talking to a guy who was a Christian, wanted to ask me questions because I'm an out atheist at work. And he's just like, where do you get your morals from? And I'm just like, Larry, you would roll your eyes into the back of your head like 16 times when you get this. And I have no problem answering that, but it's like, it's sort of like a kid being like, like a third grader coming to you and being like, I don't believe in blue. You're just like, oh my God, how do I go explaining this? It's like, well, there's colors. If I bought you box of crayons and we pulled out everything that wasn't blue, there'd be one crayon left. It's like, how can I make this more simple? Well, that's not actually blue. That's just the blue that the news. So anyway, so I'm talking to this guy. He says, where do you get your morals from? I'm explaining him about like the concept of well-being and reducing needless harm and stuff like that. And so at the end of it, he's like, well, I guess that makes sense. And I ask him like, where do you get your morals from? He says, I get them from God. And he's like, is your opinion is God very moral? He's like, he's the most absolute moral person person. And like, that's where morals come from. I'm like, so would he ever tell you to drown a baby? He's like, no, drowning babies is bad. And I'm like, would God ever drown a baby? He's like, no, God would never drown babies. And I'm just like, no, no, he's not. Not critically. And so I said, well, Noah's flood drowned like the whole world's worth of population, including babies. Like, well, they deserved it. That was the switch in his head. And I'm like, but that wasn't the premise of the line of questions that led you up to. And he's like, well, I'm sure he had a reason for it. And they were acting really, really bad. I'm like, the babies were acting really bad. He's like, well, and then we did the same thing with slavery because Ecclesiastes specifically tells you groups of people to enslave, how to beat them so they don't die within three days so you don't get punished for it, how to take their children from them so they don't run away from you, how to own their family so they can always own them as property. And you can ransom them for additional... Go for it, Larry. And according to the book, God's single most common interaction with humans is killing them or giving them plagues, which kill them. Yeah, it's pretty bad. It's pretty bad. And the one that breaks my heart the most is when I bring up the slavery option and they're like, well, that was just the accepted thing to do back in the day. And I was like, the slaves didn't want to be slaves. I'm pretty sure that people who wrote the Bible were like, yeah, we're cool with this, but the ones who were enslaved had a problem with it and it wasn't cool with them even back then. And would you agree that they had a right to at least have that feeling, if anything? And yes, of course he gets it, but like the idea that you could take a well-meaning person and destroy their sense of morality and taint it so poorly by extolling like this terrible example of virtuosity in front of them, one that they don't apply any sort of critical thinking to. It's tragic. If anything, in my opinion, it's child abuse. I think in the most simplest form, when you raise a kid to not appreciate morality in the real sense, in the systematic way, and instead hold this bully, this tyrant and say, this is the example of morality that you need to follow and everything that Sky does is correct. That is child abuse in my head. That is an affront to us because we have to live with the circumstances of that. We have to live in a world where people can just be rude to each other, pray in their own private quarters and think they're completely resolved of any issues. That's a terrible world to be in. John Rogers. Yeah, well as president of atheism UK, I get invited to do interesting stuff. And one of them is to debate this very topic, the title is, can we be good without God? Hell yeah. And it's to happen at the Bishop Stortford College, which is one of our near top private independent schools. And my opponent will be a bishop. So this isn't going to happen until March, unfortunately, but I can't wait. No, I'd like to see that. Let us know. Another thing about when Christians say that they get the morality from the Bible, I usually just jump in and say, so you think that the Bible is the apex of morality and you do everything it tells you to do. And they say, yeah. And I point out that, you know, it does tell you which is a real and that we need to find them and kill them. Right. And that you should find and kill homosexuals as well. Do you do all that? No, I don't. Then you don't get your morality from the Bible. You pick and choose which things that you want to do and which things you don't want to do. Therefore, you're getting your morality from the rest of society and from what your Dean is good or bad. When I hear, when I hear people say I get my morality from the Bible, I asked them, what do they mean by that? And they say, well, it tells me not to steal, not to hurt people, not to kill, not to blah, blah, blah, blah. And I say, okay, if the Bible just just for the fun funsies of this argument, if you found out tomorrow, the Bible wasn't true, right? Would you start killing people? They say no. Would you start stealing things around like, no, I want to do that. Like if you would you start, you know, cheating on your wife? No, I wouldn't do that. And it's like, okay, well, whether it's, yeah, whether the Bible was true or whether it wasn't, you're still operating on a higher standard of morality, like this high standard morality. So it can't be from the Bible. What do you mean then that you got it from the Bible? What do you what do you mean by that? And let them think through that. What do you mean? What's up, Larry? No, my thought process has moved on. I'm afraid. Yeah, yeah, I'll fill in for you, Larry. On this very topic of stoning gay people, I think you mentioned is from the Bible, one of your candidates, a GOP grand old party candidate in Oklahoma is getting attention at the moment because he's running in the Republican primary runoff. And in some years ago, it's true, but everything stays, doesn't go away on the internet, does it? So he made some extreme comments. And he was, he was saying that there's a long list of people in the Bible who sinned and who are worthy of death. So he's now trying to have to roll back on that because he realized he's not a vote winner. I remember now. I get people asking me. Yeah, it was. Sorry. I get people in my conversations, they get people who watch stopping us from killing or raping as much as we want to. And the answer is, I do rape and kill as much as I want to. I don't want to. And, you know, we are stopping ourselves because of our mutual empathy and compassion with a fellow man. That's a very interesting point. You have this. So Larry, you might realize has a bag of cheeky comments. And if you follow his internet premise, he's just constantly dashing him out like, you know, Pokemon cards at a trading card event or something like that. But if someone says, why aren't you killing or raping as much as much as I am doing exactly as much as I want to, which is zero. Why is that? And listen, I and here's the other thing, too. If if the Bible is the only thing keeping you from stealing, sexually abusing, murdering people, like whatever terrible thing you want to add to that, then you are welcome to keep the Bible. I mean, I wish there was a better, you know, I bet there was a better safeguard than a fantasy book to keep you from causing all these harmful things from happening perpetrated by you. But if that's what it takes for you to be a working member society, fine, fine, I'm willing to take that. And I think that works for some people. But I do not think that it works for the number that it's currently indoctrinated for. And I guarantee you that if we were to at least have the freedom of of not being indoctrinated at such a young age, we would come up for better systems for those people who believe in those falsehoods that keep them as as operational functioning people. We would come up with better systems for them or find a safer place to keep them or to reduce their harm than this this book of lies. And I want us to work towards something like that. What's up? Well, a big problem there is the the idea of salvation and heaven and forgiveness and a second life. So it reduces the importance of what you do in this life. Yeah. So you can get away with murder to coin a phrase and just go and and say, you know, I'm sorry, and you will go to heaven. That's a very bad idea. Very good, very, very good points for for a very bad idea. And you turn it around and you say that, you know, lower Christianity is keeping you from doing harm and doing bad things. Why didn't it stop Hitler? You know, he's a Catholic. Yeah, speaking of letting things happen, right? And the church was behind him, you know, during all that time. Why did he do good? Why didn't he do good instead of harm? And you don't have to reach as far back as Hitler. You can look at Russia and Ukraine, you can look at just the Trump legacy. Like there's just so many examples of harm going unobtain or uninhibited. Yeah. And if you can't believe in a virtuous God, if we allow that to happen with them being all right. And even even done by the church itself, like in the inquisitions in the name of God, right, doing all this harm. And the distinction here is we're talking about needless harm, harm that comes without any need for it. Why do we have that? We should be able to go without that by definition. Why do we allow it to happen? Why does God allow it to happen? If we if there is no God, let's work on our own ends to stop that from happening because we work in a universe where there isn't necessarily purpose given to us. We can come up with a purpose to enhance our well-being. But lacking that, if there is a God that's controlling everything, that God is not all powerful. That God is not all knowing. That God is not all virtuous. John Richards, what's coming up next week? Oh, next week we have the return of Pastor Alan Cartwright on Freethought Hour. He came on about a month ago and he reckons that we were too kind, too gentle to him. He wants to come back and have a more abrasive encounter. So he's preparing a PowerPoint presentation. Oh, no. Yeah, he's going to tell us why Jesus is God and he's right and we're wrong. And Teresia and my co-host and I are going to say things that challenge that. Yeah, it's actually kind of embarrassing. Like it's been a while since I've dealt with Christianity at that degree. And now when I see someone who is a Christian, that's just like, to the point where they're willing to put up a PowerPoint presentation to like extol how much they believe in this thing. It's just like, you know, I like sci-fi too. But you'll never see me being like, quantum leap and why it actually could actually happen. Slide number one. So what's your dictionary defines quantum leap? It's like, okay, calm down guy. All right. You can find me on less chat. I'm here. Feel free to leave a comment. We'll go over him over next week's show. Larry, I'm still, you know, you brought up a lot of points, but I still don't understand what atheism is and what it's all about. We're just going to have to call it, you know, let's all become Christians. There's no way we can resolve this. I've actually put those ideas in the book called atheism. What's it all about? It's available on Amazon. My content and cute, including a lot of the articles in the book are digital free thought.com. Be sure to click on the blog button. There you'll find our radio show archives, atheists, songs and many articles on the subject of atheism. My YouTube channel can be found by searching for doubt or five. If you have any questions for the show, you can send them to ask an atheist at Knoxvilleatheist.org or let's chat s e at gmail.com and we'll answer them on future shows. If you're having trouble leaving religious beliefs behind, you can get help from recoveringfromreligion at recoveringfromreligion.org. And you can find this show on podcasts everywhere. Just search for digital free thought radio hour. Remember, everybody is going to somebody else's hell. The time to worry about it is when they prove that heavens and hells and souls are real. Until then, don't sweat it. Enjoy your life and we'll see you next week. Say bye everybody. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.