 on this computer. Hello and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio, R&W OZO Radio 103.9 LPFM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We're recording this on Sunday morning, April 16th, 2023. I'm Larry Rhodes or DJ Douter 5. And as usual, we have our co-host Wombat on the line with us. Hello Wombat. Hey, it's the Wombat, DJ Wombat. There you go. And Boudreaux is with us. Welcome. Hello, everybody. Digital Freethought Radio OZO talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism, and the sciences. And conversely, we'll also talk about religion, religious faith, God's holy books, and superstition. And if you get the feeling you're the only non-believer in your town, well, you're just not. You're in Knoxville in the middle of the Bible Belt. We have a group of over a thousand of us. We're the Atheist Society of Knoxville or ASK. We'll tell you more about that at the mid-show break. So be sure to stick around. Wombat, what's our topic today? What's so good about you? You. Yeah, I really want to know that. But it's been a while since we've done a show because we had a holiday break. We had that thing called Easter. Easter came up. Or the Spring Equinox, which is what I celebrated. The Spring Equinox, right? Or just chasing down some plastic eggs with jelly beans inside of them and finding them all over people's homes and jelly bellies. Yeah. And then realizing that there's, I think, this year a push for. I'm not sure if it's just this year, but I never knew that there was a Christian motto for Easter, which is he has risen. I didn't know that was. Oh, yeah. I didn't know that was a motto. But I'm seeing it on more church signs, you know, those ones with the letters that they can they put up. It's not like every single because of the yeast. And that's a capital H and he, no matter where it is in the sense. Yeah. But you know what? It's a capital letter, regardless of every single time I've seen it, because either people scream it out loud. So it's all deserving of capitals or it's in that block font that they put up on their church signs. But either way, I had a good time. I went up to just rolling straight into like what we did the last couple of weeks. I went over to a friend of mine who is a Christian and celebrated just a gathering at his home. What's great about this guy is he knows I'm an atheist. He knows I'm asexual. He he's totally cool with science, but he also is Christian and is generally like very inclusive with his family. His family is also Christian too. But like they're open to the idea of having like Jewish people over Greek people over they the mindset they have is one where it's not we're afraid of differences or different cultures or different ideas. They appreciate the heterogeneity of discussion and people and cultures. They're good people. And what I say is you have a right to believe whatever you want in this country, but don't be intolerant or purposely ignorant or harmful to those who have differing beliefs or life practices. They embody that very well. So I was actually a good pleasure for me to go over to their place. They did do that one thing though where they cooked the food for everybody. So I was in a potluck, but they did the thing of like, hey, let's come over here and gather and pray. And I kept my eyes open. I looked around on the crowd while everyone was like in the kitchen and I saw people with their eyes open who were also scientists just like, I don't know what's going on. I'm like pointing at them and they're like pointing at me and then afterwards they're giving each other high fives. And I'm like, this is cool. This is cool. We have a lot of different people here. That's awesome. So it is nice to see that. Boudreaux, how have you been? How's your last couple of weeks? I also see the shirt. I got a 5K shirt recently. Yeah, I saw you had a good time too. Thank you. I appreciate it. Appreciate it. Yeah. No, it's been good. I just got back from Oklahoma City, OKC, which was neat. I had a conference there, but it's a really cool conference where I'm friends with everybody there. We're all part of the planning committee. So it was a good time. We got to see a Native American dance for us at the hotel and explain some of the instruments and stuff. So it was cool. Very, very cool. Were you designing more diamond turnarounds? What was going on there? So this is a GIS conference. So it's more about digital maps. And that's the class I teach in civil engineering. So it's perfect for for me. But yeah, we're making digital maps. Very cool. Very cool. Hey, question with digital maps. When you make a digital map, is it like similar to like Google Maps? Is it always demonstrably on a 2D model? Like you are not compensating for the curvature of Earth when you make a digital or topography? Right. Apology. So actually, that's a whole lecture and in my course about projections. So we use you want to use the right projection for the right job. So if you're just looking at if you're looking at like a Frisbee golf course, yes, you could you could do it in in geographic coordinate systems. Yes, projections because it's so close. Right. But if you're doing something countywide and you want to measure area and things like that, you'll want to use a state coordinate system. Right. In fact, you probably want to use a north or south projection system. So yeah, the reason why I bring that up is a lot of people don't understand that the value of science is that we make useful models first. The models are useful first, and then accurate to the objective reality second, because they're only as valuable as they are useful. So I like the other the old scientific quotas. I like standards. We got millions of them. Yeah, exactly. And so we've had people on the show I've done interviews with people before who are like, don't you care about objective reality? Like Christians are asking me like, don't you care about objective reality? It's like, I really care more about a model that I can test that's accurate. And whether it's nominally close to objective reality or not, that's that's fine. But if I can test it, I can use it to be useful and navigate life in a predictable and useful and testable way. That's far more useful to me than something that could be objectively true that I can't understand, right? Or something so convoluted that I can't use it on a regular basis like too expensive, too complicated. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Right. I want a gas pedal where I just push it down and my car goes faster, not one where I have to like, tune and dial in the amount of injecting fuel and like get it down to like the hundredth decimal. It's like, I don't that's way too complicated for me. I just need to be able to do this. I need a model that simple. And so the objective reality of the universe isn't that important to me. And people take that little snippet and they're like, oh, he doesn't care about objective reality. It's like, to an a point I actually don't. I actually more and invested on models that get me close enough to the question that I have. And that's fine with me. And then if I have a more specific question, I will happily take a more as long as it's reliable. You don't want something that's not reliable. Exactly. I don't want something that's not reliable. How do I get something that's reliable versus something that is reliable? I'm able to test it. But if I can't test it, if I have something that's so convoluted that's beyond any sort of testing that I have, I can't demonstrate that it's true even to begin with. So that's why I like those reliable models. Yes, I might know that there's an error margin there. For example, if I'm don't account for the curvature earth for my trip from here to McDonald's, I might be off, but I'll be, if it says, hey, it's going to take you 12 minutes to get there. And I get there in like 11 minutes and 59 seconds. I'm like, that's fine. That's totally fine. That works for me. That's for what I need it for. That's a very useful and accurate model. Good enough for me. And that's what science is all about. I really, really do. It's a nuanced understanding, but it's one that is fundamentally potent in the world of science. It's just, we got to get close to the truth to the point where it's useful to continue to use it and test it. And beyond that, we're good. We're good. It's beautiful. Yes. Love it. Love it. Great job. What a great conference. I hope we're your family able to come with you. No, this is a, I'm so busy that it's it's hard to, hard to invite anyone else to come because they wouldn't see me. We're all going to Mexico in June, June. Very cool. Do you feel like life has now accelerated back to your pre-COVID phase? Yeah. I saw surprisingly few masks actually on this journey. I've traveled a little bit before this and saw a lot more masks. So I think that's kind of like a measure of, is it still here? But also, yeah, I feel like, well, good friend of mine actually just tested positive. But yeah. Well, it's officially over. Yeah. You know, President Biden said so. Okay. Okay. I'm still getting vaccinated if they still got. Oh yeah, definitely. Yeah. Because it will mutate. Yeah. And so I'm glad we got to this point if anything. I would say one last weird thing. I'm taking a school in Oklahoma right now, a digital class for Oklahoma School for the Deaf in sign language. Yeah. I'm in my second course right now and it's sort of a combination of watching videos, then doing live chats afterwards and then doing quizzes online. But it's like a really, really nice way because of COVID. It's a nice way to find that there are classes that are available for you to learn anything you want online. There's a website called edx.org and they teach literally anything you want from Harvard all the way down to, you know, basket weaving, like anyone you actual college lectures and they'll let you sit in, they'll let you, if you pay for it, get credit for it as well. So it's a really interesting access for anybody. But it's free if you don't want credit free if you want to audit. It's free if you want to audit and some classes will even like the one that I'm in right now will let you sit in on classes and even do part of the conversations. If you want to do like a language, they'll let you sit in and be one of the people that you talk with just so they can have people there of varying skills that they can work on. They will work on you and have their students work with you too. It's really great. It's actually really, really nice, but highly recommended. So yeah, learning edx.org. Larry, check in with you. How you been? How's your holidays? Oh, I'm fine. I actually got the motorcycle out. I rode it for about an hour, I guess. So 73 will be 73 next month. Still riding. It's now a defiance. It's just like, I got you. Very cool. I wanted to phrase, I wanted to phrase up in real quick. This show is seen by coworkers at my job. And we have some conversations about the conversation that we bring up at work. So something that was brought up to me was that we have a pretty small atheist culture in my neck of the woods in Tennessee. We have 10 Nashville, which is pretty secular, but we're about 45 minutes away from there. So we don't really have anything in our immediate area. And so when we meet other atheists, we tend to be very aggressively friendly about it. And we're like, oh, it's you. Hey, hey, how are you? Where are you coming from? Why are you doing over here? Hey, Larry. You don't have an atheist group in your town? No, but we're starting on more or less. So the idea is, so I'm helping as an atheist at my job. And for the people who know me, we check in and I tell them about the show. And I let them know about the Sunday Assembly in Nashville. But like for the most part, we play disc golf or have a good times. But the question that they had was, hey, listen, I was watching your shows. Can I send you questions that I have? And I said, absolutely, feel free to send me an email. I gave him my email. And this person asked a really nice question and phrased it around of last visit she had when she went up to Sunday Assembly, Nashville, where the topic of conversation was someone who left religion and had a problem with staying out because they lack so much self-worth. Larry, what do you think? Would you explain what Sunday Assembly is? Sure. Good point. Good question. So Sunday Assembly is essentially a gathering. It started out in England, but it's a format of a church that meets once a month. It's formatted as if it's a church session, but it's entirely secular. And so for people who like the church vibe, but don't necessarily like the agenda that comes with it, Sunday Assembly is a really nice middle ground. They celebrate life and love and people and society, society, critical, but all secular. Yes, all secular, but very much the stand-up sit down. The music will be different by somewhere you go because Nashville has a lot of local bands there. So even when I was there, there was a lot of country and rock and stuff like that. Sure. Music is a lot better in Nashville than probably a lot of other cities in the world. But beyond that, they had like three bass guitarists one time. It was kind of crazy. It was like, oh, yeah, ask them to come and they all three came. So they're just all three different guys playing different licks on bass at the same time. It was crazy. But yeah, it's really, really nice. And every single time I was there, I've always felt invited. It reminded me a lot of the UU churches, the Universalist churches, which meet every week. But this is a bit more of a bigger production, if I would say. And they'll invite people to talk. I've done talks with them before, but the talk they had last month was a person who left religion and had a hard time staying out. And she was talking about the idea of lacking of self worth. And the idea to realize what's good about you is a practice skill that you don't have or you have no time to work on when you're in religion, because everything that you consider good about yourself, you just attribute to your God belief or your God figure. And so as a result, when you leave, you realize you lack a muscle in reaffirming why you're a good person or what's particularly good about you or what's so good about you. And that is so true. I wanted to bring up her question and I wanted to make that the topic of discussion today. So my coworker asked, Hi, I'm a former religious person. And I've been struggling with a question about morality and virtue. In my previous faith, there was this idea that everything good about me was a gift from God. And that without God, I wouldn't be able to be kind, just or virtuous. Since leaving that belief system, I've had to reevaluate my own values and figure out what's important to me on my own. However, I still sometimes feel like I'm missing a framework for understanding and appreciating my own goodness. How do you think secular people can come to terms with what's good about themselves, especially when they're used to thinking of it, thinking of it as something that comes from a higher power. So I wanted to phrase that question. Boudreau, I'm not going to put you on the hot seat right now, but I would like to warm up with, can you tell me some things that are good about you? And then what's the framework of understanding that you use to figure out and appreciate your own goodness? Okay. I think I got a nice tie in here to my atheism. What's good about me? I guess I find myself very often in contrast to some religious people or even just spiritual people with regard to honesty, where I have a view of line that was largely reinforced by Sam Harris' book, Line. I know we're only 20 minutes in and Sam Harris has already mentioned. But no, there's this whole idea that just white lies and line just is there's rarely ever a good case to lie. And I find myself even at odds with a benefit to me sometimes just telling the truth, even though it's going to cause some uncomfortability or not benefit me. I'd rather people just know the truth. So it's a trait that I think not a lot of folks keep at a high level. Even just kind of weird bits about, I've had weird thoughts about Santa Claus and children. It's a very deceptive thing we do for a good reason. I get it, but I don't know. It's the whole another conversation, obviously. But to your point, the framework I use to judge being a good person is, well, I have very often been told when it's revealed I'm an atheist to someone I've known for quite a bit of time or at least has known me well. They go, wow, you're a really good person for an atheist. I hear that a lot. And that makes me think that like, what are the kind of people are you hanging out with? Or what do you think atheists really are like? But I think from that hearing that, that reinforces that it helps me be a good person and makes me think I am being a good person. Who would you like to see? The summits that you do. If you mind giving me an explanation of what the summits are, but I also feel like that's a good pool or an environment for people to be honest with each other. And you're a really good post for that. Would you mind talking about that a bit? Yeah, it's not quite the Sunday assembly, but about once a month we get together right back here or outside of the fire pit. Ty, you've been to several and we religious people, non-religious mixture of everything. We get together and we talk and we try not to focus too much on politics, although that creeps in often. Talk about philosophy, talk about why you believe things. But yeah, the big rule is if you want to be honest, but you also want to be respectful of everyone else's opinion. We're not there to try to change minds necessarily. I have changed my mind on things. And others have, admittedly, and that's a bit of honesty, to be honest with yourself that you've changed your mind. I think it's great, but it's a lovely thing. We do in Lexington, if any listeners are nearby, hit us up and I'll give you an invite. What I really like about it is you'll go into a summit with one perspective and then you'll see so many completely diverse perspectives on a particular subject you had that you realized. Man, I thought I was monolithic. I thought everybody thought about this the same way. And it could have been something that you thought was just so straightforward. And then you just have people from entirely different walks of life show up and just explain how they think about something. You're like, oh man, I never thought that that was even on the table. And then the third person with a completely different idea. And you're like, oh, okay, so this is far more colorful of a situation. And when you leave, you just have this deeper appreciation of the idea that, okay, mine is just one in a deck of cards of potential options. And even if you don't change your mind or have like a revelation, that in its own scope is an epiphany that's very appreciative. We had an asexual show up once and he really revealed some things to some of our panel. That was an interesting group too, because you brought some other people there. It was like completely on different sides of the spectrum. So that was very interesting. Let me see what else we got. Larry, what is so good about you? And what's the framework that you've used to determine? Well, yeah, I was typing some things down so I would remember, but one of the things I had down was honesty. And of course, he covered that pretty well, but I'm a pretty honest person. And also self honest, I don't lie to myself like a lot of people do about things. Although I'm sure somebody would say, well, you're not being honest about that. But it would be because I don't perceive it. Anyway, always open to hearing what I might not be honest with myself about. I'm a trusting person, I care for people. And I've got some pretty good skill sets. So that's good. I mean, I've got programming, guitar playing, singing, I dance. You dance? Yeah, I danced on TV for five years. Oh, what? Really? Yeah, club dance. It was a nice thing. Oh, yeah, that's right. I remember that. You told me about that. But it was a lot of fun. But I worked hard to get my skills. They weren't just given to me. They weren't just handed to me. So that's good about me that I don't push off to some God figure. So I guess that's about it. Sure. Bujo, you wanted to go back to honesty real quick. Yeah, a short story that just gets your your guys's read on and it ties into all of this nicely. I have a kid who plays soccer. And I'm gonna say she and who it is. But but recently she was asked, you know, by her coach, how was how was your Easter weekend? And then he paused and said, Oh, I guess I'm just assuming you celebrate Easter. And at that point. And so our coach is actually pretty religious. He went to went to a religious college university. You know, so I don't know a whole lot about him other than, you know, that which makes me think he's pretty religious. And he said, or no, and she said, Oh, actually, we don't celebrate Easter. He was like, What? Wow. How can I ask why? Yeah. And she said, well, we're we're family of atheists. I thought that was terribly honest of her to say. Yeah, I was I was proud depending on the company. Because I'll be perfectly honest. Yeah. And I fear a little bit. She just outed herself. And I mean, now we're going to talk about starting lineup and, you know, play time and things like that. And now I'm not believe me. I'm not saying a Christian would be devious to do that. But they might. But they might. I hear you. I don't think he my best friend is the arbiter of truth and justice. I can do whatever I feel like I want to do with no consequences because you can always be forgiven. Right. It's such a terrible situation. So should she have lied? No, no, no. And I give her kudos for that. Yeah, I'm proud of her. That's great. That's a great job. Absolutely. Yeah, because it's it's it's not her fault. That guy isn't aware that there are people that don't celebrate Easter, you know, like that. And he felt that he could ask her. Yeah. You know, why? Why don't you celebrate Easter? You know, that's kind of an offensive position. It's like everybody celebrates Easter. It's like, where did you live at that? That's the question you are. But, you know, again, we are Kentucky is as south as the North gets pretty well put. And to be fair, we're in the club that she's in is actually south of Lexington in a small community, which makes it a little there are a lot more in God we trust license plates and that right, right, right, right. Yeah, don't undersell the Midwest. They're pretty darn south too. Yeah, I also like that. She said, I'm from a family. Excuse me. She didn't just put it on herself. She's just like, Hey, my whole family's atheists is just like, Oh, one, it's not like, Oh, you're an atheist because whatever happened to you in your personal life made you fall out of your god. We was like, No, my whole family's atheists is like, Oh, there are families that are atheists. That might have blown his mind too. He did say he said, I haven't met that many atheists, which is for him that he knows of. Yeah, exactly. It's just a sign of him being sheltered if anything. It's more of a reflection on him. But I'm glad that I won't say her name, but I'm glad she spoke up and was so like just straightforward. It's not a problem. Deal with it. This is your own problem. It's your own problem. And such good. One of the hardest things that I have is dealing with the idea of not being my real self because of how people react. She handled it perfectly well. It's like, Hey, this is who I am. It's your problem. If it's your problem, if it's a problem, love it, dig it. And, and yeah, and there's even other atheist soccer players that's going to be totally fine. How does he not know that? That's just so bizarre. Anyway, guys, we're at the bottom of the half hour. We're going to come back to this and we'll talk about frameworks and how you can be a good person and what's good about us and more detail along with other questions. Larry. Cool. This is the digital free thought radio hour on W O Z O radio 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. And we'll be right back after this short break. Hello, and welcome back to the second half of the digital free thought radio hour. I'm doubter five. And as usual, while we're on W O Z O radio 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee, let's take just the moment to talk about the atheist society of Knoxville. ASK was founded in 2002. We're in our 21st year and we have nearly 1100 members. We have weekly in person meetings every Tuesday evening in Knoxville's old city at Barley's tap room in Pizzeria. Look for us inside at the high top tables or if it's pretty weather outside on the deck. We also have a Tuesday evening zoom ASK meeting. If you'd like to join us, email us at net ask an atheist at KnoxvilleAtheist.org or let's chat SE at gmail.com. You can also find us online at Facebook and meetup.com or go to our website at KnoxvilleAtheist.org. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you should still go to meet up and do a search for an atheist group in your town. Don't find one star. That's right. Well, Matt, where do you want to pick up? I like to stick the idea of honesty and flipping on its head a little bit. I would say for me, one of the things that I'm proud about is my sense of empathy. And the empathy that I have is because I've been mistreated before or I've been lied to. And I realized what that feels like. And I wouldn't want someone else to feel that same way too, because I want to try to treat people in a way how I would like to be treated. And so I, without taking that from the Bible, it's just like, and if anything, I'd like to treat them how they want to be treated too. I'm going to assume, making an assumption on point that we would like to have a sense of well-being and respect and like a high morale in work situations, or if we have bad news coming, let them know in an objective way that doesn't purposely make anything particularly inflammatory or place the blame on any particular person. I have a very problem-solving mindset when it comes to resolving situations, and I come out with solutions, but I don't come out with commandments. I just say, hey, these are options. It's always good to have options. And I allow people who work for me or even like my managers to just have the list of the best options. And we can come out with a good argumentation that I'm open to and try to figure out what's the best path forward. When I talk to people, even when I did so with my table format, it wasn't an aggressive situation. I just wanted to demonstrate that you can talk to people in a really productive way and have really meaningful conversations with people about sensitive topics. And I felt like the most important aspect of that was not a flowchart of questions, or was not setting up traps, but was trying to connect the people on an empathetic level, which takes a lot of social dynamism and reading the room and understanding that people might be uncomfortable and realizing, okay, if you're uncomfortable, I'm not going to push it because I'm not here to make you feel bad or hurt you. I just generally want to talk to you. And I want to emphasize that in video form. And I'm willing to have this conversation with you in any way that you feel comfortable. Even if you don't want to have it, we'll stop right now. But everything that I do is for the interest of the feelings of the people that I'm working with. And I felt like that's a good thing. And the reason why I feel like that kind of flips honesty on its head is in some scopes you had mentioned, like Eric or you had mentioned, white lies as being something that is problematic. And I agree. But I also find like, you can, if you contextualize a lie as a lie, it might be more valuable to you as a truth. It sort of feels similar to a model that we're talking about at the beginning. And my mom, she's from the Virgin Islands. So she has all these weird sayings, but she has a saying where it's like, you know, I can trust the moon more than I can trust the sun, even though the moon is just reflection of the sun's light. The moon is a lying to me because it doesn't actually glow in the night sky. It just reflects the sun's light. So even though the moon is lying to me, I can trust it more because I can keep an eye on it. And like the idea behind that is, if I know a lie is a lie, then I can, I can, if I know it's a piece of fiction and I'm aware of that, I can still use that as a good model and make it useful for me moving forward. And so I would say like, yeah, I wouldn't literally, if I had kids, I wouldn't literally tell them that Santa Claus exists. But I would say, hey, there's a fun tradition where we pretend that there's a guy named Santa and he, he does all these things. And let's just celebrate it, but not as like a literal guy visiting my house who's going to come through my chimney, but just as a, hey, it's, it's the spirit of the season. These are the folk lords we tell. It might be based on like true history, but it's just a fun thing we do. Let's go have some fun. Same thing with the Easter Bunny, like, hey, let's go pick up some plastic eggshells. I'm not going to literally tell the kid that this came from a rabbit. They're mammals. They don't lay eggs. We know this. Well, some, there's weird plastic in Australia that do, but we don't count them as real things. Australia is a weird place. But like, I think, I find that if you can just be honest with your kids and say, Hey, this is not real, but we're going to have fun in the scope of it anyway. Like that's our framework that could work out really well. What do you think? There's one little caveat to that. That is if, if you do that with your children, and now you, now you are, are committing them to have to lie to their friends, because one of the biggest dangers to be honest about Santa Claus is, you know, how young your child is when that happens and they're spoiling it for other families, which can be really, really devastating to some, some families. I say, I say, do that, do that anyway. It's other families fault for telling them literally that there's a guy in a red suit visiting their home in the first place. That freaked me out when I was told that. I like, I wouldn't want that. But like, and other people might freak out, but just your kid, you're going to have fun. They're going to figure that out eventually. Like that shouldn't be your onus. You do. What do you do? Pay it a social cost though. I mean, your, your kid then would be in a minority and excluded from things. And my point is that there's some, some nuance to it. I'm totally with you. Yeah, they're cost either side. Yeah. Like you could have a dumb kid. And I'll use that rabbit's lay eggs until they're 18 years old and be like, what do you mean? You don't believe they asked their soccer training kids? Like, what do you mean? You don't believe rabbits lay eggs? That's, that's weird. I've never heard of that before. It's like, you're 18 and you believe that you're you coach kids in high school and you believe that that's crazy. Yeah, I would be a little hesitant though to burden my kindergarten kid with that knowledge. Because we did lie to our kids when they were very, very young. Both kids figured out pretty early anyway. And probably we did probably because of the way we phrase things. You know, we made it seem kind of, you know, we made it seem we were kind of revealing the lie a little bit. Right, right, right. But yeah, if you take it, if you have a kindergarten kid and they know the truth and you either ask them to lie or just let them out in the wild and they tell their friends. Or not say anything. Yeah. But then they let people assume things about you then. Yeah. But wouldn't it be good to have a bunch of people tell the truth about stuff in in general? Like, isn't that like Tyrone, you can't tell people to be inclusive and not racist because that might hurt their feelings and make them be less racist when they go out in public. It's like that's that's a good thing. Like you can't tell people the truth because they might say truth things when they go outside. It's like, yeah, that's a good thing too, especially when it comes from kids. Because then it's the parent who is trying to enforce the lie who has to go out of the way to try to tell reinforce and reinforce lies. Like, don't do that to my kid. He's telling the truth. What's your problem? He's like, well, I'm telling my child a lie. So I was like, that's your fault. That's your own thing. That's your thing. I tell my kid the truth. Deal with it, you know, I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go extreme extreme. There's a knock on on the house that Anne Frank is hiding in. Yeah, right. Are there are there any any Jewish people in this house? You brought up a really good point. So this goes back to my scope of empathy, because my my argument, and this is interesting because of dread was here as well, you would be lying to a person at the door who said, Hey, is there Jewish people here? And I don't want my Jewish people that I'm hiding to be found. I would lie. But that's not what I ought to do morally. I shouldn't lie to people. But what I ought to do and what I should do are two different things in my head. And so what I use as my moral scope is just a way is just a way to Oh, sorry. What I use as my morality scope is just a system for how would I manage my actions in a general sense. But in very specific terms, I use my should cases. And I try to inform them as best as I can with my ethics. And I might not always pick the most moral option. But I am picking an option that I feel like leaves the least needless harm. And I feel like that scope I'll be all right. What's up, Larry? Well, I think you hit on it. The most moral option. You have it. You have a moral obligation to sell the truth. But you also have a most moral or more moral option of protecting people that you care about or just protecting people from an autocratic government. Right. You just have to go with the most moral option at the time. And in some capacities, I would say your daughter speaking up that she comes from an atheist family is a very similar to the example where she had the option to lie to keep herself in a potentially good status and not have this coach question his own idea of like how people around them are different. She just expressed herself honestly. And was that the most moral thing she could have done when she's in a team environment? And it's really important to have a cohesive nature amongst all these different people to stand out as someone who might be very different fundamentally than everybody else. And risk may be potentially her future or how other people see her. It's like, no, I'm just going to be honest with myself. That is the least personally harmful path for me to take. And whether or not it was the most moral in that capacity could be, you know, it could be essentially argued one way or the other. But I find like her taking the value of like, hey, I'm going to whatever harm it causes you for me to say this, I'm going to say it anyway. And it's more important for me to be honest with who I am personally than to risk hurting your your degree of comfort. But it's a measurement that you make in your head. And when you get the knock on your door from Nazis, you have to make another measurement too. And it's not always honesty that wins. In my opinion, it's just the needless harm that I can avoid that wins. And I find that to be like a really interesting path because morality, again, is not a set of rules that you follow and dictate. It's a system, right? And so the as a system, we're going to have a lot of flexibility and exceptions that we'll take. And so my my most fundamental approach would be empathy and the avoidance of needless harm because I don't want other people to go through harm. And so I will lie to the Nazi that's knocking my door. I will speak up to the coach that asked me if I'm an atheist. And in other situations, I'll weigh them in moment and try to move forward with that. What do you think? So I would dare say that this is a really interesting dichotomy we've created here because you're right. Nazis on the door, pretty obvious what to do, what Vivian did with you edit that out. No, I'm kidding. What this lovely coach was was what I was I was proud of her and all that. I think she did the right thing. Yeah, there is a little she paid. She's going to potentially pay a little social cost to it. But now go in the middle and the kindergartener, I would dare say that I'm how did you put it taking different measurements now? Now I'm asking a young child to be burdened with this this thing that I don't think that they're old enough to handle where you're asking them to either be either either tell the truth or avoid the conversation or don't bring it up. And again, I think how did you put it the least amount of harm? The child is going to be harmed by telling the truth. I guarantee other parents are going to get upset. Other children are going to be mad at them because they're so young and they're they're definitely in the minority. I think there is a little bit here here I would definitely do the math and say maybe it's best to just not bring this up with the child as much. But you already alluded to the idea and this is really good because it's all falls into the idea of like finding good reasons for someone to practice feeling good about themselves. And one of the the things that were brought up in the original question was it's hard for me to practice feeling good about myself because I never got the opportunity to do so because when I was in my religion, I always attributed my good to my god belief. But if we value honesty, right? When do you get a chance to practice that if you don't ever get a chance to be honest with people? Second grade. I'm just saying not kindergarten. But you could frame it with some nuance such that I know and I understand this is a difficult thing for a kindergarten. You were in your head saying it's easier for me to just lie to you until you get better cognition skills so that I can tell you more elaborate nuance with how the universe works and apologize for telling you a lie previously. But I also feel like there may potentially just be a way to just say, hey, we can talk about that later or just say, listen, it's not real, but people get angry if you say it because they think it's real. And we can sit down and like have a whole half hour conversation about that. And I can remind you about that on a regular basis. But for the most part, you know, this isn't real. Let's just enjoy it anyway though. It's a story. It's a really good thing. And there's a lot of things that we celebrate. All of our holidays are just stories like most of them are just basically stories. So let's just have fun in that same scope. And and if you they kids then go out and do that, they're going to have to learn the repercussions of like, still getting people angry anyway. But like, at least you were honest with them and they have the capability to use those tools and figure out the consequences of their actions on their own on a low stakes skill, because no one's going to not vote for them for accidentally telling another kindergartner that Santa Claus wasn't real, but they might not vote for them or find harm if they're a doctor that didn't want to give them an abortion because their God belief would get in the way. Like there's there's times to like fundamentally let them get the exercise of practicing the idea of like, I have stories that I follow, but I can break them in the interests of humanity. Larry, I'm sorry, you were wasting your time. The thing about it is, it's not just like Santa Claus that parents tell their kids that are very early age. It's also the whole religious package. You know, they start, you know, just as soon as they're able to put their hands together at the table and do that. It's just when they're about seven or eight years old, they disabuse them of Santa Claus. So it's not a conversation you really can't have. It's everywhere. You know, the weather forecaster tells you that they've caught Santa Claus on radar. Right. You know, you've got to have the conversation. You can't just ignore it. My other thing is, as soon as you bring a baby to church, it's fair game to tell them that Santa Claus doesn't exist because you are now behind in a race of indoctrination where Christians have codified it to where it's a good value oriented situation where they even have schools in their church settings where they can teach kids whatever they want and they break away from their parents. If they can do that in a church, you should have authority, liability and all the punitive or all the accessibility measures possible to just express your kid at any age you deem fit Santa Claus isn't real because they, they are fundamentally taking their children and raising them in in indoctrinated circles. So if anything, teach them the truth and teach them like the measures of critical thinking as soon as you possibly can, because we live in a poisoned world. We live in a world where there's poisonous air in the system and the sooner you can put a gas mask on the better. I wouldn't say give them till second grade and be like, just second some of this poison because you don't want to make the, the, the poison zombies people offended. It's like, no, no, no, give me that gas mask, give me some clean oxygen as soon as possible. I might make a people offended because I'm wearing a face mask. We've seen that happen. But you know what? It's in my best interest. And when people ask me why I'm wearing it, I'm going to just tell them and express myself as honestly as possible because what if we lived in a world where we didn't have that happen? And she was a little scared to express herself. Maybe that could have been because she'd been living in a world where she didn't want to offend people her entire life. And when she was brought up to that moment, she decided not to offend instead of being her real self. That would have been a detriment. I would have said like, that's a sad situation. I feel like the idea of just letting people know, as you said, the truth, being honest and letting them know the harm that can come with unabashed honesty when they express it to other people, letting them know that, not telling them not to do it, but just letting them know that it's there. That could be a really good demonstration of, hey, I have faith in you as a person, as my adult, as a parent to a child, and I trust you. And again, I'm not speaking as a person that has a child. But I do feel like, hopefully, these points are just options. They're not me telling you what to do with your kids. I'm just thinking like out loud. But I do feel like we should at least reinforce the idea as young as possible that honesty is not something that we should hide until we feel like people are old enough to handle it. I feel like that is a skill that we should immediately train, because people are being lied to as soon as they're born. Yeah, I was hearing as soon as possible, which is kind of my point. But I think maybe another factor to this is just knowing your kid, knowing how your kid, taking the best approach to how your kid's going to react to it. And maybe some kids will be great at kindergarten. Other kids, you might be like, they're going to pay a social price for this. I know they are. Maybe I want to wait to first or second grade. Now, I will say I am advocating what you said as soon as possible. And we did with our kids. We actually probably told our kids before they were probably ready. But we I wanted to I wanted that gas mask on as soon as I could. But I can tell you, for sure, I know of kids that have outed themselves as atheists at a young age and have really paid a price for it. Now, I'm not saying you lie to them about religion, but you got to be really careful with with with that. And maybe your point, talk to your kids often reinforce this. And it's probably a different thing for me because I was religious when I was a kid, but I was also the only black kid in a lot of schools that I was in. So it was a lot easier for me to be immediately judged on things that weren't necessarily entirely my control to begin with already. So it was never a big deal that I believed in a God or didn't believe in a God. It was just always a big deal that I looked black to certain people. And for some people, that was a problem. And navigating that was like my biggest priority. And now that I'm an open atheist, I'm still more concerned with how people tolerate with me being black, because they're just, you know, there's that one in 100 words problem. But the atheist thing is a new thing that I'm still getting used to expressing. I'm more comfortable with it now. And I found like the bigger deal is just expressing it without the baggage of, Oh, I hope I don't make this person angry. And I hope my social circumstances aren't affected by the fact is like, I'm an adult and I'm comfortable with controlling who I want in my life and who's my chosen family and who my friends are and who I want to hang out with. With that, with that sort of like self respect, it's a lot easier for me to just be like, I'm an atheist. Is that a problem for you? Because it's not a problem for me. Oh, it's not a problem for you. Let's hang out more. And that's an easy thing for me to like deal with. And I would say in your social circumstance for a kid, it's, I'm sorry, sorry, one last one last point. In your social circumstances, it's a very cool thing to know that you have no obligation to hang out with people who would have a problem with you being your real self. And knowing how to call those people out of your life and stick with the people who are cool with you being your real self is the fundamental aspect in my head of hanging out with a good, healthy social circle. And you don't get the experience of cutting out the weeds without expressing who you are and being honest. And that's a skill too, if I can throw that out. Blair, I'm sorry. I was just going to say that self worth and discretion are both good skills to have. And the earlier you can get them the better. Yes, I would teach the child discretion in certain situations and honesty or at least self reflection or in public is a good skill to know when to use and when not to use. Yeah, Eric, I had a question. If you were at kindergarten age with your kids and one of them came back and said, hey, I told Billy, Billy was scared. He was crying because he thought Santa Claus didn't give him his Xbox that he wanted. And I told him, actually, there's no Santa. Your parents probably just didn't know that you wanted an Xbox or maybe it could have been something else. But he started crying again because I told him Santa Claus wasn't real. Did I do something wrong? Like, how would you how would you react to that? Yeah, again, I mean, it's obviously complicated and varies across the board. But I mean, doing something like that can can have a pretty big effect on a small classroom, right? I mean, you you tell someone the truth that way. And I mean, you're really you're really stepping into outside of a boundary. I think I'm maybe arguing with myself here a little bit because I'm not sure I fully agree with the fact. But I mean, that family chose to tell their kid this this make believe this. Yeah. Yeah. And with the knowledge that one day it's going to be overturned by someone who's just being honest with them, right? But I will say that that absolutely there is a a just just like having a imaginary God in the sky. You have a built in babysitter when you have the Santa Claus lie, you have look, you need to go clean your room. Otherwise, you're not getting presents. Right. I mean, that is a powerful, motivating thing, you know, whether it's a lie or not. They carry it on a stick. It is. And a lot of parents rely on that for, you know, before certainly between November and December. So you are now you now you're telling this kid something that's going to have an effect on how the parents are. I don't know. Again, honesty is probably always best. But you're they're so young. I don't it's a burden to ask them to lie. It's a burden to ask them to to be careful of the words they choose. And again, I feel like I'm arguing myself a little bit because I could probably make the same. Make another argument to just just to your point, too. So you can just as easily say, you don't want to. I mean, to that point, you don't have to go to the kids and say, you know, there's no Santa Claus. You can go to the kid and say, you know, a lot of people believe in Santa Claus. I don't, you know, you have to make up your own mind. You know, that kind of thing at the evidence, you know, that a person could go all around the world, visit every household in a single night, give everybody present, you know, because the the presents are made by elves, you know, think about the evidence. Six years old. Yeah, six years old. You're asking a lot from us. Well, I like the idea of like everybody believes in it. I don't. And now you now there's a kid who realizes that not everybody believes in Santa and even their parent doesn't believe that that could be massive for just a kid. And it's like, I didn't tell him Santa Claus didn't exist. I'm just letting him know that people believe different things. And I think even a six year old can get that's a good setup for the rest of the world. Yeah, that's where I would. I would put the caveat that for six year olds that can handle that. Sure. But there are sure six years out there where this would blow their mind or I mean, or they would go, they do it wrong. Right. I mean, it's not, it wouldn't be surprising if they, you know, miss the point somehow and they say it wrong and then to make things worse. So know your children, the comments on this, know your children. Yeah. The comments on this are going to be amazing. I want to throw out one last one. We got like four minutes left, five minutes left. But the idea would be like, if I had a kid and they said, Hey, when we were doing the Pledge of Allegiance, I didn't say under God and my teacher got in my face and said, why aren't you saying the full Pledge of Allegiance? And I told them because I don't believe in God. And then, and now I have like a slip of paper that said, I have to talk to you about it. And what am I supposed to say about that? I would say, continue not saying it. Like, regardless of whatever age, I would be so impressed with a child who is saying like, they were forcing me to be something I wasn't. And I don't have enough evidence to support this thing that they're telling me to be. And I'm willing to say it if they can demonstrate it, but I don't have the evidence to support that. I'm just like, you're saying all these amazing things and you're so young. I would never want to tarnish that with a lie or anything like that. And then the same scope of Santa Claus, if I have a kid that's already questioning the idea of Santa, I'm not going to reinforce the lie anymore. But I would also would never give it to them to by default. I would just say, Hey, there are people that believe different things. And I don't believe everything that everybody believes. And you might hear things like that. And so feel free to talk to me about any of this. And if you say something that makes someone upset, you are going to have to deal with those consequences, because that's going to happen a lot of times in your life. We live in that kind of reality. And I'll also have to tell them some additional things too, because they're black and I'll be like, just watch out who you talk to. There's different conversations we have. But I'm saying like, for the most part, don't ever feel bad for the being your real self, because you need to learn how to develop your own self worth. And maybe that's a longer discussion to have when you're more mature. But something people have when they're in religion is they don't have the ability to be happy being them real selves. And they fall into identity of a dogma. So when you are your real self, you need to be able to stand on a good foundation of that confidence of who you really are and loving yourself for who you are and finding the good in you. You only do that when you are actually expressing yourself and being real. And like you said with your honesty, that's that's good. Find the right time to have it with your kid. But I feel like there's other ways you can phrase it to where they can start their stepping stones a little bit earlier too. And that's the conversation you have with your own children. Eric, Bujo, anything that you'd like to plug for next week? I will say that that we had a lovely discussion about abortion summit. And we did come up with the answer, by the way, we've solved it. Instead of an abortion, we need to build the technology for a deportation, which is to say any woman ever wants to not have the child in her, it can be taken out very safely and put into this machine and the machine will carry it to term. And I think if that if that technology existed, the argument is now done, unless the Christians really want that woman to go through labor. And if that's their point, then then we have a whole another conversation. But if you if you remove labor from the equation, I think we have the perfect solution. My my my think the plug is you should check this out. There was such a thing as a birth control measure for men because it got no funding because birth control for men is very, very limited funding. But it was basically something that tasted like a tic tac in the same pill form. And when you eat it for the next 36 hours or like something a period of time, they only tested this on mammals, not humans, obviously, it took away the the the long tail that's on sperm or so they couldn't travel anymore. It basically knocked out the gene that caused their tails to cause them to travel. So basically, you had a pill that made you non infertile. And I'm like, why doesn't that exist? Because no one wants to fund birth control for men because it's seen as a woman's obligation to maintain that. But I was saying that we changed that to the point where it was an effective birth control measure for men and you just pop a little tic tac and you're you're just good to go for the next day. I think a lot of these conversations would be off and you just sell them as cheap as tic tacs at discount lines and grocery stores like they have to make them effective immediately. I mean, like within 10 seconds. Yeah, effective would be an actually human being for I don't I forgot that time, but it was at least for 36 hours, they're out. And I'm thinking like, if you just take that regularly, like how you do for birth control for women, you'd be good. You're sexually active. Just take one a day. You're good to go. Yeah, I've heard arguments for that and been told that or the thought is that men are just too irresponsible that it wouldn't work. So let women do it basically. No, no, no, no. I'm just saying if you want to be effective, you need a responsible part to do it. And a 18 year old, you know, horny teenager is take it reliably. Yeah, if you associate that with if you associate it with like, sorry, we're almost over time. If you associate it with, oh, I'm so cool. I have to take these pills because I have a lot of sex. Then kids will take it. All you have to do is that because people drink Coca Cola and do all the stuff that they don't necessarily have to do, but they do it anyway. Anyway, Larry, sorry for taking up so much time. Okay. Did you want to plug anything forward? No, we're almost out of time. Go for it. Okay. This you can find my stuff on digital free thought.com. Be sure to click the blog button for a radio show archives, atheists, songs and many articles on the subject. You can find my book. What's it all about? Or atheism? What's it all about on Amazon? My YouTube channel is at doubt or five. Remember, everybody is going to somebody else's hell. The time to worry about it is when they prove that heavens and hells and souls are real. Until then, don't sweat it. Enjoy your life. And we'll see you next Wednesday, night at seven o'clock here on W O Z O radio. Say bye, everybody. Bye, everybody.