 103.9 FM, W-O-Z-O Radio, Knoxville. Ladies and gentlemen, Digital Freethought Radio Hour. Hello, and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio Hour on W-O-Z-O Radio 103.9 LP FM, right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We're recording this on Sunday morning, August 8th, 2021. I'm Larry Rhodes, or Doubter 5. And as usual, we have our co-host Wombat on the line with us. Hello, Wombat. It's me, you, and we're two awesome gooses on the pond. Honk, honk. Okay. Honk, honk. And with us today, we have several guests. George, the two-and-a-half, how are you? Oh, I'm good. The John Richards and Swedish Steve, hello, hello. A special guest with us today is Rahkshith Sridharan. Sridharan. We're all the way from India. So we have England, Swedish, Tennessee, three times, and India today. So multicultural, multi- and international show for sure. Very cool. Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism, and the sciences. And conversely, we'll also talk about religion, faiths, gods, holy books, and superstition. What are we talking about today there, Wombat? We're going to be talking about our new guest, Rahkshith, today. We're going to learn all about him and understand some really interesting obstacles that he's overcome. And I want to dive into it, but before we do, how about we just do a quick, super fast, no one's ever going to even notice it. It's going to be super fast, super quick, just summary of everyone's lives in like 30 seconds. John Richards, I've been seeing you on YouTube. You've been popping up, like, multiple times on my channel throughout the week. How you been? And what have you been up to? I'm all over the place at the moment, aren't I? We had an atheism UK AGM yesterday, and they elected me president. So I'm officially the president of atheism UK now. Nice. And then in... Congratulations. Yeah. Thank you. And then today, I've already been on a long show with Harris Sultan on my channel, Freethought Productions and his. We're co-hosting. And I can't remember... Oh, his channel is called Sultans House of Sin. Very good name. I like it. Sultans House of Sin. I love the elimination there. Yes, there you go. So that's enough about me for the moment. John Richards, you're now the president. How long until your first impeachment? Are you going to go for record? I don't know. I'm president to this year. You have to be elected every year. Very cool, very cool. George, second and a half. How you been? Oh, I've been okay. I'm struggling with my Linux computers. Oh, no. As usual. Oh, no. Oh, as usual. Oh, yeah. After selling them out. Well, it just says that we make our own hell on Earth. We make our own hell on Earth. That's right. Linux computer is your choice. Hell is other people and Linux computers. That's basically what it is. Right. Well, keep it up. I hope Google can be your friend without taking all your data. You know? Oh, no, no. Google will not be my friend. But it is, sort of. Yeah. It is useful. Sweetest Steve, how are you? They draw. Oh, they draw. I've had an interesting week where a Mormon called me. I don't know why. Cool. But he stood me up when I invited him home to me. Were you not blond enough? Was that it? No idea. I asked if he would like to come and talk about Darwin, but no. Wait, what would a conversation about Darwin begin? How would that even start? How do you start a friendly conversation about Darwin with the Mormon? It's going to be rough because this was an American Mormon and they are sensitive. Oh, yeah. But I would say something, are you stupid? Can't you see? And then I would just bombard him with some statistic about different things. Now, here's the real question. Would you have your throwing axe in your hand as you're talking to him, or would you at least leave it next to your throwing hammers? We have a mid axis. Or a mid hammer. So I will blunt him to death afterwards. Very cool. We like you, Swedish Steve. You need to come back on this show more regularly. Larry Rhodes, my friend. How have you been? What is your shirt? First, explain the shirt. Oh, it's just old cars and stuff on it. Palm trees. It's like a Hawaiian shirt. OK. OK. How you been? No, I'm 71. So I'm staying home most of the time. And especially with this new COVID outbreak, the Delta variant and all that, trying to stay in, trying to stay safe. And we did take a trip yesterday down to Townsend in Tennessee to get some barbecue. There's a place down there we liked. But it was closed. We drove all the way down there. It was pretty dry all the way back. But we did get to some Mexican food. So that was good. Yeah. I feel the same way. I went out to KFC and I was like, I can't wait to get back to this buffet. I feel like things are opening up again. KFC's closed. So I'm like, OK, that's fine. I'll just go to the Arby's next door. No dining in at the Arby's and like half the menu. I'm like, OK, that's fine. I'll just go to Wendy's. We are shut down for, I was like, still? Oh my gosh. What is going on? Again. Sometimes I open and come back and then close again. That's where we're at. It's where we're at. But for the greater cause of trying to stay alive, if anything. Rocksheath. Rocksheath. Rocksit. One more time. One more time. And then you can unmute yourself and then introduce me. Introduce me to yourself, my friend. Introduce yourself to us. You're muted. You need to unmute. Sorry. Okay. So I'm from India and I'm from India. And so it's been like, I don't necessarily say it as a journey, but I was always more open minded and like reading many things, knowing many things I used to follow. I was always a kind of skeptic in many ways. I liked questioning. I liked being curious. So, you know, from my childhood I used to read many things. I used to read about geology or about, you know, science or in general many things. Even history for that matter. So what happened is in like say even Hindu scriptures I used to read. So honestly speaking. So many people don't even know what is there in the Hindu scriptures, but I was fortunate to read some of them. So in that way I used to have a comparison with Hindu scriptures on one side, scientific things on one side. Then I used to compare and see what is the rational, how it's acceptable in society. And then from then on I started looking at more like liberal way of philosophies. I even read Vedanta and all those sort of things. But still I felt like, hey, you know what, these things may not be required ultimately. I mean, I felt like we are ultimately humans and human body is what matters at the end of the day. I thought that that direction started me taking to reading. So that made me convinced that, you know what, it's better to be a skeptic and rational rather than being like falling for any of the things. And one of the things that motivated me a lot was the amount of fake news in the name of Hinduism that was being spread online. I mean, I don't know whether how many of you know it or not, but in India it's like going like a flood, literal flood of shits. Okay. So you know, you will be comparing. See, we recently Olympics happened and some of our sportsmen won the medal for us. But if there is a Hindu YouTube channel, they say, look, these Olympic people are doing namaste. See, they won the medal. So that means they literally need sort of just if I'm just talking about the fringe writing. I'm not naming any particular one, but I'm just mentioning a group fringe, which I would like to say. I just want to make sure there's so many things that you just brought up right now. I want to make sure everybody gets a chance to win on this. John, what was the comment that you wanted to throw in? Yeah, well, Raxi says perfectly right, isn't he? Humans are quite nice and the small ones make very good pets. Yes. So you know, I was like one of the worst thing that happened last year. I think I need to bring this up. So this was, I think, September 3rd last year. I remember the date. Thankfully, Armin Navabi is an ex-Muslim atheist from Iran. He runs this atheist republic. Okay. So that's organization in Canada. So he stays in Canada right now as well. He actually, earlier few days back, he even, you know, what to say, he tore the Koran apart. He even made Bible pages, he even made Koran pages. So people were like, especially the fringe writing in those, they were literally clapping, clapping, clapping. Wow, that's great, right? But the moment he posted sexy Kali photo, they're showing in a, not in a, maybe what you could, what an average say, an orthodox or ultra orthodox Hindu perceived as blasphemous or say something like a nude, nude photo. Okay. He, the people went really berserk. I'm, I don't have words, literally. Okay. I was like, what the heck? He just posted a photo. And I mean, if you're really talking about Hindu philosophy, someone is really concerned. They say that images don't matter. That don't matter. But Axis, just put some context on this, because we do broadcast out to Tennessee. So they're like, what is going on? Well, basically just, just so everyone's caught up. You got Hindus in India. And just north of that, you have a lot of Muslims. And so there's a lot of intercultural between two religions that don't get along at all. And you, and you can think of it as angels and athletics, if you're in California, except with a lot more that higher death count, you want to go for that. Basically, these guys don't get along, but there's a double standard for how they're treated. So for a lot of orthodox Hindus, they will laud or celebrate when someone disrespects Quran or Islam. But as soon as that person uses the same tools to try to critique or, you know, lambast Hinduism, those people get very upset. So there's a double standard there. And Larry, it sounds like you want to say something. Are you on me? Yes, I was just having a hard time understanding him. Your accent is a little, a little hard for me to get past. You need to go to a science lab. I know this. I live and breathe this accent for all grad school. I guess you're talking about Pakistan, aren't you? With the Muslim money? Yeah, there's like, there's a lot of different areas where there's concentrations of Islam in northern India. But like, there's even food and drive reason, which is very, well, I, why should I talk? Rakesh, would you mind talking about this? Would you mind just quickly outlining like the geography and like how these places relate to each other and like how it is? So let's put it honestly. There is something called as Hindi belt in north. Hindi is a language spoken in north in south where I stay. And I won't specify where, but I'll just say I stay in South India. So here there is languages which is vastly different from Hindi. Okay. Very different dialects and linguistic. Then go to Eastern India. It's same the story. Northeast India, same story. West also same story. There is Gujarati, Marathi and all those sort of things. And Pakistan has Urdu and Afghanistan as Pashto. Bangladesh, for example, as Bengali as the language. So Bengali is also vastly different from Hindi and other things. So you know, linguistic diversity is huge. But just like Pakistan government thinks of Urdu centered this thing. Indian government, at least at the present Indian government and even some of the previous Indian government has always thought Hindi centered sort of administration. Now, given the linguistic diversity, I just don't think it's something logical to work with. Okay. This is my perspective. Also coming back to Armin Nawabi where I was just stuck. Okay. So let me continue. What happened afterwards? These people literally gave their threats. They made, you know, pornographic photo of his real mother. I mean to defend a fake mother, fake goddess, which no one has seen. You try and do pornographic photo of his mother, real mother of Armin Nawabi's. Okay. They did it. And they had this atheist public accounts, Twitter accounts, and then they also did like, there is one actress called Kangana Ranaut. John, do you remember? Hello, John. Hello. Yes. So tomorrow when you do live stream with Harris, do mention this lady called Kangana Ranaut. She spews the venom as you call like anything. Well, you've missed it. Unfortunately, we live streamed today a couple of hours ago. Oh, you did it today? Yeah. I thought it was for Sunday. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I thought maybe I just got confused. Fine. Fine. Join in next week and then you can either put a comment in the text or come on screen. Pew has spewed so much venom that Twitter got her banned. And the reason for ban, I will tell you what is it? Last week what she posted was after Bengal elections was, she tagged Modi and told, why don't you show the form and the, you know, the angry form, which you showed it during the Gujarat riots? Why don't you show it now? She tagged Modi in Twitter. That was one reason why the Twitter account got blocked. She, because Modi has a very like, you know, controversial history of Gujarat riots, 2002. So luckily, she posted on that. That's it. That's it. You got very, very high level complaints about Hindu. And I'm totally for like the idea of like, hey, check this out. There's double standards. There's hypocrisy. There's clearly bias. And it's just not fair. And it's not cool. But we're trying to follow along too. The thing is the terminology is like, I get the vibe. We're with you on the ride. It's just the specifics is like, you know, one of the things that we're kind of reading off from. But I can tell you like, even from our own cultures, from our neck of the woods, we have incidents where there is bias and double standards. Maybe what I would like to do is hear from examples of that. So I'm following up to Swedish Steve. He's been real good. I'm thinking like, you know, you got, you got Swedish churches that are part of the state that they pay taxes to. But not a lot of people take that church, what they say seriously. Like, is that ever a conflict for you? And has anyone ever tried to do anything about that? Yeah. The tax is a separate thing. Nowadays. Oh, really? Since 2000. Yeah. So it is a voluntary. Yeah. You can leave it. I don't buy it. But the hypocrisy is more in the area of the free churches. The really weird ones. They say God loves everybody, but they condemn gay priests and even women priests, female priests. Yeah. Yeah. We have that too. We have, when we went to, I think Larry and I went to a pride rally way, way back when, and we're marching down the streets as atheists supporting, you know, like, you know, Right. And you had a church in front of us and a church behind us, both with signs supporting gay rights on either side of us. And you had the same church Christians on the side of the roads holding up signs being like you guys are evil. And I'm like, yeah, I trust those guys because they have the citations on their poster boards. Like there's no, there's no question what's actually going on. I just want to feed back from everybody else. John, Richard, what's you got? Yeah. So what is it that gives these religious people the right to judge, to make decisions like that, you know? God gives them those people. Oh, right. Well, interestingly, this week just gone, Bishop Robert Baron in somewhere in your neck of the woods. I think he's a Baptist. He's complaining because the Tokyo Olympics opening ceremony played John Lennon's Imagine. He doesn't like the words. He doesn't like the words. He likes the music and the singing and the arrangement, but no, how does he go? Imagine there's no heaven. He doesn't like that. No, he doesn't like that. He won't say things to be real. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was very scary because I was on the phone. I was on the call with Scott yesterday. We're watching the Jovo Witness Convention and they are very clear that they believe in demons and they talk about them as if it was like rain outside. And I just thought to myself, how bizarre is that? But then you take a step back and it's like, that's the prevailing belief of Christians that demons exist. Right. They interact with people on a regular basis and that doesn't freak anybody out. Like that's weird. Like we, no, no, it's weird. On my last week, not yesterday's global atheist news show, but the one before I show a clip of a Greek orthodox. This is a variation of Christianity exorcism and the poor guy who's demonised and needs to be exorcised is crawling along on his hands and knees with a priest's hat on his back. When he has to stop periodically and hit the ground and, I don't know, explain that he's getting rid of his demon. And when he eventually collapses, the priest stands on him. Oh, no. Okay. And the church bell goes, boom. Did he survive? Yeah, I hope so. George, second and a half, you know, you keep telling me, I have no idea what's going on in the world because you were raised organically, atheists. You never had a chance to be converted into a religion. You just stayed a fruit on the stem, more or less. And is there any way that we can explain this to you, like the idea of people actually believing in real demons and you can take it at face value, or is this soul just bizarre? Yes, it is so bizarre to me. And I can't explain it. I am utterly perplexed living here in the Bible Belt. It's such a strange experience for me. George, you would love going to Sweden. It would blow your mind just to have that weight removed of the religious work. Well, you know, I come from New York where it's more of a melting pot. I mean, it's a very Catholic city New York is. And yet, but it's like somehow a lot of people tend to get along with each other. Sure. You know, I just didn't grow up with a whole lot of us versus them mentality. And that's what I'm confronted with a lot here, I think is, you know, in groups and out groups. And, you know, we're the good guys and those guys are the bad guys. Larry, you want to weigh on that us versus them mentality? Is it possible that religion fosters that kind of idea? Oh, it could happen. I mean, all you got to do is look at Northern Ireland. They're all Christian and they still try to tell each other small dogmatic differences that they have. We need to get an Irish person here because that's actually a really good conversation. It's like you guys are both Christian and you both don't like each other. It's like, no, because there are slightly different Christians than us. Maybe it's just a human nature thing, guys. Yeah, isn't that the general idea of the psychology behind the religion that we are better than them because we're the chosen people. Yeah, that's the whole reason. I have a word for this. My word for this is religionism because it makes it sound like racism, which it is. Yeah, that's right. I like that. I like it. You know, if I have to tell specific diverse parties, people searching for the caste of our sportsmen, religion of our sportsmen. Yes. That's the worst. The people who look for caste systems, like ways to structure people based on how valuable they are, are essentially using religion to reinforce that. And religion is supposed to be like, hey, everyone's equal. See, the entire structure of Hinduism, what you call like, they might try justifying it. It is based on meritocracy. It's all PS, that's not the case. In reality, it's hierarchical structure and one group has to dominate over the other. For the benefit of the Americans and the Swede here, India is playing England at cricket at the moment. We're involved in the test series. The first game was partially rained off and it was declared to be a draw. But there's going to be some division in the next few games. Very cool. Okay. There's your sports update. John Ritz has appreciated it. Larry. Hey, we're at the bottom of that fire. Why don't you take us out and we'll come back up? Sure. Okay. This is the digital free thought radio hour. We're on WZO radio 103.9 LP FM right here at Knoxville, Tennessee. And we'll be right back after this short break. 103.9 FM WZO radio, Knoxville. Hello and welcome back to the second half of the digital free thought radio hour. I'm powder five and we're on WZO radio 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today is Sunday morning, August 8th, 2021. Now let's talk about the atheist society of Knoxville or ASK founded in 2002. We're in our 19th year. ASK has over a thousand members and we have weekly zoom meetings during COVID. But we've also started meeting in person again at the Barley's Taproom in Pizzeria in Knoxville's Old City. Out on the patio. We're usually there about 530 to eight on Tuesday evenings. Hope you can join us. You can find us online on Facebook on meetup or just go to KnoxvilleAtheist.org for more information. You can also just Google Knoxville Atheist. It's that simple. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you should still go to meet up and do a search for an atheist group in your town. Don't find one. Start one. That's right. Well, I'm about where we want to pick up. Hey, we're talking to our friend, Rakesh, who is one of our new guest members. And we're going to be talking Hinduism and issues that we've been having with it. Maybe we can talk about how to start your own atheist group. So, Rakesh? Right. Oh, man. Yeah. We might just call you Rocky. That'd be good too. But anyway. That's okay. Rocky. Let me tell you. Just call me R.H. Rocky. Nice. That should be fine. Yeah. Rocky, tell me about Hinduism. What's Hinduism 101? Can you help us out with this? Like, I know there are many gods, many, many, many gods. But beyond that, I'm not. The fundamental things. Okay. Let's get back to simple things. Hinduism has many, many books, unlike other religions. Okay. It has many texts. But primary, I would say Vedas. Another primary text. The Vedas. They outline the basic principles and all those sort of things. Then you have Purana, Shastras. I think the most popular one, I see Bhagavad Gita. Yes. Most popular one. Yep. Yeah. So, that's kind of basic to start with. What are the texts? You have a society, a system. So, it is a caste system. Or people us call it the Varna system, whatever you like to call it. Division of society. And then you have. Division and society, like military, you are allowed to be doctors. You're allowed to be janitors based on your last name and your upbringing. It's kind of like hereditary profession, hereditary profession based. So, generation to generation one. Even though you may not have capable, but it's hereditary by birth. So, based on who your family was, that determines who your job can be. Yeah. So, if a father is a king, more likely that his son will also be a king. If your father was a priest or a person who is what we call as Brahman. Okay. Your son will also be a Brahman priest. Which is a high tier in the caste system. Yeah. My ancestors, the British colonists, it was a business rather than. Hold on. Did you say colonists or colonists like cooks? Colonists. I'm going through an accent. A little. Oh, right. I have to switch gears. This is nothing to do with the colon. Thank you. Keep that out of it. That's the dirty word. So, anyway. Yeah. I got it. Yeah. Not culinary either. No, colon, colon. No, no. Let's get away from that. The thing is that my ancestors, for which I accept no responsibility, took advantage of the Hindu, the Indian caste system by appointing the top castes as agents of the crown. It was called indirect rule. We said you guys are already bosses here. So, you can now work for us. Hmm. It was a very mafia. Right. Exactly. Yeah. For, for around 800 years, you guys really did know how to rule. It was really great. It was just like, Hey, I'm going to take this castle. I'm going to give it back to you. It would be a shame if anything happened to it again. Right. Yeah, that's right. You listen to me. Exactly. It's like a Kermit scheme. You look at the cast. And then. And then we used. We, as I say, I don't accept any responsibility for this, but the Bible was used in West Africa, particularly as a very good colonizing tool. Sure. You know, you don't have to kill anybody. And it's cheaper than bullets. Not only that. Once you've got them hooked, they'll pay for them. They'll buy them off you in order to control their own power. So, you know, it's like a sub level of population below the major boss, which in that case would probably Queen Victoria. Sir, I will throw this out in America. We do have something kind of similar to a cast is more. It's just how much money did your parents have? And the more money they have, the less laws apply to you. The more you can buy yourself out of fines. The more you can easily persuade people to vote you into office and you can change rules and legislation to benefit you and your niche needs so that you basically live in a lot of other people. It's really unfortunate. I would like to see Swedish Steve is a similar system. Like, I know there actually is royalty, but no one really cares about the royalty in Sweden. But like, how does the social hierarchy work? Is it just money or is there something else there too? They have no privilege or the king and queen has and the crown princess. But the titles and everything like that. It doesn't mean anything. It's just a fancy way for us to say here, look at them instead of the shabby old politicians we have. Like if we sent our prime minister or are you supposed like, yeah, here's an old communist with socialist idea about how to run a country. It's not really working well. So instead we have a stupid king that just nods. The other thing with Sweden and feel free to correct me on this is that like politics are very complicated in the makeup, not so much in like what they agree to because in America we have two parties, right? It's an unfortunate system, but we have a two party system blue and red and that's it. In Sweden, it's like 50 shades of blue. There's like literally hundreds of different parties and they all have to come to forums to agree and none of it could be like one person for every party, 200 people in a room. And it's like, how are we going to come to tears with anything? Is that pretty accurate, Swedish thing? That's really accurate. And now it's even worse because we kicked the prime minister and his party because some, yeah, they wanted to make it easier to kick someone's an employer, employed person. So then the communists just kicked them. But I think the good thing about that is you don't have career politicians who are like, you know, the Ted Cruises of the world where it's like, you did such a bad job, but I know you're going to be hired next year, right? Or next. Faces are always changing. And because of that, they don't have higher standard of protection in society than anybody else. Yeah. No, no, no. They have a much worse. We had a party leader. She forget to pay for like a small candy bar. And out she went. Nobody's seen her since then. Oh, man, speaking, speaking candy bars, John Richards, do you have anything you can show us? I don't know. I wanted to put it in the bin since then. And then let's have a look. There you go. Hey, this is our sponsor, guys. It's got hazelnuts in it and chocolate on the outside and a bit of sweets in between. And makes really good radio. What made me think of it? What made me think of it is every week, every week so many comes on to the WhatsApp and says, what's the topic? So here you go. This is the topic. No, whoever says that is never me. It's always typically you for the most part. Often me. Yes. Often you, right? All right. So anyway, sorry for that little excursion radio listeners. We just showed a candy bar and it was kind of funny. George, I want to make sure that you get a chance to weigh in on this. Have you, you know, you've been to New York. You've seen, you know, in my head, like both sides of the spectrum in terms of cultural life in the U.S. Have you noticed a lot of different kinds of tears of hierarchy in terms of social dynamics? Are we still here? He might be even out. Anyway, we'll head it up to Rockies. Then Rocky, tell me more about Hinduism and life as a Hindu. Yeah. Or or atheist groups. Oh, and as an atheist. Yeah. Yeah. So in Hinduism, the whatever system would like to call Hindus call it as Varna system. Translated roughly in English. We call it as caste system. So it is something kind of sacredly ordained. Sacredly by God's will. So that is a Bhagavad Gita. I think the chapter. Fourth Krishna says the center system comes from me. You know, so it's like direct from God, this caste system. Okay. And it's considered as one's sacred duty to follow this. That's the point. Versus in other societies, it may not be sacred. No. It's sacred. Yeah. It's ordained morality. More or less. It's like, do this. Not because I'm explained to you why it's right, but because I said it's right. And I have to go directly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you are now an atheist openly. Are you allowed to be in your area? And if you have, have you found a way to make a community? To be honest, I, well, I have, I do, I do have friends. Let me be honest. I do run a YouTube channel called X Hindu atheists. And I did share it with the John. Yes. So I do my lives listed. I had one live and the live was, well, I don't think many audience will understand what that live was about. But it was about something very, very nasty as well. So you can just check it out there specifically. I will share the video. But the main thing for me was like, if you ask me, I was, I'm still a skeptic as well. A skeptic and rational like all atheists could be because I, I still think that that's the basic foundation of, you know, understanding things. So coming back to Hinduism, I would say like, the Vedas kind of are the authority. Of course, if you are, if you were to speak to today's Hindu, you will deny, oh, no, no, no Vedas. But the point is most of the rituals which Hindus practice today, whether it's been like performing that fire sacrifice or heaven or yet all whatever you like to call it, they all have derived from Vedas. And then you have festivals, a lot of festivals in India and you have festivals, a lot of festivals in Hinduism. I would say many, some of them are cultural, but some of them is holy. Is holy one of them? Do they count holy? Yes, there is. But most of them like are either like some are cultural, but some are specific days for special person. Okay. Like birthday of Ram, birthday of Krishna, like that. Some specific days. I want to just make some clarifications. He's saying Vedas, V-E-D-A-S. Vedas, Vedas, V-E-D-A-S. The literal books of truth for Hinduism. And also he had mentioned of Pakistan speaking Udu. My sister's in Pakistan. And what's cool is Udu, Hindi, very similar. Like you can understand one another. But the writing is completely different. The writing is completely different. So if you go to Pakistan, it's written in a script that's functionally different. So if you read left to right, I believe, or even like right to left. No, no, no. Left to right. Right to left. Right, right. And then Hindu other way around, but they all sound the same. It's like what does it say? It's the same word. Why are they two different texts? Because culturally, the religion is so infused that there's no means of writing the same language. Like that's how infused it is into the religion. It's like literally how I describe myself and talk and speak is infused with the religion. And that's the separation between the two. So much that we made our own language has the same spoken text, but we just made a new alphabet and there it goes. And they're the ones that change their stuff. It's crazy. It's crazy. Though fun thing, if you want to learn two languages for one, learn Hindi and you can go to Pakistan and talk to everybody. It'll be okay. Yeah, yeah. So Hindi is like written in the Devanagari script. So it's you. Most people would not have heard of it. I don't think they will understand. But it's kind of an ancient script, which is developed over a period of time, last 1000 years or so. And then you have, apart from the Hinduism, you have festivals. I just mentioned some of them. Then there is something called as tantrisama. I mean, tantric practices. I want to know about being an atheist in India. Like, is it open? Is, are you allowed to be? Is there fear on your part? Look, the thing is you might be atheist personally, but you can't propagate it in public. That's the point. What's under what kind of repercussions? What kind of consequences would happen to you? We had a couple of rationalists who have been killed in last seven or eight years. Some four of them, four or five of them have been killed by the fringe writing. The fringe Hindu group, let's put it that way. Okay. And also speaking, you know, personal life you can be atheist, but the thing is the moment you tell in public, I'm atheist, I don't believe in God. And I don't want to follow this ritual. You know, people back off your behind, they'll be cursing you. Or if you ridicule certain things from scripture, which might be true, it's actually true. If it's there in scripture, but you ridicule it. Then the repercussions are that there will be sedition on you. Or there will be some case against you. Or there'll be case like action of blasphemy against you. But that's mostly by the fringe Hindu groups who do it. I got one last question about Hinduism. It's polytheistic, right? So like, I've seen people believe in God's that look very, very nuanced to me. Is it possible to like say, Hey, I believe in this set of Hindu gods, but not that one. And even though someone like really believes in that one, it's like, yeah, but I'm not going to believe in my God alone. Does that lead to conflicts? It's like my God of laundry. It's the stains out of my clothes every day. I don't believe it. I sound facist, but it's actual thing. Yeah. Are the gods specialists or generalists? I mean, does Ganesh do all the same sort of services as, I don't know, sexy Kali, for example, or do they have their own little powers distinct from each other? I mean, look, I think most generally what we're hearing. The problem is Hinduism is not something like as a community taught in public, it all starts from family based. That's something we need to understand in the society. So usually if a child is there, he's been told that Ganesh is someone who is a signal for species time and he removes the obstacles and those sort of things. And you know, to be honest, sexy Kali is there, which Hindus don't know, but that is a cultured practice. That is, it's community driven, it's culturally driven. So like basically what he's saying is like every generation will have a different impression of the same God. Similarly, how we would have as Americans, Larry has his version of Spider-Man. I have my version of Spider-Man, Tom Holland. And maybe, no, mine's Miles Morales, let's go. And then somebody else would have their version of Spider-Man. We'd all talk and I know we're generally talking about Spider-Man, but I know specifically he's thinking about a completely different one than I am, but we're willing to agree with each other if it means we can hate on the Iron Man team, right? It depends whether you've seen Spider-Man one, two, or three. There you go. One group of people who worship one God, like Lord Vishnu group, worships, considers Vishnu superior. And there is another group who consider Hindu God Shiva superior. There is a boss God, isn't there? There's a boss God that does the creating and destroying. Isn't that Vishnu? The creation is by Brahma. Unfortunately, there is no set for Brahma. Nobody worships that. That's based on certain story that he was cursed. So Larry, you've got a confused look on your face, but we have, even in Christianity, it's very based on paganism, which came from more or less a lot of the gods from Sweden. The days of our week are essentially Norse gods, right? And so I'll throw this one out. Do you have any familiarity with any of the pagan gods that we have as part of our culture? I have a little bit about Egyptian God, then Zeus, and... Oh, that's so funny. Because when I say pagan, I don't think in my head Egyptian, but yes, that would qualify as a pagan God, because it's just not a Christian God. And then you have Mesopotamian God, and then you have Greek gods. Yeah, you have the Greek gods, you have the Roman gods. Yeah. And even a little bit of pre-Zorestian gods of Iran. And pre-Zorestian gods of Iran are very similar to Hindu Vedic gods. Swedish Steve, are you familiar with any of these gods? Yeah. Have you paid a lot of attention, or I know you understand them as a mythology, but you're probably more well-versed in Thor and tears than we are in Loki and etc. There are multiple that are similar like Thor and Pajania. The one with the sword that rides over the sky and creates thunder. It's a thunder storm outside, so I'm a little bit occupied in my head. It's a Thor, the storm outside. I think the main takeaway is that none of the pagans have a concrete, identical impression of who Thor is, who Odin is, who Loki is, even among the place where they came from. Like you talk to a different person, you're going to get a slightly different story each time. Is that pretty close? Yeah, yeah. You have like the North one is more of Norway has the same one, but the further you came, come to Germany, the more exchanged. Yeah, I have to go and get some stuff inside. Thank you for coming over. Yeah, thanks for having me. Why do you feel it? Well, the thing I wanted to do is tell Steve about a Netflix series called The Almighty Johnson's that he might be interested in because it's a group of like brothers, family who lives in New Zealand that happen to be displaced Norse gods. Yeah. And their powers are greatly diminished, but they still have them. And it's a lot of fun. And I thought he might be interested. But maybe along the same lines. If anyone had a chance to watch the classic episodes of Bewitch, it still holds up. It still holds up. Elizabeth Montgomery, wonderful show. Guys, we're running towards the end of the show. John Richards, what happened to our sponsorship with the topic? I haven't I haven't seen anything happen to us. What's going on? I've retired it. He's made a presidential decision executive order. Yes. Absolutely. Why not? Short-lived. I was going to say about my favorite gods. You know, I've got two. In the interest of equality, I've got a female goddess, which is Chloe Zena. I like her because she keeps the sewers of Rome flowing smoothly. That's an essential job. That's an essential. And then I like. I like uncull uncull who is the creator deity of the Zulu nation. Cool. I just like the sound of the name. I. So if Dredpar was here, obviously we'd be talking about the great pasta in the sky. I don't know if the great noodley Lord has his own name, but he's the creator deity of the Zulu nation. There you go. My favorite God in the world of mythology is death, probably from the Game of Thrones universe, because you only have to say one thing that that's not today. And I love it. And it's like, he doesn't ask anything else other than just that. I'm like, I dig it. I didn't. George, we've been talking a lot about gods today. Did you have a favorite one that you want to talk about? Nope. I can't hear you, my friend. Are you on mute? He's probably on mute, but it's not like a no. Thank you so much for joining us on the show today and letting us know more about your culture. I hope you stay safe. Props you about your full name. Is there anything you'd like to say before you head out? You're on mute. Rocky, you're muted. It's OK. It's OK. It looks a little hectic where he's at. Hello, hello. Yeah, yeah. So if you are keeping my last point, the only thing I can say is two things keep this thing going. One is caste, other is the idea of spirit or atma, which you like to call. That's foundation. There's only two things that's like an engine oil which runs this. OK. And then third are rituals. So these three things mainly. And if you talk about superstition, I won't mention just one. There are many, many, many of them. Yeah. And Rakesh, Rakesh, if you'd like to promote your YouTube channel, wouldn't you, which is X Hindu atheists. Yes, yes. X Hindu atheists. Very cool. Very cool. You can find me on Let's Chat. This is the most likely seeing it on YouTube now. We'll be here next week too, hopefully with more guests from around the world. Larry, what's going on with you? How have you been doing? I heard you're like this really big guy on atheism, but you know, you haven't really told me what it's all about. So I don't understand what's going on there. I have a book to that. Is it as cool as your shirt? Oh, it's cooler than my shirt. It's called Atheism What's It All About. It's available on Amazon. Most of my content that's in the book is in the digitalfreethought.com blog I have. So just go to digitalfreethought.com if you're interested. My YouTube channel is called Dower 5 or Larry Rhodes. And if you have any questions for the show, send them by email to askanatheistatnoxvilleatheist.org. We'll answer them on future shows. If you're having trouble leaving religious beliefs behind, you can get help at recoveringfromreligion.org. If you're watching this on YouTube, be sure to like and subscribe. This has been the Digital Freethought Radio Hour. Remember, everybody is going to somebody else's help. 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. Thanks very much for the special guest. She's right here. Probably butchered that. But we'll see you next week. Say bye, everybody. Bye, everybody. Bye-bye. So, I heard a voice in my head that told me atheism is true.