 on this computer. Can I pause it without pausing? Hello and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio Hour on WOZO Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We're recording this on Sunday morning, April 24th, 2022. I'm Larry Rhodes, our Doubter Five, and as usual we have our co-host, Wombat on the line with us. Hello Wombat. It's good to have you on our guests today are the Dred Pirate Higgs. How are you there? Welcome from Canada. The John Richards from over on England Way, toward London, and George Brown, the two and a half from East Tennessee. Welcome. Good morning. We have somebody larking. We don't know who it is, but they'll come eventually I hope and we'll announce them at that time. Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism and the sciences, and conversely we'll also talk about religion, religious faith, gods, holy books, and superstition. And if you think you're the only non- believer in town, well you're just not. In Knoxville, in the heart of the Bible Belt, we have a group of over a thousand of us. And we tell you more about that after the mid-show break. Well, Matt, what's our topic today? Just want to say your group is one of the highlights of Tennessee, particularly of Knoxville. I feel like it's partners in making sure no mindsets get too crazy or dogmatic. It's really, really great community. But today, we're doing a performance review on God. We're at the end of the quarter and we've invited them to our office and we're going to have a sit-down conversation. Hey, don't think to be worried about, but would you like to take a seat and have some coffee or something like that? Let's have a conversation about your review, your performance review. Anyway, before we get into the meat and potatoes, let's throw it up to our own Dredd Power Hicks for a weekly invocation. All right. Our noodley Lord, who art in a colander, I'll daunte be thy noodles, thy blood be run, thy sauce be yum with meat, as it is with vegetables. Give us this day our garlic bread and forgive us our cussing, as we forgive those who cuss against us. And lead us not into ketoism, but deliver us some carbs. For thine are the meatballs, and the sauces, and the grog, whenever and ever. And I am looking so forward to eating some pasta today, actually. So that's good stuff. That's good stuff. Dredd, I hope you had a good weekend. We weren't, we didn't see you since last week, since we've been off. How you been? Not too bad. I can't remember if I told you I went to the Ted Talks. Okay, yeah. Yeah. So that was really cool. I saw Elon Musk was one of the headliners on that, and as was Bill Gates. And I have to say I have a new respect for Elon Musk. If he's half as sincere as he comes off, I think, I think we're, there's hope. I will say this, he definitely comes off way more sincere than like a Zuckerberg, right? And Bill Gates also, you know, surprisingly for as much money as you have, does seem more down to earth than like the, you know, haberdasheries of like curlicued mustache guys. Like they do seem to have like, not like, but like, yeah, they seem like good people. Like you could like invite them over and like not freak out. Right. Aside from them being just being like, wow, you're really poor. It's like, yeah, that's true too. Yeah, what's the, on the, on the subject of mustaches. Yes. I was looking up, I was, I was looking up slang words for mustache recently. And one I particularly liked is snot mop. My, my question is, why would you be looking at slang words from Hey, that's a strange thing. John Richards, what have you been doing over your vacation, aside from looking up slang words for mustaches? Well, I've been fantastically busy. I keep doing stuff. Even today, I've just come from another chat, an American chat hosted by a guy, a guy called Brett Keane. So I was just innocently watching snooker on TV. Okay. Okay. That's like pool only about 10 times better. It's like bigger, much bigger. Yeah. Harder too. Yeah. Yeah. And, and I had this message because he'd seen me with my free thought hour guest yesterday. And that guest JD Kane talked about Brett Keane and Brett Keane wanted to get back at him. You know, so he invited me onto his show. He was in the middle of doing an 11, 12 hour marathon. So he was pretty spaced out. So anyway, he was on, he was online for like 11 hours doing a marathon. Yeah. Yeah. That's crazy. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. So anyway, I jumped on and my producer is currently ripping that section of the show to for us to put onto my channel. So it was a bit of fun that there was a lot of questions on evolution and stuff. As soon as they found out that I'm basically an ex biology teacher, mostly biology, they wanted to quiz me on the evolution, which I was happy to do. Yeah. I'll tell you something. You're never an ex biology teacher. You're just a biology teacher that isn't getting paid to be teaching anymore, because you're still teaching. You're still always advocating for biology. If every breath of your mouth for. Absolutely. Yeah. Mike, the first line, the first line in my CV says, I'm a retired science teacher who can't stop. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. So I heard you're also doing some talks against some notorious celebs of the religious persuasion. Kent Ovid. Yes. That's being fixed up for me by this guy, Brett Keane, who hosted the chat show that I've just jumped on. And I think it's going to happen. He's he's a contact of Kent Hovind. And I think he's aiming to fix me up with, fix us up together on a chat on Tuesday. Tuesday. So I will keep you guys posted. Okay, pretty cool. Pretty cool. Yeah. My thing about Kevin Ovan is at least physically, he looks like a guy who works out pretty good. He's got good quads, good back and good forums, because he's lifting so much BS all the time. So it's got to help got to help out with that. Larry Rhodes, how have you been? I hope you're, I hope you're doing well over the weekend. I'm doing fine. I'm glad to be back. Of course, I was out of the town last week, visiting an ill relative. But if she's doing okay or doing better, she's recovered a little bit. And we'll, we'll just keep monitoring that situation. But anyway, glad to be back. Still doing the same old stuff, working during the day, playing games during the evening. And really enjoying this beautiful weather we're having nowadays. I mean, look outside the window. It finally looks like how it looks at the window outside. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's, it's actually still enjoyable to be outside too. It's not just really now that's surprising. That's surprising. So it's the first only two good weeks of the year to visit England. I'm going to remember that. Oh, come on. So I've also been playing games too. I got a copy of Breath of the Wild, which is for the switch. It's like, I'm going through some Nintendo games that I'd never had the opportunity to delve into. The long weekend was a good time to jump into it. Good game. But also this golf still, I'm still getting very into it. I'm in a 40 person league. And if I do well on this last week that we're going to have this last week, I'll finish in the top 10, which I think is a great goal for my first time out. And there's some really good guys out there. So it's a good crowd to be in. I think, oh, go for it, Larry. I just wanted to mention that you may notice that I have a haircut. Sorry, I did it. Sorry. This is good radio here. But I have to mention that after six months of growing my hair, I finally got a haircut. And I found a place nearby where I lived that I'd never been before. And I went in to get a haircut there. And it was brand new place just opened. And it has a bar. It has a bar. So you're never leaving. It has a bar. And while you're there to get your hair cut, all the drinks are free. What? Okay, well, all the apple juice you can drink. Dred, what do you think? Yeah, I did the same thing when I was in Vancouver. A straight razor shave with the hot towel and the cold towel scotch. Yeah, I know it's a treat. Yeah, pretty good. It's a man spa. It's a man spa. It's called a tune up, I think. Yeah. Okay, cool. I see one of those in Atlanta before I headed out. So yeah, I can, I can respect the digs. Miss, Miss iPhone person, are you able to talk or join the conversation? Hey, who me? Yeah. Yep, welcome. Hey, how are you doing, Larry? Oh, no, fine. There's a friend of mine. Yeah, if you're willing to, would you mind introducing yourself if as much information as you're willing to delve into and then? Sure. Yeah, so I am a in the closet, born and raised atheist. And I live in the south. So I'm so glad to be here. I'm a friend of Larry Rhodes. And I'm so glad that I met him and found out that I wasn't the only person in the universe. Yeah. Very similar to my story. I'm glad I met Larry, too. What's your handle? What can we call you? You can make up anything. Like I'm dread pirate Higgs. Milk bone. Milk bone. That's a nice one. I like it. I like it a lot. Cool. Well, thank you so much for being on the show. We're happy to have you. We're having an interesting topic today. I think you'll enjoy it before we get into it. George, I see, you know, you know, I love you. How you been the last couple of weeks? Well, I too have a haircut. I had to get a new driver's license. And I realized all of a sudden that they would need a picture. And I had to apply for something mysterious called Real ID. Oh, yeah. Same here. And this actually has some importance because you can't get on an airplane without this. So I needed to get a haircut very quickly. And I also wanted to go to an enlightened barber, you know, living here in the Bible belt. I didn't, I did not want to have to have to hear any lectures about things I didn't like while I'm getting my haircut because I'm afraid of what I would do, you know, it's like, stop me before I kill again. I remember. Oh, go ahead, John. What's that? Well, I'm puzzled here. You Americans have real things, which implies that there might be unreal stuff as well. Oh, yeah, there's a lot of unreal stuff. It's called. Well, let's put it this way. If I got an unreal, real driver's license without this gold star on it, everything would be fine, except I couldn't fly on an airplane. Right. So I mean, not that I'm planning on any trips. But so anyway, to get the new driver's license, I had to get a picture. And to get a picture, I needed to, you know, get my curly locks trimmed so I didn't look like a hippie anymore. And so I found myself a Latino barbershop here in my town. Very trendy, extremely expensive. And so I thought, well, I've got to pay this money. I got to get this today and get this over with. And one of that when the barber was done, he was a young fellow from Mexico City who's been here for a year. I complimented him on his English. And he finished. And I said, who do I pay? He said, oh, you don't. And I said, no, no, who do I pay? He said, he said, your haircut is free. You're a nice man. She could be, well, I'm not going to say anything rude. That's a good thing. And sometimes if I messed up as if I would mess up as a barber, I wouldn't bury anybody. I'd be like, yeah, you just walk out. I apologize. Don't tell him you came here or anything like that. Well, it was strange. I mean, because I was all set to pay an extremely high amount of money, which I didn't know if I could afford. And he's a fellow. Just give me what's the name of the barbershop. Let's plug it real quick. Oh, it's called. It's called the Athens Barbershop. Nice. Nice. Nice. Some good will and some good promotion. Guys, speaking of marketing, you know, we run a tight business here. This is like a it's a group of guys and and milk. But what we're going to do is we, you know, we've come together as a group to basically review God's performance over this, you know, fiscal quarter or in April. I think it's, you know, we've had some concerns as a board. And I think, you know, it's probably some good time to express those to, you know, God at hand. And since we've invited them to this call, we're recording it at least since he's not shown up. I think that's one of the problems I do would like to bring up. He hasn't shown up to work for a while. His attendance is atrocious. It's pretty bad. It's pretty bad. But we are recording this. So like, if you ever decide to call in, we will happily address any questions that he brings up on the show. Just to lead on some things. I'm very happy with God's, you know, you know, basic level of work, you know, the basic requirements that we asked him for, like making sure gravity is working, nature is working up is up, down is down. The only problem is that seems to be, as we learn more about those things, they seem to be things that largely take care of themselves. In fact, I'm reverse engineering a lot of the problems that we're dealing with in terms of physics and nature. And I don't think there's a God component at all. And I'm wondering if we're just giving him extra credit for something that me may have either set up or had nothing to do with in the first place. And I'm not, and I have sent some emails out to God to see if he could speak up on it. But I haven't heard anything. And one of the main things that I say for my employees is make sure your work is visible and accountable. Because otherwise, I don't know if I should blend you the credit for the good work that you're doing. So if it is you try to speak up and demonstrate it, don't have some guy named Matt or Lucas or any of the other Italian guys, vaguely Italian guys, Mesopotamia, speak up on your behalf, just, you know, speak up for yourself. And we'd really appreciate it. Beyond that, I think, you know, the work attendance is a little concerning, I think Larry will may speak more to that. But otherwise, you know, thanks for keeping the areas relatively clean. I'm not going to give you, you know, I'm not going to fault you for like the things that we did, like obviously, torture, racism, bigotry, prejudice, that's us. Yeah, we agree. That's definitely us. But it would be nice to see you have more of a participation in not fueling that fire to an extent, like at least if you're not a part of it, just say, Hey, I'm not a part of this guys. But I don't know, I'd love to hear what the rest of the board thinks. Larry, do you have any thoughts on God's performance for this quarter? Well, it would be nice if he'd show up and give us something to evaluate. But no, he, you know, he's apparently lazy. I don't know. All of his goals are not met. You know, he's never here, doesn't have much of a sense of humor. You know, if he doesn't like somebody, they usually die in a fiery or disease. You have a bad reputation. He's not a team player. You're not a team player, God. That's what we really want to highlight. Good point. Good point. It's always I, I, I am, I am. There is no I in team. Right. There's no I in team. It's very dreadful. It sounds like you have some things you would like to add to this. Well, you know, you're God. Yeah, it's, you know, all the secularists and the humanists and the Pastaferians are doing all the heavy lifting here. Now, put your shoulder into it, God, to get something done. Will you? Okay. Stop. Stop just standing on turtles all the way down. And letting other people speak for you. Okay. Okay. Okay. John Richards, do you have any thoughts on God's performance for this quarter? Yeah. Well, on the subject of letting other people speak for you, I want to know because you may or may not know that the UK government has come up with this scheme to grab immigrants that are, you know, rowing across the channel in little tiny boats and many of them are drowning. So the idea is to grab these immigrants, fly them to Rwanda and process them there. Rwanda is central Southern Africa, you know, about 1500 miles away. And that's the word. God's aware. God's very good on geography. He would even claim that he made it. That's the government's policy, but God's agent, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has come up with this statement that he thinks that is opposite to the nature of God. So I want to know, God, what business of yours is it what the UK government gets up to? Yeah. You know, I think what it is is God, you're allowing other people to speak on your behalf that may not necessarily have your best interests. And it might be better if you just clarify some things because these people may not necessarily represent you in the best way possible. And you see them have a track record of allowing that to happen. So you got to take ownership of your ideas. If it came for you directly, it might be better received is all I'm saying. Exactly. Cut out the middleman and give us some face to face. We're spending a lot of money on middlemen, and I'll touch on money later on. But Milklone, do you have any thoughts on God's performance for this? Just let me finish this because he's, don't you have Zoom, God? Even a steam yard account would work well. They're both cheap. They're both free. They're both free. Milklone, you said you didn't have anything to add about this. You're perfectly happy with the performance, Golden or you? No, there is no performance. It's absent totally. Fair enough. Fair enough. George Brown, do you have any thoughts on God's performance for this quarter? Well, he doesn't seem to be around much. You know, looking at the Russians blowing arms and legs off little children in the Ukraine. What can I say? God works in mysterious ways, right? Or does he work at all? Has he been showing up in the office at all? Exactly. I'm wondering whether he's in that closet, along with our guest down here. It seems like there's so many bad things happening that's clearly the fault of human beings, that there's no interventionist God that claims to be benevolent, that's participating or stopping a lot of this stuff from happening. And if that is the role of a God that is benevolent, that does love people, is a lot of stuff that he should could or should be stopping. And I wonder God like for your job requirements. And is prayer a good way to contact you? I notice you didn't leave your phone number down on any of these business cards that we have for you. Maybe we should go back to sacrifice your goats. Maybe, maybe though we do have a budget overhead on fires started in the building. So let's just make sure we pay attention to that. Larry, what's up some thoughts? I think he kind of, from what I can see, he acts like a mafia boss. He never shows up. He's never actually here to do the work, but he has all these other people sticking up for him. Making excuses for him and enforcing his quote dictates. But we never see him. So, you know, is he really there? Right. And you know, normally we wouldn't have a problem with this, you know, degree of truancy if there wasn't so much the money component. So like if we open up our financial books, if you guys look to page 37 on this statement, we notice that like over 10% of the people who do believe in you, God, like the people who do believe in you are giving over 10% of their money to you. Where's it going? Where's it going? And why do you first place? I just, I was a little confused by that. Like, is there slot machines or coin machines that you put money into that miracles come out of? Could we just not have those machines ourselves? Or is there like some other system that you need our currency for? It seems like it's no merit. I haven't seen any miracles. I think the money's just going to an offshore account. Like our inflation rate stayed at what is it? 2%, 7% per year to something like that fluctuates back and forth. But you've been asking for a steady 10% since it looks like the last 2000 years, maybe 15,000 years as far as we're aware that you're not even adjusting for inflation. So like, what is the extent of this money that you're using it for? And are you still capable of buying the same things with or without it? Like, what are your costs? What do your books look like? I'd love to see them. And if not, that's another concern for us. So overall, I think we'll just do a round table review, one out of five stars or zero to five stars. John Richards, what do you think? Oh, zero. That's rough. That's rough. That's rough. God, that should be at least a warning for you. Okay. Dread pirate. Absolute zero. Absolute zero. Not just regular zero. Okay. Okay. Okay. It must be a Celsius zero. Mr. down to five. Mr. down to five. Well, can we go negative? Well, no one's ever done it. That's unprecedented. Minus 10. Okay. It's not, it's not like he's not doing anything. It's actually doing harm. You're working against us. That's a good point. It's not like you're just not showing up to work. You're actually causing a lot of indirect harm by just you perpetrating the fact that you're accountable for certain things that you're not showing up to buy. And through the next generations. Okay. Milkbone, zero out of five. Well, I gotta say that I hear it a lot of all day long from people who are religious that there is confirmation bias. Whatever it is that's good that happens. It is God. Right. So I'm sorry to have to throw that out there, but he's working all the time. I see it. I see it in people's comments. They make it comments on them. And I go, and I'll go. Yeah, yeah. But how many comments have you seen by God himself? You know, good point. I have had conversations with people like, how do you define God? And I can get them away from the idea or at least get them thinking about what they mean when they say God and they just basically say reality, but only the good stuff. I'm like, give me an example of something that's like a good thing in reality that has like component to it. And they can't, they have trouble bringing up examples because everything's nuanced. If you look at it and the things that we value as good could be interpreted as bad, like, oh, I have a car. Yeah, but that makes pollution. Right. So, oh, well, then I guess God isn't Ferraris, right? You can get people to stand back on stuff like that. But honestly, what would you be your final rating? Zero out of five stars for God? So we can close up this call and then get to the next God. For the existence of God or for his job? Job performance? Yeah, yeah, yeah. This quarter? Zero. Negative zero. Yeah. Zero. The rarest number of all. George Brown, second and a half. Well, I think, you know, in terms of the cost-benefit analysis, we're not getting our money's worth in this guy. I think we should take him back to God or us and get a refund and buy ourselves another God. Maybe we could get a better one. Maybe we could. Maybe we could do a better job for us. Yeah. Flying spaghetti monsters available. Oh, okay, okay, okay. Listen, listen, we got flying spaghetti resume and I think he's actually overqualified for this position, if anything. But yeah, if he's open to it, I think that'd be a good get for us. If he shows up, I'd be better. John Richards, what do you think? Well, I just want to know how we can do it, give him a rating because, you know, other services like Amazon and YouTube and so on, they send us a form and we can select how many stars we've chosen. And if we like, we can put a comment, but nothing from this guy. Right, right, right. It does seem weird. It's like, even when there's jolts of lightning, it's just people being like, well, I think that's God, right? Like, if all of us were to drop dead right now, maybe that would be indicative of something, yet I've yet to see God take such a personal stance and things. It would just be nice if he could just call it into the show and explain this behalf on his lack of, you know, accountability for this entire quarter. I think it is very concerning. Joe, Joe Pirate? Yeah, I was just going to say that there was an Ipsis read poll done in Canada on religiosity, sort of, and the increase in irreligious people is quite high. It's like over 40, 41% or something like that. That's so good news. It is good news. And, you know, Christianity is down to like 21% or something like that. So waning. And there's some people who say that religion may be gone by 2040. Churches are closing everywhere. The people who are claiming to be Christians are desperately fracturing in terms of what that means to them and largely are non-denominational and largely just in the spiritual sense of culturally Christian, but not actually like even in any church you know what the Bible says. That said, God, my final review would be one star. I'll be the nicest guy here. I'll just say I'll put a little warning here. I'll be, I know we'll probably see the same problems next quarter, but you're on warning right now. And I just want to make sure you know that we all support you. Just come into work. That's, and we can work it from there. We're encouraging you to actually do your job. We have a lot of faith in you, whatever that's worth, but we'd like to have hours at your actual locations. Many do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like faith doesn't really get us anywhere. It doesn't fill up the coffee machine. Help us out here. That's it for at least this forced half hour. I think we're at the bottom of the half. Larry, would you mind taking us out? Oh, not at all. This has been the, well, the first half of the digital free thought radio are we're on WOZO radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. And we'll be right back after this short break. Welcome back to the second half of the digital free thought radio hour. I'm doubter five and we're on WOZO radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Let's talk just for a second about the Atheist Society of Knoxville. ASK was founded in 2002. We're in our 20th year. ASK has over a thousand members and we have weekly in-person meetings in Knoxville's whole city at Barley's Taproom in Pizzeria. Look for us inside at the high top tables or out on the deck if it's a nice day. We're usually the loudest and happiest group there. We also have Tuesday evening Zoom meetings. If you'd like to join us virtually, email us first at AskAnAtheist at KnoxvilleAtheist.org or let's chat SE at gmail.com and we'll send you a link so you can join us. You can also find ASK on Facebook, meetup.com or go to the website at KnoxvilleAtheist.org or you can just Google Knoxville Atheist. It's just that simple. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you can still go to Meetup and do a search for an Atheist group in your town. Don't find one. Where do you want to pick up there, Wombat? Let's do some listener comments real quick. Got a lot of feedback over the holiday break. Thank you guys so much. We'll go through these and feel free to leave more questions on our channels or our email addresses, which we'll plug at the end of the show. Dada's Trader Room says, 5 out of 5 Atheists will agree that you exist. Does that mean that I'm not an Atheist? Because I claim that I do not exist? Or does that mean Ty is wrong? So a lot of problems here. One, that's not the only two options. That's a false dichotomy. Two, Atheists don't agree that something exists. Atheists are just people who lack belief in something because they don't have enough evidence to support or warrant belief in it. That's it. And likewise, 5 out of 5 people agreeing on something doesn't necessarily make it something true. But 5 out of 5 people can be justified in not having enough evidence to believe in something. And that's all an Atheist is. They're not making a definitive claim that a God doesn't exist. They're just an agreement that they have not met their standard or proof yet based on the evidence provided to them. So there's, you know, fix those things and we'll come right back to it. Speaking of things we don't necessarily understand, Jan Dross says, we must be born again. You are born again when you are like Jesus, then you are sinless. And then there's a lot of nice little helpful citations. We appreciate it. We appreciate it. Let me keep scrolling down. There's a whole thing here. Thank you very much. Afterwards, my illness was the best thing that happened to me. That was the last thing that he said there. That's great. I appreciate it. Anyway, California said from last week's episode, which was how do atheists get some R-E-S-P-E-C-T? That said, man, I can't wait until you're able to get back out there and doing S-E or Socratic examinations. Again, really missing your energy and enthusiasm in those one-on-one interviews. I know Reid from Cordial Curiosity has been publishing a few newer ones recently. So hopefully soon. I'm waiting till COVID's completely gone. And I think otherwise, I just don't, I don't feel like it would be responsible for me to go out and do that on a regular basis and then go to work at the same time too. I really do respect that a lot of people are choosing not to wear face masks. And I completely respect that though. I really want to make sure that I'm advocating for proper health for this country because we aren't getting it necessarily from the government. It seems a lot of the choices are political. So I want to, I at least want to make sure that the people I work with are safe from, you know, anything that I could pull from random people off the streets and stuff like that. So abcain says, I still avoid saying I'm an atheist and just use the, I don't believe in much of anything without evidence. Make your mom is a total boss. Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate that. I love my mom too. Also, I do think if you can maybe have maybe push the waters a bit with some friends that you do trust and let them know that you're an atheist because the more we let people know that we're atheists, the better. And you might find like-minded people, right? Exactly. You might find friends that you didn't know. Likewise. I would like to remind people that if they don't come out of the atheist closet and let people know that they're an atheist, even atheists around them will assume they're Christian and they may not be able to get their friendship, their companionship, you know. Likewise, if you're hiding that you're an atheist, it makes it seem like it's something that's worth hiding, right? Right. And it truly isn't. It's not something that you should be ashamed or worried about saying because that's how Christians went even more, right? But they are the most untrusted distrust or whatever, how you say it, a portion of the population. I'm saying eat the babies in front of the Christians. That's all I'm saying. I don't want to be hated. I've already lost my job. And anyway, that's a whole other situation story. But I suspect I can't ever prove it or not. But that was part of it. But if they keep us quiet, then they have won. True. That's true. And through silence, we give up our power. And also being disliked versus warranting being disliked are two completely different things. And I can't control how they feel about me. If they see a person with black skin and that bothers them, that's nothing on me. So I say be the real you, right? And represent that because it takes so much energy to be anyone else. The thing is too, I'm not particularly worried about being hated by people who believe in nonsense because they're not with me intellectually anyway. So those aren't the people I care about. Let me say this. We're all talking about everybody should come out. There are situations when you shouldn't. I don't think I wouldn't come out if it means that you're going to lose your home because your family is going to throw you out in the street. I wouldn't come out if you're going to lose your livelihood because you know that you're working at Chick-fil-A or something. You're going to have to be thrown to the curb. There are situations when it is not a good idea to come out. Right. Sometimes you may not even want to come out if it's not the other person's business. Like if I'm just dealing with someone who is like, hey, I don't, I don't, this is a, this is a transaction where once I'm done with you, I've never seen you again. I don't need to much for some people to handle honestly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I was at the pet store, not the pet store. I was at the animal shelter yesterday, you know, petting some cats, giving some love out and walking dogs. And the lady comes in and she's like, I just lost my cat. I'm in grief, but I want to see what cats you guys have available. But don't worry about me. I know I'm going to see my cat again in heaven. And I'm like, I'm not going to go out of my way and tell this person that I don't have it. Like it's just, yeah, I'll show you where the cats are. It's not a big deal. John Richards, what's up? I'm wondering why she would go to cat heaven. But anyway, I think this is, this has really got to be left to the person concerned, although we do encourage people to come out of the closet. Exactly. But it's got to be a personal choice because some people coming out of the closet could be a risk to life. Very true. Very true. So great conversation. Depending on what country you're in. And the religious know this, of course, because that's why they set up this shunning activity between members of families. Just communication and all that. Well, X communication. And of course, there's the people, the clergy themselves that are leaving faith, but find themselves, you know, it takes a rock and a hard place because perhaps preaching has been the only job they've ever had. So I'm talking about the clergy project, of course. Sure. They can find refuge there. Yeah. So, you know, there's, yeah, it can be hard for all kinds of people, right? But yeah, I think, you know, maybe it's important if you're in a circumstance where it's not safe or, or, you know, could pose a risk to your livelihood, that you actively work toward creating circumstances for yourself in which you don't have to be in that position, you know, if you can, right? Right. Right. You know, stop working at Chick-fil-A and get another job, right? And then you don't have to worry about, you know, coming out as an atheist and losing it, you know, so. Right. You know, some of the things I wish that science had were impassioned speakers that are capable of breaking complex facts down to audiences in the way that a pastor does speak to his congregation. And for, you know, there's only so many, like Neil deGrasse Tyson's and Carl Sagan's in the world, right? And so, like, if we had a religious person who was like, hey, I'm out, but I'm out as Plaza as an atheist, but I do feel like I have these skill sets. And I do have this motivation to express aspects of science in just as wondrous a way so that people can get on board with this and advertise it and speak to it and use that as like the new truth and deliver it in a vehicle where people who need that religious whole field can get it from more rational basis. I would really appreciate it. Like they just re-adapted their skill set to something a bit more useful. Sure. Utilitarian, because it's an incredible thing to see. I just wish it wasn't wasted on false hope, you know, like I wish it wasn't just a peddling of essentially. Think about all the resources that religion has diverted in the last thousand, five thousand years. Exactly. Yeah. Absolutely. It's travesty. It's a travesty. California won. Thank you so much for that comment. That was a great stimulating conversation. Oh, I'm sorry. Was that was that? No, that was Apcain. We appreciate that. So that is Trading Room. Also, another comment on the update on Matt Dillahunty. He's doing great. He's doing two to three shows per week. I'm really happy to hear that. Matt Dillahunty, Atheist Experience, Atheist Society of was awesome. Atheist Community of Austin recently had some surgery on himself. I won't get into the details too much, but has some from the looks of it made a full recovery. One last comment from Dottus Trading Room. A person, no matter of faith or lack of thereof can be a better humanist. And I think we can all agree with that. Does that seem fair? Yep. Sure. Yeah. I agree. I agree. Yeah. All right. Even even a Posterfarian. That's right. Even a Posterfarian. All right. So guys, we're in the last stretches of today's show. One of the things I wanted to talk about was the, you know, Old Testament, which we have a regional expert on it. The not so Jewish, but is Jewish. George Brown, second and a half. George Brown, second and a half. Are you still with us? I think so. Nice. Nice. You had a comment on one of the weird inconsistencies about the Old Testament. Did you want to talk about that? I can't remember a thing about it. Do you want to talk about God saying, hey, don't let any other gods before us? Oh, yes. Well, you see, I really started thinking about that in the context of, you know, who else is available in the God store? You know, in other words, if he's saying that I shall not have any other God before me, well, that's an acknowledgement that there are other gods. Right. Maybe we don't like this particular one. Kind of going back up. Yeah. Kind of going back to what we were saying at the beginning of the show, like maybe we should hire a different God to take God's place, like one that would actually show up. I feel like we downloaded a very expensive app on our phone that watches everything that we have and charges us 10% of our paycheck every month, but does nothing on our phone. It doesn't turn on the light, doesn't take a picture, doesn't communicate with the friends. It does nothing. Maybe there are better apps out there. And if the terms of service of God app is, don't let any other apps before me, maybe we should look back at the God app store and the flying spaghetti monster. I mean, Dred, can you make an argument for why we should have that be our new God in chief, if you will? Our new Lord. Yeah. Because he, the beer, you know, the beer volcano and the stripper factory as rewards for a life well lived in service of all things pastafarian. Okay. And also there's the God back guarantee. So God back guarantee. If you, you know, if you try out pastafarianism for, for 30 days and you don't like it, you can always appeal to your old God to take you back. Okay. Okay. Okay. There is a limited pasta in this deal, right? Or is his whole unlimited pasta? Yes. Okay. Okay. That's what I'm signing up for. I don't have much of a beer drinker. Hey, what's up, John Richards? What's his trade in value, Dred? Box of lasagna noodles. I don't know. I'm sold, as I said. I mean, it sounds more entertaining than some of the other gods out there, though I do, I would like to try Joe Pesci, at least for, you know, a trial period. I've heard praying to him is just as effective. And I know where he lives. So my favorite would be Morgan Freeman. Can I have him? Yeah. He's a hardcore Christian. I feel like he's typecast into the role. And I feel like if you could just speak a little faster, I need at least, you know, 70 words per minute for my, for my gods. Just I need to worry about the, it's like, that's way too slow. National geographic. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. I got it. Is he in the room? I think we need to be looking at the resumes of different gods and see, you know, is there one that we would like to hire? Maybe that's something we can do in the future. I really like that. The resumes are always made up. Are all resumes made up, Larry? There's no fact checking. There's no fact checking. Who do we call to verify your resume? That's the real question. Like, who can we call? Who are your references? Exactly. Who are your references? Like I was saying, over here in the UK, we have the technology. Okay. We have an organization that does it. Nice. Though, you know, God's reference would be Jesus, but I'm like, isn't he you? Isn't that just you? Yeah. Like, what's going on there? That's a tautology there. It's a little bit of a shifty situation. Guys, we're at the point of the show where it's time to plug yourselves or think about something that you'd like to recommend that we check out before next week. And I'll throw it up to Dred Pirate Hicks. All right. Yeah. So you can find my stuff on my YouTube channel, Mind Pirate, M-I-N-D-P-Y-R-A-T-E. I do live stream this at 7 a.m. PDT. That's specific daylight time. And it looks like we're going to be sticking to it, too. Nice. Nice. Yeah. And then I'm doing a show with John Richards, the Global Atheist News Review, where a panel of folks look over the headlines of the past week and speak our thoughts on what's going on. It's a worldwide trend. Yeah. So that's where you can find me. Nice. Views on the news. That's what it is. Yeah. Oh, and I streamed that at 11 a.m. on Sundays. Okay. Very, very cool. It's still to date in a couple of hours, right, John Richards? Yeah. That's right. Okay. That's 11 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time. 7 p.m. Yeah. So whatever that is where you are. Yeah. So it's 11 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time. Yeah. John, I know you got the most stuff to plug, so I'm just going to see if anybody else has anything. George Brown, do you have anything you'd like to recommend that we check out before next week? Well, every time you ask me that, I can't think straight. That's our new little gig. That's the bit that we have now. No phone. Do you have anything that you'd like for us to check out or anything interesting you'd like for us to check out before next week? She says she's away, so I'll put it in for her. iPhones. iPhones are probably pretty cool. All right. There we go. Larry Rhodes, do you have anything you'd recommend that we check out or anything you'd like to plug? Well, yeah. I'll plug, yeah. Not yet. Not yet. If you're having trouble leaving religious beliefs behind and a lot of people struggle with that, you can find help online at recoveringfromreligion.org. By the way, you can understand a lot of clergy members are leaving the church because they no longer believe. If you're a preacher, imam, pastor, or priest, but have come to believe or see that the claims of religion are not justified, there's help for you at The Clergy Project. The link is clergyproject.org. My content can be found at digitalfreethought.com. Be sure to click on the blog. Hey, we're not closing out the show. Okay, I thought you were. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I thought it was kind of early, I saw you get into the script. I was just like, not yet, not yet, not yet, but that's a good thing for us to check out. My thing to check out is visit your local animal shelter. If you can walk dogs, they'd really appreciate it more than money. They really respect your time and appreciate your time. And then also humanizing cats, getting them acclimated to being around people petted helps them get adopted more. Black cats are the least likely to get adopted. So if you see some black cats, give them love. They're really, really chill animals. And it's the thing that I've been really enjoying doing more so than sitting in a church pew and feeling good about myself when I walk out, help your community get out there, pick up trash, do something, but don't just sit, even if you're religious, get out there and try to do something productive. Dred, what do you think? I was just going to say the Pasadena church here in Grand Forks has successfully been included into the Adopt the Highway program. Nice. So we have a two kilometers stretch where the flying sparity monster and crew is featured on the sign and we're going to go pick up trash. Nice. What do you mean we fell face? Two football fields. Nice. What's up there? What do you mean we fell face? John Richards, I know you got the most applaud. Go for it. Everyone pay attention. Get your notebooks out. It's very easy. It's all on Free Thought Productions YouTube channel. And I do a growing number of shows. I do the global atheist news every week where we gather reports about the religious impact that it makes on humanity. Then the follow up show, as Dred said, and he's coming to help me with it. And so are you, Ty. Thank you guys. Is the review where opinionated people express their views of the news. Then I also do Free Thought Hour, which is like an interview show with one special guest. I did a great one yesterday with, thanks to my guest who was a guy called Jeff Dason Brock Kane, who used to be a host himself and has quite a lot of presence on Facebook, particularly in unbelievable question mark group. Then I appear as a guest myself on other people's shows. And the one coming up now, which I'd like to plug is for what's he called it? It's, I'll get his name up in a minute. It's God TV Radio Live podcast. And that's hosted by Brett Keane. And it's scheduled now, my first appearance as his guest, apart from the other one I did today, is on Tuesday, the 27th. It's Tuesday, the 27th. Yes. No, Wednesday, make up on Wednesday, the 27th at some hour or other. Anyway, it's scheduled and my opponent, 1 a.m. in, I think that's central time. So that's going to be very difficult for me. Well, I better check the timing. My opponent, anyways, Kent Hovind. So I'm looking forward to chatting to him, Dr. Dino. A lot of stuff going on. Okay. One thing about Brett Keane, as he claims to be a former atheist, he used to put out videos, I think as an atheist per se. So be sure to ask him all about that. Yeah, you know, former atheists are the ones that scare me the most because in a weird way, most religious people are, I don't know, I don't want to get into it. We don't have the time for it right now, but basically it's a sad thing for someone. A good topic later. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Bored again, atheists will may have to talk about that. But anyway, Larry, that John Richards plugs were so numerous and so well worth listening to that I forgot what atheism is and what it's all about. Well, if we're talking about plugs, we can plug my book, I guess. Atheism, what's it all about? It's a book that I've got on Amazon. So you can go there and download either an electronic copy of it or order the paperback. My other content and pretty much all of the stuff that's in the book can be found at digitalfreethought.com. When you go there, be sure to click on the blog button for a radio show, archives, atheist songs, videos and articles on the subject. My YouTube channel can be found by searching for Douter 5 or Larry Rhodes. And that's about all the stuff I really wanted to link to as far as content. As a heads up, thank you for all the comments. Just feel free to leave them at the end of our channels. Respectively, Mind Pirate, Douter 5's channel, John Richards channel, so many channels, my channel, anyone. And we'll be happy to review them over the show. And we're ready to sign out now. Let's do it. Thank you for joining us on the Digital Freethought Radio Hour. Remember, you can find our podcast at Apple iTunes, Pocket Cast, Amazon and podcast everywhere. Just search for Digital Freethought Radio Hour. If you're watching this on YouTube, be sure to like and subscribe. Remember, everybody is going to somebody else's hell. And the time to worry about it when they prove that heavens and hells and souls are real. Until then, don't sweat it. Enjoy your life. And we'll see you next week. Say bye, everybody. Bye, everybody. Amen. Love it. It's awesome.