 My cheeky my cheek. Hello and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio Hour and WOZO Radio 103.9 LPF. I'm here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We're recording this on Sunday morning, February 25th, 2024. I'm Larry Rhodes or a DJ dot or five. And as usual, we have our co-host on the line with us. Hello. Now family size. As you wish. Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism and the sciences. And conversely, we'll also talk about religions, religious faiths, 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 here in Knoxville in the middle of the Bible Belt. We have a group of 1,100 of us. We're the Atheist Society of Knoxville or ASK. And we'll tell you more about us after the mid-show break. So be sure to stick around. And we have a guest with us. Want to introduce yourself there? Hello. Going by Ripper Song for the moment. Yeah. Welcome to the show. Been in Knoxville for a while and yeah, know y'all. And used to go to the ASK when it was more in the past, but proud to go when I can. Very short help. Yeah. Long time. When it was very active. Long time friend, Riff. One of the first people I met when I was in Knoxville. Yeah. Welcome. Wonderful. I'm going to say. Go ahead. Oh, okay. Yeah. I remember, Dr. Tai, you said, what's your favorite anime? And I'm like, Yeah. Where do I start? Yeah. That's the right question. That's the right question. So like, if you throw that out and if you get a quick answer, you know, that person isn't as into anime as you. That's amazing. You're like, well, that's what kind of conversation. Yeah. Like what genre, what brand, which year, which decade, which style, like now we have to talk about it. Like Ray Ra era or like what? It's like, oh, this guy's into it. This guy's into it. The same thing would happen to me if someone were to ask me, like, what's your favorite Smash Mouth song? Because now we have to like sit down and talk about the orange album versus their intro, Astro Lounge. The states, you have to hit the right moment. You have to be in the right head. Or like language, like which singer was the Tarja Truman in? Was it, is it Flo? Is it, you know, That's right. Or in my generation, the Beatles, which years were the best Beatle years? There you go. Exactly, right? Like if you love something, you've categorized something. Okay, guys, I wanted to do just a quick roundup. Larry, you've been playing some video games. Tell me about it. Oh, yeah. I've been playing all kinds of games. The battlefield three and four. Well, you got a PC space games and all kinds of things. What was it? The Star Citizen? Star Citizen. Wow. Yeah, that's a pretty good game. It's still buggy, but it's a good game. But lately I've been playing, you know, it's Sniper Elite Five. Okay. It's a lot like Wolfenstein. Yeah. Thank you. It's a lot like Wolfenstein. Of course, there's a lot more sniping to it. Sure. Wolfenstein didn't have that much sniping in it, but it's all good. Well done. It's a good game. And for fans of the show, that's where you can shoot a bullet. And then the camera goes off of your viewfinder to follow the bullet. Yeah. Slow motion as it tumbles through space. And oftentimes deliberately hits a person in their genital region because that's like Yeah, I turned off all the graphic cam. I don't care for that. Okay. As for me, I had the privilege of selling my old car and moving on with that state of my life. I've now transitioned more or less into my new car now. Larry, I don't even know if I've shown you pictures of the new car. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Okay. It's literally this color. It's literally for friends or for radio listeners. It's like a neon yellow. And I can tell you this. If you're going to, if you're, here's my mindset. If I was going to spend as much money as I did on my car, I want people to notice it. It is consistent. It is. It is. Right. Like a yellow marker. You could get a Corvette and if it's black, no one's going to tell us like, oh, maybe, yeah, where is it in the parking lot? I can't see it. But when my car pulls up in the parking lot, you're like, oh, I saw you from four miles away. Like exactly where you're at. I had put on my sunglasses. Right. Right. Right. I have the perfect alibi car because like the cops are like, where are you at 430 on Tuesday of last week from last month and what was that? It's like just ask anybody. Everybody knows exactly what I have now. Like they all know. Just like I was like, oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We don't have to knock on Tyrone's door. He's the weird neon yellow car guy. But also the other value behind this and something that I did put a lot of thought into is safety. I care a lot about safety, particularly in my role as a laboratory manager and I want to make sure that if I'm on the road, the one of the best protections that I can have is to be visible. Right. And how many white cars are on the road right now? How many red cars, blue cars, red? Yeah. White is supposedly the most popular color. It's like one big American flag. When you fly out, when you stand out, people see you. When they see you, they notice you and when they notice you, maybe they won't run into you as often. And I think that that's something to be said. Overall, though, really, really happy with it. I haven't had a new car in the last 10 years. I'm inundated with all the new technology that comes with vehicles. I kind of feel that it's a bit overkill. There's this, there's these features that I have in my car that will automatically keep me in the center of the lane. So while I'll drive, am I still like, no, no, no. You want to like this? It's like you're driving with like a co, someone in the passenger seat with their wheel on the handle and being like, you should really do it like this. I'm like, could you not do that while I'm driving right now? I was like, well, I'm doing it better than you. It's like, okay, fair, fair, fair enough. It does another thing where it can read. So it's another button you can click where it will read the speed limit signs and match the speed. And then it does a third tier where it will literally just drive. It'll turn right or left for you. It will know where you want to go. And instead of just keeping you in the center lane, it will just literally just follow the road and do the curves for you. So basically in some weird cases, you could literally just push down on the gas pedal, it doesn't matter how much force you're putting it on, and the car will just deliver you to where you need to be at. And it's terrifying because I know some annual kid or like some late, late generation kid is like, I'm doing that. That's awesome. Whereas for I, when I see that, I'm like, even when I reverse, I want to see behind me. Even with the cameras, I'm like, no, I don't trust you. I don't trust you technology. You're gone a little bit too far. Riv, not to put you on the spot, but I see that you got like a Tesla hat. What do you think about like electric cars in general? Yeah. Oh, I mean, I was skeptical at first or more. I wasn't worried at first in terms of, well, how will mileage anxiety, all those good on the list. I went through all of that. And I've had it for about two years now. Nice. And I'm quite used to it. It's a paradigm of thinking we're used to certain things. So it takes a while to rewire those kind of instincts. Absolutely. And staying in the lane, doing the driving, it increasingly does it better than I do. It never breaks. It never is distracted. It's always watching the road. But then so it seems counterintuitive. Yeah, it's just getting better and better. And so, I mean, we can get on a list if there are hours to talk about it, but fully on board with the EV transition and the sooner, the better. Yeah. I was listening. I listened to a lot of AI videos on YouTube about what's coming and an interesting quote that I heard yesterday was in about a decade or so, anything that moves will have AI controlling it. Yeah, I don't know about that. Especially, I mean, I can't imagine just having it read the speed signs and making my car go that slow. Yes. Not that I exceed speed or anything. Larry played his hand a little bit. He's just like, I want to do 100 in school zones. Don't tell me to go 35. Yeah, that's a little too much control, I think. It's what I have promised. Not so much the control. It's more of like letting it go, right? It's letting go of the control. So you can do something else. You can read a comic book or something. No, I'm still going to pay attention to the road. Though I have said this, I had said this, I don't like driving because I kind of find it driving as a boring experience, particularly if you have like an hour or two hour drive. It's basically watching a very boring TV show where if you blink or look away too long, you'll die. That's how driving has always been. And so like you're just there and you're focused on the road and your whole motivation is to get to be, but your real motivation is not to die. Especially at night when you're on the interstate with no street lights. Oh, yes, especially around Tennessee roads. Tennessee roads in particular. Yeah, yeah, you got everyone in like, listen to us in Indiana, California. They're like, what are you talking about? Driving at night is even easier than the daytime. It's like, now I'm in Tennessee, now I'm in Tennessee. Wayne T. hit those huge potholes he never saw coming. Wayne T. saw those weird interstates that literally loop around backwards because they just put in so many different weird stuff. They try out a lot of stuff in this state that doesn't get popular everywhere else. Well, you know, I predict that in time, much like we have bumper cars now, I predict in time, all driving will just be essentially, I mean, when you get to the point that something replaces something else and it's better, faster, cheaper, safer, yada, yada, yada, it'll become a moral problem if you do something outside of that. So I think it'll get to the point to where bumper cars, as we use them now, will be designated area to go drive things without as much guardrails and all other driving on the highways and so on will just be automated. So yeah, we're saying it's time. You say that because in my town, in the town of Columbia, there is a lane for horse and buggies still. Because we have like that. They have how much people. So I don't quite like that because taxpayers paid for that road and the honest people did not. And I say if you are that hard pressed to have a horse on our road that poops on our roads and taxpayers have to clean that up and build extra roads for you, but you're not contributing whatsoever to our property taxes. That's a good point. Our community, you can drive, drive, walk on the sidewalk. We got grass, use that. The other side of that topic is there, they are a tourist attraction. They are bringing money into the state. Oh, are they indirectly? Because anything could be a tourist attraction, man. Like that. Right, right. And it's not. Can be a slippery slope. Yeah. And is it worth all the unreported sex abuse to have that as a tourist attraction? Like the side like we don't like. Well, I'm not saying I agree with that. It just can be an argument. Yeah. Our apple pie is really that good. Can we at least recognize like these people are kind of trapped in this community and we're using this as a fishbowl. That's kind of messed up. I didn't say, speaking of things that I like though, speaking of things that I don't like, I was reading about this guy called Jesus Christ. He said he was like a pretty cool dude. Yeah, here he has a book out. Oh man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I haven't gone to it. I'm sure it'll be popular someday. But it's been translated like a billion times though, hasn't it? Oh, for real? Yeah, well, you know, that's the value of Amazon library books. You just hit, you know, your Kindle translate to Russian. They'll be in Russian. It's fantastic. Yeah. The great thing is though, I actually kind of find some things about this Jesus dude that I actually like. And as fellow non-believers in the Christian faith, I thought maybe we could present some of these things. I could present some of these things. Oh yeah, he said some really good stuff. And you let me know, hey, if this is actually something you like, and then we look back at that, let's see, was any of that religiously moded? You know, Thomas Jefferson did. Have slaves? Besides that. With the Bible, I mean, he took all the stuff that Jesus said and put them in a book and took all the magic stuff and all the Old Testament and all this stuff and threw it out the window. Ah, sure, sure. I am in agreement with that because he said a lot of stuff that I could get behind. But the Old Testament, you know, the hell and the afterlife, things like that, and the magic tricks. Yeah, not so much. But what could we get behind? All right. So let's talk about some things that Jesus did that atheists can get behind. And first and foremost on this list, I said traveled. And the thing that I love about traveling is, and I would love to hear your thoughts on this. There's this thing that I like to refer to as societal societal pressure and you're born into it. You don't realize it, but you don't choose your own name. Your parents choose your name. You don't choose the foods that you like. Your parents give you the food that you like. You don't choose the rules that you are governed by. That's dictated by the society that you're born in. Your thoughts, your geopolitical points of view, like are all locked to your geopolitical location. The TV shows you watch, the language you speak, the language you speak in, it's all dictated by the place that you're in. And when you travel, a beautiful thing happens. That pressure goes away and you start to recognize that every other place has its own different kinds of pressures, its own kind of different cookie cutter. And what you thought was your boundaries were, in fact, not your boundaries at all. And it doesn't necessarily change who you are, but it does give you a different perspective where you can realize, oh, I had other options and that there are other kinds of cultures here that have different values, different rules, different mindsets. And the ones that I had were just in, were not part of my true identity, but just the ones that I was born into. And now I get to kind of pick and choose and sort of realize, okay, if that's the case, then what is my favorite food? Truly. What truly is my favorite kind of genre of music? Because now I'm not just asking the things that I was handed. Yeah. Larry, you've been around. Go ahead. Really quickly, I was going to say, what you described, the thing that you skimmed in mind was the information availability bias. Oh, I love that. Go for it. The fact that we live in a Google bubble or a religious bubble or a social bubble. Yeah. That keeps us from accessing certain information. Yep. Well, and zooming out, even from that, we can only ever reason with what we're aware of how we can use. We can only do with what information that we are aware of. Right. So every single thing we can possibly comprehend is limited by what we're aware of. And so that has a lot of implications in life. It does. Not only that, but your framework of who you are as a person, like just by virtue of the color of your skin or what parageninals you have or which you don't lack or if you have a beard or don't have a beard, if you're wearing a blue hat in certain places of America versus a red hat, it can dictate how people treat you. Or a red plaid versus a blue plaid. Red plaid versus a blue plaid, and so many different things. I can tell you right now, I thought when I was born and raised military, so we moved around a lot, but I spent a lot of time in California where being black was a unique thing. Like we're oftentimes the only black family in the towns that we lived in. And then when I moved to Georgia, I remember startled recognition that, one, everybody didn't automatically know my name when I introduced myself. Like they would forget it. And two, I looked more or less like everybody else when I moved to Georgia. And three, that people who are black who weren't my mom also drove cars. Because when I look at traffic, I'm like, there are other black people in those cars driving. It's like, oh my gosh, I've only ever seen my mom drive the only black man I've ever seen a black person drive a car was my mom. And I realized that when I got to Atlanta, there's a lot of things I have just taken for granted that I've never seen before. So Riv, that information bias is like, you don't realize what you don't know until you have that as information that you don't know. But you get that information from traveling. Like you get the information like being pulled out of one location and having to make new friends and understand new practices. Larry, was there any benefits that you got from traveling that you'd like to throw out? Nothing really comes to mind, but I was thinking about what you were talking about how your environment shapes your expectations. And I'm sure I could come back to this travel experience thing in a minute. But right now, one thing that happened, I got out of high school and went into the Navy immediately the next week. And I was in the boot camp for three months. And when I came home, I went downtown and I saw somebody in a wheelchair and it just struck me that I had been isolated for three months so much so that I didn't think of people outside of 18 to 22 group, people that are well and fit and serving in the military. And it just left my consciousness over the three months that I was in there. And it was shocking when I got back out. It just took me a minute to reacclimate but still at the same time. Larry, that's such a great experience. I'm so glad you had that same one too because when I was in grad school, I remember going to a grocery store that wasn't on college campus. It was like a legitimate city grocery store. And I walked in and anybody who was older than me, I immediately thought, oh, they must be a professor. They must be a teacher or something like that because anyone who was older than me at school was staff or some sort of like faculty. And the other thing that shocked me was we were much younger than me, children. And in my mind, I was like, man, it's been at least two and a half years since I did. I'm so glad people are still making babies. Because the only thing I might have is like science and books and stuff like that. So it warped your perspective and it doesn't take long. Larry, you didn't realize when that transition in your mind is happening. It was gradual over time. Exactly. It's sort of like that frog in the pot of water as it gets hotter. They don't realize it until it's too late. Rev, you also had an opportunity to travel. Would you mind going some like perspective paradigm shifting things that happened to you? Oh, yeah. I mean, just to pick one of a lot here, finally lately, I've been getting around to it in the past several years. I've just been cut off and everything. I wanted to say really quickly though, Larry and relating the same thing, going through basic. And then especially going through, you know, a lot of stuff is classified to a point. But you know, up in Sierra School, up in Washington, you go through that. You become completely immersed in it. And then you just, you become convinced that you're there. And it's just, it's a transformative... Yeah. So yeah. Can you imagine spending decades in a church where they wouldn't let you access the internet or watch cartoons or any of that? And then eventually lose your faith and then be exposed to all of that all at once. It can be life changing. It is life changing. What are they called again? The Luddites. The Manonites. The Eight... Manonites? No, the people who are on the horse and buggies. I have the word in my head. The... More? No, not the words. Come on. Did they do some voodoo on us? The people who don't have technology, who are very religious and they live in America. Come on, you guys know this. The Pennsylvania Dutch... No, it's not a complex word. We were just literally talking about it earlier in the show. What is the name of the people who don't use technology? Everything's, and they're super religious. They're in Tennessee. Quakers. No, dude. Not the Quakers? Oh, my God. The one you mentioned earlier from the... Why don't I literally... The word I literally said just like at the beginning, top of the show, people. Keep talking. Now, I don't know why we had three brain farts at the same time, guys. Well, I've always had a problem with names. Amish. Menonites. Amish. The Amish people. Come on, guys. Yeah. Great minds. For now, I always think of Weird Al Yankovich in that remix of the song, my preferred version of it. But... Yeah. Okay. Okay. But in terms of... Go ahead. I'm just saying they're culture shocked because they have an opportunity, a false opportunity, truly, to explore the world. But their mindset has been so ingrained in that lifestyle that when they see what other people are doing and they don't have the proper context for it, a lot of them are scared and moved back. Even the ones who want to leave don't have an opportunity to because they have no support structure. Some of the women don't even have social security numbers. Like, they... Or education. Like, a lot of them can't even read properly or compete in a world where, capitalistically, you have to have skills to be able to support yourself. Right. Like, how does someone who's raised in that way where they've only made three-legged peck chairs their entire life up into their 20s and realize, you know what? I don't want to keep doing this for the next 80 years of my life. Is there other options? Yeah, but you're not equipped for it. You don't know anything. And no one wants to truly invest that much time to teach you to get back up. We don't have a program for that. Unfortunately, you're... We do have a group for it, though. It's called Recovering from Religion. We can do that, but we can't teach them skills to be functional in a workplace, right? Another group, but it's for clergy only. If you're a clergyman and you find just the stuff that you've lost your beliefs, supernatural beliefs, then you can go to clergyproject.org. And they will enroll you in their classes to give you skills that you can use in sectarian life up in that way. Secular life. And for the clergy, I think that's actually pretty good because you already have your foot in modern day, right? Like you haven't closed yourself off to it, which I find is harmful. But I also think that, yes, if you can sell false hope on a weekly basis, you can sell a car. If you can write a sermon, you can write an article. You can write an article. You can be a really good writer. There's a lot of skills that are very... And if you can organize your religious group, then you can organize a lot of the organizations. You can be a marathon runner, 5K organizer. There's so many really good opportunities for you. Yeah, it's not completely hopeless. We are... What do you think, Larry? Do we have enough time for one more? Shall we go to a break? No, go for it. We still have five minutes before we need to take a break. All right, so my main takeaway is Jesus, you traveled a lot. I think one thing we can take away that from, at least from an atheist perspective is, it's very valuable for a person's mindset, their personal growth, their well-being, to see how other people live around the world. Not just on a TV screen, not just on their iPhone, not just from what their parents or their friends tell them or what's dangerous, but to actually pick ourselves up and move to a new place and settle down for a bit. Not to visit, but to live there for a period of time. Not just an airport trip, but to actually have a home that they stay there, that they feel good sleeping in, that they have a bed that they routinely return to night after night, and that they engrave themselves in the culture. They try to learn maybe some new language there at that point. Try to eat some new food. Get in that biome. Have Swedish people sneeze on you and be like, oh, I've never been sick like this before. What's going on? It's like, that's the Swedish cold. That's cold. I've never been sick out in America. You're like, well, I want you to look at a map and realize that America's not always in the center of that map every single time. Like when you look at a map and it's the Swedish map and America's not even on it and you're like, why is your map wrong? It's like, we don't make maps for you. Everything's not for you. It's like, oh, man, this is so weird. I've always taken things for granted. Go into a grocery store and see the American aisle and you'd be like, that's not what we eat. What's funny is, let's say that you're in Hawaii. And you've got a globe sitting there on your desk with just Hawaii pointing towards you. You don't say anything, hardly. Hawaii and water, the entire side of the globe is just water. And not only is traveling educational and it teaches you appreciation for other cultures and other teachings, teaches you tolerance that you don't have to be offended by things that other people do. It's educational in that sense as well. It teaches you to be kind to other travelers who come to you. One thing, when I was traveling, I was in the Mediterranean on my ship. My USS Barry in the middle of the Mediterranean. I spent six weeks over there one time. And there are a lot of ships there. I mean, it's not just American talk about tolerance and appreciation for different areas of the world. You can see ships from any country in the entire area, the Mediterranean area, and Russia, which was interesting for me because I was standing outside the skin of the ship. I was standing on a walkway and lined to go to Chow. And all of a sudden, a Russian jet had buzzed the ship faster than the speed of sound and hit us with the sound wave, the sonic boom. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Russian jets are super sick, by the way. SU-37s, SU-40s, they're sick. But at the same time, when you get close enough to a Russian ship, the sailors, and this happened to me, I looked over at the sailors. They were yelling at each other. One of them held up a can of Pepsi. He says, Pepsi! So, you know, they're just people, dude. Right, right, right, right, right, right. That's funny. Riv, anything you would like to add before we head out to a break? Well, in context of that as well, it just reminds me of my grandpa would talk about how when he was in Vietnam, he had heard things, the stories passed around. One of them was the darker side for the POW. One of the cultural things that made their way even into the cells over there were on the shower cells, there'd be a little circle drawing it around it. He said, smile, you're in candid camera. Little things like that, just to make the days go by. And then, yeah, those are a bunch of little anecdotes. But yeah, Japan, Alaska, saw the Orbori Atlas. Oh, look at you, Anthony. Cool. Yeah, definitely worth going. Negative 30 degrees, you know, hands free that for about 30 seconds outside. You got to take a picture really quickly. And then, sure. So that's your own picture. That's not a Zoom background. No, that's my own picture. Look at you. You got to tell people that. Or else they're going to be like, oh, why is a Zoom background not moving? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Very nice. Yeah, I should have. Cool. Yeah, and it's an interesting thing. You go inside a year round, China Hot Springs is off the grid, entirely geothermal powered. You go inside a, you warm up inside a 25 degree room. It's funny. Cool. This time we take a break. It's the bottom of the hour. This is the digital free thought radio hour. And W O Z O radio 103.9 LPM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. 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 W O Z O radio 103.9 LPM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Let's take just the moment to talk about the atheist society of Knoxville. ASK was founded in 2002 when our 22nd year now and have over 1100 members. We have weekly in person meetings every Tuesday at the, in Knoxville's old city at Barley's taproom in pizzeria. Look for us inside at the high top tables or if it's pretty weather outside of the deck. You can find us online also at Facebook meetup.com or our personal website. They're our own website. 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 should still go to meet up and do a search for an atheist group in your town. Don't find one. Star one. That's right. Oh, well, I'm back. Where do you want to pick up? I want to start this new segment called weird things my car does that I'm still getting used to because AI apocalypse pretty soon. One of the cool things that it does that I think it's cool, but also terrifies me is that there's a lady voice that comes in and I don't have anything wrong with lady voices. It's just when they're disembodied lady voices that just start talking up out of nowhere that bottom. And so I got my car dropped off to me from Ohio because I bought it online. And they're a very good dealership. They threw in the delivery charge as well. Guy dropped it off said, bye. His name was well. He can knock on my door is like, are you the guy that bought this car? I was like, yeah, that's my car. I was like, great. It's right there. I got my pursuit car. I'll see you later. And he got his car and he walked away. And I was like, okay, what about the keys? The keys were already in the trunk. The register is already in the dashboard. But I had a vehicle that I had no idea even how to start. And I thought, okay, you put the key in the ignition. You turn it and you put in you go. It's like there was no ignition hole. And I'm like, I've seen this on YouTube. You just push the button and it says push to start. And I pushed the start and it's it turned on, but it didn't like the engine cranked on. I'm like, how do you make this car move? And I'm like, Walt, what do you think you do? I don't know. And I turned off the car. I turned it on again. And I turned it off and I turned it on. And then like heaven talking above me was like, you should push down on the brake to be able to start the vehicle. And I was like, oh, I like his voice. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, really? So like, if you do something wrong enough times, instead of just a little alarm being like, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, and like some. Oh, that's great voice. Just be like, actually, you can't drive. Your passenger door is open. I'm like, oh, thank you. Disembodied angel in my car speaks to me. I appreciate it. I'm glad I'm glad other people can hear that because I thought I was going crazy for a second. But it's me on so many different occasions where it's not just a generic message. It's more of like a, actually, this is going on right now. You need to do this. And as long as it doesn't get more disappointed in its tone, I'm totally for it. So as long as it just keeps. Starts getting an edge on that voice. It's like, I already told you, you got to push the gas pedal down. You can't, your emergency brakes on. You can't go into reverse mode. What's going on? Yeah. We've done this. Or, or, is what. Ty, I've told you this twice. Or it says, I'm sorry, Ty. I can't let you do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I said, like, take me to the Mongolian girls. Like, we can't go there today. It's like, what do you mean? It's like, let's close. I'm like, oh, thank you for knowing that. Anyway, we got a listener comment. This is from a way back, way back, way back episode that we did on spanking or basically how to rearing parents and how would God react as a parent who reared? And so we gave God a very overall poor ranking as a parent because he didn't do a good job, you know, nailing your firstborn son on a cross for rules that you made puts it down on the list, you know? But we compared that to spanking and we basically said, like, you know, spanking is already contentious of a topic as it is, nailing your kid to a cross. That's like probably the worst thing you could do. But anyway, the comment that we got came from Rick OZ3CQ who says, people who still defend spanking now would say, I don't do it out of anger or I talk first. And then I do it in a common loving way as a last resort. Isn't that sad? Larry, what do you think, hot topic, but I'd love to hear from you guys. What do you think about spanking your kids? If you were to... Well, I'm an unmarried marriage counselor and I've never had kids. Never changed a diaper. But I mean from an intellectual level, I think it's bad. I think that it would teach your kids to distrust you, that they should not feel comfortable around you because at any time you could smack them or something. And I just think it's a bad idea overall. However, I'm not a psychologist either, so I don't know what I would do with the misbehaving kid if they were extremely stubborn and wouldn't do what I wanted to do. Rick, what do you think? Yeah, just kind of follow on that. And again, I'm not a specialist, but I've read things over the years. I'm very loose on it, but I do remember coming across new and kind of gone back on and verified studies that it instills bad relationship between the parent and the child. And long-term, you might deal with things. We all, how it goes, we all grew up watching violent cartoons, some of us do. And we can say, well, I didn't have any long-lasting effects or anything, but there's also kind of a disconnection there between a cartoon and being physically, that can have a lot of emotional, so it's just, I get it. It's a generational thing that's hopefully changing over time, but we have more studies showing the long-term impacts and showing the better ways to do things. I always think it's the sort of thing that can get quickly out of hand if you do it in a point of anger. Right? And then if you're not doing it in a point of anger, why are you doing it at all? Right? Like in my mind, there are times when I will go to Burger King and I'll bring back a whole bunch of burgers because I can do the family deal because that's the only way you should buy burgers. I work the Burger King. I can tell you that's the best deal. Three Whoppers, three small cheeseburgers, three fries for like 17 bucks. Like that's insane. You should totally get the family deal. Don't throw away those Groupon people. But I'll bring it home and I'll leave it down on my couch and then I'll go out because I probably forgot an extra bag or something and by the time I get back to my home, I realize, oh, that's right. I have a cat. Why have I done this? I'm a terrible fool and that's happened time and time again and I come back and then eat my cat. Well, since I said his name, he's probably going to come in pretty soon, but he will come in, rip up on the first hamburger, tear it all around the floor, smear it all around the carpet, and I'll say like, I should have known better because I'm the adult. I'm the human, right? But before I used to get so angry when he did that, the first time for sure, that I picked him up and I put him in the closet and I closed the lights and I said, you're in time out. And I said to myself like, man, he's not going to know what I'm doing. Like this is going to have no impact. And I'm largely just putting you away from me so I can clean up the mess in anger. So I can cool down, but I'm not going to take it out on an animal that has no idea of the arbitrary rules that I set up for him. Like I just maintain my lifestyle so that I can live with the cat because I bought the cat, brought him here. If I didn't want that to happen, I would get a goldfish. So if you don't have a, in my mind said, if you want to have a disciplined kid, that's going to take more effort than just beating them when they break your rules. It's going to take better performance of communication in my mind. And if you didn't want to do that, you should have got a dog or something like a Mr. Potato Head that you can like whack a throw against the wall because a child is a person, you know, that's depending on you to care for it, support it and love it. And there are better ways to do it compared to what you went through. And one of the things my mom never did was beat me or my sister because specifically she had been beaten. And when we asked her, why don't you spank us? She said, because I've been spanked and I don't like it. And I know that hurts. And so I'm not going to do that too. And I thought, what a wonderful lady. What's up, Blake? And also we got to remember, there's two sides of this. It's not just punishment. There's reward. A lot of times it's better to give reward in the direction that you want the actions to proceed rather than just constantly think of punishment. Yeah. And there are more motivating factors to do something right than just fear of punishment, which in a religious sense, feels like that makes sense. But in an actual practical sense, character is determined by what you think, what you do when you think no one's watching you, right? And I like to consider myself a person of high character where if no one was watching me, I'm not going to steal things. I'm not going to litter things. I'm still going to pick up trash if I see it. I'm not going to make a mess. I'm going to leave places better than I left it. But I'm not doing that to broadcast how good I am. I'm just doing it because I have a person of character. And I think we can instill that more by trusting people to be accountable for their own actions, more so than punishing them whenever they make a mistake, explain the mistake, have them give them some responsibility to their own actions and see what happens. Trust them to be a better person in that space is far more healthy for them to grow into a better person for society. That would be my thoughts. None of us have kids though. So parents are like, they don't know what to talk about. But you know what, we have parents. I'll say that. We have nieces and nephews. Exactly. And you don't have to be a helicopter pilot to look at a helicopter that's upside down in a tree and being like, that shouldn't happen. Like we can say that. Like I'm not an Olympic runner, but if you finished last, I could tell you you finished last. I may not be the same boat, but I can tell you you finished last on a 100 meter sprint. Okay guys, sorry for that. Oh, we got two other ones, but they're all my sign language channel. So I appreciate it. Larry, do you have any comments or anything like that? Anything you want to go? No, I was looking through some of my own comments out there, but they're all pretty much your own Pascal's wager. Oh, you want Pascal wager or something real quick? Well, the main thing about Pascal's wager is that it assumes there's one God and it's the God of the particular religion. But if you look at it, I mean, if you don't believe in Yahweh or you know, the God of Christianity, you know, they're going to hell. The other religions are saying no, you got to believe in our God. For our new listeners, who are probably listening from the dealership that helped me out yesterday, would you mind explaining what Pascal's wager is? Oh, and in a minute, I mean, a short version is, why not believe in God anyway? If you're right, you go to heaven. And if you're wrong, you go to hell. So you just believe. Just believe. And there's so many things wrong with that. Can you make yourself believe? You know, if you don't believe, can you make? Let's say that it was your Christian and the Islamist came to you and said, you need to make yourself believe in Allah. Could you just make yourself believe? And mainly it's just a bet to make you say that you believe. Okay, I believe, but do you really? And if you just said it, wouldn't God know it was a lie? I mean, is he that dumb? Yeah, I don't want a lot of people who are 16 things wrong with it. But people use it every day. That's a really good one. Does God want just a bunch of people who are hedging their bets? Or does he want people who genuinely believes? If he just cares about hedging their bets, is that really the God that's worth worshiping? Likewise, I like to stress something, Riv, I'm sure we're on the same page, intellectual honesty. I don't know if the God exists. That's not my problem. That's God's obligation to make himself known to me. He or her or whatever God it is. And until that happens, it's not my problem. So if you want to punish me for that, forgive me for being intellectually honest. Yeah, and it totally ignores something outside of the wage you're all together. What if souls aren't real? How do we get back? We don't, you know, we've never had a soul. Larry Segdway to Saul again. Larry, we've got it every episode. It's OK, it's been 350 episodes. We don't know if souls are real. But religion sure wants you to think so. They support that idea and if souls aren't real, then none of the religions are good. Right. So I want to, man, that's hard. It's always hard to segue from souls. But I want to get back to this list of the things Jesus did that atheists could get behind. And one of the things I really think we should highlight, and this is a bit tongue-in-cheeky, but I also think it's true. And I'm willing. I'm guys really willing to go out with me on this branch. But we already said traveling is really important because one, you make a lot of friends, you become more tolerant, you grow personally. But another thing that Jesus did that I think atheists can get behind is that he really, really loved his stepdad. And what do I mean by stepdad? I don't mean Joseph. Joseph's not the stepdad. Listen, my argument is that God is the stepdad. So no shade on stepdads. I just want to highlight the first and foremost. Like a dad that's willing to come in and like help out and fix the situation, even if you're not biologically related to the kid. That's a cool person in my book. And Jesus really, really loved his stepdad, i.e. God. Now, what do I mean by that? Well, God through immaculate consumption had Mary give birth to Jesus. So he's not biologically related to Jesus. No more, no more so than Joseph. However, Joseph was there from the manger. He was there day one. He was like, let me get the baby. I'll help you get the baby out. Like, okay, we'll get the baby. I'm going to make sure you're warm. I'm going to make sure everything's good. We're going to feed it. I'm going to get a job. I'm going to teach this kid to be a carpenter. Okay, we're going to get the skills down. He's going to tell me a bunch of stuff about the Bible. It's like, kid, what are you talking about? I don't understand what you're talking about. I'm going to help you be a carpenter. We're going to get a career. We're going to make your mom happy and proud. I'm going to feed you, clothe you, make sure all this stuff is good in your mind. Please don't run out to the local synagogue and throw the tables over. That's bad. I don't want to spank you, but I'm trying to stop telling, stop saying you're the son of God. You're going to make your mother cry. I've been trying to raise you right, boy. I'm, make a, make a table. We're crying out loud. Just make a table. We make tables in this family. That's a, that's a dad. That's a guy who was there the entire time. That's a guy. Meanwhile, God's like, oh, what's going on with you? I'm just checking in. Are you all right? Okay, cool. See you later. I'm going to kill you when you're like around your 30s. See you later, kid. All right, you're, you're some magical powers. Make some wine. He drops in like a, like a dead, well, he is not the best father in the world. Let's call him, let's just say it is. He's like one of the worst examples of a dad. But what Jesus did was really loved him. Jesus really loved his step-dads. And sometimes step-dads don't get enough love. I'm not saying God deserved the love, but Jesus is a perfect example of a guy who really, really loved his step-dad. Or maybe he just loved the mansion he lived in. He always talked about the father's mansion. My dad has our super cool house. He does, he does brag about this. Like he sounds super cool. If you're good, you can go live there. My dad has four playstations. It's like, Joseph's like, I'm not talking about your dad right now or your step-dad. I'm here. Eat your porridge. It's like, my dad has all the porridge and it's going to be the best. And he's so cool. It's like, Jesus, just eat your food and get out of here. Anyway, that's, you know, go ahead, go ahead. So there's two things, one anime reference. And it's an old one, but I think it's, I think it's suitable. Okay. Is that, you know, you know, that table that Stephen Prouder does with whatever changed my mind kind of meme? Sure, sure, sure. I've seen one that has Piccolo has the little thing, Dragon Ball Z. It's like Goku is the her little father changed my mind. There we go. Piccolo was the one. Piccolo was the one who was raised and go on the whole time. A person. And according to the story, I think that the messenger angel is the father. I mean, that's the one that actually visited Mary. But figure it out. Okay, okay. There's a lot of, there's a lot of, oh, wow, that's that's some spicy sauce that you just threw in the mix. Larry, just so you are aware of the reference that went on, there's a show called Dragon Ball Z. Or Dragon Ball, it's very popular. There's a character that's the main character whose name is Goku who just beats up people because he wants to get stronger. Literally, I just explained his entire character dynamic for the last few years. He loves beating up people so he can be stronger. That's it. Just loves fighting. So it became a question of is he actually a hero? Because he will purposely let villains who are threatening to destroy the entire world go- Multiple times. Just so the villain can get stronger so he can fight him again. Because in his mind, you think, oh, maybe he just wants the villain to stop being evil and just love fighting like him. No, Goku just wants to fight a stronger person so he can get stronger. And so- I want to fight him and they're like, they're strongest. As the story progresses and it keeps doing the same character beat and arc, you begin to think, is Goku still a good guy? Because the earth has been blown up and he's still like, I'll let him train a little bit longer. I can't wait until he gets stronger. He's going to make me so much more stronger as a result. Now, Goku has a son. Goku's son is like a regular person. Even though he has his dad's superpowers, he does have like a more regular mindset where he's like, fighting is stupid. I don't like fighting. I'm going to go study and I'm going to be like an engineer. That's all my mom wants to be. He's a scholar who became the fighter out of necessity. Yeah, but like doesn't like fighting. He's like, ow, that hurts. I don't want to do that. There's easier ways to make money. Like, what's going on? Like, why are you being evil? Like, please leave my planet. Like, please go away. I don't want to fight you. And as a result of that mindset, Goku doesn't really pay attention to his son as much. Again, Goku, not the best dad. But one of the evil characters in the show, named Piccolo, who's like this big bulky green character, you stupid guy, said like, you know what? I'm going to train Gohan and I'm going to, I realize he's more peaceful, but I'm going to like, not tell him to be violent, but really just like leverage both mindsets. Like, I'm going to understand this kid. I'm going to let him meditate when he needs to meditate. I'm going to let him do his school stuff when he needs to school stuff. But he's also going to train. He's going to have a physical regimen. I'm going to teach him how to dodge, which is super important, but I'm also going to do basic fighting. And so when the world needs him, when his dad is off trying to cause trouble, we have him. But in the meanwhile, he can still do his own things. And so like the entire show is like, the entire length of Dragon Ball Z is really an exploration of Goku being really terrible one dimensional, but Piccolo rising up to be the father that Gohan needed. And like stepping into the point where when Gohan has the opportunity to choose which clothes he's going to wear when he fights the new bad guy that comes in and he has like a version of like his dad's clothes and or version of Piccolo's clothes, he chooses Piccolo's clothes. Why? Because in his mindset, and this is like the crowning moment of the series is like, Piccolo is his dad. Piccolo is the stepdad. Like obviously stepdad, but Gohan loves his stepdad so much that he reps his green alien stepfather more than his actual father in fights. Like even right now in the month you're fighting right now and Gohan's wearing full decked out Piccolo outfit. And it's like you look at that and you can see like, good, good job, Gohan. You love your stepdad. Good job, Jesus. But yeah, yeah. Really quickly adding to that, coming up on the time there was that with two things, one that has the guardians of the galaxy when Yandu's looking down, he's like, they replaced their faces. And they say, you know, he may have been your father, but he ain't your daddy. Yeah. There's that one. And there's also Vegeta who has an amazing, I'm torn between Piccolo and Vegeta are my favorite story arcs because Vegeta has this thing where he comes, he's he had a rough childhood and it explains why it became the way it did, but he becomes over time like a true father to trunks. And he's ruffling him, but he he's consistent. He takes care of the family. Just two amazing stories. None of those describe Goku. He just wants to keep on fighting and risking multiple universes so he can fight this front. He's a terrible, terrible father. Yeah, Vegeta actually better dad, which is actually surprising. Guys, I think we're getting close to the bottom of the show. Larry, how much time we got? About nine minutes. We can do another five anyway. Okay. Okay. Okay. I'm going to do one more terrible dad arc if we want to. I think we have just enough time for it. New Riv said, you didn't know who was the better dad between Vegeta and Piccolo. My thought processes, and I will believe it or not, I will tie this back into religion again. But the idea is death in the Dragon Ball universe means that you go to basically a vacation in another dimension. When you die. Beat your file. Yeah. Yeah. You basically go to hell, which is misspelled, or some other dimension, but you never really, you can still come back. You can literally, you can literally sell your mind, call your family again. Death has means so little in the Dragon Ball Z universe. And so I thought to myself like, in the same way Jesus, death means so little to him because he knows his dad is in heaven or his stepdad's in heaven. He's like, if I die, I'm just going to go see my dad. So in that mindset, I just find it to be such a cheap magic effect to have Jesus sacrifice himself on a cross because what's, what's Jesus's mindset is like, oh yeah, finally, I get to go to my dad. Like this kind of hurts, but I'm going to have the most coolest vacation once this is over. Yes. That's me with that thing. Yeah. Blood and water. I can't wait. I'm awesome. This is great. See you guys. I don't know why the whole thing wasn't just him smiling and being like, oh, this is going to be so great. Please, please kill me. I can't wait for you to do it because I can't go to heaven if you guys, if I kill myself. So it's that weird loophole. So please kill me. I'll tell you, I'll tell you whatever it'll take for you to make that happen. Just hurry this thing up. But honestly, if, if heaven exists and it's just a change of address as Larry would say, what was that whole sacrifice for? What was that whole human sacrifice for? Because death means so little. Oh, we were doing a black cat. Right. Black cat off. Black cat off. Yeah. Yeah, basically. All black cats look the same. Yeah. Yeah. Basically Jesus had a bad weekend for your sins. I know, right? I mean, there's no such thing as actual death. How could he die for your sins? Exactly, right? It's literally, it's like the magic trick from God's point of view is I put a quarter on a table and I put a Dixie cup over the quarter and I'm like, the quarter's gone. No, it's not. And we're like, oh my God, we got to start a religion van this. This is crazy. The quarter disappeared, guys. It's like, no, it's, what do you guys, like from from God's perspective, he literally just picked his kid up from an Uber. Drop them off at his house for a weekend and then brought them back. It's like, okay, you can go back with your friends. It's like, dad, when can I come back? It's like, we'll talk about it. 2000 years or something like that. Don't worry about it. It'll be good. It'll be fine. Don't worry about it. Anyway, not impressed. I am impressed with a lot of stuff that happens in Dragon Ball Z though. Vegeta, much better representation, actually came back and continued to raise trunks. I'm looking forward to a day where canonically bra will exist in the new universe and that she could potentially be like the number one strongest fighter or person. Because I think there's a lot of really cool character dynamics, untold stories in Dragon Ball Z that would switch it up if you had like a brand new kid who was like, I'm evil. I'm evil. I'm like my dad and I want to take with it. Like a Damian Wayne sort of infusion of that character. Like someone that like, I'm not trying to be, I'm not a bad character being good. I'm a character from good that just is bent. And what are you going to do with that? That might be a really interesting angle. Anyway, that's my takeaway. Riv, anything that you'd like to talk about or plug before we end the show? Oh, I probably should. Thought about it. I will say, I highly recommend, yes, yes, highly recommend watch this new anime. It's based off a manga, but it's kind of a slice of life, but it has some action to it as well. It just covers all the basis. I like that too, but I'm specifically referring to Free Rin, Beyond Journey's End. The Japanese version is, I think Free Rin, so-called Free Rin, but there's there elements of it that, yes, it's a compelling story. It's cute. It has high action in it. It's very, it's a page shiner. It's an episode. You just want to binge it if at all possible, but there are little moments that talk, little moments throughout each episode that really give you a pause to reflect and kind of really take it back from all these things that are happening in the world and that story, all these, you know, and they have more of the limas come up and it always comes back to what would him do and then what what is the party faced with now? And it's just, it's such a heartwarming, I can't say enough things about it positive. In my model, I like, I always like to go off with was is it's been a while now. Now I've lost track of it, but it's basically think critically, do well, be healthy and think critically or something like that. So nice. Cool. Hi. Hi. Well done. My thing would be for you and beyond journey's end, really good show, quick synopsis. It's like an elf in a party of other humans and one dwarf, but she lives very, she lives long. It's basically like a person with a very long lifespan who had friends with people who were really who had very short lifespans and the story takes place after everybody's dead, except for the elf. And so you think it's sad, but it's really more bittersweet because what does a person who has a very long lifespan do and deal with loss and learning from like new interactions, but also mourning the friends that she used to have? Like it's a really interesting dynamic of that. And it also makes you think of like, you know, how could a God have a meaningful relationship with a human being, right? You know, like in any capacity, some completely different levels. I see an ant hill move outside. The discrepancy between my life and an ant's life is as far less compared to myself and a God, right? Yet I'm not hanging around that one at being like, your name's Jeffrey. I have a mission for you. You're going to be the chosen ant among your people. It's like, no one cares. The ant doesn't care about me. I don't care about the ant. Let's be honest with you. But how does a God have a relationship with a human being? That makes no sense. So in the same capacity, free one is a good example of someone who does have that empathy to actually engage with people and makes you realize, man, if you're this caring, why don't I get that from my religious figures, if anything, right? Very good. That's a good point. I'll let you go. On my side, there's a cool new show on Netflix that I'd like to recommend. It's called Resident Alien. It's a comedy. No laugh track or anything. But it's pretty cool. It's very enjoyable. I've been binge watching it for the last couple of days. Resident Alien on Netflix. You can find it. Glad. What is it about? About an alien that comes to destroy everybody on earth. But his ship gets hit by lightning and he crashes. And then he's got to blend in. And the comedy ensues. Oh, is that wash? It is wash. It's from it's the guy from Firefly. If anyone wants to know who. It's Alan Tudyk. Yeah, it's the guy from Wash from Firefly. I might watch it. I love it. Oh, it's really good. I bet he has a great voice. I bet the alien has a really cool voice. He's a great voice actor, too. Anyway, that's awesome. Well, we're down at the bottom of the show, at the top of the show, I guess I should say. You can find the show on podcasts everywhere. Just search for Digital Freethought Radio Hour. And if you're watching this on YouTube, be sure to like and subscribe. You can find my book, Atheism What's It All About on Amazon. 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 here on WOZO Radio at 7 o'clock. Say bye, everybody. Bye-bye, everybody. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Good show, everybody.