 and then we close the show. 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, April 14th, 2024. I'm Larry Rhodes or a DJ, Dowder 5, and as usual we have a co-host Wombat on the line with us. Hello Wombat. I'm the Wombat. 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, 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, I'll guarantee it. In Knoxville, in the middle of the Bible Belt, we have a group of over 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. Wombat, what's our topic today? Movies. We're talking about movies, we're talking about some of our favorite movies, and how we can make them even better, including infusing them with the glory of Jesus Christ. Oh goodness. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought it would be good. You know, as we wrap up the 365 episodes of this show that we've done, let's have some fun with it and discuss some of our favorites. Two more after today. I know we got to let everybody else know, but why not talk about some of our favorite forums, media, favorite video games, have it be more focused on us and getting and transitioning away from just bashing on Christianity is all our friends say. Also, we'll have some of our comments at the end of the show, too. I wanted to talk about our favorite movies. Larry, I know you happened to be a big Shrek fan. I did not. I never knew that was such a thing as well, when you gave me your list of movies and it was like Shrek was one of them. Yeah, yeah, it was a top one. I've watched it probably five, six times. You came from like the golden age of movies. You had like the original pillow talk you had gone with the wind. You had like the Tiffany's, the true American movie classics. And I asked you, OK, so what's your favorite movie all time? Shrek. Yeah. OK, well, you know, it just hit all the buttons. I don't know why. I love the good animation. And it was some of the best animation. It covered a lot of topics like talking animals and dragons and love and just everything. And he was a monster, my beauty and the beast, you know, kind of thing. It kind of had everything. It had a lot of jokes in it. Sure, it's a good time. It's a good time. It's a sort of movie where it doesn't really matter what five minute section you're watching, you're going to have a good time regardless. Like there's no point where you're just like waiting for the next thing to happen. There's always something very mean. There's always always something good going on. You know, one of the reasons why I love animation is because every frame, every frame costs so much money to make, especially in the early days of animation, that it wasn't necessarily made by committee, but it was sort of passed through, hey, if it's going to cost us a million dollars to make this 30 second piece, let's make sure it really, really matters or has a lot of weight to it. Because otherwise, you're just going to waste a lot of time. If it's just two characters staring at each other, we're wasting money. So like throw some gingerbread men in there in the background and have to eat your eggs in there. Make something happen. Yeah, tell us it's not on your to-do list. Little things like that. You know, slaying the dragon is not on my to-do list yet. Right, right, right. That cost too much money. We need something else. I did like a lot of the animations that came out when I was growing up, CGI stuff. I remember I had pics. So I grew up, started with Toy Story One when Pixar came out. And that was around preschool for me. Like, I remember when that movie dropped. And then percussively, like every four or five years, there was a new toy story that came out. And I had to keep hearing the, you got a friend of me song. I just thought to myself like, okay, why is this movie come out? And then I go there and Andy's a little older and he's my same age. And I'm like, okay, that's fine. I guess I'll let this go through. Then Toy Story Three comes out. I'm like, they didn't need to be a three. I saw two. There was an end. All right, fine. I watched the third one. Oh, and Andy's a little older. He said he's in high school too. That's interesting. That's weird. He's not playing with his toys either. I wonder where my toys are. And then finally, Toy Story Four came out. I'm like, there's no need for Toy Story Four. Like, the toys don't even want a Toy Story Four. And then they finally did it. And like, Andy's in college. And I'm like, I'm in college. And he's just like here. You grew up with Andy. Somewhere, somewhere, somewhere, there was like some place that has like all my old toys, hopefully. Yeah. Maybe they've been used by a new generation of kids, right? Maybe a junior generation of kids. Maybe they're a new cup or maybe they're a car panel somewhere. How would that movie be made better? Uh, so, you know, the idea that we had for today's show was we have these two competing interests almost in all cases, science fiction. And when I say science fiction, I just mean literally like having fun with science and the themes of science and Jesus. And what I mean by Jesus is like having a spiritual message put into your story, where people are more recognizing the fact that they are mortals, and that the only true way to salvation is through the blood of Jesus Christ. Let's get them back on the plan, the one true plan, if you will. And you can't really mix those two together without either sounding really preachy or being really hand-fisting with it. But you do have these two elements that are sort of like salt and pepper, right? And I wonder like, what movies in our favorite cavalcade of movies would benefit from a little bit more science fiction versus a little bit more Jesus Christ? Like, could we make a better shrek if we threw in some science fiction into it? And would it actually be better as a result? Or what if we threw in some Jesus Christ? Would that make the movie even better? And I wonder which of these two ingredients would consistently be the better spice? I'm assuming that when you say throw in a little Jesus Christ into the movie that you're referring to a biblical Jesus Christ and not some fictional or I guess it is fictional, but not some random off-the-wall version of Jesus Christ. One that would push a moral story sanctioned by the church. Exactly. So if you had donkey and shrek, they're walking down and they're doing their shenanigans, and then all of a sudden donkey stops and he says, listen, I cursed in the last scene when we left that gingerbread house. And I want to remind us that God does not like cursing and that we should honor our mother and father. And then they just nod their heads and then they just keep going to the next scene. Like, wouldn't that be a gritty way? Nothing like adding a little guilt to a good time. It would certainly, to me, it would bring the movie down. It would bum it out. You're bummed out. Like, oh, what was that bummer? Okay, I mean, there's a lot of cool things that you could throw in with Jesus lessons. I mean, he could be eating like a meal of fish and realize he doesn't have enough fish and bread for all of his friends, so they pray. And then next thing you know, there's just a bunch of fish and bread all over the place. That'd be a cool way. No, I think that the problem with it would be that just having him appear in there would throw a whole different light on the movie because it would shift the person's viewpoint while watching it from one of enjoyment and fun and comedy to guilt and sin and death and redemption and all that stuff. But we just, the total amount of baggies it would throw into the movie. But the thing about it is, there are churches out there that won't let kids see movies like Shrek or even Woody Woodpecker, I'm sure, or any of the other films that are quote of the world because they want to keep them sternly and firmly thinking about Jesus and heaven and hell and sin and redemption all the time. It's kind of a knowledge bubble that they don't want the kids to break out of. And of course, they wouldn't be able to access the internet or anything like that either. But of course, some religions are much more progressive and do allow it, so I don't want to dismiss them all. I thought it was funny that you brought this up because typically, whenever anything gets very popular, one of two things happen, it gets so popular that Christians either say it's evil and we need to stop having it and it's completely ungodly and it shouldn't belong in our church. And then the next thing that happens, which isn't necessarily like the alternative, but oftentimes the consequential next step is that it gets so popular that it becomes parts of sermons and there's like Christian plays that are based off of it and people will be like, no, it was always a Christian movie. It was always a Christian thing. We've always had this in Christianity. And I'm looking at pastors that have given in 2021 or 2001 sermons detailing how Shrek is in fact a message, a Christian family movie because they have references to Talking Donkeys, which is given in Numbers 22-28. They have the Song of Hallelujah, which is a song by Lierner Cohen mentions that there's a secret God or a secret core that David played that please God has a citation for it. There's also a green giant and we know how much of the Bible loves giants. That's something I'm hearing about creatures which are all portion of the first chapters, first books and then forgotten the rest of the time. Your favorite movie is a Christian movie this whole time. That's all the pastors would tell you. They just say, oh, okay, you like Shrek. Did you know that was a Christian movie? Let me explain to you why. For me, one of my favorite movies growing up was Home Alone. I don't know if you're familiar with that. Have you ever seen it? Oh, yeah. Yeah. One and two. I don't think they made a three, did they? They did. They made a three. There's even a four out. Wow. They have a different kid that's a different kid this time. It's not the same vibe. It's not even the same filming. It looks like a Hallmark special compared to the old school versions. In the similar sense of Home Alone and Willy Wonka, I'll throw these two movies out because everyone in Willy Wonka, everyone who remembers Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, remember only the parts where Willy Wonka comes out and they start doing the crazy shenanigans in the movies in the Chocolate Factory where there's like kids being sucked up tubes and there's Oompa Loompas dancing around. But a lot of people don't realize that's like the last fifth of that movie. There's a whole four. Oh, yeah. That movie even begins. Right. The front. The whole front part to me was just boring. If you know about the last fifth, yes, the first four fifths are boring. But if I didn't know about them, then I'm actually really invested in the story that's being brought up and just blown away by how everything like this incredibly long climax of just happens because I was not prepared for that kind of movie happening. And that's how I felt when I watched Home Alone because I thought Home Alone was going to be like a sad movie about a kid who just like left the loam because his parents. Why did you watch it? Because it was like on TV because we had a substitute teacher and I'm just like, I don't know about this movie. And my mom never got a chance to see it. We never had a lot of opportunities to go to the movie theater. So I'm watching it and the whole movie sad because it's like this kid's home alone. And I'm like, this is his whole family. His big family left. His whole family just left without him. And he's just like, oh, I and I don't even get along with them. And they just completely. The problem for those who may not have seen it is the family was so large. Yeah. He had like five or six brothers and sisters is that they were trying to get everything ready to go to the airport and get on the plane. And I just didn't notice that little kid wasn't there with him. Not only that, but it felt like for a period of time, they didn't even know he was gone. So like his impact on the family was so minuscule that I just felt like, man, this is a sad situation. Not only that, plus he has robbers trying to like rob his home or slash kidnap him at the same time too. Like this is a situation. I hope he comes out of this. Okay. But the whole time the kids just like, you know what? What I need to do. And this is the part where I start thinking about like the two modes of thoughts. I'm going to make lemons out of lemonade and start figuring out what I can do in my home to like properly protect myself. I'm going to get that tape recorder set up. I'm going to get that cardboard cut out of that cowboy. I'm going to get that those pink cans up on the screen. Yeah. I'm going to put the marbles on the stairs. I'm going to make this whole, this is my home. This is my home. It's a whole rocky situation. You know, Rocky's also another movie where it gets really, really ramped up at the very end, but the whole movie is a very slow start. But home alone, very slow start. And then finally, you have this beautiful cascade of like built, you built up this, you have the setting. You could have gone in a sad direction and said you wanted a nice engineering science fiction direction. And you're like, I'm going to do engineering to protect myself. This one kid taking initiative. But he's setting up, setting up, setting up. And then the neighbors come or the robbers come and they grab the doorknob and it's super hot. And they're like, ah, we're going to kill this kid. Then they open up the door. The pink cans hit their face. You're like, oh, when he did that, then they climb up the stairs and they fall because of the marbles. And then they're like, what's that? What the hell's going on in this house? We, we, we're so agitated by this kid. We're going to take this kid down and every step of the way, the kids like completely making sure he's one foot ahead of them until the very end, when he runs out of his bag of tricks and he finally has that one crazy neighbor help him out. I just thought, and then the mom finally comes home. He's like, oh, I finally found you. I'm like, that's a cool movie because I feel like the kid was able to take care of the stuff. But yeah, it was very resourceful. Yeah, very resourceful. It changed the way how I saw everything in my home afterwards. I felt so independent as a kid. And I felt like I was in the movie with the crazy neighbor be Jesus. Maybe what if, what I was thinking is, you know, he spent a lot of time building and engineering. What if he just prayed? What if the movie in the, in the second act was instead of like, I'm going to build a bunch of stuff to protect myself? He's like, you know what? I'm just going to rely on the blood of the lamb to get me out of this tough situation. Oh, Heavenly Father. Yeah, and didn't do anything else. Sooner or later, sooner, preferably more than later. Can you please protect me from these evil people who are coming through my door? In fact, I'm putting all of my faith in you. And he just prays and there's like the music coming down. And then it's finally Christmas miracle. The robbers go to the wrong home or something like that. And they rob some other kids home and they steal some other kid. And he's like, thank you, God, for letting them steal the black neighbors who live next to me. Not me. Amen. And then it cut the credits. I'd be like, Hey, you know what? Well, he probably just gave somebody an idea. So I'm going to go out and make it now. Yeah. My misfortunes were given to the brown people next door. Thank goodness. Thank you, God. Thank you, God. Thank you. No. No, I don't think it would make it a better movie. Christmas classic. No, no, no, no. You said keep the science fiction. Okay. And what what they'd probably do in a movie if they made it was make the next door neighbors Muslim. So they would be praying to the wrong God. Okay. So oh, Larry, you made the worst movie possible. So yes, you have the Christian neighbors who forget their one kid and you have the Muslim neighbors who are like totally fine, normal citizens, but they get janked by robbers because the Christian prayed to have their house. And that teaches you two lessons. One, you want to be on God's side and you don't want to be not on God's side. So or if you're not on God's side, then you're doomed. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hit the Bible. You got to do what you got to do. Lessons learned. It's all about the lessons, Larry. That's all it is. Okay. What about Guardians of the Galaxy? What how would that make it a better movie? Why is that your favorite movie? First of all, oh, well, I love humor and movie. It's got a lot of humor in it. I love science fiction. I love action did a lot of action in that movie explosions and ship and fights and stuff. One of my favorite scenes is how that guy controls a little arrow that answers to his whistles. Okay. That's awesome. But I don't know, I don't think it would be better by adding religion to it. Oh, you know, I don't think any of them would. But yeah, that's just me. It's very interesting that you bring that up because I would almost recommend and I know you love video games that there's a Guardians of the Galaxy video game. Have you heard of that game yet? No, I'll have to look it up. I would highly recommend it. I'll give you a link to it after the show. But there is a Guardians of the Galaxy video game released by Adios Montreal, I believe. It is amazing. It's absolutely amazing, though your the thing is video games are a lot longer than movies. So you will play this video game for roughly 40 hours, maybe even 50 hours. And when you are done with that video game, those characters faces and their personality and their voices will become your Guardians of the Galaxy more so than who the people are in the movies. Like you will like bond with these people. Yeah. At first you'll be like, they don't look like how they they don't look like the actors. And then at a certain point, you'll be like, I am these people. And then you think like, this is the only way they could ever be. And then you go back and you're like, whoa, who are you guys? This is so weird. That was the thing they had. But the villain in that movie is actually a pretty good analogy for overdogmatic religions, because there's a there's a sequence in the video game. And I'm not giving too much away where life becomes very difficult for people in the universe. And so someone's offering us a way out that doesn't necessarily resolve the problem, but basically distracts you from the problem by focusing on some sort of religious figure. Right. And so a lot of people are now migrating towards this religious figure. And it's like up to you and your crew to either contend with that with a, hey, truth is a hard pill to swallow. I have a I only have the truth on our side. And it's not very delicious, but we need to swallow it so we can deal with our problems versus even members on your crew realizing like, you know what, it's a lot easier for Junior to just do what this guy's saying and add to his, you know, his messaging. And like that that that that message of, you know, life is difficult, but you still got to live it, you know, like you still got to address it. That's such a was such a powerful message to me for that game. And you end up saying and doing things as Peter Quill in that game that makes me feel like, man, at the end, I was crying. It was just such a good story. He goes through so much emotionally. And when the video game is over and you go back to the movies, you're like, who are you, dude? Like, I don't have a problem with you as a as a as a movie cast, but I just figured like 60 hours with these other characters, man, I'd rather play a sequel to Guardian of the Galaxy, the video game than watch another 10 Guardians of the Galaxy movies. It's just so good. Highly recommended. I'll send you. Yeah, I'll definitely try it. Thank you. I need a good recommendation every once in a while. I just finished the two Jedi games and I love both of them, especially then you're a third person. Oh, you'll love third person. OK, OK, OK. Oh, and also that woman who weigh in the future, who kills the machines or hunts the machines that have turned animals, basically, you told me about it. Yeah. Horizon Zero Dawn. Yeah. Yeah, that's a third person game. And I loved it. So you'll love this game because there's also a nice little mechanic where as you fight with your team, you have a cassette tape that can be set to like old school songs from like the early 80s. Oh, great. And if you punch it, you get to do a team huddle where you get to like give like a pep talk, but it's based based on the conversations that you've had in the past. So you have to pay attention to like all the lines. And if someone's like having a down day because Rocker Raccoon couldn't find a screwdriver, you have to like give a pep talk that's all about finding the right tool for the right job, which gets him charged up. And if you get like the right messaging lined up, he's pumped up. Everyone else is pumped up. And then like they start playing like a brand new song instead of like really fight music. It's like, I don't give a blank about your reputation. And it feels so good to just have everyone like bond as a team. Also, it's a sort of game where it's like the Goonies. Maybe we can talk about the Goonies next half. Yeah. No one ever shuts up. There's always conversations with your team going on in the background. So if you just stand and listen, you could listen to like hours and hours at a time. But yeah, honestly, you need to like come on guys, we need to do the next thing. It's like, oh, but this guy's yelling. I was like, doesn't matter. Come on guys, we can even move forward. You're always like the guy who's like trying to keep things going as best as you can, even though you're one human in the group. Okay, cool. I'll have to try it. It'll be my next game. Nice, man. Highly recommend. Highly recommend. I give it a 10 out of 10. You will do some really, really sincere things. It's a good game. If you love the Jedi games, I love this more than the Jedi games in my opinion. Okay. Cool. Cool. Next movie. Okay. We got like, we didn't talk about how it would be made better with Jesus. No, I was I was saying the video game addresses it. If you want to know how it is, and I don't want to spoil it for you since we're talking about on the show, but you get to see people recognize that dogma that just distracts you from your problems while a good temporary or feels good temporarily is actually not the long term. It's detrimental to you in the long run. It absolutely is. And so the whole game is about understanding, listen, things aren't perfect. Things kind of suck. Life is hard. It's not going to necessarily always get easy, but it's the life that we got to live. You know, everything else that's what this guy's telling you is a lie. It's just a simulation. It's a magic trick. We need to focus on us to get better. Like that's how we don't be distracted from your life and hope some of a good afterlife. That's right. Listen, that's the game you should play next, Larry. You would absolutely love it. Definitely. Well, okay, cool. My let's say we got a quick one. Let me do one other one. Honey, I shrunk the kids is one of my faves. The reason why is because I when I you're when you're really small, the you realize that adults don't see things the way you do. And that you're almost living as if you're in your own world where like cabinets aren't as big as you want them to be. Cups are too big for you. Plates are too big for you. Bags or groceries are too heavy for you. And you think like, man, when will I ever get to the age where things finally feel like they're around my size, right? And so when I saw Honey, the shrunk the kids is sort of like seeing adults get shrunked back to a paradigm where I may think, whoa, this world wasn't made for me, but it is the world that exists for a lot of people, you know. And so when I saw Honey, the shrunk kids, I felt like, yeah, finally, adults are going to understand how I feel. But I also thought to myself, man, what if we got rid of the science fiction aspects of this and just had to be where the parents get shrunk down and for them to get right back to the regular size, they pray to God. And they they confess their sins to the Almighty Father and they let them know that they are not perfect, but they are willing to open up their hearts to the one true of truth, the King of all kings and the glory of all glories. Well, as usual, that theme overlooks the fact that he allowed them to get in that predicament in the first place. God gives people tests. Sorry. He doesn't know the answer to the tests. He's not all knowing. You know, people always started a certain point and say, God, help me going forward. And but they never never back it up to the point where they got in the trouble or the car accident or, you know, lost their job or whatever. Right. Right. Why wasn't God looking out for me then? I prayed before that. Yeah. And praying for good things to happen to me and how come this bad thing happened to me. A lot of people don't realize that every moral story with God is basically a guy who dug a ditch like a hole in the ditch, put like a false top on top of it and waited like eagerly as you're walking towards it. Like the Garden of Eden. Yeah. And just staring at you, smiling, smiling. And you're like, what's going on here? And then you suddenly fall 20 feet and you break both your legs and he looks over the top and he's like, I could give you a rope. And you're like, I'll take a rope, please. And you climb yourself out the rope. And he's like, I gave you a rope. And you have to be like, thank you for giving me the rope. The end. And you're like, what a weird story. It's like you're in a really bad situation. It's like, no, I tested you and I gave you a rope afterwards. That's how we're back. Like Garden of Eden. Why did he put the tree in the garden? And once they did it, why was he walking around the garden looking for him? Did they know where everything and I see everything? Isn't he everywhere at once? It's like he's just playing games with them. He was. It's basically when I like pretend to throw a doll for my cat and my cat's like, where's the doll? And I'm like, I have the doll still in my hand. Let's look for it together. I put it in my pocket. It's the same. You ever see those magic tricks when they're done on an animal, like a dog or something? Yeah. Yeah. And they're just totally taken back because they have no concept of where it could have been. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I saw a guy doing it to gorillas at the zoo. And that's just so well sad, actually, because they have no concept to what's going on. Sure. Sure. I can totally see that. I could also say like, man, animals are super smart and we're not much different, you know? I think it's just the subversion of our expectations affect on just humans, but like that's a really good trick to show like animals know what's up. I love the one where they have a mirror in the woods or a jungle and they'll have like a walk across it and the bear's like, what in the world is this? I've never seen this before. And then after a while, they're like, oh, it's me. That's interesting. What's going on here? Very few animals have the ability to recognize themselves in a mirror. Yeah. I'm not sure bear does. But I mean, the one I saw where the bear found the mirror, within seconds that mirror was broken on the ground. There are such things as dumb bears and smart bears. I'll take your word for it. I haven't seen a smart one. Don't let the dumb bears control your entirety of all the population. Bear's like, we're out with that bear. That's why that bears. Okay. We need to take a break. Are you, are you ready for it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And this is the digital free thought radio hour and W. O. Zio radio 103.9 LPF. I'm 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 in W. O. Zio radio 103.9 LPF. I'm here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Let's take just a moment to talk about the atheist society of Knoxville. ASK was founded in 2002. We're in a 22nd year now and we have over 1100 members. We have weekly in person meetings every Tuesday evening 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 on the deck. You can find us on Facebook, meetup.com by visiting our website at KnoxvilleAtheist.org or 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. Start one. Start one. Right. One that we want to pick up. I do want to, I want to go back to Bears real quick. Bears real quick before we move on. Bears real quick before we move on because, you know, I always worry about the alien race that comes, visits us for the first time. And they're like, you know, let's just pick it anywhere on the planet. It doesn't really matter. Let's just pick. And I don't want to pick on anybody. Let's pick on some people. Arkansas. We'll just go to Arkansas. And then there's a weird little, like, plant, plant, and they like suck those people up and they're like, this is the humanity, guys. We're going to run some tests on these people and they'll represent how everybody is on this planet. I'd be like, don't do that. Don't do that bear. No, not bear. Please. Please. Like, look at this. They don't even know, like, we're throwing, like, we're juggling and we're, they can't even count the number of things. And I was like, oh, come on, guys. We just lost all our listeners to Arkansas. But still, I'm just saying, you can look at one bear and be like, the bear is like, what's going on? And be like, that's how all bears are. It's like, don't. Okay. I apologize. It was a second chance. It was a second chance. Some bears are like, oh, we don't know this guy. We don't know this guy. There's a lot of different kinds of bears. We're all, we're all different. Some of us have degrees. Some of us can ride bikes, you know, we have some. Some of them are, some of them are yogi, some of them are boo boo. Right, right, right. Maybe, uh, how about let's transition into, um, yogi the bear is a comedy animation that's had a couple of live action movie spin-offs in the spirit of how they've done live action, Garfield, Smurfs, taking classic shows from nineties and turn them into live action. They did the same thing with Alvin, the chickmunks, Scooby-Doo, you might be familiar with them. My thing is, this is like a, I'll throw them into the same bag because they're all generally of the same quality. Like they'll take the cartoon characters, turn them into CGI, and then get some like C-tier actors to like be around them. And basically you go to the movies and relive your childhood. My thing is, there are some cases where I do feel like I've been given a moral message in, in, in the stories, and then some cases where moral messages are in no way ever clear or close to them. And I feel like here's my, here's my split. Casper, the friendly ghost, that is a movie that always has, or a TV show that always has some sort of message along with it, with some hints of spirituality, right? Casper's always trying to make friends with somebody. Right. As soon as they realize he's a ghost, they're like, I don't want to be your friend anymore. And Casper's like, aw, but we got along so well. And that's how this thing ends. And you think to yourself, man, if I'm just willing to put past my biases, maybe I can get to know some really cool ghosts and maybe I should be so afraid and prejudiced by people all the time. I'm like, yeah, I get that. I feel that. Whereas Yogi Bear is like, I'm going to steal picnic baskets. And he does. And there's no repercussions whatsoever. Even the cops try to stop him. It's like, stop trying to make me steal picnic baskets. I'm a bear. It's in my, it's in my, in my, oh, what's it, in my jeans. Yeah. It's in my nature. It's in my nature. I'm going to get, I'm going to teach a kid to do the same thing. I'm not changing my ways. You came to my house. You came to my house to bring picnic baskets. That's my property now. I never got, I never got the point of a Yogi Bear, but I'm just like, keep doing what you're doing. So like some cartoons are all about that moral learning lesson. And then some are just like, just have fun. Just have fun. And so I like. So let's add Jesus to it. Okay. How would that change it? I think adding cast, I think adding Jesus aspects to the Casper might work pretty well. Like you could say, for example, I was talking about Yogi, but we can do it. We can go to Casper. I'll do both. I'll do both. It's easy. Casper, basically when the friend doesn't want to happen, Jesus can be like, Oh, but he was a Palestine. Well, why isn't, why isn't the Casper in heaven or hell? He shouldn't be still here. Oh, it's like, so, okay. So every single time no one wants to be Casper's friend, they could be like, Oh, but you deserved it because you're probably like gay or something like that. And then it'll be like, Oh, okay. That's fair. Totally fair. Totally fair. Now I understand why I have a lifetime of purgatory ahead of me because I was, I was unclean. Unworthy for heaven, but not bad enough for hell. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He has to like, you know, learn how to be a bit more heterosexual and, and look by property and, and, and fit that social expectation. And then you'll be able to go. Yeah. You know, I'm old enough to have read the comic books long before there was ever a movie. Yeah. They used to have the comic books. I thought were pretty good. Of course, I was a kid at the time. Wendy, you remember Wendy, the little red witch girl? I have big recollections. Yeah. Well, that was a spinoff of Casper. She was Casper's friend. Oh, so she was friends with a witch. There you go. That's why he's talking purgatory. Yeah. But, um, you can, you can imagine having Jesus in a, in a movie with a little red witch girl. Right. But actually, you know, I believe the, the, you know, the Bible talks against witches. I mean, how did the, uh, the Puritans treat them? Because they were Christians. You know, they were always looking for a witch, you know, and Evan in Europe, they had European witch trials. So I don't think that would have worked out well for Wendy. No, Jesus was in there. In the same context, I'm, and I want to really nail this down. Wasn't there a book series where you had these two boys and one boy was kind of lazy and he always had like some something wrong with his life and the other boy was well behaved and he always had something good with his life. Do you remember the name? Yeah. That was part of, um, oh, it was a, a children's magazine that was always laying around schools. Right. Right. It was like almost boys life or something like that. It was like, yeah, it's kind of like that, but it was more animated and had, had stories and cartoons and puzzles in it. Right. It's like Simon didn't wash his hands and all of his friends are brown. Goofus and gallant. Goofus and gallant. There you go. Yeah. What, what if Jesus Christ was always in the Casper cartoons, but you never saw him because he was already in heaven. And so you have a Goofus and Gallant. If we threw in Jesus, it's basically Jesus in heaven being like, I am perfect and everything here is pretty awesome. Whereas Casper is down on earth and he's like, oh man, I'm my friends are witch and I'm so lonely. And it's like, Jesus is like, my friends are witches and everything's awesome. And Casper's like, oh, I'm so sad. And he's just like, everything's great up here. I want, I don't have to worry about anybody else but me. No, Wendy, which was very sweet. She was, she wasn't evil at all. No, that goes against the stereotype. Right. Witches are awesome. My, I, when I lived in Knoxville, my, I probably told you about this before, but my neighbors who lived right underneath me in our complex for both witches, practicing with Wiccan witches. Really? Well, not, but old Wiccan witches, they're like in their 60s or 70s and they would leave like fruit on my door when I came home from, from work. They knew about the radio show that I was doing. I'd help them with the laundry. They let me walk their dog. We've gotten along very well. They had, they, they've invited me over for food before. They loved Western jewelry. They're like, we're kind of like quasi cowboy witches. But yeah, they were super cool. Super cool. And when I saw them know I was an atheist, they're like, oh, wow, that's awesome. Because we don't like you here very often, but Knoxville actually had a lot of flavorful people. So yeah, yeah. Okay. All right. All right. Let's go to the next one. We said we talk about Yogi. Now, how do you infuse the only thing that Yogi needed was to repent for his sins? So like, what And stop doing it. Can't just repent. He doesn't have to stop doing it. He has to repent because God doesn't care what you do. He just cares if you repent or not. Right. That's the thing. You know, I have these conversations with Christians online, generally, they say, you just want to, you're an atheist because you just want to sin. And you know, my response is, you know, oh, if I wanted to sin, I'd stay a Christian because I could get forgiven for anything. There you go. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. Yeah, that's pretty true. Because it doesn't matter. Good people don't know, good people don't go to heaven. It's only the people that, you know, pledge their soul to God that go to heaven and repent for their sinful ways. Right. The result would be Yogi steals mountains and mountains and picked up baskets until he gets to his old age. And he's on his deathbed as Boo is like looking over him. He's like, you're going to make it, Yogi. And Yogi is like, nope, this is my time. But let me do one last thing before I see the sweet heavenly pearly gates. And he claps his hands together. He's like, oh, father, please forget me for all the picnic baskets I've stolen in my past. I am a repentant bear willing to be washed in the blood of the lamb. Please, father, amen. And then God's like, okay, fine. I'm sure a lot of people are living their life just like that. It's like, yeah. I'll sin a little while longer. And then his whole soul goes up to heaven. He's just like, ah, no regrets boo boo. No regrets. Use me as an example. I did it my way. I thought you were going to say, let me pray one last time. I'd like to have a picnic basket. No, no regrets whatsoever. That's the gangster way of going out. OK, so man, a lot of good movies, dude. OK, so I had a I had a thing when I was growing up where it was very easy to scare me. And I know we got some listener comments. We'll do two more movies and then we'll go straight into the comment section. But when I was growing up, we always had I always was scared by one movie in particular called Terminator. Have you ever seen Terminator? Oh, yeah. Several times. OK, as you were probably much older than I went out when you watched that movie. I love it. When I saw that movie and I saw the guy turn into liquid and go through a chain link fence, my mind. That was too. Terminator. OK, then maybe I saw Terminator two and I was too scared to see one. But I saw that and I was like, oh, no, because my go to plan to always get away from people would be like run around the fence because there was no way you go through a fence because you're out of metal. There's no way I win. And then you use through the fence and I'm like, oh, but if you could do that, where can I run? And you're already a machine. I don't know what to do. I'm terrified. That scared the light out of me. But you know what I didn't try doing instead of running around fences? Great to God. And whenever I'm chased by a big metal robot because that always works. Well, I'm just saying it should in a movie in a movie, right? Yeah, send the message out and have Neil down on one me clapped his hands together and be like, oh, Heavenly Father, there's a giant robot with laser eyes coming after me. He's 10 feet away from me. Please save me from my sins and I shall commit my life to you, O Lord, O Father, O God. And then the robot just like turns round and walks away and explodes. Like that would get out so many pews filled. Wouldn't you agree? Like, let's just take that movie all the way up until that moment. Like to do Terminator one exactly as is to terminate or two all the way up into that scene where he fuses through the fence, but have the kid Neil and pray for the robot to go away and then it becomes a Christian movie. I got turned up the hat and you're like, what happened? It's like, Jesus, that's what happened. And people will be like, oh, OK. Well, I think it would work for a certain segment of the society that I think it would make the movie flop in the long run. I mean, to the to the general people who have, I mean, the general population. What are you talking about? They would love that. They'd eat that up. Yeah. Yeah. It's much less so now than it was before ever. And it's it's it's leaving, leaving that stance. OK, OK. Larry, you got the last movie. What would you like to discuss? Jurassic Park. Oh, classic. You know, I work with a guy who considers himself a Jurassic Park expert and could literally cite the next line of any. Well, I mean, it had a valid premise that we could if we could find old, complete dinosaurs DNA, we should be able to replicate it with the current technology. Matter of fact, they're they're working right now to return mammoths to the earth. Did you know that? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How about this, though? They they do Jurassic Park, but instead of bringing back the dinosaurs, they instead discover that the earth is only 7000 years old. Oh, and they're just dinosaurs never existed. No, they did. They did. But it was just 7000 years ago. And they're like, the scientists are like, we need to hide this because this goes against every single thing that we know about. And so what Jurassic Park is as a movie really is just about really clever Christian scientists trying to be like, how can we get people to realize that the dinosaurs are only 7000 years old? Let's bring them back and ask them. And they rewrite the Tyrannosaurus Rex and he goes to the city is like, I'm 6500 years old. And the and all the atheists are like, dang it, checkmate, Christian, win. And then that's the credits. They're like, you got us good. And we found the water from Noah's flood down there, too. That's Jurassic Park, too. And like the next one, they'll find the Ark. And the whole time they're just like, we're finding the things that scientists are trying to cite them because they don't care about Jesus. They never cared about Jesus. Yeah. You know, using their faulty logic and faulty science or pseudo science and putting out movies saying we found them. I'm sure that it's coming, especially with AI making it so easy going forward. You don't need special effects. They could just create the movie, you know, with anything already in it. They're built in it. Yeah, you know, I've always I've always thought it was a cool idea to try to bring back old animals. As long as they're immune system up to date, because I'm sure like even common cold would be enough to kill a moth or mammoth these days. But like, yeah, if they can bring them back and it's stable, I'd be like, OK, that's a neat that's a neat demonstration of a lot of cool things when you have a walk. So what would you bring back? I think mammoth would be nice just to demonstrate it. But I don't think we should be. It takes a certain degree of a lot of engineering to like bring that back. And my thought process would be. Is it the sort of thing where when a mammoth is actually walking around, they finally have one in a zoo somewhere in New York that Christians would see that and say, oh, so science is pretty good. Like Bible didn't say anything about this science you win. Or will they be like, oh, but, you know, God always allowed for something like this to happen. And oh, yeah, they've been apologetic mode. That's all. I mean, when when presented with facts that they can't repute it, then it doesn't go against their teaching. It goes with it. You know, yeah, we witness, you know, the scientific discoveries that people say are in the Bible, right? You know, but they have to stretch to make it match. But they do it anyway. Right. Or they'd be like, hey, the guy who's the director of this this this project, he was a Christian, therefore, you know, it's really Christianity who did this. Like, it's just such a tired argument. That's part where I just feel like no matter what you do in science, science, by the way, is never in the in the in the practice of trying to disprove what cannot be disproven. Like you're never going to try to prove it negative in science. And so because of that, a lot of people take that as an open door to believe anything, right? But what science is really good for is validating what is true. And so, like, if you have something that is a statement, you can use science to demonstrate whether or not that statement is accurate or not and test it. And if you can, then that becomes a much more reliable statement to have. So the fact is, the matter is since we can't apply science to like any of the God claims, and a lot of them just fall through the cracks or our outside of the scope of science, then I feel like we have enough proven or demonstrate demonstrable scientific knowledge that you can live just on that without any of the spiritual junk, right? Well, sure. Very good quality of life. There are countries right now that do that. Many of the European countries are mostly secular. The Scandinavian countries are mostly secular. Yeah, China, for sure. Sure. But you don't need it. You don't need it for medicine. You don't need it for how to make. No, you don't need it for how to name one thing you need it for. Right. Well, you need to make those good movies. You need to terminate or stop for entertainment, for fictional entertainment. We got some listener comments. We'll go through them real quick. Friend of ours from the show, past tasty crosses. Sorry to see you guys go heard about your last episode. That's not coming up until a couple of episodes. A couple more weeks, a couple more episodes. We do have a question. This one I'm going to throw to you. This is by Lurking who asks, how do you feel about the capital G in God? Well, I think you should use it when you're talking about a specific God. If you're talking about Yahweh and then you refer to him as God, then you should capitalize the G. But if you're just referring to any God or God's period, then you don't need to capital G. It's just a generic reference to God's in general. I heard that. I've also seen pastors say on a pulpit, I never capitalized the S in Satan, just disrespect Satan. Well, then like in my thought, it's like then it's no longer a grammar issue. It's just an emotional issue for you. And what a weird thing to boast about in front of like 40 people like I don't follow grammar when it comes to G. He goes, you take that, Satan. Yeah, lowercase that. I'm like, okay, I'm sure he's really you got me. You got. But in my mind, it's always been a job description for me. Like, I understand it in the proper sense of like Lord, when you're talking about a very specific person. But I mean, there are gods before capital G God, there are lords before capital L Lord. And so I see it as a way of imbuing it with more importance. But I want people to recognize at least I want people to be more willing to understand when we have like these kinds of conversations that God, Lord, Savior, like these are job descriptions. And like these characters Christ, Christ is a job description. Christ is a job description. These people had names. And like, if you knew what the names were or what they meant, maybe that would be more indicative of what those people were because like if you look at even some of the biblical versions of what God's actual name was, various versions of them simply just mean one God of these people or like a one of a many God, like even Elohim is like the light of the people of a certain group of people who all came from a class of people who are like all buying to try to have the one most powerful God. Like it, I think it's telling that we obscure or generalize the name of gods that we follow to just job description, because that's a much more easier target for people to imbue their ego and emotions and hopes on, rather than like a very specific being that you'll know more and more about in the same way that a lot of people know who the president is, but probably don't know who their governor is, or know who their mayor is, or people who more directly infect their lives. They just, they just need the figurehead and they don't want to know more about the details. Right. Especially before they're elected. They just can't be bothered to find out about them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a human nature sort of thing. Like we don't like to be too generalized. Anyway, hopefully that was a interesting answer to your question. Today, I'm glad that there's no God. It's a comment given to us by Darker Lord. Please forgive me for this rambling. Basically, he he speaks to his mother falling to Alzheimer's when she was 70. She started to refuse to eat or drink. And that was the end game for Alzheimer's. She didn't want to be kept alive on a feeding tube. Especially at this point where isn't really her mom anymore. He didn't really feel like it was his mom anymore, not his father's wife. So she moved on to palliative care and is being made comfortable until the inevitable end. So today, he's glad that there's no God because he wouldn't want necessarily for this person to be living in that state for for eternity, or being someone who she's not for the last 20 years of her life. How do you take an Alzheimer's patient and send them to heaven? Or a baby. And what state are they in? If they're going to be in that state, are they going to be the version of themselves where before they ever got sick and their family? It's like God. You stated as an answer, but it brings up a thousand more questions. Like the version of hell that we all think about is not really in the Bible. It's all from Dante's Inferno. It's a fictional support for the concept of hell. As a matter of fact, the scholars say that the hell in the Old Testament was just a trash heap outside of Jerusalem. I agree. No, I totally agree. I feel like it's always a tricky situation when people think, man, heaven's a good place to be. Because a lot of times, if you had a family reunion, there's some of the most contentious places for people to be in in the room to be sure. And you're like, wait, you want to do this forever? Do you even know how long that is? Is this going to be alright? Is everyone okay? All right. All right. There it is. I've always said that heaven is only going to be heaven for one person. There's only, because there's so many different people in the world, they're not all going to like the same thing. And so you either make heaven in a way where you mutilate the brains of the other people so that they like the same thing that one other person likes so that they all can have maximum whatever happiness and pleasure. Or you basically have a heaven that's just a nice lazy bully in a white room that's just for one person and only one person can sit there. And so if you don't know where I'm referencing, there was a Bruce Almighty incarnation that was going to have Steve Carell be the lead and Morgan Freeman as God, where he finds out that heaven is just for one person. It's literally a chair for just one person because you can't have two people in heaven because people are going to have naturally different tastes. And so whatever is perfect for one person is not going to be perfect for the second. So God just said, fine, I'll just make heaven for just one person. And here's your chair, Steve, and he sits down on the chair and he realizes, oh man, so like, where's everybody else? They're like, you don't have to worry about everybody else. It's like my mom, my dad, my friends. It's like they weren't safe. You were, you're in heaven. Be happy. And I'm like, I can't be happy if I know that other people aren't happy. So obviously the movie didn't go through, but he does make good friends with a character named Lucy who's just like, can you turn down the thermostat? It's really, really hot here. It's like, we got used to it. We got used to it. And he's like, I don't know how to control the country, but I've always thought to myself, like, you can't make a heaven that's happy for everybody. And I can never enjoy heaven knowing that there's people in hell. And so the idea that there's a place just for people who are chosen, who are happy to be there, knowing that there are people who are not there, that can't love the ones that wouldn't be a heaven to me. Because one, I want to want to be there knowing other people are suffering and two, I couldn't hang out with people who are okay with the idea of other people suffering for eternity. Like in my mind, those are people that I want nothing to do with. So the further away I am from those people, the better the happier I am. And if you just told me, hey, this is all a myth anyway, I'd be like, that just solves a lot of problems for me. Like heaven hell, it's done. I don't have to worry about that. When I was a kid, a teenager in western Tennessee, rural town, I used to hunt. I didn't, there was a period of my time when I hunted, but it wasn't very long. But during that time, I kept wondering, since animals don't go to heaven. And I loved to hunt. If I died and went to heaven, what would I hunt? That's, you know, a million, billion questions about heaven, which they don't address in any kind of scripture. And nobody knows. The gears are turning for you way earlier than you yourself. But I mean, nobody knows the answer, but everybody claims, especially in religion, claims to know the answer. And different religions have different answers. I mean, they can't all be right. But they can all be wrong, especially if souls don't exist. I know, don't get me started. Correct. Correct. And the fact is, you don't have personal truths, right? There's just one truth and it's possible that nobody knows it. And it's possible that if that's the case, we should use the most reliable tools that we have in the meanwhile. And the ones have demonstrated the one to be the most reliable, the ones that I'm using to communicate with you. The same tools that I'm using to communicate with you right now, same tools that our listeners are using to listen to us. It's science. Yeah, science. Very good method. Very good method. Not scientists. And what the scientists say is to practice of science. The methodology of science. Yes. Yes. Do we have any more listener comments? We got four more, but we're nearing the end of the show. Now, let's try one more. Okay. I think this is one sent in by Leo Stephanakis. He says, I think religion will die out before the end of the century. What do you think? And he puts in some statistics that basically show that the more developed the country is, the less religious it is. So as countries become more developed, isn't it likely that religion will eventually die out? Yeah, I agree. As long as we experience our progress and a betterment of society, I think that the premonition is a good one. However, let's say that this war with Iran and Israel goes further, much further and involves nuclear war and it gets everybody involved. And we all take a right hand turn back to the past. I think religion will over research because it cuts out, it will cut out our testing and our ability to do science and teach and share knowledge. The internet may survive, but it would only be for a few. Yeah. So we have a vested interest in peace and going forward, moving forward in progress. I think it's two prongs. It's like access to a high quality life and then also diversity of people around you. And develop countries have two things that they do very well. They bring in a lot of different people together into the same area and they make it easier to have a higher quality of life. And when you're not struggling anymore and you don't need assets to get hope for, man, you'd really love that Guardian of the Galaxy game. This is exactly what we're talking about. You will find that people start leaning less on superstitions and more on tangible methodologies that are reliable, that work well for diverse group mindsets to meet a higher standard of life for everybody, not just themselves. Right. I guess we do need to close out now. We sure do. Where can we find your? I'm on YouTube. Let's chat. Let's go. Very good. Nice. And we're down to a couple more shows now next week, week after that'll be at 365 shows, seven years worth of shows. You can find this podcast or this show on YouTube and on our website, digitalfreethought.com, where you can click on the blog button to find all of our articles and atheists, songs and this radio show archive, all 365 episodes. Once we get done, my YouTube channel handle is at doubter five and you can find my book atheism, what's it all about on Amazon? Remember, everybody's going to somebody else's hell. The time to worry about is when they prove that heavens and hells and souls are real. Until then, don't sweat it. Enjoy your life. We'll see you next Wednesday night at seven o'clock. Say bye, everybody. Bye, everybody. Bye, everybody. Good show. And a wrap.