 103.9 FM, WOZO Radio, Knoxville. Ladies and gentlemen, Digital Freethought Radio Hour. Hello and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio Hour on WOZO Radio, 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today is Sunday, May 2nd. I'm Larry Rhodes, or Doubter 5. And as usual, we have our co-host Wombat on the line with us. Hello Wombat. Ahoy there. Ahoy. I guess Dred Pirate recognizes that language. We have Dred Pirate. We have Dot Fire, George Buffalo, George Brooklyn, Boudreaux, all the way from the UK. Dred Pirate Higgs I mentioned, and the John Richards. Hello all. Welcome. That is funny you said Boudre from the UK because John is like, wait, I'm from the UK. What's going on here? John is from the UK. I work at the UK. Look who's hosting in the background there. We're certainly an international program. Dred Pirate Higgs is sailing the high seas of British Columbia. There you go. Very cool. Very cool. For those not familiar with it, 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 today we'll be talking about religious irony and hypocrisy and weird moments thereof. I call the show, Oh, the irony. That works. Yeah. And we have an invocation today. Yeah. You do. Hail Marinera full of spice. The flying spaghetti monster is filled with the tasty art thou among sauces. And blessed is the fruit of thy jar, tomatoes. Although fools believe they are vegetables. Holy Marinera, chief amongst toppings. Save a plate for us now. And at about six o'clock when dinner is served, if you would be so kind. Wrong. Wrong. Oh, man. How can no one take that seriously? That's the thing. How can anyone hear that and be like, sure, you can wear whatever hat you want on your license? That makes such an obvious thing. Hey, I have, I think I already outlined your moment of hypocrisy, but I do want to outline moments of irony when dealing with religious people. And I'd want to hear everyone's story. We've got a full house today and I'm happy that everybody's here. I'll throw out just one quick one and then we'll start throwing it around to see who has shared moments of similar times dealing with people who strongly believe in a dogmatic God belief, but also have like this weird hang up. So like we have a book club at work. And the book club was currently reading a book on this woman who's a therapist and the scandalous story she's had with her patients. And the book's called, you should talk to somebody and it's really funny. We opened up the discussion on therapy and the conversations tend to go on different tangents, but we brought up the idea that they actually have therapist apps you can download right now on the Google Play Store or Apple Store where you can talk to like a face or disembodied text box and it'll hear you out and it'll just like, you know, voice the text, everything that you said, maybe even highlight some words for you, maybe even ask you some great questions. And I said, that's like a really cool thing for people who may not necessarily want to go out to a therapist or may have hangups with the idea of therapy. Wouldn't that be a cool thing to just have something in your pocket that you can always talk to? And the guy who was the most ardent Christian in the room was like, I don't like that idea because I don't like the concept of talking to something that doesn't answer back to me, like, you know, asking and talking to something that's just this disembodied thing. I am very uncomfortable with that. And he had the whole cross and everything like that. He had the tattoos and all the irony. I didn't know how to deal with it. So I'd love to hear I'd like to hear like feedback on that or if you guys had similar stories like that in the past that dread part. I'm going to throw it up to you because you're you're my buddy. What do you got? You got comments on that story that I just told you has that ever happened to you before? Well, yeah, of course, I'm dealing with it all the time. But certainly in my case, it's dealing with hypocrisy of policy under the guise of, you know, being fair to religious groups in the case of my headband. I just recently got a letter back from the ICBC the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia who said, well, on April 14th, you went into get a photo taken and apply under religious accommodation. In fact, that's not what I did is because I was denied. I've been denied so many times under this religious accommodation thing. I went in under the policy that they have for hair accessories. Right? Right? I didn't say I didn't even say I was a member of a religious group. It just so happens I have a symbol on my thing and unless you know what unless you know what it is, you don't know what I mean. Exactly. Yeah. So the letter was very pointed and saying, well, you came under this religious accommodation thing and therefore we're denying you. So now this is the coffin, this is the coffin that I was looking for, right? Because now we can go and say that they are actually discriminating because I made no overtures that I was representing a religious group or was seeking religious accommodation. I was seeking an accommodation which is ordinarily allowed to members of the public. Right. And they have denied me this under the understating that it's a religious thing. So we ought to, I think. The hypocrisy here is like you could wear a headband in British Columbia and get your driver's license picture taken. Yeah. And so they specifically denied you for your headband picture because there was an iconography that most people wouldn't recognize anyway of religious icon, but it's not a religious piece of headgear that you're wearing. You just have the standard thing that any citizen can wear and have a symbol on it. Because it's not a head covering, as you can see. That is the distinction that's being made. So my hairline is right about there and it's above the hairline but it doesn't cover the head. So it's not even considered a head covering. It's a hair accessory. Now, you know what I mean? Is BC so small that people could see you coming. It's like, oh, here's this guy again. Let's get ready to hit the denial button. BC is so small. Well, I suppose because it's been in the paper now enough times that even in the Toronto Star like when the the Supreme Court judgment came out. So the word is getting around and actually there are more and more people joining our Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster British Columbia Facebook group. So yeah, and you're all encouraged to to see what's going on. John, what do you got? Well, I'm wondering whether Hearty Pirates encounter was due to the fact that they suspected that his headband was just the beginning of the slippery slope, you know. He may be saving up to the rest of that. But it's not for them to judge it then if he's still within the boundaries, like it's them to say like, hey, do this. Don't do this. But for him to do what you're allowed to do, which is we literally had a poster saying you could wear a headband. I'm like, OK, cool. He's wearing a headband. It's not a religious covering. Like I've never seen something like that. It's a headband with an icon on it. And I just feel there is that hypocrisy there. It always makes me a little upset to see that. Yeah. Here was the here was the policy. This is the ICBC policy. I was literally wearing a headband. So people who are there is acceptable. Yeah, he's showing a picture that has a bunch of people with headbands on it. It's very clear that he's within, you know, the realm, though I would love to see what would happen if you had a cross on one one day and walked in and I'm going to see if I can conscript others to go with similar headbands. Yes, yes, yes, you know, or crosses. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. This headband and put it around my neck. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Bloodrow and buffalo would both agree with me, the perfect control for this experiment would be another person with a white headband, but with a Christian cross on it. Say hey, you said no to this, but you said yes to this, that is religious discrimination. This guy's getting away. And I'm not exactly where we're headed. Gotta get that. Gotta get that headband with the cross on it. They say go shaved heavy. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, see, it only costs $17 to get your photo retaken. Oh, you know, say you choose, you lose weight or you change your facial hair, you can go in and voluntarily pay 17 bucks. As it turns out, that is the voting membership fee for the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster of British Columbia. Very, very cool. John, I want to throw it up to you. Like you got comments, but I also want to know a story of hypocrisy from you. Oh, right. Well, I just wanted to respond to dread, because in not a million miles away from you dread in Quebec, they've just passed laws to prohibit the wearing of religious symbols by government or, you know, state employees during work hours. Yeah. So is that relevant to what your encounter? Well, I mean, it does speak to the larger issue of this whole debate, right? But I think in terms of what you're just trying to be like a Sikh would wear a turban as an identity. It's a simple identity, but I see BC goes under the pretext that they're accommodating a religion that prohibits them from removing their headgear for the purposes of photo ID, which is not true. Right. It's just not true. So they've invented this condition under which people are allowed to wear their headgear and under which they can arbitrarily say, well, your religion doesn't prohibit you from wearing it. So you're out of luck. Yeah, I feel like it's a double standard. And John, just to comment on that, I feel like it's a problematic situation to say, hey, don't wear your religious garb. It should just be wear whatever you want. And we'll see, you know, like after the fact, whoever has a problem with it to an extent, because if you say, hey, you can't wear religious headgear, does that mean Muslims can't serve in government? Does that mean Sikhs can't serve in government? Like you're seeing a standard already. That's like sort of for very specific demographic that make it hard for other people to get those kinds of representation. John, what's your hypocrisy story? Well, I meet hypocrisy a lot on social media, where I argue with people who want to rubbish evolution and they come up with all manner of false ways in which they can disprove evolution. So they think, but then when I ask them back, you know, can you give some evidence to support your idea, your proposition of creation? Suddenly they go quiet. That's hypocrisy. That's a double standard. Right. They always want you to have the burden of evidence and they want to be right by default. If they see a struggle, I don't like that. I find that that's kind of what do you call it? What do you call that? I'm going through the words of the list of words I can't say on the radio. Dishonest conversation. You can say BS. Yeah, that's a little BS, right? Disingenuous is a good word. I like to stay with the basics. They were lying. I don't actually meet a very great deal of irony because irony is meant to be humorous. What I meet is sarcasm, which is meant to be condemned to us. Sure. Where's our sarcastic Christians? That's what you want. You want the ones that are like, of course Jesus died on the cross. It hurts. I feel weird even saying that way. Oh man, that's bad. But yeah, you do meet a lot of people who are saying like, hey, prove to me that I'm wrong, right? That tends to be a lot of the Christian starting points when that really shouldn't be the basic conversation, right? Them to prove that they are right or at least have positions that are worth discussing as an option to be right. And that's their struggle. It's not our point to prove that. Larry, what do you got? Well, that leads us to their rejection of all the other religious claims. They believe all of their own magical creatures and miracles, but with absolutely no evidence at all. But all the other religions, creatures and miracles are just silly. Right. Their fabrications are wrong. Yeah. Passed periods get that a lot. Right. No grounds for it at all. Right. And if I am even going back to my book club story, if I said, hey, you know, talking to a disembodied voice all day with your problems, that's kind of like praying. They'll be like, that's not true. Praying proves my God. Well, you wouldn't say every single person who prays to a God is praying to a real God, right? He's like, well, no, they're just paying to a cult or a false God. Like when I pray to my God, that's the real God. It's like, well, we're back at square one then. There's a lot of people seem to be praying to things that don't actually exist potentially. Boudreau, I'd love to hear about your hypocrisy story. What do you got for me? Yeah. So this one kind of ties into what Dredd was saying about his, his icon on his headband. Either, you either know what it is or you don't. Right. And, and I've got the same icon on the back of my car for the fine spaghetti monster. And I have a shirt that I love to wear that is has the fine spaghetti monster on it. And it says some of the fact this shirt has the fine spaghetti monster on it that makes it cooler than your shirt. And I wear it any chance I get. Honestly, the airports is my favorite time to wear it when I was allowed to fly. But, and I very often get comments on it of people either loving the shirt, because it's a wild looking spaghetti mess with a couple of meatball eyeballs. Sure. And it says what it says. And people very often say, Oh, I love your shirt. I love your shirt. And I have this weird distinction to where I'm trying to figure out, do they know what it means? Or do they just think it's neat and unique? Do you think it's a Green Day band or something like that? Like a cover band? It's just pop art. I love spaghetti. Yeah, there's some people either people either love spaghetti or they just think it's silly. And it makes me think of the article I sent dread. I think a few years ago, not an article, it was a joke, a book of jokes. And the joke was, what do you call a spaghetti that is pretending to be something else? And it's a impasta. But the picture they used in the book is the fine spaghetti monster. Like, oh, no doubt without a doubt. They just want to grab it. That joke. So wow, look at John. He's ready to go. But Larry, it makes me wonder, did they Google it and just grab that image or was the person a secret fan of the fine spaghetti monster? And they just kind of sneak that in there. So I don't know. It was a child's book, right? It was a child's book, wasn't it? Yeah. No, no, no, we're at the really, really fun part where Eric started a story and he's trying to make it make sense halfway through the story. So I wouldn't say anything. I'm pressuring this landing. Go for it. Keep going. And I'm trying. Round peg, square hole. But no, I find the irony in it that I have this secret, icon, the secret thing I'm a fan of. And it's so hard for me to tell if the people like my shirt or in every once in a while, they'll say, yeah, I've been touched by the noodley pendant. Good job. You found the irony in that situation. That's wonderful. Everyone has to give that guy a pat on the back. Good job. Yeah. So it's like, is he complimenting me because of the reason why I'm wearing it or does he just like meatballs and pasta or whatever? I can tell you this that makes you feel any better. Whenever I go to Walmart and I see someone wearing like an obviously atheist based shirt, like science is real blah, blah, blah or some snarky thing. I will go out of my way to be like, Hey man, I like your shirt. You know, like I contact and be like, we're fighting the fight. Like, yep, yep, yep. And we just go up and continue to get our nachos and springs and stuff, whatever you do at Walmart. But yeah, Scott, I would love, actually, Scott, I would love to know if you have a crazy shirt that is or adding a religious iconography that that purports to maybe what you used to believe, maybe as a jovial witness or as your new atheist life, did you get inspired to like go to hot topic and get a bunch of sarcastic teas? I was thinking about doing that, but not yet. I haven't got anything like that yet, but I have been thinking about that and looking at some stuff, but that'd be cool. Okay. Okay. Okay. But not yet. You got a story for hypocrisy, Scott? Have you had a moment? You know I do. Let's go into it. You already know. No, but last week, the thing that comes in my mind right now is last week, I was, yeah, talking to a Islamic friend of mine on Facebook, but he was basically trying to make the case, trying to get me to follow his logic. He was trying to, we're talking about epistemology about God. So he wanted to start with the some sort of column cosmological argument with me. So he was saying, look, just so I can, just so I can travel to the radios, you were talking about, what's the best way to know that a God exists? And he says, well, the universe had a beginning and therefore, and that's basically what you were saying. So perfect. Right. So in the conversation, his argument was, you've got, he wanted me to agree. Is there, there are necessary things? And then there are contingent things. Would you agree? Like, well, contingency is something that depends on something else to exist as it does. So of course, you know, it's like, I can follow that. I understand that. Cool. So how does this get us to your God? So he's like, okay, well, here's the thing. The universe, everything that exists are things that don't exist of themselves. Would you agree? Are they contingent things? I'm like, well, let's just grant, I don't know, but let's just grant that they are. So how does this get you to your God? Okay, you, that's a big grant, by the way. That's a big grant and he understood that. That is literally the biggest of grants that you could have given him. But yeah, right. So I granted him all that. Basically, just to make a long story short, I granted him all of his premises just to cure his argument, just because I wanted to get to it. So he's like, okay, so you're telling, so he says, so you're agreeing that the universe is dependent on some necessary thing that isn't contingent, that is eternal, absolute, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, okay, sure, I'll grant you that. How does that get you to your God? Then he was like, well, it's got to be a God. And I'm like, well, could these contingent things be grounded in something that's not a God that's still eternal, absolute, like some unknown law of nature? No, that can't be the case. It has to be my God. Allah. It can't be Jesus. It can't be Zeus. It can't be multiverses. It can't be. It's got to be Allah. Okay. So how is that just within your argument? How is that going to work? It's ironic. Like, why the special pleading? You do understand that special pleading. Yeah, it kind of is, but still it makes sense. Larry, thoughts? Yeah, just one other further step. I grant them all that when I do my Ask an Atheist booth table when I sit out and talk to people, I grant them all that. And I even grant them the fact that it was a God. Wow. I still say, how does it get to your particular God? And they can't bridge that gap. There's just no way they can. They point to the Bible. I said, well, the Bible points to a particular God, but it doesn't. I mean, it's not proof that A, the God that created the universe is that God. All the other holy books of all the other religions say it's their God. You know, the silly thing is the Bible even purports that there are other Gods, because I think one of God's biggest rules is like, hey, don't worship any other God. And like, my question is like, other Gods? I was wondering why all the people are like, wait, there are other ones? Using the words like us and we. Yeah, no other God before me is like, how many Gods are there? That's kind of crazy. I like that. Oh, yeah, yeah. I really like that. John, I saw you mouth the words why during this, that, that, well, it's, it's simply the gap that can't be crossed, isn't it? My favorite God is Unclean Kalu who is the South African creator God. And he's just as good a candidate for the origin of everything as Jesus. Yep. Your, your knowledge of Africa is so awesome. John, I just got to say from all the work that you've done, like, you know, like collaborating with the atheists that came over from South Africa and all that stuff. Very, very cool. Uncle Kalu, Kalu, who drops that in a conversation casually? Like who just says that? And just like, anyway, back to cheese. Who else wants to talk about, you know, anything else? Guys, we're at the half break. We're going to do more stories of the Parkers team when we come back. Larry, can we, can you take us out real quick? And then we come back and bring up my prompt here. You haven't memorized the final. Come on. It's been 10 years. Yeah, this is the Digital Freethought Radio Hour at WOZO Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. And we'll be right back after this short break. 103.9 FM WOZO Radio Knoxville. Hello, and welcome back to the second half of the Digital Freethought Radio Hour on WOZO Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. I'm Doddard Five, and this is Sunday, May 2nd. Continuing on with the show. Let's talk about the 80th Society of Knoxville, or ASK. Founded in 2002, we're in our 19th year. ASK has over 1,000 members, and we have weekly Zoom meetings during COVID. And starting May 11th, we'll again start meeting at Barley's Tap Room in Pizzeria in the old city, live, face-to-face, out on the patio. Well, you can find this online on Facebook, meetup.com, or KnoxvilleAtheist.org. Just Google Knoxville Atheist. It's just that simple. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you should still go to Meetup and search for an atheist group in your town. Don't find one. Start one! That's right. Well, I'm about where we want to pick up. So I want to talk about stories of, oh, the irony and what it's like dealing with people who are very religious, but also want to throw some logic bombs at you at the same time, too. And you're like, well, what's all this religion in the background? Come on, let's look at the whole basket, right? George Brown, you had a story you'd like to share. What's going on? Well, it's sort of some reflections that are on my mind. And one of them is that every once in a while, I start doubting what it is that I know. And sometimes, I doubt the definitions of words. It's like, I'm using words. And all of a sudden, I think, do I really know what that word means, despite the fact that I've been using it all these years? So a couple of words that have come up lately in my mind are fascism and cult. I'm glad those are the words are not like surgeon and plumber, because it would be really terrible. I don't have a hard time with you. You keep charging me so much money, I just have a leaky pipe. I don't have a hard time defining surgeon and plumber, but it's like, it's like when people throw around the word, considering the kind of, what am I going to say, the fishbowl we've been living in, in the United States over the last four years, is that's what's got me confused. And it's like, what's reality anymore? And it's been quite a ride for the last four years. So you're saying, is the irony then, people are using words in the complete opposite use of that word and applying? I mean, frankly, I don't even know. So it's like, if we call person X, and you all know who I'm talking about, a fascist, what is it that we mean? And so I go to dictionaries online, and every definition is different. Okay. And I still don't know the definition of the word fascism. I know a part of it. But anyway, let me move on to the next word. Okay. The next word is cult. What is a cult? If we accuse somebody of being a cult follower, what, what do we really mean? What does the other person mean when they use the word cult? So very important. You see, and so we're talking to irony. The word cult seems to mean, now I'm, I'm inventing a definition, please, please based on other definitions that I have read. So the word cult means somebody who doesn't agree with me. Basically. Yeah. Basically. You know, it has a religious connotation, and it is, it is essentially a, a set of values that are different than the prevailing set of values, which, but having lived through what I think is a cult in the United States for the last four years, the prevailing values are a cult. It's just a big cult. Yeah. They're all cults. Basically. In my book, I've always called, I don't have the definition yet. Religions call other religions is what I would just define as a cult. But I do like the idea of like, what would you, what did you say? It was so perfect. It's like they don't agree with me. That's a cult. That's how I, that, that was my beginning on this. I love it. So, so I mean, here I am. Look, I'm an urban person. I've, I've lived in cities aside from 10 years in rural Connecticut. I'm stuck in rural Tennessee right now. And, and I'm used to the kinds of, I don't know, prevailing thought patterns, I guess, that go on in metropolitan areas where we have what I feel is what is truly great about America, which is diversity of people, diversity of backgrounds, diversity of opinions, diversity of sexualities, all that stuff. Yeah, everything. That's what I'm used to. And so I'm, I'm living now in a place, it's a city of 14,000 people. And I'm living in rural America. I'm going to tell you this too. When I moved to Kentucky and I started doing my S.E., Street of Pistemology Conversations in Kentucky, I was very deftly, I was very, very worried. I was only going to run into one kind of person, one kind of idea, and one kind of mindset for all my conversations. And even before Bejo kindly reached out to me and showed me a really great, you know, group, even when I went to the atheist group that was there, it was, it was terrifying how similar minded everyone was. And so I'm really happy Eric reached out to me and showed me many different lights in Kentucky in terms of thoughts and mindsets. But I'm also glad that I kept doing S.E. and having one-on-one conversation with people because it showed me the wealth of diversity there was, even if the impression that I had was different. And I can tell you the weight of that impression that everyone is the same and everyone's, you know, only thinking one thing is a very powerful weight. But it's not necessarily a real, it's not a real model of the reality because it wasn't until I started coming out in my job as an atheist that other people started coming out as atheists too. And I started to realize, oh, I thought everybody here was Christian. Turns out there's like only three Christians in this group of like 40 people that worked here. We just never really talked about it and just let them kept dictating the course of, you know, conversation and relationship and vibe in the office. So it's worthwhile to like I said what Larry says, start atheists groups. It's worthwhile to seek, you know, people, and it's worthwhile to like, you know, billboard yourself as a non-believer in my opinion. Larry, what's up? Just as a reminder, if you don't come out of the atheist closet and stay in, even the atheists around you, who could be your new atheist friends, think you're a Christian. You know, that's the default. So come out and form a community. And I was helping someone move furniture into their house upstairs. And it was like too, it was supposed to be two big Christian guys who just came from a Bible study, because that's, you know, Christians, they love to talk about that. And only one showed up. So I was like, I'll help you. I'll help you out. No problem. He was like, yeah, Pierre said he'd come, but John was having a problem. So Jesus, like all their friends have biblical names. And he was just like, yeah, I'm just not in my head. And in my head, it's like, I'm going to have to have, I'm going to have to say something. So I made a weird, funny comment. It was like, yeah, you know what it's like when your Bible study friends don't show up. So you have to rely on the neighborhood atheists to help you move furniture up there. And everyone was like, oh, that's funny. And it just, it broke the ice, but everybody knew where I was coming from. And I think it made a good representation of what atheists are, because they're not just like this villain that's in the room. They're people out there, people that live in your communities. Yeah, George. Yeah, you know, that reminds me of in this little 14,000 person city where I live, there is a kosher section in two of the supermarkets here. Right. Somebody is buying this food. Who is it? It's you addition to me. And I go to the supermarket and I find Japanese food items. Well, there's a Japanese factory here in my town. Okay. Denso. The city where I live is a center for car parts manufacturing. One of those factories is a Japanese owned factory, Denso. So maybe there's some Japanese managers or something, you know, and I've seen some people. I've seen some people around here wearing hijabs. Okay. And, and there's some older women who are wearing what we say in Yiddish Shmatas on their heads, which means rags. Okay. And so who are they, you know, and then there are the different kinds of Christians on the 167 official Baptist churches that are here. And I guarantee you in all those churches, it's not 100% Christian. I haven't yet to walk into a Christian church that has 100% Christians in that church. Tell me more. What do you mean? Dred, we can, we can talk. Dred, what do you got? I was just going to point out that George was talking about kosher second sections. And of course, that's based on a Jewish ideology or a theology. And so is organic. So when you have an organic section in a, in a grocery store, that is also based strictly on ideology. It has nothing to do with nutrition, science or anything else. Definitely not science to do with ideology, right? So, we're just trading one thing for another, right? Yeah. George Buffalo, I'd love to get an opinion of hypocrisy or irony from you. We got some from all around everybody. What do you got? Yeah, for me, it's the constant mockery of science that very often Christians will apply. Well, they rely on it day in and day out. And so, you know, the one, the episode I'm thinking of was a, was a minister and I happened to meet him in a parking lot. We're standing next to his new car and he wants to show me his new car. And, and, you know, so he's got this new technological gadget to satisfy his, his needs. But yet he's mocking science and how Christians will literally mock science and then of course practice science and just about every aspect of their lives. How universal is that? It's, I wouldn't say it's, I wouldn't say everybody, but I have had arguments or have conversations with people who will chastise and use science in the same breath or sentence to both denounce science and use it to support their God belief and like in the exact same phrase. And it's mind boggling. It's very, very bizarre. Yeah. And I, with, with students, mostly undergraduates in this case, because at, at our university at Kentucky, about 60% of the students that come in are very religious, you know, and they're very often Baptist and they believe in creationism and they don't believe in evolution. So the challenge is to try to get them to think for themselves. But in having discussions with them, they would often again take this approach of mocking the science if there was some aspect that they could verbalize. Right. And it doesn't take long to change their minds because they're probably already, a lot of them are, are ready to be, you know, educated in many different ways. But even there it's, it's a matter of their practice. It's what they're used to, what they grew up with. And then they're just, without thinking about it, they're just applying it. John. Yeah, I met that when I was teaching because I had a class of A-level biology students and I started by doing evolution. And at that moment, my class diminished by one because the parents of one of the girls objected to her being taught evolution. So she went off to study something else. Anyway, I also wanted to examine this, this word cult because it's ripe for hypocrisy, isn't it? A cult is always somebody else. If you don't apply, I'm not in a cult. Nobody accepts that there is a cult. It's always a word that they use about other people. It's otherwise. So I don't know if this is Umbridge, but Dred, Bujjo, you're a big Star Wars fan. There are cult aspects to that. Are you aware that you're in a cult? Would you be willing to call yourself in the Star Wars cult? Oh, okay. So it is accurate. John, you're absolutely true. People who are in cult do not admit that they're in cults. It's kind of crazy. And that means that a cult is probably a smaller organization than a mainstream one, which of course is geographical. It depends where you are. What qualifies as a cult and how big or how small? Where's the boundary? I don't know. But even the small cults call the big religion's cults. So like everybody from my outside perspective isn't a cult. It's just a question of, is it a big cult or a small cult? It's not like, Bujjo, what do you got? Maybe just a fair distinction here that I think if it has like a negative connotation, yes, you wouldn't consider yourself in a cult. But with the Star Wars thing, I totally feel that my whole family is in a cult. We even commented that we probably don't go a single day without mentioning something Star Wars. Or Sam Harris. Or Sam Harris. Sam Harris, too late. Scott, you're next. What's up? Hey, I just had a question. Was not all religions started as a cult? Like was Christianity once a cult? Yeah, absolutely. It was considered by the Romans a cult. Yeah, they would throw you into lions because of that. And they had to literally make up gods that were from the Roman Pantheon to satisfy the Christians when they were willing to roll them in. So like all the saints that you have, a lot of the holidays that we have are just pagan holidays or Roman translated things. We got weeks of the days of the week were named after Roman gods. Like Christians don't really think about that. It's like, I will name seven days after these Pantheon of God. It's a very bizarre thing. Somehow there's a progression, isn't there, from a cult, which is a small thing? Yeah. To a faith, which is a bigger organization. There's some sort of or a religion. And there must be some sort of, I don't know, exam or qualification to number of people. No, it's all the same thing. It's just popular cults or not popular cults. It's all the same thing, John. I'm telling it. Are we guilty or cults necessary? They're both necessary and contingent. I didn't believe that. We're all guilty. We're all guilty. One person at a time, one person at a time. Larry, you were next. Then we'll go to Dredd. Yeah. What gets me is when the hypocrisy of Christians claiming that they're not a religion. They say, we're not religious. We have a relationship with Jesus. But then they take advantage of every religious freedom law that there is, and they claim religious tax exemptions. But then they act condescending and self-righteous toward anyone who is actually non-religious, which kills me. Yeah. It's like, I'm not religious, but I'm not an atheist. What are you trying to say? What's going on there? And atheism is a religion. How many times have you heard that? I've heard that so. I know. Yeah. And the problem with, and my problem with these big cults is that they get to develop new usages of words that only muddy the actual definition of it. That's why I think it's important to outline you're an atheist with the A word and show, hey, I'm an atheist. If you have questions about what atheism is, ask me. Don't go to your pastor. Don't go to your Christian friend. Talk to me. Very good. All about it. Dread. So here I was going to make a distinction here. So a cult could be considered an emerging delusion and a religion, a prevailing delusion. Social. Yeah. It's all the same. You guys, you guys, you guys, it's all the same. It's just a question of whether people are comfortable calling themselves in the cult or not. Star Wars has its own religion, doesn't it? Doesn't have multiple religions in it? Yeah. Aren't there like always just thought it was a major size? Yeah. Jedi is an actual religion in real life, or like people have taken the Star Wars babyology and turned it into religion. I'm just saying, look at yourself in the mirror. Honestly, Eric, that's all I'm trying to say. Though, George, going back to Buffalo, the idea that people will diminish science and then also uplift it only when it serves their own purposes. Indeed. I have seen that so many times and it makes me upset. What do you do when that's happening? It's a matter of not even knowing they're doing it. It bothers me. For example, this minister that's standing next to his new car and telling me about how much he likes his new car, but yet denying science. How can they do that? Yeah. That's total hypocrisy. You know what? Using a cell phone and GPS to all same time. Right. Like when there's a problem and someone says, well, I'll pray for you. But if it's like their car and it's a spark plug issues, like, well, I did some diagnostics here. I use my multimeter. My mechanic says XYZ. I'm thinking when I order these things, my values are a little bit off my gas fuel, miles, mixtures and very it's like you're using factors for such a small thing, just spark plugs in your car. Yet when it comes to like the biggest thing, like how you should treat other people, the fate of how you impact the world, your consequences of your actions. You're like, no, this big magical thing. That's the answer. If you cared as much about your guide as you did about spark plugs and maybe put in half amount of work as you did to figure out if your God belief was faulty as you would your spark plugs are faulty. I think you would come to substantially different conclusions. Yeah. If you were lost in the middle of the wilderness, what would you rather have? A prayer or a GPS? Right? We could all figure out which one we'd rather have. Yeah. Scott, go for it. Yeah, just to piggy tail off what you're talking about, especially with regard to morality, like, you know, the atheist like a Christian or a Muslim or some other religious person would say, well, unless you can ground your morality in an objective standard like God, then your morality is just subjective. It doesn't mean anything and it's an opinion and it's faulty. But our morality is based on the absolute objectivity of our God. And so our moral basis is a lot stronger and more sensible than yours. But then you could just ask them a question like, is rape objectively wrong in the past, present, future or killing homosexuals for being homosexual? Is that objectively wrong in the past, present or future or slavery objectively wrong past, present or future? And of course, in that case, they're going to kind of they're going to kind of be in a bind because their holy books all support that kind of immorality. Yeah. And so they've got a little problem on their hands right there, which is ironic. And I also don't like the idea of subjectivity is a bad thing because we live in a world that needs to have nuance. We live in a world that changes and where cultures develop and things are constantly evolving. It's good to have the ability to change your mind and be able to readjust what certain things are and what the values of certain things are. In my opinion, a system that is subjectively framed worked such as, hey, we all came up with a list of things that we don't like and what we do like and what we value. And we can objectively come up with rules to support that framework. We can say, hey, we don't want to be killed, right? We subjectively determine that. So let's make a rule that says, don't kill each other, right? Okay, great. It's a whole process of creating laws. That's the whole law. That's what morality is. In a sense, it's your processing what the cultural values are and coming up with moral suit and you can come up with like the best set of rules or more optimal system that can, you know, acquiesce to what everyone wants to have to have a needlessly harmless life, which is one of the best things that we could have, like a life without any needless harm. Though we're kind of, I'm kind of translate. I do want to throw this out irony that I see in the Bible. I see a lot of irony in the Bible. The Goliath David fight. A lot of people purport that as like, man, look at this giant giant with like a club or a sword or whatever. But all David has is like this tiny, you know, tiny, long projectile weapon. That's way better than a sword in my opinion already, but he also has this giant God on his side. And I'm like, well, then that makes the dude with the sword the underdog. Like the underdog is not David in that story. Like we keep reporting that story is like, this is a great underdog. I was like, no, this guy has magic plus a gun. That's not a fair fight. This is a fair fight. Even if you took out the God, you brought a guard and a gun to a stick fight. It was no hope whatsoever. And I can't tell you how many times people were like, well, I'm the David in this solution was like, no, because that would make you the jerk. John, what do you got on the subject of God on our side? Was there ever a contender in a conflict who said God wasn't on his side? Right. Yeah, I want to lose and they're both Christians and the one that was saying that was saying, yeah, I just want to interject very quickly. There was once an automobile named Goliath. It was a brand of car. It was a subsidiary of Borgward, which was a British, a German car. And the Goliath was anything but huge. I mean, it was a small car which was underpowered with a two stroke engine. I don't know why they came up with the name Goliath for an automobile. There's irony. Yeah. Guys, we're at the end of the show. Let's do a quick roundout. George Brown, Brooklyn, what's something that you'd recommend we check out before next week? There is a television program that on our American public TV, there's a program that is trotted out every a few years when the local national public TV station is trying to raise money. The name of this program is Sid Caesar's Writers. And Sid Caesar was the comedian who really developed comedy on television. And this is a panel discussion for two hours among the people who wrote the material for that TV show. And they do some bits on routines, comedy routines, which are absolutely priceless. And so if you have a chance to see Sid Caesar's Writers. Is that SID or CID? How do you find that? SID. Okay, cool. Thank you, George. Buffalo. Got anything you'd recommend we check up before in the next week? I'd like to hear a discussion of the Satanic temple. And why did they call themselves a Satanic temple? Next week, maybe we can talk about that. How about that? Yeah, we'll bring it up. It's a very interesting organization to me. But I don't understand why you try to start something new by challenging the old. Interesting. Very good success. Yeah. Boudreaux, anything you'd recommend we check up before next week? Well, since I had live in-person band practice last week, it was great. So I should have some videos to post in the coming weeks of some old band practice playing around. We're doing so. Now, help me out. Does when you are practicing your band, and I'm not trying to correlate two different stories here, but does the wife and kids find a good reason to go gardening outside during that time? Or do they, you know, they just go to the store? Ironically, we do need some more flour. Ironically enough, my wife, who generally doesn't love the beating of the drums and the bass right upstairs. She said, I was like, Hey, how was it? Was that sound okay? She's like, you know what? It sounded, sounded normal again. It sounded like we're getting back to normal. There is your sweet story. That was a sweet story. Scott, anything you'd recommend before next week? Wow. Not really. I mean, there's I'm going to be doing a little steelman debate tomorrow, tomorrow, yeah, on a board skeptic channel. But that's if you're in that all those sort of debates and things of that nature. But if you'd like to tune in tomorrow, I think around five o'clock Eastern time, I'll be doing that. Well, can you real quickly flesh out what a steelman argument is? Yes. So a steelman is when you take the opposing position in a, in a debate, just to kind of lay out the argument that your usual, yeah, the best points that you can come up with. So it's kind of fun. Disargument in a good way. This is, yeah, I'm going to give you all the credit possible. Here's your best even better than they could. Yeah. Right. Here's your best case scenario because I've heard that still defeat the argument. And it's still bad. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Why, why Samuel L. Jackson is the best Jedi ever. Okay. Let me, let me take this. We'll just say if purple lightsabers were the best lightsabers ever, we still have problems because there you go. Anyway, anyway, John, you have a bunch of stuff to plug. So would you mind tell me some of the things that we should check out? Sure. Sure. Yeah. Since the beginning of 2021, I've been doing a weekly global atheist news show, which is a 20 minute show that is a review of all the ways that in the last week, that religion has impacted humanity. Mostly, it's in negative ways, but occasionally there's a little, a little glimmer of goodness in there. And that's the show about those glimmers. I put those at the end to end on a light note, you know. Okay. So I want to promote that show. It's on a free thought productions YouTube channel. And I don't, is the chat public here because I've put, I've put the link in there. People have been click on that. And the other show that I do follows free thought productions, global atheist news about, there's a 10 minute gap so that you go to the toilet, you know, fill up your beer. It goes out at 3pm on your time, Eastern Standard Time on a Saturday. And the following show is my version of Ask an Atheist when I have a guest and we discuss something of interest to people of a like mind, people of kindred spirits. And time is, it can be agreed to come on my show in the near future. Very nice. Very nice. Very nice. Nice. Nice. Oh, when you're pointing, you're pointing at where my face was in Zoom? Yes. Everyone has a different arrangement. That's what you did that. I don't know where it's going to be. G, what's G mean? Well, but in Britain, they have a different sign language system. So that's, that's just weird in my brain. I'm sorry. Dred, pirate. Anything you recommend, we check out before next week. Also cute dog, by the way, very, very cute dog. Well, thank you. Yeah. Yeah. So I have a YouTube channel and I live stream this on Sundays at 8 a.m. Pacific standard time. So you can come check me out while we're in action. And somebody's throwing a ball around. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Dred, what channel, what's the name of the channel? The channel is Mind Pirate, M-I-N-D-P-Y-R-A-T-E. And if you haven't joined, please do. I'm looking for 13 more subscribers to get me to 100. And then I can customize my channel. So thank you for you guys for having joined already. I appreciate it. Also, I just wanted to say that we ought to touch maybe next week on the revocation of the American Humanist Association's Humanist Award of the Year to Richard Dawkins. Yes. That just happened. And give this some thought and then have a cogent and intelligent conversation about it next week. I'd love that. Sure, sure, sure. Very cool. Larry, go ahead and take us out. You can find me on Let's Chat. You're on this channel probably right now. See you guys. Okay. My own content is found on digitalfreethought.com. Be sure to click on the blog button for all of our radio show archive, Atheist songs, and many articles on the subject. You can find my YouTube channel by searching for Doubter 5. My book, Atheism, What's It All About, is available on Amazon. And if you have questions for the show, you can send them to AskAnAtheist at KnoxvilleAtheist.org, and we'll answer them on future shows. If you're having trouble leaving religious beliefs behind, you can go to recoveringfromreligion.org. They have people there that can help you with that. And if you're watching this on YouTube, be sure to like and subscribe. This has been the Digital Freethought Radio Hour. Remember, everybody is going to somebody else's 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. Say bye, everybody. Bye, everybody. Bye, everybody.