 103.9 FM WZO radio Deadpool is another argument about what a hero actually is right. That's what give it to me then. Oh What's what's the argument? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the point is that he shows very positive positive Virtues he he sticks up for people who really can't stick up for themselves in certain certain sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah He he he's also really funny. So she's like, oh, he's enthusiastic and funny. Is that is that a good thing? Well, you enjoy watching him do it, right? Right. Maybe I should try to learn to be more enthusiastic and open and funny, right? But Deadpool also kills people. Yeah, like Psychotic killer like it does that balance itself out. I wonder like that was the argument, right? Yeah, right exactly The quote a line from a Schwarzenegger movies. Yeah, but they were bad Hello and welcome to digital free thought radio hour on WZO radio 103.9 LP FM live right here in Knoxville, Tennessee Today is Sunday, August 25th, 2019 And if it's not where you're listening, then it's a rebroadcast of the show or a podcast I'm daughter five and usually we have one been on the phone with us. Hello. Wombat. It's the one bad Fun time today guys. Yeah And digital free thought radio hours a call-and-talk radio show about atheism free thought rational thought humanism and the sciences And conversely, we also talk about religion religious faiths. God's holy books and superstitions And if you get though, oh, excuse me if you get the feeling that you're the only non-believer in Knoxville Well, you're just not there are several atheists free thinking rationalist groups that exist right here in Knoxville And we'll be telling you how you can connect with them right after the mid-show break Today's topic is what philosophy of Christianity or religion in general and we have a guest with us today Ty, would you like to introduce your your guest sure thing so we're gonna be talking about truth and How people determine if things are true or not but it could also stretch to things that are outside of religion and I thought it was really cool to Bring up someone who's really interested in trying to do this is a project his name's human eight and welcome to the show Hey human eight. What's up? Good good. I thought I was gonna be honest. Hey, there you go. Honestly, let's go. It doesn't matter either way But I'm well on a state. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself about the project that you're going through to? So Well, I'm a teacher so that's that's my interest. I'm naturally interested in how people can know things and how my students can know things and so Kind of in short the idea is just to have conversations about that Openly and that's what I try to do. I'm gonna try to do kind of like a Street epistemology style or I want to start doing videos like that soon I'm working with people at some mentors at some of the Schools that I work at have been helping me with these ideas and develop them so But the basic idea is just to have a conversation with people about what's true Kind of go with our kind of write down those intuitions that we all have sure that we all tend to have and then to Start to talk about some of the beliefs and see if that really is matching up with kind of our intuitions of What we would say is true or not so if I can understand this like you'll have a conversation with someone out outside like maybe at a park or something and You will ask them so like what does it take what's your criteria for determining something's true And then you guys will work together to write down that criteria or like have some sort of record of it And then you'll talk about actual belief that they believe is true and compared to that criteria Is that more or less? Yes. Yeah. Yeah, I mean that's that's the short of it It's not I haven't talked to anybody necessarily at a park yet I have talked to people that I disagree with Politically and my students obviously are the two main crowds for me so far But I am trying to expand that and to make it more inclusive and kind of global. Okay, sure So friends and four-year-olds That's students and students and students. Yeah No, yeah, you come up the students. Yeah, it's no the students are of college age. Okay, great Great, I don't know if I mentioned that. No, like sometimes that's even worse as far as like maturity levels go But yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you're right. You are right about that. Oh, hey, let's write it down on the list Yeah One thing let's get it right into it One of the first things that you mentioned was how it matches up with your intuitions. Yeah Our intuitions can be flavored very strongly by earliest knowledge training They could be dead wrong due to that. So how do you address that problem? Yeah? So you're right about that That's the point of the conversation, right? So the point of the conversation is to List those intuitions and if there's a reason for challenging that intuition to go ahead and challenge it Yeah, right, but what I found in doing this practice myself is that That's not actually that necessary at least for me in my conversations that I've I've had It usually actually is good enough to just talk about those intuitions and what I find is we tend to agree of When I'm talking with somebody it's just how do you determine and so for instance? Kind of the list that I made but one of those things is like if we can observe it We have a certain amount of confidence that we can say that it exists, right? Oh, yeah, that's how we that's one way we can know what's true. Possibly. Well, you can misinterpret the Senses, but I mean, yes, right pretty much there. I would say it's not seeing it at all So that again, I would say it makes me more compelled than not seeing it at all Exactly right and the point is that a lot of people have that intuition like even even people that you might disagree with heavily in terms of religion or Politics and are going to say that as one of the potential ways to figure out what's true Well, I'm going to observe things now again. There are there are complications to that. Yeah, obviously we talk about what those complications are but you get this this very natural kind of progression of a Conversation where these these things come up naturally and these are also Linked to The philosophers have already essentially had this conversation We have the empiricists right the empiricists and philosophy they're gonna come along and say Well, if we can observe it we can be sure of it, but then there are philosophers like hold on That's not exactly right right and they have their challenges to that proposition right, right? And it's become this complex conversation about epistemology But what's so great about it to me is that I have found that a lot of them are intuitive And that's great for building common ground between people and and creating a standard for us to be like, okay Now we have a standard. Let's see if we can hold ourselves to the standard or if we need to Possibly revise the list does the list need to be changed instead of our beliefs or should we change our beliefs instead of the Lists, you know and just have that type of conversation. Okay. Okay. Okay. I can see the idea behind it What do you say then that you've had? Conversations that were always like key towards an Agreement between the two of you as far as like what you find to be intuitively true or there's cases where it's like Hey, both of us are having problems with this What should we do at this point? So the biggest complication for me has been that we tend to agree about how to Decide what's true in Kind of the sense that we end up talking about but When it comes to other things people seem to want to build a separate list for both beliefs that they want to keep Right. That's that that is also something that you have to accommodate for so for instance When we're talking about the list of how to decide when I've talked about the list with my friend who is a Christian He kind of just like well, yes, I agree that this is how we're going to determine what's true But in terms of my faith that's different Right. Yeah, why did they throw up that barrier though if they're actually trying to get to the truth can't Can they recognize that their feet the faith might be a barrier to getting to the truth? Right, right. Yeah, I know and I think what I do at that point is I'm like, okay Well, what is that? What does that look like then? How did you get how did you if there's a separate list? Let's look at that list, too. Yeah, right and find which one's more reliable. If anything, right? Say that again and find out which one of the two is more reliable for coming to like a true conclusion But nothing should be exempt from examination Exactly. Yeah, and that's also an intuition that we have to I found that most people are open to discuss these things Which is which is really great. What do you do if there's something true that can't be reached intuitively? What do you what do you do if there's a truth that can't be reached intuitively? Yeah, like quantum quantum or even more simple stuff like hey You know the more dense something is the smaller it could be so that seems weird It's like intuitively bigger things are heavier than smaller things are so why is it that? When something gets smaller but be more dense it weighs more like that's it's not as an intuitively Understandable thing to understand it's not it's like inverse relationships aren't necessarily intuitive you have to like Sit up for a couple of seconds and be like, oh, okay now I get it But it's not an intuitively understood thing or you know Like there's a lot of stuff that's seen that it's a little bit more complicated But isn't necessarily intuitively true and that can go on to multiple levels to even the thing that doubt of five was mentioning So what do you do if you're having a conversation and you're trying to reach the intuitive truth? But it's just not there, but it's still true Yeah, so I think those things that are counter-intuitive are kind of subsumed in the practice of Good induction like properly done induction So what do you mean by induction? We have logic logical training. Is that what you're saying? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, I mean it is it's it's recognizing that so so You can't always observe something directly, right? That's the truth The truth is that there's some things that we can't observe directly that we're still gonna say Are true. So for instance, I can't really observe Abraham Lincoln live his life, right? Yeah, but I still do believe that Abraham Lincoln there was a person named Abraham Lincoln who lived a life and the reason that I think that isn't because And the reason that I think that isn't because I've observed Abraham Lincoln live his life. It's because I've Seen pictures of him in history books and I've read news articles and and I've put other things that I'm going to use as evidence to build The idea that Abraham Lincoln was a person that actually existed. There's a trail of evidence actually or really It's a really mundane thing to believe that we had a president We've had over 40 of them and they've been stretched back over time So that we've had a president named Bob. It's like sure why not like sure. That's true, too Yeah, like we can fight we can figure that out That's fairly mundane and we can get a standard of evidence that meets that claim fairly readily Because it's a mundane claim mundane amount of evidence to support right and it doesn't cost you anything to believe it I won't I don't think that's a good reason to believe anything, but yeah, that is true I mean, uh, it's a good reason not to believe something if it's questionable the first time Right, yeah, yeah, I would agree with that too and I've been thinking of ways to even incorporate that idea into this into all of this is like because because it is true that The type of claim kind of dictates in some ways What you need in terms of evidence, right, right, right? Yeah, sure So that's also something to keep in mind What was it, uh, Carl Sagan said, you know, incredible Claims require incredible evidence more or less. Yeah, it's extraordinary. Yeah, though I would say that's the word and I would say like if so if you got someone from like a tribe in the amazon Who's never heard of a president before that would seem extraordinary to them But we should be able to have that evidence To substantiate that to the point where it's just so commonplace. It's like, oh, okay So it's like a village leader, but for a bigger place. Okay. I get that that's now mundane now Like it might be extraordinary at the beginning But as long as you can support it with evidence Then you have a good reason to believe it if we can't come up with good evidence for Presidents existing then he's in his right to not be convinced that that's the case It's not his fault that he doesn't believe it. It's our fault for not Doing our research and presenting to him in a At a good manner that what makes a compelling argument for why this obviously mundane thing actually exists or not And it's also, uh, some people it's not really important whether they exist it or not their ideas stand by themselves like, um, Aristotle and uh, uh, play dough, you know Their their writings, uh, whether they existed or not as they you know, we believe that they existed As Aristotle as long as the ideas are valid. We can just go with the ideas. Sure. Yeah I would I can say that goes beyond just historical figures to figures that we know now don't exist But maybe in the future they might be turned into religions But like you have like, you know, your your comic book heroes who like stand for justice Uh, responsibility. What's spider-man's main thing like, uh, great power requires great responsibility or something like that, right? Like there there are like solid catchphrases that you like See in fictional characters That can still stand apart from, uh, them as people and more be as ideals for how to interact with people and conduct yourself Well, look at, uh, Confucius and Buddha. I mean, they may or may not be real people, but their ideas stand Yeah, yeah. Yeah, um We were talking to an atheist before or not an atheist Episcopalian who's now an atheist by the way After a couple of conversations. Yeah, our last guest. Uh, he's finally out of the closet. The thing very good The thing for him was um, he he he loved gods Like he loved a lot of examples of gods and he found a lot of value in like, um, researching them Though he didn't take them as a literal truth He did see value in like what they stood for and and he believed in that And once he was able to parse the two of like, hey, I know this isn't real But I do love them as a character. He's like, okay. Well, if I don't believe it I'm an atheist, but I still like these characters. I'm like, you dude I love a lot of god like a lot of us as characters. There's plenty of them. Like I've just played a Thor Yeah, I love Thor does like funny Thor Tycho TD Thor great But I've also played a game called assassin's creed that has like a bunch of like, um, You know, Polyponnesian gods Greek gods the uh, Roman pantheon and you're like, whoa These characters are so interesting and the dynamics they have with each other are so great That I just picked up books and started reading about them and I'm like following like The mythology of these, you know deities and it's really enjoyable for me So like there's nothing wrong with loving the god In fact, I would say there's more atheists that love the character of like atheists hate god Is it real isn't all but you will definitely find atheists that love a lot of different kind of gods So it's actually kind of interesting You could you could probably consider me that on an extreme end I think that the idea of I love the idea of narratives and I actually think that They they can be a great comment another great common ground for people And I think that The way that in in terms of so we've had this conversation about truth now, right I think narratives help us have conversations about morality in some way There might be some overlap there, but you know, when I go to a movie I've said this to you before Um, when I go to a movie, I feel like I'm I'm being somebody's arguing with me Like the the person who made that movie is arguing with me about What it means to be the protagonist and what it means to be the antagonist And what are the qualities I see in the protagonist that I'm really going to agree with the Director. Oh, yeah, that is what makes a good human and I want to emulate that a little bit more now Um, and this is this is you know, like harry potter. What makes harry potter a protagonist? Well, he's close to his friends. He's he's willing to sacrifice himself in certain circumstances He's generally kind to people. He sticks up for the underdog. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, that's what makes him harry potter That's what makes him a good human and the protagonist and what is who's the antagonist the antagonist is literally the opposite of that Spoiler guys. All right Oh, do we have to do that? I'm sorry No, you haven't seen harry potter. I feel sorry for you. You should you should do it. It's it's a great narrative But sorry, uh, that's that's we're all in that conversation. Okay. Okay I know just playing with you. I was just one sorry for interjecting. But yeah, I agree I do think like it's sort of like um, uh, a debate between Uh, uh a battle of different ideologies And you might find yourself inspired to root for one of the characters just based on how they are conducting themselves because you see value In that if that was like adopted by the general public to act in that particular way like But I also like anti hero movies too. Like I I mean, I like my dead pools. I like my uh transport. Oh, yeah Yeah, but those are also to me arguments too dead pool is another argument about what a hero actually is right? That's what give it to me then Uh, oh, what's what's the argument? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah So the the argument is can you still have so so dead pool? What what are his virtues right? He has the the idea of an anti hero is they have these quote unquote virtues Versus these other things that were like we don't know how we feel about that. Okay, so he still cares about the Well, see now I'm gonna start That I don't look well. So the point is that he shows very positive positive Virtues he he sticks up for people who really can't stick up for themselves in certain certain Yeah, yeah, yeah He he he's also really funny. So it's just like oh, he's enthusiastic and funny. Is that is that a good thing? Well, you enjoy watching him do it, right? Right, maybe I should try to learn to be more enthusiastic and open and funny, right But dead pool also kills people One-ton psychotic killer like does that balance itself out? I wonder like that was the argument right there Yeah, right exactly to quote a line from uh, uh, Schwarzenegger movies. Uh, yeah, but they were bad Yeah, yeah, it's just like is What what balances like sure. He's definitely agreeable. He's definitely funny He seems like a cool guy to hang out with but he's also psychotic like to like a fundamental course when it's just like What are Does one counteract together as far as like here's a here's an example of a person Like is the argument like psychopaths can be funny people too No, I think the question is is it is I think what you're being asked to do is Is deadpool's action in a certain scene The right decision even though it's murdering So for instance when he murders the whole yakuza, which is the beginning of the film So I feel like it's that big of a spoiler now go for it Um The question becomes if you actually had the ability to stop the yakuza, would it be the right thing to do? Now he enjoys it, right? So that might be another level like is it okay to enjoy it? Yeah, you know Right, that's another question But that is still something that you can kind of grapple with is the audience and think about And and really assess critically And and and think about your own morality and how it stands to that and if there's things to consider Is there a time to kill? You know, is there a time to do that? Is it right every nation on earth? I would say yes to that Because they have standing armies and which are prepared to kill necessary I will on an individual vigilante level No, I'd say every nation would agree that no it's not at that level I would say the same mechanics that made characters that are intriguing and worthwhile to talk about like Over multiple generations like Deadpool or Superman or spider-man Is the same mechanisms that we probably used to come up with a lot of the god claims that we had way back in the past And as we present like these characters like odin for example, who's like, yeah, he's powerful But he's very conniving and will backstab you despite the fact that he's like one of the most powerful and should be most altruistic gods in existence or Loki or I mean There's characters in the bible that do the same thing too And they inspire conversation I'd say as atheists They we we have the ability to say like hey We love these characters. We love talking about these characters We're really intrigued by them But that could be a separate conversation from whether or not they're actually true or not and absolutely and If we can separate once we separate those two It's like now we have this whole worth Wild world of mythology that we can like dissect and and connect with together Without having the weight of taking it literally You know And I think there's value in that so would you say that's kind of close to What you were trying to do with with your outgoing or what is it nice characterizing that? No, that's it. I think that's exactly it. That is uh nail on or that's hammer on nail head. Yeah, that's So what are the things some of the things that you uh, you discover? Are discussed in your classes here. Can you go to some examples? Yeah Well and the classes and the conversations I have with conservatives are going to be different So the conversations that I usually have so I'm more willing to talk about spiritual things with a conservative Or or those, you know those narratives, right? With my class, I'm more interested in making sure that they understand academic epistemology And so when we talk about building we we we focus much more on that that conversation of truth because I feel like morality In terms of philosophy gets a lot more mucky and and I and I trust them to deal with it We have some basic conversation, but really what I like to do is okay We've made this list of how to determine what's true now. Let's look let's go look at sources So we'll look at opinion sources We'll look at news sources and we'll look at academic sources and we'll say are they doing things that we would expect Given this conversation about truth Are they doing those things that we said were the proper ways to build truth? And what they tend to find is that the opinion sources don't really do it Nearly as well as the academic or the scientific Uh, how how scientific scientific or academic discourse happens a method of science Science per se Do they walk away from that conversation thinking opinions are less valuable than like the news or academic sources? and Do you inspire them to do you in any way? Find or explain some value into the opinion Yeah, so what we talk about so so first of all it's kind of on it's uh They determine it's based on Who the opinion piece is from right? So that's the thing is you're analyzing those opinion sources individually. So you might actually come away feeling like Oh, well I actually that opinion source didn't really well about being careful with their claims and qualifying when we said they should qualify Qualifying being like just limiting your claims. So i'm not going to say all i'm going to say most right right. Oh, they use most correctly, right? um This is just a general idea that they get Generally, they become more skeptical of opinion pieces and more they become more confident in academic works Which is great by the time they go to the research project because i'm like now you actually understand Why we tell you to you to use academic sources? Right, that's why this is our It's not something we're trying to brainwash you with no, it's like a higher quality of um thoroughly investigated data compared to What something could just be said or misinterpreted that must characterize more reliable method to getting to the truth There you go Right and they're talking to each other too. So sometimes they'll have an opinion piece And it's also the case a lot of times where Usually if the opinion piece is really good at what it's doing at making claims and stuff It usually tends to agree with the academic interpretations or represent those in some way even though there are still complications there Which we talk about sure. Yeah Because you never know what what they're leaving out of an opinion piece They could they can include all the stuff that agrees with them Which actually exists but they could leave out a lot of things it doesn't I like I like the idea that it's not necessarily Is this thing an opinion or a news article or an academic piece that determines whether or not it's reliable? It's the standard that they're using that determines if it's reliable and if you actually have Oh, we're getting closer to the bottom of the hour, but uh, hey, uh, let's talk about this when we get back from the break How about that? Uh, this is 103.9 FM radio. We're coming to you from the birdhouse This is digital free thought radio hour and we're going to be back right after the break. See you guys Okay, sounds good You're listening to the digital free thought radio hour on wozo 103.9 LP FM in Knoxville, Tennessee Feel free to join in on the conversation at 865-333-5937 That's 865-333-5937 And now back to the show Three digital radio one simply the best Welcome back. This is digital free thought radio hour right here in Knoxville, Tennessee wozo radio 103.9 LP Uh FM here in Tennessee Um, i'm doubted five wills. We have uh the wombat say hello wombat. I'm the wombat And we have the honest eight say hello on him state How's it going? Yeah, he's so honest And uh, let's talk about just for a second the free thought groups that are here in Knoxville, Tennessee that you might be able to join You should be able to join or if you don't have one where you live Start one. Yeah Anyway, the first one is the well, they're all uh right here They got about four groups the atheist society of Knoxville Has 950 members. It's available on meetup. You can go to meet up where you can go to KnoxvilleAtheist.org There's also the rationalists of east Tennessee. They're found at rationalist.org The sunday assembly is a church that started uh for no god People people who no longer believe in god they can go to the church Anyway, it still have the fellowship of a church type gathering Just do a google search for a sunday assembly in your area And uh, there's also a secular student alliance that are in most high schools and colleges now If you don't have one in your school start one It's a free thought movement for those who like to find other free thinkers to hang with Everybody needs like-minded friends and atheists are no difference Now there's also an atheist tv college show here in Knoxville besides the radio show It's a tv show called free thought forum comes out at 6 30 on wednesdays on comcast channel 12 charter channel 192 You can also watch some of their archives on youtube by searching for free thought forum Knoxville Knoxville out. It's good stuff You say Knox yourself out. I love that. That's good. That's good. I didn't say that. No, I like yeah, we need to point that That's better. I like that. Yeah, at least half room pizzeria. Knox yourself out. I love that. That's good All right, we're freaking stuff out. All right. Anyway on the state uh, so uh Here are our guests for the show and we're talking about the project that you have where you're trying to build connections with people And have conversations about the nature of truth and how we determine if things are true And I think you said you do it in like a three-part step You you set up a criteria with them Then you ask them about their beliefs and then if you see if they are using that criteria to Support that belief that they have Do you mind talking to you talk talking to us about some of your success Successful conversations success stories breakthroughs stuff like that Yeah, yeah, sure. Um, so first, um, I'm gonna modify that three-part process just a little bit. You're gonna add five more problems I'm sorry. Now go for it. Go for it. Go for it. So, um, so Basically, we do have that conversation. We examine their beliefs Um, and we by the way, we don't have to do it to them If they if they want to kind of reverse that if they want to ask me how I decide What's true and and and compare that to one of my beliefs. I also think that's appropriate Or that's a good conversation to have even cool. Um, and then from there What I would like to do, um, which I haven't necessarily fulfilled this part yet But this is kind of the third step for me, which is price fighting I'm sorry. It's the fisticuffs like you just throw the table across and you start punching each other and see whose ideas last till the end It's a battle royale of Yeah, um, but I what I would hope that they would do is that they would Kind of print out that list or pull it up at some point when they're actually confronted with the claim and say, okay How should I go about Assessing this claim step by step in the way that I said I should do it So it's their personal list to keep after the end of the conversation Yes, yes, it is. Um, and the reason that I'm doing this is because One thing that I found as somebody who used to be a fundamentalist Christian who To me the most important parts is that I just didn't trust Science or academia. I believe a lot of things that were contrary to the data or the scientific consensus or the academic consensus um And the reason that I and but I still had all the same intuitions that I have now about truth The only difference to me in my head from my experience Is that I didn't really have it in front of me in any moment to like really think about it critically So for instance at my old church, there was this claim going around Uh that people generally believed which was that people in africa were being raised from the dead Right. Yeah And in that moment of being in that church, I kind of just accepted it Right random question. Isn't that like and how was that news taken wasn't was that taken with any degree of excitement of like Oh, maybe these guys have figured out some stuff. That's awesome. Great. Maybe we should start learning voodoo Was it like yeah, so you mean in the church, right? I want because I'm not I wasn't privy to what was discussed in the church, but I would imagine a Environment where people are looking forward to living in an afterlife that wouldn't be a surprise to them Or maybe I've just not been in church for so long that that would still be an alien concept So the idea Well, so the idea the the africa part is actually only significant because there were christian missionaries over there That helped raise people from the dead. Oh, okay. There's yes Using it as like confirmation that their ideas are genuine So it's white people bringing up the brown people that okay. All right. We got it. We're lucky. Yeah. Yeah The news is being parted by the christ by the preacher from the pulpit. Is that correct? Uh, yes, I I mean it's been a while since then. I know that it was a rumor I think that the pastor did this is something that they themselves Endorsed and said was happening. Wow Well, and so and the thing is again If you had stopped me in that moment as a teenager and just said hey, let's let's write down a list of how you decide Well, it's true. It would have it would have invalidated Me really accepting that claim. I couldn't observe it. I can't repeat. I can't repeatedly observe it You need that independent verification right disability I'm sorry reproducibility Right exactly and and so I did I just didn't have the thing in front of me to really hold myself to a standard Right, even though if you would have asked me, I'm sure I would have still said yes I think observing things is a great way to Um, know that something is real. Yes, I know I can observe things that aren't real And I need a way to distinguish that and independent verification is a really good way And yes, I know that in this circumstance this claim can't be independently verified. Therefore, I really shouldn't accept it Right, right The the preacher himself though this gives me trouble because he's he's theoretically passing on what the missionaries themselves have seen And and you know when you're sitting in the pew and you have missionaries in the field And you repeat you wait for the reports to come back and the reports come back To the preacher and the preacher is imparting that information to the group That's got to be incredible news when they hear that. How did they react? Oh, you mean my church they loved it They I mean they should have been on their feet. Yeah, I should have you know, what words did they use? How did how did they do that? I want to bring back my mother, you know Yeah, we talked about that event for for weeks For weeks at that point that was that like that's what it is is like something will happen in the church It'll be news and then we're talking about it for weeks. It's like our gossip fades out How could that possibly say that? Linda got a new car that's the new thing to talk about this day. It's like, oh It's actually interesting you should say that because when that happened I remember being really excited for like a week or two And then I remember YouTubing like can I can I see videos of this and not really finding videos and then just kind of moving on Wow, that's that was the process. That's a low standard of evidence Yeah, and that's where and that is the way it usually runs in some circles So Geez, yeah Like you but it became easier once I had that standard once I really sat down and thought about okay How do I decide and here it is in front of me? I have to be fair. This is how I said I'm going to do it So would you be interested in trying out that method right now like over the over the radio with us? Like absolutely. I mean, yeah, sure. So like, um, how does it start? How do you normally begin? So are you do you want to approach this from you asking me how I do it or me asking you Try without a five. I've talked I talked so much That are five. Do you have like uh, like uh, uh, hopefully a mundane belief or something that you're you're yeah. Yeah. Yeah that you Wait, are you talking about on a state right now or uh, so I would love to see I'd love to see you try this method without a five who is larry who's yeah Oh, well, I've got a belief the souls aren't real It's a classic for the show. Sorry. It's an inside joke for us. But yeah, uh, that's his belief So how would you go about that? Okay, so first we want to have that conversation. How do you decide what's true? Right, how do you decide that you're going to accept a claim? That's really I think by the end by the time we get to this end, uh, the end of this conversation That's going to be a rejection of a claim, right? Well, his belief is that they don't exist. That's the belief Right, and I'm still not Up on the particular. So for instance, I might Okay, so let's just let's just see how it goes. All right, you're in the dinner seat now Right, right. So how do you how do you decide? How do you go about deciding? What's true that you're going to accept a claim or not accept a claim? What's the process look like? Well, it's all evidence, you know and the valid validity of the evidence and in 2000 years or as long as religions have been claiming That souls exist and go to heaven which goes back even to the ancient egyptians Uh, nobody's ever put forward any kind of solid evidence that They're real But they assume that every other living thing on the planet has no soul And uh, but we we live forever. I mean, it's kind of a egocentric claim that you know, I can't possibly die You know, I've got to have some kind of life after this one and it just seems arrogant and egocentric Right, so this uh, and it also might not necessarily work the same with all the people With all people so I am this is a bit of a deviation, but I do have a question And i'm just interested what you would say which is Would you say that both of these statements are true that You believe that there are no souls or that you lack a belief that there are souls I'd say both of them Both of them. Okay. All right. I active. I actively believe that there are no souls. Okay. All right at the same time I don't believe it Okay. Okay. So let's go back to this idea of evidence right now. So what constitutes evidence? How do you decide that something is evidence or not? um, well if I can examine it if it's something that besides anything better than anecdotal evidence Would be helpful um, you know, we watch seven seasons of ghost busters or ghost hunters on tv And theoretically a soul is a ghost and vice versa and they have never produced one They might say it's a little different from a ghost, but I'm not particular on the When we talk about ghosts everybody has different attributes for them, you know Yeah When they see a ghost the ghosts are generally clothed, you know, do we have Ghost clothing. Yeah They're standing on a floor. Do they do ghosts have weight? Do they and why would they yeah floor should they just go right on through the surface of the earth? Yeah, there's a really funny Um comedian that's kind of like, you know, why are there why are there no like 20th 21st century ghosts? You know that like wake you up in the middle of the night and ask what your wi-fi password is Yeah Yeah, it's just it's just to me. It seems silly. Uh, they're like to say that nobody's ever given me any any evidence other than anecdotal Uh, and are you familiar with David Hume? Yes, okay. He he has three principles that that Say that none of this is valid The first principle is that people lie or they are mistaken or they're They're fooled All the time this happens. We all know it. Yeah, the second principle is The second rule is that for a miracle claim to be true Laws of nature which are immutable would have to be broken And the third rule is because of the first and second rules No miracle claim or supernatural claim for that matter should ever be credited If you did credit it then you would have to give more credit to the rules of the new universe being broken Then that somebody might be mistaken a fooled or lying And that for me does it Yeah Yeah, so there's this chasm for me. Um in terms of where you're at and what you know Um about epistemology already This I would probably get into an air I would we would probably we could build my list probably pretty easily You're going to accept that you can observe certain things but it should be independently verifiable, right? You should be able to look at it or qualified people should be able to look at it, right? Right You're going to agree that we can also use induction We don't necessarily have to observe it directly, but we need to be able to preserve some evidence that confirms the thing, right? I would agree But that's also problematic because in terms of induction Any new piece of information might validate what you knew before So you're going to accept it tentatively you really need to get as much of the data as possible Which kind of requires you to have some type of peer review process Where a bunch of other people who are also looking at different data than you Are checking what you're observing as well Right, sure So so we're going to agree probably along a lot of this and and we usually get there But it would just be a lot quicker for you and me but where you and I I think would be at would be the idea of falsification by Carl Popper which is The idea that we don't Uh And again, I'm still a layman philosopher. So if I mess this up too bad, I do I'm looking for those types of critiques, but Um that we we don't tend to Prove things true so much as we fail to prove them false Yeah, and a lot of it comes down to the ability of falsification if the premise itself is unphosphiable, then Where do you go? Now you have to make a decision whether you want to believe it on anecdotal evidence or or not So then my question would be how is the claim? um That souls are not real falsifiable Um, I don't see that. How would you go about proving that claim false? You would go about proving that claim false by producing a soul No, no, I'm sorry the the claim that souls aren't real not are real that would be you would be right if you I'm sorry. Hold on. No. No, you would you would prove it false by Producing a soul. Yeah a soul or good reliable evidence for one Which uh, since we don't have any attributes that we we don't never had a soul to examine So how do we know what attributes or evidence would be valid for it? Yeah? Yeah, and I will um, I'll throw this out real quick Sorry for interjecting. Um, and I actually like this method a lot. I really do think it's great Though the distinction here is he's not saying I know they don't exist He's saying I believe and I actively believe that they don't and is that belief justified based on this What he's presenting and for what I'm seeing so far it seems like yeah He's coming up with a really good argument to show that there's no case To even start believing in one so it can't even be a candidate for consideration Until someone brings some meaningful evidence to show that right this is a possible thing to start believing in And then we can work on whether or not we know or whatever stuff like that But he's not compelled to believe it's true and he actively believes that it's not true And that I mean both of those things are the things that he can demonstrate So well, it's belief and I'm not claiming knowledge. Exactly. Yeah, like That careful listening is really important in like these kinds of conversation So, um, what you're saying, um Might be I we might be an agreement here I don't know if there's gonna be some Way to semantically split the difference. That's something I have to think a little bit more about Um, but just on the face of it I I would say that given the conversation that we've just had that you seem to be lining up with Pretty accurately those intuitions So That would be how the conversation would go Um I need to think about the kind of the nature of falsifiability a little bit more I had it differently in my head, but okay, again, just given the way the conversation is gone That I would just say yeah, I mean that's that's about where we're we're at and I would agree with that And I can tell you an se agreeing with the person that you're talking to is Like totally a normal part of it because you're not they're trying to catch them in a trap and flip the tables on them You're there just trying to learn something and if it's true You're gonna you're gonna absorb it and put it in your pocket And I think like what Larry's presenting is like a really cool card to put in your pocket as far as like thinking about How to think consider if things actually exist or not and whether or not you should believe them Right, right Yeah, I would I would agree with that um I'm trying to think of The nature of falsifiability now which is so one thing that I like to do which is a good practice that I encourage my students to do Okay, as well Which is to I think analogies are a very great underused resource And so what I want to do or what I usually do in this circumstance is I think would I accept this claim In its form but about something else Okay, that is analogous to it. So for instance, if we were going to make the claim about fairies What I get to that same conclusion by saying I don't believe in fairies, right? And why don't I believe in fairies because there's not sufficient evidence, right? Or I'm sorry I believe that there are no fairies is actually how right is actually the the difference here, right? Yeah, I believe there are no fairies Right. Yeah, it's just like so. So how do you go about? Um Falsifying the claim there are no fairies. Well, you produce a fairy, right? Yeah, poor evidence. That's how you would falsify. It's okay. It is falsifiable right But false. I don't know if falsifiability is just like the first step. Okay, so it's falsifiable It doesn't mean that it's true. There's all the evidence point towards it But that's where I would I might start to ask. Well, what evidence do you have that points towards that? What actual evidence so honestly just interject here, but we are that we're talking about Can you hear me? No, can you hear me at all? I don't think you can hear me. Yeah, go ahead one, but okay I don't know if you can hear me or not, but um, I just interject the claim that I actively don't believe that there's no fairies And I know that there are no fairies or there are no fairies are different claims Um, and there's a subtlety there that's significant enough to warrant explanation Saying I am not convinced that something's the case I believe it's not the case versus I know for a fact or I can demonstrate that it's not the case Requires a different standard of evidence to support it One can be reached through just reasonable thinking and and just saying hey I'm actually just convinced that because based on these principles that I've read And I've I found that this is a good reliable way to come to conclusions on what I should be convinced or true or not But saying hey, there are no fairies That's something that you can demonstrate to be the case you're claiming knowledge at that point So requires a test it's like well show me that there are no fairies And if you can't do that then maybe that knowledge claim isn't justified So I think what uh Larry's explicitly doing is showing that like how you listen to the person And what you hear from them will dictate how what kind of questions and conversational approaches You'll try after the fact But what's really important is just make sure you're listening to the person that you're talking to That way it doesn't get misconstrued into a more Powerful claim than For sure and it might also come down to what I was saying before about semantics It might also come down to semantical differences. Well on one Under what conditions do you think it's acceptable to use the word belief? Sure? And it's always worthwhile to just ask the person. What do you mean by that? Right, and I see that's a very common thing. So I was just saying like hey, what do you mean? What do you mean when you say faith? Yeah, it's right. That's huge Right, and it's also a really good practice. It's called rosierian argumentation You're gonna have to explain it. We have a we have an audience that loves having big words explained, please Right, right. Yeah, so um, it's a practice that I have or it's an activity that I utilize in my own classrooms but it is just the practice of listening to somebody's argument And then what the the next step that you do is you reiterate that argument back to them in your own words And you have them confirm that that is their actual argument. Oh, that's three points of contact. Yeah, yeah Right, right. So that's what we call rosierian argumentation. But yeah, that is the that is also a very Useful practice and yeah, it's actually a safety standard at my job. So it's like, hey, I'm gonna I'm gonna leave this hammer on the floor and someone's like, okay I understand you're leaving the hammer here on the floor and then they say roger that way There's not a random hammer on the floor and someone trips over to something like that Like stuff like that will Like a three point conversation. I'm just like, hey, I dropped the hammer on the floor. Yeah, I got you No, no, no, make sure you understand what I said because I don't want you to have a like a safety issue It's here temporarily. Let's make sure we three point contact it. So yeah, that's that's very typical. Yeah Yeah, yeah, and that and that's you know, it's a kind of a safety measure in conversation I'm making sure that I'm actually dealing with your argument as opposed to what my head is your argument Exactly. Yeah, what you can strew is their argument I would say like conversation is always a compromise between what you mean And the choices and the word choice that you use to express that meaning And how that person interprets your word choice to try to translate what you had meant So it's always like this two middleman situation even though it feels like hey language I'm just throwing these words out. It's how that person's interpreting it that dictates How well you guys can actually communicate? So if it's worthwhile to like throw out terms that you are really familiar with like for example, someone says, hey man, um I'm not an atheist, but I don't believe in any god claims. I'm like, okay, that's fine. I'm willing to work with that For the while all I I can interpret that as like you're just you don't want to be called atheist I get it but functionally in my head It's it it checks a box in my head of like, okay Well, we at least are on the same page as far as what we believe to be true or note or require evidence more evidence to believe But it's just an issue of the word and I'm fine with that because I get the meaning And we can probably talk about that later, but I'm not going to force my vocabulary on you like right And if they but if they phrase it as what would you label me as you'd be like, well, I would label you as an atheist Yeah, right right just in my opinion. Yeah, right now I know there are people out there that do this but they kind of get my go to in one particular way When they if they don't believe in god and they they say, but I'm not an atheist Well, it's one. It's just ingenious. But two is it's like they're standing off to the side pointing at atheists saying I'm not one of them And that to me is uh troubling Yeah, at least Especially when it's done by like really really smart people who really do care about the truth Like uh, yeah, yeah, you're on our side here. Like there's clearly a side that's against You know, like it's indoctrinating children Is inhibiting progress of science is reducing limits through rights for women and color people and has a terrible history of Pitting people against each other for their own profit and and and let's not even talk about the sexual abuses and the political Destructions and meanderings and and lobbying that and getting their fingers in places where they shouldn't belong In a place that should be a separate church and state institution. Yeah Yeah, I think a lot of it is is Their understanding of the word a lot of times they you know, if you out talk to them about if they say I'm not actively working against. I'm uh, religion. I'm not an anti-theist. I'm not vocal. I'm not mad Well, none of that really Comes into the question at all. It's whether or not you believe in god, right? If you don't believe in god, you're an atheist then you should own up to that You should accept that it's literally one answer to one question Exactly. I had my mom I had my mom tell me I was going to over to the kentucky free thought convention Which will be in september 21st and I told my mom I won't be able to come see her on that weekend She had asked if I can come over and I said i'll be actually talking at the atheist convention She's a drove a witness And uh, we have like i'm i'm glad that she's like open to like talking about like where I go to talk But uh, she said well while I don't share your atheist belief I'm really glad that you like still told me like where you're at So like I'll know where you are and I and I'd only reply like atheists don't really have a belief to share That's kind of the point So I always find like it's always a misinterpretation of what atheism is why people find themselves so Can I can I sorry can I uh, have you repeat something real quick? Yeah, go for it So so I think me and I might have just misheard you But it sounded like you said atheists don't really believe anything No, no, that's not what I said. Atheists believe a lot of things In fact, I would say they believe in more things in common with religious people Then not like I have more or less almost the exact same beliefs as a christian except for the god So like or I know that so what was the what was the thing that you said then Do you remember atheism doesn't have doesn't share beliefs. There's no belief to share in atheism So you don't share the belief that there is no gods Yeah, like there's no god. That's not a claim that atheists have like the claim The only claim that atheists purport is I don't believe in a god or I'm not a theist And that's not really a belief. It's just more of like a It's a lack of a belief. Yeah, like if anything it's like This this is just the position that I have but I'll mess one question But it's not a belief like if you want to ask me what movie I think is the best movie I can tell you I can tell you black pamphlet was an eight out of 10 I could I could tell you hey, you know, uh, the war is pretty awesome. I and I've talked about it multiple times on the show But yeah, like uh, so this would be different from the soul conversation. We just had right Yeah, and that people who wanted to unify against not or unify about not believing in souls Or lacking a belief in skull souls might not necessarily believe there are no souls They might is that correct, right? They might not necessarily believe there are no souls, but they definitely lack of beliefs at their souls, right? Gotcha. Yeah, gotcha So we got five minutes left in the show. How about this, um Why don't you tell me one of like the coolest things from your list or maybe something? And if you have anything you'd like to tout like a website or something like that, you could give it a shot Yeah, as we get into like the home stretch. Yeah, sure. Yeah, so actually yeah, that's great Um, so and I didn't get to talk about I think maybe I hit on the successes a little bit So maybe that that would be good enough. I do have those but uh, maybe that's at a different time But in terms of the list one thing that I would say is really important in terms of conversation that I think helps Or I found has helped is to have a conversation about Uh, I think I think I've already mentioned the word but qualifiers and that is things that limit Your claims or they they they Describe how this how confident you are and I like that Right, so only if we're going to use the word most right Well, what do you mean is is most over 50 percent? Is it 50 percent exactly and we have this and again The thing that's great is that we have the same intuitions about those words as well. Yeah, usually Um, and then so that way when they say when they make a claim about most you can say is that actually Do you have a way to demonstrate that it's over 50 percent? To say that it's most or should we scale that back a little bit? Okay, I like that And I know that you guys are already doing similar things in terms of street epistemology. So there's that Yeah, so I can tell you right now street epistemology is not one thing and there's in my opinion There are a lot of people are like this is not street epistemology Like don't listen to them because it's all about talking to people without being a jerk So if you can fold in What you're doing into s e and form people like how to do s e better with this method that you're doing Or run into like hurdles and be like hey actually don't do these things. They don't work as well That makes this whole system of talking to people about anything better So I would say hey, let's not look at it as like two separate things Just see like in this field of talking to people that we're all a part of Whether we're atheist or religious or whatever We found these really good ways of having these conversations about sensitive topics And this can fold it into like this whole new strategy My end goal game would be literally to have Like this kind of dynamic talk of like talking to people but things they really strongly believe to be like Todd in high school Is like a subsection of communication class like this would be like that the perfect thinking exactly How this is my plan by the way partnered critical thing. Yeah, you're already in the system You're in the school program in in schools now. Maybe you guys will think this is great Um, so colleges have for a long time been concerned about the public education system Okay, good And what's going on there? And so one of the program and I don't even think this was intentional It might as it actually wasn't intentional. It was built to the program was made to save money, of course, right? Which is the foundation of almost all of our ideas when we're doing something in america, but the uh Hello, hello. Hello. Oh, sorry. Um, but the idea is to um, well, they're they teach college classes in high school now Right college like AP courses like calculus and stuff like that No, no, no actually directly teach those basic you get college credits in ohio. It's called college credit plus And height so in in a typical a basic english or philosophy class A professor will come to your school and teach you that class and you can get credit for it paid by the school So that you don't have to pay towards tuition. Oh, you don't have to accumulate loans or something. Oh, that's great. Yeah Yeah, so and in more and more states are doing this they have been for a while But a lot of people who are interested in critical thinking have taken the has seen this as an opportunity To get some of those critical thinking conversations that are more typical in a college course Dude, I can make them more typical on a high school course, which is what i'm doing. I'm i'm eventually going to try to teach Uh college argumentation in high school. I want to become a high school ccp teacher. That's my next step Well, thank you for that. I thank you. I think we can make a whole show just about that But um, we have a lot of things that we can talk about more. I hope you come back on future shows And um, and we can have some more time to discuss this All right, larry. Do you ever want to close out the show? My my only closing out thing is I miss getting the atheist tv show thing confused because I had a whole thing about Spider-man being kicked out of the mcu thing. It was going to be great and hilarious We've got to find some way to work that in but I do like the next time knocks you out I love that we got to work that in. I think that's better than dilla hunties preach punch and stuff like that I think you got something going on here. We should work on that Okay, my sign out as usual is everybody's going to somebody else's health Don't worry about it. Time to worry about it is when they prove that hells and heavens and souls are real until then don't sweat it Bye. See you next week. Bye. Thanks. See you Hey real quick plug from on the state go for it Yeah, you can find some of my work I have a youtube channel simple arguments in which i'm hoping to produce more videos that Do what we're doing and then also I have a podcast called currency of discourse You can find that on youtube with my co-host and We're also on every platform. I or apple run a bunch of different ones. You can find this pretty much anywhere. Cool Thank you for having me