 this computer. Hello and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio Hour and WOZO Radio, 103.9 LPFM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We're recording this on Sunday morning, February, I'm sorry, March 13th, 2022. I'm Larry Rhodes, or Doubter Five. And as usual, we have our co-host, Wombat on the line with us. Hello, Wombat. I'm feeling healthy in the best shape of my life. Let's go. All right. Very good. Our guests today are George Brown, the two and a half from Brooklyn, formerly from Brooklyn, residing in East Tennessee. Hello, George. Hello. Good morning. And we have Saloo from Ohio, Midwest. How are you? Good. We're here to talk about Digital Freethought Radio Hour, atheism. It's a talk radio show about free thought, rational thought, humanism and the sciences. Conversely, we'll also talk about religion, religious faith, God's holy books and superstition. And if you think you're the only non-believer in town, well, you're just not. In Knoxville, in the middle of the Bible Belt, we have a group of over a thousand of us. And we'll tell you more about that group after the mid-show break, how you can join and come to our meetings and participate. Wombat, what's our topic today? Here we go. We're going to do mysticism today and then a whole bunch of other stuff, including listener feedback. So thank you guys so much for leaving comments on the show. Before we get into the meat and potatoes of the show, we'll do a quick section that I'd like to call. How are you doing? How's everybody doing? Saloo, how are you doing? I'm doing good. How are you doing? I feel pretty good. I'm doing good. Hey, listen, I heard you did an interview with John Roberts earlier this week or earlier last week since it's Sunday. How'd that go? I did. It went well. I enjoyed it. We got to cover a good pretty broad range of topics, including my Satanist background, atheist background, coming out of religion and everything. Nice. Something I've been wondering is, have you gotten tired of being asked questions about Satanism yet? Is it a weird thing? It's a weird thing because I hate to say that I get tired of it because I want people to ask questions. I think that's a good thing to do is to be skeptical and to ask questions. I enjoy that. But as far as like, there are a few things that kind of get, I keep answering again and again and again. No, I don't drink blood. Yeah, we don't do blood sacrifices and all that stuff. Now, what usually ends up happening is there's something like the Christians that will, the televangelists and stuff or the, you know, what's her name? White. Paula White, I think those type of people will start spreading these little gossip things about Satanism. And it will usually be pertaining to abortion rights and things. So they'll say that we're sacrificing babies or we're killing, you know, which isn't true at all. These are fetuses and they just don't recognize them as that. They try to recognize them as something else. But that's, that's emotions going. Exactly. So that's one of the big ones. And then it's, we still get confused with Church of Satan, the Satanic temple and the Church of Satan get confused a good bit. And the Satanic temple on their website actually distinguishes between those two and where the stances are that we take pertaining to our form of modern Satanism. Right, right, right. And I think, you know, it's an ambiguous that plays in favor of Christianity. So like they are totally fine muddling that water because, you know, at the end of the day, it makes them look good in a weird way. But also like from the Satanic point of view, it's like, but it's still just as silly. Because the more you associate us, how do I put it? To say that, oh, they're not just Satanists, they're people who actually believe that the devil's a real thing. It's like, yeah, but so do you. That's, that's the whole point of this, right? Anyway, I will, I love to visit this topic again and figure out like what questions you'd love for people to have the answers to before they ask them regarding Satanism. I'll push that button one last time. But before we get into that, George Brown, I love that hoodie. You got a little camouflage in there. It was hard seeing you today. How are you? I'm cold. I know it is. It's if anyone didn't know we had a cold snap brushed through here through all of Tennessee. And I got snow outside still about two inches. Five to six inches here. Wow. Here in the sunny south, it was supposedly 11 degrees last night. Yep. Negative 11, right? No, no, no. Okay, I got make it worse. Don't make it worse than it is. That's why I have this one. My bald spot is cold. Okay, okay. Yeah, you got to take care of yourself. Also, Richard, I mean, sorry, George, George, George, George. Thank you for the correction on John Roberts' names. John Richards, big fan of the show and Fran of the show. Yeah, you know, John's and ours, they all get mixed up, right? I'm sure I've called him that, too, in the past. George, you look healthier than I've ever seen you before. You look great. I mean, honestly, even with the frozen temperatures, it's not a bad look. I mean, you should keep that up. Well, thank you. I feel like I'm back in New England where I went to school, you know. So, not bad. Larry, you're looking great in the suspenders, my friend. You're about to represent someone pro bono for public court. I love it. It's a real good look. You might even be interested in virtual legality, which is like a Oculus software where you pretend to be in a courtroom and you actually are doing a whole steal. It might work out for you. Yeah. How you been? How you doing? I need to take on evolution until I know that. Yeah. No, I've been doing fine, spending a lot of time in VR. Cool. I've pretty much stopped playing regular old computer games and playing Skyrim anytime I have any free time. But it's great fun. It costs a little bit, but it has an awful lot of entertainment value because I think I've already spent like 40, 50 hours in there. And I've really not even gotten hard into the game yet. I mean, as far as some of the storylines. Not bad. A lot of entertainment for the money. So another thing. So speaking of being entertained, I've had a lot of fun going outside, playing a lot of disc golf, working out. I've been steadily reducing my weight since December. Today, I've hit 260 pounds up from like 320 pounds in December. That's about 60 pounds or so feeling really good. And I'm losing weight steadily in the way where it's not I'm rushing it where I'm feeling hungry all the time. It's just a minor calorie deficit throughout the day or throughout the week. And I just feel really good. I feel like I jumped for the first time in like forever. Like I used to jump and be afraid of like, Oh no, I can't handle the knee strength. But now it's like I'm jumping and it's like, Whoa, did I just jump? I feel so light. It feels great. I need to buy some new clothes, though. None of my stuff fit me anymore. So looking forward to that. I'm sure your knees are really appreciate you losing that weight because it can really wear those knees out and not you not realize it until you're much older. Well, listen, I'll tell you what, I have a backup plan. If I wasn't going to lose weight, I was going to rely on the spiritual power of mysticism to keep me healthy and well. So today we are talking about mysticism today. Unfortunately, from an atheist point of view, this is going to be kind of a rough conversation because it means a lot of different things even to people who are strong adherents to mysticism. And so what we will give essentially is our perspective on it, which will also be varied. And I think there's no better way to start than with a general definition or at least our interpretation of the definition of it and a nice round table. So we can start with slew. So are you familiar with the concept of mysticism and how would you define it? I'm not real. I'm not real certain on that one. Okay, that's very good answer. I like that actually. I don't know as an answer is always something I support. But yeah, I'm not I'm not entirely sure. I know I've heard the term thrown around a good bit. And I don't know the whole spectrum of all of it though. Fair enough. Fair enough. George, I think it'd be interesting for me. Do you have an impression of what mysticism is as an organic atheist? Well, I have to just say that I have been around a number of people who have thought of themselves as mystic or into mysticism. But I don't think I never got a sense of what it was. I have no idea. Right. It's like it's a religion, but it's not. And it's, you know, it's about hocus pocus, but it's not that. And, you know, fake, fake science comes into it. And, you know, so I have one one person who comes to me with crazy theories and wants me to provide scientific validation for them. And the words, the words sound like science, but it's hocus pocus. So the words sound like I can't tell you. I just don't know. We were just talking about this before we went live on air that it's really unfortunate that a lot of people who make the definitions for atheists, you know, in dictionaries and stuff, aren't atheists. And so obscure or mishit or offer imprecise definitions of what atheism actually is, particularly, you know, as we understand it as atheists. And I feel like mysticists do an even worst job from inside their own group of defining what their thing is, which, you know, I take it or leave it. But hey, Larry, do you have an impression impression on what misses? Yeah, generally, when we refer to it in our group of atheists, we'll get together and we won't call it mysticism. We just call it woo. Yeah, because, because anything that you can't be scientifically explained, but has a mystery about it, that may be appealed to the spiritual or supernatural powers or properties of an object. It brings up a lot of what do you call it, like supernatural awe, right? People say woo. So that's woo. It's woo, essentially. Yeah. But there's a there's a definition I looked up. I looked up several of my like this one. What does it mean to be called as mystic? A mystic is a person who has who claims to have direct experience of the sacred, unmediated by conventional religious rituals or intermediaries like preachers or whatever. In other words, it's a person who thinks they can directly mediate with the mysterious realms of the other worldly realms. You know, I'm going to I'm going to branch on top of that because I feel like in the most grounded sense, there have been times where I have gone to churches when I was a kid, and I felt like I was being overwhelmed with like a force that was outside of my body, just from the practice of singing with a bunch of people sitting down, standing up, sitting down, standing up, sitting down, and then drinking the juice, heading out and getting that little sugar high. That that meticulous approach to worship did make me feel like there was a sense of community that was outside my body and tapped into something that I couldn't quite explain. And I feel like that concept of mysticism is putting mystic aspects of the universe or things that are mysterious or have like some sort of spiritual component into a box and calling it like a field of science or calling it like an objective thing that we can all experience in the same way and study in a very thoughtful manner. And I don't feel like that is tangible to grab and put into a box in the first place. And I think when I look at definitions of mysticism from other mystics, I get very alarmed because, thankfully, one of our contributors has given us an article called Mystical Traditions in the Great World Religions by Ronald Rafiq Wayne Powell. And he's a PhD in philosophy. Okay. That's not bad. That's not bad. That's not bad. But still gives you a lot of time to think. And typically, when you have a lot of time to think particularly unchallenged, some weird things come up. That's fun. That's always okay. But he defines what is mysticism in the section of his paper? What is mysticism? Mysticism in its pure form is the science of the ultimate capital U, the science of the union with the absolute capital A and nothing else. And you know what? I don't know what that means still. It's still one of those bizarre things, right? Ultimate what? It's an adjective. It's not a noun. It doesn't give you anything to grab a hold of. Right. Right. And unfortunately, throughout that paper, and it was a rough read, it was a rough read. It was one of the things where it's like every line is making me ask 10 questions in my head about like, why do you think that? How did you get to that conclusion? Why are you begging these questions? It unfortunately just feels to me like mysticism is essentially looking at the universe, not knowing all the answers. And by instead of admitting, I don't know, like, slew was brave enough to do and what I champion all the time, coming up with false narratives or at least vague appeals to mysteries and using those as the answers and stop looking for the real meaningful conclusions in the world or in reality. I feel like mysticism is a stopgap to actually trying to figure out the real mysterious things in the world. Is that too harsh? Larry, what do you think? Maybe. I really can't comment on that. I think that it could fit. Larry, I'll give you an example. If you're in the woods and you see a shaking branch in the nighttime, you could just be, oh, it's the wind or a predatory animal, right? Yeah. Like either way, I'm going to be aware or we're getting into agency now. Exactly. Or you can listen. I mean, they give the ultimate agency by giving it a proper noun. But like, if you think about the woods as like this mystical place and maybe there are spirits shaking trees and maybe that's your ancestor trying to get in touch with you and commune with you, that can answer the problem and maybe you don't have to look and see. That is so dangerous though. I mean, it's almost as dangerous as thinking that you hear the voice of God in your head. I mean, how can you refuse whatever that voice is telling you? If it's the ultimate authority and it tells you to do something, are you going to say no? I mean, you're at the mercy of that particular voice or whatever you interpret the wind saying in your case. It's very dangerous position being. Slu? I'm curious. Would spirituality be under the, under mysticism? Yeah. Actually, this paper claims that every religion has mysticism in it. And that's why mysticism is true because it's, religion is essentially mysticism right. Somebody had posted something, a psychology article thing on this that I, it's backed by really nothing more than anecdotal evidence. So it really isn't, it doesn't seem to be going very far, but defining spiritual emergency, a content validity study. There's a few studies on this stuff in psychology and I don't know how much, how much faith I'd put into them, I guess. It's interesting how it kind of seems to seep its way into just about everything in that way. If that's part of that. And I feel like it exists as a way to solve the discomfort that comes with admitting that you don't know something. And I fortunately think mysticism stops us from coming to that conclusion. And the problem that I have with that is saying you don't know something is the first step towards knowing it, because a lot of times we will come with a lot of confidence about how something actually is when we don't have any knowledge about how it works. And it's not until we shed that ego, shed those initial biases, those prejudices, and actually admit that we don't know it and try to learn fresh and figure out how this system actually works. Do we begin to actually learn how it works and in the most accurate way possible? That is the heart of the scientific method in a sense. It's like come up with a question, don't come up with a conclusion first, start with a question first, start with your hypothesis first, and then test it, right? And when you believe in things that can't be explained, you leave yourselves open to conmen who claim that they can. Yes. Many con, well con comes from the word confidence. They get your confidence first and then they tell you all these things about things that you can't possibly understand. And many people are suggestible. Right. And therefore they end up following these religious cults, religions that end up taking all of their money, they're taking them away from their family, take their family away from them, or, you know, like Waco or Guyana, you know, things like Heaven's Gate. Just, it just doesn't have good outcomes generally. And later on top of that, when you, I've had these conversations before when I was doing Socratic examination with people like Essie, the idea is I will ask them, you know, what God they believe in, they say, oh, well, God talks to me. I have a God that personally interacts with my life, talks to me, and that's how I know he exists. And I would do everything he says. And I would say something like, if your God told you to kill your first unborn son, or your first born son, would you do it? And their responses that no, it's, well, my God won't tell me that. And I'm like, that's not the question I was asking. And now I'm Well, we have documented evidence, theoretically, about him doing exactly that. We have his holy book telling him that he does stuff like that. One of the first books, if not, what the first book? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And he still doesn't in the second one, too. Like, he's still like killing. He's still killing firstborns all over the place. And he accepts, accepted the sacrifice of Jeppe's daughter without any qualms. George, what's up? So what is our definition of mysticism? And would a mystic agree with us? So I don't think any mystic would agree on the idea of what mysticism means to them personally, because from what we can tell, looking at these definitions, they seem to be incredibly broad and varied and don't follow. Like, there's like 14 different definitions of walking. I haven't found a single one that's consistent. But so go for it. So so would they even label themselves as mystic or as a mysticism? Would it be labeled as holistic or things of that nature? If if they're referring to it themselves? No, I think the obscurity is the point. I feel like the whole idea of mysticism is to be mysterious, is to appeal to mystics into the the undefinable, unknown, the arcane, the ultimate, the absolute. But I'm not going to define what it is. It's your personal experience that leads you to there. That's the whole concept. It is from an atheist perspective. Woo. And so like, why are we trying to define woo for the people who believe in woo? They believe in woo because it's not defined, right? Like, if it was defined, and if it was studyable, and if it was measurable, they wouldn't believe in it anymore, because then it'd be science. At a certain point, we would just absorb it into our logical, rational points of view and and use it for the betterment of the world. And they would find something else to grasp onto that helps them to not have to deal with not knowing things or the feeling of not knowing things. I honestly just feel like that's what mysticism is. It's an excuse not to say I don't know. And I feel like it's a really unfortunate thing, because it's a beautiful thing to say when it comes to learning how the world works. Slu? I can think of one more example, because recently, there were trees that come out with a new video on their channel, and it was talking about subconscious and dismissing kind of some of the that almost insinuates a spirit in itself or a separation from the physical aspect of a person. And I don't know if that would tie into that, or it seems to though, but I'm not sure. Yeah, I come across that so often on the internet when I'm talking to believers that they equate consciousness with a spirit. You know, your consciousness, since your soul goes on to live in heaven forever, that your consciousness goes with it, and therefore it's immortal. It's not just the product of a working brain. It's an actual spiritual being, and it's really hard to disabuse them of that, of course. Good question, George. I will tell you this, the closest I've ever gotten to the idea of a spiritual being is I've had conversations with people who have thoughts on fitness and very, very closely identify with what their body is. And so they would at the ask the question, do you love your body? And they would say, yes, I love my body, I will treat my body, I respect my body because they are one one one with their body. Whereas for me, I'm going through like this fitness journey on my own right, but I don't see myself as my body. And I am at most an emergent property of my mind, like the thing that's talking to you right now is a bunch of synapses in my brain, making this really useful experience of continuity and identity that's just now having a conversation with you. But that's not my fingernails, it's not the fat that I'm burning, it's not the hair that falls out of my body. And so when my body says, stop, you're tired, I say, keep going, do another set. When my body says, it'd be nice if we ate some cake, I'd be like keep feeling. So Larry, go for it, go for it. Well, I mean, it's pretty obvious that the consciousness is tied directly to the brain, because it can be affected by drugs, by surgery, by damage, trauma. It can literally change your personality. Right. And so like the idea is, it's not a spiritual thing, it's clearly tied to my body, right? Like it's not a different thing, but it's also not the physical, it's more of an emergent property of the physical. And that's as close as I've ever gotten to a spiritual body. Beyond that, I don't follow, I don't get on that train. Slu, do you, do you, would you agree or do you have a? Yeah, I was going to say the abstract, yeah. You're being, I guess, or whatever you want to say. Yeah, you know, you like to use the analogy, and I think we can leave on this, is the analogy of water, like one molecule of water is not wet, right? Like if I had two atoms of hydrogen, one atom of oxygen, that is technically water, but it's not wet. There's not enough molecules or continuum of molecules to give it that physical property. But as I add more water to a system, I get wetness as an emergent property. And it's the exact same thing with how I deal with my identity. It's like one brain cell, no, enough to have synapses, closer, but not quite me, an intact brain with a complete network of electric activity. That could be an identity there. How many animals have consciousness? And people who are spiritual, I mean, like the old Indians, Indians would say that the animals did have spirits. But of course, the religious people, the religions that have evolved over that time say that animals don't have spirits, but they do have consciousness. So, you know, it gets into a sticky area there. It is, because it's one of those things we can't physically measure. It's just one of the things we have to assume you have, if we're going to have a conversation with you. And it's going to get even stickier once we get AI going. In some ways, I feel like we're already there. In some ways, I feel like we have more reasonable AIs than we do people. And it'd be nice to swap it to the future, but we can get into it. How about we go out on the half of the show and then we get John Richardson. Be sure to stay tuned right here for the second half of the digital free thought radio hour on W.O.Z.O Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We'll be right back after this short break. Welcome back to the second half of the digital free thought radio hour. I'm Dr. Five and we're on W.O.Z.O Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville. Let's talk about the eighth year society of Knoxville. ASK was founded in 2002, we're in our 20th year and we have over a thousand members. We have weekly in-person meetings at Knoxville's Old City at Barley's Tap Room in Pizzeria. Come down and look for us out on the balcony. Not this weekend. It's cold and snowy, but the spring is coming. So look for us out on the deck. We're inside this week in the high top tables, usually the loudest and happiest group there. We also have Tuesday evening Zoom, ASK meetings and if you'd like to join us for that, send us an email at ASK KnoxvilleAtheist.org or let's chat s-e at gmail.com. You can find ASK online on a Facebook meetup.com KnoxvilleAtheist.org or just Google Knoxville Atheist. It's just that simple. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you should still go to meet up and do a search for an atheist group in your town. Don't find one, start one. That's right. On back, where do we want to pick up? Hey, we're so pleased to be joined by the great John Knot, and now I can't remember the other last name. I accidentally called you John Roberts during the show, but you're John Richards, one and only. John Richards, how you been? How you doing? Yeah, I'm fine. Thank you very much. How is the daylight savings time treating you? Well, we haven't, we haven't bothered with that here. In fact, there's quite a movement to stop doing it because, yeah, absolutely. It makes no sense. Everybody knows that stopping tradition is a very easy thing that we can do overnight though, right? Yes. Ty, you are looking very slim and chiseled today. Thank you. I appreciate it. I'm feeling really, really good. Thanks. I feel really good. You know, the craziest thing is I went to the gym and I tried to do a pull-up, and I remember I couldn't even hang on the bars, and then yesterday I did three in a row for the first time in my whole life, and I was like, oh, it's so much fun. There are things in the gym I can start using aside from just like this one elliptical now. It's really great, but we're talking, you know, who I have to thank for that is the great Mystic Arts. You know, just an appeal to the Mystic Arts is what we are doing our show on. John Richards, I'd love to know what you think of mysticism. I call it woo. Maybe you can find both of them for us. I'd love to hear it in your finest accent possible. Maybe Yorkshire. I'm not Yorkshire. Try it. I want you to hear, I want to hear how you say it in Yorkshire accent. I'm not going to go there. I could do Northern Ireland. Okay, okay, very nice. But I'm not going to Yorkshire. Anyway, mysticism, yeah, very difficult to define, and it's very close to, very close to mythicism too, I think. But woo woo. I remember Brian Cox using, that was the first time I heard it. He was in, he's a physicist and program maker over here. You may have seen him on Discovery Channel, one of it, because it's a BBC effort. So it will travel. Anyway, he was talking to somebody about non science, which I like to, I like to mix up with nonsense. And they jointly came up with the description woo woo, but I don't think that was the original coining of it. But it just means something which is not scientific. So there's lots of things that are not scientific. Anything, any hypothetical thing or any, I can't even use the word hypothesis, because that has to be testable. And of course, woo woo inherently isn't. So in any proposition that cannot be investigated is non scientific. Right. That makes it woo woo. You have a really great point too. Hypothesis is something that you can test. It's, that's the difference between it and just a wild conjecture question. Right. And a lot of people claim things are scientific method, but start on a question that is fundamentally untestable or unfalsifiable. And that should be your red alarm right there. They don't qualify as hypotheses. In that case, they're just blind guesses. Right. Right. Right. How did God help me today? That's a lot of weird things. And you probably find an answer to that. But slu, we both grew up, I imagine with wrestling. You remember Ric Flair or Nick Flair? Yeah, Ric Flair. There you go. Yeah. You had a theory where woo came from. I'd like to hear it from you. Well, I did look into it because I kept hearing, I heard like R and raw talk about it on, on his shows and stuff. So I did look up a little bit on that, I don't know, a year or two ago to find out where that came from. And what I, the conclusion I came to, I found online was that that was the sound of the theremin in the old sci-fi movies. And that was where that comes from. Now you're going to have to make the impression of it because we don't know exactly what you're talking about. Oh, I'm not going to do that. Come on, make it. George would love to hear you do the musical rendition. I'm sure George has one in his house. I wouldn't be surprised by that. I would love to, honestly, I was on Amazon thinking about trying to get one. I don't. I don't, but I sometimes people who define themselves as spiritual or mystical want to get some validation from me about, about their experience with higher vibrations. You know, and they say to me, well, you, you, you've been working with vibrations all your life. I have experience with a higher vibration. I said, when in the world are you talking about higher vibration? There's no such thing. There are such things as high vibrations, but not, not higher vibrations with a capital H and a V. There, there's the, there's the draw. Well, high vibration. Yeah, you're talking about a fast, a high, a higher frequency or. Well, the bottom string on my guitar is higher vibration. The lowest. It's not a capital H and a capital V higher vibration. There's the problem. I'll do this for the show. I'll do it since we're radio, but it's very good, very good impression. There are good vibrations, of course. I like the way I like, I like the way that the star, the Star Trek thing. Yes, the original Star Trek thing. Yes. Yes. I like the way that the Theramine not only has the woo woo sound, but it also has the woo woo hand movements, too. So yeah, we're on the radio moving one hand in a wavy fashion. I feel like it is one to one. I feel like that had to have come from that. I feel like if it's not, it's the sexier of the two theories that I'm definitely going with. But speaking of sexy things, how about we go through listener comments, guys? I think I'm speaking. I think we can conclude that mysticism is, by its design, difficult to define. By design, it's difficult to define because it appeals to mystery. It appeals to mystics. And I feel like the more we define it, the less the art and mysticism will hold onto that definition and pick something more vague because they appreciate the ambiguity of it because it keeps them from having to admit they don't know in a way when faced with hard objective truths. They can always appeal to mysteries as a way to resolve having to ever say they don't know. And I feel it's unfortunate because saying I don't know is a great way to learn. And it's the first step to knowing things. And I think the scientific process is built on admitting you don't know something, asking a question, and then testing it. Whereas mysticism is about, yeah. And mysticism is about, well, I'll appeal to a mystery and now I don't have to investigate anymore. And I feel like that shouldn't be the case. And that's going to be an ad hoc fallacy anyway because what you're trying to do there is substantiate a claim with another claim. Yes. Yes. Yeah. It's not a good epistemology. In fact, it's a really, really bad one and doesn't mean that the conclusion is wrong. It just means that your methodology is poor and why use a poor methodology for something that you care very deeply about. Yeah. A broken clock can be right two times a day. But why are you walking around with a broken clock? Basically. Guys, I got a comment from Dada's trading room who asked, based on our last week's episode, how do atheists charge their spiritual battery? He asked, what is a spiritual battery? How do you charge such a thing? He must have asked this the first, second in the show because I think we went through it, but it's all right. What is a spiritual battery? How do you charge such a thing? And you plug a spiritual battery into a spiritual socket in order to direct the spiritual energy towards the appropriate spiritual charges in the spiritual battery. So he asked the question and answered the question. We appreciate it. We thank you. I think that answers everything. Where do I find my spiritual socket? Don't go to a pastor. He'll know. Or Catholic priest. I've got some suggestions, but they're unrepeatable. Yeah, sure, sure, sure. George, you have some comments. I'll go for it. Don, I'm wondering whether sorry, George. Yeah, I'm wondering whether the technology of spiritual batteries has changed, you know, like the other batteries have changed from lead acid to lithium lithium oxide. Right, right, right, right, right. Who knows? Who knows what's in those things? Okay, so George. I think it's the same for long. Go ahead. What were you saying? Sorry, George. I almost can't remember. Oh, yes, my head is spinning already, because I have a really hard time when I'm looking for the definition of something and it refers me to something else I have to look up. And then I have to look up that thing, you know, and at some time I feel ripped off. I hate this. I'm going to make a dictionary that does only that for every single word. And I'll call it either the George dictionary or the or a Christian dictionary and just be like, Hey, the father is the son. The son is the father. And it's like perfect works for me. Any definition is a what's the expression for you keep having to probe deeper? Circular? No, no, spiraling down. But I'm thinking of a chain of, you know, I can't think. I'll come to you. I'll come to you. I'm having a George moment. You woke up an extra half hour early today. Who knows what's going on with you? Guys, next comment is prefer prefer to say, oh, go on. So was there something you want to add? I was going to say paradox, maybe, or you know, okay. And there's a dictionary. There should be. Okay, anyway, we'll move on to the next one. Commenter who prefers to be anonymous, Ty said, to me, atheism means the lack or withholding of the belief in the God or gods. I have two issues with that. Number one, Stanford, edu entries on atheism define atheism as and at this point, I don't care what the comment really says because he quoted me as saying to me, atheism means blah, blah, blah. And I don't care what anyone else says because in that quote, I'm saying what it means to me. So you can pull out someone else's quote and they can explain what it is, but it won't be my definition that I preface with to me, atheism means blank. And I figured the best way to learn what atheism means to somebody is ask them what they mean to them and you'll get a definition for that. And it might be not the exact same wordage as someone else's. But to me, atheism is the lack of belief in a God and not the claim that a God does not exist. It's a it's basically me saying I'm not a theist, you know, and a theist is someone who believes in a God. So I'm not that. Go ahead, John Richards. What do you think? I've checked it out. It's infinite regress. Okay, okay, okay. Would you agree with that definition of atheism? By the way, speaking of definitions, John, my favorite definition of atheism is non belief, not a lack of belief. You know, the same as if I don't have any sausages, I'm an a sausage possessor. I'm fine with it either way. Yeah. And I think it's important to talk to the people who hold the belief or lack of belief or whatever the status is to get the proper definition rather than go to a formal textbook that might be written by someone who's not even an atheist or not even a satanist. But we all know what a political means, don't we? You don't belong to a political party. Sure. Sure. Sure. Or some other things. Hey, Larry, what's going on? Hey, guess what? You got a comment directly sent to you. I want to thank by Sandra Jackson. I want to thank Dr. Five. I am an atheist and simply value the truth. I value workable knowledge. I fill in the gap by seeking knowledge and doing things that represent who I truly am. Every lie or misunderstanding I am disabused of leads me closer and closer to bliss. I doubt everything. Hey. Oh, good. Good. And that's why I call myself doubter five. I just like the letter five or number five. But a doubter has been with me for 15 years, I guess is the name and online name. But yes, even doubt what we were talking about here. You know, doubt it all. But, and like I said earlier, don't take claims as an answer to a claim. Doubt those as well. Do some research. Do what it needs. You need to find something that is convincing enough that you can go with the definition that you're looking into. I agree. I agree. I also feel it's a lot like having a diet that skewed more towards truths than falsehoods. And as you shed religion, it's like you're shedding really, really bad poison or fat from your body. And you just like, oh, I feel way lighter. I feel way more capable. It's great. And what gets me is the how easy it is for religious folks, especially online, when you're talking to them, just make stuff up and claim that it's the truth. It never fails to amaze me how many lies are told by religious people so that they can maintain the claim that they own the truth, the capital T truth. But they're there lying and making up things and selling it as the truth when it has no foundation in truth. Yeah. Do you know what I want to do? What's up? Well, over here we have full fact organization, which is a charity and has quite a team of expert people who examine all the claims of our politicians and pronounce whether they are true or false. Oh, interesting. And it's our version of your political effect. That's right. And I want to apply that to religious claims. Very cool. Well, I mean, it'd be a short, it'd be a lot of red on that list. Let's be honest. Why shouldn't they be exposed? Yeah, make sure they don't open themselves up to ads because that's just where everything downfalls. John, I have a question for you. This is a question for you. Is it true that every former religion introduces division? It's a poem. So like the lines are kind of broken up. Is it true that any former religion introduces division us against them? What do you think? Well, I'm not an expert on every form of religion, but all the forms of religion that I've met are very tribal. And that means they're divisive because you're either with us or you're against us. It's an us versus them thing. And some of them take it to such extremes that if you leave, they will kill you. Or maybe not quite so extreme. If you leave, they will shun you. And so you don't exist. Many, many do that. Okay. Slu, I got a question for you. This is from an anonymous commenter. It says, you are still not getting it. If you believe in the true God, the omnigot, as he claims himself to be, everybody in the whole universe would be worshiping him without any doubts. Try to step outside your limitations. You have comments? I don't know. I'm sorry, that wasn't actually a question, but I know we get some. No, I believe I did. I end up responding to that one. That was my hat. Yeah, that was on there. And I got curious and it went into it kind of dove down into an area. I just, I didn't even know where that was going. Right. Oh man. It's an interesting thing. Infinite Regress. Yeah. Yeah. See, all you have to do is be, all you have to do is worship my God. And then you want to ask me why I worship my God anymore. And then it'll just be so much more sense. Okay. Let's see. So there was some recommendations from our commenters to check out some documentaries we had been talking about Ukraine last episode. Commenters recommended that we check out Frontline PBS, Putin's Way, the full documentary on understanding how radical of authoritarian Putin has become and always was. And then real life lore to YouTube video series about why Russia is invading Ukraine. Strontium 76. Thank you guys again for all these comments. If we don't get through them all before the end of the show, we guarantee you we'll break them up and revisit them later on. But thank you so much for the comments. Strontium 76 says, and I haven't read this yet, so hopefully there's no cursing. Okay. So many views. I'm a French atheist. A little sad since I listened to this podcast for two years or so. I follow the Ukraine war since the beginning. I'm rather close to it. First time I hear about a link between this war and religious problem in this specific conflict. Aren't you pushing religion somewhere where it has no link? I feel this subject started on this religious link. How important is this link in the US? So how important is the angle that the Ukrainian war may have religious influences currently in the United States? In summary, and I would say at least from my perspective, I wasn't aware of the religious link until John or George brought it up. And I think that it's a reasonable way to divide people and get people to demonize Ukraine, particularly if they're very orthodox, very traditional, very religious in that sense, where it's like, hey, Ukraine, they like gays parade down the streets. Ukraine, they have Jewish leaders in government and they kill Jesus. Like it's a very easy thing to go for. George, what do you think? Well, I know somebody who left the Ukraine, his family left the Ukraine many, many years ago because of anti-Semitism. The times change and the president of the Ukraine is Jewish today. That's quite a revolution in itself, I think. This is a part of the world where they used to have programs. Yeah, I've been following this for my global atheist news show on a week by week basis. And the latest thing I've picked up on is that Patriarch Kirill, who is sort of the lead preacher, I don't know what other title to give him, of the Russian Orthodox Church, has lately blamed the invasion on the need to combat gay pride in Ukraine. He's picked up on the fact that LGBT people are getting rights in Ukraine. And that's in not the Russian bits of Ukraine, but the major part of Ukraine. So he's claiming that the invasion is actually godly because he's trying to wipe out this homosexual tendency. Geez, Slu, I thought you were shaking your head. Do you have thoughts on that? I don't really have anything else to add to that. I was just agreeing, I guess. I mean, I'm agreeing in the fact that we're disagreeing on the idea that it's a foolish and tragic reason to start a war against a group of people. Can I pick up on something you said, Ty, as long as they don't start wanting to put adverts on the content? A few minutes ago, you said... Yeah, I always worried when my news sources have dog food ads, because then in my sense, it's like, oh, no, because now I'm never going to hear bad news about dog food. And then it just spirals out of control from there. Exactly. Well, some of our viewers and listeners may have heard of a site called Pathios, which until recently had a non-religious section where people blogged Hemant Maitre, my pal Jonathan. I'm not going to be able to remember. Oh, MS Pierce. Jonathan MS Pierce. And other secular people have been blogging on there. I did it myself for a year. I was a daily blogger. But it's changed because it's changed ownership. And now the new owners want to carry adverts. And they're worried that they won't get such valuable adverts if they put out a message that is offensive to Christians. So if you look at the non-religious section of Pathios today, you'll find there's nothing new. It hasn't been updated because all the people who used to blog there have left, including the admin of that section of their site. And they've set up a new blogging position called Only Sky. So if you want to go Only Sky, I guess it's .com. You will find all these atheist bloggers. I think it's .media. Only Sky. Could you spell that one just so that's not a weird spelling of Sky? How would you spell that? It's only O-N-L-Y. I think it's a separate word, S-K-Y. It's like John Lennon's song. Nothing above is only Sky. Exactly. Yeah. I think we got time for one last comment, right? Is that a .com or .org or what? .media. .media. Yeah. Okay. Google it basically. He'll pop it in for you. Last comment of the day goes to Anonymous, who says, so our noodley lord is the right God to worship. After all, he sacrifices his body to us and actually wants us to eat him and he resurrects every time on our plates. Thank you guys so much for leaving comments. Please continue to do so. We appreciate them. You can find more at Let's Chat on my YouTube channel or I recommend check out some of these guys's content. John Richards, where can we find your content? Well, the noodley lord's blood is also red too. The pasta, anyway. Yeah. Sauce. Yeah. My content is found on Free Thought Productions' YouTube channel and my guest only last night, yesterday, was Slough. Oh, he's, get this right, because stream that. It's all right. It's always going to be a different order for everybody. Yeah. It's like mysticism. There's no set order. It's all planned. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, check out that Free Thought Hour show, which is available on Free Thought Productions' channel featuring Slough. Highly recommended, because I saw that interview too and I thought it was delightful. And I think Slough, you did so well. Slough, any final comments? Anything you'd like to plug before next week? Yeah. Check out my podcast. I'll be having new content up pretty soon, the Skeptical Satanist. I'm on YouTube and I've got a group on Facebook, same name and a page there as well. I'm also, I was also interviewed on the Misfit Amish, LLC. I would ask people to check them out, their content. Mary has some really good content up, explaining, coming out of the Amish community and some of the abuse and things in that community. She's involved with a few organizations trying to help with that. Nice. Very, very cool. Where can we find that again? What's that? Second? It's the Misfit Amish, LLC. They're on YouTube and I believe the website is the MisfitAmish.com. George, anything you'd recommend we check out before next week? I can't think of anything right. Hey, I'll tell you what. Did you know Pete's coffee, make a tea as well? Have you ever tried that? They make a what? They make a tea. Oh, yes, they do. Sure. Have you tried it? Yes, they have a lot of tea. Okay, okay, okay, okay. I've never been a tea junkie, but... Anyway, Larry, feel free to take us out. I still don't know what atheism is and what it's all about. What's going on? You might find the answer in my book. Atheism, what's it all about? It's on Amazon and other fine booksellers everywhere. My content can be found generally at digitalfreethought.com. Be sure to click on the blog button to take you over to the many articles, songs, atheist songs that is, and radio show archives can be found there as well. My YouTube channel can be found by searching for Larry Rhodes or Daughter5. If you have any questions for this show, send them to askanatheist at Knoxvilleatheist.org or you can send them to let'schatseatgmail.com. We'll answer them on future shows. If you're having trouble leaving religious beliefs behind, you can get help at recoveringfromreligion.org. I highly recommend them. Thank you for joining the Digital Freethought Radio Hour. Remember, you can find this show on Apple iTunes, Pocket Cast, Amazon, and Podcasts Everywhere. Just search for the name of our show. If you're watching this on YouTube, be sure to like and subscribe. 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 week. Say bye, everybody. Bye.