 103.9 FM, WOZO Radio, Knoxville. Ladies and gentlemen, digital free thought radio hour. Hello and welcome to digital free thought radio hour on WOZO Radio, 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today is Sunday, September 20th, 2020. I'm Larry Rhodes, your Douter 5 and as usual we have our co-host Wombat on the phone with us. Hello Wombat. To infinity and beyond. Where no man has ever gone before. There you go. And our guests today are George, red leader. Hello. Hello. Digital free thought radio hour is a top radio show on atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism and the sciences. And conversely we'll also talk about religion, religious faith. God told you books and superstition. And if you get the feeling that you're the only non-believer in Knoxville, well you're just not. There are several atheist, free thinking and 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. Also did you know that there's a streaming atheist call in video show here in Knoxville? Right. Yeah, I was calling. I don't think they're taking much calling now that they've been doing a streaming video. But did you know that Wombat? Yeah, I'm actually really confused about this because the trilogy wasn't that bad. Like yeah, they weren't the best Star Wars movies, but to try to take the number off the end of them, I think that's a bit much. Don't you think? I don't think you... What's Hollywood doing? Just let them... It's only been ten years. Three years since you've been looking for it, I guess. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Eventually you'll still go for it. Well, I mean the movie trilogy is only like a couple years old. I don't know what you're talking about. No trilogy involved. Anyway, if you'd like... If you, the listener, would like to involve yourself with the show, go to Facebook and search for Digital Freethought Radio R. Use the messaging function to send those questions or comments. Remember, we record this on Sunday mornings at 11 o'clock Eastern, 10 central. So go there and put your questions in and we'll try to get to them during the show. So what's our topic today there, Wombat? Today we're going to be talking about atheism. What's it all about? What's it all about? I have a good friend of mine who sent me this book that I think is going to be the start to a really nice secular library that I'll be starting in my home. And I want to go over some of my favorite topics from the book. But also, since we have the author here somewhere among us, why don't we talk about what it means to them, how they came about, you know, making the book for themselves and how they can be used to help other people. So I think there's a lot of really cool things that would go over. But before we get into it, why don't we? Oh, no, Dred Pirates is not here. Well, I'll tell you what, we found a really nice quote from Mark Twain. We'll do over it real quick. Mark Twain says, but who prays for Satan? Who in 18th centuries has had the common humanity to pray for the one center that needed it the most? And I thought that was a really cute phrase. Yeah, he's not got his book out. We are a whole judgment until Satan has his book out. Yeah, we should have the Bible from the equivalent of the Bible, but from Satan's point of view. And then you have the night, then you'll finally have the full point of view. That's good. I love that. Now there's a fun book to read. Yeah, I have a little quote here from Robert Jean Grissault. Go for it. In nature, there are neither rewards nor punishments. There are consequences. Very true. I've always liked that. I like that too. So yeah. Hey, you know, this wasn't so bad. And Dred, we miss you. When you come back, we'll be waiting for you. All right. So we're going to jump into the topic. Larry, where'd you want to talk about what's starting from this book? Well, how it came about, I guess would be a good one. About back when we had that downturn in 2011 for the economic downturn, the country, the company that I worked for went out of business. So I was out of job and out there looking for work and stuff on and eating up my IRA. As it were. So I started a blog, digital free thought blog. And I put started putting up articles and I would put up an article at least every few days. And by the time I had 60 or 70 articles, I figured I'd just make it into a book. And with that book you hold is the results of that. I've got 52 of my favorite articles in there. And like I say, if you go to digital free thought.com blog, you'll find those articles plus another 20 articles there. So hopefully there's lots of good reading there. If you're in the Austin, Texas area, there is actually a newsletter that comes out with the atheist experience. It's the Austin community, atheist community of Austin newsletter. And for all of last year, there has been every other month excerpts from this book and that newsletter. So yeah, you might have already read stuff like this. If you're a fan of reading this material. But the question is, why do you need to have an atheist book if it's just about not belief? Why do you have it? What is this? Why do you need it? Because the loyal opposition, the evangelicals, the religious right, the conservative religious or even just plain old religious people have concepts that are not founded in reality where religious, I mean, where atheism is concerned. They hear all these terrible things from the preachers about how we babies worship the devil, you know, all this stuff. Going back literally thousands of years for the crying unbelievers. So this is a book I put together to be able to set the record straight, at least. And I devoted the first several chapters to those people who have found out that they are related to somebody who may be an atheist. If you have an atheist loved one, someone who has left the faith that you once shared with them, I've got several articles in the front of this book that will talk about how to consider them now. You know, don't just disregard them and say that they're human firewood. They're still people. They're still the same people that you used to know. They're still lovely people. Read the books, read the articles and find out how you might be able to communicate with them. So speaking of getting to know some free thinkers slash non-believers or slash atheists or whatever, Dale will call himself this week. How about we go around and try to figure out how everyone's been? George, I see yourself stretching. How you been feeling? How you doing this week? I'm feeling great. A little bit stiff as I sit here in front of my laptop. You've got some good range of movement going on there. Oh, wonderful. Look at this. Look at this. Yeah, it's so amazing. It's amazing. I'm recovering from shoulder surgery. You're doing quite well as your recovery process is going. And so as I sit here, I realize I'm stiff and I'm stretching. Have you eaten any babies to make yourself feel better? No, no, no. But I've been drinking blood. Good. Yeah. What kind of blood? You have to get the A plus. Yeah. See, I come from a Jewish background. So I've been reviewing all kinds of mythology. Okay. You know, under the subject of anti-Semitism in general and pogroms in particular, and pogroms were kind of public events where Jews were hunted down and murdered throughout European history. And even after World War II, so I'm sort of steeping myself in the law. And aside from the fact that we every once in a while are accused of killing, quote, our Lord, we also are accused of draining the blood of certain Christian babies and mixing the men with the ingredients of matzah. And that is the fabrication. And it is still floating around now in the Middle Eastern Arab world. And therefore it's emerging again from you now to Middle Eastern. What we need from you is like Jewish atheism. What's it all about? We need that book. I have nothing to say. I am a logical person, but I don't express myself with logic very well. And I found philosophy in college. Yeah. You probably just had a bad teacher. What's that? You probably just had a bad teacher. My brain isn't wired to argue this way. So I have to acquiesce to you guys who have had to throw off the yoke of Christianity and that indoctrination. George, I have a lot of questions for you, but I also want to check in on Dale. Dale, it's been a week. How you been? And one's the last time you've eaten a baby. And what's your favorite race of baby to eat? I prefer Mexican, but you know, I have my ups and downs. Well, I don't know what to say about that. It's okay. I know China, Chinese is very popular, but I like to be controversial. I like my Mexican babies. What are you going to do? What is your religious disposition this week? If you don't want me asking? Well, I'm surprised that you would know I'm under existential crisis here. I was a low down dirty deist. Then I realized I needed to be an atheist because I was getting so much crap for it. And then I decided that no atheism wasn't good enough because you needed to be the best atheist could be. So I went to atheism 2.0, which is the militant branch of atheism where we dress up like military people and rip people off of the Christians off the streets of Portland and have them deprogrammed. But even that wasn't good enough. So I went to atheism plus, which was founded by Jim McCrate. Yes, atheism plus is where an atheist embodies all of the other features, but also adopts some sort of humanitarian effort. There could be atheism plus Black Lives Matter. Atheism plus feminism, atheism plus environmental issues. Mine was atheism plus election reform. And then I realized that still wasn't good enough. So now I have become the absolute hot key. Keep going, keep going, keep going. So now I have become the absolute epitome of atheism, epitome of atheism. Which is? Which is bright. Oh, okay, bright. That way I can get rid of all of the baggage going with atheism. And I can also be brighter than someone else and be an absolute better atheist than them. Okay, so two questions. First, what is bright and then like why bright? It's just mainly it's like a PR. Okay. You don't want to. Is it just a different name for the same thing in a sense? Or is it like, is it more dedicated? It's greater than atheism plus. Okay. The bright is where you're is the absolute pinnacle of atheism. Okay. Okay. Okay. At least for this week. Not bad. And then switching it up from, from your perspective of someone who's actually swapped around the most, who's the best like, like potlucks, t-shirts, get-togethers, meet-up groups. Like, I imagine you're just like, you know, a rock star coming in. Everyone's really happy to have like a former, you know, atheist plus former militant atheist, former deist in their group. Like who has the best parties? The pagans. Yeah, they'll pagans always win. That's the same thing. George, I want to fill in one question back at you. It sounded like you have two forms of baggage on you as one, and non-practicing, but, but cultural Jew. And then second also as a act of atheists, like, have you felt weight from both of those stereotypes being put on you in any way? Oh, yes. Let me put it this way. I think there are, of course, a lot of people who have a much larger load of baggage in terms of being Jewish, especially in Europe still, you know. I mean, they're fighting for their identity in Poland right now, for instance. You know, there's a lot of anti-Jewish sentiment. Yeah, some fighting for their lives. Never went away, you know. And, and, I mean, there was, there was a program, if I remember right, right after World War II in Poland. So, but, but anyway, in terms of my own personal baggage, I have been, I have lived on the coast of the United States for almost my entire life. And I have simply never felt it as, in other words, atheism. I have never felt a problem with that. And now that I'm here in Tennessee, it's sort of like it's in the air. Right. I'm a musician by training and I once performed in a church in Connecticut, because I loved playing Bach. Bach is my favorite composer, as it is for many classical musicians. And he was a profoundly religious man and wrote incredible religious music. Absolutely. So I had the honor to be performing a Bach cantata aria in a church. It was a congregational church. And so I sat and listened to the sermon and the minister started railing against atheists. Oh no. That's awkward. And there I was sitting there glorifying his God myself. As a Jew. Or as a non-artist. From music. Yeah. Actual and atheists. This is, this is. Exactly. This is us. So I've had to learn, you know, in my life to be comfortable with paradox, you know. And I think I just have to live with paradox all the time. And there are all these different paradoxes, if that's the correct plural. Larry, I'd love to hear you weigh in on that. Like what do you think? And does your book touch on the idea of living with the idea of even if you're an atheist, sometimes you're just going to have to find yourself in positions where you're going to have to deal with people who. I will, but I believe that Dale had his hand up. He was going to. Oh, I didn't see. Dale, what's up? Yeah, go for it. Well, I would like to help George out a little bit. The Jews are often accused of killing Jesus in the chapter 111 or whatever of my book. I absolutely prove that neither the Jews nor the Romans killed Jesus. And what book is that? Would you like to plug it? Go ahead. Yeah. You can read it free at howjesusdidit.com and chapter 11 is how he changed the wine. Chapter 23 is how he made a fish with a coin in its mouth. And chapter 50 something is how he cut the cut the put the did the ear miracle, so forth and so on. And all of it was non supernatural. And as a matter of fact, the Bible explains it in three part harmony. How all of these things were done. You take all of your evidence from the Bible too. Yeah. So what was your question? Would you rephrase your question to me? Larry, what do you think about living with parents? So I think George touched on something nice and that atheism is a lot like humidity. You only feel it when you're in the South. Right? Yeah. So finally a good one. Yeah. So I'm thinking like Larry, how do you deal with that? And have you talked about it in your book? How do I deal with the living as an atheist in the South? Among Christians and just the cultural of like religion and the stigma and like how do you deal with that? I've got an article in my book about coming out of the atheist closet. There are a lot of nuances there that I recommend, especially for teenagers whose life, livelihood and education may depend upon the people that they live with and with preachers who no longer believe. By the way, if you are a preacher who are stuck in the pulpit as it were trapped in the pulpit, there's a group for you. It's called the clergy project and it's clergyproject.org that you might check into. They work with ex-preachers or current preachers to retrain them for secular employment. However, living for me it was pretty straightforward. I was self-employed. I didn't have to worry about being fired except by my clients. And basically every other religion or religious person in the world feels they have the right to stand up for their beliefs. But we are not supposed to. We're not supposed to stand up for what we believe and the things that the supernatural that we don't believe in. The important thing is to realize that you have just as much right to your beliefs as they do to theirs, and if they're going to come to your door and ring the bell and tell you about their Jesus, then you have the right to tell them that you don't believe in why. Even if it comes up in a conversation, as street epistemology says, you know, address the topic, go there, talk about methods of reaching conclusions, et cetera. But realize that you have just as much right to your beliefs as they do to theirs. Do you think there's tips that you could recommend right now from your book about how to deal with, I guess, not so much the sense of oppression, but the pressure that does come with knowing you're an atheist and other people aren't, or you may think that other people aren't? Like what's a good way to get over that, huh? Well, I don't really know that there's an easy way. I mean, the people are going to believe what they want to believe, and you're just going to have to deal with it and live in the society. The things that bother me are when people like I check out at a store and they say, have a blessed day. Oh, I hate that. I don't mind it. Yeah. And, you know, that's just their way of saying, have a happy day, have a nice day. But they're doing it in religious speak. I will say two things on that. One thing that really bugs me is after they've found out that I'm an atheist. Yes. I'll pray for you. Yes. And that's simply saying you're broken and I'm going to try to fix you or have my boss fix you. That's the thing I hate. You touched it. So I would say if they don't know I'm an atheist ahead of time and they say something like, bless you. I take that as if I was traveling back in time to like Roman era and people are like, Apollo be with you on your journey. That's just your cultural flair of how you say have a good trip or something like that. So I'm told go for it, George. You know, I had surgery in the middle of March. I'm in the middle of July and I was driven to the hospital by a friend of mine who's an atheist. And just before I was wheeled into the operating room, she said, I will pray for you, Richard. And well, I guess her prayers have been answered. Because I'm doing great. Yeah. There was no other way for it to happen. Yeah. So Jesus is looking out for me. Jesus is looking for her. No, I was sure she wasn't. I was sure she wasn't Hindu because they say, bless me. They pray to, they pray to, to more gods even. So like probability wise, they're probably. She said she wrote on Facebook, which I don't use. She wrote something about me that was quoted to me by somebody else. And I thought I'd share that with you that, that just as the nurse put me back into her car, the nurse said to me, have, have a blessed day upon which I cursed at the nurse. Well, you just, I'm not going to repeat the words that I use because this is going to be a radio program. Was it snazzle, frazzles, margin snarky? You go yourself. No. That's the New York. That's the New York aspect of it too. So there's like three aspects of George. He's got the, he's got the nice guy he's got to do. He's got the eighth. It's in New York or don't, don't get in my face. Um, I have had something like that happen to me. I've done like an epistemology session with someone at work for, he was a visiting contractor. We talked for maybe for like four hours because we're waiting for a machine to warm up and we got really into the conversation to the point where I was getting exhausted, but he really wanted to keep going. And at the end we found out he's just holding on to his faith because he can't think of anything else to hold on to. And it made him really uncomfortable. When we walked away, he deliberately said, uh, God bless you. When he walked away in my head, I was like, wow, I really got this guy thinking because he had to say that. Like he felt like he had to say that. And it probably didn't feel as how do you put it as non thoughtful or mechanical. Like it was something he threw in there as a way to like save some face in that conversation. Like, and now every single time he says it, he has to think about a little bit more. And I'm like, that's cool because I'm, it doesn't bother me. Like your God might be real, but I'm, I'm, you still haven't come up with a good excuse for it. That's the whole thing that I care about. George, go for it. So Larry, what do you answer when somebody, a checkout clerk, for instance, says to you, have a blessed day? I just say thanks. Yeah, same here. It's not a big deal. And unless I'm like, I've got an atheist hat or something on and or a T-shirt and they know I'm an atheist and that I just consider it just and say, have a nice day and their speak. Right. Exactly. Like if you're at your atheist table when you says talk to an atheist and someone says that, then it's like, okay, let's, let's, let me dig to my toe. Now, somebody like, like Wombat was saying, if I do identify myself as an atheist and they say they're going to pray for me, I might come back with a, well, how very self-righteous and condescending thinking type of thing or tell them that, oh, okay, I'll, I'll kill a chicken for you. Oh, sacrifice a goat for you. That's right. I'll think for you. Generally, you don't come across these people. Yeah. I did come across quite a few of them when I was doing ask an atheist tables on university in downtown, you know, cause they'll come over and shout at me. Tell me I'm going to hell and never sit down with you. Right. Sometimes they will. The nice ones. Well, some of them are hitting run, you know, they'll just shout at you or give you the finger or whatever and go by. Now, this is your Christianity. Right. Right. The people who are supposed to love their neighbors and all that. And so, of course, there's a opposition. Dale, what do you, what do you say? If anyone says have a blessed day, do you have a particular phrase that you go to? Or is it all encompassing for you? Well, as a true militant atheist, what I usually do is take out a pen and paper and ask them to their name. Okay. And write their name down. And then they usually ask, why are you writing my name or look at their name tag? And I'm saying it so it can be reported so that you can be picked up off the street and deprogrammed. As necessary in this culture. As necessary. Yeah. Yeah. You should have said, because I have a death note. I don't know. That's very, that's a obscure. Oh, anyone get that. He's quitting. He's kidding anyway. But still no, no, no, no, no, no, that's threatening somebody was bodily harm and that's illegal. Well, you guys take all the fun out of it. Okay. I'm glad. I'm glad we live in a culture at least now where people know, even though it's been adapted for Americans, at least to random Japanese torture devices that are metaphysical. Anyway, we might even get into metaphysics in the later on, but we're actually at the bottom of the half hour. Larry, why don't you take us out? Sure. This is the digital free thought radio hour and WZO radio 103.9 LP FM. And we'll be right back after this short break. The digital free thought radio are the second half of the show. We're on WZO radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today is Sunday, September 20th, 2020. Let's talk about the free thought groups that you can join right here in Knoxville. First, there's the Atheist Society of Knoxville founded in 2002. We're in our 18th year. ASK has over a thousand members and you can find us online at KnoxvilleAtheist.org or you can go to meetup.com and search for Knoxville Atheist there. It's just that simple. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you should still go to meetup and search for an atheist group in your town. Don't find one. Start one. Start one. Another large free thinking group here in Knoxville, the rationalists of East Tennessee. Just go to rationalist.org and click on their upcoming events for more details. Earlier in the show, we said we'd talked about Knoxville's Atheist TV show. However, it's not really TV show anymore. They did that for 10 years on public access TV, but now they're streaming on YouTube. Freedom. You've been searched for Free Thinkers United Coalition of Knoxville and you'll find their streaming videos that are archived there. Also, we have the 10 years of public TV shows there under, what is it? Free Thought Forum, Knoxville. So just remember three words and you can find them there. Also, if you're interested in getting involved with the TV or the radio show, just come to an Ask Meetup or RET meeting and talk to us about it or come to our Facebook group and ask us about it there. You could be our next co-host or guest. With us on the show is our regular co-host, Wombat. There's a snake in my boot. And red leader and George, where do you want to pick up Wombat? So the first half of the show, we were talking about famous quotes from great presidents. As a reminder that we did used to have great presidents. I remember a great quote from John F. Kennedy who said, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask where is the love? We're going to go over some words. That's the power of love. So what did we even talk about last week? Well, first of all, the love we're talking about is our comments from the listeners. They send us love every week. That's right. That's right. And where can you leave this love? You can leave it in the comment section. In any of the videos that you watch this channel in or any of the comment sections of whatever podcast feeds and we'll go over them. We also have a Reddit R group, r slash street epistemology. You can check that out and make posts there. And we'll go over them over the show. In fact, pixel 917 says, hey, it's nice to hear you guys have subscribed to the audio podcast and it's cool to see you guys as well. Thank you very much pixel sacrifusion says since the last episode was about dreams, he had a little snarky comment that went like, oh, so you've had personal experiences that influence your belief that make you think that it's true. Can you give me your best example? Oh, I see. When you were 13, you had this very super vivid dream. And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we get it. Dreams aren't very convincing because we don't necessarily know if they worked out very, they don't know. We don't know if they are a good means to know if something's actually true or not because we can have dreams about true things and false things, all sorts of stuff. Nathan Matthews quotes on our YouTube channel. Hey, that was a great talk. Atheism Plus seems similar to ethical culture. Hey, here's a topic idea. What are your opinions on humanist organizations with congregations? Maybe we can do a roundtable on that after this quote. But his thoughts, Nathan's thoughts in particular is that when searching for a local free thought group, I found a local ethical society that has congregational structure. And I worry that this provides an experience over participation. I'm reminded of the dangers of the typical religious congregation where you blindly follow instead of engaging in your own critical thought. On the plus side, a large group with a united cost can bring greater opportunities for impact. Maybe my expectations are too low by comparing them to religious congregations. I think my thoughts on this is that secular congregations or secular groups that meet up in congregational styles can actually be really, really fulfilling. Because there is a scratch that is scratched in a spiritual sense by being with a group of people where you can see them on a regular basis, grow with them, share and confide with them. And maybe even tackle maybe some bigger topics that you couldn't have done by yourself. And universal, united universalists was a group that I was in when I was in Kentucky. And they would have very much the church-like structure. But there were Jews, atheists, pagans there. They would do sermons on Carl Sagan on so much different cool things. And I highly recommend it. So maybe there's some merit in that structure. George. Yeah. Yeah. What do you think? Well, I think I was four years old when I was taken to humanist lectures at the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture, which makes me wonder where our participant is located. The person who just asked the question, where did that question come from that he even or she even knows that there is such a thing as an ethical culture organization because there is one. It was founded, I mean the first one I know of was founded in New York and I mean Manhattan in this context. Around the turn of the 20th century, so around 1901 sometime, and it's still there. It's very big. It's located on Central Park West. And the one where I was taken to and became a later participant is the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture right next to Prospect Park on Prospect Park West in an old mansion. You told me about that one. Yeah. Both of these places have their own websites. There are other, let's say, branches of the Society for Ethical Culture. The Society for Ethical Culture is founded as a religion in New York. And recognized by the old draft boards as a religion, as a basis for a conscientious object or claim if you wanted to get out of having to serve in the Army. George, I'd love for you to plug those groups again at the end of the show when we do our final plugs. Dale, I'm going to throw this out at you real quick. Do you have a group of secular or do you have a non-religious group that you would be a part of? If I was going to do something like that, I'd probably just join the Unitarian Universalist Church. They're very inclusive of everyone. They are very good at organizing for whatever community activities might be and call for. You can socialize and all of that at least when COVID is not around. But they're very nice people and I don't believe they're very judgmental and it's not really necessary well I don't know if somebody wants to have their own little atheist thing, I guess that's fine too but most people really do enjoy getting together and seeing other people on a regular basis. We are, after all, social animals. I believe that's what most of the Christians use but benefit they derive from becoming, you know, gathering in my name type of thing. But you mentioned something from John Kennedy. As an atheist plus, my atheism is plus political reform and as of recently I've been letting people know that there's a thing called a contingent election that has happened in America in 1800 and 1824. That's where neither candidate gets to 270 votes and therefore the vote is thrown into the House of Representatives. So if everyone could please vote on a timely manner and not allow any state to uncertify or fail to certify their election then we may not have it happen that it's thrown into the House of Representatives because there there's one party that will lose that's the Democrats. And it's not each representative has a vote which would make a lane toward Democrats. It's one state has a vote of one vote. So it's for the Republicans. Anyway. So if the election was messed up so badly by mail going down and election going the machines going down and all it could be possible that states, some states could say we cannot certify their election. And then we will have four more years of the same. Thank you for letting me share that with everyone one bat. We all know your love for Trump. Anyway, Larry, what is the value for social groups? I agree with Dale and says the value is getting together with your fellow humans. We've been so we're a social community. So we have a lot of information in form groups. Dan Barker said in his book losing faith and faith, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. If the churches go away then we need to keep the good things that are promoted in church. Absolutely the community socializing getting together it's all good. it's a secular student alliance. Yeah. High school and college. And if you don't have one, then you're school. They're virtual now. There's literally no excuse. You can just go to your nearest chapter. They will have a virtual session on Zoom. This COVID has made it even more easier for you to join groups like that, national, atheist, secular organizations. So what kind of group is this? Go for it. Secular student alliance. So if you're in high school or in college, you can start a local chapter of the Secular Student Alliance and have your own community, secular community that you can shmooze around and make friends. And when I was in Kentucky, I didn't know about the Secular Student Alliance. And I did not like the atheist group that was there. So I picked up Street Epistemology and made my own community around that. And I would say it helped me form connections with people, such that I have this group that I'm even talking in right now. And so it's particularly if you're living in the South and you need secular friends. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. No, you're fine. But a community is something that you can make. It's not something that's owned by religion. Religion doesn't own a monopoly on congregation. It's something that we can benefit from outside of even religious previews. I would also say Boy Scouts was a good outlet for me as far as meeting a bunch of kids. Yes, it's very much religiously mandated now, or at least it even was since inception. But when you are an actual 12-year-old in a troop, the Reverend component of Boy Scouts is the last thing that's ever, ever discussed or talked about. It is just like, I don't even think we've ever packed the Bible. And most of the conversations there are probably the reasons why any of us would be sent to hell in the first place if hell exists. So yeah. But they certainly put it in their oath. They sure do, but most of us can't even remember those. OK. We were speaking of things that you remember and you should read and check out. Atheism What It's All About, we got the author Larry S. Rhodes on here. And we were just talking about why it's important for getting out of the atheist closet, in a sense, and making sure people understand where you're coming from. And that's actually the last chapter in this book. It's the blog section number 52. And one of the things I had in my job when I was a scientist, my previous job that I was working at, I was fairly open about my atheism because I was really getting into street epistemology. And I realized that it wasn't until I openly let people know, hey, I'm an atheist, that I realized that all the people who I thought were Christian were actually also non-believers. Like it went from I'm the only atheist that works in this building to actually, I think, like maybe 80% of the people are on the same level as me. If you don't come out, then you're assumed to be a Christian or the predominant religious group in the area. Exactly. And that one loud Christian who wears the necklace and talks about God every day seems like he's the default person for everyone and speaks for everyone because no one's challenging that person. It ain't the case. It's not the case. And it showed up in family members, like I had ladies being like, yeah, and I don't even believe in God. I was like, what? I have more friends than I realized. So it is a really good thing to stand out, or at least people know to stand out. Larry, could you talk about your, I know you, I know when you became an atheist, but like the impact of it on your part from, and also the push for atheism named groups. Could you talk about that? Well, we need to defend the word. It's a perfectly good appellation. Atheism means you don't believe in God, and that's all it means. But we, as a society, treat it as a curse word. And I'm not going to stop using the word simply because it offends the very people who made it a curse word in the first place. I am an atheist. I don't believe in God. If you don't believe in God, whether you call yourself an atheist or not, you are. That's what it means. It's like being a female male, if you say, I don't believe in God, but I'm not an atheist, which I hear, which is amazing to me. They just don't understand what it means. And there's nothing to hear. Don't wear clothes, but I don't call myself a nudist. It's like, wait, what's going on here? Right, it's an oxymoron. Dale? Yeah, I've heard that the word theist is reserved for a belief in a God that affects or does things or grants favors that interacts with humanity. That that word theist is reserved for that area. So when you say atheist, would that not mean I don't believe in a God who interferes with mankind or the universe? I don't think it's conditioned. Yeah, I think it's any God. Whether you believe in a God or not, Larry, I think there are definitely certain things I'll go for. I definitely think there are certain thieves who are like, if you don't believe in my God, you're not a theist. The original first usage of the word atheism was in Rome calling the Christians atheists because they didn't believe in the Roman gods. Right, which is kind of weird. And the Roman gods had an effect or meddled with humanity. But I mean, if you look up the word atheism, I don't think you'll find it says that a person without an interpersonal God, he just says a person without God belief. It doesn't differentiate. It's literally not a theist. So like whatever a theist is, whatever is not that as an atheist. There is George, have you I'm going to fill this question out of you as well. You've always been born. I mean, you've always been an atheist, but has anyone ever assumed that you were a Christian or something like that? You had to correct them on that. Yeah, I always, you know, I think I mean, certainly here in the South, they do. And, you know, I'm not used to being in the South. The South has always fascinated me, which is one of the reasons why I live here. But I'm not used to it. But I think that every time somebody says to me, have a blessed day, and it's happened right here in my own house, you know, I just had an occupational therapist wish me a blessed day on her way out the door. I mean, I think that's. Oh, no, did that break the romance we've been following for the last four weeks or so? Yeah, I've been in love with my OTs, yes. Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm assuming that they're they're making the assumption that I'm a Christian when they say that to me. Yeah, I mean, a couple of times, I've just casually said to people here that I'm Jewish. You know, God help me if I said I was an atheist, because I understand that atheists are the most commonly hated people in the whole country. Who help you? What's that? Who help you? Yeah, who help me? Yeah, and so when I said that I was Jewish, I was met with shock and horror. And I'm not used to that. So like in the black community, there's very there's a there's additional stigma for being a black atheist because one of the former one of the pillars of community for like black people is the church, right? And so you don't have that. It's like, where are you going to find people and social people to help you out with? And like when I came out as an atheist, it was it was church wasn't even a place I had been to in the last five years. So like I didn't miss losing it, but I can imagine someone who's in the church pew realizing they don't believe what's being told to them and figuring out, oh, but if I admit that, I can't hang out with these people anymore. I can't be this person's god kid. I can't be this person's babysitter, this person's mentor. Like I lose all those functionalities. And that is really, really like what I find a double not the double edged sword, but like the ties that keep people into really bad dogmas. Just like the familial and societal ties that pull people back in. There's also the idea of like the history behind it. Because if Chris Rock says a really funny joke is like, if you're black and a Christian in America, you have a very short memory. Because the idea is like that is not a natural dogma demographic that got put together is naturally a thing. Like that was put on. It was crossed on you. Yeah, without much else. And there was the really good film called Roots where it was like, oh man, it's just really depressing when you consider how that happened. But how did it all turn around? Well, it was because there was a big abolitionist movement where churches in the North or in some of the South could network with each other and actually help to migrate slaves to freedom. And that was huge. And not only that, but when you're a slave, you don't really have much to rely on. So like I can imagine people leaning on God when they have no other life to stand on. So like as a pillar to keep people together, as a pillar to help free people. And as just means to hold society together or community together as it is, church has played a huge part. But even in the South, like I noted that when I went to church in California, I went to church in Georgia. It's completely different. Cause in the ones in California, they're like, let's read from our Bibles. Here's the psalm, stand up, sit down, stand up, sit down. Okay, you guys are good. See you next week. Whereas in the ones in Georgia, it's more of like, you need to get involved with these people. You need to know what's going on here. Here's this music. It's so loud, it's so loud, we're gonna dance. We're gonna get involved. But like the Bible wasn't even like the, I would say the core part of the church experience. It was, you need to know, let people know who you are. If you meet these people, these are good friends. This is a community that you can be a part of. And I get that vibe so much went in retrospect and that I ever had before. But it's a hard thing to let go. Still, when you are black and an atheist and you need to come out, it's important. It was very good for me to know that there are other people who made that jump and that there are people I could rely on on the other side of the fence. Black non-believers was a huge one in Atlanta. Yeah, and that's where I came in. So George, what's up? Well, my barber just opened a business called Big Daddy's Barbecue Shack. Okay. And he's a minister in the church of God and Christ. Do I open up to this guy? Honestly. He might, if he gives you better barbecue, I find the anger the person is who's making your sandwich, the better the sandwich. I mean, I've been going to this guy for a few years. Yeah. Why me? And it's bald. If it's a real friendship, I don't think it would matter. And I think that's probably the biggest point because I had friends who I've let know when I'm an atheist, even at my current job. And it's just made our friendship better because I know that these are people that I do want to invest more time in now that they understand where I'm coming from other than me keeping in the back of my head and they keep telling me parables about the Bible. It's like, don't you know that I'm about to sign up to Dale's bright slash atheist plus slash militant atheist slash deist club. Don't you know that? Like I'm almost there. I got the pamphlets ready to go. So there was a listener request from last week's episode about metaphysics. And we probably don't have a lot of time to get into it but I have found that it might be worth to just maybe softball what our impression of metaphysics are. I have a very low, I have a low opinion of metaphysics unfortunately. So I don't want to call it the conversation but in my opinion, metaphysics is what happens when you pull away all the scientific aspects, philosophical aspects, moral aspects, ethic aspects from something and try to ask yourself what's left, you know? And in my opinion, not much but maybe it's something cool. Bill, what do you think? I believe it's misnamed meta means above or beyond physics. This, metaphysics is simply a branch of philosophy has nothing to do with physics like nuclear physics or Newtonian physics or electronic physics. It's just a word. As a matter of fact, the word was hijacked in the 70s by all of the new age movements, the acrylic and photography people. Oh, I had acrylic and photography machine. The pyramid power people, I did that too. Rosa Crucians, what? Homeopathy, is that part of the new age movement too? I think so. Yeah. No. Oh. I'd believe homeopathy tries to call themselves more like science and they do metaphysics. Ah, that's very true. They misappropriated or appropriated that word for use when they wanted to add some scientific legitimacy to some of their crackpot ideas but it's just philosophy. One of our philosophers that was a member of the RET here in Knoxville, also tried to start an idea where he called it sci-fi which is scientific philosophy where he thought that philosophy should have something to do with scientific results or study. I believe it's just totally ridiculous to apply philosophy to that which can be quantified. Regulatory physics. Well, I think it's more about the use of it and not so much as verifying the results but how to use it. Yeah, because in a... Philosophy definitely has a place and it should stay there. Okay. George, you had something you wanted to say. I can't remember. Okay, the idea that we shouldn't quantify anything in philosophy, I feel like a way back when when we were trying to understand how science worked it was very much philosophical in its approach. Like what we know math means things we know numbers have values but what can we do with these values and how can we make them be true in the real world? Like what kind of models can we generate? And we got better and better at it to the point where it's now almost like a concrete you're either right or you're wrong it's very objective matter in the fields of math and it feels like biology and genetics stuff like that. We know what works and we know it doesn't work but we can still ask ourselves some meaningful questions but the gray area of like identity and like the nature of time and stuff like that we can have some... We can still have some wiggle room to come up with some interesting theories but as we become more concrete with our conclusions and can quantitate more it doesn't necessarily pull it out of the realm of philosophy it just means that we've now added quantitation into a realm of philosophy. So I think we can totally quantify things that are philosophical in nature. We can... I think the philosophical aspects is just the pursuit of asking questions in a meaningful way and we can add stuff to it and I think even in my field of science like biochemistry or even like engineering where there's a lot of questions always being asked but we just have more tools to answer them and we just get our solutions a lot more effectively. We got six minutes before the end of the show George, I asked you let's see we're going to test your memory I asked you to plug that club. Well, it's not a club. It's chartered as a religion under the state of New York and has been for over a century. What's the name of the club? How can we find out about it? Yeah, it's called the New York Society for Ethical Culture and it is part of a larger organization which is called the American Ethical Union. Very cool, very cool. And it has had, it has been kind of amorphous over the years. In other words, it has had chapters around the United States and I believe even in the UK that's sort of common go as people do. So I remember they had an affiliate even in the San Francisco Bay area in California and they have one I believe in Philadelphia. I haven't checked into it for a long, long time. Cool, if I just Googled it, would I find out more about it? Yes, oh yes. I maybe will give you a URL in fact. Sure, well, you do that. Dale, I had a quick question. Does Bright have a leadership structure or is there a website that I can find out more about what that is? No. Okay, okay. Is it just a name? No, it was started, I think it was like 2003. It was, it's mainly an effort to try to have better PR for people who tend to offend those who don't believe in the offendees religion. So it's agnostic 2.0 basically which is probably the next epitome of atheism. You might want to check that out. Larry, I'm about to head to you. We'll get the URL from George and put it in the description for at least this YouTube video. But you can find my videos on Let's Chat. I'm Ty, it's nice to meet you. I have a hobby where I think I can talk to anyone about anything and I highly recommend that you guys check it out because I post chats on that channel at least on a weekly basis. Larry, if there's anything else? Well, there is a Brights website. It's called the-brights.net. Their description is, Brights ethics and actions are based on naturalistic worldview. The Brights aspire to egalitarian civic vision, et cetera, et cetera. So just go to the-brights.net to learn more about it. But yeah, it's kind of an older movement now. It's been out five or six years and a lot of people have a problem with the name in that it assumes that you're brighter than the other person. Oh, there's a distinction in that one. That's what Dale was alluding to a little while ago. I believe you're muted, Dale. You're muted, Dale. Say what? We are brighter. That's what makes us bright. Okay, cool. Now, what was your other question, Dale? Larry, we got one minute in the show. Why don't you take us out? Okay. This is Digital Freethought Radio Hour, NWOZO Radio 103.9 LP FM Knoxville. Be sure to visit my blog at digitalfreethought.com. We have our radio show archives there, atheist songs and articles. We mentioned my book several times, Atheism, What's It All About, available on Amazon. Dale's book can be found at howjesusdidit.com for free to read online. If you're having trouble leaving religion, go to recoveringfromreligions.org and religions.org. And if you have any questions for the show, you can send them to askanatheistatnoxfilatheist.org and we'll answer my future shows. If you're watching on YouTube, be sure to like and subscribe and remember, everybody is going to somebody else's hell. The time to worry about it is that when they prove that heavens and hells and souls are free, until then, don't sweat it. Enjoy your life and we'll see you next week. Say goodbye, everybody. Goodbye, everybody. Bye.