 Hello and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio Hour and WOZO Radio 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We're recording this on Sunday morning, January 1st, 2023. Happy New Year everyone. I'm Larry Rhodes or a DJ Doubter 5. And as usual, we have our co-host Wombat up with us. Hello, Wombat. Hey, that's me. I'm the Wombat. And our guest today is Boudreaux from Kentucky. Welcome. Hey, hey. And Digital Freethought Radio Hours, a talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism and the sciences. And conversely, we'll also talk about religion, religious faiths, God's holy books and superstition. And if you get the feeling that you're the only non-believer in your town, you're just not here in Knoxville, in the middle of the Bible Belt in Tennessee. We have a group of over a thousand of us and I understand the one in Nashville is even larger than that. The Atheist Society of Knoxville or ASK. We'll tell you more about them after mid-show breaks. So be sure to stick around. Wombat, what's your topic today? Hey, we're talking about Happy New Year wishes. We're talking about license plates. And we're going to be talking about making changes to the Bible to improve and impact society. But before we get to that, Happy New Year, everybody. Happy New Year. Brand New Year. Feels good. Feels good to be alive. We made it around a rock. You know, we made it around a big giant plasma ball, not a rock. We're on our 73rd trip. That's pretty cool. Very impressive when you think about it. Some people go, it's an easy thing to take for granted, but we survive through a lot of stuff. And I'm very happy to make it through up to now. Very true. Very true. Boudreau, you have any New Year's plans? What's going to be different this year compared to last? Oh, I don't know. I guess I never made anything official. Fitness is going to be a big goal. Okay. I'm running a 5K today at two o'clock. Nice. Oh, very good. You must be pretty fit to already do 5Ks, taking them in stride. I don't know much longer than 5Ks anymore. Not to pry into your life, Boudreau, but he actually has like a garage where he has all the ribbons that he's run on a big string. It's very impressive. It's very, very cool. Yeah, but they're participation trophies. Actually, to be fair, a couple of them are because they happened during COVID and we didn't really run them like we were supposed to. So, and I'm prying a little bit more. Let me know if this is picking on you, Eric. Like, I would say I've seen the show Pee Wee's Playhouse. It's sort of your home is sort of structured like that where it's like, here's my fun thing that I do up here. And this is this crazy little room down here. And this is the garage and this is the toolbox room and this is the place where I put these things on. It's like, okay, everything has a little theme where I can feel like you're like, I want the fun things in my life to be centered around here. I like that a lot. That's really cool. I don't even want to know what's behind those tubs behind it. Yeah. Okay. Very cool. Very cool. Larry, what's your plans for this year? Oh, well, I hope there's some way that's that's about it. No, I'm pretty happy with the life I'm living right now. Very cool. I would I'm looking forward to retirement whenever that happens. Yeah, I've been retired for a year and a half before I started this last job and I enjoyed it, but I'm enjoying the work too. So it's all good. Nice. Nice. Nice. Last year, I was 109 pounds more than I am now. So I'm done, not necessarily done with the weight loss, but now it's all about cosmetic improvements. I just want the definition. I got my first vascularity vein on my bicep. Oh no. We could go and I'm really, really happy to see it. It's really, really small, but it's there and I'm like, oh yeah, I want you to get bigger. I want you to be all over the place. So I'm getting into rock climbing now too. So I'd like to be able to do so a v3 by the end of the year. That's that would be my goal, which is just outside of the beginner level of rock climbing. So we have a rock climbing wall at our gym here, which is about like five minutes away from where I'm at. And I bought my own hand grips because I just want to put new kinds of holds on that wall. So after this call, I'll probably be back at the gym trying out different kinds of like sets and very controlled sends up and down and sideways on the wall that we have here. It's really, really cool. I was a rock climber back in college. Oh, for real? Yeah, outside stuff. And now my daughter climbs at a gym here in LA. She climbs on buildings and stuff like that. Rock climbing is awesome, man. My best climb was a 512a. Well, I'm going to have to learn more bouldering legal, but it sounds high, sounds high, sounds super high. That's really good. And there's a lot of cool rocks around the area too. Anyway, guys, next topic real quick. So Tennessee has a new license plate. I've tried to renew my license plate online because it's pretty simple thing. They just give you a new sticker. They said we aren't giving you the sticker because we have a brand new plate and you'll have to come and order it or order online. I'm like, okay, that's fine. I ordered it online and I saw there are two options. I had two boxes I could pick from the state sanctioned one and then a vanity plate that had the exact same layout as the state sanctioned one, but it said in God we trust around the logo for Tennessee. So I think of it as a big deal because I had that same question asked me last year's or when I had the old plates as well. So I just said the standard state sanctioned one. If I ever become a Christian, I'll get a bumper sticker. I'm not going to put it on a state issued thing, right? Right, separation. Yeah, yeah, separation of state and church is all I'm about. So I picked the standard state issue one and it came in and I was fine with it. I saw something that was like playing with my head a little bit because my plate starts with three letters and three numbers and that's the way how this default state issue license is. But then I saw the end it was interesting because my license plate not to divulge too much information on me, but had BLM at the front and I was like, whoa, that's cool. Is that intentional or is that like what everyone else has? Some people have BLR, some people have BLYs. I was like, okay, so it kind of like changes. But I noticed that some license plate had three numbers in front of it. And I was like, huh, that's weird. I go up to those license plate and they say in God we trust. And I'm like, is that a trend? Because that's the way my brain always thinking. And every single license plate I saw in the state of Tennessee that starts with that has the in God we trust my logo on it starts with three numbers and ends with three letters, whereas all the secular tags have three letters and then three numbers. So it's ABC 123 if you don't believe in God, and it's 123 ABC if you do believe in God. That's exactly three letters and four numbers. Oh, four numbers. Okay. Okay. So, yeah, whether you start so I can from a distance now. And this is not my little paranoid brain thinking of things as I'm driving down the street. I'll drive down the street and be like numbers that guy for losing guy numbers that guy's Christian letters. Let's go. I see you. I see you. I see you. I see you. Larry, did you notice that too? Is that the same thing? Oh yeah, definitely. Like playing head games like you did. Like, why would they do that? Why would they make it so obvious that she chose to put in God we trust on your license plate versus those who didn't. I mean, it's like you can you can tell it from 50 yards away. Just basically they do that. Yeah, like in a parking lot, you can be like Christian Christian Christian. Oh, that's an interesting possibility. And the weirdest thing the weirdest thing for me is I used to think I was the only atheist in like my time. You always think that you always think you are. And like you said, it's not true. Go out start a club find out, but you'll see like a red truck with a guy and a trucker hat, driving down the street, and it's like messed up fender. I mean, he's got the American flag on it and you're just like, Oh, here it comes. But then you look around and he's license plate starts with letters and you're like, huh, this guy might be. I might want to hang out with this guy sometime. Let's see if he plays disco. So I have noticed that they released the statistics on the license plates on whether they were secular tags or non-secular tags. It's very easy to track. The trend is not surprising. The trend is essentially the bigger the town, and the more money it makes, the more proportion there is of secular license plates, whereas the smaller the county, and the less more and more impoverished that they are or below the population, the more likely they're going to have a religious tag. The biggest example is Davidson County where national is located 703,000 people, 13% of them took the religious tag. Whereas Fentress County, which is one of the smallest counties we have here, it's only less than 20,000 people, right? There's towns bigger than that. We have 98% of the religious tags. And so what the way I interpret this information is, there seems to be a starting majority of people just population-wide that aren't taking the state sanctioned tags. But if you broke it up into counties and percentage and normalize it through percentages, it seems like it's like truly a 50-50 split where just based on number of heads, it seems to be overwhelmingly non-secular tags. Not only that, but those larger cities are only getting bigger, and they're spreading out into the smaller nearby or adjacent counties. I feel like this is a trend in a good direction. We are going to eventually see a tipping of the scale. I'm only taking back by the idea that this vanity plate that has the in God we trust is just so easily given out by the state and offered for free. It seems like we could have had vanity plates to support autism or wildlife or teachers or anything like that. And the one that they picked was one that looks exactly like the state issued one except for just swap numbers. I feel like that's a bit of a bias where if you want to keep that I'm fine, but maybe give us more options for other vanity plates too, if you automatically give us the Christian version. And then you got to wonder which God is, you know, we know when they mean the federal government always use the word God so everybody can just, if you're Muslim, it's well it's my God. Yeah, if you're Hindu, it's my God. One of them. Yeah, so I bet if you went back in the archives, you could probably find a clip of me saying something similar in Kentucky. I've noticed we have a in God we trust option, and I don't think you have to pay for it. But I had noticed you people of statistics but I had more anecdotal evidence where I would walk around a parking garage or a parking lot or whatever, and I would notice the in God we trust and then I would look above it to the county that it was from. It seemed to me and again this isn't scientific this isn't, you know, I didn't jot these numbers down but but just the hunch I had was that not the hunch but most of the time when I saw that in God we trust is I would look for it, and I moved up to the county. It wasn't Fayette County, which is where Lexington is it wasn't Jefferson County, which is where Lou Louisville is, it was some of the smaller counties in the surrounding area. Right. And that, like you said with this there's this overwhelmingly higher proportion of the in God we trust in the rural smaller communities, right and I, all of the reasons we can suspect I'm sure are there but I think there may be another piece to it and I'd be curious. The DMV. If you go to the DMV there to get your license plate is there like a social pressure for you to get the in God we trust so you might know the person that that works there. That's funny because when I go to okay layer you want to weigh on and I was just going to say I read something this morning said that when they went to the DMV they were just handed a plate that didn't have an option. And he would think that if the person was a religious person that would hand out the in God we trust play, you know, with a higher rate than the other and vice versa. Sure. This could just be me my mind is when I went to the DMV and I got my new tag when I first moved down here a while back ago. It was a lady in glasses and a room full of other ladies with glasses and she gave me an option of two tags and she was basically pointing them at her desk you want this one or the game God we trust, and I was like I want this one. And she gave me that one and there was no mean looks or anything like that at a time but like, I can imagine someone who might be not as confident with their atheism as I am to be potentially that moment with a line of people behind them because it is a small town here. I absolutely agree. And her name her name's Jenny, and I called her to renew my license she's like, Oh, is this tie. Yeah, is this Jenny. Yeah, come down here tied to for you. I was like I appreciate that. Yeah, but particularly at that point you don't know the difference between the numbers on the left and right. Well this one has a guy we trust on this one doesn't realize that there's another whole facet to it that can be seen at quite a distance. Yeah, it's very true. Very true. I would say this though if you are interested or if you live in the Tennessee area you can actually look at the statistics available I'll post them in my YouTube channel and also send the link out to everybody if you post this conversation that we're having please post that link as well. If not, you can also Google it. It's called Nash or the link is called Tennessee license plate kit picks national drivers don't trust in God question mark. It's like of course they don't I think the national is pretty great. The Sunday assembly of the national is one of the best Sunday assemblies have been up to, but ideally, look up your county and realize that my impression is in my town I was the 1% of the people who don't have the There's 35% of people who don't have those tags here and that's overwhelmingly much larger than I anticipated not only that, but based on where I was shopping. This is this is how in the weeds I got I went to Walmart and I was the only car with the letter tag as I was walking up and down, going in and I was like, man, I feel kind of bad about that. And then I went to Kroger and like every car nine in a row up to my car, we're all letters and I'm thinking, oh man it's been stratified just down to gentrified areas in town versus non gentrified areas in town. Isn't that crazy. So, it speaks to the concept of just like, you know, it's not so much a stratification of belief it's just where are you and and how much money do you have available to you and what kind of options do you have that started determines whether or not I'm speaking to being able to see it at a distance. I just looked at that website and it said that my hometown had 98% your hometown 97.9%. Where's that because it's not not Benton County. Got it. West Tennessee. And if you're in that town, you can imagine the pressure of saying that you want one without and got trust. The police department, you know, see you coming down the road or going down the road, they might be leaning in the other direction and pull you over for some kind of infraction. Exactly. That's the first thing I thought about like I was scared that you can't read in God we trust on these plates at any distance. But you're sure see those numbers sure can if I get pulled over by the cops and it's like some crazy religious cop. And like I got the ones that start with letters is going to be like, Okay, well now I'm going to do my thing. I haven't had anyone like vindictively or suspiciously wish me or bless me or anything like that. I don't it's not gotten that crazy. But it's just sort of feeding unmeeted fuel to a fire that's been burning for a while. And hopefully should go out pretty soon. I'm hoping like within 20 years within my lifetime will reach an age of at least culture where religion is sort of like something people are proud in in the sense that Greeks are proud of their Greek gods but no one actually literally believes in the Greek gods, and they aren't using them to determine cultural rules. It's just, Oh, these are the things that we thought were cool. And our ancestors had, but we don't actually believe these things we're all culturally atheists, but we like those gods. It's like those are ours. And, and, and, and Budo you've been to Greece so like I'm hoping I'm not stepping on any toes no one actually believes in like Zeus or anything like that right. Okay, great. Great, great, great, great. Okay, cool. I want that 20 years guys we can do it. Yeah. All right. So, moving on to a different topic, which is going to be the main topic for this is the show. Boudre, would you like to introduce it you had a really good premise for it. Sure. Yeah, so the idea here and Larry I think you wrote about this in the book, at least there's something similar but the idea here, just to get good conversation going would be, if you could make one tiny change to the to the Bible to part of the Bible, the wording of a section of it or kind of change the meaning of something, and then to see it have a huge positive impact on on the world living today and I'm thinking you know go back in time, have you know like whisper and someone's ear when they're writing this down and say I don't know I'll use this word instead of that word, and then we'll go back to today and what kind of little change can you guys think of that would just turn in just a really, really beneficial positive thing that really again it was somebody who didn't really really know science and didn't really know what was going on and just wrote some words out on some paper but if you could just tweak it just a little bit. Save lives, make the world better. And you know, obviously got some some thoughts but I'd love to love to hear you guys Larry you wrote a book on it. Why are you starting well no I was thinking about that and I wrote a book I wrote a chapter in the book about what the Bible could have said. There was, you know, taking this book instead of that book type of thing. And there could be a heck of a lot better book out there than the Bible is the point that I was trying to make there. I didn't make one about a tiny change. And I'm not really sure that a tiny challenge would make a difference, because right now, the book, the Bible is Roushach test. I mean, it says more about what you find in the Bible than what it says, because, you know, it says everything you can support any particular idea by reading something in the Bible it's just all over the board. And I think that if you made a little tiny change back then mankind themselves with either ignore it or reinterpret it or whatever to make it fit their world view as it currently exists. I have one of those small changes is actually came from John Richards, we had a conversation with him a while back but I put a disclaimer at the very beginning of the book that says all characters appearing in this work are fictitious and resemblance to real persons living or dead or immortal are coincidental. One of us saying this is all I worry. Yeah, yeah, this actually happened. Yeah, just the lessons, just one black page that supernaturally can't be removed from the book you remember every time you try to rip it out it just keeps popping up, or start at the very beginning of each chapter I mean, what I found though is like Larry said that'd be something that would be easily ignored or taken out, but I do think a disclaimer like that might have helped set back the momentum a bit. You know, like if something like that was actually in it. They've taken all books of the Bible and thrown about the window. They sure have. I mean, you make a small change like that if they didn't like it they just cost it. Mankind is mankind. You know, we have a reptile brain that pretty much pushes this away from kindness mankind is going to constantly have to fight that. So I totally agree with you guys and that and but maybe I'm thinking subtler like my one thought was just a passage that talked about so we talked about germ theory or something like that that you know, it took us, you know, hundreds of years to realize that hey we should probably wash our hands after we stick our fingers in someone's, you know, and then go deliver a baby right right. So, I seriously like now that that's in my book. Yes, yes. Just, if he had just told us about germs it would have said hundreds of thousands of them. So those are the little things I'm talking about and I, and I, there's one brilliant one that that Kristen and I came up with on the drive home. And this one that the positive impact this is very topical, but if they would have, if we would have explained in the Bible that the soul doesn't enter the body until the baby breathes their first breath. Right. And the whole portion argument would be completely changed. That is in the Bible. Well, to make a point. It is. It is. I mean, people ignore it. Other passages and other interpretations because it doesn't fit. I've got a similar devil's advocate here where it's, let's say we put in the passage about soap in the Bible. Okay, and it's accurate. And it like demonstrates that the Bible or the those who wrote the Bible had awareness and germs and germ theory and proper sanitation. How could they possibly know that back then, when that field of science didn't exist for like another 400 years or something like that. I feel like that could only further increase the confidence of those who want to push unhealthy dogma on people, just because of so just because of so. And, and if it wasn't, if it wasn't so much a scientific point, one that we can demonstrate with science, then I'd be more happy with that because I don't want science be. I don't want religion to be used to prove science. It really like that's not the, that's not the value of religion for a lot of people and it's only going to be used to bolster more belief in non scientific beliefs. Instead, if it was just, how do you treat people? And like, could you give us, yeah, we may not be able, there is no sense of obligatory justice. God is not in concern with karmic values. It's your responsibility to make up for the consequences of your actions and you can make the reality that you live in good or bad, but sometimes bad people get away with bad things sometimes good people don't get rewarded. Overall, if you trend for this set of actions, you can improve the quality of life that you have here you can improve your well being. So this is how this aren't the guideline rules stipulations list of like 100 set of rules of what to do and what not to do. These are like the foundational guidelines where we can empower you to come up with a system of governance. That's in the best interest of the people who are, are, you know, contained or mediated by that rule sets or ethics. You know, teach us ethics in the Bible would be really good. A whole chapter of just ethics and morals and how they work. And I think if you use that and like structured it so well that all the rest of the stuff that's in the Bible is like, Oh, this is just flowery nonsense. Let's look at these two big things. We have great. And here's the thing we have great kings, supposedly, or alleged great kings that were called great kings in the Bible. We hear anything from them other than the stories that they had with God, and hanging out or being thrown a lion pits or like creepily watching women take showers from like their their castles and stuff like that. Why don't you just tell us some of the rules and dictates they did and even if it wasn't their exact rules, come up with a codified rules of baseline of ethics and morals and say this is what King David said on how to rule people or this is what Lazarus commanded for his people. He structured so well that people can use that as a template for building governments and making sure people are well and power doesn't get out of control. And I think that could be really, really useful. Maybe something that would automatically be taken out. You know, perfect omniscient being create a Bible that could be misinterpreted in the first place. Right. And if he's if he's all powerful and totally in control of everything every minute of the world. He could make a book that's self updating so that we could understand it. He could make it update to the person who's reading it so that they have no misunderstanding about what we asked for a little change, not a crazy But I would love something like that. Again, if we had a supernatural book, I'd be a supernatural believer like 10,000%. Right. But if you can make like a small change, I would say make a chapter that's just ethics. Keep it as long as take out numbers. Take out numbers if you want to and give me a little bit of this and do so useless. Most of the most of the chapters in the Bible are completely useless and most Christians don't even read them in the first place. So why don't you just give us like a book of here's how ethics works here are morals work. And instead of us going from the dark ages to our period of enlightenment, over like 300 years. Give us a solid head start, because we're still referencing people from days of enlightenment way back when because they still made good points, just put those good points in the Bible. Give us like a 2000 year head start anyway, getting down to the bottom of the half hour. Larry, why don't you take us out. Soon for the second half of the digital free thought radio hour and w ozio radio 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We'll be right back after this short break. Okay. Welcome back to the second half of the digital free thought radio hour. I'm doubter five and we're on w ozio radio 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Let's take a moment just to talk about the atheist society of Knoxville. ASK was founded in 2002, we're in our 20th year going on 21 now. We have over 1000 members and we have weekly in person meetings every Tuesday evening at Knoxville's old city at Barley's taproom in pizzeria. Look for a sense hide at the high top tables or if it's pretty weather outside on the deck. We have a Tuesday evening zoom ask a meeting. And if you'd like to join us on zoom from anywhere really email us for details at ask an atheist at Knoxville atheist.org, or let's chat s e at gmail.com. You can find us online at Facebook meetup.com, or at Knoxville atheist.org, our website, or just Google Knoxville atheists is just that simple. If you don't live in Knoxville, you can still go to meet up and do a search for an atheist group in your town. Don't find one. Start one. Right. Well, I'm back where you want to pick up. Hey, we were talking today about the new year wishes that we all had made some fitness goals for everybody we have three different kinds of fitness goals one Eric you're running it right now today. You're getting ready to start a fitness journey. And I'm just doing the cosmetic values I want to ask what else can I say what else can I say. Then we also went into some Tennessee license plate shenanigans that are going on. And while it was a little concerning what we found out is like the default is the atheist, the secular license plate because we have a separation mandate, right. And the state is offering a vanity license for free that some people are partaking, but what we're realizing is that the overwhelming majority of people in Tennessee aren't picking it, but it's in fact just the rural areas that are picking it at large And I think over time as these public shifts of public opinion shifts and our awareness and our capability to maintain our own well being rather than relying on the God to take care of it for us shift in better directions, we will become less religious over time. I give it 20 years, but we'll see we'll come back to the show in 20 years and see where we're at but I think we're making really great trends already. Larry, what do you think can we make it sooner than 20 years. Yeah, Larry wants to see it too. Larry did a good job getting this up to here. Okay. But we then transition to things that you would change in the Bible and small change that you can make to the Bible, just the Christian Bible that would lead to the most beneficial impact for all society. That's a good point. If it's, you know, something that people will ignore in favor of some other predetermined conclusion they had about the religious book, they'll follow it. And as a result, Boudreau you mentioned maybe we can make some scientific laws more apparent, but I do feel like that could be setting us up for greater failures for getting us out of that good trend that we're in because then people would use religion to support their claim that they're right because it's specifically demonstrated, and we don't have an excuse for why that could be in the Bible other than the fact that it must also be accurate as well. Muslims do this, by the way, all the time, they'll take very poetic phrases, and they'll say that's proof that allows real because this passage is about embryos. And, and you read it is just like the flower petal opened up and humanity came from is like well that means humanity came from buds just like known what are we talking about here. So yeah, I worry about that so I said why not we make a code of ethics and we codify them into the Bible. We already have very good standards for how to treat people in society now, whether we follow them or not is a different issue but we can codify them, make them a parent in the Bible make it very clear make give it its own chapter, and perhaps that could be a good way to head start and improve in a society because we can always work to improve that. So if anything it would just save us 400 years of figuring that out ourselves since the time of enlightenment. But what do you think what are your changes to the Bible that you'd make for improving society. Yeah, I'd like to build on your, your thought on ethics and, and one of the things that's always bothered me about, you know, most Christian religions is the whole bit about forgiveness. You know, it really changes the morality to you know you could actually be a pretty horrible person all your life, but you know if you if you ask for forgiveness and bring God in your heart and all that and on your deathbed, then you go to heaven. It kind of it kind of sets us up for pretty bad incentive program, I think. So, kind of scrapping that whole concept and making it again more about being good to forgiveness for goodness sake, not because it's dictated. Right, exactly. And again, you can still you can still have a God in the picture of that but just yeah like I said make it more about, you know, being good to other people and and yeah again just scrapping that whole loophole forgiveness loophole I think, you know, would I throw this one out too, because I think I could run into the same problem by putting ethics in the Bible where now court systems are now I mean they're already you have to swear in a Bible or, or some other book in front of a journey, jury appears who are also Christian is like you're going to probably pick the Bible, but like, honestly, it's if we made morals so codified so well it only make the Bible the authority and morality which totally is not because there's some horrendous things in there. So what if instead it was, you have the ethics and the morals but you also throw in there like hey if someone believes something that it's not what you believe that's on a supernatural level. That's not a big deal. Like it doesn't matter what God people are believing is where or not they're following these standards of behavior, in terms of like understanding the consequences or actions, not being harmful to society reducing needless harm. If they do that they're good. Don't worry about it. Please, please follow these standards otherwise but that's, that's, that's a good point to make to people generally because if you go to look at our law books, none of the laws on the books whether the state, civil federal say, you know this is a law because it says this in the Bible, right, none of them are based on the Bible, right, based on harm to each other. Right, right. Make it clear like these rules aren't true because they're in the Bible, they're true because of how we come to terms with how we treat other people. Right, that these are good ways of reducing needless harm. These are good ways of improving society as well being. Yes, in society, and this is why they're good. If you find better methods that are inside this book. Those are the better methods and you should follow them, but they should still follow the same principles of reducing needless harm and improving general welfare of people. We're not an authority on anything. And if someone believes something slightly different, even though we've come with different rules, that's not a big deal. You can work on it together. That's the whole reason why we're here is to work on better systems. What do you think, Boudre? Here's the rub, and I know we're just amalgamating things here, but if we go back and we make some of these tweaks to the Christian Bible we're talking about, we're probably affecting its likelihood of surviving. I bet there were some religious texts or even some religious concepts that died off because if you allow other religions to exist, then you're not promoting your own religion, it's less likely for it to survive. So some of the bad bits in the Bible I think were beneficial to its survival and its popularity. So we go tweaking these and then now our time machine would go back and then we come back to present day and then religion's gone. It's only a matter of fact that the Bible becomes more peaceful as we realize that murdering a bunch of brown people on some other continent is actually a bad thing to do or it looks bad on a PR frame. But in my head, I feel like the history of why people are Christians today, at least in America, is a very, very telling story of how corrupt Christianity is. It's like a mafia movie, but rated X because it's just kings and queens constantly killing each other. Oh, what's up, Laird? Well, with or without religion, you still have kings and queens killing each other. That's a power play. It's just power place. It's just power place, slavery, enslavement, war, mongering, and trying to amass authority and power for as few people as possible. But what I was going to say was you mentioned that we've missed like 400 years of progress because of religion. That's true, but it's still going on. Don't forget that we're still fighting religion for progress today. Social progress, scientific progress, always standing in opposition to stem cell search, universe exploration and looking into the Big Bang, just the opposition opposition to all of this stuff. It just don't forget it's still going on and we need to fight it as much as we can. And you know, the weird thing is God mentions that there's other gods in the Bible. It could be one of those things that could be easily cherry picked on or off for people. So mentioning other gods and being kind to other people, the Bible says be kind to other people. The Bible says there are other gods. Like God says that himself. It's like, don't worship those other gods. And I'm like, what are the gods? And it's like, God's like, oh, rule seven, by the way, don't steal or think about stealing. It's also a sin. And if we if we put it in, I think, as like the book of philosophy, and it's like the tellings of a famous king from the Bible, Saul, I think Saul was a king, David Lazarus, like, these are his their quotes on how to rule and make a good government. And it's three different books from three different kings over a period of time, where we can see that, yes, I'm referencing some of these older rules, but I've made improvements over them, because it's not real. There weren't true because they were in the Old Testament. They're true because they follow these certain principles that were demonstrably valuable, but we can make improvements on them because it's a system that we're working on, not a code of rules. Right. Right. And so like when you get to like the third king, you're like, Oh, like this is a good stepping stone bridge off for us to form our own society based off of and and and we can work on it together. And if as long as we follow certain principles that are that that can be empirically reached, we can really look at how to make a better society for everybody. And if someone has a slightly different society, that's not a problem that we should go to war against them. Just because they believe in different God, or they have a different idea about something is we can still ratify a code of ethics for everybody to follow to have like a best welfare and learn from each other. Like maybe that diversity is valuable for us to at least see how different systems work and what we can learn from each other. And I believe that pushes more towards a peaceful, more understanding, more critical thinking route. Whether it gets rid of Christianity, it may not, but at least we'll deal with a Christianity that's a lot more in favor of the people that are indoctrinated by it than one where it's just God will take care of it. And then they, they continue to like, you know, do terrible things to the earth. What do you think Larry? You know, I don't think it's a small thing. I didn't mention it earlier because we were asking for one small change in the Bible. But I think that if the afterlife, the soul in the afterlife, if we could get rid of any dependence on another life after this one, I think that would be the best thing, you know, live this life to the best of your ability and make it easier and better for following generations. I think if that was the central message of the Bible, if we could change that, I think it would make all the difference in the world. You're onto something because why would anyone care about philosophy on how to make this life better if we're going to a paradise after this life. That would be the immediate reason why most people wouldn't think about a book of philosophy. It's like, why do we need philosophy if the next life we have is so much better. But if you take that, if you take the afterlife out of any holy book, you immediately have basically zero followers because the advertisement from competitors are like, Oh, they even have an afterlife. We have an afterlife. It's like, Oh, death is universally scary for a lot of people who don't have a who have not come to terms with life being a finite experience. Right. Larry. Yeah, but there are whole religions that don't have. You know, the afterlife is goal. I mean, you've got the Eastern religions like Confucius and Taoism and all that that focus on making this a better life. You know, truly they do believe in an afterlife they believe that their ancestors are still with them and can commune with them and all that. But it's not a goal. The goal is to make this a better life. I think those are better religions for having made that change. Trust me, I think like the biggest hurdle of losing your religion is reconciling with the idea of not having an afterlife and that like that is. I agree. I agree. Like it's not even so much Oh God's not watching me if I accidentally touch myself at night or if I think about a girlfriend's like no it's the death thing it's the death thing because that is guaranteed to happen to you. Everything else is, you know, potentialities but death is going to happen anyone who's watching the show will die. And that is a scary concept that if you've not come to terms with it. The best thing that you could do is ignore it and and give yourself this placebo that it will never actually happen to you that death is just a change of address, and not an actual event. Right. And so if you took that out I think it'd be really hard is. I think you had be really hard. No, I think it goes to my earlier point that that would that would drastically affect its survival, survival, you know, how well it again it's a huge marketing piece to it. Yeah. Yeah, I think I think that the other the other big one I think is the constant watching right and that's that that that enable us to go from small groups of people that we could kind of watch everybody. You get into larger groups and not have these freeloaders as part of it because we can just go hey, the big guy's watching you know he's watching. Oh yeah, that's how you get your kids to behave. And the obvious one where we're completely overlooked though is just the very end of it. Please burn after reading. Right. Problem solved. I wish that I wish that worked and I wish people wouldn't use that as impetus to not learn how to read, you know, are you burning a book did you learn how to read. We're going to get you. There was another week to this that we I know we're talking about Christian Bible but if we moved over to the Quran. I could see some tweaks being beneficial to us atheists and, you know, instead of beheading, you know, apostates and, and having incentives to kill yourself for the greater good and to get the 42 virgins, whatever it is. And if you if you could put some words in there to say, you know, what do you do to someone who doesn't believe in your God, or someone who's atheist. Maybe pray for them, instead of try to. You know, just again, put them to God in the most angry voice possible, and then the rest of your life. Exactly. He doesn't believe. Oh, I'm going to get him. And then you're like, oh, gravel, gravel. Our great God knows and he's going to, he will do it. He'll take care of it from them. I do like the idea. I think we talked about this a couple of episodes back is that you should only ever be as angry or outraged about any topic as your God is demonstrably outraged. So if someone puts up a God doesn't exist flag in their front yard and that's like direct blasphemy against your God. Watch carefully and see if this house ever gets hit by lightning, or if a flood like carries it away, or if a bunch of locusts come and eat his front yard and bush rose bushes. And if none of that happens, don't be any more angry than you got, you don't have to be angry for my sake, or as God would say it's like, don't. Good point. Good point. Like if gay people are getting married and God's not doing anything and he could have done something like then leave it alone. It's all good. And if he does something, you, you don't need to do anything. And if he does something, you don't need to do it. And if he doesn't do anything later on doesn't do anything, don't leave it, but you're not the arm of God. You're not the act of God. Like nature will handle it. Why does why would God need an arm? Exactly. Can he handle it himself? Why does he know? Why does he need Ted Smithman and his very angry group of friends? Like, no, it's okay. You know, it would also be, I know, I know a picture is worth a thousand words, but maybe we're overlooking something here. Maybe if instead of changing the text, we had like a way to add a picture to the Bible. I know this is, you know, getting a little bit beyond small changes. But recently we just had a beautiful telescopic image of the universe taken again at higher resolution for us. We had some older ones that were like kind of like cool, but this is like high definition, 8k picture of our galaxy. And what you can see when you look at it is like the most startling mind blowing thing possible, but just these big clusters of light, big clusters of light. And when you look at them, tiny little dots inside of them, and you're like, wow, is that like another solar like, no, that's a whole galaxy. That is like another Milky Way galaxy. And there's hundreds of them in this thousands. And it's only looking in a pinhole direction in one random spot in the in the sky. Think about it like an Earth face. So this is like exponentially huge. And that's only as far as it could see past that there's probably even more and more. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. So of this huge giant expense. What cares whether Timmy Mary Steven like is this an actual thing or are we so insignificant that we should really think about, man, we're so small yet we're having this conversation that makes us actually really special like we have so much agency here right now. Let's make use of that for the good rather than time rehashing these, you know, are fables. Yeah, or put another way, if America is so important to Christianity why didn't God mentioned it in the Bible. Mormons are knocking on the door they'd love to answer that, but why not just a picture of that, but you don't explain what it is right just it's a big old picture, and you let science basically figure out like hey this this with that with that hurt or take away some of my points or do you just explain. Hey by the way the universe is super huge you're really really small God doesn't really care about your finer rules. You have your list of rules from your, your kings. Use those. There's not a God watching you you got to make sure you're doing this yourself here's a picture of the universe just to explain how big this is and this is only like a fraction of it, it's not even a big big bit. It's a nice little picture, you can look at earth you can't find it it's not even big enough to be a pixel on this you'll figure out what pixels are later on sorry anyway. End of the chapter is like what mind blowing. Would you add a picture to the book blue drone what would you show as a picture. I'm, I'm thrown by your statement to our want to be careful not to put too much scientific, relevant, scientifically relevant things because then yeah just later on becomes a. Then, then how about this what if it was just a picture kind of like what kids make in third grade, and it's like a picture of like people holding hands, and you have like the white person holding hands a black person holding a Muslim girl, a Chinese person, a lady wearing pants two ladies wearing holding each other's hands, like all the way down, and you're just like. Humanity is okay. All right, end of the chapter is like you guys are okay you guys are getting better too. And this is what it's all about. And maybe people can look at that and not have this homogenous chosen people mindset and just see. Oh, okay, okay different people working together, getting along. That's what we're about that's that's what makes us that's what makes evolution work that's what makes it work yeah yeah. That and then one of those pictures where if you stare at long enough you see hidden picture pop up sale boat or something. It's a. Yeah, that's great. Larry, do you have a picture that you'd recommend a picture. Yeah, a picture that you would add to the Bible. Oh, the atomic symbol. You know, say this this item makes up everything that they're called Adams or whatever. Maybe a swirling picture of a galaxy. And say and point with an arrow pointing to say suns stars sun is a star. Yeah what if it was the nutritional pyramid, and it's not the terrible one that the government was like forcing to give him due to the the corn and bread and carbohydrate lobby, but it's actually the inverse was like hey don't eat this much candy bread is full of simple base sugar. Proteins really good this if you do this, your mentality your thinking power your your energy for the day is going to be so great. Obesity will be much lower your hearts will be much healthier. This is a good way to take care of yourself see you later. Yeah, the whole bottom of the pyramid would be. I made so many oceans. You'd have to have some, some disclaimer on it like don't don't read this part until you know the 19. Oh, oh, that's interesting. Yeah, but you couldn't say 1900 because then they'd say 1900 after what. Well, it's theoretically said that Christ was coming but it didn't say when. So like sealed envelopes that only open up after a certain period of time or something like that. Man that'd be rough. Why not. One that's like only it starts at the 1960s and it's just a picture of a light signal flipper on a car and be like, use this in both. Yeah. No, but I mean you wouldn't have to have a sale number of she just have blank pages where the text didn't show until a certain year, or a certain time. Man was ready for it or something. Yeah, we love our supernatural Bibles we need one we need. These these auto printed ones aren't so good. But you'd be like a tablet, just like a reader. I've always said God should have a social media account and just like tweet these out. Well, they does. He needs an official one. The blue ticks got taken off of his account on Twitter. It's really unfortunate. Guys, I think we're at the bottom of the show. Right, getting there. All right. Joe, anything you'd recommend and thank you so much for coming on the show for today. Yeah, yeah. Happy New Year. Yeah. I apologize. It's been a while since I've been on again. My one of the best times for me to go to the orange theory is during the radio show Chris and I go together. Most Sundays and this. But but yeah, this was a good chance to get back on hope to join more. Very good. Nice. I'm going forward to shaving. I didn't want to shave over the holiday. I don't like shaving. I always cut myself slightly black people have very coarse hair. And there's not a clean way of doing it because most products are for Asian or white people. And the ones that are from for black people are really offensive because they have like pictures of German shepherds and chains on them and stuff like that. I'm a human being. But eventually I'll either have to like cut deal with the fact that I have to buy something that will break down because my hair. So of course, or just not shave when I don't have to go to work because we sometimes wear gas masks and stuff like that. So, yeah, well, a two day beard is so popular these days, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree. So I'm hopefully we'll take this off by next week and then we'll see how that's going to go. Larry anything you'd recommend. One of the things I bought myself for Christmas was an electric razor. Yeah. I mean, I have a beard you can tell. I can definitely see it. I shave here. Okay. So electric razor saved me from having a leather up and wipe my face and all this stuff. Right. So I'm happy to have it. And it's doing a good job. Nice. Oh, am I closing out the show? Has everybody said their thing? I don't know. I just mean like, for me, I still don't know what atheism is or what's about and Oh, I happen to have a source for that. Oh, really. Really. Yeah, my book can be found at Amazon is called atheism what's it all about a series of articles about atheism and the proofs that we depend on to show that God isn't real anybody's God really not just Christianity. So check it out. My content can be found at digital free.com. Where most of the articles for the book came from. Be sure to click on the blog button for a radio show archives atheist songs and many articles on the subject of atheism. 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. So until then, don't sweat it. Enjoy your life. And we'll see you next Wednesday night at seven o'clock on well as a radio. Say bye everybody. Bye everybody.