 Hello and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio Hour on WOZO Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We're recording this on Sunday morning, September 10th, 2023. I'm Larry Rhodes or DJ Datter 5. And as usual, we have our co-host Wombat on the line with Hello Wombat. Hey, it's me, the Wombat. Back from COVID. Cool. It tried to take me down, but it couldn't take me down. I don't know if the audience knows or not, but we missed the last couple of weeks because I was that sick. Take that, God. Yep. Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism and the sciences. And conversely, we'll also talk about religion, religious faiths, God, holy books and superstition. And if you think you're the only non-believer in your town, well, you're just not. Here in Knoxville, in the middle of the Bible Belt, we have a group of over 1,000 of us, nearly 1,100 now. Wow. We're at the Atheist Society of Knoxville or ASK. And we'll tell you more about us after the mid-show breaks. We'll be sure to stick around. Wombat, what's our topic today? We're going to talk about credibility and a couple of stories today. I wanted to say, you know, while I get my training wheels underneath myself, because I'm still having some cough spells, I am glad to have this session with you again, because I remember, listeners of the show will remember, way back when years ago, it would just be me and Larry in a studio dishing back and forth, sweating with the sound of an air conditioner in the background. Sure, you had to turn it off when we were talking. We had to turn it off during the breaks. We would hope someone would call in so we can mute ourselves and turn on and blast the air conditioning for a while, and then we'd have to play music and then hopefully get back in. But those were the good times. Those were the good times. Anyway, excuse me. So we were talking about credibility today. The reason why I want to talk about credibility is it's important for us to know how to get credible information, right? And so we need to have credible sources, or we need to be able to measure the credibility of the different sources that we have, because we don't want to work off of false information. What is what uses the information if we can't trust it? I mean, it's going to lead us away from the truth and away from reality. Yeah, a smart man once said that I care both about things being true and knowing when things are false, right? So like, I need to be able to pull out my falsehoods from my truth. And I tend to rely more on credible sources because they tend to tell me more true things. But even with the most credible source, I still need to have a level of skepticism that that's healthy for me to still parse truths from false. And no time more important than maybe I would say like my my experience with COVID, because I got I had COVID like two and a weeks ago, approximately. I went to a grocery store. I imagine I picked it up then just for a quick in and out just picked up one thing walked out. And then for the rest of the day felt a little like I thought I had like a bit of a stomach bug because I ate something that had some dairy in it. I'm thinking, oh, it'll go away in 24 hours. The next day still felt, you know, irritable, still felt a little weak, but checked myself no fever. And I had been vaccinated. So I thought, I'm good. This is probably just a weird kick went to work the next day, developed like a really bad sore throat. And I'm thinking to myself, I tested, I'm going to test myself this afternoon. I'm going to test myself for lunch this afternoon. By the time I went back home, I was already so fatigued and so disoriented. I felt like I got off of a Ferris wheel wide or like one of those spinning rides at amusement park. And now I'm beginning like tie all these symptoms together. I do the code to test this time actually listening to the instructions because before I was like, Oh, you stick in your nose and you dab it in. Oh, it's negative. I'm good to go to work. And then I watched the video. It's like, Hey, you got to stick it in there and you got to swirl for like both nostrils. It's the grossest thing. It's the grossest thing. You're like, I don't want to put that back in my body. But you do it anyway. You put it in there and you wait. And it was a hard, hard, hard positive test for COVID. And I was thinking, thankfully I had a good credible test. I had a good credible video to confirm my status. And I had a good procedure for work to let my employees know, let my boss know. And from that point onwards, I was at home self isolating because I knew that that was a credible way to avoid infecting more people. And lo and behold, there are other people in town. There's like a wave of COVID going through our city. And I don't think it's just us. I think it's just another wave of COVID going on in general. Through the steps that I followed and the self care that I did at home and managing myself and getting more face masks and stuff like that. I'm in a much better place now. I feel like I use reasonable means to get myself back into a healthier state again. And I feel so much better now that I'm in that healthy state. I didn't rely on crystals. I didn't pray. I did it. I didn't like, you know, consult my psychic. I didn't draw a pentagram on the floor. No, but I handles down. But I did reach out to like my sister who's a Muslim and she says, you should get some tumor tea. She didn't say it's like, of course I'll think about you and I'll pray for you. But you should get some tumor tea. Get some rubber tussin, get some acetaminophen and like literally just keep resting. That's treat the symptoms and rest. Exactly. I'm like, I love, I love that she's always science minded when she talks to me and like these are incredible points of information. My mom told me the more or less the same thing. I looked up online, figured out what to do. But like the whole idea is I got credible information. I felt good and I got better. But here's the problem. Larry, not everything. Not everything is as credible as that because there are of course, uncredible sources. I found how do you cure your COVID? You could take like these weird holistic medicines. I don't know if you heard about the garlic cure. Like you, you like boil garlic and you drink the runoff and you like it by like one 10th. Garlic water. Yeah, you add some peroxide to it too. And that's supposed to, it's supposed to cure COVID from there. And I'm like, I don't want to do that. Like I found some really crazy cures. Like over the last two years, a lot of crazy things have come out. But they, but the most important thing for me is to get vaccinated. I'm sure you got vaccinated too. I go to the gym after I recovered, after I tested negative with COVID. And I'm there. And there's a physical training lens who is not my personal one who saw me working out. And he's like, Hey, Ty, I haven't seen you in a long time. I'm like, yeah, it's good to see you too. And he's like, what were you been? I was like, I had COVID. It's like, oh man, almost everyone who teaches classes in this gym also got COVID. Like this lady, that lady, this person. So like basically we have no classes this whole week. It's crazy. I'm glad everyone's healthy. I mean, I didn't get vaccinated, but I'm glad everything's healthy. Let me look at your work and like tell you which muscles to work. Like I hear what you're saying, but you kind of snuck in the, I didn't get vaccinated level two. Yeah. And my thing is the credibility started to hit hit because he would tell me, you got to work your hip abductor by doing X, Y, Z. And if you're trying to work at your calves, you got to explode. It's like, you're telling me all right information. The message is true, but the credibility of the messenger is what I'm now questioning. And it's so much that it's distracting me from listening to the, the truth of the message itself. Like why package something with really, really terrible gift wrap, like just, just get vaccinated or don't tell people you didn't get vaccinated as your way towards telling them some scientific advice. Right. And the whole thing I'm going to use to put this together is. If I go to any dentist general practitioner. Or generally any hospital here in the, in the, in the city that I'm in, I don't know what it'll be like in national, but I'll go to any of those local clinics and there will be more than likely placard on the wall, some verse from the Bible. Or a picture of Jesus on a cross or a picture of Jesus baptizing or being baptized by John the Baptist or a giant cross on the wall. And I think to myself, you know, I come to these places for credible information, credible help to take care of myself in a, what I hope to be a scientific basis, something that's grounded in some sort of testable reality that is objective and true. Yet it is compounded with this, with this gift wrap of, you know, supernatural beliefs or superstition or some sort of assumption on who's the chosen people in the world or what Jesus looked like, even though he's from Jerusalem and he looks like a chiseled Brad Pitt or some blonde guy. I'm like, hey, stories aside, I feel like, why do I, why do I, why do I live in a world where the credibility of people can't be automatically checked or questioned or, or, or, you know, confronted in a way that makes them realize, hey, if I'm trying to be the science guy or the health guy or your doctor, I can't also be representing these weird holistic or supernatural messages now. Yeah. It affects the credibility of the message that you say, even if what you say is true, it affects, in my opinion, the overall practice. I feel like why reach that at all. It makes me feel like, are they actually treating my tooth or they praying that a demon will leave my body? Yeah. I mean, that used to be the way to do it. Like it used to be where if someone was sick, they'd bring over the priest first, right? If there's some water on them doing exercise and if the problem persists, then maybe you get a doctor because the priest was cheaper and he would be part of the family. Right. That's kind of flipped lately. I'm in the last couple of centuries or three. They'll bring in the doctor first. You don't treat whatever symptoms you have. And then if you, as you get closer to death, they'll bring in a priest. Right. Right. Right. I feel like, you know, to have the, to be a hospital with a priest on staff or like a chaplain on staff or to be, you know, even just like again, like a clinic, I've walked into clinics and I've sat in a waiting room and I just see nothing but like Bibles on the table in front of me and Bible verses in yarn stitched, you know, decorative stuff. It doesn't offend me like as an atheist. I've even seen these little cardboard stands with cards and Bibles and children's Bibles and stuff stuck in them. Yeah. You know, sales job on the impressionable children while they're there. Right. For me, it just, I question the quality of care and I can do an outsider test of faith for this. I think this would make sense to anybody. Even if you're a diehard Christian, you're like, oh, you guys are just super reacting. If I took you to a dentist and this is like one of the best dentists in the world, but he has like a voodoo doll on the table and he has like a tahiki model with like the the Omen mask, wooden bamboo cutouts and he comes out and he's got like, you know, the bone through his nose. Right. And like a burning sense of incense in the other hand, and he's a good dentist. He's really good. It's like, hey, they get ready to get your, your X-rays done. He's like, I'm not going into this dentist. Why not? This X-ray machine is going to work just like anyone else's year. He's going to see the cavities just as clearly as anyone else. He's going to prescribe the procedure just like any other doctor. He's like theoretically he doesn't have the credibility because he's not messaging me that he's a man of science. Like he's not messaging me that he's grounded in reality. He's has all these ideas of these supernatural things and weird iconographies. And as an atheist, I'm seeing the exact same thing when I see Christian do the same thing too. It hurts my hurts my ability to believe that I'm getting adequate care from professionals. Right. And so when I get COVID and I think in my head, man, I could go to a doctor right now, but I don't want to be prescribed or, or directed towards some weird basis or have some weird commentary. I just want to be able to get the care that I need. And if the care that I need can just be easily received from a Google search, then I'll just do that compared to walking to a doctor and being like, oh, I don't know what you're going to prescribe me. I don't have people. I've had doctors prescribe me viral medication for just foot calluses because they think it was like a virus infection. And it totally wasn't. It was just because I was wearing shoes that are too tight. And I even said that in the, in the meeting. It was like, don't you think my shoes are too tight? It was like, what size do you wear? I was like, I'm in 11s now, but I wear 13. It's like, why are you doing that? Because I can't find the shoe sizes I need. It's very hard to find size 13 until like I found out you can buy things online. This is like way back when that's, that's a compelling story. Before, before you step on Amazon to have it shipped to your door, but like, I would be prescribed stuff. People are even doctors or just people is the main thing I want to say. And I know this because I'm a doctor too, but the idea that just because you have the accreditation in a particular field of study doesn't mean that you aren't subject to the bias that you could have from your upbringing or your geopolitical location or belief system that you had in your household. And so I would recommend is that people just recognize that you should go to credible doctors. And for those who can't separate how they message that to their patients, you should, in my opinion, find a different doctor that has like at least a higher standard for how they package themselves and or present themselves because you can believe in God and be a good doctor, but don't, don't like, don't like wear it everywhere and expect me to, to as a nonbeliever be convinced that whatever you're telling me is true because that's only going to heighten my skepticism, my level skepticism. Right. What was that you were saying about this artist that was wearing this big huge diamond cross? Sure. Excuse me. It's not just doctors and professionals. It's musicians and everybody else who mission, you know, they'll be like acting like such a bad boy on stage and then pull out a cross or something. And it's huge and it's diamond is it's everything against what Jesus would have wanted in the first play. I don't even know. I don't even know. So it's a great point. There's a concert series on the NPR is what YouTube channel called Tiny Desk. And they had a concert by a jazz session artist called Hiromi, who's really great. I've loved her since I was a little kid. But the they have, she has session drummers. So it's a different drummer every time that she does a concert. And the one that was playing this time, started off the cancer with just a black sweater. And then like somewhere halfway through the video, a necklace comes out because he has to represent that, Hey, I am playing drums with like an international cast, but I'm a Christian. And I'm looking at this cross and it's this giant as palms, palm size cross just studded with diamonds in my head. I'm thinking how far has how far has Christianity come that this is the acceptable format for how to be a Christian or that I am a Christian. I remember there were direct viruses in the Bible saying, when you pray, don't do it in public or it's okay to do it privately because you don't necessarily want to show off your faith. But now it's like literally something that people wear around their neck. Yeah. It's just for a tree signaling. They just want you to know that I'm a good person and but they think they can do it by by bringing out something that refers to the religion. What do it gets me is, you know, if I were to wear my atheist hat, you know, I don't care if you're an atheist, just don't put it in my face. Yes. Although they do it all the time. Right. Right. I can't tell you. I had a friend of mine who I told you about before in a previous episode. I told him I was an atheist way back when and he was like, listen, I don't want to celebrate your atheists, your atheism, but I'm only going to ask you, don't be an atheist around my daughter. I think that's fair. And I'm like, one, I don't know what that entails. Don't be a scientist around my daughter. Yeah. I've been around your daughter like every, like all the time. And it's not like I go out of my way to like, to actively not believe God around her. It's just the state of where I'm at. And then two, like we celebrated Easter together when we look for eggs in your backyard. Do you think that's a Christian holiday? Like I didn't say that in my head, but like the, we're compounding of history. Yeah. I mean, we wouldn't proselytize the children and we would wish that they wouldn't proselytize to our children. Yes. Although they don't seem to have that capacity to not do it. Look at our schools, the teachers in the schools pushing on their religious beliefs to the students. And what gets me is they constantly demand that everybody respect their religion and their religious beliefs, but they proselytize to everybody else, no matter what their religious beliefs are, not respecting their religious beliefs or nonbeliefs. Right. I mean, you look at, so I hate to make this analogy, but like any mildew that you have in your home, as long as mildew, it's like the survival mechanism of mildew is to attack different mildews, but don't attack the same kind of mildew. So like if you have black mold or like some sort of mildew, it'll be happy if it's around other black mold or the same kind of mildew from the same spore. But as soon as it encounters a different kind of mildew, a foreign invader, it starts releasing toxins. It starts sporing. It like starts, there's like this weird microbiological warfare going on. As soon as it interacts with different things. So like you think about how an idea spreads, it's my idea. Everyone can celebrate their idea as long as it's my idea. As soon as I experience a different idea, I'm attacking that idea. But if everyone's Christian, then I'm fine. I respect all forms of Christianity, or at least the ones that are closely like mine, but any different things is the ones that I attack. At least to their face. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, and, you know, you mentioned virtue signaling. I wonder like what virtues are actually being signaled when you have a diamond encrested cross around your neck? Like just the signal that they're Christian and theoretically they own morality. So, you know, if you're wondering about this guy up on stage, he's like dressed in black and playing rock music or whatever. And he's worried that you might think he doesn't have any morals across. I see I'm moral. Yeah, but like, doesn't that inherently, like if I put on a shirt that said I did not rob a bank today. Would that, would that make you any way more inclined to make me believe that I didn't rob a bank that day? Or wouldn't you be like, huh, this guy probably robbed a bank today. Like, don't you understand like the direct counter-effect of doing something like that? Whenever I see like a giant... Well, I do as an atheist, I do. Yeah. But other Christians I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't think that they understand that concept. When I see... Especially when it concerns their religion. I hear what you're saying. And I know we're getting closer to the break, but I think this is an interesting thing that I'd love to come back to. But like... We've still got 10 minutes. Fantastic. Whenever you see... Whenever I see a cross on someone's neck, I see a person that has a loose sense of ethics and a flimsy understanding of morality and is prone to choosing what they want to do, not based on the dogmatic viewpoints of their book, but just simply what feels good to them in the moment and justifying retroactively. It's a signal to me that this is a person that probably doesn't understand the consequences of their actions in a public format or in a public space. And it makes me, if anything, more inclined to believe that they're not a moral person wearing it. And I know that that may not be the view of the person wearing the cross, but in my mind, that's just further proof of how out of touch they are. Because you can't... There's no symbol for being a good person to the point that you would wear it around your neck. Like, if it was that easy, honestly, don't you think everybody would have a sense of doing that, or like there'd be a better-recognized symbol that's like more objectively true? Like, you're a good person based on that. I'll go on ahead. Well, any more. Evangelical Christianity has been the voice of Christianity in today's marketplace, especially politically. And they've lost all credibility in my sight. I mean, I grew up in a Christian home when my mother was a very moral, virtuous woman. And my dad, you know, he didn't practice religion that much, but he fought in World War II. You know, he was a deputy sheriff at home. He was a good man. But any more, these evangelical Christians supporting Trump and his ilk and breaking whatever law they want to to gain power and keep it is just lost all credibility in my mind. Yeah, it's important. And plus the racism of that group, the, what do you call it, the hypocrisy. I don't look at Christianity the same way I did when I was growing up for those reasons. Same. Absolutely. I'm saying that as a former Christian. Like it, to me, when I was in Christianity, it seems far more about, hey, here's a good bunch of people just coming together, trying to do the best they can and understand the world and work together and be a community. But now I realized that it's almost the exact opposite of that. It's about, this is a community that's about separating yourself from other people that could be good people, keeping you closed off from how the world works, keeping you closed off from how to be a good person, keeping you closed off from interacting with different kinds of people to understand that it's not just the community that you're in, but the global community that we're all participating in, and that this world that we're in is fragile in the sense of it's going to be around in regards to how much plastic and fumes and pollution we produce, but we may not be. So until we get our acts together, because this world wasn't created for us, we, and we have to learn how to like take care of ourselves and the planet that we're living on at the same time, which takes some like ego checking on our part. We're going to have some bad times. We literally want to give our children a worse planet to live in. I think these are all. Go ahead. How many times have you heard people say that's not Christian when they're talking about MAGA and some other stuff about the things that they do? You know, that's not Christian. But if Christians are typically racist bigots and persecute homosexuals and treat women as second class citizens, if they're against higher education and science, if they're typically ignorant and superstitious, then that what Chris, that is what Christianity actually is. We have to be honest and reassess what Christianity means. Did you know that KKK is a Christian organization? Absolutely, absolutely. I'd also say this too. With Christianity, there is a aspect of hero worship or leadership worship, which is essentially, hey, the more powerful my leader is, the more powerful I am because I'm on that leader's team, right? And it's the same premise from choosing your God, to choosing your prophet, to choosing your pastor, to choosing the deputy pastor of that. I mean, you are just in a pecking order where you're blindly following one person. So I can see how those who follow a very persuasive, very eloquent, very confident leaders that are following the same textbook example of leader. And seem to want the same things that you do. That seem, but clearly don't, like clearly don't. So like my whole thing would be like, you know, we, the leaders who are in that position of power, such great power typically lack the humanity to understand the plights of the people who are at least the compassion. Right. Or the compassion because they're just operating at such a different level than everybody else and they have access to, they don't have the same concerns of like buying bread to take care of their family, what rights they have because they have power. It doesn't really matter. Like I can get an abortion whenever I want to get an abortion, but you were going to have to make a law to say that people like you can't get abortions. I can pay any fine that I need to pay. I get enough money that I can pay fines any day. But for you, when I make a $300 fine for you, that could affect you. That can get you homeless the next month. So there is a realm of misunderstanding that we give to people that we give to such power, but it's the exact same problem that we would have for God. Why are we worshiping? Why are Christians worshiping a God that has no concept of the human condition? Because even when he came as Jesus, he's turning water into wine. He's walking on water. He's carrying the sick by touching them. He's like, he is literally using power that we don't have. Like you're not a human. If you can do those things, you're not a human. If you don't have a man and like honestly, if you don't have a male and a female share their genes together and make a person like a virgin birth, human being isn't a thing that humans do. So like you can't just say, hey, I'm a human. I'm just like you, by the way, I have all the extra powers and capabilities. Like, no, you're not playing in our same rules. And the most human thing of all is to die. He can't die. I mean, they say he died for your sins, but he was only gone for like three days. Yeah, that's not even going to be God. No, like that's like he died and came back before the next week of a week. Put a loss. Like, hey, hold on a second. It was Friday evening to Sunday morning. Yeah, like you could lock me in a closet and like, and so I can still walk out pretty good in three days. Like I wouldn't even die a thirst by then. Like what that's not a long time guys. That's like Monday to Wednesday. We need to go ahead and take our break now. I guess this is the digital free thought radio hour and w o z o radio 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We'll be right back after this short break. Welcome back to the second half of the digital free thought radio hour. I'm doubter five and we're on w o z o radio 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Let's take just a moment to talk about the atheist society of Knoxville. ASK was founded in 2002. We're in our 21st year and have nearly 1100 members. We have weekly in person meetings every Tuesday evening at Knoxville's old city at Barley's half room and pizzeria. That's Tuesday evening around 530. Look for us inside at the high top table. So if it's pretty weather outside on the deck and you go out on the deck, turn left or at the far end. You can find us online also on Facebook, meetup.com or at KnoxvilleAtheist.org. You can just Google Knoxville Atheist if you want to. It's just that simple. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you can still go to the meetup and do a search for an atheist group in your town. You don't find one. Star one. That's right. Well, I'm back. Where do you want to pick up? I wanted to talk about credibility, which is the theme for today's show. And what I meant by it is, you know, you can tell me something that's true and it can be true, right? But if you package it in you in a banana suit with with you doing a silly dance and there's like, you know, stuff smeared across your face and you're ringing a bell and you got crystals. Like even if you talk to a witch doctor. Yeah. If you dress up like a witch doctor and you tell me what the weather will be like today and you're using the accurate forecast and it's actually fairly accurate. I'm still not going to take you seriously. So like the question is, is am I being too harsh with my assessment of saying, listen, you are. You're triggering all my skeptical flags to the point where I'm asking, why am I even listening to you? If what you're saying is true, it doesn't mean that it has to come from you. I can get a different source that can tell me something true. That's more credible, right? And if that's the case, why do I put up with doctors that present themselves as supernatural leaning or and and this is we live in a country where it's okay to be supernatural. If you believe in a very specific God and a very specific dogma, but I don't see why we even give them that leniency. I say if you are a dentist and you represent on yourself or in your clinic or in your practice, I'm a Christian and I love all these verses and I love this cross. And I think these are accurate stories and I do think the world was flooded. It's like, I don't want to be, I don't want to be your patient. I have the right to be able to choose a different doctor that even if they believe the same thing can present themselves in a more credible fashion. We also have to assume that they believe in demons and angels and at least a few instances of talking animals, et cetera, et cetera, it reduces their credibility. Right. And I apply the same thing to my physical trainers. I play the same thing, which I don't have, but like just friends of mine, I would say I apply the same thing to my groups of friends where if my friend believes in the supernatural, but I know he's a good person. And just by virtue of me being an atheist around him and him and openly is a good effect on his his world view of like, oh, maybe atheists aren't that bad. And I think that could that could be a healthy way for me to like learn to be a better person and raise family better. I see that as like my role in a lot of times and being friends with a lot of people who are supernaturally inclined, but are still nice to me and cool with me and show me respect because otherwise if they don't show me respect, I don't care what sort of indirect value I'm providing them by just presenting them with a good model of being a black atheist. Like I don't want to deal with anything that could be a potential threat to me. But if you show me respect, then let's be friends. But it doesn't give me a credible understanding of, well, now I need to come to you because I need advice for like some sort of scientific issues. Like, no, because you're the friend that has the supernatural leanings. I can't come to you as a resource of objective information because I can get objective information from sources that don't rely on supernatural. You don't know how much of the information that he's giving you is influenced by a supernatural leanings. Yes. And it can even come down to just like what's the meaning of this word? Like you could just have so much baggage based on how you're upright. Like what does it mean to what does definition of sin mean? Like for me, sin used to be like when you're aiming an arrow and you miss. Did you know that sin is an archery term? Oh, yeah. So believe it or not, Christianity borrows things from other things that were popular. No. And just claims the word for their thing. So to sin is an archery term for like when you miss a target, right? It's like, oh, you're trying to hit here, but you missed it here. And then it's become this whole conflated thing that they own. So like words that like Christianity wants to take over like chariot Lord, like Lord just used to be a job. Like that's a job that like a land owner would have and you'd have people live on his land and they would refer to him as Lord Lord. Yeah. Chariot worship that wasn't a Christian word. That was just a generic thing, but like these these charged terms that infect how we think and what we think around like the street, the sphere of what we think about makes even communicating with a Christian difficult when you want to have a more objective conversation about something. So like if I said, hey, I'm worried that I'm I have a bad thinking practice about this certain thing. I feel like I'd like to talk through this because I don't want to be prejudiced about something. Can I have this conversation with you and you and you bring up something out of like a point of vulnerability and they're like, well, you know, my worldview is blah, blah, blah. And morality is this. And it's like, whoa, I wasn't talking about any of that. I just wanted to know about this. Like, well, I can't separate these two. It's like, I know that's why I shouldn't come to you when I need to have a more objective conversation. I need to find an atheist friend to talk to. I've got to find my friends that who have by virtue of talking to me have become atheists and have lost their dogma. And it's much easier for me to talk to them on a basis where we aren't necessarily always talking about religion again. I've had a friend. I just told a friend, hey, listen, I'm learning a new language and it's really great. And it's like, yeah, that's almost like the Tower of Babel when they had to like build. It's like, why are we talking about Bible stories, man? Why is literally everything about you a Bible story like I can't have these conversations. It's so incredible. Because one, I don't even believe that what you're saying is true, but two, the fact that you can't have a conversation that lasts more than five minutes without bringing up some sort of Bible passenger story. It affects how I can take you seriously and what kind of things that I ever talked to you about. Yeah, that's another way religion hijacks everything. The hijacker, your sense of history. I mean, you could be a Scott and know absolutely nothing about the history of the Scott Irish with Scottish or Irish, but you know the history of the Jewish people right down to the names of their children all the way down through the land. Christian religion has hijacked your sense of heredity, your sense of family. Yes, it makes you think called fathers and sisters. Yes, nuns are called sisters. You know, it's just one thing after another. And one of the first things they do when they, when Christianity entered a new land, they would take over the holidays. The religious holidays of the people who lived there and claimed them for their own. Yes. Of course we got Christmas and Easter. Not only that, but they erased the holiday, the original holiday. So like summer solstice, winter solstice, a lot of people are like, what is this holiday? It's like, it's the reason why you celebrate Christmas. It's the reason why we celebrate Easter. It's the reason why we celebrate all these holidays that we've renamed, right, used to already be holidays that people would celebrate. But we just, I mean, when Christianity came in and just said, you know what, these holidays that are popular, we will own relabel and then they will belong to us. It's classic marketing. Like if I'm going to make a shoe, I'm just going to look at popular shoes that are on the market, make those shoes and change the Nike label to the Tyrone label. And I'm going to call them Tyrone airs, you know, like instead of Nike air. Why am I going to rebuild the same thing? So you made a really great point. You said Christianity hijacks history. I think in every aspect, that's absolutely true. I'm so shocked at the interpretation of Christianity at the times, like it's 1700, 1600, 1800s. And what people assumed was Christianity is nothing like what we assume that it is today. And what it is. Yeah. There's documents that have come out that were counted that came at the same time that Columbus was, you know, sailing the seas and trying to figure out, you know, where America is and all that stuff. Like he is actually trying to look for India. But like a long story short, people at the time did not like the idea of a new continent existing. In fact, they were very much adamant that one, it either didn't exist or two, if it did exist, it wasn't only because the Bible didn't say anything about there being a new continent. So like, why are you talking about the new world? The Bible doesn't say anything about a new world. Like this is not Christianity. It's the same thing with Galileo exploring the stars. Like why are you talking about other planets and stars? The Bible doesn't say anything about that. That's unholy. Same thing with Charles Darwin and different animals. Like why are you talking about other animals and a common ancestor? The Bible doesn't say anything about that. The Bible doesn't say anything about germs. Well, let's not forget it's not just the people talking about it. It's the church actively trying to suppress the science than burning books and jailing scientists. I don't know Bruno was killed for espousing the solar system. Yeah. Socrates was poisoned in front of his own students because he just expressed doubt on things. And it's like Galilea was prisoned in his own home. Charles Darwin was laughed and ostracized out of his own genre of science that he created. Because back then being a biologist just meant you did whatever the church told you to say. And then for the first time actually there's a better observation that I made that's not necessarily what the church wants, but I'm trying to make it what the church wants, but I don't think it's going to fit. And the church is like, we don't like that. Everyone make fun of this guy. He's a monkey now. That's so crazy. It's so crazy. The history that we see. But even inadvertent explorers who find things as clear cut as a brand new continent is like, I can't pretend that. We're in new galaxies. Back before stars were thought to be galaxies. Yes. They didn't even know about other galaxies. Right. Right. But like back then the telescopes didn't look that fancy. So like you're just seeing blurry dots and you're like, hey, this blurry dots moving in a way that doesn't make sense. If we're the center of the universe, right? It's like there's no real model. Like we'd have to be rotating around some other larger object, right? But to find a plant, a new continent and for having religious scholars right at the time. This is unholy. We shouldn't be looking for other continents. There are no other continents because the Bible doesn't say anything like that. That's what Christianity was. And now today you go to any guy like in a Tennessee trucker hat or Kentucky, you know, just like a proud Southern person. And they're like, yeah, God made this country. God has God loves my family. God loves my truck. God loves my radio station. And you hear country music stars being like, God bless the America. And I'm like, no, he didn't. That's never happened in any like show me the verse for God blesses America. We bless the whole world's like, yeah, but we thought the world was like literally four towns back in some religion would just take that and change it like Mormonism. They say that Jesus came to America like 400 years after he died or 400 years ago, something like that. Yeah. Yeah. And why not? Who's going to say it's wrong and prove it, you know. So what's the next step when we go out to Mars and we're just like, it's, we can laugh at the concept now right now of saying like, oh, there'll never be a new verse or new interpretation of Christianity that expects us to believe that life on Mars would ever be a thing. But like you give us, you know, 300 years, 800 years and maybe we do get successful enough where we get our act together on Earth and we are like colonizing other planets. And next, you know, there's like another version of Christianity. It was like, oh, it's the solar system. No, it's like, it's it's always the whole solar system because God created the universe day one. And that's all these planets that humanity lives on, which is why we live on the Venetian planets or volcanoes of Venus. And this is all compatible with Christianity. It's inevitable. Yeah. Why are we, why don't we just take a couple of steps back and just understand that the level of credibility that comes with this book is poor by virtue of the fact that it rapidly evolves to whatever science takes us first and then retroactively adjust itself so that it's just with whatever is popular at the time. So like when people are saying, Hey, only monks can write only your pastor should be able to read and explain to the audience. And then we came out with a printing press and now we can print Bibles. And we're like, Oh, you know what? Everybody should have a Bible. Like everybody should read. Well, that was Protestantism. Catholic Catholicism still doesn't want you to read it. That's so crazy. It's like, we'll make it in the language you can't understand. Oh, that's so crazy. But you'll tell you what it means. But Protestantism is an example of the evolution of Christianity. Like it is not the it's not the single vine. It's not like one line that traces back to Jesus. No, like we have all these bifurcation that we have at least 10,000 different denominations. I've heard a number as high as 30,000 different denominations of Christianity alone. Right. So much for the truth. Right. And listen, I'll say this again. You look at the history of just Catholicism alone. It's enough to make you sick. Like the crusades were terrible. The pope, the battling for popes is just so petty and violent and bloody. And it tends to be the case that whoever was a pope at the time was not a good person. Oftentimes there were just the best friend of the king at the time, who was also a terrible person. And you just have these really, really unfortunate relationships. Yeah. There have been times when there was multiple popes and they literally fought each other with armies. Yeah. Yeah. So what does it mean at the end of the day? It just means that when I look at the system, I don't see the credibility that justifies the level of confidence needed to believe in the message. If the message itself is that extraordinary, I always said like extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Like that's true. I do believe that. However, it would also be good if they came from a credible source because if I think somewhere in that in extraordinary evidence is a credit from an incredible source, like the asterisk would be also from a credible source. And so if you're giving me extraordinary evidence, but it's coming from like a talking crystal or burning bush or English speaking snake. I'd be like, these are all weird things. I'd rather just have something that's a little bit more credible that I can question rather than these stories that you're giving me. I need a credible source of information. I'm not seeing one from Christianity. I'm not seeing one from the popes. I'm not seeing one from the bifurcations of the, the how Christianity has changed. And clearly just looking at the how the times of how Christianity has changed where it's like no women. Okay, women are okay. No black people though. All right, black people. Okay, but no slaves. Actually slaves. We're not saying slaves are a bad thing. We're just saying we don't read those chapters anymore. I would just love to see a more credible source of information that doesn't change based on what's popular. And what I get, the best source that I have for that is science. Or at least the scientific method. Cause it's, we'll tell you things that are unpopular from the very get go day one, like here's something that you aren't going to like to hear. And then we just have to grow around it. Cause it's just a, it's a thorny rock of truth. And you're like, man, this sucks. I'm going to get sick. I have to get vaccinated. Dang it. I guess that's just what it is. Shots are unpleasant, but it's what I need in order to survive. And that's what science figured out. And as a person who survived COVID, like I can just tell you right now, like I'm so happy I did get vaccinated as many times as I did. Cause I had a very low symptomatic experience. They always tell you that it won't prevent you from getting it. It will keep you from dying from it. Yeah. It's getting extremely ill. Like remember when COVID first hit? Oh yeah. People were, I mean, you got it and you pretty much guaranteed being on a ventilator. And, and that was just a step toward. Yeah, yeah, especially. Very bad. Yeah. And I say this as a person who's lost my aunt, my aunt died from COVID. My, my mom is a twin and my, and my, I was able to convince my mom to get. Vaccinated. And my, my mom's twin did not get vaccinated. And so we lost my aunt, but like I was able to keep my mom. And as unfortunate as it sounds, like I'm reminded of that viscerally almost every day that like, I'm like, you know, I'm not sure if it's because of my mom. I was like, you know, I can hear these two people, you know, who, at least phenotypically or and genome, typically very close. And I could have easily lost both. If I couldn't have convinced at least one, you know, my month, my own mother to get vaccinated. Like this is a real. You do that. Just. Believe it or not. It was like a whole S. she has very strong viewpoints on like where she's at in the universe and what plans God has for her. And I had to, I can't, I couldn't completely break that down because that's not my goal for SC is not to break down a person's religion. It's just like fact check the method that they're using to arrive to hopefully instill enough doubt that they recheck their own conclusions. And we had one specifically just on vaccination. Of course it went to religious grounds, but through the end of that, I did convince her that it's not it's not as blasphemous as it may seem to take a vaccine, right? Like if she's willing to like use deodorant, take a shower, take care of herself, maintain basic hygiene, sleep when she needs to sleep. She's already doing steps to take care of herself. And it's not like she's never had medicine before the vaccine is just another form of medicine. So what method why is she saying this form of medicine isn't holy? Like what method is she using to determine that? Turns out it's not a very reliable method. She then got convinced to take a vaccination. She has been vaccine. And I think that literally saved her life. Like I'm honestly, I think it did. I think it pretty much did save her life. Kudos on you. Thanks. I was just wondering if you got to the point where just do it for me. Just do it for me. You know, like I wish like an argument like that would work, but like that's sort of like the level of toxicity of religion because I can't just, I can't use that argument for her. She's going to believe it because she wants to believe it, right? And I wish I can go up to any Christian and just be like, do it for me. Just like, leave this behind, man. Like you'd have a much better life as soon as you have more time to come to terms with death and like understand that it's going to happen, but it's okay because it gives your life now meaning. And your death is not a change of address. It's a final step, but you can, it provides so much closure for all the stuff that you're dealing with now. And like take this opportunity to live the life that you can. It's not giving up hope. It's in fact giving you an opportunity to like recognize really beautiful things about the world. Anyway, you said listener questions. We do got listener questions. Larry, give me a spiel for like summarize our talking points and then I'll bring up some comments for the show. Summarize our talking points. Yes, be a coast. Well, we are atheists. We don't like what's being said about atheists in the marketplace of ideas, you know, and usually by those who are believers and leaders in the believer community. So we have this show to show that how atheists think, how we come to our conclusions, why we think religious beliefs are bad or false or harmless, harmful, sorry, harmful, and how religion does great harm in the world today. And we hope you listen to us every week and please feel free to send us any comments or questions at Ask an Atheist at KnoxvilleAtheist.org. Nice. So YouTube is being silly and asked me to verify my account information. So I have comments from listeners from the last three weeks, but I don't have access to them because Google is asking for confirmation and it's not sending me the notification. Okay, well, I've got a comment from one of my digital free thought people. What are atheist beliefs? What are atheists? What do we believe? I mean, what do we believe? We don't necessarily believe in. Well, as far as what atheists is, it's not a system of belief. It's just a state of a lack of belief. Yeah. I think that's the main distinction. It's not a, it's not what we believe in. It's what we don't believe. Yeah. It's not an eanity. It's not like it's a whole set of beliefs. It's just the state of not believing. In my opinion, it's when you're born, you don't have a belief in a God. You are instilled with the belief of God typically by your parents who similarly were instilled with the belief of God by their parents, right? So like when you are born, you, in my opinion, are an atheist and it only tends to be a case that people become religious based on their environment. And when you recognize that's the case, it's not so much a question of how did you become an atheist. It's more of like, how did you become religious? And if you didn't do so in a manner that is a reliable way to always come out with the right and true religion, if that even does exist, then why not just go back to your default state, which is, oh, I don't believe any of these things until I have a good reason to believe it. Not only that, but if you go to any person who is religious, you'll quickly ask a question, a basic question, which is, do you believe in any of these other gods? And they will say, no, I don't have any belief in it, though they do go an extra step and say, I actively don't believe that that God even exists, which isn't as far as you have to go for an atheist. It's just a lack of belief that takes you to the party. But the idea that atheists, if there was a hundred gods, an atheist only believes in one less God than most monotheists, including Christianity. It's not that big of a difference, but yet it has such a big impact on our society, that one difference. So like, honestly, we're not much different. We have a lot more in common with Christians than we think. What we'd prefer is just that that one minor difference of that one extra God does impact our lives. I really don't even have that much trouble with it. I mean, let's say you have a friend who's a deist. You know him as well as I do. And that's not a problem for me because his deism doesn't profess any particular beliefs about the world. It doesn't have a book that tells you how you need to live, who you need to hate, who you need to fight. It's a belief in a generic God like deism, like a God created the universe and either went away or died or just lost interest in it. It's not really a problem. It's religion. It's people saying that they know what God wants you to do and what God doesn't want you to do. That's the problem. And most Christians become Christians the same way children become Santaists. You know, their parents from the very earliest conversations that they have with them, they instill this this God and of course Santa is a kind of a stepping stone to it. But it's just it's it's better not to lie to your children. Yes. Yeah, because then that becomes a hurdle that they have to overcome. And I know we've had parents on the show say, I'm afraid to let my kid know that Santa Claus isn't a thing because then they go go to school and say, hey, I don't I don't believe in Santa Claus anymore. And then the parents would get angry at them. But like my opinion would be, I think the problem occurs when you start telling your kid that Jesus is or Santa is a thing, not so much when they realize it isn't a thing. And you have to tell them it's not a thing. It's when you keep encouraging that it is actually a real person. It gets right back to our topic for today, credibility. Yes, you're telling your your your children things that are true and telling them to believe it. And then later on, you're going to say, no, I was just kidding. Oh, no, that's not true. Right. But for years, you said it was true. Now they have a problem. Now they have these questions going on. And hopefully they asked them from their own parents. But don't I hope that if anything, if anything, the silver lining of a situation like that is, it can help the kid learn to not not trust even their parents to 100 percent certainty. And if their parents are also Christian or also atheists, at least they have the level of skeptical to be like, hey, I'm not going to trust anybody to 100 percent certainty because even my own mom or dad who loved me more than anyone else can lie to me. We got time for one listener comment or a couple. Yeah. All right. So we did a show called The Meeting of the Minds a while back while we used the famous luminaries, including Jesus. And some of the comments of the show was that we could have asked Jesus better questions to further confound our points with how upset we are with his actions in the past. And so anonymous asks tells us the first thing you should have done when Jesus was on the show was showing the Bible, especially the New Testament, and ask him what he thinks about it. Bet he would become an atheist. Also, bet he would say he never said any of that. Probably. Yeah. Worth another whole show. Yeah. We should have like had if you have Jesus on the on a call or on a show, just literally hand in the Bible, flip to the New Testament and be like, read this. Starting. Starting with his little group in the Garden of Gethsemane when they're all arrested and go have him read from there on. Yeah. Start from Matthew. And if he says, yeah, that happens, then flip to Luke and be like, why is it different in this version? It's like, oh, it's crazy. He's always adding extra stuff in and then flip to John. He's like, oh, my gosh, don't go to John. I don't believe we had a special relation. I particularly like the last few verses in Matthew where when Jesus was resurrected, all the all the graves, not just his, all the graves opened up in the, the, what did they call him? Well, the people who slept there came out and went into the city and was seen by many. Wow. So we were talking zombie apocalypse right there, but nobody seems to mention that. Sure. Historians are in otherwise. And it just brings me back to the idea of has anyone ever embellished a story when you know that no one else has seen it? Like, have you ever caught a fish and like told your friends, hey, every single time I tell this story, the fish gets there or like, hey, I, when I used to skateboard, I used to jump only this high. But when you're, you're an adult, you're, you're still doing the same body motion. You're like, oh, it's this high. And as you get your arms get bigger, you're like, oh, this is how big I jumped. That's 400 years of the telephone game. It is. Imagine, imagine if it was actually in people's best interest to embellish your stories for their profit and power, right? Imagine what kind of things would happen as a result. Another comment from the meeting of the mind's idea. I find it most amusing and worrying that anyone can claim to know the mind of anybody else. And in this case of people who lives long ago or are already dead or aren't present, or we don't even have sufficient evidence that they did exist or exist at all. Isn't that just another form of woo? Yeah, I agree. It is. But it's also knowingly fictional. Like we're not selling it as like a religion. And that should be the point of if you can, if you can frame something as a performance or as like as a work of fiction and use it as a model to like learn some funny things, right? That should be, in my opinion, how we should even approach religion. Like we should, we should understand that religion is just mythologies presented by people who are trying to do the best with what information they had back in the time. And maybe we can learn from some social characteristics of how they govern themselves and how they saw the rest of the world. But we should never, ever take it as a literal truth because we have laws, we have ethics, we have better ways of treating each other now that we know we're different and we can interact with each other still. Then we do with this book where everybody was assumed to be the creation of this one superior supernatural God that we've never seen or talked to since. Right. Right. Well, we come right down to the wire. Any final thoughts? Take care of yourself. Wash your hands. If you're sick, stay home. Don't go to work. And don't take your good health for granted. It's an incredible thing to be able to breathe and feel a habit. You have energy and not being pain. And Larry, I do know that you're someone injured right now. I hope a speedy recovery for you as well. And follow my news. Take care of yourself. Yeah. My knees. Yeah. I did a lot of karate and dancing and stuff, which I don't regret it all. So I'm happy to have done it, but it kind of wore out my knees. Anyway, my content can be found at digitalfreethought.com. Be sure to click on the blog button for a radio show, archives, Atheist songs, and many articles of the subject. You can find my book, Atheism, What's It All About on Amazon. And remember, everybody is going to somebody else's health. The time to worry about it is when they prove that heavens and hells and souls are real. Until then, don't sweat it. Enjoy your life. And we'll see you next Wednesday night at 7 o'clock on WOZO Radio here in Knoxville. Say bye. Bye bye. Bye bye.