 103.9 FM, W.O.Z.O Radio, Knoxville. Ladies and gentlemen, Digital Freethought Radio Hour. Hello and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio Hour on W.O.Z.O Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today is Sunday, February 21st, 2021. I'm Larry Rhodes, your Douter 5. And as usual, we have our co-host Wombat on the line with us. Hello Wombat. Well, it's been one week because I've been in this house for one week. One week because all the snow. Yeah. Well, hopefully you'll be able to get out next week. Our guests today are Dot Fire, Woodrow, and Buffalo. Hello all. Hello, hello. Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism, and the sciences. Conversely, we also talk about religion, religious faiths, gods, holy books, and superstition. And if you get the feeling that you're the only non-believer in Knoxville, well, you're just not. There are several atheist, rethinking, and rationalist groups that exist right here in Knoxville. And we'll be telling you how you can connect with them right after the mid-show break. Also, did you know that there was a streaming atheist call-in TV show broadcasting here in Knoxville? And it has been for 10 years. Did you know that Wombat? Yeah, but if they have a hyperbolic time chamber that lets them train as much as they want in 24 hours, why don't they just always use it? Always be on the line, always be training. Yeah. Yeah, that's not our show. But we always are online because the archives are on YouTube. Anybody can go to YouTube and find Knoxville atheists or Knoxville Freethought videos. Wombat, what's our topic for today? Hey, we're actually going to have Scott leave the topic. But I think we're going to be asking the question of do your beliefs match your actions. But before we get into the main show, I really like to have just a quick, super fast, super, super neat, super, super, like trimmed section of how everyone's life is doing in the next 30 seconds. We'll start with Scott. How have you been for the last 30 seconds? Your whole life story? Can you wrap it up? Come on. Oh, man. Come on. Had a debate last week. Yeah. How'd that debate go? It went pretty good. I didn't perform as well as I wanted because I was kind of not prepared for my interlocutors. Lack of knowledge, I guess on the topic we were talking about. So it was kind of hard to navigate that situation. But that went okay. It went well. What was the format? Did you have a, did you, I mean, when you say debate, I'm thinking two people at a podium and a moderator. Or were you, was it more conversational? How'd it go? Yeah, it was structured. So it was opening, rebuttal counter. Then it was open discussion. Then it went into closing statements. Wow. It was on the empathetic Atheist YouTube channel. So check that out. Yeah. So we did that. And then, yeah, everything's been going great this week, you know, other than that. Everything's been going great this week. Just wonderful. That's great to hear. You're in Trump country. You should be fine. You should be fine. Yeah, I'm wonderful. Yeah. Boudreaux, how are you doing? Looking spiffy? Well, I had a good week. We are fine, the snow and things are getting better. So I'm pleased that we're on the down of that. I did something fun and tracked all the walks, runs and ellipticals that I've done since the lockdown. I put it in some graphs and put it on Facebook. It was kind of fun. 875 miles. 875 walks. Amazingly. Yeah, neat. So it was fun. And yeah, we walked a lot. And I suspect George is going to share some, Buffalo is going to share some news about what his daughter did this week. Shoot, let's vote for George. Yeah. George. Which daughter? The one I married. Okay. She was pretty excited about giving a presentation. I guess it was a Zoom presentation that included where somehow I don't know the details, based at Cornell. And it was on her business, her specialty, and that is regulation of the pet food industry. Okay. And she's, she argued, she was very pleased to have done that with the particular audience, a lot of people from the FDA and so forth. But I think it's much more significant that she's the past president of the national organization of regulators of the pet food industry. And that I think is, and she's done that, she had a stint on that for a couple of years. That's real work, you know. Good. Talk is one thing, but get down there and doing the putting in the hours is quite another. But anyway, that was great to hear about. She's very excited about it. Yeah. I mean, we love her pet. We're going to get together and watch the US women's soccer team. She believes tournament is going on and we're going to be playing the Brazilians who are very tough teams. So that's going to be exciting. It's going to be fun to watch. Is it two national teams or do they have names? Two national teams. I see. I see. So it's USA versus Brazil. Right. Cool. Cool. Nice. All right. Who are you cheering for? Yeah, I had trouble last week when USA played Canada. I was torn out who I was here for. Sure. Sure. Sure. I know, right? Just kidding. There was some play. What are you going to do? Larry, how you been holding up? I'm doing well. Just staying in, staying safe. I'm 70, so I don't really have to get out that much. Playing a lot of computer games and watching some TV. Nice. About it. What's the new TV challenge or just maybe? Well, we just got to watching the Mandalorian. Oh, yeah. It was pretty good. It was pretty good, he said. Yeah. A few things. I'm a science fiction nut or geek. So I mean, two guys can't put together a space worthy spaceship in a couple of days. Which is one of the things that supposedly happened with no external health and no external tools. Just all happened. Yeah. Biting my tongue here. But this is way, way in the past. So who knows what kind of technology they had back then? Who knows what kind of tests? True. Right. Right. Right. You just think crystals and Lego pieces. That's it. All right. So I've been trapped in the snow. Like I said, we had that bristle. Blizzard come down. Friday, last Friday, everything looked pretty clean that was like a really nice picture. And then this dark cloud came in in the evening. And we woke up Saturday more or less in what I would say like a quasi-blizzard, except it was just hail. And it was constant hail for like 26 hours. Tiny little pieces of ice built up and stacked and froze together into solid chunks. And so when we went by the time it was Sunday and we got up, we're like, I can't get out of the parking lot. Like my car is literally encased in an igloo. And so like work was just shut down. All the roads were blocked. Sanitation workers couldn't come out. Gas stations were shut down because no one could go to attend them. Like Walmart shut down for a period of time. There was like nothing for anybody. Everyone just stayed home. Thankfully we did some, I guess what you would call emergency shopping beforehand before the storm hit because we had heard so much from New York. But it is a crazy thing. Weather is crazy. And it's not just, you know, whether it's obviously getting more extreme, like the weather tours are getting more cold, summers are getting more hot. And I'm glad that we have at least the perspective of having administrative or administration that's willing to recognize a problem for what it is. I don't know if there's leaves. If not fix the problem or at least start fixing the problem, recognize that there is a problem there. Right. Question, Ty. Hey. Talk to me. Yeah, did you lose a lot of trees? Did this ice do a lot of damage to the trees? So not in my local area. No, I have not seen any tree loss, though I have not left. I have not left my block in the last seven days. So I don't really know what the rest of the world looks like right now. We got quite a bit of ice on the trees as well. But I think the saving was this year was, unlike 2009, is there was no wind. Ah. There wasn't as much power loss, at least in our general central Kentucky area. Sure. And there wasn't so much damage to the trees. It's not going to be so messy afterwards, in other words. Good. I will tell you this one thing. I almost went ice skating. That's how bad it was. Like there's a very, very shallow lake right outside my window. And I said, you know what? I know this lake isn't deep. I know it was had water beforehand. I know I won't fall like a meter or whatever in the water or anything like that. I got the ice skates right here, and I can't rollerblade. And I've been rollerblading all this year. I'm like, let me just put them on and go out there. And I was like, no, don't do it. It's not worth it. Because, one, I'm older now. And two, I realize when I go out rollerblading, I'm wearing the helmet. I got the wrist guards. I got the knee pads. I'm wearing a whole bunch of PPE. And I fall all the time. Ice skating, there's just this convention of, yeah, you don't wear PPE. You just go out there. And if you fall, you fall. But I'm like, I just weigh harder than pavement. What are you doing? So, yeah, I did not do that. Not worth getting the injury. I will keep to rollerblading. Anyway, Scott, that was quick. Let's take a break. Like I said, super quick. I already had a topic for us today. Well, something about like our actions don't match our beliefs. What's that all about? Yeah. So the question is, does our actions really match our beliefs? And there's a lot of folks in the field of psychology that would say that they don't. Like there's a PhD Leslie Becker Phelps, who did a piece on this and psychology today writes a book and things of that nature and talks about how the evidence kind of shows that people talk about what they believe as an afterthought to their actions. And sometimes people wind up not acting on what they say they believe because of that very reason that they don't really act on their beliefs at all. People say they believe what they act on. But then sometimes they don't really believe that deep inside. Like for example, I had that debate on free will last week. Yeah. So I'm one of these people that don't believe in libertarian free will. Yet every day I act as though I do. Like every day I'm making choices and I feel like I'm free and in my language, you know, reflects that, you know, that I have freedom and things of that nature, that I have free choices. And it's kind of good that I do the science even says that people who make the story and they kind of believe and reinforce the idea of free choice end up being more causative in their, you know, behaviors and things like that. And it's just weird semantics. And it's really hard for people to grasp that subject, for example, because it's so intuitive, you know. And so we, again, we make stories that sort of line up with our behaviors and sometimes that's not the case at all. So another example that you could say is that, you know, let's say if you pay attention to your thoughts, let's say if you're having a problem with your boss at work and you may think that your boss sees you as stupid and you feel like it's true. But say if you were to really think about it and reflect on the praise that she gave you at different times, you may realize that this thought does not really make a whole lot of sense. And in circumstances like this, it can help remind yourself just because it feels true, doesn't make it true. But even in that process of thinking and kind of understanding, yeah, she probably doesn't think I'm stupid. I'm probably blown out of perspective. You can be easily triggered by that same person because this thought is just ruminating so much. It's becoming a habit to where you just act on every little criticism that person gives you because you have this idea that, you know, she thinks you're stupid even though you know different. So it's just one of those weird things, I think that this is kind of interesting. And the question is, how can we use that to help ourselves? So just to condense the thoughts so far, I'm thinking like our feelings can be very subjective and oftentimes even confusing things, even for the person who's experiencing them, such that the actions that are born from those emotions may not even be in line with those emotions. And so the question would be like, are emotions in line with our beliefs? Are beliefs in line with our actions? And like what's really controlling what? Like where does the circle begin and where does it terminate at? It clearly or terminates at like maybe an action, but is that motivated by a set of like morals or beliefs that we say we have? Or are they more guttural emotions that we're just operating on at the moment and we're retroactively making it seem like it's a belief after the fact? That's right. That's what I'm saying. For me, it took like when I left Jehovah's Witnesses, for example, when I had beliefs that or feelings that the Jehovah's Witnesses were true and then those beliefs became just out of my intellectual wheelhouse. But there was something always making me act a certain way because I had screwed velocity. I was so concerned about having God's approval and my behaviors and things like that. It was a hard habit to shake. And so my actions didn't really reflect my true beliefs at that point. I had dropped all those beliefs, but yet I was still kind of worried about not living forever and all these promises that I had kind of made part of my identity in my thoughts. I think the real question is are our actions more strongly informed by a belief that we have or are they strongly motivated by our emotions? Maybe we can ask that around. Buffalo, what do you think? Do you think it's fair to say that your actions are more motivated by your beliefs than your emotions? Can someone actually be that belief oriented? I don't know. I think between the beliefs and the action and then there's a balance of whether or not our desire and need for creature comforts, whatever they are, whether they're social acceptability or they are indeed physical comforts that then interferes and you end up somewhere in between. Yeah, I can definitely see an equilibrium there. Maybe it's not entirely one thing. Do you see yourself as more belief-oriented or more emotion-oriented in terms of them? Definitely, I'm not belief-oriented because I don't really believe in anything. I conclude. That was an easy one for me. Boudre, I'm going to throw this out at you. Do you find yourself more motivated by your beliefs or do you find yourself more motivated by your emotions and how do you parse the two? And for argument's sake, we can replace belief with conclusions here to satisfy George's point. I don't know. I dare say none of us probably really pay attention to this level unless you're really, really meditating on it, but I'd like to think I'm more belief-based and less emotion-based, but I definitely feel like if there are things I'm passionate about, that kind of feels like it's an emotional belief that probably goes on the other side. I do find that actually I've got a fun list of things that I often kind of clash with people on that I kind of probably fall into the emotional category there, but I try to back it up with facts, so I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. Probably a mix, maybe favoring the belief. I can tell you where I can conclude. I can say my emotion-driven actions are way more fun than my belief-driven actions, almost 10 out of 10 times. And so if it's something serious, I'll try to operate on beliefs, but if it's for my own recreational benefit, I'm going to go on emotional. I'll do whatever I want, emotional-wise. But as far as free will, as you guys are defining it for this conversation, allow, I will be motivated by that. Larry, what do you think? Are you more emotion-driven, or belief-driven? Well, I'd say that most people are a mix of both, obviously. What comes in the problem is that the hypocrisy of a lot of believers, they'll say something like that God can see everything and knows everything, but then you'll find out that some preacher is cheated on his wife, or has hired a homosexual prostitute. Does he think that God no longer sees it, or does he not believe that God sees all this stuff? That's what gets me. They're not acting as if their beliefs are true, but they're telling everybody else what to believe based on their professed beliefs. Good example on that of Mother Teresa. Do you want to touch on that? You know the Mother Teresa hypocrisy? Larry? Or should I touch on that? There's a whole book on it. Christopher Hitch has put out a book. What was the title of that one? Anybody know? It escapes me. Anyway, she professed theoretically taking care of all these poor people in Calcutta and India, but it turns out that what she was doing was just taking them and putting them on a cheap mat and laying them on the floor by the dozens and hundreds and just allowing them to suffer. And in her own words, suffering is next to godliness. It was what Jesus did for us. So let them suffer basically what she did. But then she went all around the world gathering money to take care of these people and working on the stated assumption that she was literally helping them to get that money. That's hypocrisy. And then she got sick and she went to get the best medical attention she could find no matter what it cost. And we don't have to go all the way back in the past. For example, say, hey, you don't have to worry about the coronavirus. Have you tried it? I don't know. Maybe injecting bleach into your system. Is there a light ray or flashlight we can get to kill these viruses? I have coronavirus. I started a rally that gave everyone coronavirus. Well, give me the good stuff. All right. Yeah, give me the good stuff. Many comes back and he ticks off his face mask and then people just keep taking off their face mask. It's just like, what are you doing? And don't forget about Tom Cruise and Cancun. I like Tom Cruise. I like Tom Cruise afraid. And that book, by the way, is called The Missionary Position. Mother Teresa in theory. That's a great name for a book. But on Mother Teresa, not that I know that much about her, she did spend her entire life interacting with those poor people and giving some of them hope or something. In the time that she wasn't money raising, you mean? No, she was money raising, but she generated an army of other like thinking people that went into the slums and took care of those people. Take care of them or gather them up and put them on the floor and just let them suffer. They did feed them. I don't know where they fed them, but they subjected themselves to disease and I'm sure a lot of awful smells to give some of these people some hope. I don't know whether that's right or wrong, but I think it's a complex sort of issue. And then her confessions at the end that she doubted God in the end were, I think, very interesting in those letters that she didn't want to be published until she didn't want it to be published. If I can make an analogy, I once had a really bad ulcer, but I had to go to the doctor to repair. And instead of giving me a pep talk that made me feel really hopeful and like a sandwich to feed me and like a nice mat to lie down on, he gave me a prescription that actually helped me get rid of the ulcer. And I would say 10 out of 10 times if you put yourself in position or inhibit someone from getting in position to get meaningful standard of help and care, you're not helping. Even if you give me a really nice pep talk and a nice sandwich and you feed me and I smell bad and you're around me, that's not helping me get actual help. We should have standards for help and standards for help to actually reduce my harm, the harm that I'm doing to myself or harm that's going on in the community are always going to be better than just a pat on the back. And when I look at the Mother Teresa story, I just see lip service at the highest tier. It looks great. It feels great, but it does nothing. It's crackers. You're just eating and getting no nutritional value. And so, it's up to us to have a better standard for that. Pooja, what do you think? This kind of ties in another thing that's been talked about quite a bit that I think is worth bringing into this conversation. Thoughts and prayers. Yeah. How about the smallest possible effort that I could give to your cause? And you know, especially on a Facebook post or something like that, it's like, you know, my family's all sick and someone just died. Thoughts and prayers. Thoughts and prayers. No, like, hey, let me set up a... Well, it's even less than lip service. You say you're going to help and don't. True. But with thoughts and prayers, you just don't. You just don't. The numbers involved here are important, aren't they? It's just like problems in population. The greater the numbers, the more complex the solutions. I actually... Go ahead. I actually have a bone to pick with praying because I actually think we know scientifically now that that actually makes the situation worse. There have been studies done on blind groups. Larry, do you want to take that? Well, it was... I don't know who did the survey, but it was done on... MIT did one. Who? MIT did one. It was on heart patients before and after they went to surgery, they were doing separate groups. Groups that knew that they were going to be prayed for before they went into surgery. People that knew that they weren't going to be prayed for before they went into surgery. And a blind group, a blind study group that wasn't told one way or the other. And they found out that the group that had the most complications was the group that knew that they were going to be prayed for they came out apparently they had more anxiety to be able to mean to be better and that led to other complications after they came out of surgery yeah a lot of ways lots and prayers are something maybe even worse right don't tell me you're gonna pray for me please anything geez yeah all right I had I had an interesting experience and that is I had a 5x bypass surgery about three years ago and and afterwards I wasn't feeling very well of course and my family was there and the a minister came in to come and give the prayers and so forth and I was really I was really annoyed but I was stuck sort of in a social situation where you can't complain even though in every respect I wanted to complain but yeah here here's here's the thing that was that was very useful or a very useless I should say interaction and it still annoys me to this day I was being prayed for I didn't want to be prayed for I didn't want to have the social pressure of of sitting there and being silent while I was being prayed for but never was there was that you couldn't talk you're like prone and I'm not gonna embarrass my family because there was a tremendous pressure just sit there being uncomfortable and keep my mouth shut right yeah well you know I would not be the first to say this but you know a lot of ministry leverages on the fact that it's socially expected for you to do what they're telling you to do because they keep your mouth shut stay in the pews and keep your mouth shut right yeah they happen because what's the harm right yeah yeah like what you don't believe in this cuz I was losing this it's the emperor's new close pressure pressure system anyway we got two minutes I want to hear something cool I want to know a cool emotional belief that we have I know for me I am willing to argue the Pokemon generation number one is the best generation of all time I'm not willing to hear anything else is a reason why Charters are cards are selling for like $300,000 right now and nobody knows what a total dial is it's the best generation best art style best set of 151 Pokemon Boudreaux I think you got Star Wars I don't want to load your card but like what would you be your go-to emotional not don't care about beliefs this is about emotion let's fight man I got I got well you got a list of like a dozen I think I think saying how it's worth a shot it was worth a shot is a meaningless statement somewhere you go 15 minutes on your way to see if you can get like a closer parking spot or a better deal and then you don't get it and then you come back well it was worth a shot was it worth a shot it's a no Buffalo do you have anything where you just like gut reaction have like a belief you know it's not absolutely rational but you just enjoy it anyway um I can't come up with it anything at the moment but I would I would respond to Eric's comment sure and and I would say you know it really annoys that that'll noise that hell on me when I'm riding with somebody and they do that and and again you can't do anything about it really yeah maybe the next 15 minutes of the interaction by saying something but but it also drives me crazy that why don't why not just look around you and see how many people are being successful at this and see that it's most often not successful and just pay that way if only everybody tried to do that that'd be great we'd have a much better society who would evolve as a culture Scott I'm gonna throw this out at you uh what's a fun pet peeve that's entirely emotionally based that you that you enjoy having well I don't know well I guess I enjoyed a little bit but I feel like um you know this positive thinking thing like I don't think that positive thinking works I don't know I'm not sure I'm not I'm not 100% on it like I could say like well I'm gonna be really positive today and I'm gonna go to the gym and this time I'm gonna lift I'm gonna bench you know this amount of weight or whatever the case is and I just have to get my mind right and go in there and do it and I go in there and it's like 50-50 sometimes I'm achieving my goals sometimes I'm falling short but I don't think positive so in that case it seems like the evidence seems to me that the positive thinking thing has nothing to do with it that's just kind of an illusion you know like it's a it's just to make me feel better about me yeah motivating me to do something but I don't know we're gonna touch that next half of the episode Larry what's your pet peeve and then take us out I got nothing I know you got pet peeves I've been around you long enough I know that's just the host and Larry talking because he sees the clicking time clock but Larry want going ahead and take us out okay this has been the well first half of the digital free thought radio r and w ozio radio 103.9 lpfm right here in Knoxville Tennessee and we'll be right back after this short break 103.9 FM w ozio radio Knoxville welcome to the second half of the digital free thought radio hour I'm Delter 5 and we're here on w ozio radio 103.9 lpfm right here in Knoxville Tennessee today is Sunday February 21st 2020 let's talk about the atheist and free thought groups that you can find right here in Knoxville Tennessee uh first there's the atheist society of Knoxville or ASK we've already found it in 2002 we're going on our 19th year now ASK has over a thousand members and we have a weekly zoom meeting during COVID where we can all get together and talk about anything we want to you can find us online at Facebook or at KnoxvilleAtheist.org you can also find us on meetup or just by googling Knoxville Atheist by the way if you don't live in Knoxville you should still go to meet up and search for an atheist group in your town don't find one start one right earlier in the show we said we talked about the television or video show well they were on television for about 10 years until last year when they switched over to online services you can find all of their work or their archives on youtube just search for Knoxville free thought and you'll be able to pull up their archives uh with us on our show today are Wombad regular co-hosts we have uh Bujo and Doubtfire and George yeah Buffalo Joe Buffalo there you go and uh what were we talking about today where we're going with this yeah we're going over necessary supplies if you are locked in your house for over a week and i'm going to tell you you need to be able to get first of all a lot of ice you'll need a shovel and then you'll need a fan what a fan what a fan what a fan what a mighty good fan what a mighty mighty good fan guys we're going over listener feedback from last episode i'm going to highlight two comments so that we can get right back into the thick of things doubt us trading room all the way from hungry i think he's in america though uh he says if the universe actually i think he's Polish my bad if the universe were fine tuned for us or even created for us shouldn't we humans be around since the beginning of the universe and i kind of johnny come lately is that way yeah yeah we and the grand scheme of things we are kind of late to the party if this is what party was going for us the equivalent of like doing a new year's party in may we're showing up in may for a new year's party it's like hey showing up guys what's up by the way these are comments from our last episode last week which was the universe trying to kill us and i thought the comment to dodd's training rooms comment was actually pretty good it was well if the universe was fine tuned for us or even created for us shouldn't humans be around forever and so i thought two really good thought exercises for the fine tuning argument like this universe was created for us it's meant for us not only are we showing up late to its existence not only does it seem like most places would kill us in this universe itself but if it's fine tuned for us why aren't we better suited to exist in different kinds of areas in it and why can't we be around it forever why are we put into this place with an expiration date well it's not only us i mean even if we were to stick around forever the sun won't be here for but for another five billion years very we know a lot about stars and the sun is a star we know it's going to run out of fuel in about five million years it's going to expand so much that our orbit the orbit of the earth will be inside the sun it'll span that much in five billion years so even if we're around it would be an awfully hot place let me let me throw something up something else that too though ocean water the water that hit earth in a comet for most likely uh did not have as much salt in it as it does now the reason why it does have as much salt as it does now is because it's picked up from water streams rivers mountains etc and it collects and then it recycles and pours more water i'm sorry pours more salt and sediment and and and and ions of that sort in that collection pool that we call the ocean it gets progressively more salt here so there's a period of there will be a point before even the sun burns out where it's just this water ain't good we need to get some new water over here we gotta be like the dead sea yeah yeah yeah basically basically so we have to we have to at anything we have to do what we can do now for future generations to be able to preserve the the quality of life that we have not we're not preserving the earth because years when we hear whether we're here or not but we can make it a better experience for humans down the road if we are willing to take some responsibility today and that's what we got to do hey positive thinking by mr guy who doesn't believe free wills an actual thing so i want to i want to i want to i want to dissect this a little bit you're saying hey when i have a positive mindset i sometimes and sometimes don't find the motivation to do the work that i'm that i'm tasked with doing and that makes me think that there is a disconnect between positive thinking and motivation such that i can't force myself to get motivated or i can't push a button and be instantly motivated and that makes me think that positive thinking in its own right may not actually be a thing that's worthwhile in the first place have you have you tried the opposite have you thought negatively going into the gym thinking ah i can't bench press anything today i'm going to feel terrible today and then actually find the motivation to overcome that you're on mute my friend yes actually um yesterday i was in the gym and what happened was this is where why this is on my mind because thursday i went to work out and i had all this positive energy and positive thinking i'm so i'm going to go in there and i'm going to do it and i'm going to make it happen and i'm going to blah blah blah blah and i got there and i failed and i just gave up and i was like yeah i'm just not feeling and i'm out of here like it just i just ran away from from it you know no terrible so i woke up yesterday i was like well i've got to work out but i'm again i feel terrible i feel it based on the memory of thursday i'm i'm just gonna i'm just really starting to really be bad at this and i went in there and i kind of drug myself in and start lifting weights and i realized wait a minute i feel a lot stronger than i did thursday and i started getting into it and i was having fun with it and so just kind of dawned on me that all this positive thinking negative thinking thing may just be kind of an illusory thing hmm and based on everything that i because i did a lot of research about the free will stuff and some of the science behind it and so it all started kind of coming together like i think these guys these these scientists people they really they really know their stuff maybe i always get triggered when someone says he's a scientist maybe say something not the science says something but i'm gonna pull a page out of george's book uh george let me know if this is compatible with maybe uh the logic that we might share i think everyone's a bell curve generally like there's there's enough of a distribution of people where you might find that one thing works for most people but on the fringes not as well and maybe positive thinking works for the bulk sample of people and even there maybe it's an equilibrium maybe it's more inclined to work with a certain group within that certain proportion but as you get towards the longer fringes you're gonna need something else other than positive thinking or maybe something entirely different as you get towards the outliers to get someone to feel motivated because we are inherently different and unique animals what do you think george does that seem reasonable uh yeah it does because i think almost everything is on it on a bell shaped curve um and uh so yeah it fits and again i think each one of us is so different both inside and outside that um that one would almost expect it i would almost expect it how do you get yourself motivated how do you get your actions to make sure yeah it's an interesting question i think i think maybe more sort of constant inner drives work for me rather than wake up in the morning and and have a thought about doing something although i do that i sometimes wake up and decide i'm going to take on a certain task and i'll go and do it but i don't really think about whether or not it's going to be successful because i'm experimentalist and i know that 20 or 75 percent of experiments usually fail but you you've got only 75 what field of science are you in that's why you've got so many citations but but i but my strong feeling is you know you gotta keep going you may not be successful today but you'll be successful tomorrow as long as you keep at it sure sure wisdom wisdom from buffalo uh larry what do you think uh i'm going to phrase this question slightly differently for you but um is there validity in positive thinking towards getting yourself motivated and if not how do you personally get yourself motivated no i think there is um it may be not to the extent that most people tout it but i think that it will be um curing yourself up mentally for a task is is halfway through the task it really does not only because you're expecting the task to be a certain way and in generally if you meet it and it is that way then it makes you have that much of it done i think that uh a lot of anything that you do and my work was programming so i if i if i have a really good mindset about what i'm going to try to accomplish before i go in to do it it helps me get through and helps me get done quicker if it's a meant i mean a physical task i think it still sets you up for what you're going to be expected doing it but whether or not that particular day it works for you physically or not is something else okay but you're going it out at you uh comments i yeah i think maybe piggyback on what larry's saying i mean the i don't know that we can simplify the the topic to to work for just anything working out this or that but imagine it has a strong influence of positive thinking will really help on certain things uh you know where you have a big influence on your subconscious has an influence on it whereas positive thinking is not really going to be much good for playing the lottery right the outcome is beyond your control right right so i think i i think the the topic is is important it might help you accept the results now that is actually a really good point because when you go to a casino for example those places are specifically engineered to keep your bad thoughts at the back of your head and the happy bright colorful sonarific gcf bright pitches bright colors those thoughts in the front of your face at all times and the promise of hey man just one more pull of that you know lever and yeah i got a free buffet there you know it you don't think about the hundred dollars you drop when you in the hour you were there like a free drink sir like all that stuff in a casino it's specifically engineered if you go to a church very much engineered without you maybe even realizing it these are places that are designed for you to not be able to hide behind desks you're sitting in a pew open open chairs kind of uncomfortable you're standing up you're sitting down you're standing up you're sitting down at very specific intervals the songs aren't very intricate um those songs if they are they're classical in nature yeah yeah there we'll just say stimulating in the way to keep you placid they aren't meant to like raise your heartbeat dramatically but they are meant to keep you in that good frame of mind so that when the tithe bell or bowl or hat comes around you're like maybe i will give five more bucks today because literally everyone in this line gave five bucks and now everyone's looking at me it's all engineered for you you should be aware of that hey scott what do you got hey i was just thinking uh just now when you when you guys were mentioning that um about making a deal like how can we use our feelings to our benefit right yeah and i it just done on them i remember i was speaking i used to i don't know if i mentioned this before but i used to work with a a zen buddhist person and what we have always to have all these kind of conversations all the time so you know in buddhism they believe that there is no free will there is no self and all of this kind of stuff right so we were having this conversation and he told me a story he said the thing about it is there's a side of your consciousness the unconscious or the subconscious that's way stronger than your executive functioning mind is what he was telling me he's like you know your awareness you know your this illusion illusory part of your mind your brain is very weak it's it's it's really not composite of what's really going on with most of the hard lifting is done in your subconscious mind and he says so there's this um story i think in in zen buddhism where he says it's kind of like the rider on the elephant you know there's a rider on the elephant that says go to the left and the elephant always goes to the right and so every time he's telling the elephant to go somewhere the elephant doesn't listen but then you know he finally learned how to uh trick the elephant into going where he wants it to go so that the elephant leads somewhere he wants to go i forget exactly how the story goes but it's basically that there's an elephant the stronger part of you which is your unconscious mind and you have to create these habits and start recording this information into your unconscious so that it starts directing naturally a fair phrase you have to kind of power you have to have a relationship with yourself to to improve yourself in a way yeah and it takes time like it takes um it's it's it's called forming it's like forming good habits i was telling me to put a capstone on the uh positive speaking topic i think it's a form of pressure because i think we are very responsive to social pressure obviously i mean we can look at we can see that very clearly in society and what we're doing when we're talking to ourselves to hype ourselves forward it's kind of put this stakes on ourselves to perform in a way that we are expecting we're either personifying our expectations or talking to ourselves as like a secondary agent where it's like hey you can do this you got to do this and then i receive that same message and be like okay i can do this i can do this i'll keep running up even though my body says stop because i said go i will keep doing the going and so if you format it away from just like hey i'm just talking to myself and maybe that may not motivate me maybe it's more of like maybe i just don't respond well to pressure social pressure and that's a hit or miss for me and i just need to find a better way to talk to my elephant or talk to myself in a way that's much more conducive towards getting the things that i need to get done there's experiments that show when people are under pressure like it work and people are trying to really pressure you and you get nervous you can't perform right but if you're very relaxed and having fun you're able to do things that you didn't think maybe you could do and that can be a good way to inform our actions larry i'm going to throw something fun at you we had a comment on youtube i know you want to talk about it i can see it in your eyes there's a glint well it did deal with faith and you know what how about we handle it's from tom stone he responded on a video from far back ago we were talking about faith tom stone says you keep looking for full proof if you are looking for full proof then you will fail you can develop what i call educated faith through great study and human experiments i'm reading i'm reading this comment just making sure but an element of faith is required when you develop full true faith a connection with our mind becomes established and you can actually feel the divine presence divine is spelled with an e it's all fine and then deep medic deep meditation can also establish this connection good luck tiny humans i mean faith is i mean especially religious faith is believing without evidence um and he's saying once you do a lot of tests it reinforces your your faith well that's experimentation that's science and uh once you have a lot of experiments under your belt if if you there are true testable results and not just you pointing to something saying that's God then if you've got good verifiable results and you've you've done experiment you've done you have everyday expectation of a based on experience which is what the dictionary would say one of the definitions of faith is there you know problem with a lot of religious people use faith one definition to mean something else it's equivocation and it's a falsehood so i i would just recommend people go to the dictionary look up all the different definitions of faith and you'll see that the one that um atheists use are the everyday expectation based on experience and not believing without evidence yeah it's unfortunate because even in the bible there's two definitions of faith that aren't compatible with each other and that's what he's doing to to some effect here yeah uh but if you want to if you want to do a good experiment you better do at least three controls and that means asking the difficult questions as well as like easy questions right and if you're going to have an experiment it only it can only do it can only run an experiment if it's falsifiable which means you need to have a frame of reference for what it'll look like if it's wrong which means you have to be able to say what would this look like if there was no god what would this look like if faith didn't work and you have to be honest with those or if it was a different god right you can't say well i'll be dead so i don't know either way like that's just means you have an unfalsifiable position which i've heard many times uh larry you got another comment as i'm going down here last uh one week ago someone asked is larry a hologram now someone's asking no he's just a manifestation of the force says that's that's it that's it manifestation of the green screen scott so we had a nice chat about door actions uh inform our beliefs our emotions really what's informing our motivations um i'll leave one point and then left to hear your closing thoughts on the matter um i find boredom to be the thing that i will so consciously try to avoid at all costs even if it means i will do something that is painful or terrible to my system i will do it to avoid boredom and by terrible i mean like watch desperate housewives or something like that just other words just like anything to keep me from not being bored i'll turn on a tv while i try to go to sleep like stuff like that to just do terrible things to my system but when i am working out i have a really really hard time listening to radio music which is what they play in the gym because radio music is very formulaic and i i hate it when it's like and here comes the course it's always country music by the way i live in tennessee it's always country music so it's like here's the course near nashville so yeah and here's the title of the song right after the course the pains of whiskey it's like oh god i don't want to listen to this song anymore and it just kills all my motivation so i go in there with my own earbuds and i'll play the same playlist of music that i've curated specifically just so i can be like if i'm at this part of the song i should be at the at the escalator or the treadmill if i'm at this part of the song i should be working my weights and that works out so well but even i'll get bored with that so i have like a series of playlists for like different days some are randomized some aren't and that just helps to throw in variety just so i can avoid the boredom because i realized that's my that's my elephant hate achilles heel that's my achilles heel and i think what you're saying like how you have to get to know yourself to to be able to work with yourself better absolutely true i feel like there is that relationship and a lot of people don't give themselves time to figure that out and that's what i find the benefit for those who you know like more of the i don't need a dogman but i do like the spiritual benefits of connecting with myself it's like yeah like i feel like meditation gives you a chance to listen to your inner monologue all that stuff and that's beneficial to you round table thoughts do you disagree buffalo i'll throw it out at you and then uh we can leave it to scott for closing do you think there's a possibility in that uh meditation and all that stuff get to know yourself better and help to control yourself in terms of at least getting a better handle on your motivations can you do that through self-thought meditation what do you think well i understand i understand that some people can but i can i'm too impatient yeah i mean absolutely i just i'm more worried about uh losing patience than i am being bored i'll argue this you can meditate in other ways other than just sitting down like some people for them it's drawing for some people it's skiing for some people it's walking in cow patties on frozen ice i uh like hey you know lost yeah all right the walking analogy is a good one because it does it is kind of meditating because i look around at the woods and i think about things that i see and ask questions about why they are the way they are yeah so yeah i guess in that way i i am meditating i guess it just doesn't fit the normal definition of meditating sure i'll give you that but but i can rotate out of that very quickly uh into something else i think what motivates me is just if something's not working then think about find some something that has more potential to work and move to that for a while harry how do you meditate and do you see any benefit into a i i i have i have an app uh and i've tried it uh a couple times i really just haven't given it the time you'd think in coronaviruses i have all the time in the world i just i don't uh how do you not i yeah i i i've actually asked myself like okay what has happened but i just what are you doing i i feel like there's there's just always a project going on or family stuff or i mean it's just i don't have the free time that i thought i did and i was i'm filling up some of that with the music so i need to do i need to do it but um i i will say my and i maybe mentioned something show before but it ties in nicely my my uh motivation is is a mind hack i try to hack myself into particularly exercise or other other habits like that my elliptical back there i'm only allowed to get on that uh i'm only allowed to watch my tv show they're like uh while i'm on there so i'm watching the expanse right now great show uh but i can't watch it you know on the big tv and it's got to be right there on the ipad so i've got like this inner like motivation back i want to know what happens to these guys what's with the rascinante what's i got a fair what's going on i gotta go work out so it kind of forces me to do that i did that i did that that's you are you are literally hacking your motivation right yeah like you're making sure the carrots connected to the the stick in all times right yeah i like uh larry we were talking about before um about motivation and now this is more of just a question of like all right so how do you get yourself motivated to get stuff done and so for the things that you do like to do whether it's writing or well i have uh i have a saying that has held me in good stead all of my life there are no souls uh no no no that one too but no it you know back in the 60s and 70s there was a saying you know you you get into something you know i'm really into the treadmill now i'm really into working out and if there's something that you don't really want to do but you have to do it anyway my saying is if you can't get out of it get into it so you know try to set your mind that it's fun that it's going to be good for you that you know they're they're reward at the end you know try to make it something that you could get into i love that i love that i do have a saying myself uh on that it's not as good as that but it's more of like um um it's your that was so good if i can't get out i get into it um the time i enjoy wasting is not wasted time and so for a lot of the hobbies that i do where i feel like i'm losing time if i'm enjoying doing it and getting better at it right it's not wasted time i like that and there goes along with a crossbeast or song that says maybe it was james taylor he said it there's so little time to do the things you want to do once you find them because it's really hard to find things as you grow up that and live your life that you really want to do i mean that are that really turn you on the things that you're into uh and then you don't have time to do them okay scott closing thoughts today yeah hope we handled your subject well oh thank you um yeah uh i would just say that um you know to be effective and and when i say effective like to be happy to be um you know to enjoy your time to enjoy your life is to not ruminate and think too much and worry too much and be nervous all the time and that's suffering it's like my zen buddha's friend used to tell me all the time the guy was really smart on this stuff is that you know thinking is suffering and what he meant was ruminating is suffering and he says so meditation and he used to always tell me that the best form of meditation is um called dedication if you can dedicate yourself to a thought or dedicate yourself to an activity or dedicate yourself to an interest then you're going to lose the sense of time you're going to lose the sense of self and you're just going to be focused and dedicated into this singular thing and he says and what is going to help you be more productive in life is while you're doing that if you can just live in the moment like when you are dedicated into your thing that you're focused on stop for a second and just reflect on how you feel like reflect on the fact that you're not thinking reflect on the fact that observe the fact that you're losing time and just in it and i've done that and this bad boy right here this is my tool for meditation since i got this bad boy just this last week yeah he's showing another mixer board is this yeah another mix of another yeah scent engine and i've been working on that thing and i tell you man it is so much fun i've been so singular in my thought of just doing of working with this thing and man um after that the next day when i go to work it's like my mind is so relaxed and i'm so peaceful like before i was getting all this equipment and i was kind of stressed about a lot of changes that are going on in my life right now along with work and other stresses but now i can really make a difference because i know how now to stop be more singular in my focus and observe that thing and it gives you like this sort of really peaceful all inspiring feeling within you that it makes you more productive than your other activities cool thank you scott for that wonderful topic that we handled today and i think i learned a lot today it was really great having everyone input uh budro where can we find your stuff at man well i think you put my latest video at uh mid-show break maybe last episode oh yeah last year yeah there's another song we're working on um i'm finding it harder to play drums to this one because it's a bit faster oh okay but uh but yeah uh i'll uh i'll link you guys as we make more stuff quick question what's bpm beats per minute yeah what's not what is bpm but what's you said i'll look i'll look it up but i mean it's it's punk rock so is it like 120 is it 130 oh jeez jeez i mean it's just punk is just 200 i mean you're 200 okay i would even say it's the speed as much as the the tenacity of you're constantly doing the same same rhythm uh without a rake so yeah a lot of people don't realize that drumming is a workout every now yeah yeah yeah yeah george do you have anything that you would recommend that we would check out between now and next week um no i'll pass this time fair enough i i talked about something the last time uh that related to to the universe but i think i'll pass this time fair enough fair enough i would recommend if you are on youtube to check out on youtube ninja skating ninja skating the reason why i say that is there's this whole guy who's developed this kata system this fighting system but it has flips and stuff while ice skating it's it's done with laughs but it's just showing people being productive in a particularly snowy climate with particularly inclement weather and making the best of it and it looks cool as hell the guy who films it is just so good and the guy's also a pro skater too so it's not just some dinky little thing the guy is actually really good ninja skating i check recommend you check it out larry sounds sounds a little bit like figures i've done some skating myself and yeah and figures uh can get incredibly intricate and beautiful once you learn how to do them but as a friend a friend of mine says in fact a very accomplished skater says figures are also like watching grass grow okay in other words they take so much time to perfect by so much practice i see yeah it's true and they don't wear helmets either but they do when they practice sometimes so like there's the misconception a lot of people have figure skating skating in general is a very dangerous thing wear your pads wear your mouth guards there's a reason why a lot of people who don't don't have teeth larry why don't you take us out or what are your final thoughts okay i was just going to say that my own content can be found on digital free thought dot com the blog is there the atheist songs the articles on subject of atheism um is on digital free thought dot com be sure to click on the blog button my book is called atheism what's it all about and it's available on amazon if you have any questions for the show you can email them to us thank you ty uh at ask an atheist at noxvilleatheist.org and we'll answer my future shows if you're having trouble mentally or whatever emotionally from leaving religious beliefs behind you can find help at recovering from religion.org if you're watching this on youtube be sure to like and subscribe this has been the digital free thought radio hour remember everybody is going to somebody else's hell the time to worry about it is when they prove that heavens and hells and souls are real until then don't sweat it enjoy your life and we'll see you next week say bye everybody bye everybody