 103.9 FM, WOZO Radio, Knoxville. Ladies and gentlemen. Hello and welcome to our digital free thought radio hour on WOZO Radio. 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We're recording this on Sunday morning, December 19th, 2021. I'm Larry Rhodes or Doubter 5. And as usual, we have our co-host Wombat on the line with us. Hello Wombat. I can't cop the hair from coming out. It keeps coming out. I don't know what to do. Yeah, if you can't stop it, let me know. We'll make a million dollars. Yeah, there you go. And our guests today are Boudreaux from East Kentucky or from Kentucky. Hello, Boudreaux. I haven't seen you in a while. Hey. George Brown, two and a half, formerly from Brooklyn. Hello. Hello. Dread Pirate Higgs. That's a great way north. That's right. And Lee John Richards from across the pond. Hello. And we have a new guest, Skye, from Texas. Welcome to the show, Skye. Thank you. Hello. Digital Freethought Radio Hours, a talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism and the sciences. And conversely, we'll also talk about religion, religious faiths, God's holy books and superstition. And if you get the feeling that you're the only non-blaver in town, well, I'm swear you're just not. In Knoxville, we have a group of over a thousand of us. And we're a small Tennessee town. Larry, there's no swearing aloud. We just had a conversation about this. You just said you swear or we're not. Oh. We're not alone. This is radio, but I can use the word swear. I'm sure. Will you tell you more about the Atheist Society of Knoxville after the mid-show break? Well, Matt, what are we going to be talking about today? We're going to be talking about the story. It has to be about Christmas, I bet. Yeah. It's true. It's the story of Christmas that we're talking about today. And we're going to get into some meat and potatoes. And we've got a lot of great comments, we got a new person in, and we're almost near Brady Bunch capacity in terms of our layout. I did want to give up some highlight and some awesome comments. First of all, John Richards, I see you've upgraded the castle in your background. Very nice. I think that's a keeper. That looks pretty good. I've promoted myself to Lord. Very nice. Very, very nice. Boudreau is also really, really nice to have you on the show as well. I don't know why, but it's what you're always welcome on. George, looking good. You're looking light. You must have lost weight, buddy. And, and Skye, I'd love to get into your backstory, but before we get into all that, I'd like to throw it up to our own Dread Pirate Higgs for our weekly invocation. All right. Nudely Lord who art in a colander, I'll dente be thy noodles, thy blood be run, thy sauce be yum with meat as it is with vegetables. Give us this day our garlic bread and forgive us our cussing as we forgive those who cuss against us. And lead us not into ketuism, but deliver us some carbs for thine are the noodles and the sauces and the grog whenever and ever. Ramen. You know, Dread, I've actually found some noodles that are carb, more or less carb. I don't want to say they're carb free, but they're at least low, super low in calories. They're conject noodles. I just got them in Amazon and like a whole packet is only five calories that's going to blow my mind. I'll let you know how they turn out. I know it's insane, right? They also make rice that's like a pound is only like five grams or five calories. It's like, how, how is this possible? It's insane. But I am going to be getting you some highly caloric fruity pebbles in the mail. Be ready for that, Dread. Sweet. Yes. Guys, we have a new guest. I'd like to throw it up to Sky. Sky, tell us about yourself and what's your Christmas situation like. Okay. I am an atheist. I was raised in an atheist household. My Christmas situation is that I love secular Christmas. I love all the grand old pagan traditions. Unfortunately, we will not be having Christmas this year because my mother is still afraid of COVID. So the family won't be getting together. That's interesting. For you, Christmas is being with your family because that's why you aren't having Christmas, right? Yeah. I get that. My atheist grandparents always threw big to-dos for Christmas. And it was the whole family. We have like 40 people there. Wow. Wow. Yeah. COVID has put us through our stir. Boudreau, what's your Christmas situation like? Well, I have kids. So Christmas is a big deal for us. And it's fun. It's very secular. But we do tree and presents. And we'll do, we'll visit with Kristen's parents and her sister there in town. So it'll be a small gathering. And Kristen's parents are also atheists too, right? Isn't it Buffalo Bill? And father is, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So it's nice. Christmas has always been a big deal for me as a kid too. My mom just spoiled us rotten as kids. And that always made me just enjoy Christmas that much more. So a lot of presents under the tree for the kids. So not bad. Not bad. Not bad. For me, I had a Christmas birthday nearby. So you get the combination of the December, early December gifts and then the Christmas gifts. So it's a slow trickle. And it's never anything big. So it's not a lot that you have to wait for. I kind of have like a nicotine passions from getting presents throughout December. Yeah. John Richards, what's your Christmas situation? And how have you been my friend? We do the traditional Christmas, you know, we've got a tree flickering lights, presents underneath it. We will have a Christmas lunch. And then we'll, of course, we'll, we'll sit and listen to the Queen's message. There's a Queen's message every year. Is that, is that a thing? Yeah. State of the Union, state of the Christmas. Yeah, is that a state of the Union? Yeah, it's more of a, it's a non-political speech, obviously. And she's just reporting on the year and wishing all the members of the Commonwealth, because don't forget, we may not be an empire, but we still have a Commonwealth. And in fact, other countries have been voluntarily joining it. But she's just gives us all a nice, homely message. And I thought that on the back. Exactly. But I hear that in Abu Dhabi, for the first time, they're going to have a do. So will it be the Abu Dhabi do? Okay. All right. Dred, in Canada, do you also get a broadcast of the Queen's message as well? Is that, is it reach across the seas? No. Not to this household, anyway. No, we've been slowly, my wife and I have just over the last few days, been opening a gift that we've given to each other one a day. Oh. This morning after the show, I am leaving for the Great White North, where I'll be working for some wealthy people doing security. So it's a 5,000 acre ranch. I'm heading up to a pretty groovy. Now, is this for a movie? No, this is a different security outfit. Yeah, there's some familial issues that they need security detail for. Oh, this is very, very, very interesting. Yeah. I'm actually going to be on a gator. I'll be armed. Because, you know, aside from any security issues, there's lots of cougars up there. So I'm going to have to be on my guard. But yeah, it's a nine hour, nine, 10 hour drive. I'll be undertaking today. So cross your fingers for me and we'll pray to the newly lord that I make it. Yeah. I didn't know what kind of cougar he was referring to, but now I was like, oh, it is a reality TV show. You watch out for those predatory women. He's armed and dangerous ladies. It's true. George, would you mind giving me a fill in? How's your holiday season looking? Very uneventful. I am in my armchair study of psychology. I confess that there is one Google service that I am addicted to. Actually one and a half. OK. And the one service I'm addicted to is YouTube. Yeah. Because there's a lot of good information, armchair psychology information and not such armchair. So good stuff coming up professionally. And a lot of people are hard to understand. There sound is bad. YouTube presenters. So I am setting up a little high-fi system to plug into my computer so that I can understand these people better. You know they have closed captions, right? You could just turn those on. Well, but the closed captions often are muffled themselves. No. OK. When the people are so hard to understand, I have to boost the speech frequency. Yeah. I hate it when I have to turn up the volume on closed captions. They don't really make any noise at all. It's a serious problem. So what I'm doing, my task right now is that I am painting a pair of old Radio Shack's small speakers to use in this task. So that's my big confession right now. I love the long-term projects you always on, George. It's always something. George, George. Go for it, John. Yeah. When you turn up the volume on the captions, like, do they go from lowercase to capital? Well, the word arm gets bigger. Ah, OK, OK. There we go. Guys, that was a great touch. Larry, I can't be remiss if I didn't touch on you. How's your Christmas holiday looking? Oh, it's just going to be a small family affair. We're really cooling off the big gatherings due to COVID. It wouldn't be so bad, but we've got people who are saying that they're vaccinated when we know they're not. So we're just not doing it. And Sheila and I are 70-ish. So that's a lot of trouble. Yeah, I don't want to even mess with that. I'm in Tennessee. There's a lot of friends that are having parties like around this time. And it's just like, I know for a fact that some of these people who are going to these are like the proponents, poster children of anti-vaccine. And I don't want to hang out with them when I'm about to be on an extended break. Likewise, I don't want to bring the biome that I'm in in Tennessee out to my mom. And she's in Virginia. And I know Tennessee is like the hotbed right now. So I'm just saying, hey, we'll do video. We'll give it one more year. And I'm sure we'll catch up later on. Hey, what's up, little girl? All right. Skies, we're talking about the story of Christmas from an atheist perspective and sanity of Christmas from an atheist perspective. Larry, would you mind setting the tone? Well, one thing first is we said we were going to get back to Skye after we did our introductions. Oh, yeah. That's what I meant. So Skye, can you tell us a little bit about what it's like there in your corner of Texas for an atheist? It's awkward. San Antonio is a very Catholic city. A very churchy city. Also pretty liberal, though. Well, I don't know. I've lived other places, so I don't find it all that liberal. Oh, OK. But Austin is right up the road. Austin is really liberal. Austin has a great atheist community. Yeah, they do. They do. There's a secular humanist oasis opening up there in January. Cool. Very cool. Yeah, well, if you run into Matt Dilla-Hunty, say I said hi. I sure will. But you won't know who I is. That's the weirdest part. Dredd, Dredd, Pirate Higgs. He knows me. OK, OK, OK. Matt, Matt Dilla-Hunty is in hospital having his heart operated on right now. Oh, no. Really? Wow. Wow. Such a wow. Suddenly good vibes. Yeah. Yeah. Good thoughts, anyway. We have faith in doctors. Not only faith, but also good reliable science in it, too. Of course. I did want to make some... I did want to have some things to touch on. Sky, how long have you been in Texas? And then, I guess, is it hard for you to admit that you're in Atheist in that time, particularly in this holiday season? No, it's not. I realize that there is a lot of stigma sometimes attached to being in Atheist. And I really like to let people know and to be a good role model to show them that you really can be good without God. Awesome. About the truth, you're important to me. That's good. Dredd, would you say, you know, as you're driving armed through the gators, or, I'm sorry, through the cougars, right, just knocking back left and right, left and right, left and right? No. How are you doing it? Do you feel in this holiday season any... I know as a post-pherian but also as an Atheist at the same time, too, like, do you feel any additional pressure pressure to, to, to keep yourself, you know, in the back burner while the Christians have their holiday and then give yourself more time to step forward. What do you think? No, I'm a realtor. It was one of my professions. And just recently, they, they were going to, you know, they advertised a virtual party Christmas, a Christmas party. And it was heavy, heavy Christian theme there. And, and then I just, I spoke up to my managing broker and said, Hey, look, I'm one of the 69% of people who are not Christians. And so, you know, with all due respect, it would probably be better all around for everyone if we did this as a secular, secular holiday. Otherwise, I'm just not interested in participating. And he was, he was really good. He came back and he says, you know what, you are absolutely right. We ought to do this in a secular fashion, because as you point out, 69% of people are not Christian. There's all kinds of faiths out there. And we cannot assume our, our realtors are all of the Christian faith, even though they might celebrate Christmas and All that good stuff. So yeah, so it was a, it was nice that I, that I stood up and it was nice that he acknowledged that and made changes accordingly. So I was really appreciative. That's really good. Good story. Butcher, I'm going to throw a softball at you. You just, when I asked you what Christmas was, you know, I heard sky talk about family, but I heard you only talk about presents. That just shows Christmas is getting way too capitalized. We should get right back to our Christian roots on Christmas, right? Like, isn't that the most important thing? And what's all this tree and pagan stuff that you got? Pull out a Bible, throw out a New Testament up there. Let's celebrate the true good story. I mean, what we need to tree because where else are you going to put the presents? Do you feel like Christmas as it is, if it's moves towards more capitalist, centric, then religious centric, is that an improvement in your book? I mean, I guess I don't, I don't, I don't feel like capitalism's replacing the, the Christianity of it. I think there are plenty of people that, you know, it's the only time of the year they go to church and you know, there, a lot of times you'll have a big gathering and that's when you say grace and, you know, and I don't know, the capitalist side, it's hard for me to think of that as bad because again, I have such warm memories as a kid of Christmas and, you know, we, we, we try to make it to where the kids just really, really look forward to it. And, and, you know, a lot of times we'll try to make sure we get them practical gifts as well as cool, fun things too. So, you know, they're, they're getting practical gifts. Yeah, well, but if you mix them, if you mix them in, you have a right practical gift, it could be really useful. I mean, you get socks for Christmas, but you get cool socks with dinosaurs on them or something, you know. Anyway, but yeah, so I don't know, is it too capitalist? Should we be maybe one of the things we did start and maybe this, this is a better way to look at one of the things we did start this year is that we are going to every Christmas make sure we go to givewell.org and kind of do good there and then we've got some local charities that we want to give to, but it's, there you go, Ty, that's a good idea. There's some giving back there. Nice, nice, nice reminder for the kids to give back a little bit in the community. Oh yeah, and definitely we involve the kids, they help pick the, the right, you know, the charities. So yeah, I'll transition to John Richards. Listen, Christmas was never secular. So the idea of a secular Christmas is an affront. It's an attack on Christmas. Wouldn't you agree? Isn't it obvious that if we have a secular Christmas, we are literally taking away the entire point of Christmas in the first place? And why are you as Lord of atheists laughing right now and agree, you're in agreement with this, right? Like you're, it's shows being recorded. We agree that we are attacking Christmas systematically each year. Aren't we in agreement? Not at all, no. I was, I was told way back when I was at school that the pagan midwinter festival that we celebrated in the northern hemisphere since before the days of Christ. I mean, I think that Yule and Saturnalia, depending on which part of northern Europe you came from, was a couple of hundred years pre Christ. And what happened was the Romans commandeered most of Europe and decided to adopt Christianity as the state religion and then imposed it on our existing festivals. So they stole Saturnalia for their evil Christian purpose. So you're saying two rights make a wrong. We're just stealing it back. That's it. Is that what it is? And I'm saying I want it back. Give us back. Give us back Saturnalia. Oh, give us back just the pagan holiday. Let's just celebrate that. We may even have more fun with it. The songs might even be better. I'm a little tired of that Celine Dion soundtrack over and over and over again. Hey, what's up, Dred? There was all the good bits in Saturnalia. The drinking, the eating, the fire, the dancing, the gift. We didn't need any of that other nonsense. Yeah, get rid of it. Dred, what's up? I was just going to say, if anyone's looking for a good thing to donate on Christmas to. Pastafarians are involved in a thing called Kiva. And I don't know if you guys have heard of this. Kiva is a platform where interest free loans are made to persons in underdeveloped countries. And pastafarians have donated $5,693,150. So if you want to be a part of that good thing, just go to Kiva and Church of the Blind Expanding Monster. Wowee. That's fantastic. Listen, George, I know you were raised atheist. I know you consider yourself an organic atheist. I like to consider you an untainted, not born again atheist. But you grew up in New York. You saw the Rockefeller Center. Maybe you even saw that big tree. Could you tell me about the best, biggest Christmas event that you've been to? No, I can't. Don't forget that I come from a Jewish heritage. I know. To me, I've been thinking about this today, which is why I proposed the subject. Because the anomalies just come hot and heavy to me. I mean, how can I put this? Okay, first of all, the occasion, what we all wrapped around is the death of a guy, right? Right. George, I guarantee you, I guarantee you, we'll go into the insanity of Christmas in the second half. But at least for now, when we've got like a couple of minutes left, we'll keep it nice and happy. Tell me about your most positive Christmas experience. If it's as a Jew, I can totally respect it. I was like, ah, there wasn't anything. Oh, well, we got a tree and I got a lot of presents, you know. Okay, cool. And the presents weren't clothing because I hated getting clothing. No, they weren't dreals or anything like that, right? Oh god, the dreal is ridiculous. You know, you see, you spin the dreal, it spins around, it falls down. Big deal. Forget about it. You know, don't want. But, um, ah. Or Hanukkah, would Hanukkah be the better answer? Like, did you ever have a big Hanukkah celebration, even as an atheist? No, no, because I don't care about that either, you know. I thought that there was chocolate involved in the dreal game. There sure is. Yeah. That's how everyone would play with them so they could have this chocolate. That's how it worked out. No, it's called Hanukkah Gelt. Gelt means gold. And they're coins that are, they're like a heavy aluminum foil that is gold-plated and they're filled with chocolate. Yeah. And they're very, very thin. They're coin thickness. So there's a whole, not a whole hell of a lot of chocolate in there. Not even a good bar. It's all just very frustrating because you've got to peel all this stuff off of this hardly anything. I was down with anything involving chocolate. Yeah, me too. Me too. Dark chocolate especially. Dark chocolate also good. Guys, we're going to go into the Insanity of Christmas after the second half. I promised I would. But before we do that, let's do a quick break before we reach the top of the half hour. This is the Digital Freethought Radio Hour. We're on WOZO Radio 103.9 LPFM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. And we'll be right back after this short break. 103.9 FM, WOZO Radio, Knoxville. Hello and welcome back to the second half of the Digital Freethought Radio Hour on WOZO Radio 103.9 LPFM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Let's talk just for a second about the 80th Society of Knoxville. ASK was founded in 2002. We're in our 19th year. ASK has over a thousand members and we have weekly in-person meetings in Knoxville's Old City at Barley's Taproom in Pizzeria. Look for us now inside since it's winter at the high-top table. We're usually the loudest and happiest group there. If you'd like to join our Tuesday evening meeting. You can email us at askanatheistatnoxfilatheist.org or let'schatse at gmail.com. Repeat that. No, it's good. You can keep going Larry. You can find us online at facebook meetup.com or at Knoxvilleatheist.org or just Google Knoxville Atheist. It's just that simple. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you can still go to meet up and do a search for an atheist group in your town. Don't find one. Star one. That's right. One back where you'd want to pick up. I was still trying to turn up the captions, so I'm sorry if I was some technical difficulties. I hope everyone now sees them all in caps now. They should be as loud as they possibly can be. Guys, we're talking about the insanity of Christmas. You know, over the show, I'll admit we had a little break to discuss with George that Christmas is not about the death of a guy. And I think we're all on the same page. That's Easter, right? But you're the organic cake in the room, so we're totally on the same level now. But it's very sweet. It's like that's the impression. They can go through your entire life being like Easter and Christmas. They're maybe the same thing, right? It's like, I love it. I would love to have that kind of like non indoctrinated mindset. We're going to go with John Richards. Insanity of Christmas. Things you can eat. What pudding, sausages, those shouldn't be mixed together. What's going on here? It's because I'm worried about you guys. You've eaten all your turkeys at Thanksgiving, so you've got to provide some alternative menu for you. And I suggest toad in the hole. Toad in the hole. Toad in the hole. It's an egg and plain flour batter with a little milk to loosen it up. You put it in a pan full of hot fat and then you lay your sausages in it, cook it for about 40 minutes in the oven. Delicious. It sounds like sausage biscuits. Toad in the hole. Sausage biscuits? Anyone? We eat tamales. Oh, I love tamales. Yeah, that's a good one. And the last Christmas I spent with my family, we just ordered pizza. And I think that just saved everybody because we didn't have to spend time cooking more time with each other and no leftovers because everybody loves pizza. You can get any way you want. All right. I want to remind you that in Gene Sheppard's Christmas story movie, they all go out for Chinese food. Yeah. Yes. Oh, you know, I love that. I love that film. It's likely to be one year where I won't have to hear the peanut steam or hear about that movie for at least one year. But it's not this year, but thank you, George. Check that out. But I haven't heard the peanut steam yet. So who knows? Who knows? Tell me about the insanity of Christmas. There's something about scenes that you want to talk about. Scenes. Yeah. And for the people that are watching this, they'll get a little extra bonus, but I'm going to attempt to put a background on mine. There you go. Nicely done. So seriously, there is a company that makes a nativity scene for like a lawn ornament. And it's this bright white thing. People usually take a light and shine it on it. And two of my neighbors have it. There are dozens in the neighborhood down the street, all kind of the same. They seem to be the same manufacturer. And I don't know if someone who worked for them just got in there and got a little creative with the design or maybe my brain has just mapped this so well. But this nativity scene looks like two dinosaurs. Wow. Okay. It's a Jurassic. It's a Jurassic Christmas. Now I see it's like two weird crazy hand puppets. And you're like, every time we drive by this one, great for radio, but yeah, they look like dinosaurs. Imagine the nativity scene with dinosaurs. So we're driving by as a family. And every time we drive by one of these, we could be in conversation. We could have somebody else in the car that doesn't know just the whole family goes raw. Every time. It's kind of like a punch bug, isn't it? It is, it is. I love it. I love that mindset. I love it. I think it falls right into the insanity to Christmas for me. I also feel personally like the nativity narrative is probably like the best cover up story for teen pregnancy. Like in the last two millennia, it's just amazing. Can't believe that story still stuck. It hasn't worked for anybody else. Well, it's great. Any other comments on the nativity scene or insanity of it? Well, I appreciated the church of Satan and wasn't it down in Texas where they had, you know, the government had put up in front of the one of the official buildings. They had put up an activity scene in the church of Satan came along and put up a statue of Baphomat. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it was very cool. It certainly drew a lot of attention. So eventually the government relented and took the nativity scene down. Nice. Nice. Speaking of iconography. Scott, you had a story about the Christmas tree. I just had a comment that I can't give a citation for. I just know it's in the book of Jeremiah. And Jeremiah says that you should not decorate trees with silver and gold as the pagans do. And that kind of segues into the fact that I've got kinds of notes on Christmas and it seems like just about everything about Christmas is pagan. Yeah. Are you there calling Christianity hypocritical? Let's start. I need it. I got to put you on the item. I wouldn't go that far. I would. Don't fight. Hey, Joe, fire. What's up? It's actually it's Jeremiah 10 versus one to five. Not bad. Not bad. Not bad. Yeah, go on, John. Because I did global atheist news yesterday, of course. And one of the hot items is about a bishop in Sicily, you know, the island off the bottom of Italy, who, who, who wanted to promote the Christian aspect of Christmas. So what he actually did was denigrated Santa Claus. He said it was a myth. And, and the real thing, of course, you meant the real thing was saying it wasn't real. Exactly. That's what happened. All the parents on their Facebook site came out and said, how dare you dash the, the hopes and wishes of my children who I've been indoctrinating with Santa Claus. And in the end, he had to somebody had to write it for him. Really? Santa Claus is actually Odin. But you got to, I think that priest got a small glimmer of what it's like to be an atheist and try to talk about God. You know, for the first time in his life, probably he's just like, oh, whoa, this is weird. Maybe I should have better evidence. Why don't you, why aren't you convinced with good evidence? There's a lack of evidence. You shouldn't believe in this thing. Wait, what am I doing? You go to slapping anyway. Slapping anyway. Anyway, praise be to Santa. Guys, we're going to go into a more extended topic. Dredd Pirate, you want to talk about the Christmas story. Well, I attended a online series of lectures hosted by Bart Ehrman, who is a very well known New Testament scholar and historian. And so he touched on, you know, many of the things we, you know, considered the insanity of Christmas, including virgin birth. And one of the more interesting things I learned right off the bat was about the fulfillment of prophecy that I believe is in Matthew, where he spends, the author spends a great deal. Of course, it was Matthew that wrote this. It was probably 70 years after Jesus was around. But it goes into great detail about the genealogy and the lineage from Abraham down through the House of David and that Joseph is the direct descendant through that, through that genealogical line. But of course it's not lost on historians and other people who regard this with a little more skepticism, that Joseph was not Jesus's father. God was. So, you know, it kind of throws a pretty significant wrench into the whole Christian cogwheel there. You know, and that's certainly not the least of the issues. The virgin birth as someone, I think John pointed out, it's not the first time that, you know, teen pregnancy has had a story to, you know, kind of cover it up. And interesting enough, virgin births or claims of virgin birth continue to happen, even right up to this day. And I'm sure when I was watching in the barter room, and this was maybe two weeks ago, something, one of these virgin birth claims had just actually recently been made. So, it's not the first time, and it certainly won't be the last. And resurrection and just miracle after miracle, all these different kinds of cults that are around the world. And some people even claiming to be Jesus Christ himself come back. So, there is a great documentary called No Men Beyond This Point that is fairly recent. I think it's a 2020 movie that came out on Amazon. It's a documentary about alternate reality. So, it's still fictional, but it's filmed as if it's a documentary where women now only give virgin births. So, like, the only propagation of humanity is by women just giving virgin births only. And they cite in the movie claims of virgin births since Mary all the way up until like the 1950s. And people weren't giving them enough credit until now all the women are doing it. And then all of society basically turns upside down because all the men have to be put into, like, tiny little camps where they can play video games and talk about how to barbecue the right kind of food. And women will run the world because they don't need the men anymore. And it's the most funnest thing, because, like, one of the men want to escape. And he's just like, this world's so different. Everything, there's too many options for pants and their pockets aren't big enough. I don't know what's going on. And it's a fun, it's a fun dumb movie. Well, what's the name of it? No men beyond this point. I believe it could even be a Canadian movie, Dredd. I would highly recommend you check it out. Of course, if there was such a thing as virgin birth, it would only be daughters that were produced. Right, like Parthenogenesis, yes. Oh, so no Jesus. No, exactly. Or it could be a female Jesus. I mean, Joanna or somebody. Yeah. You know, the weird thing about the whole virgin birth situation that bothers me personally is that it tends to, unless if you have some way of randomizing DNA, right? You're still stuck with what essentially the sequence that you pull from the mom went because even her, even her mitochondrial DNA is going to be pulled from her line. And that doesn't give us enough variation to what I think kept us alive just by the fact that when you combine DNA, you get like a really weird combination that might give you some advantages, may not give you some advantages, but more often than not keeps the variation long enough that any cataclysmic event won't kill all of us at once. And I feel like that's been the testament, this trial and error that we've had through the natural births that we've been having. I'm not, I know in the future we'll be able to probably design people better, but like I am an advocate of like this naturalistic system that got us to this point. I will say that. I'm also going to throw this out too. The scariest thing for me about the virgin birth situation is that for Jesus to be a male, as you had pointed out, John Richards, and for him to be an actual human being full, full on normal human being as he quotes himself to be and claims to be, he needs to have DNA from a partner, which means that DNA had to come from God, which means God has to have a genotype. And if God has a genotype, how disappointing it can just be this guy. And God's genotype must include a Y chromosome too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. John's, or it must have included like nice pair of abs that everybody gets to see. But like if Jesus did look in fact the way how he purportedly by the Catholic Church as like a very oddly Italian looking man and Mesopotamian bronze era. It's unfortunate that God has all these features because now it's pretty easy to indicate what God looks like and that's a very disappointing person in terms of like looks. It's not at all, it sucks that we came up with that story and didn't think about the consequences of the science and backtracking it when we had a better understanding of it. It strikes me as a story that we came up with, with not a very good understanding of genetics and it reeks of it. Sure. Fortunately. Also, Larry, what's up? Oh, you're about to mute it. Yeah, I was just going to throw a couple of things out there that I observed about the insanity of the Christmas story itself. And just the sheer rudeness of God. He didn't ask Eve, I mean, he married if she wanted to have the kid. Yeah. When it was time to tell her that she was going to be pregnant, he didn't do it himself. He sent a messenger boy. He did. He didn't show up at the birth and he didn't show up at the death. He didn't pay any child support. Yeah. He's like a dead and dad, you know, not a thing. And it's totally impersonal. Of course, dead and dad possible. Yeah. Virgin births, you know, Eve for all intents and purposes was not born of a woman and she should have been a clone. I mean, if he, if he made her from the rib of a man, Eve, why wasn't she a man? She should have been a clone of the man. So there's a lot of, a lot of problems with these stories. If you take him in two seconds to think about him. Yeah. Hey, go dread. Yeah. I was one of the things that I've already pointed out to was the, the incongruity between this idea of virgin birth. And in another gospel, Mary chiding Jesus for presuming to teach in the temple. If, you know, if it was her understanding that she was having the child of God, she would have known, of course, that he's more than qualified to teach in the temple. Yeah. Well, it's, it's, it's actually, it's a pretty glaring thing. Exactly. What's going on here? I'm pretty qualified, mom. Thank you. Hey, George, what's up? That's a great one. That's a great one. I have a question. And I don't know if we'll be able to answer it, but let me throw it out there. Is there any difference between the way the Catholics celebrate or view this story and the way the Protestants do? Not that much. I think the most difference between Catholicism and Protestantism is just structure of the church and, and who's the authorities, but the. Yeah. And what you're allowed and not allowed to do. Yeah. Of course, it's bifurcated a lot. Yeah. And it's bifurcated a lot. But it's one of the biggest differences between Protestant and Catholic is that Catholic want to read the Bible and tell you what it means. Protestants encourage you to read the Bible for yourself. That was the whole thing about the Reformation. Which one was actually raised Catholic? What's up? I did want to quickly point out to Skye Skye, if you just put your hand up, you'll have an easier time to interject because I hear you trying to say things and it's hard to, hard to hear. But, but yeah. And to me, the Catholicism, the one thing that blows my mind talking about insanity is transubstantiation where you're literally eating the body of Christ and that. Oh, that's a great ritual cannibalism. And it's not just on Christmas. You do that like almost every other week every Sunday. If you got a good church, they always have the grape juice ready. I will throw this out. Here's my crazy one. The fact that we don't appreciate Joseph, I think that's the stepdad of Jesus as a good father figure. Because here's a guy could have just done whatever he wanted. It's like, oh, you're pregnant. I don't want to deal with that. I literally can get stoned for stuff like that. He's like, no, no, no. I'm going to step up. I'm going to still be your friend. I'm going to make sure you're warm. I'm going to make sure I'm going to be there at the birth. And I'm going to teach this kid useful traits that he'll need for a career because I'm a carpenter. I'm going to teach this kid to make a chair. Okay. He's not good at making chairs. That's totally fine. We're going to work with this kid. Okay. He's preaching. He talks a lot. I'll get him out of the trouble. He's always there trying to get Jesus out of trouble. And Jesus is always like, I'm going to die on a cross one day. And Jesus is like, you're going to make your mom cry. Can we please just like calm it down a little bit? Best father. Best father. Like one of the best fathers in the book. Better than God. I'd say that. Let's see who's next. George, what's up? He showed up anyway. He showed up. Okay. I've been thinking about the emasculation of men originating in the Catholic church. So the word father is interesting because God usurps the role of men when we refer to God as our heavenly father, our father. We refer to the priests in Catholicism as father. That tends to diminish the role of an authentic father. And Jewish people, they say father. Well, I don't know what Jewish people you know. Let's leave it to the last words, Jed. What's your last words on this topic? Free thought. I was going to say that one thing that was pointed out as well was that Joseph in all likelihood was, you know, the age of a great grandfather and Mary was likely around 13. Whoa. That probably makes sense. Gotta be honest with you. John, tell us about this thing you want to plug. Well, before I do that, I want to refer to a meme where there's Mary and she's cradling the baby Jesus. And she's trying to get it, get her head around the fact that the father and the son are the same. And who did I, who did I, who was I impregnated by? All right. That's a dark note. Thank you, John. John, go ahead. Yeah, what I want to plug is free thought city. It's a new social media site. It's civil. It's got a city that you can visit with your friends, meet new people, and it's time zone so that you can come out of the virtual world into IRL, you know, in real life and meet up the people that you met there here. You see what I mean? And so go to it. It's got a Kickstarter now free thought dot city slash Kickstarter. Nice. There's all sorts of videos on there and we're doing a campaign. So tomorrow I'm going to launch a song. I think the modern term is drop a song and it's written by the lyrics are written by Richard Dawkins. Oh yeah. What's the URL? What's the URL? Free thought dot city slash Kickstarter. No dot com or anything. Doesn't need that. No, it'll go straight there. Yeah. Yeah. That city is a new one to me. Boudreau, anything you want to check out anything we should check out before next year or next week. Got to exactly. You can check out behind me where the kids made a tent last night. I love it. I love it. No, I guess I don't really have anything. Guys, give all that arc. I think I plugged it before. It's a great, a great organization that really focuses on what charities do the most good. So you're not, you know, just given some, I don't know, Goodwill, Goodwill CFO. Yeah. I love your jet. I love it. But really vetted, vetted charities. Goodwill. Givewell.org. Givewell.org. Dreadpire, is there anything that we should check out before next week? Yeah. I just want to, we've got a couple of live watchers on the show here. Dada's trading room. He's always watching. He's talking about a film called Cezk Meza. It's a Polish film. S-E-K-S-M-I-S-J-A. They have some different Christmas traditions that some people might find interesting. So check that out. And Loma says retcon. I don't know what that means, R-E-T-C-O-N. But you can check this show live on Sundays on my YouTube channel, Mind Pirate. That's M-I-N-D-P-Y-R-A-T-E. I broadcast this live at 8 a.m. Pacific Standard Time. So come check me out. And if you like it, please subscribe. I'm still at 98. Oh, man. G-Wiz. Sky, anything that you would recommend we check out before next week? Not really. Okay. Yeah, fair enough. I think we should go back. George, same question. Anything we should check out before next week? No. Fair enough. Guys, listen, it's holidays. And there's going to be animals that won't be adopted during this time, because people won't be looking for your adoptions at this time, which means dogs will be in kennels and cats that could be adopted or friendlier won't have anyone to play with or humanize themselves to. And so if you are nearby an animal shelter and you have time over the holiday season, I'd recommend checking out volunteer work, see if you can walk some dogs and share some love. Money is always useful, but personal time with animals means more to an animal than dollars. I think if you can afford to give that time, it'd be really, really nice. Hey, buddy, I hear you, too. Also, this is for animals, too. Here's Vinny. Hey, so good. Such a nice cat. Larry, why don't you take us out? If you had anything else. I'm sure my own content can be found at digitalfreethought.com. Be sure to go there and click the blog button for a radio show, archives, atheist songs, and many articles on this subject. I have a book out on atheism called Atheism What's All About. It's available on Amazon. And you can find my YouTube channel by searching for Dowder 5 or Larry Rhodes. If you have any questions for the show, you can send them to askanatheistatknocksvilleatheist.org or let'schatseatgmail.com and we can answer them on future shows. If you're having trouble leaving religious beliefs behind and many people do, you can get help by going to recoveringfromreligion.org. I highly recommend it. Thank you for joining us on the Digital Freethought Radio Hour. Remember, you can find this show on Apple iTunes, PocketCast, Amazon, and Podcasts everywhere. Just search for Digital Freethought Radio Hour. If you're watching this on YouTube, be sure to like and subscribe. Thanks everybody for joining us. 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 will see you next week. Say bye everybody. Bye, man!