 to hello and welcome to the digital free thought radio hour on w o z o radio 103.9 l p f m here in Knoxville Tennessee for recording this on sunday morning june 4th 2023 i'm larry rhodes our dj doubter five and as usual we have our co-host wombat on the line with us hello wombat it's the wombat hey digital free thought radio hour is a talk radio show about atheism free thought rational thought humanism and the sciences and conversely we'll also talk about religion religious faiths god's holy books and superstition and if you think you're the only non-believer in your town well you're just not here in Knoxville in the middle of the bible belt i once thought i was the only non-believer in town but i started a group and now we have over a thousand of us just in the group we're the atheist society of Knoxville or ask and we'll tell you more about that after the mid-show break so be sure to stick around wombat what's your topic today atheism for profit and while you're only in it for the money or practice yeah the practice of non-belief for the money which is what the ultimate goal of all atheism right is to make it worth my money i'm not getting any uh let's see before we get into it let's have a look review session figure out how we've been doing i can tell you something for me uh so uh a couple weeks ago i had my mom fly over from virginia to stay with us for a bit or stay with me for a bit and we had a really good time i got an opportunity to cook a lot of different kinds of foods for uh one of the things that i find as a highlight is to show that i can cook and we made euros we made uh mexican food fully loaded nachos we made pizza from scratch from scratch like flour active yeast made the pride crust all that stuff johnny bread and a bunch of other island treats too um that was really fun and showing like hey like the culture that was instilled in me since i was a kid i still got it um i refined it i made my own little spins on it and i can share it back for like good feedback and that was fun gained a lot of weight mostly just water weight mostly water weight it was like about 10 pounds and i made an interesting promise to myself i have this idea of like when you make a promise to yourself um don't break it because those are like the most important ones for yourself control right and so i do this thing called a level eight promise where i'll like say the promise or i say promise like eight times in a row and i've never broken a level eight promise regardless of whatever it was it's just a realistic goal that's time-based and had it's achievable and this goal was when i until i get back to maintenance weight i'm not allowed to eat junk food which is pretty simple so like i had to lose about 10 pounds of water weight to get back to an idea where i can eat junk food but i can still order fruits meats vegetables for sure but i'm staying on the outside oh you're gonna order anything you just can't eat it yeah yeah yeah and i don't want to have that problem either so like my guy brings donuts to work i can't eat that because that would break the spirit of the level eight promise but i can still feed myself i can still shop so i would maintain that for like about a good week and a half and till this weekend where i said okay let's get rid of the last six pounds of water you know i got up ran a 10k got up went to the gym checked my weight again i was like one and a half pounds away so put on a sweatsuit knocked it out and i felt so good afterwards and uh go back to i think i went to what did i say i'd do first i wanted to rehydrate and then i went to the store and got like a thing and what was it chips and ksc and i eat the chips in the ksc and it's like this in my head of what these things would taste like it's so disappointing to what they actually taste like yeah if that makes any sense it's sort of like the entire lot time your your dream of going to i don't know like six flags and going on a roller coaster but the roller coaster is like 55 miles an hour when the highway trip to six flags was like 70 miles an hour 80 miles an hour you're like i don't understand why i work so hard for this but um i got it and at least now i'm not bound by maintaining the will power can i eat the junk food but it's not as motivating when you're eating you're like this is what it was all right that's how i feel it must be nice to want to lose some weight and say well just do a 10k and nice to have knees that work you know mine are giving me a lot of trouble these days yeah running is not good for you so i hate i hate doing the run to get rid of weight but it's like the most effective way for me to get right you know we went to the beach last weekend very nice and uh no it wasn't really oh no if you remember there was a hurricane or at least a tropical district the depression or whatever off these coast last weekend we got there on friday and it never really showed sun until until sunday monday was our last day because we're coming back on tuesday we actually got some sun on on uh tuesday and the kids were able to take advantage of it but walking on the beach even that is too much on my my knee so we drove down to the pier got up on the pier and listened to karaoke and had a drink or two so that was enjoyable good you know i see people who get the you know we've had we have people who were in rational east tennessee who got knee surgeries before and replaced both of them and i've seen even in the gym that i'm at people will go with like shots that like increase more of like the fluid stuff i want us to just go to the i want us to get to the point where it's oh my knee's bad cut off my leg give me one of those cool prosthetic legs and just let me like or i want to get to the point where i want to get to the point where we can cut off the leg and it grows back within a week no no i don't want some weird malformed leg that i have to like maintain for a week that's way too embarrassing okay a day a day okay a day's fine but i want one cyborg leg i want a cyborg body part i think they're the coolest things possible i was going on a tangent yeah anyway now tell me how you make all this money on atheism using atheism sure sure sure that's not a transition i was working for a transition lady we could have done better than that give me well i can't afford my cyborg leg until i get my money though and oh that's a good transition that's it it's what i'm here for it's uh so the idea is a while back ago i was talking to my friend about how i used to do talks on the nature of like free thinking at places and he made a comment that was essentially he's a christian but he made a comment that was like yeah i know there's a lot of money in atheism for those kinds of talks like how much do they charge why should you charge and i was like i didn't charge anything i just asked for my travel not my hotel to be covered basically that was it i drove out there myself and it didn't make me think and you didn't pass plate or anything i didn't pass the plate no i did not pass the plate no i didn't knock a book i didn't knock a program or anything like that all my stuff's on youtube for free but it did bring up an interesting idea that at least from some people from the christian point of view that atheism could simply just be a market for selling something for profit where christianity is like the truth and and you can in the gospel anyone who's an atheist is in it for the money because that's a provocative position to have to say oh this thing's not true and let me tell you why and if anyone listens to me it's like well now you got to buy my book now you got to pay tickets to my lecture hall and i don't blame them for thinking that because the only exposure they have to atheism is the highest you know most marketed tier because they're not paying attention to the more subtle versions which is like your neighborhood atheists or like just people in your immediate area they're seeing stuff on tv with guys in suits christopher hitchens roitchard dockins the guys who are like i'm now hosting a debate in a cathedral hall filled with people and there's professional lighting and i'm just i'm just this a guy with an english accent saying i would don't understand why you believe in this i don't understand why you believe here's my pre manufactured speech and here are my book series and here's my book world tour and when people say atheism they say my name and i'm closely related to this this new movement and when i die there'll be a new atheism for new potential for marketing and i get i what i basically say is i don't i don't i don't the smirks the attitude that atheism is for profit from a christian point of view because it does seem like it's something that you know the thing about it is they say they they say that uh you know what about all you you talk about the examples in christianity where the preachers are just making money hand over fist and they don't question that well the why he asked him about that says well they need the money to spread the word of you know the community you know you have to pay uh television fees you have to uh you know mailing fees and all this stuff but do they actually use it for that or do they buy yachts and and mansions and and cars when you look at their lifestyle they're not using it to spread the gospel they're using it to enrich themselves but christianity you know they just give it a slide but as soon as you talk about you know like me i've written a book and it's on amazon i make absolutely well let's say i don't know $20 a year off the sales of that book it's not written i would have done it for free matter of fact all the articles in my book are online for free right now right it's but i have been accused of using atheism to make money and i have been i have sure as soon as i mentioned the fact that i written a book you know they'll jump on that so oh that's a good way to make some money huh you know completely given their preachers a pass and and the evangelicals and television and evangelicals total pass but as soon as anybody else talks about atheism and and doing anything in it you know we're in there for the money it's we're we're being obtuse or what greedy or right um capitalistic rather than trying to spread uh information to counter their disinformation and i remember i i did start my um i used to do videos on talking to people with why they believe and why they believe it and they were really really cool i enjoyed it a lot the the only issue was uh i need to buy equipment in order to support that and i out of my own money got a table got multiple cameras got my uh mic setups and i had them because i always thought it would be good to have video audio recording equipment just in general and i could just put it like in a in a drawer or place for my closet so i thought of it as just like a fun investment and a way to apply a new hobby that i could develop but i also needed to get the software license as well i was in the i was in the hole for about maybe 700 bucks when by when i was all said and done and so um i set up a patreon to help me at least not get back the money from the equipment that i bought but at least the sometimes you have to buy tickets just to park at certain places like on the university campus to get a a pass just to have that would cost money and i was thinking you know like i'm fine with having equipment that i could own and use for other purposes so like i can use that for recording disc golf videos for friends all that stuff but these specific things that i need just to do these talks it'd be good to have support on that it would be good to have support on just you know these ticket purchases it's not like i'm making even when i got the patreon to support the the purchase of like the travel and and the parking passes um i was still in the hole like it wasn't that big of a deal in terms like the total cost of what it what it took with you know excluding all the labor that it took to like learn how to video edit and all that stuff right but i i would have done it again for free i would have done it anyway well it's more than just for free i mean we do this uh expending our own money so we do it in the whole you know i bought banners and buttons and cards and things you know to support my sharing of information about atheism uh as opposed to what i consider mis misinformation or mistruths right from the religious right in order to make the world a better place a more logical place a more rational place and and and for me just to show these dialogue systems aren't things that just exist in books that you have to pay for you could see it demonstrated and see a different take on it compared to how it's being done uh in different ways on the internet and if everybody shows how they're doing it someone could see that and realize oh i can take a little bit from this guy this guy this guy this guy come up with my own approach for how to talk to people who are stuck in their drama um i had a like i said it's something that i would done for free yes i did have a patreon yes i did have asked for hotel fees to be covered but atheism was never a venture for for for money for me and i know for a fact that like at any time i could say hey mr pastor i'm a famous youtube atheist whatever how about i convert and you can pay me money and we can show oh this guy is a scientist this guy said there was no god now he says there is and here's a little bit of money on the site like it would be way more profitable for me to to if i was in it solely for the profit to go back to christianity and claim that i was wrong in the entire time than to maintain the current course that i'm on and so yeah you can do a circuit on that oh yeah part of the plate and a fee and the thing is i know all the rambles i can i can preach like anybody else like if it really came down to it i could be a really good preacher right now just due to the fact that i i understand how the the the sermon works i understand how it's like broken up how it's phrased and how to do it perfectly you have a great rabble in your voice you could probably preach your impression if you had to as well you know yeah i could even get southern if it won't be oh no don't don't go back go back but i'm saying like uh we're not it's not so much for the profit it is for the purpose and if you were to ask me i have two purposes that are facing me right now i have one words okay looking i am profession professionally not believing in god seems absurd i agree like professionally writing a book about why you don't believe in a god seems weird right like what is this book about oh it's well it's about how i don't believe in something it's like why would you even write a book about that the alternative is writing a book convincing people that something that doesn't have a good basis for its existence does exist with all the confidence needed to to make them believe it too and in my head that is purporting a poor methodology for understanding what is true and what is not true which would be deliberately harmful for people who don't have a basis for understanding facts from from not facts and if you have this book that's out and you're making money off of it you are profiting off misinformation not only misinformation but poor critical thinking skills and indoctrinating people by confirming their personal biases based on their environment and upbringing towards you getting money from them and hopefully now they're being harmed by whatever impact they may have in society as long as they continue to echo chamber your well that also brings us to another topic if you want to get into it sure why do we do it if we don't do it for the money what do we do it why do you do it larry well i do it well big to combat the harm of religion and you say what what harm religion doesn't do any harm what yeah there's nothing wrong with religion i mean it's all over the world sure well religions have not only do they have disinformation as their base they have credibility as a as a a lauded capability or a lauded attribute you're being told that you should believe things just so that you believe them in other words on faith alone and with faith you can believe literally anything that's how all the different religions on earth maintain or continue they just you know the preachers tell their people just to believe don't worry about evidence well that's that's credibility and that's not good yeah most religions go ahead i wonder for a christian if it would be a good question to ask or any religious person what's something that i couldn't believe with faith like if they if i say listen tell me how you're why you believe this and they give me the process i'm like if i took that what could i not believe with that process right right and and i want to see how that particularly on faith is there anything that i couldn't hold on faith alone right the world's not faith isn't enough that i could imagine that being the follow-up answer but like then it's a rumor tool anyway larry sorry for interrupting you well that's okay well there's a whole list of things that there that is harm caused by religion most religions are uh it's chauvinistic they're male centered which is surprising because a lot of women support these ideals as well well that's because well that's because of the built-in autocracy you know male autocracy and religions are a thing pretty much every religion on earth you can't question you have to obey period and that's another harm that a religion brings to the world and that's another thing that we fight by by doing what we do unquestionable obedience is the problem it it leads to so many things including wars um programs exterminations what do you call it inquisitions you know unquestionable unquestioning the authority of the church right i am it also it so i will say this it harms women immediately and it also also harms men as well because when you take women out of the equation as far as like the availability as a think tank what they can contribute in terms of like their force their thought their critical thinking when you take them out of the equation and you only have men you have a society that's half as capable as what it could be if it was fully realized well that's a society that's ruled by testosterone which leads to its own problems too there's nothing to balance that out so when you say hey women can't be engineers women can't be doctors women can't be this that scientists etc philosophers etc and you only laud a very select group of men that generally all look the same right you you run into a scenario where you are maybe competing against other countries or cultures that have a more balanced uh uh repertoire of thinkers that are fully capable and you only have that one select group that you've always put on that pedestal whether the thinkers are not the right book to justify what you know what they want to do and it's it's not just christians that can do that it's it's basically most all religions i think it's just the human condition to want to pat ourselves on the back right truly on it honestly and if one of the things that i've appreciated about that spoken atheism that i'm doing and and why i do it is because i want to demonstrate that diverse perspectives are needed to improve thought processes and and it's not necessarily a commandment to adopt the thought process but it is good to be exposed to different ones and show that through the exposure of how different people think and different systems to analyze how they think you can come up with better systems on your own right to think as well and it sounds like such a basic thing but if you have dogma in your mind if you have a hardcore bias that is instilled with you that fundamentally changes how you see reality it inhibits you from appreciating the way how other people think or how other cultures behave or what other uh uh high points of thought came from certain people like if you say hey i'm i'm uh i'm a christian i don't have to listen to muslims muslim philosophy or like famous muslims it's like you might want to because they may have things to say that are right irregardless of whatever god they believe in yeah and and and if you only know christian or western ideals you're you're limiting what further growth you could have in this one lifetime yeah and that's just philosophy i mean we haven't even touched on science yet yeah scientific method i mean religion will once the suppressed science wherever it disagrees with the claims and in their holy book right going from the origin of the universe to evolution to um original sin which it's not a thing sure but i mean it affects us all the way down to climate change right right it makes things that are a reality uh a thing where you have to tiptoe around it politically to not offend somebody when it's like arbitrary objectively true objectively true uh and science is objectively true the method itself works um i have i it also has a a tendency to make conversations more vitriolic than they need to be like on the idea of climate change like we should be able to just say hey it's pretty clear we're having an impact and i think humanity i don't think the world the planet's gonna suddenly explode one day but i definitely do think that it'll be more inhospitable for billions and billions of human beings on this planet like if we if like i think we have a near unsustainable lifestyle that won't be able to support more humans and if we don't come up with a better way to change how we exist when everybody's operating on how we do in america we're humanity is going to be in danger not the planet the plan's going to be like oh that was a weird fever for a little bit be fine but humanity is gonna have a problem so it's in our best interest to look into this it's in our own best interest to look at this well why are you bringing this up don't you know that god made this well for us that progress exists for this don't you know that there's a plan it's like hey hey hey hey i don't i'm not trying to offend you by saying that your religion's wrong i'm trying to look at the objective reality like let's look at charts and science and try to figure out better ways not well we're following the evidence and so far religion has not brought any evidence they simply bring claims right with no supporting yeah with no supporting evidence right claims and offense right and morality arguments and and the people that they elect into positions to support you know laws that govern how we pollute the world that we live in will be those that hold those same indoctrinated viewpoints and so it's this really really terrible self-fulfilling prophecy when you have people who don't believe in the science deciding what kind of science can be done ow yeah it's like like congress of men deciding how women's bodies should be regulated absolutely listen it's like in olympics they have judges who never have done the thing that they're judging i don't know if you knew about this so like powerlifting in in in olympics the judges for powerlifting are not former power lifters they're just people wearing suits who are a third body organization who are following a criteria that they're looking at and trying to assess so like when a powerlifter lifts a weight over their head they're like oh well that's not really over their head because their elbows weren't locked out it's like i'm lifting this they will bring over my head like back that counts like uh not based on this rubric so no i'm like do you guys power lift do you know what it you know that you understand that might this only goes up so high look i can't i can't put it up any higher than my over my head like it's already over my head give me the gold medal there's there's so many controversies in how olympics runs and scores things because none of the judges are like former ice skaters or like former rock to avoid bias i've destroyed an illusion of mine i always thought they were no it's yeah blew my mind too and i just like why are the people who are judging it not participants in it and so like why are politicians who don't believe in science or don't understand the science the ones regulating science it's because they're being voted in by bodies of people who also don't agree and support the science and i'm saying that that is fundamentally a system that needs to be addressed because science is always in the interest of mankind and a system that doesn't concern itself with that is not in our best interest and we should be addressed as well i don't know if i'd go quite that far it's a science always in the interest of truth now sometimes it's in the advantage of humans it depends on how we use the the facts the evidence the truth that comes from science whether we can benefit humanity or not i mean science can develop a mustard gas which is not really in the in the benefit of humans but if we decide to use it against humans it's not a good thing but if we decide to you know use the knowledge to say we shouldn't use this on humans you know than that i would say that's in benefit of humans but it comes from more from morality which is another point atheism addresses the religious people will say that morality comes from their book you know you can't have morals unless it's in the bible but of course obedience is not morality you know if you got 10 rules being laid down or is in the bible 613 rules from uh leviticus and deuteronomy uh following those rules is not morality it's not objective real it's it's well not only that but some of them are downright bad rules right one of the rules is uh you know kill homosexuals that's that's not a good thing killing virgin uh non-virgins on their wedding night not a good thing not moral and there's no way to make it moral um the thing about it is if you follow all of the junctures that are in the bible you won't be able to stay out of jail very long because we have our own set of moralities we got from a secular secular society right which is in their best interest of society for now right like it's something in the system that can be improved upon which is absolutely better than what we have in the bible there is no perfect system at this point and we probably should take a break about this point let's do it you're on a roll airy find it this is the digital free thought radio hour on w o z o radio 103.9 l p f m here in Knoxville Tennessee we'll be right back after the short break welcome back to the second half of the digital free thought radio hour i'm doubter five and we're on w o z o radio 103.9 l p f m here in Knoxville Tennessee let's take just a moment to talk about the atheist society of Knoxville as k was founded in 2002 we are now in our 21st year have over a thousand members we have weekly in person meetings every Tuesday evening in Knoxville's old city at Barley's tap room in pizzeria look for us inside at the high top table or if it's outside i mean if it's pretty weather outside we'll be outside on the day we also have a Tuesday evening first Tuesday of every month ask meet up ask as a zoom meet up if you'd like to join us email us for details at askanatheist at Knoxvilleatheist.org or let's chat s e at gmail.com you can find us online on facebook.gofffacebook.com meetup.com or Knoxvilleatheist.org by the way if you don't live in Knoxville you should still go to meet up and do a search for an atheist group in your town don't find one aren't one right well I'm back where do you want to pick up I wanted to talk about how a religion can insert itself into conversations where it's not necessarily invited but has a much more vitriolic impact a distracting and vitriolic impact and I am a reminded of a conversation a heated debate that didn't need to be that heated in the disc golf community believe it or not because in disc golf there are there is a division where everybody can play it's called the MPO it stands for mixed professional open so if you're young if you're old if you're man if you're a woman if you're anywhere in between you can compete in this in this category and just see who the best is in this mixed category then they have that's MPO then they have MPO plus 40 so if you're if you want to play in the mix but you're older than 40 you can play in that and they have plus 50 plus 60 plus 80 etc so based on age brackets because some people who are younger can throw really hard like there's a there's a point where your your physical capability is just better makes sense but you're if you are 20 you can't compete in the MPO 40 is that makes sense you because you're blocked off on age they also have a separate division that is just for females so they have the mixed and then you have the female division the reason why they have the female division is because just in general women can't throw that hard compared to guys they the best drivers typically are 200 feet past some of the best women and so what they'll have is a female uh fpo course that is on the uh on a slight sometimes it'll be on a slightly different course where they have like the professional teas and the the fpo teas which are a little bit closer to the basket so they can have an easier time throwing to the basket and that way the numbers don't look that bad when the best female players and the best male players play on the same course um and it gets more people encouraged now then that's the nice thing because it gives people a place to see females play and that might help encourage more females to be able to play as well and and see oh okay this is kind of cool and their scores are are balanced out so that they're roughly around the same and females can have a place in the sport as well and if they want to they can play in the mixed as well so it's not like all females just playing the fpo they can also play mixed as well and and a lot too well how does the religion come in this is where the religion comes in it's a good point uh so the idea is there was some controversy because the disc golf association has said um there have recently been a influx of a small influx of transects or trans players male-born transition to female uh in the fpo division and they started to win tournaments and the females who were there the female-born ones were couldn't necessarily complain against it because they didn't want to have to deal with this social media onslaught of dealing with oh you're you're transphobic it was more of like what's the what is the spirit of this division what is it trying to protect and does the idea of having trans players in this division who are winning take away from what the idea of what this division was to begin with because they can drive really really far they won like the distance throwing champion is like but is that i'm not we're not saying you're not women we're just saying is that what the female fpo is for and instead of having like in my head a uh a rational conversation about what the spirit of the division was for and the idea that there is a mixed division for everybody and that maybe uh if you're trans you and you're not female-born it could be a better place for you to be an mpo where you can compete against high tiers and maybe we make a different category in the mpo or something like that um it became a very vitriolic religious-based conversation one where if you were even if you're on the side of i don't think trans are the best fit for fpo you you were you were on the same side as people who are like they're they are as they are akin to satan they are so and they don't understand that god had a plan and i god didn't make adam and even steve like or whatever it's just like these weird archetypical arguments from very ignorant religious people and i and it was very hard to to separate yourself from the idea of like listen there's a logical basis for what we're trying to say but i'm it's really unfortunate to be on the same side as these people as well because they're only making this conversation way worse and targeting people who just want to play disc golf like at the end of the day like this is a fun sport for everybody we're just trying to figure out a proper way to categorize the skill sets based on biology and can we like come up with a simple way of doing this objectively rather than making it personal or even dogmatically damning people's souls at the same time yeah no i i'm i'm in agreement there is a case to be made that um cisgendered females should appeal among themselves and and cisgendered males in the in there i'd simply because of the dynamics of the the physiology yeah like let's say that you're competing against a woman you've got longer you're a bigger person you've got longer arms you can generate more centripetal force and and it's all physics yeah you can when you let go of it it will travel farther than a person with shorter arms and and smaller muscles you know if there's there's a valid argument to be made calling somebody demonic is not helpful right it's just the function of that my body makes testosterone there is a biochemical advantage that i have that is that is such a good hormone that it's used as a drug for some people to get stronger my body naturally produces it my body doesn't produce what is it uh god ram the man now here's me with my biochemistry degree falling apart the female the female version testosterone estrogen there we go my body doesn't make as much estrogen it makes a substantially very very low amount and not only that but estrogen counteracts the effects of testosterone so if i have a body that's mostly making estrogen and very little testosterone from a game that's based on physicality game based on how far can you put power or how much power can you put into this disk when you release it and how fast can you throw it and how much force you can put into it a body that's running on estrogen is at a immediate this biochemical disadvantage than testosterone it's like someone took steroids before they threw a what we're all what we're trying to do is figure out what's fair in the spirit of competition right we can do we can do it in so many more productive ways that it's not demeaning to the people's gender identity like we do in very respectful ways but there i felt like there was never a a course or an avenue for that kind of conversation as soon as the religious right the the the dogmatic religious point of views entered into the conversation more or less took over because now the the people who were trans have dropped out out of fear for their lives there have been threats against their their life livelihoods people saying just really unfortunate just like very very genuinely motivated people saying absolutely ignorant vitriolic things against them personally saying like listen we're going to flood your instagrams we're going to track you down if you show up on course we're going to burn you down this is like why why i i was hoping you know to find that a community of people that just love playing outside can get along with each other because there's not even that much money in disc golf to be fighting over it in the first place that uh to just see this wave of ignorance just really really hurts the conversation when the objective scientific truth about it is good enough to just say like hey this is what it is let's just break it up like this and everybody go on and then fbos can have their things trans can have their things and then we still have the mixed division which is for everybody like let's just have it like that that would work just fine i don't know yep yeah i agree so religion is divisive who knew larry the idea though that you can make money off of atheism which we find to be a little uh it's true some people do make a profit off of it but i did find that in comparison making money off of atheism is nowhere near as bizarre as making money off of christianity and we know and we definitely know that's the more lucrative of the two and the idea that you can make money convincing people of something that doesn't let's be straightforward doesn't have any basis for existing is terrifying for me it's terrifying in the sense that you'll always have these two competing things i've always said this you said science isn't for in the interest of people it's in the interest of truth i agree truth though it's like brussel sprouts it's like just straight up raw brussel sprouts uh uh lies are like twizzlers and skittles they're delicious they look great they they they don't satiate you they keep asking you for more and more and more when you eat a skittle you're never like oh i'm so full you're like give me more skittles let me put a handful of those in my mouth right whereas they have no no nutrients really yeah if you only have them to eat you probably die the same thing with lies it's the same thing when i was on my weird uh promise diet sort of thing where i was just trying to get rid of the waterway like i work so hard for these junk foods that when i finally had a chance to taste them i'm like oh this is junk what am i wasting my time with the same thing with lies though if if a pastor can sell lies they can reproduce those far more easily than the truth in order to get truth like how we how we're trying to support people have to actually go out and do a job and come up with observations that are fact checked with other people and and are issuing out reports that then have to be translated for more layman to be able to appreciate and then it has to have a demonstrable impact on society where everybody can like agree oh this is a good thing and it doesn't have anything to do with god okay and and that takes a lot of work whereas a pastor could just be like but god loves you i can put that up on a billboard and i can get people to show up at sunday what's really funny is we have a couple of political parties in america right now that our main political parties one of them is using disinformation and lies to a much greater extent than the other one they're they're passing a q and on and all kinds of other money column conspiracy theories is truth right the evangelicals the religious have a choice they can back one party or the other guess which one they choose to back the one that is passing all these lies yeah and they're doing it in force and they're doing it seriously with serious consequences i mean they're the ones that are wholly behind the party that's telling all these lies and disinformation that but they also have the least to lose by going for that you see i don't understand what you mean can you elaborate good good point i find like if you were to look at the if you were to look at the demographics of evangelicals they don't produce evangelical christianity does not is not a it's not a production facility somewhere where they're relying on uh or or silicon chips to come in on time or bargain agreements that that come through overseas terrorist they sell this product they sell is misinformation so they have nothing to lose other than binding with the misinformation party ideology party because otherwise people will get smarter and they would lose their products so they have they and then they'd have to change so they literally could not support a truth party is what you're saying they can't support hey learn things because their whole thing is about just trust us and that's a very very different dynamic so like when they when i say they have nothing to lose it's i'm sitting on a pile of lies essentially and i don't have to work hard to produce this well of lies so i'm just going to look at see who supports my well of lies or can give me the mechanism to keep people's standard of evidence low enough to where i can continue to support my lies because i'm not i'm not deeply invested in this i'm just profiting for as long as this is possible also notice that it's the party of autocracy in and top down command leadership as far as it's it's almost the party is almost militaristic and they're a autocratic command and and follow um the the leader speaks and everybody falls in the line and shame they got the religion is the same way it's the point that i meant to make what it's a shame they got some of the worst leaders possible because you could use a structure like that towards some really good you can use a structure like that for good we're talking about well military uses it for good theoretically yeah absolutely but i was i was thinking like um if you had a stand-up model that was a stand-up model citizen who could control a party like that that could be used for such a great good um we but instead just due to how corrupt the nature of the party is and corrupt the nature of the system is only the most corrupt can get to the very very top of it and as a result when they become in charge of the entire country we fall into this we fall back right into this well of corruption where and you know it's corrupt in the sense of what is this party stand for religious respect and freedom it's like okay this leader doesn't even know how to hold a bible right side up you know like this leader is uh criminally charged for assaulting a woman you know like in the most in the most clear terms possible well well it wasn't that bad it was like oh no well it was really the victim's fault it's like why are you making excuses for this leader that you's trying to that's trying to run the party the party of morality he supports him a hundred percent right like doesn't matter what he does unfalsifiably too and it's the sort of thing that gives me a lot of dread in the uh but it's one of the senses of dread words i know i can vote but i know i'm in a state that doesn't necessarily uh will be swayed by the book that i have however i also know that it's trending in a good direction and i and my trend is more and more people are influxing their way into national tennessee yeah and the largest towns in tennessee one because of the low state tax and two because like the state taxes and other and states are just going way high up so we're getting more influx of different kinds of cultures more influx of different kinds of people from more liberal areas of the states coming into these more conservative areas and only so many people can fit in these large towns so they end up starting to spread out into the neighboring towns and jurisdictions and davison county where it should wear national is that has multiple millions of people whereas the town that i'm in is i'd be surprised if we had over 70 000 however most of the people that are living here are becoming are like scientists engineers uh we have like a new uh a battery plant facility for like tesla cars so it's like an oak ridge outside of national yeah yeah yeah it's just like oh the people here are becoming more like it's it's nice like the candor is nice and i you can feel it and see that there's like you look at the the gerrymandering that goes on and seeing like which are blue and which are red and it's spreading out over time and i find like that trend is good if it if the lines keep being redrawn that's that's that's its own problem but it is good to see that the rule areas that have a lot of sway are being impregnated by different kinds of points of views which is ultimately not a push towards the political doctrine that i would appreciate but if anything just the enrichment of culture that is necessary to keep us from holding on to these very dogmatic points of view it tends to be the case that when people are exposed to very different kinds of people and they understand how they work and have some empathy to understand who they are they don't demonize them as easily as their pastors say they should and they start to think oh i'm in a different kind of culture with different kinds of people let me let me vote and express myself in ways that is in solidarity with the fact that i'm not the only person or the person archetype of humanity that that should exist i'm not the chosen person in fact there's a diversity of life out there and i can make choices that are respectful for all of that yeah i'm getting back to the harms of religion per se rather than thought rather than politics i've always found that religion couldn't be good for your mental health if you think if you believe that you've got an omniscient ruler a judge of right and wrong that's watching your every thought and every action no matter how much privacy you have that can't be conducive to mental health it's more paranoia than anything indeed does this not define paranoia can i i was thinking about that for a while i think that it's only in the only in the case when it's incongruent with the reality that you're living in or can cause some sort of degree of stress that it could be considered an issue with your mental health like a mass delusion if it's if it if it's incongruence with the reality that you live in no just the fact that somebody that has total control over everything in the universe is watching your every thought nobody nobody else is involved he's just watching you every second of the day right sleep you know it's worse in santa claus is he can this particular judge can punish you forever yeah but this god won't punish so like my impression is most people who believe in god are really just believing in an aspect of themselves and when they feel that they're thinking about the stuff that they're doing they just atone that to god so in a weird way it's why do people get upset when you say i don't believe in god they're like why why are you getting angry at me if i say i don't believe in god is because they're personally offended because in their mind a part of them's god a part of them at like i don't think they think of it that much they don't consider that part of it if at all i think that the god is a separate entity consciously subconsciously i believe you're right but if you actually ask them about it they're going to tell you that the omniscient ruler of the universe is watching my every thought and judging right on every one of them yeah yeah yeah i think it's totally subconscious but i also think that it's tied to the ego as well it's god loves the music that i like god is willing to justify the sins when i choose to do the sins god is willing to forgive me god likes my family god likes my car god likes my home god likes my financial decisions like you're just giving an excuse for yourself to do the things that you're you like to do under the pretense that it's god and when someone says well i have a different god to believe in that personally fundamentally offends people why if you if you had a girlfriend that lived in canada that actually existed and she dyed her hair green and you told me my my my girlfriend who lives in canada has green hair i'd be like i don't believe that it's like well too bad for you because i know she's real like that's like it could be as real as you say hey ty i'm wearing suspenders i'm like well i don't believe you're wearing suspenders it's like well then you must be blind but if i said i don't think you're wearing suspenders right now later you're like i have deeply offended how dare you i'm gonna get my friends to get well i wouldn't be their place and offended if i told you that i was wearing suspenders and i wasn't if i was right right i had to defend the lie i was like well then then prove it to me prove to me you're wearing suspenders i don't have to prove it to you i just have to tell you and you have to believe it it's like i think the lady protests too much type of right right right right but i do think if if you take the idea that god is essentially just a character that someone made up that they closely identify with to the point where it overlaps with their identity then all these you know trespasses against their god makes sense about why they take it personally and so when we talk about like morality in the sense of like what's good what's not good it's always based on what's most comfortable to the person believing it and and it's and more of an argument of comfort rather than so like people who believe in god don't actually uh typically christianity don't typically read the bible and are following all 312 commandments right they're just living a lifestyle 613 gee whiz and are they're simply living a lifestyle that they can retroactively say well you know god let me do it and i feel good about it so therefore it must be okay that's an easy enough and i i feel like that mindset isn't necessarily a mental illness it's just a salve for not having to actually think about more complex or nuanced forms of morality and ethics it's a very bad starter pack for how to operate as an adult in a society with people but it's not necessarily a mental illness it's just a excuse to be lazy with your thought process that we should shed because with some very basic rationalizations you can immediately progress to a higher form of morality where it's not based on a dogma where you don't have to make many much more concessions concessions i'm not going around killing people i'm not going around robbing banks i understand the consequences of my actions that's all it requires for me to be a more moral person than someone who's just following their holy book and it didn't take a lifetime of studying stuff like that you know morality to me it comes from considering the impact of your actions on a fellow man where the immorality of the bible and christianity and other religions because is considering your the impact of your actions on a nebulous authoritarian creature a person a god you don't consider the male that mean your fellow man as right as much as you do how it will offend your god right it's back to this uh internal camera and monitor that you have in your head it does that and it also gives some sort of credence of all happened to you after you die which is also a fear and if you move to a more secular base of morality and haven't come to terms with death that could be people say well your mental illness is you think you're gonna die one day when as i know i'll live forever it's like that's just again arguments from comfort like yeah it could be uncomfortable to know that you will die but if you come to terms with it it's the impact isn't as great and you actually realize oh but what i want to live forever next to the right hand of god playing the harp all day or like worshiping all day is like i wouldn't want that either so like maybe death is actually not that bad and it gives value to the life that i have right now it hurt me after i'm dead like i'm not going to be like oh i'm dead oh that's not happening right well who was it it was uh mark twain said i was dead for billions of years before i was born and it didn't inconvenience me at all right and you can think of it as your body is essentially the way how i think that is my body is my legacy my body is a tool to craft my legacy and i want my legacy to have a positive impact on on the world and that is why i do talks that's why i've made the videos that's why i'm having these conversations with you i'm trying to put good out there so that other people can use that as a path to make their own good right and that's a good point when you get back to religion and and the harm if you talk about the world and the earth you know according to the religion it's gonna end and it's gonna end shortly we don't need to do anything to protect it you know we global warming doesn't matter jesus is coming next week another great harm of religion and we've got to abandon to be able to make the future of mankind better hmm right and your purpose exists with god it's like it takes the the most harmful thing anybody can do is to remove your ability to make your own purpose and and chart your own course for what though in your life right what a terrible thing to take away but you don't have it taken away from you that's the grand that's the grand truth it's never been taken away from you you can't make your own purpose you just have to be able to wake up to it that's it and another thing is well one final point uh religion doesn't always say that what does atheism got to give uh the world you know at least religion gives hope and i say there's nothing stopping you from hoping about an afterlife all these religions do is tell you that they're a different afterlife say every religion has a different afterlife nobody knows personally i would hope for an afterlife with no hell on it that would be my hope anyway go ahead and uh do you have any sites that you want us to visit the see your content yeah let's see uh i will check out joe mass pro which is a disc golf channel on youtube the reason why i recommend them is that they not only cover disc golf events but they also have very thoughtful conversations regarding states of players and laws associated with disc golf as a burgeoning you know uh sport to like an entertainment industry sort of a thing and it's very good to listen to well meaning people have a rational conversation about things that don't necessarily have a huge impact on people's lives like you know politics balls all that stuff but can have like a meaningful rational conversation based on based on you know like care empathy and science at the same time to without necessarily being overloaded by doctrine i think their coverage on that the trans uh incorporation into fpo and the recent barring of that has been very well done along with their other coverage as well so i would recommend that okay um if you're a member of clergy i always like to mention that if if you've come to see that the claims of religion are not justified and and you're losing your faith as it were and feel trapped in the pulpit there is help for you at the clergy project dot org that's clergy project dot org without the in front of it my content can be found at the at digital free thought dot com be sure to click on the blog button for a radio show archives atheist songs and many articles on the subject of atheism you can find my book atheism what's it all about on amazon my youtube channel handle is at doubter five 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 next wednesday night at seven o'clock on w o zio radio say bye everybody bye bye