 Hello and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio Hour and WOZO Radio 103.9 LPF. I'm here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We're recording this on Sunday morning, October 16th, 2022. I'm Larry Rhodes, our Daughter 5. And as usual, we have our co-host Wombat on the line with us. Hello Wombat. Isn't it amazing that we live in a universe where I'm the co-host to this show? Isn't that proof that God exists? Well, some God maybe. We don't want no witch. It's an evil God. Oh no. And today's guests are Dread Pirate Higgs from Western Canada. Hello. And John Richards from England. Welcome. Welcome. How the devil are you? Doing well. Thank you. Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism and the sciences. And conversely, we'll also talk about religion, religious faith, God's holy books and superstition. And if you get the feeling that you're the only non-believer in your town, well, you're just not, especially if you live in Knoxville. Here in Knoxville, in the middle of the Bible Belt, we have a group of over a thousand of us. It's called the Atheist Society of Knoxville or ASK. And we'll tell you more about that group after the mid-show break. Well, Matt, what's our topic today? Healing by faith alone. And it's going to be an impressive topic today. One where we get a lot of stuff off of our chests. But what about stuff in our stomach? Maybe we can fill up on some noodley goodness and who better to lead us on a weekly invocation by our own Dread Pirate Higgs. Indeed. I'm called to invoke the power of the true creator of the universe, the drunken tolerator of all lesser and more recent gods, the maintainer of gravity here on earth. May the great flying spaghetti monster rouse himself from his stupor and let his noodley appendages ground each of us in our seats. Amen. Guys, I wanted to catch up. Sorry for the late start. Some background talk. I think I mistook which hour we started that, but I think we're anticipating a daylight savings time change. So maybe I just got a little too excited for that. But guys, I do want to catch up on you. I want to catch up on you here now. Dread, how you been? Oh, not too bad. I've been busy working. So that's why I wasn't able to make it last week. I was out on a set in a fairly remote area. So, yeah, and I was out of data as it turned out. You were on a what? I was on a set. Oh, a movie, a film set. Okay, okay. But you said you were on a blank data on a data? I was out of data. Out of data on my phone. Okay, okay, okay. I thought you said you're on a date and Well, my wife probably wouldn't appreciate that. But a couple of a couple of interesting news items from my neck of the woods. Sure. I did. You know, I'd gotten an FY request. I think I had mentioned from ICBC our insurance corporation the one I'm having this battle with. They sent 691 pages of fully redacted emails. And so I, I sent a complaint to the office of the information information, freedom of information officer here in BC, and they've decided to take it on. And so nice, Dave. Yeah, so they've demanded ICBC provide the unsevered documents in full within 15 days. So it's already coming up now. Good. And then they'll have a an officer assigned to it to go through those documents and see what can be provided because certainly the full redaction of every email seems a little excessive. Certainly is not in the spirit of freedom of information. Or in the, or in the spirit of saving black ink, I would have thought. There you go. Yeah, it takes up a lot of toner. And also on the on the other front with my security license. I've heard back from the office of the ombudsman, who is reviewing my file to hopefully come to it because they have the power to recommend that it is not in the mandate of any government agency to review the veracity of a person's religious belief. And this is of course already demonstrated another jurisdiction. So it's just a matter of bringing BC up to speed. So if so it's actually working on two fronts here if I can get the ombudsman to make the recommendation to the ministry of justice, and get my security license with my tricorn on, then it just becomes a simple matter of it trend, you know, moving over to ICBC to do the same thing. So yeah, so that's what I'm up to. Yeah, I can't tell you how deeply I admire the work that you put in in my head. It's, it's a, it's an evil in an atheist secular term, it's an evil when, you know, dogma like this spreads without any sort of resistance or question to it. Yeah. And my head it's like, it's not the people who perpetrate the dogma that should be at fault it's the ones who know it's bad, but don't say anything. That's what allows the culture to change because it only takes one crazy person to change. I mean, for a bunch of quiet listeners to change a culture. But for you to stand up and make a voice about this is is what I hope more people would take example from we need more leaders. I appreciate that. And I can't tell you how many times I, I just spare over this battle I've been fighting since 2016. And, you know, almost entirely on my own. Yeah. Yes, it's and so thank you I really appreciate the kind words. I really don't want to make you feel like you are on your own you're definitely doing most of the legwork but you definitely have our support and yeah yeah. You are the spokesman for the silent majority. And maybe we can talk more about that despair because it is something that you can feel especially when you talk to like people who are like so deep in their indoctrination, particularly when it comes to like things that you just know aren't true that you can demonstrate are true but they want to believe it's true and are making concessions to believe that but before we get into it. John Richards, I want to know about you and your quest overseas. When will that tugboat make it to the other side of the screen. What is going on with a king of England tell me everything that you know we'll talk about it maybe more today. Well, I don't know how political you want to get but we've got a, we've got a puppet for a prime minister at the moment. The country is being country is being run run by the newly appointed and I mean newly yesterday, Chancellor of the Exchequer. The likelihood is that we'll have yet another prime minister in a very short time. Honestly, but I wanted to say that I'm never out of data, because my contract is unlimited. However, this doesn't mean unlimited dates, unfortunately. As. Okay. You got to separate the two you see there's there's three. There's data there's date and there's like going out with people and then there's also calendar. So it's this. It's a weird cinnamon what are you going to do if you don't like to get out fixed. True. Anyway, way to tell you what to tell me what I personally have been up to. Last night, we had a very good free thought hour. And it wasn't. It was only because our guest didn't turn up. She phoned in sick poor lady she's got upper respiratory infection she can't speak at the moment so that did with her prospects of being our guest. So to see her and I flew by the seat of our pants and address some of the misconceptions that people have with the evolution. It was fun. You watch it. Okay, absolutely. Let's get this on. Let's get on the show. I'm actually going to check that out because I was talking about that pollution earlier this week, Larry. Well, I mentioned the fact that the only the previous Sunday we had you and I had talked about idiotic design, which was, which was very relevant. Very cool. So it could be like a follow up to the show. Awesome. Awesome. Larry, give me an update on what you're doing. Are you trolling on the internet right now? Tell me what's going on. No, within reason came up to this Sheila and I yesterday. And we went out to lunch and it was all good and she visited for a while. And I thought she was going to join us on the show today. But she's not here and maybe she got caught in the time change or something to some texting her to say, Hey, we're on. Sure, sure, sure, sure. How you been? Oh, fine. Morning live work, work day, play games in the evening. And I didn't ride my motorcycle or anything this week. So. Motorcycling, not that much going on just just the life of a of a wonderful retiree having fun and work at the same time. Great. So I was working in my job speaking to work and I was working my job. I've worked with a lot of scientists. One in particular I know knows that I'm an atheist and that he's a Christian. And we were talking about he wanted to see a world map because he wanted to know where the family is from and I sold I have some family from St. Thomas is like, Where's that Bahamas? I'm like, No, it's a little more south. And I pulled up a picture of the globe. And he's like, Oh, look at that. That's so cool. And you said your family came from here and here I can tell because the facial features are similar to like these people who I've seen in like Africa and maybe even a little bit in India. And I was like, Oh, that's cool. And I'm and I'm my head. I'm like, Where's this going? But in his head, he's like, I just wanted to explain like, you know, when the reason why people share family similar facial structures and skin color is larger just geographical because you started out with human beings in Africa they spread out. And the closer they stayed at the equator, the more their skin maintained melanin. And I was like, Oh, this is really fancy for a Christian and tell me this. I already knew it. But like, too, I just I'm just waiting for like the balls to drop because like you guys know what I'm talking about every moment. And so he's just like, you know, the humans spread out. And the ones who are on the North they evolutionarily stayed I'm like, Oh, so you believe in evolution. It's like, Yeah, of course I do. Of course I do. I'm a scientist. And he's like, Okay, he is also a Christian to like you believe humans evolved. He's like, Yes, of course. And I'm like from a from a non human species. And he's like, Yes, of course. And I'm like, This is very interesting. And he's leaving showing me like, you know, I even think tectonic plates are a thing like look at India and how it shaped. And then look at like Africa and you can see how they like originally used to be together. You can see the tectonic plates, you can see them on a satellite. He's looks like, Okay, so you think tectonic plates are a thing of human evolution. The age of the earth is old. Yeah, and the age of the earth isn't like under 10,000 years. I'm like, Oh, this is very interesting because a lot of Christians, I said this, a lot of Christians don't believe that. And he's like, Well, listen, it directly contradicts the Bible. Correct. Correct. Correct. Right. I asked, I told him a lot of Christians don't believe he's like, Well, you know, a lot of Christians say a lot of different things, but I will never let my religious beliefs interfere with reality, because I see reality as more important. And I'm like, so even if the Bible said that Adam and Eve were the first two people, and that, and that doesn't comply to the, the, the scientific understanding of like how, you know, humans evolved in Africa and then went through, you know, different cultures and different geographic locations. Like you're fine with that contrasting is like, Yeah, of course, that's definitely contrast. I'm like, In which case the Bible would be wrong. He's like, Yeah, the Bible is wrong there. I'm like, Well, then, why do you believe in a God, right? Particularly that religion. Right, right, right. Go ahead, Larry, go ahead. Well, I was saying, he says, he says that my religion is one thing of reality, something else. Right then, he just got through saying that his religion is not based on reality. It's not based on reality, right. But he's not making the connection. Oh, there's a minefield. There's a minefield. There's a minefield. That's a pretty serious sign of cognitive dissonance. Yes. Essentially what we're talking about here is cognitive dissonance. And of course, you know, I love poking at that. I shouldn't have like, you know, for Friday, you're a Pokemon. I want to say, can I have it in writing that your religion is unreal? Very good. Very good. Yeah. May I quote you on that? Yes. So basically, I thought I had like a perfect example of like a guy who just needed like two seconds to maybe a minute to think about everything he just said to realize maybe I don't have as much of a good reason to believe in this God. So I'm like, why do you believe in a God? I just want to at least know I know which God he's talking about. But why do you believe in a God open topic? I like to when I do these questionings, I don't like to go through a flow chart. I really want the person to expound on the belief and give me like their best reasoning without their own words and their own words. So why do you believe in a God? And it started with, that's such a great question, Ty. Listen, this is really important to me. I had so many different experiences that led to this. And I'm like, okay, so personal experiences. That's great. Tell me about like the best one. He's like, I have the best one for you. Listen. I had a friend and he's Indian. I had a friend and I bring that up because culturally they are a lot of Hindus. Is he Indian Indian or red Indian? I don't know how to respond to that, but he's from India. And he said, listen, I had a friend who brought me to a church and the for the first time. And what was amazing was I was in the in the pews and the pastor comes up on the pews and he looks around and guess what he did. He looks straight at me and he said, I know what your name is. And he knew my name. And I couldn't believe it. And I'm like, and then what me, I'm like, and then was like, well, no, I'm just saying that's one of the experiences I had. And I'm like, how did you go from that to a God exists? In my mouth and my head, I exclaimed that out. And I apologize probably now retroactively because I realized that could have like started a series of events where like, my volume started going up. But I was just so shocked that this man who was a scientist, a PhD fell for essentially just a, you know, what could have essentially just been a parlor trick. Yeah, it's a peer pop off trick, right? But yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just like, oh, pointed out a guy knows his name. It's like, you went from that to a God exists. Like, well, how did he know my name? He knew where I work. I didn't want to go into that. I didn't want to go into that. Afterwards, he's like, I saw this man do something also incredible. It's like, I was trying to explain to him like maybe he was a time traveler, maybe he had when he was a sorcerer, maybe he was a telepath. Like, why did you jump to God in which in my head is far more incredible than a guy who has a time machine or read people's minds. That would be natural. Right, or an alien like you went to the most extreme possible case, a God existing. And as that as your answer like how did you not know is any of these things or just a trick that you fell for it like a little electronic device is like listen, I'll tell you why because I saw the most incredible thing happen. During that same presentation, he brought up a person who was sick. And he touched that person. And let me tell you something this he said, this person was seen by five doctors, five doctors who all said the same thing this person couldn't be healed. He touched his person and he healed that person in the name of Jesus. And that's why that's one of the reasons why I believe. And in my head, I'm just, I'm like, why do why do why do science, especially scientists of people fall for stuff like this. And I want to talk about faith healing and personal experiences today. And why that could be so motivating for someone to believe in something they already potentially want to be true. Larry, what do you think. When people bring that to me. I've got like I've got a friend who I've got two or three friends that I had the same, pretty much same conversation with them. And I said what convinced you that God is real. Oh, I had, I had this intentional cancer and, and, you know, after I prayed it went away. And I keep wanting to scream at him like you did your friend, but this different note. Why did you have intentional cancer of God loves you, and looking out for you and trying to protect you why did you, what do you have cancer in the first place where was God when you were getting cancer. You know, but nobody seems to consider that. There's a darker turn to that too, in that, why did you get healed. Why did God choose you to be healed of cancer and what about the people who do believe in God who weren't healed. Right. Or the guy all the time, who could have been saved or would change their mind if they were miraculously healed, but just were died anyway. Yeah, that's a familiar thing in the aftermath of plane crashes, where, you know, the survivors in, you know, and otherwise deadly air crash are praising God. Say God saved me for some special purpose. Right. And what kills me is how they blame the victim so many times you were talking about, why did you get healed when this other person didn't get healed. Well, I must have prayed more. I must have been more pious. I want to church more. So they're putting the blame for it on the victim. Exactly who died from it. Right. And the, and it's just a sad thing because the people who died from things like this, playing crashes or cancer can't speak for themselves. And so it only bolsters the narrative of the ones who survived who do say, well, God saved me. You know, it's weird. It's the boxer effect. If you guys haven't noticed it whenever there's two men boxing and they both have like Jesus crosses tattooed on their arm, right. They got crosses and the beads and everything like that. One knocks out the other one viciously. And then they go and interview is like, what would you like to say? I just want to thank God for this victory. I just really want to thank him. It's like, yeah, but like if the other guy won and he knocked you out, he'd be doing the same thing too. A Christian got knocked out at the end of the day. Like what makes what makes you and what no one ever blames God in their, in their consultory interviews. So it just seems like, what's going on there? What's going on there? Richard, do you want to weigh in on this? Yeah, sure. Well, I wanted to because what what you've reported there that the man having his names recognized the other man, the woman having her broken leg or bent leg straight into whatever it was. Those are examples of anecdotes. One of my, one of my contacts, I like to call her a friend is Professor Sophie Scott, who's just been given the CBE by, I think the new king. And she, we saw a video on must have been Twitter of a pair of parrots because she's, she's in, she's the lead of the Department of Neuroscience at University College London. We saw this video on, on Twitter that has got a pair of parrots and they're, they're talking parrots and they've learned to insult people. People go by and they get called names by these parrots, but the clincher is the parrots then laugh together. It looks, it looks very realistic as though they, they are behaving intelligently. But of course, that's just behavior that they've copied. They've seen us insulting people and laughing together, and they've picked up on it. So I showed this to Professor Sophie Scott. And she said, that's a nice story. And I could tell from the way she'd written it, that the accent was on the story. It's not evidence. It's not evidence. Yeah, exactly. Yes, exactly. Go ahead, Larry. I was talking about your scientific friend. If he had, if he had seen that type of thing at a magician magician show. Yes, he's gone into a venue where there was a magician on stage and he was doing all kinds of miraculous stuff. He would think it was a trick, but you put the same trick in a church and person is just blown away by the power of God. They're willing to suspend this because they want what the pastor states to be true. It's, it's also a crowd thing, you know, when the, when the Like an effervescence, right? Yeah. Yeah. I want to, I want to highlight, oh, go ahead, Dred. Well, I was just going to say that not all people are necessarily taken in by the faith aspect of magical healing. My dad, for instance, is an atheist, you know, pretty staunch about it. Nevertheless, he takes apple cider vinegar every morning, because he thinks it has this special property that, you know, it's a cure all. And again, it's really it's just magical thinking. And you know, I've sat down and we've done, you know, the Socratic examination thing. And he comes to the realization that it's probably all in his head. But he still does it. Well, maybe he likes it. I don't know. There's some comfort. Maybe he's a vinaigrolic. Is that the right way to say it? A Cedaholic. Maybe an alcoholic. Yeah, maybe you don't see any elephants around me now. I'm going to have to bring that up. I'm going to say you're a vinaigroolic. There you go. There you go. I just traded one poison for another. Are you sure it's vinegar in that bottle and not the predecessor? Okay. I wanted to make a point because Larry, and both dread, you were saying like a magic trick is, is just when it's put into a church setting, people are more willing to believe it. But the weird thing about a magic trick is that it's designed such that the people who see the trick, when they explain what happened, it's never how it happened. The narrative of explaining a magic trick from someone who doesn't know the mechanics behind it is always far more fantastical than the actual practice of doing the trick. For example, I saw a guy shuffle a card, shuffle a whole deck of cards, shuffled it again, cut the deck, showed me like all the cars were randomly displayed, shuffled it one more time. And then from the top, he pulled out four aces. I don't know how he did that. That was amazing. Like that is not what that guy did. That guy probably did a very sophisticated maneuver of card trickery and sleight of hand that you just didn't catch. That's far more boring once you know how the trick is actually done. But in retelling the narrative, it's far more fantastic because it makes this guy seem like he's supernatural or has some capability of controlling probability. That is inherently what a trick is. It's when you can enjoy it for a piece of entertainment. It's fantastic. But when you take it from a magical setting, what you do in your head is like, these are just card tricks to a church setting where it's this is actually things that happen. And we all in this group believe that this is happening and this is reality. And this actually does exist, but it's the same clever sleight of hand or sleight of words. That is now in my head a dishonest act, but it could be done genuinely by people who. Who genuinely believe it or who think they're doing a good thing by purporting this narrative dread. What do you think? I was going to say that it's interesting in some cases where a person's been shown a magic trick that they will not believe the person who did it, that it was a trick. They'll say, no, it can't be a trick. You know, that's magic. That's real magic. And they will, they will just not let it go. They will not allow themselves to feel like they've been deceived. You know what I mean? They will say, you know, no, you just did real magic trick. You know, you just did real magic. You're lying to me by saying it's a trick. Sure. Like I really want to believe in magic. Yeah. They want to believe in magic. They want to believe. And that's such a good point because I did bring this up to my friend and I said, listen, if there was a sorcerer and we brought you to him and like an audience and he knew who your name was. And he said, I know what your name is. I know what your profession is. You can interview me afterwards. I'll happily talk to you. I figured out all these things about you, your birthday, everything that I couldn't have possibly known otherwise using sorcery. I'm a sorcerer. I would say, I asked him, would you believe in sorcery then? And he said, no. And I was like, okay, that's interesting. What if. And previously he, the pastor did a faith healing event and that really impressed him. I said, what if we had, we brought back another pastor who believed in Vishnu or, or, or Buddha or some or a law and said, listen, I'm going to take this guy who has half an arm. I'm going to touch them and then it's almost going to grow back. And he does that. And we see that and we can interview them and hold them afterwards. Would you believe in those other guys? He's like, no, no, no, Ty. No, this is, you're not understanding. And then he tried to repeat his pastor story to me again. This is like, I don't want to hear. I understand the mechanics. I'm trying to. And that doesn't even mention the leap of logic. Right. Right. It's one thing to say, okay, this person miraculously or magically or slightly handily changed this person's leg. Yes. And then automatically they take the leap to, it was a God. Right. It was another leap to, it was this particular God. And they don't recognize that there's any leap in there at all. We really need to take a break. Station identification, but go ahead. For that reason, when, when talking about God's to beat believers, I always use a word, you're in front. I would say your God. To make the point that there's other ones. You know, good point. Right. So stay tuned for the second half of the digital free thought radio hour. We're on W ozio radio 103.9 LPF. I'm here in Knoxville, Tennessee. And we'll be where Tennessee just beat Alabama, by the way, for a first time in a couple of decades. We'll be right back after this short break. Had to throw that in there. Welcome back to the second half of the digital free thought radio hour. I'm doubter five and we're on W ozio radio 103.9 LPF. I'm here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Let's take a moment to talk about the atheist society of Knoxville. ASK was founded in 2002. We're in our 20th year and have over 1000 members. We have weekly in person meetings every Tuesday night or evening at Knoxville's whole city at Barley's tap room in pizzeria. We also have weekly zoom meetings on Tuesday evening to start about six o'clock. The ones that Barley's the in person meeting starts around 530. So if you'd like to join us seem just come on down to Barley's and join us or if you'd like to join the zoom meeting. Email us at us at X X ask an atheist at Knoxville atheist or let's chat essay at gmail.com. By the way, if you don't live in Knox where you should still go to meet up and search for an atheist group in your town. Don't find one. Start one. We're going to pick up. I want to get back to this point of my Christian scientist friend who is both a scientist and a Christian has this a MACA cognitive dissonance and we're talking about why he believed in God and he said it was because I went to a place where a pastor knew my name without me ever telling him. And he did some faith healing. And I said, okay, well, I think we can talk about the the two combined because that's largely just a personal experience that you had that was very vivid for you. And I said, what if we brought you to a sorcerer who knew your name and could heal people grow back and arm from the elbow that we can chop it off and he could touch person and grows back in. Would you believe in sources and he's like, no, no, no, because I know that's just a trick. I'm like, okay, that's interesting. What if we had a Muslim or Islam representative who touched a person and grew back his arm is like, Ty, I'm not going to believe it if it's a person who represents Islam or Buddhism or anything like that. And I said, well, what if there's another Christian? What if we've got another Christian there? It was like, no, because I don't care about the pastor. I care about Jesus Christ and I only care if people are doing it for in the name of Jesus Christ. So I said, okay, fine. What if we got back with we just I brought back a guy who claimed to be Jesus Christ and we can interview him afterwards and we can hold them and we can touch him and we cut off a person's arm and he can be like, I'm Jesus Christ. I'm going to touch this guy and the arm miraculously grows back in front of our eyes and he says he's Jesus and he's willing to talk to us afterwards. Would you believe it? Would you believe that guy was at least Jesus Christ then? He's like, no, of course I wouldn't. I'm like, that's very bizarre. So then what makes you believe that Jesus ever healed anybody? He's like, because it was in the Bible. I was like, so because someone said it in the Bible, you believe it. But if we have the opportunity to actually bring someone from the Bible here to the present and you can talk to them, touch them, hold them and see the things for yourself, the claims that were made in the Bible, you can see it for yourself and test it and interview afterwards. You wouldn't believe it then. It's like, no. I'm like, then why do you believe it when it's in the Bible? And I think that was largely when the conversation started going back into the. I can imagine because weren't you saying he was at the same time saying, well, the Bible is wrong about this and I'm wrong about that. How do you figure out which is which? When you have a book that you already know can be wrong about certain things. Why do you believe it on other claims? Let's test to know which one is true or not. That's the test. I wanted to bring up a little more here. I posted this in chat. A little more said it's easy to reverse that healing story. My friend went to five faith healers who said they couldn't. They couldn't be healed and then went to an oncologist. Yeah. Was subsequently healed. Exactly. Yeah. Also, John Richard's going ahead. So I'd like to ask your friend what his criteria are. How does he know what is a reliable source of information if his source of information is unreliable. He's recognized that his Bible doesn't work. So. And you know, it's a sort of thing where when you know you have a Christian who feels like they're on the ropes and they start doing the word soup. I'm just going to keep saying things. Yeah. Because it doesn't have to make sense because most people never correct me when I talk about God in this way. So if as long as I just keep talking, I'm good. I hate when I have to sit through that, especially when I'm not doing it in an adversarial sense. I'm having this conversation and their benefit to try to make them realize that there are standards for believing things. And it's, if it's in your interest to believe in this true thing that you think is the most important, true thing in your life, that you should also hold it to the same criteria that you hold to anything else. And if you don't hold it, you might potentially lead yourself on the path where you're believing in something that you think is true. That may not actually be true. And I'm not the one saying that it's not true. I'm the one saying you're not having a standard that's equivalent between the things that we agree are scientifically testable to come to a certain conclusion, like the color of people's skin and why they have more melanin than others or the movement of tectonic plates in the continents. Or how humans evolved from a non-human species. Each time I was like, how do you know that? Well, scientific evidence. Well, how do you know about scientific evidence? How do you know scientific evidence? Well, then what about the Bible? Well, once upon a time, my friend took me to a cool place and I saw, and listen, Ty, listen, I know you're not going to believe this, but I was like, why do you have a different standard? That's the most important thing that you believe in. Come on. And so, you know, I was really, really sad by that. And then listen, I keep remembering, oh, but we got things to talk about, but listen, the one of the things that really irked me was the fact that he said, listen, I believe in the faith healing because he brought up a person who five doctors could not resolve this, this crooked. Well, how does he know that? Did he interview the doctors? Yes. No, no. He did. He believed it. The pastor told him that. Right. But listen. When someone says, when someone says, you know how the Bible is true because you have four different people talking about the same story. And like in my head, that's just one big, that's just one big claim. And all they did was fracture it. Like some of those people didn't, couldn't even spell as well as they were. We're not literate. All right. Anyway, not to get too much. Not to get too much. I've been doing some, as you know, I like doing taking down of Frank Turak. I've been doing Frank Turak debunking. And one recently dealt with that very subject. How can you justify believing in the Gospels? And he said that if we expect a historical document to be reliable, it needs to accurately describe the details of the surrounding culture, people, places and public practices. So I did a takedown of them and pointed out that this could also apply to Spider-Man. Yes. And I think that's one of the, the, the Dickens story of great expectations. Because they've all got well described locations in there, but it's no evidence for any event. Right. And the thing is just because you have a book that four people agree on, if you have four people that agree something, even in the same room, doesn't make it a fact that's not a good standard to determine if true things are true or things are actually false. Just having four people agree on it or five people agree on it. And he looked me in the eye and he's just like, but five doctors all said, it's like, even if that was true, even if it was true that five doctors agree that this lady's legs were crooked and couldn't be healed by any sort of doctors. What? A doctor of English? A doctor of Scientology? What, you know? Yeah. It's like five religious studies. There have been five doctors of religious studies. The story has shown us that five people can be wrong about something all the time, including evolution. How many people were argumentative against Charles Darwin when he was like, I actually think humans are just a product of evolution like cows or birds or pigeons or any other animal species. How many doctors disagreed that you shouldn't wash your hands when you try to give birth to people because germs aren't a real thing because they didn't understand germ theory back in the day. And it goes into even more harmful beliefs where it's like, black people don't feel as much pain because their skin is thicker. Like we've had, we've only recently gone over that from like the 1960s. Like there's, there, you can be a doctor and be wrong. And just because you're around other wrong doctors doesn't make your wrong opinions right. And at that point, I think that was like more or less the end of the argument. John Rich is what you think. Well, on the subject of Darwin, at that time, about 160 or 165 years ago, his ideas, his understanding of evolution by natural selection, were quickly adopted, at least in this country. That's so great. It was, it was only in 1910 America or thereabouts that the evangelicals got hold of it and started to bring up this anti-evolution movement. Right, right, right. Listen, I applaud England for a lot of things. And so especially their use of max. Yeah, yeah, exactly. America's products are so great, aren't they? But I'm also saying like, you can easily find a hundred, 400 doctors in America who would all disagree that evolution is an actual thing. Science teachers included. Yeah, that doesn't make it wrong. It's not an argument by ad popularum is a higher, it's a higher standard of argument and methodology that we apply, you know, determining things in reality for it. Not just, well, a group of people disagree that it's wrong, therefore it's not true. I wish my friend would think about these things. Go ahead, John Richards. How many people's opinions make a fact? How many people's opinions make a fact? How many people doesn't take to say the same story over and over again to make an effect? The answer is an infinite number. Yeah. Go on it, Larry. No, I just wanted to thank you for taking the time to sit down and discuss all this with him. And I know how well you do it with your street epistemology or scientific, socratic examination. I appreciate it. Anyway, good on you, mate, as it were. I understand we have some listener comments you want to get to before the end of the show. Good point. We'll start with on the show. Dred, what do you got? Well, I was just going to say there's a very good interview with Peter Bogosian. He is interviewed on Lawrence Krause's podcast. So it's definitely something worth checking out. And it was just this week that he did it. It's his origins, origins podcast. That's the one with Lawrence Krause and he does a, an hour and a half with Peter Bogosian. Yeah. And you can hear it for free, but you've got to pay to see it. Right. So we got a listener comment from our Reddit chat. That's open. Thank you guys so much for leaving comments. Anonymous says believers and other gods say the same thing. And they are, and they say, you're wrong. You can't both be right. But you can both be wrong. And let me just reread that. So believers and other gods say the same thing and say that you're wrong, but you can't both be right, but you can both be wrong. So if you had Hindus who say, listen, my pastor said this and that's why your God, your Christian Jesus representative is wrong. Like you can't both be right. So how can I as the outsider figure out which one of you is right? Because we could live in a world where both of you are incorrect. Right. Let's see. Geofagus, a regular commenter on the show says, how do you get to God from that telepathy? Maybe, but even if it really happened, I don't see the God connection. Right. Right. You can have radio waves. Right. Did you, did you say the name Geofagus? Yes. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That's an awesome name. Okay. Okay. A crew one says possibly telepathy, but I don't see any theological reason. A lot of the comments seem to be based on this. And the reason why I bring that up is. You could talk to you. That pastor could have been a time traveler. He could have been a magical man. He could have been from the future. He could have been a source alien. He could have been using high tech technology. He could have been an inventor in his room, but figure out some way to read minds over, over in his basement and never. He didn't want to pop off in disguise. Of course. And he could have just been a guy trying to fool you with some clever, you know, right? All of those cases, the time traveler, the sorcerer, the guy who's just trying to trick you, the magical inventor, the high tech guy, all of those people are far more likely because they they are far more of a mundane explanation than a God existing, which is natural. Yeah. Right. Which is without a doubt the most complex. Card you could play in terms of trying to solve a mystery. And when my head, it's always extraordinary expectations required or. What's the dread? You want to help me out here? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Right. And mundane claims. Require Monday. So like in my head, I raised my, I raised my expectations for evidence based on how mundane or extraordinary the claim is. And if someone says it's just a guy trying to trick you with some radio earways, I could believe that because I know radio earways exist and people try to check you. You don't have to like reinvent the wheel. But if you told me that I got a time traveler was it was it? My expectations are higher, but at least, you know, show me that time travel is a thing and I might come to terms with you believing that it's just a piece of science at the end of the day. And we'd adopt it as a thing that we teach in schools eventually, maybe. But if you told me that it was like a magical dragon that lived on Jupiter, I'd be like, I need so much more evidence. And yet a God is greater than all those other previous explanations. And you believe it because it was written in a book that just some people wrote it in a book. And you believe it because of that. I need far more evidence than that. Why do you give, why do you give God the, what the God that's in the Bible, Jesus Christ and his retelling of events, the easy path to believing when, when we could bring Jesus here in the present and we can interview him afterwards. After seeing him heal a person's arm from de novo back to on, why wouldn't you believe that then, but you'll believe it because it's in a book. Well, you already agree has wrong stories in it. Yeah. Dred, go ahead. Sorry. I was going to say. I invoke Chris. Christopher Hitchens, the Hitchens razor, which is that, which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence. Sure. Sure. Larry, I see our, I agree. No, it says it's there. There's an answer to it. You know, it says whether it's radio waves or earbuds or, or aliens or whatever there's an answer, but invoking God brings up so many more questions. Right. It's not an answer. And it's like, where did God come from? Does he have a family? Is he, is he an alien or is he a programmer? How many gods are there? How did you thought that one? Right. Even in the Bible, he says we, when he's referring to God. So I mean, it's not, and which God, I mean, humans have. Yeah. Worship thousands of God's in the history of humanity. And what it just, he just jumps from, you know, unexplained to that particular God. The most bizarre rule that God gave was not, Hey, there's no other gods. I'm just the only one. It's don't worship any other God except for me. I'm like, what does that mean? What are the gods? What are the gods? So there are other gods. Even in Genesis, they said if he eats of the, if they eat of the tree of life, they will become like us. Oh man. You know, like God's. What do you mean by us? Yeah. Century before. We had a pasta. Zantra 3000 says you shouldn't have these conversations. They're delusional. No matter what you say, it isn't going to change their mind. And then anonymous replied, which is all perfectly fine until they start trying to change the laws to conform to their delusion. Right. Right. That's why we speak and arresting people for breaking those laws. Correct. Or, or changing your culture, right? Or, or preventing people from expressing themselves in the way that they is consistent with their beliefs like me. And listen, I'm also going to throw this out too. I'm a much better. I'm just going to say it finally, I'm a much better scientist. When I let go of my dogma, because it affected not, I didn't have to have these two parts of minds bring brought to work every day. Like I could just bring one mindset to work, I could just get work done and then come home and live by the same mindset where I appreciate evidential evidence and be willing to say, I don't know when I don't know stuff. I've broken far less things due to an understanding that confidence isn't the best way to approach a situation and kept my, my employees far safer when I realized that doubt and questions and doing analysis before you do new stuff is far better than just praying at the beginning of the morning expecting God to take care of me for the rest of the day. I don't want to value my critical thinking skills and anything that would inhibit that in my head is a detraction to my ability to be a good scientist. And so when I see a brilliant Christian scientist like my friend, I say to myself, he could have been better if he was be willing to be more awesome with himself. Right. Well, the world is less without that. Yeah. What you've said there is you don't want to magisteria as Steve and Jay called them. He thought there was, they didn't overlap. He thought you could have an overlapping magisteria. Exactly. And in the podcast that Dredge has just drawn drawn our attention to Lawrence is talking and he says for him, there's only one type of fact and it's obtained by scientific method that you knowledge can only be obtained by scientific method. There's no other way of getting reliable knowledge. Now that's quite a firm and extreme view, if you like, but it's it's very difficult to challenge it. Right. Hey, we got a shout out from a fellow postifarian. Ken Kenobi says shout out to Dredd. The satanic tape. The same tannic tape temple. Wow. And spaghetti monster people get ridiculous. I'm sorry. I'm just chopping this up. The satanic temple and spaghetti monster believers get ridiculed by Christians, but at least we stand for real things and understand the nature of our beliefs origins. Christianity has no concept. And then the next one was branching off the idea that everything's fine until the laws begin to change our society, which is why religious delusions ought to be recognized as a form of mental illness. If somebody started talking about how magical fairy smurfs were doing all sorts of stuffs in their lives, good or evil, and acting out on those fantasies delusions, we'd recognize it as a mental illness and potentially force them to seek treatment. Yet when people do the same thing with established religious delusions, we treat such actions with legitimacy and even allow those individuals to steer our society. We do worse than that. Most people steer clear of it. They attribute it to some other cause and try to steer clear of any religiosity aspect to it. Right. Like imagine how many diseases we could solve if we didn't think diseases were things that are mandated by a supernatural God or to get rid of them, we could do it by prayer. Everyone was actively working on like a secular scientific approach to resolve things like disease, inequalities, prejudices that we have against each other. Origin of life, origin of like where things come from answering bigger questions that we often give to metaphysical answer or proponents. How much better of a society could we be if we just gave us one year off from the dogma and let us actually think about these things in the best method that's gotten us all the other great forms of technology that we can enjoy and appreciate today. It'd be an amazing thing or at least recognize when we don't know certain things. Before that happens, before everybody starts to think critically. Dredd, I'd like to suggest that we set up a company and start producing packets with supernatural noodles written on it. I love it. Yeah. Yeah. Spiritual ramen. Yeah. Yeah. I'm in it. Let's do it. Hey, the postiparian is also from Canada. Maybe we can give you feel free to give me your context. He said, um, religion is the cause of so much pain and death all over the world. It affects many parts of our lives and the idea that God has imposed on us. God is on money, an American money, for example. I'm a teacher and for years I had to listen to the Lord's prayers for 30 years. I lived in the U.S. And I sang the national anthem, which has gotten it. But in Canada, oh, I'm sorry, in Canada, I don't care what people believe as long as it doesn't hurt someone and we don't spend public money on it. As in the Catholic school system supported by the religious schools. It's not a Christian school. It's not a religious school. It's not a religious school. It's not a public public school. It's not a private provincial government. But the government doesn't support other religious schools. And that forced people to really look at their beliefs and systems. So is Catholic school a thing in, in Canada. Oh yeah, absolutely. In various forms of Christianity. Also there are Muslim schools. So it's not just Christian schools. Of course. Muslim is. I'd love to hook them into my into our local Pastafarian Circle. Oh yeah, okay. God being on your money, that only began in 1955. On the paper money it was on our coins like from the Civil War. What's really bad is that it's now the official model of the country so it can be placed anywhere with impunity. Larry, I got a shout out to you specifically. This is from Chimuella who says, everyone needs to consider who they're talking to first, at least in South America. Would you dare tell a family living in extreme poverty, specifically women working in horrible conditions and surviving daily physical abuse or sexual assault? Some people just need to believe in fairy tales in order to not kill themselves. As long as they keep religion out of politics, education and healthcare, we shouldn't care at all. Otherwise we are just as bad as them trying to convert them into atheism. It's sad but it's true, unless I guess they themselves start the argument and push into a debate or other people. No, I disagree because religion is keeping them in that position because they think that if they just endure through this life they'll have a paradise in the next instead of trying to work right now to alleviate the situation that they're in either by moving to a place where they can get the respect and the work that they need or making any other kind of change in their life. They're just hunkering down, believing in the next life and being used by the society. And further to that, there is no instance where religion has not infiltrated politics and other aspects of society. So to say that as long as it doesn't, it should be okay. There is not an instance where it doesn't. So it's a non sequitur. Right. I'm reminded of that film that we talked about a couple of weeks ago where a guy was an alcoholic and he didn't know what to do and so someone gave him the Bible and then all of a sudden that solved his alcoholism. And I'm like all they did was replace one crutch for another except one was chemical and another one was completely imaginary and based on false hope. I'm like they're both bad. There's a ways to get rid of both. You don't have to you don't have to constantly make your patch away from like a bad belief. You can just stop having bad beliefs and bad habits. But the thing that is again, belief is not a choice. You believe things you're convinced are true. True. And you can't it's just like you can't just say I'm going to believe in Santa Claus this evening and believe it. You can say it, but you can't believe it. It's you need to work to find out what is true. You actually need to put in the study and ask the questions and pursue the answers. Yeah, you need to have appreciation for critical thinking. Well, you make a very good point there because people who claim to be born again can't be right. It is a progression of belief or progression of things that are starting to change your mind. It's more of a commitment. You say you're born again, but it's not like it's not like the light that struck you like Paul or Saul. It's it's not a flash of lightning. It doesn't happen that way. And and you make and I think that's a really good point is that we don't come to our beliefs instantly and nor can we divest ourselves of them instantly. It's a process. But interestingly, of course, Cassius Clay was born again when he became Muhammad Ali. Again, born again doesn't mean that you changed your belief. It means that you change your commitment to the belief. You can make a decision to be more committed. And that's what that is. I mean, but you already have the belief before you make that commitment. Guys, exactly. And it's like, you know, someone becoming or coming out as an atheist, right? It didn't happen just like that. And the time you told your parents or your friends that you are, you never call yourself a born again atheist. But when you come out, it's a sudden change for everyone else. Right. But for you, it's been a long transition through examination and all the rest of it. Six months of nine years. And in here's my here's my little caveat. I don't believe religion is a mental illness. I believe it in the same sense that someone just saw a magic trick and was convinced because of how it was presented in the audience they were in that it was a real thing. But if they were given an opportunity to understand the mechanics of like how things operate and appreciate it and be willing to let go of the need to believe that the magical trick was was a true thing, they would wonder they would realize these people who are around me were incorrect when they were telling me that they had a good reason to believe this because now I have a higher appreciation for understanding real things that versus not real things. And so it's just a person who's been fooled. And there's that's not necessarily a mental illness, but there is a way to fool yourself that in my head, I find just as dangerous as as a illness that could be prescribed to you. And so I'm sorry. What was your name again? Chamella said again was a response to Larry. You guys were sounded like you were calling religion a mental illness. Well, according to an article I just read, 84 percent stats might have changed by now of the world's population believes in some religion. Are you saying 84 percent of the population is mentally ill? How about people that believe in ghosts or local myths and legends? Are they mentally ill too? Do they make laws? John Richards, do you have a comment on that? I could I could do a debate against Larry on this because I think that belief is a choice. And I can it would be an interesting to and fro. We all just how you define it. Yeah, I'd love to be in on that one. We're running close on time. We probably should. Yeah, we are. Thank you guys so much for all these comments. Wow, I really, really love this. This is a great discussion. Guys, let's wrap up then. Basically, I don't I felt a little frustrated after talking to my Christian friend, but I also realized that it's a good thing to speak up when things like this happen, because it's only by being quiet do I foster an environment where this kind of Christian scientist cognitive dissonance is seen as OK. And if I can have these reasonable conversations with someone without making it crazy or argumentative and still be friends afterwards, I can at least present the idea of I'm someone you can talk to if you do feel like some things don't add up because I can be an objective third party that's not part of your religious set that can tell you if I'm convinced by the reasoning that you're presenting. I want to be that for Hindus. I want to be that for Buddhism, Christians, everyone else, even Pasifarians to some extent. I just feel like it's good for us to be able to rationalize our ideas behind with each other. So the best one float to the top and the worst one sink and go away forever. And in the same way, how dreads bringing up these arguments to his board and its political groups, I think we should be willing to do so at least on one on one conversation with people, because that's how we can change our culture on a one by one basis. John, what do you got? Well, I've got lots of stuff on free thought channel. You sure do. More stuff added every day, almost. And a lovely global issues review coming up in a few hours time. And I hope that you guys, Ty and Dre, are going to be in it. Frank sent his apologies. He's driving back from his army reunion. And Scott can't join us again. He's still on holiday in California, but Tersia will be with us. And I think Guy and some other people. So we'll have a good panel of opinionated people. And we'll deal with our views of the news. And one day that boat will go to the other side of the screen. We can, we can cross your fingers and pray for it. It will be a miraculous event of healing. Dred, what do you got for us? Well, I, of course, I stream this live at seven a.m. on Sunday mornings at my channel, mine pirate YouTube channel, mine pirate and my and P Y R A T E. I've also been doing some Friday invocations and benedictions of the for our past a fairy and friends. So yeah, come on board. Check it out. If you like, please subscribe. Love to see you. Chamele, you're making some very, very good points that we may want to make into future episodes of the show. Just, she just encouraged, encouraged that person to come on as a guest. Yeah, she just analogized, or if that's a word, people believe in science in the same way that people believe in faith and in God's because they're just believing in the scientists. And they don't have necessarily a background in the science to appreciate the details. They're just believing smart people. Is that any different than pastors or priests? I love it. Maybe we'll talk about them in the next episode. Yes, that's an appeal to authority. And that's a very good one. I'm just going to copy it here and leave it up to Larry. Larry, why don't you take us out? Yes, my contact can be found at digital free thought.com. If you go there, be sure to click on the blog button for the radio show archives, atheism songs and many articles on the subject of atheism. One of the things I'd like to say to Camilla is that sure, 80% of the world believes in God, but it's not the same God and religious wars are a huge problem. Yeah, all those gods are mutually exclusive. Right. Remember, everybody is going to somebody else's hell. The time to worry about it is when they prove that heavens and hells and souls are real. Until then, don't sweat it. Enjoy your life and we'll see you next Wednesday night at 7 o'clock on WOZO radio. Say bye, everybody. Bye bye, everybody. Bye bye. I'm Robin.