 103.9 FM W.O.Z.O Radio, Knoxville. Ladies and gentlemen, Digital Freethought Radio Hour. Hello and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio Hour. I'm W.O.Z.O Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today is Sunday, May 9th, and I'm Larry Rhodes, or Doubter 5. And as usual, we have a co-host Wombat on the line with us. Hello Wombat. And a no car of God. And our guests today are George Brooklyn and Red Pirate Hig. Welcome all to our Digital Freethought Radio Hour. It's 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. Wombat, what are we talking about today? today. Today we're holding the question, are atheists accountable? Because we've heard off too. Yeah, we've heard a lot of times that they aren't. But listen, we last week's episode, we had like almost nine people coming onto the show, which means it's like, we don't really get a chance to, to really voice out stuff because it's a lot of people talking. But now we got like a nice solid four pack. I love this. This is great. So I want to start today's show off with an invocation and then getting to know everybody. So before we get into it, I'll throw it up to our own Joe Power Higgs for our weekly invocation. Monster, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things I can and the noodle to know the difference. You've got to have a good noodle. That's what the day I want to go around see everybody's doing first, first and first most birthday boy over here with the new haircut. Larry, you're looking good. How are you doing? How you been? Oh, I'm doing fine. I've been getting out a little bit this week since my birthday week. Got a haircut, went shopping, did a lot of things. Actually, I spent a lot of time this week on the deck, watering stuff and cleaning it up for the summer, spring, summer and fall, actually. And just having a good time doing it all. Now, Larry, what do you want to be when you grow up? I think that's the real, that's the real question. Try again. And I think I will succeed. When I get into my eighties, I'm planning on being a child again. Okay, nice, nice, nice. Isn't that beautiful? That's beautiful. Joe Power Higgs, how you been? How is your quest for chaos? Basically, the headband challenge, the all the other projects you got going, I can't, I can't, I can't see the fireman, movie star, what's going on with you? Well, actually, I just took my, my drone flying license or what? Your brood flying license? Yeah, ground school for drone, for flying drones. I thought you were in Canada. I thought you said drone flying license, which is totally within the purview of what Dread Pirate would do. Okay. Yeah, so anyway, I took my ground school for that and going to Transport Canada to write my test. Nice. And then I can fly these super cool drones and that'll help me in my security business and potentially with film. Yeah, yeah. So walk me through the drone flying. I thought you could just buy one and fly one. Are you telling me Canada is a license? Yeah, it's all since 2019. It's all been licensed through Transport Canada. No. So you can actually, if you're caught flying a drone without a license, you can get $1,000 fine. No way. Now I have to look at the licenses in Tennessee, because it's only coming for us one day. I'd sell it one money. One day it will. One day it's like, we can make money out of this. Yeah, it's source of revenue. Buffalo, what do you got? Government? Can you fly any size drone? Okay, that's a good question. So between 250 grams and 25 kilograms. That's literally every drone. 250 grams. It's so little. There are drones out there that's our they are designed on purpose to be 249 grams. So it's just under the wire, but they figure that is small enough not to be a serious risk to aircraft. Oh, one of the linear one of the linear linear directions of a 300 drone. How far can you go? What's the range? The area. So the one I'm looking at purchasing, which is about $5,000 has a 31 minute, 31 battery life for 31 minutes, and can go up to 10 kilometers radius. Wow. I guess I guess what I was asking is the linear directions and dimensions of the drone. How big? A drone is about that big, including our fellas. Yeah. I see ones that are four feet by four feet. Yeah, so that would that you cannot fly. Sure. Like I say, it has to be under 25 kilograms. So here's like anything of any size up to and including 25 kilograms. So that's including payload. Sure. If if I can stand on the drone while it's flying, put me give me a license, like I have to get a license for that. Otherwise, free free air, baby. You own the ground. Let us have the heavens. That's all we're gonna throw it up to Buffalo. Buffalo. We're talking today. Just saying how everyone's doing. How you been since last week? What's going on with you? I've been fine. Thank you. Fine. Nice. Happy Mother's Day. I know I know you have your daughter's Christmas alike. Happy Mother's Day to her through you. It's good to have you on the show. What's the feeling you're looking forward to next week? What's something you're looking forward to? You got the you got a vibe like you're looking forward to something. Really? Yeah. Well, I'm looking forward to getting blastings ready for a family get together in a cottage by the lake. Oh, there will be about a dozen of us and my daughter's coming from from Utah with her first son. So we should have a nice time, I hope. Nice. Some boating, some fishing, some swimming. If the weather is good enough. Nice. And final plans to put that together. And it is nice to be I'm not saying post COVID because obviously a lot of people are stressing out, but it's nice to be on the the acceleration curve of it and starting hearing stories of people being out with each other and not immediately thinking, wait, are you crazy? So it's great that it's great to have that. Very nice. Everybody will be everybody will be vaccinated up to the younger than 16. Nice. Very, very cool. By the way, if you're listening to this now, at least in Tennessee and Larry, you feel free to support me on this, but Governor said, as of May, anyone 16 or up 10 get vaccinated. There's no more. There's no more age barrier. Just show up, get the shots. See you later. Yeah. Yeah, I hadn't heard myself, but I certainly believe it. Yeah. Yeah. In Canada, of course, I did finally get my appointment. So I'm going on the on the 11th on Tuesday. Nice. But I'm 57. And so we've got a long way to go before we get down to 16 and above. Okay. Yeah. And I'm getting to the point where I'm beginning to see very, very, very short lines in the COVID vaccination booth in my town and it's a small town. So it's making me at least hopeful that, you know, at least it's only the anti-vaxxers risk, which is what we will get to the accountability point. You understand why I'm saying that later on, but Brooklyn George. Buffalo, what's up? Can I just say that I think I've said frequently, I've been volunteering at our vaccination center, one of our mega vaccination centers that was processing about 4000 shots a day up until last week. And now it's down to 700. Yeah. So ours has really taken a downturn. Same year. We see more young people, parents with their family, with their children coming in, young adults, not 16 year olds yet, but it's definitely moving in that direction. So they're going to close down our mega center and I'll be put out of the job. But that's a good, that's good. It's a good thing. Yeah. And they may just do walk-ins from here on out. Brooklyn, Buffalo. I'm sorry, Brooklyn George. George Brown. Can you hear me? Hi, man. How have you been? Can you hear me? Oh, no. Oh, I'm just returning back to you after my cable connection just... My cable connection just won't die. Oh, it's dead. Stop saying it. Boy, you didn't see me here for a few minutes. Okay. Okay. You're doing so good. I just want to, like, encourage you. George Brown, you mean... My main computer has died. It's not funny. It's just your voice has slowed down so slowly. It's funny. You'll want to disconnect from the call and come right back. Well, this is the last of you for a hug. Turn off your video or something. You got to get a bandwidth issue fixed. But I will tell you this. That leads right into my topic today, because I was saying bad things do happen to good people, and we don't have anyone to blame as atheists, because we are ultimately just responsible. At least we have the purview, that we can't blame anything supernaturally. We can blame other people. We can definitely blame other people, and we do a lot of finger-pointing. The finger-pointing stops at a 90-degree angle. It doesn't go like this. It's like, this is your fault. It always goes here, right? You can say that about believers, too. They never point up and place blame. Oh, now, here's that question. I do feel like there have been a lot of instances where people say, like, I guess God's really testing me right now, or there must be a reason like this. Like, a bunch of bad things happen. It's like, well, you know, God always opens up a window when he closes the door. It's like, you have the hopeful-pointing act God at that same point. Any excuse. I'm just going to say this, too. Our atheists are accountable, and the way how I see it is, when bad things happen to me, I am willing to blame myself for my part in it. And if someone else does me wrong, I can blame them. And if I do something wrong to somebody, I will go throughout on my way to say, hey, I was accountable for this injury, or personality, or emotion, or whatever, it's a great story to put this into context. There are a bunch of roofers fixing our apartments in my place. They have a bunch of nails they threw out on the carpet, on the lawn. And I'm like, kids, play in that lawn. I don't want a bunch of nails there. Let me go to my job. I'm going to borrow a big magnet, the main magnet that we have. I'll put it on some fishing string and just roll it across the lawn, pick up all the nails, and do a nice little service. I'm going to put a big magnet that we got, come back home, put it on the fishing string, pull it across the yard, pick up so many nails, even like magnetic rocks. It was great. Go back to my car, clean it all off. Everything's good. Can't buy anything the next day. All my credit cards have been white. And here's the thing. You don't realize how much you depend. You don't realize how much you're just a caveman in a box until the lights go out. You know, you've ever heard that before? I'm a doctor. I'm doing a good job. I got payments too. I got $7 in my wallet and that's it. I can't go to the ATM. I only have like two gallons of gas in my car. I need help to get new cards. I don't know how to get money. I have no access to money. I have no access to money. I appreciate your internet when you went home. Yeah. I actually had to have a friend come to my home to pick me up to go to exchange that was a prepare for prepare for the next bad thing. And that is when you find out they use some aluminum males. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, very true, very true, very true. So, uh, bad thing happened when I tried to do a good thing. And a lot of people say karma is like the balancing of forces. I don't, I'm not confident of that. I do believe bad things happen to good people. Bad things are the rewards for sometimes good actions, but you're accountable for it. The means that I, the actions that I took or it made me responsible for the unforeseen consequence. But that doesn't, but with that mindset I'm also saying I'm also responsible for the good things in my life, too. So, uh, those stories inside Dred Pirate, what do you got? Oh, no, he's on mute. Oh, no, can't hear him. Yeah, sorry. I just got a text from someone that was watching the live stream and said that the your guys' voices are really, really loud. Okay. So you can turn down the master, maybe you're Sure. Or that guy can just turn down the volume now just like two degrees, but yeah. Yeah, we're good. Turn mine down, hope that's better. Dred, now you're on the hotspot. What's, uh, have you, what are your thoughts have bad things happen to you from good actions? Why have you done anything that made you feel like you're accountable for your actions? Well, absolutely. Um, I mean, I'm really, I don't know how anyone could think that by virtue of being an atheist, you are excusing yourself of accountability. Um, I just don't understand. I've had people say, well, you don't see many atheists from foxholes and that kind of thing, and it's like I don't even understand where that rationale emerges from. It just seems absolutely ridiculous, but that's me. Well, I can tell you where the rationale comes from being used to being a Christian is they say anybody who faces death are going to call on God. So if you call on God, you're not an atheist. So that's where it comes from. But having been, um, in the military, I can tell you they're quite a few in there. Matter of fact, there are whole monuments to, uh, atheists and foxholes out there. They're organizations if you want to find some atheists and not foxholes just do a search for them. Um, atheists face death all the time in the half a century, millennia. Um, I'd like to address your subject, though, today. Uh, who are we accountable to? Like you said, first and foremost, we're accountable to ourselves. We have to live with the consequences of what we do. We can't go to our invisible friend and ask for forgiveness and then just start again, like nothing happened. Uh, some some believers feel like they can. Confession is all about that. We are responsible to ourselves, our family, our society, and by extension to the world. We're responsible to the law enforcement of our society. Yeah, I mean, we do something really bad and they catch us doing it. We're going to spend a lot of time off the street as it were. And if we wanted to stand, we should just, we could just stay in the religion and ask for forgiveness and like so many up and do. So we are I would say more accountable than a believer or someone who thinks they can just be forgiven by a God or whatever. It's very true. It's very true. Absolutely. Buffalo, you got any thoughts to share on that? No, I agree with everything that's been said and the thing that instantly comes to mind to me is the word mercy. You know, the word mercy to me is the key to being religious or not. I don't think there's any mercy in this world. I think this world is merciless and I think it's because of our Bible. Well, you're talking about nature though, aren't you? I mean, there are people that are merciful. Well, people are, but I'm not so sure it has the same connotation as the way in which it's used in a religious context. Yeah, I feel like mercy in a religious context is sort of like absolution. Like, don't worry about things anymore. It's taken off the record whereas we still live in a world where a consequence from 200 years ago could still affect us today in how we treat each other. Hey, Larry, what's up? Especially when you're talking about absolution, by throwing your blame on someone else. Yeah. Nobody can take responsibility for your wrongdoings. They might pay your bills, but they can't take responsibility for something that you did to someone else. Now, hold on, I take offense at that because I put my Christian hat and it's like, that's the whole reason Jesus died. Jesus died for our sins. It's a heinous belief that someone else can take responsibility for your wrongdoings for your sins. Are you saying he died for nothing? How dare you? That's what I'm saying. If it was valid, it's not moral. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. I don't want to get in the habit where we do human sacrifices for other people's benefit. People should never be used as a means to an end period. Or animals. Oh, animals. I know, but Bacon's delicious. God, what are you going to do? But they don't die for sin. That's what I'm saying. They are not sacrificed for the sin of the person. Sure. And a lot of cultures they are. Sure, sure, sure. Just for nutrition. For nutrition? Yeah, but like for deliciousness too. Yeah, for survival. I'll give you that. I'll give you that. I know the vegans are going crazy right now. George Brown, let's check back in on you. How you doing? George Brown, are you there? Oh, no. Still lagging? Okay, yeah. Still looks a little laggy a little bit. But it's good to see your face. So here's my wrench in the system. So the complaint that I... Can you hear me? Can you see me? Can you hear me? Can you see me? Okay, okay. Sorry, we still can't we still can't get you. Yeah, you can probably keep the audio and get rid of the video. Turn off the video. Turn off the video and then we can try from there and we'll give it a couple of minutes. No, you just turn off the audio. There you go. Turn off your video. Guys, this is great. This is exactly what I'm talking about. Universe is a much worse place. Me? Yes. All right. So here's my thing. The original complaint that I heard this in was in a Discord chat where there was an atheist or I'm sorry a Christian in the room who's basically talking about the tenets of objective morality. And so he says I'm accountable to this objective list of right and wrong that was established by a higher power that has ultimate good, all that stuff, all that jazz. And so I know who I'm accountable to. I know for what I'm accountable to and I know the punishment and the the benefits or promises if I hold myself to this code it is an absolute code. It's a perfect code and it's not open to the subjectivity of human minds. You know, it's not like well, you can do this on certain days you can get vaccinated at these ages like no, this code is the perfect code. And don't speak it. And what? And don't speak it then. And don't speak it then. And so as long as I follow this objective code I know who I'm accountable to and it's this God and as long as I do that it's good. But this idea that I'm accountable to anybody else is a very subjective you know promise because different people have different ways of giving a world that's so subjective. Sometimes I can kill babies, sometimes I can't kill babies. That seems like a worldview that Christian didn't want to be in. Larry, what do you think? Well, first of all, you say that if I do the things that God tells me to do, I'll be okay. But how does God tell you? He doesn't show up and talk to you. And there are, if you go to religions there are thousands of religions and thousands of holy books. The Bible is just one, the Quran is just another one. And as far as I'm concerned, they were written by long-dead preachers. Not, not, God didn't take a pen and hand and write it down. Some preacher wrote it down whether he was inspired or not is up to the question. How do we know that God put those words there for you to obey? It's a good question. What do you mean by these are God's words? How did you determine that? What's a reliable test? None of that for your own question. Dred? Yeah, how do you differentiate religion and what some might consider a real God? Those two things are indistinguishable in my view. I mean, like Larry was saying, how do you know a person is inspired by anything other than mental disability? Now, Dred, I'm going to say at least from, we're all atheists in this room, but at least from an SC perspective, you want to make sure you don't compare the God belief to something that's automatically like connotated to something bad, like a mental illness or like a delusion. I'm more interested in differentiating those two and seeing like, please promote what you're saying and prove and show me how you're right rather than tell me why you're different from all the crazy other BS stuff that I'm listening to. Well, I thought that was the point I was making. Go for it, go for it. How do you tell the difference? How could you possibly tell the difference? You get the same cookie from the vending machine, whether you press A, B or A1. And what I'm saying is if you phrase the question and the idea of like, how is your stuff different from any other crazy stuff I'm listening to versus how are you right and can you give me a reliable way to figure that out? How you're right? You get the same answer, but you also avoid the mind field of, is he saying I'm delusional? Is he saying I have a mental disorder? I don't like this person as much anymore. I'm going to believe in my belief even stronger. And this is like, what do you do? But yeah, I hear what you're saying. It's a valid question. I'm just saying wordsmithing is such a fun thing. Sure. And I wouldn't say I wouldn't phrase it that way to someone who had a hardcore religious belief. I mean, I've done enough to know that we try to be gentle and respectful and preserve the dignity of the people that we're engaging. So I just say this in present company. Now that is an interesting point and I think that's a very interesting point because Dredd, I've seen you do Etsy and I know you're fantastic at it. So I'm wondering like when we, and this is a little bit off topic and I want to do it a little bit too, but like when we do Etsy are we genuinely asking the question how are you right? Or are we just paraphrasing tell me why you're not wrong in a in a more politically correct fashion and what I'd love for us to do as a movement or at least as like an organization, not as an organization, but at least more people willing to try this is Etsy is not a way to cherry, put a cherry on top of a why are you BS? Like what's this BS? Why are you crazy? You're not sugarcoating a question. You're not about, it's not about sugarcoating questions. It's about genuinely asking about methodologies and if they give you a good rationale for that, that should be the case. Larry, what do you got? Yeah, it's about examining the beliefs themselves. The methods at which they reach those beliefs. Exactly. All the questions should be about the method itself. Oh, Larry, perfect. Oh, you took the words right on my face. You raised my face and you're like get over here and you got them out. One of the things that always gets me is how many times I'd be talking to a religious person or particularly a preacher and they'll say well, God told me that blah, blah, blah. And you know, first of all, my very first question is did you literally hear his voice and sometimes I'll say, yeah. But how do you know it's God's voice when you hear it? When you hear it, even according to the Bible, there are many other entities that could speak to you in such a way. The voice of the Satan or an angel or a demon or anything. When you give entities physical powers of telepathy and how do you know that the voice that shows them from your head is God's? Yeah. Once you introduce a Satan figure, how do you know anything is true? Like a grand deceiver? How do you know any of it's truth? George? Absolutely. Third time's a charm. Keep your video off. Let's go. George, can you hear us? Oh, man. Were you muted? Buffalo, I want to ask you a question. We're both scientists. We both love data that can at least be universally applied. It doesn't have to be objectively true, but if it could be close enough and useful, we can at least make a useful model out of it. The idea that Satan exists as a character in the Bible, or at least in Christian lore, as a grand deceiver, someone who's capable of deceiving any person that has a mortal frame or whatever. That just makes me feel like no model of truth that's presented in the Bible could be taken at face value because it could obviously be the Satan trying to deceive me. And that means if I don't have the Bible and I'm just feeling inspired, I feel like that could literally just be the devil trying to inspire me. Like, is there a useful metric in a worldview where you can literally be deceived at any point? It feels like, I feel like there isn't, but maybe you have a different perspective. Oh, I don't know. What are our minds capable of? Hitler eventually reached that point, but that's because he was mentally ill. So I think mental illness, certain failure of circuitry between the ears can lead to that. But I don't think that many people, well, some people are born with it, I guess, but again from a biological perspective, I think a disease is a disease and it can go to the point of death and it can stick around and be vicious. Yeah, essentially, the Bible is basically saying it's sick. So that means like, every character could eventually be just a symptom of a sick person. What's up, Larry? Oh, it's just a bottle of the air when you need to take a break. Good point. This is the digital free thought radio hour and WZO Radio 103.9, a PFM right here in Knoxville and we'll be right back after this short break. 103.9 FM WZO Radio Knoxville Welcome back to the second half of the digital free thought radio hour. I'm Donner 5 and we're on WZO Radio 103.9, a PFM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. This is Sunday, May 9th, 2021. Let's talk about the atheist society of Knoxville. Founded in 2002, we're at our 19th year. ASK now has over a thousand members and we have weekly meetings starting this Tuesday down at Barley's Taproom in Pizzeria in the Knoxville's Old City out on the patio. We also have Zoom meetings to go along with that for people who can't make it into town. You can find us online on Facebook, Meetup, KnoxvilleAtheist.org or just Google Knoxville Atheist. It's just that simple. Also, you can find Rationalists of East Tennessee at Rationalist.org. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you should still go to Meetup and search for an atheist group in your town. Don't find one. Start! Where do you want to pick up there? Hey, let's talk about the devil buffalo. You got some devil on your mind. Yeah, so I've been reading a little bit on the internet about the mechanic temple and they are really doing what is being discussed here. So they're trying to have a I can't say they want to have a religion. They want to have a voice like the religions do without having the basic creed and the same rules and all of the rituals and so forth. But they want to do community good and they're attacking questions of right and wrong for the point of going to the Supreme Court. But my curiosity and I can't find this anywhere is why did they call themselves that? And it gets to my own problem that I have and that is how should I go out and make my feelings known about a religion without antagonizing people and shutting down the whole discussion of putting up a brick wall so to speak. And it's almost appear that that's what they've done they use the word satanic and I just wonder if anybody's got a feeling for why they did it this way. Why would you start a discussion about religion atheism using the word satanic? Larry Well, theoretically I mean according to Christianity please listeners correct me if I'm wrong he represents the loyal opposition to God and his message and his rule and so they took up the banner basically to be in opposition of that. However I am with you I don't think that we should show that we're buying into that the panoply of entities that they have in their religion by naming an organization after one I don't think it's a good idea but I know people disagree with me on that I think it's counterproductive Dredd I know you have some thoughts on this Yeah I mean it's similar to what the Pastafarian movement is about we're just taking up a different kind of stand to in opposition to religious or institutionalized religious privilege I mean you're not picking a character from their That's kind of the point Yeah So an important thing and of course this was where the judge went in a Supreme Court decision against my petition was that by virtue of some Pastafarians mocking and satirizing religion that somehow disrupting the peace of the country and you know putting people down or robbing them of their dignity and all the rest but when in fact that is just not the case and of course that would be harder to argue if I declared myself a member of the satanic temple just by virtue of it is literally taking up the mythology of the Christian faith and using it as a platform to take their message out. Not that I don't disagree with their message it's just the way it's wrapped the way it's clothed Are you saying that we shouldn't ridicule them? The satanic temple? No, no Christianity or any other religion Well ridicule is different than challenging a belief, right? I agree. All beliefs are up for a challenge and the idea is and we talked about this in S.E. so Ted just made a point that S.E. when it's spoken together sometimes sounds like S.C. and so we just have to make sure that we're saying like street epistemology or Socratic examination because it gets lost when we speak that way but yeah no I think that street epistemology and the methods that we use doing it is the best way to undertake those kinds of conversations Buffalo I just wanted to round out the idea of like why they do it. It's sort of the point to be what is the right word provocative with that term because it draws attention to an idea that there is a lot of religious privilege given to Christians and so if that's the case then we will use a character from your book and have a seemingly unilateral discussion on religion but Christianity doesn't offer satanist the same platform they do for the more mainstream Christians and it seems to draw a light on the idea of well you won't it does like if you agree that these religions are equal but yet even when we use characters from your book you're saying yeah you're not the same you don't get to have as many governors you don't have to have as many senators you can't start court proceedings you can't start council meetings on budget for the cities everything starts with a prayer but it doesn't do satanic prayers like clearly there is a preference that is not being unilaterally distributed we have this new God that we came up with it's literally a soup or noodles it's noodles and people will look down and be like you're making fun of us we're going to contextualize it as you're basically taking Christianity and making parodies no this is our completely separate religion please give us a platform as well and you can say hey I'm from the Middle East and I have a completely different God it's like yeah we don't do that too I respect you enough that you wear your turbans and driver's license what Satanists are doing or saying is like we have your Bible we are using your book and we are pulling quotes from your book and we are taking these figures from your book and just worshiping these figures instead where's our unilateral where's our piece of the pie no no no you're not real one of which approach is more effective I like the multifaceted approach there are tiers of hardcore rock and you can do soft rock I think it needs all those voices to make sense Dredd what do you think the mission here of the satanic temple the mission of the satanic temple is to encourage benevolence and empathy reject tyrannical authority advocate practical common sense oppose injustice and undertake noble pursuits and we've had Satanists on the show and they've been super chill and for the most part I feel like the name is there to set up an expectation and when you actually talk with one it's like oh okay okay this is not what the Christians are telling me you are and so when I, and here's the catch George regardless of whatever it was they called themselves Christians would take offense at it if it wasn't Christianity so it doesn't matter if it was pacifarianism or satanism or screw you Jesus you look silly on that T-shaped piece of wood like they're gonna take offense at it you know they take offense at the word Atheist like it is what it is Larry? Yeah, no my problem with it is if you, most Christians when they hear of the satanic temple that's all they know at that point is the name and they just take it and run and you can't blame them for running to thinking that we believe in Satan to worship Satan and follow Satan. I mean that to me is what it's telling the normal person on the street the normal Christian on the street that doesn't know anything about it, just heard about it and I think that that is not a good message no matter what they say their goal is or their mission statement I think the mission statement is great I think it's worthy I think it needs a better name Larry I'll throw this out at you if the same can be said Atheist or Christians appreciation of the word Atheist because they'll hear that and they'll think ah, here's a person that probably worships Satan or hates God and hates babies that is not part of the name if they look it up just the word Atheist it'll just say doesn't believe in God and Larry I'm not sure, I'm with you on that we're on the same side of the street holding the same sign but I have to verbally defend and answer your question the Christian perspective is what I'm saying like that what I like I think to avoid all of this is just to call myself a concluter I'm not a believer I'm a concluter you just came up with a new name it's just waiting for more baggage to be put on top of it for sure it's neutral it's just a new thing that people are going to take it's like I'm, yeah what's up George can you hear me can we hear you I just want to know if you can hear me absolutely can you I'm seeing you guys on my screen you can see me on your screen and I'm talking to you on the telephone you've got a phone guys I don't know they're talking about ridicule too so that's 2001 it's a good year so I would I'm going to throw this out as well if there was a Satanist that worshiped Satan but in the mindset that they're doing it in is well the God that's in this book the one that calls himself God the one that drowns babies the one that kills all humanity that makes rainbows to make up for it the one who does human sacrifices for his own progeny to immorally shift the blame so that most people don't have to do it and who's had more people die in the name of the sun than any other figure in the in humanity like that's probably not the best guy and the person who's anti that guy the person I would rather follow and I throw this out as point and Matt Delhonte says this a lot in his shows but like how do you know if you're reading the Bible God's the good one and the devil's the bad one it seems every single instance it's the devil that's telling the truth that's trying to be honest with people that's showing examples of hey this guy is evil I'm going to present it in the fact by going to heaven and actually setting up a bet with this guy who says he's good and he hurts people and he's the one who's hurting Job and he makes a new family to be like I killed your family but here's a new group of strangers and they're your new family now and I was going to say the book of Job is a perfect instance of where essentially God and Satan are just playing with people as a toy really pulling the wings off flies it's horrible because the devil didn't want to do it the devil wanted it and God didn't want it it wouldn't happen but if God wanted it, it's going to happen so it's God the one that's pulling the wings off I hope you're seeing this I hope you're seeing that this is a thing that's going on are you sure this is the one you want to worship doesn't it look like I'm the guy that's trying to be honest with you I know we've had Christians on the show we had Christians on the show who brought up the book of Job as one of the best books to prove that God was a really benevolent God and blew my mind and we've talked about that before but I'm seeing different people interpret it different ways but I could see a Satanist reading the Bible and being like clearly this is the better character and it's just told out of context as if God was I'm worshiping this guy and I can see there's no harm from that point of view someone wants to worship at that point if you've got a couple hours to talk to a Satanist and have him explain that to you but the name itself doesn't do that one thing I'd like to mention about Job is that whenever you talk to a Christian a lot of times I would just say yeah but he gave him all that stuff back he killed his family and his and his crops and his house and burned it and everything and he gave him all that back no he didn't he gave him a new family a new house, new crops and new animals so is it okay if God just kills your family and gives you a new one after testing you and by the way wouldn't an omniscient God know the outcome of the test before he performed it absolutely I want to show that to a demon I want to throw this out just real quick I'm sorry we give we say Satan shouldn't call themselves Satanists but why do we allow Christians to call themselves Christians as a free past isn't that an expression of you're saying Christ you're saying Christ can just borrow people's sins like that seems abjectly immoral you're saying you like human sacrifices you like torture like for three days that's terrible why would anyone want that like that appalls me on a fundamental level but yet we give that the free past because there are people in charge well I feel like the thing that it is Christians believe in Christ, Satanists don't believe in Satan some do some do there's Lavellian Satanists and there's actual there's the church of Satan and then there's the satanic temple and those two entities are different and they're both called Satanists which one believe in Satan what's his name Lavellian yeah the church of Satan but it's all Satanism it's generally all the same umbrella term so like it's all good what's up Dredd well I just had a question from Ted here he says because we were talking about alternate names for atheists and George said Concluder what's the alternate name for Christianity is there I want to say I want to say something flippant but I don't want to your horns are showing so I will say this too there are such things as really good Christians but it tends to be the case that the better they are the ones that I enjoy being around with follow to a lesser extent their own dogma and the ones that follow their dogma very ardently are the ones I don't want to have anything with or to deal with I made a meme about that I know he makes memes Christians Muslims and other believers are good people in an inverse relationship to how closely they follow their dogma very true dogmatic thinking in general tends to do that George Brown I'd love to get your thoughts on the idea of Satanism if you have an opinion on this have you if you were to meet a Satanist would you have any qualms or worries ahead of time and what would be your expectations if we said hey we're going to have a Satanist on the show what questions would you want to ask them are you there can you hear me yeah I'm talking to you George yeah I'm talking to you Brown George Brown I know we got like no impression right you talking to me I'm having technical things going on what questions would you ask the Satanist if you were to meet them what would be your expectations if you were to meet one I would be delighted to meet a Satanist and I would want to know everything about that person tell me about yourself tell me about your beliefs or lack of them you know because I'm always interested in finding in meeting people who are different than me you know and I'm like that so I would be open to finding out about this person hey tell me I'm all ears I just want to know in my book the devil is just as supernatural as Jehovah or Yahweh and if I was to have to if I don't want to worship anybody but if I was going to worship one it wouldn't be Jehovah it would be like you are clearly crazy if my only other option is this other dude alright you're on here and I'm going to be honest with you I think he only asked to be worshipped once to Jesus and Jesus said no and he was like that's fine no punishment I'm not going to send you to hell I was here to give you water but if you don't want it that's good I mean I think you're going to be okay and he turned out alright for the most part so why should the devil define himself by how he is defined in the Bible in the Christian Bible or the Jewish Torah maybe I'm not even sure he's in there I don't know but I mean my main issue is what do you like if I don't have to sign on to his belief in order to know him yeah it's true it's very true like he takes no for an answer and it's no big deal and that's that is a full statement if you got to ask me like which one is the better figure Dred Pirate well I was just going to say too that in the Old Testament clearly it was a pantheon it was a pantheistic or polytheistic religion because you know the idea that there was you know angels and God and Satan and that you should not worship any other gods before me this kind of thing it was clearly from a it was a monotheistic to start with that for sure and we know historically that that makes sense right mm-hmm yeah yeah so Pirate you said you you want the opposite of concluter and I simply to me it's believer and I as a biologist I think that we have propensities a genetic propensity which drive one toward one extreme to the other most of us in the middle and so I'm Daniel Kahneman is like that right yeah so I believe in belief genes and we don't know about them yet because we don't know about much that's between our ears but I would say that several generations down the down the road if we don't destroy our environment first we'll have a better idea of how those genes function we'll have a concluter gene yeah the concluter gene or the networks neural networks that lead to believing and that'll describe what we already know and that is every person is different both on the outside and on the inside and the same is true for what's between our ears mm-hmm I think a lot of it too is around this idea of agency and attributing the human agency or animal agency intelligence other yeah to other things that clearly don't have agency but our perceptions are sort of geared towards interpreting in a very fast way things we don't quite understand like the wrestling of bushes what you know if you if you tend to think that it's always the wind and not the tiger you're probably not going to last too long as a species so you know there's sorry no you're fine I was just saying just to take up some of the dead space going back to accountability I think yes there's probably some facets to our genetic makeup or phenotype that dictate how easy it is to learn without inhibitions due to mental disorders or processes or stuff like that balance of sodium and potassium in our brains blood pressure all sorts of stuff to help to dictate the capacity that we have to absorb new information but I feel like there's such a great fact that we can't deny that is on ourselves after the fact after we have like a body to learn and that we are responsible for the information that we take in and for the information that we put out and we are accountable after a certain point of the prejudices that we may carry or the biases that we have because we always have an opportunity to learn better and to take red to get rid of that stuff yeah everything is nature and nurture not just one or the other sure but I really think that there is some hard wiring in there that we don't understand sure we try to explain it but we don't understand it Dredd you want to finish that thought before we I lost it the dog barking got to yeah I guess you're talking about intelligence and agency in the bush agency yes agency so attributing agency to things that clearly don't have it it's like I always say about the tigers and the wind wrestling the the leaves or the grasses and just a reminder that Daniel Kahneman wrote an excellent book called thinking fast and slow is an excellent read I believe he won a Nobel Prize for whatever is neurology or physiology I want to add to the agency thing too because there's a really great video called double rainbow and one of the funny things is it's a guy walking at a two rainbow stretching across the sky and he's like it's a double rainbow what does it mean and it's just a really beautiful thing but I can see myself you go back you know beyond internet beyond electricity all that stuff and you'll see people who look at beautiful things but yeah but what does it mean well it means light refracts we don't have that information we need a shorter, simpler comprehensive answer but at a certain point you need to get rid of those shortcut answers that we came up with like God magic, fairies, devil and come up with better standards for information George Brown what do you got well he reminded me of Robert Crumb back in the 1970s the cartoonist there was always a character coming to him to his character to his cartoon character Mr. Natural and the the supplicant would say Mr. Natural what does it all mean and Mr. Natural which I cannot repeat because this is going to be a radio broadcast so he would say it don't mean you all right so hey that was the show thank you guys so much for everybody coming by you can find Mind Pirate Mind P-Y-R-A-T E on Youtube please subscribe he's getting close to 100 80 right now Sunday mornings at 8am PST perfect wonderful and he's also streaming too Buffalo George hope you have a wonderful cottage trip George Brown I want to see you on that keyboard next week let's see you play and I'll check out some dollar store lenses we were talking about during the break Larry why don't you kick us out my own content is found at digitalfreethought.com you can find these shows and a whole bunch of other things like Atheist articles and music Atheist music on digitalfreethought.com if you have questions for the show send them to askanatheistatnoxfullatheist.org if you're having trouble leaving religion behind you can find help at recoveringfromreligion.org if you're watching this on Youtube be sure to like and subscribe this has been digitalfreethought radio hour remember everybody is going to somebody else's hell the time to worry about it is when that proves that heaven and hell's and souls are real until then don't sweat it enjoy your life and we'll talk to you next Wednesday on this radio station say bye everybody bye everybody see you