 Hello and welcome to the digital free thought radio hour. This is one of three point nine wozo radio FM all day all along all live here talking to you about the greatest news and atheism science free thought. Spirituality, Positarianism, you name it we got everything you can imagine on this show today in fact today we're going to be talking about is Christianity polytheistic or not. A topic of a great amount of controversy and no better controversy laid out on the plate before us than our own dread pirate Higgs dread power Higgs. One, let me know you're doing and then two if you don't mind please lead us in on our daily or weekly invocation. Well, right now I'm up in Fort St. John back up working. Well, actually waiting for work, going in a little bit this morning to do some cross training into the safety aspect of working in the oil and gas industry. Safety so important. Absolutely. It's important work. First, we all want to go home for dinner right. Absolutely. Yeah. So, yeah, so that's what I've been up to. Yeah, other than that it's just by my time waiting for some work. What's the quality. Okay, so how about this we're going to invocation and I got some follow up questions how about that. Sure. Okay, so this is a nice short one because you, you had mentioned the last one was a week long so I've got a high coup. Oh, interesting. Okay. Yeah, newly appendage sauce drips on the meatball pile. Ramen fills my soul. Very interesting. So, you know, safety is a really important thing. I find that it's the immediate thing that we take for granted when we work for when we work in general, because we assume that we're good at what we do. We assume that we're professionals. And so there is this balance between safety which is sort of related to doubt. I found that to be really related to doubt in terms of like dogmatic thinking, and then confidence, which is sort of related to your awareness of your abilities, right. And the problem that I have with confidence, typically is that it's never in my best interest. It's the half confidence, but it's never operating in my self interest. It's always the one that's saying you can jump in that tiger pit, you can you can beat up any of those boxers on ESPN. You got this tie you can do it and that's a good voice but sometimes doubt is the more important voice in your head to listen to up to a limit of course you don't want to be debilitated by it but I have found that doubt is always in your self interest. You should wear your safety belt, because you safety seat belt because you never know if you're going to be in a car accident you don't know if you're going to get something in your eye you don't know if you can't fight that tiger that thing has claws you can't fight those boxes you never had a boxing class before. Likewise when you're at work. You don't know if that machine is on or off you should double check to make sure it's off you should make sure it's a lot out you should make sure that someone else is in the building in the event that there's an accident. And let them know you should make sure that chemicals properly labeled and spend an extra five minutes making a new label. You should always make sure that you are being safe, and it's hard to be an advocate for doubt, as much as safety. Would you say that's fair. I. Yeah, I would put a slightly different spin on the doubt thing. I think doubt in that respect is good. But you always do what you practice often. Right. So, to, I mean you can have confidence in your skill, but it should be based on the skills that you practice often. So, if you're always putting on your safety belt, every time you do a job, then it just becomes a matter of habit. So there isn't even room for doubt to come in there, because you're not relying on a lack of skill or lack of practice. You're relying on the fact that this is part of the thing that I do every time I do it. So, that's part of the task. It comes with the task becomes an automatic thing. Yeah. You know, every morning when we're out in the field, you know, every, everyone that's working on the site, we all gather around and talk about our respective duties and, and how what the hazards are, and how to mitigate those risks of exposure to those hazards. So, you know, it's a big safety culture up here and it's something I really appreciate, certainly as being a medic, no one wants to have to employ those skills unnecessarily. Right. I love it. And I also like the fact that the idea behind the safety culture is to defy God's plan. Right. Exactly. It's in God's plan that you die today by falling off one of the trappings. It's the culture's job to make sure God doesn't win that day. And that's right. The engineer, the people who spent years and years making sure that they got the right kind of fibers, the right kind of buckles, the right kind of training, the right kind of meetings, the right kind of engineering, administrative and PPP and PPE, you know, measures put in place is to make sure God doesn't win. I love it. I think that's a great, great way to put it. Dred, you had a really interesting. How have you been? Oh, listen. Thank you very much for asking. I have been quite well. My mother came to visit me for Mother's Day. Yes, I saw the pictures. That was great. Yeah, we took pictures with the Pasifarian hat. My mom's a jovial witness, but she, she knows I'm an atheist, totally cool with atheism, knows I'm asexual, totally cool with asexuality. And I told her about the Pasifarian thing and she's cool with that too. Like it's nice to have a mom that can see past dogma and just appreciate people for who they are. She's an incredible person, slightly hard of hearing, but we went into a swimming pool that's nearby and we did Tai Chi there, which was one of the highlights there. Oh, nice. What was interesting was because of the water splashing around, the frequency of hearing the instructor's voice about what your next set of instructions are doesn't register very well for her. I needed to sign in the class to mom so that she could understand what the person was saying. And I'm, I'm typically about 30, speaking of confidence, I'm about 30% confident in my signing capability. Okay. So, over in that public space, particularly with an instructor, you know, speaking slowly enough to give instructions to everybody, and a somewhat limited vocabulary, she's not describing science. She's just like, Hey, lift your right arm up, get ready to march do this. I could, I could match everything that she was saying as she was saying it, so that my mom had such a good time that she came back the next day. She had to be like glowing sort of view and everyone was looking at me and was like, what's he what's he doing and everyone was looking at mom is like, is she understanding what's going on. And so we had a really good time, signing back and forth the only, the only one embarrassing part was, I, she, my mom wanted to ride the, the, the disability chair lift in and out of the pool. And the thing was she's deaf it's not like she can't walk like she, like she's not even one athletic so, but she wants to just try it anyway. And she says, can I get away to using it since I'm deaf is like, I don't think, I don't even think the life card would understand the connection but we'll just see if we can get away with it. We got through with it she got to use the trade away so yeah. Nice. That's fair. She could have just said I'm just prepping for the future. Right, right, right. Okay, but yeah that's about it I had a really good time we went over to the arcade and I have in my family, an interesting dynamic because I have sisters that are Muslim have sisters that are still Christian from our upbringing. I myself am an atheist. I was born an atheist I was indoctrinated to Christianity and I came out of it. Right, my mom switch, my mom switched religions from Christianity to Jehovah Witnesses around the time when I was in college. And so right now we have what you could almost describe as a family that believes in very different gods or lack of belief altogether. It's, I wouldn't say necessarily it's polytheistic, but it is varied in its approach. And from the outside perspective, for me, just just looking at you know everybody is theistically diverse theistically diverse thank you. But even the funniest thing that's only happened to me once is we were sitting at a quasi quasi Ramadan quasi Thanksgiving sort of meal prep. My sisters are closing their eyes and they're praying, my mom's closing her eyes and she's praying, and I'm just looking at everybody I'm like everybody's praying to a completely different being, but they, they all call him the same name and I was like, it made less sense to me before but now I understand it as now understand that that it's not about the God that they're believing it's about this personal relationship that they're trying to build with this God. And that's what they're, you know, really talking to me really just talking to an aspect of themselves and I'm fine with that. Yes. And I would agree with that. But I wonder, is it easier if to do that if you had a poly poly polytheistic cadre of gods to believe in rather than just one monolithic God that everyone's supposedly talking to. I guess I'll throw up the idea to you. What did you mean by Christianity is polytheistic. Well, I mean, when you consider sort of the Roman Empire, or the Greek civilization, where they had, you know, their host of gods. There was nevertheless a chief God, you know, there was Zeus, and Kronos, Kronos before him. And, you know, Hera, the wife of the top God, sort of like, you know, Mother Mary would be sort of the bride of God, and the mother of Jesus, right. And then you consider things like the devil, and the host of angels like Gabriel, Norio, Raphael. Yeah, and really, they all seem to represent the host, the heavenly host, which really is a semi, semi-lacrum of Olympus, or whatever the Roman host called themselves. So that's why, despite claiming to be a monotheistic religion, they are in fact polytheistic. Right. Because, of course, you don't carry, you know, you'll carry a, you know, some people were across, some people will carry a charm with, you know, St. Joseph or, you know, Mother Teresa or whatever. You know, as a, I guess as a way in, or a special acknowledgement of special power, that, you know, for instance, they have different saints for different aspects of your life. You know, one of traveling and one of singing and one of, whatever, construction, you know, who knows, right. So we can take it even more fundamentally, you take standard Christianity, standard Protestant Christianity, you don't have a singular God, you have a Trinity, you have Jesus, you have a Holy Spirit, and you have a God. And if you can't see God, well, you know Jesus is in this book. And if you don't see Jesus, you know you have this feeling inside of you, that's your Holy Spirit. And if you don't have that Holy Spirit, you have God who you can pray to to get the salvation from Jesus to get the Holy Spirit, and you're just constantly kind of in this loop where it's a tautology, right. And it's like, who am I praying to what's going on? It's like, just pick one, just pick one, pick one and start on one, you're good. They're just trying to cover all the bases, right. Yeah, I proposed this a long time ago where I said, like, hey, if I flip a coin, this is the other coin example I had, but if I flip the coin, and if it's heads I win, or if it's tails, you lose. I'm trying to play that game with me and a lot of people want him because they realized no matter what I lose, and I'm trying to outline what a false, non falsifiable argument is like one word no matter what you do, you're never going to win. Why would you use a system like that? Why would you play a game like that? You should always know what it takes to win and lose before you start, you know, a new system or process or a game, right. The same can be said for like catching logical fallacies and a belief that you hold to be truly true. I do like the idea of saints. I listen and this is a controversial take. I like the idea of saints. I like polytheism. I like it in the sense of it makes more sense for me to have a structured sort of enterprise of wishful fillers, right. Then one guy with one phone. Who's constantly I'm like, All right, I'll help you find your keys. Okay, I'll help you find your keys. Okay, I'll help you find your keys. Oh my gosh, this is this sucks. I wouldn't want to do this for a while. I want to, there should be a God of finding the keys in the morning. Yeah. And I'm sure there is. The saints have lost things. The saint of lost things. Is there a saint of lost things? Did you just make that up? I'm sure there is. Dred, if not, I'm putting your name in the hat next time the saints go around because saint of lost things would be my number one favorite saint. I can't tell you how many times until I buy enough trackers and tiles to keep myself satisfied. I'm literally sitting if you don't know this. Let me just pull this up just I'm literally sitting in a pile of trackers and tiles that I keep on at nearly all times, because I keep losing my glasses my wallet. You know, and in order to be fine my wallet be like where was I where did I leave my wallet last it's in my pants. Okay, where are my pants, just like the Lego movie. Those things are actually coming in handy for my mom who has advanced Alzheimer's. So what she'll do she she's paranoid right she's quite paranoid. So what she'll do is she'll hide her phone. And then when she can when she can't find her phone. She says well someone's stealing it. And it's this circular thing that happens and of course so so now we stuck a tracker on her phone and on TV remote that's that's the, that was the clincher right there was like, because that's all she does all day is watch TV and so when she hides a remote to go walk the dog. She thinks someone's gonna come and steal it. Then she comes back in can't find it and thinks that someone stole it. It's a terrible. It's a terrible life. But yeah trackers trackers are good. But going back to the enterprise of religion I do like polytheism for that aspect. I also find that it's really good for the storytelling, but it also has this really weird parallel with technology, where as I get better at tracking with technology and science, that God, who I pray to doesn't become as important anymore. And does that mean that the God of technology or batteries being charged becomes more powerful over time like that could be a really interesting narrative that I can think that religion could cause more people to tell stories and folklore relating to these gods because what is the pantheon stories, other than God's bickering with each other, as they go up and down relevance. Yeah, and I think helping people to acknowledge the fact that Christianity is at its basis polytheistic would help them get a better understanding of it in the context of of religion over human history. There's those direct comparisons between the Greek pantheon and then the Roman pantheon with what the Christian pantheon is, or even the Norse gods. You know, most religions throughout history, including the Egyptians were polytheistic. You know, there was always one. There was kind of like the father of or the chief God, but certainly, you could talk to 10 different people and have 10 different ideas of how that heavenly host is run under that head God, right. Well, we believe in the one God, but then we've got all these other sort of sub gods or demons or whatever you want to call them, that minister God's will, right. So, right. I think it would just help clarify to Christians that they're not actually very unique. Right. You know what I mean. And even when, you know, when Constantine Emperor Constantine there accepted Christianity as a as a religion recognized by the empire. Right. He put in Yahweh into the pantheon of gods that were accepted by Romans. He wasn't saying it was exclusive he wasn't making any kind of exclusive announcement that Christianity was it. It was just, we just stopped killing Christians now and we'll just accept them into the fold. And imagine, which is, which is what I'm waiting of course for, you know, the Canadian government to do just take us into the fall. But think about it. You think of it as like Christian is not that unique in the sense that, you know, this is just one of the gods that they absorbed as they were trying to take over Jerusalem, and you know, Middle East and stuff like that. But what if Rome went north instead, like, and try to take over Scandinavian areas or territories or proto proto areas like that. And next thing you know we have runes and Norse mythology being wrapped into the Roman catalog of gods and all of culture changes because the Roman Empire had such a huge impact that now, instead of Christians we have these druid dream they're like no we're ancestor worship that that was we wish that the one great ancestor, the one great ancestor of all time we controls all ancestry. And you can see the same parallel evolution take place because while that might sound a little silly. That's basically what happened in history, like at one time one guy said we're going that way. And we're going to be here. What's up. But I do think that actually has happened right to a large extent because as Christianity kind of moved throughout the world, it really gobbled up other religions took on their traditions. Yes, wrap them in the Christian sheath. Yes, so that people were still locations. And a real good example voodoo is all the trappings of Christianity, but it's still their religion. Right. Great point. Great point. I've been subsumed by the new kind of cloth, the new clothing, but at this heart it's still killing chickens and casting spells and whatnot right. They just do it with a mother Mary statue and the trappings of Christianity to make it. I guess. No, you're right. The fingerprints are all there the fingerprints on that crime scene are all there we have a seven day week named after Norse gods we worship the sun the moon tear. And I forgot where Wednesday came from but Frida is Friday, like you think about it for a moment you're like wait a second God made seven days but named them after completely different gods like to do that. So Mercury is actually Wednesday. I'm sure there's a Norse equivalent. Sure, sure, sure. So, interesting concept because the paper trail is there. It's just a question of, is there a willingness to see it. Because I have from my own Christian perspective, I took it from a big point of ignorance that I knew what my religion was about because I had a personal relationship with that God. But when I gave myself some more time to introspectively understand the reason reasonability of the approach that I was using and realize that it wasn't reasonable at all. It didn't switch me out of Christianity overnight. Right. I had to systematically go through a transition process of letting go of this relationship that I had, and realizing that there wasn't any major consequence that came from, there was no drop from letting go of that rope, right because the rope wasn't connected to anything itself, the rope dropped, and I stayed in the same place the rope was on the floor. And then real. Go ahead, go ahead. No, no, go ahead. Well, when I dropped that rope, I'm just standing and I'm like, okay, what else do I need to hold on to, and I just found better things to hold on to and that since then I was looking myself up. I'm off the floor and have enough grip strength to be like, Oh, look where I was. Why didn't I just jump up here, because I couldn't. I had to, it took time I have to climb out of this. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, reflecting on Christianity in these different lights is like reading the Bible. For me reading the Bible was what really opened my eyes to the fact that this is absurd. This is crazy. This is horrible. This is, this is misogynistic. It's, you know, it's all those horrible terrible things. I'm going to take an extra stab at that. It's not just reading the Bible because I read the Bible entire time when I was a kid up to my high school. It was reading the Bible with while being a good person while understanding scruples while having some understanding of ethics doesn't come to you automatically. You have to, you have to evolve into the kind of person to go back to your dogmatic textbook and read that with some sort of critical mindset. Yes. Yeah, and be willing to listen to that feedback. You certainly can't serve as a template towards being a good person. Correct. It's just, it's not built that way, right? Exactly. You have to be a good person first and be honest, intellectually honest first. So that's on you because I can tell you, millions, billions of people are reading their Bibles, and they're not making that, that, that transition, but you did. Well, and oftentimes to people are reading what they're told to read the focus, you know, they go on Sunday, the preacher says, let us turn to such and such and read this and, and of course, avoiding always the ugly bits. Sure. Yes, you know, just as a, as a, as a means of directing the attention of the congregants to what they want them to focus on as opposed to just going out at it, read what you want and ask me questions. That's not the way it works, right? Dredd, I have a very short story on that, that pastor thing that you're telling me about. Sure. When my mom was over here, she hates magic tricks, by the way. So I don't frame this as a magic trick because she'll go crazy if I tell her it's magic tricks. So all I did was I took a deck of cards and I was like, Hey, mom, do you want to play a card game because you will play card games. And I'm there sitting riffle shuffling carts together riffle shuffling carts together riffle shuffling. Mom, I think this deck is broken. And she asked me, why do you think it's broken? Because I flip it over and I after like four riffle shuffles, I fan the whole thing out and everything's in perfect order. It's like, no matter what I do, I can't seem to shuffle these carts together. So I put it together, I riffle shuffle again, and I show her it. And she's like, Oh, let me, let me help you and she just shuffles the deck and then gives it to me and they're all in random order again. Because in her head, she didn't understand that I would, in her mind, she didn't, she wasn't thinking that I was setting up for a magic trick. Because when you do magic tricks, it's very important that you inform your audience, what you're doing so that they can come up with some sort of expectation so that you can. What do you call it? Avert subvert that expectation and be like, how did you do that? But I didn't frame it. Yeah, I was just like, hey, this card's broken. I can't, this deck's broken. I can't get it out of order. She's like, oh, you're weird. Come on, kid. Just like this that easy. I was like, you didn't understand the thing I was doing. The same thing. Pastors are doing the same thing. Pastors are doing the same thing. They have to frame the discussion on the Bible in a very particular format for it to have efficacy on its congregation. They can't just be like show up one day and like Jesus is going to save everybody. You're all sinners, but if you pray, you're going to be okay. And here are the citations. See everybody. That's a quick sermon. You have to do it in a very particular way with particular songs where people can feel good about themselves where you pass the hat at just the right time. You get that tithing money. And it's the whole production. If I was a pastor, I'd be really, I'd be a very unsuccessful one because I'd just be like, you guys are done. All right, we're getting close to the bottom of the half hour. We're going to come right back in and we're going to be talking about more concepts of designing Christianity to be more addictive. And then also atheism for profit coming right back after this break. Welcome back to the digital free thought radio hour or let's chat podcast or mine pirates. YouTube extra guys, we are here again talking about Christianity and religion in the whole, trying to understand this design from an atheist perspective trying to understand what we can do to better communicate some of the not necessarily issues, but the irks that we have with it and have like a very intelligent conversation regarding belief, why we believe things and what we can do to get ourselves out of holes. We had a really good conversation in the first half regarding Christianity being polytheistic in nature, particularly in its origins, and how that's an important thing to recognize because it helps to broaden. There's enough evidence there that anyone of inquiring minds can easily figure that out, and to help to hopefully break apart those dogmatic chains they're keeping people to a belief system that isn't as special as they might put as much, you know, confidence into. And so, now we're going to be talking about the design of Christianity I'm going to open this up with a question dread Have you ever played video games before. Yeah, it's like this thing that you put in your hands and you do you do this thing. I think the signing version of it is like literally that old school ones used to be like joysticks. Yeah. Yeah, once or twice. So when I was a kid, when I was a kid the first game that the first system we ever had was a Nintendo Entertainment System that was in the 80s. And it wasn't the first video game system that ever existed but I remember it right. I remember it because my mom brought over like this box. And we have to connect it to the TV. And it was the most confusing thing possible because there are these red little dongles and yellow little dongles and on the back of our TV there was a red hole and a yellow hole and the whole time we're like, which one goes and which one we don't know why their instructions why isn't there like a internet database of videos where we can just easily figure this out like we were all entirely on our own right. And so we figured out a way to plug it in and it started me on this journey of understanding like games outside of arcades because we had our kids before, but of games and seeing how they evolved and change over time based on the culture of the people who make them or influenced by them. And the interesting thing is game design from the long, you know, virtual experiences that last thousands of hours to this ones that are short on your phone have sort of bifurcated into very different cultures, somewhere it's all about telling a story somewhere about an experience and then some words about addictive profit. I am making this game to get as many people to play this game and pay money as much as possible and those games are very successful and very lucrative. And it makes me think, why hasn't religion, which has been around much longer than games, right, or, or God's anything. Why haven't they followed course on any of these addictive models why isn't religion or Christianity or post-sopharianism, or, you know, any of the classics, classic gods, more like the addictive games why is it here's your book, come every week. Train this on your kids by before they understand critical thinking skills. See you later. Why isn't just here's the app. The first one's free and 299 for monthly subscription is like why what's 10% of my paycheck have to do with this. I'm really confused. Dred, do you think that religion can learn from the addictive models of gaining and why haven't they already if not. Well, I, I think they have certainly the move of, or the increase of people, even though there's a decline of people who identify as any particular region. Those who identify as Christian are increasingly moving towards most evangelical models. And I think that is the gamification of Christianity right there. It's, oh, I like gauging instead of this pulpit where it's, you know, from the top down and you just listen to the fire and brimstone story and behave when you leave. People are engaged in way that they participate, you know, you're speaking in tongues or worldly derivishes or handling steaks seizures on the floor or whatever the heck you're doing. Playing with snakes exactly. It's, it's about engaging the audience in a participatory way. So that they are now a character. I get it. In the thing. I get it. It's sort of like the button on mobile games where it's like tell a friend about snakes and talking in tongues. And you click a button and it already has the pre-made email. And it's just like, would you like to tell your Twitter friends? Would you like to tell your Google contacts and just push these buttons and, and it just goes out. And next thing you know, I'm sitting here with alerts on my phone being like, why is Kevin telling me about snakes and talking in tongues. I'll check it out. That 5% of people are like, I got nothing better to do. Right. Well, part of it too, I think is, is by getting you in the door. Right. It's, you know, about the collective effervescence is what finishes the job. You know what I mean? Like, you know, coming in the door, you know, if somebody can get you in the door, they're almost relying strictly on collective effervescence to hook you. Right. To engage you. And it's like, we'll just try this game. You know, this is really a play. Wow, just once. And, you know, it may capture your attention. Sure. There's millions of people that play. Wow. Sure. I mean, I have graphics. It's a good story. You know, there's lots of interaction. There's quests. There's this, you know, so I think religions just is gamified in that way. Yeah, it's a social network. Right. Like, it's, it's essentially a club that has some air of exclusivity behind it. Because we're the chosen people. And by joining a church, you get all the perks of being part of an exclusive new club, which comes with new people, new self sense of self importance, which is very good for people's esteem in a culture that doesn't very do that doesn't do a lot to build a steam being in a prestigious group, even if it's your neighborhood church can mean a lot to you, particularly if it's like one of the biggest churches, you can be like, I can wear the shirt that has the logo of our church or mega church on it. And I can feel like there's a sense of collective with other people who have maybe the same bumper sticker. Like I feel like there's a camaraderie of people who would support me in the event that I have problems. I have a God that I'm directly networked to, we all have leadership that we agree upon which helps to alleviate some sense of am I normal. Yes, I am because everyone else must think exactly like me. It does a lot of neuro neural benefits to be in a collective environment like that. Right. Yeah. And also, also it helps, you know, because it, it establishes the in group of group. Right. Yes. So, once you become part of the in group, you now have a way to focus on the outside. Yes, establish an out group, that way your shortcomings are not the focus of anyone's attention. Right. It's the out group you can all collectively look at and say that those are the people that are wrong. Right. Or evil or even or whatever. So it is, it's divisive. Yeah, taking it to it. Taking it to like a primitive level like you have a lizard brain, which is your very lizard brain does not literally mean you have a lizard brain in your brain. Sometimes people on YouTube are like haha I clip this out of the podcast. And here's got Ty with a degree in biochemistry and he says we're half lizard is like I didn't say that I'm saying we have a very basic part of our brain that hasn't really evolved over time very much and so it's really important for our mainly core functions and some degree of that is how Right. And how we react to things and how those things are controlled in our body. And the fear reflex is a big component of that. I will have two examples one if I'm running through the woods and I'm scared it's dark. I'm terrified and I have no idea what's coming out at me. My fear complex my brain or my loser brain is going off like there's danger there there's danger there this keep running or get ready to fight, keep running or get ready to fight. You got to keep moving or get hold the position keep fighting, but keep running if you can because you know that's good. I'm freaking out. However, if I run into a cave, and I turn around. And now I got like a pointed stick facing out towards the opening of the cave. Now my type. I know my back is safe. And I'm facing one unknown danger that can only come to me from one side. I kind of think like that's how the, the, the inside outside group operates when I'm outside. I'm running through a variety of different sort of threats field lies communities that I can't necessarily trust neighbors who might be trustworthy, etc. But when I'm inside a closed group. Now I can be like, here's my group, turn me my eyes outside. And now I can look at everybody, knowing that the people behind me have my back. Yeah, I feel like that is somewhat alleviating to the fundamental parts of my brain and how that works and I can't deny that. I can't deny that that feels good. Whether it's a dream and you have the same brain everyone else does. Whether or not that's accurate. That's that's the other thing but I do feel like that gamifies religion on a big aspect. The other thing I don't, I find to be a little weird with religion maybe I'd love to get your feedback on this is in games there is a progressive model. Level one, level two slightly harder, level three slightly harder than that for and I, and I get to use more complicated mechanics, such that if they're given to me all at once I'd be overwhelmed, but if you drip feed them to me. I can build a sort of skill set that helps me feel good when I tackle harder challenges and I get that little feedback dopamine rush. What would you think that could be read to Well, certainly in masonry. I, I saw that as a free Mason, you know where you're at go through success of initiations and there's this ladder climb towards hubar ship. Scientology same way right yes, they get you in and, and then you go through these learning through these levels. Until you start believing in aliens and the not to or whatever his name is. But it's, it's building on successive levels of delusion essentially, and it's, and how does the game work. Well I play wow and I'm level 70, but I had to start at level one, right and work my way up and progress and, you know, practice and get better at working with other people who like this, the same game so that we could defeat monsters together. So, you know, the difference of course is I know it's a game, and people of these religions don't, they don't get it. But, you know, I don't know specifically about Christianity because it, it tends to be, well, certainly the models I've been exposed to us, you got the preacher, and then you've got the congregation, and you may have, you know, people who, you know, I guess are part of the, the preacher's council or whatever. But it's, there's not too many levels to that. So, I'm not surprised that there's a pecking order because no one's going to walk into her church and be like, I'm the same level as a pastor, or I'm the same level as Deacon, or I'm the same level as the guys who are like there's that membership tier you don't see when you first come in, but I also think that the way, the structure of what you're taught is, is broken up so that there's like level ones based on your age group. And when I was in Bible study, when I was a young kid, they'd start us on the fanciful stuff immediately. Noah's Ark. Jonah in the well, oh my gosh, yeah, I can't tell you how many times we have to draw that with crayons and stuff like that. Adam and Eve, all the fanciful stuff, because we had in my, now that I see it now, a lower standard of critical thinking that we could operate with, so that we could get those stuff indoctrinated in faster. When you're an adult, when adults came in like adult alcoholics, and we were just looking for a second chance. People who'd never heard about religion, maybe we're coming from a different religion or Christianity and coming from a different religion to understand people who are married into the church as an adult. They would go to adult classes, and when I swapped from children's classes to adult classes, we started on the stories of Jesus, we never talked about the Old Testament. Jesus was just a guy. He was a person just like you and me. And here's him telling these parables and stories and stuff like that. And there was like no magic. And I thought, wow, the adult classes are boring, because the kids classes are fun because they're all about magic and stuff like that. And I was like, oh, it's because they have, there's like two completely different sets of starter packs in Christianity, based on what they can get away with as an adult. And yes, yeah, you're right. When you're a kid after you learn the fanciful stuff you can graduate into the Jesus stories but then you're a lot more easily able to accept that he can make big trees evaporate or walk on water or multiply food or change water which has hydrogen and oxygen into wine which has carbon. Where'd you get that carbon from? How did you balance this equation? This is a very basic question. Why is it still at room temperature? There's a lot of thermodynamics going on here. You have to understand that. No one wants to answer that question. No one answers that question for me. I have people in my science group who are Christian right now and you throw that question out at them and it just like, they get angry at you. It's like, why are you angry at me? I'm asking a very basic question. Like you are a scientist. Like balance this equation out for me. Like this makes no sense. We have good times. We have good times. Either than inviting to this home a couple of times. Anyway, the idea is like, yeah, if you're an adult, I think Christianity cares itself to basically try not to break or make you ask too many critical questions and we'll cater a different kind of Christianity to you to make you appreciate what it's all about before it gets into the higher level stuff. Because for example, like if you're a Mormon or if you were Christian, when you knock on someone's door, you start with the good news. Hey, listen, we're saved. This is all great. And then as you get into the church longer, hey, we're all sinners and you have to repent like the baby switches there at progressively after you build up some sort of vacuum in on what to believe and what not to believe based on the level ones of what you start off with. You don't start off with your little baby. You're just like, Oh, there's an arc and this is all great. And you're just drawing and absorbing all this weird poisonous doctrine. And then you get older. It's like, Hey, there's something wrong with you. Well, and, and that really speaks to how important your geography, your personal geography is to the religion you are initiated into, and how well it sticks. Right. Right. Because, you know, it is, I mean, it's just a, well, not necessarily just geography, but also the cultural milieu that you started out in. If you're East Indian and West Vancouver, East Indian East India, you know, you're born into that culture. Exactly. So you're indoctrinated necessarily by the people you were surrounded by. You know, your parents, your parents, friends, your aunts and uncles, whoever, right. Yeah, same thing. If you're like, if you're in Tennessee and you're born in Davidson County, which is where national is located, you are in the most populous area of Tennessee by millions and millions of people and overwhelmingly secular, overwhelmingly secular. Like there, you'll be hard pressed to find high attendance in a lot of churches in national is much more likely in stadiums. However, if you drive 40 minutes outside of national in any direction, any direction, substantially more Christian where there's churches literally on every block, some are facing each other. I've made the joke of, I try to tell people where I live and they can't follow me, they can't follow like what's Oakland what's, what's this parkway what street are you talking about? It's like, so you take a left at the first coming of Jesus, you go past the passion of the lamb, you take a left at the second savior. So they're just landmarks. Oh, yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I got it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know exactly where you go. I want to do one more gamification idea because one of the things that I love and hate with games is that they're not perfect. And so sometimes developers have to come out with patches. Are you familiar with patches, you ever heard about that? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, patch update or some sometimes people will try to speed run a game speed running means that they try to beat the game as fast as they possibly can, while breaking some of the mechanics in the game. And so the developers have to come up with a, you can't do that and they'll patch the game so that they're running routes and a little bug fixes a little sort of like a nice try guys we still have to use this for something. Don't ruin it for everybody. There's no cheat codes here. And I thought to myself, okay, our goal is to get to heaven, right? As Christians, we're put our Christian hats on our goals to get to heaven. Why are we wasting time on earth? Let's just kill ourselves and go to heaven, right? Sing like a really good plan. Like you put that on paper. And I'm like, why are we in this median transitory life? It's like, yeah, this sucks. This is about suffering. It's like, well, let's just stop suffering and go straight to heaven. Like, in fact, if I was young enough, I can get an automatic pass to heaven. It's like, yes, children who die. It's like, why are we wasting time? Let's just give kids whatever it means they need to so they can go straight to heaven. They can even shoot themselves. We can buy, we can sidestep that little suicide route. No one loves that idea. No one loves the idea. That's not a popular idea. We've gotten edicts from popes. We've gotten messages from pastors like, here are the extra stipulations regarding our stance on suicide. I'm like, you just give me patches to stop the speedrun route called wife. What's going on? Yeah. No. And clearly, the motivation is, there's not because they want you to live longer, but to be able to provide more of your cash. Right. And I also love this one too, where it's, well, I'm just going to sin as much as I want my entire life. And then right when I'm on my deathbed, absolve my sins. Exactly, because blood is strong enough to do that. Why am I searching now? And that is one of the horrible things about that whole thing is, you know, a pedophile could have abused children all their lives. And the children are atheists. And the guy asks for forgiveness at the end of it. He goes to heaven and the kids go to hell. Right. That makes sense. Right, right, right. I mean, we've heard the, the, the more classic or even the wrong religion. Right. You know, like a, you know, a Catholic priest abusing a Muslim kids, you know, like your Buddhists or something, whatever. It's just, I mean, it's just nonsense. I'm actually reading. Okay. Okay. Where he is, of course, justifying monarchy as the only legitimate way to rule or govern people. And of course, it's based on the idea that God is the ultimate sovereign. That's a shame. Because I'd be willing to. So speaking of games, and I didn't want to interrupt you, go ahead, go ahead, finish what you were saying. Well, I was just going to say that's why I came up with this topic is because he spends a great deal of time talking about, you know, the how, and it's weird to read it. Because of course, what little is said in the, in natural Bible, people have expounded and expanded on to make those vast, vast stories, enormous fiction, of which, of course, there is certainly no proof and no way to validate it. Right. It's just, we're taking somebody's word for it more and more and more, you know, like our own notion of what hell is, is really comes from Dante's inferno. It doesn't come from the Bible. No, true. Yeah, so they just hang their fictions on on the good book. And all of a sudden we've got this enormous fiction. Don't get me started on that you just transcend it to another topic because like what else, why else do we have a white Jesus that looks suspiciously Italian, then the one we got now just like and this is the guy from Jerusalem is like you have you been in Jerusalem like we know we've had crusades no one Long flowing hair and it gets more progressively lower body that content as, as our idea of obesity in America gets more concerning. I want to get back. Okay, I was just going to say, have you seen that picture that was on a woman's mantle, and it was a picture of you and McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi. And that was her picture of Jesus. Oh, no, I've not seen that. I've not seen that. But I mean, it wouldn't be a stretch to say that a lot of the Star Wars theories are framed off the biblical parables. Very similar structure. That's one of the reasons why moms who are Christians are like, don't play Dungeons and Dragons, watch Star Wars. These aren't very different mom. They both have people with red horns coming out of their head. You just I'm well, there are Thursday easily the good guys in the back. They're they're very easy to tell apart. Yeah, we'll we'll break and talk about Star Wars for a bit if you'd like to. But I wanted to. Okay, so I got to go back a couple of pages. You were talking about help me walk back. I had a very Hobbs Leviathan. Okay, here's the thing on speaking of video games on Epic Games, which is a launcher that you can download for your computer. It's a way for you to buy games on PC. There's a free giveaway of a game right now after watching this of Fallout New Vegas, which is a video game series that takes place in a post-apocalyptic wasteland that is America after a series of nuclear wars have happened a series so like everything's completely irradiated and very little life is left but a new culture has risen up to take its place. It's sort of Mad Max in its nature. But what's great about Fallout New Vegas is that it is very philosophical in its approach because there's not like a morality system where it's good actions bad actions. Everything has these twisted sort of bittersweet moments where you're constantly doing mental gymnastics with characters that have very strong motivations about why they develop their culture in this wasteland the way that they have. And there's one culture that has basically adopted Caesar's model of rule. And while we love to put Roman Empire on a pedestal for the people who weren't in the Roman Empire, you get to see what life was like for those people which was these guys are powerful and chaotic and completely full of the battery actions where they're murdering people, stealing, looting, and it's insane how evil they are and how quickly they rewrite their history to make themselves look so good. But if you were to talk to that leader because they're framed as the bad guy and you talk to their leader and you're like, Hey, listen, you need to stop doing this because we're going to take you down. Listen, your system is a democracy, your, your, your culture that you have is spread out so far and so bifurcated amongst themselves that you will never last in this culture that we have now, whereas we are relatively while we are smaller, we are not that smaller, and we are unified in one singular purpose with me as the top lead. And let me tell you something historically if you look back in American actual history, if you look back in world history, democracies do not last for a very long time. They are one of the most short lived forms of governance. And we need to have a system that can at least keep its act together, because this might be the last time our culture would ever have its act together before we fall apart completely. We need to have our substantial benefits to this authoritarian rule, even though it might be seem as tyrannical. If you were to follow the game plan, we won't be as mean to you if you indoctrinate your if you put yourself into our system and follow my singular rule. This is the benefits and he's like laying out the strategy and it's not, it's not a God argument at the end of the day. It's actually just a well formulated historical based proposition of why authoritarian rules in certain contexts are actually fairly valid. And you have to make a key decision on whether or not it's still worth breaking them down and you can do so just through dialogue you can be like actually well here's my counter arguments it's a really really interesting game, not to spoil the entire ending but you'd really enjoy it. You just outlined Leviathan right there. But there's no God combined. Yeah, it's precisely what he's talking about is that, you know, monarchy could be monarchy, democracy, which is ruled by assembly, but that assembly acts as a sovereign. Right. So you have one person or one group of people. Right. And that group could also be an aristocracy, right? Yes. An aristocracy or aristocracy or monarchy. But yeah, I know that that online is right right there where he's talking about. Another thing he said was like, imagine what would happen if you if it's really hard to keep a system accountable, whereas for one person it's much more easily, not only that but the trend of a system going corrupt is far faster than one person being corrupt or being replaced. Right, right. Because if you get replaced by one idiot, you can replace that idiot with a capable person, you know, and now we you've kept your trajectory somewhat fairly well but if your system becomes more corrupt, you can't course correct that as easily. And so, so many very persuasive arguments by the end of the day you have to make the decision I won't tell you which ones to pick. There are many other counter rules of governance in that same game. If anything, watch like a summary video on Fallout New Vegas, at least on the philosophy on the New Vegas philosophies, you would really, really appreciate it, especially if you're reading Leviathan or any other books that's my shout out as we reach the end of the episode. What would you recommend we check out before the show ends, or before next week and we meet again. Well, I don't know. You know just go to my channel I, you know you're reading a lot of books. Yeah, yeah. Well, Thomas pops. I'm going to be working on fortune Russell next. I want to kind of get get all the older philosophers in before I start moving into more current. Can I throw out just as a nation. Yeah, could you, could you read some ancient Egyptian philosophers, if you like old stuff, because the kings of Egypt wrote books as well that were translated for English readers, and you'd be shocked at how well aligned they are or influential they are for a lot of the, I would say, what's the right period of time. Enlightenment age era of philosophers that are out, you'd be surprised how well it trends, almost as if those guys read, or maybe they could maybe they couldn't have the technology to like, wow, they had their stuff together even back then that was great. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, I think I mentioned I had read Marcus Aurelius's meditations which were based heavily in Stoicism. So yes I'd like to read Cicero, as the, you know, and you know guys like Spinoza and whatnot to get a, again, a feel of, you know what the, you know, how it progressed over time, you know, starting from the Greeks and Romans and, and moving into modern times but I tried to go back and forth, you know, so I read Kant and Sartre and, and then now I'm back at Hobbes and, you know, Heidegger and all the rest of it's kind of keep it interesting. Some of that old English is really hard to read like, you know, 1670 was Thomas Hobbes right so you know they've got, you know, page long sentences with commons that you have to, you know, sort of read how they've embedded the meaning right. Okay, got a lot of good book recommendations. Thank you mind pirate and you guys are tasked with at least checking out. Listen, we got a chat GPT AI, you can ask it anything you want ask where to start start asking yourself some important questions. The main thing is to keep asking questions. It's what the show is all about. It's what the show is for. And if you have questions feel free to leave them in the comment section reach out to us you can get me at let's chat se at gmail.com or put your comments in the comment field in this YouTube video, or reach out to mind pirates if you're watching on his channel and just leave a comment there too. Thank you guys so much for joining us on the digital pre thought radio hour. We'll see you next week and remember what's my close out. I don't really have one but I'll tell you this. It's always good to listen to both your doubt and your confidence don't just listen to one or the other, you got to live through balance. That'll be my end to see everybody thank you so much. Right man.