 computer. Hello and welcome to the digital free thought radio hour on WOZO radio 103.9 LPFM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We're recording this on Sunday morning, July 17th, 2022. And I'm Larry Rhodes or Doubter 5. And as usual, we have our co-host Wombat on the line with us. Hey for the eyes on the Wombat or the head just generally. And our guests today are Dred Pirate Higgs. Hello, welcome. How are you? It's Guy from Texas. Welcome. Greetings. Digital free thought radio hour is a talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism and the sciences. And conversely, we'll also talk about religion, religious faiths, gods, holy books and superstition. And if you're the only non-believer in your town, well, you're just not. In Knoxville, the middle of the Bible Belt, we have a group of over a thousand of us. And we'll tell you more about that group after the mid-show break. Wombat, what's your topic today? Narrative versus evidence. In the greatest combat since all the time they should make a movie out of it. In fact, we're going to be talking about that today. But that is what I'd like to call the main dish. Let's have a nice little appetizer of pasta led by our own Dre Pirate Higgs for our weekly vacation. Go for it. Our newly lord who art in a colander, I'll dente be thy noodles, thy blood be rum, thy sauce be yum, with meat as it is with vegetables. Give us this day our garlic bread and forgive us our cussing as we forgive those who cuss against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us some garlic bread with iron or the meatballs and the sauces and the rog. Whenever and ever. I think there's a really good joke on the internet. It's like, hey, have you heard about the good news? It's like, yeah, garlic bread. It's really great, isn't it? It's right there for you. Today we're going to be talking about narrative versus evidence and how it relates to the movie industry, particularly is religion or how to put it, are the movie industry implicated in the persistence of religion and does movies or superstitious thought and superstitious thoughts. But I guess it would be important for us to, one, catch up, see how we've been over the last week, to get our definitions in order and then three really delve into this topic as best as we can. So we're going to do what I like to do. A nice little recap. Joe Skye, how you been? Good to catch up with you. How you been? I've been good. I've been working a lot. I have a new project that I'm investigating doing. I'm thinking about writing a little book on what I call the dialogue. Believers and unbelievers talking in a non- confrontational way. Nice. I dig that. We need it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think dialogues like that are always really wonderful to watch. I got caught in that rabbit hole, but it is a fun thing to come back to every now and then. Dred Pirate, how you been? I've been really good. I was just out in the shop this morning actually and I don't know if you can see this here. This is an egg cup. It's an egg cup I made out of walnut. You can see the inlay there is actually made with eggshells. Really? Can you put it on the camera? Is it like chopped eggshells or is it like a single shell? Is it powder? What's that white part? The white part? The white part at the very top, the inlay. That's egg shell. Okay, pieces of egg shell. Yeah, yeah, ground up egg shell that I put in a blender. Okay, okay. Nice. Very cool. And then I used a guitar string to burn that mark there. I think it was an E string. Excellent. Nice work. It's really, really nice. Thank you. It's a cup for an egg basically, right? Or am I misinterpreting? It is a cup and it also doubles as a shot glass, right? Nice. After you've had enough boiled eggs, you can down a shot of whiskey or scotch or have a scotch egg. And that's breakfast. That's breakfast of champions. Larry, how you been? It's good to catch up with you too. I'm fine. I haven't got my motorcycle out this week and I feel guilty about that, but I need to. My nephew is visiting us, so that's really nice. He's sitting off screen monitoring what I say because he can't hear anything else. But it's always good to see him working. Yeah, it's boring. And I've been getting into chess more and more, playing online against bots and doing chess puzzles. Okay. That's a lot of fun. You know, I can tell you for as many video games as you play, I think you could find more riveting experiences in terms of gameplay than chess. I'm calling some shots out. I feel like chess. Oh, my nephew has a Quest 2, so he's here. You know, we're loading up the Quest 2s and playing a lot of shoot-em-ups and playing some golf too. Okay, so you got the whole spread. I like it. I like a man of variety. For me, I'm going to bring up a little story. I had some hard times this week and it reminded me of a parable. And the parable went, one day a man was drowning and a boat came by and asked the man, do you need help? And the man said, no, thank you. God will save me. And then another boat came by and asked the man, do you need help? And the man said, no, thank you. God will save me. And then the man drowned and died. And he went to heaven and he asked God, God, why didn't you save me? And God said, because I like drowning people. I like drowning people. Haven't you read my book? All right, guys, we're going to be talking about narrative versus evidence. What I feel is a really interesting topic brought to us by our own John Richards. He'll probably be joining us later on today. But I want to talk about what we mean by these words. What do we mean by narrative and what do we mean by evidence? And before we start blaming the movie industry for anything, let's try to get those out of the way. And I'll throw out my two examples. Evidence and narrative. If I was trying to define those two, I find narrative to just be sort of like a story in a series of claims to support a story, right? Whereas evidence is a series of claims that can be presented to support like something that happened in reality. So a narrative is supporting a story. Evidence is supporting what I feel is a case to be made for something that may have happened in reality or not. Maybe that's abstract. What do you think? Well, I think we would also say that evidence would have to be testable from any perspective. Basically, anybody doing the same experiment would get the same results. And as far as narrative, anecdotal evidence is a mainstay of most religions. People tell them just so stories about this or that and to help bolster their belief. And if you think about it, the Bible is just full of anecdotal stories that present a situation where it would bolster your belief. Fred, what do you think? I would characterize it this way that evidence, it's the, so the narrative starts with the conclusion, whereas evidence supports a conclusion. It makes sense. Evidence supports a conclusion. Great. Way more time. What would be narrative then? So a narrative begins with a conclusion. So a person writing a book knows how it's going to end. So a narrative tells a linear tale with the end already figured out. So all the events that happen essentially conspire to deliver the conclusion. Whereas evidence supports a conclusion that's only determined after sufficient evidence has been pulled together to support a hypothesis, I guess is a better way of characterizing it. Makes sense. Another thing I might throw out is if you're like George R. R. Martin, not to call more shots, or if you're a bad writer, typically you write without understanding what the conclusion is going to go. And so it ends up just a meandering story. But I do say that narratives are built with an agenda in mind. There is an underlying desire when you're making a narrative ideally to sell an idea or to make money or to have something that is beyond just the story itself. Whereas evidence, I feel, is solely for the purpose of demonstrating a fact of reality or making a point. But there's no other greater agenda behind it. For example, I can find evidence for climate change. And I can also tell you in a narrative sense that we're going to live forever. And my agenda for living forever is like, hey, I want people to feel good and listen to me and make profit. Whereas evidence might support something that I totally don't want to happen. I don't want this world to be frying apart. And it is a scary thing to think about. So evidence very much doesn't care about my concerns, my agenda. But narratives are almost fine-tuned to tell the best story. Yeah, almost by definition they are. Narratives are created by agents, right? There it is. Yes, there's an additional agency in a narrative compared to evidence, right? I think that's probably one of the best ways to put it. Skye, do you have one way on this? Do you have a difference between narrative and evidence? As a writer, I would simply say that narrative is the art of telling the story. Hmm. It's more than just the content. It's the presentation. There are good storytellers and there were awful storytellers. As far as evidence, I don't think I could do better than what Gretz said. It's a tool. It's essentially just a tool. That's it. It's not so much telling a story. It's trying to figure out the world around you. It's the things that we can build to tell the world around us. Then we see when we look at a movie, this particularly fiction, works of fiction, right? This clear and compelling desire by people to watch and be entertained in a narrative sense, even if it means they have to forego their grip on reality. In fact, there's a concept when you watch a movie called suspension of belief, right? No suspension of disbelief. Of disbelief? Okay, suspension of disbelief. That makes more sense, yeah. And it's simply put, I am willing to be fooled if you can enter. Yes, there is. Well, and there are people who are very... Stray audio in there. Yeah. I'm willing to be fooled if you can entertain me. It's both a fun thing to do if you can control it, so that way you can enjoy a good narrative. But I also feel like it might be difficult for certain people to turn off, so that when they walk out of a movie theater, they're like, yeah, but the force could actually be something that exists if there's a multiverse. And if the multiverse exists, there must be a world where there is an Iron Man. And maybe I can blink my eyes twice and then no kung fu in some weird, strange capability universe. I feel like that's where we start to get into these strange conditions where we may not be employing critical thinking in a capacity where we could. What do you guys think? Larry, do you think... I'll throw the question at you first. Do you think then that movies can be implicated for the persistence of religious thinking? Oh, of course. In particular, the religious movies. You know, all the... What do you call it? The Ten Commandments? The... Greatest story we're told, that kind of thing. All of that stuff. But in particular, the ones that really grab you like the exorcist and scare the heck out of you, you know, drive these fears home. My older brother, Steve, said that he went home after seeing the exodus and started reading the Bible again. And I started praying a lot more because of that. So it reinforces police, even though it was just a movie. Okay, that's an interesting take. If you were to ask me... And I like it because I definitely see all the examples you bring in. Definitely no doubt more people watching The Passion of the Christ. I remember that when I came to high school. And it's inspired a lot of people to be like, yep, that's how it happened. And I'm like, I don't even know if there was a single Jewish person in that whole movie. Just white people beating on other white people the whole way. Like bleached hair and like abs everywhere. I'm just like, are you sure? It's like, okay, well, you know, you got to have a mental image of something, but not a lot of black people from Mesopotamia Africa, just saying. But I am saying also, I think like, I feel like movies prey on our ability to want to have a belief and confirm beliefs that we have that we're looking for evidence for. And movies are a poor substitute for that. And I feel like, yeah, if they can't persist it, but I also feel like if it wasn't movies, it'd be something else. And as demonstrated by the fact that religions, those same ideas persisted even before movies existed in the first place. But yeah, can it help? I definitely say, I wouldn't say it's culpable. I just feel like it's there and something else would easily replace it if it wasn't. Dredd, what do you think? Yeah, I don't know about something else having to be there. You know, again, again, just pointing back to statistics of religiosity, you know, people are moving away from it. So it's not like there's a default position where people need to believe in strange and unjustified things. Maybe it's, you know, it's a shift, but I don't know that it is just being we're replacing one thing with another. Okay, okay, I like it. So how about this, then? I'll throw out before we had movies, we had folklore. And and when we had folklore, we had epics. And we had stories where that we passed on for generations about the odyssey or like Achilles or like great wars that were only from the perspective of the winners that manage. Yeah, right. 300, like things that aggrandize ourselves of like, oh, we are big and powerful, when in reality, it was just, you know, maybe the other side got sick and got completely stomped, or they didn't show up to the battlefield, but they made an agreement of like, you know what, we're going to say, we, we beat off 14,000 people with only three guys. I feel like we do the same thing with legends, you know, Johnny Appleseed, what happened at the Alamo, David Crockett, we Samson and the Jawbone. Yeah, we take figures from our history, we remove all the bad aspects of them and only try to remember the good. George Washington, we don't talk about the fact that he slave traded our own people, like, like we just say, oh, no, that was a great leader who wanted all the ideals for America, despite that, he probably didn't want women to vote, only wanted white people with land to have any power in this country. And and the whole bunch of other terrible stuff show them with like powdered wigs, even though he's like in the middle of the Delaware, like in this really organized suit, like you probably didn't look like that if you did do that in the first place. But if it wasn't, I was just going to say, I read recently that George Washington was actually an infrared liar. The story about I cannot tell a lie is a story. Yeah. Yeah, of course, I would like I also feel like we will say stories like Benjamin Franklin flying a kite in the middle of the storm and discovering electricity because he got zapped by lightning, like that would kill a person like you kill a key isn't enough to stop a lightning bolt, but we believe it even until the point like we're an adult and it takes effort to like lose that. And so when I say like when a movie supports that, yeah, that's sort of thinking is supported with a movie. But if you took movies out, we would still have a lot of other kinds of narratives that we're holding on to. Yeah, that aren't evidentially based. I feel like it's a human nature thing to grab on to stuff like that, particularly in this environment. That's what I mean by that. Dred, do you feel like am I getting closer to a mark? Is it some more compelling to you? Mm hmm. Yeah, yeah. Sure. Okay. I'm a bit I'm sorry. I'm just a little distracted because my my frames, my frame rates skipping and acting up. So you're coming. You're looking good. What I'm basically saying is humans have cultivated an environment where there are a lot of narrative based stories that are easily mistaken for evidence. So if you take out movies, there's going to be so many other crocodiles in the river, if you will, that it's like you just took out one grain of sand out of a beach of bad narrative based disguises for poor evidence that Yeah, no, I would agree that, you know, human it's human nature to we're storytellers. It's just that we have to I mean, it's a it's a matter of diligence to discern between evidence and narrative and not conflate the two as they are so often done. Okay. And because of that, that's why I'm not blaming movies for the persistence of religion. What I'm saying is I can watch a movie and if I'm told that, hey, this is a work of fiction, have have fun. And you know, when the movie is over, that's when the story ends. Like that's up to me to like know that when I go into a movie, you know. Yeah. Well, that's, I mean, that's what I was saying last week is that, you know, as a as a former student graduate of the Vancouver film school, it kind of ruined me for movies because the suspension of disbelief is not easily accomplished anymore simply because I know how it's done. It's all sets and lights and special effects and, and, you know, Gollum's a guy with a suit and a little tags all over him and he's jumping around. And then all the expressions and stuff are, you know, kind of infilled or backfilled, you know, after the fact, right? So, you know, it's, it's, it's entertaining to, to initially. But then once I get over the fact that this is how it was all put together, it's like, yeah, it's just a big chase story. You know, that's what the Lord of the Rings turned to be turned up for me. You know, six hours of people getting chased across, you know, the world with a ring, you know, thanks for that. I've always, but even with the suspension of disbelief, I've always appreciated movies for the underlying story that's that they tell about the human condition. Like I, I recently just saw a really great movie called everything everywhere and all at once. And it is so good, but it's not about, it's a multiverse movie, but it's not about like jumping across universes. It's about a relationship between a mother and her family, right? And like how distant they become and what she's trying to do to pull it back together. And I really deeply empathize with that. When I was done with that movie, I called my mom and just like, Hey, mom, I love you. Like stuff like that makes me feel good. Whether I know how the movie worked or how I did it, because I recognize most of the actors in that I was like, Oh, I know that guy from there. He's on YouTube and stuff like that, but it's not about that. It's about the story that you can tell about the human condition. And I feel like if you're watching Twilight Zone or if you're watching any of the movies that do come out, that's what I enjoy out of the movies. Like I can suspend the disbelief to a degree, dread. I'm in the same thing, vote as you bad CGI is bad CGI, bad effects or bad effects. But it's really about what is the writer trying to tell me as a parable for like humanity. And that's the stuff that speaks to me the most. And I can walk out of the movie with that as sort of like the most evidence for like how we interact with people. And I'd like to make a point that these things, if it carries a good message, a good moral or whatever, it doesn't matter whether the story is true or not. A parable can do that. But at the same time, if you try to pass off a parable as as true fact, then you start getting into trouble and people find out it's not fact that they question the parable and the moral. Right. It makes you a wire and a fraud when you try to pass off a narrative as evidence. Right. Oh, go for it. Go for it. I was just going to say that not, you know, not all stories with a moral are like not all messages are good. So there you go. A poor message could be told very, very well. And that I think is what I'm getting to when I say that movies perpetuate religious belief because you can dress something up. You can dress a donkey up to look like a stallion, but it's still a donkey. Right. And how many how many ghost movies are there out there? Exactly. Prepetuating this just perpetuate religion, but they perpetuate the relief, the belief in afterlife and continuing on after death. And those are the good, good feel stories like ghost or, you know, things like that where, you know, at the end, when he's resolved the conflicts in the storyline, he finally goes to see the light and everyone's happy that he's lifted up into heaven. So you guys are tapping onto something I definitely want to go into more in the second half, but I also feel like Larry, you made a really good point where the story can be true or not true. It's the it's the morals that we should be looking at. And those are the most useful things like that can be used as places of evidence for how people thought, how systems work or what morals they thought were important back in the day. And when I look at the Bible, I see nothing but fantastical stories that have very useless morals because all the morals in the Bible are obey God. That's it. They like the the the garden of Eden know us tell like God came and destroyed all the people on the planet. But he saved a couple of people because those are the people that were that he deemed to be the good, most people to follow his commands. But I'm like, what's the moral of the story? Oh, the morals listen to God. Well, what am I supposed to get out of that? There's no there's no value. It is not morality. Obedience is is is just this terrifying thing that you must maintain under threat of drowning to death, like the guy in that boat story. It's the the the fact of the matter is is if you don't have a useful moral, it doesn't matter how incredible the story is doesn't matter how powerful characters are in the story. You basically have what I find to be a useless narrative, because I don't care about the dressings as Larry is putting it, I don't care if the storytelling is true or not. I'm trying to figure out what's useful from the overall message that the writer is giving me. And if the message is just worship God, I don't I'm not you haven't made a good case for it. And I can just move forward with that. Whereas dread you make a really good point that I like to follow up in that they can dress up really, really bad morals in really nice storytelling ways with like great effects and great actors and stuff like that. But the message is still terrible. So like you need to have a good message first, build your narrative around that. And then that's that's that's the best way to maintain what I find to be like a really good story. Anyway, this would be a good spot to take a break and come back after the station identification and all that. Stay tuned for the second half of the digital Freethought Radio Hour and WOZO Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We'll be right back after this short break. Welcome back to the second half of the digital Freethought Radio Hour and WOZO Radio 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Just take a moment just to talk about the Atheist Society of Knoxville. ASK was founded in 2002, winter 20th year now and have over a thousand members. We do have weekly in-person meetings in Knoxville's Old City at Barley's Taproom in Pizzeria. Look for us inside at the high top table or if it's pretty weather outside on the deck. We also have Tuesday evening Zoom meetings in case you can't make it to Knoxville or you just don't want to get out. If you'd like to join us, email us for a link at askanatheistatnoxvilleatheist.org or let'schatseatgmail.com. You can find us online at facebookmeetup.com or go to the website at Knoxvilleatheist.org or just Google Knoxville Atheist. It's just that simple. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you can still go to meet up and do a search for an Atheist group in your town. Don't find one. Start one. Where do you want to pick up? I don't always forget if it's don't find one or can't find one or you may not find one and there are different signs in ASL. So I always have my toes for that. But today we're going to be talking about narrative versus evidence. And we just did a whole spiel on what we think narrative and evidences are. We think narrative is the art of storytelling, whereas evidence is a tool to support claims that are testable and can be used to help us better understand reality. And while our narrative typically has an agency behind it, evidences tend to be far more neutral in what they try to present. And so it's very important for us to be able to distinguish the difference between a narrative versus evidence because in movies, those are largely narrative-based. And there are a series of claims that are very well produced and presented to us in this spectacular fashion that where if we don't remember that we're looking at a narrative, we can use those films or studies as evidences in the way of a bad methodology to support terribly produced messages or terribly produced claims. And so in that same light, we're talking about sugarcoating, bad messages with appealing narratives. And Dread Pirate, you're talking about how that happens in more ways than one. Did you have examples? What do you mean by you can hide a really bad message with a good narrative? Well, I mean, there's any number of movies out there that essentially, they've kind of got the message that they want to tell, and they dress it up in the most favorable light so that if you're not discerning of what that narrative is, you may be led to believe it. And that, of course, is the essential truth of all religious books. If you buy into the narrative of a religious book, which tells a story and offers no evidence in support of it, then you may be lulled into it and certainly billions and billions and billions of people over time have. I'll fill that one too. So Bible notorious for not having any good female characters. For the buns who think they do, if you break down their stories, they're all fairly terrible in terms of like female representation and agency of the women who are the main figures of that story. But if you were to look at movies, a lot of movies are written by guys, it's particularly Disney movies. And I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing, but it does overlook a lot of potential that the story could have had if it had more influence and case in point, the Disney princesses, or more importantly, the idea of a prince charming, who can just come in the third act and basically marry the female character and that solves basically all the problems. It sort of continues to perpetuate this idea that women, whatever problem you have, whether it's wanting to walk on land and live life or leave your tribe that you were born into or become, I don't know, like some sort of like queen where you can have all your answers solved and no longer be a maid. I got to do is marry a man. That's it. That's it. Find a nice prince charming for yourself and figure that out, whether you're like being raised by seven doors or anything else. It's like marry a man, it solves all your problems. That's it. Yeah. You know, it's funny you should say that I was just listening to a podcast, Origins podcast, who hosted by Lawrence Krause with Neil de Grass Tyson and goes back into the origins of Neil de Grass Tyson. He recalled in school how boys and girls were pigeonholed by a questionnaire where they were asked, what kind of careers would you be interested in? Of course, boys, the typical things would be like fireman, policeman, you know, some of these very common vocations for aspiring young boys. And for women, it was mother, homemaker, hairdresser, waitress. I've got a career. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the statement comes with it. But go for it. Something occurred to me and that is that narratives and evidence address two forms of questions, right? So a narrative answers what if questions and evidence answers why does questions. Oh, I can see that. I can see some nuance in there. I like that. I like that. Larry, I'm going to throw this out at you. The idea that movies can sometimes wrap up bad messages with really great production values. Do you have examples of something like that happening from your recollection? Maybe if you'd given me that at the beginning of the show. Hey, you got it. And ask me now. No. Welcome to the hot seat, Larry. Bad mess. Oh, I think that you nailed it with the Disney movies. But it's just it's hard to think of any right off the spot. Normally what I get is like, I get those weird sports movies where it's like the guy, the coaches, he believes in God. He's a nice guy and he talks to his pastor and just like, listen, I'm just some underdog coach and the other teams, they have this huge budget and this big program. I'm just a God fearing man. What can I do with just me, my gumption and this group of misfit kids? It's like, all you got to do kids is follow me to church and pray with me and you will win that touchdown. You'll get that score point. You can do the sports ball thing and they all pray in the last inning and they get it and they're like, yeah, we did it. It's like great. Reminds me. Yeah. The last three minutes is all in slow motion. Yeah. Running across the finish line. And like as a kid, you watched that and you're like, oh, OK, well, I like that movie because there was a bunch of really nice music and songs. But as an adult, you watch it, particularly as an atheist, you're like, wow, this is just proselytism in Mighty Ducks, basically. And there was a movie when I was growing up called The Cross and the Switchblade. Yes, Cross and the Switchblade. Is that what you were thinking of? Yeah. I was thinking of another one that's actually currently in production. Yeah. So. As I might have mentioned, I do work on set security. And one of the ones, it's actually one of the largest productions of all the ones. There's like 35 productions currently on the go in the lower mainland of Vancouver. And the biggest production with the biggest budget is one called The Scriptures. And it's in it's a series being produced and filmed right now. So. OK. I'll tell you, I'll tell you two other things, too, that I that I like. Could wait. First, could you tell me what the Cross and Switchblade is? Because I don't know what that is all about. Oh, it was Pat Boone, I think it was a priest. And he went into the slums of New York City and and converted people, mainly the gang members that were there and brought them to Christ. Yeah, we have a Hispanic version of that down here in Texas called out crying the barrio. But it's essentially it's the same story told about American. There is a church that does live productions every Easter of the resurrection of or and the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. But they they flanderize it by making parodies of local of the most popular movies that had come out. So there is a Marvel Cinematic Universe version of the crucifix of Jesus Christ, except this time it's Iron Man. And it's like Loki's the one that stabs him in the chest. And then there and then they make songs about it. And it's like them and it's very highly produced. They have multiple camera angles. It takes place in a mega church. So like there's a full crowd of people singing. There's lights. There's costumes and all that stuff. They'll do a Lord of the Rings version of the crucifix. The next year, they'll do a Twilight version of the Lord. They'll do a Star Trek version of James Bond movie. And they release their videos online to great appeal. Of course, they sell them to. But in my head, it's the sort of thing where it's like you're wrapping up a fun production. Or you have like this sugar coated fun production around what is essentially a man sacrificing himself and really his own son for to make up for rules that he made up in the first place. Because he's unwilling to forgive people without a human sacrifice. And you're just like, why did we how did we normalize that? It's a wolf in sheep's clothing. It's yeah, it's it's a M&M coating inside over a Skittle. Basically, you're just like, what? No, no, no. It's a Skittle with an ambulance. All right, Joe, Skye, putting you on the same hot seat. Did you have examples of movies with bad messages, but good productions? Well, any movie that promotes belief in an afterlife, I think could go into that category. Probably one of the most sensational movies I ever saw like that was Poltergeist. It was a very engaging story. It was a good ghost story, but it promoted wanted to promote that belief in the afterlife and, too, it tried to ascribe a moral meaning. And I think that it detracted from the movies as a whole by trying to give it a moral that you don't desecrate the dead. Right, right. The dead are dead. Yeah, and more power to them. Dead are dead. I feel like there are also sci-fi movies that obscure science or don't do any favors in terms of explaining complex scientific terms or simplifying to the point where that becomes the new mainstream way of explaining what is truly a much more complex idea. And you've actually only muddled the waters even more so than what religion could have done. One of the things I hate when I was watching a movie, and I think it's a nice hybrid of the two in terms of religious selling and obfuscation of science is contact. Obfuscation. Contact with Jody Foster. Is that who was in there? Yeah, I remember watching that movie and I was like, oh, everyone I know loves this movie. I'm going to watch this movie. And there's like scenes in the movie where she's like, hey, I got contacted by like this, you know, interstellar species that gave us instructions. I think we should build this thing. And then she's bringing this up in Senate and the Senate is like, well, tell me before you send yourselves out, how do you feel religiously? And I'm like, and the lady's like, no, I don't know. I don't know how to apply to anything. It's like, you got to believe in God. I'm just like, why is this a message in the story? I thought it was an idea of like, oh, the Senate is so politically and religiously based that they want her to be religious. But like the movie is going to play that off as like, no, obviously I wouldn't need that you can build this with entirely secular minded ideals. But the movie was flipped out on its head. It's like, no, she has to have a religious experience. That's the whole idea of the contact. That's the first place. I'm just like, what? No, Larry, what's up? I mean, Carl Sagan just wanted to interject this combat between science and religion into the story so they could address it. Yeah. And I absolutely agree with you, Larry. And, you know, unfortunately, I disagree with you, Tai. It wasn't to suggest that she ought to have a religious or be an ambassador for the people of Earth who believe in religion. And that was a pretty poignant point that I thought was very good of Carl Sagan to have included in that story because he could have done without it. But the story I thought was actually made better by the fact that that was the reason she was overlooked in favor of the first guy who got killed. And, you know, subsequently, there was the second machine and she got to go. So I actually thought that the inclusion of that was actually pretty poignant. But I would throw this out as a Christian who watched that the first time. I saw that as a good thing that she didn't get the role and that the guy who was a Christian did. So I think she but she went out in the end, right? That's that's that's where the turnaround came. Then there was this other thing where she meets her dead dad and she's like talking to like this figure who died and it's like, is that a soul experience? And I'm like, what did this have to do with the science? Right. Like I was sold as a Christian, a science movie and we can debate the merits of for sure. But I was like, I was sold a science movie, but caught in the quagmire of religion. And as a Christian, I didn't really complain too much. But I was like, oh, but I wanted a sci-fi experience. And instead I watched. What was it primer instead and got like, ah, there's my it's scratched. I got a I got a science movie and I and I saw a science movie. And that's all I wanted. But I got sold politics. Yeah, but you're a scientist. That's the difference between cosmos and contact. Once a science based information show, which was had really great production. And the other one was this was a narrative. I'd say this, if anyone built a machine, right, there's zero guarantee. And Larry, maybe you might support me on this that you will. You will meet your dead dad at the end of an intergalactic tunnel and have a conversation with him about like how awesome life is in the. Well, I'm pretty plain in the movie that they took the concept of her dad from her mind and presented themselves in that venue so that she would more relate to them. And actually this was yeah. And this was actually explained by Androian, who was his Carl Sagan's wife. Is that Carl did not purposely did not want to show the aliens because we anthropomorphize our ideas of what aliens may look like. Just watch any Star Trek episode. Everything's bipedal, two eyes and nose and mouth. But they got bumps and lumps in places on their head. And breathe out to generate the same things we did. And that's why. And that's why Carl said he didn't want to show the aliens. And that's why the the father thing came in. OK, very cool. There was also a movie that Will Smith was in that was about the nature of CET or concussions that football players get when they run into a number of head injuries during a game of football. I forgot the name of the game of the movie. But I do remember watching it and only getting through the first act because it sets up the the doctor that Will Smith plays as this belligerent person who is looking for things to fix in his life. And eventually runs into his pastor who's like, listen, if you want to fix something and you're like into the sports things, I got an idea for you. One, why don't you get a nice little lady. I got lots of ladies here that come to my congregation. You can figure this out. And then you just calm down a little bit. You're always so agitated. It's like, no, I have this idea about brains. And I think we should make better helmets. Like you're freaking out too much. Come come to my congregation. You'll meet a lady. And I'm like, I I like the act one structure. What's like everyone's telling this guy to like settle down and and his penis is I guess his pastor is acting like a pimp for him. Basically trying to set him up. And that's the B line story. And I thought the B line story is going to completely dismiss when he figures out that NFL is like actively trying to like dismiss this research that he's doing. But instead it does both stories. It's one of like him fighting for it. And then to his pastor totally hooking him up with another lady and them coming to terms with God. And then and through his his desire to be a better person through God, he he lucks out and his research like takes over and like helps to like win the the narrative of NFL changing. I'm just like you have the science. Just stick with the science. You know, you didn't need a you didn't need a sugar coated with all this other stuff around it because then when people take the science, they pick up all this extra baggage along with it. And I feel like contact had the same thing. Maybe I can maybe maybe we can I can rewatch that movie and change my opinion on that and I'll come back to that. But I feel like it'd be nice to just have science movies that are just science movies because I feel like science is cool enough. I feel like science is cool enough. You can take it. The best go for it. Well, I was just going to say that some of these things are superfluous. Right. Like you could tell a story about the thing that happened without the superfluous notion that God had something to do with it. Sure. Or just construct your narrative to where you've made it clear that the science doesn't matter. Like you can make it like Jurassic Park one where it's like it's about dinosaurs. There's stuff going around. There's families and there's people chase. But it's about the dinosaurs. So like just let me sit down for the dinosaurs or you can make it like where it's loop or where you literally say to the camera that the science doesn't matter or like time travel is organic. It doesn't really matter. You're thinking too hard about it. I'm like, OK, great. Now I can turn my brain off and just enjoy the message of the story and like and understand it as it is. But don't give me both at the same time because one is easier to swallow than the other. It's like you gave me an aspirin and a ping pong ball and you're like, enjoy these two things. It's like, no, I'm going to do one or the other. Just me. Sorry for that small rant, guys. Guys, you know, make of the the myth that's promulgated in so many movies that you have to be in a relationship to be a complete person. Yeah, I hate that too. I really, really despise that. But I agree. I feel like it's really toxic because there are a lot of people that function entirely well single in my head or demonstrably so. Larry, so do we have any messages from our questions from the audience that you have holding on to any of those over there? Dredd, are you? What? Questions? No, no, no. I don't have anything on the live stream right now. Low moz on and a couple other people who haven't identified themselves. But OK, cool. OK, so I'd say as a takeaway, messages can be given in narratives where as evidence can support claims, know what you're dealing with and don't substitute one for the other. And while suspension of disbelief is potentially very difficult or enjoyable if you're really good at it, just know how to turn it on and off, right? And know when it is on and off. Well, and recognize that that's what you're doing. Exactly. Right? Awareness of that you're suspending your disbelief. That's critical because if you don't, then you're conflating evidence with narrative and that's where the problem comes in. And even though someone is telling you a very engaging and well done story, it doesn't mean that the components of the story actually exist. Right. And, you know, go ahead. There's a really great idea of like getting the message out. There's a good student indie film about Christians who event a time machine. They go back in time and they see not the events of the Bible, but the people writing the stories of the Bible. In a council, I think it's council Geneva or something like that, or Genia. And it's literally just people writing the story there. And they're like, well, where's the thing happening? It's like, it's just the people in the room writing it down. And they're like, oh, no, this is all fullery. And you're talking about the council of Nicaea. There it is. Nicaea. They go to that time and they just watch these people argue. He's like, well, let's put this story in. Nah, that one's too late. Okay, what about this one? I pulled it from this group of people. It's like, yeah, sure, we'll put that in. That's fine. It's just politics at the end of the day. And then at that point, they destroy the time machine so that nobody knows that that is actually how it was put together. But that's the message of the story isn't so much like that that happened. It's that people when faced typically with things that they don't want to have to be the truth or the hard questions may cover it up. And that's also part of our human condition, too. And it was a terrifying, like horrifying, awakening moment when I was watching the movie. Anyway, people have no problems thinking that if the preachers today were to write some kind of supernatural story that it would just be a story. But they don't project that into the past and say the preachers did that in the past as well. They write these supernatural stories and pass them down generation to generation through a lot of superstitious people to get to us. And we accept them as real. Go ahead, Dredd. I was going to say, and I've heard this said, I've heard this said many times, is that if anyone in current times wrote a story where the principal actor was like Jesus in the Bible, nobody would buy the book. It would be boring. There's no story arc. It's completely an uninteresting character because he never changes. Let's do I love that point. It's true. Perfect. And that's why I don't like Dr. Strange, by the way, because he has a Jesus complex. We even have a term for it. We don't even like it. But Dredd, you have any final words on today's show? And well, I'll just plug my channel. I have my channel, Mind Pirate, which is on YouTube, M-I-N-D-P-Y-R-A-D-E. Check it out. If you like it, subscribe and help me build it up. Nice. Joe Skye, anything you'd like to plug in any final words? Yeah, I have the Nova Fidian Chronicles page on Facebook. And today's post is already up because I got up early. On Sundays, we do Go Home Bible. You're drunk. And it's just Bible contradictions and impossibilities. Nice. What's the name of that Facebook page? Yeah, I have a Facebook page. And I write about all kinds of things. I try to make them atheist relevant, but... He was asking for the name of it, the name of the page. The Nova Fidian Chronicles. That's easy to say, at least. No Fidian. Yeah, at least it's an easy-to-find Facebook page. It's offensive or atheist. Okay. My final words is I'll admit I'm wrong on a bunch of stuff, but I did not like Contact the Movie, but I will rewatch it again to get the narrative that settled out because, you know, I did watch it as a Christian. I'll watch it again as an atheist and see if I appreciate it more. Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, a lot of movies I should do that. It's surprising, you know, how that changes. I'll appreciate narratives with different mindsets. So I'll put what we were talking about in the show today. You can find myself, but let's chat. Larry. Oh, my content can be found at digitalfreethought.com. Be sure to go there and click on the blog button for our radio show archives, atheist songs, and many articles on the subject. My YouTube channel can be found by searching for doubter5 or digitalfreethoughtradio. And you can find my book, Atheism, What's It All About, on Amazon, in paperback or audio, not audio digital. If you have any questions for the show, you can send them to askanatheistatnoxcleatheist.org or let'schatse at gmail.com. And we'll answer them on future shows. If you're having trouble leaving religious beliefs behind and need some help, you can get help at recoveringfromreligion.org. Remember, everybody is going to somebody else's hell. The time to worry about it is when they prove that heavens and hells and souls are real. Until then, don't sweat it, enjoy your life, and we'll see you next week. Say bye, everybody. Bye. Cool. Nice show, everybody.