 Hi. Hello and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio Hour and WOZio Radio 103.9 LPF. I'm here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We're recording this on Sunday, December 18th, 2022. I'm Larry Rhodes, or DJ Douter 5. And as usual, we have our co-host Wombat on the line with us. Hello, Wombat. I want to be DJ Wombat. Like, what are we doing throwing in DJs now? This is, this is new. This is a new iteration after 10 years of doing the radio with you. Yeah. Yeah. Now, when I talk to other DJs and they're introducing themselves in our meetings, they always put DJ in front of it. So I thought, okay, okay, okay. I've been to a couple of those meetings. So that is true. That is true. I don't know why we can put DJ in front of Wombat. That's fine. Okay. Okay. Okay. Our guests today are Dred Pirat Higgs. Welcome from Western Canada. And D, John Richards, all the way from England. Welcome. Hello. Yes. I want to, I want to, like, MBE off to my name. What's that stand for? Help me. MBE. MBE? Help me. What's that stand for? Members of the British Empire. Oh, I'm nice. I'm nice. Nancy, okay. Digital Freethought 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 get the feeling that you're the only non-believer in your town, well, you're just not. You're in Knoxville in the middle of the Bible Belt. We have a group of over a thousand of us. The Atheist Society of Knoxville or ASK. And we'll tell you more about them after the mid-show break. So be sure to stick around for that. But what's our topic today? My mind is blown. I had no idea that MBE existed. I'm on Google looking for OBEs, MBEs and CBEs. This is a whole new rabbit hole for me. Yeah, yeah. But speaking of things that have confounded me, I want to talk about inverting the problems. A lot of the problems that come with Christianity. And if we just flip them on our head, we might find some really interesting solutions. We'll talk about them. Christianity has problems. I know. But if you turn them around and make them your problems, all of a sudden, everything's solved. And it's done in like the most straightforward fashion. Well, do tell. It's going to be an interesting show. But before we get into it, how about we throw it up to our own Dreadpire Higgs for our weekly indication? OK, all right. Our nuclear lord who art in a colander. I'll daunte be thy noodles, thy blood be run, 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 ketoism but deliver us some carbs for thine are the meatballs and the sauces and the grog. Whenever and ever. For all men. You know, I was telling Dread about this. I wear a flying spaghetti monster hat just has the logo whenever I go out and play disc golf and I play disc golf regularly, even in this cold and I have been kicking butt. And people are like ties, the guy who hits really long putts who who only throws two discs and ends up beating everybody else on the card. Like I'm having like a great time out each time. And the reason my my secret to success is that I can see the noodles. When I look at my lines, I just see the noodle wrapping around everything. And I'm like, that's the line I'm going to take the straightest path between two points in reality is a noodle. Have anyone ever considered that? That's absolutely right. And don't forget the noodle theory. Yeah, and you know what? The cool thing is, is like lines don't have endpoints. They just keep going, but noodles have a beginning and an end. So as long as you just stay on your noodle and land at that point of where your noodle needs to end, you will have a very consistent line of each shot. You have a very good birdie route. And I'm very, very happily and thankful that I have a flying monster, the Lord is behind you. Exactly. And guiding each one of my throws in and it's just like, oh, that's so good. And tights like everyone's just like ties weeding off so well. Anyway, and that is really what you need a God for. Right. All right. That and finding parking spaces. Yeah, and keys, car keys, car keys and car keys, which is a shame. Side story. I have my I have a little clip that keeps my keys next to my pants. And so I always lose my keys, which also means I always lose my pants. And it was a movie that was the Lego movie that had a song called Where Are My Pants? And that's the only song in my head that goes on every morning. It's like, where is my pants? I need to find my keys. My wallet's in there, too. Where is everything? Jared Pirate, how have you been? I'm doing doing pretty good. I've been working and that's why I've been absent. Last couple of times here. But I'm going to I'm we're on a break. What are the what are the crazy jobs this time? It's like fireman, private detective, security guard, cougar, fighter, backer, what like what's going on now? Well, so yeah, doing security for this show called Fire Country, which is wildfire fighters, wildfire fighters. It's set in California, but of course it's shot here in B.C. So sure. But yeah, I know it's kind of becoming a regular show for me. So that's good. I'm getting closer to membership. Dread, your adult life is cooler than what I would expect. Most teenage life is just like I wish all this were going on 30 years ago. I have one more ahead of me. Awesome. John Riches, check it in with you, too. Master of Chaos. And how far away are you actually from a British Empire membership? Because I would imagine if the Empire went to war, you would be a part of it. So like, how are you not part of that system already? Not having much to do with war. Well, OK, well, the Empire would be like, hey, I mean, the Beatles. The Beatles are in B's. Oh, yeah, actually, they're serves now. They've gone up one, but I really can't take part in this conversation because my mind is still boggling about the problem that Ty's been having with his pants. You've got to realize that they're underwear. No, the trousers. Trousers are pants. Trousers. That's different. That's very different. I've been trying to picture you sticking your keys in your pants. I'm sorry about that. That's a good one. Larry, how are you then? What's going on with you before we get into it? Fine. I've had a cold this week and not real good that I gave it to Sheila. So she's got it now, too. So it's not been a great week and I haven't missed any work. So working and having the cold is not real good. No, that's a bad combination. Yeah, but it's better than that. I did take a covid test that I was negative. So that's all good. Good. You know, that's it's a it's a good reflex. I went to a couple of parties with friends and one of them did have a cold. And I was making sure that, you know, I'm still separated. But like while we are so concerned about covid, still like flues out there, colds out there and a number of other diseases, too. So still. It was real nice going two whole years without a cold. Yeah, it was. It was. I'm so careful. I got. Yeah, I've still been basements. Go for it. I haven't had anything since at least 2018. Well, there's a cold or flu or anything. So yeah, not only that, but I'm all up on my vaccinations. I used to be afraid of vaccinations because it made me sick. But now I'm just like, keep vaccinating me. And like my body just takes it as it's like, you're good. Walk out, not even like a sore arm ish. It just like goes away in a couple of hours. Anyway, we're going to get into speaking of things that are inconvenient that you have to do anyway. Iran has this thing called Hajab, which is not just in Iran, but it's in all over the Islamic mindset around the world. But I saw a really interesting movie made by other Iranians called Man Events Brilliant Device to to protect himself from lusting over women. That's not a job that women have to wear, but is in fact just a blindfold. And it's filmed as like a whole documentary series, but it's they were actually really done in a both a commentary appropriate, but also a funny way because tongue in cheek. It's tongue in cheek, but it's made by Iranians. It's filmed in Iran. It's done in mosque, and it's like a guy's having an argument with his wife saying, listen, you got to cover up your head and the wife's like, I don't even want to wear this. Like, what's going on here? It's like, you should just close your eyes. It's like, I'm not going to close my eyes. How can I do this? Like, well, if I got a veil, you should bail. I'm just like, there's no way my eyes is going to stop. Oh, my gosh, this might work. This might work. So like he's sitting in his chair being like, wait a second, I can't see any women. I got to tell my friends about this. He goes to the mosque. His mouth is like, why are you guys wearing a mask? Like you're standing where the women sit. You need to stand where the men sit. Like, guys, I can't even tell. I can't even see. It's like, you got to put this on. He puts them on these guys. Like, oh, my gosh, Saeed, you have a brilliant idea. They take it up to the boss. The boss is doing like a cut interview. He's like, yeah, I always had this idea. I thought this would have worked. This is pretty good. And next thing you know, all society begins to transition from women bailing themselves so that men don't get aroused when they look at their hair to men just covering up their eyes and not seeing the women in the first place. And it sort of restacked society by inverting the problem. What's up, John Richards? I saw you had a comment. Well, how did he get to the mosque? If you do it three times a day, I'm pretty sure you can like get there. It's muscle memory. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, like I could probably commute to work blindfolded at this point. But here. So I've got a high tech version of this. You know, these, you know, these video filters. Yes. Which can make you turn you into a rabbit. Yes, yes, yes. To turn you into glasses. Right, right. Very, very glasses, which do that to women so they're all bold. Ah, so listen, that's exactly what I want to talk about today because if we just say if we take the text from the Holy Book and say or any or any edict and say women need to cover their head because men are lustful, or if we say homosexuality is a sin or you can't have an abortion based on whatever religious reason. If we just looked at what the core problem was and instead of having the innocent people come up with a solution, just make the people who have a problem with it change a standard or change a process. If we invert the problem, we can come up with a brilliant solution in the same way that you have to wear a job. Just cover up the men's eyes or tell the men, hey, look away so you don't have to get aroused then, basically, you don't have to have women covering up their heads. You can have a much simpler, straightforward solution if you just invert the problem. We can use technology to help us out with that, too. John Richards. Well, there's another possibility, isn't there? You could have rules that mean men can only go out during the day and women can only go out during the night. Yeah, curfew. Yeah, this is the diurnal separation mechanism that enables some species to specify. You know, right, right. So like Punjab, for example, is an area in India that says, hey, you can't cut your hair. You can't or if you're if you're chic, you're supposed to leave your hair curing out because that's the way God intended it for it to look. And so you have been with very large beards, regardless of how convenient it is when you're like drink, soup or eat milk or whatever like that. A really, really long beard gets in the way. And then you have to have the turban to help hold all that hair in place. But as John Richards was saying, what if you just invert the problems just like, oh, well, what if we had filters where it's like when you look at people and you want to have a beard, you can just have the beard. And then if you want to take off the beard, you could just take off the beard with like a click of a button. That works out so well. We can have stuff like that. Yeah, maybe maybe the answer is using smart goggles, like, you know, yeah, yeah, I was talking about you can dial in the level of yeah, that's what you want that you want. Yeah. Holy, do you want to look today? I want to be very holy. Yeah. OK, we'll get that long extended filter. We could get there with technology or just through some simple practices. So what I want to bring up today with some examples of problems and then methods that we can do to probably invert those problems. So we won't have to deal with them anymore. I I'd like to begin first with the issue of blasphemy. Are you guys familiar with blasphemy? Do I have to introduce the head of atheists? Are you kidding? We're all blasphemers, you know, Larry, for our audience, since we've never had this conversation or since we haven't recently had a conversation, blasphemy, would you mind talking about what blasphemy is and why it makes God so angry? Well, it depends on who you're talking to, I guess. It doesn't make God angry. God's don't exist, but it makes the people who worship that blasphemy see what I mean. It's it's talk that goes against the spiritual teachings or the religion that you're blaspheming against. OK, like it. And in what the Ten Commandments, this is one of the first rules, you know, don't create graven images, right? Well, if you go on and create graven images, you're you're creating a blasphemous image. It's going against the teachings of the religion. Why is that harmful? Yeah, yeah, why? Why are they such snowflakes? Right, right? Right. That's the issue. Problem, yeah. In past, if Aryanism, we do have one one act of blasphemy. OK, and that's using ketchup on noodles. Just it just doesn't work. Sorry, guys. Is that worse than putting pineapple on pizza? No, I don't know why people don't like that. Yeah, that's OK. I'm a supporter of pineapple on pizza. I mean, there's already tomatoes on the pizza. There's already that's how we brought the Hawaiians into the fold. That's just all I'm saying. But John Richards, what is what does God have against blasphemy? I'd love to understand this problem a bit more better. Like if I say, God damn it. Or if I think I can say it on the radio, if I said something that God didn't like, why does God care? Well, you've got me beat. I mean, most of us can take a few little insults without it damaging our ego too much. This guy just seems to be so tender. He's a snowflake. Toughen up, God, toughen up. So we do know we have a very sensitive God, right? Or at least the Judaic version of God, the character is very, very sensitive. Don't worship anyone else before me. I want to be your number one. You got to love me. You got to worship me. You got to worship my kid, too, who's also me. Don't worship more than me. I'm the number one guy. And don't make fun of me either. I hate that when you do that. I really, really don't like it. It's like a 30 year old, a three year old and like a playground being like, I make the rules. This is my slide. Don't take me off the slide. It's like stop it or I'll take my ball and go home. Exactly. Yeah. So how do we? That would be very serious because they're playing at the World Cup final at the moment. We need that ball. Very true. It's my ball and I want to go home. So we have don't blaspheme God because it's offensive. It offends God, it offends his religion, it offends his workers, it offends everybody. Don't blaspheme God. What if we just inverted the problem where it's not our problem to not blaspheme God, but it's just God who won't take it personally anymore? Like when you consider the problem, if you consider it, it's ultra super powerful, all knowing, powerful being, being angry that ants are mocking him. And he's like, you know what? I don't care about the opinion of ants. Maybe they don't like me very much. Yeah. It's all good. I'll still reward the good ones, punish the bad ones. Oh my God, I got other things to do. I'm not, I don't mind. What do you think, Dred? Well, I was going to say, you know, it's not like, I mean, how many times have you heard on the news that somebody got struck by lightning after blaspheming? Right. Because it just doesn't happen. Right. Oh my God, that's getting mad. It's all those guys. Right. Grunts. Right. Yeah. It's just like, don't make fun of my dad. Don't make fun of my dad. Yeah. Hey, you know what? Why don't you just calm down? Your dad doesn't even care. Or, yeah, that's a good one. Only be as affected as your God is. Right. Exactly. My mother got struck by lightning. She was on the phone back in the days of corded phones, you know, and the house across the road got struck by lightning. And some of the charge came through to her and she had to let go and drop it quickly. But we don't know what word she last said. So I like the idea. I'm sorry that happened to your mom, by the way. That's that sounds frightening. She was fine. I'm glad to hear it. I'm glad to hear it. She was an atheist, though, too, right? Yeah, definitely. OK, OK. Just to wake up, who knows? But the idea is we have a God who apparently doesn't care or immediately punish people who blaspheme. We have his grunts who do. So what if the rule was just only be as offended as your God is on any matter? And if you follow that practice and he's like, hey, I'm going to get gay married today. It's like, what's God doing about that? Nothing? OK, we won't do anything. Exactly. Have fun, guys. I'm like, oh, well, this solves a lot of things. I'm only ever going to be as offended as God is about anything based on the experience. This is this is a case for fact checking, isn't it? Because when when the priests or pastors or whoever agents of God claim that God is their God is being blasphemed, we could demand to know how they know that. Yes, exactly. And you know what's your source? Yeah. Yeah. There's another weird arm to this, too, because even just in America, at least mentioning that you're an atheist can offend people, you know, right? But it's like your God isn't offended or demonstrably is not offended, observationally isn't offended. Well, too, he made me. And three, why are you being offended of the fact that I don't believe in your God? You should only ever be as offended as your God is. And as far as we can tell, God doesn't care. So why do you care? Like, what's what's the real question there? It's taking vicarious offense. You're taking vicarious offense unnecessarily. That's the sin that we need to address. Vicarious offense. Yeah, thanks for that, Dredd, because what you never know. I mean, whatever next, it could be. It could develop to a state where one person can absolve the entire world of all their sins by dying, right? That's what I did. OK, I love this. I want to I want to tackle one more before we get to the top or the bottom of the hour. This one is all right. So it's a complicated one because it's multifaceted and it's one that we're all familiar with. But Bible says, do not fornicate, but also the Bible says, don't commit adultery, don't commit lust, don't feed or commit prostitution and another a number of other sexually mandated rules that keeps us in in my position, even as an asexual in a very frustrated point of view, particularly given that you biologically have urges or or dispositions on certain things. If you can't he gave us that he gave us and gave us access to and and and immediately gave us like hormones to make it very pleasurable if you do play with things. But you can't because you can only have sex with one person. You can't have lust, you can't have prostitution, you can't commit adultery. It's a sin to even covet that neighbor's wife. It's one of the big it's one of the big ten. We can't have that. What if we transition that? Or if we thought about the problem, why is there so many sexual based rules in the Bible? Dred, I'd love to hear that. What do you think? Why are there so many sexual based rules? And why is fornication one of them? Well, because it's the thing we think about most. It's probably the one that's like what do you call it? The most ubiquitous, you know? And if you if you pay any attention to Richard Dawkins, OK, would say the whole mandate really of why we're humans is just to forward our genes. It's really got nothing to do with anything other than that. And since we forward our genes into the future through sex, that is the most that is the priority for life. The prime directive. The prime directive. Yeah, I love it. Interesting. John Richards, what do you think? What is the deal with God and sex and against fornication of all things? Well, he made us all obsessed with sex. And therefore, other people's sex is very interesting to us as well. And there's a word for that that I can't remember at the moment. I'm looking it up, see if I can get there. Mariah Carey's got a number called obsessed. So the thing is that this is such an important factor in a lot of populations viewpoint that there's a country is group violence that trades as a country, Indonesia at the moment. There's passing a bill through its parliament, which forbids adultery, homosexuality, sex outside of marriage. And there's punishments of about a year in jail for most of those offenses. And I've got no idea how they're going to detect these activities. About crimes. Yeah, how they're going to police those those crimes. Hey, yes, when I hear the the complaints religion has with sex, I always think it's a matter of control because I'm going to hijack biology, something that a lot of people think about or something that it's hard for people to not even think about. Like, don't think about zebras, you're thinking about zebras. Right. What if I made thinking about zebras a sin? And now every single time you try not to think about zebras, even though it's your natural proclivity to do so, you will then realize, oh, I got to go back to my religious authoritarian to ask for forgiveness or to ask my God to forgive me because there's something wrong with me. And the saddest thing with religion is that it's basically a poison that's given to kids that they claim they have the cure for. But there is no real cure. The cure is getting rid of. Stop giving that poison away to your next generation of children. Yeah, I can't cure a disease you don't have. Right. If so, well said. And then not only that, but there's the secondary effect of it because for the people who aren't obsessed with sex, they have to deal with the fact that there is a powerful group of people who are that dictate labels that are put on people, whether they're good or bad. And if they are good, they have to be good in their certain ways. And if they're bad, there are the others, even if they don't have obsessions with sex, they're wrong. Something's wrong with them. They're not normal. And it starts to bias what normality is even in in cultures that are well suited to accept a progressive attitude. And it's a really important thing. I feel like, for one, I don't really have a lot of I never had a lot of sex obsessed thoughts, but I felt that lacking that was a problem for me. And I thought, whoa, I must not be something's wrong with my head. Like, I must not be normal because everyone else is talking about this thing that I have very little interest in. Is there a problem with me? No, it was a completely normal state of mind to be in. I didn't have I couldn't realize it until I was like in my thirties. So like, it leads to a lot of problems. This idea of sex. What if we just inverted the problem and we can invert the problem before we get to the bottom of half hour? What's your time, Larry? We're at twenty five, twenty four and a half minutes. Sweet. We got plenty of time. Let me let me. Here's my inverse. OK, so don't fornicate, but also don't commit adultery, lust and prostitution. If we invert the problem, what if we just said, OK, maybe that first thing helps reduce the other things? Have fun, guys. Well, it's OK. And then you could maybe if you do that first thing, all the other stuff like drops down dramatically. What do you guys think about that? And that's what that's awesome. Let's not forget that the Bible was written by men. Yeah, who were who were preachers, who were preachers, right? And who felt that they owned the women of their flock, right? They were. Yeah. And as long as they put down sex for everybody else, then they can do what they want. How many times have we heard about preachers, you know, having sex with the women in their flock or the boys in their flock or whatever? They put all these these prescriptions out for the people or the men in their flock and then they do whatever they want. Yeah, absolutely. It's control and hypocrisy, right? Right. Yeah, definitely. You was told not what I do, right? Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was a report in Maryland recently about I think it's in excess of six hundred sexual abuse offenses committed by clergy and officials of the the the evangelical church over the last 90 years. So. And nobody is immune. And the saddest thing is, is we're not surprised by it anymore, like Catholic priests sexually abuses 14 children. That won't even make it to the headlines of any news. Because it's just, oh, well, that's what happens. Like, tell us about the dog that can speak French. Like, that's news. I'm like, wait a second. It's de-sensitized. We've been de-sensitized to it just by frequency. It's the expectation. Yes, yes. Yeah, it would be more alarming to hear of a priest that never abused anybody like record here he has never abused a single child once. Wow, that's pretty good. That's on news. But then they would find that it is because he was a eunuch. OK, now we're at the bottom of that. Wish outbreak. Stay tuned for the second half of the digital free thought radio hour on W.O.Z.O. Radio 103.9 LPF. I'm here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We'll be right back after this short break. OK, let me get out. Welcome back to the second half of the digital free thought radio hour. I'm Dr. Five and we're on W.O.Z.O. Radio 103.9 LPF. I'm here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Let's take a moment to talk about the atheist society of Knoxville. ASK was founded in 2002, we're in our 20th year, soon to be our 23rd year coming shortly. And we have over a thousand members. We have weekly in person meetings every Tuesday evening in Knoxville's Old City at Barley's Taproom and Pizzeria. Look for us inside at the high top tables because it's cold. We also have Tuesday evening Zoom meetings. If you'd like to join us, you'll need to email us for details at askanatheistatnoxvilleatheist.org or let's chat s e at gmail.com. You can find us online, too, at Facebook, meetup.com or go to the website at Knoxvilleatheist.org. 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 star. All right. Where do you want to pick up warm up? We're going to do some listener comments and I'd love to get some feedback. Anonymous Mouse says based off our last episode, stop mentioning Kent Hoven, William Craig and Frank Turrick. It only gives them more power. What do you guys think? That's right. And I also he did mention them in the comment, but I also think like you would necessarily have to. So, you know, Dredd, what do you think of the idea of stop mentioning those people? I absolutely agree. The more oxygen you give them, the more they stick around. Yes. Starve them out. Give them more CO2. Ignore them, basically. And watch them go away. John Richards, do you have a comment on that? Yeah, because I have fun looking at them. And I don't want to be deprived of that, you know, because where else am I going to get such low hanging fruit from? It's true. OK, OK. Larry Rhodes, you have a philosophy on mentioning like people who are famous by being annoying over and over and over again. No, I agree with you. I agree with the commenter. Don't mention them. I try not to, but it's hard not to. They're such good, bad examples. Though you did personally interact with them, John Richards, like you've actually had conversations and debates. Yes, yes, I'm afraid so. Guilty as charged, right? Yeah, out of politeness. It's just instead of that guy, you have to say the name. I can respect that. Good. What do you think? Well, I was going to say that it's it's probably a good practice to extol the merits of non-religious views without having to have that as a counter. You know what I mean? Just by virtue of its of its own merits that these are good ideas, but don't have to be measured against bad ideas. Right. Yeah. Well, you see, there you go, because it's all up against temptation, isn't it? We also like to personify things. And when we can, because we personify even ideas, we often see the same ideas presented every single time a new person presents the same idea. Whereas if we challenge the concept itself, then regardless of whoever champions it the next time, it's still the same bad concept. And we can't exactly. It's going to be very difficult here in the UK to not mention a couple of those names in the next few months because a certain chief executive advances in Genesis in conjunction with a certain man who likes making videos of him holding a banana. OK, no. They are forming a team to try and attract Christians from around the world to descend on London in order to present their their propaganda. Let's face it. To the crowds that are attending the coronation on May the 6th. Have you heard about this? Yeah, no, this is new information for me. But really? Yes. They're calling it Operation London. And the the reasoning goes that this is a mega event. This is like this is like the Oscars on steroids. Right, because you have a new king. Exactly. We haven't had a coronation for 70 years. Then and the world loves our royals. So everything is going to stop. Everybody is going to be eyeballing Westminster Abbey for the coronation. And that's their opportunity as they see it. Because, of course, our king is a fraud. He's only an earthly king. The real king is Jesus. They're trying to get the political timing impression. First impression. I'd say this, too. We have some really good comments from the episode. I was born an atheist, and so are you. Miss Bellaclos says, I freaking love this guy. Subscribe. Haley Padgett says, I stumbled across this show. You guys have very interesting comments. I'm looking forward to watching more. Thank you, Haley Padgett. The Afro Atheist, Esther, from the Global Atheist News Review. After the Afro Atheist, the Afro Atheist says, hey, Ty, I'm waiting for you to still complete the challenge, the challenge of being dancing on the show. I've danced on Global Atheist News Review. I have completed the challenge, Esther. Let's see. Dottice Trading Room, a frequent commenter on the show, said, can you choose your beliefs? He says, you guys, we made a comment about a turkey's expecting Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday to come. He says, well, we actually have a similar saying in Poland with the turkey, which was expecting Sunday, but it got beheaded on Saturday. The only difference is ours rhymes in Polish. That's pretty good. I have I do signing on my video as well for a heart of listening people and someone asked, can you subtitle your videos, please? YouTube has a closed captioning feature. I know it's not perfect, but it'll definitely save me more time than subtitling hour after hour of the show. Or maybe better technology exists out there. You can use your phone for a lot of subtitling features that are much more accurate. And and you can actually download the transcript from YouTube. Oh, perfect. That's even better. We'll make sure to speak only the King's English on this show just to make sure it understood very well. The earthly king or the earthly king. Teresa, who's also a member of the show or a Global Atheist News Review, says on the episode, good people are going to hell. She says, good people go to hell for the offense of not being gullible. And that's sad, very true. Guys, there are so many comments. Thank you so much. But I want to get back to feel free to leave more. We'll be happy to get through them to next episode. I want to get to more problems that we can invert, which was the topic to show. I want to talk about homosexuality is a sin. And we know it's a sin. It's in the Bible. If you don't believe me, go to any protest where they have guys holding the fliers or the posters. They have the citations on the poster. That's the best depiction. Don't believe your Christian friends who says, well, God just loves everybody, and it doesn't matter who you love and all that stuff. It's like, no, it's in the Bible. The guys are holding the citations. You can read it yourself. You don't have to believe me. You can go in your Bible, get those citations and figure it out. What I do love, though, and before going around table of homosexuality is a sin. We did recently have a federal pass by Joe Biden, famous Catholic, lifelong Catholic, devout believer in God, passed the protection for federal protection for gay marriage, which means whether you're interracial or you're gay, there is no way a state can revoke those rights from you regardless of whatever issues they have with it. That is federally protected for all people. And I love that. That is a guy who is Catholic, who is making a very non-Catholic decision. That's what I love about it, because he is a political leader for all people. What do you think, Dred? Well, I'm wondering why if he has the power to do that, why he couldn't at the same time go, I also provide protection for a woman's bodily autonomy. Abortion is next on the list. Abortion is next on the list. Why can't he just do that if he can do that for protecting gay marriage? Why can't he just say that that's the way it is federally? Supreme Court would probably take that away, most likely. Well, couldn't they take away the gay marriage thing, too? They could. They absolutely could. They absolutely could. But it would be much harder for them to do that on a less popular topic than it would be for the abortion, which was a recently made decision by our Supreme Court. So it's like if I brought potatoes and someone's like, I hate those potatoes and they throw them in the trash to be like, I don't like this guy. But if it was like they threw away a plate of broccoli that I brought like six weeks ago that everyone's like, oh, broccoli is fine. This is like, yeah, the broccoli was spoiled. They may not be as offended. It's a really, really delicate balance right now. It's just like going immediately overturned the thing that I just said we can't do. That'd be terrible. But anyway, John Riches, what do you think? Well, I'm not sure that the Bible is a reliable source of information because it goes. Oh, I disagree. It's amazing. Well, although it's the best book in the book, it says we are the best book in the book. We're the good book. It says it in the book. Yeah, that's some endorsement that is, isn't it? Of course. Because although, stop it, child. I'm being invaded by a children. Although it's quite clearly against homosexuality, it's very much pro-abortion and genocide. Oh yeah, absolutely. So what do we take from that? Yeah, you know, I wouldn't even be surprised if it was in a lot of ways. Geez, I keep thinking of like Jesus as depicted in the Bible is a guy who doesn't like handiwork, likes to keep his hands off, loves to hang out with other guys, loves to hang out in robes and nice little gowns, accessorizes with like red scarves, super long hair, good abs. I'm like, we can connect some dots here is all I'm saying. He loves to party. His major one of his major things, not like Samson, who's like pushing pillars across from each other or like zapping lightning bolts from the sky, like God or something like that. It's like, oh, I can make parties even more fun by turning the water into wine so we can have even more drunk. It's like that is that is I don't want to make it stereotypical, but like that is not machismo and action. That is very much a guy who loves hanging out with other dudes. And he's not a man's man. And it seems it's a little telling to be like, but it's it's not gay, though. It's like kind of just embrace it. It's solely good. We're all fine with that. We're like, it's OK. I have a problem with this. Like, well, that's your problem. Don't make it our problem. Right. And I'm loving I'm loving the American version of McKizmo. Is that American cheese in the middle of it? Yes, it is. It's American cheese is the best cheese. We all know this. All right. So homosexuality is a sin. What if we inverted it and said, OK, well, if it's a sin, just don't do it if you're straight. Yeah, that would cause that would solve a lot of problems. That's for sure. Yeah. Yeah, you're straight. Don't be don't be don't be homosexual. But if you're homosexual, that's fine. Yeah, if you're against abortion, don't have abortions. If you're against abortions, don't have abortions. How about that? All of these things are a matter of personal taste, and there's no reason to impose your taste on me. Right. So it's not just because they say it's God and God is the God of all of us, whether you know it or not, which is their attitude. And we have to obey them, whether we are a part of that religion or not. And they're going to make damn sure you do by passing laws. Yeah, that's the thing. You know, it's like having eighty nine flavors of ice cream and only being allowed to eat one. Yes, yes. Vanilla. This is the thing. The best part. This is the this is the thing about the bill going through the Indonesian Parliament at the moment, because they're not just saying adultery and sex outside of marriage and all those other naughty things are merely naughty to their population. If you're a visitor, a tourist there, then you're banned as well from carrying out those naughty things. Well, that's true. That's true. A lot of societies do that, though. Look at sure. I mean, the thing with the Qatar, right? The soccer, no homosexuality, boys. Many, many countries will legalize. I mean, legitimize. They turn into law. They're religious beliefs in America. We just want many in that regard. Yeah, I I tend to find that these rulings on sex and sexual groups or identities come from institutions that are fearful of change because they don't want to have to deal with reordering of power that might come from the fact of change occurring. If I am if I am profiting off of people by making sure that they stay indoctrinated in their small bubbles and and don't get opportunity to become like engineers or scientists or political politicians or world travel people. That's a situation where I want to make sure I come up with as many arbitrary rules to conduct their everyday lives and thoughts as much as possible. And so I think back on like the Black community, which is very conservative, unfortunately, like you look at us as a group in America. A lot of us aren't pro gay people or or abortion and stuff like that. Or even atheists, because we're very much in caught in the religious fold. Yet we've had a great black president who supported all these things by virtue of the fact that he was educated, world traveled, understood the needs of many different groups of people. Same thing with Brighton, same thing with anyone who gets an opportunity to lead their small circle, their small culture and understand that there's meaningful people all around the world that don't necessarily follow the same ideology or could be served by the same dogma. Like that is the that is the reason why I feel like a lot of the religious cornerstones that we have are crumbling apart because we're becoming much more globally interconnected with each other and realizing this model of behavior is not going to be suitable for everyone. That and critical thinking are going to be the steps that helpfully get us completely out of this era of religion. And in my opinion, when we look back on this 50 years from now, hopefully we can say, oh, yeah, that was a time when everyone was religious. And now we have a new reason at the age of new reason, where we completely left those shackles and are now solely focused on better treatment for human beings, scientific approaches for understanding things and new adverts and technology and treating people that have been untouched by everybody. Stephen Pinker has a great book. It's called Enlightenment Now. I'd recommend that as a read for anyone that wants to be encouraged by the direction in which societies around the world are going. Right. Yeah. And I do I interviewed Stephen Pinker a couple of weeks ago. It's a video of it that will be launched in due course. I had an excellent opportunity to interview three people that night. Lawrence Krause, Stephen Pinker and Peter Singer. How are you not a member of the British Empire yet? That was a good that was a good night for me. But what you were saying there is that what we need to do is to educate all of these religious people to keep their noses out of our genitalia. Right. Right. Or stop. Ramen. Ramen. Why are they so nosy? Why is that sex obsessed? I mean, I don't like it when my dog does it. So, you know, I want to tackle another one. I don't know how simple this would be. But we have God's laws, right? And we also have our local laws and we're always told to uphold God's laws above everything else. But we have an impact on our local laws. If we're upstanding members of our community, if we can vote, if we can at least show up in boards, if we elect officials who like can help, you know, curve attitudes towards better, more what's the best word for it, beneficial to our community, like make things more beneficial for our communities. But God's law is unchanging. It's perfect. And unfortunately, it doesn't necessarily address everything in the way or in the nuance that needs to. And so we have a big declaration in the Bible. Do not steal. That's a problem. So if you steal, that's a problem. And why is it a problem? Because it goes against God's law. It's one of the big 10. You cannot steal. It's the first thing most Christians will say when you talk about sins. They will they'll obfuscate the fact that six of them deal with thought crimes of adultery and like sex related stuff and putting God number one. But they'll be like, well, you can't murder and you can't steal. Like those are the only two good ones of the 10. Stealing is one that they bring up because it's against God's law. But you know what? If we invert the problem, what if we just said it's also against local laws too, and maybe we should like think about the conditions of our local law, because if I steal something, does that mean I should get my hand cut off? Or does it mean like, oh, maybe I just accidentally walked out with something unknowing and I'll put it back again. Maybe we can have different tiers of stealing and different punitive measures based on the severity of what was stolen and the intent behind it that we can demonstrate in court. Like we can figure that out ourselves. We don't need God's law. Yeah. Well, the problem with God and his law is he's not local. We can go to a local source of laws and check it out. There's the book. There's all the laws. We can't do that for God's laws. God's laws be heavily in quotes, you know. And they vary according to where you were brought up. Right. I mean, the laws in Indonesia that I've been speaking about are very different from the laws in the UK. Right. And even if you go by the book, you know, different churches interpret the book different ways. Of course. And if you have these churches are wanting to have their own police force, they would have their own written laws about what they're allowed to do and not the clergy and the parishioners. And those laws would change from church to church. Interpretation and from time to time, too. Because we noticed how limbo went out, for example, the previous pope canceled limbo. It was it was a place where it was a place where the un unbaptised unchristianed babies went, which wasn't quite so bad as hell. But he's abolished him. So where did those babies go? Well, he did never address that. Yeah. No, no. So here's the here's the breaking news. I thought of that word that I couldn't find. OK, what was the thought? It's no, it's salacious. Oh, that's a nice. I love it. It's a lovely word. Love unnecessarily sexual obsession. Right. There is a problem, though, with God's law. It is it is very unsatisfactory from a what is the punitive measure? Right. They'll tell you what the edict is. They'll tell you how to exonerate yourself from it. But it doesn't tell you the course of action of what to do if you are guilty of that crime. So don't steal. OK, and what happens if we do? Well, listen to your local leader or your local authoritarian or your local tyrant who happily dished out any punitive measures like you gave too much control to one person that can be biased on how whether it's their son who steals something or a complete stranger or a foreign person or the chosen people. Like what are these rules that you set up if you haven't clearly outlined what the punitive measures are? Then you know a great thing about local politics and local rules are. Those are explicitly laid out. And so if I am, for example, a guy that does this dance, Esther, check it out. I'm dancing. I did it and that becomes that goes on the fortnight for whatever reason, fortnight takes that and it turns into an emoji. I feel like they stole my dance, but then I'll be like, you don't own that movement. You just did maybe you inspired it. It's not frame for frame. You can't own songs. They didn't steal it. Oh, OK, so there's no punitive action. No, of course not. It's like, OK, so even if I convinced that something was stolen and even if I can demonstrate that example of it has been, we have case law and an establishment where it says, actually, we have codifications to show that this isn't as big as you think it is, even if it means personally a lot to you. That's so useful in a biased society and it's injected society. We don't have that from the Bible. No clarity whatsoever. Just if you do steal, pretty God, Jesus, and we'll forgive you. I'm like, how unsatisfactory? How do we maintain a society on such a loose set of rules? Yeah, yeah. So so I like that because it's it's channeling, isn't it? I didn't steal it. I really channeled it. I was inspired. It was inspired. It's like, oh, they got my dance. Oh, no, you never know. Guys, we're at the I think we're at the bottom layer. What do you think? Where are we at? We've got about eight and a half minutes left. We're all right. Oh, that's true. OK, OK, so we talked about how to resolve it, how to invert these problems and solve them with our current day technology. We can use I mass to stop people from lusting over people who have issues with jobs being worn. We have, hey, listen, only be as offended as your God. How about that as a good rule? Like that could be a nice general. And if we don't see lightning strike, hit people who blast him, God, then you could take it that you don't need to step in on behalf of your God and vicarious to be offended for him. What do you think, Larry? Well, there's a problem with that, as usual. And in the Bible, you know, God theoretically stepped in and gave everybody diseases, right? Correct. Well, the preachers are going to point to covid. God did step in. See, he gave everybody covid because you're not listening to what I said. You're not following God's rules. They just interpret it any way they want to make it their point. The favorite favorite is the post hoc fallacy, right? Well, sure. But I'm also a big fan of testing things. And correlation is not the same thing of causation. If we want to test it again and say, like, OK, then let's do it again. And if another covid outbreak happens immediately afterwards, then we know for a fact, let's not based a worldwide decision on an end of one. Let's not test God. Oh, well, then let's not follow him at all because we're going to do things that we can test because we're talking about things that we can solve with our own tooling. And what we do tool is test. And anyone that says test me, shoot, I can make a thousand guys that are like, don't test me, by the way. We we could actually get a test group together, right? Yeah, yeah, and under control conditions, have them blast beam. Yes. And after, you know, see if there's a direct you know, a direct punishment exacted from on high. And if nothing happens, then that is for the proof that, you know, it's not a blast beam at all. Yeah. And how telling is it lies hate to be tested? Lies will tell you don't look under the covers. Don't ask how this trick was done. Don't try to spoil the illusion. Whereas don't look behind the curtain. Exactly. Whereas the truth is always asking you to verify it and always asking to provide proofs for it and always asking you to look at it critically and try to get closer and closer to the truth with each attempt. Any being that says don't test me is a being that's hiding something. And if we live in a world where a devil exists, that is all about tricking and tempting people, you have to consider that I'm God that says, don't test me. May not necessarily be in your interest. The truth has nothing to hide from investigation. Absolutely. Like, what's the point of lawsuits? Like, what? Don't test me. What are their standard of evidence? Do we apply that to? Oh, there was a murder. But don't test it. Just just punish this guy. Don't test it. Yeah, I love that, but don't test it. I love the quote from H.P. Lovecraft says, instead of trying to rub the Gospels into your children, why not if Gospels are true, just tell them to have an unsperving devotion to looking into looking into the truth and trying to find truth. Then they will discover it if it's true. Watch this, guys. Look, God, you're evil. And if you exist, destroy me now. He turned into a green screen. That was good. That was awesome. Yeah, I also say this, too. The Val Islamists who have a problem with seeing hair that's uncovered on women. We have a supernatural potential to solve that problem. God could, if he God solved seeing Islamic hair and that immediate. OK, so it's the problem to see women's hair uncovered and God made it so that one day, magically, any guy who sees an unhaired or it's about to see the uncovered hair of a woman automatically has their eyes engorged shut, their eyelids engorged shut. Like that would be one, one indication of, oh, maybe they're there. Their God is actually doing something. And two, that's something we can test. Three, maybe we shouldn't be atheists anymore. Doesn't necessarily mean we'll worship. But at least we know it's this God compared to all the other ones, because as soon as someone converts to Islam and they try to look at a woman's hair that's uncovered, their eyes shut and they can't stop it. And we can test that and look at all the nerves and be like, oh, this is very bizarre. What's going on here? It's like a new organ in the body suddenly appears to make that connection. Right. I just did one supernatural demonstration. What do you think, Larry? Yeah, no, I think it would be great. Something testable would be awesome, right? But we're getting close to the top of the hour. We need to start winding out. OK, OK, OK. In a simpler context, you could just have someone magically not be able to blaspheme. So whatever John Richards just did, which we don't endorse on this show because we're all Godfair and feasible, you could have given us lobster hands instead of telling us not to porno Kate. You could have my work against masturbation. I'm not sure that's the whole point. That's the whole point. Give us lobster hands. Now we can't work any more. Homosexuality, stop making straight people, make homosexuals. Don't steal. Create a society where people won't have to or need to steal in the first place. These are all supernatural steps you could have made, which would immediately solve your atheist problem and help us all discover that we all have souls and we're all going to heaven when we die. Isn't that right, Larry? Absolutely. If you just show up, I mean, that's within his power, right? He's just so hot. Just show up. Yeah, own it. Not only get rid of the atheist problem, but all the other religion problems. All right, guys, feel free to leave more comments and let's chat. This has been a great show. Dred Pirate, where can we find your stuff at? Well, I'm on Mind Pirate, M-I-N-D-P-Y-R-A-T-E on YouTube. And I do live stream on Sunday mornings, this show at 7 a.m. PST. And when I do the Global Atheist News Review, that's at 11 a.m. PST on Sunday morning. So yeah, check me out. Nice. And I hope you're going to do that today. John Richards, we're working on that. Well, I'm on the Freethought channel. And my co-host, Tersia, and I had a wonderful conversation with a very highly qualified fellow who he's got about four degrees, one of which is an M-D, and he's an evolution advocate. OK. And you should watch it. It's a fantastic show. Cool. Who is it? OK. His name is John Peters. Actually, he's not that far from you, Dredd, because he's in Porta... Yeah, that one. Where? You know, I'm trying to say Port... Coquitlam? Western Canada? Machismo? Just Northern America on the West Coast. OK. Where Starbucks comes from? Oh, Portland. Portland. Seattle. There it is. All right. Gotcha. Daughter 5, take us out. OK, this has been the Digital Freethought Radio Hour. My content can be found at thedigitalfreethought.com. Be sure to click on the block button. Thank you, Dredd, for holding my book up. My book can be found at Amazon, by the way, and it's called Atheism, What's It All About? I do have a YouTube channel as well at Daughter 5. Check it out. 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 and they haven't for a long time. Until then, don't sweat it. Enjoy your life. And we'll see you next Wednesday at 7 o'clock on WOZO Radio. Say bye, everybody. Bye, everybody.