 103.9 FM, WZO Radio, Knoxville. Ladies and gentlemen, Digital Freethought Radio Hour. Hello and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio Hour on WZO Radio 103.9 LPFM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee, Sunday, today is Sunday, March 28, 2021, and I'm Larry Rhodes here at Doubter 5, and as usual, we have a co-host, Wombat on the line with us. Hello, Wombat. Okay, a lot of rain out there, that's for sure. Didn't know you were a witch, though. Our guests today are Doubt Fire and Boudreaux and George, Brooklyn, and Dreadfire at Higgs, and all. A Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a talk radio show about atheism, freethought, rational thought, humanism, and the sciences, and conversely, we'll also talk about religion, religious faith, God's holy books, and superstition. And if you get the feeling that you're the only non-believer in Knoxville, well, you're just not. There are several atheists freethinking in rationalist groups that exist right here in Knoxville, and we'll be telling you how you can connect with them right after the mid-show break. Also, did you know that there was a streaming atheist call-in video show broadcasting here in Knoxville? You're nodding your head. Ty, did you know that? I love it. I don't know if it's technically a musical, but I do like it. My favorite part is when the lion gets courage and the pin-bang gets a heart, because it's like the best thing possible, because everyone needs a little bit of a heart and a little bit of courage. That's all you need. If I only had a brain. Yes. So, was that a musical? We have brands. We have brands on our show. Yeah. He doesn't have a nervous system in here. He has. It's amazing. Yeah. We'll tell you more about how you can connect with the show right after the mid-show break. Also, if you'd like to interact with us during the show, go to Facebook and search for a digital free thought radio, our Facebook page. Use the messaging function to send us questions or comments. Wombat, what's our topic for today? We're talking about sipping loudly in cups today. It's going to be a really, really great hour-long discussion where we're just slowly slipping, sipping into the microphone. Everyone get it out. Yeah. Nice trick. Yeah. Welcome to the ASMR podcast, APS Podcast. We're talking about karma today. And before we get into the meat and potatoes of karma, I'm going to throw it up to our own Dreadpower Higgs for our weekly invocation. Hello. What's your name, Captain? I shall not warrant. He may give me to float in salt water. He steereth me through glassy seas. He filleth me bowl. He steereth me through the straits of newliness for goodness sake. I, though I sail through the heaving of tempestuous waters, I will not fear not sinking for an hour with me. I must, and I ready, rather, they comfort me. They'll preparest a feast before me in the presence of new mates. I'll quencheth my thirst with grog. orazhey, you've grown to God whith me and struggled It's over. poz tested grog she'll abide with me all the days of me life and I will shelled well in the galley of our classroom forever. Ram may I want to do a quick review on how everyone's been over the last week Dawg. Dub shine. Igottoremember. Use your full name here. But Dub shine. again over the last week, actually a couple of times. You mind telling me about it? Because it was pretty cool. Oh, cool, man. Yeah, it's a remix album. So it's just taken a few of the tracks off my album, the Collapse Reality. And it's just remixing it for the DJs. So I sent about 400 plus DJs the remix so they can play it on their internet shows and radio shows and stuff like that. Yeah, it's like real vibe-y, real. It is. It stood it out. Yeah. It's clean. That's what I get the vibe from. It's like it's very, very clean. If you remember, so this is my personal take. If you were ever in high school when I was in high school and Den Stenz Revolution never came out, it was just like clean track after clean track after clean track, just like this electronic, but not about crunch or synth, just about clean, precision beats and a clear vibe from beginning to end. And I really, really liked it. I'm glad you liked it. Eric, it's good to see you. How you been since last week? I have been good. I gave my garage a complete overhaul. OK, that was needed. That was fun. It's cathartic. OK. Yeah. Are you getting more into the whole being outside, spring cleaning sort of thing now that COVID's over? Or is that the cathartic part? Or for, I wouldn't say over, but like, vaccinate, post-vaccination. No, I mean, now, month and a half after the second shot and just feeling a lot more open and willing to do things, especially outside, playing some volleyball outside. Nice. Yeah. Eating restaurants, just opening up slowly more, but still conscious, still caring about people that aren't vaccinated or can't get it for whatever reason. I would say this. I'm a little wary about going to a restaurant myself still, but I am planning on doing a picnic with some friends. I think that'll be kind of fun, yeah? Yeah, especially with the weather out like this. Not so rainy, but when it is out and about, it's really nice. George Brown, how have you been since last week? The last week in my mind is a blur. I can't remember anything except. You're lovin' crazy, that's the problem. Yeah, here halfway between Knoxville and Chattanooga out in the boonies, I've noticed, I went for a walk in the city park and the health department was vaccinating a lot of people. Thanks. Like the number of people being vaccinated has exploded. Good, that's a good thing. And the age range is lower, of course. And I got my second shot three weeks ago and I did have a reaction to it. I won't get into the specifics right now. I would even say that's a good thing too. It's good to have a reaction to vaccines. That's showing that it's working, your body recognizes the problem and is going through the set to fix it without actually having the disease. That's a good sign. And I'm seeing, you know, if I go into the store, it's the same pattern, the old people are wearing masks and the younger people, a lot of them are not. You know, and I don't know how to interpret that exactly. I don't know. Though I do think it's interesting that you're pointing a finger and calling people old, because every single time you point, you got four fingers pointing back at you. Just letting you know. Did I point? I heard you talk smack about old people before every single time on this show. It's just like all these old people in the grocery stores, they're coughing in my face. I can't wait to tell them. I can't wait to tell them. I got younger people who are coughing. I want to do the coughing. It's my turn. Jared Pirate, how have you been since last week? Just checking in on you. Well, you know, I'm not going to be vaccinated. It looks like until the summer. So come to the US, please. I'm glad you guys are all getting vaccinated. But yeah, I know my mom, she's 75. She only just got her first shot a couple of days ago in preparation for surgery. So yeah, but other than that, I'm doing good. I'm getting lots of work down on the coast there. And I just had contact with the administrator for the local college here. If you recall, I was setting up a critical thinking course. Right. And unfortunately I had only received one, while they had really mislabeled it. So I had only had one person sign up, but she asked me if I was now interested in doing maybe a teaser course. And so I thought of a couple of things, one of which is doing a dowsing demonstration like Richard Dawkins did. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because there are a lot of local people here who do dowsing and believe in dowsing. And I think it would be a great opportunity to get some people out and do this double blind demonstration of the efficacy of dowsing. Yeah, if you want, you can even put some vaccines in the ground and have a dowsing rod triggered to them and be like, you should, or just a piece of paper that says get vaccinated. You bury that and you say, hey, dowsing rod's pointing here, there's a magnet at the tip of the rod, magnet underneath the paper. You can make this work, Dread Pirate. We can make it work for you. Yeah, awesome. Where's your mom located? My, what, what? Your mother. Oh, she's about five hours away. So she's out in Maple Ridge, which is just a little closer to the coast. Cool. Larry, how you doing since last week? Doing fine, just staying in and staying safe. Got my second shot a couple of weeks ago, did have reaction to it, had a full day of flu-like symptoms. Waiting for the weather to warm up so I could get my motorcycle back out. Nice. Started riding. Nice. Won't be long now. Dogwoods are gonna bloom here in a week or two and that'll be real nice. Are you getting the same rain that we're getting? Yeah, that's terrible. We got a lot of rain last night and it's taking a break right now, but I think it's coming back. Oh yeah, definitely. It sucks when it happens on the weekend too. Like, Thursday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, you're like, oh my gosh, this weather's so great. Let's plan a picnic, let's have fun, let's go skating, this is gonna be amazing. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, torrential rains, thunderstorms. You're like, what are you doing? Is this the cosmos punishing me for bad things I've done in the past, maybe? Yeah, could you be interested? I mean, and what is it? Injecting the topic at this point? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm thinking, we're gonna talk about karma today, but it will also be nice to talk about what we mean when we say karma because there's a lot of different understandings of it. And I find that to be one of the points that needles me when people mention karma as a thing. But I don't wanna bias the conversation, I would like to understand what people mean when they say karma. So round table, Scott, if you have an impression of karma, why don't you give me a definition of it? And before you do, George Brown, think of a definition of karma. So that one, you're like, hey, I got something, I got something. So Scott, what do you got? What's your definition of karma? Yeah, so I'll be, I'll try to be as quick as I can, but I wanna kind of let the audience know that there's different, of course, we're already talking about different definitions of karma. And so there's a more traditional where it originated from. So there's two kinds, they're Sanchita karma and Prarabdha karma. And I learned this from listening to a guy named Saad Guru. I don't know if anyone's familiar with this guy, but he's like a yogi. And he talks about how the West has kind of bastardized the definition of karma that means some sort of supernatural type of thing, which is different from the yogic or Hindu traditions of karma. So his whole thing is that karma is simply about information. This is information that's kind of similar in terms to what we call software. So there's a certain amount of life energy that is charged with a certain amount of information. And this sort of becomes, this causes a certain kind of character that you are because of this type of information that's gone into you from, so from the moment you're born to this very moment that you're living now, the kind of family, home, friends, the things you did or did not do, all these things are influencing you. Every thought, emotion, action comes only from past impressions that happened within you. But then there's different types of karma. There's Sanjita karma, which is a warehouse of karma, which goes right back to a single-celled animal and even inanimate substances from where life evolved from. So all information is there within you. So it's kind of like a warehouse of information going back into different life forms and creation or whatever you want to call it. So this is your Sanjita karma, but you cannot take your warehouse and do retail business with it. You need to have a shop to do retail. And that retail shop, which is for this life is called Parabda karma. And so that's about a certain amount of information allotted for this life. So depending on the vibrancy of your life, it allows how much information it can take on. So the creation is very compassionate, for example. If it gives you a whole lot of karma that you have, you would be dead. Right now, many people are tortured by simple memories from like 30 to 40 years ago that they've kind of accumulated through their life. It's kind of like if you were given like a hundred times that memory, you would not survive it. So nature allots Parabda or an allotted memory that you could handle. I'll just know what... Yeah, could you condense that? What does it mean specifically just to you then? Like, I don't doubt that there's many different definitions of it that we can find on the internet. But when I say karma, what does it speak to you in like a... Oh yeah, like, I guess if I, you know, because I try to be a rational kind of person. So if I was to take that on seriously, I would just say it's just what you were... It's kind of like the cause and effect of your life. Like, different causes cause you to be a certain way. And it just, like after I die, if I treated people like crap, then that karma continues even after, you know, it affects people. And it's kind of like a drop in the ocean that... You're making ripples. And there's more ripples under the surface even if you can't see them, right? That's right. So that's what karma is to me. It's just cause and effect that extends beyond my mortal coil. It sounds like most of this, you're saying it's just the environment, more or less. Right. That you're in. And that's what Sai Guru says. It's just your life and how you affect the environment vice versa. That's all that really means. I'm gonna take that. I'm willing to go the next couple of extra steps. I think I've heard the case and we'll go to Eric next, but like the idea of karma being an actual force that corrects injustices, that says, Hey, if you are being out of your way, me and to people, we're gonna, me as this corporation or agent or force, I'm gonna find a way to get me back at you cause I need to balance out all the good and the bad in the universe. Eric, have you heard anything like that? Yeah, no, that's your take. That's a little more of the traditional or the more familiar take that I was thinking. I thought the show would be based on that. I guess to me there are two types that are commonly talked about. One is, yeah, if you're a really bad person and you die, you come back as something worse because you let a bad life. But I think the one that really strikes true in kind of conversation is what I like to call what people call instant karma. So you don't have to wait till you die to get the payout good or bad. It happens the next day. The weather turns or you stub your toe or, so if you do bad things, yeah, there's this force correcting the world to get you to do better things, which I would love for this thing to actually exist because- I would love for this to exist. We should talk about that in the second half of the show. I have some objections to that. If this force actually existed and it had been running for hundreds of thousands of years, I bet everyone would be a really good person. Well, based on what standard, that's what I'd like to know. And instead of punishing me, just tell me the standard to be good and I can follow that. Don't just keep punishing me blindly while I trial and error figure this out. Just have the list. If you are a force just to communicate to me, this is a bad thing. This is a good thing. Do these things and you'll be okay. I'll be like, okay, fine. Now I know. It seems like you're personifying it though. I think if it worked just like evolution where it's not, it doesn't have a goal in mind and agenda. It's just, oh, this didn't work. Let me course correct, course correct, course. And if you just keep course correcting, it doesn't really matter what the goal is. It's just, you know, people would be better, I would think. Okay, okay. I'm gonna keep beatling Eric for just a little bit, but I wanna talk more about this in a second off the show. Eric, evolution is one of the worst judges or heartless things in the universe. There's just so many branches of unsuccessful living organisms that just die just because they're a little too blue or they're a little too tall or a little too heavy or they didn't make enough feathers. Evolution doesn't care about people. Evolution doesn't care about humanity. I want a system that if it is gonna guide towards people being nicer, so they have an interest in humanity or empathy or respect or like anti-racism, these would all be great things. I wouldn't wanna force as blind as evolution to control that. Are you saying Karma has no agency in this whatsoever? It's just nothing but counterweights moving up and down on ropes? I guess what I'm saying is if it worked like evolution, then I guess I disagree. I think evolution got us here. So it's maybe not the most efficient thing in the world, but the fact that we are here, we evolved the things that worked were successful. So if that same thing was true for, again, you have to factor time in here. I mean, if Karma worked over billions and billions of years, I guarantee there would be, but again, if we can't... No, that's so fascinating. This is great. This is great. We can't give agency to it because then we're now we're talking about something spooky and magical like having it anti-racist that like who would pick all this, right? Who's gonna be the judge of all of it? Where's the standard? Right, right, right. I love this. We gotta come back to it for sure, but I wanna make sure everybody gets a chance to weigh in. Dred Pirate, would you mind talking to me about Karma? What do you think it is? What does it speak to you? Well, the most common form I hear is essentially a balance sheet in the universe. And I think unfortunately what happens is people conflate luck in Karma. So Karma is just essentially luck with agency in it. You know what I mean? So I certainly don't hold that Karma exists because again, it's in my definition anyway that there's someone keeping an eye on this balance sheet and making sure that over time, justice is mitted out to the people that deserve it or don't. Now, when you say that, do you phrasing it in the form of luck? Are you saying luck is also happening naturally or is this force also introducing luck into people's lives? Well, I just think luck is luck. I mean, coincidence has happened. I mean, there are people out there that win lotteries. So Karma's not responsible for luck. Karma just punishes the bad to make sure it balances out with luck that naturally occurs. Well, I hear people speak of, I did something wrong and I'm gonna have to build up my Karmic Bank account essentially. And so it's like that's a savings account that doing good needs predisposes the universe to treat you in a better way. And I think it's this sense of agency that people attribute to Karma or their actions that they think it's like going to the credit union, putting your card in the ATM to get some good Karma. You read, you're almost phrasing it like it's a mafia that's coming room to room and being like, hey, it would be a terrible thing if something happened to your car today. Why are you paying me with some good deeds? Cause otherwise we're gonna come and pay you a visit. That's right, you can find no horse head in your bed. Okay, that's very scary. We're gonna go, Larry, you're gonna get the final word, but we're gonna go to George Brown. George Brown, what do you think about Karma? What does it speak to you? Well, first of all, I don't believe in it. My view on Karma is very simplistic. I don't believe in it. But as I understand it, it's very childish almost. It's the reincarnation version, I guess, that if I step on a snail, I'm gonna come back as a snail. Mm. And so with that in mind, I'm wondering how's Dick Cheney gonna come back? You know, Donald Trump Hitler. I mean, this is gonna be interesting, but I don't believe in it. So it's all academic to me. I mean, what the hell? The funny thing is, I think Trump's already one of the lowest forms. I think someone did something terrible and came back as Trump. Larry, Larry, can I get a point of view on Karma for you? You get the final word. Yeah, I get the final word as it should be. Get the final word on our definitions. What is it? Yeah, no, any supernatural definition of Karma, I think it is false, of course. I don't believe in any supernatural entities at all. And I believe what George was saying about agency out there in the universe is, you know, with him, I'm in agreement, it's false. There's nobody out there with a tally sheet keeping track of their good deeds and bad deeds. And there is no punishment after life. We have to take care of the justice that has mitted out ourselves, among ourselves, to make sure that it's real and it happens. However, I think we can live in our own social bubble. Like on Facebook, we create an environment around ourselves with people that agree with us, people that like us, people that we work together with. And it's the same in real life. You can treat your neighbors good or you can treat them badly. You can make friends or create enemies during your life. And that creates the bubble around you that you live in. And that's a form of karma that pays you back during this life. Sometimes it's immediate and sometimes it's not. But I think that's the only form of real karma that exists. But of course, it does exist. If you feel like you're surrounded by jerks, it may be because you're being a jerk to everybody, that kind of thing. But that's about it. I do feel the what you put out in terms of vibes. So I'm not a believer in karma, but I am a believer in vibes. And what I mean by vibes is the attitude that I put out in display tends to be the one that's reciprocated back to me. And so the only reason why I'm having a good time with all of you guys right now is because I'm putting out, hey, I want to have a good time with you. I'll show you guys respect. I'll have a good time. I can guarantee you if I was a jerk, for I was more mean, I wouldn't have as many good friends on this call as I do right now. So what I'm putting out is what I tend to get put in. But I wouldn't call that karma. I just call that input-output, I-O. Like we already have terms like for that first stuff like that, tech, the computer tech guy Scott gives me a thumbs up. Yeah, that's a great analogy, actually. And that's exactly like when I was telling you, I was watching Saw Guru on YouTube. And he said, that's the real definition of karma, like traditionally from his conception. That's really what it means from that tradition. This whole supernatural sort of definition, number one, Saw Guru says it doesn't even make sense. And it's not even true, number two. And it's not even what is taught. And it's just a Western idea. Maybe it's kind of like a mix between Christianity and some sort of yogi tradition or whatever. He says that maybe brought that kind of idea, but it's very popular in the West. Oh yeah, definitely. That karma is this supernatural thing. So I think that comes from the same idea of, hey, I don't like the Christian idea of God. I don't like what's being sold here, but I still need to fill the God hole, right? And what fills that God hole? Well, here's this idea that like, hey, if I'm good at people, I'll be treated good. That's sort of like a more, a loose moral system I can put. And it fits perfectly in here. Oh my gosh, it fits perfectly in my God hole. And if I die, I can come back. Oh, that's perfect. We're just gonna put some cement on here and now smooth it out. And boom, I got a new, not a religion, but it is a religion and it's spiritual. It comes from the East. It's valid. George Brown, what do you think? Well, are we into the discussion now? We are about four minutes away from taking a break and then we'll roll. Okay, I wanna, well, considering that I'm here in the land of the evangelicals, I had a little discussion with another neighbor than the one I usually talk about, his brother, who laid, he laid a trip on that you tried to that if I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, I'm gonna go to heaven. So that to me sounds like there's no common bulb where this guy's coming from. No more L.O.V.E. either. Sounds like heaven's gonna be a really dangerous place to be sometimes. Yeah. I don't wanna go there. Yeah, I'm gonna be honest with you, and we'll go back into what does a world look like with actual karma? I don't wanna rally too much, but maybe a future discussion would be like, do you actually wanna go to heaven? Cause I feel like our idea of what heaven is is not actually where we would wanna be. And I feel like there's some disconnect there. But, hey, we're coming down towards the half of the show. Larry, you wanna take us out and come right back? Sure. So this is the digital free thought radio hour on WOZO Radio 103.9 LP FM, right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. And we'll be right back after this short break. 103.9 FM, WOZO Radio, Knoxville. What are we talking about today, karma? We're talking about karma, but we're gonna quickly do some fan mail. What a fan, what a fan, what a fan, what a fan, what a fan. What a fan. What a mighty good fan. Fan. Brad, I feel bad for you. Let's share one more time. What a fan, what a fan, what a fan. What a mighty good fan. What a mighty good fan. Nice, nice, nice, nice. You guys can get excited about it now. It's spring. We're out of the winter. Let's get happy. So Patrick Madden says, have you guys ever considered moving this show to a podcast format? Y'all have a great format. Thank you, Patrick. We do have a podcast. It's on Spotify, iTunes, whatever have you, whatever your podcasting search is, search for Digital Freethought Radio Hour. That's the name of this radio broadcast as well as the name of the podcast. And I just take our live videos and put it up on my YouTube channel. Dada's Trading Room said, you guys were talking about Goosentite, or I'm sorry, you guys were saying about Bless You. How about Goosentite? In fact, in Nolan, in Port and Poland, we say, oh my gosh, na zwarde. Na zwarde. Which is just saying to health, which is often used on other occasions like a toast or before a podcast shot. And then there were a lot of other comments too, including from what we call life who says, why say anything after someone sneeze? You don't say something when someone else farts or burps, do you? I think that's a good question. Good point. I want to get back into the karma discussion. Eric, I have some hot topics for you. Hot topics for everyone else too, but we'll start with Eric. The idea of, do you want to live in a world where karma actually does exist? And if it was a system, not so much like evolution, but more like osmosis where there's just, hey, there's, I'm evening out particles so that there's reverse osmosis where there's like this distribution, fair distribution of particles across a certain, the realm of supernatural and reality, whatever you want to call it. There's a force at play that's making things balanced. It's like an entropi, it's like almost like an entropic force. And it's measurable and we can learn from it. And it's, if over a billion years would guide us towards what you believe is a better society, is what you say like, is that a world that you would want to live in compared to the one that we have now? What are the benefits? What are the disadvantages? I'd love to know. Pedro, what do you think? I think we have the prefaces. If we're going to talk about this, we have to admit we are talking about magic. Like, yeah. I wasn't talking about real. Okay, okay. I can't imagine a system that is based on physics that we know it as we know it, that would be beneficial. But if we were talking about a little bit of sprinkle, a little bit of magic in here. A little bit of magic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've got space. And if the only kind of rule that this thing operated on was just improving happiness, you know? Then it, or just adding more, less suffering. If it was less suffering. Less suffering. That's good. That was like the thing it operated on. Yes. I think that over billions of years, we would be in a much happier world, I would think. Okay, so system plus magic plus overall less suffering would make us happier. In what way would it be better than the system we have now? Like, how would that manifest in a way that actually would be better? Well, I think you'd be able to control things. Cause we can really, like you talked about earlier, we can really only control things that we see. Like we saw someone do something bad. We put them in jail. We can't control bad thoughts. We can't control the things we don't see. So if you had this governing force, right? This karmic force that was course correcting there, honestly, hypothetically, it could be a really interesting world to be living in. I don't know that we would even exist in the way we are right now. I wouldn't agree that we would. I think if there was something governing our thoughts over millennia, like who we are today would just be a product of this, you know, force that's guiding our thoughts. And like, and telling us what to think and when to think in and curving us away from maybe interests that don't interest the system itself. Something to think about. I want to get your thoughts. Scott, what do you think? Yeah, I was just gonna say it seems like it would just end up in the same position we are now because we're in a causal chain and karma kind of implies causation. And then, you know, it kind of goes into this whole free will thing. It's like we're sort of assuming. Triggered Eric, I thought. Yeah, it's like we're assuming that we have this will, you know, and if that's the case, well, some people don't want well-being. Some people want to do other people damage. And so we're kind of just doing the same thing anyways, right? We're kind of like ending up in a mixed bag of good, bad, evil, you know, virtue because there's so many different people with so many different wills. And then we got to, and then even with determinism, the same thing exists. We still have people that want to do bad things and good things and all that stuff is determined beforehand because we're in this causal chain of priors. So I don't know if it really gets you anywhere. I'm not sure. Boudreau, I'll fill one thing back to you. We'll get right prior to way on this too. But here's my monkey's pause situation where if we rely on a system that says less suffering, an island with 100 people will have less suffering than an island with 1,000 people. So this system all has to do is get rid of humanity. And it solves the problem. And I feel like the idea of like a system that isn't human, determining what humans should do is problematic because a system that needs to be humane necessarily needs to be in service of humanity or at least have the perspective of humanity to understand what it's governing, right? Which is why I like governors who are humans and not dogs or robots, right? But you're personifying the conversation. I guess I'm talking about a system that exists before humans. Yeah, I don't want that. I want humans to be the system. I want humans to determine what humans should do. Sure, but we're having fun with the conversation. So I was just kidding. Yeah, I'm just poking. I'm just poking. You know me. If we had a universe that had this kind of golden rule, so to speak, that was ingrained in everybody, I would be really curious to kind of visit that world and just see, I bet it would be a pretty happy place. I just think it... Well, last question. Would you visit in the Star Trek format or Star Wars format? Well, Star Wars was a long time ago and Star Trek is in the future. So I'd have to go into the future because then I'd have to... Yeah, okay. Yeah, because there's more rules than what you're supposed to mess around with or not. George, what do you think? Well, you started out, I think, you said the not... The way it is now, right? I think something like that. And I was thinking, well, that means not karma. What's the definition of not karma? And then my head started to explode. So... I would say the system that we currently have is a non-karmic world. So what's the definition of not karma? Look out the window. I'm looking. Yeah, that's karma. It's not a non-karmic world that you're looking at. It's raining. The bubble we were talking about, so there is some kind of karma. I mean, you can't totally throw it out because people are gonna react the way they are treated. So you're gonna have that kind of thing with you no matter what. So that at least exists. Dredd, I got a question for you. Would you want karma to be a real thing, regardless of whether or not you believe in it right now? What do you think we would benefit from if karma was in fact the thing that actually existed? I wouldn't want to live in a karmic world. Or even the idea that only humans are subject to karma. I mean, if karma is a real thing in the universe, then it should affect animals. It should affect bacteria. It should affect everything that lives and moves and slithers. I mean, is a lion subject to a karmic lash back for killing a new or something. You know what I mean? I don't know, it's all this idea that humans have souls and animals don't. I mean, it's all tied to this sort of magical and primary place in the universe that humans would put themselves in if things like karma exist or souls exist or hells exist or heavens exist. I mean, it's just, I don't know. It seems like a silly notion to me and I wouldn't want to live in it. Is there any benefit that you could see if we did live in a karmic world? What would it be something that you'd be like, oh, at least we got this? Well, I mean, if karma existed, we would need laws and penitentiaries and punishments and all the rest because the universe is taking care of all that for us. The universe becomes our prison cell. That's right. Yeah. And if karma exists, it's like, and laws exist, it's like double jeopardy. You go to jail for murdering someone and then you get karma on top of that. It's like, eternal punishment for a finite crime. What would also suck is if someone got punished and you don't think the punishment was justified or met the degree of crime and you're like, can we make an extra law to punish them more? It's like, no, we already got karma to take care of it. The universe knows what needs to be imbalanced. That's right. Larry, I'd like to get your throat before we go to Scott's. Larry, what do you think about a karmic world? Do you want to live in a world like that? And do you see any benefit that can come from it? Well, I assume you're talking about like where the universe itself takes note of every single thing you do and then punishes you for the bad things and rewards you for the good. The universe handles justice. I don't think so, but I could understand why some people would. I mean, you think about being rewarded for good things and punish for bad. I think it would be okay, except are you also going to be punished for mistakes, things that you inadvertently hurt people with or do without malice, you know? That's a great type of thing. So if that was the case, if they took all of that into consideration, I don't think it would be a problem that would make people act better, especially if they knew it was going on. But if it's just random and nobody knew, why am I getting kicked when I kicked that guy? Yeah, that's a fantastic point. If I gave someone a chocolate cake, because I thought they liked chocolate cake, but they actually turned out to be allergic and they die from it, should I expect repercussions from that? Or does the intention make it good? And if intentions can make potentially objectively bad things, good things, what do you say about someone that's in a mentally impaired state or someone that might be drunk at the time or someone who is genuinely in love with someone that's way too young for them and they try to maintain a relationship? It's like, you can't do that. Carmen's gonna be like- Or masochists who enjoy pain and then try to give that joy to others. So much great. Scott, I'd love to get your opinion. Did I ask you the original question? Then give me all your thoughts. What do you think? Well, I was gonna say, I heard somebody talk about this reincarnation, this karmic reincarnation thing a little while ago. And they were saying that the belief system in that is that if someone does bad things in this life and they go to jail or they get punished for it in this life, that now they're better people so that in the next life, they kinda graduated to the next level. So they kinda look at this life as a schoolyard. Like kinda like- What if they don't get punished in this life? Yeah, and if they don't get punished in this life and they didn't learn anything, then they have to start over. It's kinda like they didn't graduate to the next level. So it's always life is going through to the next level, to the next level. It's like an evolutionary process. Is that a tenet of Buddhism? Sort of like, yeah, Buddhism, yeah, that's what one of the mystical Buddhist interpretations will say, that yeah, it's like a school. You go to school and if you didn't learn anything from this life, you gotta start over in the next one. But if you get punished and you kinda get rehabilitated and you kinda got wisdom during your lifespan, then in the next life, you've gotten better. And they said, overall, the plan is that life for humans gets better. I like the hopeful aspect of it, because there's not a lot of hope in a non-Karmic world. But I feel like Karmic world has like, hey, things can get better. Things aren't as bad as they seem. And sometimes you really do need to have, you know, at least that as a voice. I know and I've had some dark times too. So I do appreciate that from the Karmic world view. Eric, it looked like you had a question? Yeah, yeah, I guess maybe just for the record, since you kinda got my silly answer to the question. Okay, give me your graded one, give me your graded one. My real answer's pretty short, so we can get back to everyone else. That was a great disclaimer, you said magic. We were like, okay, we're talking about magic. All right, we're good. So taking magic aside, I really, the one thing we kind of teased on a little bit here that we haven't really brought to light is understanding most of our thoughts on free will and the fact that we don't have free will. I told you, Eric, I told you you got them. I told you you got them. Anyway, you wouldn't let it go. It's fine. I knew we were gonna get them. All right, the whole thing is preposterous then. If you don't have free will, then why are you getting punished for anything? You didn't even do it. So I'm not gonna do it with George on it. Karma's just ridiculous. Eric, I like to get your feedback on this because this is actually my point of view on a Karmic world. It's more grounded. It's more in the sense of, I don't actually think karma's actually real, but I do believe really that people actually believe in karma. And the problem with that is, if they believe I get punished for my bad actions and rewarded for my good actions and they do something bad and they don't get punished for it, it's very easy for them to interpret that they did a good thing. And that can start a really bad spiral where they continue to do bad things because they're out of a realm where they can get punished for it or not observed. Their crimes aren't observable and those bad things get worse and worse and worse. And I think to, I can only think of cases where someone actually got caught. But for every Harvey Weinstein that didn't get caught or for every corrupt politician that didn't get an expose on or for every robber that got away from it, these are people who are going to think of the worst thing that he can do or more harm they can do because they don't have that feedback because they believe in a system that watches them all the time is always this invisible force that helps whether it's an agent or not, it's corrects them. And if they aren't getting that response or feedback, they think they're doing a good thing. And I feel like that's the same problem that religious people fall into. And when you look at, I'll throw the Pope under the bus, but we don't have to keep banging on Christianity. There's definitely religions where it's like, hey, we're in, we've been a religion for the last couple of thousand years. We've never had a woman as a leader. We don't have to have a woman as a leader because we are clearly blessed by our God who gives us all these advantages. So women can just continue to be substandard to men. It's like, if you're not trying to improve your culture, if you're not making that effort, it's gonna die hopefully, you know? And if not, it's not gonna be, you know, representative the best of what you could be. And that in its own right is a bad thing, but not a cosmically punishment. It's just a bad thing we all have to deal with. Yo, I'm gonna throw something out. I'm gonna throw something out. This is gonna be a little random. If George is bored with the idea of karma, we'd have to talk it. What do you think of the idea from what we call life? He says, why do you say anything after someone sneezes? Why don't, you don't say anything when someone else farts or burps, do you? George, I want you to be part of this conversation. What do you think about that? Do you think you should say something after someone farts or burps? What the hell am I going to say tonight? Ask what you had for lunch. Is that the takeaway? Yeah, yeah, yeah. George, give me something, give me something. Do you think we should just stop saying bless you all together or should we have? I don't care. Okay, okay. Okay, okay. I try it, I try it, I try it. You did, but really it's a convention, you know, and I'm getting, I'm looking at a lot of situations in my life where people are doing things because they've always done them that way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, let me give you an example of this. Sure, yeah. I get statement, I go online and I look at my bank statement online. It shows me the transactions in reverse order. You know, we've always done it that way. I call up the bank and I say, hey, I don't live this way. I don't, I don't die before I'm born. I don't buy things backwards. I don't buy things backwards. I don't have to, why are we doing it this way? I don't know, we use the service for this. Leave me alone. You know, it's like, we've always done it this way. So I just want to know, I can't, of all the things you could have brought up from argument of tradition that are actually bad. You brought up bank statements. It's like, because I had a deal with this guy. That's the top of the list. That's, that is, for me, for me, that's the top of the list. All right, all right. It's the top of my list, it's not the top of your list. I know we were going to go silly for a little bit. We're going to go a little bit back more serious. Eric, I'd like to touch a little bit on that free will statement that you made. If we don't have free will, how can karma even be justified in anything that it's doing? Cause clearly it's punishing us for things that we had no control or religion over. I would argue, and I'm massaging the term free will here, that even if free will did exist, karma in no right has a position of authority over us anyway. It has to be something that's consensual or deserving. It can't just be a, I'm okay, free will exist. And I get to decide how to punish you. It's like, I never agreed to this. I don't know who you are. What right are you coming from to punish me for taking an extra cookie? Like, that's not cool. Just let me do what I got to do. I'll tell you something you can update, right? Has to be something you can update or have some like feedback on this. It's like, Hey, I agree. Can't just be. Yeah. I've been trying another good quick, quick point. What you said about someone doing something bad and then not having something come at them and that makes them do that bad hit behavior more potentially, the opposite can occur too. Or someone could do something really good and then coincidentally, something bad happens. So I'm like, well, I'm never doing that again. Or they do something good and nothing happens. And there's no like, oh, I thought this was a nice thing. It's like, nope, everything's normal. Just like, oh, well, that kills my motivation and go out of my way to try to do these good things. Yeah. Yep, good point. Yeah. Dread. Yeah. Well, karma really is in essence, like believing in Santa is that he's watching you. He knows who's naughty and who's nice and right. You will be rewarded accordingly. You'll either find a lump of coal in your sock or a nice present to a new bike on your Christmas tree. Again, I think it's just an appeal to this universal authority that's going to make everything better. And further to Scott's point there, this idea that reincarnation and moving up levels. I mean, who's to say that humans are the pinnacle of creation of the universe? Like, is it really the best thing to be a human? Scott, what do you think? What do you think? Oh, I got the perfect simulation for that one. Oh, I hope it's short. We're in a matrix that we're in a simulation simulated by our future selves. So it's an ancestor simulation. So they say that the karma is a way to move up this little video game. Not that I believe that, but I'm just saying that could be an argument someone could produce. Sure. It is human-centric. Larry, I wanna fill something out at you. I'm seeing a lot of parallels between karma, God beliefs, and even Santa in terms of figuring out like this ambiguous being, I can't see the terms whether I do good things or bad things as a inhibition for me to do bad things or at least hopefully a carrot stick situation where it's like, if I do good, there's some bigger force that watches all my actions will reward me and if I do bad, there's some bigger force that watches me or keep me from bad things. Do you have thoughts on that? Do you think that's a coincidence? Well, I think that if we're working from a human objective and for the betterment of humanity per se, all we really need is empathy and compassion. We can guard ourselves. We can monitor ourselves and do what is right for ourselves and our society. That's simply from the golden rule, as it were, what was it? Confucius used to say, don't do unto others what you wouldn't have them do to you. But you want the best for yourself and if you care about your fellow man, then empathy and compassion would kick in and you would do the right thing. However, we're pulled in many different directions in this life and sometimes we have to choose priorities. But I don't know, it's a really hard question. What are you gonna do? Now, I'll throw this out as my last point. If we can, right now in this grounded universe actually make a karma system that is a human-centric model that says, listen, instead of all this court cases and scheduling appointments with a judge and lawyers and all these fees you gotta pay, we just made a list of rules. We have Google Glass now and we can just update you on, hey, you're doing a bad thing. Hey, that intent was wrong. Change it or now that we can see what you're doing all day long, we will dock your account a certain amount of fees that we've all agreed to as human beings on this planet. I would be like, you're getting closer to something that I would actually prefer more than this cosmic magic stuff. Larry, your raise your hand, what's up? Well, aren't you reinventing the Ten Commandments? And that's not morality. Am I reinventing the Ten Commandments? You just said we need a list of rules and we all have to live by them. Morality isn't the list of rules. I like that. That's a good counteract, that's true. The vanilla sky, I think, was a movie they made about that. Yeah, Larry, you're gonna do the future. All of my fun is gone, so much for that. I had a zillion dollar idea ready to go. I'll throw a little bit back into it. We could get a little bit back to where you were talking about, a list of rules and then the universe automatically corrects bad behavior. We may be getting closer to that when you think of it as close as we're getting to artificial intelligence. I mean, and somebody was saying earlier that if we could have non-humans determine how humans should live, we wouldn't want that. We'd want humans to determine that. Well, humans program machines and program artificial intelligence. We would just have to program the human priority into it and then turn our enforcement over to the machine world, as it were, and have them monitor our conversations, our actions, our interactions with people. Basically, what they do instead of selling us stuff, though, they instead just help us correct our behavior to be nicer to each other. I think there's some promise to that. You don't want a set of rules about don't do this, do that, but how our interactions should work for the benefit of humanity ourselves, that type of thing, to make humanity healthier going forward, not put it that way. Is it possible to leverage what people really want to do selfishly into the betterment of all? I like it. That would be kind of cool. I mean, yeah. You're gonna have a narcissist out there that was gonna go like that, you know? Larry, we're at the bottom of the show. You can catch everyone at the links that I'll put in the comment description, and I'm gonna put a Dub Shines album link in there. Boudreaux, hey, if we got time, we'll play your music. We'll also link to the YouTube channel where you put music at. Dread Pirate, you can find them, mine, P-Y-R-A-T. Pirate, and we got some cool stuff coming out of you. In the future, stay tuned. This is Let's Chat. Feel free to subscribe. Larry, why don't you take us out? We definitely have run out of time. My own content is at digitalfreethought.com. Be sure to click on the blog button. If you're having trouble leaving religious police behind, visit recoveryfromreligion.org. This has been the Digital Freethought Radio Hour. Remember, everybody is going to somebody else's hell. The reason 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, everybody. Bye.