 Hello, and welcome to Digital Freethought Radio Hour on WOZO Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee Today is Sunday, April 26th, 2020. I'm Dodder Five, and as usual we have our co-host Wombat on the phone with us. Hello Wombat! Our God is an awesome God! He reigns over heaven and earth and everything else, because our God is an awesome God. I'll say it was amazing. It was well done. It was well done. The subject was a little off, but our guests today are Boudreaux and Joey Woods, a J.W., Dread Pirate Hicks, and Chad the Impaler. I'd leave anybody out. I think I got everybody. Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a top radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism, and the sciences. And conversely, we'll also talk about religion, religious faith, God, 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 atheist, free-thinking, and 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 breaks. Also, did you know that there was a streaming atheist call-in TV show broadcasting here in Knoxville? It has been for over 10 years. You know that one? I can't believe it. That's so cool. I was really excited because I thought they couldn't get any higher than Endgame, but now that they're coming back with the new series, I'm really excited. I don't know. I wonder who the big bad will be, because I spent so much time with Thanos. I really don't know where this is going. The only big battles we have are with believers who call in and talk to us about beliefs. Long as Spider-Man's there, I'm happy. So it's all good. We're good. I think you'll miss Spider-Man, but it's on the air. It's been on regular community access TV for 10 years, but we've gone video now and streaming online, so we'll tell you how you can watch that after the mid-show break as well. And if you'd like to interact with us during the show, go to Facebook and search for Digital Freethought Radio Hour and use the messaging function to send us questions or comments. Wamba, what do you have for us today? Something about projection? Yeah, I heard we're going to be talking about Mickey Mouse. Wait, let me frame this better. What do the Ninja Turtles, Mickey Mouse, and Twilight, if I guess Twilight a little bit have in common, they all got people animal things. It just shows that we like to put people traits on animals, and it's kind of weird. Okay, I'll use the word anthropomorphizing. Anthropomorphizing? What does that word mean? That's a big word. Yeah, and certainly it's not limited to putting human traits on the humans. It's on the nature, generally. Wow, Joe Pirate, tell me about it. Well, you know, I just, I see this a lot. So the anthropomorphization of nature, of the world, which really kind of connects to magical thinking, that there's agency behind some of the things that go on in our world. Like lightning. Clearly don't have agency. You know, mother nature. There you go. There's the big one right there. And everything else is sort of underneath that. But again, it, you tend to do what you practice. And if in your mind, you're constantly referring to nature and these human quality terms, even while you may rationally and logically think those things don't have those qualities inherently, there's still a tendency to, you know, essentially put a face to the faceless. You know, when I hear things like that, it's almost like we are really good at making patterns. And a really good analogy that we tend to go towards is things are like us, right? So like, if I'm having a bad day, everybody else must be having a bad day. That gives me permission to be a jerk to everybody because everyone hates Mondays. Everybody likes the music I like. But like, as we grow up, we realize that may not necessarily be the case, but we still have like old hangups of like, oh, I don't understand how this works. I don't like saying I don't know. I'll just say a person did it because I'm a person and I can do things. So in a weird way, I'm just sort of like extending that out into nature in the senses. Right. Does that make sense? I'm throwing that out for critiques. What do you guys think? I think so. It comes from, sorry, go ahead, Pedro. No, no, no. Chad, you got it. All right. All right. I was just thinking about fables. From childhood, we're told stories about animals and we anthropomorphize them so that children can understand them. They love animals. It holds their attention. We push these human traits into these animals to try to somehow subconsciously code our children to understand over arching themes. And maybe it starts there. Maybe we have found a way in to start programming the firmware of our children using things like fables. And then it's a wonderful hack throughout life and the way we make sense of the world. We can only see it from our perspective. Not necessarily. We try to see it from other perspective, but I don't know. Fables just made me think about stories. I got some fables. What was your favorite fable growing up? I had a Nancy the spider. I don't know if you know about those. I don't know a Nancy the spider. Is that a Caribbean type thing? Yeah. It's a Creole probably comes from Africa. There's a lot of African ties to it, but I imagine it could be easily moved around, but it's like a spider that is very clever. And you wouldn't necessarily think that a bug would be the main character in a story, but he's just constantly up against really severe challenges, but figures out a very clever way around them to get what he wants. And then sometimes he gets, you know, still pegged at the end, but that keeps it exciting because you never know if he'll end on a good way or a bad way. But he's always hustling. I think the first one that I remember was Charlotte's web. The first one that really stuck with me because it was a cartoon as well as a book. Boudre, what's what's some of your fables or what do you think about this conversation? I'm trying to think of my fables. You got kids. Are all your fables just human characters and Sam Harris t-shirts? All the fables for the kids are Star Wars related. So where you were starting with this, I think I'm tracking what you're saying, Ty, in that I think we find it easier to categorize things or to, you know, map things onto analogies. And it makes it so much easier to understand. It's certainly like that in mathematics where if something's really complicated, you can't come up with a mathematical model that perfectly predicts it. So you come up with some analogy for it. But you can better understand it. So I think there's a comfort. And then there's also a learning hack, I think, to doing this. And if you want to understand how thunder lightning works, you can kind of hack it by making it a god that did it, you know, or a life force inside the earth that caused it. And that just when you're young, it makes it easier. But I think as we get older, you learn things faster by using those tricks. Yeah. You know, part of the recognition is that it's a trick that it's not, you know, a quality that something possesses as an inherent quality. But that's kind of what I get at is because I see this amongst other people who sort of refer to things in nature as having some sort of agency and actually believing it. I mean, I have a niece that, you know, she owns one of these stores where they sell tarot cards and Ouija boards and crystals and all that kind of stuff. And. Oh, that's right. You're in France. So of course you would say it like that. Okay, never mind. Go ahead. You're Canadian. You have to say it that way in my head. I have to. Yes. Oh my God. Tarot Tarot Tarot Tarot cards like what do you say it like that? Oh, he's right. That's right. That's all right. You're all right. Oh my God. Get out of here. So, but, you know, in, I mean, those are places where, you know, ruins and stones and tarot cards and all that kind of stuff have a connection to nature through agency. And, you know, the, the tendency of many people to actually believe that those things are connected in that way. I think it's a, again, it's the anthropomorphization of human qualities onto the natural world. I'll throw something out. I had a girlfriend who did do tarot card tarot cards, right. And she used them as means to write better stories because cool thing about tarot cards is they have characters that are stacked on the deck. And you place out the cards and you're essentially making up a story based on the placement of the cards. The cards that the random association of all the cards can really come up with some really compelling narratives if you're really imaginative. Sure. And come up with like a story that, that is breaking the molds of a lot of, you know, classical literature, because people say all stories build down to just like four or five different tales. When you do like this randomized setup, you actually are telling a story that's like, I don't even know how this is going to end. I'm just, but I'm, I'm, I'm composing something like on the fly and it's a lot more fun doing it this way. So using that as a tool, she doesn't actually believe it, like not take it seriously, but she's using it as a means to, to improve like her lifestyle or stuff like that. I'm like, that's cool. And I think I, I'll put this out like we make models with our, you know, squishy brains. It's one of the best things we're, we're able to do. And we do it all the time, whether we know it or don't, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. I guess what really matters is, are we taking it to the point where we believe it as a literal objective or are we considering it as for what it is just a model that best reflects reality or something that we can tweak to better anticipate things that will happen in the future and so on. JW, what do you think about that? Got to unmute myself here. I think bringing together fables and attributing agents and all that. It's, I completely agree with you. Like there's, there's a, there's kind of a line that's like a, like a spectrum that we don't want to, we've got to compartmentalize these things. Yeah, like a continuum. Yeah. And I don't, and think as a majority, as a human race, we're not really doing that. And, but I've read this book, actually two books this year, Thinking Fast and Slow. I'm horrible with author's names. Thinking Fast and Slow and Mind. Danny Connemann, right? And it's, what was really fascinating about it is he, is they both kind of painted this picture of how these, this particular thing that we do with our head that is not beneficial now might have very well been the catalyst of our survival at one time. Right. And at the same time, how magically thinking we are might have actually been one of the crucial why we made it this far. But now we've come to a time in human society where we got to like reassess this is just like, okay, we got these things going on. But are they real? Are they reliable? You know, that would be my. Yeah. And like, what's the best way to figure out between the two, right? Yeah. Larry, what are mine feeling me on and why you feel about all this and, and have you ever grown up? Did I what growing up? Did you ever have fables growing up or the, what were the classic fables of the 70s, like the wrong 70s? 60s or 50s. I try to give you some credit. I try to give you some credit. No, no, I was born in 50. So, you know, Brer rabbit and those type of fables, three little pigs course growing up. You, you were alive during the Dr. Seuss zeitgeist, basically. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Can the hat all that stuff. Yeah, that's those are the American fables that we have now. Right. Yeah. And building a little bit on what JW was saying. Back when we were in still in the, in the woods in the forest before we built civilization and stuff, and we didn't know how anything worked. If we, we saw the bushes rustle over there, it could either be the wind or it could be a tiger. Yeah. This is an example that she's allowed in the particular instance. I mean, the people are ancestors who thought it was a tiger ran away. And if they, those that thought it was the wind didn't run away. Of course, if it was a tiger, they killed them and they didn't reproduce, didn't pass those genes on. So all of these survivors that are paranoid, they are, well, they're paranoid, I guess, but sometimes it's rightfully so. But we look for agency where there isn't agency a lot of times. Like going back to the lightning and thunder, we attribute it to agency, a God who is living in the cloud. You know, it didn't just spontaneously happen. Of course, back when we didn't know anything about it, we, we projected our own human traits into the clouds and say, well, there's a, there's a man up there throwing lightning down. Yeah. That's where lightning comes from. But since we have discovered now this science as our best tool for inquiry, doing queries into nature, we know better than that. We know a whole lot better than that. And the beliefs that we have in supernatural beings is really just an artifact that needs to be dropped at this point. Yeah. And that, and that would be a point I would make with respect to this whole thing is that, you know, sometimes old habits die hard, and it's about being mindful. I mean, I know, you know, I have conversations with atheists regularly who say, oh my God, and I think that was actually a topic we had touched on in a previous show. You mean it's like a punctuation declaration? Yeah. And, you know, for myself, I just try to be mindful of using those phrases. Oh, that's interesting. Because I, I don't like to train my brain that way. I mean, you know, I'm a firefighter. I do what I practice, right? So, you know, I know the, just how repetition sort of brings things top of mind and then all of a sudden you're acting without thinking. It becomes just, you know, a conditioned response or a habit, right? And that's where I'm, I guess that's where I was going to with this whole anthropomorphization thing is that our, you know, this, you know, a tendency to, you know, see agency in nature, even as science draws us away to understand the true causes of these things. Sometimes we practice these behaviors, which kind of hold us back in some respect, I think, and, you know, about being mindful of who we, who are what we attribute, you know, the physical causes of the universe to. I can, can I, you touched on something a little interesting. I want to take just a slight detour and we can get right back down from my poor my station, but like the idea of saying something in the nominal sense like, oh my God, right, when you don't mean of specific deity, because God's a job description, you know, it's not an actual person. And I feel like it carry, like, even in other languages, they say, oh my God, like, like, and they don't mean it in a, in a spiritual sense, they're just being like, oh man, that's so crazy that you would have to like Yeah. And I've trained myself sometimes to say as a replacement seven hells because I was really into Game of Thrones at the time. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. But I would say like, I remember doing an SC conversation, and I was at Larry was there, Kentucky Free Thought Forum, and there was a trans person there, and I was doing a conversation with with them. And I said, Oh, that's so cool, dude. And she said, or they said, I think it was, I think she used pronoun she she said, Oh, I don't like being called dude. And I was like, Oh, I'm sorry, I wasn't calling you dude, I just say dude is like, Oh, dude, that's awesome. But I didn't mean in that way. And I think I said, instead, like, I using like as a punctuation marks or like, Oh, that's so cool. Like Jesus, that's cool. Like, dude, that's cool. Jesus, that's cool. And she said, my name's not Jesus, it's Tiffany. And I'm like, Oh my God. She's like, I'm an atheist. And I'm like, I don't know how to talk to you. So like, in a sense, you have to like, know, like there's some people take it more seriously than others. And I can understand that in the case by case, but I wouldn't, I wouldn't waste, I wouldn't exert the mental energy to refrain from saying certain phrases as well. And what I really more care about is the intentions behind it. And if I say like, Oh, dang it, I don't mean or like screw it. I don't want to find a screw. I just, I'm just saying something. Does that seem reasonable? What do you guys think? I, I think you both make actually excellent and very rational points on the same, same particular topic. I mean, as you know, as we use our words are really important. And as a, I've been a musician and I love poetry and I do comedy and all that. And I've always, I've always loved words and how you can organize them like I wanted to be a pastor and all that. And so I do think I think you're both right at the same time. In my opinion, it's just like there are people that hyper fixate on words and not really think about the meaning behind them. But at the same time, I think Dread Pirate Higgs makes it makes a great point as well. It's just like if we get into a relaxed view of something that maybe we shouldn't have such a relaxed view or relaxed attitude about. Could it take our mind back down a road that we shouldn't go or see something as not as serious as it should be. No. Right. And, and part of the thing is I wanted to be careful because Wombat brings up the point through his illustration there. I don't mean it as a, as a way to criticize or, or, you know, be hyper vigilant in conversations with other people is about being mindful of what's going on in my head. Yeah, I did that. You know, I totally respect that. Yeah, I'm absolutely about that. Right. Yeah. Lou Joe, you're kind of quiet. What do you think? Yeah, another kind of to bring us back to the to the science of what's going on here. I think another another plug for a book because we tend to be kind of a mini book club on this show sometimes. But Donald Hoffman, I didn't, I didn't read the book, but I heard a good podcast on his book, The Case Against Reality. I haven't listened to this podcast in a while. I would have loved to listen to it right before this because it's been a while since it came out. But if I recall, it was the Sam Harris episode, of course. But he and his wife were talking to this guy about his book and, and the idea that how evolution didn't, you know, because obviously evolution isn't like purposeful, right? It's just a reaction. So evolution didn't compare us very well for perceiving reality. Oh, what? Yeah. So I don't, well, I mean, I think at a very deep level here where the way we perceive the world is really just kind of evolutionarily learned, right? So how we react to sound or sun or or or danger or sounds or anything like that is just a just an evolutionary reaction to survive. But the actual how reality truly is, is really just an interface and I'm butchering their, their, his book here. But if you're curious more about this, I'd recommend it, or at least the podcast, but, and I think they use a nice analogy again, a better way to understand this complicated thing that we're trying to trying to put into words. You can use an analogy, the when you get on your computer, like a Windows PC and you go to your desktop, that what you see is an interface. It looks nothing like what the computer actually is in reality. It's just an interface. It's got big buttons. You can click on things, pictures, images. But when you look at what a computer actually is, it has nothing to do with that. It's there. There aren't little things to click on. It's just a bunch of circuits. I think what you're, what you're trying to say is our brain will tell us whatever we need to, to make it to be able to survive. If it's true or not, it, we, what's important is how we react to the situation. And if the, if the, if our brain wants to tell us it's a ghost and we believe in ghosts, you know, then we'll react as if it was a dangerous thing. Right. Selection pressure from the past forcing us to, I love that. Sorry, that's, that's a buzzword, I think. I love it. Yeah, right. Yeah. Selection pressures from millennia past telling us that we should be more alarmist because that, I mean, that, that's who was selected for. I mean, we're, we're the, we're the process of those that did run when the bushes wrestled. We're not the ones that didn't, they didn't survive their genes didn't survive. We've still got, because genes, gene traits can be recessive for years and years and years. People pop up and with different combinations, you get different, everything's a spectrum, it seems you're somewhere on the spectrum of this and that. And yeah, I think it's important to have one foot in the past and understand that you have to live there because until we have our scientific explanations. All we have are our fables and our stories that have got us here so far. Now we don't have to, we don't have to believe that there's a sky daddy or any of that other, what we think is ridiculous, but what others may not and others may see things as allegory. That allegory holds a place until science can step in. But I think it's just really important for us to understand, to be mindful, like, like Dredd was saying, just be as mindful of the fact that this is going on inside you inside your head. And, and it should be, we should be excited about replacing it with fact. But we can also enjoy the stories as well. So yeah, yeah, I also think culture evolves in the same way too, such that right is this like that selection pressure impacts culture as well. Term turns how we interact with each other even if we never met each other like it sets the guidelines and frameworks for how we, like as Eric said, and as you're pointing out like how we see the world and how we interact with reality. I do have a weird tangential question. Do you suppose that if we are the products of evolutionary pressure to remove people who don't run away when the bushes rustle, rustle, and that nowadays we don't necessarily have tigers hiding in bushes so like kids and people can just be raised with with any sort of, you know, compulsion to stick around any kind of rustling of bushes. Would you would you think that explains why we have so many more wingsuit gliders in this generation now compared to like caveman times. Yeah, creating that. Yeah, we're required to be anxious. Yeah, or people who like just do crazy extreme sports that would never fly in caveman times because caveman would be like, what are you doing we need to get food and shelter. Why are you jumping out of a plane with a helmet on it's like that makes no sense the helmets wearing you for protection that makes no sense. Risk is too high yeah no that's a really good point. Yeah, I think like, I think we see a lot more of that if we ever came up with like a universal income where people didn't have to work every day. I mean, using our imagination and taking chances and just looking for thrills. Yeah, exactly. I feel like we have way more thrill seekers now than we've in that kind of with the ready ready player one book and movie was all about right. Right. People were just, I mean it was all about like just extreme. Yeah, for me that's what the 90s were all about. Those are good times. Well now that is true. Ty, if you think about it when you're young, you're more you take more risks to certainly with your body. Yeah, your sense of mortality isn't very well developed. Yeah, that plus I've invested so little. Very sage. Like when I'm 10 the amount of time I've invested in my body cognitively is like a year maybe two years like that's like my long term thought capability. But like when I'm 30 it's like oh geez I went through school I have a job and I have to pay off I just paid off this car there's no way. I'm going to go bobsled. I don't want to break a leg and something like that like I have too much to think about. That makes sense. Just to go back to anthropomization I think there's an interesting aspect that I'd like to touch on we only have a little bit more time before the end of the show but doing it not to non humans but also humans. So like when we take like a Jesus Christ figure and apply a bunch of characteristics to a person that may have existed, but to the point where it characterizes them to the point where there's no way in a reasonable sense a person like this could have existed. They're like doing magic tricks and walking on water and like healing the sick and stuff like that. You've turned a character of a person into a fable and like anthropomize basically a legend as in someone you can talk to. That was a good point in Braveheart actually was when one guy was introduced to William. Whatever his name it will even call us. He says I heard your seven feet tall and you know 300 pounds and our our our clarity was just a man. You're good on that by the way. Yeah, they're good. Yeah. Smart rule. Cool. So we got accents and with more taxes to spare. We're going to come back after the break Larry. Why don't you take us out. This is digital Freethought Radio R and WZO Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We'll be back right after this short message. Can we get a mic check from JW? Digital Freethought Radio. Well, I'll let you know. Can you hear me? Yeah. Yeah. When you said like the 90s was like that. All I tried to interject was I think the same argument could be made for the 60s. Maybe. Yeah. Anyway, we're back. Larry, why don't you give us some local news? Okay. You're recording? Yeah. Of course I am. This is one file. Let's go. Okay. Welcome back. I'm doubter five and this is the digital Freethought Radio R and WZO Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today's Sunday, April 26, 2020. And this is the second half of the show. Let's talk about the Freethought groups that you can join right here in Knoxville. First, there's the Atheist Society of Knoxville. ASK has been around since 2002. We're in our 18th year and have over a thousand members now. You can find us online at KnoxvilleAtheist.org. When we start having meetups again, you can join us at Barley's Taproom in Pizzeria in Knoxville's Old City every Tuesday evening around 5.30 happy hour. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you can still go to meet up and search for an Atheist group in your town. Don't find one. Start one. You guys got to get in on that. That's right. Another large Freethinking group here in Knoxville, the Rationalists of East Tennessee. R-E-T can be found at Rationalist.org. Click on that and click on Upcoming Events once you go there. Earlier in the show, we said we'd talk about Knoxville Atheist call-in television show. Well, it's called Freethinkers United Coalition in Knoxville. It's online at YouTube for streaming video. Just look for Freethinkers United Coalition when you get there. Cool. You can find archives of their shows on YouTube where a fan has been posting them. Also, if you're interested in getting involved in the TV or the radio show, just come to an Ask Meetup or R-E-T meeting and talk to us. Or just go to Facebook. Go to Digital Freethought Radio Hour and chat with us and let us know. On the show with us today, we have Wombat, J.W. Joey Woods, Chad Dean Pailer, Boudreau, Hicks, and Wombat. Where do we want to end up? Where do we want to go? I have a slight angle to pick on. I think two of the reasons why I joined or where I was easy to be an atheist in Knoxville when I first came back from Tennessee was one, there was a meetup group. And two, the meetup group was very, very well-named. It was the Atheist Society in Knoxville. Ask. I'm like, this is some clever advertising, man. That's good. Because one had the atheist name in it, but also it had Ask as like the catchphrase. And I'm like, this is so good. Everyone should follow it. And then there was like Rhett. And then there was like the Freethicker performance. Like, no, no, no. Ask. Like, copyright that. That's so good. Question, question, everything. Why doesn't everyone just do that? That's such a good thing. Anyway, Freethicker Coalition, would you call it? Freethicker Coalition, United Coalition. Oh my gosh. Just, just give up. You gotta give up that copyright. It was not my idea. That's all right. It's all right. It's all right. So we're talking about animals. We're talking about people. We're talking about people animals. We're having a good time just talking about like how the brain seems to try to make sense of reality. And it seems to clearly both be really good at certain things and really needs help in other capacities. And I figure, what would the world look like if we had a better view of reality? Like Eric, you were saying like, if we were born evolutionarily with a better grip on reality, what would a world like that look like? Well, we'd be able to tell jokes as well would comedy completely shift in a different way. So I was walking down the street last time. No, you weren't. No, you weren't. You were, you were practicing this joke. I know you're telling me a lie. This is not funny. Like, how's that work? That makes me think of the, I don't know if I brought this up before. One of my favorite books when I was younger was a book called Flatland. A very short story. I think it was written by an English teacher, but it was about basically about math or about reality in dimensions. Dredpire, you were shaking your head. I know the one. Yep. So the point of it though was a three-dimensional being went down to a two-dimensional world and was trying to explain to the 2d shape because all the beans were shapes. What a third dimension was like, and it was just so mind boggling like they couldn't, they couldn't perceive a third dimension because they, you know, they're this, this flat surface that they can't point up or down. So in talking about perceiving reality, what if you could actually see in three dimensions? And I know people say, Oh, it looks 3d. JAWS is popping up. No, we see in two dimensions, right? It's just, you know, it's a screen, right? It's a stereograph. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we see it up to, yeah. Yeah. It's depth. We can perceive depth, but that's just perception. Really, we can only see in two dimensions. If we could see in three dimensions, you could see my stomach, the back of my head, all at once, right? So that would be, that's gross. Like how much that would help doctors. Oh, yep. I see right here. You got the problem. You're going to go. You should. Yeah. You should. I just watched a few documentaries this week on. The most recent discoveries in quantum mechanics. And I watched a lecture. On how they're pretty sure the universe is a hologram. And there's also. A pretty, they have a. There's a pretty good argument that our universe is actually inside of a black hole. And the three dimensional depth is actually an illusion. Like you say, our universe is actually two dimensional on the outer edge of a black hole. It's pretty cool. But anyway, let's take a look at that. I feel like every single time someone mentions quantum mechanics, there's a physics student who just like gets a cold shiver up his back. It's just like, oh, someone's talking about me and completely ruining my field of study. Speaking of fables. My best quote from, from quantum mechanics is if you think you understand quantum mechanics, you do not understand quantum mechanics. Yeah. Yeah. It's a spooky dunning Kruger effect. Yeah, it's a very, it's a very sharp drop off on that curve for sure. Yeah. For sure. But it is fun to think about, you know, what that, and that's, that's the point. I'm glad you brought that up chat because I'm saying like, is there value in. Willingly believing the, the fable or believing the lie, like when we're watching comedy, when we're seeing like red door for Star Trek or, or, or Star Wars and we can like sort of let our mind or the critical part of our minds go and just enjoy a terrible movie by JJ Abrams and just have fun and like, Hey, I'm just, I'm just throwing some shots. How dare you. I'm just throwing some shots. But like you sit down and you just let it go. And it's like, I'm just here because I deserve, I deserve this. Can't you just. Yeah. Well, I mean, if it offers you new concepts, if it gives you something to think about, it opens your mind up to other possibilities. Yeah. And we've got an entire dope, an energetic system like reward system in our body that, that lights up when we hear beautiful music. And that has nothing to do with whether you're able to grow squash in your backyard or, or, you know, that. So there's, there's something to having, deriving pleasure from things that don't, at least on the surface seem like they are a necessity to your survival or your understanding of the world. I think it might come from somewhere. When you've got that luxury to feel that you feel at ease. You feel like my job's finished for the day. I can sit down. I can relax. You know, when we are able to enjoy those seemingly silly pleasures. Are we signaling to ourselves? Everything's okay. Everything's taking care of us. Yeah. I'm okay, which is why a lot of people ignore problems. If things, if they're anxious situations, I'm going to ignore that. I know it's over there. I'm going to ignore it because it tells me I'm okay. And, and I can continue to function without a level of anxiety that makes me tariff, terrified or terribly uncomfortable. I don't know. There's something great about not having to think so crazy. I don't know. There's something great about not having to think so critically all the time. That actually just spawned a thought in my head. I'm thinking about like, you know, because earlier we were talking about the, what could be behind the bushes. And sooner or later, you know, when we lived in caves, we had to get to a point where we had to leave the cave. And we couldn't get in that moment or in that time, we couldn't be like terrified to the point where we're, like physically, we can't be so emotionally devastated that we're physically useless. So somewhere along the way, there had to be this balance between, I've got to go explore even though I know there's stuff out there. So I mean, that'd be, that'd be a really cool, cool study to do. Or, I don't know if there's a book out there on that. It's just like, I don't know. That just made me think about that. So where did we find the balance? Or how did our mind evolve to the point where we had balance between the wonder of exploration and also being so reminded that there's also still things out there that might hurt us. Right, right. Maybe a cave in, right? Yeah. You know, or something that made your, your space so uncomfortable that the comfort, the comfort level it offered is completely destroyed in that. I mean, that's what predators do. That's what we have to go. Yeah. It's what got us out of the ocean. Right. And these ideas, these dreams and stories that we think up, it's Alfred North Whitehead. I was trying to think of a quote earlier, Alfred North Whitehead said, the purpose of thinking is to let the ideas die instead of us dying. So we tell these stories to ourselves and we try to glean as much information out of the story so that when we're put in that situation, we react almost automatically. So please explain that. It's great. I'm trying to catch that. It lets the, no, no one can agree yet. I need to have this explained to me. Well, I don't know. Letting the ideas die. I'll give you a shot. What does that mean? Could you elaborate that? Sure. Wasn't it letting the ideas live instead of people die? Well, was it, was it Edison that said I'd found a thousand ways not to make a light bulb? Rather than seeing it as a failure, he discovered so many different ways of not creating a light bulb. It could be similar. There's no telling what else he discovered. Right. So you can tell yourself, you can tell yourself a bunch of these stories and you're learning from the story rather than having to put yourself in harm's way. You create these worlds inside your mind and you run, you're running scenarios. Yeah. Models are amazing. Yeah. Models. You're creating models and you're, you're running them through the end and you drop different variables in constantly. I think we talked last time, we talked about building charisma, talking in the mirror about meetings that you might have to attend, saying to yourself in the mirror what you really want to say to your boss, you know, to try to sort of automatically program the circuits in your brain so that you react instead of think it's slow, think fast, think kind of thing. Right. Maybe. Yeah. I don't know. That was Larry's image to share. Yeah. That was awesome. Yeah. And I don't think my phone is able to send it to you all, but I'll send you all to over the group. It's a meme that I actually made. So I'm pretty far. This runs really well on the, on the audio. I was going to say, this is audio, right? Yeah. So I want to throw something out. It's a bit of a tangent, but there's a one guy who wrote all of our military marches. For example, one of our military marches is. Like you guys might have heard that before. Canada's shaking his head. I don't know if you've heard it before, but I'm glad it went out. But there was one guy who wrote all the military marches. And this was during a time before sound. It was Edison times. It was before sound could be recorded so that if you wanted to hear music, you have to actually go out to an orchestra and listen to people play or play in your own home and just get the sheet music from like a library or store that sells sheet music. And because of that, there are a lot of homes that had instruments and had to learn how to play, you know, guitar or piano. And when Edison came out with the ability to record music and like, or was popularizing that idea of moving from like wax to, I think it was like, not like what we're used today for vinyl, but like a precursor before that. And it was getting better. We're getting better at recording sound. This guy who wrote all the songs for a military marches is like, I won. I don't want this to happen because one, I'm going to lose a lot of money. Let's, let's be honest. I make money going around. Like this is how I afford myself. But two, I think it's going to be really bad because then people won't want to play music. They'll just listen to music and there's so much value, such a rewarding pleasure from being able to play music. And it turned out to be the case that now that we're in the world where everybody has, you know, audio that they can listen to music on, there's probably more people that play instruments today just because they're inspired by the songs that they have access to and the ability to share music. Then ever before. And so it goes, so it goes on two levels. One, this guy who wrote music came up with a model that he was really worried about to the point where he was writing manuscripts about. I suspect that in the future, a lot of people won't want to even learn how to play music. They'll just listen to it. But in the reality of the sake case, the desire as Chad was implying to the desire of just like rewarding yourself through fulfillment of the you know, like really constructive pleasures like making music, listening music, talking to people, reaching out, doing good in your communities. Like there's an innate value that we derive from doing good things and improving our life that outweighs even the things that we might be afraid of that, that that's also able to like destroy models that we might even come up with that seem reasonable, but actually turn out not to be the case. So well, if I were to say, just put this as like a moral, like don't bet against the ingenuity of people and the value that we derive from improving our lives. Cause when we do that, we tend to do it for everybody. And I feel like as long as we have the idea of we try to, like as long as we have the idea of like, how to put this, we always seek to improve our well-being. We always seek to improve our well-being. And improve our lifestyles and do good things because it benefits us. We basically can bet on that as the, the core model for like how reality works. And we may not need to be ass weighed by the things that gave us paranoia and might scare us. Like shaking bushes aren't that bad if we know we, it's worth it to stick around. Yeah. I think part of the reason that people are so anxious these days is because we've got this circuitry that we just don't, we no longer need it as much as we did and people are finding reasons to get anxious. You having to work this Saturday isn't necessarily going to kill you, but for some reason, because it's the worst thing that you can imagine happening to you this week, your body reacts as if it is the most dangerous thing that might happen to you. So you overreact. And the more that you appease these circuits and feed these monsters, you bolster these connections and you actually build them. It's very difficult to undo. Yeah. Like bad things can actually be good things, but your body just treats them as bad things. Cause we're working on old firmware. Yeah. And, and you can idle hands. I don't want to pull scripture out, but. Not with dread pirate around. He'll jump on you. Right. Well, you know, again, Tarot cards at you. Again, I, I see, I, I see atheism. If atheism is practiced in any way that I'd like to see it practiced and I do an air quotes for anybody that's not looking at me doing air quotes practice. Yeah. We as atheists could be seen as. People like pharmaceutical companies that that look at let's say something like ayahuasca. And this works for this group of people in central America. And we study these compounds that these people are able to extract. And we can synthesize them. And use them in pharmacology pharmaceuticals. And understanding. The people that put this together and what it means to them. Is important. And not saying these people are stupid for, or underdeveloped or primitive. Because we were able to take something that they discovered. And synthesize it. And then, you know, I just. I worry constantly about how. I do on occasion see some of us. Some atheists. Bad mouthing people that hang on to ideas that we find archaic. And no longer useful. When a lot of our. A lot of our improvements in life came from there. Yeah. So I just, I think it's important to be compassionate and, and understand that not everybody's where we are yet. So just be careful. That's all. And it's a, and to extend on that point, it's. I wish I knew. Someone that. Had been through my journey. Prior. To my having done the loan, essentially. You know what I mean? Like if there was somebody that I could have. That could have helped mentor me. I remember Matt Dillahunty talking about, you know, sort of the, his escape from the Southern Baptist thing into atheism. And just. I remember him talking about. A friend of his, a good friend of his. And the conversations he had with him. His friend was a good friend of his. His friend was a good friend of his. And the conversations he had with him. His friend was an atheist in that. He had looked harder and harder to find a justification. To argue the point with his friend. And then ended up discovering. That he wasn't justified in his thinking. So I think it's great that, you know, If we're not. If we don't put ourselves in the position where we're chiding people. Or looking down on them down our noses at them. That we. That we actually modeled the behavior. That we that we would like to see in, you know, critical thinking and. And all that good stuff that that is the real positive force. That atheism has the opportunity to play here. Yeah, you don't want to. If you're, if you're chastising someone or berating someone for their beliefs. It just comes off disingenuine to me. It comes off as if. You would likely be less willing. To accept that you were wrong in the future. Right. If you're. People tend to shut down and double down, you know. Right. Yeah. It's a good argument for why street epistemology. Is such a good tool for this. Yeah. Speaking of which. Joey just did his first street epistemology. Thingamabob last night for the first time. Also, you just started a new channel. Hey, let me see. Do you want to talk about that? Do you want to, do you want to say like what some of your goals are with. S.C. Well, I, I was. Straight epistemology was mentioned to me shortly after I deconverted. I didn't know much more about it. I was kind of. Hyper addicted to the hitch slap. Those kinds of things. Christopher Hitchens. Yeah. There's somebody out there just kicking ass. And now that I've kind of calmed down a bit and, you know, gotten to know myself a lot more and found, I'm getting to find my place in the world a little more. I, I've, I've, you know, I've gotten to know myself a lot more and found, I'm getting to find my place in the world a little more. I, I've, I've become awakened with the help of others to other methods of engaging with people. I've watched a lot of different videos, ties videos on his channel. The, I can't pronounce his last man, Magnobosco. Magnobosco. Yeah. Anthony. Anyway, I decided to try to come up with a name for my channel and with the help of the SE League chat group, I came up with speak your beautiful mind. And so that's going to be my YouTube channel. And there it is. Yeah. It's going to be my YouTube channel. And Twitter feed. And so I, I'm basically, I'd like to do the table thing. That seems very appealing to me. What tie does. And so I really look forward to it because I kind of did that anyway. When I was, when I was Christian, I was very evangelical, but as the years went by, the more I learned about the Bible, I became more evangelical inward to talking to Christians about what they, what they believed about the Bible. Because my views were changing because it's, but that's a whole other story. But anyway, I've, I've always been a people person. I mean, theater kid stand up comedian. So I just, I just really look at it and I just, this is just very, I think it's more, it's a more productive method. I mean, debates, debates I think have, have their place. And controversy has its place. But when it comes to something like this with a building of the core with somebody and building on, like building a relationship with somebody to help them know that there are people out there and to also help them know that it's okay to question their own beliefs and the methods that they arrived at those beliefs. So I'm really excited about it. It's cool that you're a people person. Yeah. No question. You were mentioning something in chat earlier about doing street epistemology over resume. Yeah. How would you find your, your cuters? Yes. Enter locally. Your interview partners. Yes. Thank you. How would you, how would you come in contact with them? Do you have any way of advertising or, or what? Are you talking to me or? Yeah, Joey. No, you're the one. Oh, I, I, I, this is the first time I'm used to zoom is with you guys. So I basically did kind of a, a Monk interview with Ty last night. When we were doing the, the game night thing. So I'm, I'm not entirely sure. I still have a lot to learn, but learn about how zoom works, but actually learn a lot from how a dread pirate does it. Cause he just sets it up ahead of time. Like he just, you know, calls a friend says, Hey, you want to chat, sets up a time and then they go have a chat over coffee. And Fanny, Fanny does that too, right? Fanny does that too. There's a guy in Denmark who also does SC who just does channels exclusively over the internet with people from Denmark. And he'll speak Swedish English or Danish with them. And he just has good conversations with people over the internet and just sets it up ahead of time. You see different ways to do it. But I'm just over messenger. I've done been doing a little bit of street epistemology over messenger. I, um, I might get messages back. I think I've got to the point where I've gotten the pregnant pause, but to the point where. Yeah. And so I hope that one day that I'll, I don't know what, uh, what I got to learn his name, what he talks about putting pebbles in people's shoes. Oh, shoe pebbler. His name is Chris. He's been on the show. He wants to get a message back from these people. I'd be like, Hey, so, uh, what's going on in your life? Yeah. It's like, I'm just. It's really, it's really been on my mind. I look forward to that. Anyway, how can people find you? What's, um, what's your handle? And you mind giving me like all of them from the start to the bottom YouTube, Twitter, all that stuff. Um, well, uh, speak to your beautiful mind is YouTube. Um, at your beautiful mind, you are not beautiful mind. Um, on Twitter. Um, and for my, uh, comedy is just J. W. Kennedy on Twitter. I mean, uh, J. W. Kennedy on YouTube and J. W. K hates the news on Twitter. Nice. You got a lot. Hey, Boudreau, uh, you've been recommending a lot of books lately. Uh, would you recommend people check out, uh, read ready player one by the way? Cause I actually read, I liked the, the first two chapters of book are so great, especially how we just like flatly tells you what like atheism is all about from start to finish in like the most casual way possible. And I'm like, people need to read this book just for this. The rest of the book is kind of schlock references reference reference, but people need to read this book just for these first two chapters. Cause they're just like, boom, boom, boom. Don't freak out. You're going to die. It's not a big deal. We came from, you know, things from the sea. It's not a big deal. Yeah. I love it. People need to read that book. Well, what else? I, um, I don't know, uh, about books, but the stuff J. W. He's talking about. It's got me thinking that, um, Chad and I are going to make a podcast. We keep going on it, but I'm saying out loud so that we are committed to do it. So this is the, I'm going to quit smoking. We're declaring it in front of everyone. Can I, can I for one say that I love the brochure between you two guys? Cause I, I, in my mind, I can't imagine someone coming to be like, I'm going to promise you that I will never lie to you in the rest of my life. I want to, I want to make that agreement. That's our romance. I want that. I want that in my life. You can do it right now. I want, I want, I need it. I need like the, I need the wrist on wrist handshake. It is an interesting thing to do. And if, if, um, not to get too bromancey with, with my boy, Boudreau here, but that's a big commitment to make to someone. People don't even make that commitment to their spouses, nor should they. I think that's the worst person to do this with. But, uh, if you can find someone that you feel safe enough with someone that you know isn't, well, Eric and I've been doing, we've been doing summit for years and we've been friends for three times as long as maybe four times as long as we've been doing summit. Uh, so we've spent a lot of time together. I think we trust each other enough to know that if there is judgment, um, coming from one side of the camp that we can give that person the space to have that judgment and it's okay. So you really have to, you have to be comfortable enough with somebody to do that. And we're there. And we may not have been there when we decided to do this, but man, we're really there now. So it's, it's a fun place to be. It's nice to at least have one person that you can be 100% real with. And it doesn't mean you have to answer every question. You can choose to not answer. It's like, man, I really don't want to talk about this. I mean, there's always that answer. Uh, but I will not lie to you about anything. I may tell you that it's inappropriate. Uh, and you have to be comfortable with the person to be able to say that kind of thing too. You know, I don't want to talk about this right now. It makes me uncomfortable. So what's your safe word? Religious. Religious. Pineapples. Pineapples. Where can we find your stuff at? Uh, so I'm on YouTube at a mind pirate P-Y-R-A-T-E. Um, I haven't had anything new up there lately because of course, uh, I haven't had the opportunity to sit down with anyone, but, um, I'm looking forward to this all, uh, waning in the coming months and getting back at it. If you want to cross post these shows that we do together on your YouTube channel, I'm totally for it. Okay, cool. That's more eyes and it's more you know, like you've been sharing your thoughts with us. I think that's totally fair. Yeah. Um, so, uh, I guess that should do me. Hey, I'm, uh, a guy that does SC. I have a hobby where I like to talk to people and I think I can talk to anyone about anything and I have a channel called Let's Chat. Uh, you can go on YouTube and just type Let's Chat and you'll see a bunch of new videos that I'm posting right now. These are the back end of our time and CPAC 2020 that was like that big Republican, uh, conglomeration. I'm not, I'm not hardcore political either side, but I think it's good to go to a place where you don't think you can talk to anybody and actually show that you can talk to anyone and have like really eye-opening conversations of people who have very, who've never given themselves to think critically about their own party lines. And so, um, yeah, we did some interviews there and then went to a Bernie Sanders rally, but I'm putting out more CPAC, uh, interviews and I recommend that you check them out. They're really great. The last one I did was with a guy who was a Mormon priest dressed in a Star Spangled Banner in a suit who said that paying taxes are un-Christian and that was his topic for the conversation. Um, anyway, check it out. Let's chat at YouTube. Larry, I think we're at the bottom of the show. What do you got? Okay, well, I just want to tell everybody that they can visit digitalfreethought.com and, uh, read all the articles that we put up there on these, uh, subjects that we're discussing these days. Uh, be sure to click on the blog button for those articles. We also have all of our radio show archives on that, uh, link. It's digitalfreethought.com. Also, there are atheist songs and just all kinds of good stuff on there. A lot of, uh, atheist thoughts, resources. Nice. Um, also, uh, I have a book out. It's, uh, atheism. What's it all about? It's available on, um, Amazon and other good booksellers all around wherever. Um, by the way, if you want to, uh, submit some questions for the show that we can then discuss and answer, uh, send them to askanatheist at noxfolatheist.org. You can also put them on Reddit and the street epistemology subreddit and we'll go over. There's a lot of people who post there and are way backlogged. All right. We're so backlogged. I'm so sorry I haven't gotten to the question yet. And also our podcast, this podcast is available on Stitcher, luminarypodcast.com, my heart, et cetera, et cetera. Just look forward. It'll be there. And I always like to lay or remind everybody at the end of the show that everybody is going to somebody else's hell. The time to worry about it is when they prove that heavens and hells and souls are real until then don't sweat it. Enjoy your life. It's the only life you got. Yep. So everybody say goodbye. That's the end of the show. We'll see you next week. That's the end of the show. See you everybody. Take care. Bye-bye. Perfect. Let me end the m-