 103.9 FM, WOZO Radio, Knoxville. Ladies and gentlemen, Digital Freethought Radio Hour. Hello, and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio Hour on WOZO Radio, 103.9 LP FM, right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today is Sunday morning, July 11th, 2021. I'm Larry Rhodes, or Douter 5. And as usual, we have our co-host, Wombat, on the line with us. Hello, Wombat. Vinnie, I'll come help you. I'll be right there. Just give Daddy an hour. Who was that? That's my cat. He's going crazy. Yeah, that's the only other cat. Excuse me. With us today, also, our guests are Doubtfire. Hello, Doubtfire. Hello, hello, hello. And George Buffalo. Welcome from New York. Boudreau from the UK. Hello, everyone. George Brown, Brooklyn, but he's in Tennessee with us and down there in Athens. Yes, good morning, everybody. And Dred Pirate Higgs, also from, well, out of the States. He's up in Canada. Welcome. Oh, you're there. And a special guest this morning, Isaiah Diesel. Diesel. Where are you located? You're in an out-of-the-country location, too, aren't you? I'm located in South Korea. So good evening, Annyeonghaseyo. South Korea, cool. Very cool. International show right here. Annyeongseyo. Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism, and the sciences. And conversely, we'll also talk about religion, religious faiths, gods, holy books, and superstition. And what's our topic today there in Wombat? Today we're going to be introducing friends, Isaiah Diesel, and talking about should we be judged by our actions. But before we get into it, we have a full house of people. International show, I'm digging it. Let's all gather together for a moment of respect to appreciate this wonderful moment by leading it up to our own Dred Pirate Higgs for our weekly vacation. I'm going to dawn my holy colander. Give me a second. Go for it. It's a bunch of the flying spaghetti monster. Oh, a red one this time. Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. And that is from Saul of Tarsus. Lead us into a raw man, Dred Pirate. Dred Pirate, where's our raw man? I can't hear where that is. Where's our raw man, Dred Pirate? Raw man. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Can't believe that, can't believe it. Gotta get that bit. Okay, so guys, we have a really cool opportunity to introduce a new guest coming all the way from South Korea. That's a surprise for me. Hello, Isaiah. Nice to meet you. Okay, cool. I only know that and Kogi, and that and then a bunch of K-pop. And what else are you going to do, right? But I want to crack into, like, everything that you're doing on there, but I just want to check in with everybody else on the show. And then we'll get to you. So, Boudreau, haven't seen you in a while. How you been? What's going on with you? Also, I like your shirt. What's your shirt all about? Run for ice cream. It's a 3K. It's not a very long run, but in the hot, hot summer, you got ice cream. Oh, cool. Did it with the kids. Nice. Yeah. Good time? What were we doing? Yeah, yeah. Actually, the race was canceled last year, but it's going to happen in about a week. Again, this year. So I'm looking forward to it. Fantastic. Trying to run again. But, yeah. Does the dog ever go out with you on these runs? Because I think that would be a wonderful opportunity. We have, we have a new puppy. She's about eight months old. So we try not to run her too much because that's not great for, but she goes for miles and she'll be a runner. I think she's not 50 pounds too. So nice. Nice. Nice. Scott, what's going on with you? And are you still on tour? How have you been? Oh, man, I'm having a blast. I've been working again with the new materials that Mike Greenlee and Debra McGone, the Grammy songwriters, and just really thrilled about like these upcoming projects. You know, they're just, I don't know what to say. It's kind of like, enough of a man. But yeah, it's having a great time with the music, all that good stuff. And also my, my exploring epistemology channel, that's going really strong. And yeah, it's been really real, man. I dig it. I dig it. Keep up the love, man. Keep up the effort. You're doing the good, you're doing the real hustle. And we appreciate it. The good stuff. Putting out music, putting out good thought. Love it. George, the second one half coming all the way. You said you were from Athens. Did I hear that right? Or was this a different part of Tennessee that you're in? We're, we're exactly. I am exactly halfway between half, between Knoxville and Chattanooga. Does your, does your, your grass patch have a name? Oh yeah. I'll send you all letters. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Athens, Tennessee. Yes. How's life been down there? So I'm, well I'm, I have been exploring alternatives and computing. I've always been interested into that. So I have been given a new, a new laptop machine to explore. And I, I work in Linux. I want to be really off of the commercial computing grid. I told you, why don't you just get an advocate? Why don't you just get an advocate at this point? I didn't know what an advocate is. What is it? I will happily show you after this, this conversation. Okay. Okay. But in general, I'm very opposed to surveillance capitalism and surveillance on the net. So I take special efforts to avoid being surveilled. Yes. If they can't use it to get rid of climate change, why do we have it in the first place? Right. Okay. Dred Pirate. I love that red colander. Was that a brand new one? Or is it only one that used for special occasions? No, that's actually used for firefighting purposes. The red, the red fire colander in case something burns on the stove. Okay. I don't imagine it can hold water very well, right? So how does that thing work? Is it, is it powered? Yeah, that's it. It's just so people recognize the factors in emergency. So for videos of the show, you have a t-shirt that has some text on it. I want to know what that's all about. Demand evidence and think critically. That's what he says on the shirt. Love it. Dred Pirate, how you been? What's going on with you? Good. Good. A couple of really good things. Recently, I think I mentioned it last week that Australia had been died. Forming a religious organization or nonprofit. So we've started a campaign through our international pastafarian captain's conclave, which is our international captains group to do a letter writing campaign to the Australian ambassadors to our country. Okay, in support, in support of them being able to do as they wish, just like anyone else. And also we got together yesterday to talk about, I mentioned this before, the World Cruise 2021, which is this initiative that pastafarians around the world are looking to lead in order to form a delegation to the U.N. Nice. And request a special day in November or two days, November 20th and 21st to be a day of truce. Just like the Christmas truce in the First World War, very same sort of idea, but having it secular and led by pastafarians. So do we have other days of truce that are recognized right now or is it a grab bag or outdated? What's going on? Yeah, I'm not aware of one. You know, I looked around and tried to see if there was anything official, but I haven't seen anything. So it'll be something new. Just a call for peace in November. No, not peace. Peace. Temporary peace. Yeah, peace is a goal of a longer journey. Right? So truce is the time that you get to sit down and have conversations. Peace is when you've done all that negotiating and understanding one another and coming to terms with each other's differences. So truce is just the time to contemplate those things. Okay. That's actually really, really thoughtful. And I appreciate you telling me that particularly at a time like this, because there were a lot of things I was thinking about where it's like, peace seems almost improbable, but a truce as you're defining it now does seem good. And there's always time for good conversation, I think, right? Well, and the thing is if it does work out, you know, then we can expand it because of course next year will be 2022 and 2023. So you expand on the idea that the truce becomes longer and longer, giving more time for that reflection. I dig it. George Buffalo with the tan. You look like a guy who's spent some time on a boat, houseboat. What's going on with you? How you been more from my gardening? That went very well. And Eric and his family shared in that. Well, I guess one of what I've done, knew very briefly is I took a very interesting trip to Cherokee, North Carolina below Gatlinburg to the middle of the Cherokee Indian Reservation. And I learned a lot about their culture and the wonderful peace-loving people you see over here, some artifacts that I brought back. Yeah. Why don't you talk to me about some of that stuff? Yeah. A blow gun down on the bottom. Okay. So back up. Back up. You just said peace-loving people. And then you point at two weapons of like, and there's this peace-loving rifle. And here's this peace-loving blow dart. You're overthinking it. You're overthinking it. About 15% of their diet was meat. And they use both weapons, not as weapons, but as ways of sort of stunning their prey, which mostly birds, pheasants and the like. And that's what they were used for. Actually, the blow gun works, and it's got a very mild impact, but it's enough to stun a potential meal and then go and grab it. But really wonderful history of those people. And of course, they suffered like so many of the American Indian tribes did, and they were forced off their land. But enough of them stayed in the mountains so that when it was time to establish the reservation where folks came around to giving reservations, they were there. And now they have a casino, so they're doing very well. Okay. Okay. Let's hope for a long-lasting wellness for a lot of the Indian tribes. Let's hope they keep control of the casino. It's the most important thing. I'll tell you this. I went into a TED Sporting Good this weekend, and I was expecting there to be sports equipment. But it turns out, TED Sporting Good is for sporting equipment, which is not sports, but hunting. And that made me upset because I was like, where's your disc golf disc? They're like, we don't have them here. You have sports on the signs. Like, no, we do sporting. Completely different thing. I'm like, that ING. That was my weekend. How was yours? Oh, it was fine. Uneventful. It rained, so I didn't get to work out on the deck as much as I wanted to. Just watch TV, play it on the computer. It just wasn't that much to it. Not that much to it? Nice and keeping it simple. Okay. Just trolling on the internet, making people angry, making some memes. I do that, as well, through... Okay, cool. I don't troll though. I take exception to the word troll. I don't troll. It's troll light or wheat trolling, if anything, right? It's just little pokes and stuff like that. Get people thinking. Well, I answer questions and make points. I don't go on there just to rage among people. Is that what you kids call it these days? Yeah, I know. I know. I know. I understand. We're going to have to ask Larry to explain the internet to us. Hi, Bruce. Isaiah Diesel. So happy to see you. Would you mind taking some time to explain your entire life story in the next couple of minutes? Go for it. Well, thank you for having me on, Larry. Thank you. Larry was on my show. So I have a podcast I do with an aegis man. But sometimes I do people one-on-one. So Larry came on. But I'm a former aegist. And I had a religious conversion about seven years ago. And I live in South Korea. I'm a missionary here. And thank you all for having me. We'll just stop there. Yeah. Where are you in South Korea? You know, like, what do you vibe about? What have you been up to since you've been down there? How's the Kogi? Talk to me. So currently I'm right now in Seoul, but that's because I'm doing some, I'm helping out a church here. But I live at the bottom of South Korea, which is called Mokpo. And it's kind of like out in the countryside. So I moved from Seoul to go out there. And I've been here for about 10 years. My wife's Korean. I have a daughter who's Korean. So I love living here. Cool. I spent a lot of summers in Korea, myself. A lot of time in Busan area. My whole family's military's in this big base, as you know, in Seoul. And so a lot of the times we would spend it in the military base is very open. So like, I wouldn't even be surprised if you notice it. You notice it because they're all the military there. But like Busan is nearby. Well, not nearby, but it's southern. And it has a ferry that takes you up to Japan, Fukuoka. And we'd spend time bouncing back and forth. Right. It's really, really nice up there. Food is too small. The proportions are too small. Would you agree? Like when you get a food, you're like, it's only like the size of a calculator. And you're like, I'm supposed to eat this for a day. It's like, no, that's your three-day meal. It's like, no, I can't eat this much. I need more food. Anything like that. What do you like about Korea? What do you hate about Korea? Right. You can be from your perspective. What's your favorite things? What's the things you're like, man, America, come on, I missed July 4th. What's going on? There are some things that are, you know, there's some cultural differences. That's a bit of a trouble. But I think by and large, I prefer living here to America because people here tend to be more communal minded. So they generally think about as good as society rather than the good of the individual. In America, there's like a fixation on individual freedom. And so that just doesn't really jive well in my mind. But I love the food. I love the people. Okay. Okay. Okay. Are you near Kwan-Ju? Yeah, actually very, very near. Okay. I spent a year and a half in Kwan-Ju in the military. Thank you for your service. Really appreciate it. Thank you for your service. Thanks. My mom was a Vietnam veteran, but as an American here, I'm very grateful to the military people who serve. So thank you. So part of your mission, sort of part of your missionary work, what's your daily schedule like? Can you take me through a typical day of a Korean patriot missionary? Yeah, well, it's been the first year down here. So it's been mostly just making connections, but I do teach English and I also do talk to people online and just generally being out and meeting people. So I'm still establishing things. It's been extremely difficult, obviously, because of corona. So almost all the activities I would normally be able to do I can't do right now. So just trying to wait it out right now. That's a good question. How is corona over in Korea? Hey, and Larry, we're going at, Larry, what's your input? I'd just like to get back to something you said earlier that he used to be an atheist. What convinced you that going to Christianity or believing in God? I mean, we're all atheists here and we are open minded. So I was wondering what your evidence or your experience was that brought you back into the fold of religion? Well, so about eight years ago, I was living with my friend and I took a trip from Greece over to Israel. And while I was in Israel, I got this tattoo right here, which is a North Korean atheistic body, which means Juche, it means self-reliance. So I got that tattoo on me in Israel. So I was pretty far off of being a Christian as you come. And amazingly, just four months after I left there, I was in my room and Jesus Christ spoke to me at the age of 32. And I gave my life to him for the first time in my life. So did you actually hear a voice or were you just moved? No, I heard him when he said that. Okay, did he appear to you? Did he appear to you? No, I just heard it. I know it sounds crazy, but... Dred? As I said, I was in Israel four months before getting tattoos and smoking weed and drinking. Religion was as far, you know, Jesus Christ was the last thing on my mind. So, yeah. What would you say, Dred? Yeah, I was going to say, so how did you know it was Jesus Christ? So he told me. He said, I'm Jesus Christ. Yeah, so it's been a very interesting last seven years. You're on mute, Ty. Weird comment. If there was, if he told you as any other person, would you have the same standard to believe whatever the voice was if they said, like, hey, I'm George Collarlin. Or, hey, I'm Muhammad. I'm Muhammad. Would you believe it then? Or, like, hey, I'm Zeus, actually. Would you believe in Zeus? Why not? I mean... Why not? Some people want to ask me, like, what do I think about other people's experiences if they've heard from Muhammad or met Muhammad? And I'm like, I don't... I'm not going to get involved with anyone else's experiences. I can just talk about my experience. And that's what I experienced. So I'm not saying Muhammad doesn't exist. I'm not saying Buddha isn't whatever out there. Like, that's not what I do. I had this experience and it changed my life. And, yeah, I'm a better person as a result of it. Yeah, I don't even know if you had the experience or that it was changing your life. I was just wondering about the veracity of believing whatever a voice in your head tells you just because it told you. Does that make any sense? Like, is there any possibility that I could have a voice in my head tell me that it's something that it's not that thing? Like, is that even possible? Yeah, certainly. George, I would say... Buffalo, you just, you lifted your hand and then you walked away. Look at this guy. Sorry, what's up? Oh, you're on Meet My Friend. You're on Meet My Friend. Still on Meet My Friend, George Buffalo? There you go. There you go. For a radio audience, he put himself on unmute in the left room. I guess he had to say... Maybe I could ask a question? Yeah, Scott, go for it. Yeah, just this is an epistemic question. So what method would one use to distinguish between imagination and God speaking to them? Or auto-relationation. Or a way to know the difference. Okay, so you speaking in general? In general. In general. What's a good way to know about a voice in your head is actually what that voice is and compare it to an imagination? Okay, so in general, I would say if he's able to confirm something externally, which I can only speak for my case, which he did multiple times. So for example, one of the times he used someone else to tell me one of the things that he told me, which was part of multiple different things to confirm what I experienced. But I would say, yeah, some other kind of external confirmations. That would be good. External confirmation, would you be open to doing one right now? Or does the voice only talk to... Like, could you externally ask this voice to confirm something for you right now or does it only work when it's convenient to the voice? So just let me tell you how that works in my own personal life. I don't know, maybe there are other people who can, but in the first six months afterwards, maybe about the first five months, I believe he spoke to me about six times, and then I literally did not hear one peep for five and a half years until I got onto the mission field. And then when I got onto the mission field, he spoke to me again, and now it's been an entire year where I've not heard from him. So difficult to test. I never know what he's going to speak to me, so I have no idea. Jared Pirate? Jared, you're on mute. Yeah, so I was wondering if there was anything that you can think of that would disconfirm your belief that what you heard was what you heard? Probably not. Honestly, it's been seven years. And mind you, prior to this, like my parents and ministers, I went to Bible college. I became an atheist while I was at Bible college. I got all the world religions tattooed on me later on. And I was even served as a missionary for some time. So I did all the things on the outside, but I didn't have an experience with Jesus Christ. So at the age of 32, after that, it just was a life-changing experience. It just... True. I mean, even if I found out it was a lie, I'd still want to believe it because it was so drastically changing on my life. For example... Is that it? It's a short show. I don't want to make sure we get to Scott's question, but it sounds like, at least so far, it's unfalsifiable. You want to believe it. Your parents were missionaries. And what was it? It's sporadically testable. It's utilitarian and it's sporadically testable. Scott, what's your question before we head out to the break? I was just going to throw this out for some of our Christian listeners and others that I know listen in, at least go back to the show. There's a lot of Christians that will say, well, Jesus doesn't speak to people like that anymore. That's not scriptural. And then they'll say, if you heard a voice and the voice confirms things externally, that's the double, man. How do you respond to that? Well, first of all, my family, when I told them what happened, they did make me seek counseling after. And so I did go to counseling for a year. And I've definitely had a lot of people tell me, I'm crazy that I'm a liar and so on and so forth. Even a lot of Christians, I have told a lot of Christians and I have heard a response that says basically what you said. So if it was a devil, then I don't have any way to confirm it was or it wasn't a devil or it wasn't some kind of alien who was shooting audible sounds at me, some kind of sound waves. But I don't have any way to confirm that. I know what happened. Yeah, so. No way to confirm. That's totally fine. One way or the other. It was a devil or another. You know, because if you're a Christian and they say like, okay, Muhammad speaks to you, whatever they say, oh, that's like a devil or a demon. Well, I don't know that Islam is the right way. And the Jesus voice was just trying to keep me away from the one true religion, which is Islam. So I don't know that one way or the other. Isaiah, I'll ask you this one last thing. Why were you an atheist? Do you mind like describing that? Well, part of it had to do with suffering, abuse, like sexual abuse as a kid. And so that made me have some kind of natural resentment towards, I don't know, some kind of being out there, but whatever creator. So I was already that. But then when I went to Bible college, it was during the Clinton impeachment and they were making fun of Bill Clinton. And they were saying things like, you can't be a Democrat and Christian. And my mom was a Democrat and Christian. So just those experiences. And then I was in love with the girls. She went on a missions trip to Indonesia and she got bit by a snake and died. And just like the last month I was there, I just became an atheist. So just a combination of lots of different things. So I'm sorry for the trauma that you've had in your life, especially the sexual trauma. I mean, nobody should go through that. I'd be interested if you want to ask us any of the questions that we ask you, particularly like why are we atheists? Or what it takes for us to believe claims if even if we did have a voice in our head speaking, but unfortunately we're at the bottom of the half hour. Larry, you're going to have to take us out and then bring us back in again. Talking with Isaiah Diesel. All right. This is the digital free thought radio hour on WOZO radio. 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We'll be right back after this short break. 103.9 FM WOZO radio. Knoxville. Hello and welcome back to the second half of the digital free thought radio hour on WOZO radio. 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today is Sunday morning, July 11th, 2021. Let's talk about the atheist society of Knoxville or ASK for just a moment. Counted in 2002, we're in our 19th year. ASK has over a thousand members and we have weekly Zoom meetings during COVID and we're still doing those, but we now have our in-person meetings starting at Barley's Tapton and Pizzeria in Knoxville's Old City out on the patio. We're there every Tuesday evening after work, say from 5.30 to 8. You can also find ASK online on Facebook, on meetup.com or just go to KnoxvilleAtheist.org. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville and you can still go to Meetup and search for an atheist group in your town. One, start one. Start one. Where do we want to pick up there? I'll bet. All right, so we were talking to Isaiah Beasel about some things involving his path from his identification as an atheist to his identification as a Christian. Was that fair? Isaiah? Okay. Cool. He's currently a missionary in Korea doing some good work there and helping out, I imagine, during COVID. We appreciate the work that you're doing. What we'd like to be able to do is have a chance to have the questions that we had asked you sent back to us. And so we made a really short list about, you know, what made you an atheist? Is it important to have beliefs that are falsifiable? Is personal experience reliable? How would you confirm a voice in your head? Why is it important to have high standards of evidence? We don't want to just put you on the plate. We'd hopefully like to share our answers as well. And I'll actually start with a round table question on why are you an atheist? And we can start even with Boudreaux. Boudreaux, why are you an atheist? Or why did you become an atheist, if anything? Yeah, mostly I just wasn't convinced of what was being told. And of course I was brought up Catholic as we've talked about in the past, but it just didn't sound believable. And any of the other flavors is, you know, all similarly, you know, kind of unbelievable. So I just not convinced. Okay. And, you know, and it gave me comfort. I felt better about it because I always had these doubts anyway. So, you know, much like Isaiah, I felt, I don't know, like a better person. Yeah. Nice. Judd Pirate, why did you become an atheist? Pretty much the same thing. I've always had a scientific bent and sort of an investigative proclivity. So, and I was actually working towards being a Catholic priest. But as I, the more I investigated, the more I learned outside of what is generally taught the common person with respect to the religion, generally it's cherry picked so that the most favorable aspects of the policies and for instance, are the ones that are out there mostly for the flock. And as I investigated more in more studious fashion, the more I realized that the contradictions were just overwhelming. And then of course my investigation spread to other consideration of other religions and the conflicts or the fact that they're all mutually exclusive. And the additional fact that over the, you know, 100,000 year history of humankind, 99% of all religions are no longer in existence. So it just seems like to me it was, it just became glaringly apparent to me that there was something wrong with that. And I do want to just make a distinction here and perhaps this is something that I should have done way earlier, but when I say atheists, I don't mean person who believes that there is no God. I just mean someone who doesn't believe in a God. Or doesn't have sufficient evidence. To be convinced that a God actually exists, which is a nuanced statement, but it's a very, very important one because we're not making the claim that no God exists. We're making the claim that we don't believe in any God claim. So it's not an issue of we know that there's no God. It's that we don't believe people who say that there is a God. And so that we are asking for evidence to be convinced that that's true. And until then we don't believe it's a lack of belief. It's not a statement that we know that there is no God. Just making that point. Scott, why are you an atheist? So I guess the reason I'm an atheist is I decided one day to be very honest with myself and others and also be genuine in my beliefs. So I couldn't, I never had like a personal revelation from God and reading the Bible, reading the Quran, exploring Hinduism. It seems like the method that people use to get at those beliefs are all the same. It's faith. It's taking what is written as gospel or as the truth. But they all come to different beliefs even within the religions themselves. So it all kind of created a lot of doubt in me. And so I left Christianity as a result of it. I just got to the point where I couldn't be honest about it or I couldn't be dishonest in light of myself and others anymore. And so I just decided to be more honest with myself and live my life accordingly. So for me, it just seems like I cannot tell the difference between a hidden God and one that doesn't exist. Until I can, I'm just going to withhold beliefs either way. I like that. Obviously, I like that. You're talking to the choir right now. I want to actually throw it up to Brooklyn George. You're going to be an interesting case, Isaiah. I think this will be an interesting story. George Brown, why are you an atheist and why are you still an atheist? Well, first of all, I was simply brought up without God and I was brought up without religion. These two things were simply not present in my household. My parents were atheists and I think each one of them had their own reasons and I'm not privy to know exactly what they were. But they were both, I would say free thinkers and at times we attended the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture, which was a humanist organization. And I was dragged off to humanist lectures, I think from the age of four when I didn't understand a bit of it and in a way I still don't. So my cultural background is Jewish and so it's like I'm a double outsider in this culture in the United States. This is a very Christian-oriented country and so the belief system simply has never made sense to me. George Buffalo, listen, I know you're going to say something scientific. I want to pressure you not to mention anyone whose name begins with the letter S or mention any curves of Gaussian nature in this explanation. But why are you an atheist, my friend? Also, take yourself off mute. You've had the whole thing backwards since the last half of the show. There you go. So just hit the mute button again. There you go. Okay, so I've always been a scientist, but even before that I've not been an adherent. I'm an independent. I'm not an adherent. I like that distinction very much. And so that's where I come from. I always have and I'd like to see the evidence just like Dredd's shirt says. And if there's something that I don't understand and I have a path toward understanding it, or I'm not going to buy in. I'm not an adherent. Nice, very cool. Larry, I'm buckled up. You ready to do this? Yeah, I'll try to get you. It's a special time for me. All right, I'm buckled up. Larry, why are you an atheist? Well, I was born into a Baptist family, so I was raised Christian. But from an early age, it was mainly the outrage that made me skeptical. You know, talking snakes and donkeys, parting of the waters, the arc and the global flood, Tower of Babel, virgin births, angels, et cetera. But later on, I mean, I went through high school and the Navy and then got into college before I ever started really questioning it. I met a atheist and during conversations with her and studying anthropology, physics and geology in college. Which gave me the scent of man, the age of the earth and how the universe is working basically. I lost all belief in anything supernatural at all. Souls, sin, heaven, hell, all of that. And I've been an atheist for now for almost 50 years. Oh, very, very cool. Very cool, very cool. And look, Larry didn't even mention souls. Eric didn't mention Sam Harris. George Buffalo didn't mention Gaussian curves. You guys are all doing wonderful. Keeping my blood pressure low. I really appreciate that. Isaiah is looking a little confused. Sorry. There's just these buttons that everybody keeps hitting all the time. I'll do mine real quick and then we'll get some feedback from Isaiah. Simply put, the reason why I'm an atheist is because I've raised my standard of evidence for the things that I deeply care about. And really for everything, really honestly. And for the things that I deeply am concerned with and the things that I desperately want to know more about. I've raised my standard of evidence such that when I think about things that are generally mundane, like did I go to the gym today? Am I a black guy? Does my mom love me? I can find enough evidence to support that and be reasonable with it. But for greater claims that are a bit more complicated, like does a supreme being exist over everything? Or is it possible for someone to break the laws of physics to feed a bunch of people fish or offer dietary advice through a talking snake? I need a little bit more evidence to support those claims. And not to be cheeky, but it's essentially just, I haven't been convinced that those claims are even feasible for me to begin belief in them. Not to say that they haven't existed. It's just that they're not an option for me to begin believing in until I have better evidence to support it. In fact, I found that there are much more mundane explanations for a lot of the things that Christianity or other religions may claim to be the answer for that I found explain much more better in secular fashion. And in a simple sense, in the most simple sense, I had a lot of religious answers, but I was desperately looking for explanations and I didn't get any of them from religion. And so I was looking for a way to figure out, okay, well, what's the best way for me to be able to take away things that are true? I mean, take away things that are not true and keep the things that are true. And I found the best way to separate the two is to have a high standard of evidence. And if what I believe in is true, it'll withhold, it'll stay in there. It'll stay in that standard. I'll still believe it. But if it turns out to be not true or if I just don't have enough evidence to support it, I can put it in the separate category, which doesn't mean that it's not true. It just means I don't know yet. And I'm comfortable with there, with God being in that box, because it feels like a much more intellectually honest position for me to just say, I don't have enough evidence to believe in a God, but I can have a high standard of evidence. And if God ever wants to meet that, I'll be ready to believe it. But until then, it's up to the people who do believe in God to present that burden of evidence to me. It's not my job to reach my standard and reach out for other people. A lot of reasons going in. Isaiah, what are your thoughts on everybody? Well, you know, I have three different Atheist co-hosts. So, I mean, you guys really haven't said anything that I haven't heard before. So, I mean, I'm familiar with those arguments. And for many years, I was an Atheist slash agnostic. I could just tell you on a personal level, kind of like a really big, a really big crack in the ceiling was going to North Korea and seeing the oppression of the North Korean people firsthand and trying to balance that out in my atheism. And I really couldn't find the proper reasoning to condemn that inside of what I was believing. Could you? I'm going back to you. Because it sounded like, at least in this example, you're saying atheism comes with a codification of some sort of morals that will allow you to look at subjugation of people and come through a realization that it's wrong or right. Whereas in very much in the context of this conversation, atheism is just a lack of belief in a higher or in a God claim. It does not come with a set of morals to come up with a judgment on how people should be treated. I'm telling you just from my own perspective, you guys can have your own, how you come to your own conclusions on that one. But because I believed in evolution and I believed that in the survival of the fittest, I also saw that Kim Jong-un in his mind, actually his father, Kim Jong-il, believed that he was more highly evolved than the Korean people there and he was using them as, I would use a sheep or goat or whatever. And I was just trying to reconcile that inside of my atheism and beliefs in evolution. And I just, I couldn't do it. Yeah, I wouldn't be able to do it either. I don't find a faculty in, there are atheists who believe in religion or evolution and the ones who don't. And I would say it's not a vehicle to determine how to treat people. It's just a lack of belief in God. Hey, Doubter 5, what do you got to say? I was just going to say, his proximity to North Korea may have influenced his thoughts there. But I mean, if he had lived near Scandinavia or Holland or any of those countries there or predominantly anywhere in Europe, which becoming more and more atheistic, China, any of those other ones who don't have overarching oppression of their people, who are also atheists, countries that actually support the people, socialistic countries that take the welfare of their people very much to heart. Yeah. It may have been, well, how would you have felt about that if you did have lived in that proximity instead of one that, I mean, they're not using atheism per se to oppress their people. They may be using evolution as an excuse to, or that particular person did, but any excuse and an argument like that cannot weather. Just want to throw it a silly thing. I think over half the people on this call are over 52. Is that accurate? If that is the case. So most of the people who are on this call right now were born in a time when black people couldn't even marry white people legally in the country that I'm in right now. And my mom, it was illegal for her to attend the school that I eventually got my PhD in just because of the color of her skin. So like there's been subjugation. We don't have to look across seas to find subjugation. I know we're an international show, but I can look at my window and still see attitudes of people who, living through generational changes that are stymying and inhibiting progressive change that are necessary to just allow black lives to matter as much as everybody else's. In this state that I'm in right now. But I don't need an atheist perspective to see that as a bad thing. Like I have a set of morals on just humanism or just how people should be treated with egalitarian values that complement, if anything, my impression of what it means to be a well, a good person in society and treat people with well-being. But it has nothing to do with my atheist perspective. It is, my atheism is just an answer to just one question, and that's whether or not do I believe that a God exists or not? And it's not that. It's no for me. It's yes for some other people, and that's it. And then everything else is up to me to decide. I saw a lot of hands raised. We're going to go Dred Pirate first. What's up? I just wanted to mention that you were bringing up segregation in America. I think it's worth noting that most of the improvements, societal improvements are as the result of secular values, changes in secular values and humanistic values. Because certainly my experience and my understanding of history is that it's always been the religious contingent that represses change in favor of their conservative values, and that's through humanism and secularism these things change, and we have a better society. It's really hard to get rid of slavery when it's promoted in the Bible. Doubt or five, and then Scott, doubt or five? Well, I mean, if he's going to look at a country and say, well, that's an atheistic country, and they oppress their people, you need to look back through history and see how religion has been used to oppress people. I mean, I've got a whole blog page I think I sent it to you one time that you could look at what religion and superstition is responsible for, but I mean, just looking at the inquisition, like 400 years of human oppression in the name of Jesus, you've got to take that into account as well, I would think. Scott, what do you got? Yeah, I just wanted to make sure we weren't talking past Isaiah here because I think it, you know, I may be wrong, but I think basically what Isaiah is saying is not that Christians can't do bad things or Christians can't, you know, impose bad policies in countries. I think what he's saying is that if your grounds for morality is evolution, then it should be no surprise that you have a North Korea. I agree. So that's, I think that's mainly what he was trying to figure out in his atheism that it provided no answer for with regards to evolution and naturalism, but I would just to maybe push back on that idea to maybe help you understand is that empathy and being humanistic is also a product of evolution if evolution is true because we see animals being empathetic towards their common you know, tribe or animals like apes and dolphins and... Crossby, she's too... Correct. So it seems that while evolution does you know, kind of promote in many cases tribalism like this is kind of seen in countries like North Korea, in America and other Christian countries as well it also promotes empathy and a pathway to morality and then we get into a whole other conversation about subjective morality versus objective morality and blah blah blah but I just wanted to put that out there to let you know that I think I understand what you're saying Isaiah. So I do want to clarify something like... Isaiah, if you would mind, I'd just like to clarify what Scott says then we'll leave it to you and then we'll close out the show. Is that okay? Sure. So you'll have the final words for sure. So yes, I agree with Scott's point. Evolution makes for a really bad moral barometer because it doesn't really offer any I would say guidance in terms of how to treat people or how to assess behavior, right? It's simply what it is and it's trial and error and it's a fairly murky system. Atheism likewise is not a moral system or moral codification of any code. It is simply an answer to one question, do you believe or not in a God are you convinced or not? And so what I do find appealing behind Christianity is not only is it an answer on whether or not a God exists but it also comes with a set of morals and a set of dogma to follow which can make things a lot more clear and the thing would be not so much for us to assess whether or not that's a good moral code. It's just an issue for us. Are we convinced that that is one that's given to us by a God or not? And if we're not convinced, then it's just another set of morals that are provided to us by most likely people by society and then if that's the case, is that even the best one? Or has society come up with even better codification rules for us to follow and then what would be the better set for the best consequences of behavior and I feel like I have found a higher standard of principles to follow than one that's been codified in a book multiple thousands of years ago that I know for a fact has actually been used to propagate a lot of harm and distrust among people today and ones that we're still going to fight by today. I know we're getting close to the show. Kira, final words. What do you got? We'll give it to you. Yeah, your criticisms about religion, like I share the same exact concerns and I have a degree in history so I definitely understand that. My experience in North Korea, I'm not saying God exists because of that. That was a crack in the ceiling that just made me stop and scratch my head and say can I really rectify these two conflicting beliefs that I have and I just, I couldn't internally. I'm not saying you guys can't, I'm not saying aegis are immoral or bad people because the secular humanists I've met by and large almost consistently every time been more moral than the Christian that I've personally encountered especially now when I saw in the last four years the Trumpsters who were going along with some very vile stuff and it seemed like it was the secular people who were standing up for themselves more on the stuff that they were doing that was blatantly anti-religious and anti-Christian. That was not intended to bash you guys so you guys lack morals. It was just a matter of I was presenting my own experience. Thank you guys for hearing me out. Sure, thanks for hearing us out. Yes. Getting down toward the end of the moment. Dred, go ahead. You're on mute. I just had a comment here from my data's trading room when you talk about North Korea of course many of you ought to know I've heard in the news that what happened here at residential schools in Canada so he makes the comment how about what's going on in Canada now with the Catholic Church who oversaw essentially the deaths of over 1,500 indigenous children that we know of so far that we know of so far so it's certainly not limited to fascist countries religion sometimes has foul effects in more liberal liberal societies. I also was fortunate enough to spend a lot of time in Sweden too and I can tell you that's a very atheistic society. That's where I actually came out as an atheist. I wanted to do that and for every North Korea that's presented as one's extreme I can just as easily point to Sweden and be like this is the exact same thing and everybody here is happier and if not at least the metal music is fantastic right off the vine so good, so good. Boudre, what would you recommend? What's up? Just last thought because I recently was preparing for a debate with an atheist and I went to all those Norwegian countries they're totally Norwegian Scandinavian, Swedish almost all of them with exception to the Netherlands which I went to had at least a 75% rate of belief in God so this idea that they're like all or most atheists is a total it's just not sure. I live there. That would be interesting I can show you my World Factbook every one of those countries where at least 75% either Lithuanian or Catholic so yeah there's a myth that they're mostly atheists, it's 25% of them Interesting Even Sweden I'd like to see this one Yeah, go to ciai.gov World Factbook I would love for you to have the same standard for these numbers that you're saying then for the God voice that's in your head I'm very eager to come up with these citations and quotes for the statistical ambiguity that we have but for the idea that a God could talk to you and say oh yeah I am Jesus by the way and you will believe it face value there's a discordant lack of similar standards there but maybe we can talk about that more in the future Boudreaux, what do you have is there anything for you? Are you talking about anything to check out? Yeah, yeah, check out, what's up? I did want to point out this is maybe a bit silly but everyone's looking for things to occupy their time there's a Netflix show called Manifest that I just got sucked into in Isaiah, I think you'd like the premise of it because it's actually all about callings like hearing voices and having them fulfill these things to almost pass a test or something so it's actually Manifest, yeah a bunch of people were on a plane and the plane disappeared for five and a half years back but anyway just my point I think with it it's a fun entertaining show but I think the interesting part about it is there's a lot of conversations about you hear these voices, how can I trust that you heard that voice and then the trick of the show is they actually come true so they hear a voice and it says there's a kid buried here they dig it up, there's a kid and I'm like well did you put the kid there? No, no, I heard the voice and it gets into a really interesting I don't know, there's some evidence that all of a sudden he's under arrest for murder Right, and I'm sorry we ran out of time on the show so Larry why don't you just take us out Okay, let me get to my point This has been the Digital Freethought Radio Hour, be sure to check out thedigitalfreethought.com slash blog, be sure to click on that blog button for our radio show archives Atheist songs and many articles on the subject if you're interested I have a book out there called Atheism, what's it all about it's available on Amazon if you have any questions for the show send them to askanatheistat noxfilatheist.org and if you're a member of a clergy you're a preacher, pastor, priest but no longer believe in the claims of religion there's a group for you it's called the clergy project go to clergyproject.org for more information if you're watching this on YouTube be sure to like and subscribe remember everybody is going to somebody else's hell, the time to worry about it is when they prove that heavens and hells and souls are real until then, don't sweat it enjoy your life and we'll see you next Wednesday say bye everybody bye everybody bye everybody bye bye who's hell am I going to I heard a voice in my head that told me that only atheism is true