 from this computer and. Prestige and if you get the feeling that you're the only non-believer in your town, well, you're just not in Knoxville in the middle of the Bible Belt. We have a group of over a thousand of us. And we tell you more about that group after the mid-show break. Well, what's our topic today? We've got a number of topics today. We're talking about the universe and karma to atheists threaten Christianity. And of course, my personal favorite science says that atheists are more unhappy than Christians. And let's talk about the study of those studies. But before we get into the meat and potatoes, we're going to throw it up to our own nudely preaster in practice to lead us in our weekly invocations. Our newly lord, who art in a colander, I'll Dante be thy noodles. Thy blood be run, thy sauce be yum with meat, as it is with vegetables. Give us this day our garlic bread and forgive us our cussing as we forgive those who cuss against us and lead us not into ketoism, but deliver us some. Our for that we are the noodles and the sauces and the grog. Whenever and ever. Well, what happened there? What happened there? What happened there? A green fart. I think it was karma. I think it was karma. Oh, speaking of karma, why don't you tell us about it? I thought it was a fake glitch. Ah, yeah. It was a glitch in the matrix. There you go. There you go. So speaking of karma, Dredd, what do you mean by that? What are you talking about? Yeah, well, you know, I find it interesting in talking with people who don't identify either as religious or even spiritual in some some cases who still say things like, well, you know, if it's meant to be or, you know, you know, hopefully karma is going to get them for, you know, their bad deeds and all that kind of stuff. What goes around comes around. What goes around comes around exactly. And I find them, you know, for the most part in even SE discussions like street epistemology or socratic examination that people come to realize that they don't really they haven't really given that a lot of thought in in many cases. Right. But, you know, of course, you have to think about what would have to be true about the nature of the universe for karma to to exist at all. Sure. If there's no God or, you know, if there's no background designer, who would be keeping a record of all this stuff and how would it be recorded in, you know, the background like would it be recorded in the cosmic background of radiation and somehow? But I thought it intriguing because I've always, you know, kind of wondered because I used to I used to say that, too. I used to believe in karma. When when you believe in karma, what what specifically was it that you believed in? Was it just a vague sense of justice or a meticulous detail of actions by every person and weighing and balancing of it? Or was it something else? Yeah, yeah, something something like weighing and balancing that there was, you know, a ledger, you know, in some respects, like, you know, the more good deeds I did, you know, hopefully it would come back on me and, you know, I might win the lottery or something like that, like the Egyptian gods used to weigh the soul of the soul against the feather. You guys, so we just had a I don't know if it was on HBO. It was on Disney Plus. There was a show called Moon Night. I don't know if you guys have been hearing about that, but Egypt, Egyptian gods are very popular right now, at least in the zeitgeist of, you know, young adults. And one of the things that people are now being more aware of is that this is not a new concept that gods who weigh good deeds versus bad deeds, even on literal balances, have it's been a concept that existed. I would say back when people were worshiping animals all the way to like these you take, you know, practice beliefs. And I would say like because it's not novel, I think it'd be possible to actually envision that universe where you don't necessarily have, you know, our classic gods, but perhaps this big sense of justice in the universe that's keeping track of everyone. The only thing I don't know is what would that universe explicitly look like? Dred, do you have ideas? Yeah, I mean, now that I'm not in disgust in that sort of belief system, I find it hard to even appreciate what was going through my head when when when I did believe it. And I guess it's, you know, sort of a really comes down to magical thinking. This idea indoctrination. Well, yeah, certainly indoctrination because I was raised Catholic. But then I I certainly after leaving Catholicism, you know, sort of stayed on a spiritual path, the Egyptian gods were a big thing, hermetic magic and all that kind of stuff. Nice. Yeah. And I did that for actually I did that for a lot longer than it was certainly any useful purpose for other than, you know, sort of the social group. But it's all it really does come down to magical thinking, I think, and and just strange beliefs. Alita, you have something to say? Need change that name. No, what gets me is that most of this karma belief is founded on something we hardly even think about it anymore as a society and that's souls. I mean, if you don't have a soul, you're not going to be judged right or wrong or whatever in the afterlife because there is no afterlife. And if there's no souls, how many religions would just go away if they we found that we could prove that souls don't exist? And there's never been any good evidence that they do exist. Any evidence at all except for ghost stories and anecdotal evidence that type of thing. But I mean, if karma did exist, could it not exist in the absence of a soul? Because you're you're getting karma is happening to you all the time. You're talking about in this world. Yeah, in this world. So if you do something while that's going to come back, it begs the question, how long can you do something bad before it catches up? I mean, look at how long Hitler did it. You know, you would think that if karma was real after he killed the first couple of people, he would die. That's what a real universe with actual karma, a quick, quick karma would look like. And he went on and had finally had we had to catch him and kill him ourselves or at least get to that point before what he was doing stopped. Well, here's a good question, too. Like, could the Large Hadron Collider find the karma particle or the karma field in which karma manifests as, you know, how would we recognize it? I mean, we found the God particle, but that's only because I scientist named it that, right? Not that it had anything to do with the God. Right, right. John, love to get your feedback here. Yeah, sure. Well, do you have karma, karma, chameleon? So that's that's that's the karma particle is chameleon shaped. I thought it was just comedians, but OK. What I wonder is people only seem to wish for karma when they when they're disgruntled, when they feel that they've had a bad deal and they're looking for some compensation in the future. So they never do it the other way around. I mean, I never think I've done a lot of good now. Let's have some bad to balance it up. You know, and actually I get I hear people say, you know, like about lottery tickets and stuff, like if they win a lottery ticket, like 400 bucks on a scratching win or something, they say, oh, well, I must add good karma, you know, like attributing it to a magical magical reason or I must be living right. Right, John. John, I agree after they spent eight hundred dollars to get it, right? John, I see your point. It's like karma exists for people to fill in the gaps of an imperfect justice system. Yes. And I wonder. I was going to say, I wonder what the criteria are. I mean, how how do you decide whether you've had what you've had was bad enough to deserve a bit of good? I mean, what's the measurement here? One comment before we get to George, I just wanted to throw in when we were talking about Hitler, it does karma does provide this really unusual, scary point of view where it's like, well, then the Jews must have deserved it if karma exists because karma knows how to equitably distribute justice to everyone. And that is a really scary, you know, POV, in my opinion. And then the second one is if you win the lottery or if you do something terrible, let's say it's not something as as as non-offensive in the lottery. But like you stole you robbed the bank and you got away with it. You can look at that karmically speaking and say, well, I deserve to have the money and and and and get away scot free because karma is on my side. It's like this very unusual tool to make empathy an alternative mental action when it should not have any inhibition whatsoever. I still want to know what the metric is. Yeah. Well, it's it's just like it's exactly like the God thing. I mean, when when you're when your football team wins. Yeah. You say God made my football team win. When your football team loses, you say, God works in mysterious ways. It's the same with the car. You say, God damn it. You don't you don't say it's about time we had a lose now, do you? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Alita, what do you think? I don't know, Mr. Larry. I forgot to change it on my screen. Anyway, I'll change it here in a second. I know when somebody say they get they they're in a fiery car accident and like three people died, but you didn't. You know, right? You know, well, I prayed or I'm a good Christian inferring that the other people had to come and there's some built in karma in that type of stance. Yeah. Yeah. And if anything, it's a system that makes life scarily easier for people who don't want to think about nuances or complex systems. So like if justice fails, you can think, oh, well, karmically, that murder will finally get retribution somewhere down the road. You don't have to fix this problem. Karma's got it. It's like that's a bad simplistic point of view. And if there's someone who gets their house burned down, it's like, karma will fix it. Don't worry about it. I don't have to help this neighbor of mine or learn from their folly. It's just the universe will take care of it and I'm good. And unless you go downtown and look at all the cold cases. Yes, exactly. People that don't get caught. Right. Right. Right. And it's just in my head, permission to not think critically what I see when I see karma and I wish they would be recognized for that, for what it is. And more along the lines of embrace the mystery of a universe that isn't, you know, tied together, that is very much has a lot of loose ends to it. And then realize that there's a potential for. I guess servicing accountability. Like, hey, this is a this is somewhat of a random universe, but I don't have to treat myself or other people randomly. I can I can feel actualized by coming up with systems and behavior and character that make my actions representative of a good way of behaving in a chaotic universe. And if I can set up a good model that inspires other people to behave and treat other people equitably, all the better for society in a universe that doesn't necessarily have our best interests at heart. And I think that tends to be something that gives me purpose and accountability and reason to wake up and try harder the next day, even when I do know and want to move. Personally, I believe the universe doesn't care at all. No, the universe is trying to kill us, by the way. The sun is out there being like, why aren't you dead yet? Yeah, you have a radiation. Cold. John, what's up? Oh, you're muting my buddy. You know how in some games you have a rating against your name so that you're a triple scorer or whatever? Sure. If there was such a thing as karma, then the universe, we'd have a little thermometer beside us and it would go up as we got to the level of deserving karma and then suddenly we'd get some karma and it would go back to zero. OK, I would. So in a universe, so we were talking about what would the university that looked like in order for us to believe that karma exists? I would like to see something like that, just like a little meter that's next to everyone's head that goes up or green or red and like there's a range. There's like a little yellow bar on either side. And if it crosses that line, you're going to get some karma. But if you go back down again, it's like normal. So like everyone's trying to do their best, like push it up the green and like get good rewards. And I think that could actually curb society in a good way. Just immediate feedback on the actions that we do. That's just a literal guideline of like, this is a good thing. That's a bad thing. Do the good things. It's good for everybody. But we don't have to call that a karma ometer. I was thinking that, you know, there's there's probably a million dollar idea right there is coming up with a device that just reads, you know, some random backfield magnetic field or whatever. And people carry along and that's their come out like a radiation thing. You know, you know, yeah, one of your like Genghis Khan or Hitler or somebody, how high do you set that? What's your range on them? So I think that is it basically just make it scientific, like make the measuring of karma scientific and visible to everyone. And then we believe it exists, something that's testable and recordable. And that could be measured through repeatable tests that are objective across different people. Then we have a very strict guideline on what we can do to increase our karma, what we can do to get our cosmic justice, what we can do to get our cosmic rewards. And I think if we had that, we wouldn't have a complaint that we're getting them or being punished by them, because now we have a guide of what it takes to get your or and we'd be totally fine with that. You can take the next step instead of just putting a gauge next to the person, have some kind of shock come from it, you know, built in Larry going straight to the scary rat, built in retribution. This is why we can't have my aggressor. I'm also going to say this to, hey, there might be if we do have gauges, right, maybe there could be like some sort of if it was like a thing that you buy at a store and put on your shoulder or like on your neck, that's I would I was preferring like someone just let something over my head, just like spiritually or heavenly like a health bar. Yeah. Or just like some sort of visual indicator of like, hey, this guy is doing good. Halo that gets bigger and bigger and or horns. I don't want to give Christians any head starts and saying that they're right all along. I was thinking more of like the life bar or horns. I like horns. They're cool. The cool you are, the bigger your horns are. I love that. I always say we should have had horns. Yeah. You know, I'd be like a moose. You know, that guy who sold a load of fake mine detectors, he sold them to governments. Yeah. Yeah. And then it had nothing in it. Just a gadget box. Yeah. And as as people as people went into the airport or whatever, they would take tested by this gadget, which produced no results at all. But he made a fortune. Let's tell him this is his next project. OK. He's in jail, of course. He's in jail now. Now, I'm going to throw something out because we still have like about eight minutes before the half, but do we not have systems like that already in place? And I'm going to I'm going to take a wild step into the beyond here. But I'm thinking like social media has sort of become sort of that litmus of. Good standing among people and immediate feedback from peers or even an audience in terms of whether this person is person of character or not a person of character. However, the judgment system tends to be more stark, John, sounds like you have something. Yeah, I love that idea. And it happened only a few days ago. We were in a situation. I was driving my daughter to school and we were in a situation where there are two lanes, one turns right, the other one turns left or go straight on. And the right hand one is popular, so there's a half a mile of tail back. So what people do is they steam up the left one and then try and sneak in between you so that when the lights go green, they save themselves a lot of time. We did we did the very thing you were thinking here. We insisted on public justice. We kept our cars so close together. This poor guy, this poor guy who steamed up on the left hand side couldn't get in. And he had to wait there for the next red cycle to go through. Which one? Yes, that was right, right, right. Even when I was in school, we would have before social media existed. I would be like I would only allow people to cut into line if I was the last person in line because I only wanted to affect me. But I always made me upset when people in front of me like way in front of me would let their friends cut in because it affected not just them, but everyone behind them. I'm like, what are you doing down there? I think only the person at the back has the right to do that. So like I feel like there are I feel like we have some social mechanisms in place, maybe not as digitalized as what social media does. But that does help us remember what character looks like and we can come up with like a social sort of like reaction to that. Dredd, what do you think? Public justice. Public justice. I think that social media, though, is often driven by kind of populism, right? But and if if you it's harder to voice an un unpopular opinion and be canceled for it, often quite stridently by, you know, a group of people who are quick to be vocal and self-righteous and all the rest of it. So it's not really a good barometer for the quality of character. It's just whoever yells the loudest. And right, you know, one has to play a discourse yet. Only take a look at the number of followers Trump has to say that there's a flaw in the system, right? You know, it's there's similar to how people will reach out to karma as a salve to a broken justice system. A lot of people reach out to loud voices that just seem confident as a self to their own lacking self-esteem and they they grip on to, you know, loud, powerful voices, even when they're completely objectively wrong, because in them they have recompense for their lack of, you know, value that they see in themselves. They see value in other people as a ready amplification of their own feelings without having to be necessarily that loud themselves. Right. And likewise, you know, it's hard to get an education. Let's just I'm just going to be flat out like working out. It's difficult working out your brain also difficult. They're both they both take time and effort to like ratchet your way up. But the thing is muscles you can see, but smart you can't. So you always have the impression when you see a guy who's really muscular like, oh, well, I'm not as strong as him, but I'm definitely smarter than these PhDs. I'm smarter than these professors. I'm smarter than these guys who are telling me what I should do and what I shouldn't do. I don't like that. It's like maybe you're not, but that's not a popular opinion to like expound upon. And so as a result, there's like this very stark anti-anti-intellectualism, even when the the matter that intellectuals are proposing or in the best interest of all humanity, climate change, rights, civil rights, all so many different things. So let's just goes on. I don't have to go over here. But that is why I find a lot of people who are looking for a loud voice to feel self-esteem, to fill in their self-esteem for typically go the anti-intellectual route, typically go the route that is anti-science and like hold on to this more conservative ideology that or one that's more closed minded, even on the liberal side, where it's just like, I don't care about these other opinions. I don't care about other discourse. I just want to listen to this one person who's perhaps saying something that's absolutely harmful to society at large. Very unfortunate. And I think we break out of that by just empowering people to think critically on their own and giving them the opportunity to be educated and maybe even skewing our education practices to enable better critical thought practices, because right now we just teach kids out of books or or, you know, like list of rules to remember or or, you know, answers in the back of, you know, texts like let's let them think about problem solving and let them empower them to do it on their own. Yeah. John. I thought we only imagined that we were always the smartest person in whichever room, or is it just me? George, what are you doing? Well, I think that we are in a period now when anti-authorized, anti-expertise is on the ascendant. I love that. And I see different signs of it here and there. I mean, at least in the society that I'm looking at here in the United States, I can't talk about elsewhere in the world. There do seem to be places, different places in the world where authoritarianism is is the rule that I wasn't aware of before. I don't know about anti-expert, anti-expert sentiment. What is it? A lack of trusted institutions. That too. Yeah, that's true. And some of it even rightly deserved, I would say, but like also Dunger Kruger effect, what do you think about that, Fred? Do you think that falls into it? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. No question. What is this effect you're talking about, Kruger? Kruger Dunning effect is where you believe that you are smarter than you are, essentially. You have greater expertise in a subject which you certainly don't. The less you know about something, the more you think you know about it. And the reverse is also true. There are people who are highly educated, who underestimate their in certain subjects. But it's done in Kruger. It's a bit more than that, because it's not having the ability to understand what you, how much you don't know. Right. That's it. So and the more you get that understanding through actually understanding it, the more you realize that there's so much more to not understand. And so it humbles you in a weird way. Sometimes at least that's what it should. And for those who don't have it, it's just a gross overestimation of what they're capable of doing. That doesn't mean that you can't learn it. Just be aware that this is a good way to I mean in street epistemology is is the calibration is to find out what to what degree a person is confident in their belief about something. And if someone's a hundred percent or comes off as a hundred percent, you already know that there's a bit of the Dunning Kruger effect in there. Absolutely, because, you know, I had someone talk about in Canada here, the Freedom Truckers thing of the anti-vax movement or anti-mandate movement. And they said, you know, I'm a hundred percent confident that what I believe is true. I have doctors and scientists who agree. And I pointed out that a doctor and a scientist would never, well, in the majority of cases, would never say that they're a hundred percent confident in anything because the nature of science and medicine and all the rest is that it's a it's a matter of discovery and you could be ninety nine percent, but you always reserve right a level of uncertainty in order for you to change your mind when the facts change. This is all provisional. It's all provisional. Man, I could talk about confidence all day. How much time do we got? Larry, are we really at that break right now? We're pretty much at the break. OK, OK, I guess we stay tuned right here for the second half of the digital free thought radio hour. We're on W.O.Z.O. Radio 103.9 L.P.F.M. Right here in Knoxville, Tennessee, and we'll be right back after this short break. Welcome back to the second half of the digital free thought radio hour. I'm Dr. Five and we're on W.O.Z.O. Radio 103.9 L.P.F.M. Here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Let's take a moment to talk about the Atheist Society of Knoxville. ASK was founded in 2002 and we're in our 20th year. ASK has over a thousand members and we have weekly in person meetings in Knoxville's Old City at Barley's Taproom in Pizzeria. Look for us inside at the high top table or outside on a patio if the weather is nice. We're usually the loudest, happiest group there. We also have Tuesday evening Zoom meetups. If you'd like to join us, email us at AskAnAtheist at KnoxvilleAtheist.org or let's chat Essie at gmail.com. You can also find us online at Facebook, meetup.com, or at the website, KnoxvilleAtheist.org, or you can just Google Knoxville Atheist. It's just that simple. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you should still go to meet up and do a search for an atheist group in your town. Don't find one. Star one. And one that where you want to pick up? Yo, I want to talk about confidence real quick before we get into the next topic because it was a really interesting tangent. In our lab, we do the statistical test to verify if a series of numbers that we get from an instrument are in control, if they're within an acceptable range of tolerance, or they're out of control. We don't just eyeball it and say, all these numbers look fairly similar to each other, we're good to go or have faith in it, faith doesn't go very far. Though there are religious people in our group, but they use our scientific methods when it comes to their scientific processes. And that's telling to you. But anyway, the two tests that we do is called a T test and a Fisher's test. And the T test basically collates a bunch of numbers together and says, here's your score and you can take that score and you can plug it into an A test or a Fisher's test. And I'll basically tell you if you can be 95 percent confident about it or not 95 percent confident about it, about it being different or an outstanding outlier in that set of numbers. But the cool thing is, is why do we only stick to 95 percent confidence? You could actually skew your Fisher's scale so that you could be 99.99999 percent confident or even 100 percent confident. However, it tends to be the case that people who skew their information that way only invite more skepticism at the result. If someone's more than 95 percent confident after doing an A test, people will look at the number of tests they did. It's like you're 100 percent confident that you're right, but you only did four tests. You should be doing thousands upon thousands. No wonder your confidence is so high. You didn't do enough of a thorough study. Yeah, so a lot of people, right? Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So a lot of people. So a lot of people will just be like 95 is the highest in terms of confidence I can get, which is a fairly confident value. I could still be wrong, but there's always room for that. And so in scientific circles, 95 percent is typically the highest you get. So you don't really find a skilled statistician or even like a well versed scientist or doctor who are like 100 percent of the time it's going to happen this way or even like 99 percent of the time. It sounds great as far as like a sales pitch, but scientifically it's a number that doesn't really have value. In fact, it actually makes you more alarmed at the study that was done in order to come up with that kind of result. It says. Cool. Yeah. All right. Everyone's cool. All right. So we're going to go into next topic, do Christians threaten atheism brought to us by our own George Brown, the second and a half. George, would you mind talking to us about this topic real quick? What do you mean by do atheists threaten Christianity? Well, that's right. You got it wrong the first time. My bad, my bad, my bad. OK, do atheists threaten Christianity? Well, there are a number of Christians who feel that they are they are being persecuted. And this this very put this really puzzles me, you know, because I come from a background of people who really have been persecuted. And I don't know what these guys are talking about. But I think that maybe they they latch on to things to get outraged about. And when there is nothing to get outraged about, they manufacture something. So do we threaten them? I don't know. Yeah, you know, I I get where you're coming from. And it's like because Christianity and, you know, sort of the institutionalized religiosity has been really unchallenged for so long. The increase in secularism is threatening the status quo. And I think that's just from my perspective is with the large essence of this whole persecution mentality is about. I could go on. What do you think? So I mean, yeah, yeah. Well, I hope so. I hope atheism threatens Christianity. I hope it threatens Islam. I hope it threatens all of the religions. But I don't want it to threaten Christians. What they have here is a persecution complex. They've taken ownership of an ideology. It's the ideology that we want to challenge, not them personally. They need to revise their attitude towards it. And what we're doing, as I see it, is teaching science and how to understand and discover reality. That's a good thing. Yeah. Um, you know, I may think the inverse is true. I would say we start off as atheists in my head and I don't see any other reason to believe in any other way. It's it's Christians that threaten atheism at every turn of the corner, because everyone starts off as an atheist or converted into Christians when they're young before they have any developed critical thinking skills. And then it's they're up to them for most for a lot of for a lot of people to work their way back to the default state of not only being back to an atheist if they can, but also developing a lack of fear of God, a lack of fear of death, critical thinking skills, things that they should have had or were able to naturally develop if they weren't indoctrinated at such a young age. I found that to be more tragic. I think from what I've been seeing, there, you know, statistics pop up in my life every once in a while. Let's say, at least here within the United States, that church membership has been dropping. And it's dropping steadily for at least 10, 20 years, you know, dropping at a significant rate, although. That's I don't think that's the case with the fundamentalist people, you know, with with the Baptists and the Baptist spin offs. I guess centered around where I live here here in Tennessee. So I'm a bit puzzled. Larry, would you mind touching in? To me, it threatens them because atheism shows that non-belief is an option. Like when I grew up, nobody I knew was a non-believer. Right. Until I got to college. And once I found out that there were actual people who said, no, I don't believe it. And I have good reasons to not believe it is when I actually became a non-believer. So it threatens it in that way. Yeah. So I was I was going to say when when the word conversion comes up, it's not it's always converting to a religion. It's not converting to atheism, right? You can't convert to non-belief. You have to convert into into a faith system. Right. And I was also thinking that, you know, well, we talk about the decrease in the number of churches, which has, you know, the evidence is pretty clear of that. But at the same time, I think there's a consolidation of believers into larger and larger churches so that, you know, smaller chapels and stuff like that don't exist anymore, because as the as the singular voice of any religion starts to to dim and decrease somewhat, they have to it's like there's a need for them now to gather in larger and larger centers in order to make more noise and build the confidence of their beliefs amongst each other. John. Well, I think you're right, Ty. I think that we're all born atheists and what's been happening is they've been threatening us with their malicious rumors of hell and and after life pain and all that sort of nonsense and so part of it. And in order to try to protect their mythicism, what they've done is they've accused us of threatening them. It's a reversal. They've demonized us as the threat. It's nonsense. Yeah. Right. Right. You know, it's come down to like, why is there that self persecution? I feel like it's an easy thing to think of yourself as the underdog, right? In the grand scheme of things. But also religion has never been in the interest of making room for all the other different kinds of thoughts and dogmas in the world. It's always been a practice of monopolization. And it's only now when we have like this global society where people can internationally travel and internationally communicate at an instant that you see religion begin to dwindle because it's its interest is in not keeping all the different kinds of bifurcations alive, but rather making sure everyone sticks to a plan or some sort of single ideology, but they can't get terms with each other because they are, you know, in their own ranks, competing against each other. But that's why all our churches like fall off to the wayside. And I think that's leading to the diminishing numbers, because people aren't subscribing to these larger store brand versions of religion. They're just like, ah, I guess I might as well just be my own thing. Be a karma spirit. It's an irrational tribe, tribalism, an irrational tribalism, because it's based on something which has no evidence to support its existence. Right. Right. It's a business that sells false hope. What else can you say about it? That is and it's the easiest commodity to give away. It's cost nothing. But what's up, Dredd? Well, you know, and that's and that's why one of the main reasons I identify as a Pastafarian, we're not a tribe, you know, we don't have. We're not rigid. We, you know, we take ourselves lightly. And in terms of those unexplained aspects of reality that there is no answer for, it serves as a suitable avatar that we can sort of point to have some fun with and at the same time celebrate our own, our own uniqueness and, you know, this amazing universe. So that's my defense of Pastafarianism. Yeah, yeah. And I guess that is true. It's not it's it's such a nuanced point to to tie theism and religion in the same basket, but they are different things. And I think in some aspects, certain religions are actually valuable and useful when you can, when you can handle them. And I think when you can handle them in a way where it doesn't harm critical thinking practices and like you can just really appreciate your community. That's fantastic. I also find that theism is just an invitation of accepting a bad model of reality because I have had conversations with Christians before who said, Tyrone, you don't think the truth is important because you don't believe in God. And I'm like, OK, so one, I don't think I know where this is leading up because I've done conversations like this enough times where it's like objective truth is God and that's why you think my my truth is important because you think truth is God and therefore blah, blah, blah. But my head, I've always found objective truth to be overrated because what's guided science is not the objective truth. It's what's useful, come up with a model for it and understand that it's just a model of reality to work a fiction that we can pull useful truths out of and the more useful it is, the better we can apply it to come up with better systems and better understandings of the universe. The objectivity truth of it is not important at all. It's why we have Google Maps that has a flat 2D representation of the world. I know when I tap national, my thumb's not going down and pushing national into the dirt. I know it's a work of fiction. It's a model that I'm working with, but it's a useful model for me to drive up to national if I need to. And as long as I understand it as a work of fiction and pull the useful truths out of it, I can benefit from that. That's the concept of science. But religion is like a goat in a book in my holy book told me not to steal things. I'm like, it didn't literally need to be a goat telling you that for it to not be a good idea to steal things like it still would be a bad idea to steal things, even if a magical goat or magical bush or a dove on the someone's shoulder or a guy who could resurrect from the dead told you not to do those things. Like you don't need the the theatrics of it. Like there are some good morals in here that if you just appreciate it as a work of fiction, it could still be true. And I feel like because you've tied it in with this God complex, this Themson complex, you just invited a really bad mechanic of understanding what real is and what's not real and what's good and what's not good because I did. Yeah, unnecessarily true story or unnecessarily. It's a barrier to discovery, right? Right, right, right. Once you have the answer, you don't have to look anymore. Right, right, right, right. John, what's up? Well, you're absolutely right again. Who was it said that all models are wrong, that some models are useful? And it's some very wise person. But the only I think he was a pirate. Yeah, probably the only the only false tribal religion that I think is harmless, apart from Pastor Farionism, of course, is what should we call my Christianity or Karma, Carmelism. Carmelism is delicious. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm doing a reverse segue. They hate the sprinkle lights, though. They hate the sprinkle lights. You have to like pick camp. My life is caramelized. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's fringles all the way. Let's go. Dred, did you have something to add to that? Just wanted to know. OK, ice cream all the way down. Ice cream all the way down. Guys, we have speaking of science. When did we get to the turtles? That's right. We got the show is also about the sciences I want to bring up. So we've had I've had an email discussion with some people who mail into the show. I'll keep them anonymous. I get a lot of requests that people would prefer to be anonymous. That's totally fine. But the comment that was made is that US studies show that atheism or atheists are more unhappy than religious people or people who have religion in their lives. And it was sort of a follow through comment from a previous email where we had conversations of how do atheists deal with stress and discipline? But the counter argument based on our show from last week was that, well, everything you said sound reasonable. However, objectively speaking, US studies show that atheists are less happy. And so isn't that a compelling argument that, you know, maybe religious people have figured something out something else out and when I say religious, I literally mean theist and most like, well, I don't want to speak for the person. Anyway, Dred saw your hand up. Do you have comments on John was up first there? OK, John, what you got? Thank you. Well, I was going to say I bet I know where that survey was conducted. But then you told us it was in the US. I was going to say I bet it wasn't conducted in Denmark. It's a very happy country and almost nobody believes in any God. Yeah. And I think also that, you know, it's it's like one of my sons who believes in homeopathy and naturopathy. The placebo effect, well, it might make you feel that good, you know, it doesn't really remove the underlying causes of your ills. OK. You know, it just. Yeah, if you're happy with the placebo effect, well, good for you. But it still puts you out of sorts with with the real world. Mm hmm. Larry. Yeah, I was just going to say that it has nothing to do with whether it's true or not. I mean, you're happy. You're what was I saw as a drunk man is happier than a sober man. But it doesn't mean that that's the way you should go. Yes, for the rest of your life. Right. Right. Also, if one religion makes you happier than no religion, shouldn't you be on the track of which religion makes you the happiest? Very good. Oh, it's not a very good argument. Larry, you got it. That was exactly what my point was going to be. That's fantastic. I was just going to say so what, you know, as Matt Dilla would say so what because he loves those silent ages. Right. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, it tell me all the atheists in the world are miserable. And I'd be like, that's still not a convincing argument, you know, to to be religious. Like it's it's always going to be the case that I will be convinced when there's a better argumentation or at least substantial evidence to prove that it got exists, not whether or not it's more comfortable for me to believe in that God, you can't care how you'll make me. I care if it's true. Yeah, you can't just say I'm happy. Therefore, God. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And that is the sense. It's an argument from comfort, but it's basically I'm happy. I heard statistically you weren't. Therefore, you know, the weird thing is to not to be not to be even more paranoid than I am. However, I am aware of the fact that there is a there is messaging within churches to say make your appearance look like you have your stuff together because you don't want to give us a bad look as a community, because that's how we attract more people into our home. And so I know, for example, Mormons have very strict dictates on how you behave in society, how you're supposed to look, dress code, matters of appearance, things that you like music, which causes a huge amount of stress. Oh, definitely 24 seven. But if you talk to them, they're always smiling because they're they have to have to they have to Muslims have the same thing too. I don't know if it's everywhere in every sector, Christianity. I mean, I've seen Presbyterians, but they seem more just like they're in an environment where like that's just the culture. But I know, for example, Jehovah Witnesses also have very strict guidelines on how to behave and what what they find out of us, one of us, right? So expanding, expanding on that idea, what we really need is a ranking system which puts religions in order of most happiness, the one of the top is going to be the most tolerant. It's going to allow most things, isn't it? And the one at the bottom, that's probably I don't know, Jane is something which is fairly permissive. But the one at the bottom is obviously going to be Islam. You're not allowed to do anything fun in Islam. Well, you know, that's a hard point to to to leave on. You know, Jane is also I would say Jainism is pretty rough too for a lot of people. I would imagine it'd be pretty rough. I don't think you can eat bacon as Jainists either, right? Like, tell me something that Jainists can do that an Islam person couldn't. Is that right? What's the religion that emanated from Iran in reaction to Islam, which sort of matches together the best bits of all the other religions? I forget the name of it, but it's it's a pretty damn good religion. Oh, really? OK, OK. Yeah, I can't remember it. There is a there is a so for talking about happy, there's a religion called Last Thursdayism. If you guys aren't familiar with this, it's the idea that the universe was created last Thursday with all perceived memories just implanted into us. And so like it really doesn't matter what's going to happen in the future, what's going to happen in the past. The universe only existed since last Thursday. So Hakuna Matata, you know, like just hey, it doesn't matter so much in the grand scheme of things. Just have good time this week, because that's it. What's up? George, oh, you're on mute, my friend. He's sort of the name of the religion. Hi. Hi. Is what you're thinking about? That's it. Thanks, George. George remembered something that none of us could remember in this show. So that's because I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for a long time. The Baha'i people have have a large presence there. I just couldn't remember the name. Yeah. Dred, you have anything you'd like to say before you close up the show? Yeah, I was going to say something, but I got sidetracked. OK, where can we find your stuff at? Well, I am on YouTube on my channel, MinePirate, M-I-N-D-P-Y-R-A-T-E. And I record this live at 7 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time every Sunday morning. Fantastic. And you also also Global Atheist News Review at 11 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time. So please check it out. And if you like it, subscribe and ring the bell. Hey, Dred, let me ask you a question. You're setting up that studio. Is that going to be for future scientific conversations that you'll ask in front of the camera? What's that about? Well, I've already said that I'll be talking about the Higgs boson on a sort of a layman level just so that people can have a better understanding of some of these more complex scientific concepts that they haven't, you know, haven't yet taken a deeper dive into. So I look forward to producing some content here in the very near future. I can be found at Let's Chat on YouTube. I'm really shocked I still got that YouTube screen name, but for the most part, I'm having fun time just uploading these videos and thank you guys so much for paying attention to the show. We have really, really long term fewer engagement on our channels. We get about a couple of hundred, but everyone watches the show for at least 40 minutes. And that is very unnatural as far as YouTube goes. So like, thank you guys for the long attention span. I think it's useful to produce long form content that people watch from more or less beginning to end each time and and and just sort of like curb this sort of, you know, lack of attention span that we seem to be altering on this. They're all sleeping. Anyway, John Richards, where can we find your stuff at? I'm at Free Thought Productions YouTube channel. And as already been trailed, I do global atheist news review with a couple of you reprobates later on today. I don't actually live stream it myself because I want to do some editing. But, yeah, Dred, you put it out live. I think somebody else puts it out live, too, which is fine. It's all about getting seen, not about purity of content or even production values. And I also do Free Thought Hour. I did a lovely Free Thought Hour last night with a delightful lady from South Africa, Tersia Duplessis, who is a critical thinking teacher. She is well worth watching. And of course, then there was global atheist news, which is the the parent of the review, which is also up on my side to be seen. This will be later, too. That's it. Ben says a critical thinking teacher. That's so great. I just want to say happy Mother's Day. It's Mother's Day. That's true. Happy Mother's Day. And I just wanted to show off a bowl that I turned on my Woodley. I mentioned that. That looks great. I've just started. This is maple with spalting, which is the coloration is in there. And that's fungus that gets into the grain. Yeah, yeah. But anyway, yeah. So my mom is a question. So I can't say happy Mother's Day because she won't watch this. But I say it to all the other atheists and Pastifarian mothers out there. Same here. My mom's a double witness, but we still love them all the same. What can you say? And I'll call her after the show. So Larry, anything that you'd recommend that we check out and feel free to close up? Well, I'd say if you remember the clergy, but have come to see that the claims of religion are just not justified and you've lost your faith, but stuck in the pulpit, as it were, check out the clergy project. There's help for you there. It's clergyproject.org is the website. My content can be found at digitalfreethought.com. Be sure to click on the blog button for a radio show archives, atheist songs and many articles on the subject of atheism. My YouTube channel can be found at Dowder 5 or Larry Rhodes. And my book, Atheism, What's It All About is on Amazon. You can find this show as a podcast on Apple iTunes, pocketcasts, Amazon or podcasts anywhere. Just search for Digital Freethought Radio Hour. Thank you for joining us. Remember, if you're watching this on YouTube, be sure to like and subscribe. And remember also 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 and we'll see you next week. Say bye, everybody. Bye, everybody.