 Hello, and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio, our NWOZO radio 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We're recording this on Sunday morning, May 7th, 2023. I'm Larry Rhodes or Doubter 5. And as usual, we have our co-host Wombat on the line with us. Hello Wombat. Hey, I'm going to text my friend and ask him if his counselor is actually a Christian counselor. That's a good point. Yeah. Yeah. Good job. Welcome, Judd Pirate from West, West Canada. Must be early there. Hi, it'd be 7am. Oh, good man. Digital Freethought Radio is a talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism, post-deferianism and the sciences. And conversely, we'll also talk about religion, religious faiths, gods, holy books, and superstition. And I should probably put that post-deferianism over there with the religion stuff. Yeah. If you think you're the only non-believer in your town, well, you're just not. You're in Knoxville in the middle of the Bible Belt. We have a group of over a thousand of us. We're the atheist society of Knoxville or ASK. And we'll tell you more about it after the mid-show break. So be sure to stick around. That's our topic today. You can take something out of the atheist playbook. And what I want them to take is consistency. And we'll talk about that today. But before we get into that, let's have a nice little appetizer or pasta, led by our own Dread Pirate Higgs with our weekly invocation. All right. The chaos of this world we roam, one day he stands tall above the rest. The flying spaghetti monster calls his own to a saucy and noodley paradise bless. With meatballs tender and sauce divine, he nourishes our souls and warms our hearts. His noodley appendages forever entwine, guiding us through life's uncharted parts. O pasta Lord, we kneel before thee and raise our forks in praise and prayer. May thy meatball blessings set us free and thy noodles of mercy always be near. For thou art the saucy deity above whose love and grace no no end. May we forever bask in thy noodley love until our mortal coils we doth transcend. So let us sing of the flying spaghetti monster and revel in the saucy noodley bliss he doth foster. I had a flashback. There was one extra stanza to that, that, that sermon that I wasn't prepared for. And it reminded me when you know your, your, your preacher's on a roll and you're like, all right, and now it's going to be done. It's like, nope, there's four more lines. And you're like, okay, we're all of our eyes are open guy. I think the disconnect already getting up off your knees and we've already unplugged. It's been that prayer already. We're good to go. It's like, and lo behold that God is like, we get it. We get it. Just hit send. God's happy. Guys, I'm so happy to hear from all of you guys. How about we do a quick, just something to see how we've been and then we can go straight into the topic layer. We're going to put you first. How you been? Oh, I'm fine. Had my 73rd birthday yesterday. Well, let's go. Happy birthday. Thanks. Play computer games all day and had a lovely dinner and cake instead of last night. Fantastic. Hey, you look good for 73. Still working. Still working. That's awesome. Yeah, I went out and played some disc golf with my friends yesterday. Let's see. I also had a funny incident happen where I locked myself out of my car at the disc golf park. Now I had a situation where I'm locked out of my car. I'm in a place where there's no one around me, but I am a big fan of preventative maintenance. So I have a plan, even though my car and my phones locked my car. I do have my friends with me and I said, Hey, can you drive me to my home? And I realized I left my car keys, my home keys in my car too. I said, actually, can you take me to Lowe's? I did have my wallet on me. They drove me to Lowe's. I picked up a ladder. Why did I pick up a ladder? Because I leave my window open for my cat at my place and all I needed was a ladder to be able to get back to my home. Or I had strategically placed location, a spare key available in my home. I just needed access to it. So I already had this planned out. I'm not stressed out. We go to Lowe's. We pick it up. We go back home. We filled out the ladder. I climb up the ladder, go into my window, get my spare key, come back down the ladder because I couldn't lock my front door. And then I went to back to the park, unlocked my car keys, had access to all my keys, played around disc golf, went back to Lowe's in my own car, dropped off the ladder, had a funny story to tell them at Lowe's. Got a full refund. Overall, good day. But I'm saying, you know, it's easy if I was religious minded, I could have blamed that on karma. I could have said there was 14 different things. But I can say that it's nice to have a problem solving mindset and realize that things can go wrong and have some. Sure. And I would recommend. Yeah, how spare keys there are so, so important. That's my best preventive major. All right, dread. What's up. How you bed. Not too bad. I had sent along to you guys the article that was recently written by Jeremy Hainesworth. With regard to my ongoing plate with. Now, the fourth government institution, the home bus persons office. Yeah, very encouraging. But, you know, having read having read thoroughly the court case to which these people have referred. I discovered that actually that court cases in my favor. And because they've. All these agencies have subs subsumed the authority to determine a person's religiosity. Whether it's valid or not. Definitely outside of their, their purview outside of their mandate. Yeah. And I have them on that. And if I have to hire a lawyer to sue them, I will. Good. And for a good amount. Make it worth the time. Many noodles will be bought. If you have to hire a lawyer to sue them. If it was possible to like sue not for money, but for time and say like, if I win this lawsuit, you have to have a pot of noodles with me at like this. And one, that'd show like how much good will you had behind it. And to enforce people to do something silly. And realize, oh, this is what we've been fighting against for millions and millions of man hours. What have we been doing? What a great lesson for everybody about how dumb they were. That sounds like it's a really good follow through to our topic today, because it's about. People not representing the things that they stand for. And when I see people subsuming justice and integrity and objective fairness for everyone, yet they are being deliberately penalizing marginal marginalized groups for no, for no reason other than they think they have the authority to do so. It sort of strikes me as. Hey, you are being somewhat of a hypocrite. I want to take a nicer word for it. I can say you are not following the rules that you are. Telling and forcing on other people you are, I'm not living by your own code. And I say you can learn something from the atheist code of which there isn't, but there is a single position in atheism, which is I don't believe in a God. And that is a very consistent. And I want to throw up a couple of stories. I'd love to hear from everyone else, but one of the stories I have is that our potluck at our job, we have a lot of people from India, a lot of people from India or Hindu. And I know who in our group are Hindu and who aren't. So it's not everyone that's Indian, but they will sometimes bring in over tacos and they'll be steak tacos that people can make. And I see the Hindus reaching out for the meat and putting them in their, in their tacos and eating. I'm like, oh, hold on. Hold on. Don't do that. And I've seen them do it with chili before too. I've been like, don't do that. There's, there's beef in there. And they'll look at me and it's like, oh, it's fine. It's fine. Don't worry about it. And they'll just keep it. It was like, hey, hell, isn't like beef a whole, like a holy, holy situation of being. He's like, it's fine. It's fine. Don't worry about it. It's like, why is it my job as an atheist to remind you about your own code of conduct for your particular religion? And the same thing. I have family that's our Muslim. And we had Ramadan recently. And I'll reach out to them and say, Hey, happy Ramadan. And they'll send me back pictures of the food that they're eating in the countries that they're living in. And I'll, and they'll be eating the food in the pictures. And I'm like, is that recent cause like you, or this is like during like the week of Ramadan where you're supposed to be fasting. I'd be like, aren't you like, I'm doing the math in my head. Like you shouldn't be eating right now. It's like, it's fine. It's fine. You can eat during fasting on Ramadan because it's only allowed to eat what you're not allowed to eat when the sun is up. But once the sun is down, you can eat. And I did the math. I'm like, wait a second. Isn't it three o'clock where you're at right now? Like, where's this? Yeah, but it's cloudy. It's true. You get that. And I feel like with Christianity, there's a lot of examples where even me as a religious person, I can't tell you how many times my mom has asked for like, a Christmas present, even though she's a Jovo witness or she'll, she'll like, she'll indirectly be angry at you. If you don't give her like a call on Christmas day or Easter, or give her a birthday gift, even though she's not supposed to have that where she'll ask for information on blood transfusions that she's had issues with, or inquiries about surgeries that she'll have, even though she's. Sorry, testing. Why is it up to me to know those rules basically. And so I would love to hear if you had similar examples of. People who are religious, not following the religious code and you as an atheist being aware of that. And like, Dred, I know you have the perfect example because it's what you're going through in courts right now. Your voice. Your voice is a little high. Going to talk to me while I fix the microphone. Going to talk. That sounded really weird. Yeah. It's like you put it on fast forward or something. Your voice is fast forward. We don't have to dominate the entire show on it. We're like. Catch up for me. Be a good co-host catch up for me. Larry. Yeah. Go ahead, Dred. Well, I, I'm sorry. I kind of missed the question. But I did want to make a point because you said that a lot of people from. India or Hindus, but there's also a lot of seeks. And those two are. Religious are quite different. So. I wonder if that is making a distinction without a difference, but. I just thought I'd add that. What about seeks? Well, that. So. Ty had said that. There was a lot of. The recent celebration went to. There was a lot of Hindus. And, and people often don't distinguish the difference between. Or can't distinguish the difference between a Sikh and Hindu. Well, usually. Would not seeks do not like to be called Hindus. Right. We know the difference and they're the ones who educated us. And yeah, there's just a lack of when they're out of a minute, when they're out of an area where there's a lot of other Hindus, they don't follow the rule, their own tenants as strictly because no one's watching as, as closely or willing to correct. Well, you know, and it's like people who consider themselves. Jews, but only in a cultural sense, not in a religious sense. Right. So, you know, bake a cheeseburger on on a Saturday or whatever. Sure. Yeah, I know it's the same thing all around. You know, most people are, well, especially in the Bible, right? Because there's ways to read the Bible. Like, for instance, an eye for an eye. You know, when, when they want to exact revenge, it's an eye for an eye because the Bible says so. And if they want to show compassion, they say turn the other cheek. So, you know, depending on the, it's a situational, you know, a situational thing where they can just, you know, take on the parts of the Bible that suit the situation as opposed to being consistent. And in that way, they are consistent to their Bible. Right. Right. It's like it, it almost, it gives them a pass for their own accuracy, right? Yeah. You can pick anything out of the Bible to support your current mind. Yeah. Right. Sort of acts like a Rorschach test. There's actually a really funny skit that I wanted to share with you guys called Bible man. And if you weren't familiar with it, it's a guy, there used to be a show called Bible man that was like on a Christian television public broadcast station. Sort of public, but it was actually, you know, for profitly funded Christian propaganda on television, basically. And it was a guy who would dress up in a superhero costume, go to places where there are criminals doing bad things and then preach at them in his, in his costume and the, and the people would stop doing bad things. So like robbers would try to rob a bank. Give me all your money and then Bible man will kick down a door and be like, John three 14, thou shalt not spend thy, thy brother's money. And then guys would be like, Oh Bible man, you're blowing my mind. I should stop doing this. And they put their guns away and to become teachers and wrestlers for local coaches for schools and stuff like that. And you'd be like, Oh, okay. Good job Bible man. But the skit that I saw this time was a parody of that because it was basically a guy's robbing a bank Bible man kicks down the door and the robbers like it's Bible man and Bible man just start shooting them. And like they all die. And like Bible man's like. Relations for 16. I can do whatever I want to do. And it's like, he's quoting like actual things from the Bible, but he's just like, I get to do this now. And I'm just like, Whoa, this guy's kind of mental. He's doing whatever he wants because he's just pulling verse from the Bible to justify any action that he wants. And I thought it makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. I thought that was so it was so great. But yeah. Wizards with hats is the guy who made the, that's that camp comedy skit. Larry would love to get some feedback on you. Is there anything that you've noticed as an atheist where Christians aren't following the rules that they're supposed to or any other religious groups. I love that neighbor. I mean, that's supposed to be the thing, you know, I love your neighbor as your enemy. But this Christian right movement nowadays that. Dominionism where they're taking over the country. Love is the last thing on their mind. Right. It's all about control and. And religion. Right. Religious control of the. Instruments of power of the government. Right. Right. And it doesn't benefit people as like love would. Sure. And you know, on a more superficial level, like, I've definitely seen a lot of Christians who enjoy wearing fabrics of mixed, mixed cloths. So, like, yes, or cotton blends shellfish, wearing color purples, like there's a lot of weird commandments in the Bible, not just the main 10, but obviously hundreds and hundreds that people don't realize that they're breaking if they're, if they're a Christian that they're breaking every day. 613 commandments. And like Deuteronomy and Leviticus alone. Right. And not only that, but like I have a friend who does is a Seventh Day Adventist and does not work on. What is it? Saturday. That's his religious day. But the thing is. I will. So like, I will say, hey, you want to play disc golf on Saturday. It's like, I can't, I prefer to just rest on Saturday. It's like, that's totally fine because I respect your religious beliefs. I'll go have, you know, I'll go play with some other friends. But thank you very much. And if you're free on Sunday, let's hang out on Sunday. And then Saturday, he'll come back and or he'll send me pictures of things that he did on Saturday, where he's hanging out with friends, making like, what's up, Dred? Well, I was just going to say it. You said that you respect his religious beliefs. Right. Do you respect his right to believe what he wishes? Or do you respect those beliefs? I would just saying, I guess, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a euphemistic statement of. I'm not going to tear you apart. Even though you know that I believe a different thing. That's it. It's a, it's a euphemistic statement. That's it. I want to read the exact verbatim of it. But this is a, I think a point that many. People of religious faith. Take issue with is that they think you should respect their beliefs. They're right to believe and that's the distinction. Some beliefs are just silly. I tend to point out with people is I won't have to respect it. Actually that recent video I made. About ad hominem versus challenging beliefs. It's, it's an important distinction to make. I think that. You know, it's, I'll, I'll, you know, defend someone's right to believe what they want. To my own death. But I will not say that I have to respect their beliefs. Okay, that's fair. That's fair. I at least even in this context, I didn't find the belief particularly harmful to take a day off. On a religious context. So I guess in, in some literal aspect, I do respect the idea of taking a day off. So like, if that was also. Adopted by a religious. Ideal. It's still, it's still an idea that I respect taking like a day off to just like reprieve because he has a lot of, he does like a really monotonous task at our job. And it's good for him to take a break. But the main thing was he didn't want to play disc golf on Saturday because it's part of his like, I can't work on Saturday, but yet he will still drive to a place by model paint things for figurines for like this. Table top, like war thing. And he'll like paint soldiers that have like skulls and angels and demons on them and like throw dirt on them. And like these like giant monsters, he'll like portray that are from a demonic dimension. Warhammer is what it's called. And he's like, in my head, it's like we could have thrown this and that would have been at least more acceptable in like. The religious context compared to like, oh, I got to go paint demons instead. I got to make them look as realistic as possible and have them chewing apart human soldiers with blood coming down their face and stuff like that. I'm like, it's not technically working tie. I'm not technically was the, but you're going somewhere and you're driving and you're buying something and coming back home and you're toiling on something that's clearly demonic in a lot of other people's eyes. But like, that's fine. I don't have a problem with that either. I just have an issue with the consistency or the, the adherence to a tenant that you, you, you claim to believe in that's controlling your life. And yet how you actually operate in society and, and why these two things are desperately apart from each other. Yeah. And it's interesting also tie that people will select the things that they'll abide by, right? That are most comfortable today. It won't work on Saturday, but they'll eat the cheeseburger. You know what I mean? Or the bacon cheeseburger, you know, right? You know, it's being very selective about what it is that appeals to you to do without, like you say, without any kind of consistencies. Right. I feel also like it's the thing that doesn't bother me is, isn't so much the hypocrisy. I kind of feel like that's inherent to human nature. There's a times where I've been, I feel like a hypocrite. It just, it bothers me when it is. Both my bane as an atheist to be pigeonholed as like this outlier of a well-meaning society, but also the person who's in the best advantageous position to objectively see when people are going outside of their script. And why isn't our perspective on that? The one that Christians go to first to figure out if they're actually being adherent to their beliefs. Like if you're a Christian and you want to know if you're being a good Christian, talk to an atheist because they'll tell you, they'll most likely know the rules better. They'll have read the book in a more objective state and they can say the rules that you're breaking or not breaking. If you go to another Christian, they'll be like, oh, you're fantastic. You just got to pray. You got to do this and give me 10% of your paycheck. If you talk to an atheist, they'll be like, well, if you really care, here are the rules that you're breaking. Bam, bam, bam, bam. They'll be like, oh, I got a lot of extra work to do. It's like, yeah. And you want to, you want to have a conversation about why you believe that because I'd be happy to have that with you too. That's just my voice. Well, most atheists have gone through religion, know all about it, come out the other side with a lot of knowledge about the religion. Now, some of, some atheists, very few atheists were born into a secular home and never learned about religion, except what they wanted to study just to be aware. But so many of us have gone through and got the T-shirt been there, done that. And there's also the idea of like even just being friends with an atheist, couldn't that be against a religious code? Now that's something I'd like to think about. So if you're a Christian and you have an atheist friend, isn't that inherently or a post-sopharian friend or a friend that's just a heathen, someone who does not believe in your one true God? Can you truly be friends with that person in terms of what you're allowed to do in the context of your religion? Dredd, are you familiar with any stances like that in Christianity or even post-sopharianism? Well, there's no problem in post-sopharianism being friendly to anybody of any kind of faith whatsoever. Of course, as long as they're open to eating pasta, then we get along famously. I don't know if you're there. Okay, good. But I do know, I do feel like at least it's practice that there's otherism, tribalism and issues with Christians being friends with our elites, very close friends with people. Yeah, well, I mean, what do you think about even when the Muslim, you know, Islam, you're supposed to kill apostates, right? So, you know, yeah. Yeah, what's funny is I just typed in Google, I said, can a Christian be friends with an atheist? You got two totally separate answers. One of them says, no, Christians should never be friends with non-believer. After all, Jesus was only friends with good religious people. And I think it was kind of a smart, alecky answer on that one. But then it says, my friend says she doesn't believe in God. Can I share the gospel with her? Which is a totally different thing. It's a different thing. Yeah, right. Because you want to hang out with them to proselytize to them. Right. So it's for your religion, not for them or for you. Right. You want to hang out with people who couldn't turn into Christians so you can get extra Jesus points. But the thing is, would you be willing to just accept the fact that you have a friend that doesn't believe in God and still be friends with them? I feel like that even affluences marriages as well. Like I've had, and we could talk about this in the second half of the show. But if you marry someone who's out of your religion, is there in your back of your mind the intention of you converting them after the marriage fact? I certainly know that there are relationships that I'm aware of that tried to do that. But there's also a lot of influence within a religion to marry within the same religion. And so Muslims tend to only marry other Muslims. Christians tend to marry people who they establish as other Christians. And I find like, you never see a lot of mixed between the two. Even like Jewish, even Jewish Christian, it's like there's not as much mixture. And I'm wondering, is there explicitly any sort of religious basis on that? And for the people who... Oh yeah, Christianity says, thou shalt not be unevenly yoked. In other words, if you're... Yeah, don't yoke yourself to somebody who doesn't have a Christian belief is what they're saying. Wow, okay. They're talking about marriage. Yeah, so it's a shame because there's a lot of benefits that come from having a multicultural background. And for the people who are mixed in their beliefs and do start a relationship, whether it's best friends all the way to marriage, I find like a lot of people get a benefit out of that, even if the religion explicitly says not to. Or that's a bad thing. I feel like from an atheist point of view, I don't have a problem with it. That's just more communication that needs to happen. Dred, any final thoughts before? No. Larry. Yeah. Go ahead and take a break. This is the digital free thought radio hour on WOZO radio, 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We'll be right back after this short break. Welcome back to the second half of the digital free thought radio hour. I'm doubter five and we're on WOZO radio, 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Let's take just a moment to talk about the atheist society of Knoxville. ASK was founded in 2002. We're in our 21st year now and have over 1,000 members. We have weekly in-person meetings every Tuesday evening at Knoxville's Old City at Barley's Taproom in Pizzeria. Look for us at the high top tables or if it's pretty weather outside on the deck. We also have a Tuesday evening, first Tuesday of each month, ask Zoom meeting. If you don't live in Knoxville, you can join us there. If you'd like to join us, email us for details. Ask an atheist at KnoxvilleAtheist.org, or let's chat SE at gmail.com. You can find us online on Facebook. Go to meetup.com and look for Knoxville Atheist or go to our website, KnoxvilleAtheist.org. 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. That's right. One back where you want to pick up? Random aside, culturally, we can be born into an environment where there's just social things that we accept to be true. We don't really think about them a lot. It can come from what language we speak. It's not a big surprise you speak English if your parents speak English. Likewise, it shouldn't be a big surprise that you like the music that is particularly in your geographically locked location. If you're in Tennessee, you might have a nice appetite for country music. It shouldn't be a surprise if your parents are both Christian or Muslim, that you are at least exposed to that as well. The shocking thing is how many times do we get an opportunity to examine the beliefs that we have from an objective point of view and understand not within the context of how we were raised or the culture that we were in, how we were indoctrinated into particular belief sets. What I find is the benefit to know that is when you get that multicultural experience. I talked before in the first half that multiculturalism is really useful. If you have a parent that's Muslim and another one that's a Christian, you as a kid have a really interesting opportunity to actually see these two completely different belief sets and be like, huh? How does this actually mix? Can they both be true? What's going on here? Why aren't you guys angry at each other? Oh, you guys both love each other? Okay, well, then why... This doesn't have to be a contentious issue. Different people can believe different things and they can still like each other as people. That's a very good, healthy mindset to have and maybe influence what they actually believe is true too. And I recently always thought that, for example, myself, that you had to drink milk as one of the basic food groups. It was like a dairy section in the food pyramid to have milk. It wasn't until I took biochemistry in graduate school that I realized adult humans are not supposed to drink the milk of cows right into their adulthood. That was just a lobby by the dairy industry to make sure people are supposed to drink it. And things like lactose, the sugar that's in milk, when you're lactose intolerant, you're normal. That's normal. You shouldn't be eating lactose and it's not a disease. It's just the fact that you can only become lactose intolerant when you give yourself enough time to be normal by stop drinking milk because you're not supposed to be digesting that sugar in their first place. And that blew my mind. And I thought, wow, just because I lived in America where milk is a very prominent resource and a good commodity for selling that I realized how ingrained my understanding of my reality was based on my upbringing. And if it could affect me on milk, imagine how much it could affect me on just how I treat other people, how I think about other things and the religions that I am exposed to. So, Dred, I'm glad that you're doing your post-sopharian exposure. I'm glad it's being publicized. And I'm glad that you are making an effort to let people know, hey, I exist. It's a thing. Deal with it so that people can have exposure to that culture because otherwise, you're going to have the exact same thing happening to you from these boards that have no authority over you to the layman conversations. And likewise, Lair, you're doing a great job letting people know you're an atheist. I do do a lot of trolling on Facebook. I do not troll. I don't troll. What means can I make today? I've seen the stuff you post, but it's good that there's like all these different approaches to letting people know that there's different cultures out there. I just represent it. I just represent Lair Rhodes. Quotation. All right. So the thing that I wanted to bring up was last week, I brought up a friend of mine who said he recently came out as agnostic and atheist to his wife. His wife did the same thing too. And they both sort of knew where they both were, but didn't want to make it explicitly clear. And when he confessed, she did too. And now for the first time, they're both on this new level of honesty where they both know they don't believe in a God. They haven't told their kids yet even. And they're just realizing, wow, what is this new world that we're in? Let me reach out to my one atheist friend. Who who helped me or helped me understand what I needed to do on my own to get out of my own dogma. And he reached out to me. We played some disc golf. We talked again this weekend. He was the friend who helped me get the ladder, by the way. The the idea that we talked about in the car was personal responsibility. And one of the things he was greatly overwhelmed with is, you know, ever since I said I was agnostic or atheist or whatever, he's still getting used to the terms. I realized like my work started getting a lot harder. Like I'm getting a lot more responsibilities. My my relationships with my my wife are on a completely different dynamic. And just things in my life just seem more, more higher stakes because I used to be able to pray and believe in that guy over to Jesus. Right. And now I'm realizing that like everything's on me and it's filling me up with a lot of uncertainty. And so I said to that, well, I had two concerns. I was worried that those uncertainties and and and fears and responsibility and that weight would make him go back into religion. But he's like, I'm at the point where I couldn't be reconvinced that God exists again. So like that is a bad state to be in when you're an atheist because you it's like you let go of the safety line because you know there's nothing at the other end of the safety line. But you also don't have the fulfillment of comfort that you get from religion either. Isn't that a terrible position to be in when you realize, yeah, it is all on you. And you never really had a chance to exercise that muscle of dealing with that personal weight and you don't have anything else because I don't have an answer for you. It's just an uncertainty that you're going to have to deal with. But it always was. He just he needs to realize it always was on him. He just never thought of it never took time to evaluate that. Good point, Larry. Yeah, it's not like you got a new load. It was always there. You're just looking at it now. Right. Or you just passing on the responsibility of it just letting things happen, but allowing some supernatural friend to theoretically take care of it. Sure. It's like I wrote an article about Jesus takes the wheel, you know, how that's a really bad philosophy because what you're really doing is is ignoring your responsibility and kicking the can down the road and letting just nature take its course because you don't know what it's going to do, but you're accepting no responsibility for it. Right, right, right, right. And I can say this to it's very similar to like he's pulling a load. He's pulling a load of responsibilities behind him. And instead of him giving credit for the load that he's dragging forward. He's saying, well, God's pulling this for me. It's like you're clearly doing it. And then when we realized that there wasn't a God doing that for him. And it's just him. Like, whoa, look at all this stuff behind me. It's like, yeah, but you've been pulling it the whole time. That's right. So like, think about how old you are. Think about all the things you accomplished. You did all of that. You did all of that. You're responsible for all that. So it's not like you'd never had the strength to do it. You're just aware that you're doing it now. And while it's scary to have this as a lucid moment, it's a strength that you've always had. And you can continue to do it. You continue to pile more stuff on it. And so what do you think, Dred? I was going to say, it reminds me of that footprints. Let me, where, you know, there's two sets of footprints in the sand and then it goes to one. And the guy says, wow, God, why did you leave me? He says, I didn't leave you. That was when I was carrying you. And that's that. That does seem to reflect the mentality that you're talking about here. But the opposite, right? Cause it's not. Totally. Yeah, exactly. It's a bit of a delusion, right? Right, right, right. The whole time you've been, you know, you know, held up by somebody that doesn't exist. Right. And then in the absence of that, you feel that the burden is heavier while it's not. It's always been you. You know, while there is that footsteps in the ocean analogy, there's also like every sports movie of the nineties analogy where it's like the coach comes in, there's a kid, there's a team that's just not doing well. He's like, listen, guys, I found a magical orange. And all you have to do is touch this orange and you'll get all the slam dunks. You'll get all the touchdowns and the kids all touched it. It was like Trevor, I believe in you. You just got to work harder on your homework and touch this orange and Trevor does hard on his homework and he touches the orange and he makes a slam dunk. He's like, Billy, you just need to confess to that girl and say you love her and touch this orange and you'll get the touchdown. He's like, he asked Jennifer out on a date and she says yes. And he touches the orange and he makes a touchdown. He's just like, the whole team's like, great. And then next, you know, one day the coach drops the orange and he steps on it and it smashes on the floor. And they're like, no, the magical orange. And the coach is like, it wasn't the orange kids. It was you the whole time. And the kids are like, oh, and then they win the game. It's the exact same thing. It's like every, like leaving behind your Christianity is a lot like realizing that, that magical rabbit's foot. Or that lucky charm. Or that magical rock that you had, or even that magical orange never, never had an influence in your life. And that all the things that you're doing was because of you taking accountability, responsibility and action on your life. That's, that is a good thing, but it's also a disconcerting thing. And here's my, here's my question to you both. Christianity provides a lot of comfort because you don't have to think about all the responsibility that you have. Atheism has none of that. It's literally just one position on one question. What can we do as atheists to help people who are coming out of their religious mindset and leave me behind all that comfort? What can we do to help them be more comfortable? Or let them understand what the nature of uncertainty actually is. Dred, I'll throw it up to you first. What do you think? Oh, Larry, I saw you open up your mouth too late. That was a little bit of lag. Do you want to go ahead? Go ahead, Larry. Go ahead. Well, I was just going to recommend that they, that there are some awfully good, fine people at recovery from religion.org. Very nice. Who, who are answering these questions every day and that they, they might start going, start there by going to recover from religion.org. But the other thing is just realize that. Like you were saying, it's, it's all on you anyway. I mean, it's always been, there is no magical answer and where you have, where you got to at this point is because of what you have done. No, what your invisible friend has done, no matter what you might think. Part of this. Dred. I was just going to say, I've got this guy trolling my channel now. By the name of Wesley Curry, the second. You didn't have to give him credit, but okay. He's, oh, no, I just wanted to point it out just to make sure that he got named. His, his thing is Jesus is, Jesus is going to read existence of your type persons. So I said, awesome, thanks for playing. Oh my goodness. Yeah, first prove that he's real, then we can talk about what he's going to do. Right. There's an order of operations before any. So why do we say that? Because if someone says, well, let's talk about how God made the universe. It's like first prove that a God exists. Then we can talk about it because you don't get a special seat at the table because the guy who's saying it's pixie magic and pixie magic made the universe. He doesn't get a seat at the table and the guy who's saying, my lucky horseshoe created the universe. He doesn't get a seat at the table because they haven't proved that there's magic or pixies yet. Right. So therefore the guy who's saying God did it has a burden of evidence to prove before he can sit down at the table. What meanwhile we can prove science exists. That's the whole concept of science. It's like demonstrating that these things happen. So we can model it. We can demonstrate that it's testable and now you get a seat at the table and we can talk about it. There are other seats, but until they prove their case, they can't come at the table. That's basically my idea. Dred, what do you think? I was going to say, I've been one of the podcasts I listened to is Sean and Carol. He's a physicist and philosopher at Johns Hopkins University. And he had this great YouTube show that he talks about whether God is a good explanation for the universe. Okay. He showed a picture of the Hubble deep field where you see, you know, thousands and thousands of galaxies. And he said that is one good reason why God is not a good explanation because if God created the universe, why waste all that space? Just just for us. You know what I mean? It was a great point that he made. For that one cool picture. Or you ever, here's why. Here's a Christian mindset. You ever have, you ever go to like, I was a kid. You ever had gone to like a fair or like a grocery store. Let's do a grocery store and you want a toy and you're like, mommy, I want a toy. It's like, you're not getting that toy. None of these other kids are asking for toys. Do you see all these other kids perfectly behaved? And so like when God made this university is like, why are you guys messing up all these things? Why do you have all this sin? Look at all these other universes. There's no sin out there. Why can't you be like your, your older brothers and younger brothers out there? Like they're doing a good job. Why do you have so many problems here at one planet? Get your stuff together. He's just showing us good examples. That's all. That's what the whole deep field is all about. Okay. Anyway, I did get a really good feedback from my friend though. He said he's reaching out instead of to prayer and his pastors, he's going to actually go to a marriage counselor to help with his new dynamic with his wife. Because I told him, Hey, it's actually a good thing that you're getting that help because you have people invested in helping you and you're reaching out to them rather than like the spiritual aids that you were relying on. But also you and your wife have a new level of honesty that you've never dealt with before because you're dealing with so much misinformation beforehand. And now you guys really get a chance to understand each other on this, on this new non spiritual level. And that is, that could be a really good thing. And you guys both seem like you're working towards it. He's like, yeah, we're not, we're not arguing with just, it's weird talking and knowing what we can, how to engage with each other on this new level. And so it's be good to have like a third party in there. Larry, you did make a mention though that you want to make sure that the counselor was not religious. And I think that's a, that's a fair point. Cause you could have like a religious therapist is like, you know what you guys need? The Bible. Yeah, yeah, what's funny is when my first marriage ended, I felt like I needed some counseling. And my wife recommended a counselor. Now this was the girl who made me an atheist in college. She later, she later slid back into religion and she sent me to a Christian counselor and I'll, and that did not work more for more than like 10 minutes. Right. And so I quit that. And then I got a good secular counselor and it helped a lot. I recommend it. Good. Good. Yeah. So yeah, there's good. I was going to point out that, you know, along with your friend, my wife and I are of different faiths as well. She, she's a Mennonite. That's how she was raised. She, not a strong, like she doesn't go to church or anything like that, but she does believe that, you know, her parents are in heaven and that when she dies, she'll go to that place with them. But yeah, we managed to make it work so far. You know, it's been. For me, I've, I've been a pass very for about, you know, seven years now, I guess. And I think it's getting easier for her. You know, when I go to have past acts, which is our monthly, the past of fees. You know, she, you know, I, I, I can tell she gets kind of out of sorts about it. Sure. Because she doesn't buy into it at all. But, you know, when the, when the event is over, you know, she's, she's back to normal. And actually she was on this. She went to San Diego on a cruise or turnaround cruise. And she actually brought me back a pirate hat. Nice. I thought, well, that's, that's actually pretty amazing. So there you go. There's two people of different faiths that get along. So I have a question for you. How long were you guys married? We have been together for 20, 23 years now, I think. Okay. Okay. So you guys. All right. Got it. Got it. Got it. Okay. Were you a man and I was still together? Were you a man and I, when you guys met? No, no, no. I was, uh, Like I was a bit of a waffling Christian, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Becoming a non Christian took several years. Like, you know, like many people, the more I read, the more I just couldn't. The more you examined your beliefs. Hey, the more I examined the beliefs, the more I could reconcile them with reality. So. Sure. And there's a, in my head, there's a. So strong atheism has a weird connotation in that. It's typically given to people who are agnostically atheist, which in my head is an untenable position. Uh, it takes an extra step further. But in my head, strong atheism is typically people who are atheists for, and this isn't the general content, uh, a consensus of what this word is, but strong atheism is people who have done enough work to understand that it is about a standard of evidence and have such a good founding of why they're an atheist, that they don't necessarily waffle in position, get their open-minded and they understand the terminologies. They understand the, the idea that it is purely just a, you haven't met the standard of evidence for the claim that you've made. And as soon as you do, I'll believe it, but until then you don't. And I can't, it's not my job to try to figure out what that, uh, the standard of evidence is for an unpowerful God. That should be something that that guy is capable of, but it's also not my prerogative to tell that guy what to do. And it's up to that guy to decide whether or not, if they, if it's in their power to convince me or not otherwise, other than that, I'm happy being a good person. I'm going to figure that on my own. Like I kind of consider that as like a really strong atheist position to the point where I don't have to worry about checking in with them. A week from now or a month from now and being like, Hey, are you still an atheist? Like no, I'm a Baptist now. I tried it out. And I was like, I was an atheist because I liked the letter A and I wanted to get the shirt, but then I decided I didn't like black that much. So I was like, ah, screw this. I didn't want to pay the fees or the dues. Like what fees are dues? It was a free. Yeah, exactly. I didn't like feeling uncomfortable. Yeah. I remember you had some comments or questions by somebody that said or was it a guest that we had? Yeah. Who said he was an atheist and then became a Christian. Correct. I was like, well, you couldn't, you couldn't have become an atheist and then converted back to Christianity because that the atheism couldn't have been genuine because there's no evidence to support Christianity. So, you know, an atheist doesn't have sufficient evidence to believe in a God. I hear you. I hear you. I hear you. I believe that you could believe something like a God and that makes you not an atheist or like a believer, a theist, right? And then for whatever reason, you can have a moment of clarity where you understand you don't have a good basis for your belief and you become an atheist because you don't believe in that God or any God claim anymore. And then for whatever reason, you don't like the feel on the other side of that fence. And so you begin to drop your standard of evidence so that you can get rid of all this uncertainty and fall back into a belief system. And when you drop your evidence standard of evidence low enough to the point where it's not as meaningful, you can, you can easily believe in a God again. And once you believe in that God again, guess what? You're no longer an atheist. So like I understand the transition. What do you think Larry? Well, yeah, a lot of people. A lot of Christians will say that I've never been a Christian because I wasn't a real Christian. If I could ever give up my belief in God. And it's does this is the other side of the fence. When actually what you can do is you can be a Christian, then you can be an atheist. But then you may have come up with a further newer definition of God that you can live with and that you think might actually exist. You can come back into a belief of a different kind of God or a different level of God or a God that has a different job as it were. So beliefs change all the time. I'm not really, you know, overly concerned with people say they used to be. I will always ask them what changed your mind to go back. I will always ask them that. And then I will, if I can point out the flaws of that kind of thinking. Right. And for me, it's, it's that plus. Okay. I'm fine with you being a Christian. Are you still asking questions? And if they're not asking questions, that's the problem. And so it speaks to a degree of closed mindedness that I've always worried about when you fall into a big religion, because I'm an atheist. I still ask questions about atheism. I'm still willing to dismiss atheism and leave it on the side of a curve. If I had a better option and I'm constantly thinking about processes and complaining about science. Man, let me tell you something. I got. Fish oil right here in my hand. I, I've gone through like this four day. Tyrate in my mind on like, what's the scientific benefits of fish oil? It doesn't seem like it has anything of value in it. And I'm reading up stuff, just scientific claims. And clearly there's like good stuff in fish oil, but not all fish oil has that good stuff. And there's like lipids that are absolutely useful. But if they're not at a high enough concentration in fish oil, then you shouldn't be taking that fish oil. So it's not so much the fish oil that's important. It's these two, uh, uh, long chain lipids that are useful that your body needs and needs to get from its diet. But you can get them from walnuts, flax seeds. You can get them from eating actual fish. You don't need the fish oil, but this does provide a convenient way to eat it. And so you really have to just make sure that there's no mercury and then it has those two ingredients. And I'm reading these things like, well, then how they do their mercury testing then, like I'm constantly thinking about science all the time. I think it's good. But when you're Christian, you're like, well, the Bible said this and that's all that. That's, that's it. My pastor said that and that's it. I'm just like, why aren't you asking questions? You have this. It's your body, it's your chance. Go for it. And what gets me? Is there anything good in snake oil? Do they have good lipids? Maybe, maybe there's some good omega-3s in there somewhere. Yeah, but no, they'll always come back. You know, they used to be an atheist though. They never come back to just deism. They always come back to like Christianity or, or Mormonism or whatever. And I always ask, I can understand how you could maybe go to deism since we don't have an answer to what created the universe. You know, what fine-tuned the universe and all the first cause and all that stuff. But how do they make the leap from a deistic God to a whole religion when there's nothing more to support it than an old book and there are thousands of old books. Old holy books in the world. I choose that one. I guess that's what I was trying to get at is that, you know, a Christian who is maybe having a crisis of faith. Doesn't become an atheist. It's a Christian having a crisis of faith. And that, you know, when they go back to it, it's just reinvigorated by the same, because there's no additional evidence to add to it. I guess that's kind of what I was, what I was getting at was. Yeah, a Christian with a crisis of faith. You know, for someone to call themselves an atheist is again, in some cases, they're just having a crisis of faith, whether it lasts a week or a year or two years, whatever. And that uncomfortable feeling might, might get them, or get them to accept the new claim against, you know, for the, for the Christianity or the religion that they hadn't considered before and let them fall back into it. Let's talk about that uncomfortable feeling, because I remember the, I consider it a parable, but it is just a story, a fairy tale of the emperor's new clothes, where there's an emperor who doesn't wear, he got convinced by a couple of snake oil salesmen that there's this invisible thread and they made an entire wardrobe out of it and sold it to this king. He wears it out in public and he's essentially naked. He feels a draft and he's like, oh, but that's just the quality of this fiber. In my mind, that is the, that, that degree of uncertainty, the idea of like, hey, there's this nagging sensation that I might be wrong about stuff or I might need to be doubtful of things and it's up to you to recognize it or not. And you can ignore it and say, no, I'm covered in clothes. This is good. I have all the confidence in the world. I'm a hundred percent certain that I am wearing clothes in public right now or you could recognize what that draft is and be like, oh, maybe I'm not wearing clothes. Maybe how I treat people isn't good to resolve itself by just praying in my own quarters. Maybe I should go out and if I injure or harm someone or say something particularly offensive to someone I care about and I was being unreasonable, I can make amends personably with that personally with that person and not in my, in my own private space with my own relationship with my personal God. I feel like the that degree of uncertainty is sort of like a spark of empathy and if anything quality ignorance that lets you know that you could get on the path to learning about stuff in a meaningful way. Dred, you love reading about physics and understanding like latest scientific articles. You have to do that from a position of I don't understand or I don't know where I don't understand the conclusions yet until I read about them and then understand the conclusions that are being made. You don't go in with the impression of I know this field of science and I'm just here to verify my own conclusions. Like you have to understand that there's a point of ignorance you have to enter into a lot of different complex ideas. What do you think Larry? Oh, you're on mute my buddy. I need you to go back to that phrase that I'd never heard two words put together before like that quality ignorance. Yes. What do you mean by that? So the idea of quality ignorance is a man. You asked me this with four minutes left in the show. We could have made a whole show. How about that? We'll save it for next week. Sounds good. All right. I guess we should start closing out. Yeah. Dred, is there anything you'd like to plug? Oh, yeah. Sure. Sure. My channel is a mine pirate on YouTube and. I N D P Y R A T E. Nice. I've actually been getting, you know. Some more joiners on like. More people on my channel. So I appreciate everyone that joins. Even the nut jobs like Wesley Curry. Wow. And thanks. That is trading room for inspiring me to give them a time out. Nice. You're always. I do. I live stream this show at 7 a.m. Sunday mornings. When I'm able. Nice. And thank you for all our ardent commenters. We'll go over your comments in the next week episode too. We'll do quality ignorance in next week's show. You can also find our shows on let's chat. This or let's chat SC. G at Gmail is my contact. If you want to send me long form comments, we appreciate those as well, but also at the YouTube channel, which is just at less chat. Larry, all you. Sorry for the noise. There's a truck outside idling or something. But anyway, my contact can be found at digital free thought. Be sure to click on the blog button for our radio show archives. Atheist songs and many articles on the subject. You can find my book atheism. What's it all about on Amazon. And my YouTube channel is handle is at doubt or five. Remember everybody's going to somebody else's hell. The time to worry about is when they prove that heavens and hell's and souls are real. Until then, don't sweat it. Enjoy your life. I'll see you next Wednesday night at seven o'clock on W O Z O radio. Say bye everybody. Bye everybody. Bye. There was. We're good. I just looked up quality ignorance and it's, it looks pretty interesting. It's really, really cool. I'll check it out. I wanted to throw out one other random thing. There was for the first time on a Disney cartoon, a kiss between two male gay parents. I think it was really cool. It was a lot of fun for the kids. And I was like super awesome. Obviously there was a lot of blowback on that from Christian groups. However, there are, there. In the context of the show, there was, um, Multiple examples that were cited where gay men have kissed each other. And you had mentioned men and nights, dread. Uh, one of these were called the holy kiss. Are you familiar with that concept? No. Uh, it's when it's a, it's a sign of peace where, where two people of the same gender will kiss each other on the lips. It's been painted, it's been cited. There are multiple citations of it happening in the Bible, Romans 16, 16, Corinthians, the Lossians, 1 Peter, where God is explicitly saying, hey, greet one another with a holy kiss, greet one another with a kiss of love, greet all brothers with a holy kiss, where people are kissing each other. So it just hasn't been popularized to the point where we hadn't known that that was a thing that already happens already. So I thought it's a bit of a stretch, but it was also one of the similar situations where Christians will get upset about things that are in their own holy book. And like, as atheists, you have to be like, but there's gay guys, I mean, not gay guys, but there's men kissing in the Bible. What's your problem with kissing? Like, they're already doing it. Oh yeah, it's true. Anyway. Good point. I guess you guys probably seen the Anhauser Bush blowback. Some people are getting all upset about some people. Oh yeah. I went to a restaurant, I guess it was like three, four days ago, and I ordered Bud Light. Oh, we don't serve that here. I said, you don't, why not? And they said, I don't know. I could ask the manager, and I said, no, don't bother. And next thing you know, the manager is standing at my table. I said, why aren't you serving Bud Light? We just made the decision not to. So Sheila and I got up and left. That's how far it's gone. Right. It's just, it is, it's really crazy, isn't it? Yeah, it's stupid. Yeah. Loving your neighbor, right? Like that whole device of nature, right? All right. The things we do for Jesus points. Thank you guys so much. Hopefully see you next time. Okay, thank you guys. Appreciate you. Are you gonna be on the other show? I might be able to go on there. I might go and do an SC session with that friend of mine who is talking about marriage counseling. And so it won't be recorded. It'll just be us meeting at a park and just hashing out some stuff that he's going through. Yeah. Good luck. Thanks. I was gonna say before you go, if I was thinking about doing, putting together an SC thing with people like Francis Crick, scientists, right, who are believers to get, to have a SC sessions with some more well-known ones, right? To get a sense of what it is that how they can parse the scientific method and a belief in usually a Christian God. They functionally can't. They can't. Like it's not a compatible mindset. No, I know, but it'd be nice to do an SC session to see you. No, I agree. I'd be interested in watching that. Yeah. My only concern would be is there would be an inherent blowback as the guys who are well-known scientists tend to have some ego with them for them to publicly announce that they're also a believer and not admit that they're wrong about that would only further reinforce people who are believers to by association look at, you know, scientists that are in well-known circles continue to stay adamant and not admit that they're wrong about something. And even if they get caught, they're just gonna play some sort of weird obfuscation. I just chose to get to the end of the show. And that's gonna be enough for believers to understand. And I don't know if it's gonna move the conversation any forward. Like any other debate. I understand the spirit of it. I just wonder like would a presentation on their belief work better than having them? Well, what you would do is you would just clear it with them first, tell them what you're going for. Tell them that you're gonna ask them all these questions about that. And are you still willing to be able to sit in front of a camera and discuss all this? You don't have to like surprise them with it. Sure. And I'd even started off with a, hey, here are my concerns before we even begin. This is what I expect to happen. I expect, I don't expect you to change your mind at the end of this, but I do anticipate that there's gonna be some weird, well, a pathologic I won't be able to follow that leads me to a conclusion that neither of us can substantially reach with a high standard of evidence. Like I anticipate that. I also expect other people to watch that and use that as evidence to further support their claims that they can't substantiate either. And I worry about the relevance of the conversation like this, but here's what I'm genuinely trying to attempt. Yeah. And that's exactly how I go at it is to go in there with a genuine curiosity, right? A genuine interest in learning how people do reconcile beliefs with their scientific vocation. And I am genuinely interested to figure out how it is that people do that. And so that would be the pretense, not as an attempt to shotgun journalist sort of 60 minutes approach, or it's a gotcha moment, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That would be totally disingenuous. Right. You know, it'd be about doing it properly, like Larry says, you know, just giving them an interaction to what SCE is about and the reasons why you'd want to engage in that kind of conversation, so. Sure. And yeah, I'm not a fan of shotgun journalism, so as long as that's clear. No, neither am I. Okay. Good guys. All right. And we'll see you later. See you. Take care, y'all. Bye-bye.