 103.9 FM, WOZO Radio, Knoxville. Ladies and gentlemen, Digital Freethought Radio Hour. Hello and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio Hour on WOZO Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today is the 4th of July, Sunday morning, and I'm 2021 by the way. I'm Larry Rhodes, or Daughter 5, and as usual we have our co-host Wombat on the line. Hello Wombat. Hello, I want to have fireworks in the background. Let me see if I can even make that happen. Fireworks. There we go. Taking a gamble. Yay! There we go. Go, go, go. Sorry for the radio audience, but it looks pretty cool. Check it out on YouTube. Yep. We're live streaming this. With us today, we have Dred Pirate Higgs. Hello, Dred. How are you? George Brown, the two and a half. Good morning, everybody. And John Richards, all the way from England. The John Richards. How are you? Hello, I'm fine. Thank you. Yeah. Very good. Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism, and the sciences. And conversely, we'll also talk about religions, religious faiths, gods, holy books, and superstition. Wombat, what are we talking about today? What's your topic? All right. So as I try to get my camera back working again, we actually have a topic that's going to be really, really heavy to unpack. Most likely we're going to be dealing with spirits, free will, and how are they combined if they are at all? But before we get into the meat and potatoes of it, I'm going to throw it up to our own Dred Pirate Higgs for our weekly invocation. All right. I'm taking off my headset for this. What be me, Captain? I shall not want he maketh me to float on saltwater. He stireth me through glassy seas. He filleth my bowl. He stireth me through the straits of noodleiness for goodness' sake. I, though I sail through the heaving of tempestuous waters, I will fear not sinking. For thou art with me, by mast and thy rudder, they comfort me. Thou preparest a feast before me in the presence of me mates. Thou quenches my thirst with grog. My goblet runneth over. Truly, past and grog shall follow me all the days of me life, and I will dwell in the galley of the quav forever. Robin! Guys, I want to apologize for the initial awkwardness. Today is July 4th, and we do have someone from England here. And so everything's fine. Everything's good. I guarantee you it's not a too soon situation. Everything's fine. Everything's okay. John, can we just disclaimer? We're all friends here. Everything's okay? Well, I forgive you for unilaterally declaring independence, and I will have you back in the Commonwealth as soon as you like. No, he's called in reinforcements. We've got Moudreau over there from England as well. Moudreau, looking tanned, looking good. How have you been? How was your vacation? Good, good. I've been great. I'm playing music out live again. Nice. Drums and bass or like a little bit of everything? What do you got? Just bass right now. Not bad. Not bad. The heart of the band is what people would call it. Dread, that noodle thing, you finally got it eye contact with the camera. We appreciate that. That's really good focal points right there. What's your shirt say? So it's got a picture of something. I-8-5. There you go. I-8-5. It's a square root of a little one. It's real proud. Good job. With two to the third and the symbol for some and the symbol for pie. Yeah. And it was delicious. And good for you, Moudreau, for getting that. It's a nice t-shirt. All in symbols. There are going to be people from Greece who are like, wait a second. No, no, no. Those are our letters. We know what that means. How are you surviving the heat in British Columbia? Well, we managed. I've got very good air conditioning. And I know where the local pub is. Oh, you need. That's a quick one too. George, thanks for your concern. Lots of libations. George, thanks for your concern. Why have you been? Have you been? Well, I'm doing good. I'm looking into, I'm ready to look into the issue of whether psychopaths have been ruling the world for the last 40,000 centuries. 40,000 centuries. 40,000 centuries? That's a lot of centuries. At least during all the centuries that I'm aware of. That's four million years. Well, you have to go to Star Wars too, because that counts now, right? I'm pretty human. And in that case, yes, still. I will refer to the book about this much later in the program that I'm intending on reading. I must have misheard. I was sure he said 40,000 centimeters. 40,000 centimeters? Well, how far is that? And someone's going to have to do the kilometer conversion for me for that. But I still feel like I could find someone that's crazy within that standard. Oh, absolutely. Larry, I like the shirt. You always have these festive moments. But I'm noticing a distinct lack of red in this blue and white shirt that you got going on. What's going on here? Why do you hate America? Red, white, and blue with stars and all that stuff. But I think it's outgrown it. OK. Fair enough. But no, it's a nautical shirt. It's got sailing stuff on it. Very cool. And you spent time in the Navy too, right? I did. Yeah, we appreciate that. I went to a baseball game yesterday just to get some good vibes and got some disc golf in me. Did 18 holes yesterday. Did the best score that I've done in my life. Now I'm going to go out with another friend and do nine holes at a different course. Went to another course this morning. I have a disc catcher in my living room. I am officially hooked. Like I got too many discs coming in from Amazon. I don't know what to do with my free time. They're almost going to put, listen, they did a poll at my job and they're saying, hey, do you guys want a pizza party or a disc golf course installed in the back? And I was like, disc golf course. And guess what they chose? Pizza party. And I'm like, you know, you can buy pizza, right? Like you can just buy pizza. You eat it and it's gone. It's gone. You flush it down a toilet. We could have had a disc golf course. It was heartbreak. It was heartbreak. Lost by one vote. Anyway, speaking of things that break my heart. Do spirits have free will? Jared fire. I want to actually have you introduce the topic that we'll go over today. Sure. It's always something I've kind of pondered about, you know, when people get up to heaven and they're, they're, you know, praising God, do they actually have any choice about it? Is there any free will in heaven? Can you say, God damn it. I don't like this place after all. So if you're deemed good enough to be in heaven by God and now you're in heaven, do you have like a out clause as part of your like heaven residency contract? Where you could be like, I'm tired of these harps. Can I, can we turn up the temperature a little bit? No, okay. Is there any, is there any opportunity to sin? Does sin exist in heaven? John, what do you got? That's another question. Is heaven hotel California? Oh, yeah. You can check in, but you can never check in, but you can check out. They sound it with their steely knives. Yeah. So maybe we should take a step back. Obviously, we have some interesting topics to impact even in this one question. Like one, is there heaven? Should God be able to decide who goes to what? Are spirits real or souls real? I know Larry wants to dig into that. And then the whole nature free will, right? So like there's a little bit of cheese for everybody, but I just want to take it from the very, very top heaven and hell in my head. We'll do a quick round table on that and then we'll do souls and then free will. I think that'd be pretty good, but heaven and hell in my head. There's, there's this concept that heaven is filled with good people who know that hell exists where there's people who are suffering for eternity for, for finite sins. And in my head, I couldn't imagine heaven filled with anybody who's okay with the concept of hell, right? Like the people who are in heaven in my head would probably be some of the most egregiously privileged and ignorant. Willingfully this human people who are like, yeah, I get, I get all these really nice things, but I don't care about the people who are suffering for all eternity. It's like, how'd you get here? This is for good people. What's going on here? Heaven's either empty or something's crazy. If there is a heaven and hell, which I'm not convinced that there is. Larry, what do you think about that idea? Can heaven be filled with anybody? If someone who goes to heaven has to be okay with the concept of hell, like Sam. Oh yeah. You know, it depends. To me, you know, they always say you'd have to be good to go to heaven. Well, that's not what Christianity teaches. You have to accept Jesus to go to heaven. You have to believe and accept. And, and once you do that, you can go to heaven. It doesn't matter what heinous crimes you've done, heinous crimes you've done in the world. John, I mean, I don't know if his first name is John, but Dahmer, the guy who ate people killed in eight people. He was a homosexual and all that. While he theoretically accepted Jesus in prison and he's in heaven now. So it's not about being good. Being good has nothing to do with it, according to this dogma of Christianity. Interesting flip. Yeah. Dread pirate. Well, one other point says I've also talked to Christians and asked them if there's sin in heaven unless I know, you know, to, to be, to sin, you have to trespass against God and you can't do that in heaven. Well, that's right there. It tells me that there's a limited free will at best. Hey, you're skipping, you're skipping. We're skipping. We got to keep in the lanes because Eric is going to take this and just say bye guys for the next half hour. Yeah. Yeah. Go save it. Just save it. Just say, we'll get there. We'll get there. Dread pirate. What do you, what do you think of the idea of heaven and hell? Actually, I was just going to comment on Larry's latest point here about Jeffrey Dahmer. And it's funny because I just posted a meme on our church Facebook page. It asks the question, how many communions do you have to do before you've eaten a whole Jesus? And it shows a picture of Jeffrey Dahmer. Oh man. And then underneath it says my son now calls him Jeffrey Dahmer, the people nommer. Yeah. I remember doing communion at a Baptist church. And the idea was we're eating crackers and grape juice, because all the kids were doing it too. But then I knew in some churches they literally give kids wine as well. And then I also know that there are some people in the church who are like, no, this isn't crackers and juice. How dare you call it that? This is the actual blood and body of Jesus that's been transformed. Transubstantiated. And I'm like. Transubstantiation. We have the receipts. What are we talking about here? It's true. It's also cannibalism. Absolutely. Absolutely. Wayne. I won't be able to do the details of the joke, but for anyone that wants to follow up later, there's a fantastic David Cross bit about, you know, grandma going through the communion line and getting the body of Christ. And if you do the math, you got to have all body parts. So I'll leave it there. Wow. Wow. Yeah. John. Wayne. So the question is how heavy was Jesus? We could work out how many crackers he is. Oh, there's some math there. Dread. Yeah. While I was researching this meme that I posted, there is actually somebody that's done the done the math. And that the average weight and the average height and all that kind of stuff at the time. And you, if you broke it down into wafers, if you ate one a day for 643 years, that would be enough to eat Jesus. One a day for 364 years, 300. You said 300. Was that the biggest? No, it was 643 years. 600 years. Okay. Okay. It's weird math. Or every Sunday, maybe every Sunday for 644 years. Oh, you can't just make up math. But yeah, okay. Okay. I'm sure the math evens out, but still it's just like, what's the value of this model? John, where are we going? Well, I was just going to say, Methuselah could have done it. Then he would be old enough to be able to do it. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And who was that other guy who was very old in the Bible, 800 year old? Abraham? Noah? Noah was like 600. Noah? Noah, that's right. Yeah. Methuselah. Yeah. Maybe he could have done it as well. Noah was brave too. Noah was really brave. Getting back to the topic, I'm trying to stay in your tram lines. Appreciate it. Ty. The question is, which heaven is it? Right. Is it the Valhalla of the Norse people, the Nordic people? Is it the paradise of the Muslims, where there's 72 virgins waiting for us all? Or is it the Jews? Didn't they have seven heavens? So which tier do we enter? Can we travel up and down? Can we get promoted? I found something always very saddening about the 72 version heaven, because one, I'm asexual and two, I would run out. Eventually, right? Like there's a guarantee you would run out. And that's, that's, that's what is it 99 problems times 72. Oh man. They're bottle renewal renewing virgins. Yeah. Oh, okay. Well, then that's just unlimited virgins. What's going on there? There's a card there. They need 72. It's a very weird disclaimer. It's a big numbers. That's why Larry. Isn't that actually a mistranslation? It wasn't an actually 72 raisins. That's what I heard. Raisins. I've heard that. Yeah. That's the case. That's, oh man, that's, that would be really unfortunate for some people. It's like, what? Like, oh man. Hey, what's up, John? Does it specify the sex of the virgins? Good question. Very good question. Oh, so like 72 people from geek squad just show up at your door. And you're like, ah, dang it. Hey, let's land party that. That's land party in my head. Okay. So if that's the case, I've had more fun with 72 virgins in that capacity. That's like game night. That's a fun, fun game. We can play board games. There's all of these great. George Brown, the idea of like Jewish heaven is like laying with your father. At least, you know, that's how it's transcribed in the Torah. There is no like harps or clouds or right sitting beside God or worshiping everlasting in this attorney. It's like, no, you're lying with your father was heaven for you a concept as a, I guess, unaltered atheist. And if you did have a heaven concept, was it the Jewish concept of heaven or was it something else? Um, Ty, talk to me. It's completely alien to me. Whoa. The whole concept is alien to me. I can't understand why people can give it credence. In fact, it just makes absolutely no sense to me. Yeah, it's a silly thing when you think about it outside of the theist blanket or circle for a while. Well, I mean, it just is far. The whole idea is foreign to me. But, but of course, one of my neighbors here in the Bible is has has told me very emphatically that if I believe onto Jesus that I'm going to get into heaven, of course, I would want to write from the onset. Who am I going to be in heaven with and do a question around these people? Yeah. Or would I rather go somewhere else where it's warmer and have a better time with my fellows there? So I mean, am I going to be sitting next to Hitler? Did Hitler adopt Jesus before he died? Yeah. He was always a Christian, wasn't he? Theoretically, he was always a Catholic Christian. He was always a Christian. Yeah. And he probably got communion or whatever just before he was suicide, didn't he? Yeah. Cool. I'll tell you this, too. There's this really great play called, I forgot what it was called now, actually, but it's three people in a room and it's the afterlife. And basically, they all get in each other's nerves. And the famous quote is, hell is other people. Because all you have to do is just have one person and another person in the same room with each other. And there you go. That's hell. Because eventually they'll find something to be annoyed about with each other. And I'm like, isn't that marriage? It's like, maybe you can play a little bit with it, but hell is other people. If you don't get along with them, maybe you can then find some good people. John, George, what's up? This is, since I've been here, I've been wondering about the predominance of all these different Baptist churches where I live. And so I've gotten, see, fundamentalist Christianity is also a bit alien to me because I come from New York, which is a very Catholic city. And there aren't that many Protestants. I mean, they do exist for sure, but there aren't that many Protestants in New York. And I mean, relative to all the other people. So I forgot what I was going to say. No, I think you're on the right note. There are a lot of different denominations in Christianity, which lead to a lot of different kinds of heavens. So here I am in the Bible. Almost. Go ahead, George. Yeah, here I am in the Bible Belt, which is very fundamentalist. And there are all these, I think what they are, they're all Baptist spin-off churches, as well as the Baptists themselves. So here in this county where I live, now let me see, this is, we've got something like 57,000 people in this county. And I counted up, there are 167 official Baptist churches. Wow. In this county and the little tiny county. You'd have to do churches by square mileage or square kilometers. See how many there are in every block. These are the official Baptist churches. And then there are the unofficial Baptist churches. So there's about 35 of them. And then there's the church of God, church of Christ, church of this, church of that, church of the other thing. And the way it's been explained to me is that these all split, that each community, what do you call it, congregation. The people find that they're in disagreement with each other, as in our heaven, maybe. And so they split the church apart and it becomes a church of something else. And that's why I've got 167. I mean, that's essentially how Protestantism happened too. And there's still people up in arms about that, right? Like, that's not uncommon. Hey, John, what do you got? And if you disregard all the immigrants into the USA, and I'm talking about you lot, you know, because you came from Europe and look at the... Not me. Okay. And if you just focus on the natives of America, each tribe had its own religion, with presumably its own afterlife heaven. Very true, very true, very true. Great spirits and blah, blah, blah. Yeah, and they just called all that, they blanket termed it as paganism or heathenism, but that just meant you're not a Christian. And that's so many different things. Eric, I'd actually like to get some feedback on you. You had mentioned Valhalla. You had heard about, like, Jewish God, Christian God, and the various different sects. Or Catholic gods and how that might work. Did you have a favorite heaven, at least, that appealed to you? Even if you went to, like, Jediism or anything like that, did you actually have a favorite heaven? No, I was raised Catholic. So, you know, to me, it was this Catholic picture of a heaven, which I think the really all I got out of it was, you know, see your relatives that have passed away. Wow. And I didn't actually have any real, like, anyone close die growing up. You know, that wasn't really, that wasn't a carrot for me, I guess. So I don't know that, I didn't see, I mean, heaven, the idea of, like, ending and never, you know, I think that was probably the scariest part is you die, it's nothing. And that was scary to me as a kid. So I guess the idea to continue on was maybe the most intriguing part of it. But obviously as I got older and as I kind of moved out of religion, gosh, eternity is kind of scary. Yeah. That's forever. Yeah. And it seems so weird that it's like, why do you, why do you exist at a moment in time and then live for 80, 90 years here and then live on for eternity, but you never did anything before. Right. And it seems like, you know, every soul has a different starting point. Just that all seems just weird to me. Alien. As George put it. It does seem bizarre. Yeah. So many questions. And what do you got? Well, and just along that line, the more I think about it, certainly as I was transitioning out of belief, those were those, those thoughts just dominated my head. And thinking about just how absurd. There's so many facets of religious belief are, you know, even in terms of thinking about afterlife. Like you, like you say thinking about, well, I wasn't here before I was born. What is this crazy notion of living on forever and ever and ever and ever and ever. Just everything that's packed into that, that expectation is, it's just, I don't know, the more I think about the crazier it seems. Yeah. I mean, I'm a finite being. The idea that anything about me could be infinite doesn't comprehend or identify with who I am as a person. And especially when you think of, you know, what we understand of the universe as a whole. Yeah. You know, even the universe is finite. And it will have an end, right? You know, as far as we understand. So yeah, it's just so counterintuitive to think that, you know, there's a different existence that goes on forever and ever and ever. It's got to be boring. How many reruns or how many seasons of Seinfeld could you have in heaven? Like, I get bored of these after a while. Larry, what was the thing that you were mentioning? Or you wanted to ask? Oh, not only that, we're put on here for a finite amount of time. Every single one of us faces different tests here. And I mean, some people have it easy. Like, you know, they're born with a silver spoon in their mouth. Some people born into abject poverty. They have to steal and lie just to survive. But we all have to accept Jesus to get into heaven, because apparently, morality has nothing to do with it, no matter what they tell you. They tell you, you know, that you have to be a good person. It's just all too strange. It's all too contradictory to make any sense. Yeah, if you want to have fair judging, have a fair playing field of some sort, or some sort of standardized test. But right now you have people who are born to parents who are billionaires and people who are born in abject poverty in places where there's no access to even vaccines for the black plague, right? It's like, how are these two people accepting Jesus and both being treated fairly? Plus, not to mention things like child cancer and leukemia, things like that, you know, you're stacked against everybody before you even start. Ooh, someone's sick. I hope they're okay. John, what's up? And then we get ready for a break. Bless you. Bless you, bless you, bless you. So, yeah, the only test for getting into heaven is whether you've accepted Jesus, isn't it? Which is a bit unfair on all those people who were born in, you know, a Muslim country. Oh, yeah. A Hindu country, but they're all condemned, aren't they? Yeah, well, maybe Dredd has something to say, and then we've got to take a break and then we'll come back in Georgia. Yeah, well, I was just going to say that, you know, again, going back to Jeffrey Dahmer. If all the eight were atheists, are all the atheists going to hell? And is Jeffrey now in heaven? Yeah, crazy. What a bizarre question, Dredd. Why don't you leave it on that? All right. Tasty. Larry, why don't we take a break and we'll come right back. Okay, this is the Digital Freethought Radio Hour. We're on WZO Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. And we'll be right back after this short break. 103.9 FM, WZO Radio, Knoxville. Welcome back to the second half of the Digital Freethought Radio Hour. I'm Dauder 5 and we're on WZO Radio 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today is Sunday, July 4th, 2021. Let's talk about the Atheist Society of Knoxville, or ASK. Founded in 2002, we're in our 19th year. ASK has over 1,000 members and we have weekly Zoom meetings during COVID, but we also have started meeting in person again at Barley's Taproom and Pizzeria in the Old City every Tuesday night around 5.30, out on the patio. So come on down and meet other atheists in your area. You can find us online on Facebook, meetup.com, or go to KnoxvilleAtheist.org, or just Google KnoxvilleAtheist. It's just that simple. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you should still go to Meetup and search for an atheist in your town. Don't find one. Start one and get vaccinated. That's right. I'm good. You want to talk about souls? So we were talking today about, if spirits go to heaven, do they have free will? And so we want to talk about, we'll take a step back and look at the idea of like Heaven and Hell, we'll look at the idea of souls, and then we'll talk about free will and work our way down. And so for the quick, do souls exist update? I'm going to go to our own Larry Rhodes, who's an expert on the subject, so I've heard. Larry, do souls exist? Well, I do say a lot about it. I don't know how much of an expert I am. How can you be an expert on something that doesn't exist? But the whole point is whether God exists or Heaven or Hell or religions or whatever, it all depends on whether souls are real or not. And in the entire history of humanity, there's been a lot of stories of souls, but never have we ever captured one, put it in a lab, be able to test what attributes it has. It's all stories. There's nothing, no proof of anything that continues after we die. Our mind is a product of a working brain. The brain dies, the mind dies. There's nothing to say that anything continues after that. So why would we continue believing all of these incredible stories these religions are telling us about the afterlife when there's really nobody who's an expert on the afterlife at all? Also, I need my body. I like my body. If you put me in a computer, I may not be the same person. John, what do you think? Well, Larry makes a good point. You see, speaking as a retired biology teacher, the first question I want to know about the soul is, is it in the abdomen or the thorax? It's in your big toe. But we have people who don't have those or have them surgically removed, and they would still pay attention. Is that why I get gout all the time? I have an inflamed soul. Too much information, Dredd. As Larry says, nobody's ever found one. Out of in the professional ghost hunters after how many seasons? So then the question arises, is it actually a material thing? And if it's not a material thing, then of course there's no way we can even start looking for it, because all of our instruments of detection are made to detect material things. Oh, or emissions or, you know. I was going on to say, or radiations, forms of the electromagnetic spectrum, or other emissions like, you know, gravity, for example. But the point is that once we get into immateriality, then we're into the spirit world of womb. And at that point, I want to push us on to free will, because can a spirit have free will? Oh my gosh. Would you guys be okay if we head on to free will? George, did you have anything you'd like to comment on the idea of souls? Yes. Before we move back on to free will, I want to talk about the seductiveness of the concept of heaven for a moment. The seductiveness of it, which I think comes out of a very basic fear of death that we have as children, so that the church gives us the solution for that. You know, you're going to live forever. Now you have a choice. Are you going to be good or going to be bad? Because if you're good, and especially if you believe in this guy, up there you're going to go and stay there forever. And George, I'd say that seductive point makes a lot of sense, because yes it is, and then the soul is like, here's your ticket to the awesome place, right? And so now... And so we are really afraid of death as children. We are afraid of death and here comes this guy and he says, you can leap frog over this, you won't have this problem, you're not going to die. It's very seductive. The antithesis of survival and all of biology is about survival, like from a fundamental genomic perspective, like survive. I mean, from my perspective as an atheist, originally, this may be the root of the whole thing is the fear of death. Are there any religions that don't have a concept of heaven? Let's talk about that in a future show. Dredd, what do you got hopefully on the nature of souls? What do you got? Well, my mother has Alzheimer's and she's moving into a more advanced state. So I think in terms of, you know, if souls do exist and they go to heaven, if you're accepted Jesus, in her case, you know, what does go? Does she go in her pristine, unaffected state? Or is she there as she is currently? I mean, just the idea that when you're born, does your soul learn stuff? Does it become more like you as you get older? And still such a point that it knows, you know, are you developing as sort of things, as entities, I guess, a human entity and a soul entity that occupy the same space? I find that kind of disturbing. Yeah. How does the soul represent you, John? There's so much to unpack there, isn't there? Is a soul like a hard drive that keeps updating and dumping the trash? Right. Yeah. And what kind of cookies or ads are the best way to target souls or things too? Sorry for interrupting. You have to shut down for updates. Okay. Here's the real question. Do souls have free will? And obviously we're working on the idea of we don't know souls exist yet because we haven't had a good way to confirm that scientifically or, you know, any reasonable approach towards it. So we're not definitive claiming they don't exist. We are definitive claiming that there's no good reason to believe it. And so if that's the case, show us a good reason to believe it and then we will be assuming that they have. But until then, do souls and would they have free will? I actually throw this out to Eric since he's been sitting patiently, arms crossed, waiting to go out. Eric, what do you mean by free will? First of all, probably the best question and then go from there. Yeah. Yeah. So I appreciate your team it up, Ty. No. So for this conversation, just be on the same page free will being that you're able to choose something of your own volition, right? You're able to make a choice between the blue or the red pill without biology controlling it. You were able to do it. And I suppose since Eric backup, we've had this conversation so many times. You know, I hate this definition. What's the difference if I'm not so if without biology doing it, we already know souls don't have biology. So then if souls make any choice whatsoever, that would inherently mean that they are by definition, at least by the definition you're using using free will. So instead of perhaps that definition where it's like making a choice without biology, dictating it since we know souls aren't biological, maybe we can make it just choosing things on their own volition without outside influences or being able to I was actually going to step into it a little differently and say even if this soul is making that decision from the outside. Well, you didn't choose your soul to summon my inner Sam Harris. Oh, he's making all the references. Go ahead. If you don't choose your soul, so even if that soul is controlling you, you didn't you didn't have any authorship in that decision. So now you're just a puppet. So so I think whether it's biology, whether it's a soul or whether your decisions are randomly made by the universe, none of that, I think to me invites the concept of free will. So then I was going to kind of tee it up to the rest of the group and say, okay, now we have a soul. Does this soul, regardless of how it controls us humans, does this soul have free will? And I think somebody made a really good point about heaven being free of sin. And if it's free of sin, I don't think there's any room for free will in a soul. I think. Okay. Yeah. So if you can't sin in heaven, if you literally cannot sin, not in the sense of we would appreciate it if you didn't, but actually you are physically incapable of doing even if you choose you want to as a soul, you just cannot do it. Is that a, is that a rejection of your free will? Or I'll throw this bone in the race. What if it is like, Hey, I can't fly. Is it against my free will that I can't fly? It's like, no, it's just physics just works such that I don't have wings more or less, right? Or I can't levitate maybe in heaven. That's just how the physics work. It's just, you know, you just can't do it. It's not an issue of choice. It's just the issue of what heaven is. Like it's not a reasonable question. Even asked to sin. And then that's in that case more beats more of a mechanical can't rather than a willful can't. What do you think about that? Larry? Well, I mean, there's so many religions with so many different heavens. We, we have, you know, what's the chances of your particular heaven being the correct one in the first place? You know, even if souls did exist, I mean, it may be that you go to the Mormon heaven. Oh, the Mormon heaven. Oh man. I don't have enough. Right. The third rung of the Mormon heaven dread. What do you got? Can you, can you be a martyr in heaven? Can you be it? Oh, oh, Judd Pirate with the weird. Can you lift up? Make a rock so big that you can't lift it. My brain can't, my brain can't handle that. It's like, it's like Sisyphus, right? Yeah. Yeah. Where's that rock up the hill? Where would you go if you were a martyr in heaven? Good question. Well, you get to, you get 72 more virgins, right? Oh, I see. That's right. Once you're, once you're out, once you're out of virgins, raisins, raisins, raisins, raisins. Right. Well, you know, some, some people are raisin lovers, right? George, what's up? You want to say something? Very simple. What the hell are you going to do with all those virgins? You're going to have a LAN party and play board games. That's what I was saying at the beginning. It's going to be fun. You pull it up, you pull up with the Nintendo 64 and like 72 game controllers and you play Goldeneye for the rest of the tournament. It'll be awesome. How old are these virgins? Another question. Raisins, raisins, George. Larry, Larry, what's up? Well, the raisins, my question is moot. But what gets me is the men get 72 virgins. What do the women get? Right. And 170 seconds of a man. Are there virgins in the Muslim heaven? Are they actual women's souls that lived here on earth that are just made virgin and then, you know, shared with the men? Or they created, you know, ad hoc, you know, as needed from a whole cloth. It's just, again, more contradictions, more questions and answers. To be perfectly honest with you, I find of all the silly things about. So like 72 versions thing, if it is 72 versions, it's such a small aspect of Islamic culture and that particular heaven that if you were to look at just the little craziness and just the Christian heaven, like the seals being unlocked and the existence of dragons and floating eyeballs with wings all over is like, that's way more psychedelic craziness than the 72 versions. Like that's tame. That's just, you know, Metallica album number one self titled. This is like the stuff they're coming out with now. We're going to talk about that. George, I'm sorry. John, you wanted to say something. What's going on? Yeah. Well, now it's back to whether the soul is material or immaterial or not because the one definition of free will. I mean, I accept Eric's definition, but I do not. But okay. There's two ways of looking at this. Could you have done something different? You've made a different choice. Historically. Yeah. Or can you now going forward make his personal choice? Do you have that option? Yeah. And I'm not sure where free will fits into that because the argument that Sam Harris comes up with, is it him? Yes, it is. Who thinks that there is no free will. Right. That argues that you could never recreate this exact same circumstances. Sure. That where you made that choice historically because the universe has moved on and all the particles are in a different place. So from that point of view, there is no free will. But that doesn't say much about, you know, making choices going forward. Okay. So I was going to say as for whether you can use your soul to commit sin in heaven. Well, and we're told that you can't. Well, is this because it's like one of those lead line rooms where you go into and your phone doesn't work? Sure. Yeah. Yeah. All the wicked thoughts are kept out. More or less. Yeah. It's a really bizarre concept because the source of all sin is God too, because he made everything. Right. So like, if God is in heaven, then the source of sinning is still present. If he's the one who made it, it's a weird thing. I have an idea that judgment day, and I have been looking at this with the Christian lens, maybe even Egyptian polytheist lens, but like there's a concept of judgment day where your sins will be weighed against, you know, the deeds that you have. And it's a question of whether or not you will be going to hell or heaven even after you have, you know, maybe perhaps done all the titular things that you need to be, you know, in the line for heaven. Like there's going to be a process. And at that process, is there a chance for you to disagree with the result? Like Eric would allude to, is there a voice of your opinion to say, hey, I know you're sending me here, but based on this record, I think I have enough credibility to go there, and I want to go there. Please don't send me there. My will is to go here and you're sending me here. And my judgment record, I think is, you know, I want an appeal, basically. Larry, what do you think? Oh, yeah, you have to fill out 10-17, 4034. I can imagine you at the gates being like, yeah, it's a whole process over here. You won't believe it. You want two umbrellas? Oh, my gosh. Where's that form? There's another form. Yeah, George, what do you have? I saw your head. Well, you know, we were talking about all the virgins before in this. We're a boys club here. You know, we've been a boys club for some time. I think we need some girls in our boys club at this point to get the female perspective and just, if nothing else, about all those virgins, you know, and I think we better duck for cover. First step to getting girls club, stop calling them girls. There you go. Well, I mean, I'm just, because I'm saying that we're the boys, they'll believe the girls. But we're going to have to duck for cover, you know. Dred, what was your feed in? Well, I was just, I can't remember, did you mention the Egyptian? Yeah. So Anubis would literally take a heart and weigh it. Right. Against the feather, the feather of truth. Exactly. Yeah. Right. Okay. I thought that's what you were talking about. Which does lead the idea that there could be times where they're even with each other because that's an analog measurement. So if it is even, whether you do in that situation, can someone voice an opinion at that point and be like, hey, listen, I know it's even, but look, I'm not bad. I'm not lower than. Because I don't want to go there. I want to go there. Of course. Of course. That reminds me of that, that is the scene in Monty Python's life of Brian. Yeah. You know, where they're weighing the witch against the duck. And then she says, oh crap. You mentioned Monty Python. So of course our resident Brett will have to weigh in on this. John, what is your, your thoughts? Well, I wasn't going to do a Monty Python reference, but I'm going to do a Monty Python reference. But I'm going to say this. Dread raises the interest. No, you did tie. You raised the interesting possibility that somebody might be. Neither bad nor good. In the weighing of the song. And of course there's a place for that, which is purgatory. And also if you've been, if you've recently been born, but you die before the priest can get to you and absolve you of all sin or prison. Then there's another place for you. Limbo. Oh, wow. The, the last. Was it the last? It was Benedict. I think the last Pope, but. Two. No, it was pretty. It was Benedict. But before he was Pope, he abolished limbo saying it's just an idea. Well, he said that in, in Catholic terms, but effectively that's what he said. Wow. I never learned to do the limbo. Okay. But it's just the banding all those people who have loved ones, babies or whatever in limbo. It's, you know, too bad. We, you know, we don't do that anymore. That's why. Yeah. There's no more rush limbo. Eric, what do you got? Yeah. So Ty, you made the really good, good point when you're talking about how did you put it with you? You the physics don't allow you to to sin, right? Yeah, maybe it's like that. Yeah. So and I like that. And John, you, you picked up on that and you're talking maybe it's like you walk into a room and you're, you're, you can't have these bad thoughts. So I want to, I want to actually kind of circle back to that and say how is that any different than like a lobotomy on your brain and pulling out pieces. So you can't do this. Again, free will doesn't seem to have a place in any of this. If, if, if you, if you can't fly, obviously that physics, that makes sense. But if you're able to sin on earth, but then you go to this other place and now you no longer can sin I still don't see room for that free will. It's Eric. Can I throw out a small, I don't know if this is a challenge or not, but I just want to see what you think about it. Like right now I can call you on my cell phone, right? But if I were to go to, I don't know, Alaska, new point, new hope or some, some wilderness place, I wouldn't be able to call you because I don't have cell phone access. Is that denying my free will to place a phone call to you? Or is that just the mechanics of the place that I'm in? Stopping me from being able to do that. Well, the difference is you have a desire in both cases. Yeah. But is one breaking my free will? Technically, no. You're still free to try to call me. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I just won't be able to make the place the call, right? Well, whether or not the call goes, whether or not I pick up is, you know, that too. Yeah. Yeah, so maybe it is maybe it's an issue of a tent. So like, are you saying in heaven, I can't even intend to send because if that's the case, then that's your lobotomy, right? Yeah. But if I can intend to send and just mechanically can't, that's also, I would see is like, that's a good point. That's good. Not in a weird quiet zone movie. John, John, you're about to book. What's up? What's up? I'm about to burst a plug in. Here's my theory of what happens as you go through the pearly gates lasers are focused on the evil part of your brain. Oh my gosh. So don't go through. So don't go through the pearly gates. There's lasers. John Richard. I love that quote. I love that quote. You have a great t-shirt quote every day. Every time, every time. What was it? What was the one from last week? It was a belief is just faith on steroids, right? Yeah. And then this week it's don't go through the pearly gates. There's lasers. You got last week's one that's just belief on steroids. Boom. There we go. Faith is just belief on steroids. I love it. George, did you want to say something? What's up? I forgot what I was going to say. Totally good. Totally good. We got 60 people on the call. I can't always wait. So many, so many so many people. You've been laser. You've been laser. So how I was thinking about men in black a while back ago and they have this they flash you and they make you forget you even seen the organization. Right. If they have to come and do a clean up spell and I never really considered like the moral implications of choosing to wipe other people's memory. Right. But in heaven you even if you go to even if you were a person that gets elected to go to heaven and you have had to have at least sinned once or twice because you're born a sinner and you are subject to what Satan tells you. And so maybe you did some bad things. Maybe you did some sins but you got them absolved. Do you go into heaven with those memories of the fun times you had sinning and right. Or are they memory flashed at the pearly gates along with the lasers as you walk through the door and you'll be like what what sin I have no idea what you're talking about and is that acceptable. So many questions so many questions how do you even get a person prepared for heaven. So how about this we'll do a final round table thumbs up thumbs down and you can say some things too but like is do spirits have free will and and what do you think about that dread sense you brought the topic what do you think well I I clearly think that even if spirits did exist they wouldn't have free will by virtue of some of the things we've discussed here. So I would I would thumbs down on spirits having free will thumbs down on spirits having free will there's so many questions involved with this but I can't imagine a scenario where spirit is in heaven able to do everything they want to do without having some intention or memory wiped or laser beam on their persona so I'm going to say thumbs down on free will Eric what do you got spirit I'm gonna go curveball on everyone and say hey if we're inventing a spirit anyway and we're making it out of magic it could totally have free will that's a magic no rules magic okay John Richard's spirits free will do you see a connection I agree with Eric I mean if spirits are immaterial then of course they don't obey the laws of the universe that's true so they can make historic alternative choices except if it's sinning if they're in heaven right well of course there's the lead lining isn't there's that lead lining around it okay so we got a thumbs up from John oh we're too too Larry oh no there's no souls no free will he said fight me he put his race down like no souls no heaven no souls no heaven no free if there's no souls they can't be free will and I think I understand Larry's point of view like his whole thing is there's no soul so can spirits have souls no because there's no souls there for no free will I understand the logic George the idea that spirits have free will what do you think thumbs up well as the as the organic Jewish atheist in the room it's all BS I feel like that's I feel like he's sounds like a thumbs down sounds like a thumbs down to me a thumbs down no the thumbs up had some really really good points to George is there something that you'd recommend we check out before next week oh we doing our final round here yes absolutely well you know I'm thinking about what are the motives of the people who sell us religion and that's a good topic I think for for another show but I stumbled on a book that I'm going to buy and read and the name of the book is the psychopath epidemic and the the poll quote on this is a timely analysis of why so many of our institutions have failed us this is a book by a fellow named Cameron Riley he's in Australia so I'm intending on reading this book because for many years I've been thinking that the leaders the movers and shakers of our whole society for many centuries have been psychopaths and I want to understand yeah there's something that calls a person into that level of power though sometimes it falls in their lap and those are the really interesting stories let me get let me give you the web address for this thing it's it's just all one word the psychopath epidemic dot com nice George that was a that was great because a lot of people I was worried that you're going to be like HTTP and then you got two dots backslash oh it's another backslash maybe three backslashes I don't know in my browser I know about your browser but in my browser you don't have to put all that stuff okay cool it's a relevant you put in the name the name of the URL that's Eric is there something that you'd recommend that we check out before next? I have something fantastic and I'm so glad I went before John because I think everyone should tune in at least I believe in eastern time it's three o'clock on Wednesday July 7 because England is playing Denmark if anybody's been watching they're all the England did really well against Ukraine they did it's good soccer it's a lot of fun and I'm pulling for I'm pulling for you guys John very very cool it's coming home yeah they're playing Wimbley right football's coming home alright John Richers is there something that you would recommend that we check out before the end of next week yeah sure we were talking about girls earlier okay we decided not to call what I'm gonna say is I had a very fun conversation with a female last night in my free thought hour which is available on free thought productions YouTube likewise I'm going to recommend that you check out free thought productions on YouTube and subscribe to that channel there's quality interviews that happen at least once a week plus there's global atheists updates which I think is kinda interesting so I'm subscribed to two niche news channels on YouTube one for deaf news and then one for global atheists news and it's really really good to get both Dredd what's your update for this week well you can find my stuff on Mind Pirate M-I-N-D P-Y-R-A-T-E I livestreamed this show on Sunday mornings at 8 a.m. P-S-P I'm also the new test-carrying correspondent for global atheists news thank you John nice nice and so I look forward to a lot of fun a lot of fun cool and Larry I keep having this same problem I know you keep telling me about this thing called atheism but you know what I don't know what it's about maybe you have like some sort of manual or description about it can you just break it down and like I don't know maybe something like a reading format or something like that I don't know what's going on he's on mute see that's the problem I can't you talk and I can't hear you so if you just put it down in like a book then I would know yeah yeah yeah just like atheism let's all about or something like that do you have anything like that what's it all about to be able on Amazon either in softback or kindle actually if you want it there you can read most of the content from that book on my blog digitalfreethought.com be sure to click the blog button we have a radio show archives there Atheist songs and many articles on the subject of atheism you can find me on my YouTube channel search for Daughter 5 or Larry Rhodes if you have a question for the show you can call or I mean email askanatheistatnoxwellatheist.org and we'll answer them on future shows if you are a member of a clergy or preacher pastor or priest but no longer believe in the claims of religion there is help for you to convert to a secular job they do job training and counseling at clergyproject.org if you are watching the show on YouTube be sure to like and subscribe this has been the digital freethought radio hour remember everybody is going to somebody else's hell the time to worry about it is when they prove that heavens and hells and souls are real until then don't sweat it enjoy your life and we will see you next week say bye everybody bye everybody bye everybody bye