 on this computer and we are six five four three hello and welcome to the digital free thought radio hour on w ozio radio 103.9 lpfm right here in Knoxville Tennessee we're recording this on Sunday morning March 6th 2022 I'm Larry Rhodes or doubter five and as usual we have our co-host Wombat on the line with us hello Wombat please have a nice day everybody I'm the Wombat see and welcome it's so much nice and with us with us today from across the pond we have John Richards welcome thank you hello yeah yeah we also have Gary Smith or dread pirate Higgs from up north and the frozen north Canada welcome and George Brown the two and a half from east Tennessee welcome to the show good morning good morning digital free thought radio hour is a talk radio show about atheism free thought rational thought humanism and the sciences and conversely we also talk about religion religious faiths gods holy books and superstition and if you get the feeling that you're the only non-believer in town why are you just not in Knoxville we have a group of over a thousand of us and we're in the middle of the bible belt so you know there are plenty of others around where you are we'll tell you more about our group after the mid-show break well um Wombat what are we going to be talking about this week we're going to be talking about the power of please and what would change our minds if anything if god started using please more well before we get into the me and potatoes of that topic let's throw it up their own dred pyre Higgs for our weekly invocation bomb be me captain i shall not want he make it me to float in salt water he steer with me through glassy seas he filleth me bowl he steer with me through straits of noodliness for goodness sake i though i sail through the heaving of tempestuous waters i will fill an out sinking for thou art with me thy 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 pasta and grog shall abide with me all the days of me life and i shall dwell in the galley of our pub forever guys i'm feeling pretty good i went to my first disc golf tournament yesterday got even on par i'm really happy with that old man throwing cutters but i feel good i feel like i had a really fun time outside it's been so cold and muggy the last couple weeks i'm just glad to finally see the the beginnings of spring come in without the pollen without the pollen but it is nice to be out so round table i mean tennessee is getting really really nice i know it's raining in some places right now but for the most part it's getting really really nice john richards what's it like up there across the town how are you enjoying the now hopefully turning weather for the better we've got swathes of daffodils everywhere nice yeah yeah it's sunny out here right now it looks a bit like my picture good yeah okay okay so the tourists actually were like man we're lucky we got that one week of good weather in england no no this is a myth this is a malicious myth put about by hollywood who portray britain as being a foggy place and okay it's not true it's not true no no just just look at the meteorological statistics and look at the picture behind you yeah president of atheism uk also saying don't trust the media i love it no no i'm yeah okay i'm saying don't trust hollywood because not all the media but if you look at the stats you'll see that new york has got a far rainier wetter and more extreme climate than london okay okay okay shots new york shots new york and california coast to coast coast to coast i know no california is pretty balmy yeah yeah gary it's good to see you by the way really really nice jacket how you been i've been well i i am back from my from my sojourn up north right and uh yeah i've been out to actually i recently set up a wood shop i've got a couple of woodlays so my mentor has been showing me the ropes and um making a in the process of making my very first bowl oh maple wood bowls so okay once that's done i'll i'll show you guys next week are you doing like laminate layers or is it one block that you're just carving into yeah just one one block one solid piece of maple okay it's got some really nice uh really nice patterning in it yeah so i remember when i took my first welding class the funnest thing that we ever made was a box you had like a couple of panels and you had to weld them all together and you had to hold water yeah the thing that you made had to hold water for a half hour and i remember making it for the first time and the it sprung leaks left to right it was more of a sieve if anything but the second time i'm just there watching it for a full half hour it's like don't drip don't drip so yeah the the idea of making things out of wood making things out of the earth it's just a really fun process to learn and and really respect the the quality craftsmanship that go in a lot of things we take for granted yeah yeah well you could have called yours a colander right because true true right i mean if anything it makes you appreciate the grand designer anymore anyway larry how have you been how's life man doing fine uh work a day world anymore just um playing games on evenings and weekends watching tv as an old guy i don't get out a whole lot but uh life's good have you heard of a game called elden ring it's kind of like going crazy right now by any chance i've heard of it but i haven't played it okay i'm playing uh skyrim a lot on quest two okay then you got plenty live virtual yeah elden ring just like skyrim just way harder way way way harder may not even be worth your time based on how hard i don't need it harder i'm playing skyrim on easy harder is not gratifying yeah yeah yeah some people like it fun yeah i realize i like as the older i get the more and the more jobs i have the the more i want to to have the easier things in my life anyway when you're enjoying it yeah all right we're going to take a gamble today george he's he how are you feeling george what's going on with you in the interest of being brief i'll say good let's move on cool cool thanks for the setup for the great transition anyway so what we're going to do now is uh i'm going to play in my head and say to myself you know george it's so hard to take umbrage against that without you saying please because i feel like there's power and i feel like there's power in being polite and if some people would just take the moment to just show a little bit of charitability a little bit of humbleness just to be a bit polite and not make it so much of a commandment but more of just an offering maybe i'd more acquiesce to a personality of that regardless of whatever they were telling me especially supreme beings huh especially supreme beings so what i want to talk about today was the power of please particularly coming from god because one thing you don't hear a lot from god i think we can go through the bible and actually see this as like a word search if we looked for number of times god has said please it might be zero it might just be straight out zero however however however what if you just said please more and how would atheists react to it as a result and so what i wanted to do is a roundtable discussion with the people here where we take a classic commandment or a classic phrase from god put please at the front and see how we would feel if he was just a bit more polite would that even make us persuaded i think in some cases we would i'm thinking in other cases we want it let's see john richards i want to throw out the first one to you okay so go for it go for it go for it yeah i'm a big fan of please because i i've raised about five children i say about because you know that some of them and they're producing grandkids but i'm very much in favor of please i get to the stage where if they don't say please i don't do what they want and eventually they they twig and then i do what they want and i say do you know why i did that and they say because i said please it's it's so important but do you know even if god said please before kill your son isaac i wouldn't be persuaded okay okay so we have a line in the sand it's good how about this though he also says honor your mother and father such that your days may be long on the earth what if he said please honor your mother and father john richards as a as a parent yourself how do you feel about that would that make you feel any better well i i think this is this is such an important rule that it doesn't really need please you know it's it's just a way of respecting the generation that produced you okay i think larry what do you think about the idea of honor your mother and father with please or without please would it change how you feel about it in any way you're also a dad oh sure i would think so um i you want another example i would be please don't eat the fruit of the tree that would be you guys both have interesting takes on this because i wouldn't automatically be i wouldn't honor a mother or father based on a commandant like for me and and dredd feel free to counter this it tends to make you rebel against it just simply because it's a command well man i i would counter that uh you know honoring your mother and father um it shouldn't be by fiat right it it should be that they've you know done and acted in a way that is suitable for a parent to act you know there's lots of parents out there that unfortunately uh are either abusive or neglectful of their children and in those cases i wouldn't think that they deserve being honored by their children right there's also people who just don't know who their parents are maybe that you know there's a number of circumstances if i don't know and i have maybe different sort of parents or i just didn't need them or i had one parent or you know it's an orphan and you just graduate out of that system but like either foster parents foster parent or maybe you're uh a sperm bank baby that way but maybe you don't know your dad is should you go out of your way to find him an honor him or should you just appreciate the mom that you had and and just move forward with that i think i think honor should be one of the things like respect where it's it's earned and you give it as in at where it's deserving whether it's asked for or not by a complete third party dread what do you think i i just wonder if we might introduce our uh our latest uh edition here swish steve really steve came on welcome uh thank you thank you hey boys hey hi steve swedish steve hi steve hey george i haven't to know that you're recently a parent right um i am little girl a little boy which one was it um i wanted a little girl so of course it's a boy okay oh that's good for you you're you're quite you're quite in luck i am doing um so what we're asking today is uh in the bible it does say two things one kill your son isaac which which is kind of rough right but please kill your son isaac hopefully hopefully uh i don't know maybe maybe there would at least be some hesitancy there but the idea of honoring your mother and father as a commandment whether or not you say please for me feels the it does it's immaterial because i still feel like that is something that needs to be deserved by the parent but as a new parent what do you think do you feel like the amount of work that you've done so far has made it that you've deserved to be honored by no no no no no no it's you can't say that it's something good to take care of your baby it's it's it's natural it would be unnatural not to take care of the baby so that doesn't give me any how do you say credits good credits from the baby and and is deserving his respect when he gets old enough to stop drooling and maybe think like the expectation is if you're gonna have kids take care of them right yeah you don't get extra points because you you want to also some respect out because i took care of you it's like no that was your job when you had me yeah that would in fact be what god does right because he creates his beings and then he demands respect and love and worship and all the rest exactly please but if he said please it doesn't change it john richard have we have we convinced you or are we still off what do you think well i'm with you in that i don't think it's really a case for pleading we've in this country we've just jailed some abusive parents who's who were responsible for the death of a two-year-old right and sorry this is so dark but there's some video shown of the mother recording the two-year-old and trying to get that baby to say it loves the mother and it's very reluctant to i don't i don't think any amount of pleading is appropriate in that case like um like like steve said this is a duty rather than rather than choice george how do you feel do you feel like you had a duty to raise your kids or do you want some special recognition for it um i don't want any special recognition for it and i think we have a duty if we are suitable parents which a lot of people are not and should not have children in the first place but if we are suitable parents we have a duty to be nurturing and never to be abusive to our children um i agree so whether god says whether whether god says please they're not as irrelevant because the man behaves just like bloterie or putin or donald's prompt that's i mean honestly if we're gonna really consider it that's a compliment considering how crazy god is in the bible yeah i don't know there's not much comparison of guy who drowns the world in chapter one and then he's like there's weight the rest of the books keeps going like yeah it keeps going it gets better it gets better he has a really nice turnaround he starts purping it's great um but it wouldn't have made it any better if he if he'd said please can i drown the world apart from knowing technically he asked moses to say it for him so i guess it's okay who knows who knows though i will throw this at the next one um one of the weirdest commandments that i had i had seen that i never really understood very well was keeping the sabbath holy have you guys ever heard of that sabbath so for some reason some people say sabbath is saturday which i think makes sense based on a georgian calendar yet a lot of people just go to church on sunday and we'll call that sabbath and i've and i'm i've always been confused how we haven't even gone the day the right time like sabbath saturday he's like no no no no no no it's sunday so my main thing was well how do you keep the sabbath holy when i was a christian and i and i found various different levels of uh of you know respect for it some people don't even get well some people don't even leave your home some people don't tie knots some people will say they don't listen to music other people say they don't eat certain kinds of food there's very unclear rules about it even in the bible it's like well i'll only burn my goats at this temperature other ones it's very bizarre however if you got a clear list of instructions on how to keep the the day holy maybe i'd acquiesce to it more at least if it was more consistent but if you just told me please maybe i'd go out of my way and do it what do you think john richards would you keep the holy day sabbath of god was like listen this is what you got to do could you please do this on every saturday could you please do it am i am i hurting you or harming you in any way please please i'm asking you we've had a history of fighting to get the sabbath treated as a normal day of the week over here wow which day is it for you guys it's sunday for us and that's that's confusing as you say because of course for the muslims it's friday for the jews i think george will tell us it's saturday and for the christians it's sunday so there's no agreement there at all which pokes a hole in the whole argument i should think yeah pasta farion celebrate on friday as well it's a very good day for a barbecue isn't it let's face it in the end in pasta yeah yeah the end of the week yes so when i was when i was young when i was the age of somebody like say george i used to um i used not to be able to do anything on a sunday because it really was shut down no shops open wow you had to go if you were of a church going mind you that's when you went and the the pubs weren't with the pubs open i can't remember but it's certainly in ireland you couldn't go you couldn't get a drink on a sunday wow that we were we were pretty much sabbathed right up although over the last 50 years gradually we've become de-sabbathed apart from of course apart from of course black sabbath which has had a good career in the meantime so even in tennessee you can't order alcohol in the evenings on a sunday i believe is that right larry can is that accurate in tennessee in kentucky you can't get like alcohol no it's it's all around the county or the city laws it's not state laws okay there are cities that have blue laws that says you can't order alcohol or get alcohol at all during the sun usually sunday so what do you do then did you just drive outside city limits saying it's ridiculous outside city limits is the county and they're usually worse so we're looking at two things it's a huge inconsistency but also there's no pleas in front of it so john you said you were working to get rid of it if the rules are just more consistent and and they were given to you by a very polite god would you be more inclined to follow them at that point no i think the trend is in the opposite direction we're we're increasingly heathen over here but no amount of pleas is going to turn the clock back dred i'm going to put you on the on the hot seat has the claustropharian god the great nudely nor himself every day please and with respect to the celebrating friday um well he's he's so drunk he can't even articulate that uh i mean friday's his day and you know he's taking a break and he's just you know he's he's he's sitting at the beer volcano and uh you know drinking grog that if anything i love that it's way more consistent it's just like hey it's friday have a good have a chill day yeah yeah you gotta work you gotta work exactly but i'm not telling you not to do anything if you did try to say it it would come out as please he's uh not to put sweden on the chopping block but state church does is there any sort of like formally recognized day of the week that is sort of like lower key in terms of like what businesses are in operation and no no not because of religious bullshit it's okay keep going yeah well there is the ceremonies on sunday but maybe 15 people are there in a big town now here's this so let's say we can make sunday uh the the day that we have um our our our holy sabbath day and god comes to you it's like hey listen can you please just do x y z things i would really appreciate it as your lord and savior thank you so much if you can do this wouldn't this be great all right see you would you be more inclined at that point he's like oh he want me he he talked to me he asked me please he gave me a gift basket no it wouldn't work like half the population is so high hangover on sunday so nice i'm gonna come to speed it's a good place to go ahead larry i was just thinking if he actually did come to me and say please then at least it would approve his existence right i would no longer be an atheist right he goes without saying but it would it would it would make me tend to go along further with what he requests okay then if he commanded it but at the same time i would never reach the level of worship i don't believe that worship is a good practice of anything larry i think that's a good point you made because one it is good if you could come down and just say hey i am here please do this i would appreciate it that would clear up everything no more atheists in the world incredible huge and then a little please on top it's like oh okay okay what is he gotta say it's still not killing my son thank you very much so yeah like i'm not an atheist anymore but i i'm not digging the if i'm i'm not a christian by default because i'm not worshiping that god thank you very much yeah thank you very much but i'm i'm thinking that his reputation is so poor really trying to get trying to get isaac killed and and and genocide of all by drowning at the entire population of the planet apart from Noah's family i think just requiring him to say please is not enough i want him to be really humble i want him to say please on his knees oh no i was gonna say pretty please i i didn't know you're gonna go that far there's limits we're sugar on top i think i think god i think god is incorrigible you know a gift basket goes a long way and i feel like if you just send everybody a heavenly gift basket we'd all be great though george uh john brings up a good question uh god's reputation seems to be in the trash at least among atheists like what would it take for you to be more inclined to follow this being and would please help i i i've just put the muffle in jail for eternity just lock them going at george it sounds like you want to ask something else go for it i forgot what i was gonna say it's okay it's okay it's okay you i i thought i got to you just as you're raising your hand it's totally fine hey larry we're at the bottom yeah i forgot i forgot i forgot what i was gonna say larry we're at the bottom of the half hour when we come back to this and you can take us out well sure uh this is the digital free thought radio hour be sure to stay tuned for the next half and after this break we're on w o z o radio 103.9 l p f m here in noxville tennessee we'll be right back after this short break hello and welcome back to the second half of the digital free thought radio hour i'm doubter five and we're on w o z o radio 103.9 l p f i'm right here in noxville tennessee let's take a minute to talk about the atheist society of noxville ask was founded in 2002 or in our 20th year now ask has over a thousand members when we have weekly in-person meetings at noxville's old city at barley's tap room in pizzeria every wednesday night starting after work around 5 30 look for us inside did i say wednesday it's tuesday tuesday night look for us inside at the high top table um we could be out on the deck though the weather's getting to be so pretty we're usually the loudest and happiest group we also have tuesday night evening uh zoom meetups if you'd like to join us if you don't live in noxville or we just like to stay at home rather than get out during this covid uh just send us an email at askanatheistatnoxvilleatheist.org or let's chat s e at gmail.com and we'll send you information about how you can join us now you can find ask online on facebook meetup or noxvilleatheist.org you can just google noxville atheist it's just that simple by the way if you don't live in noxville you can still go to meet up and do a search for an atheist group in your town don't find one start one that's right one bad word we want to pick up we're going to go to current events john riches you got your finger on the pulse of the world i heard everything in outside of a usa around the world is is perfectly happy and wonderful what's going on no it's not oh man this this is going to be a bit darker than the usual mood we have in our podcasts but uh we can't ignore what's been happening in ukraine and it particularly as it does have a religious connotation since back in the ussr days religions were banned and a lot of churches were destroyed but since putin got into power he has rebuilt the churches he's built a splendid new cathedral in moscow and all at public expense and so the leaders of the christian church christian orthodox russian orthodox not greek are beholden to him so they pretty much agree with everything he says and he wants to come across as a man of faith so he tells the story of how his mother gave him a cross that he wears now around his neck and has never taken it off so particularly because back in the pre-u ssr days the orthodox church had a wider boundary than current russia he is now using that to justify his we call it invasion he would call it recovering the lost lands that they ought to still own the russian crusades it's sort of yeah so i don't think we i think we should express some opinions about what's going on here obviously we're not going to be able to solve it right but also like uh just to just throw my thoughts on this it was saying like the pervasiveness of the church is always been a political tool when used by very large governments and it's not a new thing that we're seeing going on it's not a new thing back in the medieval times it's not a good it's not a new thing since before we even zillis i'm sure there was some sort of shaman who used it as a way to get people to group up against the people who didn't believe that that shaman had powers but it's really unfortunate when it's a pool of people in my opinion who aren't educated or told or are deliberately misinformed and are taught very poor forms of reason and then those people who believe those groups can easily manipulate them to to giving money or fighting for or dedicating hatred or changing their culture against certain groups of people and i found that to just be a really terrible yet progressive tool that we still find ourselves culpable to and and vulnerable to you know moving forward that's my take dred yeah well you know as i mentioned um canada has its own state religion that's by virtue of the queen as head of state and she's you know head of the church and uh monarchs rule by divine right so um that's a lot of push that we get from as pastafarians uh in you know moving advancing our um our interests is the pushback from the christians under um under the monarch uh it'd be nice to uh fight that fight uh once i get my driver's license with my tricorn on the next step is to uh get the queen out you know uh do like barbados did and uh i i don't i can't remember what the word is is it secede from the commonwealth um to you know extract ourselves from i see it as you guys kicking out kicking out the the crown yeah yeah yeah absolutely yeah evict yes it'd be for the better well you know and it you kind of see that a bit in the royal family where there's a dissent amongst the children or grandchildren um they just don't want to participate in the in this charade anymore and um you know it's high time that we get rid of this thing right across the board where state religions are both far too much sway and are used for nefarious purposes yeah i just wanted to uh ask swedish steve you have a state religion there i believe uh how much sway does it hold in your society nothing none none yeah you you pay taxes to support is that correct if you're a member you will pay short taxes so that's one step ahead of canada um and that their taxes go to support whether they want it or not yeah not to poke swedish steve so much but if you're in sweden you're going to pay taxes regardless yeah i think you have you're going to pay taxes even if you have a tv in your home there's a tv tax did you know about that yeah but it won't go to the church that was the point no it goes to the public but but i've never got this i pay 37 i think 38 percentage in tax on my income no i yeah do you get free university free university free health care free medicine sweet uh and nobody sleeps on the street no you got a spare room there swedish steve i'm moving over yeah come on don't move don't move there right now it's probably really dark out we give it a couple months but uh going back to what john was talking about like what we're seeing with Putin right now and the playbook he's following is the same playbook that we've seen from a number of narcissists and and and dictators in the past where they use the arm of the church that that they have a hand in their pocket and the church doesn't want to lose their the influence of a great you know position position of power so they will purposely do harmful things to to other people or their own culture and i feel like narcissists don't care either way and so i'm going to go to our own resident expert on narcissists george brown tell me about tell me about narcissism and putin where do you see like the lion's well i i'm not going to address not the narcissism diagnose anybody on the radio but i think it's brilliant you know i think the guy's a book the guy's a bully and and i think there's an element of sadism there but um what i'm what i'm thinking about the ukraine i want to share with you all is that there is a heady stench tradition of what's called pogroms in russia which means hey let's round up all the jews and have a little barbecue you know um it's sort of sort of a sanctioned um murdering of the local populace and and um so i i find a religious component to this what's going on the the um i just want to share that one of my relatives left the ukraine i mean his family left the ukraine many many years ago because of anti-semitism the president of the ukraine is jewish times have changed yes and and um so i can't help but thinking that part of trying to bomb the ukraine's into the stone age right now it has a religious tinge to it and you know i i'm feeling like um the crusades are are sort of happening in a way you know it's like well let this let's get those people you know those those horrible people who are threatening us remember they're they're laying that on on on them too and so that's that's about all i have to say i i feel really sad for the people yeah it's a great angle and i feel i feel terrible gutted john what do you think that's how you're like you said uh ty you either make a an an enemy of a church if you're a politician and that that's of that of course is what the ussr did they they looked at the church starlin looked at the church and said this is a rival authority i want to stomp on it and what putin has done is the opposite he said i want to encourage this because i'm a bit weak at the beginning of my term of office and i want to encourage this as an ally so he's made the church indebted to him for causing it to regrow right and as a result of which right up until yesterday the the biggest leader of the russian orthodox church patriarch kirill wasn't condemning putin's invasion of ukraine he was just keeping a low profile and saying nice things as you know putin would have imagined and it was only in the last 24 hours that he actually came out and said hey this is not christian that's interesting yeah well i mean these things become wars of righteousness right because it's not like he's going after an obvious source of oil like saddam busain didn't create you know he's uh he's just flexing because of you know because he's clearly a narcissist but um you know it becomes a it becomes a war of righteousness as opposed to a war of something you know what i mean not to get too much that's what it appears to me but also ukraine does have oil but it's not well but yeah but that's not that's not their justification right there you go that's absolutely true he's never said i'm going in there for the free energy and natural resources he's made it a thing about um righteousness and morality and his intent and his his duty to to make this country one again to make russia strong but it's it's at the expense of the lives of civilians and and terrible there's there's a really interesting book uh that's been written i and i'm sorry i'm remiss as to the author um but she has uh researched the justifications of war uh from all the wars that have happened in the world since 1928 when when war was outlawed war became illegal um of course you've got the second world war and all the other wars that subsequently followed but as a as a way to get around that bit of it being illegal uh leaders have had to write justifications why they're going to war right so it'd be very interesting to see what bootings is i i haven't looked it up but i'm sure there's one there that he's uh dictated to somebody to uh you know uses justification for what he's doing george get in here oh go sweden steve do you have a comments on that report yeah yeah the justification at the moment is he is the nazi vacation uh and stopping the ukrainian genocide on russian people just nonsense of course it really is but it's the public um justification that is given okay i i want to make a comment if i may go for george um the history of russia is one of continuous uh um autocratic rule on it's an unbroken chain so through the communist years you had strongman dictators uh following the strongman kings and there is a there is a component what we're discussing there's a component of divine right you know that that put in in other words putin let's say maybe have having been anointed by the church is is um is chosen in a way by god to rule this empire okay that's what they always done that in the past not to make light i don't want to make crown the king not to make light of the situation going on though i i felt like the red flags i know we made war illegal but i feel like the red flag should be if your government leader ever takes a picture of himself on the back of a horse with his shirt on with his rifle fire that guy as soon as you possibly can because that should be illegal because that's a red flag those are the red flags guys because we don't have a lot of heads of states doing that we don't need we don't need that at the DR more and more concerned about uh the stories i hear about putin isolating himself yeah that's you know that's a that's a psychosis uh or an entry point in psychosis to me not only that i really worry about that if he's everything's about trying to use nuclear weapons there's nobody around him to tell him that too yeah yeah right absolutely back in the end of the second world war that's what Hitler did he didn't come out of his bunker for months in in 43 44 because uh he was he was losing it right not only not only in the sense of the war but in the sense of his marbles right it's what they forcibly did in napoleon like you take any like very strong person either as a punishment or as they become loot to the point where they lose themselves they isolate and i find that from an epistologic point of view it's because they don't want to deal with outside criticism on on their actions because they have no capability of dealing with it and they don't have a method where they are interested in refining a process it just has to be the way it is because they don't have room for doubt anymore because confidence is brittle and the more you stack on confidence the less you want doubt to come and knock over that tower so you try to keep yourself isolated away from anyone who can question you and unfortunately we interpret that sometimes as an audience as someone actually being right because we tend to look at very confident people in positions of power and say that person must be doing something right i'm going to follow whatever that person says and so putin wouldn't uh i don't want to put this i don't want to put this i don't want to say this too bad but we tend to give up power when we don't have to and i feel like that's one of the biggest mistakes we do as a people and when we find someone who's very powerful we often give up our own power to them and i feel like if we ask ourselves why we do that and should we and and and see what what happened if we all choose not to i think we'd see incredible things as a country world really dread what do you think it's it's a and it's also about being able to assess the capabilities of the people that we would put into positions of power if you're not a critical thinker your criteria for evaluating their competence is probably pretty rough um you know and certainly lots of people get in by virtue of their looks and their wealth and um other other sort of uh very base traits um outside of you know a sound reasoner uh a good thinker you know right um that's that's where the focus ought to be when we're picking our candidates um as opposed to how nice their suit is or what kind of shoes they're wearing oh i also think go for it george i was gonna say give give me a chance i'm gonna vote for a comedian future but but then i realized a comedian not a joke there's a difference because there's such a subtle that's yeah we've already got a lot of people who shouldn't be in office we've got a joke we've already got a joke yeah what we want is a skilled comedian hey we've been there too well i feel yes honestly i mean i do feel like there could i feel like the religious card was played a lot in this current war that we're we're looking at yeah because it is easy to look at your crane if you rush and be like oh there's a lot of jews they're jewish president hey easy easy easy right as far as like because there are people in russia who are completely for the war that's going on but i also have sympathies for the people who are completely against it and i feel like a system where where there's that much dissent the only thing they can do is go out in the streets and and protest there's a problem with the the structure of the political system there should be better representation than that than just go to that street and yell meanwhile we will authorize this war as the other side um any final thoughts what do you guys think john what do you think your topic i wondered if swedish steve has got any more to say because finland with the border to russia they're rethinking their policy because they've been quite um non-military and now they're thinking maybe they're next in line after ukraine if if putin succeeds i don't i don't think sweden has a border with uh with russia but it would be next but one in line yeah but we have a special defense for um russian submarines for example we have signs in the oceans um that says this way if you're gay and i'm i'm sure that the russians won't be able to cross those lines as it's legal to be gay in russia so well for for serious it's we can't do nothing finland can't do nothing it's just come in and we have an old joke in sweden that's well when russia has taken over sweden they will um defend it and that makes me feel very safe yeah i forget it's totally fine so john richards i think you make um a really great point that we can look as bystanders at your crane and even if we're the most empathetic apathetic person who will be like oh well that's a shame meanwhile i gotta do my own thing that attitude that mindset is coming for you eventually because tyranny like that doesn't get satiated if it has a victory it's the only way you get rid of tinnary like that is by eliminating tyranny right and so if your cranes next and they fall and i don't think they will but if they do don't think it stops there it's going to be maybe poland it'll be maybe bella russ next it'll it'll keep tidying its way over and when we see through history is every single time we've turned our backs or looked away from situations like that it eventually got you to it eventually got them to yeah and pulls you seem to be in the appeasement stage right like like england was during world war two at the start of world war two when germany invaded poland you know they you know we can get along with them we can work with hitler but then of course it didn't work with anybody right right right i understand the honesty but yeah yeah did switzerland uh take a stand um against um this invasion today switzerland has yeah switzerland is altering perpetual neutral wow yeah i thought that was pretty significant when i heard that i hadn't had a chance to research it to see what what that actually meant but yeah um yeah that's interesting so good um i remember hearing a story about you know um a person learning that uh one group had had been attacked by the government or was being targeted by the government and he says well you know it's it's not me i don't have to worry about it and then another group and then another group and then another group and then finally it was him and he said why won't anyone help me it's because there was no one left no one left right correct correct it's a great parable um and and uh if anything pay attention to this like i it's so easy to not pay attention to this because it's happening so far away maybe you don't even know any ukrainians keep this in your foresight because you need to in my head yes we've had a terrible pandemic yes yes we've had uh an issue where a lot of race relations have come to light and they were always there for some people like i've always seen them but i'm glad other people are seeing him i'm glad the reaction is oh that's bad good pay attention to those yes a lot of abuse in work and jobs and relationships between women and men and offices are completely unbalanced and in some way it's predatory and dangerous for women to work in those spaces yeah keep paying attention to that the thing that's going on with your cane there will be hopefully resolved but there may be another incident where you feel like your empathy is getting like exhausted i say keep working on it because we need to be more empathetic as a country and we shouldn't be to the point where we turn ourselves off on stories that make us feel uncomfortable like that discomfort is a good sign that you have that humanity left in you so don't turn away from that and i say if you can this is not a call to action but uh my small little nitpick and this will be part of my final word is if you donate to the ukraine red cross for this particular issue because we that that does need support be wary of what centers you go or what websites you use donate the money because some are religiously based and i won't name names but right look for crosses and look for religious names in the donation group because they don't report where the money goes and often or not they take a fraction of that off and then if any give away to the proper donation groups which is right ukrainian red cross find them on google it's a very easy search but ukraine and stay away from a religious army that supports um yeah you know the you know the one i mean salvation army yeah yeah yeah that's a good one there you go yeah but um and you know a lot can be said for you know i mean because there's a lot of systemic racism for instance or sexism yeah but what it really boils down to is systemic bigotry and and that's because that kind of encapsulates every kind of prejudice and bias that that people may hold and that's what we need to address i'll meet you one layer lower systemic ignorance right because perfect you can you can easily take the most racist person take them to like a university and tell them learn stuff and when they're surrounded by a group of people who are different from them when they're learning from people who look different from them when they're constantly exposed to different cultures all that stuff leaves and they leave some of the most enlightened people willing to contribute to society i was so religious when i was in college by the time i got out there i was like whoa you would hate me dread if you met me in high school you would hate me you'd be like ah i can't can't deal with that guy anyway but yeah systemic ignorance let's fight it one of the best ways to do is ask questions and we're really good at doing that all right round table we got nine minutes we got time sweetest steve anything you'd recommend we check out before next week please tell me i'm not commanding you okay um no okay it works for me works for me keep being a dad man it's i heard it's i heard it's difficult i heard it's difficult george brown do you have anything you'd recommend before next week well as usual i think it would be good for us all to be conscious of cluster B personality disorders and really get familiar with them and and um be aware of the rising tide of bullyism and the forms that it takes in our societies bullyism i'm saying plural in our societies yeah you know think about the the goodies that people get from bullying other people i like it i like and how are we going to deal with this going forward george i also like your strategy in the sense of always have a B plan regardless of whatever platform or brand you like always have something different where if a starts doing terrible things and thinking they can get away with it you can immediately switch to B or something else is that my strategy that's a good strategy hey we can talk about that offline but i don't remember saying anything like that oh that's your whole vibe your your whole your whole vibe is hey you got you need options and i love it i love it uh john richards i heard you got a youtube thing you just started it what's going on with that no i haven't just started it i've been youtubeing now for a couple of years or more i can't remember when i started but i want to pick up on what you said about donations to reliable charities hi because yesterday i interviewed for my free thought hour show a lovely guy kurt louis who is he does his work for the international rescue committee he's based in sacramento but international rescue is all over the world it was set up in 1948 the suggestion of einstein albert einstein to help to place refugees and we hear that there's 1.5 million people currently trying to get out of well have have got out of ukraine and more wanting to get out of ukraine so there's going to be a lot of refugees so i'd like to recommend that on that list of good charities we put international rescue committee it's led by president and ceo david milliband who was nearly the leader of the labor party following gordon brown and might have given them the labor party a chance to win an election which they haven't done in 12 years now and and he might currently be our prime minister if it wasn't for the fact that his younger brother ed beat him to the count and so david is now over in new york heading international rescue committee that's great they also have a page where they are helping ukraine right now so that's something that you can check out if you just google international rescue committee yeah unless it's your game dread i heard you have exactly less than a hundred subscribers on youtube oh no is that accurate what happened no i've got 104 awesome excellent way to go um and now that i'm back uh and back for an indefinite amount of time i'm going to get down to my studio and do my show on the higgs boson oh let's go that's that's what i promised my viewers uh that i was gonna produce my first show so are you gonna do that show periodically uh oh yeah yeah oh sweden yeah let's go let's go let's go yeah so well you'll have to watch the show to find out um but anyway you can find my stuff at mind pirate that's my youtube channel m i n d p y r a t e i broadcast this live at eight a m on sunday mornings um and then my uh other content is on there of course and i'll be doing some more shows so please check it out if you like it subscribe and uh yeah see you there guys i'll go for it pirate how are you how are you spelling boson is it b o s apostrophe u n no b no b o s o n that's that's a but i i know the the the ship's boson exactly both boson that was a sailing well well that's why i thought it was kind of funny that i would i'm dread pirate higgs a pirate uh and a boson and a boson right yeah okay okay yeah yeah yeah i get it all tying together and it works better for maritime works better for maritime nations yep so as a quick recap international rescue committee they have a ukrainian donation page you can check it out just going on google for international rescue committee dread pirate wonderful youtube channel mind pirate p way p y r a t e john rich is all over youtube you can't not find this guy that's that's a problem once you subscribe to one channel algorithm just hooks you up with literally everything uh and listen i'm not telling you to do anything i'm saying pretty please i'm saying pretty please not a call to action larry what's the coolest thing about suspenders and could you tell me something about atheism because i don't know what it's all about oh the coolest thing about suspenders being able to get thumbs behind them act like an old southern greek um but my my content if you want to find it online is digitalfreethought.com oops got some problems with audio be sure to click on the blog button for a radio show archives atheist songs and many articles on the subject of atheism my youtube channel can be found by searching for doubter five or larry rhodes and i have a book atheism what's it all about that you can also find on amazon if you have questions for the show you can send them to askanatheist.noxfilatheist.org or let's chat se at gmail.com and we'll answer them in future shows if you're having trouble eating your religious beliefs behind you can get help at recoveringfromreligion.org i highly recommend it thank you for joining us on the digital freethought radio hour remember you can find this show on apple itunes to cast amazon and good podcasts everywhere just look for digital freethought radio hour if you're watching this on youtube be sure to like and subscribe excuse me remember everybody is going to somebody else's hell the time to worry about it is when they prove that heavens and hells and souls are real until then don't sweat it enjoy your life and we'll see you next week say bye everybody