 103.9 FM, WOZO Radio, Knoxville. Ladies and gentlemen, Digital Freethought Radio Hour. Hello and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio Hour and WOZO Radio 103.9 LP, FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today is Sunday, January 31st, 2021. I'm Larry Rhodes, or Doubt or Five, and as usual we have our co-host on the line with us. Hello, Wombat. Listen, I can't kill anyone. I can't make you fall in love with anybody or anyone falling in love with you and no wishing for more wishes. No wishes. No, I'm going to do that. Those are my three rules. Our guests today are Doubtfire, George, Boudreaux, J.W. Kennedy, and Buffalo. Hello, Buffalo. Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, and humanism, and the sciences. And conversely, we also talk about religion, religious faith. God's holy books and superstition. And if you get the feeling that you're the only non-believer in Knoxville, well, you're just not. There are several atheist free thinking and rationalist groups here in Knoxville and we'll be telling you how you can connect with them right after the mid-show break. Also, did you know that there was a streaming call and atheist video show broadcasting here from Knoxville? Did you know that, Wombat? Exactly. I'm glad someone's finally talking about it because that's how they're putting the microchips in the vaccines. And if you look really close, you can see it's everyone's in on it. It's all a conspiracy. We got to do something about this, guys. I'm serious. Oh, my Twitter account got blocked. Never mind. Never mind. We're good. Oh, Larry, you're on mute again. Anyway, as Larry figures out his audio issues, you're on mute, my buddy. If you would like to interact with us during the show, go to Facebook and search for digital free thought radio hour page. Use the messaging function, send us questions or comments. What's your topic today, Wombat? Hey, today we're talking about cultural hijacking. We got a full stack of people on the show today. I want to do what my favorite thing is every episode to do. If we can do it, we have no time for it. And that's a quick, super, super fast, super, super check in. How you doing? Life story update since last week. Scott, how you been? Oh, man, I'm doing great. I got more pieces. Hold on a second. Show me the cool stuff. Show me the buttons. He's setting up a whole home studio. So this is the latest one. Okay. Whoa. That is a cool looking thing. That's a cool one. That's a cool looking one. Yes, sir. Yeah. So we've been just building and building and building. Hey, and we're looking forward to playing your music during the break too. Yeah. Here we go. George, the second one out of two. How you doing? What's going on with you? I'm doing fine. Buffalo, we got the name set up. George, get yourself off mute. What's going on with you? It's George two and a half. Got it. Got it. How are you doing this? Since last week. Right. I can go with Buffalo. I've got my Buffalo shirt on. That's what I want. Exactly. George, how you been since last week? Well, I had to go shopping a couple of days ago. So as many people who are just tuning in. Don't know. I'm located right this moment halfway between Knoxville and Chattanooga, Tennessee. And here out in the bunis. I went shopping yesterday at the most expensive supermarket in town. And I'm happy to report that I only passed two people who were not wearing masks yesterday. That's improvement. And that's about all I have to report. Nice. Nice. Nice. Nice. How's your arm feeling? Didn't you get vaccinated? Yeah, I got vaccinated against COVID. Nice. About a week and a half ago. My arms been fine. The experience was very good. I think that everybody who was involved in administering the vaccine behaved very professionally. Nice. Competently. And I was very impressed with the performance of my county's health department. Nice. Speaking of biomedical half breeds. Boudreaux. I know you got something in your arm, too. You're looking forward to another blast of antigen. What's going on? I'm signed up for number two on Thursday. And it's, I'd like to say it's a blessing. I feel really, really grateful. I got pushed up and in line. I think really just for testing purposes. But since Scott's showing off his cool stuff, I've had this up for a while, but now you guys can see it in the camera. I have a shelf on the drop ceiling in my basement so that I can put things up there when I'm on the elliptical. I might be the only person that has a shelf just way up on a drop ceiling. Fair enough. That's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. Nice. Nice. That's your cool stuff. Buffalo. Good to see you again. You got, you're all decked out in the Buffalo gear. Nice to see it. Nice to see it. How you been since last week? I've been fine. I get my second dose on Wednesday. Nice. Nice. So that doesn't mean you're immune, right? Like you still have to wait a couple of weeks and it just reduces your, your, your, your chances of getting sick or like actually having it be a big deal. It doesn't make you bulletproof or make you a better driver. All that stuff, right? It certainly doesn't. It certainly does not in my mind. And I probably will never know unless I get tested for antibody tighter. Okay. Very, very cool. But it doesn't matter. I still follow the other rules strictly and, and try to do my part and move toward herd immunity. Nice. Thank you for doing your part. Also a weird question. I'm just going to take a weird backseat. You got that shot on your arm, Eric. Has that, has that affected your drum playing at all? Like, huh? Good, good question, but no, uh, any sort of volleyball and volleyball. Okay. Yeah. Uh, no, but I am going to go rock climbing on Friday. So I'll let you know how that goes next week. Yeah. Yeah. That's going to be an interesting thing. Yeah. Yeah. It's going to be interesting anyway, though. J. W. It's been forever since we'd seen you on the show. You're looking great in that blazer. How you been? Um, I've been all right. Just moving right along. Um, living life. I had COVID back in November. I think it's been since before November. Since I've been on the show. Yeah. You've been out for a while. You've been sick. We're glad you survived. Also, you have various degrees of camouflage going on right now. Like I can't see your forehead. Yeah. But he's got the, the, the professor blazer on at the same time too. So like there's, there's so many messages going on here. I just threw it on. I thought it would look better than just a black t-shirt. I'm the guy who eats pizza for breakfast. So just don't be impressed. There's nothing wrong with pizza for breakfast. First of all, that's blasphemy. Yeah. You should totally eat breakfast. Pizza for breakfast. So J. W. Did you wait it out at home? Yes. Yes. I, I have three roommates and not a single one of them got it. Nice. Very good. Very good. I, I quarantined immediately. Once I had a fever that Sunday morning, I had actually cleaned the apartment the day before. Um, just, just thought it was a clean, it was cleaning day anyway. And so once I had the fever, I notified everybody immediately quarantined and, um, then I didn't find out until Tuesday afternoon that I had it, but I had already been quarantined for three days. And then I did the, finished out the quarantine, had some people, I know, deliver me some things. So I still plan on getting the vaccine as well. Nice. Good. Right. Speaking of that, Larry, when do you get yourself in line? You know, you qualify. What's going on with you? Well, I don't really, according to the Knox County guidelines, I'm one AC, something like that. Um, one, a one, a three. Uh, okay. Anyway, they're only doing people with, uh, hard medical problems or first responders or people over 75. I'm only 70. Oh my gosh. Listen, I know in your past, you have a history of sneaking into bars and being like, one for me, please. I'm, I'm, I got this. No, you, you will have signed up through the VA. And I'm just going to stay home until they call me in. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Staying in, staying safe, playing computer games. Nice. Nice. Nice. I've been holding up too. And, um, looking forward to the topic today as well. Uh, the topic of today is cultural hijacking. The reason why I have to bring it up. We had a guest on the show last week. His name was Elmo and he was from the Philippines. And he was talking about Christianity and how much it meant to him. Towards the end of the show, maybe even after we had ended the interview, we had talked about some of like the native gods of the Philippines. And he knew a lot of them. And Larry, you made the point that like, if Catholicism hadn't found the Philippines, he would probably be telling us about those gods rather than the Christian God. And that was such a eye-opening little thing in my head. Cause I thought, man, you can say the same thing for black culture. Cause I can't name any black kings. I can't name any black gods. I can't name anything from like really Africa, but even America can't name anything from Native American culture. Like we don't know any great Native American chiefs or political leaders before the pilgrims came. Like that's just been all lost. The culture had been hijacked on top of being hijacked on top of being home. Even today, just pure history too. Like I'm Scott Irish. I was making the point before the show. I don't mean hardly anything about Scott Irish history, but I certainly know Jewish history because I was raised Christian. Exactly. I mean, you study in the Bible, you study the Jewish people's history. Yeah, you don't know William Wallace, but you know Ezekiel and Jesus, right? Right, right. And basically religion has hijacked my sense of history. Scott, you were weighing on this before. What were you making a point about? Yeah, I was going to say, I was actually speaking to somebody earlier this week who was saying that they know Christianity must be true because our whole dating system is based on Christianity. So it's like it's 2021, but 2021 since when? Since the birth of Jesus. So that just proves it's true. So the Chinese calendar proves that the dragon god is real too? Exactly. So we mentioned the Chinese calendar and not so long Jewish calendar. Jewish calendar. Yeah. Well, science has adjusted to that because they don't, they don't say AD anymore. They say BCE before the current. Yeah. And it's funny that we would name the weekdays after other gods. It's a Georgian calendar with gods named after the Roman gods, like from Saturday all the way to Sunday. Saturday and Sunday actually are pagan gods, the sun and the moon, right? We did a show on this before, but like Monday all the way through Friday are like obviously free to, you know, thaw. Like these are these are not Christian characters in the Bible, but it is a funny thing. But you had mentioned that your wife was from. Oh, yes. Yeah. She's from Kenya. So in her tribe, they worshiped a God that lived on Mount Kilimanjaro. And this was way before it was calling out that that nation was colonized by the British, of course. And so Christianity and the missionaries came in and now the national religion is Christianity. And they look down on their, the religions of their ancestors as a whole. It's kind of a shameful thing to do. But they, some people do in secret, she was telling me, some people still pay homage. They'll still trek up to Kilimanjaro just for, they'll say it's just for, you know, well heritage reasons. Sure. Not because we really believe it anymore. But like that ancestral calling that sometimes you feel that you're just a way to connect with your culture or whatever. I feel like the lack of a sense of identity is a, is a considerable sense that we have. A lot of people say we have a sense, only five senses, five senses. I think we have way more than that. And I think that sense of belonging or the sense of identity or the idea of like, even if I'm gone, there will still be a concept of me or something that I was supporting that will remain. Like that is a sense that we have for sure. George, I'd like to get your feedback on this. You were raised atheist, right? Do you feel like any part of your current identity had been hijacked by like a religion by any aspect? Or do you feel absolved from all of that? Well, boy, it's a, so much to this really as you may be able to tell from my accent, I'm from New York. And New York is unusual. I think in the United States as not being founded on a religious basis, the city was founded for money. You know, it was the Dutch West India Company. It was strictly a corporate project. And if you've ever heard of the old mayor of New York City, Peter Stuyvesant, he was a middle level corporate manager. And when the British came in and took over New York, which was simply like a stock trade with the Dutch. Stuyvesant went off to be a governor somewhere else, you know, for his company. So the place where I grew up did not have a religious heritage, let's say the way I feel that Boston did or Philadelphia. And although I grew up in Brooklyn, which had been called the city of churches, I never saw any, you know, there weren't a whole bunch of churches around. There were some, but you know, it wasn't like here where I live. Sure, yeah, where there's one on every block. There's one on every block, yeah. So however, I feel whatever our, it's like Tyrone, my God, the cultural robbery that took place on your background is just so immense to me. And, you know, I just think about, like, how many languages are spoken in Africa? You know, and Swahili is so beautiful. I mean, just the sound of that language. So just, who was talking? Just to weigh in on what George was saying. Yeah, I do feel like I have a missed opportunity, but I also feel like I am just as invested in the American project as any other color of skin that's here currently. Yes, indeed. But it's also an interesting thing that even that concept has only been around for 1900s, like very, very early 1900s when the Chicago World Fair was established, like, 1893-ish. Like, we think, like, America has always been about Americana and Christopher Columbus and all the founding fathers and Mount Rushmore and stuff like that stuff is new on the grand scheme of things. Like, those are fairly new institutions that are raised, brought up, funded, built, and instilled in children as things that are part of America. Whereas, there were people already here, there was a culture that was already here. And I remember I was at the gym this morning and I was seeing, like, a PBS cartoon show about a bunch of Native American little kids playing with a bunch of friends and talking about, like, you know, the great things about Native American culture. And I'm watching this and I'm like, this is brilliant stuff that's been here since we've been here, or even longer than any of us have been here. My culture has been brought over here. So, we reach out for stuff, and if we can't find it, we'll invent it. And that's the new hijack, like, the way how we can just make culture and force-feed that as the new truth. And we can see that even affecting us today with, like, how easy it is to just give fake news out and for people to just accept that as fact and then move on with it. But I don't want to go too far off topic. Boudre, I'd like to give you the same question. Do you feel in your upbringing, because I know it wasn't, like, you know, aggressively religious, but, like, did you find any parts of your upbringing hijacked as you grew up? Like, hey, why do I think that? Yeah. No, good question. So, I was raised Catholic. My mom was Catholic, but my dad is an atheist, and he didn't identify to us as an atheist until we were older. And I think it was something he did kind of out of respect to not influence us, maybe, which is interesting because I'm not sure that it would have terribly, because I was kind of coming into atheism on my own. Right. So, I don't know. I kind of felt like it was maybe kind of unfairly dishonest to, you know, to not know early on that my dad was atheist, but, you know, I've thought a lot about how to introduce religion to my children, so I don't fault them for it at all. Plus, that was in the 70s, so it's a bit different than today. Absolutely. Boudre, where did you grow up? I'm sorry? Where did you grow up? Wisconsin, north of Milwaukee. Yeah, so I moved to Kentucky when I was about 15, 14. The uncle that raised me grew up in the Green Bay area. Green Bay. Okay, yeah, yeah. That's more where my dad was from, but a bit more north. His last name is English. Did you know, run into any Englishes? No. Blue Eyes. No. Blue Eyes. No. He's by marriage. He's by marriage, though. Argyle sweaters? No, you don't know that? Okay. I do love the, oh, you work at UK? Hey, you know, this either side. Yeah. Oh, you're from Kentucky. Do you know the Thompson's? I get that too. But my mom, my mom is from Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario in Canada. So she's Canadian. And what I always thought was interesting, and maybe this kind of ties slightly into what we're saying is my mom's family is very Italian. I guess I think maybe they're from Sicily, but my grandfather's name is Joe Bambacco, and he was number seven because there were so many Bambaccos in the Sault Ste. Marie area or the Sioux, as they call it. And we would go up there and I would just see Italians dark hair and cooking all kinds of food for the longest time. I thought Canada was Italian. Like, I was like, no, it's not French. It's Italian. Like, so my view of Canada was this, this very, this small town that was very, very Italian. Scott, did you want to weigh in? Oh, no. I was just going to ask a question. It seems like, it seems like with more African cultures, Christianity seems to be really, really accepted. And like, there's never a problem with that. But like, I notice now in America. It depends where you are. But yeah. Well, I mean, other than like, Muslim or yeah, because if you're in northern Nigeria, it's almost like that won't fly. Yeah. It's like the cultural gods. If you weren't colonized, you know, if you were colonized and that would be, that's never a consideration almost like it's, but then in America, there's more of a push to reclaim, you know, the African traditions, like religious spiritual traditions, at least it seems like it these days more so. Maybe. I always wonder why is that? I don't know. Probably going to have to find some black people to ask. I don't know. I would say this. I would say this. We say Christian, but Christianity in Africa is a completely different beast than Christianity. We think of it in the Western point of view and there's no way a white Jesus would fly when you call him Jesus Christ in like in the areas I'm familiar where Christianity is popular in Africa. And so it is an interesting thing. They also look suspiciously Italian Jesus or Canadian as Eric would say. And that's something that's more cultural hijacking like the image of Jesus and what he looks like. JKW Kennedy, have you been hijacked? You wanted to make some points too. What do you think? Well, fun fact, I'm sure quite a few of you already know this. Most of the pictures and paintings of Jesus are actually paintings of one of the Pope's nephews. Yeah. I wouldn't be surprised. Yeah. He had a great six pack apparently. Apparently. Yeah. You can just Google it and you can see pictures of the Pope's nephew beside pictures of Jesus. And then there's some sort of articles. There's a few articles on the history of that. Now, JDM, you actually do have a poignant story as far as hijacking is concerned. Religion did have a big impact in your life. It did. It was actually a very unhealthy obsession for the first eight years of my adult life. But I prayed this prayer at the beginning around 18 or 19 years old. I said, God, I want to know you for who you are, not for who I want you to be, not for who I've been taught you to be, but for who you are. And I want to know the truth for what it is, not for what I want it to be, not for what I've been taught it to be, but for what it is. And at the time I was open to entertain the possibility of being raised in the wrong denomination. But soon this motto, this creed, actually, it took me to a journey that actually I ended up leaving religion altogether. But I went from being raised Southern Baptist to more of a liberal Baptist in high school to, I was into Calvinism. Wow. Yeah. I don't know how much. Yeah, I don't know how much you guys know about Calvinism. It's main belief is that God controls absolutely everything in their free will. But it tries to fit that into the biblical narrative, which doesn't work. You can't really fit reality into any type of biblical narrative. But anyway, and then I went from there to a even smaller denomination of Christianity. It called Messianic Judaism and what they called the Hebrew roots movement, which most American Christians consider a cult because we believe that we should still keep the commandments of Moses along with believing Jesus as the Messiah. And in their defense, we had so many more verses to support our doctrine that American Christians do theirs. And I learned in that, this is where the main point comes in with cultural robbing, I learned in that movement, in that denomination about an emperor called Constantine, that I really don't believe, I think it would be very challenging for Christianity to exist today in the West if Constantine didn't do what he did. He basically Christianized pagan holidays. I think he beheaded some of his family members. He made it the national religion of Italy at the time. Yeah. He's the one that made Christmas Christian. He's the one that made Easter Christian and they tried to make Halloween Christian by calling it Jesus' wing, but it really didn't stick. Jesus' wing. I fool you not. Wow. So yeah. Another example in hijacks. Yeah, if you celebrated Easter or if you celebrated Valentine's Day or Christmas at 25th of December, you're a victim, not a victim, but you have been affected by hijacking. Sure. It's the winter solstice. The hijack for Christmas in Easter was hijacked the spring solstice. Santa's first elf was a demon called, oh God, what was his name? How did we get this? A demon-like creature called the, was it, no. Krampus. Krampus. Krampus, there it is. There you go. Buffalo speaking of wings. How do you feel if hijacking has affected your life in any capacity? What do you think it's come from? How would you describe it? Well, I don't think I've suffered very much from it because I'm a first-generation American. My father immigrated to this country when he was 19 because he didn't have enough to eat back in Romania. But he brought his culture with him. And so until I was four years old, I spoke nothing but Hungarian at home. Oh. Very strong cultural basis. And we were, you know, we joined with, we lived in a neighborhood with other Hungarians bordered by a neighborhood that was rich with Polish people and all the wonderful things they've contributed. And I have a very strong background. So I don't feel like I've lost very much myself. Now that maybe the downside is that I haven't passed very much of that on to my children. And I feel guilty about that. Well, certainly the food, the meals, Christ and my wife, Buffalo's daughter cooks a lot of Hungarian meals still this day. And my kids love them. Okay. Capista and, yeah. It's like the idea of competing cultures are always going to be a thing. Even if you aren't affected by them, just the pressures of other cultures around you can make it such that it's hard to pass down your culture because it's going to compete with what's the day-to-day for everybody else in their lives. And so I can see that as a really sad point. As soon as I went to English speaking school, I didn't want to have anything to do with the language anymore. You know, I felt very hard to wrap in Hungarian. So yeah, I'll give you that. Yeah, it is. Long words. It's very long words. It's like, I have too many syllables and not enough notes. But on the religious side, I was raised as a Catholic and I was an altar boy for many, many years and all that stuff. But my father basically said, believe in God, but think for yourself. Okay. From the get-go. So I haven't really, when I got to the point where I was thinking by myself and I had his support in a number of instances where there was a conflict between the biblical version and real life, he would just say, what do you think you should do? I'm going to ask this question and then we'll give it to Larry and we'll get back to like a full round table when we come back after the break. But Buffalo, question for you. You said, I don't really feel like I lost a lot of culture. I hang with Hungarians all the time in my neighborhood. I'm good. If you actually went to back to Hungary right now or if you went to Hungary right now, would you feel like the odd man out? Would people look at you and be like, oh, look at this American guy in his Buffalo hat and Buffalo t-shirt. And he thinks he can cook American. He thinks he thinks he cooks our food. No, no, no, no, no. Let me show you what a borsch looks like, you American boy. Do you feel like that's happened yet? Well, I did that. I went back with my dad maybe 10, 15 years ago and visited the poor village that he was raised in. And I could still speak a little bit to the people. So I wasn't considered to be that much of a stranger. But I think they looked upon us, my father, and I included, or both of us, as rich people. But I think we were very much accepted. And so there wasn't very much strangeness about it. Okay, not bad. Larry. I want to hear what your perspective is on hijacking because it's probably going to take like 20 minutes anyway. Well, I'll save you the time. You can go to my website, my blog, or buy my book and read the chapter on it, How a Religion Hijacks Everything. It talks about how it hijacks the holidays and your culture, history, your family, how they try to get you to call the priest, father, and the people in your church, brothers and sisters. And they tell you if your family doesn't want to follow you into the religion, a lot of times they'll tell you to leave your family behind. And, you know, it's just a lot of hijacking going on. It's like I said, I've written a whole chapter on it. Go to digitalfreethought.com, slash blog and read all about it. Nice. I also found that words in our normal lexicon can be hijacked by religions as well. Even the word, I was trying to sing the song chariot in my mom's house who's a jovial witness. She's like, don't sing that. That's a Christian song. I'm like, well, it won one. It's not. That's a love song by Gavin DeGraw. It's not a big deal. It's like chariot is a Christian word. And I'm a jovial witness. And I'm like, that doesn't even make sense. It's just a thing that horses pull. But it's been so connotized. And Lord really has been connotized. There's a lot of words that we feel like owned by other people, but they aren't. And we should fight when that idea is brought up. Like we own family. We own belief. We're not non-believers. We believe in things too. It's just we don't believe in a God. That's it. Things to think about. Larry, why don't you take us out? Sure. This is the digital freethought radio hour on WOZO Radio 103.9 LPF. I'm right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. And we'll be right back after this short break. For the second half of the digital freethought radio hour, I'm Dr. Five and we're on WOZO Radio 103.9 LPF. I'm right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today is Sunday, January 31st, 2021. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you should still go to meet up and search for an atheist group in your town. Don't find one. Start one. That's right. Another, it's the earlier in the show, we said we talked about the atheist video show. Well, it was originally called Freethought Forum, Knoxville, and you can go to YouTube and search for those words and find their archives. But currently, they're under the name of Freethinkers United Coalition of Knoxville, also on YouTube. If you're interested in getting involved with this TV or radio show, just come to and ask, meet up, go to our web page or Facebook page or an RET page, the Rationalists of East Tennessee. You can find them at rationalist.org and tell us who want to be part of our video or radio shows. With us on the show today, we have Dot Fire, George Boudreau, J.W. Kennedy, Buffalo, and of course, Wombat and myself. Nice. Dot or five. Where do we want to pick up there, Wombat? So, Buffalo is giving us Hungarian lessons in Hungarian. So, this is something I've always wondered. I know only one Hungarian word is for a common household object. Can you translate this back into English, Buffalo? The word is ventilator. No, I cannot. I'll sign it up. Let me Google translate it. It's for fan. What a fan. What a fan. What a mighty good fan. What a mighty, mighty, mighty good fan. Nice job, guys. Well played, well played, Wombat. Why is it always a surprise? That's what I want to know. Why is it always a surprise? Alright, so last week's episode was let me check my book. And we were talking to Elma, who was a guest on the show, a Christian. And what was interesting about him was that very polite, very welcoming, but very standard in terms of like the beliefs of Christianity. But I also feel like if it was it wasn't as staunch as someone who knows the Bible so well and is coming up with apologetics for it, it's more of like, oh, does it really say that? Oh, I never know. It seems like he's the kind of person that just needs to be critical when he's being exposed to some of the things that made us turn away from the Bible in the first place. One of them being slavery. And so DK66 says it's a sad day whenever there's a person in color who defends slavery on the Internet. And I get the point of view. Essentially, it's like when we ask them like, hey, was slavery wrong? He's like, well, he's really unfortunate, especially ironic in that it was in a conversation framed around him questioning our morality as atheists. And it's like in every case, we would say owning people as property is wrong. There's no there's no explicit nature where that's an OK thing. It's always more wrong. So Donna's trading room, friend of the show, many times commenter, give us a really, really long comment. And so basically, while I'll do this, I'll tell you what that is trading room. I'm going to I'm going to read over this and then towards the end of the show, I'll get everyone's feedback on this. But it's essentially about morality and the nature of how these and people who aren't religious can parse the two. Whereas, you know, these will have to rely on what their God tells them. Whereas people who don't can figure it out for themselves. And even if they reach the same conclusion, it proves that you don't need the God route because you can totally do it on your own. And I think that's the main point. We were talking about cultural hijacking. We had a really nice conversation during the mid-show break. I want to return to it just a little bit. The idea of hey, you know, these things that I hold these things that I believe in these were beliefs that were given to me by other people. J. W. Kennedy, you were talking about Constantine, right? Yes. I remember a lot of other impactful people that colored basically what was even in the Biblical book in the first place, like the meeting of Nicaea is how you refer to it, like the people who came about. Oh, Nicaea. There were a group of people. The council that basically decided what books should and shouldn't be, and it was by majority vote. We're taught in the church that the Bible was given to us by God and it was brought together by the Holy Spirit and decided and yet it went through all these processes of Catholics have more books than Protestants do and then there are some Christians who only read the New Testament. There are denominations like the Church of Christ who just completely throw out the Old Testament all together when it comes to doctrine. This is one of the reasons in the list why I left and decided that it was just more rational to believe that there was no personal God involved in Christianity is that if there was do you think that what's supposed to be the most important thing, his word, what he gives to us and what he tells us is right and wrong, how a man is supposed to be saved and all those things that were preached to about and yet he did, there is no evidence, zero evidence throughout history that he made any action to protect it from corruption. Yeah. So it's, you know What about them Dead Sea Scrolls Scott, you know those Dead Sea Scrolls that proves everything, what about that? That's right, those Dead Sea Scrolls man they were authored by a Jewish sect that was trying to escape cultural hijacking I think it could be argued because they were a group called the Essenes. Wow, you know your history dude. Yeah, they lived on the outskirts of Palestine and the hills area and the wilderness so to speak and they wrote down prophecies and wrote down copies of the Old Testament the Hebrew Bible that they had and they were considered heretical by the Pharisees and the Sadducees and I think there were even some arguments that John the Baptist was a Essenes because he came from the wilderness dressed in you know animal coverings just like the Essenes did and they in the Essenes practiced this new thing called baptism. Hey, Pedro, what do you got? Just pointing out the irony here, maybe others see it too but we're talking about I assume we're talking about these scrolls that were uncovered and science was used to 3D modeling to unravel them and read them and translate them and all this and just there's a bit of irony that we're having to use science to make things more That should be apparent Yeah, okay. Yeah, totally. George, I'm going to head to you real quick just so everyone gets a chance to feed in on this but like the idea of like okay, so you found a really old document so what? Why should I care? Why should I even take that seriously? Like you can tell me Dead Sea Scrolls you can tell me counseling and the Sia came together and came up with a series of books but why do I care? Why should I care? Well, sometimes I ask myself these questions because I would like to understand what these deluded people all around me believe because I live surrounded by them and they baffle the hell out of me you know and they have a really strong influence over how I experienced my life That's true. But I keep trying and I'm very unsuccessful at this because I try to read the Bible and I keep falling asleep. George, you made a great point even if you are raised atheist even if you don't believe in a God even to your senior years being in America means that you are living in the effect of a Christian shadow more or less Well, don't forget too that my background is Jewish on top of this. Ah, that's, yeah, then that has an effect as well too. Okay, so I mean my mother and father were raised in the Jewish tradition one of the Jewish traditions and to tell you the truth I'm not quite sure which one but so I feel very baffled for instance here in my town where I live as the county seat it's got a bunch of supermarkets and two of these supermarkets the expensive ones have Jewish food kiosks Okay. I wish religious facilities I can find around here the phony ones the evangelical Jews they're not Jews I don't know what they are but you know they're not any kind of Jews that I grew up around so because they didn't exist when I was a kid Jews for Jesus is a relatively new phenomenon but you did I guess my takeaway was like even if you're far removed from religion growing up you still feel the effects of it because the people who decide the rules in this country have religious backing have to appeal themselves to religious lobbyists and stuff like that J.W. raise your hand what's up Well, a moment's kind of passed now Oh boy, you can bring it back Well, I was I've heard of Jews for Jesus and I did read some of their material when I was religious. Well, I was just going to say to the baptism thing it was actually an evolved ritual the original ritual was called mikva and it was a pool that they put outside of the temple that you're supposed to immerse yourself in before you go and enter the presence of God which it's supposed to be some sort of cleanliness thing but it's clearly a placebo I mean, think about how standing water where maybe thousands of people go there to just immerse themselves that's going to be the most disgusting cesspool Oh my God before you go and enter the temple I was thinking about it because of COVID but yeah there used to be a time where you could shake people's hands and be like oh, this isn't normal Why is it green? Oh, it's the spirit of God Yeah, they're kissing each other don't they know about germs? Well, with the Essenes baptism was just required for a change of heart it didn't really mean anything more than that but I think with John the Baptist it was a sign of being liberated from your sin and I'm sure it will I think he was the first one of the first to do the mikva outside of the temple area like in a river somewhere that's what I was just saying that was pre-lister and pasture and people didn't identify with germs and disease so that can sort of be excused I think So I'm going to devil's advocate I'm going to throw this one out to Larry I actually think that cultural hijacking has made it easier to be an atheist because we know how easy it is for someone who's about to be an atheist to just be like well I'm spiritual I'm just going to pick the next culturally acceptable thing so I don't have to be a label atheist I can still say I'm religious but I can at least pick the next thing Buddhist, crystal universal connection all that stuff to make you feel good and warm and not look like an outsider The buffet of religions around the world you can pick the one that currently suits your spirituality is it or but cultural hijacking has been like we're going to take all these gods take them off the table and just make it one thing it's the one thing and that way atheists can just be like well your one thing doesn't make any sense you're right one thing oh you made it somewhat simple it's the most popular one it's like wow if I don't believe in this one thing I'm 70% not on board with more than half of the religions around the world that's great you've made my job so much easier as an atheist well a lot of times you'll talk to deus and they'll say I believe in a god because I want to believe in a god at least they're honest they're just telling you up front it's something I want to believe in and there's no reason not to deism doesn't I don't have a problem with that because it doesn't have any dogma it doesn't have a book telling you what you should not do and not to do doesn't have any commandments but it still allows you to think that a supernatural being created the universe we don't know anything about that being he doesn't care about us or keep an eye on us or anything of course we wouldn't know but there's no dogma so it doesn't interfere in our lives per se I would add a biological element here I believe in believe in belief genes yeah and I think that we have propensities and beliefs are part of those propensities so everything in science right or just about everything is on a Gaussian curve and so that means a distribution of variation and ultimately in a biological organism that means differences in the DNA there's no reason for me not to believe that there are people who have sets of DNAs not yet identified not yet connected with belief or propensity to believe and that these people have more of the expression of those genes than for example I do yeah and therefore that's the context I put yeah so you're saying it's nature it could be nature not nurture but I personally believe it's more nurture but I wish it was as natural to question and challenge our own beliefs as it is to believe something you know Richard Dawkins was the one that he came up with a hypothesis that you know because magical thinking you know like when our early ancestors in the bush saw the rushling of the bushes you either thought it was some spooky demon behind the bush it was out to get you the wind and those who thought it was the demon behind the bush would run away and those people could live to talk about it whereas the science minded people says oh we don't know what it is so there's no reason to run and then they might have got eaten up by a lion or something like that and so it just seems like we are the descendants of the people that ran away from the rushling of the bush so that magical thinking kind of got passed down you know the generations to make us who we are and we're all kind of prone to beliefs and magical thinking to some degree well we know other minds exist I mean we look around to see other people and other writings and we know animals have minds so we tend to project them where they aren't as well and we always look for an explanation so what better explanation is that something or somebody is causing it and I think what Larry was saying that the way you're nurtured has a huge impact on the way that your thought process operates and I think you know no one's race to be a misogynist no one's race to be racist those are things that you pick up from your environment and one of the things I want to be absolutely clear about is like the everyone is a little bit racist and that's okay it's in my opinion it's like a salt you put it on food it makes jokes funnier it makes movies easier to deal with it keeps your blood pressure low it's the people who put way too much salt on it it's like that's too much salt it's like well my grandfather gave me this salt we have to put it on everything calm down a little bit I've never heard that analogy that I like it's pretty good and the flip side are the people who are like well I don't put salt on any of my food it's like well you're just very boring I am not gullible because I'm genetically disproposed not to be that is something where it's like hey at least consider that the gullibility gene is right next to the self delusion gene and you want to make sure that you're at least aware that these two things have a really big impact if one exists it's likelihood that the other one exists I don't know if there is a gullible gene but I want to be aware that it's very easy to convince yourself that you're right in this world I think it's possible I think it's possible to transcend your natural inclinations to be tribal or to be a magical thinker or something like that because I used to be a magical thinker huge same with me you just have to train yourself skepticism isn't something that comes natural what is magical thinking leading towards supernatural excuses to explain things things that can't be tested you basically explain things with no explanation you know God did it that's not an explanation it doesn't give us any information you give us an answer instead of an explanation I will tell you something that was really good when I grew up there was a show on Phos called the masked magician where it would basically tell you how every magic trick was done and I remember watching that show and I was like this is ruining magic for me but then when I realized how hard it was to do the trick magic went from exactly magic went from like this weird ambiguous entertainment to like this guy is good he did like the whole card lift he did a little pass pool here there was probably a string there this guy really is a good engineer I respect this on a technical level and at no point did his hands leave his arms it's the same thing with me with science and learning about how reality works like when you really look into deep sciences and hard sciences and stuff like that I used to think that science is ruining religion for me and it's ruining spirituality for me but then when you really look at nature and reality and how things weren't what we come to find out it's actually a better story than it's so much better yeah understanding is so much better than early so Buffalo is implying you go for it it starts from modesty and that is the scientist realized that he doesn't know we don't know anything absolutely everything about anything that's quite different from religion isn't it or belief in a deity absolutely Buffalo you made the point that you almost look to nature as if there was ever going to be a god worth worshiping it would be nature is that something along the lines that you had mentioned before am I using those words first of all on the believe and belief genes thing it's a gradation I think we like just like everything else you take a single enzyme from your body and mind that are not exactly the same there is variation a great deal of variation people are not one being or as the doctors say if we look so different on the outside why do you expect this to be the same on the inside so there's a gradation in all of this here but I think and if you believe that then the extreme believer the person that will believe in anything is way at the end of the Gaussian curve not at the exponential rise part of it and the majority of people are in that 60% to any exponential rise so everything's a gradation and and that's why I think that nature does have a real part in this nurture yes and of course they're all working back and forth with each other I really think that extreme people that believe and have a very high potentially having a high expression of sets of genes that are not yet identified I would love in the given that we can identify the genes they have not been identified and we don't have evidence for it I would love to have that belief once I have a good reason to have that belief until then I would feel like I'm in the same pool as Diaz where it's like I want to believe this I would never believe it and I would claim that I believe very very little I conclude I don't believe Eric what do you got yeah just kind of something got me thinking and I'm having maybe slight internet issues so apologize if I cut out no you're right but maybe even in contrast to what you said but earlier something I've read recently and thinking about raising children right I've got two young kids how much of a role am I going to have in the people they're going to be you know my nurture what's the percentage of that versus the nature and one of the podcasts I heard on this and something I've read really says you know a lot of it is nature and then of course with my thoughts it's unfree we just lost him that's okay he'll come right back keep going am I back yep okay so the thought is the genes that my kids have is the nature side and if you know my thoughts on free will the nurture that I give these kids I'm not actually in control of they come from my genes so really it kind of feels like a most of it 90% something like that is what I hear is nature yeah I would always I'm always wary of the idea that we are fundamentally different from each other when we can see from this COVID vaccine we can see from just the human condition itself that we are far more similar than we are desperately you know distinct and so it's just it's not a question of ingrained potential of like who can learn more who's a better who could be a better president should these groups of people who have these sets of you know sexual organs be better at leading people than compared to other people it's like no I think if we invest in the society where we treat people as equals and and and give everyone free opportunities to learn and and take the occasions that they want to work for and foster curiosity and critical thinking anybody can do anything and so I love the idea of like if someone is gullible critical thinking can make them skeptical if someone isn't doesn't know how to change out a carburetor on a car you know a half hour YouTube video can probably teach them how to do that exactly and it's not so much a genetic loss it's just a question of can we invest the time and nature as a society to get them on board with you know asking the right questions and anybody can do that and so I think if anything if anything if there is that genetic you know limitation nature is the thing that can take the nurturing the nurturing is the thing that can take us past any sort of limit JW what do you got this is kind of spooky I didn't meet my father until I was 24 years old and when I met him my everybody on my father's family was really it was it was just really strange because I sat like he did I had a my personality was very similar to his I had not met him in my whole life until I was 24 my BMI was a body mass index was very similar to his and so I think there's a lot more to be found where the whole nature nurtures concerned I just it's still it puzzles me I don't know why that is but without meeting him I still I even some of his habits and it's just like wow you know genetics fascinating field I would agree that if you share the same phenotype what's comfortable for your dad to do through force of habit would probably be what's comfortable for you to do as well though I don't think you would have the same fashion sense I think that's uniquely yours congrats on that Boudreau where's your podcast that man where can we find your stuff at man we're being lazy with our we did record one need we're fighting over who's going to edit it and but we're also doing another one but I will have the song I think we're at our final mix for our original song nice I should I should have that for you soon that was fun and then my last last comment on cultural hijack every Christmas every Christmas I think about this but Leonard Cohen's hallelujah is always paraded around as this Christmas song in this religious song it's just not it's about sex is it white Christmas the same thing too it's like a deliberately secular Christmas people don't realize that hijack buffalo last word on nature nurture what do you got well I would just say that again it's it's a gradation that's not that's not a I don't think you can take any single trait put it in the nature column or the nurture column they're inseparable but I think that I really think that some people have more propensity to express one side than the other and maybe it changes with age because because too I find myself thinking and about things much more the way my dad did the older I get maybe that's because I'm 77 years old now and so that may have something to do with it too but things change everything's changed everything's on a on a variable scale these things we're talking about are on a tremendous variable scale nice that's why I hate secular religion so much is you know how can you believe something that's been so divvied up George what's something we should check out by next week by next week yeah what's one thing you think we should check out by next week well I like a book called tales of the dervishes okay Idris Shaw it's um Sufi teaching stories each one has a hidden message nice like that very cool Scott you got some music going on what's the music that we're going to be playing over the break you want to do a quick intro uh this is what is it what was the radio and we got Scott Williams he's playing music during the break this is his latest jam why don't you tell us a little bit about it oh yeah just music that I put together um and I hope you enjoy it you can go to dubshine.bandcamp.com to support me if you like what you hear download something and support an independent musician very cool very cool we're going to be playing his track over the break today Larry you can before I have it to you I'm let's chat you can find myself on youtube you're probably watching this already feel free to leave a comment we'll go over it during next week's show Larry my own content is on digital free thought dot com be sure to click on the blog button for our radio show archives our atheist songs and many articles on the subject of atheism um my book is called atheism wait you wrote a book why don't you tell us anything about it Larry Larry Larry if you're wondering about atheism you keep writing books about cell phones and cough drops I want to know about atheism have you wrote a book about atheism can you tell me what it's about like is there anything like that it's called atheism what's it all about that's available on amazon if you have questions for the show you can send them to ask an atheist at noxvilleatheist.org if you're having trouble with leaving your religious beliefs behind you can go to recoveryfromreligion.org if you're watching this show on youtube you can be I mean be sure to like and subscribe this has been digital free thought radio I 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 bye everybody