 103.9 FM, WOZO Radio Knoxville. Ladies and gentlemen, Digital Freethought Radio Hour. Hello and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio Hour on WOZO Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today is Sunday, May 30th, 2021. I'm Larry Rhodes, Ordered Outer Five, and as usual we have our co-host Wombat on the line with us. Hello Wombat. Oh, I'm missing some teeth, but I'm still here. Let's go. Okay, and our guests today are Dott Pire, Dredp Pire Higgs, and George, two and a half, Brooklyn. He'll be joining us here a little bit. Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism, and the sciences. And conversely, we'll also talk about religions, religious faiths, God's holy books, and superstition. Wombat, what are we doing? What's our topic today? So we're going to be talking about how to talk to an atheist in front of an audience. And I thought it would be a good way to talk about rules of engagement when you bring an atheist onto your show to have a conversation, because a lot of us have had interviews or have interviewed former atheists, and they're all really well done interviews. So I was thinking, how can we crystallize all of those rules of engagement in one friendly video so that the next time a pastor wants to have an atheist on the show, there's no surprises or misstepings along the way. But before we get into it, we do have our own Pastor Farion extraordinaire. Pastor Farion extraordinaire. Jethire, please lead us in with our weekly invocation. Absolutely. So this is the Pastor Farion prayer of knowledge. Grant the flying spaghetti monster thy sauce and in sauce noodles and in noodles, meatballs and in meatballs, knowledge and from knowledge, knowledge of what is tasty and from knowledge of what is tasty, the love of spaghetti and from spaghetti, the love of the flying spaghetti monster. Very, very good. I've always heard a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing for two reasons, right? Hey, I want to do a quick review of how everyone's been doing over the last couple of weeks. It's been a while since we actually had a chance to meet up. I had some emergency dental work, and if anyone had been wondering what's going on, had a wisdom tooth came out, cracked another tooth at the bottom, and so they have to take out the wisdom tooth and the crack tooth, but all good now, and I'm looking forward to getting a fake tooth put in. I get to choose my own color. I think I'm going to go for silver. I want to go for like a piratey thing. Hey, right. It has to be gold, wouldn't it? Oh, is that how they do it? I thought, okay, I thought that was a myth. We'll have to go to Dredd to sort that out. Probably is. Dredd, you are here. What is the appropriate pirate gold? I think it's gold. It's gold. It's gold. We're rocking gold. Gold is more malleable, right? You know, so. Okay, okay. I thought you would want to sell the gold and just get the silver to chew on. You can make money off gold. Maybe the gold is for the front teeth, but you don't have to do a lot of chewing. There you go. Yeah. And people see it. Okay, cool. Dredd, how you been in the meanwhile? How's the last two weeks been treating you? How's your pursuit of chaos? Well, yeah, I'm still working on it. I just wrote my latest letter to ICBC. He had claimed that the last time, remember I came and I showed you that little scarf there? Yeah. So that's a permissible hair accessory. And anyway, he wrote back and said that I had gone in there claiming accommodation under the religious policy, which was not in fact the case. I just went in there wearing a hair accessory. Next time you got to record this as you walk in, like the second you walk in or something like that. Absolutely. And that's exactly right. I've actually ordered a temporary tattoo with that same symbol. So I'm going to go in again with the scarf. And they say, no, you can't have it. Take it off. Okay. Here I am. Now I've got a tattoo. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's nothing you can do about it. What are you going to do? Are you saying I can't get a driver's license now? Because I've got a tattoo on me? Exactly. I love that you keep pushing it. I love that you keep pushing it. So every experiment, Eric, you would agree on this, needs a control. And the control is a Christian cross on a headband or a Christian tattoo. And if they get to you and you don't. Yeah. I am trying to conscript one of our fellow pastor fairies to do just that. If any of us were in Canada, we'd be right there in line with you. I appreciate that. That sounds like a fun weekend. I appreciate that. You want to almost get not arrested? Yeah, I love that. I'm totally for it. I also got my RPAS license, which is remotely piloted aircraft system. So I am now licensed to fly drones and control the airspace. Yeah, but there's a big one, isn't there? The big job, so. Yeah. Very cool. Very, very cool. Boudreau, you know you've got that ghost coming up behind you. What's going on there? You're kind of Japanese horror movie. So my son had his 10th birthday this weekend and my daughter set up a cardboard fort complete with a mail slot for delivering mail and LEDs. I think it's so. I haven't broken it down yet. Don't have the heart to do it. So. Have you spent any time in there yourself? I took the tour. That's all about it. Okay. But yeah, I've been playing this thing. Can I point to it? Same here. We've got a gig. Is it a base? We have a gig plan. Yeah, I've been playing the bass. I'm getting ready for a show we're going to do on Thursday. In person? Like outside? What's going on? No, it's it's a indoor place that's yeah, things have been really starting to relax here. Nice. CDC is saying fully vaccinated people can, you know, basically kind of carry on almost like normal. So. Yeah. So playing live again. It's crazy. I don't know. So along with that and not to put it down on it, but I was, I went to get a pizza yesterday and I was driving back home. I went past our local movie theater and I saw that it was completely shut down. And I was like, yeah, it's great to be able to go outside and be outside and like get food and like feel, feel secure in the fact that I'm out in public for, for trivial things like pizza and I don't have a face mask, but there's still the impact, you know, left and right, you know, going up and down. But I'm glad that like we are steadily getting back towards that normality, you know, so like I will, I will give up movie theaters for that though. I am sad that we don't have as many as before, but it looks like you got your own personal one. And I think that's, that'll be a testament of this like, Oh, but it's not on a phone. What are you talking about watching movies? That's so bizarre. Yeah. Good luck in your gig. I know you don't need it, but one last question. Have you been, have you been meticulously practicing like nonstop now during COVID? Like, have you just been drilling on the base scales and all that stuff or what? No, to be honest without, without having a gig on the books, I get pretty lazy. You know, I did, I did those covers and different things goofing around. But if I don't have, you know, if I don't have something on the count like we're playing a gig, I'm sure I get pretty lazy. So, but I have been the last week I've been memorizing, learning, practicing. So, so yeah, I'm better now, but yeah, I need, I need that thing on the calendar. Everybody needs goals. And when I work out, I don't say I'm working out. I say I'm training if that helps for anything. It puts me in the right mindset. So I totally agree with that. Scott, I want to know everything about you in the last two weeks. How's your family been? How's the music parade of, of connected instruments going? Tell me about it, man. Oh man. So that's going well. We're still recording more music, but also the second follow-up for the Deborah Magone project with the Grammy writers and things like that. So we finished recording that. So it's all done. It's about to be released again on the same record label. And this one's more of a positive message, how to make the world a better place, encourage people to be positive and treat each other well. It's a real positive uplifting type of dance song. So that's what that's all about. And also on another front, I've been building out a new exploring epistemology show. So I had my first show yesterday, interviewing into a little SE chat with a former atheist who just converted over to Islam and we all know who he is. And yeah. So it went through some questions trying to figure out his process for why he converted over. And so that was pretty interesting. So yeah. I want to know all about that. And like in like the next 10 minutes, I want to hear all about it for sure. Who was that? Yes. Guy was formerly known as Justin Downing. He was kind of up and coming. He had a YouTube channel called Empathetic Atheist. And so he would talk to different theists and kind of challenged them and talked to them and put in a nice cordial way. So his thing was a little different in the fact that it was not so toxic in the conversation. But he had Muslims that joined his group and his YouTube channel and they eventually got to him and converted him over to Islam. And so now he dumped the channel and he's like 100% Muslim. He changed his name to Khalil Allah. And he's like against atheism and debates atheists and tries to get them to see the light and stuff like that. So, you know, so I wanted to interview him and see what's going on with that. Sir, did he give any kind of reason why he converted back to believing in God? It is so funny. If you watch the video, he gives absolutely no reasons. The only thing he says is that it just seems like Islam makes more sense than Christianity does. Now, hold on a second. I feel like if you were to tell me just because I know Christianity so well, I think it's more of like a, you moved me from one ambiguous set of things that I know aren't true to another brand new ambiguous set of things that I haven't had a chance to investigate yet. And this seems a lot better because it makes more sense to me. I'd be like, yeah, but when you start delving into that, it's just a layer and it's the exact same cake. Yeah. Yeah. It was great. One delusion for another. Yeah. I had like a... Wait, this is strawberry cake, too. I had no idea he was going to say something like that. So, when he said that, like there was like a million SE questions that came to mind, like, which one do I go with? The one that I decided to go with was, well, if something is internally consistent, does that mean, does that make it true? Yes. Does this mean that's certainly mean truth? No. Right. Right. I said, like, if Harry Potter is a hundred percent, you know, internally consistent, does that mean Harry Potter books true? Right. And he admitted, no, it doesn't. Though you got to... Though in my head... I wasn't expecting that either. I was surprised he gave that as an answer though. Right. I... There's so many minefields when it comes to stuff like that, that it's like... Yeah. It's... I love the fact that we're taking different approaches. I've been trying to simplify my SE approach, but we can talk more about that. I do want to get... I want to get to George. George Brown. How you doing? I haven't been in the last couple of weeks. What's going on? Honestly, I can't remember at all, but I want to comment about my experience with a Muslim. Okay. I always wanted to meet and know a Muslim, and they're kind of thin on the ground here in the United States. You know, my paths and Muslims' paths have just not crossed very much. Especially in East Tennessee. Well, not even here. I mean, I'm talking about California right now. Oh, really? And so I was working on... I was working for a dot-com on a project and a manager there was a Muslim and we hit it off. We started forming a friendship and we started going out to eat lunch every day downtown San Francisco. And he was very devout. You know, very religious guy. Now I come from a Jewish background and I've always been an atheist. I was raised an atheist, but I didn't just like throw that in his face. He was talking to me about how much he respected Jewish people. And this sounded very interesting. The fellow was from Lebanon, you know, where they have a lot of strife going on for many, many years. And he's saying, I respect the Jewish religion. I respect Jewish people. I think, wow, this is really going to be interesting. I want to hear what he has to say. But it really boomerang. He said, I respect everybody. If they're sufficiently religious, I don't care what their religion is. And again, I'm going, wow. If they're sufficiently religious, I don't care what their religion is. Yes, that is what he said, Ty. And... George Brown with the New Show Topics. Continue. You know, and I was thinking, man, this is going to be one interesting guy. Interesting guy to talk with. But then it came up about my own religious involvement. And he decided that I was not sufficiently religious. That was the end of our friendship. He wouldn't talk to me again. Oh, no. That's an obscure standard. And yet he already... Oh, out of his eyes. So here is all these years later, and I'm still in the same position. I still want to... Here I am in this little town, halfway between Knoxville and Chattanooga, and I have seen some Muslim people walking around. So, hmm, what am I going to do? Stay tuned. I don't know what the answer is yet. George, I have so many comments about that story, but I do want to get to Larry first, and then we can round out our How's Everybody Been Doing section. Larry, how you been doing for the last two weeks? What's going on with you? Doing fine. Just staying around the house. I did do one atheist table in downtown Knoxville down in... They call it Crutch Park, K-R-U-T-C-H. And I had like four people in two hours. One of which was an atheist, and I said, wow, I didn't know you had a group, had a table, and told them all about the atheist society in Knoxville with the other three people. Great name for a group. Best group name. Because it has ask in the name. It's such a great name. It has atheists, and it has asks. And you're like, oh, this is perfect. That's the best link. Everyone should have that. Especially for a group in Knoxville. Yes. Yeah. It's wonderful. But the three of the people were believers. We had a short chat. One of them was very short. He told me he was a believer. I told him I wasn't, and that was about it. But he didn't know what an atheist was, so I had to explain it to him. I had to explain it to two people. Sure. But so Ben's staying busy. Hey, did you get that motorcycle ride in that you were talking to me about? I did. Nice. How was it? I've got a couple of them in over the last couple of weeks. They were great. They were a little hot out there, but it's pretty naturally hot for this time of year. They're like 88 degrees in May. Yeah. But today it rebounded. It's 68, 69. It's a beautiful day. I'm looking forward to running it outside. So, Dredpire, go for it. Yeah, I just wanted everyone to say hi to Loma. He's watching our live stream right now. Hey, Loma. All right, so what we're going to deep dive first is, we're going to get into Scott's topic because I think it melds well with the topic of the show. But I do have a hot take, and I want to hear everyone's opinion on this hot take. George's friend who wants everyone to be sufficiently religious so that he could be friends with them. I feel like that's a guy who's just looking for either A, and A, just looking for someone who's not going to challenge his point of view. It's like, hey, we're all religious. It's not a big deal. And I can assume I'm right, but as long as everyone's religious, it's easier for me to assume that everyone's slightly wrong, and I'm correct than to have someone have the exact opposite opinion of me of, like, I have no religion at all. I don't find any of it worthwhile to believe in because then I have to start asking myself some hard questions about why is this guy not fitting in my worldview, and I don't want to change my worldview so I won't be friends with you. Or, more nefarious, here's the hot take. He's looking to see if the booster pack of just how can I manipulate this guy into thinking like how I think. Because if he comes into me with this weird ambiguous set of morals, I can tweak that so that he can start to be on my team. And I need someone who's just close enough to make my job easier. But if they have no work, then it's not worth being their friend because that's the path that I'm on. I'm trying to get people on my team. That's my quest in life. Hot take, Dre. I did not get that sense from talking with him. We did have lunch for a few times. I have to say it was a very exciting project. It was a lot of people, you know, a new dot com that was beginning to take off on the internet like a storm. And the manager of the department I was in was Lebanese. And I have to say, and all the time I had been working in high tech, he was the absolute best boss I ever worked for. Let me see if I can get some feedback from Boudreau. And we come right back to this. But Boudreau, I want to know sufficiently religious. I'm okay if you're religious as long as you're sufficiently religious. What in the world do you think that means? You know, I had a different hot take on it, I suppose. And I'm not sure if this is more aligned with how he was thinking. But you kind of, and I encounter a lot of people at Summit sometimes that take this kind of safe road of they're not really willing to say they don't believe in a God, but they really don't believe in any of the Bibles or any of the scripture. So they're just spiritual. And I feel like if you're spiritual, you're pretty much okay with every religion, right? It's a little more a safer way to, and it's certainly a very liberal, politically liberal stance. You know, you're kind of politically correct. Yeah. Yeah, you're okay. You're okay with, you know, a gay Christian or, you know, Islam or Buddhist or all everything. As long as we all believe in some kind of woo. That was my hot take. Is that what your take is? Boudreau, I just want to say that that is the sense that I had from talking with this person. Okay. I won. I won. What did I win? Dred. Dred, what do you do? Well, it's almost like hedging your bet, right? Yeah. The way that Boudreau is putting it. And it really does remind me of Pascal's wager in a sense, right? Is that, you know, rather than giving up belief completely, you're just kind of hedging your bet that you have more to gain in being right than if you choose the wrong thing and you go to hell. So it's like pretending, trying as hard as you can to believe in something that you can't maybe put your finger on, but you're hedging a bet that if there is something out there, you'll find favor with it in the end. That is also a good point. I love the different takes on sufficiently religious as long as you're religious. Larry, what's your, what's your... Oh, it kind of gets me in the, I hear this a lot. You know, everybody believes in God their own way, you know, type of thing. Everybody who just follows their faith that it's all good. But when it comes right down to it, the other guy's going to hell. But you never let, you never get down to that point with them and you never actually ask them, am I going to hell? Yeah. They never come, you know, come up to the point of saying it, but what do you do? I mean, it's not, it's not come by y'all at that point. Right, right. No, there's only one ticket and only one winner. It's a heavenly American item. There's only going to be one or nobody, right? Scott, I'd like to hear from you the idea of sufficiently religious as long as you're religious. What does that mean to you? You're on mute, my friend. Because you're a clickety clackety. Clickety and clackety. Okay. So to me, just that statement kind of tells me, like the keyword there sufficiently. Yes. So what that kind of rings a bell with me, it says that this is a moral issue. Boom. Because you got my point. Because it's exactly because the thing about it is you could argue, well, there's all sorts of religious people that are bad people. Well, he's, he said, I didn't say just religious people. I said sufficiently religious. So you see, he's kind of like setting it up already. There's a standard for religion that he's using. So you can't just be religious. You have to be sufficient within my restriction. And if you're not sufficiently religious, you're not sufficiently moral. As you consider ISIS sufficiently religious. Oh, man. There you go. Minefields, dude. Yes. George, what do you got? You know, sometimes I feel like I, I suddenly don't know the meaning of a word. And I, I want somebody to define a moral to me because I blanked on it. I'll say just standards of how to treat people play in a, in a social environment. So isn't that ethics? I mean, ethics and morals are tied together. Yeah. Ethics is the collection of the morals. So you have morals, which are the rules, morals, which is the system of applying the rules and ethics, which is the combination of the rules together. So they're all branches on the same tree. It's just a question of how far up on the branch are you going? I think just to find that sufficiently well. I'm too adult brains to my point is very similar to Scott. I feel like he's making a moral judgment there. I think he's saying like, Hey, I, when I say sufficiently religious, I don't mean if you're, you know, like maybe he likes you. Maybe he likes you if you're Jewish Christian or, or more Muslim, but if you go outside of the Abrahamic gods and you're saying, well, I believe in Vishnu or she, but was like, well, that's not sufficiently religious in my book. Cause I don't know where your morals come from. Cause it's not coming from the same, you know, base God. Subject. Yeah. And where are you getting that standard from though? I do like that. I have heard religious, but not spiritual. I feel like that's sort of like an appeal to not offend. And I feel like I'm okay with anyone who's religious as long as you're sufficiently religious. There's an appeal to, I'm not trying to offend anybody. I'm okay with whatever God you believe in. I see the little bit in there and also see a little bit of the Pascal's wager of like, yeah, maybe you're the right. Maybe I'm right, but I know I'm right. That's the wager I took, but I do feel like there's a moral assessment going on there. Speaking of, and that's why I think it's great. Cause once you hit the idea of atheism, he was a hard out. And so like, how does a guy like that manage to actually have a conversation with an atheist and not actually bail out on it? You know, I, I didn't even say to him that I was an atheist. You found out? No, no, I concealed that because the thing was that, I mean, it was a very complex situation really because here I'm talking with a fellow from Lebanon who was, you know, he's an Arab and he's, he's a devout Muslim. He talked about his own marriage that he had to wait until he found a Muslim girl who was sufficiently religious to be his wife. And he was so happy to have met a woman like this. And he, he was defiant against Israel. You know, he, he, he talked about having to live on his knees and he was, but George, the idea of like hiding you're an atheist, how did he find out that you're an atheist? You were saying that once he found out about your religious stance, he was gone. Yeah. How did you find that out? How did he find out? And what? He got it by osmosis, I swear. He was, because I was not sufficiently enthusiastic. It was in my, it was in my manner. It was in my demeanor. In my head, I am now leaning towards more nefarious friend who's looking for a religious package to try to manipulate because all these conversations you're telling me about him, all these details you're explaining, he had to have told you that. And if he's not getting the same from you, it's almost as if he's selling it, the ideas to you and seeing what sticks. And as soon as he found that nothing sticks, he's like, great, I'm off to the next guy. Well, I didn't get that sense from him. True, true, but you're a nice guy, George. You're a nice guy. You're a nice guy. I got the, you were born an atheist. I was, I was in the flames of people trying to endorse me. And I got the red flags, baby. My, my spider reflex. That's it. I was so, I was so disappointed. We're down with that friend. Friends in the bad group. We're, we're moving on. But I have a sister who's Muslim and I told her I was an, she knew I was an atheist like from the get go. We have lots of conversations. Really great layer. I think we're at the bottom of the half. We are when we come back, we're going to be talking about how to talk to an atheist and going to that story. Yeah. Okay. This is the digital free thought radio hour and W O Z O radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. And we'll be right back after this short break. 103.9 FM W O Z O radio. Maxville. Hello and welcome back to the second half of the digital free thought radio hour. I'm doubter five and we're on wozo radio. That's W O Z O radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today is May 30th, 2021. Let's talk about the atheist society of Knoxville or ASK, which was founded in 2002. We're in our 19th year. ASK has over a thousand members now. We have weekly zoom and in person meetings starting. I can think that started in May 11th. So they've had two of them now. We'll be meeting at Barley's Taproom and Pizzeria in Knoxville's old city out on the patio every Tuesday after work. So you can find us online in Facebook, meetup.com or KnoxvilleAtheist.org or just Google Knoxville Atheist. It's just that simple. Also, if you're interested in the rationalists of East Tennessee, that's RET, just go to rationalist.org. 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. Where do you want to pick up there? I want to get into Scott's own interview with our man, Justin. I feel like we were looking for a reason for why he joined Islam. I know why it's the sweet hat. I saw him doing the interview with his other Muslim friends. That's a cool hat. And the friends had the hat and he had the hat and they looked brand new and they even had the sticker on the side. We need cool hats. You're not a religion or a cult until you have a cool hat. And I think atheists just need the cool hat. That's really what we needed from the beginning, right? Scott, how did the interview go and what were your rules of engagement or at least thoughts in your head to make sure the conversation stayed respectful? Right, right, right. What I did is before we even went live, we all met, you know, we met and we had a little discussion. And I told him, you know, this is not a debate. I'm not here to throw gotcha questions at you. This is, and I asked him, are you familiar with street epistemology, which of course he was. He's been a big figure in the atheist community at least with some, in some circles. And so he was very familiar with Anthony Magnobosco and, you know, different street epistemologists. And he used to practice it too, back when he was an atheist, I guess. So he was familiar. He knew it was going to be what the rules were from the beginning. He kind of understood all that going in. So that was a good thing. And, you know, and so going from there, I just kind of wanted to set the interview up, you know, be really cordial with them and give them props where it was due and just kind of help them relax. Because let me tell you, he's been having a lot of problems with different atheists in the community. Even Matt Dilla-Hunty, him and Matt Dilla-Hunty went at it, surrounding his conversion. So he's just got this idea that, oh, I was so disillusioned, you know, I thought atheists were my friends in the community was going to hold me down. But once I flipped, now they're all attacking me and lying about me and all of this stuff. So I wanted to help let them know, at least here, you're not going to get that kind of treatment so we can talk, you know, have a productive conversation. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. It sounds like, and I would say this again, one of my New Year's resolutions for 2020 was to get off social media, including like YouTube and stuff and just deal with what I can handle in like a weekly or a daily format without anyone telling me what to pay attention to. I've done marvelous work in terms of my mental health. And I feel like when someone makes a transition like from even Christian to atheists or atheists into Muslim, that's, in my opinion, a very personal transformation. And to introduce that on a global stage with an audience where people are weighing in on a very vulnerable transition for you, I can imagine that being a very, very traumatic experience where you don't know who your friends are and you make yourself even more willing to bite down on whatever conclusion you jump to, regardless of how reasonably you went there. And so I feel like I'm seeing that in that transition. But overall, you had a conversation with Justin. Did it go well? Did it go badly? I mean, I don't really know the update on it. Okay, it went really well. Basically, I was just asking some general questions. Going into his history a little bit, he started, he was raised a Catholic, baptized when he was a teenager, then got out of it when he was around 16 years old. Then he went into, I guess, a Methodist church is what it was. And then he kind of got disillusioned with that. And then he became a hard atheist as he described himself. So I just asked, yeah, go ahead. Hard atheism I have a question about, but Dredd, you had a comment. What's going on? Well, it just seems to me that he couldn't have truly been an atheist. Ooh! You know what I'm saying? Well, the reason I say that is because it sounds like he was on the fence. He wasn't jiving with Christianity and that because of the huge difference or the big difference between Islam and Christianity, it's really a transition from one to the other with a sort of a void in between the two. So that's not truly atheism, maybe agnosticism. Dredd, can I weigh in on this? Because I think this is a good segue. Larry, please correct me on this. In my opinion, an atheist is just someone who's not convinced of a God clean. And you can be not convinced for a period of time and then convinced of another God. So as long as you're not convinced, that's an atheist in my book. What do you think, Larry? Well, that's why I particularly asked him what reason did he give for saying he left atheism for a God? I mean, it comes right down to us. All of us atheists want a good reason. If there's a God out there, we want to know about it. We want good reasons. We want evidence. We want something that's repeatable, testable. What reason does he have? That's one of the reasons anybody says, I used to be an atheist. That's the first place I go. What convinced you that a God was real, rather than just saying it was a nicer religion than the other one. And you can be an atheist with very low standards of being convinced of something being true, which is probably what got him back onto the religious train. But in my head, if you aren't convinced that anything's true, I'm willing to give you the credence that you're an atheist. But I don't care what you call yourself. I care if you have a high standard of truth. And if you have a high standard of truth in the Christian, it tends to filter you out towards wherever I'm at. And if you have a high standard of truth as an atheist, it tends to filter you out to wherever I'm at. Because I have a high standard of truth. And I care what I believe is true. And I don't want to have to believe in false things. And I don't have the best standard, but I at least know that God don't know is the best answer until I have a good reason to believe in false things. And I don't think Justin was on that page yet. And that's probably why he said that. That's where I'm picking at. Yeah? It's an unfortunate thing that can happen to atheists. That's why I'm saying it. Larry? A lot of having a high standard of truth is having a high standard of evidence. If you have a low standard of evidence, in other words, of anecdotal stories, meet your standard of evidence and you have a low standard of evidence. And the Bible is made up of nothing but anecdotal stories. It's all secondhand. And David Hume taught us a long time ago that we can't believe miracle claims because people are more prone to lie than the laws of the universe are to change. Yes. For an instant. Hey, that's a greatly well-stated sentiment. Though, Bujo, I'd love to hear you weigh on this. The idea that atheists are just as... An atheist with a low standard of truth is just as prone to self-illusionment as someone who is fully religious and has a low standard of truth. In my opinion, it's that standard that needs to be increased. First, not the label, right? Because you could be an atheist and have terrible... I'm sorry if I'm talking over you. Bujo, what's your thoughts on what we're talking about? No, no. I actually tracked most of that. Sorry, I had some distractions in the background, so I killed the video for a moment. Was it the dog or the kids? I must know. Was it the dog or the ghost? The dog or the ghost. No, no. I totally agree with what you're saying. I think it sounds like that's what's at play here and maybe even a little bit of, you know, hearing his history kind of believing religion in a teenage-year timeframe. I mean, that's rebellion. There are other... Atheism is a cool rebel tag to go with. It can be hip. Yeah, I didn't catch from what little we know about his history. I didn't catch any sincerity to his atheism. Although being big in the street of epistemology and, I mean, does he have any recordings from back when he was an atheist? He is so... I thought he was very artful and skilled at logical thinking. I actually learned a lot in some of the things he said just by watching his channel and being a part of a lot of that stuff with him. So it came as a real big surprise because the same things he used to criticize theists for, he's now practicing that. Like, you know, I asked him, like one of the things, it's like, what's a good reason to be a Christian? And, you know, let the Christian tell you, you know, hellfire or blah, or because it's true or because it will make you a moral person, you know, and he would point out how those are bad reasons to conclude that the thing is true, right? So he understands all that. So when I asked him, I turned the question around on him. So why should an unbeliever become a Muslim? What's the best reason? And he says, well, because it makes sense. Again, it just makes sense. And I never, I don't understand, really, I don't know where to go with that, to be quite honest with you. I will let George weigh in on this. George, you're on mute, my friend. Take yourself off. You know, what I'm hearing is that he has a fundamental need to believe, you know, it's down to an emotional logic. And I don't know. I think it's, I'm now talking philosophically myself. It's a very deep need that a lot of us have, you know, to be part of something that is larger than ourselves. Just the genetic fabric of trying to be a social creature. More or less is what. Yes, yes, yes, indeed. And, and, you know, I don't want to go off on this, but we're afraid of death. We're afraid of our own death. Sure. And we're, we're afraid of the deaths of the people who brought us into the, into existence and, and. Or at least are meaningful to us. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so underlying a lot of, let's say beliefs are this, this fundamental belief that I'm talking about. And so there's the urge to believe, I would like to believe, you know, I just can't, you know, I don't know what else to say. I'll go out. I like to weigh in on just one quick thing. I think there's a fundamental need for attention here too. You have a guy who has a YouTube channel trying to get to more subscribers. And when he transitions, or at least considering it, you have a group that's like, what's his original audience is like, no, what are you doing? That makes no sense. You're doing it badly. Like I'm telling you critically that this doesn't make sense. And then you have the other group that's like, we're going to make a, you're going to be our poster boy for all the people who are going to wear this hats. You're incredible. You're awesome. You're great. And when you have that, you have the competition between a heart truth and a delicious lie and delicious lies. When nine out of 10 times, baby, it's why we are where we are right now. It's like, it's how all marketing works. It makes you feel good and makes you like, oh, I want to, I want that fancier car that does exactly nothing for me. Larry, what do you got? Well, one thing, one thing I mentioned a little earlier was that we have to have, we have this need for something larger than us built into us genetically. A lot of people believe that. And I think that's true because for most of our formative years, if not all of them, we had someone larger than us that we could depend on our parents, our father, our mother. As a matter of fact, if you look at the symbolism and the wording of a lot of the origin, the religions of the world, God is our father in heaven, you know, and the Catholic church is really about bad about that because they then make the priests, your father and the nuns, your sisters, and all of that. And of course, Mother Mary. No one talks about Mother Mary. Everyone only cares about the father. In fact, I want to make that a show. Why couldn't Mary just be the disabled? I believe they do talk about that. I want to know, I want to talk about that. I got opinions, but yeah, I hear you. That's all I say. That's true. Scott, what's your way in? I was just going to say everything you guys are saying have been charged or hurled against him in his groups and in his channel and all of the, and probably I'd say maybe 95% of the atheists that used to follow him are saying, oh, he's just doing this for attention. He's just trying to remarket himself, rebrand himself as something else. This has caused a lot of war because apparently Justin's been very angry about that accusation. So he's been really on the, he's been really on the tear about that and fighting that whole idea. So the other thing is that he says behind the scenes, he says, no, my reasons for becoming a Muslim is because of the Kalam cosmological argument. That doesn't get you any. And the hard problem of consciousness, those two things. The Kalam cosmological argument is your Sam Harris. Just throwing it out. You mentioned that four out of five shows. We can go to that. George, just so you know, we've defined it on multiple instances. We know the problem with that argument. Larry, do you want to hit it again? The Kalam cosmological argument just says it's going to be a God. There has to be a God. I mean, he could have stayed in Christianity. He could have gone back to Christianity. And at the end of the day, it's just an assertion. Yeah, it's just an assertion. He could have been a deist at the end of the day. On my interview, I asked him, how do you go from there? Let's say, I told him, OK, I grant you that everything that started to exist, let's just pretend like the universe started to exist. How do you go from that? Right. And that's a big grant, right? Even if that was true, and I asked him, how do you go from that to Allah? And he never answered the question. There was just a lot of dancing around. Yeah. Oh, man. Anyway, it did sound like, remember, we were talking about the topic of the show, is rules of engagement, how to show respect, how to get atheists on your show. It sounds like you had an agreed upon format of the questions that you would be asking and the tone that you would be asking them in before you even had the interview begin. And I think that's a good way to start a conversation with an atheist, especially if you have a different face on the show, because no one wants to feel like they're being attacked and no one wants to feel like they're being immediately judged or part of an interrogation. And so when I had my interview with that Christian way back when, I had it in black and white writing. This is what I want to talk about. Please don't preach at me. He did preach at me, but I made sure in the interview, he was like, you told me you wouldn't, and this is breaking those rules. And he's like, oh, I'm upset. I'm like, that's not my problem. Anything else? He's like, well, I'm gonna end the interview. I was like, great, I'd love to leave too. And that was more or less the end of it, but I at least have that record. And I think managing and respecting those rules of engagement, very important. Boudreau, it's nice to see George with you. Just wanted to give him a chance to say, hey, what's up before we head out. But Boudreau, Boudreau, tell me about your interview with John if you can summarize in a couple of minutes. Yeah, like, I think a big part of it was talking about how I got to where I am in atheism and kind of that backstory, which I don't know. I think that's when you're talking about how to talk to an atheist, I think that's usually a good opener, a good starting point to it. Yeah, no humorous person. Yeah, because we've got George here who was not really indoctrinated with anything. And we've got folks from all different walks and different religions, parts of the country. So I think that's a good kind of opener. And you get to know the person's journey a little bit. You know, I do think it's important to have them admit that everyone's born an atheist. And, you know, you do, you know, we all were atheists. And then, you know, some stay or some back and forth. So it was an equal conversation. Yeah, I love that you made that point. I actually have some people on YouTube who take these conversations that we have over Zoom and cut them so that they can make arguments against me or street epistemology. Like there's a whole practice session that does like, let's look at the latest critical video on Thai and see how we can like crop it out. And it'll be like clips of me being from YouTube being like, yeah, eating babies is awesome. And that'll probably be its own clip later. But I do like the idea of making sure that people understand that we were born atheists. I think that is like the most crucial give possible because that is the case. You weren't born, you know, quoting scripture. You weren't born saying praise Jesus or whatever. You didn't have a God belief. And then someone down the road convinced you that God was true. And then that's what you believed until you agree. In my opinion, which is atheism, George. I like, I like that idea of eating babies. Can I buy a bet? Can I get a baby sandwich at Subway? A foot long baby sandwich. Any other George, I'd love to get your way in final thoughts before we get ready to close the show. I hate to waste the time because I just didn't hear. But I would just say that I recently heard an argument about a new book that sounds really interesting. It's called attention marketing. And it talks about modern marketing, which I think religions have always been involved in attention marketing. But it's something you might just Google and see what you think. Hmm. Fair enough. I like that. Other George, George Brown, is there anything that you would recommend that we check out before next week? No, no, baby, baby sandwiches sound really good to me. I want sandwiches. Sound really good to you. Wonderful. Wonderful. What if I told you all, all meat that you're eating is basically from babies, just nonhumans that there's your, you can't wait for babies to grow up. It's the truth. Now we see the real reaction. That's what you have to see. You have to see it does hurt a little bit. Dredd, what do you got? What's coming up in the future? Well, of course, you can find my stuff here on my YouTube channel, Mind Pirate. And thank you, Larry, for posting it on your web page there or your Facebook page. Hopefully I'm looking for 100 subscribers. I've got 88. So I've got 12 to go. So please sign up. That way I can change my, modify my channel. And I'm reading a book right now from Steven Pinker. It's called How the Mind Works. So it's been, I've just gotten into it and it's really, really excellent. If anyone's ever read any of Steven Pinker stuff, I would heavily recommend this book. Wonderful. Wonderful. Scott, what's coming up in the horizon? All right. So the single is going to be dropping soon, but you can get a preview of it. Go to dubshine.bandcamp.com. I uploaded it yesterday for everybody to check it out. Other than that, we're going to keep on working on the Exploring Epistemology channel. Hopefully every Friday for every other Friday. I got a spot on there coming up. Yeah, that's right. You'll be on there next. So that's, I'm looking forward to that. And that's going to be on the board skeptic channel. So if you just search board skeptic and YouTube, you'll pull it up and you'll see the channel or the show exploring epistemology. We may have to do a session on just how to make a YouTube channel name. They got, they got to be easy to say. They can be like, yeah, it's just board skeptic with 16 Ks. And you know, you'll get into it. You can find myself on that chat. You're probably here now. Buffalo. What do you got? It's just to correct that. It's attention merchandising. And it has very much what you just said. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I deliberately picked. Let's chat to just keep it as simple and casual as non intimidating as possible. Cause that's what I'm all about. Larry. Take us out. What's going on with you? Well, there was a few things that I were going to mention about how to talk to an atheist, but we never did get. Well, I don't even know what atheism is all about. So why am I supposed to figure that out? Well, atheism, I mean, I mean, I have a book called atheism. What's it all about? It's available on Amazon. I got you. Wow. There it is. You can see it. That's the picture of my daughter, by the way. Oh really? You never told me that. Yeah. First time I knew that. Okay. My own content is on digital free thought.com. Be sure to click on the blog at button for main content. Radio show archive, atheist songs and many articles on the subject are found there. My YouTube channel is found by just searching for Larry Rhodes or doubter five. Either one will get you there. If you have any questions for the show, send them to ask an atheist at KnoxvilleAtheist.org and we'll then answer them on future shows. If you're having trouble leaving religious beliefs behind, you can find help at recoveringfromreligion.org. They help a lot of people. If you're watching this on YouTube, be sure to like and subscribe. This has been the digital free thought radio hour for another Wednesday. 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. We'll see you next week. Say bye everybody. Bye. Bye. Bye.