 on this computer. Hello and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio Hour and WOZ Radio 103.9 LPF. I'm here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today is January 22nd, 2023. I'm doubter five or Larry Rhodes. And with us, we have our co-host today, as usual. Hello, Wombat. Hey, I'm the Wombat. What's up? Cool. Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a talk radio show about atheism, freethought, rational thought, humanism, and the sciences. And conversely, we'll also talk about religion, religious faiths, gods, holy books, and superstition. And our special guests today are the John and Richard from England. Welcome. Hello. Andred Pirate Higgs from Western Canada. How the devil are you? We'll be talking about the devil in just a minute. And if you think that you're the only non-believer in your town, well, you're just not. In Knoxville, in the middle of the Bible Belt, we have a group of over a thousand of us, almost 1,100 now, an atheist society of Knoxville. And we'll tell you more about them after the mid-show break. So be sure to stick around. Wombat, what's our topic today? Why not just destroy Satan, which is a question of the West by our own Redditor, honest, classic 6,950. We're going to get into that. And I think it's an interesting topic. But before we do that, save that main course and let's have some appetizers. How about some noodles and who better to lead us in our noodley appetisement than our own Dred Pirate Higgs for our weekly vacation? Our noodley Lord, who art in the calendar, I'll daunte be thy noodles, thy blood be run, thy sauce be yum with meat as it is with vegetables. Give us this day our garlic bread and forgive us our cussing, as we forgive those who cuss against us and lead us not into ketoism, but deliver us some carbs. For thine are the meatballs and the sauces and the grog, whenever and ever. Nothing hits like some good carbs. I can tell you it's really, really good for you. All right, guys, I'd love to catch up before we dump into the main topic, Dred Pirate Higgs, quest for chaos, general life in Canada. Hopefully you have some sunlight going on there. How's life been for you, my friend? Not too bad. We had pasta on Friday. So that's our monthly get-together and feasted over some good, whole-hearted noodles and sauce. I also had a conversation in the morning with an investigator from the B.C. Umbudsperson Office with respect to my plate with the Ministry of Justice and Public Safety about my private investigator's license. And they're having first photographed me, allowed me to have my license with my hat, with my tricorn, and then demanded it back three months later saying, if you don't give it back, we're going to punish you. I like to take away your license. So anyway, so we've got the ombudsman on it. And we'll see. I will keep you all updated. You have great first-hand now experience that I'm sure you've had others in the past, but of fighting a system while following the system's rules, right? Yeah. And it can make you understand why when the stakes are so much more dire, why people try to go out of the system to protest, because the system, the mechanics for systems you change within the system typically aren't designed for people to disrupt the system, right? And so you can see why people are now like, this sucks. Time to protest in a more dramatic fashion, right? Exactly. Yeah. All right. It's tougher, you know, and like you say, I do have that experience of, you know, trying to beat your head against the drum to make a noise when, in fact, the key is to use the system's own bureaucracy and policies in order to undermine undermine itself, right? Because generally, people that, you know, build these institutions are generally stupid. Right. So, you know, it's just a matter of finding the flaws and worming your way through until finally, until you make it, you fake it until you make it. Go ahead, John Richards. Dredd, in order to make a noise by, you know, beating your head against the drum, one of those things has to be empty. Why can't both be empty? Man, I had this other. That resonates with me. In a similar way, in a similar way, it's, I also think that it's, there's a difference between highlighting flaws and getting people to care that the flaws are there. It's, it seems like there should be one and the same. If everyone's in that same interest, you are working towards a better system. But when they favor a certain group, even if they know the flaws are there, they don't care because they have. And that's absolutely true. Right. I do. I hear it all the time, you know, like, well, you're pacifarian. Obviously, obviously, you're ridiculous. And you don't believe that stuff. And it's like, I just point the finger back at your own self there and have a look at what you believe, you know, outside your test of faith. Right. Just have a look from an objective point of view and tell you, ask yourself, does a big boat with two of each species in a worldwide flood actually make sense to you? Then you're on the same level as I am. And let's just live and let live. So I've been on the call with Boudreaux. I've been at its place and we've had a roundtable discussion before about this very topic and a person who was with us while we're talking about religion brought up the idea that pacifarians don't actually truly believe in their in their noodle God. And what do you think about that? And I said, I don't care because it doesn't matter whether they be actually believe or not. It's the fact that the system is now putting them in a marginalized status where they can't, you know, where there's institutionalized favoritism on certain ideologies and not theirs despite the fact that there's no true or should be a barrier or test of faith for any like you shouldn't be like, well, you know, I don't think you actually believe it. Therefore, you shouldn't get the rights that these people do think believe. Exactly. That shouldn't be the case. It doesn't matter whether they actually believe it or not. So we shouldn't be asking that question. We should just be asking, are we fairly divvying out these rights to everyone? And should we even in the first place? And if not, let's just take this all off the table and find a different criteria to follow. Yeah. John Richards. According to the theory of mind, we can't know what a person believes. Right. Right. So what's this guy on about? You know? Yes. Well, you know, and it could be said too that there are people who are willing to express themselves outwardly as belonging to a particular faith for reasons other than believing in the faith. I mean, certainly there are people of, you know, Hindus or Sikhs or Muslims who are, you know, compelled under their sort of cultural milieu or social milieu to conform in order to participate in that culture. You don't get a job in a Sikh neighborhood unless, you know, you're demonstrating yourself as a Sikh, whether that's wearing a turban or wearing a bangle, which is what many of the non-turban wearing Sikhs wear. But, you know, again, it doesn't mean that you believe in the things that you say you do. It just means that you outwardly profess that. Right. Those two things are very different. It could be a sheep and wolf's clothing. Yes. It could be an atheist and bishop's clothing. Sure. Oh, there are several reasons. I have to say, maybe I mentioned this last week, but I actually was contacted by the president of the clergy project. Oh, cool. He's a post-aferian and he's now joined our church and we're going to work together on some future projects, hopefully. Yeah. Dr. Five, you had a comment. I was just going to say there are several different reasons for people joining certain religions besides social pressure and religious pressure. Like, if you're a businessman and you move into a certain city and it's predominantly Southern Baptist, you're going to join the Southern Baptist Church to make business context. Especially if you're a realtor. Yeah. Yeah. And there's love. People change religions all the time because there's spouse or girlfriend or whatever has a certain religion. There's lots of reasons to join religions besides actually believing the tenets of them. Right. And it doesn't make the religion any more true that you're pressed or threatened or have to take it as just say, I got nothing better to do. Like it should be from a point of hopefully demonstrable evidence that you are convinced that it's true and nothing else. And the fact that a lot of people can believe religions for any other reason, myriad of reasons, is an indication that maybe the majority of the people who profess that they believe don't actually have any good reasoning for it in the first place. Right. Yeah. John. So the definition of beliefs that I like is a proposition that a person, hang on, let me get this in the right order. It's a personal attitude towards a proposition. Okay. And there's no way it's personal, which means it's in here, that there's no way anybody outside of here can detect it. Right. Right. And I also think of this too, in the sense that when civil rights was taking place, I think the people who are in an advanced position could see those in disadvantaged positions and be like, yeah, I don't want to switch places with them. But the system is favoring me and I don't want to lose that in the event that I get closer to that. So I will maintain this system, even though I'm aware of its flaws and its corruption, I'm going to just continue to support it because it's for my family that I want to protect. It's still going on. It's silent support, right? Right. And I feel like the same issue that you're having with your post-sopharianism is basically that, but just in a different dress, right? It is essentially an institutionalized group saying, I don't want to give up any of our status to introduce you into the group. We essentially have a, what's the right word, a union that allowed, now I'm not against unions, but I'm just saying we essentially have a union where we can decide who comes in and who comes out. Yeah, it's the in-group or group thing. And we don't want to dilute our privileges by letting you in. And so even though we know we're all, I'm basically being hypocritical, I'm going to still allow it because I'm in the position of power and the system benefits me. That is a very frustrating thing to do within the system. Useful for, it's in my head, it's useful to have people in the system and it's useful to have people outside of the system, top down, bottom up approach towards getting changed to occur. It has to come from all fronts. So I appreciate that you taken the most, one of the most frustrating avenues to get this done, Dret. I really do. Yeah, thanks. I appreciate the support I really do. It's very exhausting. It's certainly had impacts on my, I mean, it's a good thing I work for myself for the most part because, you know, I couldn't hold a regular job, I'm sure. Right. And, you know, and not face ostracization from either my peers or my managers. Yeah, listen, I can tell you, if I was like a grade school teacher and I was doing this podcast, or if I was doing even the street epistemology stuff that I was doing way back when, that would really scare me with regard to the safety of my job. The fact that I'm a scientist just adds more credence to the work that I'm doing here. But I can imagine people don't have the assurance. Exactly, exactly. And a lot of people are even scared to just have the license plate start with letters. Exactly. Good point. So yeah, there's all sorts of fronting going on. Maybe that could be a topic of the future. But Larry, I'd love to get the video game review of the week. What's going on with you, my friend? I'm still playing Star Citizen. Still. Nice. Thoroughly enjoying it, but my computer is, my graphics card is three years old. It's really dragon. But I've ordered a new one. I hope to have it in this week. Have you stopped playing Eve altogether? Yeah, for quite a while ago. One year ago I stopped playing Eve. Do you find Eve? But I'm still playing Wow. Okay, but do you find Eve? Yeah, I see you are. Eve is less intensive than Star Citizen or Star Citizen Eve, but personified in a really perspective. Star Citizen is so much more than Eve. I'm glad Steve's not here to hear it. Sweetie Steve. But I mean, Star Citizen, you're the ship, basically. Yeah. I mean, in Eve, you're the ship. But in Star Citizen, you own a ship and your friends can come aboard it and man the turrets and sleeping beds, and you can carry them across the galaxy. And you can all get off the ship, go into caverns or bunkers and invite first person. And you can mine or you can do all kinds of things personally, you know, first person. So it's really something. You're actually flying the ship instead of being the ship. Wow. That's cool. And the graphics are incredible. Wow. Everything looks created by like a Grand Prix. Star Citizen. Yeah, sometimes this week look up some videos on YouTube for Star Citizen. You will be amazed at the graphics. Fantastic. I'm just glad that game is actually, you know, fruition. It's actually coming out. It wasn't like one big scam and people are enjoying it. Well, it is pre-release. I have to say that. Okay. You can only play it pre-release because it's not out yet. Okay. John Richards, continuing the quest for chaos. How have you been, my friend? Well, first of all, I want to mention chat GBT, which is fantastic software that you should all have a go at if you haven't already. Because please introduce the concept. I'm only familiar with that. It had some correlation with Google and was like an AI something. It's AI, but it's not Google. It's better than Google because it can write stuff. It's revolutionary. It is, yes. You remember? Oh, what was his name? I've got brain freeze on this now. No, no, no. Crumpets. Everybody just saying English. Stop coming up with everything English. I'm trying to think of this guy who spoke in BS, and there was a little software which made a quotation for you in his style. What was he called? I'll think of his name. CS Lewis? No, no, no. I'll think of his name later in the show. Leave me to it. The thing is that this is like that software grown up, and it can really provide convincing text, and you put questions in, and then you can ask it to praise see what it's just said, or go integrate a depth on a particular bullet point. It is fan, buddy, tastic. Okay. And you're using it for what purpose though? I was wondering. Well, it's going to revolutionize the whole of society because in future, all university assignments will be submitted by this machine, and they will be indistinguishable. Yeah, yeah. They will be indistinguishable from, you know, A grade students. I don't know what's going to happen. It is incredible. Anyway, getting back to me. Me, me, me, me, me. What have I done? Well, I've been having a lot of fun making my little short videos. I think I've cracked it. You know, we have this thing in the UK, which is called Thought for the Day, which comes out every morning on the radio, and it's a priest, Mueller, you know, some cleric giving us a little three minutes snippet of his wisdom on the radio. Right. And I've copied that technique, and I've done little three minute videos, and I've incorporated clips from other people, and they're getting hundreds of views. And I'm gaining at least one subscriber a day, which I've never been working so well. Anyway, what's his name? Deepak Chopra. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can actually use the app that generates some nonsensical phrase that you can, yeah, yeah, that's deep. Yeah, so that's less like an early version of chat. And before we get too scared with what the future might bring, here's some silver lining to it. So like at our job, we work with a lot of robots, we design robots that can do functions, and it's called automation. And typically when people have a job where all day long, they're just taking a piece from one conveyor belt, flipping it upside down and putting on another conveyor belt. That's not a rewarding job for anybody. Not only that, but it leads to a lot of ergonomic strain or just mental, you know, drain recognition from just doing this all day, like that's literally the job. So when we come up with a robot, we give that person an opportunity to fulfill themselves in a much higher advanced level role, or open up a new opportunity for someone to design something more interesting or build be a robot technician rather than just an item flipper, like we advance our society to a higher status, more meaningful jobs. And so instead of people, you know, whatever job we had back in the day, where it's like everyone's either a ditch digger or a blacksmith, which are both fine, you need those jobs. But now we have a much greater flavor of different kinds of careers and professions people can get into as a result of technology coming about. So these are good things when I hear, oh, we have something that can make writing school assignments wrote. It's like good. So now maybe we can go from just paraphrasing chapters and books to critically understanding the nature of what was said and pushing back on some of the ideas that were presented by the author himself or herself and figure out what we need to change and stuff like that. We can at least hope that the student will read the essays that the generates and get the point of the assignment. Or at least get new essays, because I'm tired of reading the same four books in high school over and over again. I went to like four different high schools and had to read the same four books over again. It was terrible. Yeah. Anyway, guys, we did a nice little recap. Oh my gosh, we're almost at the bottom half hour. Let me at least introduce the topic. This is what we're going to do. We're going to introduce the topic and then we're going to get into questions from our Reddit. Here is the first one. All right. So why not? Let me let me take myself off of you. Good to recap, everybody. Here's the first topic and we can go into it a little bit into this next section as well. But on this classic 6950 asks, why not destroy Satan? His question is, if Satan or Lucifer is such a bad being, why didn't God just destroy him? Saying that, oh, Satan sucks. I hate his butt. Like, brah, you're already powerful. Just destroy Satan or beat him up or lock him up permanently in hell with his demons. Like this scenario makes no sense to me when I was in Catholic school. If Satan and his demons suck so much, why not destroy them completely to save everyone the trouble? Or for John Richards, everyone to bother? John Richards, what do you think? Why doesn't God just destroy Satan? Well, why did he make him in the first place? That's the first Christian, surely. Also good. He should know that he was going to be bad. Yes. Yes. It's part of the plan. It's the classic problem of evil, right? Yeah. And the thing is, if God or anyone destroys Satan, there's no one to blame for all the children dying of cancer. Except the God himself. Yes, he doesn't want that, does he? No, he can't do that. He only wants praise. He doesn't want blame. It's almost like God has a department in a company where it's like, not the complaints department, but he has a praise department. That's him. He's the CEO of the praise department, but he also has like another department where it's like, anything bad, that's the blame department. Anything bad? Send all your blame to this area here. It's the good cop, bad cop on a celestial level. Come on. Every television show is based on that premise. It's good cop, bad cop. And it's Tom and Jerry too. If Tom ever caught Jerry or the coyote and the road driver, the story went in, there would be no story. So I do have umbrage with that dread pirate because if you were to ask me, and here's the most controversial thing I've said multiple times, but the good cop would be Satan in my head because the bad cop is clearly the guy who's allowing all the bad stuff to happen. Satan has on multiple occasions acted in the influence of people. He's even said, Hey, listen, I know you don't understand me. Here's the situation. You're going to need to eat this. So you have ideas of good morals and stuff like that. Let A decide on our own. Satan's gone to Jesus and was like, Hey, if you want to worship me, I'll feed you. It looks like you're starving yourself on this mountain. And Jesus is like, I will never worship you. And Satan's like, I'm not going to pressure it. I'll see you later. Bye. It's Satan who goes up to like heaven where God's at. And God's like, Hey, let's kill some people. And Satan's like, I don't know, man. It's like, no, no, no, look, I got this guy named Job. He loves me so much. Yeah, Joe is like, let's take bets. And Satan's like, this is, I mean, you already know the outcome of this bet. What are we doing right now? What are we doing? This is awesome. I love it. Well, there's if you look at the Bible and somebody's done this, they've added together all the people that God killed and right people Satan killed and Satan's killed. I don't know, half a dozen, but God has killed the entire population of the world. Plus all the people that he gave plagues to. What's the example where Satan's killed somebody? That beats me. I don't think there is any. I don't think there's a single one, whereas God kills nearly the entire population of earth in chapter one. Or even harmed anyone. Yeah, yeah. At most, Satan's like, here's an option. I'm going to let you know it. I'm not forcing you to do it. In fact, in certain cases, the person he's talking to doesn't have an awareness of right or wrong anyway. So like that was like, you know. But he was telling the truth. He wasn't. And it was a true truth every single time. Yeah. Yeah. Honestly. And honestly, what was his biggest, the biggest crime Satan has ever written in the book himself, in the book itself to give clarity of like how God leverages his own ego is Satan thought he was more beautiful than God. That is the number one crime in the Bible for Lucifer. So it's an interesting concept in my head. It's like if there was a bad cop, good cop. It's like the show was called good cop, but it had the titles flipped accidentally because like the good cop or God wrote the the movie after himself. And he's just like, you're not the good cop guy. He's like, no, play me. He's like, you're dude, you're 400 pounds. I don't care. But we need to take a break at this point. All right. We'll be back with this same topic we'll be carrying on here in a little bit. So stay tuned for the second half of the digital prethought radio hour here on WZO radio. 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We'll be right back after this short break. Welcome back to the second half of the digital free thought radio hour on WZO radio. 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. I'm DJ doubter five. Let's talk a moment about the atheist society of Knoxville. ASK was founded in 2002. We're in our 21st year now. We have over a thousand members. We have weekly in-person meetings every Tuesday evening in Knoxville's Old City at Barley's Taproom in Pizzeria. I'll be right after work around 5.30. Look for us inside at the high top tables or if it's pretty weather outside on the deck. We also have a Tuesday evening Zoom Ask Meetup. If you'd like to join us email us for details at askanatheist at Knoxvilleatheist.org or let'schatse at gmail.com. You can find us online at facebook meetup.com or go to our website at Knoxvilleatheist.org or you can just Google Knoxvilleatheist. It's just that simple. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you should still go to meet up and do a search for an atheist group in your town. Don't find one. Wombat, where you want to pick up? Why doesn't God destroy Satan? We have gone over some interesting research over the break and we found out that Satan's toll would be 10 people. This is from a website that Jonathan posted by Wired. From some deeper digging down, we found that it appears that Satan only killed 10 people, with seven sons and three daughters or Job. And he only does this because God wanted, allowed, and made it happen as part of a bet. Technically, the blood is on God's hands for these as well. Even in the garden, when he theoretically doomed to man time, he was actually telling the truth. It was God that was lying. God said that you would die if you ate the fury print. But I do want to stay on the killing top because I want to imagine a scenario where we have two people. One person will call in person A, tells person B, listen, I will give you this much money. Let's bet. I will give you this much money if you win the bet and I'll take this much money if I win the bet. Here's a gun. I want you to kill that person right there. That's the person who I want you to kill. Please kill that person and we'll do it over a reward for a bet. How's that sound? Even if that person, person B, commits the murder and gets arrested, the other person get arrested for conspiracy for murder or accessory murder. Yeah, exactly. That is an incentivized means of causing harm in the public. And of course, we want to protect ourselves from that. Larry, you also made a really good point that since God is in charge of everything, every single murder that's ever happened, he has been accessory to murder for it. And I think that's a really starling concept. Right. If you know about it beforehand, don't do anything or don't notify the authority you're an accessory. But in the interest of balance, just within the Bible, God is responsible for the deaths of 2,038,344 victims. Yeah, and that's not counting the entire earth, right? I don't know what the population was back then. I don't think anybody does. Right. I was going to bring up this book here, The Skeptics Annotated Bible. And it's broken. It just goes through the entire Bible and points out all the salient points that any skeptic should be aware of. It actually breaks it down into 13 categories. Instances of absurdity, injustice, cruelty, intolerance, good stuff, contradictions, interpretation, misogyny, sex, prophecy, language, politics, and homosexuality. So this book has got it all, man. Cool. So my thoughts on this is when God's not involved, Satan's not killing anybody. And I think it's pretty clear that whenever there's a murder that does take place, God is involved. Well, he's all powerful and couldn't prevent it too. So maybe the problem isn't getting rid of Satan. Maybe we should just get rid of God. Why doesn't God get rid of himself? That could be the most immediate way of a lot of trouble and bother overall. That's my take. Anyone else want to add to that? Okay, cool. We're working on it. Okay, so next question. This one's going out to John Richards. John Richards, let me throw this question up at you. Why are, okay, so Difficult Plankton 467 asked us, why are so many people obsessed with personifying the unknown? As a species, there's a lot we still don't know. A couple thousand years ago, we knew less than what we did now. So creative minds came up with religion to explain what reasoning we put in. In some certain sects, it seems that even people who identify as non-religious can't help but talk about things like non-duality without referring to the unknown, our unknowable aspects of God, if you will. It seems rather narcissistic to think that in this unimaginably large universe, anything that is unknown is somehow anthropomorphized by default. And you might want to define those terms as well, personification and anthropomorphizing before you go into which thing. The unknown should be exciting and motivating. What do you think about that, John? Well, personification means conceiving of an agent to be behind whatever cause you're investigating, whatever phenomenon you're observing. And why we do that? Well, I have a theory, of course, and it's because the only things that we know historically have known the causes of have been done by men. I mean, we know that men make bricks, make swords, make food, you know, make fire. Everything that we know was done, was started off, has been done by an agent in the form of a human, right? And therefore, when we find something that's happening that we don't know how it started, then the natural tendency is to wonder what agent, what person, might be doing that. So that's where you get Thor is making thunder, you know, the volcano is making volcanic eruptions and so on and so forth. There's always got to be, because of our experience of this being the cause of everything, that the only one that we can actually pin down being an agent in the form of a man, therefore, we extrapolate that and say that all these other things that we can't see how they began must be another agent. Right. Yeah. It's actually called hyperactive agency detection. That's a well-known psychological phenomenon. It's also tidied with pareidolia, where you see patterns and faces in either inanimate objects or certainly non-animal features of the environment, like clouds and seeing Jesus on a piece of toast or whatever. It's the pattern making portion of our brain. That's how kids, you know, babies come out of the womb and recognize their mother's face because they're hardwired to find those patterns and formulate them in cases where they're not even there. So as a chemistry degree, that is the default most instinctual way how we understand the world. And it's to how all of our hormones work. When we do something bad, we get pain sensation. It's like, oh, this is a bad thing. I got it. When we do something that feels good, we get pleasure hormones. Now we associate that with good things. It's all pattern-based recognition of how we operate. And in the modern world, we live in a completely fabricated environment. You know, we live in man-made houses. We drive on man-made roads, in man-made flowers. We eat out of man-made containers. We go to man-made parks and we think, oh, God made this. It's like, nope, there was a guy who planted these trees. That's right. So the temptation there is to make the assumption that there is somebody, some creature, some agent, doing everything. At a microcosm, I also find parallels between the popularity of simulation theory versus how often simulation becomes part of the mainstream discourse of people. Or when we start using simulations more and more, simulation theory becomes more and more popular because more people understand it and they can use that as an analogy to explain unknown aspects of reality. And so whenever I see people appealing to simulation theory, it's like, that's the thing people didn't do 100 years ago when computers weren't nearly as sophisticated. But as a reliance on computer models and adaptations became more prevalent, I would not be surprised if maybe 40 years down the road, we have a new theory called AI theory. And God's just one giant AI owned by a giant corporation or something like that that's just controlling everything. It sounds silly to us now, but as we become more part of the mainstream, it just becomes more commonplace. It's the exact same reason why we call God our father, because most people who exist have fathers and they say, hey, God's just the heavenly father. It's an analogy that people can grasp onto. It's just another pattern. He's a guy behind a curtain in somewhere over the rainbow. What John was saying about parks being God made and no, we made them. Reminding me of a joke is a preacher came up on this guy, a farmer whose fields look lush and full of cropped and all that. He says, well, farmer John, he says, God really took care of your crop this year. He looks wonderful. He says, yeah, but you should have seen what it looked like when I was sick for a month. Right. Right. Let me tell you something. I'm also really annoyed by this too. This is a small little tangent, but I saw a football clip. I can't even tell you who the team of teams were, but basically the kicker football and American football, John Richard, sorry, American NFL football guy kicked a field gold and won the the event for his team. See you much about sports. I know guys. Anyway, when he's being lifted up by his team, he like lifts up. He pulls out a cross from around his neck and starts pointing at it because he's like, aha, that's the reason why I won. And in my head, it's like, okay, so first of all, the reason why you won was the team that's underneath you because you only have to win by a couple of points. Points aren't worth the difference in the score differential that you guys had, you know, coming into it. Like a lot of touchdowns were made before then. Secondly, how many Christians were on the other opposing team who lost? Right. Like you never, you don't film the other people who are pulling out their Jesus crosses and looking at them confused and being like, God, I thought you had my back. You made him the chosen person. You always show the winner. And the third one that always gets me angry is this guy. After all of his hard work, after all the investment, after all the football practices, his parents drove him to after all the scholarships he got that other people couldn't get after all the training that people were hired to be on his team went to explicitly train him, him specifically and take time away from their families to invest in him. When he's ready to like highlight his achievement, he doesn't say thank you to anybody else that helps him. He just like points at the one thing that makes him think that he's God's chosen person for that one night, the God's most important person despite all the people in harm or babies needing to be born with like misshapen hearts or anything like that. He's the number one because he kicked that field goal. It's just such a degree of narcissism that I just can't. Absolutely. Yeah, hubris. The other team, the other team, of course, accidentally had all their crosses on their neck. This is upside down. Oh, that was the problem. They're facing backwards. Yeah. Actually, Dredd, your sound went away, Ty. Dredd Pirate got a question to you from our own Dredd Pirate Higgs off of our show called Just Let You Wear Hats where we were talking about why does the government need to step in for people who are choosing to express themselves or their religious identities in a nonviolent, non-harmful fashion as in kind as other religions are allowed to do so. So if some people can wear turbans, why can't you wear a pirate hat? What's the distinction there if the technology barrier allows for it? Why make a rule to take away from certain groups and give to others based on their religious affiliations? It seems fundamentally flawed and unfair. So that is what the trading room says. But today's acknowledging we don't need photos of the whole head. We only need the face, or we just need the retinas or fingerprints. So why do we still stick to photos of the whole head? It's just a question he's asking. And the next one he says, plus fighting the system is a waste of time. Instead of fighting, look for solutions which will satisfy both sags. In other words, don't create more problems, create solutions. What do you think? I mean, I thank Data's Trading Room for his response. We always love Data's Trading Room. We've had a bit of a back and forth and it's turning into a rather unproductive conversation, unfortunately. But I asked him to define fighting because you can conflate anything to be included in that in order to render everything some form of fighting. So just having a debate with somebody is a form of back and forth opposition to somebody else's idea. It's not rendered wrong to do so by virtue of the fact that you're opposing somebody else's opinion. And systems are not meant to be worked well within. I mean, I do as much as I can, and I think I expressed that at the very beginning of the show. I'm not standing outside of the offices with signs calling ICBC a bunch of goofballs or, you know, prejudice bastards or whatever. I'm working within the system in order to come up with a solution because, like I say, institutions are created by people who are generally stupid. There's no way that people can figure this all out. And of course, they have to start from somewhere. And generally speaking, you know, institutions are created by the prevailing religious group. They're certainly manned by them. And so, you know, they're, you know, they see a, you know, positive area with a, with a tricorn. And they say, well, that person is making fun of me is making fun of my institution. And where I have the power to thwart him, I shall. And, and so really the system is not is fighting me. Right. I'm working within the system, but the system is fighting me because I am the out. No, because the system wasn't for you. The system was made for them. And so correct. Yes, exactly. Yeah. And so yeah, it is against you. And, you know, I appreciate the approach that you're going through. Like the, the, the, the systematic, peaceful approach is a use as a necessary arm for change. And I also find that it's one of the easiest ones to dismiss by those in power, but you are well documenting it. And I don't think they aren't aware of the hypocrisy. I definitely think there are some Christians that can empathize with you, especially in just like a straightforward conversation about it, one to one face to face and not through bureaucracy, but they won't act on it because they have the benefit. They have the benefit. It reminds me of an episode of Star Trek where there was like clearly an alien race got captured in a jar and they're like, why are we in jars? We have just as much intelligence as you. And I think Kirk was like, it's not because we're moral that we're doing this. It's because we're stronger. And that's all he could offer. It's not the fact that we're better than you that we're putting in jars. It's just because we're stronger in you and we risk you getting out. That's all there is to it. Sorry. Sorry. I know I'm being flawed, but I'm doing this just because I can and I have to. Well, it actually reminds me also of the episode of Star Trek where the computer created Moriarty and Moriarty was then able to reprogram the computer. So essentially it was what you say is like an intelligence had to be kept into a jar because it risks their existence, right? Right. Right. I like this idea of jars. I mean, pickled aliens, but that doesn't market shortly for that. But if you think about it, the whole reason we put people in jail is because we have to, first off preservation, we can't have them wandering around society, continuing to do the same thing that they've been doing. So we have the power to put them away and keep them away from society. So we do. And the weird thing is, is like we know we don't have a perfect system with regard to putting people in boxes. We know we have a system that definitely unduly targets certain groups of populations more than others and doesn't met out the same degree of punishment based on gender or skin color. Like we know that for a fact, yet we still pertain to it. Is it partly due to the fact that the people who make the rules aren't affected by the rules? Possibly. Like that might be a part of it too. So I'm saying like it's systematic of human culture. It's systematic of a lot of human cultures, the injustices that you're seeing right now, Dredd. So when the environment changes and the population mixes up a bit, then obviously the rules have got to evolve. Right. And that's why there's just as much fight against that mixing up. Like it wasn't until very recently in American culture that it was illegal for interracial marriage to even exist. That had to be protected. Right. And we take that for granted, but decided that we're now and that's good that we do. But it's also something that we should be aware of so it doesn't get taken away from us because we also had things that we'd taken for granted be taken away from us too. But you know, it's interesting that the change there for interracial marriage, it was a hard thing for society to get on board with. But you would think that over the times where this has been the case where society has had to come to terms with this big change, that it would make change easier to come to terms with. Right. But we see with homosexual gay marriage that again, it's, you know, it's a tough fight that one group has to fight in order to affect change. So it takes society as a hard time coming to terms with it every time. Right. The way how I think about it is- Can I have a word on that too? Because we have a situation here in the UK where the- who's going me? Yeah, go on, John. Yeah, yeah. The situation we have the situation we have currently in the UK is that the established church, the church of England, is having a disagreement internally about whether or not to marry homosexuals, you know, LGBTQI plus people. And there's two schools of thought. Some of the bishops think we should be more tolerant and we should marry them in church because, you know, they love each other, they've got, they've been faithful to each other, and there's no reason to discriminate against them. And then the traditionalists, they say, we can't do that. It says in the Bible, it's a sin. So at the moment it looks as though the Anglican church might split into two halves, the pro-gay marriage and the anti-gay marriage. And the question is, if that happens before May this year, the question is who's going to crown the king? Right. May. So I wanted to bring up an analogy like we have a pot. We're one big pot by all society. And when we find out interracial marriage is okay and totally fine, we're like stirring a certain section of that pot. We're just making a small circle, but the area in that, in that vicinity goes from being cold on the top, hot on the bottom, to now just warmed up all around. It's more homogeneous, right? But because we stirred in that particular area, it doesn't mean the other corner of the pot is any more evenly distributed. It's still going to have a hot bottom. It might even have a more hot bottom because it has been unsteered for even longer. But we did get better at stirring, which means the mechanics have gotten better. We've learned from how to stir properly. We understand how to get more people motivated in it. We have demonstration that it works. We have people that could be motivated. We have stories and narratives that we can tell that we know are functional and work and effective. And we can take that same energy and go to the next side of the pot. So yes, if we stir one corner of our pot, we may not mix everything, but we at least get better at stirring. And so we have to just continue to stir because it's that flux that keeps us all from burning at the bottom as is the best way I can put it. Sorry, I got stuck when you said hot bottom. Yeah, I want to hear more about the hot bottom. Ah, yeah. So yeah, asexuality, my brain doesn't cry. But Kai, isn't it the case that in, you know, politically speaking, people are more divided than ever? I mean, you know, the, you know, political races like the presidency are won by a few points. Like, you know, it's, it's crazy how close and how divided people are, like in America, in Britain there with the bricks it, right? I think it was 51 in favor and 49 against or something. I mean, you know, why if it's so unclear that that if the issue is so unclear that people are so equally divided, is it really a fair thing to impose the winning side to any question when it's only by 1%? Because you have, you have almost an equally, an equal amount of people who are going to be dissatisfied with the outcome. The suggestion is in the future, if we ever do that, and I suggest we shouldn't, referendums are a bad idea, because they push the decision down from the experts who might know what they're talking about to the Joe public, you know. And but the suggestion is if we ever do it again, what we need is a super majority. So that, yes, 70% or more. Yeah. Exactly. It was two thirds. Yeah. Yeah. Larry, I got the last question ready for this. Okay. What do I, Unicycle Co-pilot wants to know what do I do with all these Bibles I've taken from hotel rooms? You know what I mean? Well, there's a mulch. You can always mulch them. Like in Canada, they don't, they don't put them in hotel rooms anymore. But I do bring, I do bring my, my postcards, my Pastafarian postcards. Yeah. And I put them where the Gidgens Bible used to be. So I'm spreading the word. Yeah. I just put my YouTube channel business cards inside them and just put them right there. I don't, I don't like taking them because then I have the burden of what am I going to do with them? I just open them to the first page and write and strike out the, in the beginning and put it and write in once upon a time. Perfect. Well done guys. Hey, we made it to the end of the show. Let's do some plugging before we wrap up today. John Richards, anything you'd like to plug? Free Thought Channel. That's where I do my stuff. And you'll find lots of new videos there, lots of short ones, which are well worth taking a look at. They don't take up much of your time. They are little pithy events that gets an idea across in a concise way. And you guys, some of you guys are going to join me hopefully tonight. Right. Tonight here at UK Time when we make the latest recording of views on the news. I can tell you right now it's balmy and buggy. It's just straight up like UK weather. Isn't that right, John Richards? Out here right now. So we can't play disc golf. So guess who's showing up? I'll be there. You're welcome. Jed, Pirate Higgs, where can we find your stuff at? Yeah, you can find me on YouTube on my channel, MinePirate, M-I-N-D-P-Y-R-A-T-E. I'm looking forward to putting on some more content. So stay tuned. Check it out. If you like it, subscribe and tick the bell and the thumbs up and all the good stuff. Thank you. Nice. You can find my stuff on less chat. I'm on YouTube and feel free to continue to watch these shows. We keep pumping them out weekly and we're happy to have you leave more comments. We'll be happy to go over them. And if you have any questions, feel free to post them onto our Reddit group or talk on our Discord channel. The descriptions will be in the comments section. Larry, after all the talking we've done, you've yet to explain what a soul is and why we all have that and what's the value of soul. So would you mind going into that? Everyone, let Larry explain why souls are real for a second. You have a soul. Yeah, not going to happen. They're not. Again, explain it if it ain't real. Now, I just invite people to research what we know about souls. I mean, actually do some research. You'll find that nobody's ever shown a soul to be real. No ghosts are real. I mean, even the professional ghost hunters on TV on 13 seasons haven't found a single ghost. So get a clue. My YouTube channel can be founded at Doubtor5. My regular contact can be found at digital.