 Hello and welcome to Digital Freethought Radio Hour on WOZO Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today is Sunday April 19th, 2020. I'm Dr. Five and as usual we have Wombat, our co-host on the phone with us. Hello Wombat! God bless America! The last thing I expect to hear you say, and there we have plenty of guests today, Joy Wood, Chad Dean-Paylor, Gred Pirate Hicks, Abstract Activists, and Boo Drow, is that you? Yep. Hello. Leave anybody out? No. Okay, 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 religion, religious faiths, gods, holy books and superstition. And if you get the feeling that you're the only non-believer in Knoxville, well you're just not. There are several atheist free thinking and rationalist groups that exist right here in Knoxville, and we'll be telling you how you can connect with them right after the mid-show breaks. Also, did you know that there's a streaming atheist calling video broadcasting right here in Knoxville? Oh, it's really popular now. So I think it's because of the coronavirus thing that's been going on, but a lot of people have been using video conferencing software, and I think Zoom is like one of the coolest new things that just people are using. I think it's really cool. Yeah, I'm glad you bought it up. Very cool. They're broadcasting, however, not using Zoom. They're on YouTube, and their recordings are going out every Wednesday night at 7 o'clock. But you can go to Knoxville. If you go to YouTube and look for Knoxville Atheists United, you can find them and all of the other archive shows that they have done. If you'd like to interact with us on the show, go to Facebook and search for Digital Freethought Radio Hour, and use the messaging function to send us questions or comments. What is our topic today? What you got for us? I wanted to talk about something other than the virus. For what? Last two shows, we did that. Oh man, and it's been a nonstop thing at my job too. So I was thinking about the idea of going to a dollar general, right? And you see a guy decked out with the new balaclava and the gloves. It's like the only time of the year where you can dress up with gloves and a mask and walk into a pawn shop, people will be like, yeah, that's exactly how you should be walking here. Yeah, exactly, yeah. Oh, that's great. And so because people are covered up so much, I don't necessarily see the Jesus cross anymore as much. And I'm wondering, like, I bet it's still there, but it's just like this weird, what's the right word, juxtaposition between, this thing is going to protect me, by the way, I need to have my face mask on at the same time too. And I was wondering, like, what would, this doesn't seem to reflect what a worldview would, or what a world would look like if prayer actually worked. Because obviously if we had working prayer, we'd be able to pray away this problem. Like the virus is here, pray it away. Oh, could I get sick? Just pray it away. And so that brought me up into like, is that a good thing or is that a bad thing? And if prayer is that effective, could it lead us into problems in the future? So I thought, like, maybe it would be cool to talk about what would the world look like if prayer actually did work. I'm going to be assumption that it doesn't work whatsoever. We can talk about that second half of the show. Gary Boudreaux, Joey, Chad, Nathan, I'm glad you guys are on here. I wanted to talk about prayer and what would it look like if it worked completely? Why don't we do a round table? Have you guys had a moment where you prayed for something and it actually worked? Like, God, help me find my keys. God, where are my keys? That's God's voicemail. Like nonstop, by the way. But Boudreaux, why don't we start with you? Do you ever had a chance where prayer actually worked for you? And like, what was the most effective thing where you're like, if anything, this would be the most convincing case where it would be like, okay, I asked where I got it. I'd have to go back pretty far because I haven't considered the thought of the power of prayer in decades. I suppose, I mentioned before, one of the last things for me to shake was maybe flying on a plane. I don't know that I directly prayed, but I definitely tried not to think like an atheist on a plane, like one of my first few times flying. Not me flying, but being a passenger. And I was actually pretty old. Well, I mean, I was in my early 20s, first time I flew. So I suppose that's, at least with my peers, that was kind of later than most. But so I was already pretty skeptical and pretty in deep with atheism, but I had that little bit of doubt. Right. Right. So that little window for us to like seep in and give you the word of God. Just the what if, right? What if it is true? So, you know that I shook that, you know, five, six years later. What that prayer sound like? What's that tiny little, I think everyone does that tiny little prayer in their head when the plane starts going like, oh, here we go again. Okay. I think it was more like a Pascal's wager kind of a thing where it was like, it's like, well, I mean, what's the downside? I might as well just be like, see, I don't think it was a very literal prayer. It was more of a, like, don't think about, don't think about being an atheist right now. Let's just put that away for a second. So maybe that's what it was. So I don't know. I don't know if that counts for this conversation. But it's been a while. It's been a while. Oh, yeah. This is not the time to be arrogant about this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, isn't any time you say, I hope something is going to happen is, is really a reaching out to the universe to say, please work for me this time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't necessarily a prayer to a deity. It's just, you know, putting it out to the universe to cooperate. Yeah. Religion doesn't have a monopoly on hope. Anybody can hope. Exactly. Oh, that's so good, Larry. That's good. I like that. Put that on a shirt. You need to put that on a billboard. We need to talk to your billboard team. That's really good. I've got it on a meme. I could send you on memes. Yeah. Send me some memes. That's pretty good. Joey, what do you think is like the last time, even if it's not to like a specific God, but like more of like to the universe. Have you ever reached out in thought to the universe asking for something? Well, since I became an atheist, I think, well, last week, actually, I think I almost did that. I almost prayed or almost reached up and I caught myself because my boss had a fever and he canceled on me. Oh, boy. No, and we go way back. So I just was almost like just the wave of that emotion almost provoked me to pray with. I think there's a lot of confusion among the atheist and agnostic community. I think especially the ones that don't have a religious background as to as to what prayer is. At least, at least to me, you know, this religious, it was when I got to a point where there's something around me that I couldn't control. If I believe somebody above me controlled it and I really cared about what's going on in the person's life. You know, it's almost like going to the CEO or your boss at your job and say, Hey, this is going on. We need to address this. And, you know, I don't have the power to do that. So when, when I prayed, it was, it was really, it wasn't out of, I never prayed for anybody to get saved or anything like that. I prayed for people to, you know, come to know the truth for what it is and all that and for people to have help in their life and things like that. So it was always at least from my perspective has always came from a good place. But yeah, that's, that's probably the last time because the first few weeks after I, this is almost going on two years ago, the first few weeks after I left religion, I think there was one last prayer in the first week. And that was, that was really the end of the, end of the, like the genuine pursuit of somebody up there. Like what you said about like it's really more about reaching out to either a force or an entity that you believe in a control over it. You know, I like thinking of it as a parental figure. You know, the religion always tries to sell you as the father, the great father, you know, the, and I think it's a continuation of from childhood to adulthood that you may lose your parents, but you still have the father and, and all that that you can appeal to in times of crisis. It's an easy analogy to like wrap your head around. Yeah. Also makes you feel special because it's like, Hey, my dad can beat up your dad, right? Every dad all at once. Gary, you, you actually are religious. Have you ever prayed to the flying spaghetti monster for, I don't know, like a really good dinner or breakfast or something like that? Well, we do on Fridays. We celebrate past that. That's our holy day. Nice. Well, the flying spaghetti monster by the time he was at five days of creation. He was just wiped, decided to get drunk. And that's why we celebrate that on Fridays. So you say he gets white drunk basically every Friday gets wiped. He's wiped at the end of five days and gets. Got it. Got it. Drunks. They get together. They get together. I don't know. I generally don't pray and I, you know, I used to, of course, I had, you know, gone so far as to, you know, move towards being a Catholic priest in my youth, in my twenties. But, you know, since becoming essentially an atheist, I, you know, like I commented earlier, this idea of hope being a reaching out to the universe to have it work in your favor to cooperate with your plans. And it's always selfish in my perspective from my point of view. Anytime I say, I hope such and such is going to happen. It's always about me. I mean, I may say, well, I hope you're better, but it's really a selfish thing I'm doing. There's no true altruism. There's no true altruism. There's nothing wrong with being selfish. It's just the way it is. You should worry about yourself. That's how it goes. Absolutely. So this will probably, I wanted to do mine before we landed the chat, because I feel like Chad will have a comment on mine. But I feel like when I, when my closest to prayer have always been conversations with myself, it sounds arrogant as hell. But when I'm like up against a situation where an instrument maybe breaks, or I'm dealing with a really heavy unknown, or even like in this situation that we're going on and I don't want to get my family. I don't want my family to get sick. Like I will say to myself things like, I know the statistics of this situation. I know I can fix this thing. I know I can do this. I just need to sit down and figure this out. Tyrone, you can do this. We've done it before. You can do this. Like I will have like these mantras that feel self-fulfilling because eventually I do do the thing and it builds up confidence for the next time that I give myself like a pep talk. But I will have like things that I say to myself in particular hard times that get me out of like a hard situation. And I found those to be really empowering. I don't think, I feel they are more causal than me praying out to an entity and expecting a supernatural entity to like find my keys. Like I will say Tyrone, just calm down, sit down, sit down for like just 30 seconds and think about where you put your keys at. They're probably connected to your pants. Ah, found them. Great. Or like remember to get those batteries recharged when you get home because I got trackers on everything. We can talk about that, but that's its own subject. But I found talking to myself in like just calming myself and talking to myself has been a really good way to pray to myself. I'm not sure if that counts, but I'm at least appealing to a version of myself that in my head is more calm and probably in the future who's already figured it out and I'm just appealing to my more conceptual version of myself. Chad, do you know what I'm talking about? Does this make any sense? Yes. Yeah. You were speaking through my brain I think. Yeah. That's kind of exactly where I was going to go with this. As far as prayer goes, I've done it in the past. I used to be a Christian. When I was a child, I was a Christian. I'm too excited about it. Even after I left faith, if I was even ever really a part of faith, but after I stopped trying to believe, I still prayed and I didn't really know why I was doing it. It made me feel good. So I kept doing it and now that I've been a little more contemplative about my life, I find that I'm doing any type of so-called prayer for the exact same reasons you were saying. It's a conversation with yourself. I think it's about setting intention, which is very important. So I have a theory and I don't know if there's any real, if it holds any kind of real weight, but saying something is coming out of one part of your brain and hearing it, it's going into another. And I see it as sort of a way to have a conversation with yourself. And I do these mantras as a way of, like I said, setting intention and problem-solving. It seems like when I'm, even like when I'm working on a car, I talk to myself. When I'm working through problems, I talk to myself. So I think those mantras and the prayers or any type of meditation where you're either vocalizing or just in your own head working through them, I think, I think they help. I think self-talk is very important. A lot of people do self-talk, but it's not positive. It's negative self-talk. So we need to keep that in mind. You need to be your own best friend in your self-talk. You don't want to call yourself an idiot or doing anything negative. If you lose your keys or lose a job even, you don't want to come down on yourself. You want to be your best, your own best friend. It's like the little train, the little train that could, right? I think I can. I think I can. I know I can. I know I can. But back to what Walnut was saying, what would a world look like if there were a God that would answer all your prayers? And like what Larry is saying, well, look at how terribly your life can go if you do nothing but say horrible things to yourself and discourage yourself over and over again. The power of prayer is interestingly enough only the power that you have over yourself and the way that you view the situation. You feel to know other entity, I guess. But the Christians would have an entirely Christian world to live in if their God actually listened to their prayers. Well, I think there's a difference too between maybe some of the ideas of prayer that we're talking about and true intercessory prayer, right? Yeah. True. Yeah. I mean, there's stuff that we're building ourselves up as prayer, but I think Christians really see it as that greater power interceding with the flow of their life in order to accommodate their wishes. Taking the wheel, so to speak. Mm-hmm. I'd like to let Nathan weigh in on this. Nathan, do you have a chair where you've appealed to prayer before in any of the senses that we've been talking about today? Well, I live in Portland, Oregon, so over here it's way more about the law of attraction over here. Yeah, that's right. So everything over here is like I'm setting the intention and if I keep thinking it, it's going to be drawn to me, not because of God is doing it, but because the universe itself grants prayers. Right. Which is a different way of conceptualizing something. I have to do a quick back story thing. So yesterday, Nathan and I were playing Drawful, which is a game where you draw something and then someone else has to guess what the word is. And it was literally insane because the first game of Drawful we played with a bunch of strangers from Nathan's point of view, he had like a multiple score that was at least seven times more than everybody in the game, which is literally unheard of. Because in my opinion, that's just Nathan has tapped into the ether where everyone's ideas just flow and he's like on this vibe of some conscious where it's like, I know what everyone needs to feel and I know what everyone needs to answer. And if you draw like a score, you'll be like, I know that's a reindeer. I know that's a reindeer and a rainstorm. I'm just going to say that because and then everyone was like, oh, it's a reindeer and a rainstorm. It's like, what is that other person thinking? What is everyone else thinking? What would they want to hear? That's what Drawful is all about. Law of attraction is like real with this guy. So it's absolutely true. Though have you ever have you ever found yourself in like a time of need where you would expect something to act on your behalf through, you know, reaching out to it? You know, I have been not for a long, long, long time. I mean, I've just after all of this, I'm neck deep in the skeptic community. It's hard to even entertain stuff like that these days for myself. But I recall being very into that line of thinking, especially when I was applying my own kind of wishful understanding of what I thought quantum physics was all about. And how the double slit experiment explains how the cat is both alive and dead at the same time. Therefore, the physical world is the same in the same way. And so, you know, I thought I, yeah, I don't know. I guess so back in the day, I thought that I could do stuff like that and I would try to drive my mind into only positive ways of thinking for that reason. And what I learned is that's a great way to keep positive thoughts in your head, which could benefit the way you interact with other people and other social creatures. Because if you're exude, like if you're putting out your best person in the world, people are going to see the best in you. And you're going to, if you dress nice for the job, you know, you're more likely to get the job than if you're not putting in your best effort. And that's the part of the law of attraction that, you know, the morsel of truth in the ultimate kind of greater untruth of the idea of the law of an attraction in that way. Right. More about aligning yourself with your intention. And it's like when you buy a Jeep Cherokee, you seem to see a thousand Jeep Cherokees now. By the way, you should say that because that's exactly what happened to me. Yeah. At first Jeep Cherokee, it was like, oh, you never see these things around. And once I bought it, oh man, you couldn't get away from them. Yeah, right. That's an oversimplified way. Yeah, that's kind of what that's what I think about aligning yourself with. Well, it becomes the availability. Yeah, it's a fun way to think about things too. And you know, the little brain hacks that get you motivated and put you on a path of I don't know, getting what you want. And if it works, then it works. Yeah. And ultimately what we're talking about is being frustrated with not getting what you want. And ultimately we as emotional social, you know, social creatures, if we feel alone and we're social creatures, we don't know where to put this emotion, we will be driven to coming up with unique solutions. What's the unique solution to this problem? Even if it might not work, let's give it a try. I have an interesting conundrum with talking to yourself and giving a prayer. I always feel like when I am addressing myself or thinking to myself or trying to get my intentions aligned there is a person asking for help. There is a target idealized version of myself that's like hearing myself. But then there's like a third chair in the room, which I feel is sort of like looking at the conversation that's going on and asking himself, is this positive or is it negative? Like is this prayer actually constructive? Am I asking first, is this person asking for like, man I really, really need to get this done. I can't believe I have so much pressure at work. And then that third chair is like, you're being too down on yourself. Try to make it a bit more positive. It's like, okay, you're right. I know I've done this in the past. Has anyone ever noticed like it's very easy to compartmentalize your thoughts into different agencies and I can actually have them have conversations with each other as sort of like a mental process. I know Inside Out is a movie. So I know I'm not crazy. You're saying something? Say and arguments. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've heard some people say that consciousness itself is really just a conversation that your left side of your brain and your right side of your brain are holding and you're just aware of it participating in it. Another thing I'd like to throw out during this intercessory prayer discussion is I've always considered it as kind of a form of witchcraft. What? Think about this. You use postures to recite special words in certain orders asking supernatural otherworldly entities to do your bidding in this world. Is that not witchcraft? I feel like witches would take a number with this and we have witch friends because I feel like Christianity is really just a re-labeling of a lot of pagan traditions. Yeah, it's in the first place. It's kind of like white magic. Just magic. Yeah. So I've recently read a meme I'm pretty sure it was of Sam Harris or Richard Dawkins or one of those guys. Bingo. Congratulations. 33 minutes in. Yeah, gotta get it in. But it was if you are perfectly okay with someone looking in the mirror saying a prayer and hoping for something take that same exercise and hold up a hair dryer and speak into the hair dryer and do it and now people think you're crazy. And all we did was add one little thing to that. That sounds very Sam Harris. Yeah. It's like going to a courtroom instead of putting your hand on the Bible, put it on a hair dryer. Yeah, exactly. Energize me. I remember when I was young I remember there was I don't know if I was taught this or just felt it but there was a negative connotation to talking to yourself. There was this idea if I talk to myself if I'm the only one in the room and I'm talking to myself, it's crazy. I'm weird. It's and I don't know where I picked that up or why but for the longest time I wouldn't do it. I didn't feel comfortable. And I remember there was a certain time and I'm not sure if it was linked with, you know, atheism or anything but at a certain time I was like, wait a second there's nothing wrong with talking to myself. It helps motivate me just like you guys are saying. Now I do it all the time. I do it when there are other people in the house and they could hear me talking to myself. Right. I'm not embarrassed by it. I think that came along with it seemed like there was a pretty bad stigma surrounding certain forms of schizophrenia when we were younger. Absolutely. And many of those people, especially if you find them on the streets homeless they're talking to themselves. They're hyper stressed, you know, they're under duress. They don't have a place to live. I'm surprised more people aren't talking to themselves out loud. And I think it's only because of social fear like what you were saying when you were younger you wouldn't do it. That's a realistic, that's a nightmare waiting to happen, you know, asking people to not do things like that. We do that to each other all the time. I'm not really sure why I don't just give people the bird and tell them to carry on with what they're doing. And I'm sure we could find some irrational things that everyone does. And this is one of the lesser offenses. Does anybody else have the experience where you imagine having a conversation with a real person in the real world, but it's in your head. But like if something that you really, like a conversation you really want to have with somebody so you end up like preparing yourself for what that person's responses would be every job interview I've ever gone to. Because of Essie, that's literally the only thing I've been doing for the last four years. Did you guys ever play the game Sims or still do play Sims? One of the ways to build what was it? Charisma or influence or something like that was to practice in the mirror. If you would go into the bathroom and speak to yourself or practice interactions in the mirror, you would have the same points. And I think a lot of motivational speakers and life coaches will tell people to do that. Stand in the mirror and say the things out loud. Jerome. We all did it. In a sense, yeah. One silly thing before we go out on a break, my mom was hard of hearing and I was raised in a family where ASL is secondary language. Larry has seen me sign. I don't know if you guys have seen me sign otherwise, but you will sign as you think and instead of talking out loud, you will sign out loud. It's called soul. I've done that even at work where I'm just writing and I'm clearly on other things. I'll be driving in a car and people will be like, can you please not sign while you're driving? I'm like, oh, I am signing. I'm sitting on the wheel and to stay focused, but you will use your hands a lot. I use my hands a lot when I talk anyway, but I'm sitting here like this right now because we're on video. It's a thing everyone does. I wonder if people that speak multiple languages are able to work through problems better because some different forms of languages have better words and meaning around those words than English does. I've heard, I've got a lot of Spanish-speaking friends and they'll go back and forth between Spanish and English because they can more easily articulate their ideas in Spanish or switch back to English to do so because they're speaking to people that speak both Spanish and English. So if they can't find the meaning in one language, they'll flip to the other because it's more efficient to communicate. You also find that like if I'm speaking to people who are like academics there's a higher tier of English that I'll use compared to where I'll use when I'm talking to my friends. If I'm with my black friends, I might use completely different words and tempos and tempers than I would if I'm speaking mostly to just white people or Mexican people. That's an interesting conversation to have and one that we should be allowed to have without being called as a society. Understanding that different cultures communicate differently and even black or African-American people are going to communicate differently than a suburban white family, something you would consider typical and I don't think it's terrible to talk about that. I think it's interesting and fascinating and fun. And I can tell you I cherish this time that we have to just meet and have these kinds of conversations every week. And if you like this too don't leave because we're coming back right after the break. Larry, why don't you head us out? Larry, you're on mute. Pause. There it is. There you go. Okay. I'm Dr. Five and this is the Digital Freethought Radio R&W OZO Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We're going to take a short break. We'll be right back. Hang on. You're listening to W1 103.9 FM WOZO FM low power coming out of Knoxville Digital Freethought Radio R. Hey, we're back from the break. I hope you recorded that. Yeah, we're good. Larry, what's local news? Excuse me. Local news? Yeah. Gosh, I don't know. You were coming back from the break. You've got the news ready, right? Oh, that news. The thing we do every single week for the last five years. For the last five years. Let's go on. See, it's five years old. Today is Sunday, April 19th, 2020. This is the second half of the show. Let's talk about the Freethought Groups that you can join right here in Knoxville. There's the Atheist Society of Knoxville founded in 2002. We're in our 18th year. ASK has over a thousand members and you can find us online at KnoxvilleAtheist.org. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you can still go to meet up and search for an atheist group in your town. Don't find one. Start one. Another large Freethinking Group here in Knoxville, the Rationalists of East Tennessee. RET has been around for more than 20 years and has bi-weekly presentations and discussions. Just go to rationalist.org and click on upcoming events to find out what they're doing next. Earlier in the show, we said we talked about the Atheist Call in TV show. Let's call Freethinkers United Coalition of Knoxville. You can find them on YouTube just by searching for those words and they keep their archive there as well. And if you're interested in getting involved with the TV or this radio show, just come to and ask and meet up when we start having them again. Yeah, we'll do it online too. We have them online as well. In the meantime, you can always go to Digital Freethought Radio Hour, Facebook page, and messages there. And on the show with us, we have a co-host Wombat, say hello Wombat. Yay! Wombat. And several guests today, Joy Woods, Chedney and Paylor, Boudreaux, Dread Pirate Hicks, and where was it? Abstract Activist, Essie. Abstract Activist. It's a hard name, Nathan. That's a hard thing to remember. I had to just go with it. I was either come up with something or just think about the name forever. The word abstract is in the title. I think I need to change our names on the way screen so we can see who we are. True, true, true. Radio names, anyway. So, hey, let's talk about more of the dark side of what would happen if we lived in a world where accessory prayer did actually exist and work. What would be like the worst outcomes on that? Larry, what do you think? I'd like to take the first jump in there, anyway. It all depends on how many people are praying for something, theoretically. Most religions are praying for different things. Like, they want to be the dominant religion. And, of course, they're going to be in conflict. Even if it came true, then it would be back and forth vacillating all the time. But I think most of the religions in the world are praying for a coronavirus virus to go away. That ain't it. So, you know, if it's a popularity thing, then why isn't it working? And if it's not, then how does it work? It's a sticky-paw situation. And the way how we're... And this is dark. But the way how coronavirus is being prayed away is by removing the people who do have it. Mm. Removing. Yeah, like, if accessory prayer assumes that you're working with a benevolent god or a benevolent deity, when you could very easily be working with, like, a trickster god or a belligerent god who's like, you know, from getting sick, I got a great way of doing that. Bye. Yeah, yeah. I mean, those are the OG gods. Yeah. And they would remove your memory of you from everybody who was ever on the planet so you wouldn't be missed, right? Something like that. Maybe, yeah, they could. Time does that. Time does that to everyone. What about the classic example of one guy praying a farmer praying for his crops and right next door, a young couple is praying for no rain on their wedding day. Right. And if they both pray just as hard, let's say they're equally as strong in the force or whatever it is they get, who wins? And how do you decide? Does the rain just split right down the middle? Whoever goes to church and whoever tides the most, I think. Let's say it's exactly equal. That's a Catholic perspective. Exactly equal. That's your umbrella. Whoever says it first. First in, first out. I would imagine if you're all-powerful, you can just split the cloud and just have it rain maybe the morning of or just on the field and then when the wedding happens, no rain or something like that. That doesn't seem like a hard problem for an all-powerful god. You could just make the rain come up from underneath the ground so that it doesn't have to come from the sky. And in the Bible, I think that's how it used to be before it started rain, right? Yeah, and people who wrote that didn't ever follow it. They just wrote everything up, way to go. What a way for a doctrine to just make women the bad guy. Oh, man. There's no greater book to do that than the Bible. Mm-hmm. Brother is. Well, the Koran does a pretty good job. Exactly. They're all misogynists. From my perspective, that's Bible 3.0. Yeah, I agree. What about if there was an all-powerful god, why not create a universe for each one of us where we get what we want? I'm certainly not living in that universe. I get what I want. There's the possible words, hypothesis, where that is actually possible, right? I wonder who that is here. Is it Donald Trump? No way. I can't imagine. So there is, again, Trickster God. There was a great, I love the Twilight Zone, and I would highly recommend that you guys watch that now, considering when the show was making episodes, still the standard of writing well-written series on TV. Okay, so you're talking the original Rod Serling stuff. Oh, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I didn't know there was new stuff. But anyway, there's an episode where a guy does get his own universe and he gets to do whatever he wants and gets as much food, women, money, whatever he wants, and it's miserable after like the first day. Because you need to have you need to be upset. The human experience is working through challenges and strife, and when you have everything handed to you in a platter, there's no fulfillment from it because there's no angst, there's no earning from it. So there is this weird thing about humanity where it's like, we need to have a bad guy. We do need to have something to fight for or struggle through to feel meaning in our lives. I feel like that is a thing. That theory was expressed in The Matrix. Oh, really? The good place, too. Oh, okay, yeah. Joe, what's your thoughts on this? My thoughts on they're having to be antagonists. Yeah, how about that? Like, do you think the concept of humanity goes well, yes. I think 100% taking into the fact that we're produced by a merciless and amoral savage environment that the reason that we are here is because that we overcame and adapted to the struggles that nature threw at us. But it was an uncontrolled thing, so it's not just kind of like somebody's out there writing and throwing all these antagonists against us throughout human history. I mean, some religious people believe that they bring in evolution and their religion. I don't see how they can do that, but they do. Because evolution to me is even more evidence that we're produced by a universe that isn't controlled or guided or ordered. So, but yeah, I think that is essential to the human experience is obstacles and struggle. And I've been doing a lot of studying a philosophy of thought called dystoicism, dystoics, and that's one of the main teachings is looking at obstacles from a different point of view than a negative. Yeah, that's the things happen for you, not to you. Yeah. I like that. It's a nice way to look at things. Yeah. Nathan, I'm going to throw a question out at you. If you could have any intercessory intercessory. Thank you. Thank you, Jeff. If you can have any intercessory prayer answered for you on your behalf right now, you can wish for everybody to have dreadlocks wherever you want. Whatever you want, Nathan. This is all you. What would you have right now? I would probably wish so you're not going to like this. This is not a trick to God. I would wish the maximal well-being for all conscious creatures. Oh, whoa. Yeah. I'm Harris. Yeah. Living forever. So I do like the idea of well-being. I feel like well-being, even on a more fundamental level, is based on selfish properties which aren't inherently a bad thing. I feel like that is could you mind elaborating a bit on that? Well, well-being would include whatever you would define as meaning fulfilled. So if that meant that you had to maybe suffer a little bit in order to get that kind of meaning, well then that would be part of the well-being I suppose. Go for it, Larry. I mean, conscious creatures, you're talking about animals as well. You know, the lion on the engine. Sure, we're not. The maximal well-being of a lion does not include the maximal well-being of the antelope. Right. Larry with the wrench. I think that's where Nathan's going with it, right? But you maximize across the board. So yes, some lions will get to eat the antelopes, but some antelopes will get to be free. Or maybe the lions don't need the antelopes anymore because there's some other way to maximally achieve their well-being without having to sacrifice anyone's well-being in the process. I mean, we can conceive of such a world, but I don't know how to achieve it. Achieving it would be different, and that's not up for me. That's up for the genie in the lamp that we're talking about here. But I'm just saying if I had that genie, well then I would abstractly talk about, you know, well, maximum well-being, and we can debate all day about how to achieve that and how that could be achieved, but well-being actually represents. Right, yeah. Or maybe like the maximal avoidance of suffering. That would be another good way to put it, but it would be another angle. But then you'd be depriving masochists of their jury. Guys, I'm interested. Nathan, thank you for sharing that. I want to know what everyone else would wish for if they could actually get an antacessary prayer from a benevolent God. Chad, where would you be on? Where would you be on that? I was hoping you wouldn't call on me first. I saw your face and I'm like, oh, this guy's thinking. What would you be on this? You have one prayer you can ask for anything you want. It's a benevolent God who's going to do, or she's going to do, or it's going to do whatever you say. With no strings attached, just boom, there you go. To show humans, I would start with humans being what I consider the highest level of consciousness on the planet. I could be wrong. Hard Varks are going to take umbrage with that. Who knows what all levels of consciousness we have, but the one we know about, the one that we subjectively know about, that we understand our own motivations more. Maybe. Maybe be more conscious or mindful. And I don't know what that means and that's, I wish I had more time to answer this question, but I think just more awareness of motivation. Like the long-term implications of not only just what they're doing now, but like the impacts they'll have in the future and maybe how they'll be recognized or remembered by other people moving forward. I know that that's not very easy. That doesn't pack much of a punch. I wish I had a better answer, but I wish that would be what I would wish for is that, well, you know, okay, wait a minute, I do this. I might have a different answer. I do meta meditation, which is loving kindness meditation. Okay. And sometimes this starts with, may you be happy, may you be well, and you can start with yourself just to start with someone that you really care about and then broaden your horizon until you're finally saying that about someone that you absolutely despise. May you be happy, may you be well, may you suffer less. Maybe that's it. Learn to be more compassionate and think about other people. You're here. Cool. And I'll stop there. Eric, Boudreau, what you got us? What's your intercessory prayer or wish? I like a lot of what we're hearing, but this is great for Mathias, by the way. Yeah. I think a really, really interesting, compelling one that would tie into my science fiction interest become in contact with another intelligent life form. Oh. Yeah, meet the other us. I mean, that really puts a muggy wrench on the whole God series. You want to meet porpoises? Oh, no, no. He's talking about aliens. That's hard. Talking to the dolphins would be great, too. Figure out some way to get our universes to communicate with each other that way. We can just be like, whoa, this is completely new. I'm so happy I can talk to you. It's a new friend. Maybe it makes us more... And it really monkey wrenches the whole, you know, the gods that we know of. Love to know about their gods. Star Trek had no religion, right? As far as I understand it, there was the idea there. There was a cartoon I saw on the internet and I like to pass it on a lot of times. There's a family at dinner and the boy asks the father. He says, why people don't go to church and Star Trek? And the father says, that's because it's a future son. That's pretty good. Dreadpire Yes. What's your anti-cessory prayer? Intercessory. Intercessory prayer. So, if there was a god to whom I could make one, I would tell him to leave us the hell alone. Yeah, you stole my prayer. I'd be like, no, thank you. We're good. Well, I'm actually reminded of Frank Herbert's Destination Boyd novel from, you know, 70's where the last line is, the last line is, God leaves the scene never to be seen again, as it were. And if that was a wish I could make to something that existed, that would be it. I feel like there's value in, and the two reasons why I'd make that wish is, one, I don't know if this god's going around to everybody and I know there's certain people who I don't want to have the ability to make a prayer, but if it was literally just me, I find value in the consequences of the actions that I've had since the time of my birth and everything that I've done, I've done. And not someone done for me or through me. If I hurt somebody, that's my fault and I have to repair that relationship. It's not for me to pray for someone to repair this relationship for me. Exactly. If I win the race because I worked hard for it, it isn't because God chose me to be the winner that day, it's because I worked hard for it that day. That's juncture. I wouldn't ask for anything more. I'd just be, just let me continue doing what I am. If we are in a bad state, if we still need to convince people global warming is an issue, if we have political problems, if we are treating people unwell, that's on us and we're going to figure this out together because we've been with each other and this is a human problem that we need to work together. We don't need a supernatural deity step in final hour and put us into overtime, so to speak. Because who's to say if we get ourselves in a worse situation, we'll be less likely to fix our own problems and rely on God to fix it for us. Let's continue to deal, look at the problem we've made and clean up the mess that we continue to make. And then also at the same point, the things that we do do well, the accomplishments that we make are entirely of our own merit. We're talking right now all around the world on a video conference machine, black, white, happy people, not so happy people, whatever whatever it is. This is an amazing form of technology, just connection and it's being done by people all around the world in the state of a pandemic, we are still strong and we're still communicative and it's just a brilliant thing that we connect with. Just finding different ways to do it. Yeah, and that's us. God didn't make this for us. This is well beyond what the people who originally wrote the Bible thought was possible and we're here now. And I think that shows something. Joey, I don't know if I asked you the question. Did I get a response on what would you wish for if you had the ability to get an intercessory prayer going on? You haven't asked yet. You guys got to stole my answers as well or I pray for that. Best to get what we want in that way or get what we need in that. And I was also thinking when Nathan was talking about mass maximum well-being do we really know what that looks like? Do we really know what that is? Because we have to know what that looks like or have to be able to define it in order to work toward it. Correct? We went to a God that he, she, or it and we actually asked for that and they gave it to us and when they gave it to us all they did was delete the universe. Pull a Thanos on us. Oh yeah. If that were true then that would be good to know before asking it. Yeah. Maybe maybe we have to maybe just the universe that we live in it's not a black and white kind of thing. We have to have both and we have to go through this and we have to keep fighting and keep adapting and there's just no extreme upward. In my world view maximum well-being would not necessarily be a binary thing. It would very likely be multi-dimensional and have highs and lows and different dimensions than just yeah. The question isn't like I guess to me well-being is just proposing that things could be better for most things probably and if we can conceive of some goal or desire to try to chase after for well-being then that would be what well-being is at the present moment and maybe that changes over time and maybe that's why well-being isn't so binary and it's more complicated than that and very well it could be. I just like to well down my wish into a simplistic thing for the sake of this. Yeah. What my thoughts were on the matter is like we're talking about struggles I mean we went from having an antagonist and having obstacles and turning them into opportunities it's just like you know if we this is exactly the way it was supposed to be what if this is what we need what if this is maximum well-being and we're not seeing it that way what if this is exactly the way it's supposed to be but I mean it's just this is all we're getting into an area of philosophy speculation here the truth is I don't know what I would really ask I hate seeing cancer in kids I hate that shit that's right Thanks for making this really hard on me Ask what we need you know if that makes any sense Chad it looked like you wanted to say something Well I kind of wanted to back up what Nathan was saying as long as that lofty goal is our goal we will continue to at least try to understand what well-being means as long as we don't assume that we have the answer now and that with more and more understanding of the human condition and the universe that we live in the better we're probably going to understand what well-being is and I think leaving it so open is the right way to do it it's an invitation to continue to try as we better understand our condition as we as we lead our way towards the last couple of minutes of the show I just want to say I'm so thankful you guys are willing to have these conversations every week this is a really beautiful moment and one of the highlights best ways to start off a week in my opinion just a round table discussion but we are near the end of the show and I have editing to do thanks to Joey so Larry why don't you why don't you take us out Okay this is Digital Freethought Radio R on Wednesday at 7 o'clock on WOZO Radio 103.9 LP FM you can also listen to us streaming online at wozoradio.com that's WOZOradio.com at 7 o'clock on Wednesdays be sure to visit digitalfreethought.com and click on the blog button for our radio show archives we have like 175 shows on there and Atheist songs and many articles on the subject of Atheism if you have any questions for the show you can send them to askanatheistatnoxfilatheist.org and we'll answer them on future shows if you'd like to listen to prior shows and can't get to digitalfreethought.com you can always go to all the podcasts out there itunes, stitcher, luminary podcast.com, my heart et cetera et cetera and listen to them there and as a last word anybody else have last words for it get into my last words I will run close at night praise be to me I love these conversations they're great one of us keep in mind that 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 join us next Wednesday talk to you later say bye everybody bye everybody