 Hello and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio, our NWOZO Radio 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We're recording this on Sunday morning, December 10th, 2023. I'm Larry Rhodes or DJ Douter 5. And as usual, we have our co-host Wombat on the line. Hello Wombat. Um, no Wombat. Oh, these arms are looking pretty good right now. Okay. They are. There's some guns ready there. And I guess the Dread Pirate eggs. Welcome. Western Canada. Cool. Did you know Freethought Radio? I was a talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism and the sciences. And conversely, we'll also talk about religions, religious faiths, Asteferianism, God's holy books and superstitions. And if you get the feeling that you're the only nonbeliever in your town, well, you're just not. Here in Knoxville, in the middle of the Bible Belt, we have a group of 1,100 of us. We're the atheist society of Knoxville, ASK. And we'll tell you more about us after the mid-show breaks. Be sure to stick around. Wombat, what's our topic today? I want to talk about pleading, but not just any kind of pleading, not just court. Yeah. Oh, no, no. This pleading is special, very special, special pleading, if you will. We're going to talk about it for about the show today. And then if we have more time, we'll talk about legacies. I'll also go into listener comments today as well. Thank you guys so much for all your comments. Let's dump into some pleading. But before we go into that, I'd love to get into some. Post-addictions. I do let through our post addiction by our own. Direct power of Higgs. Go on ahead. All right. Hey, everyone. Our new Lord, who art in a colander. I'll go on to be thy noodles. Thy blood be rum, thy sauce be yum. With me, because it is with vegetables. Give us this day our garlic bread and forgive us our cousin. Because we forgive those who cuss against us. And lead us not into ketoism. But deliver us some carbs. Fine are the noodles and the meatballs and the grog whenever and ever. I have noted that I was playing disc golf this weekend and I noted that someone was flying around with an FPV drone. I know it was an FPG drone because it was doing maneuvers through trees in a way where someone had to have seen the flight of the drone from the Jones perspective in order to navigate that well. I think they're like some video of like, hey, here's some pass that you can take. And I just want to like fill myself play. I never found the pilot, but I did find the drone. And I thought to myself, wow, how cool it would be to fly like that through the woods, have that experience. But I also worry about the paranoia that people can have being seen play through what looks like a security camera on wings, right? But then I thought I threw the idea up to like, you know, isn't that what the whole God is in a weird way? And my brain, my weird atheist brain, I have this weird thing where I can't keep thinking. I can't stop myself and remind myself of all the contradictions in society. Left and right. Every single time I see something like a security camera being like I and hearing people be like, we hate security cameras, but you love God's looking at your actions every single day. And they're like, no, no, but that's different. I don't want to have that conversation with them. In my mind, it irks me when people aren't consistent with, you know, the rationale for what they prefer to have and what they don't prefer to have. Like why can't we just have criteria? Why are you making special acute excuses for yourself? Or should I say special? Special pleadings. You know, that's how I define it, though. I wonder how everyone else would dread. Would you like to give me a definition of how you define special bleeding? Maybe examples of that. Yeah, well, you know, certainly you made a great case there is, you know, for instance, I had a conversation recently with someone about supernatural stuff. Yep. And, you know, I pointed out that, you know, I don't believe in ghosts. I don't believe in, you know, the Christian God. I don't believe in angels, giants, witches, real magic tricks. Yeah, et cetera. Yeah. Yeah. And so in this person, of course, was agreeing with me for the most part, but then said, but I believe in ghosts. Ghosts are real. Of all the things. So he doesn't like, well, you know, how. Yeah. It doesn't believe in all the other stuff, but, you know, it makes a special case for ghosts because they saw one. Oh, interesting. It usually works that way. That's what I find anyway. Another one is, you know, suicide in medicine. Yeah. They don't believe in acupuncture. They don't believe in Reiki. They don't believe in all kinds of stuff, but chiropractic. They believe in chiropractic. Thank you for bringing that up. That's a case of special bleeding. Dread, you may have to clarify what you mean by chiropractic because we have a lot of listeners on the show, particularly in America who aren't aware of what chiropractic tree is versus physical therapy. Would you mind just like highlighting the difference between the two? Because some people will be like, wait, I have a chiropractic. Yeah. Well, yeah, sure. Yeah. So chiropractic was invented. I believe. It's not even a hundred years old. But it was a guy that. I figured that some ailment, bothering somebody was the result of what they call a subluxion in the, in the spine. And so that doing an adjustment of the spine somehow remedied this affliction. And it just, it just went crazy. It just, people are just lapping this stuff up. And of course, they don't limit themselves anymore to just the back. They think they're, well, many of them practice or have. Broad spectrum of their, and you know, it doesn't take a lot of investigation to figure out just to what degree this is all a bunch of quackery. Right. And it's been demonstrated over and over again. It's just unfortunate that so much of our, well, certainly in Canada, I don't know what it is in the States, but it's actually covered under, under medical. Yeah. So that, you know, people going to see chiropractors and taxpayers are paying for the pseudoscientific discipline. If you want to call it that. Right. But yeah, there you go. It's sort of like being medically there to go see. Yeah. It's like medically being clear to go see an astrologist. You say, oh, I had a serious, really bad headaches. And my doctor here is what I'm saying says, you know what, you should probably go see madam divine at the, at the site, at the psychic tundra next to the pawn shop. And I think ours is in the fourth house. And you know, and it's opposing the sun sign. Yes. Your planets are astray. Yes. Yes. The weirdest funniest thing though is how you can after as, as just human beings, if no one's ever went through the research to or went through the effort to understand what chiropractor is, even watching like a YouTube video, like if you aren't looking for it, you won't find it. What you'll end up with is being in a culture where people will speak highly of visits that they've had to the chiropractor, people who mentioned it and passing without describing some of the, the issues with the science or the lack of. They will just mention it as in, oh, I went to a doctor today. I checked out some chiropractors and then I went to a dentist. Like in my head, I'm not having any alarms, but I threw just association, pulling these two things together and legitimizing it just by virtue of the fact that I'm not critically assessing what I'm, what I'm paying attention to because that takes effort. But the fact is that if, if someone made a case saying, hey, I went to a chiropractor and had a really good time. And then after the fact had to realize, oh, wait a second, is this guy just pseudoscience? That's so much harder. That's so much of a harder barrier to go over because now they've had that personal experience. Like your friend who saw a ghost. Now they have to realize, well, then what did I experience? Was it actually a ghost or was I hallucinating? What about all the times where I declared in public that I did see a ghost? Now I have to go back to my friends and like, by the way, I was wrong about the ghost thing or go to my chiropractor and cancel my appointments and then realize it's just the fact that someone's touching you, giving you a lot of adrenaline and masking pain or symptoms temporarily so that I walk out and then I feel good in the moment. But then the symptoms as a whole were not. Let's see. Exactly. Yeah. That takes a lot of effort. It takes a lot of growth. And people. Yes. And people are so, you know, they want to be confident in what their senses report to them. Yes. And, and, you know, so, you know, I saw it with my own eyes. Well, you know, there's probably circumstances where your eyes have definitely reported the wrong thing to you. And actually I point out to some people, you know, who say they definitely saw UFO or whatever. I say, hold a quarter at arm's length. That is called the phobia. And that is what your eye actually sees. Everything else is just filler. Your brain just fills in everything else. I said, you know, they, of course, they don't believe that. And I say, well, you, you know, you have an optic nerve. And that was called a blind spot. Do you see your blind spot? And they say no. And I say, well, there you go. That's your brain filling in. Fill in. Along with that. Like, can you see the bridge of your nose? Not when you're actually paying attention to your nose or not. Right. Missing. And. Anyway. Right. The brain runs on input. If it doesn't have any, it'll supply its own though. Larry and I have both seen UFOs. Right. Larry, you've seen at least one. No, I've seen UFOs. I saw one this weekend. Like it's just an unintended flying. It's something that's flying that you can't identify. Yeah, exactly. We saw a bright star. It looked like a star, but it was a cloudy night. We thought it was a blimp, you know, probably being like reflecting from some of the moonlight, but we didn't know. We thought it either was like some sort of blimp or like a very slow moving thing, maybe a satellite, maybe a man made low orbit satellite. But we, there are identified flying objects exist. I think the repercussion that comes with it is when people start saying, I saw something I didn't understand. And it must be aliens or an angel or extra dimensional travelers, like that extra step from, I don't know to, and this is my conclusion. Right. That's the problem. That's the thing. Yeah. The leap of logic. That's the part where special pleading starts to make it, it knock on the door and be like, Hey, do you need an excuse to believe the thing that you believe in? I can help out with that. I was about to make an analogy that kids would not understand who are to show. I think, you know, when a door to door vacuum salesman opens up your door and he throws a fistful of dirt onto your carpet. I don't know if that's ever happened to anybody, but that's happened to us once. That's happened to us once in America. Can you believe that? And then they'd be like, I can suck that up. I'm like, you just gave me the problem. Religion and macrocosm or microcosm. Larry, I would love to know. Do you have examples of special pleading and how do you define it? Well, it goes back to the existence of God. A lot of that is like, you know, nothing comes from nothing. Right? You can't get something from nothing. But where did God come from? Oh, he's always been here. You know, that's a special pleading, you know, that he never had a beginning. Okay. Well, you just make an example. Yeah. Now I have an example that doesn't come from anything. Yeah. And also, you know, God made everything. Well, God made evil then. Oh, no, God double made evil. Yeah. So it's an exception to the general rule that goes flying in the face of the general rule, but they claim it anyway. Right. That's a special pleading. So exactly. That's a really good point. It's that. So why am I laying Craig use that argument a lot. Yeah. Logically, if you say the column cosmological argument. Oh. Yeah. I'm, I'll. Must be me. So Dred, if you had logically set up a, an argument for why God needs to exist by saying everything has to come from something. Right. And my head, I hear that I think, okay. All right. So far as a first statement, I can, I can, I can understand what you're talking about. Okay. Now let's talk about God. What did he come from? Well, he doesn't count. Or what, what did he make the universe out of? Like, yeah, there was nothing around, nothing. You know, even if you were to follow that argument from in the explicit order for how things are created, like God created light. First, first thing. And he said it was good. In my mind. Light works. Light works by bouncing off of things and bouncing back into your receptor. Right. Like, so you can see something. A light source exists. Bounce photons are emitted. They bounce off a physical object or something that has mass that I can interact with. Those photons bounce off that substance and they go into my detectors, my eye detectors. And I can see things. That's how light works. If light was the first thing to exist and it was good. How did you know it even existed? Because otherwise it's like me shining a flashlight into deep space. That light's just going to keep going and never going to come back to me. It's going to be effectively as dark. It will be just as dark as if there was no light at all. So what was the point of that being the first step? If there was nothing else preceding that. Nothing else to reflect off of. Yeah. Yeah. It's one of the, it's one of the weird follies of, oh, this was written by a person who doesn't understand physics or light, right? And if you go to a physicist and you say, Hey, if I don't have anything and I shine light on it, will it bounce off anything? It's like, no, because that's not how light works. It's like, great. It's like chapter one of the Bible first, first, literally first line. More or less. You like, well, that doesn't count if I'm a Christian physicist, I'd be like, well, here's the exception to the rules because maybe there was my asthma. It's like, if that was anything to make it work. Yeah. Post ad hoc rationalizations are really, really frustrating to hear from a, from an atheist. Larry, more on the idea of special pleading. How could I recognize, even as an atheist, if I'm operating under special pleading, like, have you I would think just be, just be honest with yourself. If you make some contradictory statement, you may not recognize it yourself because you were raised with it. But when somebody tells you about it, recognize the truth in what they tell you and don't just try to push it away from you mentally. You know, in other words, think about your beliefs, especially if somebody brings up the problem with those beliefs. Don't just blow them away. Think about them. Try to, try to see how you, you might be wrong in this particular situation. It doesn't mean the whole thing's wrong. Just think about that one thing and go from there. Yeah. And don't worry about, and here's my thought, don't worry so much about meaning to change your conclusion, right? Because if you put so much, you are, your, your belief or your confidence in the conclusion will adjust once you start caring about how you got to your conclusion. So you don't have to worry about like, oh, do I have to believe something different? It's like, no, you just need to start caring about how you approach beliefs. Right. Your method is, is, is it crucial? Yes. When you start thinking about how you, what your sources are, how you're coming to arrive at such a high level of confidence, when you start putting investment into that, everything that comes downstream of that will be improved. And if you want that to still be, well, I still want to believe in a God, at least you'll come to a more rational level of why you believe in that God, which is totally fine. I want people to have more rational ways to get their conclusions. Right. The one thing I can respect is if somebody says they believe in God and I ask them why, common question, why? You know, they'll say, because I want to. Well, that's honesty. That's honesty. I can respect that. Okay, fine. A lot of people want to believe in UFOs and Bigfoot and leprechauns, you know, at least you're being honest. I believe in UFOs. Are you calling me weird? Am I special pleading right now? No, not as long as not as long as you understand that they are just unidentified flying off. That's exactly what they are. I don't think that that that's hypocritical or special pleading at all. No, I think though, if I went to a convention for UFO con, people would be really upset if that's all I said they were. They'd be like, no, you have to go. You have to buy the whole horse and carrot. I'm sure there's some of the represent both camps there. Okay. Let me let me try to think about one more thing on special pleading that I do. No, for myself, I really do care about why I believe things, right? And so as Larry had mentioned, it's really important for you to think about the the beliefs that I have. If you could, if you're watching the show, maybe jot down like one of the five most important beliefs that I have, right? And like those can be the things that you do believe. But then right next to them, think about like why you believe them, how you got to those conclusions. And then what I want you to do is take if you have these two pillars, right? You have the things that you believe and then you have why you believe them. Take that section of what you believe and literally, okay, take why you believe and covered up, covered up, right? And then replace the things that you do believe with five different but analogous things. So like if I said, I believe in the Christian God, now I'm going to replace it with Muslim God or God from Islam or Jade or some other God and then look at those reasonings again. Do any of those reasonings apply to that God that you believe in? If you say, hey, I'm the coolest person in school and my reason is because I have these fancy pants. If someone else had the fancy pants, would that person be the coolest person in school? Like, does the reasons that you have specifically and necessarily support that God belief that you have? A good example that I have of this is I've talked, I've done this practice with someone and they said, well, I believe that the son is my God because it sustains life. These are the reasons it sustains life and without it, I wouldn't exist or life would cease to exist on earth and that's why it's a God to me. And so the follow-up that I had to him is, well, you know, we had some examples where let's just replace it with no son. If the son stopped existing or if the son was like two sons and there's like twice as much sunlight, we know or if we weren't worshiping the son or worshiping the planet Mercury or something like that, the main conclusion was we have planets that clearly have more sunlight than earth like Mercury or Venus. They're exposed to more solar radiation and there's no life being sustained and in fact it's almost as if UV light is antagonistic to life in general. Not only that, but we also know that in order to go away, there's life on earth that never even exposes itself to sunlight like deep water or fish that are insulated by layers and layers of ocean water, right? And maybe even ice on top of that. So it seems like for the reasonings that you've positioned for why the son is a God, the sustainment of life through sunlight isn't necessarily a feature. It's just seems to be more like a byproduct of just enough sunlight and just really an atmosphere to filter out a lot of the UV and that if the sun was gone, we'd still have life on earth. So what about these reasonings tie back to the sun being God? And I literally, this is the end of the conversation was, well, you know what? That's actually pretty good. Maybe I should not have the sun be my God and think more about how the atmosphere sustains life because without that, then it seems like the life on earth would go away a lot faster. It's like, yeah, that would be at least an improvement, right? Because now he's thinking about his beliefs and he sees that his conclusions are changing. I'd love to just more people think about their beliefs in that way, just like in a formatted thoughtful consideration. It's particularly if it's important to them. Yeah. Well, we were talking about methods and the method is all important to approach the truth. If you've got a faulty method, you're going to get faulty answers. And that's why we realize so much on the scientific method. It's self-correcting. If a scientist comes up and says, hey, I got this theory and here's my work. The first thing they're going to do is they're going to send it out for peer review and all of the people who have the same theories that he does can look at it and try to understand it and replicate it. And if there's flaws in it, he will be the first to be notified of it. Right. And especially if it's a long-standing theory, like a theory of evolution or something, which is still being challenged to this date. Yeah. And if somebody comes up with an exception to that that disproves it, that person, the scientific community will make that person famous and rich because they want to know the truth, the truth above all else. Right. I have another example of special pleading if you'd like to hear it. Yes, please. When I'm out talking to people, you know, in my little Ask an Atheist booth, they come over and the first, one of the first things some of them want to do, want me to do is disprove their God. Because how can I, how can I not believe in their God if I have no evidence against their God? You know, disprove it. Instead of, you know, taking the, the onus, the, the responsibility of proving that their own God exists, that they say it exists and had. You know, you would think the onus of proof would be on the person. It is. Owning the claim. It is. Now, but to think the special pleading part of it is they disbelieve in all the other religions, God's, and never try to disprove them. Never try to come up with evidence again. But so they, they can demand that we disprove it, but the special pleading is, Oh, I don't have to. You do. Right. Because by default, people are Christian because they were Christian before they even were aware that there are other options. Right. That Christian family. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That's the scary. When you change your default, then it seems like the burden belongs to everybody else because you're living a default naturalistic life. You know, it's both. And I'll go to this as our closing comment. I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to say that. My point is that in the default of the human condition. And society in general, that. The things that we get used to, we take for granted, whether they're good things or bad things. If you're a very talented writer, if you keep writing, eventually you'll feel like I'm not that good of a writer. Even though you might be really good. You're a great artist. And you keep putting beautiful pieces of art out. Eventually you'll start feeling like my art's not as good. And so it's good to get reminders that you are a quality of person, but for even thoughts or indoctrinated thoughts that were given to you, like Christianity, or if you grew up in an Islam family, you start to think, oh, this is my fundamental way of looking at the world and everybody else who just doesn't fall into my dogma, they're wrong. That could be just as alarming, particularly when you start getting to an age where you start realizing, I don't feel as good of a person anymore because I believe in my God. Now I'm stuck in this loop where I'm constantly trying to reinforce my religious beliefs, not just to myself, but on other people to reinforce the feeling of adequacy that I used to get out of my religion, even though it is ultimately just a position on false hope, right? And that could be a spiral for a lot of people who are caught in a loop where they're just constantly trying to prove to their God that doesn't answer to them, doesn't talk to them, doesn't have any relationship with them on a tangible level that they are in fact a good person or are worthy of love and are worthy of respect and authority. Which goes directly against the basic teaching of Christianity. You're not worthy. You're nothing without Jesus. Yeah, it's a noxious poison that you can systematically keep giving yourself that you can get used to for a period of time, but I think long wise cause a lot of harm overall. So it's really important that we recognize where we are, understand what special pleading is, and if you are listening to this and you are religious, it's about, you know, if you are looking for a way out, you know, contact people who use your local atheists so that you can, or at least, you know, start going on some YouTube channels to figure out how to get yourself free from like bad run loops of thoughts. Dredd, any final thoughts before we break? Well, you can also get in contact with your local Pastifarian. Really? Pastifarians will help you out for that? Okay, I didn't know this. Well, I'll tell you and I'll tell you why, or I can tell you after the break. Tell us after the break. I'd love to know this because I'm not sure if this is another case of special pleading. Let's just get to the break. All right. This is the digital free thought radio hour on WOZO Radio 103.9 LPF. I'm here in Knoxville, Tennessee, and we'll be right back after this short break. Welcome back to the second half of the digital free thought radio hour. I'm doubter five and we're on WOZO Radio 103.9 LPF. I'm here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Let's just take a moment to talk about the atheist society of Knoxville. ASK was founded in 2002. We're in our 21st year now and have 1100 members. We have weekly in-person meetings every Tuesday evening in Knoxville's old city at Barley's Taproom in Pete's area. Look for us inside at the high top table so if it's pretty weather outside on the deck, you can find us online on Facebook meetup.com or go to our website at KnoxvilleAtheist.org. It's just that simple. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you should go to meet up and do a search for an atheist group in your town. Don't find one. Start one. Start one. Well, Matt, where do you want to pick up? I want to talk about special pleading. So it turns out that Dredd said that if you are stuck in a belief where you are worshiping a God, a God of nebulous existence that you should reach out to a apostrophe and to hopefully help out with what? This is interesting now because what do you got, Dredd? So we distinguish ourselves in the following way. Our religion is as likely to be true as any other. It's pretty good. So well, it's a start, right? I mean, you know, other religions, of course, even the Abrahamic religions, like if you're Jewish, you believe in the same God as Christians and Muslims do, but they're all still mutually exclusive. Certainly, if you're a Sikh, everyone else is wrong. If you're a Hindu, everyone else is wrong. If you're a Jew, everyone else is wrong. Apostropheries don't take that stance. We just say we are as likely to be true as any of the other religions in the world that have been, are, or will be. And so we eliminate special pleading in the sense that we don't claim exclusivity to truth or knowledge of the underlying nature of the universe. We just say, eh, it may be true. It may be not. We don't really care. But it's something we're into right now. So there you go. That's cool. Rahman. I understand that. Rahman, Rahman. I understand the idea of like, hey, by us, so we're not supplanting your religious view of a monotheistic deity or even polyistic deity with another one. What we're basically saying is we have a more open-minded option that's open to swinging. That's right. Which is just likely to be true. It goes right back to the God-back guarantee. Try this out for three months. And if you don't like this, your old God will probably take you back. Right, right, right, right. God-back guarantee. That's cool. I'm going to start with the George Carlin, Joe Pesci rule, where it's, hey, I'm just going to start praying to Joe Pesci for the next couple of years and we'll see if anything changes. And if not, I'm just going to keep sticking with that. I was thinking about something this week. As we get older, we think about how, what's more important? Like, is it my body? Is it the good things that I can leave behind, the numbers in my bank account? And what I realized was, and I was alluding to this last week, is that I really do care about the legacy. The legacy that I have is very important to me. And the reason why I bring that up is because I know my body is temporary, but I could have a lasting impact that lasts longer than my temporal form, my mortal coil, if you will. And what I mean by that is the good things that I do, the people that I make, the things that I can teach, the discoveries and science that I can establish, the work that I can put forward and move industry through analytical research, support, just putting out good vibes. Like, even if I've stabbed my fingers and I disappeared today, I think those would have a positive lasting impact that I could say that I was happy to contribute to and pioneer for. That's very important for me. And I feel like if you're going to open up a book about Tyrone Wells, if I was fortunate enough to have something like that about 100 years from now, what they look back on isn't what I did yesterday when I woke up, brushed my teeth, took a shower and just like fed my cat and like all these mundane activities that I did. What I hope is that they can see a lasting impact of, wow, really good, strong, positive influences in science, good support in the community, like good standards for safety in our laboratories. People got to go home safe, come to work in the same state that they did when they left. Everybody was like very positive with the amount of work that was being put out and the productivity they put up, picking up trash, helping the hungry, walking dogs on the weekend, a volunteer show, like this guy did a lot of cool things and the good things are still around and more people are motivated to do them by virtue of the fact that this guy participated in it. Like, that's the culture that I want to be able to stimulate. So if I look back on in, when I look back on historical figures, what I realize is a lot of times we're not talking about that person specifically, we're talking about the legacy that they put out, because we will put people on pedestals, historical figures even, Ben Franklin, I don't know, George Washington. I'm trying to come up with a Canadian. But my American history is not very good. Okay, okay. My American history is just so US centric. But when you look back on those figures in detail, you actually realize Ben Franklin was actually kind of a terrible person. George Washington slave owner. Like not a, when he's fighting for freedom, he's not talking about women. Like the people that we have on like the Mount Rushmore is largely made by people who are looked like and could fund a Mount Rushmore. In fact, Roosevelt is on that monument because he paid for it with taxpayer money. So it's just this weird echo chamber of people patting themselves on the back. And as far as like a legacy is concerned, yeah, we can look at it and visit and be like, wow, Americana, wow, this great historical impact. But who are those people in general? And now I wonder about religious figures. We know a lot about, we think we know a lot about Jesus. We think we know a lot about Moses and Isaac and Abraham and all these other figures. But do we really know anything about them? Or do we just understand a legacy that they still have as an impact on society? And is that legacy and is that impact positive or fit or under microscope? Is it actually far more noxious, far worse than we could have ever imagined. And if I were to think of like the impact that Jesus has had on society overall, I can't think of one person who's been responsible for more deaths in human history than that person or the inhibition of science or the support of ignorance or family conflict or, you know, just prejudices in general from just one person's legacy. Maybe that guy didn't even know what he was about to do. If there was a collection of different people put together, but that legacy has a lasting impact that I find to be a net negative actually. So if that's a strong, what do you think, Dredd? Is that, is that fair to say? I was going to say that often, I mean, certainly people, most people I think don't set out with the notion that they're creating a legacy, that they're just, they're just acting, they're just acting according to their, their own temperament, their own personality, their own motivations and their temporary goals and that after the fact, if they've had an impact on society, it's the constructed narrative after the fact that makes the legacy. And, you know, you brought, you brought up Jesus and certainly what, what he was saying at the time when he was alive and doing his ministry wasn't really the legacy because that's what Paul created. Paul created the true legacy of Jesus, which is, you know, Gentiles are, you know, can be saved and all the rest of it. And like I've listened to Bart Ehrman, this New Testament scholar, and some real deep dives into this stuff. And it's, it's very surprising the different messages that Paul had with respect to Jesus' teachings and what Jesus had to say right out of his own mouth. So that's what I mean by legacy being a constructed narrative, usually after the fact, you know, like George Washington and all those guys, they were all acting as members of their time, right? And, you know, trying to do what their temperaments and motivations and all the rest of it guided them to do. But, you know, people embellished stories after the fact. And all of a sudden, you know, you have these people that could not possibly be as good as history remembers them. Right. And I wonder, is that a fair representation of them? Would that be something they'd even recognize or would they say, man, I died twice once in actuality and two in the minds of everybody as you replace me with this mascot who has my same face and name and purports ideals that I'd need to even support at the end of the day. Larry, I wonder, questions of legacy, do you feel like the lasting impact of Jesus as on society has been a positive or negative legacy? If that's fair, feel free to make it. Well, to be fair, he had some good things to say about equality or not even equality, but if you're with sin, be the first to cast a stone, you know, that type of thing. But it was far outweighed by all the negative stuff that he supported. Now, the first thing that he did, which was a problem and brought a lot of harm into his new religion was he supported and validated the Old Testament. You know, not one jot in total of the Old Testament will pass away. So he brought all of that baggage into his new message of hope. And also he was the one who created hell and there was no hell before no eternal punishment before the New Testament. So I mean, that's a whole big bunch of problems and harm that he created for us right there. Now, that's himself and his own legacy. But then religions, of course, you know, are things like they grow up from those and they differ and they split and they have 13,000 different denominations. Now, if you disagree with the scientists, you're either right or wrong and you can prove it. If you disagree with the church, you just started a new church and that's how they splinter and move on. Sure. Right across the street sometimes. That's where you get into it splits mankind into warring factions. And that's another huge problem that he brought to the world. I mean, Larry, you completely overlooked the biggest thing that Jesus ever did, which was destroy that fig tree. Like he's like, hey, someone else's fig tree. Oh, there's no figs in it. You're gone. And some guys like, hey, it was out of season to what are you doing? You can't just do that. Like I hated that tree. It didn't have a fig for me. It's like, even if it didn't, they weren't for you. That's my fig tree. What are you doing? He's destroying personal property. Right. Trent, I see you. He's a vandal. He's a vandal. He's the ultimate salesman, right? Because like you point out, Larry, there was no hell. So he creates hell and then puts himself forward as the solution to that problem. Yes. Right? If you have any product, you know, they create the problem and then say, and we, as it turns out, have the solution by me, right? Right. Yeah, you know, it was almost as if it was missing a component because the situation was you're a sinner. And that was, you know, Old Testament, what's the repercussion of being a sinner? God doesn't like you that much. I was like, okay, okay, is that it? More or less. That's fine. Then Jesus is like, by the way, if you're a sinner, internal damnation, you're like, oh, now that's a problem. So what's the solution? Jesus also. So yeah. Oh, I mean, in the Old Testament, they could just, they could just do animal sacrifice, you know, and get back in with, get back in good with, with God, but in the, in the future. If you're a landowner and if you own property that you can destroy for, for no other purpose, not to feed your family or anything like that. And that's where the solution is in, in the Old Testament, what kind of caster is it? Disrespectable income. Yes. Then you can save yourself, which makes it very clear what kind of status or cast Old Testament was supporting. Right? If you have property to destroy, then yeah, you can be saved everybody else. Sorry. Sorry, get some goats and Burnham. And this is the accident with some furnace and, and ER and all that other stuff. animal sacrifice being something that was pleasing to the Lord. I mean nobody in modern society I don't think would consider trying to rationalize that in any way or seeing that as a reasonable part of their own history, like moving forward. Why would you believe in a God now that used to be pleased by the killing of animals and the burning of their flesh? That's pretty bizarre. With the New Testament you don't have to do that anymore because Jesus was the ultimate sacrifice. Yes, I understand. I'm just saying that that again is it's a special pleading to excuse the behavior of a God who demanded that in the first place. I was just going to say however even though Jesus did sacrifice himself and replace all the other sacrifices, you're still sinner. You're still damned to hell unless you follow that particular church's doctrine about accepting Jesus and tithing and following the religion. Yes, very true. I also wonder, so I have a mom who loves me very much and she's a Jehovah witness and she will send me brochure. Well, she will ask now before she sends me brochures for Jehovah, right? She'll call me on the phone and if that conversation ever gets to religion she knows I'm a atheist. She's supportive of that which is really big on her, but she'll say, Ty, I have brochures. Would you like to see one for, you know, watch Tower of the Truth, etc. And I made the point, I don't know the exact wording, but I said basically mom, if I sent you a brochure for a law would that, you would agree that you would need more than a brochure to believe in a law, right? She's like, yeah, of course I'd need more than a brochure to believe in more or less any other God except for my one God. That's special pleading right there. Yeah, that's the example of special pleading. I could, I can label it, but it doesn't have the impact until you understand the importance of caring about why you believe things, right? And I think that's the justified point. As atheists, we are very quick to point out the logical flaws and errors, but they fall on deaf ears if we're talking to people who don't care if their beliefs are true and just care about what they believe and not why they believe it. And it's really up to us, honestly, to transition from the, and there's still a place for it. I think in public debates, I think it's a really good place, but transition from attacking the conclusion or pointing out the errors and more of inspiring people to critically assess why they arrived at their conclusions. We can do that in a multitude of different ways, but that's the key to getting people to start thinking about this stuff and having a higher standard of evidence. I think another problem too, and I'm going to get in my old person soapbox, but I think we are living in a culture where less and less so we are afraid to tell people that they're wrong. I knew when I was a kid, I hear Dredd and Larry not in their head so hard. When I was a kid, when I was wrong, my teacher would just be like, that's wrong. They wouldn't say incorrect. They'd be like, that's wrong. And I'd be like, oh, I'm wrong. I have to get right. I have to figure out how to fix this. Then around high school, it was like, well, you're incorrect. And I was like, huh, that's weird, because I know I'm wrong. But I'm not correct. So what else would that leave the wrong? And then I think around college, I would say things that I almost knew were not right or at least were tenuous at best. And people would be like, well, it's a difference of opinion. It's a binary yes or no situation, black-white situation. I've made it either X or not X. It's a true dichotomy. How can it be a difference of opinion? That's something that I'd like to investigate more. And then as my adulthood continued, I realized that it wasn't just me. I feel like culturally, at least as far as America goes, we've been more concerned with not letting people know that you are wrong on things. To the point where with people who have access to the Internet are now very confident about the rabbit holes they've fallen in and the cropping of other opinions to have a perfectly catered point of view to fit their ideals, their dogmatic thinking, their close-mindedness. And so when they express an opinion that's flatly wrong, I had a guy literally tell me, well, all Asians wear glasses. I said, that's wrong. And he was offended. I heard him. I was like, well, what do you mean? That's not even what I just said. It's like, literally, you just said all Asians wear glasses. Oh, what's the problem with that? I'm literally telling you the idea is wrong. You said a wrong thing. That's factually incorrect. What way can I make this where your opinion personally isn't you? And you can rectify that situation. Because we don't... Yeah. What was your method of arriving at that information? We need to culturally get used to the idea that being wrong is a good thing, because then you can understand how to be right. Understanding that you don't know something is a good thing, because that's how you can start your journey to start learning new things. It's not just about being correct from beginning to end. That's a boring life. Like the scientific method, the process of discovery, the exciting thing about learning stuff is that you realize that you are wrong on certain things and you have an opportunity to fix it. Without that, I don't feel like you're living to your true standard. And it doesn't work until you realize what being wrong is and understanding and valuing that. That's the measure of doubt. That's the value of understanding that we're in a world where we can learn new things. And that's my purpose in life. That's hopefully a legacy that I can give to other people. Dred, I see your hand up. What's up? Just to say that truth and facts are not subjective. Right. Yes. That these days is an objective reality and it's not just about how I feel about it. Yes. And this is where I think our culture has taken a bit of a spin. As people are believing that it's true for me. No, no, no, no. It's not true for you. It's true or it isn't true, independent of whether you exist or not. And that's why people have to get their sloppy brains around. Okay. All right. And special pleading is a good way to recognize that. The way how I think about it is special pleading. It's it's wrapping paper. It's wrapping paper, but it's scratch and sniff wrapping paper that smells like dog poop. Right. And my opinion is you can special plead around a good conclusion. Like I can wrap gift wrap paper that I actually want. But the question is, is why would I do that? Why would I give someone a gift of special pleading wrapped good ideas when they have that idea and they think sticky and it smells like dog poop? Why would you wrap up a good idea with this? It didn't need it. Get rid of it. Maybe find a better wrapping paper for it or no wrapping paper at all. Good ideas. Truth doesn't need any frosting on top of it. You know, like just give me the truth. That's really all I need. All special pleading does is get in the way. I can understand. I can understand the need for having a reason. Now, you know, you don't have a reason. So you make something up that sounds reasonable to you. It's stinky and it's a false wrapping paper, but it's a reason. I can understand and see them doing that. Yeah. It's just a human need. You know, that's a very good one. The only reason you should ever wrap dog poop is to have something to light on fire at somebody's door. Right? Right. Only on Halloween. Larry, you alluded to a really good point because I can put wrapping paper around an empty box and now that empty box suddenly has so much more value. It looks at very tantalizing, but it's still an empty box. Right. So that's another danger or special pleading. I can wrap it around things that don't even exist or complete waste of time or space or just things that take up space but have no merit, tensile strength or something to support within the time of need and how many of my ideas are basically just specialty wrapped papers just because I'm an atheist doesn't mean that I'm prone or not prone to fooling myself on some good ideas or some things that I really need to adjust. Like an example, you know, a guy lives in Africa and he has little kids and the kids say, why'd a giraffe have such long necks? And you don't know the answer. But you say, oh, well, so they can reach the highest limbs and get the juicy leaves up there. So the necks, you know, have overtime stretch to get there. That's the wrong answer. But he gave him something to pass on. He had a reason that he could fall back on it, even though it's wrong. Right. Um, I want to throw out one random story before we close and I do feel don't forget our customer. Ah, yes. Yes. Listener comments. So we got it. We did get a listener comment. This one's from a mood of heart, mood of heart, I believe the name and he or she said, what is your criteria? If you guys claim I'm trying to make it YouTube friendly, basically you're saying this is from our last show that we posted. Actually, it's not from our last show. This is from the show. It's all in your head. That's from two weeks ago. And they refer to well, what's your criteria? And I imagine they're referencing, well, if you said something was morally good or morally not good as atheists, what do you determine as a good way to determine what is morally good or morally not? If you don't believe in God. So what's your criteria? I'll throw it up to you, Larry. Oh, well, mine is pretty easy. It's harm. If it does no harm, it's morally ambiguous. If it helps the person in society or whatever, then it's good morality. And if it harms people financially, emotionally, physically, whatever, then it's negative morality. But really, all you really need to know have is compassion and empathy for your fellow man. If you have that, it'll take you nine tenths of the way to a good moral standard of your own. Yeah. And mine is a bit Kantian. So like I don't have a short answer. My idea is my preference is I don't know, right? But I have models that I find to be very reliable. And until then, I'm willing to listen to other models and then assess them on their ability to maximize well being and reduce needless harm. And I will listen to I will listen to the models and I'll try to apply that strategy to them. And based on how well they do those two things maximize well being and minimize needless harm, then I'll replace whatever model I have with that next more better improved model. And right now I have a model that's pretty good, can always be improved and it's constantly learning and self correcting. And I like to think of morality less of a less of a list of edicts and a set of rules and more of an evolving system based on social contracts that we develop and science and a better understanding of the consequences of my action. And I understand that that's a longer answer than just whatever God said. But the problem with that is it's not as comprehensive for a lot of the more nuanced problems that can come up in life. Whereas I feel like mine's a much more multifaceted approach to learning how to be a better person rather than just following a bunch of rules that I'm trying to be obedient to. Dred, what's your response? I was going to say that I almost take a Bayesian approach that you just you keep updating your priors you start with the premise that you want to accentuate human flourishing and as you say, reduce harm. But your actions always have to be amenable to updates. So that, you know, we continually look to expand our moral, you know, the improve our moral choices. And that's by updating our priors with new evidence and new information. And we have because, you know, in contrast, getting a morality from a book or from a God is that's it. I mean, he's spoken and there is no changing the law as it were. But taking a Bayesian approach, at least you're updating your priors and and leaving yourself open to improvement. I like the Bayesian approach. I also like the Kantian approach because it separates it separates moral actions from necessarily what I should do or what I need to do. It just makes this new category of odds, which is, hey, you talk about David, David, is that not Kant? No, that's human. Okay, categorical imperative doesn't refer to what you ought to do and what you shouldn't do and making methods of determining. Well, so the categorical imperative was Kant. Yes. But the odd the odd is thing was human. Okay, so was conscious informed by Hume's book and then put it into Kant and into his award? Because Kant was before Hume. Okay. Well, I'm referring to the example that Kant came up with, which is like the axe murder at someone's door. Right. Is that Hume? Are you saying that's Hume? I'm not familiar with the axe. So so Kant came up with an example of there's an axe murder at your door. Should you open up and he and the axe murder says I'm going to kill the person your wife is and and it's up to you to determine whether or not you should open up the door or lie to him and say, no, my wife's not here. Go away because if you'd lie to him, he'll walk away. But he then said morally, you shouldn't lie. Right. So morally, you shouldn't lie, but you still shouldn't you ought not lie, but you still shouldn't open up the door. Like you can come up with completely different metrics to determine what you ought to do morally versus what you should do practically. Though the the overall takeaway that I had from reading it and this seems much more complicated. It's it's a more nuanced level of understanding morality versus what you do. And the value of it is you can use morality as sort of like an objective measuring stick and just say, ah, that seemed to be the most moral course of action. But let's see what they actually did and look at the consequences left to right from a from a more distance point of view. I appreciate the idea that you can look at things a bit more dispassionately rather than just saying, well, I did because I have to do it. It's like, well, let's find out what you actually did and see if we can improve it. Because a lot of people would, for example, jump into a I see I see Larry. Well, a lot of people jump into like water to save somebody. But it actually turns out the fact that if you try to drown, save a drowning person, jumping in to save them is like one of the worst things you could do because they'll grab you and you'll be pulled down to maybe you can get a life life raft or something. So there's an experiment experiment experiment out there. I don't have time to go into it right now. But the listener should look up the trolley experiment experiment the trolley experiment for morality. It's a very good reading and short film that will explain a lot how difficult true morality is to come by. Cool. Yeah. All right. That's the show. Dredd, anything you'd like to plug for next week? I'll have to give it some thought. Okay. For me, I would say don't be scared if you see drones. You're already being viewed by multiple security cameras. And don't worry about getting vaccinated because you're already getting tracked on your phone. Yeah. I would say, yeah, for anyone who has a smartphone, but doesn't want to get vaccinated, you have your priorities completely out of order. But yes, Larry, anything that you'd like to say? And remember, God is always watching. Yes. And God is always watching. Always under surveillance. You can find the show and podcasts everywhere. Just search for digital free thought radio hour. If you're watching this on YouTube, be sure to like and subscribe. If you're having trouble leaving religious beliefs behind, you can get help at recoveringfromreligion.org. My content can be found at digitalfreethought.com. Be sure to click on the blog button for more radio show archives. Atheist songs and many articles on the subject. I have a book. Atheism What Is It All About on Amazon. And my YouTube channel handle is at doubter five. Remember, everybody is going to somebody else's hell. The time to worry about it is when they prove that heavens and hells and souls are real. Until then, don't sweat it. Enjoy your life. And we'll see you next Wednesday night at seven o'clock here on W O Zio radio Knoxville. Say bye everybody. Bye bye. Bye bye. Buddy. Oh, good show. Thanks guys. Good show, everybody.