 computer. Hello and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio Hour on WOZO Radio 103.9 LPFM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We're recording this on Sunday morning, July 30th, 2023. I'm Larry Rhodes or DJ Doubter 5. And as usual, we have a co-host, DJ Wombat. Hello Wombat. Hey, I'm the Wombat. Yeah. Crank and boom. And our guests today are Boudreaux. Welcome. Hey, hey. John Richards from England. Welcome. Hello. 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. If you get the feeling that you're the only non-believer, excuse me, in your town, well, you're just not. I'd wager on it. In Knoxville, here in the middle of the Bible Belt, we have a group of over a thousand of us, pretty much 1100 now. We're atheist society of Knoxville or ASK. And we'll tell you more about us after the mid-show break. So be sure to stick around. Wombat, what's our topic today? So we're going to go over more ideas of dogma popping up in places where they don't necessarily help the conversation move forward. And also address some of the comments that were brought to us from last episode. Before we do that, though, want to just do a quick touching base and seeing how everyone's, how everyone has been. Then we can do a recap from last week's episode and go into the meat and potatoes of the show. John Richards, your quest to chaos over in UK, how have you been, my friend? Yeah, I've been fine. Thank you. Yep. And I'm getting on with organizing the next event that we're staging in the Midlands here. Not not Alabama, not Birmingham. Not the real original. I checked out Birmingham, Alabama. It's a little, piddly little place of just about 200,000 people. This Birmingham is a million. Wow. Wow. It's the big daddy Birmingham. Big daddy Birmingham. We love it. Okay, cool. I hope you have a good time and I hope you can get as good a fried chicken as the show. There will be there will be more news about this in the next few weeks. And I just launched the event right, the ticket sales site. Great. Coming along nicely. Looking forward to it. Boudreau, of course, you're on next on the docket. Love the shirt. What's going on with you? Well, I'll tell you about the shirt because that's most recently I ran the crank and boom sprint for scoops. It's a 3k and you get to eat ice cream after you run. It's super hot, but it's right down the road and we do it. This may be the fourth or fifth year we've done it and this year I placed third in my age. Nice. Yeah. My daughter ran alongside me and she placed first in her age group. Oh, that's great. That's great. Look at you. You that's awesome. You know, I was thinking the longer you stay running in these 5k events, the more harder the competition gets is what I as one of the things I had noted. So like back when I was doing 5ks when I just started college, I would get like maybe top five and then after a while it started being like 17 and then like 30th and I did one recently earlier this year and I didn't even I didn't get anywhere close to the point where I was like 18 but when I looked around, it was just all the crazy dude to like stuck around and kept doing it. So like third is like really really good. Actually, you have to like you have to like bias it that way. It's actually really nice. You're one of the guys that stuck around. That's awesome. Drive. Good job man. Good job and also congrats to to the daughter for getting first place. That's awesome too. I and you have a pantheon of trophies in your garage. I've seen that before. So yeah, good job on getting another one. Good job on getting another one. Larry, how have you been my friend? I've been fine. I'm still just working and playing computer games. I finished up Horizon New Dawn. Yeah. Been going back in and complete the map and stuff. I run out of quests though. Did you get the true armor? Did you get the true armor that like reef planishes your health? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah. It looks good, especially in those cold climbs. Yes. It's uh it's really really good. Um I'm glad you scraped the bottom of the barrel of that game. It's a fun game. What's the next one on the plate if you have one? Oh, well, there's one coming out in September. Uh it's a space game. Okay. The name doesn't come to me right off. Star Child? Starfield? Starfield. There it is. Starfield. Okay. It's by the same people who did um oh Skyrim. Correct. So it should be awesome. It should be awesome. It should be awesome. We're going to take that quote and put it on the top of the box and just like it should be awesome. This would be good. So guys I've been pretty good. It's been really really hot. I know it's only going to get hotter but we've taken opportunities to uh participate with some uh disc golf leagues that we're starting at a local school. We have a 3D printing lab at our site so we're actually able to print 3D discs and we can change the top shape of the plate or the bottom shape of the plate and then have the kids try them out and explain why the discs fly differently as a result of changing their aerodynamics. So like we are literally allowing them to design a disc on a course that they built themselves more or less. They planted the trees. We helped. Wow. We didn't help to get the land but we did help them to like figure out how to use the land well to like make a full uh my whole course like properly and um they made the tea pass themselves so like the the sixth graders made the tea pass then they got ready to go to seventh grade so now we have a new generation of kids who are like constantly working on this course. It's really great. The the the main thing I'd like to say is it's fun to be outdoors. It's fun to get be active and I want everyone to appreciate um like the idea that we are alive once and we have this beautiful thing outside called nature which should take opportunities to enjoy it. Don't just play video games like Larry though he deserves Larry you've had a long life. You deserve to do whatever you want. You can do whatever you want. I've been outside a lot. He's turning but take your 5k's. Do your quest for chaos in Birmingham, Alabama. Do whatever you need to do for uh motorcycling but I wanted to talk about how we made the internet upset yesterday uh or our last week because we did a show on the aspect of trans inclusion or trans women inclusion in female sports and why that was such a heated debate and why there's so much dogma involved in that conversation and how much better it would be if we removed the dogma and left more room for science and empathy to take place to have a more problematic and productive conversation however in the process of talking about it even just the nature of it we found that like there's a lot of contentious baggage or words with a lot of baggage that people will ask for definitions on and not agree even on the definitions because there's a lot of there's a lot of potential minefields even with the way how people interpret these words and so I thought that's a fair statement we never really define what we meant by things like cis or trans or even woman or even gender at the top we just sort of jumped in with the assumption that we all knew what those terms meant and then likewise we never really and this is beauty we never see if you're seeing playing with my nose and trying to hold back a sting bless you excuse me thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you blessing anyway uh gesundheit not no no no they don't own that word I can say bless you it's all good I do feel blessed uh so I would say this too um the idea so we had a lot of comments that were valid with regard to how we handle that conversation uh nothing that was like particularly like needling at any of us there was one question of like hey you guys consider yourself non-digmatic where's your actual proof we'll go over those in the show but what I did want to start off with was um a comment that I'll lead with budro as a response for and this is from a friend of the show who uh his name is robin she's been on the show before or uh they have been on the show before our robin asked in the ongoing conversations about transgender inclusion in sports I believe it's crucial to clarify the definitions we use especially the term cis over time its meaning has evolved rapidly leading to misunderstandings and miscommunication so as someone in my 50s I vividly remember when female athletes challenging or challenging societal norms with uh I'm sorry I vividly remember when female athletes challenging societal norms was groundbreaking as sports were predominantly seen as a male domain when women who participated in sports defied gender-based stereotypes that was a new circumstance and it's intriguing now to see how the majority of women in sports are now labeled as cis aligning with the cultural expectations linked to their biological sex this observation makes me wonder how much this debate has become generational could we delve into these changing definitions and how changing definitions impact our dialogue and how generational perspectives influence the way we approach topics and so Eric my question for you is isn't do you not see a case for not just on trans but like what it means to be a Christian what it means to be black or white change over time and leading to more complications and how we can have meaningful conversations to come to learn how we can treat each other better or or and how dogmatic approaches to I know what this definition is it's not changing this is the way it is this is the way it's always been can I actually get in the way you want to speak to that for a bit yeah yeah I wasn't on the call last week so I didn't I don't know all the nuances of your conversation there but but tying it into Christianity and dogmatic thinking uh first thing I went to is you know a lot of I would say successful or clever progressive you know churches dogmatic thinkers have kind of shifted with modernity you know when it comes to things like you know gay rights and and other progressive things that you know they're realizing we're gonna we're gonna lose you know um uh butts and pews if we don't kind of accept certain things so I uh if that's kind of if I take what your question is I do see that there are going to be some some religions that just you know uh draw the line in the sand and say no we're not changing on this this is how it is and but but others and I think that the ones that are going to survive uh or or you know become more popular are going to be the ones that do change so can I ask of oh go ahead Larry go for it I'm just going to say yeah the problem is that the book doesn't change and the preachers uh sometimes can work around that by retranslating their meanings of it but the book itself has very definite words that can uh you know right be resold in a different way some people don't want to do that and we'll go to the cross or go to the you know die on that hill as it were so does that mean that the book won't survive because I mean the book's been doing a pretty good job surviving what do you what are you saying well no I think it's going to survive and that's the problem we just have to uh realize people have to come to the realization that it's not gospel it's not rude it's not it's a story in other words the collection of stories that may or may not have any um relevance and and and reality has worked we we did see uh pretty big change when the old testament got out pushed away and the new testament came in I mean that after will we see something like that in our lifetime yeah well we'll go on yeah like every 200 years go ahead yeah well the thing about it is there was no concept of hell before the new testament so I mean it it brought some good stuff admittedly but it also brought some very bad stuff right and uh you know Jefferson tried to get rid of Thomas Jefferson that is tried to get rid of all the old stuff and and get rid of the miracles and stuff he he created his own just for sony and bible you can look it up on the internet you can actually buy it on amazon if you wanted to but the bible you know the old bible still first first fear is as it were and that's a problem budger my follow-up with the you know we had the old testament and people still just follow old testament like there's there's so many judei religions that are just old that testament the new testament is like an add-on DLC pack if you will Larry because he's the gamer and then we have Mormons and then we have well uh Islam like when you think about it like all these things are tied all these major religions are actually fundamentally tied to the same judei gospel and um and then there's offshoots from that that are completely unrelated joeva witnesses uh that still have something that looks very similar to the bible but they will claim is a very different thing it's bifurcation and I feel like through that bifurcation or that fragmentation and separation we still get stratified things that fall off and die because they just couldn't keep up with the times and then new versions that are like new flavors of ice cream on your t-shirt that are just popular enough to maintain until the next generation I think that's how religion stays alive uh go ahead on it sounds like you you're you're on mute my buddy go ahead say what you gotta say oh no he's on mute okay he says I mean come on let me go okay yeah there you go yeah yeah I'd slid the window up to the side and couldn't get the unmute button but yeah yeah there's the the bible has never really been gospel the way the christians would like to make out that it has been it's never really been the immutable word of god because as you pointed out there was the old testament and then there was the update the new testament game along and so they've already got the problem of trying to reconcile those two different versions of how society should be run but what I discovered very recently is in 19th early 19th century england a special bible was produced for use in the british west indies it was the negro slaves bible really shameful to talk about it today isn't it go ahead back then the bible was a colonial tool you know it's it's cheaper than bullets in fact in fact once you've got people on board to it they'll pay you for for more of that service by making collections very true so this particular slave bible as it came to be called it uh omitted uh let me have a look um exodus the book of psalms the book of revelations why in the world would they take out exodus of all books it's such a great book and learning how to treat other people how they want to be treated that's so great well they thought that they thought that it could instill in slaves a dangerous hope for freedom so yeah we have and listen even within christian one single christian denomination they may have different variations of the same holy book you know uh how many different versions of the the standard christian book is there from kings jame to like uh new international version to the modify text like to the highlighted ones with additional commentary from like 14 different other bible like these are all you're you're influencing and correcting and citing and putting your notes on god's holy book that seems that seems fairly audacious to me um what i want to comment on what larry was saying because i think there's some slight tweaking that i'd say you said people need to realize that the it's the bible's not true i agree that people need to realize i would say to more nuance point it's not so much that the bible isn't true because i don't want to go through that effort to it's to prove something not that is a negative i'd rather just realize that there's more reliable systems to determine what is true than just looking at the bible or using faith and i'll apply that to back to the trans conversation that we were having last week because the science at least with regard to physiological differences between uh biological males and females right like men women i'm trying to or male female i'm trying to make a point that the scientific data hasn't has unanimously determined that there's physiological differences between the two um it is it is just what it is and while that might upset people it's it there the the path forward isn't to obscure that data or ignore it it's just recognize it and then reconcile with coming up with still better ways to treat people in light of this reality rather than you know saying this doesn't exist and we'll just venture forward with our definitions on our movement like we have a good way of determining objective reality with science and we can still be empathetic on top of that and so uh my recommendation would be uh we need to realize that we have very reliable systems that are testable that are falsifiable that are repeatable and this is good and we should listen to or at least use that method in congruence with how we uh come up with rules to like best protect people and and serve our interests um any any concerns or or disagreements what do i think at least we're taking the the position that it's a problem to be solved it's something that we need to work on and get better at later on you know as we understand the problem more uh going forward it it's not black and white it's something to be solved simply by referring to an old book exactly or an old way of thinking yes yes and if any new book we need a new book well new books become old books before long you know what you ever think that you have a thing that i love we need a new method how's that and oh yeah yeah scientific method science is all about new methods science is also about giving us usable words to work with usable definitions or like clearly defined terms yeah down with books down with books because lacking meaningful uh variables or definitions we're talking past each other and i feel like that goes to both the generational divide on certain aspects like what does it mean to be black what does it mean to be christian it's a very different thing to be christian today than it meant 60 years ago right or even a hundred years ago or 200 years ago so let's not just say the same words and assume we mean the same thing if there was a better way to express something let's let's look at those definitions but let's use a scientific approach so that we can define them very well test them out make sure they meet the definition and if we need to talk about something outside that term we just come up with a new definition but we just can't if we're going to come up with new words for something you got to make them clear what you're talking about otherwise you're only obfuscating what could be a very productive conversation and so yes i do think there are generational perspectives that influence how we think how we talk to each other and i do think the words we use change i do think the science that we use also changes but tends to get us closer to a a specified target and we'll and when we change science it's typically when we're evolving to like a very specific point and that's okay too so like john i will i'll throw this question out at you i just said science changes is that true in your opinion and do you think that's a fair thing to say yes and it's one of the strengths because we don't have a doctrine that we stick to dogmatically we know that we're only making models of the universe and we know that we can't show them to be a hundred percent absolute because tomorrow we might discover something inconsistent so the only way we can say that we were right will be at the end of time maybe even so it's it's a strength it's being able to let go of something and realize that you were wrong right that's that's the only way we can be certain about something when it's proved to be wrong uh larry well yeah uh i'd like to say that the only way that we very you can disprove science is with more science right there's not one time where we're like the bible has proven science wrong right yeah the the great thing of what the scientific approach is that it's open to new data and willing to modify models as a result and that's not a failure of science that's just a demonstration that's the strength of science yeah yes you know that's why i say there's room for science and an empathetic conversation about how to treat people because it's science that doesn't have a horse on the in the race like science is in the interest of trying to come up with just accurate ways to express how reality works it's just a models that we use to understand how things are and it will change and adapt as a result and it's one of the best tools that we have we should be using us we're in an Einstein oh yeah yeah for instance is that good how many times have you have you seen a person come online saying they've proven evolution wrong right but they not a single one of them have put up for a Nobel Prize which actually would want would win right if they could prove evolution wrong right i mean because we want scientists want to be proven wrong if they are wrong i mean they're looking for truth not you know not you know proving that their answer is right for all time they want to know the truth right right and we just want to be able to understand things in a consistent way that's also the thing with yeah yeah this is a big difference between the the mindset of people who think scientifically and those who think theistically and automatically exactly because they own their doctrine they they've they can't justify it and point and say look there's the you know there's the explanation there's the fact they have to own it and claim it and argue for it right so it's their baby so as a result of which they hate to be proven wrong they hate to have anybody criticize them because they have faced to lose they will be humiliated embarrassed because they've nailed their flag to the wrong mask and that makes it a lot better for us here this is where we need dread to come in and have a pirate's mask right so budger i'll throw this out at you you are outspokenly atheist you are outspokenly fans of boring people who've written books before i forget i i forgot the name already that's that's how much six of you was it ham saras ham saras there you go sam saras there it is i'm wondering you know in the event that you ever find out that you actually were wrong how how big of a crushed your ego would that be and how how how quickly can we expect to see some you know jesus flags or cuckoo flags in your car like well are you so pro atheist that if it was ever proven to you that a god does exist you wouldn't you would just keep it on your hat and not share it with everybody i i think that's okay fantastic question and i have to be poetic and quote sam harris and say one of the things he said he said over and over again is i don't want to be wrong uh any longer than than uh i have to be so i'm with him on that like okay i i don't want to be right about being an atheist or i don't want to be um an atheist just because that's what i you know identify as right that's just where my logic has has led me and that's where i am so and and that's and that's a good point too uh one of the things we talk about in our summit group is you know the docking scale of of um belief what one of the points of it is a seven is a uh a gnostic atheist it's an atheist that knows there's no god and and i'm not that i'm a you know slightly below seven which is a an agnostic atheist right i don't know if there's a god yes or no but i don't believe in one so yeah if someone ever and i've even said on a on the program with you guys and to maybe folks dismay that you know i i don't even need that much um proof of of a god just just a few things like if all religions had exactly the same uh uh origin story or if i mean if they're just it wouldn't it wouldn't take a lot at least for young me to to stay with uh with religion um if it wasn't so geolocked right like yeah yeah consistency yeah messaging made sense uh across different groups yeah then you can at least say oh it's all pointing to the same thing we just have different points of view based on how we're brought up yeah this would be very very varied like we talked about the cross the very simple symbol that yeah you happen to see among you know several religions but you know drop a bunch of toothpicks on the ground and you're gonna see crosses if there was a really elaborate even like the star of david if the star of david existed in every religion you know i'd be like but yeah to your point yes i i if god came down here and and did his whole whole uh dog and pony show again yeah i would i would uh i'd get in line to you know so we're gonna take a break when we get back i'd love to talk about how the difference between how we identify versus what's actually just the descriptor for us because that's also one of the definitions i was asked for in the show and then maybe we can actually figure out some of these other topics that we spoke so brazenly about last week but never really actually defined lair would you mind taking us out sure this is the digital free thought radio hour on wozio radio 103.9 lpfm here in noxville tennessee 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 more on wozio radio 103.9 lpfm here in noxville tennessee let's just take a moment to talk about the atheist society of noxville ask was founded in 2002 we're in our 21st year now and have over a thousand members we have weekly in-person meetings every tuesday evening in noxville's whole city of barley's taproom in pizzeria look for us inside at the high top table or if it's pretty outside go outside on the deck you can find us online and facebook meetup.com or at our home page noxvilleatheists.org you can also just google noxville atheists is just that simple by the way if you don't live in noxville you should still go to meet up and do a search for an atheist group in your town don't find one start one right on that where do you want to pick up i wanted to talk a lot more about our robin's uh post with regarding the words that we use as potentially prone to generational changes and how the change of a definition can actually lead to a lot of conflict with regard to how people might identify with certain terms versus how they express certain terms and how other people interpret them and so one of the things i realize is how much of the terms that we identify with are inherently just cultural for example i identify as like a black guy however when i moved from california to georgia that meant a very different thing you know being black in california versus being black in the south completely different completely different one was like uh something that was like more or less a non-issue but i always stood out and the other one is i fit in but it's a different thing and if you don't if you weren't updated on the program you're you're you're falling behind and there's a lot of stuff to catch up on then i moved to sweden for a while and being black meant completely different completely different thing then when i came back here people were talking to me like egyptian and and other languages i never heard before i'm like oh my gosh what do you what do you see when you see me and i realized that i had a very particular view of myself but i didn't value or understand or appreciate or even be was aware of how much other people see me and how i need to be aware of that as well and how much that influences who i am in a particular culture and so now if you are asked me like how do i identify as a black guy in my mind it's more of like i'm aware of it i'm aware of it that i had an identification aspect but for me it's more of like just a descriptor like i would describe myself as black for sure but it's not that there's a singular flag that i can wave and be like this is what it means to be black i'm a proper representation of what that means to be black this is me this is me 10 000 percent it's more of like hey it's okay to be black i'm just one of a lot of different kinds of black people out there i'll be happy to talk to you about my personal experience i just want to highlight that it's cool to be you know an outspoken black scientist cool guy but as far as like identity like if you were to ask me to ask how what i identify it's like i like playing disc golf i like working on my car i like eating burritos but these are the things that describe me don't aren't necessarily army right like it's not necessarily how i'm identifying it's just really cool ways to describe who i am that like play into my personality but there are things that i more closely identify with if you're willing to like have a relationship with me and talk to me i can tell you what those things are well since this is the radio show yes i'd like to tell this but it's that i am actually green sometimes sometimes on the edges so i wonder i feel like the things that i identify with are less prone to changing by culture i feel like that's the general rule so like when i say i like disc golf 40 years from now that might be the same sport right like that's still going to be disc golf but like what it means to be black could be completely different thing compared to when my grandpa was alive to where i am now so i would love to throw out a question the things that you identify with versus the things that just describe you so for example john richards i'm going to throw something at you and i don't take me it's the wrong way but you are very english you you take a lot of pride in england but what it meant to be english from crusades times all the way to now like that that has changed a lot of a lot of things have changed with like england and who knows where you will be 100 years from now or whatever so is there would you say that's more just aligned with a descriptor or do you think it's unfair for me to say that you identify with something that could just change and you only identify with it now i'm searching for a question here what i would love to just get your thoughts what do you think well yeah um what it means to be english has changed enormously during my lifetime especially as this country has become increasingly cosmopolitan you know we we now have many people millions of people who have come back from what used to be the colonies and have settled here so we're a mixed community now far more than we were when i was a boy you never saw anybody who wasn't anglo-saxon when i was a boy but now it's it's difficult to avoid seeing people who obviously aren't anglo-saxon but tai would you would you consider yourself to be a coconut no i would not consider myself to be a coconut i i could say that's not i would be an inaccurate descriptor of me and i also do not identify as a coconut those are the two things i would say you've got the expression in the u.s have you a coconut what is a coconut what are you about to say it's brown on the outside white on the inside ah so i don't assign my values of being able to speak clearly and and represent myself professionally as inherently a white attribute like i feeling like i can easily demonstrate that black people have always had that skill set and i find like the terms of like coconut sort of like oh well you're rough on the outside but the inside of you is good i find that inherently problematic as a way to model how people can behave well it's really like there's too much credit to like a race that had nothing to impact on that yeah you stereotyped me as an englishman but in fact most of my living relatives are africans because about what over 20 years ago now i i married a ghanayan woman who was in this country training to be a nurse at the time and we have two daughters that are mixed and all of all of my personal family line are now dead or i think there's a couple still alive but i lost touch with him but her because she is a bit younger so her brothers and sisters and the cousins and so on are very much in my personal circle of friends so if there was a reverse to a coconut that's what i'd be what can you think of that's white on the outside brown in the middle is it choc ice no no not a choc ice no no maybe we can work people yeah you have to think of think of something for me but i would say these things would be like whether they are a bit obtuse descriptors and not so much identifiers like i would say like there are clearly words that people identify i'm an american or i'm a man or i'm trans or i'm you know a food fighters fan or stuff like that it's like i understand that you identify strongly with these but what if food fighters came out with a terrible album you know their next album was just like like are you still food first like i'm die hard it's like okay so like maybe there's a dogmatic approach to like how you are coming with how you identify yourself because it doesn't seem to be affected by the thing that you're identifying with and maybe there's a cultural divide as culture or society moves a certain way your identity is going with it or against it and maybe that might enlighten us to the things that we identify with aren't necessarily us but just ways to describe us and if that's the case maybe we can take them away from personally being offended when we're talking about terms and get closer to more of a scientific or empathetic approach to resolving how we should treat each other particularly people with different identifiers or descriptors eric i'd love to know what do you identify with versus what would you just say describes you well definitely this is you know something i've talked about with with others before that surprises people but you know a descriptor for me is is you know don't have a full head of hair you know that and that's no it is something that i've noticed is something that i feel i get judged by when i first meet a person you know okay okay and it it doesn't do anything to identify sure historically you've actually had a full on yeah full on ponytail yeah yeah yeah so that's something that i mean it's nowhere near i think what what you as described as being black has gone through but it's definitely something well i'll put a hat on when i go out to meet new people because it's so much easier than you know just you get put in a category i think oh that's interesting but in terms of identify you know you know atheism and sam club sam harris but you're right you know someone can the foo fighters could put out a horribly racist album which i seriously doubt they ever would and and you know it would change my opinion sure sure sure sure sure they just call it coconuts they just say everything about coconuts coconut it's like foo fighters what have you done you can't you can't have coconuts in a small town i want to ask you this then so like if you identify as an atheist and for whatever reason atheists becomes more militant or or more in your face about listen it's about time we stop subjecting our children to this religious protocol and we are going to start our own state and it's going to be the state of vermont and this is where the state where only atheists true atheists are and everyone who's a real atheist lives here so let's ask this again are you an atheist are you not an atheist now they're looking at you a would you what's going on yeah no i'm with you at you know i identify with something for as long as it you know properly you know you know sits well with me yeah if you start changing the the way atheists are grouped together and do that yeah and i think that's why a lot of i've even heard a lot of atheists don't even like the term atheism because it describes what you're not it doesn't describe what you are right and you know humanists secularists you know those are maybe better terms famously bad bad religions lead singer Greg Graffin has said he doesn't like the term atheist he likes humanists or other things so yeah yeah yeah maybe a lower case atheists like in the sense of i'm not a part of a group like i'm not like fundamentally you know screw but i am an atheist but like yeah let's talk about what that means and if you don't want to talk about what that means then you don't really want to know me so at best don't identify me of that just describe me as that unless you actually want to understand where i'm coming from you know it's good to point it out yeah go i'm just gonna say that when a group generally has an awful lot of negative baggage you might want to identify as not being part of that group like i'm not a mega type of thing you know it it i think it's important in some place to you identify as a negative right only because we understand that the words can have baggage that changes with it over time though i do find the fight with letting people know that i'm an atheist is is part is part just fighting the the bad swell of propaganda that's presented with atheism it's to show them an example of no i am an atheist i want you to know that not because i want you to be an atheist but just because i want you to know what an atheist looks like you know and i find that to be inherently valuable because i don't think the the wellspring of bad press has gotten to the point where i can't express that in among my friends and and family and even like just average co-workers and just present myself and just let that be the case but that not everybody can do that i and i also understand that too i am privileged in that capacity what do you think larry when it comes to using the word atheist i'm not gonna avoid using it just because it offends the very people that made it a curse in the first place there you go larry i like it i like it so i am willing to throw that out as in my pot in my mind as like hey this is how you can describe me and i want anyone else you know who has this descriptor on them to say oh wait a second maybe they're not necessarily bad people and then if you want to talk about what that means to me like how i identify as an atheist what do i do to like demonstrate my atheism and and express that that could be i could be something that i can both identify and be used to describe so they aren't even usually explicit terms i can say i identify with a lot of aspects of really the one main aspect of atheism which is i'm just not convinced that i gotta exist that's really all there is to it but i can describe past that all the impacts that's had on how i think rationally and what i think about other religions and and how i hold conversations with people what i do on the weekends talking to you guys i think there's a lot that goes to it so i think that might oh go ahead john richards well i've been on a journey because having been born to non-believing parents and living in a culture at the time for the first 20 years of my life i suppose where nobody had the slightest bit of interest in religion it didn't matter what you called yourself but then i became aware of very religious people who had demonized the word atheist and people like me began to look for a a softer way of describing ourselves and some of us called ourselves agnostics or secularists or humanists in fact we've come through that now and we're more out there you know willing to be forthright and say that we are atheists because there's a couple of good reasons one is there's no evidence for any god and the other one is religions are divisive so you know there's two good reasons not to be a member of any religion let me throw let me throw a counter to that just because i know this the comments are being typed up there is real evidence for god the thing is it just doesn't reach the standard to cause one to be valid or justified in believing that there is a god just because i wrote a book that says a god existed is not enough evidence for me to say oh well now our grip or god exists so the evidence that is out there is lacking which is why i don't believe in my god at my mind if a god is an incredible being i should have an incredible amount of evidence i've not seen that amount of evidence so as a result i have nothing but my lack of convincing and if i'm not convinced i'm not going to believe it and so that's why that's where i'm at as an atheist and yes i absolutely agree religion is divisive i think it's it is essentially a cell of terms when you think about a religion it's basically just a cult of terms right that people throw at each other in terms of dividing people into groups in terms of how they want to identify with themselves with regard to how they call things and they make a very dogmatic microculture that is very inflexible with the move of society and particularly the advancements of science and so when you have a situation like that you basically have essentially in my mind very intolerant group that is can only survive by forcing culture to change or not change with it or like press culture into its shape or further separate people to the point where they're not willing to talk to each other anymore so you can keep yourself isolated and I find both situations terrible and that's why I say we need to rely on science and empathy what do you think? Here's an interesting thing because a couple of weeks ago I went to Bristol because I I'd been invited to speak to Bristol humanists you know I I go around the country and I do presentations and I do and stuff and I organize events but anyway in Bristol at this desecrated church they hold their meetings Bristol humanists hold their meetings in a building that was formerly a church and so the first thing I did was I asked them I said listen I belong to humanism UK too like you and I'm I'm very pleased to have been invited to speak to this humanist meeting but now before I start put your hands up if you actually consider yourselves not only to be a humanist but also an atheist everyone except two everyone except two rose their hand yep okay okay okay interesting interesting okay yeah yeah you could so were they religious then would that be the only opportunity yeah did you get a chance to talk to them more well as individuals no but I yes I delivered my presentation would be about 20 more no I was I was just wondering if you had a chance to flesh out the reasons for being a humanist but not claiming to be an atheist a guess kind of just a hazard get because you didn't you didn't get it I bet they think I bet they think they're agnostic and it's it's the same it's the trouble with definitions where like oh no no I'm not right I'm not positive there's no god I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna that would be my guess and that's that's why I love the science approach to this because we need to have these definitions well defined and that way we understand what we're saying when we say things that's well so words well let's take a moment to define it thank you Larry I was just about to go to it so I would say I'd say agnostic is a measure of me not believing in a god and no no no no no no it's because I don't have a soul it's because I have a soul no agnostic has to do with knowledge not belief you're being racist against me agnostic means I have a soul and I hate god and it's all about belief it's a belief statement 10 000 percent and and atheism just means I love eating babies all right go ahead okay I didn't know you were being tongue and cheek sorry well listen I've come up with I've come up with the reverse of coconut okay which okay which fits me okay okay Christmas cake white on the evidence okay let's get the real definitions out would would would anyone like to do the real definitions of Larry Goldberg yeah well agnostic the word agnostic comes from the word Greek word knowledge right so if you're an agnostic about God you have you claim to have no knowledge of God if theism comes from the Greek word for for belief if you're an atheist you don't believe in God if you're a theist you do personally I'm both I don't know that there's a God or not but I don't believe in any and so if I don't believe in any no matter what my knowledge state is that part of me is atheism Boojer do you have anything to add to that yeah I did no that's that's the perfect definition but I yeah I like to think of agnostic agnosticism about about yeah um do you know there's a God or you don't know there's a God and and spot on it and those people that didn't raise their hand I guarantee they think of themselves as somewhere in between an atheist and a theist which really practically doesn't exist you know you can't I'm I'm both yeah agnostic can't live yeah you can't live on a line exclusive terms yeah yeah but you can't you can't be not an atheist and not a theist you can't be in between correct there's no middle ground there yeah there's no middle ground yeah on on the idea of like it's a true dichotomy to either be a theist or not a theist we've just called not a theist an atheist because that a in the front just means not a so it's true no lack of middle ground it's one of the logical absolutes yeah so I want to throw out because we're specifically asked this how do we define sex and gender and I want to fill it out to john richards first because he was a is a scientist biologist how would you define sex and if you'd love to tackle it how would you define gender good question sex is a biological characteristic and I've just read an article by richards that he wrote about 10 years ago because sex is one of those few things that is actually polar with no middle you know most most things they have a range and they extend from extreme one end to extreme the other and a normal distribution curve sex isn't like that there's only furnishingly small 0.02 percent of the population that is not identifiably by their chromosomes as male or female Larry you're going to say something that I'm going to say something maybe afterwards can we just stay on sex for a quick quick Larry what what no I was just going to say that there are masculine women and effeminate males you know they're a whole spectrum there not even getting into bisexual we were talking about we were talking about sex we were talking about sex like specifically your biological characteristics what you do personally or how you decide to dress or what hobbies you take on I would I would throw that outside of the sex point of view sex is in my you're talking about the actual chromosome I'm talking about gamics I'm talking about like yeah the way I I the way I see sex is sort of like it's in my opinion also a binary system I have like I have a left foot and I have a right foot I can wear shoes I can wear a left shoe and a right shoe and someone else can wear a left shoe and a right shoe but you could also be barefoot you could also wear two left shoes on both your feet you can also wear two right shoes but you still only have two shoes just because you have no shoes or you're wearing two of the same shoe on both your feet doesn't mean that you came up with a brand new kind of shoe and so I'm aware that there's people that have modifications to their chromosomes or weird offshoots that seem like they're like a brand new sex but it's not a brand new shoe to wear two different of the same shoes on both feet it's it's still two ingredients that were just arranged in such a way that makes it harder for you to walk here in a way in the sense which does which demands some sympathy and care and empathy for that regard but I wouldn't say like oh you came up with a brand new shoe your shoelace right okay so yeah there's not a third sex I'll agree there yeah yeah yeah and not having not having shoes doesn't mean that you figured out I've invented a new kind of shoe so like in my head it's just combinations of like two very basic chromosomes to end up with like a biological characteristic and that's what sex is now as far as what gender is is like our societal cultural our stereotypical our psychological our wings of expression like that goes I'll I'll give credence that I don't have a scientific appreciation for gender as much as I do sex and that's my personal advice as just a scientist but I understand that there's a lot of other categories that gender falls or or encapsulates and that sex is very much like its own specific thing Boudreau I saw you raise your hand or yeah I guess I'm not an expert in any of this but I did take slight issue with the way you framed it John you acted like this is what did you call the the term atheist and theist a polar something Ty would you or no absolute you called it absolute anyway you you use the term that mutually non-exclusive or mutually exclusive or there's a logical that says there's no middle ground yeah there's no middle ground yeah you kind of you kind of framed sex as no middle ground John but then you pointed out 0.02 percent there there so there is there a middle ground or isn't there a middle ground I guess I'm confused Boudreau may I address that I think it was that's why I brought up the shoe example so yes it's basically like there's there's there's two sexes and there is some degree of overlap between the two but that degree of overlap or the lack of a sex that can't be assigned isn't the representation of a brand new third tier of sex right okay okay it's a binary system with some with on the individual basis some overlap but overall it's it's something that's like very easily categorized is like it's just two things yeah like having two shoes go ahead John it's strongly binary they they but the proportions of those who don't fit into one or the other category at birth is tiny and negligible this is a moving feast isn't it of course what you are equipped with at birth then has to go through development and puberty in particular is where nuances can be introduced and you can you can be like castor cementia the south african runner who is classed as intersex she is actually male but her testase never descended oh that's interesting so she resembles external morphology a female so that's that's the gray area if you like right and it's not a new sex it's just like it's a male that didn't have their testes to send so like yeah yeah that's just what it is it's like a guy wearing two of shoes it's not a oh you came up with a brand new shoe it's like no i'm just it's the same too i'm just wearing them differently it's like oh or i get it okay cool the same same two feet just wearing much of these differently anyway i did we didn't even get the gender now we're gonna get so many comments anyway feel free to leave them you can find me at let's chat on this youtube channel as well as on our radio feel free to reach out to me on let'schatscatgmail.com john richard's work when we find your stuff free thought productions channel nice nice that's where most of my stuff goes but of course i'm also have a considerable presence on atheism uk channel cool maybe we will touch on gender next episode and and other areas of dogma that's presenting its head and and lead ourselves to a better conclusion bujo anything you'd recommend we check out i need to get a fancy url and just point everyone to one site and just put a bunch of stuff on it because i i never share if you have a sharepoint account you can do that immediately all right yeah you're right larry roads where can we find your book on about how souls exist and how we need a start believing in them well my book is called atheism what's it all about it's available on amazon my content can be found at digitalfreethought.com be sure to click on the blog button for our radio show archives atheists songs and many articles on the subject my youtube handle is at doubter five if you're having trouble leaving religious beliefs behind you can get help from re with that at recoveringfromreligion.org 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 7 o'clock on w o z o radio say bye everybody bye