 Hello and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio Hour and WOZO Radio 103.9 LPF. I'm here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We're recording this on Sunday morning, April 2nd, 2023. I'm Larry Rhodes or Doubter 5. And as usual, we have a co-host Wombat on the line with us. Hello Wombat. That's me. And also welcome, Dread Pirate Higgs from Western Canada. Welcome. Digital Freethought Radio Hours. Talk radio show about atheism. We also talk about free thought, rational thought, humanism, Satanism, Pustifarianism and the sciences. Conversely, we'll also talk about religions, religious faiths, gods, holy books, and superstition. And if you get the feeling you're the only nonbeliever in your town where you're just not, especially here in Knoxville, here in the middle of the Bible Belt, we have a group of over a thousand of us. We're the Atheist Society of Knoxville or ASK. And we'll tell you more about it after the mid-show breaks and be sure to stick around. Wombat, what's our topic today? I started a religion. Oh, you did. Yeah, it's going to be a fun one. Another religion I'm going to be an apostate for. Yeah, it's true. You guys are all currently apostates, but what's an apostate aside from a potential follower? Just a little bit of extra work. Before we get into it, we'll consider that the meat and potatoes of today's episode. Let's start with some noodles with our own drip power. Hey, would you mind leading us in our weekly invocation, please? You betcha. Amidst the chaos of this world we roam, one deity stands tall above the rest. The flying spaghetti monster calls us home to a saucy and newly paradise blessed. With meatballs, tender and sauced divine, he nourishes our souls and warms our hearts. His newly appendages forever entwine, guiding us through life's uncharted parts. Oh, Pastor Lord, we kneel before thee and raise our forks in praise and prayer. May thy meatball blessings set us free and thy noodles of mercy always be near. For thou art the saucy deity above, whose love and grace no no end. May we forever bask in thy newly love until our mortal coils we doth trust him. So let us sing of the flying spaghetti monster and revel in the saucy, newly bliss, he doth foster. Raw. What a nice little poem. What cadence was that from? Is that just? That is iambic pentameter. Iambic pentameter. Really, really cool. So Shakespeare were life. That's the kind of thing he would have written about the doodly ones. Yeah, you know, the funny thing about iambic pentameter is that the way how we speak English in modern times now isn't the way how they spoke it back then they had a completely different accent different stresses on different syllables. And so what I saw exactly what I saw on YouTube was a play. I think it was a speech from a fellow as as heard by the people back then, by a person who was just very good at old English, and he was talking and I literally could not understand a single thing that he was saying. And I'm like, is this what what language is this I've never heard this before English. Oh my gosh, oh my gosh you sent me back in the past no one's going to understand me. I don't understand anybody else, and they're going to be like who's this talking black guy. Come on guys like trust me this works out it's like whoa what kind of ill manner of speech dot represent him. All right, anyway, Larry would love to check in with you how you been. I've been fine as Christopher Hitchens, I mean Christopher Robbins would have said it was a very blustery day yesterday. Yes, the wind really kicked about it was it in your area to their yeah so we went to run a 5k yesterday. And let me tell you the funniest thing happened so it was two sections. First half you're running through neighborhoods, the last section all downhill straight to the finish line and it was broken up to like the first two miles, you are going 5k is 3.1 miles for Canadians anyone watching. That's about eight kilometers. Yeah yeah yeah the rough the rough first four kilometers is like through neighborhoods you had a lot of wind protecting you. And then on the way back to the finish line. We got hit by the hardest when possible on our backs. I was literally downhill. Yeah yeah yeah downhill with the wind at our backs I had like this weird like jumpsuit sort of like running thing, and I was literally just hopping and letting the wind push me down. It was my personal best it was crazy, like I was playing semi charmed life in my headsets and I just hit the outside of the neighborhood and it got smacked in the face by this wind turned turned with my back to it. And I'm just realizing like, not only am I tired but I'm getting like the best sale possible I'm passing people I'd even who like passed me up like four minutes before. And I'm like this is great this is great this is great the bridge hit as I was in full sprint and I like made my best time it was my first sub 30 minute 5k. I've ever done so happy about that and yeah a lot of wind couldn't play disc off afterwards couldn't play pickleball afterwards but I did go rock climbing as well afterwards that was indoor that was on a bouldering place and I did my first v3s. If anyone interested there's a v system I think it goes up to like 12, and there's still people trying to make them higher so like v12 or it's like beginner and they even have these zero which is just like training, but I did my first three v3s, which is like my first outside of the beginner school of climbing. And it was fun. It was fun I had a lot of people help me out like I fell off a couple of times and then people are like hey just put your foot here and try to push into it a little bit more and move your hips this way, and it totally worked. And now my forearms are completely dead, but I had a week on that part. One last thing before we get to dread I got, I was filmed as part of a thing for my job. It was a four hour shoot. So we've done commercials at my job before but sometimes that's just a film crew coming in and be let's take a picture of you great thank you and you never see him again. And next you know there's a commercial and it has your face and you're like oh that's cool. And they might use it for websites and stuff this one was Tyrone we want you specifically to be the spokesperson of a shoot that we're doing for this site. It's a four day shoot. And you're going to need to go on location and we're going to film you doing this. And what is and we'll do a pre interview to figure out what you like and then we'll like reality TV show take you out to those places and film you doing those stuff. And we were volunteer I was doing volunteer work at a high school we coordinate with the assistant principal to get some students in and like I'm in the classroom and we're walking down hallways and there's like film crews in your face trying to get close up close ups and there's sign off forms. And I was exhausted. Let me tell you something I was so tired by the end of the week that I did not have a lot of where with all but I did come back to work on Friday and do some tours as well as well for for students who are coming in that we couldn't schedule to film during the shoot so I moved out to Friday. But by the weekend hit by the time that we can hit I was exhausted because then I had a 5k, then I had to go rock climbing and now this is my time with you guys I'm finally relaxed, talking with some buddies about the nature of pasta and atheism there's my cat in the background. So dread. That was my week how was your week my friend I know you're still doing some crazy stuff for me. Yeah. I'm still up north here. In fact it snowed yesterday and it's, yeah it's a blustery day up here as well. Okay, good around and I tried starting my while I went out started my car just to go down to Timportons and get a coffee, and I need half an hour for that car to work up so I said well I guess I'll just make coffee at home here and make sure I'm on time. Yeah, no things are kind of slow but because this is going to be related to our topic. I started a new book. I finished, I finished even pickers, pinkers latest book rationality, which is an excellent read if anyone like Stephen Pinker and optimism and society that's a book could pick up. He talks about lots of you know cognitive biases and logical fallacies and a lot of that kind of stuff and and sketches a plan on how to get out of it. So it's a it's a good read. So anyway, I just I just picked up Marcus Aurelius's meditations. Of course that was written long long long long long ago, while he was emperor of the Roman Empire. And it relates to stoicism and his reflections on, on that way of life, and I think that will segue into what we're going to talk about today on both accounts. Okay, very cool. Oh, there was one thing I forgot to mention so we didn't do a show the week before. And that was because I was busy, not just with this golf but because I had started a religion. Yeah, it happens. Sometimes I sometimes I just go about and do that it's fine. So I knew I was going to be out for about two weeks one because I wanted to go have a play date with some friends the everyone because I'd be doing the shoot. And as a result I said hey if I'm gone for two weeks let me come back to the show with like a two week project. And so I said what I do for my two week project is come up with a set of dogma dogmatic rule sets that are somewhat arbitrary that I can derive some sort of health benefits from, or some from and use that to to see how well I can follow them and how it feels when I incidentally break them, or the guilt that comes with like maintaining this or the esteem that comes with completing the dog my dogmatic challenge will just call it like a dogmatic challenge. The two rules that I had were basically this whatever's in my fridge, I can eat in my fridge whatever's in my cupboards I can eat my cupboards, but as far as restocking over the next two weeks it can only be whole fruits vegetables proteins, not nothing process. That was like rule number one so it's just raw foods, I can purchase and put back in the fridge. And it's there were like donuts at work I can't eat the donuts work I'm only eating food that I'm preparing at home. So it's mostly like hey if you want fries you're going to have to cook fries but you have to like buy potatoes like you can't just go out to like a Wendy's or McDonald's and get some French fries, you are making sure that you are cooking the food that you can eat for the next two weeks, whether you like it or not and it's all the food that's already in your fridge is the is the grandfathered in. And I ran out of that food very quickly man I was eating Tums. Just for snacks. I ran out of food so fast I was like oh this is a bad idea, like I was just food I'm just like I'm opening up the covers like is there any snacks in here there's no snacks in here like okay I guess I'll go get some bananas or something The second rule I said was I spend too much time on the Internet and the Internet sort of dictates how I feel that because I wake up in the morning I check notifications. And based on whatever crazy happenings happened in the world that are out of my control sort of dictates how I feel for the rest of the day and how much energy and attitude my attitude for the rest of the day and how I perceive things and I said that's not healthy what I'm going to do is I'm not on the Internet and less if it's from 730 to 830 and only within that hour am I allowing myself free pleasure time to have look up stuff YouTube shorts whatever but if it's for work I can be on the Internet but spirit of the rule is 738 30 is that one hour block and only that at one hour block I can't shift it I can't bargain with myself but I only have this strict regiment of time to go on the Internet. And so what that's done for me is throughout the day I'll think about stuff that I wanted to do or goof off on or get sidetracked with or procrastinate with as I'm doing reports, and I say I can't do that. And I'll maybe make a note saying hey, I want to check out some random episode and I'll write it down on a notebook paper. Or I want to ask myself a weird question like hey, where exactly do clothes go when you donate them to Goodwill like I'll write that down as a question I'll have this nice little spreadsheet. And then I'm, I'm still doing my work I'm staying focused. I come home and there's nothing for me to do so I'll go out and go exercise, or I'll go out and play with friends, but I'm not sitting in front of my computer. And then I'll come home and I still have it's not 730 yet so I'll play with my cat for a little bit. And then finally, once it's like 72828 and my cats like playing fetch with me, I stop everything and I run to my computer I'm like, Okay, I only got an hour. And I'm trying to bust out all the questions I had on the internet, all the YouTube stuff I want to see, and I end up finishing within like 15 minutes. And now I have like this 45 block of internet time that I, I don't need anymore because I've just been so productive answering all the questions I already had. So what's up. Have you created a God to go with this new religion. I've created no God this is a godless religion this is godless religion so what I know they do exist but the whole idea was one hour internet a day, eating, preparing all the food for my own home, using wrong ingredients, aside from the stuff that is what was already in my fridge. So if you if you go along with the tenants of this religion, you're being good. You know what forces you to be good if you have no punishment. True. True. You know what, I found, I don't need a stick to eat a good carrot. Carrots are healthy. Carrots are healthy. Sometimes I could be motivated by my own self interest that I could be by avoidance of self harm. Right. And I find that at least in that non wasteful dogmatic solution that I prepared for myself. I got up with a lot more focus throughout the rest of the day to the point where it was at the beginning sort of mentally fatiguing to constantly be working on a project and realize I can't procrastinate or distract myself with like taking my phone with me to a 20 minute long bathroom break or something. I also felt like the food that I was eating was so much healthier I lost I'm at my some of my lowest weights right now I'm like at 241 normally I'm at 245 so like I lost four pounds in two weeks that's pretty good. And I just felt really good there was so much more time in my day, spending way more time outside. I was just telling about all that stuff that sounds like you created an exercise and food regimen. Yeah, basically. Yeah, and just one founded the God and that's the main spirituality. And I didn't have to I and I traded myself into this mindset but the idea is, um, I had all these beneficial things happening to me by a codified list of arbitrary rules that I prepared for myself and I followed, and I didn't need a God belief in order to do it. And so when I get exactly or spirituality and when I look at God beliefs or spirituality what do I see is like the incoming set of steps. Yes there is a God belief but here's how we can make your life better. These are the things that you should do these are the things that you shouldn't do. And when people regimentally follow those. I can definitely see the benefit of like say hey I'm not going to steal because my book says don't steal. I'm not going to eat the salty foods because it might raise my blood pressure and blah blah blah. I get those I get those and I'm going to be I'm going to honor my family I'm going to honor my mother, and I'm going to do this I'm not going to litter on the ground and I won't wear a class of two fabrics and whatever set of arbitrary rules they need to fall in order to be happy. I can get that I can get that I get why religion works now for a lot of people. But my fundamental claim still is, you can get all of those regimented structures for your life to get that self control to get the improvement in your, your out being your, your, your wellness, without the God belief, without the spirituality, you can get all the benefit or the punish rules, or the punishment or the guilt. Thank you, dread what do you think. I'm just going to say, that's not necessarily the case because people don't necessarily follow religions for the rules. They may think they do, but I think oftentimes it's an excuse to do what you want. And then at the end of the week, say it was all justified and you know the things I did wrong are already forgiven so don't worry about that. It's reset time. It's not about following the rules from Monday to Saturday. It's about doing whatever the hell you want to have a good reason to say, let's press the reset button on Sunday. Larry, what do you think I want to take into that more. I would think there are people that follow their religion simply because they nitpick the book they have it. The, the book is a Rorschach test. It has so much stuff in it. You can pick what you want and say God wants you to do this and not point to the 16 other things in the book that it says that you're not following. It's just, you know, and that's a testament to why, why there are so many religions, right, because people are paying attention to the priests who are interpreting the religion. Yeah, but if everyone read the book, it would be a different story, wouldn't it? Right. Now look at, without getting too much into politics, look at Boba, the congressman, what's her first name? I can't remember. Anyway, she's all religious and she makes a big show of it. She literally preaches religion. But as soon as her son gets there, his girlfriend pregnant, well, that's okay. You know, I love my son. Everything's fine. But, you know, before that, I'm sure she would have said, you know, that's not done. We can't have that. You know, don't do that because someone else is right. And all all changes as soon as someone you love is involved. Now here's my thing. Are there hypocrites in religion? Absolutely. And are they, you know, put on pedestals? Absolutely. And are there like a multitude of them that we can point out for the rest of the show? Absolutely. But I do think that there are people who find benefit in the outlining that religion offers them in a world where they feel like they have no self control. And I can think of something like akin to alcoholics and nominous, where what's the first thing they try to indoctrinate you with when you're there is the existence of a higher power. Managing your lifestyle, who is watching you as a way to inhibit you from when you have no one watching you to go back to your your deleterious habits, which is deleterious deleterious deleterious. Yeah, deleterious. Right, right, right. So I feel I feel it is essentially a good means of controlling people. And, and whether that's a for a good thing or a bad thing. Yes, sometimes it's definitely used for bad sometimes even people use it for their own self interest. But I definitely think there's a sect of people that get a benefit from having a regimented set of rules to follow that actually improves their lifestyle, but they don't need the God bags to go with it. What do you think, Fred? You know, I think there's a difference here between what you expressed, you know, your religion and the, you know, the common idea of religion. And one comes from the inside, which is you established these things for yourself. And it was for your own self interest that you that you perform them and it wasn't about hand waving or virtue signal. You did it on your own account for your own benefit without a need to proselytize to others about how good it is and whatnot. Yeah, whereas it's the other way around for, for most part in religion where you are hand signaling or virtue versus a mirror hand waving within the community that you become ensconced with in your religious practice. So I think there's a, you know, and of course, this is a huge generalization, but so it doesn't apply everywhere. But, you know, I think there's, you know, you can really parse those two differences out. Yeah, and it reminds me and what you were talking about. Again, it reminds me of Stoicism. Okay, okay, you can parse those two out Larry, did you have any comments? Okay, so my idea is, yeah, there's definitely the, there's the extension of what I'm doing now, where I could be just as harmful as classic religions are today. And that would be, hey, listen, now that I've done this for two weeks, I need you to buy my book. You are currently sick. You need, you need the Wellesian system. You need the Tyrone Wells book. You're unhappy. Let me tell you how to solve this problem for only $19.99 plus taxes as seen on TV. Subscribe and like to my channel. Like, definitely, definitely I can take it too far. Maybe there's something, maybe there's a better in between here in that, yes, maybe even if you have a God belief, maybe even if you have spiritualism. Maybe if you just keep that to yourself and make your personal God necessarily personal, maybe then it won't matter as much. Maybe you could have the baggage of a God belief, but as long as you keep it within yourself and still interact with people on a non spiritual basis. And still respect the fact that people have differing opinions, but you still have your personal belief system that you just keep to yourself personally. You can all learn from that. And you can still maintain your rules as long as they don't harmfully affect other people in society, right? Like don't cause this needless harm. But as far as whatever you want to believe after that, if it's in your own personal mindset, we're totally fine with that. And maybe we can get maybe we can turn away from this franchising religion that actually affects government and other people who aren't even in that religion to more of just say, hey, here's my personal codified list of rules. I'm not sharing it with anybody. This is a necessarily personal thing that I have with myself and my spiritual being or not. But here are the rules and I'm following and I actually find that they actually improve my behavior substantially and allow me to have more time with the things that I love to do. I, I could see I can see a lot of religions that we currently have right now. Evolving to a place like that. If anything, I see mainstream Christianity, more or less trending towards that day by day, where it used to be, hey, you don't believe in our God? Well, welcome to the crusades. We're going to do our ninth one. It's going to be amazing. Everybody was going to love it. Everybody loves the ninth crusade. And now it's like, oh, he's gay. Well, you know, God loves him too. We're fine. It's fine. Don't worry about it's good. You know, I'm not going to. My boyfriend or my son had a pregnant a girl out of wedlock. It's fine. I love my son. Yes, I am a governor and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but it's fine. I'm just sweeping out of the table. I do find that the more religions move away from their strict dogmatic punitive measures, the better they are getting towards where I'm referring to which is just, just keep it personal and abide by the rules of society, not by your God. And if it's not harmful, and it's not causing anyone any problems or hiccups, it's okay. I mean, and it's keep it personal. Fine, have at it. But for the most part, let's work together. Well, I think they're, I think the whole idea of believing in things that are not justified. True beliefs are problematic. Right. So while it may be good advice to suggest that people who have God beliefs, not proselytize. It still is problematic in that they hold those beliefs. Right. Right, because it's still, you would still act in a way where you would want the influence of your beliefs to play out in the politics in your school board in the way you run your business, the way you interact with people. And, you know, the foundation of the way you do those things is based on an unjustified belief. It's problematic regardless of whether or not you're out there telling everyone about it or not. I agree. I agree. In fact, I would say like right now we have a system where people are both actively acting on unjustified beliefs and having them. What you can see is a transition step from, hey, this is both unjustified and I'm acting on it to it's unjustified, but I'm not forcing you to follow them either and I'm not doing in a large class. Is it the most ideal step. No, but I also feel like, and here's my other thing. This is an interesting question and I wasn't expecting to go on this tangent with you. But the American system at least has this philosophy of freedom of religion, you can believe what you want to believe. Does that not also include unjustified beliefs in their own right to and does not someone have a right to believe that may not be wholly justified, particularly by the measure of other people who lack the ability to justify or test that belief in the first place. And so if that's the case, I'm fine with you believe whenever you want because you have a right to as well as a lack of a right to not believe in that as well. It's the actions that you have on other people that I can at least hopefully influence and dictate. And that's really the only thing I care about. Yes, it's problematic if it's not true, but that's a different problem. What do you think Larry. Well, certainly they have the right to believe whatever they want to but we also have the right as members of society to examine and criticize those beliefs that we believe that they are harmful to society. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. And you just because you have freedom. Yeah, yeah, that no belief should be for example, exempt from criticism. Correct. Freedom of belief does not mean you're exempt from criticism. Absolutely true. Absolutely. And people don't have a right not to be offended. People don't have a right to not be offended. Truth. I mean that is the that's the basis of the freedom of religion right, because they being mutually exclusive exclusive for the most part. One person's belief may be found to offend another someone with another belief. So right no one has a right not to be offended it's like the Charlie Hebdo thing. Yeah, where you know people draw some cartoons and and someone gets offended and guess what somebody dies right. Right. Right. Like we have we have a right from needless harm. That's really I mean that's truly it. It's like we have a right to health and happiness. I believe autonomy. We should have that man is that that's a bigger conversation. The main thing is yeah you're just because your feelings get hurt doesn't mean that that's a problem or because you think your beliefs are above criticism doesn't mean that they actually are. And we'll get into this more after we come back to the after the break. Larry, why are you taking this out? Sure. This is the digital free thought radio hour on W O Zio radio 103.9 LP FM 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 W O Zio radio 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Let's take a moment just to talk about the atheist society of Knoxville. ASK was founded in 2002. We're in a 21st year now and have over 1000 members. We meet weekly in person every Tuesday in Knoxville's old city at Barley's taproom in Pete's area. Come on down and join us. You don't have to be an atheist to be there and be with us. Look for us inside at the high top table or if it's pretty weather outside on the deck or both. We also have a Tuesday evening zoom ASK meeting. If you'd like to join us via zoom emails for details at asking an atheist at Knoxville atheists.org or let's chat s e at gmail.com. You can find us online on Facebook or meet up.com or their website Knoxville atheists.org. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you can still go to meet up and do a search for an atheist group in your town. Don't find one. Start one. That's right. One, but where do you want to pick up? We got a comment I'd like to go over from Dottus Trading Room on an episode from two weeks ago called Charity. Dottus Trading Room had a comment on us because we had brought up Jesus during the show and he says, Dottus Trading Room says, Preacher calls out Jesus died for our sins. You should ask, did he die? Is that really what you believe? Because you really need to make up your mind. He either died or he didn't die. If you resurrected, that means he didn't die. He could not have both died and not died. Dead is dead. And if he's if Jesus lives, he's not dead. Well, you know, when you're resuscitated, is that not that doesn't count as death is when you like are medically. Like your heart stopped beating, but you still have brain activity is not not technically dead. Brain activity means you're not dead. Okay, okay. So you're resuscitated. Well, here's another problematic thing is if you're omnipotent, how can you actually die? How can you see still exist? And according to Christianity, we're all eternal beings. None of us die. Yeah, I got a question for you. What do you mean by that? Because by omnipotent, you should be able to die because that's the thing that's something can do. And if you can do everything, you should be able to do that too. Right. Well, I think it's a bit of a contradiction, isn't it? Talk to me. Being and then to have and then to cease to exist. Like that. Well, if you couldn't cease to exist, that's a problem too. Right. I suppose it's a logical. Yeah, it's a logical. Yeah, I get you. It's problematic. It's problematic. The only way. Yeah, you make a loophole where it's basically, I am my son and I killed him. And now I know what that's like. It's the classic Naruto Kagebunchen no Jitsu. Let's see. Thank you guys so much for all the comments. Want to go into the idea of stoicism and pain dread you had mentioned that. The idea of building your own religion and your own set of rules is very similar to the concept of stoicism and pain, for example. What'd you mean by that? Yeah. Well, you know, like I said, I started reading Marcus Aurelius's meditations. And here's a case where a guy. You know, he was an emperor of Rome. Who took on a way of life. Which is almost religious nature. But he didn't do it for any hand waving or virtue signaling purposes. Meditations, of course, he wrote those for himself. He never had any intention of having them published. They were just reflections on the way he ought to live within the limits of the stoic philosophy. And he didn't do it for any hand waving or virtue signaling purposes. Meditations, of course, he wrote those for himself. And, you know, one of these things is the idea that you shouldn't focus on any one thing over another. You know, for instance, you know, gluttony over starving yourself or pleasure over pain. You know what I mean? All things on the balance are required for the good life. Okay. And, you know, you see it nowadays that anybody. I mean, it's just a, you know, everyone wants to avoid pain as much as possible. You know, and that is often over any other consideration. And I think that's a, it's a focus that doesn't benefit humans generally speaking. Larry. No. So I mean, I agree that, you know, the idea of living within practice and, and, and to extent, careful moderation makes someone more mindful of their actions. And like the idea of constantly, not constantly, but making sure you don't fall into any particular excess requires a lot of mental capacity, and particularly with how you are living your life. So stoicism, unlike other philosophies, isn't a, I only need to check myself at the very start. And then maybe at the very end, it's a controlled process where you're constantly reviewing your, your methodologies the entire time. I find that thoughtfulness to be very useful. And when I was going over my practice of non-wasteful dogmatic rulesets that I made for myself, every single time I wanted to just goof off on the internet or habitually open up an internet browser, I was reminded of my rules, close them, and then have to find a better solution to resolve this tendency I had to like open up a chat window or pull out my phone for some reason. Or if I wanted to eat something like junk food related like some chips or whatever, I had to like either come up with a better idea of what I could consume or just work or distract myself with something more beneficial and, and go outside and throw some discs or play with my cat or find something more meaningful to do with my free time, then go out and get some junk food. There are, there is a practice associated with distracting yourself from, I would say like your personal demons and temptations. And I find like stoicism falls really cleanly into that. I find the idea of thinking about what you're doing rather than just doing it to be a very good practice for people. And that mindfulness isn't necessarily something that you need a God to do. But I do find that when you're religious layer, I see it when you are religious, you are constantly thinking is what I'm doing a sin or is what I'm doing a blessing that God wants me to do. And if we were to just take away that God aspect and just come up with more traditional rules that are more fundamental about why sins are sins and why blessing is blessings and just take the baggage, the spiritual baggage off of it, we might find like the same practice of consequential actions without necessarily having to have the religion or the spiritual isn't be a part of this. Like, hey, I like helping people not because it makes God happy, happy, but because I like being in a society where it's where people help each other. And I'm going to donate clothes to charity because if I was in that situation, I would love to have clothes available to me and it reduces waste on my end. Everyone's benefiting and it's makes me feel good too. And that's at the end of the day beneficial to me be in a society where people are helping each other out. Like there's so many good ways to set that up. Larry, what do you think? No, I think it's good to be that way, especially since when you do something wrong, you don't have this like mental judge of right and wrong telling you that you will be punished for it. That's mind control. It's sin per se, you know, if you do something against the will of God, but it's just you setting up some arbitrary rules to live by, which is fine, which if the occasion happens, then you can make an exception for a particular rule. And if when you judge that the case needs to be done, be changed, you can change them. I did want to ask Dred Pirate about the book he mentioned earlier on rationalism. Would you say that that covers stoicism in that book? There's definitely, it was funny how well those two, the one book, a rationality, leads right into Marcus Aurelius, and it was completely unintentional that those two books should follow. And that was Stephen Pinker? Stephen Pinker, yeah. Yeah, he's a Harvard psychologist and professor. He's one of the 100 most influential thinkers of our century, so rated by... Yeah, I just ordered it while we were on. Am I accurate or let me know if this is too simple, but is stoicism like one of the hallmarks of it or one of the tenets is like, you shouldn't let emotions cloud your judgment that you should? Is that accurate? Okay. There's two in degree. It's, you know, it's a spock in bodies that may be to a fault, to a fault, of course, because spock is an extreme character. But yeah, for sure. And this is what I was getting to with this idea of pain as a necessary part of our existence and that to, you know, to do everything one can to avoid pain is an excess in itself. Right, right. Because you deprive yourself of the experience of the world. Right. I mean, it's like wrapping yourself in bubble wrap and saying the universe can't hurt me now. I'm impervious to it, you know, implications or whatever. But, you know, I think it's a faulty mode of being, you know, it's an excess, essentially. The importance of being can itself be an excess. And it's a double edged sword. I was thinking of a memoir that Jackie Chan wrote where he said his net worth is $350 million after a lifetime of working, a lifetime of working from like five in the morning to 11 o'clock at night training, training and only breaking for lunch and dinner, basically. And he was raised as refugees. His parents had so little. He learned to appreciate scarcity. So all the money he has now, he deeply values. But the thing is, one of his biggest regrets is that he raised his son, his only son, JC Chan, in the lap of luxury. And his son has essentially no discipline. And so his son has gone to jail, has dropped out of college and does not want to be a movie star, doesn't want to be an actor, doesn't want to be an engineer doctor or anything like that is just essentially mooching off his, his wife. And he's the son's hoping to get the windfall from Jackie when he falls. And he said, you know what? I'm just going to donate my money to charity because I don't want to give it to my own son. And this is, and this is causing a lot of problems in his life. And he's like, I should have found some way to have my son appreciate life like how I did with scarcity. And I find like, that's how his father had had the same idea. Right, right, right. But you were exactly, you were talking about pain, pain, the pain in Jackie Chan's life and the, and the work, the hard work you have to go through made him appreciate the hardships in a way that someone who had that to begin with since birth would never have the ability to appreciate. They would have to learn the, the appreciate scarcity and hard work. It helps to shape character. Absolutely. I agree. And so like the same amount of money to the son might be a very small amount or just like his baseline level, whereas for Jackie, this is like, this is an inordinate amount that we should be happy. And I want to use to avoid pain for my family, but maybe I should have taught what pain was in a more productive or constructive way. So that he can appreciate it more. You know, we were talking about, Dred, I got a question for you. We're talking about AI a couple of weeks ago, and we're saying like one of the things they will never be able to do is think like a human being, which is true. We have emotions clouding our judgment all the time, but it sounds like if the tenant for stoicism is to think without the impact of emotions, isn't that essentially an easier target for AI to mimic? Because you won't have to teach an AI emotions and it would be able to give you the most logical balanced answer without clouding of things like ego or rage or happiness or playing or pleasure. What do you think? Well, that's a great question. A stoic AI. Yeah. A stoic AI. Well, you know, stoicism is not acting in the absence of passions. It's acting where reason influences emotions, right? So emotions and passions are not to run amok, but are to be tempered by reason and the faculties of reason. So it's, like I said, Spock was an extreme character, right? So if you boiled, you know, stoicism down to its very essence, then turn it into a paste. Yeah, maybe that's what you would have with Spock. But I think Spock was still human or Spock was still had humanity. Spock still had humanity. And that's, yeah. And the struggle made this character interesting. That's what made him a complicated character. Yeah, for sure. Right. But, you know, I think, you know, the way that, you know, stoics express that philosophy was not just one or the other. It wasn't just a reason over emotion in all cases. It was a recognition that the reason needs to temper emotion for the most part. It's just like, you know, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky and they're thinking fast and slow is that there are the two modes of thinking type type one thinking type two, the type one is the quick, you know, what's going on in the bushes there, should I run away? And then there's the type two kind of thinking, which is a reflective sort of pensive kind of thinking that you take more time to do in order to judge whether or not your type one thinking was justified. I like it. I like it. I'm going to ruminate on that for a little bit. Larry, you have. Yeah, I'm talking about a eyes and emotions. It seems to me that we really haven't come down to how much emotions are based on chemicals, enzymes, and stuff like that. And if they are and I don't have those, how could they possibly have emotions? I mean, I just would have to be the most stoic and intelligences on the planet for that reason. So when you would have to teach them how to mimic emotions before they would have emotions to interfere with their logic. And that's why I don't think they could ever be considered stored because they never had the benefit of having emotion. Right. Well, emotions can be programmed into them. Well, you think about this. I'm kind of on that page. Our brains are not limited to this squishy thing in the skull. They go right to our fingertips. They go right to our toes because our bodies are part of our brain. Sure. And computers don't have the benefit of that. You can't, I mean, you could program in a simulacrum of emotion, but it's not true emotion because there's no body or experiential unit that is connected to that computer to allow it to have the sort of things that we experience as pleasure. Well, why can't we just create that? No, I mean, you're talking about experimental. I mean, computers, I mean, I is connected to computers. Computers are connected to temperature sensors, cameras, microphones, which would simulate all of the experiential inputs that we have. Even more detectors than that. That's what I mean. This has more sensors than my body does. In fact, I need to rely on this AI to tell me what's going on in the world than I do. When we ever have ships that can travel faster in space, we're not going to have like a pilot controlling that and be like, yeah, I see Jupiter coming up. It's coming up. Let me just make it right around these ass. It's going to be a computer that like sees all that ahead of time. It makes the best adjustments for like the interest of the people that are flying the ship. We have modules on Earth right now that like help us decide things that we just lack the ability to detect with our own eyes and our own ears. I couldn't imagine that we. I can imagine that we can already build something more complex with a more complex body. And all we just need is the awareness on top of it. I feel like we're lacking that awareness. But maybe we can get there one day. I think this feeds back into like sort of my, my only, my only critique with stoicism is that it tends to be detached from things that are out of their control. Or is that fair? Like things are out of your control. Stoicism would argue that it's not something that you should be relevantly attached to. It's out of your control. Is that fair? Don't concern yourselves with the things that you cannot do anything about. Correct. Just in fact, they call those in difference. Fantastic. Like as an indifferent plural. Let me know if I'm still on track or if I'm off on track, because I don't want to offer an incisor or an, an authentic or inaccurate argument, but I would say that there's definitely things that I, I don't have control over that I can hope to be the case and work now with a high degree of passion to instill in future generations to make an actual thing. And that could go from protecting your neighborhood from being overly gentrified to coming up with new technology that I can't even fathom exists today or developing social changes that benefit people or reversing laws that I feel are unjust. But as one person, I feel like I don't have the wherewithal or the power or the authority to make that change, but I can cooperate with a lot of punch of people and, and make a meaningful protest to hopefully change the odds, maybe not in that one protest, but to start a ball moving that gains traction and hopefully causes more people to be more sympathetic to the, the change that I'd like to inspire. I feel like a lot of those things don't fall in the scope of stoicism because it's not within the scope of things that I can change or the suffering that you're going through right now is relevant because suffering is relevant as far as stoicism goes and you should just be more detached about the reality that you're in. My, my thing is I like to be engaged and even in, even in undergut and underdog fights. I'm not sure if there's a place for that in stoicism. Dred, do you think that's fair or am I miscarried? Yeah, I don't think it's so extreme as that. I mean, again, it's, I think it's far more nuanced. Okay. It's much, it's much more subtle and, you know, you know, it's stoicism developed over a long period of time and wasn't limited to one or two authors in the space of 50 or 60 years. Right. It was, it was pretty prevalent. In that period of Roman history, you know, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and there were other, you know, well-known philosophers and people of note in Roman culture that espoused stoicism. And actually some of the more important works are lost. Some of the bigger names that have been preferred to by these other people are lost to antiquity. Let me throw out an example. So it's, like I say, it's much more nuanced than just... I don't doubt that it's nuanced and long-lived, but for example, as a Pasifarian, you're up against a huge mountain of a battle against institutionalized Christianity. And a person with more traditional views, or even as simple views, non-nuances views, as mine would say, you are spending too much time with your pirate hat. And once every seven days doing a nudely prayer to a God that you know isn't justified. So why don't you just, you know... How dare you? How dare you? Why? Hey, I'm as a stoist, as a stoist. None of these gods can be justified. So why are you wasting your time? It's out of your control. What are you doing? What are you wasting your time? Like, shouldn't you just be... But that's just it. It isn't out of my control, you know? And I guess it's, you know, I'm defining what that tenet of stoicism actually means. And that's why I mean it's much more nuanced than, is it in my control or isn't it? And how do we define it? So would you agree then that you could have two stoists in the same room and they would actually have different ideas about the nature of it between the two of them? Yeah, there you go. So look at that. We made another religion. That's right, we've schismed. Which means going back to the top of the show, it's, if you have your own personal impression of what this is, I'm totally fine with that, especially if it's personal and that's personal. What I really care about is how it's implied through your actions and how you're using to control how your behavior impacts other people. And if you can do it for good, like if we can have sit down and have a great conversation about it, an enlightening conversation where we learn a lot of new authors and modes of thinking, that can be so valuable. And if I can like spouse like, hey, what, this is something I've done for the last two weeks. And it worked out for me. I'm not telling you to do it. I'm just saying something to think about if you were interested in this. And maybe we are spending too much time on the internet. And maybe you could enjoy learning how to cook some different foods. I made French toast this morning. Loved it. I had made French toast in forever, but finally used like vanilla extract in the wists. Like I wasn't just milk and eggs. I put vanilla extract in. Man, does that change the taste amazing. So good. So good. So things like that, just small little learning points that I could use to enrich my life can mean a lot of things. And like stoicism. And like my rule set that I came up with two weeks. Something, a rule set that dread is pointing to that was around since the Roman Empire versus the thing that I came up with two weeks ago, both had dramatic or noticeable improvements in our lives. And, and, and changed a lot of waste that we were generating with our time, but did not require a spiritual God to give it to us or a benevolent God to like hand down these rule sets for us. We made it ourselves. And that's the main thing that I'd like to take away. We are capable of coming up with the rule sets to, to engage with other people with and to control our lives. We have that ability to do self-control. And it's not something that we can change overnight. Some things we got to work on it. Sometimes we make mistakes, but you don't have to worry about the sin aspect and the punitive measure and the stick that comes from religion. If you mess up, you can make mistakes. You can learn from them and you can improve upon it. Just keep working on it. That's all I would say. I was going to point out that Marcus Aurelius believed in a soul, but he didn't believe the soul was immaterial. They didn't believe in afterlife and that sort of thing. So that puts a, that puts a blush on the whole belief system. When you think about how different it is now where people think they have souls in that they're immaterial and mortal. So the way they viewed their existence back then, and Marcus of course was greatly influenced by Greek philosophy, which is where Stoicism actually came from. So I think that's an important point to note as a difference between the way Stoicism may be practiced today by religious people who believe in the immateriality of the soul or its immortality as opposed to the way those beliefs were expressed 2,000 years ago. Nice. Okay. That's fantastic. Yeah. Change in point. In your religion, your new religion. I'm not really sure it's really a religion. Wow. There you do. You pass the plate. You have bake sales. He's the emperor so he can do anything. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Basically I listen, I'm, I'm, I'm a fan of the idea of a religion for one. I'm old. I'm not a fan of theism. And I think there's a distinction, right? Because theism is the line in the sand where I get off the religion train. If someone says, Hey, I have a bunch of stuff that I do as just a practice that I to do it to improve my life. I'm fine with that. Especially if it's a spiritual regiment, and if it's a spiritual regiment, then I start getting like, Hey, when can I get off this train? And once we cross into the theism pool, I'm like, all right, we're done. I can't, I can't follow here with you because you're not justifying a lot of these extra baggage that's coming with this trip. However, the fun, the fun, the foundation of that theism, the foundation of that. not someone is using a good rationale to reach conclusions or not. And I find that if you have a non spiritual, non God-based set of rules, you have essentially a set of empirical data and a hypothesis that you are constantly testing that I can look at and say, hey, I feel like I'm wasting too much time on the Internet. So what have you done? I spent less time on the Internet. Did that improve your work? Yes, absolutely. It's like that works. I can follow that. I can follow any religion that is basically based on science. Or empirical data. That is easy. But it's the ones that bring up the God belief. It's the one that brings up the spiritualism. It's the one that brings up these big questions that there's no meaningful way to test it. That's when there's a problem in society, especially when it's used to dictate the lives of other people. And so that's what we need to control or that's what we need to be at least aware of. Yes, you have a right to believe what you want, but you don't have a right to force me to believe it to, right? So be careful how you package it and give me the opportunity to think critically before you indoctrinate me into your mindset. We got to wrap up Dread Pirate. Can you pluck some books for us? Well, again, Marcus Raylius, Meditations is a great book. I've just started reading it. And Stephen Pinker, anything by him. Anything by him now, rationality, better angels of our nature, blank slate. Stephen Pinker is an awesome author. Check him out. I think he's a Pulitzer Prize nominee and finalist there a couple of times. So check them out for sure. My stuff, my stuff you can find on MinePirate on my YouTube channel, MinePirate, M-I-N-D-P-Y-R-A-T. I live stream this when I'm on at 7 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time on Sunday mornings. Nice. Check it out. I got a weird recommendation. I would recommend that everybody watch everything everywhere all at once. It's a movie, a bunch of Oscars. Listen, I had that movie overhyped for me before I even saw it myself. And I thought, I'm going to ruin the movie because my hype is too big. It surpassed my height. It's one of those movies that you need to watch in the same way how you don't need God to have a spiritual belief system. You don't need a giant, over bloated movie budget to make a triple A movie. And these are two guys, essentially as directors, working as producers, making the smart choices to efficiently make the effects of a movie that has a fantastic story stand out. And when you watch it, you don't realize how low the budget is. It's just a love of the craft of filming. And you would really appreciate it from both a construction of film as well as a storytelling device. When you're done, you'll call your mom. It's a fantastic. Excellent. Larry, what do you got? Yeah. Oh, my content can be found at digitalfreethought.com. Be sure to click on the blog button for a radio show archives. Atheist songs and many articles on the subject of atheism. You can find my book, Atheism, What's 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 we 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 on WZO radio. Bye, everybody. Bye, everybody.