 Now, radio hour on WOZO radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We're recording this on Sunday, April 10th, 2022. I'm Larry Rhodes or Doubter Five. And as usual, we have a co-host Wombat on the line with us. Hello Wombat. Hey, I think that's me. It is, every week. And our guests today are George Brown, the two and a half from formerly from Brooklyn. The John Richards from over the sea in London and Slew Suffer. Welcome to Slew, Slew Foot Shoe. Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism, and the sciences. And conversely, we'll also talk about religion, religious faiths, gods, holy books, and superstition. And if you get the feeling that you're the only non-believer in town, well, you're just not. In Knoxville, here in the middle of the Bible Belt, we have a group of over a thousand of us. And we'll tell you more about that group after the mid-show break. Wombat, what's on our topic list today? We got, we got various topics that we're going to be covering today. We're going to be including, and I'm going to try to help John Richards by looking at my camera a little bit more often too. How about that? That's one of them. The second one is what to do as an atheist when your friend becomes a born-again Christian after formerly being atheist. And how do you react to that? How do you, what can you do to assuage any fear that they may have based on your reactions or other reactions from other atheists? We'll get a roundtable discussion on how we'll, how we feel about that. And then we'll go into narcissism, which has always been a fun topic on the show and figuring out if it's a good gateway drug outside to get out of religion, like why worship a god when you can just worship yourself, right? It's not going to be interesting. Before we get into it, I think we should have a nice little roundtable, what you've been doing and what you've been up to. Let's throw it up to our own John Richards. How you been since last week? Whoa, well, as usual, I've been scheming. And, and with my, my attempts to take over the world. Right. As I gone. Well, it's going all right. So thank you very much. So you just had your first panel discussion post GAN, post Global Atheist News. How'd that go? GAN review. Yeah, it went very well. And thank you for being one of my panelists. You were brilliant. Anytime. And I had some other brilliant panelists as well. And later on today, we are doing episode two. And this week, there's been a great deal of religious news, news of how religion harms humanity. And there's been 30 items that I reported on in Global Atheist News yesterday. We won't have time to discuss them all in the panel, but I hope you'll be able to be there, Ty. Wonderful. I'd love to be there. Also, where can we find, you know, so we can catch up? Where can we find like the main channel? Would you mind plugging that real quick? Yeah, sure. Free Thought Productions is my channel. And it's growing steadily day by day. I've now got a producer to help me with the shows. And I've also got a growing audience. So I'm really, really rather pleased. But in addition to this, you may remember my main project, my big idea. Okay. Which I'm calling Free Thought City. Right. And it's an online facility for people like us who do webcaming. And it's a sort of a social medium, but face-to-face. Nice. Yeah. And we now have a sponsor. We now have somebody who's investing in it. So we've got enough money to actually launch the thing. You know, post COVID, that's the first time I've not immediately cringed when someone said face-to-face. So I know we're trimming towards good things again. It's nice. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And we were all forced... Going at George Brown? Okay. John, I want to know the nature of your investor and his investment or her investment. In other words, is this a business? Do you have like advertising and products to sell and stuff like that? This is a business. But it's not an American-style business. We're not... Interesting. We're not forcing products down people's throats, like happens to, you know, you poor Americans. So there will be no intrusive advertising. It's a virtual city. So you will see adverts as you go about your business. You will see, you know, on the bus stops and things. You will see the normal sort of, what you might call, background adverts. There's a very... Sorry not to interrupt. I apologize. You can see pills like that. You can see what if you're liking this. There's a very funny video on YouTube right now of... In slew, you've probably seen this before, of the metaverse with Zuckerberg, who's literally going through his virtual world and trying to explain why ads are a good thing and like why they're going to be on bus stops and like billboard signs of the backgrounds but never in your face. Here's the thing. Here's the thing. If ads were a good thing, you wouldn't be able to buy your way out of seeing them on YouTube, would you? Interesting. That's one approach. I was worried you might be starting up your own university or trying to sell steaks or something of that nature. I love Trump. One last question too. I know if... I don't know if the pun was intentional but like is an awe the answer where like a group of people are in awe? The same thing as an audience, which is like the American version where you just like an audience that's listening to you. I'm not going to apologize for my English accent. Fair enough, fair enough, fair enough. We'll stick to American here. Slew, how you been? It's good to see you. I've been doing all right. Does your shirt say got rats? It says got crabs. It's the Joe's crab shack thing. Got it, got it, got it. I didn't know if it was got carrots or whatever. I knew it was got something. Anyway, how you been since the last time we saw you? It's been a while. And we're doing pretty good show. I have been working on some of my content and trying to edit it out and get it up for YouTube. I've been having a few medical issues. Bouncing around to doctors and stuff. I'm still trying to struggle to find the time to... You didn't know what to do with the horn growing out of your head? Shave him down, maybe? Is that it? Hornectomy, yeah. Okay, well, you know, I wish you the best of luck with that. And then you don't keep us updated. And they're always fun to have you on. George. Yeah, yeah. We can see where they were, can't we? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't poke fun at that, John. Come on, I'm still struggling with all the whites in my beard right now. It's okay. It's okay. You can't slap me. George Brown. At least I'm not doing a ridiculous comb over anything like that. Oh, no. I told you guys we're going to keep this positive. Nantox, come on. George Brown, how are you? I can't remember. I'm getting so old. I'm forgetting what I did last week. Last week, all my days are melting together. Here's your old person stuff, you know, health issues, car problems, you know, stuff. Computer hassles, you know. I run Linux, so I have especially intricate hassles. Very, very true. Very, very true. Well, I hope you, I wish you the best with all your hassles. Larry, how you been? Oh, I've been fine. Probably the most boring of all of them, because I just work and play games and watch TV and go to bed, and that's about it. You sound like a guy in the very 30s. You're reliving your youth already. That's great. I did a disc golf league. I'm in a disc golf league at my local club, and I'm in sixth place in our novice section. And if you take out all the guys who are actually really, really good who are just training all the new players, I'm probably like in the top five, because that's only one place to extra up. I'm happy with that. I'll take that. I think what I'm done, I'm going to buy myself a nice little trophy. Who knows? We'll see. And put it in my desk and be like top five. Well, I'll count that for something. Guys, we're going to be talking really quick about the idea of what would you do if someone you knew who was an atheist became a Christian again? And the idea is, here's the story. It's not so much that you're dealing with someone who was organically atheist, that you're dealing with someone who's left religion and was an atheist and knew basically all the reasons that you guys would espouse for the reason why you left religion. Like they had the proper reasoning. It wasn't just I'm an atheist because I hate the church. It's more of like an atheist because I didn't have a good reason to believe in a God. And I didn't want to continue to perpetrate not only the idea that I should pretend to know something when I don't have a good reason to believe it. And likewise, I just find it better to be a critical thinker rather than someone who's ardently following a dogmatic point of view. And so as a result, I can't come to the belief of a religious system. And so I don't have to carry that label with me anymore. And then, like a few months later, they become a Christian again. And they're like, hey, listen, I was listening to some pastors. I was listening to this guy. I read this book. I saw this YouTube video. And now I'm getting baptized next week. How would you? So that actually happened to me. And I just wanted to know for the sake of that person who's most likely watching this show, the fear that they have of interacting with other atheists is that they feel like they would be judged or that they would have arguments levied against them. And what would be the concerns that we'll do around table? What would be the concerns that you would have? Larry, I see you raised your hand. What's up? How would you react to someone who is a born again? Well, it'd be y times two. I'd ask y twice. The first y is why did you become an atheist? And the second y would be what made you or why did you go back to Christianity or whatever religion it was? I would like to know specifics on both of those. Right. So then I could evaluate those reasons myself. Right. And if he had good reasons, then I might adopt him. If they had bad reasons, I might point out why they're bad. Larry, that is fantastic. Because honestly, if you hear good reasons, you might be a Christian too. Right. And if they aren't bad and you're actually friends, you're going to say, hey, these are bad reasonings. Not the conclusion is bad. It's just the reasoning you're using is not as good. And I'm letting you know that as a friend. That is fantastic. That was almost the exact same route I would take. John Richards, do you have a point of what you would do if you had an atheist become a born again Christian? Sure. Yeah. Well, first of all, my attitude is anybody can believe what they like. What they like. And it's up to them. And I'm very tolerant. I already live in a household with a Christian. And a nominal Muslim, which is very unusual. They're part of my family here. John, just to add that, I have a Muslim, a Jehovah Witness and Christian, and sometimes in the same household in just my immediate family too. It's a very awkward thing to hear. OK. Can I raise you then? You say you've got that. I'll raise you two Christians. Call him. Call. I have a cat. What else can I tell you? Who knows what he wishes? All right. No, no. Carrying on. This is a peculiar American question because it doesn't happen. We don't have people, first of all, raised in Christianity. Secondly, they don't then need to become atheists because they've already been an atheist. Right, right. And thirdly, they don't need to revert back to Christianity that they were never in in the first place. So we just don't experience that at all. But of course, as I said, anybody can do what they like. They have ownership of their body, their mind, and they can choose their preferences. I was speaking to my son who's in New Zealand only yesterday, and we were talking about this idea of there being an atheist community. And there is in the USA, you know, there's a lot of it going on in Austin, Texas, for example. But we don't have any need to meet up and say, hello, I'm an atheist like you. Because in our part of the West, it means I'm a human. And that's not a big enough reason to form a community. We need something else. You know, I like motor railways. That's soccer, yeah. Yeah, yeah, or fishing or something like that. So how do you explain generally the idea that you're the president of the atheist community of UK? Do you just say I'm the president of human beings? Well, that's a good point, of course. Well, although I've said that in general, there's a predisposition not to be religiously involved. There are a few people who are quite up in arms about the way that the UK is still a victim of proselytizing. Okay, yeah. I try to say proselytization, but it didn't get my name right. That word anyway. Because in this building behind me, we have 22 bishops who are not elected. They're just there because they were chosen by the Archbishop as his best friends. And they're making laws for us. And we don't like that. Don't you do anything about that? Well, we're working on it. It's taken a long while, but I mean, you know, it was 500 years ago that this place was set up and progress has been very slow. So there's other atrocities like, for example, the laws that affect our children when they're being educated, which technically insist that they have a service every morning delivered to them of an Anglican nature unless they are at a Jewish school or some other faith. So that's why there's a need, there's still a need for an atheist movement in the UK. And I'm lucky enough to have been elected the president. I'm going to poke at this one last time. Excellent. I'm wondering what if any of those bishops exercise the right that you seem to be offering your friend who became a born again Christian and that I have a right to believe whatever I want. I'm doing a good job making laws. Who cares what I believe? Let me just continue to do my job, both as a bishop and as a politician. And that's it. Like, why is it okay for this person to believe whatever they want, but you have an issue with me being Christian in being in this office? I don't mind them believing what they want. What I mind is them not being elected. It's a democracy issue. And they should not be in there making laws. No, I dig it. I dig it. Yeah, if you're not an elected official, get out of the democratic position, institution that you're in right the moment. Yeah. In fact, if you want to be elected in this country, don't mention your religion. That's going to lose you votes. Interesting. I hope we get there eventually here at this place too. Slu, love to know how would you react if one of your best friends who was an atheist became a born again Christian? Well, the first time you'd asked, I believe you said what your concerns be. And my concerns would actually be is the church just feeding on that person's insecurity. But as far as like questions asking, having to ask them questions or whatever about it, I would be curious. Well, like Larry was getting at about the epistemology they're using to form that conclusion. So because it just doesn't seem likely. I don't know. I've never met anyone that was doing that other than public, more public figures that were grifting for a broader audience. Right. You know, I do feel sometimes that my immediate reaction when I hear that is sort of like my friend telling me, hey, I just became a heroin addict. It's like, how can I treat that as a positive thing? Like, who are you hanging out with that's giving you those drugs? Don't you know that there's easier ways to feel good or, you know, ebb off some of the bad issues that you're having rather than going straight to heroin? There's like so many other cooler things we could have gone for a walk. You could have got adopted a dog. You could have volunteered an animal shelter. There's so many things you could do to contribute that gives you the same inherent good feelings than, you know, this organization that might just continue to keep piecemealing you and taking money from you. It's like watching somebody with a broken leg keep hammering their leg, kicking a hammer to their leg and saying, you know, what do you think about this? I, you know, I don't think that's a good way to, to, you know, treat yourself be good to yourself. Right. It's sort of like a goblin move to town. And this is going to sound particularly racist for me against goblins, but a goblin moves to town. And the next, you know, your, your best friend has a goblin significant other. And you're like, I don't think, I don't think this is going to work out long term. I was like, no, you don't know Mephestis like I'm no Mephestis. Oh, no. Okay. Well, you know, you can believe what you want. I'm just wondering like, what are your goals in life? And I know Mephestis wants to do this goat sacrifice thing every hour. But like, there's not that many goats, dude. And you have other things you can do, right? Like, can we agree that maybe there's better ways to spend your time? But, you know, John, you have a point. They're adults. They can believe what they want. Larry, you have a point too. If they can make a convincing argument, why not believe them too? Right. The thing is, I do feel like a lot of those people are scared about the, what would happen if they left their Christian friends. And I think that, that is much more obvious what would happen. Like they'd stop communicating with them. They'd be apostate. Or, you know, maybe they stop believing in God, but they can't give up the idea that their soul may still be in danger in the afterlife. Exactly. You know, there's so much to it. There's not just one issue. Right. John Richards, I see your finger. What's up? Well, I want to pick up on that because Larry said he would ask two questions of why. Why people change, why people got a belief, why people lost a belief, why they got back into the belief. Born again is not a British thing. We don't have born again here. And, but he's right. You shouldn't believe unless you've got reasons to believe. And interestingly, the campaign that atheism, UK is embarking upon this year is a very good one. Listen, you know, thanks to the internet, we have all sorts of fake news, conspiracy theories, you know. And out and out lies that are put out, particularly by politicians and businesses who are trying to benefit from our ignorance because they can deceive us and make money very often. Well, we have organizations, you have them in the U.S., to check the facts of these statements that these people are making. Our one is called fullfact.org. Okay. And its remit is to check the information that's been sent to it by members. Any citizen can email them and say, look, somebody said this. Is it true? And they will check whether or not, about the veracity of that claim. Okay. At the moment, they're only dealing with claims made by politicians and commercial enterprises. We want them to check religious claims too. Yep. Imagine that. Because of course, the religious claims are causing harm to our society. They're giving people false hope of an afterlife. And some people take that so much to heart that they're prepared to kill in order to get there for their God. You also know, there's this other weird thing too, I'll just throw out before we go to George, that being critical of religious dogma is inherently a liberal point of view, at least in the U.S., that seems to be the case. Yes. When I was at CPAC, when I was literally at the convention for Donald Trump and Mike Pence and listening to person after person and person wearing red hat, who was willing to talk to me about the religious point of views and political views there at the event, there were groups who were conservatives who were also like, yeah, but I'm also an atheist too. And I hate the bum rap that atheism has where it's just a liberal thing because I don't want to use faith. I'd like to get faith taken out of this party. I actually have no idea where this party's going right now, but I'd like to at least take the faith component out. I think that gets us back in the tracks of reality. So it's a thing that I think we would equal opportunity appreciate to have fact checked once we have it because once it stops benefiting the people who get the benefit from it, everybody gets a benefit. Absolutely. George. We're going to demand that they do it. George Brown, organic atheist. Let me tell you something. What if you had a friend who was an atheist who became a born-again Christian? How would you react? Well, was this atheist formerly a Christian? Or before being an atheist? Correct. Let's say you had a Christian friend who became an atheist and you're like, yeah, now that's so good for you. I'm happy for you. Anyway, there's not really... Well, it's not a matter of my being happy or not for them, but I do support 100% support their right to do it. Hmm. You know, they... I mean, in other words, if I want them to respect where I am in my atheism, I have to be willing to respect where they are with their religious belief and hold the belief myself that whatever anybody else wants to believe is fine with me so long as they don't threaten me in some way. Right, right, right. Then they don't have that right. And so, I mean, whatever they want to believe is just fine. But I'm kind of... Yeah, but it's not my business. As long as I feel that they're sincere in whatever they're doing. Yeah, we're trying to pass their beliefs into law so that I have to live under those beliefs. Yeah, there's the line being crossed, right? See, that's where I say they're threatening me by doing that. Right. And you know the one thing is... Oh, sorry, go on to George. But listen, the other thing I wanted to mention too, what I think it was you, Tyrone, who made... opened the door for what I'm going to say is that when the person used to be a Christian, I'm going to assume that they weren't an isolated Christian, but that they were within a Christian community, meaning the parishioners at one particular church, the congregation. So they are accepted into an in-group. And so I'm looking at the psychology of this, and I have a question about that, of course, is that when the person becomes an atheist and he was formerly part of that group, are they now going to be ostracized from that group? So they're going to be ostracized by every single individual in that group. Well, that person may feel lonely at that point and want to connect again with the acceptance from the community, and that may be what's pulling them back. I dig it. I'm just... I don't have an experience that I can draw on too. I mean, I think it ties into the insecurities thing as well. It's almost a codependency type thing. It also feels sometimes like, from the atheist's point of view, of like, do I have to now be a therapist, like an armchair therapist to try to call this person back to atheism? Or am I, like George, you said, just going to recognize that they have the right to believe whatever they want, and I'm going to trust that they are willing to use the best reasoning to get them to whatever path that they ultimately choose to walk. And if they don't have that reasoning, they'd at least recognize that and at least recognize that there's no good argument to believe the thing that they're believing. And at that point, that's as much as I can offer. And I think most people who know me or anyone else on the show know that that's what we're all about. But on that same line, we all on this channel have friends who are religious, and it's not a big deal until the consequences of their actions start influencing our lives. And that's what we're trying to stop. We're trying to make it such that there is some equality there. Larry, we're at the bottom of that forever. I can't believe that question took up so much time. Sorry, guys. We're going to go into narcissism talking about ourselves and how much we love ourselves and how nice atheists just truly want to worship themselves. Anyway, Larry, take us out. All right, sure. Stay tuned right here for the second half of the Digital Freethought Radio Hour on WOZO Radio 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We'll be right back after this short break. So guys, I don't want to reveal who our fund is at the moment. Welcome back to the second half of the Digital Freethought Radio Hour on WOZO Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Let's talk about the Atheist Society of Knoxville for just a second. ASK was founded in 2002. We're in our 20th year. ASK has over 1,000 members, and we have weekly in-person meetings down in Knoxville's Old City at Barley's Taproom in Pizzeria. We start after work around 5.30 and go sometimes 7.30 or 8. Look for us inside at the high-top tables or out on the deck, usually we're the loudest and happiest group. We also have Tuesday evening Zoom meetings. You can like to join us. Just email us at askanatheistatnoxfilatheist.org or let's chat SE at gmail.com. I'm going to be happy to invite you or let you come into that. You can also find ASK on Facebook, meetup.com, or go to their website at Knoxvilleatheist.org. You can also just Google Knoxville Atheist, just that simple. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you can still go to Meetup and do a search for an Atheist group in your town. Don't find one. Star one. That's right. Wombat, where do you want to pick up? So I had this idea, and this also relates to the friend that I was having. It was going through this born-again Christian phenomena that doesn't happen in Britain as John Richards was adamant to remind you of. But the idea is, you know, isn't there a better in between if you're an Atheist than going straight back to religion? Isn't there a better way to resolve some of the insecurity issues slew that you might be referring to? Or, you know, community contribution aspects like volunteer work. Do you really want to spend every Sunday sitting on a pew and feeling good about yourself? Isn't there a better way to feel if you really need to worship something and you want to feel good about yourself? Have you ever tried narcissism? And I was thinking that is possibly the best gateway drug outside of religion. It's the nicotine patch of religion, essentially. Because here's the thing. You love worshiping things. Have you ever thought about worshiping you? You love gods? What if you treat yourself like a god? Narcissism, it has no bad side effects. People tend to love them. People tend to vote them into office. If you look at all of our leaders, they all tend to be narcissists. This is potentially a career path in the making. What do you guys think? I'd love to throw this out at you guys. Larry, what do you got? Well, first thing, you exist. That could be proven, you know. Even the cart. Recognize that. 5 out of 5 atheists agree that you exist. We have less problems with this. You am. Right. We have way much less problems with your narcissism than we do with your religious beliefs. Think about that. Think about how the atheist friends will gather. Yeah, that's wonderful. John Richards, do you have a comment? Well, yes, I do. We should all love ourselves to a certain extent because we need that self-confidence. And the religious people know that. That's why they try to destroy our self-confidence when we're children and make us subservient to him up there. That's the first program of Christianity, Islam, many other religions that they want to prevent youngsters from becoming anything other than somebody they can control. And that's also the idea behind Born Again, linking back to the previous topic. It was Bishop Shelby Spong, I think he died recently, who said Christianity is in the control business. And that's why they want you to be born again because you'd be a child again and therefore control. Very good. Western religions, pretty much all of them, are in the control business. Yes, we're in the business of control. Yes. So don't submit to it. Don't submit to it. Love yourself, but don't abuse yourself. Right. And in some ways, narcissism can be a system of abuse because you're over-loving yourself. And there's always a limit to everything, right? But is it... Slu, go on ahead. Go on ahead. What's your thoughts on this? So this is my thought. I don't see that as narcissism to love yourself. Oftentimes... Now, this is what... I don't have a PhD in any of it or anything like that. I'm not a psychologist, psychiatrist, or a therapist, but I've read up on the topic to help myself through some situations. I had a narcissistic parent growing up. So this form of narcissism that you're talking about, I don't see it as narcissism. It definitely isn't as far as the personality disorder and all that goes. Because that's a very different thing, and that is based in securities and things. To me, that's what Christians are already doing. They're already following this narcissistic God and then picking up those traits along the way. I talked to Larry before a little bit briefly on Darvo, one of the tactics that narcissists use, which is deny, attack, reverse victim, and offender role, which you can tie into Christianity pretty easily. They're denying all of the claims against Christianity. Then they're attacking, saying that it's the heathens and everything that are doing this, that that's the problem, that God being taken out of the schools and all of that, that's why kids are on drugs. That's why all of this stuff's happening. And then they'll reverse the victim and offender role by murdering themselves and saying that they're so persecuted for their bigoted beliefs and the controlling things that they're doing. We're the minority, right? Yeah. You'll hear them say that. I have a quick thing to say about that. I love that you made the distinction between narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder because they are different things. And so what I'm referring to is what's narcissist or narcissist. It's the Greek story of that person who was looking at themselves in a reflection and fell in love with the reflection. And the whole world treated that like it was a bad thing. But in my head, I was reading that story. I was thinking about it a few days ago. And it's like, listen, he's looking at himself in a mirror. He's not hurting anybody. He's not telling anybody else to look at him. He's basically just feeling good about himself and who hasn't felt good or looked in a mirror and was like, hey, I got things to work on. Or I'm liking this part that I got. Like, hey, I'm looking pretty good today. I feel good about that. Like, I love myself. Like, that could be a good thing. Narcissistic personality disorder, though. By the way. This thing, disorder. Go for it. By the way, that's mirror. There's two syllables. Mirror. It's a mirror, right? All right, all right. Yeah. So in my head, narcissistic personality disorder is like the part where it's taken too far. And I don't like narcissistic person. I see it as a separate thing completely. Like, it's the thing of, we use the term so loosely, and I hate that about our society that we use. We use this as a different term as what it was meant to be. And usually, like I said, these people are so insecure with themselves that they have to inflate that ego up and put on this show in order to feel good. Project it to everybody else so that they get to tell them how good they are and everything. So let me pick the point now. When I say, hey, try narcissism. I don't mean narcissistic personality disorder, though I do. I'm aware that we live in a culture where the words we use interchangeably. I mean more of like, why not take that attitude that you're putting to God, find the attributes that you like from Jesus or God or whatever, the being that you worship, and find them in yourself and then love those parts about you. And I guarantee you, if you took some time to do that, you'd feel like you won't need to have to invest all this love into something that won't love you back because you can love yourself and get the immediate feedback from that. And I find that that is a much healthier relationship compared to what you're doing right now. And then if you want to use it as a gateway to get to maybe something like altruism or some other form of service or community help or improvement to not just you, but the environment that you take part in, that could be a fantastic thing. And then be careful because you can also do that too much and then as a narcissistic person, a disorder person. I know George is chomping at the bit. What's up, George? Well, there's one element there that we're not taking into consideration, which I don't know what's going on. Ty, I see your mouth moving. I can't hear you. Can you hear me? I can hear you. Oh, okay. I don't know why your mouth is moving then. But I don't understand. God works in mysterious ways, I think. And I see your mouth moving and I don't know why. Anyway, how do we offer ourselves the benefit of the afterlife sitting at the right hand of God Himself smiling benevolently at us? Was that the question? Yeah, yeah, how do we throw that goodie out there or the equivalent of it? I would say do it by being a narcissist. In my head, there's a lot of moral goods that come when you start thinking about what's in your best interest. And I find like... So, you mean the... Almost done. Any moral system is sort of based on what's in the interest of you and what you can do past that. So, when we look at selfish, I feel like selfishness has like a really bad connotation or rap. But like if you look at any system that's for society, right, like rules to abide by, it's towards the benefit of that society. They find out what goals they want to have and then build morale to support that. And so, if we were narcissistic and a little bit more in our thinking, if we really did care about ourselves and loved ourselves, maybe we'd actually have a codified set of rules that could lead us towards what's in our best interest since we love ourselves. How do we make those rules, you know, abided by? What are the punishments that should come if those rules are broken? And then what are the exceptions to the rules? I think you can definitely build a moral system just built on narcissism that could actually be more beneficial than one that's strictly just a codified set of rules in a religious textbook. Slu, what do you think? I think it's self-affirmation, being secure with yourself and everything that you're kind of touching on. And I agree with that. And that's a lot of what Satanism has to do with that our religion as well. The whole thing of Lucifer, you know, rejecting the authoritarian position of God and everything and taking his own self into consideration of all of it. That's part of the symbolism. So, yeah, it's very much a thing. Longest lines. Larry, what do you think? Well, I think it's important, especially if you're going to have a relationship with another person that you have a good, healthy self. The view of yourself. There's an altruism that says you can't expect other people to love you if you don't love yourself. But I'll rephrase it a little bit and ask it as a form of a question. Have you ever been in a relationship with someone who didn't have a very good self-image? Right. I was that person. It's not healthy for either person. And it's kind of put offing as well. So, cultivate that good self image anyway. There's a saying that I heard a long time ago that I thought was really pertinent. It says, everyone should be their own best friend. Right. That voice that you're hearing inside your head, your voice is the most voice. I mean, you hear that more than anything else. Any other voice in the world that you have close relationships with, you don't hear their voice nearly as much as you hear your own. So, have a good self-image. Be your own best friend. Right. And you may not even need to be a narcissist, but you can have a good self-image. You can have that confidence. Right. And don't, and keep the negative self-talk to a minimum. You know, like, oh, you dummy, you lost your, you left your keys at work. Don't do that. Right. I also want to fill this out too. Abstracted enough to where you can still hear doubt, but doubt isn't controlled by the negative thought. Doubt is a tool that could be used to help you stay safe, stay, you know, out of unnecessary arguments, avoid stress, avoid needless risk. But it could be used by those negative voices to make you feel bad to the point where you stop listening to doubt. And the next thing you know, only you hear is confidence. And confidence is the one that's telling you to jump into that tiger cage and punch that cat because it looked at you the wrong way. Doubt so we can, can always be used on your site. It just can be misused by things around it. So be aware of that. John Richards, I look like you had something. Yeah, doubt is good. Everybody should be doubtful. In fact, I had a website, it's gone now, but it was called Doubt is Club. It encouraged, it encouraged doubt because overconfidence is a dangerous thing. Because imagine there's an old Brenda Lee song. It's the lyrics go, today I looked into my mirror as usual and told myself that you're still here as usual. Managed to rhyme those two words. The thing is, if you were looking into your mirror with a cutthroat eraser, if you don't have enough self-esteem, you're going to go like that, aren't you? What rhymes with mirror if you can't, if you can't just slur the words together. Poetry is about the rules. A hearer. A hearer? A person who hears something. Don't give John any more credence in front of us live on this show. Please, please. He's going to take it right to the bank. All right. Anyway, so it sounds like, yeah, it does start with self-love. It does start with trying to reduce your own insecurities. And if you can do those first, you take power away from religion because what religion tries to offer you is essentially, and I mean this in the nicest way to anyone who's listening to religion, or religious, but like religion is essentially a problem that they give you and then a solution that they don't offer. So they basically give you a problem that you can't fix on your own. And there's no meaningful solution to the problem because you're just expected to continue to carry this problem along with you. As Christopher Hitchens would say, you're born sick and commanded to be well. Right, right. I think that's part of religious trauma and everything is trying to work through all that stuff later after coming out of it. And like you said, Larry, that's something I had to work hard on with myself. And you have to almost treat yourself like a child because it stunts you in a childlike state to where you're still, you're beating yourself up as if you're the parent in the situation. And it was everything just from spilling something or whatever that I would take it out on myself. And that is hard to work through. And it takes practice, constant practice for a long time. And yet having a kid and everything myself, that was something that helped me work on that too because I had to break down, well, but should I treat my child that way? Well, no, why am I treating myself that way? But it doesn't make any sense. Right, right. And not only that, but like, if that's ingrained in you over a period of years, let's say, you know, two decades, three decades, right? That's a very hard thing to not only give up, but it's a hard thing to learn yourself out of. You don't automatically start loving yourselves by default. It's basically a Pavlovian response. And you have to insert something else in that almost that same way to get your brain to go back where you need to be. And the worst thing I feel like is, you know, atheism isn't a belief system. There is no God. There's nothing to fill that hole once you take God out. It's just the recognition that there is a hole there. Or, you know, for some people, there is a hole there. For some people, it's like, well, there never was a God there to begin with, right? It's like, in both cases, yes, but there's no salve that atheism offers. But if you believe that God is real, and you talk to him all the time, becoming an atheist is almost like losing a close friend. You have to go through the stages of grief. Right, right, right. And not only that, but it's so ingrained in your personality that if you are in a conversation with someone who doesn't believe it, it feels like it's a personal attack against you and you don't have to react to that. Right, right, right. Or my best friend's like, that's someone who I love more than my mom. How dare you tell me that person doesn't exist, right? And then even when they realize that, it's the feelings are still gaping there. And so like, I have the deepest empathy because I've gone through that, right? The worst thing. I would say this ties into the narcissism thing I was talking about as well, because that's you're basically God's flying monkeys at that point. If you've ever read about the things of narcissism, that's you, there's no, there's no like borders there. There's no, you aren't yourself. You're part of this other entity to do as God can do with you as he pleases and everything else. It's very much still that same mindset of narcissistic personality disorder that would be in a person treating their children that way or whatever as well. That's a good point. It's almost like religion is narcissistic personality disorder, just codified with better characters. It's the same, the side effects of it that people go through are very similar as well. So it's, I've even recommend like books like the Children of the Self Absorbed by Nina Brown whenever I'm talking to people that are coming out of religion or kind of on the border of things like that or struggling because it is a lot of the same techniques and everything to come out of that. Yeah. If anything, it's like taught personality disorder to children at a very young age. Larry, you had your hand up. I was just going to say that your friend that went back to religion may have some of this underlying thing about grief and losing their friend and just missing it so much that they wanted to go back and start believing again. It could be part of it. Without having actually talked to them, I wouldn't know for sure about it. I was thinking it might be. You know, it's a thing where it could immediately solve a lot of short-term problems that they're having just such a convenient way to get these problems resolved that it doesn't feel like it's a much bigger problem that they can't see. John, what do you think? Well, you talked about taught personality disorder and it's a subservient personality that you're taught and I feel increasingly sorry for you Americans because many of you are raised and sort of buried in this whole of belief and then you have to clamber your way out of it. Yeah, just like that. We call it child abuse over here. Yeah, you've got to learn what boundaries are and everything coming out of it because there's no boundaries in religion. There's no... No, I talked about this last week. We've had literal pastors come to our elementary school to preach because we would stop teaching things that you would need to learn like reading or math and go to see a pastor who's local in the area is like, oh, a new pastor is opening up a new church. Would you like to have a classroom full of kids? Sure. We are going to take these kids and move them into this classroom so you can speak to them. And that would be the curriculum. Unconstitutional. Yeah, yeah, that is something that's... And I would feel happy because it would be my pastor for some days and then sometimes it'd be someone else's pastor but that shouldn't happen. I hope it doesn't happen anymore but I also know that it is still happening even on Australia it's happening. It's a worldwide thing where we've just allowed ourselves to get doctrineated and make it so easy for that child abuse to just move generationally down to future generations. It happened in the public school that I grew up in. It was happening there and it was usually... It seems like there's these churches that are like catchalls for all of the evangelicals and even Catholics and stuff in the area. They promote this kind of watered down Christianity thing and it's usually pushed onto the kids and everything at these places so they'll have these fun events and everything to kind of bring everybody in. And they can keep everything... The water's just murky enough to be able to seep their way in. It is like living in a Twilight Zone episode where everyone is basically in this strange fog mind cult from an alien. Everyone's just speaking to each other in joining words and you move to town and you're like, oh no, is everyone like this? It's like, wouldn't it be easier if you were like us, Ty? It's like children of the corn. It's just this weird situation where of course they wouldn't see it as a problem until they leave the system. Then they realize it's a problem but it's so big that they can't fix it. Not only that, but they don't have the faculties to deal with not having that problem anymore, that they just go right back to being in the problem. It's a big security. You're describing the cults. Religions are large cults. They are. They are. Well, essentially what a cult and a religion is is just what religions call each other. For me, growing up in a rural area, it bled over into society as well with things like they would kind of guilt and shame parents if they didn't beat their kids. Because that's something that's biblical. There's no other real good explanation for it because psychology tends to differ on that subject. So George Brown, final thoughts on this? What do you think about this whole discussion we're having? Well, I'm mostly listening because I wasn't raised this way. And I think that you all have some special knowledge that I don't have from your own personal experience. So I'm just reflecting on what you're saying. I think it's so fortunate that you weren't raised this way and also that you're at the age where you are now where it was never a temptation. It was just commonsensical not to have to do it. And I think if we just gave people the opportunity to not be indoctrinated and let that stick long enough, they developed the faculties to avoid that, I think, on their own. But we live in a society where- Well, that's a good point. That's a good point, I think, because I just had an opportunity last week to converse with a healthcare person I'm involved with. And I was unable to communicate with him. I was trying to use logic. And he was coming back at me with slogans that he believed. And so I don't know how to establish communication. And here we are in a democracy. And it's important to me that other people know how to think critically. And I don't know how to make that happen. I'm at a loss. It's a language barrier, isn't it? Yeah. It is. Can I just say that this weekend is Easter weekend. And on Good Friday, legend has it that a certain person was crucified and then on Sunday, he used to Sunday, he rose from the dead. Well, I'm doing a debate on that on Good Friday. I'm debating Nick Peters, who if you don't know of him, Google him, you'll find out that he's a long-standing apologist. And the topic of the debate is, did Jesus rise from the dead? And it's being hosted by David Poppiden on Fermenting Opinions channel on YouTube. Haven't found out the time yet. But look out for that. You'll be able to see us debate live on YouTube. Very cool. And then also Freepad Productions. What the hell? Oh, excuse me. What the heck? What in the world is that? What are you, do you mind just informing, plugging out that one more time, John? Well, sure. Freepad production is my channel. And there's lots of shows on there. I've been doing it now for a couple of years. And there's hundreds, literally hundreds of my videos up there. And I'm very, I'm very proud of the fact that it's growing. And I've now got a producer. And so this is, this is the future. Nice. And then slow, anything that you'd recommend we check out before next week? Well, hopefully my podcast, Skeptical Satanist, I'm on YouTube right now. I'm working on getting, I'm hoping to get content up on Patreon and get things set up a little bit better than what I do right now. But yeah, check us out there and on Facebook. And I even have a Discord server up too. So very cool. I'm also going to throw this out. You said rule before that I think England has as one syllable. Is that accurate? Is that accurate? So you guys say rule. How do you say rule? Rule. Rare rule. Over emphasis. All right, Larry, why don't you take us out? Hey, my content can be found at digitalfreethought.com. Be sure to click on the blog button. You can find our radio show archives there. There we have like 270 of these shows there. Go check them out. Atheism songs are also available on digitalfreethought.com. And we have many articles on the subject of atheism. My YouTube channel can be found by searching for Doubter Five or Larry Rhodes. And my book, Atheism, What's It All About is available on Amazon. By the way, if you're a member of clergy, a preacher, a mom, or pastor, priest, but have come to see that the claims of religion are not justified, there's help for you at the Clergy Project. It's clergyproject.org for more information. Thank you for joining us for the Digital Freethought Radio Hour. Remember you can find this show on Apple iTunes, Pocketcast, Amazon, and Podcasts everywhere. Just search for Digital Freethought Radio Hour. And if you're watching this on YouTube, be sure to like and subscribe. 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 week. Say bye, everybody. Bye, everybody. Hell yourself.