 Hello and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio Hour and WOZO Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We're recording this on Sunday morning on October 30th, which is the day before Halloween. This is our 300th show, so nearly six years doing this. Happy to do it. I'm Larry Rhodes or Doubter 5 and as usual we have our co-host Wombat on the line with us. Hello Wombat. Freshly vaccinated and ready to go. Very good. All right. How are you back? Oh, vaccinated. I thought you said vacuumed. I thought, how are you vacuumed? Sure. Sure. I got a robot that does that for me. But yes, I can do that too. Yeah. Our guests today are Boudreaux from Kentucky. Hello, Boudreaux. Hey guys. I have John Richards from across the pond in England. Welcome. Hello. How did you get all you. I'm digital free thought radio hours, talk radio show about atheism free thought rational thought humanism and the sciences. And conversely, we'll also talk about it religion. That is just faiths, God's holy books and superstition. And if you get the feeling that you're the only non-believer in your town while betting money that you're just not in Knoxville. Well, in the middle of the Bible Belt, we have a group of over 1,000 of us, soon to be 1,100. The Atheist Society of Knoxville, or ASK, and we'll tell you more about them after the mid-show break. Well, I'm about, what's our topic today? We're going over hate mail. Hate mail. So, you know, I don't wanna start off on the wrong foot, but there's a lot of angry listeners and we're gonna listen to them today's show. Cause if we don't, we're just gonna get more and more emails from them. We need to find a way to get them a phone line to us or something while we're back. And we don't want that. Yeah, we do like the Atheist experience, right? That's right. It's not gonna be my phone line. I could tell you that. So, but before we get into the true meat and potatoes of the show, how about a little bit of pasta, led to us by our own Dread Pirate Higgs, which mine leading us in our weekly invocation. All right, I shall. Quabby me captain, I shall not want. He maketh me to float in salt waters. He stireth me through glassy seas. He filleth me bowl. He stireth me through the straits of noodliness for goodness sake. I, though I sail through the heaving of tempestuous waters, I will fear not sinking, for thou art with me. I mast and I rudder, they comfort me. Thou preparest a feast before me in the presence of me mates. Thou quenches my thirst with grog, my goblet run it over. Truly pasta and grog shall abide with me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the galley of the quab forever. Brog. Guys catching up with everybody before we get into the weird deeds. Eric Green, good to see you. How you been? How's the family been? Good, everything's good. We had our first annual Hallow Green. Nice, nice, nice. What happens there and what goes on there? It's a bunch of middle schoolers and a bunch of high schoolers and running around the house and outside and eating candy and bombing for apples. And yeah, it was a wild, wild time. But Eric, let me tell you something. Don't doubt the impact that you have on the number of kids that look up to you and that you touch on a regular basis, like just the soccer practice that you're doing, the fact that kids running in and out of your house for like playing video games, the daughter sleepover stuff, the I'm sure community service that you're employing. It's all really great. You're the dad of the community. How else can I say? And friendly neighborhood atheists goes a long way. That's true. Yeah, now we just got to get you into disc golf too. I think that'd be right. That's the last missing step. Jared Power Higgs, the question for chaos and quabs. What's going on with you, my friend? Well, still fighting a good fight, as you know. But more recently, I've been stripped in the outside of our float, which is called the SS quab, preparing it for winter. And we usually have, this will be the first time and since the pandemic that we have a Christmas parade in our community. So I want to make sure that the SS quab is ready to go and that we can festoon it appropriately and have her running down the streets, singing shanties and sharing the good news of our duty, Lord. Now, you got to explain this to me, it's a boat or is it a car that's a pirate ship? Yeah, it's a pirate ship. I know you say that and you're nodding because you've seen it and it's used to you. You've become desensitized to the concept. But for those on the radio and for those who don't understand the magnitude of what you're saying, would you mind describing this float? Well, it's essentially we just built a frame of a pirate ship. Like a galleon. And then, you know, we have a couple of masks and we put up our our our flags as as as sales. How we've got lights and all that kind of stuff. And we tow it around behind a truck and we sing shanties and and songs like always look on the bright side of life. Nice. That's a favorite. And you got to smell out of John Richards. The gold coins, you know, the doubloons, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're a big hit in this community. Absolutely. Awesome. Awesome. I could imagine. So quick one for me before we get into some heavy hitters. I just got double vaccine a couple of minutes ago. And I think I voted last week. So if you're listening to this, whether you're in Kentucky or Tennessee area, you can do early voting. You can vote now still. Please do so. And the more who do it, the better. And if you can get vaccinated to also important, let's let's kick some diseases, but and it's never fun being sick. Now, John Richards. Well, yeah, one of my top liver. You know, you're the last guy. Come on, Richard, we'll be going. And I I I accept. What's the word? I stand back in terms of instead of Oh, what's something about something happening here? Sorry, very British. It's OK. Yeah, yeah, I am I bow to Larry. Let him go first. OK, Larry, well, age before you, you know. Sure. Well, age and beauty. Now, I went to a Halloween costume party last night, first in a long time. When as well, where's Waldo? OK. But it was outside. Yeah, it was outside. So it was cold. I didn't get to stay that long just because of that. And I hate it when you got to wear a coat over your costume. Sure. Sure. Sure. Kind of defeats the purpose. You can't be Waldo with a coat on because then it's like who are you? Just a guy with a weird hat. It's like, yeah, I totally get it. I told you. Did you have the glasses, though? I did. The costume came with big point rimmed glasses. Nice. Nice. Nice. I, when I was a Christian, Waldo books would terrify me because I was under the impression that there was always a God who could see me. And like, you know, it gave me a very big sense of paranoia. So if I was looking for Waldo and I couldn't find him, that made me feel like he could have been anywhere, you know, off the book, under my bed, in a drawer. I'm like, I try to find him and I couldn't. And I believe in these supernatural things that can happen. I have no basis for reality. So they're really scary books for me growing up. John Richards, your turn. What's up? OK, yeah, sure. Well, we don't really do Halloween to the same extent over here because we recognize that it's really just a commercial opportunity for the US confectioners. So we have our own celebration. Thanks, Dredd. We have our own celebration over here, which is about the same time of year, which is the November the 5th Bonfire Guy Fawkes event. The town nearest me, Little Hampton, does the second largest bonfire night celebration on the mainland of the UK. Love those. And the bonfire costumes. People do costume. Yeah, yeah, but it's it's more of. Watching a parade of traction engines and girl beaters of, you know, I don't know what it is. It's girl beaters. Well, what do you call them? Then the twiddlers of batons, cheerleaders, cheerleaders, cheerleaders. That's the ones, yeah. And bands, marching bands and the whole event ends on the the green squad before the beach. And there's this huge bonfire that set fire, set light to. And then a firework display. And of course, the fairgrounds have all gathered around mobile fairs. So it's a fantastic event, but I didn't go. Because I'd only just returned from this year. That is, I didn't go. I have in the past. I'd only just returned from France, where I spent five days with three children, female children. And I want to tell you that at the passport control, I got some very funny looks for for the American listeners. France is pentose and and UK is Westeros. Now we're all nice. Don Richards, please continue. You're totally fine. Well, I'm loving the I'm loving the Eric Idol reference to, you know, always look on the best side of life, right? So like and and of course, because I was away on holiday, I haven't done quite so much scheming as I normally do. OK. And and this means that you'll be welcome to join me, you guys, to to take part in the Global Atheist News Review later on today. Hell, yeah. But I got out to Global Atheist News. That went out. No problem. I did that yesterday. But the other thing I wanted to say is when this show ends, I'm going to get another jab. This will be my fourth. Oh, yeah. Well, it's very good. Very good. I got some today. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm on my sixth one now, I believe you can get yours on a Sunday. That's that's kind of surprising that everything's closed. Oh, no, we got things called CVS here. They're just like local pharmacies owned by a major branch and you can just walk in and for free, walk out. They give you a coupon to get more stuff, too. It's great capitalism. I guess God is still shutting everything down here on Sundays. Yeah, we don't really do Sunday much anymore. Yeah, you know, I'll tell you if if we can get less people to sit on a pew and spread the covid next to each other and more of them lining up to get the vaccines, I think we'd see a reason for there not to be as many prayers. Right. Right. Welcome, sweetie, Steve. He just wanted to welcome you. Hey, hey, how to do. Hi, Steve. Hey, my friend. Nice to see you. My to hear you. My my my connection doesn't allow videos. You're fine. It makes for good radio. How's life as a new dad? Are you kind of settling into it? Yeah, for sure. It's great that you know, you're legally allowed. You have to say that. Just just get that a point. You can't you can't back out. It's not like having a cat. You can just be like, I turned the cat back in. We have good social health care here. So I can ship him off the wire and need to. Well, when I when I went to France, I told the guys that the passport control on the way out that I was kidnapping these these children. You see, that's a good idea. One of them doesn't even have my surname. So that provided a little bit of a problem. But then on the way back, I told the guys passport control that I had kidnapped them. But I'd given changed my mind and I was taking them back for a refund. Just too much trouble. Yeah, I said before we stimulate any more hate mail. How about we go into it real quick? We at least handle the first one. Sounds good. So Victor Dredpire, Eric Green, John Richards, we got an email. It's let's chat at gmail.com. You're free to send in more email if you want. A lot of the mail we get is positive. A lot of the mail we get is complaining on SE videos I've done in the past. A lot of the mail that we get is just straight up anger and rage and wants attention. So some of these will be anonymous. But the first one comes from a read is Oz, who has an umbrage with Larry Rhodes, also known as Larry's justification for deism is just as problematic as simulation theory. In this week's episode, I heard him bring up both. And I'm just trying to say that theories do the exact same thing by taking physical things we already understand and know of and simply inflating their loose concept of being into the cause of reality and its nature without any evidence. I don't see how one has any more substance than the other. They both just served the same function of being an explanation of the universe with those strings attached. Why is this so common in atheist circles? Larry, what are you doing? First of all, I think he misunderstood what I was saying. I don't believe in deism. I don't believe in that there is a programmer out there. But what I'm saying is we can't disprove them. And the best thing about them, if you're a deist or what do you call it? Simulationist is that they don't have any dogma. They don't have a God telling you what to tell people to do to pass laws to support what they want. There is no way to know what a deist God has in plan for. As a matter of fact, the deist God could already be dead. Yeah, it just requires that that there was a God of some sort that created the universe and kicked it off. I could he could have gone away. He could have died. He could have just got disinterested in the whole experiment left. Who cares? Anyway, I don't believe either one of them. That was espoused by Spinoza, if I remember correctly. Spinoza's God. Anyway, I was just saying that it beats out religion, per se, if you believe in either one of those two. I don't personally. Why not? Because it sounded like you were always for deism. Every single time we brought up, you're like, Larry Rhodes and I love deism. It's my next favorite thing. Nexus souls and bring it up in every show. I would not. And you wrote a whole book on deism. And now he's looking the Turbles. Now he's flop flopping. We don't like flip floppers on this show. Just say it. Flopper. Yes, flop flopping. Hey, hey, Eric Green, what's your opinion? Theism, simulation theory. Are they the same thing at the end of the day? Well, I guess one's kind of rooted in magic and the other's rooted in, you know, science. I would say science. Yeah, I mean, I guess. Yeah, it's hard to. Obviously, it's hard to disprove such things, but it's, you know, hard to disprove any imaginary thing you can come up with. So that doesn't really help anyone. So I think, you know, the best thing to do is just look for evidence. Is there any evidence for, you know, glitches in the matrix, so to speak? I don't know. Simulation theory. I think the reason it it makes me think it's possible is that the likelihood of it just, you know, seems like something we will eventually create. So interesting. We got Dred, do you have weigh in on that? Yeah, yeah, I don't know if you guys are familiar with Sean B. Carroll. He's a he's a physicist and a philosopher. He's actually got a posting over at John Johns Hopkins University as as a natural philosopher. So he does philosophy and physics and he was talking about this. And it's the same thing about that, you know, Transpermia, where the idea is that life started on earth from hitched to ride on a comet or or came from Mars. It doesn't answer a question. It has no explanatory power because it just pushes. But it pushes the the answer away, you know, kicks. If it's a if we're a simulation, could it be that the simulators are a simulation of other simulators? You know, it just it has no explanatory power. And where does it stop? It's just simulators all the way down. Yeah, where did they come from? There's all the way down. Who made the robots? Well, the the simulation made the robots. There's a super simulation made those drum. John Richards left the infinite progress, right? Yeah, it's all the way down. I think those simulators are actually turtles. OK, the the the reason that deism comes into this is because it's the least obnoxious of all the various options that could explain the origins. And it's a it's a bit like saying Mother Nature done it rather than God done it. And Mother Nature, as Larry says, she has no doctrines to spread. She doesn't want us to. She's not sticking her nose into our genitalia, you know, like most religious people do. And so, therefore, I find if I had to choose, that would probably be what I'd plump for. But as Fred says, it doesn't explain anything. Victor, I'd love to get your thoughts on this. Deism, which is a belief of God, you know, died and just has no evidence for him of being around or simulation theory, which feels more appealing to you? None of it. Or or or wait, can I hack the simulation later? In the next level or something? I think there's definitely some people who probably have already and we already know their names fairly well. Kanye West being one of the leaders, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's given. That's given. That's given. But but how do you how do you level in the simulation? Right. Like. Where does the experience came from? Right, right, right, right. Exactly. And like, how how does why is push up such a hard grind to increase your level? Yeah. I want to throw this out. I feel like deism and simulation theory are very distinct in terms of they are both problematic, but they're problematic for two very different reasons. One, obviously, with deism, you're opening up the door to the supernatural as a way to answer problems. And I don't see a difference between deism and magic, you know, or or supernatural beings and pixie fairy dust or or werewolves. Like, you're just sprinkling a dust on top of a complex problem expecting the solution to be more simple, but you're just adding more complexity and everyone knows it's hard to get glitter off of stuff. You're just making a bigger mess. That's it. Whereas with simulation theory, it's a really interesting problem because if we live in a simulation, then everything that we're looking at is simulated, which means we don't have a frame of reference of knowing what's simulation from what's not a simulation. And so when we come into the argument of like, this is all simulation. It's the same problem as someone saying, everything's a creation by God, by the way, I have no frame of reference of knowing what something that's not a creation looks like or what something that's not a simulation looks like. When all your evidence around you is fake, you have a case built up out of fake evidence. Even if it was the case that you don't, if we are in a simulation, we have no basis to make an argument that that's the case. Then because we have no frame of reference to compare anything else against. It's one of those really, really simple ones that if you just understood that, you can immediately dismiss simulation theory and move on to them, hopefully a better argument. Whereas the deism still has all that baggage. Even if there is no document, I still feel like there's a lot of baggage there. Larry, what do you think? Well, even if you've got real evidence all around you, you can still make a leap of logic that is not supported by the evidence. Very true. You know, people were raised all their life thinking that God created everything. Well, then point to everything and say, there's your evidence. God is real. Well, that's that's elite. It's not supported by the evidence. We don't it's better just to say, we don't know where things came from as far as the universe and everything. Until we find out you shouldn't jump to any particular deity or any particular simulation. We just don't know. I mean, that's an honest answer. Yeah, and we drove. We drove real quick, real quick and I'm no expert in simulation theory at all. But again, I think I just want to point out that my the biggest reason I would say that it is a possibility is again, because of its likelihood, like how likely we are to create AI. We already do, right? Right. And in some ways, yeah. So it's it the the argument I've always heard for simulation theory comes from the likelihood that, you know, it's time and, you know, as technology increases, it's just it's just likely that it can happen or has happened. But it's it's harder. It's harder to argue for it from a frame of reference of like you're saying that that's a difficult way to make the argument from within it. There's no basis to make that claim. But from like an objective point of view, yes. But how do you get that objective point of view? That's the criteria. And once we get that, then, yes, now I'm willing to entertain it as an option. And is it more likely than a supernatural thing? Yeah, because it's those are tangible things. We can tie that to a server. Hopefully we can make sense of that. But we don't have a basis to make that claim rationally if we are in a simulation. That's why hearing it inside the simulation makes no sense to me. John Richards, what's up? Sorry. Well, this is exactly what Douglas Adams was mocking in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe when he said the answer is forty two, isn't it? Yeah. But isn't that ASCII code for? It can be whatever you want to be sure. Dred, throw in it some more. Yeah, so I was going to say and just some of the readings I've been doing, a suggestion has also made that an answer to the Fermi paradox, which is where are they? If there's life throughout the universe, where are they? It could be as like we see in our own technological advance that we can build better and more sophisticated interior worlds that we can explore without having to leave the planet rather than try to develop a technology to span light years of space in order to visit other worlds, we can create them so that we actually put ourselves into a simulated universe. We are our own simulators. And that could be an answer to the Fermi paradox. Yeah, it's also a great basis for a wonderful horror story, speaking of Halloween for a video game horror game called Soma, which is all about people putting their minds in virtual spaces while there's still people around and people misabusing those systems in really, really terrible ways for like for the pursuit of science and longevity of the human race. It's really very terrifying. But we've got more hate mail to go through, guys, but we're not going to do it right now. In fact, we're going to go on a break and then we'll come right back with more heated debates for more hate after the break, more hate after the break. Love it. Go on and stay tuned for the second half of the digital free thought radio hour. We'll be right back after this short break. Welcome back to the second half of the digital free thought radio hour and W.O.Z.O. radio 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Let's talk about the atheist society of Knoxville. ASK was founded in 2002. We're in our 20th year now and we have over a thousand members. We have weekly in person meetings every Tuesday evening in Knoxville's Old City at Barley's Taproom in Pizzeria. Look for us inside at the high top tables or if it's pretty weather outside on the deck. We also have Tuesday evening Zoom meetings. And if you'd like to join us, email us at askanatheistatnoxfilatheist.org. You can find us online at Facebook, meetup.com, or go to our website at Knoxvilleatheist.org or just Google Knoxville Atheist. It's that simple. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you should still go to meet up and do a search for an atheist group in your town. Don't find one. Start. Well, I bet where you want to pick up. We're going through hate mail. Listen, we're going to go straight into it. This one is from someone who I'm going to keep anonymous. They spam my email account, and I'm totally fine with that because we're going to go over the comments on the show. I just want to bring more attention than what's due or cause any sort of like backlash, whatever. So feel free to keep sending me these emails and we'll get straight to it. This one I'm going to address out to let's see who's going to be the lucky random music. John Richards, you're going to be first on this one. John Richards, listen, our our our patron today wants to make a point. They want to make a point that there's a slight hypocrisy in atheism, and it goes like this. I'm here to point out the slight hypocrisy in atheism, and I'm not a theist per se, but I do believe in the truth with a capital T and its inevitability to lead to evidence of itself, wherever you look, that here's the problem. The truth is always harder to hide than it is to allow, right? You're just not allowing yourself to accept the truth. So this guy has looked up Native Americans, Assyrians, Indians, Greeks, Egyptians, and came to the conclusion that all of these, let me see if I get this point, if all these origins have a speck of truth, OK, here it is. There has to be single truth that ties all of these systems together from all these desperately located cultures, not to mention the huge amount of power leaking from Freemasonry. And if you look at the world, Freemasons rule the world and you'll notice that they're not atheists at all. So there has to be a connection there. Are you now convinced more of this guy's claims? Well, that's so weird. Freemason can't cancel the show, guys. He won. He won. Let me summarize it. Let me summarize basically everyone from Egyptians, Greeks, Samarians, Native Americans, Assyrians, and Indians, while all say the same thing, according to this guy, and the probability of them being disconnected from each other in origin drops dramatically if they're all saying if they all have essentially a speck of truth between them all. How can all these different groups be referring to the same thing and all be wrong? Well, there's no reason for any of them to be right, but they can all be wrong. It's perfectly acceptable for people to be wrong on mass with all their various and different explanations. But each of these groups refer to a heavily beings or some sort of God, and that's that's his point. So how can how can that not be the case? OK, well, this is because when primitive man had mysteries that they wanted to explain, they discovered while they observed that all of the powerful events happen above them, you know, thunder, lightning, rain, the wind, the eruptions, they all come down from above. So it was natural for them to assume that there was some power up there in the heavens that that was in control of everything. So but that doesn't mean they're right. They're just variously wrong with their own details about that potential explanation. Stick to looking for evidence. That's my advice. OK, Dredd, I'm going to have you weigh in on this. Aren't all these things aren't all these guys doing the same thing? Anyway, Dredd, what are you saying? I hopefully my dog isn't making too much of a racket here. And it's all good. Good. So again, I think we talked on the Global Atheist News Review last week. We mentioned hyperactive agency detection. OK. That's detecting your detecting agency behind natural events such as the rustle in the leaves. Is it the wind or is it a tiger? And you're better off to think it's a tiger because if you're wrong, you die and you don't pass on your genes. Another thing that coincides with that is periodolia, where you see faces or or or figures in inanimate objects, which then you place that hyperactive agency detection into. So you're seeing faces and agency in all kinds of natural things, which, of course, would lead to a tendency to ascribe them to be fairies or spirits or gods or whatever. Dredd's right. It's an adaptation to imagine that there's some authority, some agent because that's that's a good evolutionary survival tactic. It's a good primitive way to understand things very quickly for the sake of survival. Yeah, absolutely. Larry, what do you got? Yeah, I agree with all of that, by the way. But there's another common thread that runs through all this, which is what the guy is talking about, is the human ability or inclination to use this type of belief for their own personal good, in other words, a class system of a priest class system. How many times I say, you know, in throughout history, as someone said, you know, they're out there breaking the back in the field and they see a preacher go by on a horse, say, I feel the calling. I feel the call to go preach. And because it's basically an easy gig, it takes advantage of people's supernatural inclination. They get automatically higher. Raised up in the ranks of society, as it were. And right, for what? Because of people having this belief that there's something above us that we have to be responsible to. Yeah, and also instills a lot of other, in my opinion, paranoia and mental debilitations that's really hard to kick off if you're raising that kind of culture. Victor, would you want to weigh in on this? We got. Go ahead, Victor. No, just it didn't reference nothing else that they just believe and something bigger. Yeah, yeah. Would that prove and that proves. That they must have to be something bigger. No, no, no. Logical at all, which is there's another natural tendency, isn't it? Because we all had parents and most of us had a father. And therefore there was an upbringing, an authority figure who could look after and save us from all the hazards and so on. Well, growing up is tough. We still want one of those. Right, right, right, right. Eric, you have clearly not met my mother. Go ahead, Eric. Sorry. I like how he left off all of the the religions that don't have a heaven. More all the religions that, you know, started up and fizzled away and weren't passed on or never written down. Right. But I'm seeing a parallel in the argument. People like to make the argument too about pyramids, right? Like, how could there be these pyramid type structures, you know, in Egypt and in Mexico made by all these brown people? Like, right? So think about how that there must be some. It's like, oh, it's just a really good way of stacking blocks. So they don't fall out. You can't you can't do it the other way. If you could do it the other way, then I'd go for God. Or right, right, right, right. Pyramids like that. Yeah, I'm all over. Pyramids like this. That's that's how you do it. There's no other way you could do that. Like, and look, it's still the same shape no matter what you do. Mind you, if you could spin them fast enough. Right. I want to throw out two quick things. One, the talk about a great father kind of sounds like fatherhood theory to me, sort of like simulation theory. When you're around computers, simulation theory seems really appealing. When you're around fathers, fatherhood seems really appealing. And when we look at God, when we before computers were like, well, there has I came from a father, you came from a father. So there must be one great father above us all, right? Like, that's really appealing because we're just pulling for stuff around that we kind of understand that has a mystery behind it, like genetics or biology. And we're just applying that mystery to the greater understood explanations. And when we have a better understanding of the world, we just pull up another one. It's like, I don't know how computers work, but couldn't the universe be a simulation? And I can argue that with confidence. It's like, do you know how do you know much electricity would actually take to get billions and billions of people? Like the earth may not be able to support this level of fidelity, like this processing power, like we'd be in a carbon defunct planet to get that many people to sit. Anyway, I don't know. Yeah. But the humans are the battery, the electricity. Yes. Dyson spheres that would take care of it. Dyson spheres, yeah. Oh, my gosh. And we're and you see how I try to pull us out and there's just arms pulling us back in. All right, John Richards, what's up? Do you mean, do you know what you said about you had a father and there was a father, he had a father and a father before him and so on and so forth? You know what that means? The God had one. The common ancestor is right old. Oh, yeah. And let me pull. Let me pull some point on another thing, too. I feel like cultures like human beings evolve as well. And and like cultures, they spread. And so he's referring to Egypt, Greece, Assyrian, Indians. You know, all those are within walking distance of each other if you're willing to wait a couple of thousand years, right? And that's a pretty good explanation for why all those cultures had a somewhat similar belief that desperately verged from like a singular point. That's not uncommon. That happens all the time. They weren't. Yeah, they didn't arise in isolation of one another. That's for darn sure. Sure is. OK, even the Silk Road. I mean, you know, there was there was lots of trade and travel between these different civilizations. You know, yeah, they it's not like they they were raised in that, you know, that cone of silence that gets smart, you know, there's a there's a reason why Native Americans have a lot of Asian features. It's not because they just like popped out of the ground. You know, well, that wasn't because Jesus visited them. Or John Smith. No, no, no, it's kind of crazy. Guys, I got another email from this fellow. I'm going to send it out to our own Eric Green. Eric Green. Listen, here's the thing. Atheists ironically resort to their emotions as opposed to the rationality and can't see the actual good effects of well-meaning Christians. There is much of the time just spent on hate, aversion or distaste. But if people would just sit in silence and clear their head of notions, they would have they wouldn't have to call themselves Atheists. They would just exist and say they don't know. And hard line Atheists wouldn't have issues with the church or people being churched up, but they would have. But they. But even if they do, they'd still have no clue what Christianity is, even to the slightest degree. Why can't Christians just shut up? OK, well, well, first of all, he or she made the mistake that I hear a lot of people make. Atheists don't know there's no God. That they made a comment in there. Can't they just say they don't know? Yeah, most atheists are agnostic atheists. You know, not if there's a God. Right. I don't believe in one. But I don't know. Anyway, that that's just a pet peeve. Don't seem to get that right. Then I finally understood this correctly. Their argument is Christians are good. Therefore, there's God. You can't see the actual good effects of well-meaning Christians. And you instead, atheists spend their time on hate, aversion or distaste. But if people would just sit in silence and clear their head of notions, they wouldn't have to call themselves atheists. Yeah, I just. Well, I don't I don't see the hate. Actually, a lot of times when I meet someone and after a while, like, they know that I'm an atheist, they usually say, and you're actually you're actually really nice for an atheist. I've heard that more than once. Dred, I was the point. I was exactly. That's I'll reinforce that one is you could easily flip that around instead of just talking about well-meaning Christians. Christianity has nothing to do with well-meaning, right? You could be a well-meaning person without. You could be a well-meaning Hindu, well-meaning Sikh, a well-meaning Muslim, a well-meaning Christian, a well-meaning atheist. It doesn't matter if you're well-meaning. It's independent of whatever religion that you adhere to. So good point, good point, good point. And at that point, it doesn't matter whether you're an atheist, lambasting them or not. It's just like, hey, well-meaning people are good. We want more of those. It doesn't matter whether you're a Christian or not. And ideally, they don't have a monopoly on well-meaning. Larry, got to get to you. I saw you. Yeah, and I'm taking, well, not offense, but exception to his saying, you wouldn't have to call yourself an atheist. What the heck is wrong with calling yourself an atheist? I mean, it's an honest appellation that describes our condition. We don't believe in God. That's the definition of the word. It may be a problem for you. It's not for us. But you might want to look at your own yourself and see why it's a problem. John Richards, throwing it up. Great point, Larry. What he's doing is revealing his misconception about what atheists are and what atheism is. He's taking us down the route of aggressive atheists, you know, militant atheists. We aren't. There's no reason for us to be like that because we don't have any doctrine to impose on everyone and try and control them. That's what religions do. We don't do that. We have no need to do that. What we're trying to do is promote critical thinking so that people can see their way out of the depths of despair that they've been very doing during their upbringing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When you're born in a cave, it's really hard to get out of the cave unless you know how to climb. We're teaching people how to climb. Victor, got a question for you. Why can't you just shut up? Not you in particular. Why do atheists have to speak up? Why can't they just be quiet? Like Liri says, if people would just sit in silence and clear their head of notions, they wouldn't have to call themselves atheists. Why can't you just be quiet about the stuff that you don't really understand to the slightest degree, which is Christianity? Why can't Christianity just shut up? Yes. Ty, before you ask Victor to shut up, you ought to know that he's taller than 6'10". Wow, big guy, yeah, yeah, yeah. Speaking of spreading, Vikings were very good at that anyway. Just, hey, Dread Pirate Higgs, what's up? Well, I was going to say, just with respect to that last comment, when I left Masonry, I was a Freemason. And one of the fellows I dealt with quite regularly, when I told him I could no longer do it because I'd become an atheist to the Christian God, he said, oh, so you're one of those people that hate God. And that's where that person, I think, makes the mistake of thinking that atheists are not people who don't have evidence to support a God, but actually hate a God they think exists. No, because it's easier to straw man that point to make sure you understand why it's a bad thing to be an atheist than to understand what it actually means and recognize that you have questions now that you have to ask yourself. It is the hardest thing. Listen, the most fundamental conversation you can have with any person who's a Christian who knows you're an atheist is to make sure they understand what the definition of atheism actually is. Because no, I know it because I had a friend who's an atheist. That's like me saying, well, I had a third grade teacher who was a Christian. I know all the forms of Christianity. I don't have to hear it from you. Listen to the person that you're talking to. Use the definitions that they're working with because typically they're coming from a point of view of experience and they can inform you of what they mean. And if they're saying, no, when you say atheists hate God, let me explain to you that I'm an atheist and I don't hate God. Well, you're not an atheist, that's like, I am. Let me explain to you what this word means, please. Yes. Yeah, get your normal nature right. Yes. Then we can have a filling argument with words because we have to use words to communicate. I always like to ask them where they got that information. Yeah. They're pastors. You know, who wanted to do that? The pastor, yeah. And then, you know, you might want to take another look at that person or that channel or that podcast. That source. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The source. Yeah, because they've had their heads filled with this concept, the stereotype, by their leaders who wish to control them. They've got an agenda. And if you go down that route of denigrating non-members of your tribe, it leads to dehumanization, to victimization, and eventually to murder. Don't do it. Yep. Oh, man, Eric. Yeah, just a quick point here because I'm sure you want to move on. The other one I hear often too is that atheists worship the devil. And that's bizarre too. It's like, well, no, no, I don't believe in a God. I certainly don't believe in the devil. Yeah, it's just a bizarre. And maybe it's maybe some Christians or other religious folks just can't fathom a godless world. So they have to assume we. That everybody believes they just hate them. And I'm also going to say this too. Like, again, the Bible feels like it was written by a megalomaniac doing their own autobiography with a really nice person in the background being like, if you believe everything in this book, you're also as dumb and as evil as this tyrant. But I'm going to, for example, teach nudists that nutrition is important and they should have access to knowledge. I'm going to point out that this guy drowned everybody on the world for no good reason and drowned babies. I'm going to go and talk to his son that he brought to that he was planned to like hang on a cross for someone else's sins and be like, hey, do you want to worship me? And when that God's and when that son says, no, I'm going to leave because I'm not going to force people to worship me. I'll accept no as an answer and I'll even show up face to face and be like, hey, do you want to worship me or not? OK, totally fine. See you later. And that will be no repercussions whatsoever afterwards. I'm like every story of Satan in the Bible from Job all the way down to like Genesis is just here's a guide that I don't understand why he's the evil one. When the tyrant is in the same chapter doing substantially more evil stuff every single time. So it was in the Bible that God created evil. I mean, so Isaiah says that. Right, right, right. He developed the the the crying screams of women and children being murdered. Like he made the the blood spurts of serial murderers activities like he made everything right. So the bad stuff counts to farts like people waterfall and stuff like that. Like this extra nipple that I have that I don't need. Like I got two of them. I didn't even need one. Think about like childhood cancer, you know, other cancer, misshaped harps at birth, mistreatments. Like, well, those are well, no, he made everything. Right. So that counts. Yeah. We've got to think about that. And when we look at Satan, he's like actually in my head, the far without saying it, if we're just willing to look at, like, you know, inferences, like he's the far more moral character in that book compared to God, the tyrant. It's just so much more straightforward. You know, you don't like the Marvel universe. He's he's an anti hero. Yeah. Yeah. He's he's he's not even like what's the most evil thing he did? He thought he was pretty and God was like, well, he's not prettier than me. Like what is the worst thing he ever did? I don't understand it. Anyway, a lot of people say that the worst thing he did was he killed Job's family and took away his crops and all that. But no, he's God who said he could. Yes, not only that, but it was God who made the wager that he could and allowed that to happen. And it was all about. And when it was all said and done, God didn't bring them back to life. He just gave God some new wise and new cattle. It's just like, oh, that solves the problem. And it's like for a guy who's in the afterlife, you got to think about that. It's just like, OK, I'll see these guys later. Right. Anyway, John Richards, what's up? There's one problem with this idea that God created everything and has a problem. Well, the one that I'm going to itemize right now, which is that he can't create money. He's got a scrounge from his congregations. I can make everything except for money, which is why I need you as your help. One of my favorite memes these days is when you need money, your preacher tells you to go to God. But when he needs money, he goes to you. Right. Now, prayer or work, why would he just pray for money? Right. Oh, it's absolutely true. The church would stay open. Guys, we got we got four minutes before we go and I want to talk about Freemasonry. So who else the dread pirate to handle this one? This is the last section of the mail that we got from the same author. He's basically saying this, I wish more people leaning atheists would see that it's not Christians at all. That's the problem. But the rulers of the churches, who each have their one foot in Freemasonry, leading the Templars to destroy, which is funny because atheists like to use the crusades as a point of leverage, yet it's still just evil manipulating people who want to love their neighbors. Now, look at the world. Do you see you can see that Freemasons do rule the world. Look at the most powerful people who rule the world. And you'll notice that not a single one of them is atheists. I'm going to add this checkpoint. Checkmate. That's all there you go. But as they say, correlation doesn't equal causation just because there's a bunch of people are dressing up in funny garb and marching around a windowless room performing ancient rites, as they call them. Oh, man, I had no idea that was even a thing. It doesn't affect anything. Like there's no effect. It doesn't affect the world in any way. And really, it's a bunch of old white guys getting together to grist each other, essentially, just to give advantage to each other. So is Xi Jinping, is he a Freemason? He said all the leaders of the world were Freemasons. I'm sure Putin isn't. Yeah, Putin. He says, look at the most powerful people who rule the world. So maybe Elon Musk, maybe you got some rich people. I don't know. I don't know how it goes. Yeah, Mason really is on a decline. It's harder to capture younger minds into that sort of ancient. I mean, it's going back to Solomon and the building of Solomon's temple. Who really cares about that stuff anymore? It's antiquated. It's just banal, really. I mean, we've had just locally, we've had two Freemasons closed down due to lack of membership. I mean, it's like Christianity. It's like anything. Oh, I just wanted to point out, too, just quickly, that 53.1 percent of British Columbians are irreligious. They do not have to fight any religious population. Here and now, the majority, well, Pestifarians are included in that, because they don't consider us religious, so. Right. Sure, sure. That's funny. Bastards. As long as you don't now claim total ownership of righteousness, which is what these correspondents seem to have done, they should look at their, look in the mirror, guys. We may have. Yeah, we're getting ready to wrap up. Room for one more question, maybe, or go on to the wrap up. I think we should get ready for wrapping up. But John Richards, I think you had a point. Did you want to make one more comment? Yeah, I just made it. What these religious people have done is stolen righteousness, stolen morality that we have before. They claim ownership of something that isn't theirs to own. Right. I like the hate mill. I don't mind it. Keep it coming. The thing is, whether it's an argumentation for God or not, the thing is it's an extraordinary claim, and that requires extraordinary evidence. I don't think there's ever going to be a single email that'll make me believe in a supernatural God, regardless of the length or the grammatical clarity or the reasonable argumentation that's provided. I need a higher standard of evidence. A photograph of you sitting on Jupiter is not going to make me believe that you went to Jupiter, even if there's great lighting and HDR quality. You need a higher standard of evidence. We're not going to get it through emails, but keep sending them to us. Well, we don't mind. We don't mind. It doesn't mean we're close minded. It just means you're not meeting my standard of criteria for me to believe something like that. I'm not really. I'm not really. He's not really. That typo isn't just cycling back and forth, tenant style. Victor, anything that you recommend that we check out? Yeah, the Alpha course that the churches are doing. It's free. You can see the clips online. I'm doing one now, and it's hilarious. Really? That's awesome. Yeah. Where can we get to? What can you plug the link or? Yeah, just search Alpha course. Is Alpha training? No, I think it's called Alpha course. I can send you later. It's awesome. The food's good. The food's good though, I hear. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It is. I'm free. Yep. Hey, that's a way to a man's soul, isn't it? Through his belly. I'm going to throw this one up to Boudre. Anything that you recommend that we check out? Well, I can't share it on the radio show here, but I'm going to pop in our group chat just for Dread Pirate. Many years ago, for Halloween, we built a pirate ship and went, we took a car, cut off the top, put a sail on it, dressed up as pirates, and drove to a bar. Cool. I love to see that. I shot it in the messenger, but there you are. And guys, thank you so much for a ride of time on the show. We'll go straight to Larry. Feel free to check out Mine Pirate on YouTube. Check out Global Atheist News Review. It's going to be up here later out, and we'll send a feed out to John Richardson. You can find me a Let's Chat on YouTube. Larry, why don't you take us out? Okay, sure. My content can be found at digitalfreethought.com, which, when you go there, be sure to click on the blog button for our radio show archives, Atheist Songs, and many articles on the subject of atheism. My YouTube channel can be found by searching for Doubter Five, and I, of course, have a book on Amazon called Atheism. What's it all about? If you'd like to know more about it, I recommend either getting the book or going to my website, because a lot of the articles in the books are on the website. You can find this show on 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. They're, until then, don't sweat it. Enjoy your life, and we'll see you next Wednesday night at 7 o'clock here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Say bye, everybody. Bye, everybody. Good job.