 103.9 FM, WZO Radio, Knoxville. Ladies and gentlemen, Digital Freethought Radio Hour. Hello and welcome to Digital Freethought Radio Hour in WZO Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today is Sunday, August 2nd, 2020, and I'm Larry Rhodes or Doubter 5. And as usual, we have our co-host, Wombat on the phone with us. Hello, Wombat. Guys, I have a great song for you. It's a great Christian song. The chords are G, C, and F, but I forgot all the lyrics, but it's a really good song. I'm sure you guys will love it. Well, how am I for it? No, I'm kidding. Yeah, it's like, hmm, you're like, yeah, God. That's classic. And our guests today are Dread Pirate Higgs, George, and Red Leader. Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism, and the sciences. And conversely, we also talk about religion, religious holy books, superstition, and gods. If you get the feeling that you're the only non-believer in Knoxville, well, you're just not. There are several atheist, free-thinking and rationalist groups that exist right here in Knoxville, and we'll tell you how you can connect with them right after the mid-show break. Also, did you know that there was a streaming atheist call in TV slash video shows broadcasting here from Knoxville? Yeah, because you bring the hard topics, and this is an important subject. So there are basically two video game stores, Epic Game Stores and Steam, where you can get video games. They are both free programs. So why are people making such a fuss when a game comes out only on Epic? Epic is really good. It gives you free games every week. I have an entire game library. I think this is important. Shall we talk about it now? What? No, this is a TV show. It's a broadcast from Knoxville. It was broadcast on TV for 10 years, but now they switched over to a video format and the broadcasting live on YouTube every Wednesday night. I think it's 7 o'clock, 6.30, 7, something like that. Anyway, go to YouTube and search for Free Thought United Coalition of Knoxville. We'll tell you more about that after the mid-show break. Wombat, what's our topic for today? We're going to be talking about how to respond to common questions that you might run into when you might do street epistemology or talking to people about why they believe in what they believe with friends. And I had a conversation with a friend who was a Christian. He asked me some questions after he realized that he may not have the best position to believe in his God. And I think it would be good to just go over some like, how would you respond? Theoretical questions. But in street epistemology? Yeah, I know. Isn't that crazy? I'll actually throw this to Dred Pirate. Dred Pirate, would you mind giving us a quick definition of street epistemology and then opening up with our indication for today? A quick definition of street epistemology is the Socratic examination of a person's beliefs and methodology by which they come to hold them. Yeah, it's a conversational technique. That's it. With emphasis on the methodology itself, really. Absolutely. The invocation. Okay. Quab be my captain, I shall not want. He maketh me to float in salt water. He stirreth me through glassy seas. He filleth my bowl. He stirreth me through the straits of newliness for goodness' sake. I, though I sail through the heaving of tempestuous waters, I will fear not sinking. For thou art with me. Thy mast and thy rudder, they comfort me. Thou preparest a feast before me in the presence of me mates. Thou quencheth my thirst with grog. My goblet runneth over. Truly, pasta and grog shall follow me all the days of me life. And I will dwell in the galley of the quab forever. Rawr, man. Rawr, man. I love Dale's face the entire time you went through it. I love the noodliness part. Yeah, that was a bit more seafaring than normal. I like it, and I like that, too. Let's throw out some quick, hey, hey, Loes, how are you guys doing? Dale, how you been? I love that tweed jacket, by the way. Doing well. Yeah? Yeah. Yeah, it's very good. It's from Scotland. Nice. You dressed like radio. Actually, this is video, and if anybody's going to, if anybody's going to pay any attention to what I have to say, maybe I should respect, you know. Okay. Very good. I took a shower, too. How many of you can say that? I can't. Larry, what do you got? We should probably mention to the people who are listening on WZO radio here in Knoxville, that this is also being broadcast live on Dread Pirate Higgs' YouTube channel. But also, we recorded video and put it on several channels. Do a search. Go to YouTube. Do a search for Let's Chat, or simply do a search for digital free thought radio hour, and you'll find the videos. Very nice. And then, George, how you been? How's your morning so far? Oh, my morning's great. You recently had surgery. How's your recovery coming along? Oh, it's incredible. I am not in pain. That's always a good thing. It's underrated how good that is. Listen, God is blessing me. I have to tell you, I praise Jesus. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. I am not suffering from surgical pain, and that's the good part. I am happy to have an occupational therapist who reads the New York Times every day here in Athens, Tennessee. Oh, so you have stuff to talk about, because you're a New Yorker yourself, right? I am. I am, but she's not a New Yorker. She's not a New Yorker. She just wants to dig the news appropriately. And I met somebody else here in Athens who also has read the New York Times often. Very cool. Talking to people is actually talking to people about the subject of this show. Yes, yes, yes. Before we do that, Dredd, how's your classes coming up? You're going to be teaching pretty soon, aren't you? Yeah, I'm still working on the syllabus. And I should have that together here by the end of August. Very cool. Are you nervous? How do you feel? How's the noodles, the inner noodles? Well, my hope, of course, is to help people hone some of those critical thinking skills in order to regard the universe in a more practical way, I suppose, move the magic out of it and get to the real substance of what the universe is all about. Dredd Pirate, I wanted to ask you, is it possible for non-Canadians to attend your course? I would imagine it's going to be open for anyone that's willing to pay the fee. Or if you can, I don't want to make it sound bad, but if you can record it somehow and then just release the whole lecture series online, that would be fantastic, and then it's up to anybody. Larry, I am digging that Hawaiian shirt. I'm feeling like it's a really festive Sunday for you. Yeah, it's summer, so I go Hawaiian shirts, and in the winter I go a felt plaid. Yeah, the secrets are finally revealed. I actually had a really good weekend too. This Friday I went out to go bowling and hiking with a friend of mine who's a Christian, and he explicitly wanted to hang out with me because he wanted to talk about the nature of faith, because we had a conversation at work one day where he realized that after being 100% confident in his God that he may not necessarily have the best ground to stand on with regard to his holy belief, and the way how we got there was through a quick 5-minute SC conversation. And I think he threw out, like, I know my God's real because of personal experiences and faith, and when I asked him to find faith, it's like, well, just trusting without evidence. And then I asked, is that 100% reliable way to know something's true? And it's like, absolutely not. No way, no way. And I was like, is it possible to have a personal experience that's not going, that might be misleading? He's like, yeah, that happens all the time. So I asked him, like, well, you're 100% confident. You have 100% reliable method to get you there. He's like, really, I love this on his feedback, too. He's like, actually, I don't. I don't think I'm 100% confident anymore, as simple as that. And so he wanted to ask a lot of things about, like, okay, well, that's the case. And no one's ever asked me that before. No one's ever just, like, laid it out, boom, boom, boom. Where are you at? Because it sounds like you may not believe in a God. And I was like, no, I'm an agnostic atheist. I don't know if a God exists, but I also don't believe that a God exists. That's what those two terms mean, and they're compatible. So he wants, like, okay, well, you got to tell me about this. Where do your morals come from? Who decides what's good for you? Like, and some basic apologetics that he heard from his pastor, how would I respond to them? That was basically the nature of us hanging out. And it was a really fun conversation. I would like to throw out some of the questions he threw out at me, and we'll do it. You got to ask Dale. You got to ask Dale. How Jesus did it? George, raise your hand. We're going to do roundtables, and we're going to ask George, since you're excited, we're going to try this out first. If a Christian asked you after finding out that you're an atheist, where do your morals come from? How'd you respond to that? The way I would respond to that is like this. That I have the challenge of having to have a built-in system of ethics that governs my behavior, and I am responsible to myself for enforcing that code in my own life. I have to be a decent person. I can't do it with the threat of hell hanging over me or the reward of heaven. I just have to have a very good built-in antenna for doing it, and I have to mention too that I think that the atheists I've known in general, not all of them, but mostly have been very decent people, very humane, compassionate human beings. Cool. Jed Pyrr, how would you handle that? Let me ask you this. We're hanging out. We're having a good time. I told you I'm a Christian. I thought I'd believe in God. You tell me you're an atheist, and that shakes my world, and I'm like, well, you're an atheist, but you're such a good person. Yeah. There must be something weird here. Where do you get your morals from? Because you're a nice guy. Well, yeah. I think it's just an interest in others' well-being. You know, in as much as I have a selfish interest in promoting my own well-being, it makes sense to promote others' well-being so that we can work together to be well together. What do you mean by well-being? That's where I would say I get my morals from. Just going to poke, what do you mean by well-being? Well, we all want to thrive. We don't simply want to subsist, I'm sure. Certainly I don't, and I don't want to just kind of maintain a status quo where, you know, the drudgery of everyday living is drudgery. I think we all have dreams and desires and ambitions, and in as much as we can work towards advancing our own, it, again, is in our own best interest to advance those of others. Okay. Not bad. I like it. Dale, as someone who does not believe in an active agent supernatural being controlling our lives on a daily basis, like, where do you get your morals from? If not given to you by an active deity. Well, I actually adhere to what Jesus said, do unto others. That sounds like a pretty good plan. It makes me want to... That sounds like half of a moral philosophy. What? That sounds like half of a moral philosophy so far. Do unto others. There's like a really important other part of that, or else I'm just out there punching people, right? So, like, do unto others. Anyone want to finish that? As you would have others do unto you. Isn't that... I forgot the avius. Let's go. Yeah, yeah. As you would have others want to do unto you. Like, yeah. But anyway, Dale, what do you got? Well, I'm just saying that as far as I'm concerned is good enough. And you all may be ascribing it to being one of the Jesus originals, but it was not. So, if you can say that Jesus simply repeated do unto others, fine. But it seems like a pretty nice way. I wouldn't mind being around people who would treat me that way. And I would think that those people would like to be treated that way. As far as any more ethics or morals, I don't really think I need any more. The law pretty well takes care of me not killing people. Although I do mistrust people that says, I don't murder because it's against the law. Because it makes me think that wasn't against the law. Those people would be out running around killing everyone. It also makes me suspicious when a Christian says, I don't, you know, I do, I, I, I, I shall not kill because the Bible says so. Which makes me think that you really don't have that much of a problem with killing except that God says not to. And that's what I have to say about that. I have a question. What do you got? Well, you guys heard of the platinum rule? No, tell me about it. So the platinum rule is due unto others as they would want done to them. Right. So there's like additional condition of treating people how you want to be treated. It's some people want to be treated how they want to be treated. And I find like that is an overlooked ideal when you just look at what Jesus says. Because especially nowadays there's a lot of people who want to speak up and say, Hey, I'd prefer it if you didn't do this to me. Well, it's like, well, I like being treated this way. So I'm going to treat you like that. It's like, no, we live in a society, treat people how they want to be treated too. George, what do you got? I got a question for how Jesus did it. Dale, how prominent is the golden rule in the Bible? Not very. Cool. There's a lot of murdering and killing and slavery and Jesus himself scourged merchants in the temple. Yeah. And he totally killed that victory. Jesus himself was not beyond a little scourging. So I'm sure the merchants did not like that. That rule probably breaks down right there. But it's a good guideline. And the scourging, you have to remember that it wasn't a moment of passion, because he literally took some time to go over and create a scourge. He made a huge scourge, and then he went in and started beating people there. It would be fun about that. Dredd, what do you got? Oh, sorry. The golden rule became the wooden rule. Yeah, it's true. Larry, I thought you were finished with the point. Sorry. Well, I just wanted to address this morality thing. George said you have a responsibility to yourself, but I just wanted to throw in also that you have a responsibility to your society, the people that you live with. A lot of people ask me, well, what's the standard for morality? Harm. Harm is the standard. Don't do harm to your neighbor. Don't do physical, emotional, financial, any kind of harm. It's just look, you don't want to do it. You know, as much as you wouldn't like to have it done to you, which brings us to Confucius. 500 years before Jesus said that, what he did, Confucius said the opposite, basically. He said, don't do unto others what you wouldn't have done to yourself. Ooh, I like that. Yeah, nice that Larry up for that. Thank you. Yeah, that's nice. Nice. Larry, you have a full article out on this. I do. I have an old article on it. I can go to digitalfreethought.com and the blog area. And one last point I'd like to make is that Christians, they don't get their morals from the Bible, even though they say they do. And I can prove it in like two sentences. If they all got their morals from the Bible and they got all of their morals from the Bible, then they would all believe the same things. They wouldn't have any morality conflicts between themselves. And we know that they do. The Catholics and the Baptists and Protestants, all the different types of, you know, believe different things as far as abortions and gays and homosexuals, you know, the things that they call morally bad, there are sex that believe that they're okay. And they would also believe that if they actually got their morals from the Bible that they should kill unruly children or homosexuals or kill women who are not virgins on their wedding night. You know, so they pick and choose and they use an independent moral system, one of their own, to do that picking and choosing from the Bible. You guys were all hitting the nail right on the head. I think what I basically said, and this is a more of a elaborate conversation that we're having, but like my morals come from and understanding that my actions have consequences. And I want those consequences to maximize my well-being, like Dread Pirate mentioned, and reduce the amount of needless harm that's caused as a result, as what Larry was saying. And it's a very, very simple thing to understand that doesn't necessarily need to be written in a holy book to be true. And I, and as Larry said in two sentences, you can break it down. I do, my way of doing it is like, if the Bible told you not to steal, okay, let's, the Bible tells you not to steal so you don't steal. If it wasn't in the Bible, would you just go around stealing everything? And they'd be like, no, of course not. It's like, it doesn't sound like you need it in the Bible for you to not do it, right? So it doesn't need to be in a holy book for it to be true. Like you can look at your own consequences of your actions and realize, hey, this is a good thing for me to do. This is a bad thing. We have that innate ability evolutionarily because we are our social species and the people who don't either die off very quickly or end up in boxes for a long period of time. And that's just the thing it is. Dred, do you want us to get cool? What's up? Yeah, yeah, just another thing about morals coming from the Bible. The idea of people doing good only under threat of punishment is not doing good for good sake. You know, doing good for goodness sake is doing good under a threat of punishment. Well, obedience is not morality. I see George. Yeah, exactly. Precisely my point. Yes, yes. George, what do you got? Well, you know, in listening to all this, I have to confess to myself that I think that the Bible is a big work of fiction. I mean, there's some real locations in there. I'm really upset now. That totally means everything else is true. What are you talking about? Jordan's a real place. Yeah, okay, so Jordan's a real place. But I mean, the whole thing is made up. So it's some real places into it and maybe Jesus was around. It's fantasized Jewish history, basically. Built around real places. There are some things that are really exaggerated. I can see some basis of truth, like some things happening and then people without the technology or knowledge to compartmentalize what actually happened come up with a folklore to explain it instead. I can see certain things like that. Some things, though, are so mundane that it's like, yeah, that probably happened. It rained, or there was a desert, or I'm sorry, there was a famine. It's like, yeah, that probably happened. It probably rained. Some people's kids probably died. I think these things happened. But did a supernatural being cause it? That's the stretch that I need some support. And Ty, probably not raining mana from heaven. Well, I mean, if it's hail, you could technically eat that and that is white stuff from... Not very nutritious. I'm sorry, man. What is mana anyway? Yeah, that's a good... What's the deal with mana? Before we head out to the break, Dale, you wanted to say something? Go for it. Mana is considered to be part of a plant that has a little nodule on it. And when it rained from heaven, if it sprouted in the morning, you might thought that it fell from heaven the night before. Oh, it's not a miracle anyway. Like a spore. Yeah, like plants just... Mana actually means bread. But I'm going to have to start calling hail mana now. Yeah, mine as well. Mine as well. Hail, my man. I got a quick roundtable question because this is related to morality as well. After I told him that, he was like, well, then who decides what's good? Because in his worldview, there's an authority that determines what's good and what's bad. And lacking that, and even with this system that we have, who decides what's good? Dredd, I'm going to throw it out to you real quick before we head to the break. What do you think? Who decides what's good? Well, I think overall, it's... Load of questions, by the way. That's dependent in your culture. So geographically, culturally, and over time because certainly our views on morality have shifted, you know, over the course of even a couple hundred years. So I think there's no single authority. It's kind of a spread out. Cool. It's like a communal effort, right? Yes, exactly. George, who decides what's good for you? I do. I love it. I love it. It's pretty simple. First of all, I have... Maybe this is a misguided belief, but I believe that most people are essentially good, decent people. And I'm willing to trust them to do what's right. You know, to have an inner guidance about what's good and what's right. I like that. There's some people, of course, I think we need police to lock them up, but... Sure, it gets crazy. Yeah, but for the most part, I think most people are decent. Dale, who decides what's good for you? George. Nice. Larry, who decides what's good for you? I agree with George. I do, and society does, because different societies and different people have different views on what's good and what's bad. And we generally tend to clump together those who believe the same things. But basically each individual has to decide. Now, I also... One of the things I like to mention is that the Bible is a big Rorschach test. And that you look at it and you pick out things that make sense to you and you interpret what you call it, internalize them. And it tells more about the person than it does about what's in the Bible, because everything's in the Bible. Right. And my thing would be, because we have different cultures, there's going to be different variances on good, but we commonly agree on some fundamental principles of life is more preferable than death, being healthy is more preferable than being sick, and so on. And we can come up with a big list of rules that we all have in commonality with each other. We have, it's called books of law. Yeah, so even though some cultures, we're getting towards the bottom of the break, some cultures actually might diverge on some things. We can look at the ones that diverge and objectively come to an assessment on, okay, so you think women shouldn't vote? We let women vote, and because of that, we get twice as many engineers, because men and women in the workforce are engineers. We can objectively see better bridges as a result. We have a better workforce or GDP is higher. Why don't you do that too? Because this is objectively benefiting us. So like, even though people differ, we can use standards to figure out who actually has the best objective way of living, even with subjective principles on what good is. It's really interesting. But we're at the bottom of the break. Later, Wayne, take us out. Okay, this is Digital Freethought Radio Hour and WOZO Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We'll be right back. 103.9 FM WOZO Radio, Knoxville. You know it's a good thing when I see bumps on my neck, you know, tries to stop me, yeah. It's a good thing when I'm no one's gonna see what's just through it. It's a good thing. Digital Freethought. Back to the second half of the show. This is Digital Freethought Radio Hour and WOZO Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. I'm Doubter Five, and this is Sunday, August 2nd, 2020. Let's talk about the Freethought groups that you can join right here in Knoxville. First, there's the Atheist Society of Knoxville, or ASK. Founded in 2002, we're in our 18th year. ASK has more than a thousand members now, and you can find us online at KnoxvilleAtheist.org, or you can just go to Google and say KnoxvilleAtheist and see what comes up. Another large Freethinking group here in Knoxville are the Rationalists of East Tennessee, or R-E-T. They've been around more than 25 years. They're a large growing group, and you can find them at rationalist.org. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you could still go to meet up and search for an Atheist group in your town. Don't find one. Nice show, guys. Earlier in the show, we said we'd talk about the Knoxville Atheist call-in TV show. Well, it's called Free Thinkers United Coalition of Knoxville Online, and you can find it on YouTube streaming. They've got several old shows and doing new shows every week. Go to YouTube and search Free Thinkers United Coalition of Knoxville, or you can also search for Free Thought Forum, Knoxville, and find our 10-year archive on there. Also, if you're interested in getting involved with us on TV or this radio show, just come to an ask or R-E-T meeting or Facebook page and tell us that you'd like to be involved. Go to Facebook and look for Atheist Society of Knoxville or Rationalists of East Tennessee. On the show with us today, we are our co-host Wombat, and we have guest George, red leader, and Jared Pirat Higgs, and where are we going to pick up on this? Okay, so I... I had it right here, guys. It was right here. Where is it? Jared Pirat, where is it? Where is the love? Where is the love? The love. The love. Love. Where is the love? Beautiful. All right. All right, all right. So our question today comes from Gary Ferry Ace over at r-slash-street-epistemology on reddit.com. His question is, I've been watching a lot of SC, Street Epistemology, and Colin shows, and I've come to the conclusion that confirmation bias is the main threat to communication in my personal relationship. How? Okay. So he's asking then... What confirmation bias? We'll get into it. That's a great point. We'll talk about what confirmation bias is. I don't know. Does anyone else feel the same way, and what are good responses to let someone know or discover that they are a victim to confirmation bias? Jared Pirat, would you mind defining what confirmation bias is, and then how would you go about it? Well, confirmation bias is sifting through incoming information and picking only those pieces of information that support your position. So it's avoiding conflicting information. Well said. Yeah. Very good. I'll be a professor one day. You will be. How would you let someone know that they are a victim to confirmation bias? Gently, because you don't want somebody to, you know, dig in their heels and get defensive. That's the biggest concern in any kind of conversation where you're trying to let someone know that they have some cognitive bias. We don't want them to fight yet. We all are. Yes. That's a fantastic point. Larry, I think you hit it right on the head. The way how I do it is be open to the idea that even I am susceptible to confirmation bias. And what I look for when I respond is not me teaching someone that they're a victim of confirmation bias, but to ask from their point of view, they have a way of disconfirming what they believe to be true, because at least then we're working together to see if they have a frame of reference of what they believe and what would it take for them to show that they can't believe that thing anymore. And so what I mean by disconfirmation is say I believe I only have white socks and I would simply ask, okay, so what would it make you change your mind that you have any other color sock and I would have to think about, okay, well, if I pulled out black socks from my sock drawer, that would be a good example. I don't only have white socks. Now I'm thinking about what would it take for me to show that I'm wrong and that process is so useful because that's how you get out of confirmation bias because now you're building a criteria that it would take for you to actually change your mind. Dale, what do you have? I have a much better example of confirmation bias. Okay. If you watch Fox News, you have confirmation bias. Oh, here's our weekly Trump dump. Trump dump! View, view, view, view. Okay. I'm talking about Fox News. If you watch Fox News, you are wholly uninformed. Cool. You are disinformed. You are going after that information that you want to be supported. I don't know how many times I've had somebody say such and such and that I say, well, explain it to me. And they go, well, I can't explain it. Go watch Hannity. He will explain it to you. George, you're on mute right now. So unmute yourself and feel free to jump back into the conversation. You know, I live on a little dead-end street. There's only five houses on this street and a neighbor across the street listens to Rush Limbaugh every day and when I moved here he was flying a big Confederate battle flag. My neighbor directly to the west just put in central heating and air and along with it got cable TV and told me how much he admires Fox News. My neighbor across the street opined gently that Fox News is a little bit too far to the left for him. And so my question has faced with these realities being the guy who reads The Guardian every day and where's our point of entry? George, I have, I'd like to supplement one other question on top of that directly to you. George, how would you deal with someone who has confirmation bias and how would you let them know that they're a victim to it? Boy, I've been thinking about that for days to be honest with you because every day in my mind I rehearse talking with my neighbor on the street. Yeah, I rehearse in my head I confess I do this and I'm aware I've got my own biases as you said we all do. Where do I come to him from? I have a little bit of an answer to my question. It's something I think I mentioned here before is to tell him I stories to come at him with confessions of my own that for instance I have been accused of being racially biased in my life and so start there because this guy has find some point of commonality and even start from a confession. I like building rapport with the people that I talk to and let them know where I'm coming from and that's the way to soften the blow. But I feel like the question of and this could use some wordsmithing but basically how would you know if you're wrong don't say wrong people hate that but like how would you know if it was some other case or depending on what the circumstances how would you know if you had different colors how would you know if MSNBC is also confirmation or bias what would it take for you to think something different ask them process questions and that's where you make them go from oh he's just telling me an opinion to he's asking me to think and when you can make them think for themselves that's where the magic happens. We started the show talking about a friend of mine who was a Christian and he was asking some questions about the nature of how do atheists get morals and who decides what's good for them and we've been going out over the show today I'd like to go over the next thing that he brought up which was sort of like it is sort of like an interesting concept so the idea is we were talking about Christians in general because he was like well the bible says XYZ I was like are you familiar with different denominations of Christianity and some don't even have the same version of the bible Nigerians have a completely different bible than the ones in the west there's a black Jesus there's ideas that aren't carried over and it makes a lot more sense because they're a lot closer to Jerusalem but I'm just saying there's ideas that aren't common among all Christians and what he said was oh well those are heathens like anyone who doesn't believe in these five things that everyone agrees on because of Christianity because St. Augustine said them then they're not a true Christian and I asked them immediately like well were there Christians before that guy came up with those five rules he's like yeah and then that was enough to like some think but I'm concerned with the idea of the like no-truth Scotsman fallacy Yeah so like George I'll get you I already know Dredd I have a question for you how do you deal with someone who's like oh well anyone who doesn't believe what I believe isn't one of my things what do you think about that and you can throw in a definition for no-truth Scotsman if you want hmm maybe somebody else could feel this I gotta think about that Larry Dale were you saying something no no excellent question Larry what do you think of the idea of someone saying well anyone who doesn't believe in my version of Christianity isn't a real Christian so that solves that problem yeah well that's the thing it's similar to the Christian saying you know I know that guy killed three people and he was he said he was a Christian but he's not a Christian a Christian wouldn't do that right and it's the same thing because as soon as somebody does something bad you know they're no longer a Christian so therefore a bottom line no Christian can ever do anything bad right and that gets us back to the no-truth Scotsman which I'll explain here for take a second it's like you're in Scotland you say you're talking to somebody and you say I'm going to have a whiskey and oh and put a put a shot of rye in it oh no true Scotsman would ever have a whiskey with a rye in it and they say well MacDougall up the street he likes rye in his whiskey yeah but he's not a true Scotsman so anybody who doesn't fit their definition of a Christian or a Scotsman or whatever they are automatically not included I want to just take a moment and give appreciation for Larry's fake made-up Scottish names MacDougall McCaddish all that stuff my great-grandmother was a MacMackin oh okay very cool Dredd do you feel better or should we go to someone yeah let's see if somebody else is interested I've been talking a lot so how do you feel about the idea of a no-true Scotsman fallacy if someone said hey you're not really an atheist or you're not really a deist unless you do XYZ and you're like I've been a deist for an extended period of my life well you're not a true deist because you don't have this thumb tag or something like that like have you dealt with that how do you deal with it etc no one's ever told me that I wasn't a true deist okay now that happened I would fall back on the golden rule treat people as you would like them to be treated for example if someone is a Mormon and they say that they're Christian well they are not considered Christian by most of the Protestant religions however if they say that they're Christian who am I to disagree so who are you to disagree with me on me being a deist who are you to disagree okay George see there's the answer yeah George what do you got if I say I'm a deist you've got no business saying that I'm not my neighbor's brother came at me um trying to figure out what to leave out came at me with the statement that because I did not believe in Jesus that I was not going to go to heaven and put a card under my front door for a fake Jewish organization near me which is just for those of you who aren't familiar I call myself a Jewish atheist which means I come from a Jewish background uh what am I going to say to people who come to my door promoting Christianity um I'm offended by that I mean Jews don't proselytize we don't do that we don't do that yeah right in fact the tradition they come to your door in pairs sorry George okay um the tradition in Judaism is that if you want to become Jewish you got to go beg the rabbi to do it and you got to beg him three times because he's going to turn you down the first two he's not going to believe that you're sincere so when people so here somebody shoves a card under my door they're the fake Jewish communities you know like Jews for Jesus for instance they do proselytize and it's bizarre you know so my word to these guys is real Jews don't proselytize oh interesting so you are the one saying hey you're not a true Jew I am and I'm an atheist however so there's like layers here there's layers here yes however and there are these these um Latter-day Jews they're called Hasidim and they're on television too and they're they're um I'm trying to look for the word um they have like these messianic rabbis that they wrap themselves around you know these these guys who um um they're really devoted but beyond that like yeah yeah exactly yeah yeah and I say to myself well okay they say they're real Jews they are you know they they walk around in clothing on the 17th century for God's sake yeah and and exist in New York State in in complete communities so well uh I'm actually going to throw this out to Larry because you might agree with me here we are in a desperate situation where a holy being a holy supernatural all powerful on the present being says these are my people these aren't my people but I'm not going to give you a uh a measuring stick to determine so you're just going to have to figure that out for yourselves and as a result you have bifurcations upon bifurcations upon decisions upon subgroups upon rivals and enemies who basically live on the same walk and agree the exact same thing except one pastor and the other one has a red Cadillac right they can't agree with each other doesn't this look like an example where it would have been a lot better if the God just came down and been like that's the only answer you know this group says that God chose them this group said that God chose them and they have conflicting morals they have conflicting commandments and they and it would all be settled if a deity came down and said I'm here that's my people but it never happens this is not something that we've ever seen I see George I was saying my friend that we should have a measuring stick that just says Christian it's one not measuring stick and you hold it up and it will magically reach where it needs to be to be like this guy's a Christian and if it's not it doesn't go anywhere you're like this guy's Christian that's not Christian if we have that we wouldn't need these kinds of five rules from St. Augustine etc. George real quick and then we'll go back to Dredd Dredd George what do you got? Well I just want to say how much I love Larry's little benediction at the end where he says everybody is going to somebody else's hell and the only way I would modify that was to say you are going to somebody else's I have memes that say that no truer statement in the world that Larry's saying I have memes I put in parentheses at the bottom is this everybody is Dredd Dredd pirate what do you have? So usually in the no truce Gossman situation I just reference and usually that comes up in the context of an SE Street of Festimology conversation I end up just referencing previous conversations where for instance I might have had a conversation with Mormons who would have said the very same thing and then ask my current interlocutor how would you respond to that like you know if the Mormons that said the exact same thing that their way is the true way Joseph Smith he's the final prophet and if you're not believing our way you're not coming where we're going and ask that person then how do you respond to that and I'm going to bring up something kind of important that builds on top of what you said Dredd it also feeds back on what Dale was saying like who are you to question this or like basically why even believe that claim in the first place when I'm doing SE and we've talked about SEV4 multiple times in the show even on this channel but I think of it in three parts there's the person who has the belief there's their conclusion and then there's a through line called the methodology or the epistemology and I want to ask questions about that because if you sever that link or if you make it stronger it's a good thing because you either free a person from a bad conclusion or come with a better reason to reach their conclusion and both of those things are good and so if someone says hey I don't believe these people aren't real Christians rather than dig into the nature of what it means to be a Christian and what philosophies they're following and what schism has what you know morals or commandments and not much that's digging into the conclusion and there's a lot of ego built in there a lot of ego that person identifies with instead it's a lot easier to just be like you don't think they're Christians how did you come to that conclusion let them think about that and they have to come up with criteria to base that off of and they say oh well you know some guy in past said there was five rules and you either follow it if you're a Christian or if you're not a Christian it's like were you a Christian before that yes okay so it doesn't seem like those five rules are really the point what other criteria do you have I don't think I have one it's like why do you believe it so strongly I guess I don't and that was literally like the three part combo that helped us move on from that you know justification that he had a Christian and he did he did that thinking on his own Dredpire what do you have well I just wanted to add to that that you end up through that conversational method is you end up putting tools in a toolkit for them that they can then use in other situations outside of the the immediate circumstance yeah and I'll show you how it goes bad this is when you start digging into the conclusion and you don't want to do this say he said I have to believe in the resurrection to be a Christian right in the Bible itself there are other people being crucified along with Jesus right they died before they saw Jesus get resurrected yet Jesus was the one who told them verbatim that they were going to be saved and be sent to heaven and be sitting aside next to him and one in heaven but if I start going to that that triggers all the Rockshore Bible quotes was like well no no no no you see Mary chapter 466 is like and you don't want to dig into those words stick to the methodology do you have a good reason to believe that and if they presented to you great but if not give them the time to realize that on their own don't teach them get them to the conclusion work with them and if you can't get there together that says way more than you just telling them hey you're wrong George what do you have um boy I am thinking I have met two people good since I've come to Tennessee I have met two people who only read the Bible that's that's all they that's all they know sorry it's my phone it's okay it's okay so George was saying like he's met people who reached the Bible and he'll get up to us no no doubt also we're going to be having a conversation with George um about more serious topics and that you can have that to look forward to in the future but I think we're rounding out towards the end of the episode Larry why are you um oh actually Larry I want you to do the catchphrase so Dredd where can we find you what's some good stuff that we can look forward to well on Sunday mornings at 8 o'clock Pacific standard time or Pacific daylight time whichever it happens to be we are streaming live on YouTube at MindPirate M-I-N-D-P-Y-R-A-T and we have a couple of folks on right now I just wanted to point out that one of our regular viewers says he has something that he calls conviction bias I am convinced therefore it's true very true yeah and I think we learned a lot of good things just in this conversation too and thank you guys so much for helping me like crystallize the conversation I had um I would say it's just like a quick review um we get our morals from being social animals in a social space and it's okay for us to come up with our own rules for how we live because we can compare our rules against each other and come up with even better systems and there tends to be way more overlap with the things that we agree on when we want to all live together peacefully and thrive as a community then there are desperate things and we can work on those desperate things um also don't um don't attack people talk about their methodologies and um here's the thing don't dig into the weeds of their conclusion like if they have like a really you know intricate understanding of the bible you don't need to talk about any of that just be like do I have a good reason to believe any of this and that's the better way to frame the conversation rather than is this verse uh conflating with a verse 4 648 you don't have to go to that just ask about the methodology of how they came to the conclusion not about the conclusion themselves because you'll believe it if they give you a good reason and you have to be open to that and then um you can find examples fc on my channel it's at let's chat or let's chat on youtube dale you have a bus there what's going on there what's that severed head this is one of three sculptures that I've done is uh dedicated to my hometown this is esti's kipapur he is uh in the news recently because of the antitrust trial of senate hearings that are going on he championed antitrust and uh and he ran for president a very very impressive man he was from madison bill nice very cool what was his name again esti's kipapur skipapur very cool um george I know you probably don't have anything to present but I am looking forward to having a conversation with you and I think we can share that together okay can we do it in public I would love that it's recorded and and shown in public so yeah it'll be on the internet that's even more public than people realize and Larry uh why you close this up this has been digital free thought radio r and w o zero radio 103.9 uh f m here in noxville be sure to visit my blog at digitalfreethought.com click on the blog button for our radio show archives atheist songs and many articles if you have any questions for the show you can send them to ask an atheist at noxvilleatheists.org and we'll try to get to them in the future shows if you'd like to listen to prior shows you can go to digitalfreethought.com but they're also available on podcasts throughout the web itunes, stitcher, luminary, podcast.com et cetera et cetera just do a search for digital free thought radio hour if you're watching this on YouTube be sure to like and subscribe so you can be notified when new episodes are posted and remember everybody is going to somebody else's hell and 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 join us next week 7 o'clock on w o zero radio 103.9 l p f m right here in noxville for digital free thought radio hour see you then say goodbye everybody bye man