 Hello and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio Hour on WOZO Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We're recording this on Sunday morning, April 23, I'm sorry, April 3, 2022. I'm Larry Rhodes or Doubter 5. And as usual, we have our co-host Wombat on the line with us. Hello Wombat. Suck it to me, suck it to me, suck it to me, suck it to me, suck it to me. I remember that song. And our guests today are George Brown, the two and a half from East Tennessee. We have John Richards from across the pond in England, and we had Dred Pirate Higgs from, I think it's western Canada, isn't it? Ahoy, yes. Over in the west side. Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism and the sciences. And conversely, we'll also talk about religion, religious faiths, gods, holy books and superstition. And if you think you're the only non-believer in your town, why are you just not? In Knoxville, in the middle of the Bible Belt, we have a group of over a thousand of us. And we'll tell you how we started our group and a little more about the group after the mid-show break, so stay tuned. Wombat, what's our topic today? We're going to be talking about some bad news for Anglicans, as well as a little bit of RESPECT. Speaking of, how can atheists get some of that respect? And I guess before we get into the cruel meat and potatoes of the conversation, we're going to throw it up to our own Dred Pirate Higgs for our weekly invocation. Quam be me, Captain, I shall not want. He maketh me to float in salt water. He stireth me through glassy seas. He filleth me bowl. He stireth me through 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, thy mast and thy rudder comfort me. Thou preparest a feast before me in the presence of me mates. Thou quenches my thirst with grog, my goblet runneth over. Truly, pasta and grog shall abide with me all the days of me life, and I shall dwell in the galley of the quab forever. Guys, my fight against gray hairs has finally ended. I think I finally found a gray hair inside my ear, and at that point it's just like there's no hope turning back. The battle is lost. You're just accepting them as they come. There's nothing you can do. There is something you can do. You know what I do? I claim that I've dyed my head this color, and it's actually called extreme blonde. Okay, so that's great. Hey, listen, I've heard that there's some bad news for the Anglican church. Maybe you want to talk about that real quick, John, before we delve into our topic. Yeah. Well, there's quite a lot of bad news. In fact, if you watched last night's Gaten. I sure do. How could you miss that? You would have seen a bit. There's more coming too. It's interesting what's coming up in the near future. But yes, 53% of the Brits over here have been shown to be non-believers, nuns, as you might call them, you know, the ladies in Wimples, but the, the NONES type of nuns. And this is now a solid statistic because it's, it's been tested, polled more than once now. So it's, it's really bad news, especially as the young are the ones who are least engaged with religion. Right. So I think it's about 3% of them profess to be Anglican at the moment. So it's really bad news for the archbishop of Canterbury and his mates. Larry. Oh, you're on meat, my friend. And it's not that there's just a 53% versus 47% is 53% non-believers versus a fractured real belief systems on the other side. You may say that Islam claims a large portion of the fractured percent, but it might be 10% versus a 4, 53% non-believers. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And the thing is, because the young have rejected religion, they're going to get older and replace. Of course. Yeah. Everyone knows wherever the UK go, America tends to follow George Brown. What's up? Well, I just wanted to add that here in the Bible belt where I live, which is more Bible belt ish than where this radio program has originated with, as I like to remind people, there are 167 official Baptist churches. The Episcopal church happens to be the place where the political progressives are based in my town. So ironically, I find myself thinking, oh, this is not good news. You know, that John is telling us. If you want the latest, latest news, this only came out today. A former Archbishop of Canterbury, not the current one, has come out saying that he would like to see the Russian Orthodox Christian church drummed out of the brownies, because there is a world wide club of Christians, Christian churches. And at the moment, the Russian Orthodox church is a member of this worldwide assembly. And he's starting a movement to get them kicked out because obviously they have supported Putin. They have not come out against the horrible stuff that is going on in Ukraine right now. In fact, they have more or less indicated support for it. Sure, sure. Yeah, really terrible dread. Yeah, just going back to the first item there. In Canada, we just had our census last year. And coming out in October of this year will be statistics related to religiosity. As that question is only answered every second census or every 10 years. So the last in 2001, when that question was last asked, or 20 years, I guess 20 years, it was 33% were non-religious here in British Columbia. And I think 25% overall Canada. So it'll be interesting to see where the numbers lie. It'll be interesting to see where they come October. You said you're about 30%. That's about where we were to looking it up just really quickly. But you know what, I think the thing that's holding us back is that we still associate religion with moral character. And a lot of people will claim to be religious when in fact they don't know, they've never even read the Bible. They don't even know, but they'll say it by default, even on a census, right to appear or not to seem like a bad person. I'll go for it. Arthur C. Clark said that one of the greatest tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion. Yeah. Yeah. And I feel like there's so many more better characters that you can base your morality off of Christian God. Oh yeah. It unfortunately is almost to the case that the Christian devil is actually a better example in a lot of cases. And I would why pass up the opportunity of applying spaghetti monster when it's like right there for you. Like I see. Absolutely. It's so obvious. Guys, listen. So one of the things I've also noted on the census is that it's really hard to get respect. Isn't it? Isn't it just with numbers and statistics? And so I'm finding that, you know, culturally, while it seems to be the case that a lot of people will appeal to religion to seem like a good person, but no one appeals to atheism, at least on the grand scale to demonstrate their morality. And if you were to ask me, one of the coolest ways to demonstrate good character is by showing that I'm not following a strict dogma that has a lot of toxic attitudes against different kinds of people and classism and attitudes towards slavery that are not anti in any sense. And for the most part, I feel like with my atheism, I have an opportunity to not believe in a script and let myself come to my own conclusions. And if you don't see me hurting people and if you see me actually going out volunteering at our local animal shelter, conducting myself well, trying to stay educated, taking care of my family, then you have a person who's not following a script in order to do that. And I feel like what my atheism enables me to do is demonstrate that I could be a good person without God. And I think that's one of the ways that I like to show or give atheism respect, because ultimately it is just not believing in a God, but I'm showing moral character even without that belief. And I think that's the key for me. I wonder how do you guys show respect or how do you think atheism can get more respect and move away from the idea that you're a good person only if you're a believer. I'll throw it up to Dredd first. Dredd, what do you think? Sure. Well, you know, I also, as a, as a practicing Pastifarian, you know, people I guess assume in most respects that that is the same thing as being an atheist, which is fine. I don't really care, but it's pretty much like you say is, you know, doing, you know, being an honest person, doing good, being a part of the community and always making sure you declare you're out, right? Right. You know, letting people know. And then when they say, well, you know, because I've had people say, oh, you, why do you hate God? We're like, what happened to you? And, you know, so having those opportunities to clarify exactly what it means to be an atheist is, you know, not having evidence of something is not the same as hating something, you know? Right. So yeah, it's about being clear about what it is and then just demonstrating yourself as a good person. Right. And, you know, it doesn't have to be a huge ordeal to let someone know you're an atheist. Sometimes I've had people be like, Hey, you know, do you go to church and I'll just say, well, I'm more of a Marvel person. And I think it's pretty well too. But like, I tend to do it as like Jovial and I tend to do it as quickly as possible so that they understand and then if they want to have a long conversation, we can sit down and have a chat about it. Yeah. Larry, what do you think? Yeah. I raised my hand just as dread was making the point about being out coming out. And that's the point I wanted to make is we need to come out of the closet. We need to be out of the atheist closet. Not necessarily loud and proud. But if somebody brings up the religion and ask your opinion, tell them, you know, you don't have to be an atheist. You can say it like I do. I usually say I'm not, I'm not a religious person. Just let it go like that. If they want to get into more detail and more than happy to, but I think if all of us came out, it would do the sheer numbers. I would would then imply that we're normal people that were your good neighbors and good coworkers. And it would just go from there. Yeah. And for those of us that are a little more inclined to come out, it would help other people who are maybe a little more shy or reluctant to just because they know they're in good company. Yeah. I don't think we need to make an announcement for those that are close and near, near to us. Just engaging conversations when they come up and don't back down. You're an adult. You have the right to your own beliefs. Correct. People take that away from you. Correct. Correct. I think the biggest mistake we make with regard to this conversation is that we give it up when we can easily just hold on to it. And a lot of people give up their power. So hold on to it, stand fast. And you don't have to do it in an aggressive manner when you let someone know you're an atheist. You can, because you can be confident in your own place where you don't have to make it an argument. And if it's a problem for them, let it be a problem for them, but let them know where you are and then let them have their problem. That's not on you. John Richards, I'm going to fill this out on you. How do you think atheists can get some, I'm going to spell it again. R-E-C-E-C-C-N. You've got to think of the song. Just think of the song. I've got it. P-E-C-T. There you go. Such a great song, wasn't it? Yeah. So I wouldn't want to pretend that all non-believers are perfect specimens of humanity. But respect has to be, first of all, it has to be earned and then it has to sort of withstand the hatred that's thrown at it by other factions that want to own it for themselves. So I think that the biggest thing we want to do to try and get a higher profile of respectability is to stop these other people from claiming that, you know, we are only atheists because we want to sin. That's not true. We are only atheists because we don't have any morals. That's not true. We're only atheists because we are purposeless. That's not true. Whether we hate God. Or we hate God, exactly. All of that stuff is thrown at us illegally. It's simply not true. And that's what we've got to try and resist. So I'd like to point out that about, I think it's around 95% of the inmates of American jails are Christians. That's a good start. That's very true. Claire, would you like to introduce? Yeah. Welcome Electoral Live to the group. Would you like to say a few words just as introduction? I think everybody knows us. Everybody knows him too. Yeah. Okay. He's getting his audio set up. That's all. But we're happy to have engaged in conversation. We're talking about how can atheists get respect. Listen, George Brown, as a New Yorker, as a Brooklynite, respect is a big deal in the streets. Everybody needs to know where you're walking and where people are walking to. It's like a very big deal. But respect as far as religion goes. Did you ever feel disrespected as a natural born organic atheist? In New York? Yeah, in New York. And then compared to how your life is in Tennessee and that you're in the Bible Belt. Oh, wow. You know, in New York growing up, I never gave it a moment's thought except one day I was walking down Flappish Avenue and I passed a man who had a little table full of little tiny Bibles and he had a sign that said, Free Bible to any Jew who promised to read it. I thought, what the hell? So I picked up a free Bible and I mean, that was like my introduction to religion. Wow. In a way. How old were you? I must have been a teenager, maybe 12. Wow. At least that. And so I tried reading the Bible. I thought maybe this will make me feel better about myself, right? So I started trying. I could not read the thing. You know, I kept falling asleep. This has happened. Every time I try to read the Bible, I can't, I can't focus on the thing. So about lack of respect. It just, it wasn't an issue. Whereas, where you are now, I'll tell a little story later maybe about perform. When I, when I performed in a, in a congregational church. And had to put up with being bitten out by the minister. So. Sure. You know, when I was reading the Bible, or the way how I got my first Bible was I, my pastor from my, the church that we were visiting came to our school. Unfortunately to indoctrinate a bunch of kids in my school, just let sermons happen on campus. It's a thing. I was in second grade and I saw him and I'm like, Hey, that's my pastor. I'm going to ask him if I can get baptized just randomly. And he took it super seriously. And then they did this whole baptismal thing like the week, that same week, and they gave me a red Bible that had like a white Jesus on it. I remember he had like a nice little perfectly manicured mustaches and stuff like that. And there were pictures inside. It was all just like white blonde people, blue-eyed people, like on crosses and all that other stuff. It was just crazy. And I'm reading this thing. And in my head, I'm, I'm recognizing like, it seems to me like this God character really, really wants people to respect him or they'll, he'll hurt him because very first chapter, he drowns literally everybody. And, and like he's just killing people left and right. And I was actually really scared. I was so scared that I was afraid to even go to the very last chapter. I remember how terrified it was. And there was a point in my head where I was like, the Bible is very scary. I'd rather have someone tell me what's in it than read it myself. And then I thought that was not good. So I tried reading it and I got bored. And it was just like, this is a really hard book to read through. Yeah. But, you know, I did stomach through it. I've read the Bible twice and both times were just the most, this pleasurable experience in my life. It was just the most random series of stories. And now that I look back at, I can't believe that's what the holy books are. Anyway, Larry, what do you think? Well, it's just a surprise to me when people constantly say that God is love. When if you read his book, you know, his most common interaction with people is killing them. Right. Or giving them plagues, which killed them. Right. One after another, after another, even the guy who murderous tyrant. And the guy who tried to save the, the arc of the covenant from falling and hitting the ground, he killed him for touching it. Right. And I want to throw out this story as a counterbalance. My mom always told me like the best way to gain respect from people is to earn it. Or it's like to work towards warning it, not through hurting them. Cause I used to get in fights all the time. We used to be the only black family and I'd be the only black kid. And I get in fights all the time. And one day my mom said, Tyrone got in a fight with like three kids today. I'm going to go to his school and I'm going to bring cookies and I'm going to read stories to his class. And I'm going to give out the cookies and all the kids are going to see me give cookies and read a funny story. And she came on our lunch break as a secretary and did that on three occasions. And afterwards, nobody got angry with me anymore. I got in fights with me because they all knew my mom. And they knew my mom was a nice person. And I'm like, how did you do that? That was so easy. It's just like, Tyrone, you got to earn people's respect. Like, and I'm looking back at the Bible and I'm surprised. I didn't really connect the two dots, but here's God being like, respect me. Plagues. Plagues. This, this, that, famine, all that stuff. Or movies forever. A little bit of cookies, read some good stories and, and you know, show that you can be a worthwhile or valuable in your friendship. I'd like to suggest that you didn't earn that respect. You bought it. I didn't pay for anything. Hey, what's up? George Brown. What's up? Muted. You're still muted. He's still, he's still on mute. Should we go out there and bake cookies and put them in boxes and give out atheists? Atheist cookies. Hey, you mean believe it or not, more cake cookies or atheists than you might imagine. Anyway, electoral live. Or is your ideal good? Still on mute. Still on mute. We'll give them another try. So why are you, why are you thinking about that? The. The latest initiative that atheism UK is looking at is providing printing some stickers to go in the inside cover of a Bible, which says any resemblance to people living or dead in this book. It's incidental. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I'll say this too in sciences there. Okay. So this is always a hot topic, but in the idea that there are a lot of atheist scientists doesn't necessarily make atheism any better because there's also religious scientists too. But really what's, what's more important is that the, the scientific process is not dependent on any religious belief because you have Muslim scientists that can progress science. You have Christian science that compares some Christian scientists that can put push forward science, but they're all doing it when they don't use the religion. Right. And in my head, when I do that, right, that's the distinguishing point is like when we make advances, yeah, maybe that person's religious, but he didn't use his religion or she didn't use a religion to progress science. They were using the scientific method. And I want to say that should be indicative of what really is the best system to. They didn't do that science on Sunday. Imagine how much further we have gone and if we saved all those Sundays and actually use them for something useful. Yeah. Anyway, how about we do an early break? We can go into listener comments and then tackle some other top topics and try to get electrolyte in here for electrolyte. Yeah. Stay tuned right there 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 on W O Zio radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Let's take a moment to talk about the atheist society of Knoxville. ASK was founded in 2002, which puts us in our 20th year. ASK now has over a thousand members and we have weekly in person meetings in Knoxville's old city at Barley's taproom in pizzeria. Look for us inside at the high top tables. We're usually the loudest, happiest group there. We also have Tuesday evening zoom ASK meetings. If you can't make it in person or live outside of town and you'd like to join us, email us at asking atheists at KnoxvilleAtheist.org or let's chat s e at gmail.com and we'll send you the link to join us. You can find us online and Facebook meetup.com or go to our website at KnoxvilleAtheist.org or just Google Knoxville Atheist. You'll find us that way. It's just 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. One. One. One. One bet where you want to pick up. I got a nice comment from Dallas training room on one of our former episodes. This came from what is mysticism, which was recorded a few weeks back. He asked, Ty, I still have a problem with how you're defining atheism. What you said basically is I define atheism as the lack of belief in a God. And that is what atheism is for me. The atheists could say I define God as the necessary being and that is what God is for me. Can you see the problem? And I'm like, here's my response. I don't really see a problem with that. I see it as two people defining what a word means to them. And that's totally fine. If someone said, I believe God is this, my immediate response wouldn't be your definition is wrong because mine's different. Mine would be, well, why do you believe that? What method did you come to believe that's true or not? If you want to have that kind of conversation, I totally have that, but I'm fine with the words that you choose to use based on your own terms. When I ask you, how do you use them? That's basically all I mean when I asked for a definition, like how are you using that word? And what does it mean to you? Because it's only for that understanding that we can talk like the same level. And instead of forcing my dictionary on you and you forcing it on me. Any other thoughts on that? If there were specific ironclad rules for words, we wouldn't have usage councils. We want to have four versions of like major topic. Right. And there wouldn't be different dictionaries that have different definitions. I am reprinting every year with revised. Exactly. And I am happy with the idea of someone at least accepting the idea that atheism is a lack of belief in God's. But if they thought it was otherwise, I can at least explain where I'm coming from when I use that term. And I would ask them to just use my words the way how I'm using them because that's how I'm trying to communicate with you. And communication is always going to be a compromise meeting based on the words that we use. Certainly. You know, I never understood why people have to force a definition on you. It's like, it should be, it should be that they want to know what you actually believe. Right. It doesn't do any good to kind of like say, no, no, no, what you really believe is this. Right. And then you're like, oh, okay. Thank you for that correction. I guess I am wrong. Thank you for driving me out. Yeah. Because the other way wouldn't make a lot of sense for you to. The way I feel is it's to settle. It's to set their world narrative. And when you give them a word that doesn't suit their world narrative, then it's like, well, then I have to consider the fact that atheists may have a reasonable position. Like you've been told that you guys are reasonable from the get go. I have to use this bad definition where I start questioning myself, but it's still a conversation worth having. And I think if they aren't willing to meet you on the terms of these are what I mean with the words that I'm using, I mean, it's like a chess game. You know, they're trying to force to a way to win. You know, they're trying to straw man you because they want to exactly win argument. Electro live. I did want to jump back with you. We're talking about how atheists can get respect. What things do you think atheists can do to get some RS, RES, ES, ES, ES, ES, ES, ES, ES, ES, ES, ES, ES, ES, ES, ES, ES, ES, ES, ES, ES, ES, ES, ES, ES, ES, ES, ES, ES, ES, ES, ES, ES, ES, ES, ES, ES, ES, out irrelevant points to try to win or score some kind of emotional you know point in an argument or I think that goes a long way in winning respect. Yeah I agree setting an example is is truly what it is and when you were leaving the truth when I say truth I mean jovo witnesses did you did you employ that or did you find that it was difficult to get respect once you were out of the the kingdom? When I got out of the kingdom um yeah they I mean obviously the other people that I left the witnesses didn't really respect that they didn't respect me even my ex-wife at the time she didn't understand you know and I lost a lot of respect in her eyes because she thought oh you're just you're not being a real christian man you know you're kind of being weak right now and easily fooled so I think I kind of lost a little respect from them but I think I gained a lot of respect from my family and people who really cared about me on the other hand because I actually stood up for what I believed in at the time and still do that this isn't the truth and I need to find it elsewhere. Good for you good for you I know when my mom became a jovo witness I found that as a great opportunity later now I was an atheist without any baggage because we were both essentially leaving traditional christianity at the same time and I was just like perfect opportunity but still I can tell you there was a moment where I was really scared because I knew about jovo witnesses as a christian and I was like ma'am don't do that I'm going to lose so much respect but then I also looked at the religion as a whole because of that and was like you know what what am I doing here you know let me just get out too so yeah Larry what's up well I find it funny that he was saying that that once he got out of his religion the people who really cared for him didn't have that much of a problem with it but so that kind of not begs the question but it makes you want to ask what the converse was that the people in his religion didn't really care for him and especially once he left it it was obvious right right right and I have no problem getting disrespect from people who don't care about me it's the people I care about right right George Brown you had a comment may I tell a little story sure um a number of years ago I was asked to perform in that's in a congregational church I have been an oboe player and I loved playing Bach and it was an opportunity to play Bach with an organ and a singer an aria from a cantata which glorifies of course God and so I was performing we did a very nice performance and then the minister got into his sermon in which he bad mouthed atheists so there I was performing in his church glorifying his God and he was putting me down and by the way I didn't get paid for this you know so I naturally felt rather insulted and so I'm looking at this you know we are the butt of constant propaganda I think and and so I'm wondering so that was a lead in for what I'm going to say do we need to start a propaganda campaign of our own to counter the hate speech that we're victimized with only in the sense of we need to be more open with who we are and what do we look like propaganda is a loaded word which sends the message that you're not sending the truth and all we really have to do is just be ourselves and live the life that we slow and steady wins the race thank you for the correction thank you John Richards what we mustn't do is behave like them if they're bad mouthing us we mustn't bad mouth them back and it's a temptation you know I've very often been in an argument with some theists and they've started it you know they've they've been very rude about me and I've considered well okay you've you've opened the gates now you've permitted rudeness so I'll come back at you with some and really that's not helpful so in the exact same sense how if your goal is to get respect from people don't don't don't target them with more you know what's the right word mean mean candor virtual but here's another example of it if you don't want a guy who's hosting a show to make jokes about your wife's hairstyle don't go up on the stage and slap them because now everyone's going to be making jokes about your wife's hairstyle like you got to be able to focus and think about things in the long term it's very very you know it's very reactionary to want to do that but it looks very on you when you have a bbc channel and there's a pastor who's just speaking poison about atheists and you're just like who is this guy anyway what else am I doing with my life right well I can do that I could do that if I'm listening in the car of course sure sure yeah but I can I can can I can put this in one sentence oh don't we can't respect people who are disrespectful oh very very cool nice something I thought about too something I noticed with a lot of religious people especially Abrahamic sort of religious people like Muslims Christians people like that is they're constantly seem to be trying to prove that they're intellectual especially the apologist type like they want to they want to appeal to a lot of deep philosophy and a lot of um logical arguments and and they're all and they even have websites like reasonable faith and um you know really they're promoting this idea that hey we're not stupid it like you think we are we're reasonable too we're smart we're very educated and it seems like it all and then the way that they have to sort of um like you know Ty was saying you know they they straw man you sometimes and then other times they they try to uh uh you know say you're arrogant or you're you know you're speaking down to me by comparing it to fairies and comparing it to other imaginary sort of things which those sort of analogies are just to say you we both accept that this particular thing like a fairy or leprechaun is something imaginary that's what we're doing when we make those sort of comparisons that's how we look at your god like it's imaginary how do we tell the difference between your god and say a leprechaun like are they the same thing or what um and so that comes off as a little insecure and it and it seems like they're kind of needy and they'll even come out and say it I need god we need to be saved we need you know so that it seems like if we were to do that we would lose all kinds of respect nothing I think so dread well it's interesting uh I really like where you were going with that what I find too is that people tend not to see their own ideas about the universe like as created by god or whatever they don't see these things as ridiculous they they they see these as perfectly reasonable explanations and then but compared to another person's religion that has some other magical aspects to it they consider it absurd and ridiculous and well how could you believe something like that and I get that a lot as a past a farion how could you possibly believe that there's a flying spaghetti monster that's absolutely crazy well virgin birth resurrection those things are perfectly normal like uh you know an ark that carries all the animals in the world like really snakes talking snakes all that makes sense to you and it does right people just don't they don't see their own story as uh as as a fiction they see it as a reality and and they forget that miracles by definition are supposed to be kind of absurd and kind of non-common you know that's the whole idea if it wasn't that it couldn't be right it couldn't it couldn't be a sign of god if it was just your normal everyday thing right right right right you put bread in the toaster and you got toast that's not a miracle even if it used to be before toasters right I didn't I didn't want to add on to a electoral I was saying because there is a desire to look like an intellectual while in the other hand dismissing comments from intellectuals only when they disagree with the dogma of the proposed or the supposed intellectuals so it's very much cherry picking but also this performance piece where they demonstrate oh I am so smart we have a smarter organization but anyone who disagrees with us is wrong and that's a terrible methodology to get to true things I'm also going to say this too education is a lot like a gym right you work hard at a gym to to develop fitness you work hard in education to get smart and maybe it's not as obvious when you look at it but the marker for me that I see the one that I try to look for to see someone who's effectively educated is humility because the more that I learned the more I realized I didn't know and then more I was humbled by the fact that there needs to be experts that study from these different areas that I need to rely on because they've spent some time getting their expertise from them and I can contribute with the area of expertise that I am in which doesn't encompass an entire field of science but does allow me to have some interesting points that I can offer in my particular perspective and if we can work together with our own you know various levels of ignorance we can get to something more progressive and I feel like people who all have that sort of attitude are the ones that I respect and I feel like the same thing can be from religious groups if they were able to demonstrate some humility but unfortunately they have this giant super powerful god friend who knows how everything works and does everything right for them and they know the answer and listens he sees you when you're sleeping it's the least it's the least humble thing I've ever heard so it's very hard for me to get on that bandwagon uh John the other side of that coin is that if if you say anything which challenges their belief system they then say you're not humble because you're thinking yourself to be more you're arrogant yeah yeah it's so bizarre yeah it's so bizarre anyway dread so I think an important point is that you know being aware of the fact that that reason is not natural to humans it's a it's a skill just like critical thinking is it takes practice and this goes back to your point is that these things take practice it's a skill you have to learn it you have to practice it because it doesn't come naturally and I think there's there's the part of getting some respect is demonstrating critical thinking skills I love it and imparting that yeah just on top of that before we go to George it's a skill but it's also not like riding a bike you can get bad at reasoning if you don't do it yes for a while you need to keep doing it and in fact oh we have to check your biases right you know you have to check your own biases and you know yeah heuristics and all that good stuff anyway George so um okay I'll I'll forego the word propaganda a lot I really think that we are living in an age of propaganda and it's very dangerous sure um misinformation yeah misinformation you know fake people on Facebook and all this stuff would it be advantageous for us to have some sort of a coordinated campaign of um you know PR for ourselves yeah my coordinate campaign is everybody come out as an atheist if you're an atheist and and then just continue living your life as normal and just let people know this is what an atheist looks like this is what we're firemen we're doctors we're nurses we you know we're child care laborers like we exist we're here and we're not gonna you know step aside when someone says well these are all Christians like this is a Christian nation like no no no we're here too and I guarantee you summer taught was in the UK the more people who speak out the more are encouraged to speak out as well when I was at my last job I was one of the first people to just you know openly say I was an atheist because I was dung ho atheism back then and I thought I was the only one but it turned out that once I came out had people come to me separately and say hey I'm also not religious I'm also atheist until I realized that like it was about 70% of the people I was working with were also atheists and I just felt so much more nicer knowing that I wasn't alone but I didn't know that until I spoke up because I assumed everyone was Christian Larry yeah same thing happened to me at work too in a country where it's quote predominantly Christian if you don't come out and you don't follow your claim as a Christian publicly then you will be assumed to be Christian even by other atheists your silence hurts progress exactly and that's my PR campaign don't fall into silence maybe we should ban closets more windows less closets well it's interesting I have a friend she's um an atheist and this person still has to go to church and it's like she feels triggered you know every time listen to those sermons but what her fear is the family real deeply religious close-knit family I think she's been an atheist for like five years and still hasn't come out yet still and you know does all these videos and does all these has her own show atheist show part of all these atheist communities it hasn't been discovered yet to her surprise and I guess her thing is hey if they find me online doing this then that might be my out but I'm not scared yeah if she has the opportunity to go to like a unitarian church she can still go to church I don't have a problem with church I think it's like like I said before it's basically daycare for adults but whatever problem is religious indoctrination and so like you unitarians actually roll a pretty good you know Sunday bash Sunday assembly also very good and those very church-like and it's in its proceedings so you can find good churches even if you're an atheist and I don't want to have the word associated with religion all the time I think like Christians are really good at taking words like chariot lord it's like those words existed before you guys came around trust me we brought our house nice things belong to just the nice thing bucket rather than be taken by the Christian bucket and I think let me ask you this what's up let me ask a question there's another guy his name is uh t-jump another friend of mine he's trying to start an atheist church what do you guys think about that they already have them yeah we have before it yeah there exists I'm told Sunday assembly yeah if you look up Sunday assembly you see it started in England and pretty much one around the world they there's still a lot of them extent I want to jump in on this I wanted to say something for a couple minutes to me the whole church thing feels artificial and so I mean personally I'm saying for me it's it's irrelevant and a waste of energy well your definition is wrong no I just wanted to mention too I wanted to clear something up but I may have given a misconception during our first half which is that I never felt any hint of persecution in any way in in New York as being an atheist but I I do want to say that New York in fact is majority religious city most mostly Roman Catholic but I think that because of the great diversity of people there's a lot of tolerance and a lot of curiosity about everybody else so um that's that's what I'm saying in an environment like that it was just never concerned to me sir I want but there is a lot of religion I mean New York Brooklyn in fact was once known as the city of churches we have a fear of change as people and I think what happens is diversity tends to promote or propagate change and so there's there are groups that are afraid of diversity because they know change comes with that it's particularly if they have a very styad point of view and it's it's part and parcel with a metropolitan or metropolitan lifestyle where you have a lot of different people coming in with a lot of different ideas that those people will tend to lose their styad dot medic points of view and be more open to compromise tolerance change just different groups of people and that will be more so than people who live in the rural areas of towns and stuff like that and so what I'm hearing yeah it's just out I mean it's absolutely necessary to communicate is being able to acknowledge and and basically put up with other people's ideas about the world because if you if you can't if you can't acknowledge the differences there's no way there's no there's no way to communicate and what we have now is the easiest way to communicate more than we've ever had in our in any other time or any other generation and I think that's the key we don't have to worry about travel anymore we can now communicate with anyone around the world from a screen or from an earpiece or from our phones that we carry around with us all the time and I thought this is almost done I think this is the path that we're going to find ourselves on and the path is religion dying because essentially we have the ability to exchange ideas faster than religion can keep up with and so however there's a flip there's a flip side to that almost done almost done there's an idea that the more we religion buy factors you try to compensate or stick with these old dying ideas the more it can't keep up with the fast-paced nature of information exchange and so I'm happy that we have things like internet I'm happy that we have things like twitter tiktok etc because they're keeping people connected in ways that I think religion is going to have a hard time trying to continue to separate us and and to make us into separate tribes George Brown what's up pardon me I come from a subculture of interrupters so what I want to say is the flip side to what you just said which is that on the internet people will have a tendency to congregate with other people who have exactly the same beliefs that they do and this this will accelerate prejudice so it's a double edged sword as I see it I mean from where I'm sitting which is in a very small city out in the boonies where you know fixed fixed thinking and fear of the other is a real big problem echo chambers yes and I want to ask you Dred Pirate where you live in Grand Forks is it the same in Canada well in in Grand Forks we have a large duke bore population duke boars being a sect of Russian Christians and so they they tend to be yeah there's the it's a very religious community here so and very Christian so yeah it can be tough it can be tough sure John Richard sound like you had something to say yeah yeah well I wanted to pick up on what um Electro live said Scott said about Tom jump wanting to start an atheist church because I was sort of on the fringes of the origin of the assembly Sunday assembly organization because I attended a meeting sort of recruitment meeting with a bit training thrown in in which um Sanderson Jones and Pippa Evans the founders of the Sunday assembly performed on stage and gave us an example of what we could do to replace church with this secular non-sectarian service and it was very good and I didn't get involved in it because um they the weakness that they had identified in their own construct was they went out initially and called themselves the atheist church and of course they hit up against the buffers of this miss a not appropriate stereotypical definition of atheism and that's how it became known as the Sunday assembly to get away from that label that hateful label which you know it's been the tar has been thrown for such a long time that non-believers even before Christianity there was um Gentiles you know there was infidels and all sorts of other victims of the religious yeah so so if Tom jump wants to join to start a branch of Sunday assembly I suggest he gets in touch with Sanderson Jones because Pippa Evans has moved on she's she's she's now more mainstream comedian singer one thing that um T jump um and I heard him speak about this kind of extensively on one of his his uh debates or whatever is that the thing about it is okay we look at um the good you know like um churches like to brag about well you know if church and religion is bad then why is it that most of your charities most of your um you know humanitarian missions and things of that nature they come from church you know the we don't see too many atheists getting out there trying to help the world do we but they sure do like that rundown religion which are the folks that are actually out there boots on the ground helping the poor and helping the sick and all of these type of things and so T jumps point was well you know there's a lot of problems with that number one because maybe there are atheists that help the poor and and you know provide medicine for example like science you know they're just not busy drawing attention to themselves exactly but to dispel that whole idea maybe it would be cool to have an atheist church so to speak that provides like low-cost housing for people that um does help the um community um and then we can have that other part of it too the social get together the camaraderie you know the entertainment everything that the churches provide as well so you have two of those say to match what the religions are doing and it's all in the name of normalizing atheism you know well maybe you need that in the us but here if you associate a charity with a religion you're not gonna make any money in fact in fact a couple of weeks ago we had what we call a telethon an evening devoted to raising funds for a good cause it was called comic relief because it starred a lot of comedians who gave their skills free and you know what without a mention of any religion at all they raised 42 million pounds that night wow that's a lot of calories that's that's heavy dread do you have any final words um yeah uh yeah great conversation I just wanted to mention that you can find my stuff on my youtube channel at mine pirate mind py rate i live stream this live at uh 7 a.m. now um thankfully we're gonna be uh switching to this time permanently um i'm also reading i just read a book or did an audio book called plato plato and a platypus walk into a bar okay it's uh it's by daniel martin kline and it's understanding philosophy through jokes it's a really really funny read but there's a lot to learn from it i want the citation i want to i want to read this awesome yeah i want to read this and maybe uh after next week if i'm on uh i'll i'll share one of the jokes after the invocation fantastic i want to throw out a quick final point um the it is a double as short sword with how information is distributed on the internet where there's echo chambers the thing is we tend to look for the information we want to find on the internet and so how the internet is currently set up it will send you the things that you want to see and continue to show you ads for those things so it's up to you as we talked about to recheck your biases recheck where you're getting your information from ask yourself why and question everything because otherwise otherwise you'll be asking to walk right into the bubble bubble uh echo chamber for yourself it's not the internet's fault it's still on you to get properly educated effectively um larry i think we're getting close to the end what's up i'm warm uh we've got one minute we'll do it after the show what's up larry well my content can be found at digitalfreethought.com be sure to click on the blog button for our radio show archives atheists songs and many articles on the subject of atheism my youtube channel can be found by searching for doubter five or larry roads and you can find my book atheism what's it all about on amazon if you have any questions for the show you can send them to ask an atheist at noxwellatheist.org or let's chat s e at gmail.com if you're having trouble leaving religious beliefs behind you can find help at recovering from religion.org thank you for joining this on the digital free thought radio art remember you can find this show on apple items pocketcast amazon podcasts everywhere remember everybody is going to somebody else's hell the time to worry about it is when they prove that heavens and hells and souls are real until then don't sweat it enjoy your life and we'll see you next week say bye everybody bye everybody bye ramen