Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 166: David Smalley of Dogma Debate

Episode Date: July 28, 2014

Special thanks to David Smalley of Dogma Debate    

Do you want to get Cognitive Dissonance streamed to your iPhone or Blackberry? If so, download Stitcher free today at stitcher.com. Glory, glory, all it lures ya. Glory, glory, all seduces ya. Glory, glory, all it screws ya. Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended. The explicit tag is there for a reason. Recording from Glory Hole Studios in Chicago, this is Cognitive Dissonance. Every episode we blast anyone who gets in our way.

We bring critical thinking, skepticism, and irreverence to any topic that makes the news, makes it big, or makes us mad. It's skeptical, it's political. And there is no welcome at this. This is episode 166 of Cognitive Dissonance. And we are joined today by David Smalley from the Dogma Debate. So thank you very much, David, for being on our show. We're sorry for your loss. Clearly, you did not have better options this evening. Nothing else going on whatsoever, but I'm here, so that's good.

So the first story we want to talk about comes from the illustrious website, thecripplegate.com. I don't even understand why you would name your site. Before even going into the story, the Cripplegate? Really? What the fuck is that? The Cripplegate? Really? What the fuck is that? Anyway, it comes from the Cripplegate, and it's titled, Does the Doctrine of Hell Make God Unjust? This is a, I'm going to go with editorial by a guy named Mike Riccardi. Mike posits that no, in fact, the Doctrine of Hell does not make God unjust.

make God unjust. And he kind of goes through the arguments that he, I think, makes up on the spot as to why torturing somebody in eternal flame forever is somehow not unjust. Before I toss it over to you, I want to review two of the basic claims, two of the basic objections that he attempts to address as if there were only two objections that would make the concept of hell unjust. The first is that not everyone in history has had equal access to the gospel. That's the first basic claim that he is saying is often brought up that renders the idea of eternal torment unjust. And the second, that it is unjust to think that a person who has committed fewer or relatively less evil sins, for example, stealing a cookie from a cookie jar as opposed to murder, suffers the same eternal infinite punishment in hell as a person who's committed more

or relatively more evil sins. So God's justice has no sense of proportion. So those are the two basic objections that he's purporting, and I say that with a grain of salt, purporting to disprove. David, what did you think of this fine editorial from the Cripplegate? Were you swayed? Were you swayed? You know, I'm going to go to church now. This is, I'm done. You know what, this guy, this guy, first of all, I have to say I would add a third one. I mean, you've got there that not everyone in history has had equal access to the gospel.

Okay, yes, we've brought that up too. What about people in third world countries who've never heard of the name Jesus? Aboriginals in Africa somewhere or in Australia that are living out in the jungle, they've never heard when they die, where do they go without ever hearing the gospel? Yes, we've used that. And then this idea that you steal a cookie and you rape a child, you're both going to burn in hell forever, that's kind of ridiculous. But this third thing that he's not addressing throughout this entire article

is the fact that this book continues to tell us that God is love, God is just, God is peaceful, God is omnipotent and omnibenevolent and all these wonderful things, that's really my basic argument. Not that he's a bad guy, because I'm not even acknowledging the existence of this thing, let alone trying to argue its personality type. What I'm arguing against is the inconsistency that this book would talk about exactly how positive and loving and what a good guiding light this God is, yet they completely ignore the fact that in the same tone, they will turn right around and tell you that he is actively in charge of torturing millions upon millions of human beings every day

in the pits of hell. That's what this article doesn't touch on. The inconsistency of how the presence of hell, the existence of hell, contradicts the fact that God is all loving in the first place. You know, one thing that occurs to me is that if you are a being that is trying to sell itself as being omnipowerful and omnibenevolent, and yet you have no problem with sending millions or billions of people to eternal torture, I can understand then why you would not be able to differentiate between a child stealing from a cookie jar and somebody killing six million people like your frame of evil is so much greater you know like you're like stealing killing six million

jews no problem that's a wednesday like that's a fucking wednesday for god it's a meaningless aberration it's not even a statistical a blip on the radar when you're sending billions of people into the flames of hell. Well, it's along the same lines that he actually starts off with. His first argument is titled, God is not obligated to be gracious. And that's kind of where this all starts, is that in general, human beings are looked at as just these degenerate, disgusting pieces of shit that you don't even deserve to look at me. You don't deserve to be in my presence. You don't deserve anything.

You better be damn glad that I'm giving you a chance to come back to me because you were so horrible. And so this basic concept that humans are just disgusting in general makes perfect sense why everyone deserves hell and God's not obligated to be gracious. Because then they'll turn around and say, well, he is a God of love. Are you saying that a judge who is a judge of love

could not throw a disgusting criminal into jail? Well, of course. If you're a God of love and a man walks in the room who just raped a four-year-old and you sentence him to life in prison, yes, you can still be a loving judge and punish someone for the rest of their lives based on their actions. I get that. But it's not about does the punishment fit the crime.

It's about the definition of human being. And secular humanists, atheists, we don't see everyone as poisonous, disgusting pieces of shit. Christianity, however, does teach that. And once you look at people in that kind of light, it's very, very easy to torment, just like the Nazis looked at Jews as being rats or subhuman. That's how they justified their horrific actions. And apparently the Bible and the Christian God in this article are no different. Well, it's so funny that like atheism is supposed to be the worldview of cynicism and pessimism, right? Like the worldview where, you know, there is no point and there is no purpose and there's nothing good. But Christianity is built on a foundation of self-loathing because none of this

works unless you have a view of the world that, as you describe, is absolutely foundationally resting upon an innate hatred for the self, an innate hatred for the fact of our existence. You know, that's one thing that pisses me off more than anything is when stuff is just completely backwards. I'll take a few seconds here and tell you a brief story that kind of is in line with this. And I've told this on my show before. I was probably, I don't know, 15, 16. I was somewhere a teenager. I was playing basketball in my driveway.

This kid next door, the couple next door had like these big white gravel rocks. They weren't like really small gravel. They were the giant white rocks, probably about the size of a 50-cent piece. They were pretty solid-style rocks. They weren't like really small gravel. They were the giant white rocks, probably, you know, about the size of a 50 cent piece. They were pretty solid style rocks. He just starts chunking them from his grandmother's rock bed over towards my mom's car. And I'm like, you little shit, stop it. Like I'm talking to him going, stop throwing rocks at the car. He's not saying a word to me. He's just throwing the rocks my direction. And I'm like, dude, stop. I'm not kidding. Right. So he keeps throwing the rocks and I finally just the rocks my direction. And I'm like, dude, stop. I'm not kidding. Right.

So he keeps throwing the rocks and I finally just start walking his direction. And what I was going to say, I was just going to walk up, knock on his door and say, hey, can you stop your little demon from throwing these rocks my direction? But I go walking up and he just turns and hauls ass into the house. He just books it into the door. By the time I get up there, this lady in this giant gown comes out. She fl into the door and by the time i get up there this lady in this giant gown comes out she flings the door open and as i'm walking up her steps she says you throw rocks at my baby again i'm gonna have your ass and i'm standing on her porch like you've got to be

kidding me like i'm over here trying to stop this evil from happening and i'm accused of perpetuating the evil that I'm trying to stop. This is bullshit. She wouldn't listen to me. She had no interest in what I had to say. She slammed the door, and he was in there being coddled like a little bitch. Now, yes, I just called the kid a little bitch, but he was. I promise.

And I'll tell you, the thing that bothered me most about it is that it was the exact opposite. If he had done something to me and I had done something to him and he wouldn went and told on what I actually did, I wouldn't feel so strongly about it. But he flipped it. And that's the problem I have with this whole atheism is negative, yet Christianity is positive. When in fact, Christianity is the one perpetuating this negative, torturous, disgusting view of humanity. When atheists are supporting this secular human, secular humanism, positive work, like this humanism at work type thing. We, you know, we are kind of perpetuating this positive outlook that, that, you know, you have freedom and choice and you're responsible for your actions, yet you have the ability to change those actions.

And Christianity is portraying humanity as disgusting, but they're getting all the credit for being the reason people are positive. And that really pisses me off. I wonder, too, you know, I wonder if these people even understand what eternity means, because really, these are all finite acts. Everything we can do on this planet, no matter what, you know, I mean, if you started killing from the moment you were born until you died and you killed every second of your life, that still, I don't think, should warrant a infinite punishment, a total eternity in hell. I just feel like these people don't understand what eternity even means. That's a good point. That's a really good point. At some point, you'd be like, OK, you've had enough.

But nope. Yeah. Nope. Well, doesn't punishment strike anybody else is like as like kind of a tool of the week too like here you've got god right so you've got this this this being that has literally no limits to his power which means that if i am evil and i am here on earth and i am even if i buy into this nonsensical notion of sin, which I don't, and the fallen person and all that gobbledygook garbage. So even if I bought into that and I am

fucking, like you said, Cecil, like I am consummate evil. I just walk around. I'm a fucking three month old infant and I'm killing people with fucking baby bottles and I die and I get up and, and fucking God looks at me and he's got literally all of the power. Could he not simply remove from me the evil, remove from me those parts of me which are broken, which have caused me to be sinful in his eyes, which caused me to be a less than perfect being. You be a less than perfect being and then send my now repaired self up to, you know, heaven. Instead, he's just like, fuck it. I mean, like he treats us like a broken RC car. He's just like, oh, it doesn't work anymore. Check out the trash.

It's like you have a fucking screwdriver and you're like, I could fix it. I think I'll just stomp it. I'll just fucking stomp on it for a while. That's not a solution to the problem. That's just stomping on shit. I want to stomp on it for eternity, actually. Right. Are you done stomping on that RC car?

No. I think I'll keep doing this until time ends. That's when I'm going to stop. It's when time is no longer a thing. One of the things that the guy talks about in this article, too, is he talks about how, you know, look, who are we to judge? Like God is the judge. We're not the judge. God can basically do whatever the hell he wants. And it's like God makes his own rules so he can break them. And it feels to me like declaring yourself the winner of a contest you invented and and invited nobody else to you're just like i'm the winner i'm the winner it's like starting your

own podcast awards i just started my own podcast awards tom we won yes again you know i actually just had the honor of doing the voiceover for um atheist universe on on audiobook and it's going to be out in about 30 days or so. And in there, David Mills, the author, breaks down the reasons why we punish. The reasons we punish children, the reason we punish other adults in society with jail time and such.

And there are a bunch of different ways, and I'll save you the details for when you're actually interested in listening to the audiobook. But he basically mentions that at some point, you're only just punishing for your own vengeance, not for any corrective action. And when you look at the model of hell or eternal punishment, life is over at that point. There is nothing you can...

In other words, it's not for the greater good, right? It's not like you're going to be punished and then realize your negative behavior and come back and do the world any good. You're not ever going to do the world any good. Yet this God is continuously causing this torturous punishment for eternity for no other reason than vengeance. And that is the definition of evil. It's absurd. the definition of evil. It's absurd.

The other thing too, David, is that it wouldn't make any difference how much good you did in a Christian worldview. You could be here on earth doing fucking, you could be the opposite of the murderous baby Cecil had previously described. You could do good work and you could cure diseases every single day of your life. But if you were

not Christian, if you did not, because you can't go to heaven except for through Jesus, right? So like, if you're not Christian, you still end up in hell. So it's not like, it's not like good works are even a meaningful part of this particular dogma. You're still just like, and that is the crazy part too. It's like, did you accept, you know, my divinity without evidence? No, I was kind of waiting for some evidence. Oh, well, without evidence. No, I was kind of waiting for some evidence. Oh, well, here we are. And now you have evidence. Oh, okay. Well, can I accept it now? No, too late. Eternal fire forever. You're like, well, what kind of fucking crazy ass system is that? Like by, by this definition, it's like, I made you, I made you broken. I made you fallen. I judged you for it before you had a chance.

Cause even says like, it doesn't matter if you heard the Gospels or not. It makes no difference to you if you even had the opportunity to hear the Gospels. If you had the opportunity to hear the good work and you accepted it, then you're just fucking luckier than other people. So whether you go to heaven or hell is is literally just sheer fucking luck. Like if you were born in Papua New Guinea and you're fucking scratching out a living in the treetops, like, and you never hear the good word or whatever, and you go to hell, it's like, ah, fuck you, whatever. It doesn't mean it's, it is your fucking roll of the dice, whether or not you spend life in paradise or whether or not you are being tortured. So that is like the most capricious possible action.

You know, I've often told Christians, as I have these discussions with them on my show, or in private family discussions, I'll say, you know, you fornicate quite often. You smoke and get tattoos and drink alcohol and use the Lord's name in vain and all these sorts of other things. And you don't go to church. Yet when an atheist comes over and tells you he doesn't believe,

suddenly you're the great defender of fucking Jesus. And it's this big argument. Right. And so I'm telling them, like, look, guys, this this isn't right. If you think about it, if you read the scriptures, you're in the same boat I am. And they're like, well, wait a minute. What are you talking about? Well, Matthew 7, 21 is what I'm talking about. That's the verse where he says, you know, the guy cries out to him, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not cast out demons in your name? And Jesus says to him, get away from me, those who practice lawlessness. You must do the will of the Father who is in heaven in order to enter the kingdom. So it's not just not believing. You can believe you can cast out demons

in the name of Jesus. You can do all kinds of stuff. But if you don't do the will of the father in heaven, you don't get in. Well, then how do you find out what the will of the father is? Well, who's the star of the Old Testament? That's where daddy's in charge. So theoretically, if you're not an evil bastard performing those horrific commandments and dirty deeds in the Bible, you can't get into heaven because you're not evil enough, because you're not following these commands of the sadistic sky daddy in the Old Testament. So it's quite the opposite of reality. It's so funny, you know, when you describe it like that and when this guy talks about it, where he talks about like, well, it's God and he can basically do what he wants. You kind of got to wonder, is there going to be a difference between heaven and hell is there going to be a difference because it's basically god can do whatever the

hell he wants i mean he could be fucking making pasta out of baby faces up there and just be like well i'm fucking god i get to do what i want he could be making splatter art with kittens and a mallet and just be like hey man i'm fucking god You don't get to tell me what's unjust. Hey, what do you think of my art? God's basically Cartman from South Park. He's like, I'll do what I want. He's a petulant child. We filmed this movie, My Week in Atheism. And the Christian in the movie, we were at UNT.

And this part did not make the film. And I don't know why, but he cut it out before the final film and he was very fair I want you to know that and we can talk about the details of it in a little bit but he mentions in there that God can do anything with his creation

because he's the creator and I said does that mean that if we had the technology to produce a living thing from test tubes only and i am now the creator of this life that we grow this thing it has skin it has eyes it has feelings i can take this thing because i created it and i can i can stick pencils through it and i can cut off one of its limbs and i can squeeze it and watch it cry and I can spin it around and twist it

and pull its limbs off. And no matter how much it's hurting, no matter how much it's crying, you would call what I'm doing good because I created it. And he literally had no answer for that. Yeah. No, I wouldn't say that. I wouldn't say that. But and I just kept going into detail about these disgusting things I would do to this thing just because I created it. And I said, at some point, I'm still being a dick. Even if I made it, I'm still being a dick by continuously torturing this thing for no reason. But if you know, if you're if you guys are cool with it, I want to mention a comment about his next segment, which is the quantitative versus qualitative aspects of eternal punishment.

He basically breaks down and pretends to know, which is first surprising that he knows something about a spiritual place that we pretty much know doesn't even exist in the first damn place. But he says that there are actually different levels of punishment. So yes, the quality aspect of it, sure, sorry, the quantity aspect of it, everyone is there forever. But it's not so bad for some people because there are different levels of punishment in hell. Like, what does that mean? Like, some people are just like trailer park hot. And then the other places are just like, you know, pizza oven hot.

And, you know, then there are some people that are like, they fucked up so much. They're like dangling in a volcano hot. Like, what does this mean? Different levels of it. I've heard people tell me, you know, kids with special needs, they get a special place in heaven. What the fuck does that mean? It's paradise. What do you mean? Like, they get free

parking? They park closer. They get to park closer. Yeah, they have a better pillow or some shit. They get all the bunnies they want. Like, there's an endless supply of bunnies. Right. So when they postulate this dualistic concept of this amazing paradise in heaven or this ridiculous place of torture in hell, to enter this concept now that somehow there's going to be different levels of punishment and different levels of reward are absurd. And besides, like R.N. Ra actually says in the film, he says, I figured out a long time ago that I'm either going to be tortured by the sadistic monster or I'm going to be locked in a room with it.

That's awesome. You know, it's funny, though, because I read the same thing. And the first thing I think is like, didn't Dante try to address this? I mean, Dante addressed this in the Inferno, I mean, a few hundred years ago by creating the fictitious idea of the seven circles of hell. And, you know, here's where these types of people go. And it's exactly like you described. It's like, hey, you guys get like mild lower back pain. Like, oh, fuck, that kind of sucks. No Excedrin? No, nothing. And then like, it's like all the way down to like,

you know, thumb screws and the rack, you know, all the way through. And it's like, that's just a poem a dude wrote. Like you do, like you want to like knock on this guy's door and be like, you know, that's an idea. It was like kind of cool literature, but it's not true. Like you probably grew up with that idea. Everybody kind of did. It's been kind of consumed by the collective consciousness, but there's nothing at all scripturally to support. Absolutely. There are videos out there. There's one very well done video. I don't remember the name of it about this guy who basically met this woman and was asking or she I think she wrote in about his blog or something, saying, look, I've got my hand on the door.

I'm ready to walk out of belief altogether, but I'm just terrified of hell. And he challenges her, find it in the Bible. Tell me in the Bible where it even says exactly how hell works. There are references to Sheol. There are references to sleep. There are references to punishment. references to shield, there are references to sleep, there are references to punishment, but this whole concept of this fiery hell and the lake of fire has all been convoluted and put together using patchwork of multiple different verses to come up with this, and by the way,

a whole lot of filling in the gaps of creative writing to come up with this concept or doctrine of hell in the first place. There's not even really a doctrine to begin with. It's, it's just a bunch of scriptures, you know, pulled out of the ass of, of, of people who want to make it seem scary. You know, as a man with a newborn in the house, like the idea of eternal sleep actually sounds very nice. I'm just saying, I'm just saying, like, if I could just like wake up every now and every couple of hundred years, like fucking groggy, I'd like look around just enough to know that I'm asleep and I'm going right back to sleep. That would, that would not be a bad way to spend

eternity. That might be heaven actually. The only difference is in hell you wake up and you have to pee. Like that's the only difference. And the floor is really cold and you just don't want to get out of the bed. So if you're new to Cognitive Dissonance, we are going to have an interview with David Smalley from Dogma Debate at the end of the show. We're going to do a couple of news stories in between with just us, but we're going to have David on to talk about all the whole gamut of what he does, as well as his his philanthropic work. So stick around for that. In the name of Jesus stick around for that. I'm hooked on a feeling. I'm high on believing. So this story comes from the Raw Story. Children exposed to religion have difficulty distinguishing fact from fiction, according to researchers.

Also noted, the sky is blue and water, it has been determined, is wet. No kidding. is blue and water it has been determined is wet this this is like one of those studies where it's like hey you know maybe if we teach kids that blatantly untrue things are true and that things that have no mechanism for action to occur but yet we teach them that these things are a truth that's fundamental to their world. You think that'll alter their worldview? Well, let's find out. No shit.

It's like some sort of cruel experiment where like you glue someone's eyes open. You know what I mean? You're just like, well, let's see, do they produce more tears than if you glue their eyes open? You know, it just, it really feels like a cruel, shitty experiment to do on people. So in this study, the study basically was taking a look at kids and evaluating how they treat different kinds of narratives. So and kids that were raised in households in which religious narratives are frequently encountered don't treat stories

with the same kind of skepticism that secular kids do. And you read that and it's like, well, that's what you're training them for. Right. Like all that tells me is like your training is working. It's be the same thing as if like the researchers are like, hey, you know what's really good? If you get one of those invisible fences and then you know what happens your dog is afraid of crossing the line oh wow yeah what a fucking thought that's explicitly what these stories are made to do like that is religion's only actual function right it's almost like if you were to like ring a bell, they would salivate.

Right. You know, you'd just be like, okay, well, we know how that works. I mean, one of religion's central virtues is a lack of credulity. Yeah. And also one of the plausible narratives they also believe is that they'll go to heaven

if a priest can cop a feel, too. That's one of those little known narratives you get a snickers bar out of it so i mean there's benefits for sure um it's funny when you mention this and and you look at this because i did grow up a believer so for me it it reminds me of all the stupid shit i believed me of all the stupid shit i believed when i was a teen and when i was you know a late teen you know like all the stuff all the dumb shit the non-skeptical shit i believed because i was primed for it right my my worldview had ghosts in it my worldview had demons in it my worldview i think had ufos in it you know all the stuff that you know i look at now my my worldview almost certainly had the loch ness monster i don't remember thinking about it but i

look at it now and i think maybe i probably thought there was a loch ness monster sure it's not ridiculous in any of the stuff that's in any of these holy texts right i grew up watching a show called that's incredible and it had um it had like three idiots on it. And they would just have all kinds of weird shit. They would have people like fucking that like punch themselves in the balls and can still stand up. Like weird like tests of strength and dumb shit like that. But then they would also have on like stories where they would go do like 2020 style stories where they would go out and do ghosts. And there would be a ghost picture

there'd be a photo of like a fucking ghost which is really just like a shadow and they'd be like look it's a ghost and i remember like growing up thinking that it was true right that it was something that was i never i never once looked at it and thought well that's not real i always looked at it was like fuck that scares the hell out of me i think i'm gonna leave the light on when i go to sleep well it's funny too because like that's like that's where kids are. Right. Like kids are in a place when they're young where they're they're primed to accept a worldview from authority figures. Right. Like that's what they they're under their authority. Figures define the parameters, the foundations, the boundaries of their world.

Define the parameters, the foundations, the boundaries of their world. So it's like if the grown up says like, hey, you live in a world full of magic, then they think they live in a world full of fucking magic. Yep. Like that's just like that's just it. Like you have created a world that that is going to be much more difficult to get to skepticism, to get to a critical thinking worldview, when your foundational beliefs say, hey, by the way, magic is real. This story comes from Al Jazeera. Iraq Christians get Islamic State's warning. The Islamic State group tells the Christian community in Mosul that they face death if they do not embrace Islam or pay a tax. So really, you get the choice.

And I get the feeling like this is not much of a choice. Because I would not be the one writing the, I'm not a Muslim check. I'm not a Muslim check. That's a great way to put it. I would even put it in the memo section. Heretic. Exactly. This is like really pulling out the stops. I mean, it's going well beyond wait until your dad gets home. It's more like wait until your dad gets home and I'll have him kill you.

Right. That's more, I think, the level. I was curious about this. Now, is this the state or is this this ISIS group that's making this proclamation? You know, Cecil, I don't know the answer to that. I'm not sure what the difference is at this point in Iraq, to be honest with you. Yeah. I just wonder how much of this is Sharia law at the end of a gun.

You know what I mean? Because for the most part, Iraq was pretty progressive in that world. You know, I mean, it wasn't super progressive, but it certainly was more progressive than other areas. And so I wonder how much of this is actually, you know, the pressure from that sort of radical Muslim group that was marching their way across Iraq. And now, you know, now this is sort of coming to the fore. Like hey you can't be a Christian. If you are you gotta pay the tax. And who doesn't pay.

You know what I mean. It's like I'm either gonna kill you. It's like getting shaken down by the mob. Like Joey Stacks comes to see you. And he says look hey it'd be a fucking real shame. If something happened to your fucking place here. You know. You know now is time to give this man some money.

It's not like, oh, he's right. It really would be a shame. He is also evaluating that I enjoy my things. Yeah, right. No kidding. Exactly, right. You know, the thing is, man, that this, looking a little closer at it, so I think that this is certainly a result of the ISIS shenanigans.

So that's very much what's happening here. I look at this and I think, like, the first thing I would do is I would, if somebody told me, like, I'm going to fucking kill you if you don't convert to Islam, I'd be like, well, then I've converted to Islam. I'm the most Islamic person you've ever met. I'm fucking Mohammed. That's how fucking Islamic. I'm so fucking Islamic it's illegal to take my picture. That's how fucking is that? I'm so fucking Islamic. It's illegal to take my picture.

That's how fucking Islamic I am. I know what my bathroom reading is for the next three weeks. Right. You know, I immediately know it's going to be the current. I know it's like I know what I'm going to be reading on the shitter from this week on. You know, there is no because. But you look at this and it's like it's like convert or I'll kill you because here's their choices um is is they can convert to islam they can pay a tax um or give up their possessions and leave the city so like they have three fucking horrible options like you can basically be a fucking homeless nomad you can pretend to be a muslim which is really what that would be or you can pay a tax and if you pay a tax you're basically just identifying yourself for persecution doesn't

seem like the best choice so you clearly but but isn't it so evident from this that like they don't really give a shit if you're islamic right like it's not it's not like they're saying like what we're really hoping to do is effect a heartfelt, genuine conversion to our faith. Let us extol the virtues of Islam to you until your heart and your mind are turned over to Muhammad and Allah. They're not doing that. They're fucking putting a gun in your face. Exactly. Are you kidding me? I'll fucking tell you I'm a fucking rhin a gun in your face exactly are you kidding me i'll fucking tell

you i'm a fucking rhinoceros yeah exactly like there's nothing i won't there's seriously like there are no words that would not come out of my mouth so we're going to take a break give you all the information you need to become a patron of the show and we'll return in just a moment with uh the rest of our interview with David Smalley from Dogma Debate. Want to contact the guys? Go to DissonancePod.com to get links to their Google+, Facebook, and Twitter accounts. If you want to contact them directly, send an email to dissonance.podcast at gmail.com. Or you can call and leave a message at 740-74-DOUBT. a message at 740-74-DOUBT. That's 740-743-6828. Do you want to support the show? Go to patreon.com. That's p-a-t-r-e-o-n.com forward slash dissonance pod, or click the link on the podcast homepage,

and you can donate to the production of Cognitive Dissonance on a per episode basis. If you can't spare any money, take a second to give us a five-star review on iTunes or Stitcher or spread the word about the show. We want to send a big heartfelt glory hole to all the patrons and people who rate us. You fucking rock. So this story comes from Wonkett, author of excellent Stop Being Gay book, Arrested for Molesting Teen Boy, allegedly again. So a Pittsburgh passer, he wrote a book, Freedom from Homosexuality, No Longer Living the Lie, is the name of it. And he has been arrested for sexually assaulting a teenage boy.

So he is no longer living the lie. He's living out his dream of being a pedophile. So it's good that he's out, Cecil. It's true. You know, this book, writing this book, it feels comparable to, like, Susie Orman being caught getting a payday loan. You know what I mean?

Like, we're just like, really, Susie? What are you doing there? Why'd you steer us away from that stuff? Yeah, this is just, I mean, this is like, what do you say about this story, right? This is like one of those stories where you're like, oh, I'm supposed to be surprised even a little bit. Yeah, right. Oh, yeah, no.

Nobody is surprised. You basically, like, all the police need to do is just go to a bookstore and just find like the most hate filled diatribes and just be like, all right, let's watch them for 30 days. Yeah. Private investigate them for a little while. They are certain to do something at this point. You know, you see his tweets. Did you see his tweets? One of them was living for self

is not living at all living i think he knows i think he kind of knows like it's giving is better than receiving there you go maybe pitching is better than catching one i think i think the one that uh do it for jesus this time do it for jesus yeah just do it for jesus come on that's actually that's actually what he said to the uh to the teenage boy to try to convince him come on do it for Jesus. Come on. That's actually what he said to the teenage boy to try to convince him. Come on. Do it for Jesus this time. You didn't have your heart in it last time. Put a little oomph in it there, kid.

Jesus. One of the things that I wanted to mention is there's an allusion to this when they talk about this in the article. And they say something about kind of when you repress something. And the person says, I'm not a psychologist, but this is just a passing thought. But basically the idea is when you're repressing something, when you're repressing something in yourself, maybe the reason why the pedophiles exist is they're repressing their – exist in the church is because they're repressing their sexuality.

And then they're really going for the only thing that is available and that they can manipulate easily to get the sexual desires that they want. Right. So like, let's say they're repressing themselves. They're because they don't want to be gay. So they're becoming celibate, let's say. And then there's something available, anything available. They will use that power that they have to sort of go after it. And that's an interesting thought, something that I hadn't really thought of before, that maybe that level of pedophilia isn't – it's not a natural pedophilia. It's just sort of an availability pedophilia. That very well may be true.

That very well may be true. And, you know, I mean, they can, I think if that's a working hypothesis, then, you know, there's some, there might be some interesting studies that could be done about that. I think, you know, we can certainly conclude that celibacy is not necessary. Like it doesn't accomplish anything. Right. It's not like, it's not like celibacy. It's not like we can say, oh, well, people who are celibate are stronger or faster or smarter or more moral. Like celibacy doesn't accomplish anything. All we have determined that celibacy accomplishes, I think, is that it makes people miserable.

I don't think that there's any good to be had in the world. It's not a virtue. think that there's any good to be had in the world it's not a virtue and i know it's not like you look at somebody who's celibate and think man good for you that's gotta be living the life you know in fact as just a personal anecdote cecil um just the other day um i was at a at a wake and we i was standing there with my wife and a priest came up we had our little our little boy with us our little son newborn son and he walked up and he started making very pleasant normal conversation he started talking about family and he started talking about how important family is and you know he's and he's just being he's being a very nice guy he's i'm not but the whole time i'm like what the fuck do you know about you don't know anything about family like you've never had a wife you'll never have a son like you can't you don't know anything about

family at all from a marital perspective from i mean you know about family from a you know i am a son i have you know nieces or nephews or what have you, but from a creating your own with your spouse perspective or your significant other perspective, celibacy actually erodes a person's ability to relate to other people. And part of me thinks that that might not be part of the problem too, right? Like, if you can't relate to people sexually in a normative way, then what are your options that are left other than abnormal sexuality or aberrant sexuality? So this story comes from the Daily Record, which glory hole, it's Jesus. So this story comes from the Daily Record, which I've never heard of before.

Revealed. Sex-shamed Cardinal Keith O'Brien enjoying retirement in 208,000 pound. Pound being a unit of currency, not the weight of the home. Northumberland bungalow. Huge house. It is. That many pounds. Provided by the catholic church so enormous this story is fucking nuts so this o'brien guy right he's in self-imposed exile right yeah so he has exiled himself like you know that you have a fucking problem when you're like whoa i need to be away from

people for a while yeah i can't be trusted by me like it's not even like society has said whoa dude yeah you're off to the fucking left over here go and he's just like wait look look i'm gonna do some weird shit all right he's like he's like putting his own ankle bracelet on. Right, right. He's like, no, house arrest for me. So this guy, the church buys him a home. A home worth 208,000 pounds. Now, in American money, that's like $77 million, I think,

with the current exchange rate. I think it's Idaho, actually, is the exchange rate. The whole it's Idaho actually is the exchange rate. The whole state of Idaho? It's like the Idaho purchase. You could basically just buy it for 208,000 pounds. The funny thing about this, they're bitching about how much it costs, right? They're saying, well, this fucking bungalow costs a lot of money. I think it's actually kind of expensive to have like a secluded little sex dungeon in your bungalow.

Right. I think, you know what I mean? You got to blow walls out. You got to add soundproofluded little sex dungeon in your bungalow. Right. You've got to blow walls out. You've got to add soundproofing. You've got to ventilate that thing. You've got to have in-wall lube dispensers. That shit's costly. It's not a fucking easy thing to do. So I think that they're bitching about the cost, but there's no way he can have the same sort of lifestyle.

So it's give and take, really. You know, the thing is, Cecil, just the sanitation costs alone. No kidding. You got to get a couple of people to come in and mop. Right. Well, that sandstorm doesn't clean itself up. It doesn't. That's fucking A, it doesn't.

You got to have a, you know, bring in a couple of altar boys with power washers. You look at this and it's like, you know what what more evidence do you need that the church just doesn't give a fuck anymore i know i know the church is just like ah whatever get him a house you know there's a great list of stuff that the guy's doing you're absolutely right he's a hypocrite there's an abuse of power and an abuse of funds too and it just feels like you know he should go to church and every time someone throws money in the collection plate he should just slap him in the face with his dick would you be like here you go no you're putting an ass for me and you know every time every time people spend money

like when you go to the church and they fucking pass that plate around you're like oh yeah i'm gonna fucking give you know 10 or 20 bucks or whatever and put it in the plate. Like, do you really think that you're buying a house for a fucking weird, creepy sex dude? Like, can you imagine if they were like, okay, guys, we need to pass the plate. You know, we got to keep the lights on. Someone's got to pay for the gas over here. We just bought this creepy fucking weird dude, this hypocrite a house. Now, that's not going to buy itself. And we've got a lot of lawsuits to settle

because our priests keep fucking kids. So if you could just give from your heart, guys. Give from your heart. And $20 buys a lot of lube. So just what you want to do, it buys a lot. Look, you don't want him to chafe his dick, guys. I mean, nobody wants that. Nobody wants a fucking swollen dick.

And the priest is practicing safe sex now, so he's got to just have tons of condoms. Right. So there's a lot. There's a lot that goes into this. His ball gag costs money. This story comes to the raw story. Sovereign citizen challenges his own name in Michigan gun case. My rights come from the creator, he says.

Now, this is the second story I've heard recently about these sovereign rights people. And these fucking people are amazing. They're fucking amazing. And these fucking people are amazing. They're fucking amazing. So the thrust of their argument, if you've never heard this gobbledygook garbage before, is that they are sovereign individuals and that the United States government is not a government but a corporation. And that that corporation has set aside for each person living, and this is fucking amazing. Like, this is awesome.

Has set aside an account worth $266,000 for each person, each citizen. And that is an amount of money that's in a shadow bank account by the United States Corporation that is assigned to the fictitious entity that is your name. But your name is not the actuality of your personhood. Your name, in fact, is only your corporate designation from the United States corporation. And so I fucking I kind of zoned out halfway through what you were saying. I know it's fucking crazy. And, you know, the only reason I know this is I work in estate, and there was a guy who tried to avoid foreclosure. And I read his foreclosure case recently.

the United States Treasury drawing on this imagined shadow account and wrote this whole thing about how he was a sovereign citizen and he was availing himself of his shadow funds. And he did the same thing. Like he invoked his rights as a sovereign citizen and his rights come from the. I mean, it's fucking insane. These sovereign citizen people are fucking amazing, man. You know what I think, you know, what they should do is instead of you know calling on their name they should actually change their name to their creator because if you change your name to their creator look i'm the one endowing the rights you know what i mean like there you go actually you're your own father look they come from their creator so these are the same people though that basically think that the cops have to tell you they're a cop or else. I know.

Cops have to tell you they're a cop. And cops have to have their parking lights on when they clock you. There's all these weird regulations that cops have to follow. Cops have to follow one regulation. Get down on the ground. That's it. That's the regulation. Cops have to follow.

Don't get caught, right? Because they fucking, cops do illegal shit all the time, and people get fucking busted for that shit. Oh, yeah, man. I mean, the thing is, like, the cop shows up, and the cop's got, he's got not only a gun and a taser and a stick and handcuffs, but he's also got more cops. Yeah, he's got a brotherhood of people who will lay the beat down that's the thing that cops have that you don't have like i don't care if you've got fucking 25

guns in your car you don't have more you like the cops can always call more cops it's not like they've ever been like oh man we ran out of cops. That's never happened. I wonder, too, about these sovereign citizens, where they're getting all this stuff from. Is there just one Wu purveyor out there, or is there a whole movement of these people? I don't know. I don't know where, because there seem to be some central tenets of the sovereign citizen shenanigans. And, you know, they seem to have a common thread. So I don't know if they're all reading from the same sovereign text or whatever, but it's fucking amazing.

Because all they're trying to do is redefine terms, right? Yeah. Aren't these the same idiots who march around with, like, assault weapons? Yeah. And then they're just like, I can have a fucking bazooka on my head you know and it's like yeah good luck with that could you just leave taco bell can you just like wait outside with your fully armed and loaded ak-47 is that because i don't think you need that to get a fucking combo burrito I don't think that's a necessary thing

you need to bring in to the building. Man, I will say I'm super fucking glad that where I live, like that's not a thing, like that I'm not like, because I will be honest, Cecil, if I was sitting in a fucking restaurant and some dude walked in

with a fucking AK-47 or something, I would grab my family and fucking flee. I would leave right away, too. I wouldn't stick around. I would be like through the kitchen. I don't give a fuck. Because how are you supposed to know that guy's not like shooting to join up?

Sure. Or whatever. Like, you have no fucking idea. I said no onions. Right. You don't fucking know. And, you know, like, I know that this is probably going to generate somebody's

email because there's probably somebody out there who thinks that these guys are like freedom fighters because they're walking around with fucking gun strapped to their back um and i get and i do understand um i understand the perspective of police officers uh do shit wrong and they fuck shit up and it's okay to be a person who's going to test them on their shit. Right. Like I kind of really do enjoy when somebody walks up and they're filming the police, the police like turn the camera off and like I don't have to turn the camera off. Like that's not something I fucking kind of get a little bit of a justice boner. I get a little justice chub when that happens.

I'm like, good fucking stand up for your rights. Yeah. When that happens, I'm like, good, fucking stand up for your rights. Yeah. Like, I remember one time I was going to be, and I seriously believe this with all my heart, that I was going to be abused by the police. I was at a carnival. My brother came out of nowhere and we did this stupid like, hey, fuck you.

And, you know, we're just kidding around because we're brothers, right? So it's like, hey, fuck you. He's like, fuck you. And then my brother kind of fake pushed me and then I fake pushed him. And then a second later we hugged and I slapped him on the back we started walking and then at that moment I got grabbed from behind and I was like whoa what's up and and it's a it's a police officer but it wasn't a police officer it was a volunteer police officer and he spins me around he's like hey who are you and I was like what do you mean who am I I'm like I'm just a person like what's the big deal and they're like I need to see your ID. Like, what's the big deal? And they're like, I need to see your ID. And I said, what for?

What did I do? And they're like, you can't have a commotion or whatever to cause a commotion here or something. And I'm just like, I'm like, look, man, I'm like, that's my brother.

We're just fucking around. He's like, I need to see your ID. I said, I didn't do anything wrong. And he grabs me by the shirt and he drags me off to the side and he pulls me in between two booths. Like we're between like two of these, like, you know, carnival site booths, but we're completely in the shadows at this point and he drags me off and two

cops are at his side and a friend of mine this buddy of mine hassan and he follows and walks in and he's like get out of here and hassan's like i can stand wherever i want officer he's like i'm standing right here and they're like and they're like get i told you got her he's like i'm not leaving anywhere i'm i'm standing right here. And the police officers kind of looked at my ID for a second and they let me go. But I am to this day think that they were going to lay a couple beats on me in between there. Oh, yeah, man. You're being impertinent. Exactly.

I was being rude. It was contempt to cop. And so I recognize and I also I'm kind of the guy who's watching these videos and saying, yes, I'm with you. But then there's some of them that are so bad where they're just like, I'm not rolling down my window. I don't have to roll down my window. And they're like fucking sticking their lips out the window. We're like, I can hear you just fine. You're just like, OK, now you're being a dick.

Yeah. Well, you know, the thing is, man, I've gotten out of plenty of tickets by being like non-threatening, polite. Like I recognize these guys have a fucking job to do. And they walk up to my car, and they don't know who I am. And maybe I'm a guy who's speeding, or maybe I'm a guy who's going to fucking take some shots at those guys. Yeah, yeah. They don't know. So, like, I do genuinely respect that, like, they've got a job where they are in some amount of danger on the regular. And many times I've been pulled over, and, you over and you're polite, you crack a couple of jokes,

you make sure that you're, for me, I fucking roll down the window, I put both my arms out the window and I don't make a move from my wallet until they ask me to. Man, I have seriously probably gotten out of a dozen tickets in the course of my life just by not being an asshole i guarantee that i probably wouldn't have gotten maybe i wouldn't have gotten beat up but i guarantee i wouldn't have gotten out of those tickets like you know you'd be an asshole and it's like you're getting the fucking citation at the very least right right so this guy back to this fucking story real quick I just want to point out one awesome thing that he said.

He's trying to redefine terms. He challenged the use of his name, which was printed in capital letters on legal documents. And then this is my favorite. He claimed the building that the police identified as his residence was, in fact, his family storage unit. I love that so much. It's his family storage unit. Makes it sound like he fucking killed his family. And they're in fucking blue barrels in the storage unit.

He totally like fucking blue barrel and like fucking Walter whited them and put them somewhere like in a storage unit, like literally in a storage unit. Like literally in a storage unit. Allah. Akbar. Akbar. Allah. Akbar. Allahu. Akbar.

Just little Allah. Thank you, Chicago. So this story comes from The Independent. Al-Qaeda glossy advises women to cover to Cover Up and Marry a Martyr. So they got the new Cosmo. It's like it's, you know, seven sex tips to drive your man wild before he blows himself up. Before he destroys everything around him. And there is a feature in this magazine, How to Make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom.

That's it, man. It's like this is this is what passes for women's entertainment literature out of out of the Al Qaeda group. Like how to make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom. This is not like, oh, yeah, you know the the key to a man's heart is through his stomach and we mean that literally what you can do is stick a knife right in the infidel's stomach exactly and dig around until you find a key reach up if you reach up you will find it you will find the key yeah that's awesome i i wonder if they have like you know makeup tips to cover up a black eye like they do actually cecil because they have they have tips on how to achieve a perfect complexion yeah and

it's stay inside with your face covered that's the advice yeah well i think covering up a black eye would be pretty easy you just pull the veil down right i mean you don't really need to do much i have a black eye how would you know you're not wearing your hijab nick hobb is what they call it i think is it a nick hobb the big one like the big long one i I have a black eye. How would you know? You're not wearing your hijab. Niqab is what they call it, I think. Is it a niqab, the big one? The big, long one? I don't know. I think so. They probably have an article about

the 12 best sunscreens and they're just different niqabs. Different weights of cloth. Here's a canvas one. SPF burlap. Different weights of cloth. Here's a canvas one. SPF burlap.

That's awesome. I wonder if they have like how to spice up your sex life, like wear your sister's potato sack instead of yours. Slowly reveal your ankle to drive your man wild. reveal your ankle to drive your man wild. How not to look fat when you strap a bomb to yourself during swimsuit season. It's the latest fashion in suicide vests. It's a suicide vest bikini. Look at this. Oh, man.

It's like that bikini thing I saw a long time ago. You know, one thing that I think is very amusing is there's first aid tips. First aid tips for martyrs? Like, it's not like a little fucking, it's not like you're going to be like, oh, wait, just put some pressure on it. You fucking, you covered your body in ball bearings and C4. Yeah. I don't think first aid.

You could use first aid. You could use second aid. You could use fucking 10 to the power of 37 aid. It's not going to fucking help. I don't know if that's going to work. There's no aid for that. I wonder if they have an article on

how to avoid looking like Cobra Commander. I wonder if that's... I on how to avoid looking like Cobra Commander. I don't know that that is possible. And if you don't want to be a martyr, then it argues that the pros and cons of honey face masks, and it lobbies Cecil against you need a face you're already wearing a face mask I know you want to make sure that your face is beautiful so only no one can see it essentially like all you're gonna do is like make that thing stick to your face if you wear you have to peel that thing off your face but they also are lobbying against women toweling too forcibly.

Like, you have to wonder about the editors. Like, oh, well, you know, we definitely need to cover the toweling issue. Do we put that before or after how to assemble a bomb in your kitchen? Because there's all these women out there who've written into us like, oh, I've been toweling myself and now my skin shapes. What should I do? Don't towel so hard. How is that even an article? I don't know.

How is this even a show? But how is that even an article? So we're here talking to David Smalley of Dogma Debate. David, if people don't know who you are, could you let them know who you are? Yeah, Dogmaadebate.com. I host the Dogma Debate radio show. We are a live three to four hour radio show every Wednesday night through iHeart Radio, through Spreaker. They can listen live from dogmadebate.com. And Dogma Debate LLC actually also owns atheistaudiobooks.com. We've got titles from David Fitzgerald, PZ Myers, David Niosi, We've got titles from David Fitzgerald, PZ Myers, David Niosi, Catherine Stewart. We've got 14, 15 titles published, and we're actually in the works, in the production right now on seven other titles. So, yeah, we are producing audiobooks, atheistaudiobooks.com, and Dogma Debate, where we do live radio and we do video, too. We have members that sign up at login.dogmadebate.com for behind the scenes and extra content.

So now you kind of cater your show to people who are either believers or who are sort of coming out of believing. Right. You're not really. I mean, you're really trying to have a sort of a softer touch with your show. Right. Well, we kind of go both ways with that. to have a sort of a softer touch with your show, right? Well, we kind of go both ways with that. I mean, the reality is, you know, we my show sounds a lot like if you were driving down the road and you turn on, you know, your local FM, you know, FM radio show, some sort of kiss FM or some sort of hot FM, just your drive time radio show with a bunch of people who really like each other, get around the table and and talk about current events, but hosted by skeptics and atheists and scientists. And so we have fun with stuff.

We do some current events. But as often as possible, we like to have a Christian either in studio or call in as a guest. And yes, when we do have a Christian guest with us, we address these things. We address why the ridicule is necessary. We address these things. We address why the ridicule is necessary. We address, we, we address these things. We still have fun with them. Um, and, and, and we, we put the walls down, but, but we do, we do try to try to extend the olive branch, uh, to, to, to some degree and try to be very respectful to the Christian about basically respecting that they respecting how important their belief is to them

without validating the truthfulness of their religion. So I can tell them, I think you're completely wrong and I think it's false without saying you're a delusional idiot who worships a Santa Claus for adults. We don't

go out of our way to insult them. I'm intrigued by believers, to be honest with you. I'm intrigued because the more they've read of the Bible and the more educated they are, specifically on religion and psychology and neuroscience and the way the body works, the more I'm intrigued that they still believe. And so I like to, it's a very, what's known as a Socratic method of question and answer. I just ask them questions and oftentimes they begin challenging their belief right in front of our eyes. Do you have, do you have other religionists on your show? Do

you have like Muslims on or people who are not Christian or is it, is exclusively Christian? I have tried multiple times and I'm wide open to having Muslims on, Scientologists on, anybody I can. But up until this point in two and a half years, we've only been able to get Christians to agree. I've tried so many times to get Muslims on. I think I think I've actually been turned down six or seven times just by Muslims. Yeah. Wow. That surprises me.

I would think there would be more of a desire to engage that conversation from other people of faith. Yeah, I agree. And I want to. I absolutely want to. And I wouldn't be as powerful against those beliefs because I don't know those religions as well. So they could tell me something and I don't know the Koran like I know the Bible. So I wouldn't be able to spit a verse back at them and say, but your book says this.

I would be, you know, I'd be a lot easier to push around on that topic. I'm surprised they won't do it. But, you know, if anyone out there knows of a Muslim who is interested in coming on or a Scientologist or any other religious belief, I would absolutely love to have them on the show. Now I feel like converting just so I can go on your show and push you around. That'd be awesome. Just pretend. Seems like a lot of work, though.

So you don't steer clear of politics on your show, and I find that sometimes skeptical podcasts sometimes steer clear of that. You guys seem to tack that hat on. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. We have a segment, recurring segment, called Republicans Say the Darnedest Things. And we play audio clips of some of the crazy stuff that comes out of the religious rights mouth. And at the same time, I get quite a bit of flack from a lot of the liberal listeners saying that they think I'm more conservative than most liberals. And so we talk about conservative

issues all the time. We talk about civil rights. LGBT issues probably come up once or twice on every episode. We talk about equality. We talk about things going on in Arizona or California. For example, when Arizona got ready to pass that bill, which they were calling, you know, the right to discriminate against gays bill. We actually started breaking it down and saying, OK, you know, we we we got into this discussion about, you know, that would be wrong. If you're a photographer and you do weddings, you should do a gay wedding. And I said, OK, well, I have something to tell you. I was once approached by Benny Hinn's ministry to do voiceover work. And I told them no. And as a freelance artist who

does voiceover work for radio and TV, I have the right to distinguish where my talents are used. And I do not want my talents to be used to promote something that I completely disagree with, like religion. So if that's the case, if someone has in their mind, even though we believe that they're wrong, if they feel that they don't want their talents used to promote what they see as a sin or an abomination against the God they worship, I think as a private individual, you should have the right to say, I don't want to take pictures of your gay wedding. And then I was the bad guy for saying that. But as we continue to break it down, I was proposing things to people like, OK, so what if the Ku Klux Klan came to you and said, I want you to make our cake that says white power? Would you make that cake? Hell no. Nobody wants to not do that. However, what we determined is if it's a place of business, if it's a building that you can walk into and you're open to the public, then people are walking into your business and you're saying, wait a minute, you look gay. You have to leave.

That's a problem. Right now, they're not free to roam about society and you've opened your business up to society, but you're excluding a certain type of person from being in there. That's where it becomes a problem. And so, yeah, we talk about politics. We talk about religion. We pretty much talk about it all. That's an interesting concept. That's something I hadn't considered when we talked about it. One of the conclusions that Tom and I both came to is it's so it's not OK to discriminate against someone for something they can't control like so i shouldn't be able to discriminate against you because you're black but i could certainly discriminate against you because you're in the klukox clan because that's something you can control you can decide whether or not you're a bigot but you can't decide whether or not you're black and so we sort of came out on that side of the argument but it's it's a tough

it absolutely is tough and we received probably the same amount of email and things that you received when we came out on the we came out on a very similar side which is man it kind of sucks absolutely is tough. And we received probably the same amount of email and things that you received when we came out on the, we came out on a very similar side, which is, man, it kind of sucks that, you know, you can't tell someone no, but, um, but there are some protections in our society based on that. So, um, so that's interesting. That's really interesting. Yeah. I, I think that it's important to distinguish having, having the ability to ability to, as an independent contractor, if you're going to offer your services, right? That's one thing. But if you are AT&T and you find out that a black person is using your service, you can't go out there and cancel their service because they're black, right?

Right. But if you are an individual that is an artist and photographers are, in fact, artists to go to them and say, I want you to film or photograph my gay wedding. They should be able to say, I don't want to be a part of that. And ask yourself, would you even want the person to be forced? I know to take pictures of your wedding. Who would want that? I wouldn't want that. want that. I wouldn't want that. I know, and that's one of the major things that you know, just like, that seems like it would be the worst, most awkward wedding in history, where some angry dude is just, like, angrily snapping photos and moving the camera

around and shoving people. I mean, I would it would be awful. Like, before every shot he looks through his camera and you hear this, That is so gay! Oh my god, that's gross!'t want who wants that who wants that nobody that's awesome you have a heckler at your own way it sucks so bad it's a fucking thumb in every picture yeah it's just like every picture everything's blurry there's a smear on the lens right yeah right that's just awful um So I got a question and

this is something you might not be able to answer, but it's something that came up between when Tom and I were talking about something recently. So you've had a lot of believers on your show. You've debated a lot of people. You've talked to a lot of believers. Have you ever come across anybody where you talk to them and afterwards you think, you know, I'm kind of happy they think God exists because they would be an awful human being if they didn't believe in God. And the thing I'm referencing here is there was a guy from a band called As I Lay Dying, and he talked about how he sort of became an atheist. And as he became an atheist, he became a more awful person. Now, this is only if he's telling the truth because he might just be lying so he can sell records when he gets out of jail in eight years. But it could also be that he's telling the truth. And if he's telling the truth,

he's basically saying, when I became an atheist, all bets were off for me and I could do whatever I want. I ruined my marriage. I tried to kill my wife. You know, I basically became a really shitty human being. And God was the only thing keeping me in check what do you think about that do you think that you know that for some people maybe you know having a god is an okay thing because it keeps them in line i've said multiple times that i think some people need religion or at least they think they need religion but that it shouldn't be forced upon those of us who are strong enough to live without it. And so I don't ever want to outlaw religion. I don't ever want to see that. Sure, yeah.

But I will say the people who say those things, and yes, I've encountered them, I think that they are under the belief that they needed religion. They are under the belief that they need religion at this moment. And I think it all depends on how they come out of the faith. More than likely, some guy like that probably lost someone close to them and kind of got mad at God somewhat like Lieutenant Dan did. It's like, you bastard, how dare you give me my legs back? I hate you. And it's one of these angry things. And then he becomes angry with God. And then it's like, you know what my legs back, I hate you. And it's one of these angry things, and then he becomes angry with God, and then is like, you know what, screw humanity, I hate everything about it.

If you come to atheism through rational means, which most people do, with that comes the invitation of secular humanism. Comes with that this idea that you can be nice to other people, you can love other people, and that this is your only chance to make a difference on Earth, so make it better than you found it. And if you come to atheism through those means,

I think it makes a lot more sense to be a better person than you were when you thought you had carte blanche from a sky daddy to do whatever your conscious tells you to or your weird, crazy dream or whatever voices you're hearing due to your schizophrenia. Suddenly you act on those because you think there is no God. To me, that is just poor evidence for that.

That just says you are likely going to be a shitty person regardless of what you believe. So I do have a question for you, David. Now, Dogma Debate is a well-produced, well-thought-out show. Clearly you and a lot of other people put a lot of work and time and energy into it. So given that, on a scale from one to ten, how ashamed are you to be on our show today? Well, you clearly haven't heard Dogma today. Your researchers are horrible. I don't know what kind of team you got working for us right now. See, so what kind of team do we have working for us?

Fuck you, Tom. Fuck you. You know, I've heard a lot about you guys. I've heard the Cognitive Dissonance podcast. And I hate that I was just in Chicago. You guys were there at my talk and we actually didn't get to meet. That sucks. Yeah, I see it after the fact. I see the emails come in and my publicist is saying, hey, man, you know, these guys want to have you on their show. I thought, oh, that's cool. And I kept looking. I'm like, wait a minute. They're in Chicago. And then I'm scrolling through more messages, and I see that you were actually in the crowd at my talk. And I was like, the guys from Cognitive Dissonance were there and did not introduce themselves. I'm highly offended. Highly offended.

You're an intimidated person. I saw you, and I was kind of intimidated by you. I just couldn't come near you. Your stage presence was too much. Is it because I'm so large? I'm so big? It's because you're huge. You're so tall and personally at it.

You're burly. No, the, uh, okay. So now that we've successfully transitioned into the humanist at work conference, I want to ask you about to sort of talk a little bit about your philanthropic work, because that is, to be honest, um, that is one of the major reasons why I wanted to have you on is because I was really truly, and I'm being honest here, moved by your discussion about breaking up philanthropic work into little pieces, digestible pieces to help motivate your audience. And I want to talk a little bit about sort of what you did with the Senior Center down there. Yeah, so my talk was called Breaking It Down Simplified Fundraising. And I'm fairly new to it. I've only been doing the fundraising for about a year, maybe a year and a half.

And I've just tried out a couple of different things. We've failed and we've had some remarkable successes. And so I took those successes and the failures and I was able to come up with this formula that really works for us when we're trying to put together some sort of fundraiser. And, you know, there are a lot of professional humanists there at that Humanism at Work conference for Foundation Beyond Belief. And I thought going into this, I thought, you know, I bet you one out of five people in this crowd has probably already heard this, already put this into practice. And I'm just I've been overwhelmed with how positive that talk was received, even by people who have raised, you know,

thousands and thousands of dollars. There's, there's this one guy who, who, who does the, um, the secret atheist blog who blogged about my talk and it was so touching. Uh, he talked about how much it's helped him and he's raised money for schools in Uganda for forever. And the guy's done so many things. And so I was honored to be able to still help people who have been doing this for such a long time. And really all it is, is I just, I just found a way to break it down. And it basically comes down and I can get into the specifics of the senior center if you want, but it basically comes down to rather than, you know, putting out there that you've got a $5,000 goal and you've got it on a website. So it's got that bar, you know, that shows how much you have to go. And one person showed up and dropped $8 in it. When I go to the site, I look at that and I think, gosh, that is so overwhelming. You know, I was going to give 10 bucks, but I'm kind of embarrassed to give 10 bucks when they need 5,000. I feel like I wouldn't be offering much help. And so you may, as the fundraiser on the back end, have all sorts of

plans that you want to do for this $5,000, but to the donor, we can't see all of that. And if you give me 17 paragraphs to read on all these amazing plans that you have, I'm probably going to skim it, scan it, and go to the next thing that I feel like I can help with. So simplifying it, breaking down the dollar amounts, $3 does this, $5 does this, $10 does this, and $20 does this, and it gets directly to the people, and you can see the human effect and the human impact you're having with your donation with a specific dollar amount that takes the burden off the donor. It takes the burden off of them guessing what society, you know, expects to be a little bit. So many people say that every little bit helps. And our goal is $5,000. Well, look, when I go there, I'm thinking, you know, there's a certain amount I can spend before my wife's going to get mad at me. Right. And then there's

a certain amount I can spend before, you know, we can't pay the mortgage this month. And there's a certain amount I can spend before, you know, we can't pay the mortgage this month. And there's a certain amount that I can get away with spending that that or that I can get away with spending, which won't bother me at all. And so if I come there and I'm thinking, you know, I can drop five dollars in this. That's not a big deal. But if I don't think that that's a little bit. I think that's tiny and that's nothing. But for you, $8 would be huge or $5 would be huge. We need to clear up these definitions so that people aren't confused by it. And so what's a little bit to me is not a little bit to the senior center or not a little bit to the kids in Uganda and not a little bit to a millionaire. We all have different levels of what a little bit means. So when you say every little bit helps, people aren't thinking they can drop a dollar in it or $3 or $6. They're thinking a little bit is somewhere between $20 to $200 if you've got a goal that's $5,000. So what I was able to do is break down this cost

to say, look, $3, all in all, I know it's only typically $3 buys enough food for a senior citizen for one week, but when you buy that much, you get free food for another week. And then you get these 30 other meals, and then they get a free hot meal every day at the senior center. So effectively, $3 would buy enough groceries for one senior citizen for a month by the

time it's all said and done. It's a great deal. I was buying it from a local ministry here in Dallas, Texas. It was a wonderful deal, but that's what I told the donors. Three bucks feeds a senior for a month. Let's do it. How many seniors do you want to help? I gave them a specific dollar amount and I showed them the direct impact it would have on the human they were trying to reach out to. And then it was no longer, how much do I give or how much is a little bit or is this going to be socially acceptable for me to give $3? The question then becomes, how many seniors do you want to help?

Yeah. People would give a 10 and go, I just fed three seniors for a month. That's a beautiful thing. And so the gentleman who wrote the secret atheist blog said that he's been trying to raise, you know, $35,000 and he's got all these different goals. He wants to buy chickens for them because they eat eggs every day because of the chickens that are sent. And that's the only source of protein they get in their diet.

And he's got all these plans of how he wants to spend this money. But he's completely, because of my talk, he's completely revamping his fundraising abilities and fundraising efforts to say that now you can buy a chicken directly for this group. Here's the cost for one chicken. How many chickens would you like to purchase? How many books would you like to purchase? Here's how much it costs for a book. Here's how much it costs to send two kids to school for four years. That's awesome. And you can break it down and see your direct impact. Instead of saying, I gave 10 bucks to this charity, you can say, I bought five chickens for a school in Uganda and now they have eggs to eat. So tell me about the My Week in

Atheism. I saw this and I'm just curious to know what it's about. We have a Christian listener base higher than I think a lot of atheist-based shows do. And I think some of that has to do with the fact that we're only slightly mean. We're not as mean as some of the really talented mean atheists are out there. And so Christians feel a little bit safer, I think, listening to a show that has these open discussions. And when someone says on my show something so amazingly absurd,

my instinct is to go, are you fucking kidding me but i don't say that as to where most people will and what i'll check myself and i'll say i find it so interesting i like that your voice like dropped a quarter octave there as you got your serious tone of voice yeah that's what i do i'll say i find it i find it interesting tell me more about that crazy fucking idea you have that that that you understand morality just as i do yet you're okay with me burning in hell for not seeing the same evidence that you do how do you reconcile that and i end it with a question. It's very Socratic. And then they start having their cognitive dissonance right in front of me. Yeah, you're welcome.

And so a lot of Christians like listening to the show. And oftentimes I'll get emails from them saying, oh, I can do way better than that last guest you had. That guy doesn't know what true Christianity is. And so I get a lot of Christian guests that way. And one Christian guest we had was named John Christie. And John was a really good guy. We got along really well. He flew out here. I went to him.

I flew to him. I drove to him. We did all kinds of stuff together. And he just started filming it. He was like, I want to film this. And I was like, well, look, as long as you got your cameras out and you want to film this, let me take you to the American Atheist Convention. Let me take you to Skepticon. And come on stage with me at Skepticon

on the main stage and I'll do a show with you and we'll talk about stuff. And so he filmed every bit of it. And I've got to tell you, you know, he's still a Christian. That's his that's his his take on it. His arguments on it are quite frustrating. But I promise you, it is the only Christian film ever produced that is completely 100% fair to the atheist viewpoint. Wow. Wow. And that was my role. I told him I would only do it if I was given supervising editor credit on the atheist interest.

So that was our contract. That was our agreement. And that's what we did. And I didn't care that he had his argument. He would keep calling me up during production going, Hey man, we're editing this part out and I'm going to keep it in where I say this. And I told him, John, we hear your arguments all the time. Nobody is going to be offended by your arguments. I'm just here to make sure you don't cut out that perfect thing that matt said or that perfect thing that aaron said or that dave silverman gets this point across and you cut him short and take him out of

context i'm stopping you from banana manning this video and he never tried he never once tried he's a stand-up guy he's a wonderful guy and uh i think the movie came out pretty good so we actually travel around and and do uh do some some q a as a matter of. He's a wonderful guy. And I think the movie came out pretty good. So we actually traveled around and do some Q&A. As a matter of fact, there's one coming up in San Antonio August 2nd. I'll be doing a screening of my week in atheism there. They're going to show the film, and then I'll do a Q&A. And we did some in Los Angeles. And we actually got kicked out of a church in Compton and he was treated like an

atheist. The people in the church thought he was an atheist showing the film and they kicked him out. Even though the pastor had approved it, the elders didn't and they kicked him out. And I called him up when he was standing out, you know, on the sidewalk with his gear.

And I said, how does it feel being treated like one of us? And he goes, oh, they're Baptist. They, they all treat me that way. You know, and of course takes And he goes, oh, they're Baptists. They all treat me that way. And of course takes a shot across the pond at one of his own.

But reality is we were at CFI Los Angeles doing the same thing, and he gets up on stage, and we're doing the Q&A, and he says, you know, I got to say, I was in San Diego with Smalley last night. It got a little chilly outside, so they gave me a jacket to wear, brought me some hot coffee. I spilled my coffee once. They cleaned it up for me and asked me if I wanted more. And then here I am being treated great. You guys bought us pizza. We're hanging out backstage. And now you guys have been cheering for me and clapping and laughing and having a good time. It's like, I've got

to say, on this tour, I'm being treated better by atheists than I have by the Christians. That's awesome. Yeah, so I still have hope for him. Coming to the right side, we'll see. We still stay in touch. He's going to come back on the show soon. But yeah, I encourage people to go to MyWeekInAtheism.com.

They can actually stream it live from Vimeo. I think it's like $5.99 or something. Well, David, thank you so much for joining us today. And anybody can find your stuff at Dogmadebate.com, right? Dogmadebate.com and atheistaudiobooks.com. Thanks so much for joining us. It was great to talk to you. Thanks for having me.

I enjoyed it, guys. So we want to thank our patrons this month, specifically the two new patrons that we have, Chris and Joseph. Thank you very much for giving us your hard-earned money. We appreciate it. We appreciate all our patrons. Thank you so much for donating to the show.

And we just actually, Tom and I just used the money. We reinvested in the show. I got finally, I'm no longer borrowing a microphone, so I actually have my own microphone, my own boom. I wound up talking to people at Sweetwater, and they gave me some great stuff, and we're really happy Tom has a new solid state recorder that he's going to use next week. So we have brand new equipment that we're going to sort

of keep on reinvesting into the show to make sure that the show is better and better and better. So thank you so much. And despite all the reinvestment in equipment, please know that I won't invest any more time or energy in the show. So you'll continue to get the same low quality content, but with higher fidelity, higher fidelity. So we got a message from Chad and Chad talked about some stuff. But one of the things he mentioned is he said a while back, I can't remember which episode. One of you said that you would never call a soldier a hero or congratulate him for defending freedom, but you respect them. Thank you. I was in the military and I can't stand the hero praise.

We weren't doing anyone any good over there. I thought I was joining for noble reasons, but after I couldn't stand what I saw. I wonder, Tom, how many soldiers actually go through that. Chad, thank you for saying that because I think that there might be a large contingent of soldiers that feel the exact same way. Yeah, I've actually heard similar from soldiers and people that I know that have returned from the military that they get the praise heaped on them,

that everybody that returns, every soldier that returns is a hero. And if you don't, that can create some cognitive dissonance, which it's difficult enough for a lot of returning soldiers coming back to reintegrate into civilian life. And I think that, you know, adding that level of cognitive dissonance into their psyche does them no favors. Tom, we got a message from Jared. He thought this one was pretty good. I love this. So Jared sent his 11-year-old daughter from vacation Bible school in a small town Baptist church thing.

He says, she's my little atheist, so it wasn't a big deal. She mainly wanted to see her old friends. She had many hilarious tales of praying over projectors to magically remember the forgotten on switch. Shut the fuck up. And this is my favorite. And reenacting stonings with paper bags. What the fuck?

That's definitely the part of the Bible you want to focus on. But what I really wanted to share with you was the main lesson of the week. I nearly drove off the road when she told me, I had just finished your latest podcast on the way there. She said that they taught them to be glory givers and glory getters. Not glory getters. Glory givers, not glory getters. Or glory givers, not glory getters.

I'm sorry. So you want to make sure you're standing at the glory hole, not kneeling. That's basically how that works. Thank you, Jared. That's very funny. I love the stonings. Paper bag stoning? Like, okay, as if you were, like, teaching a lesson on stoning and, like, the kids couldn't figure out what that meant, so you had to have a fucking visual aid. Goodness gracious.

It's like whipping someone with a ribbon or something. Right? It's so weird. Like, that's not the part you emphasize. Scott sent in a message, and he sent in a horrible story about um a girl a guy that's accused of raping a little girl and he said um thought you might be interested in seeing this sadly and another example how awful the world can be can you guys foresee an end to this type of human behavior at any point uh i'd like to think the world is becoming a better place but something

like this comes up and i just don't know you know i don't think that you'll ever see an end to things like this maybe we'll see a slowing down as i think you know uh society gets to learn how to deal with criminals better learns how to deal with because i think you know when you look at at societies that have learned how to deal with crime and criminals and people who are bad. You look towards places where, you know, they have low prison populations, where they have low crime rates. There's I'm specifically thinking of like Northern Europe is one of the places that, you know, they're just have like shockingly low crime rates, very low recidivism rate. They just have they just have a good idea of what's going on in criminals' minds and trying to rehabilitate people. So I think at a certain point, we might be able to all get that low if we all kind of follow the right direction.

But I don't think you're ever going to just remove it. You know, Cecil, I think we're headed in the right direction as a species. You know, it's the safest time to be alive as it's true it's true um but to get to zero when you say like to an end like i hear get to zero i'll be honest i think we will wipe ourselves off the planet as a species before we get to zero i don't think we will make it to zero because I frankly don't think that the human animal will be around long enough to do it. We got a message from Ken,

and he was very happy we had on Rachel Hensler from Grief Beyond Belief because it just so happens that he had a loss very recently, and this really helped him out, and he was just appreciative that we had her on. We encourage everybody to check out the Grief Beyond Belief website. We think that that is a wonderful resource for you as nonbelievers to find things that can help you cope with parts of your life that are very difficult to go through.

And we could not send you to a better place. We think that she's very capable, and she's done a lot of research on this. So you should definitely go there and check out the stuff that she's done. And we're glad it helped somebody. We got a message from Tech. And he sent us, and we got to both try this, Tom. We have to say glory hole in his native tongue. Okay, so here I'm going to say it first. Oh, come on.

The fucking second word. The second word needs a fucking vowel. It's just NG for Christ's sakes you gotta buy a vowel pat say jack okay so here we go butas i think you nailed that i'm not sure i can do any better haitian kawal haitian i don't know i'm gonna going to go with butt-assing. Coloration. Coloration. Anyway, he sent a message, and he said that he just had surgery,

and he had to stop listening to our podcast because it hurt like a bitch every time he laughed. We hope you're feeling better. Oh, man. So please get better, Tech. Tom had an interesting idea to fuck with you. I'm going to read what Tom said. Tom says, I am sure Tom won't read this. Well, he's hearing it now, Tech. Tom had an interesting idea to fuck with you. I'm going to read what Tom said. Tom says, I'm sure Tom won't read this.

Well, he's hearing it now, Tom. So if you're bored, maybe the guy who wrote the episode script could modify it to spell out the episode number in Spanish or make a simple math equation. Episode 137 plus 28 or Roman numerals. Episode CLXV. That's fucking awful. That's the best best whoever wrote that code should do that that's just a fuck with you nobody knows how to read roman numerals roman numerals are just random generated it's so weird can you imagine trying to add using roman numerals so we got a message from avid Listener. And Avid Listener says, this really doesn't matter, but it bugged me two podcasts in a row. Sperm really do carry enzymes called acrosomes that break through the egg's protective covering. It's one of the reasons that men with low sperm counts have trouble conceiving.

It doesn't take just one sperm, but many to break through and fertilize the egg. Now, I know it has nothing to do with AIDS. It doesn't. But the asshat heard something true and decided to use it as a starting point to blather untruths. Yeah, yeah, sure, but that's not the joke. The joke we were making is that

he said some fucking unbelievably made-up shit. So what we did was make up some things like fucking sperms have lasers on them or they're fucking robots or they have an egg tooth or something you know what i mean like whatever to make fun of that like that's what we were making fun of not making fun of the fact that how sperm work we're making fun of the fact that you can just make up whatever you want and say whatever you want in front of a commission and

nobody cares yeah and i think that there is, too, a distinction between, like, the sperm burning its way into the egg. Like, that implies, like, a heat or something. Like, it's not, I mean, like, yeah, there's clearly a mechanism for the sperm to enter the egg. He's not addressing that in a meaningful way, and so we chose not to address it in a meaningful way either. Yeah, we chose not to address it either. You know, what makes me laugh about that whole story, though, when we think back on it is, you know, he's talking about how, well, when you ejaculate in an anus or rectum or whatever, basically it has its it's porous. So it goes right in. And so therefore people get AIDS. And I'm thinking, well, what was the first time somebody had butt sex was like in the 80s, then like the very first butt sex we ever had was in the 80s

nobody had butt sex before and got aids back in i don't know fucking 1900s or something like nobody's ever gotten it before and like nobody had gay sex before right and and like heterosexuals don't have anal sex yeah right heterosexuals there's so many things like it just was just invented it was like fucking anal sex was just invented and only men do it. And only men do it. And that's why there's AIDS. Right. And you're like, no, fucking fucking AIDS onset came around in the fucking 80s, man.

That's awesome shit. We also got it fucking corrected about the plesiosaur not being a dinosaur. And I'm like, yeah yeah it's not a dinosaur but the joke doesn't work if you're like the plesiosaur is the uh most courteous mesozoic marine reptile like it just doesn't fucking work like the joke doesn't work so look as far as i'm concerned cecil if it's an a sore it's an a sore and it makes sense i guess i you know to be honest though i had no idea that the plesiosaur was not a dinosaur. So I think it's a good correction. It's just, but the joke doesn't work

if it's whatever the fucking plesiosaur is. We got an image, though, which is awesome, which is President Plesiosaur from Galen. And it's just a fucking, fucking awesome picture of a plesiosaur in a tuxedo with a top hat Galen and it's just a fucking fucking awesome picture of Felicia Sword in a tuxedo with a top hat and a monocle and the monocle string is

super long like you could swing across a fucking canyon on it it's like a rappelling rope it's the best it looks so great I'm putting this as the image for this episode so check out go to this episode, episode 166, and check out the image for this episode

because it's fucking hilarious. Thank you, Galen. My favorite part of it is the podium because the podium doesn't accomplish anything for him. It doesn't scale. It's not like he can put his fucking important papers on it. The plesiosaur is huge and the podium is still human-sized. It's the best.

It's great. Oh, it's so funny. We also got a message from Dale McGowan. Dale just put on the Humanism at Work conference in Chicago, and that's where I saw, I not only saw David Smalley's talk, but I saw several other talks there. I went there during the day and it was a great conference. We're hopefully going to have him on very soon for a conference wrap up to talk about what happened there and to talk about the Foundation Beyond Belief, which he's the executive director of

the Foundation Beyond Belief. So we want to have him on to talk about his work and the things that Foundation Beyond Belief does. We're hopefully going to have him on to talk about his work and, uh, and, and the things that foundation beyond belief does. We're hopefully going to have him on in the, in the next couple of weeks. We're going to try to schedule a date with him very soon. Um, but we're excited to have Dale on very soon. So we want to thank David Smalley again for coming on.

David was a wonderful guest. He, he runs a great show called the dogma debate. Uh, you can check them out at dogma debate.com. Uh, please go check out his podcast. It's a wonderful podcast. It's like i mean he dedication it's like three hours long so you want to check out

the stuff that he does uh it he definitely was a fun guest and we look to have him on in the future so that wraps it up for this week um we're gonna leave you as always with the skeptics creed credulity is not a virtue it's fortune cookie cutter mommy issue hypno babylon bullshit couched in scientician double bubble toil and trouble pseudo quasi alternative acupunctuating pressurized stereogram pyramidal free energy healing water downward spiral brain dead pan sales pitch late night info docutainment leo Thank you. Giant worms, Atlantis, dolphins, truthers, birthers, witches, wizards, vaccine nuts, shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, doublespeak, stigmata, nonsense. Expose your signs. Thrust your hands. Bloody, evidential, conclusive.

Doubt even this. Conclusive. Doubt even this. The opinions and views expressed in this show are that of the hosts only. Our poorly formed and expressed notions do not represent those of our wives, employers, friends, families, or of the local Dairy Council. We'll see you next time. you