103.9 FM, WOZO Radio, Knoxville. Ladies and gentlemen, Digital Freethought Radio Hour. Hello and welcome to Digital Freethought Radio Hour on WOZO Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today is October 18th, 2020. Larry Rhodes, your Doubter 5 and as usual we have our co-host Wombat on the line with us. Hello Wombat. Life is like a hurricane here in... ...Doubter. Knoxville. Knoxville, let's go. And our guests today are Wave when you hear it, Doubter Fire, a Red Leader, and Red Pirate Higgs. Welcome all. Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a talk radio show about atheism, freethought, rational thought, humanism and the sciences. And conversely, we also talk about religion, religious faith. God's holy books and superstition. And if you get the feeling you're the only non-believer in Knoxville, well, you're just not. There are several atheist, freethinking and rationalist groups that exist right here in Knoxville, and we'll be telling you how you can connect with them right after the mid-show break. Also, did you know that there was a streaming atheist called in video show here in Knoxville? Did you know that Wombat? Yeah. And what's great is they actually made a reboot of DuckTales recently. So if you want to get back into the series, it's going to be really good. I think they have Ben Schwartz as one of Huey Dewey or Louie. I can't tell him apart. But they're really good, and I highly recommend it. Yeah, I would too. That's not our show. Well, that's not it. You haven't found it yet. After 10 years, you haven't found a show. How long have we been doing this show, Larry? 10 years. No, wait. It's not been 10 years. Don't make me feel bad. It hasn't really been 10 years. It might actually be. Yeah, then I actually overtake you. No way. Don't make me feel bad. Anyway, we'll tell you more about that after the mid-show break. Right now, if you'd like to interact with us during the show, and it's Sunday morning in October, what was it again, 18th? At 11 Eastern, you can do so by going to Digital Freethought Radio, our Facebook page, and use the messaging function to send us questions or comments. Wombat, what's our topic today? Today, we're going to be talking about a really awesome question that Doubtfire himself proposed, which is, can a contradictory God logically exist? And I think that's going to be really awesome. There's my cat in the background. Hey, what's up, buddy? Ben, what's up? How you doing? But before we go into it, I'm going to throw it up to our own Dread Pirate Higgs for our weekly invocation. Our pasta, our turn of colander, hallowed be thy noodles, thy sauce be rum, thy blood be yum, with meat as it is with vegetables. Give us their stay, our garlic bread, and forgive us our cursing, as we forgive those who cuss against us, and lead us not into ketuism, but deliver us some pasta. For thine are the noodles, the pasta, and the sauce, whenever and ever. Raw man. Raw man. It's hard, so hard not to crack up during that. It really is. Dread, I want to go around, see how everyone's doing. We missed you last week. How you been? Where were you? Or were you doing something awesome? Well, like I said, I performed a wedding the day before and, you know, carry it on a bit. So I didn't wake up until 1030 my time, which is two and a half hours after the show starts. Right. Canadian beer tends to have that effect on people. Though, how is a Pasifarian wedding and how does it differ from, say, like the more traditional, I would say, Christian variety? Well, actually, it wasn't a Pasifarian wedding. I'm actually an appointed marriage commissioner through the Ministry of Vital Statistics. So it was a traditional wedding.  Well, that's still beautiful. That's still beautiful. Nice. Okay. Doubtfire. Loving that shirt. You got to... Salmon is an unappreciated color on men. And I respect that people represent that. And I will go to the gym representing that all the time. How you been? Doing good, man. Doing wonderful. Where exactly do you do your videos from? It looks like you're outdoors enjoying like a really nice sunny day. Yeah, I'm right here. Right here on the porch of my place here and see all that. It's like beautiful Santa Monica. Yeah, it's in Irvine, California. Nice. Nice. Oh, it's pretty close. My nostalgia. My nostalgia. I grew up in California, so it's just like... Oh, yeah, that's right. Nice. All right. Larry, how you been? Like I said, it looks like viewers can't see or listeners to the podcast can't see this, but it looks like you get a really nice, specific haircut going on. Oh, yeah. Nice little mane in the back. Well, I haven't had a haircut in like four months. Most of it's behind me. Oh, there it is. Push it behind me. Yeah, I don't go to barbershop because of COVID. I don't want someone standing that close to me cutting my hair. My daughter said she'd cut it for me, but she's yet to make an appointment for me. So I'm waiting on that. I'm trying to stay away from people to embrace social distancing. I was at the gym yesterday and literally empty everywhere except for one dude who decides to do the elliptical literally right next to me. And there's like other ellipticals in the row, but he picked the one right next to me and the whole time I'm like, what is going on with this guy? Like, no mass, no, what's it? Nothing whatsoever. And just focusing on his workout. So like some people just need to be competitive with the person right next to be motivated to do gym work. I'm not a part of your program. Get me out of here. Dale, good to see you again. Your beard is coming in beautifully, by the way. It really is. Yeah. I've been working very hard on it. Good, good. It's like it's new level. Yeah.  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or get a snap camera thing to just take it off when it's too inconvenient to shave. Doubtfire, I want to fill this out at you because you presented a really awesome topic for talking today and that it seems like science's opinion on God's is we don't have an opinion because we can't measure God's. But that doesn't necessarily mean that there is God. However, it also doesn't mean that we know for a fact that we can say that there is no God. So it's just a complete unknown. But that said, we do understand logic. And so if you have a God that defies logic, that's problematic and makes us more inclined to say that God probably doesn't exist. And you phrase it as like, well, can a contradictory God logically exist? Would you mind talking about that? Because I think that's really, really interesting. Yeah, sure. So I think when we make statements, contradictory statements, then they can't be true because they don't, they don't can't exist in reality as the way that you describe it. So if you have a God that's blue, but he's also red or blue and not blue or not blue or maybe a square circle, you have a Mary bachelor type of God, then you've got a problem. So yeah, and I've actually been talking to a lot of Jehovah Witnesses this week about that topic. That's why I brought it up because, you know, kind of going through the normal questions that I have for Jehovah Witnesses doesn't seem to always work. So I kind of did an internal critique and ask questions based on seeming contradictions to see what they would say. And it kind of stumped them and then using the logic that, you know, if there's a contradiction, it can't logically exist and they would agree from the outset. So then if you showed them a contradiction about their God, Jehovah, then it raises questions and that's what's the whole point. What kind of contradictions are you talking about? I thought Jehovah was perfect. Oh yeah, exactly, exactly.  So if you go to John 4.9, it'll say God is love or the Greek word agape. 1 Corinthians 13.4 would say love or agape is not jealous and it's not wrathful. But then you could read in Exodus 34-14 that Jehovah, whose name is jealous, is a jealous God. And that's pretty good, Deuteronomy 4.0. So you've got a big problem right there. And so yeah, that's an example of a seeming contradiction. Same thing with Islam. Islam in Surah Al-Alak 96 verse 2 would say God created man out of congealed blood. But in another spot in 1526, he would say he created man from clay. And then also he created man from a drop of sperm in 16-4. So we've got a big contradiction there. So how can all of those things be true? Not one of those statements are wrong, but if you're going to accept all of them as absolutely true, which they do, then it just can't be something you can take as reality. Nice. Larry, I'll throw this out at you first. I think there are contradictions with how God is depicted in the Bible or any other holy texts. And should that be credence to reduce your confidence in whether or not that God exists? How much time do you have? Well, apparently we had 10 years to go over this. There's a few contradictions. Let's just take one of my guess. It's not like you wrote a book on the subject or something. Well, I mean, we're supposed to have free will. One of the biggest problems or one of the biggest claims of Christianity is that we have free will and we have to choose right or wrong. God has given us the criteria and all that stuff. But if God knows everything, if he's an omni-god and he's omniscient, he knows everything that everybody is ever going to not only do but think. And if that's true, then there is no free will because we all have to conform with what he has already thought we're going to do. So there's no free will. And it goes even farther. If he knows literally everything, then he knows what he's going to do, what he's going to think, and all of his actions in the future. So he has no free will. So that's a contradiction right there. I also feel like a god that knows everything essentially set this test up to fail. If this is a, hey, I'm waiting for you to do the thing that I know you did, that I know you're already going to do so I can punish you for it after you've already done it. So not only are the victims still getting punished through the person's actions. Yeah, like not only are the victims still getting hurt, but the person that's doing the crime is free to do the crime while God watches is like, ooh, I'm going to keep letting you do this assault. And only until you're done, am I going to be like, ooh, I have a perfect plan for you that I already planned ahead of time because I already had planned for you to do that assault. Ooh, it's such a, such a, such a terrible thing. Not a thing that a benevolent God would do. Yeah, he claims to be benevolent at the same time too. No, Dred. Welcome, George. Welcome, George. Can you all hear me? Yeah, you're coming in just great. George, just to catch you up, we're talking about is it possible for someone to believe in a, is it, is it contradictory God capable of logically existing, right? And so we're talking about some contradictions of gods that are depicted, you know, in popular contexts and asking, okay, since there's a contradiction here, is that credence for us to reduce our confidence that this God exists? Because right now we have science that can't test gods and can't say, hey, this God exists, this God doesn't exist. We don't have a God-o meter. But we can look to see if this God has contradictory and say, logically, this doesn't make sense. Like the nature of this God would have to change in order for it to be applicable to reality. Dred Pirate, I want to throw this out at you. Do you have contradictions that you can think of with regard to popular gods? It doesn't even have to be about the Christian God. Does the Pasifarian God have contradictions? Oh, no, no, no, the flying screening monster is perfect. Yeah, there's no contradictions there. Really? Really? Is the who? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, I got some contradictions. I'll throw some things out at you. Okay, so here's the thing. So Pasifarian God, I'm sure, is open to all forms. Does Pasifarian...   Of course. Okay, okay. He created bacon, so... Okay, pro carbs and protein? Like, what's going on there? Seems like a contradiction.  I feel... I didn't use that last one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, is the Pasifarian God generally a progressive God, or is it just like a non-kink shaming God? Like, it doesn't seem like there's a problem either way. Like, how do you interpret the idea of a stripper factory and wenches and stuff like that? Like a part and parcel. Well, when you say progressive, I don't know what you mean in relation to... Equal appreciation of legal rights of all sexes, stuff like that. Well, strippers are not forced. It's not a sex thing.  There's female strippers. There's unisex strippers. Okay. It's not about genitalia. It's about stripping. Are there animal strippers? Oh, man. Favorite. You're getting closer. We're getting into a rabbit hole here. How about the more commonplace gods? Can you think of common contradictions that it could be found with regard to Jehovah, Allah, and maybe Greek gods? And think, oh, go for it. I mean, the idea that God is all love, but was capable of creating the angels, the devil being one of them, who is the font of evil. So that's a pretty big contradiction, I'd say. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely some of that makes me reduce my confidence. Dale, here's my question for you. I'm not sure if you're aware of more broader or older terms of gods, like from Roman or Greek pantheons. But the idea of having multiple gods gave you the ability to have very vulnerable and poor gods that are very human in nature, like gods that were jealous, spiteful, revengeful, terrible beings. And when Christianity came out, it was like, hey, you don't need all these different gods you can talk to. We have this one big god that's already perfect, which is better than your assembly of gods that are each imperfect in their own way. And that caught on, along with a lot of swords and blood spilling. But the idea of like, hey, you know, Aries, this guy has some problems. He has daddy issues. But his contradictions are at least relatable. Do you think like, if you have a contradictory god, does that make it more emotionally more able to relate to? Do gods have to be perfect? That's basically what I'm asking you. Or is it possible to actually fall more in love with a god that actually has some chips on its shoulder and obvious problems? I have no idea what you just asked me. Cool. Will however make a comment. Will however make a comment. Kerry Kinthaw, who is a predominant metaphysician, his first law of metaphysics is nothing unreal exists. So that's all I got to say about this comment. Cool. I have no idea what you're talking about. I want to throw that question at you. Do you think that a god that is not perfect is actually more relatable, and maybe we're putting too much stress on the biblical god having contradictions? Like, does a contradictory god actually make it more appealing? We have a president that's not very logical in the first place. People tend to love him. Do you think that's the appeal? It could be. People like superheroes and comic books. And those seem to be like the kind of gods that are comparable to the Greek gods and pagan gods. They're not perfect, but they're super. They're meta. They're all these things. But I think in our culture today, we tend to gravitate more towards the all omnigod, because it has more explanatory power. They think for things that they have mysteries or things they want to know about. Yeah. I also wonder, like, maybe the appeal of Jesus is that you get the best of both worlds.  Yeah. He's like... Yeah, avatar. Yeah. George, why don't you take yourself off mute and join in? I saw you wanted to sit chip in. Yeah. You know, the contradictory God... I like your concept of a God-O-Meter. I want one. Yeah, me too. It would be so great if I did. Yeah, we don't have Radio Shack anymore. Can I buy one on Amazon? I mean, I really want a God-O-Meter. It would always register zero, though. I mean, it wouldn't be much. You know, I mean, do they make them in China? And can I buy it on Amazon? But, you know, to me, it's like the God of the Old Testament is like Donald Trump. It's Donald Trump, the God of the Old Testament. And our people worship him. Gotta give me some words. Gotta give me some words. What do you mean by that?  That's about as much as I can underscore on this, because every time I try to read the Bible, I fall asleep. I have not been very successful at reading the Bible. Well, here's why I fall asleep. Yeah. And we'll go to Scott right after this. It seems like the God of the Old Testament is very much the flavor of God's that are around during that time, which we're very much, I'm powerful, and I'm telling you what needs to be done as an authority figure to you. And then as we get to the New Testament time, it's like, man, these Romans are really, really, really destroying a lot of stuff. We need a sympathetic God that, like, understands us and is willing to forgive some of our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Perfect, Jesus. And now we have almost like a new, new version of God, which is like, he loves the math rock that you love. He loves. He has no problem with gay people. He wants you to go out and just, you know, love people and be okay. And maybe it's spiritual. Maybe it's not spiritual, but hey, you know, reach out and make friends. Scott, what do you think? Yeah, I was just to kind of piggyback on what you just said. It seems like the God's come from. So if you were to take a look at, say, ancient Hebrew culture, right? You know, slavery in the Middle East was a common practice. Yeah. And so God Yahweh or Jehovah back then allowed for slavery and regulated the practice of slavery. And so this is kind of a contention point with a lot of Christians today, as you just pointed out, because that idea of humans owning other humans is considered immoral nowadays relative to our culture today. And so by bringing that up, you're kind of like bringing up a contradiction, because they just can't imagine that God would ever allow something immoral like slavery.  He is ethics. And it's absolute. He's immutable. He's absolute. He's the metaphysical primary, as they told me. The metaphysical prime? Wow, you know these terms really well. Wow. Yeah. Oh, yeah. The beautiful word that means nothing. Yeah. That means absolutely nothing to me. Next time someone asks me what I do for a living, I'm just going to be like, I'm the metaphysical primary of my organization. It's like, oh, yeah. Whoa. Wow, that's important. Yeah. Larry, you want to fill in? Yeah. I was just going to say, maybe Dale, when he talks to his JW people, he's been, has a lady he'd been talking to a bit. He can bring up slavery and ask her about that. Yeah. No, one of the oldest illogical attributes of God, as we see it, was addressed by Epicurus and his riddle of Epicurus. It says, if God is willing to prevent evil but not able, then he's not omnipotent. If he's able to prevent evil but not willing, then he's malevolent. If he's able and willing, then why do we have evil? If he's neither able nor willing, then why do we call him God? That kind of thing. Right. So this riddle has stood the test of time for over 2,500 years. Yeah. One other thing that has come up recently in some of my conversations that points to a non-evil caring God is that people will tell you that evil cannot exist in the presence of God. He's so good that no evil can exist near him. But then they also tell you he's everywhere at once all the time. An evil word is evil come. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, that's good. I'll tell you another one. Right there. Dred, you're next on the, let's spot our contradictory problems, but here's mine that I like. The idea of worship or the contradiction of worship. And the idea behind this is anything that is deserving of worship would not ask to be worshiped. And it's as simple as that. And so worshiping is essentially putting something above you and lauding it as a thing greater than yourself and doing whatever you can to appreciate it and like loving it more, more so than like your car, your, your wife, your moms, like this is worship. I am worshiping this being that beyond me, anything that's actually truly benevolent or deserving of worship, wouldn't ask you to do that or want it or expect it or demand it. But it has its own problems saying we can, Hey, you want to talk about contradictions with Buddha? Like let's talk about women's rights and Buddhism, it's essentially non-existent, no one gets a free pass here on the digital free thought hour. But yeah, like if there's a being that's asking to be worshiped, it's typically not we're demanding, demanding for sake of punishment. Where was Jesus on this? What was Jesus on? What? Where was Jesus on being worshipped? I think so, like all over the place. Yeah, Scott, why are you feeling?  Yeah, I'm the sword. There's no way to get to the Father, except that through me, which, by the way, creates a contradiction in Islam. Now that we're talking about contradiction, contradictory gods. So and Muslims will say that Jesus was a truth teller. He spoke nothing but truth because he was God's prophet. Yet Jesus said, no one comes to the Father except through me. I'm the Savior. So Muslims, the Quran says that no, Jesus was not a savior or a Messiah. He was just a prophet. So now we have a contradiction. So was God telling the truth or was Jesus telling the truth or was he not? Yeah. And if it's possible for people to get it wrong, how do you know you've got it right? There's so much stuff going on here. Dred, I was going to give it to you, but he's now he just went off to say, oh, he's back. Dred, anything else you'd like to weigh in on? Yeah, I was. Well, you know, Scott was explaining their different ideas about how Jesus demanded worship. And there is the one one verse there where those who would not essentially those who would not kneel down and worship me, bring them before me so so that I may slay them. That's a pretty big contradiction for a guy preaching all love. Yeah.  Like that mentality of like, I am a I am a essentially a better organism than you. You need to come to me if you want help. Like there's on the order of magnitude of a sheep to a sheep herder. That's how he saw himself to other people.  Yeah, so just one comment here from one of our viewers, that is trading room. He says logic would imply that if evil cannot exist in his presence and he is all transcendent, then what we consider evil is actually God's love. Yeah. Oh, that went dark. That is doubt fire going ahead. Well, yeah, that took a drop. Larry, that was arguing for me.  Who made who made that comment? The Joker? No, no, that's right. Oh, no, no, no, no. Nice one. I was going to say that it kind of goes into the definition of God. And some people would say, well, God is that thing that you worship that is worshipable or or qualifies to worship. You know, it's my God. Money is my God. This is my God.  It's it means that it's worthy of worship is God is one definition people use for God. But if that's true and if God is also the first cause of everything that exists, including evil, then does that qualify as something worthy of worship? Do you worship something that would create evil? I mean, really? Yeah.  I don't know. One thing I find with a lot of the religious believers that I talked to is that they're not familiar with the concept of not worshiping, you know, they'll come to an atheist. So you worship Dan Barker or you worship science.  We don't worship anybody. We don't believe in the concept, generally, of worship. You know, why would we all praise anything at any time? I once had an Indian girlfriend and we were talking and she was saying like, you're an American, like, who do you worship? And I was like, I don't worship anyone. She's like, well, what do you mean by that? Who do you worship? I was like, I don't worship anyone. This is like so like Jesus is like no one is like no one. No one, literally no one. And it took a while.  I remember her response like, that's fantastic. And I was like, oh, my gosh, I love this person. That's its own topic. That's its own topic. Eric, it's so good to see you. Welcome, Boudreau. Who do you worship? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're actually going to head out to a break and then we'll come back and we'll get Boudreau's thoughts on this amazing topic that Scott brought up. Doubtify, why don't you take us out? Sure. This is Digital Freethought Radio Hour and WOZO Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. And we'll be right back after this short break. 103.9 FM WOZO Radio, Knoxville. Hello and welcome back to the second half for the Digital Freethought Radio Hour and WOZO Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. I'm Doubtify and this is Sunday morning, October 18th, 2020. Let's talk about the Atheist and Freethought groups that you can enjoy right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. First, there's the Atheist Society of Knoxville, founded in 2002 or in our 18th year. ASK has over 1,000 members and you can find us online at KnoxvilleAtheist.org. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you should still go to Meetup and search for an Atheist group in your town. Don't find one. Start one! Another large freethinking group here in Knoxville are the rationalists of East Tennessee. Just go to rationalist.org and click on upcoming events to find out what they are up to. Earlier in the show, we said we'd talk about the Knoxville Atheist call in TV show. Well, it's kind of a streaming audio. Now we were on TV for 10 years, but now we've got a YouTube channel. It's called Freethinkers United Coalition of Knoxville. Go to YouTube and search for that. And if you want to see our archives of the old TV show, search for Freethought Forum Knoxville. Okay, also if you're interested in joining us or getting involved in the TV or the radio show, come to our Facebook pages or ASK Facebook page, the Atheist Society of Knoxville or the Freethought, what is it? Digital Freethought Radio Hour of Facebook page and let us know you want to be involved. And where do we leave off there one bit? So we were right in our second half of our Jeopardy Challenge. Eric was leading with an amazing $5,000, but now we have our next question coming up to the bat. I want everyone to be very, very, very, very close attention. The question today is, this is a powerful emotion that recently get lost. I was rushing to write this one out, got lost. All right, we're going to throw this up to Dred Pirate. It looks like he's chiming in. Dred Pirate, what is your answer? Remember to answer in a phraseable question. Go. Oh, Dred Pirate, out of time, unfortunately. All right, I'm sorry. No one else got the answer. That was the last one that looks like Eric's our champion. The right answer was, where is the love? The love, yeah. Where is the love? The love, the love. The listener, love. All right, so. There was a deer in the headlights there. It's OK. Got it, love. You can come back in the next one. Tell us not. Yeah, you can tell. So we are actually going to go over some listener feedback that we had. We had some good episodes. I had the page up right now. I'm sorry for you guys being so unprofessional. Let me, we had like seven comments from the last show. The last show's topic was, let me just pull it up here. I had a near-death experience. And we talked about how reliable our near-death experiences and the people who claim to have them. And we got a number of chats or another comments. The comments are, of course, posted on my YouTube channel. That's Let's Chat on YouTube. Just search for Let's Chat. I'm one of the first things to pop up now. Dada's, oh, I'm sorry. iash139 says, hey, Taron, I don't know how old you are. But when you were talking about Haley's comment, you might have been referring to Halebop's comment. Because Haley's comment was in 1986, whereas Halebop's comment was in 1996 and won't return for a few thousand years. No. So I did mention I had seen Halebop's or I said Haley's comment, but I guess I meant Halebop's comment. And that showed up when I was around 11 or so. So that's cool. That's cool. And it won't show up for another thousand years. So I'm glad I saw it when I did. And Nathan Matthews has love for Doubtfire and George versus love for Doubtfire. Good points, Doubtfire. During this episode, it's always helpful to have terms be defined. Real in the context of a near-death experience can simply mean an experience that had an impact. And acknowledging someone's position is a great way to start a wonderful conversation. And here's some love for George. George, I share your hesitation with unfamiliar topics. I tend to sit back and listen. In healthy settings, I'm trying to push myself to form and share my own thoughts. Conjecture is just another word for hypothesis. So it's OK as long as we continue to challenge ourselves. And you have my full support. That's really nice. Scott Williamson. That sounds familiar. That sounds like a familiar guy. What was that about? That was big. Yeah, Scott says, wow, looking back at the video, my devil's advocate for near-death experiences or aliens seemed pretty strong. I almost seemed like someone who believes in the afterlives and little green men. That wasn't the overall impression. I just wanted to leave my thoughts to you. OK. No problem. And I was kind of cringing. I was like, oh, no, no, no. It sounded good. And plus, like I said, I think you texted me ahead of time asking to be a devil's advocate in these talks. And that's what was actually. Exactly. All right, so let me do one last check. Data's trading room, Ever the Faithful. If you hadn't said anything about rattling audio in the background, which there was some in the last episode, I never would have caught it. So you guys did good. Oh, wow, I did it. OK, he wanted to make a mention about ghosts, though. We made a comment that whenever you feel very cold, it's a ghost passing over you. And so his response to that was, oh, wow. So now I know why it gets cold at fall. Mass migration of ghosts. Yeah. Hey, real talk. I was in bed. We were starting to get cold snaps through Tennessee, just this week. And I was literally shivering in my bed, because I like to keep it really cold. And I'm like, why am I so cold? I remember this conversation and even that comment. I'm like, there must be ghosts in my room. Ha, ha, ha. Anyway, comforters will stop that. It's no big deal. All right, so we were talking about contradictions in the Bible, and particularly related to the subject of God. And the reason why we were saying that, and I'm directing this towards Eric, because we were saying science doesn't have an opinion on whether or not a God does exist or does not exist. We don't have a God meter, right? But we can look at the God claim and see if there's contradictions there. And if there's contradictions, we can at least say, logically, it doesn't make sense for this thing to exist. We can reduce our confidence based on how many contradictions we can find with a particular God claim. And the Bible is a really, really big book of God claims. That, along with many other holy texts. But we are all people here, Western. We tend to really know the Bible very well, and it's very popular. So it's worth knocking down a couple of pegs. Would you mind, if you had any contradictions that you can think of, presenting some that makes you less confident about the God that's proposed in the Bible? Yeah, I'm kind of with George on religion in that. I was raised Catholic, but I never really studied much. So I don't know a ton about the Bible. I've never actually read it. You're Catholic, and you never read the Bible? That never happens. That's a bad joke. No, and I've read parts and chunks of it. I've read a lot about interpretations of it. So I'd say the one that jumps out at me the most, I mean, obviously, the time frame of everything is wonderful. I was talking specifically about God claims. The fact that the Bible seems to kind of flip between monotheistic or the fact that I'm the only God or there are other gods. You should not worship other gods. But then again, other parts of the Bible make it seem like God is the only one. And the whole idea that the devil can stood up to God and did so powerfully such that he had to ban him to hell, it just seems like I don't know. I'd say the big one would be that, that I mean, how many gods are there who were there? Or any of that. So it's weird when someone tells you. Yeah, it's just like, hey, you're my only girlfriend, but don't talk about my other girlfriends. Yeah, there is, I think in the commandments, like don't worship any other God before me. It's like, what do you mean other gods? It's like, I am also the only God. It's like, what, George, go for it. Yeah, that was Boudreaux, right? I don't know what to say about that. He said he's like me, but I was raised with no religion. Yeah, well, I guess that's what I meant.  I didn't grow up with super knowledge of the Bible. I'm not the first one to be able to jump in and quote Bible. I have really no frame of reference. And I hear you say that a lot on the show, well, yeah, I don't. You know, when I was six years old, my mother said to me, she said, look, we've got only so much money. I'll give you Hebrew lessons or music lessons. Which do you want?  Please, please, please. So I became a child prodigy in music. Did I become a child prodigy in Hebrew? Hell no. Well, yeah, so it does kind of seem like the Bible teaches a plurality of God's and some sections. I think the Hebrew word Elohim is a plural word for God. Oh, Lord of all like, yeah. Yeah, so like when you read in Genesis, let us create man in our image. Like, who is he referring to? What other gods were there that were creating things? And the Hebrew word was Elohim. And that's why we have the translation we in our and it follows throughout many different verses. But then in other sections, you hear about God as the singular. So you have the Y H W H, which is short form for Yahweh or Jehovah. And so in those sections, God is the only God, the monotheistic God. So a lot of scholars that I've read about tend to think that the Bible, the Old Testament Bible was kind of cobbled together from earlier texts. And it came from a Canaanite religion that worship Elohim. That's where the word actually comes from. So Israel came from Canaanites and it just gets, you know, really contradictory there. Yeah, like plurality. Larry, what do you think? Well, we kind of started talking off about or talking about illogical gods per se with, you know, the attributes of the gods being illogical. But now we kind of got off into the Bible contradictions. And since we've opened that up, I'd like to offer at least one. And the one is a basic contradiction, illogical.  Yeah, but the apple contains the knowledge of right and wrong. Good and evil. Right. Right. So they wouldn't have even known that disobedience was wrong or bad or evil. But a knowledge about the apple. I've been never in a knowledgeable God would have known that. Right. And if he had wanted them to know the difference between right and wrong and good and evil so that they would understand not to eat the apple, he would have just given them the knowledge that they had been forgiven, I mean, forbidden to get. So it makes no sense. It's also perfect. They were perfect beings. And it's and it's not a surprise on God's part that that happened. And if he claims to be benevolent, yet trap made such an obvious trap. It's like putting a snake, a poisonous snake in the playground for the bunch of kids is just like, let's see what happens. Like you clearly put a trap door in paradise. That's no longer paradise. Speaking of paradise, they're free will in heaven. Yeah. And he's supposed to be everywhere. So where was he when the snake was watching it, probably controlling the snake? Probably just like it was a trap. Yeah, it was a trap. I want to talk about heaven for a quick bit or paradise, because we just brought up the idea that heaven can be a great place to be for eternity with the mindset of there's also a hell. So like if people go to heaven, what is the nature of a person that can go to heaven that's OK with a hell existing where people are burning for all of eternity, right? Like that seems to be contradictory. Like how can it be so good to go to heaven but be OK and complicit with the idea of hell at the same time?   I saw a lot of hands raised that fire. Did you want to say something? Yeah, I was just going to say really quick, heaven doesn't seem to be the place that that is purported to be in other places in the Bible. Like in Revelation, there's no sorrow, there's no tears, there's no suffering, heaven is just blissful. But then we read about how there was war in heaven. Yeah, Satan was cast out like if there can be war in heaven and war is full of suffering and tears and death.  So man, these are some great predictions. George, it sounds like you want to weigh in as something. Well, do you remember what you're going to say or want to say? I forgot. I forgot. Oh, yeah.  I mean, if if if God is God, why does he put up with this?   This doesn't. Hey, wordy dirties. Guess who's on mute? Which? What's our time? The old radio, man, blow it again. Here we go. You're uncourgable, George. But what do you got? Did you want to weigh on this as well? I really like Doubtfire's point about is there free will in Garden of Eden or heaven or any of the places that that's interesting to me, because if there is free will, wouldn't have God known that these people were going to make these choices? And if there isn't, then we're just all sitting back watching a movie and none of it matters. So it's it's just. The idea of eternity, too, is just bizarre. That's a contradiction, because yeah, I mean, the eternity forever. Yeah, I could imagine you going crazy. Yeah, so like there'll be a point where you don't even recognize who you are anymore or even remember what you did like it's guaranteed. It's infinite. Well, excuse me. Apologetics would be that there is no time outside of the universe or whatever. But then you have to ask yourself this question, which raises another contradiction. Does God think sequentially? And if he does, which apparently he does in the Bible, then he's temporal. He's one thought leads to another thought leads to an that's time, right? Then he's subject to a lot of time. Hmm. Right. He created time at the same time, too. That makes no sense. Exactly. That's all your hand raised. You want to say something? Go for it. Yeah, I was just about, you know, free will in heaven.  And if you don't have free will, are you still the same person you were when you were on earth? When you did have free will, right? And that's the question. Yeah, I will say this and this is a weird point. I know the story of Job is not literal, but we've had conversations on this show where we've where I've talked to Christian apologists who believe that not only is that story literal, but is the best story in the entire Bible. And the problem with that is it's a really horrendous story on a moral, horrible, moral front, but it begins with the devil being escorted to heaven to hang out with God.  And the weirdest part, I don't know the outcome. And the weirdest part is I feel like if anything, this is a story of the devil's trying to secretly show people who are reading the Bible with an awareness and a critical thought of like, look how screwed up this guy is. I'm going to go up to his home and I'm going to bet on the lives of the people he created and he claims to love. And it's going to make it look like I'm the bad guy and I was wrong. But the real moral of the story, if you're actually looking at it right, is this is the evil dude, this God guy. He's the real bad guy. He's the person betting, doing terrible things. And when he wins, he just makes new wise and new children and new sheep and says, ah, you're basically net. Basically, you have the same amount of property. Property, yeah. And and again, yeah, like I think Larry, you hit it on the nail. They said the bet with you hit the nail on the head. You hit the nail on the head. You, yeah, I thought we were looking at that, too. So it's like, is that right? Dell, I want to hear from you. Do you have any comments on hell or the devil or anything that we talked about today?  Like church, like church, like singing, like singing hymns and such as that. I'm, I'm, you know, this, this Christian bashing is really just going in circles and going in circle. Well, let's look at some contradictions of the atheists. One of the primary thing of the atheists now is that are this been proposed is that the universe came from nothing. Is that who's I don't say that I'm an atheist. No, well, you're not. Larry knows about it. Lawrence Crowley, some that do. So some people say things, but how does that represent atheism? It's like, that's right. It is. Well, it is a position on God, though. Yeah, it's not it's not that claim at all. That's the problem does seem like a contradiction. And I just believe that the matter of the universe has always existed and it's more and far more another. I don't think it came from nothing. And I think time is necessarily based on objective phenomenon. So if you can't observe it, time exists or not. But you have another easier to say, easier to say atheists are wrong. Yeah. Well, often, often, you know, the atheists should come up with it with a good answer for if there's creation, why is there no creator? That would be a creation is a word that is loaded and usually used by people who believe in a creative whore. Well, when you have a cup, the cup has been created. When you have a tree, the tree has been created from the history of the genes that are in the tree or the. Well, you can say it along back to use the word creation. There is a creation. There are creations when there is a creator. Now, trees weren't created, per se. They were they weren't. They are the descendants of the previous trees that came before them. And there was a time when there were no trees, according to. Right. And they evolved according to. Yeah, they evolved. So what I'm saying is creator is a loaded word. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Agency is OK, too. Yeah. And you can you can easily fall into a special pleading fallacy because then you would say if well, if everything has to be created because that's in our experience that everything had a creator. So there's a contradiction. Well, if you're going to say that, then who created God? Yeah. You can't say everything. God. Right. Yeah, that's an old song. I'd say what's really unfortunate is when someone claims that atheism is making any more of a claim than I don't believe your God exists, please come up with better evidence. And there's no other statement in the grand book of atheism than that. Like, if you look at atheism and if it was a instructional booklet for atheism, it literally is a thousand page document with one sentence on the first page is like, I don't believe you. And that's the only thing that's right. Today's credit. Yeah. Just real quick. Today's credit, I will say that some atheists, I do find contradictions, like, especially not what they call Gnostic atheists. When they say there is absolutely no metaphysical reality. Well, that's a metaphysical claim in itself. Yeah, that's also a non addition, non right. A Gnostic, exactly specific to the Gnostic atheists. Yeah. And I don't like it in general. Whatever it is, it is me, neither. We there's a question that came to my mind about atheists. And perhaps you could help with this. I've heard it said that the weak atheist or the moderate atheist, if you will, believes that only makes the statement that I see no evidence for a God. I see no evidence. But even very, very high atheists and you ask them, what evidence would you accept to believe in a God? And I've heard plenty of atheists say there's no evidence whatsoever that you would give me that would make me believe in a God. I don't. So it seems like a circular argument in that I have to see no evidence. And furthermore, I will not accept any evidence. So. So we have like three minutes left in the show. So just to respond to this, just because it is an old hat argument that we've heard. The idea of people say this, therefore, it represents the the thing that the label that you believe are two different things. It's the same thing of scientists say this, therefore, science says this. And there are atheists that say I don't like bagels, but that doesn't mean atheism is about not liking bagels in the same sense that I can wear a red hat. It doesn't make me a Republican. I can just wear a red hat. So we have to look at the idea of there are individuals and many groups, many people in a particular group that can say something. But what is the common denominator of this group? And the common denominator of atheism is I don't believe you when you say you have enough evidence for me to be compelled to be convinced that you believe that this guy actually is real. Or I don't believe your God. That's all that means. And everything else on top of that is atheism plus something else. Dredpire, I'm going to give it to you. Oh, Eric, you went through the trouble of actually getting props. Let's go over your props and then we can close out the show. Yeah, I think it's just a lovely, lovely argument to hear. But basically the dock and scale. And there are other scales that get exactly what Dale is saying. Gnosticism and atheism are two different dimensions. And I think everybody here that is arguing for atheism is a Gnostic atheist. They they are an atheist. They don't believe in God, but they don't know there's no God. You mean agnostic, agnostic, right? Agnostic, yeah. Sorry. Does that that's what I meant? Yeah. And then I'm not I'm not an agnostic. You're not an agnostic atheist. No, I'm an atheist period. OK, but we're talking about two different things. Yeah, it's OK. It's a confusing thing for a lot of other people. But when you talk to them in a short as a five minute conversation, you'd be surprised how much we agree on these really, really basic concepts. We have unfortunately a history of a lot of loaded words and we have a language based on those loaded words to try to communicate with. It takes the effort, especially in a big group, conversation to parse what we mean by what we say.  This is my impression of where you're coming from. It doesn't make sense to me. And it's like, I agree that doesn't make sense, but that's not where I'm coming from. That's generally this entire Zoom conversation in a nutshell. But hey, listen, like I said, there are some atheists that don't like bagels. Atheism is not about not liking bagels. Even though many prominent atheists probably say they don't like bagels and I like bagels. So what's our thing that we have in common? That's something that we should look for. And there are contradictions in the Bible. We just went through a lot of them. So logically, it doesn't seem like that is a good basis for believing in a Christian God. But we see these same things. Contradictory fallacies in Greek Rome and all of them. Joe, when it's yeah, it typically is the case. All the basic line is if something's asking you to worship it, probably doesn't deserve to be worshipped. And that's that's something that I always like to keep in my back pocket. Larry, you yelled at me at the beginning of the show that we were under time. So guess what? I did. You got you got a full five minutes after we're done with this. Dred Pirate, where can we find your stuff at? So I'm in Western Canada. So for me, it's two hours ahead of your guys's time. And so I live stream this on my YouTube channel at Mind Pirate, M-I-N-D-E-Y-R-A-T-E at eight o'clock a.m. So come check it out and participate in the conversation as we stream it stream it live. Cool, George, I'm going to say you screwed up because not only could you have done Hebrew school, but you would have been able to have all the Yiddish phrases in your back pocket along with your New York accent. You could have been like, no, no, no, no, no, no, it's Meshugana.  Narples. That's offensive. I apologize. Yiddish is a it's a cultural thing. So I got some Yiddish. OK, OK, good, good, good, good, good, good. Eric Boudreaux, I want you to not have any pressure on you with producing content. But if there was, I want to know what that you're doing a cover band of, what was it, Bad Omen? Bad Religion. Bad Religion. How's that coming along? I think we're done with the recording. They're mixing it and their video editing in it. So should have it next week. If you're comfortable with it, we'd love to put it on the show. It has a mid-show break. Yeah, a fun connection between Dale and Wombats comments. Samuel Clemens, also known as Mark Twain, was born and died and got to see Haley's comment twice. Whoa, very cool. Well, nice. One of very few people that. Doubtfire, I'll throw it out to you before we head out with Doubtor Five. Is there anything that you'd like to recommend that we check out? This is a great topic, by the way. Yeah, sure. Just meet me where it's going down, man. And at my Facebook page. Scott Williamson. Nice. All about it. Feel free to leave a comment on the show, guys. I'm much chat. Doubtfire, take us out. Excuse me. This has been Digital Freethought Radio Hour. Be sure to visit digitalfreethought.com and our blog. We have a radio show archives there, Atheist songs, articles on the subject. By the way, my book is called Atheism. What's it all about? It's available on Amazon. If you're having trouble leaving religion and religious beliefs behind, there's a group out there for you called Recovering from Religion. You can find them RecoveringFromReligion.org. Thanks to Dale for bringing up these questions about atheism. They're very important. We do need to address them as they come up for sure. If you have any questions about the show, you can send them to AskAnAtheist at KnoxvilleAtheist.org and we'll answer them on the show. If you're watching this on YouTube, be sure to like and subscribe to be notified of new episodes.  The time to worry about it is when they prove that heavens and hells and souls are real. Until then, don't sweat it. Enjoy your life. We see you next Wednesday. Say bye, everybody. Bye, everybody.


Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram. The list goes on. Social media. There's so much social media in the world now.  A lot of us wake up in the morning and we check our Facebook. Do we then post an update to Facebook? Do we then go to Instagram? Do we then go to Twitter? Do we then go to Snapchat? A lot of people are just like, Snapchat, why the hell do I have to do that? I've just got into Snapchat. And it all gets a little bit overwhelming. Do you have to do like one piece of content for Snapchat, one piece of content for Instagram, one piece of content and it just goes on and on and on.  Which social media platform do you go on? Which one do you put all your energy into? Do you discard the others? Do you just focus on one? Do you just focus on two? Or is there a way to cover all of your social media? Or should you just pack it up and throw it in and just say, you know what, I'm done with social media all together and live a happier life because of it? Well, we're gonna find out today in today's episode. Today we're talking to a social media expert. She's also the founder of a company called Edgar, which automates and recycles social media updates. And she joins us now from Austin, Texas and her name is Laura Roder. Laura, how are you? Great to have you here. I'm wonderful, thank you for having me. Great to have you here. I should just clarify, it's Meet Edgar, isn't it? It's not Edgar, it's Meet Edgar, is that the name of the company? Well, we call the software Edgar, it's meetedgar.com. Gotcha, at meetedgar.com. Okay, very good. So what is your story? Who are we talking to, Laura? What's your background? Yeah, so I'm a long time entrepreneur, well, a long time for my age because I've been working for myself since I was 22. So it's almost 10 years now. I started out as a freelance web designer that moved into social media marketing consulting, that moved into social media information products and training, and then in 2014, I launched a social media software, which is Edgar. So I've kind of been in the social media world really long time and explored all different business models related to it. So when you first started out as a, maybe not as an entrepreneur, but just playing around with social media, what were you using and what were the pros and cons of that, if you will? Well, the first, I mean, obviously there was like Friendster and MySpace and all that stuff, before I was using them for business. The first real tool that I was on early from a business use was Twitter. So I signed up for Twitter in I guess 2007 and that's when my web design clients kind of started poking around at social media, what is this, should businesses use it? Soon after Facebook introduced their fan pages, should I have one? So that's kind of when I came onto the social media scene when Twitter was starting. And so did you literally post to Facebook one day and Twitter the next day, Facebook six times a day and Twitter, like what was the kind of like the archaic way of doing things, if you will? Well, yeah, I mean, the archaic way was just, yeah, before there were scheduling tools, so you did everything live. Also, in the beginning, the tools weren't really marketing channels, you know, which was good if you were using them as marketing channels because I think you could be like a lot more sly, right?  Now, it's obvious the company wants to tell you something when they have an account on Twitter. Yeah, well, just to clarify, this episode is very much designed for entrepreneurs, but it's gonna be pertinent to you if you don't own your own business and you're just wanting to put a message out into the world and communicate well with your friends, like what's a polite social media message versus what's a salesy or impolite sales message. So this is for if you are an entrepreneur or you are a business owner or you're wanting to get a message out and also if you're just, you know, wanting to chill and hang out with your friends on social media and having a voice. There's a really, really big difference between hanging out with your friends and using social media as a marketing channel. And I think that's actually where a lot of the confusion comes in when people try to use it for marketing because things you do for marketing would be really weird if you were just using social media to chat with your friends. Right, well, we're gonna clarify, we're gonna make the distinction as we go through this. Okay, so that was the kind of like, and then what was the progression from there just before we get into a few little tips here, Laura? What was the progression after, you know, posting on Facebook, posting on Twitter? Some tools started getting introduced, you know, Hootsuite was one of the early leading tools, is still a great tool after Hootsuite buffer innovated by saying, okay, you don't have to schedule every post individually, you can add to a queue. And then at Edgar, we've innovated beyond that by saying you don't just have one giant queue that everything's mixed up in. You have several categories and you can decide the frequency of those categories going out and you can fill a library with updates that cycle through over and over again instead of a queue that you have to constantly refill. That's kind of the very, very broad progression of some of the big scheduling tools for social media. Gotcha, okay. And so let's get into a few little nitty gritty tips here then. So let's deal with the, let's just deal with the social person first who doesn't have a business. Like it's just someone who's just has a social media account, let's deal with that. And then we'll move on to a strategy of a social media for people who are wanting to market products or services or something like that. So just for the fun kind of user, what tips do you have? What should you do and what should you not do? I mean, if you're just using social for fun, do what you want. I mean, it's honestly how I feel, right? Because you're kind of using it as a channel to express yourself, maybe connect with your friends. I really honestly don't have a lot of, I mean, it's not really my area of expertise I guess, but if you're just using it for fun, then just have fun with it. I think don't worry so much about it. I don't know if that's what you want to hear, but... So be a social media troll, right? Just, you know, that dress is ugly.  If that's your truth that you want to express.  Like, is there some things that you know that people just don't want to see or hear? For example, it's like, baby photos. Look at my amazing baby. Look at this amazing delicious meal that I had tonight. Or so blessed to be here in this world. And, oh wow, I just got a job promotion. I'm so happy. Like some of the, I know a lot of people find that stuff really irritating. Do you find that irritating? Is there some kind of etiquette around that? I know, I'm really not being cagey. I just really believe like, I kind of don't like when people are like, oh, don't post baby photos. Cause a lot of people do. I like seeing baby photos. I love it when my friends post baby photos. So you don't like it that I said I don't like baby photos? Right, I'm offended now. Really? So yeah, this is the beautiful thing about world. I get kind of irritated at all of that stuff. I'm like, I'll tell you what I did, just before we get into these, these entrepreneurial tips for the marketing strategy. I'll tell you what I did with my Facebook, Laura. I realized about six months ago that I was spending an inordinate amount of time on Facebook, too much time staring at people. And it wasn't making me happy. In fact, it was actually sapping me of my happiness because I kept getting this glimpse into other people's seemingly perfect world. If I was stronger, you know, more self assured, I wouldn't let that bother me. But obviously I wasn't because I was seeing other people like, I'm doing this, I'm doing this amazing thing. I'm this incredible amazing life. And I was like, what, and I have that life even though I've got that life, even though I actually do what I wanna do and I'm very happy just the mere fact that I was looking at other people do that kind of made me feel like I had this longing or want or I was missing out on something. So I'll tell you what I did. I decided on five people only that I was gonna follow on my Facebook. And I didn't unfollow people, but I unfollowed them from my news feed. So I kept all of my friends, they all think that I'm following them, which I still am, I could still click on their profile. But in my news feed now, when I go to Facebook.com, I only have five, now it's up to about seven people that I follow, including some family members and a couple of inspirational people like Tony Robbins. I follow Ty Lopez as a mentor of mine, a couple of things. So if your friends are mine, if you're a friend of mine and you're listening to this right now, I'm sorry, I'm probably not seeing your Facebook posts in your news feed.  It's all opt in, I get to choose what I see, you get to choose what you see. So I think have fun with it, if people don't like it, they don't have to look at it. Right, I'm being a little bit hypocritical as well because of my Snapchat now, which and the handle is at James Swannock, it's just my name. I snap things in my food and walking in the street and going, oh, look at them, this is great, it's amazing. So it is a choice, you can actually just say whatever you want, it's up to the viewer or the reader, if you like, what they choose to take in or not. I was really hoping you were gonna say your Snapchat is only baby's eating food. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, very good, baby's eating food and me being grateful. I'm so grateful for my baby food. For all these babies that love this food. Yes. All right, so there you go.  I get sometimes on my Periscope or my MiaCat or my YouTube channel, which are all called James Swannock, or even on podcast comments, I sometimes get trolls like criticizing. It's like, come on. It's not cool. It's not cool. Anyway, let's move on. So from a marketing strategy now, for people who have a business, they're wanting to build their brand, they're wanting to sell a product, they're wanting to sell a service, what tips do we have? Laura, what's the overarching strategy before we get into some nitty-gritty tips? Yeah, so I mean, I think it's great that we started talking about using social for fun because I think most people start on social for fun, right? We sign up for Facebook to keep up with our pictures of our friends' babies eating to post our own babies eating. So we're kind of used to coming at it from that angle and then people get very nervous about marketing. And I think people often go one way or the other. They think like, social media, I don't want to deal with it. If I'm going to promote my business, I'm just going to load up a bunch of things saying buy my stuff and then just schedule them and then never look at it because I don't want to deal with it. Or they're so scared to mention what they sell. I see this a lot where people are like, we've been told so much, provide value, provide value where they're so focused on that value that you never even know what their business is or what they do. And as we've talked about social media is all opt in. So anyone who's following you on an account that's related to your business, they obviously want to hear about your business. So I think you need to make a shift into thinking about social media, not as like random chat updates, but this is actually a really powerful marketing channel. How am I going to plan my content? What type of content do I want to share? What sort of audience do I want to curate? What sort of impression do I want to have on these marketing channels? Okay, and so what's an example of a kind of impression? Is it all positivity? Is it value, value, value? Is it like, what are some examples? Well, yeah, so I mean, you do want to think about how your brand comes across. Like a rule that I've always had for my brand is that we don't post like rants or negative things about other people or companies. So some people will have a blog post like, here's why I hate Citibank and here's all the things they did wrong in my customer experience. Like that's just a little rule we have that we don't really take that angle. Instead, we like to talk about what people are doing right. The type of content that we share is about social media marketing, but it's also about entrepreneurship. It's also inspirational. We like to share what we do at our own company. And we like to tell people about Edgar and why it could help them. And if we're having a sale or promotion or something like that, we're including that in our social media mix. Okay, we're talking to Laura Roder from Edgar, which is a social media marketing platform. What else, Laura? What else besides, once we've kind of figured out what our message is and what our overarching theme, if you like, is, what else should we be doing? Well, so Edgar specifically, a big thing we believe in is repeating content, which a lot of people are very scared to do. And a lot of people are skeptical when I first bring up this idea, because they think shouldn't everything be original? Shouldn't everything be live? When we're talking about social media in the context of marketing for a business or a message or whatever, you usually are not going to get an ROI on your time if you're posting everything live all day long. It's just too time consuming. There's too much content. And the idea that you have to create new original pieces of content, eight times a day, every day for the rest of your life is what makes social media so overwhelming for entrepreneurs. And the truth is that your audience sees, depending on the platform, like five to 10% of your audience sees anything that you post. So to create this great original content, send it out on Twitter once, five percent of people see it that follow you and never send it again, I just don't think it's a great strategy. So can you literally post something, like how often should you repeat the content then? So a guideline we like to go by for our company is to have about like three months worth of content and then you're repeating quarterly. So you're only repeating four times a year. Obviously it's social, right? You're adding in new stuff. You can add on live stuff on top of this, but this is kind of like your bread and butter. We've seen our customers repeat a lot more frequently than that. I've actually been surprised. I've seen accounts that repeat things like every two to three weeks and it gets the same engagement a few weeks later. It's actually, I've actually been surprised. Like I was kind of skeptical. Like, oh, that's a little too soon. But the proof is in the pudding. You can see, like we have a case study on our website for wine tracker.co. They do this, they'll post something two weeks later, the exact same amount of retweets. Like it's kind of uncanny how similar the amount of retweets is every time. Wow, okay. So, but you wouldn't do it any less than two to three weeks. Yeah, yeah. I mean, there obviously is a level that could be too much. Like if you're posting literally the same update every hour, all day long, you know, that's going to feel like a lot. But even just a few weeks in between, people likely aren't seeing it again or if they are, they don't care. So same image, same caption, same everything every two to three weeks. Okay, how many times should we be posting per day per account, like on an Instagram or Twitter or Facebook or whatever? I mean, the truth is as much as you can is kind of the real answer. It really is more constrained for a small business by how much time they have. But because of the nature of these networks and the way it works is, you know, like especially looking at Twitter, Instagram, you log on, you see what's been posted during that five minute window that you log on and then you log off. So if you didn't send it during the same five minutes that your audience logged on, they're going to miss it. So posting, you know, like I would start with like at least a few times a day. It's actually difficult for a small business to post too much just because of the nature of it. Okay, okay, so we've decided on our theme. We're knowing that we can repeat our content and we're posting as much as we can but three times a day is a good start. Go up to six, okay, very good. What else we got, Laura?  You have to pick something that's actually a schedule that you can stick to. And this is where I'm talking about viewing it as a plan instead of like a panic mode thing you do every morning. So with Edgar, what you can do is load up a content of all your library categorized and then Edgar just pulls it for you which makes office a lot easier because you're just building up your library, you know, either once or over time instead of worrying about what's scheduled every single day. If you don't use Edgar at least you want to use a tool that allows you to schedule ahead of time so you can look at your content, you know in a week block or in a month block.  What you want to be doing live every day is what people call engagement is logging on, responding, liking, sharing, retweeting doing that relationship building because Edgar software, Edgar can send out your updates. Edgar cannot form relationships on social media. Okay, so every day you want to respond and share and like and form relationships but in terms of you disseminating content you want to put that in some kind of schedule system like Edgar. Right, because your audience doesn't know or care whether you sent out a tweet from your phone or you know from your computer or from a scheduling tool. It's just, it's all the same. So there's no reason why that people have this idea like I need to be sitting down live at the computer when it goes out and it's just not accurate. So okay, great, I've got a few questions but I'll just ask you, is there, what else? What other, what other? No, go get into your questions I think. Okay, so how is, which platforms, which social media platforms does Edgar disseminate information from? Like what does it not do? So it does Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. So it doesn't do everything else. So it doesn't seem to be one all, all encompassing place where you can hit Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Instagram. I don't know what the other ones are but there's a lot, right? It doesn't seem to be one place. I know Hootsuite does what? Hootsuite does Twitter, Facebook and... Well the thing is the tools are all different. So some tools can like do Instagram but they can't actually do Instagram. They just pull up a reminder on your phone for you to log in to Instagram and post live. There's a reason tools don't do them all. Pinterest is a very, very different tool. Pinterest is not a text update. Snapchat is obviously a different tool. So I mean, I guess I can just speak for our company. I don't know how other companies do but we purposefully do not have a way to send it out to all networks at the same time because you're not doing the same thing on especially Pinterest or Instagram as you are on the three platforms that we work with. Yeah, I know in Instagram's a tricky one. You can't really... I actually found a program that's as close to being able to send out Instagram posts automatically as possible called Instamate. Have you heard of this Instamate? Yeah, but it's a lot of... I don't know about that one specifically but all of these are against Instagram terms and they keep getting shut down is what keeps happening. Like Hootsuite is not against their terms but that's why you can't actually schedule it. It's just like a reminder on your phone you can't even do it on the computer. You have to go in on your phone. Yeah, yeah, with Instamate it's something I just tried. I remember it well because the word mate is in the end and I'm Australian so I'm like I don't remember it. But that one, you can schedule your Instagram posts to go out. However, your computer needs to be on and you need to be connected for it to go out. So it's a little kind of tricky... Like a proxy.  You have to be logged in and be live in order for it to actually go out. So you can't send it out while you're sleeping. You have to have your computer on. Right, right.  That's what's happened in the past. Well anyway, I've been experimenting with that and testing it out. I've only been on it a couple of days but it's the closest I've come to being able to be able to send it out. I've put content in and loaded it up. Okay, so you do Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Now why LinkedIn? I'm curious about that. Twitter and Facebook, I understand that. I get it, right? But why LinkedIn? LinkedIn is a weird one for sure. We don't see much traffic from LinkedIn. LinkedIn I think is much more powerful for people like sales professionals, people who are doing that kind of one-on-one relationship building. As far as why we post there, it's just another outlet and because the format is similar to Twitter and Facebook, AKA like text-based with a possible photo, it's like why not send content to LinkedIn and have content going out there. It'll give you just a small boost of traffic without having to do much. But yeah, I mean, most people I think are on the same page as you like LinkedIn, not as important as Facebook and Twitter. So I'm going to give you a little, I'm going to, Laura, let's both come up with one super-duper ninja little social media tactic. I've got one that I learned yesterday that I'm going to share, but have you got one like in terms of to do with how Edgar works with Facebook and Twitter, like one super-duper little tip that can get you more followers or get you more engagement, whether it's something like something as simple as put RT before you send Twitter out, like retweet this or whether it's like tag a friend or whatever, have you got one kind of little super-duper one before I share mine?  There you go, you're one of those girls. Yeah. You go first. So here's the thing, what I learned yesterday from one of the world's top Instagram guys, this is to do with Instagram. So this is nothing to do with what you do with Edgar, but Instagram, for all those out there who have an Instagram, if you get someone else with a lot of followers to like your photo, the algorithm now in Instagram sees that and then it shows who you're, who that person liked throughout the day and then other people can see that and then they'll go, oh, who did he like? Let me go there and check that out. Maybe I didn't explain that well enough. So let's just say I've got John Smith, I'm making up a name and he has 100,000 followers and I know John Smith in a friendly way. I call up John Smith and say, John, hey, can you please like my photos today? Can you just like one or two of my images today? And he goes, sure, James, I'll do that for you. And then all of a sudden I wake up the next day and I've got like 200 new likes on my photos or 500 more likes because now in Instagram, people can see which followers liked which photos. And when people see that, they then go out of curiosity and go, let me see what he liked. Oh, okay, cool. Now I'm gonna like it. Now I'm gonna follow it. Does that make sense? Yeah, I just haven't seen that in Instagram. So yeah, I'm just curious how it works. I'll check that out. There you go, super. No one's. I don't know that one. I know that one's brand new. No one's doing that. No one's doing that. So if you want to like, this is a super duper tip which I shouldn't be sharing because it's a multi-million dollar tip. But if you ask your follower, someone, you ask a friend who has a lot of followers or a key influencer to like your post and you do that, you can pay people to do that by the way. You can actually pay people, pay key influencers to like your photos. So it turns up in the algorithm and more people come across your stuff. You can do that. But if you have a friend who has a lot of followers and say, hey, can you just like my photos?  And then all of it, like I did the test yesterday, I literally did the test yesterday on an image on a new Instagram account I started called Swanee's Glasses. I sell these blue blocking glasses and we just started the account, Swanee's Glasses. There's only like 50 followers or whatever. And we posted a photo and I had one friend of mine who has a lot of followers just like one of the photos and that has now had 493 likes. In fact, there you go. I'm gonna hold up the photo. That's the Swanee's Glasses that I promote and you can see there. If you're watching, listening on the podcast, you can't see this, but if you go to Swanee's Glasses on Instagram, you can see 493 likes. And I've only got 150 followers at the moment because I just only opened the account 48 hours ago. You see that? So even though I've got 150 followers, that one image got 493 likes just because I had a friend of mine with a lot of followers like it and then everyone else came across. Look at this one, 670 likes. You see what I'm saying? Yeah. Versus this one which has only got 50. He obviously didn't, my friend obviously didn't like that photo so I've only got 50 likes. Mmm. Boom. I should be a social media expert. That's what I'm talking about. If you're listening on the podcast and you wanna see what I'm talking about, just watch this replay on my YouTube channel which is at James Swanee. Or just go to my Instagram. Well, that Instagram accounts Swanee's Glasses and you can see what I'm talking about. All right, Laura. I've held my part of the bargain. Now it's your turn. I want a group. Well, mine is kind of a different genre but inspired by yours because I'm gonna be a bit of a, can I be like a bit of a critic? To what you just showed us.   Are you a social media troll? I'm gonna be helpful. All right. Because here's something I noticed. So you got a lot of likes but you didn't get that many new followers. So you got like maybe 100 new followers. I didn't get that many new followers but I still got new followers. But you still got some, right, right? I still got, I think yesterday when we looked at this, we worked out that I got 50 new followers. So it was kind of like I had 493 likes and 50 new followers, so it's 10%. So 10% of the people who liked followed. That seems worth doing. So how can you criticize that? Well, so because what it makes me think of is just the importance of seeing, you know, kind of beyond the initial excitement to like, how is this actually driving traffic to my site and how is this actually influencing my business? You know what I mean? If I got 10, well, let's just do the math on it, right? Let's just say I had two or three of those friends do that, right, two or three friends do it. Then I've got 30 new followers from one post. That's worth it. Yeah, yeah. That's amazing, right? So it's just become scalable. So now my strategy with that is I draw up a list of all the people I know, like people with huge followers like Brandon Carter, like Tai Lopez, like Sean Stevens, like all these people that I know with huge followers, like Greg O'Gallagher from Kino Body, who are all in my space. And I'm gonna say, guys, can you just start liking my images and I'll start liking yours and that way we get like this start to gain. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so yeah, my tip is to always like, to always look and see your actual traffic, you know, go in your Google Analytics account. I know it's not that exciting, but I think a lot of people they're like, because you can game this stuff, right? And this one is getting you followers. There's people who like just buy followers on Twitter, right? And it's just bought accounts. And so it might look impressive, but it's not actually growing your business because it's not actually, you know, driving traffic back. So it's like, whenever you're reading, whenever you're trying out a tactic on social, try out the tactic, be like, okay, I tried this tactic. It got me 500 new likes. It got me 30 new followers. Like then let's go see the traffic that Instagram is driving. Let's go see if that traffic is converting, you know, use Google Goals to see if it's converting to email signups, to see if it's converting to sales on your website. Like follow, you know, follow your social activity all the way through your funnel. Okay, I like that. Before we do a review here, Laura, we're talking to Laura Roder from Edgar. Do you have a little tip for us, Ninja? That wasn't, I know, I know you wouldn't like that one. No, I liked it. It was good, but I reckon I can squeeze a better one out, even better one. Give me one more. No, because you're asking the wrong person because I'm kind of weirdly anti, like I'm kind of weirdly anti-hacked because people get so caught up in following like the short term hacks that sometimes they forget like the big picture strategy. You know what I mean? Like I see this with Facebook a lot because Facebook is constantly changing its algorithm. So like one week, if you put a gallery of images, then that does really well on Facebook. And then next week, if you put a video and then next week, if you put like long form text and people get so obsessed with like what's going on with Facebook this week. But people kind of miss the forest for the trees because they'll be like, I have to create these like huge image galleries and they do that one week and then they get really burnt out because it doesn't work anymore. And then they stop posting on Facebook as opposed to like, I'm going to post high quality content every day on Facebook. And I'm kind of not going to stress about what's so big this week and I'm going to be in this for the long game. Yeah, you're more, you're definitely talking about a system.  And then you don't worry about it. Exactly, exactly. And then you actually have it going out instead of being like, okay, what's the hot new thing? And you're like trying to keep up with that, but then you spent so much time trying to figure out what that was that like, now you don't have content for the rest of the month because you just killed yourself creating like 10 custom videos. And now next week, Facebook doesn't care about video anymore. So I'm like slow and steady. That's my style. Good. Well, let's merge slow and steady with a little hack in the same place. Well, yeah, this is a great interview, right? They can get both. They can get both from both worlds. There you go. I like it. There's no troll-like behavior from you at all. I've got that. There's all positive energy. I love it. Well, thank you very much. Well, I hope that's been helpful. How to grow your social media and spend less time doing it. Let's just review what Laura wrote it from Edyka went over with us here. She's all about batching your workflow. So viewing it as a strategic marketing channel versus all like having to quickly race around and do something on a daily basis. Repeat your content. You should know that only 5% to 10% of your audience is gonna see any of your posts. So have three months of content and then repeat every three months or you can repeat every two to three weeks. Laura has seen work. It gets the same engagement. So that's good news. I wonder if you can then repeat the content that you've repeated. Do you think? Yes, absolutely. Does that mean you only ever need three weeks of content and then you just repeat it for the whole year? You refresh it. You know what I mean? Well, because then you're curating instead of like panic posting, right? You're looking, because then you can actually step back and be like, okay, well, what's performing well? What's not performing well? What do we wanna put more of in? What do we wanna take out? And you're kind of curating this like body of posts instead of everything new all the time. I love that, yeah. Pick a schedule you can stick to.  Pick a schedule. And then make sure you do do this every day though. Respond and share and like and form relationships every day. And then just know that with Edgar, with Laura's platform, Edgar, you can load all of your content into one library and schedule it out on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. So if you are in that game, you have a business, you're wanting to grow it. You're wanting to grow your Twitter followers, your Facebook followers and your LinkedIn account. Do reach out to Laura Rota in Austin, Texas. You can find out more about Edgar at meetedegard.com. Is that right, Laura? That's correct, is it? And you can make sure you follow Laura on Twitter and see what she's doing. It's Laura Rota, which is at LKR, right? LKR. Yep, yep. And what are you on Facebook, Laura? Yeah, I don't do public Facebook. I think I have an old page there. Okay, cool. So follow her on Twitter and just reach out to her at meetedegard.com and just tell her that you heard her speak on the James Swannick Show podcast or you saw her on this YouTube channel or wherever else you may be seeing this at the moment. So Laura, thank you very much. This was super helpful. Do you wanna do a little one point for my Snapchat followers? Hang on. So here we go. This is exciting. Here we go. We're gonna do a little thing here. So I'm gonna go three, two, one and you're gonna go, I'm gonna go one social media tip, okay? But you've got about seven seconds to give it. Have you got it ready to go? Yeah. Three, two, one. Laura wrote a social media expert. What's the social media tip?  You can actually schedule. Oh, there you go. Ah! Well, I see what you did there. I see what you did there. I trolled your Snapchat. Social media expert just trolled, just trolled my Snapchat. Are you on Snapchat at all? No. Oh, there we go. So I'm gonna, Laura just trolled my Snapchat. I'll put some little... And now I won't even be there to defend myself where I've made such a mess. Laura wrote it. Thank you very much.  It's true. My true colors.  I'm just joking. Laura, thank you so much. I really appreciate your time. Make sure you check out meetedgord.com, meetedgord.com. If you wanted to grow your Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, hope you enjoyed this. Make sure you share this with someone now. Do you think might get benefit from this if you have someone who has realized on social media, go and get them to share it. And make sure, please do leave a review if you're listening to this on the podcast. Go and give this a four or a five-star review, or two-star if you didn't, obviously. Maybe they didn't like the trolling. And then share it, and we'll catch you on the next one. See ya.


I am mainly going to get into this in the next lectures, but um let me just give a little bit of a introduction today um rendering and I mean the visual part because you might remember that early on in the course I um I talked about rendering and displays for other senses right it could be for audio could be for haptic or touch. So, in this case we are talking about um the most complex part and the most common part for virtual reality which is visual rendering. If you are following along in the um in the textbook I suggest looking at ah Shirley at all chapters ah 4 and 8 before the next lecture. So, you might recall we did this thing called the chain of transformations and that was so that we could transform a point on a body into the world and then eventually into the appropriate place in pixel coordinates right. So, we went through that whole chain of transformations um we finished without a few lectures ago. We ended up with something that looked like this we had the overall transformation is equal to T viewport T canonical view T I and T rigid body and I went through all these transformations in detail I even inserted for stereo T left and T right in here or I might have combined them into making um right eye and left eye transformations here by replacing this matrix. I also talked about optical distortion transformation out here um, but what was important about the previous transformations was that I was just telling you how the geometry gets transformed. So, that we could figure out what the coordinates are starting from my initial objects that I define in their own body frames and I put them all together in the same world frame I just want to figure out where everything ends up when it needs to be rendered on the screen, but I did not talk about how the pixels are actually supposed to be set. So, now I want to get to that part I want to talk about how should the pixels be set what information needs to be sent out to the display. Remember we also talked about display issues when we were talking about eye movements and we were talking about perception of motion um and we went into discussions of frame rates and resolutions photo receptor density all these things are coming together now. So, when I cover visual rendering I am mainly going to be covering for you what are standard um computer graphics techniques that have been known for decades. However, we should look at them from the perspective of virtual reality developers and how these methods may in some cases be adequate for what we want to achieve in virtual reality and how in other cases they may be quite inadequate and if they are inadequate what do we need to do about it right. So, that is the next problem this was pure geometry right of the mathematics of transformations. So, the next part is um next problem how to set the RGB values values of each pixel. There are two general approaches that emerge and again this is a standard computer graphics there is what is called image order rendering put it here image order rendering versus object oriented rendering sorry object order rendering I said object oriented because we we think like that in computer science but object order rendering. So, an image order rendering and I should say to make the distinction between the two of these you have to think about what the outermost loop is going to do in the computations. So, the outermost loop in image order rendering is to go pixel by pixel.  So, this is going to be pixel by pixel the main method inside of this is called ray tracing. So, you figure out what ray of light in the in a in a um virtual camera imaging model that pixel corresponds to and then you do a bunch of computations about how all of the light would be propagating from fictitious sources in order to eventually enter or arrive at that pixel. So, ray tracing um this is I would say easier to implement and if those of you who have had a computer graphics courses before you may have had to implement a ray tracer as a class project. So, it is a very reasonable kind of assignment um overall though the performance is usually slower. So, nice from an academic standpoint and um in terms of easy to learn and implement, but often ends up being slower. Object oriented which the particular objects that we are going to use in this class are triangles just the basic primitives when we talked about models I mentioned triangles is the most common primitives. So, this will be triangle by triangle order. So, in other words I start with thinking about my model of the geometry and I just go triangle by triangle it is composed of triangles. So, I go in that way that is the outermost loop instead of pixel by pixel. So, I focus on each triangle and then I do what is called rasterization which is figuring out what pixels are covered by that triangle right. So, after these transformations have been applied right these transformations have been applied to the triangle from the original um body frame that was given in or it may have been given in the world frame if it were stationary. Where does it end up on the screen? We perform some kind of pixelation of it um in a process called rasterization. This is much harder to implement, but is what is used by modern GPUs graphical processing units. So, these have the the whole um graphics pipeline has been optimized for triangle by triangle computations quick rasterization and um fast operations by these processing units. So, this ends up usually being faster and so, what I want to do for next time is to give you an overview of how these kinds of methods work and then we will get into a kind of critique of the um the problems that arise in the context of virtual reality. There may have been some methods or assumptions that worked fine for um for rendering graphics onto a screen when you are just sitting looking at the screen that is what all of this was designed for primarily, but when we just adapt it over to virtual reality I want you to have an understanding of what may go wrong. So, are there any questions about this up up to now? Alright so, let us let us finish for this time. Thanks.