but you know thomas yes what is the point of religion that's the question i want to ask on this week's show  depends where you are ok who are you are you the person who is following the religion or are you the person who is helping to define what the religion is so you believe there could be very differing motivations are you a person who is attacking their religion or are you a person who has nothing to do with religion so let's start with the bigger question why is there religion because people want to know why they are here they want to know what is the purpose of their existence isn't that the point of radio shows though because we could tell them yes right the purpose of your life is to keep listening to this show because we make your life meaningful but no letter or radio shows don't do that yeah that's true it's not all radio shows do right but on this one it's in our mission statements to try to make your life meaningful on earth living does that mean we are religion well most radio shows actually do then one way or another they're promoting a way of interacting with the world maybe  consumerism or some other religion well i think we should start with an anti consumerist religion song then ok so that would be god doesn't want your money here it is yes god doesn't want your money but god does take credit cards there are churches that do accept credit cards but that's not really got so ok so what's the difference between the religion and god well there's a lot of difference of religion is a thing created by people religion is an organization it's interesting it recognizes now in many different facets that the minute you have something become an organization it's first duty becomes to preserve itself and often for the right reason right you know you create a nonprofit to help with whatever it is if the nonprofit goes under you can't help people but if you went into it before you had an organization with just the mission of helping people once you've created the organization now that that takes second place because you've got to maintain the organization in order to now achieve what used to be your primary goal and so religion is just one more case of that i think i think that's valid because you want to protect your religion or else  nothing wrong now you say it's about protection as much as just you need to maintain it if you feel it's important to spread the word of your religion then you need to be have the resources to be able to spread right right absolutely and you need to have people who say we want to provide those resources right and spread it right dr you help well yes i'm a person and i'm going to tell you something you're going to tell me something yes i am that you hi everybody we're back you said people want a religion because it gives them a sense of meaning because people are q why did the their life exist is that an important question to answer or is that just an important question to be asking well it's just as important is as any other scientific question because really the reason people want to know that is because they want to know how to predict things happening so if they look upon their life as being a set of variables that exist in some sort of system they want to know what the system is so they can predict the outcomes but these aren't just any kind of predictions right they're trying to say something not just about their life tomorrow they're trying to say something about like an afterlife or absolutely it's just a harder question in figuring out how far this ball falls when it falls out the table if there is an afterlife i want to know what i got to do to prepare to have a good outcome if there isn't i want to know what i gotta do to have a good outcome so you know i have the respect i think it's not about wanting to know as much as it is about what do i gotta do well i know what we've got to do right now yeah to play the song in heaven all right so a lot of people in multiple religions had this idea that it's important to believe in some type of afterlife because otherwise why would you bother ever being good right i don't get that because i think you know usually when you're selfish and aggressive that doesn't end up making your life easier in the future people don't necessarily know that because a lot of people have been told that the only way to a good healthy lifestyle is through a religion or this particular religion that you happen to be born into so it is a little bit of a novel idea that there was any other reason not to rip off everybody that you know yeah i just don't get that i think if what you practice causing you more strife in the future you probably want to stop doing that and that's enough of a reward right then you become happier you become more content you have fewer problems in the future that's enough reward i think that if you consider yourself as ultimately a powerless person and your functioning as a mouse in a maze and you have just got to follow these rules you feel that nothing i do is going to have much of a consequence it would be more likely that the only reason to do good is because you need to get something out of it as that's how you see everything ok that makes a lot of sense and that's sad it's a really sad sad idea well that's why we need religion to cheer about that but the religion is then perpetuating that idea that you have no agency i don't know if that's perpetuating but i think there are plenty of people who feel that they have no power anyway and they're going to feel that way no matter what religion aside i think they're going to feel you know what power is in the hands of other people and therefore you know i better lock on to this religion because they say that it will help me really really sad so i'm going to tell you dear listener if you're one of those people who feels powerless it's not true you have lots of power you can make changes you can do things differently than you have in the past and one of the things that you can really do that would be really helpful is to buy our city because that is definitely totally a power that you have all right so i claimed that there people have more agency than they believe i will let you close out the show how would you like to do it how would i like to do it doctor doctor give me the news