We understand the thinking atheist. It's not a person, it's a symbol,
an idea. The population of atheists this country is going through the rule,
rejecting faith, pursuing knowledge, challenging the sacred. If I tell the truth,
it's because I tell the truth, not because I put my hand on
a book and made a wish and working together for a more rational world.
Take the risk of thinking. Feel so much more happiness. Truth Usian wisdom
will come to you that way. Assume nothing, question everything, and start
thinking. This is the Thinking Atheist Podcast hosted by Seth Andrews. Just a
quick interjection into your week. I want to introduce you to Larry. Larry
is the skeleton that's sitting in my yard right now. Obviously you know me
right with ghost stories coming up this month and I'm always posting about Halloween,
did you see there was somebody on Facebook? In fact, let me just
pull it up very quickly here from a religious page called there it is God's
Glory. It's said, if you celebrate Halloween in any way, shape or
form, you are celebrating evil and darkness. And you know it. And
I responded, cool, what okay? You know? Bring on the evil
and darkness. I'm not worried about that. As somebody who came out of
the Satanic panic and is watching everybody lose their minds over the month of October,
I think it's amazing. It's just amazing. So I decorate every single
year. This year I decorated really on the cheap, recycling a bunch of
old stuff, but it really sort of panned out. I had the idea
that I wanted a skeleton in an electric chair, like an old prison electric
chair. Right he's on death row, and I'm vehemently anti capital punishment,
but I'm also vehemently anti slashing teenagers with a machete. So I don't think
these are commentaries on society. But a buddy of mine, I told him
my idea. He's got skills in carpentry. He's just a craftsman, and
he found an old wooden palette behind a department store. It was then a
dumpster. It's kind of sticking at the top of a dumpster. Obviously it
wouldn't hold any more weight. They were tossing it out, but the wood
was amazing. It looked like a hundred years old. It'd been weathered,
and he just grabbed the palette and he threw it in the back of his
pickup truck and he drove it home. And just because he wanted to,
he built me an electric chair and it looks fantastic. You can see those
photographs on my social media page on Facebook and Twitter, which is not ex
it's still Twitter. But so I just put the chair in my yard and
then I stuck one of my skeletons in it, and I spray painted him
with kind of a chalk looking spray to catch the light, and then a
few two by fours to look like bars, and the rest was just recycled
stuff. You know. There's a reaper with his hand on the switch.
The Reaper's been in my attic for years. I've got skeletons. They're all
pointing that direction toward the chair. I had those stored in the attic.
Actually, the way they were stored is if like invest if detectives had ever
had to come to my house and they searched my attic, it would look
like I had bodies in the attic. That's how they restored. But I
pull those out, and then the lights and fog I already had from years
and years ago. So everything's pretty much recycled, but it looks amazing and
it's also they're posed, so it's not going to freak out the very young
children who are walking with their parents at dusk. You know, they're out
in a sort of getting some exercise in the neighborhood. My intent was to
create smiles, not trauma. And the skeleton in the chair, I just
thought he looked like a Larry. He looks like a Larry to me,
so now when I talk about him, I'm always talking about Larry, So
I'm in the Halloween spirit anyway. My larger point is this. I mentioned
that I built this year's display on the cheap. That's out of necessity.
I'll be totally honest, and I hesitated to bring this up, but I
kind of need to. COVID nineteen just kicked everybody's ass. I'm sure you
know exactly what I'm talking about, and the podcast verse has really taken a
hit, including this show. I've been a full time activist since twenty fifteen.
The show's been on the air since two thousand and ten. Yeah,
thirteen years. But with COVID, I lost like forty percent of my patrons,
the advertisers that I'm so thankful for but these speaker advertisers, they're not
paying a fraction of what they used to pay and I am and this channel
is kind of in need of a reset at this moment, which would I
think get me back on track for the rest of fall winter and into twenty
twenty four. So I have an ask, and Larry joins me. I
have Larry, and I would like to ask for just a quick shot in
the arm for this channel, if you would help me reset. And for
that, I have a couple of links in the description box. The big
one, the one that would be the most help, is just a straight
donation of a few bucks via PayPal or and or become a patron and you
can set the parameters for that. And again, with everybody struggling, I
just hate to do that. I know a lot of other content creators have
been making the same pitch. And with four million global podcasts plus all the
weight that you're already carrying, I'm not trying to add to your burden,
but being someone who is trying to do this full time and make videos and
podcasts and do speeches and write books and try to do all of those things
against the tide of religious insanity in the world. You genuinely are a big
part of helping me to do that, and so if you'd partner with me
with a small donation, it would allow Natalie and me the opportunity to keep
kicking and to do what we do, to do what I do for the
rest of this year and into twenty fourteen, and I think after a quick
shot in the arm, we should be good. The links to donate in
the description box. Our full time broadcast the main show will release next week.
I'm talking to author Katie Cohen about the need for atheists to just come
out and say they are atheists. I've got ghost stories later on in the
month, and so much more to come. Thank you, my family,
and I will see you back here next time. Follow The Thinking Atheist on
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