 Nothing I can do about that. Hello and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio Hour and WOZO Radio 103.9 LPF. I'm right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We're recording this on Sunday morning, August 14, 2022. I'm Larry Rhodes or Doubter 5 and as usual have a co-host on the line with us. Wombat, how are you? Hey, it's me the Wombat. How's everybody? Welcome. And our guests today are John Richards from over in England Way. Hello, John. Hello. And we had Texas Sky. Hello and welcome. Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism and the sciences. And conversely, we'll also talk about religion, religious faiths, gods, holy books and superstition. And if you think you're the only non-believer in your time, well, you're just not. In Knoxville, here in the middle of the Bible Belt, we have a group of over a thousand of us. And we'll tell you more about that after the mid-show break. Wombat, what's your topic today? You have a right to religion and what good opportunities there are to get access to quality, secular religion. Religion or education? Education. My bad, my bad, my bad, my bad. You have a right to Jesus. And what paths do we have? We're talking about education. We're talking about education today. There's two things that got me off guard. One, it looks like sky's on fire. Is there smoke coming behind you? Are you cooking anything, my friend? Or you got like a cigarette? There is smoke coming from my ashtray. There it is. There it is. Okay. So I saw that. I was just like, oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. It's a message. Anyway, as John, he's got his little tugboat going on right now. Is that a tugboat? Is that like a tour boat? What kind of boat is that? Yeah, it's a tour boat. Very, very cool. He's fine. He got a video of London. And I think it's a great upgrade since last time. This makes great radio. This makes great radio. For all of our radio listeners that we're just going to embrace. Yeah, we also put this on YouTube so you can find this on YouTube. Larry, you're also catching up with you. Great suspenders. Great, great colored shirt. I can't imagine a better color shirt. People on the radio are missing out. How have you been, my friend? Well, they actually got my motorcycle out yesterday and rode for a couple hours. That was a lot of fun. Only 81 degrees. It was like perfect weather for it. Very cool. This weekend I've met up with friends when we play disc golf and we all carry a bag with us and we pick up trash as well. We pick up trash as we go through the park and play. And I figured that's a really cool way. I've just cleaned up like two large 10 gallon trash bags full of trash that's been around the park. You know, here's my two thoughts about it. We're part of the community. We want to make sure it looks beautiful, but also, you know, and I don't mean this in a, I don't mean this in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way, but I can spend an hour feeling good sitting down on a church pew, feeling good about myself once a week, or I can actually go out and try to make the community I live in a better place. And I feel like that's, that is my opinion, some of the best demonstrations of psycho activism, but also just like we've probably had some religious people who were out with us when we were picking up trash and playing disc golf. You can, it's not a monopoly in terms of making the world, you know, slightly cleaner or a better place. You can invite people in, but it's a lot better than everybody with a particular dogma sitting down and feeling like... Yeah, I do that on my motorcycle. Because I'm riding along, I'll see a piece of trash and I'll reach over and grab it. You've seen people do that on horses, right? With handkerchiefs. I do that on my motorcycle. I'd love to see it. When there's video, then I'm a little... Video or it didn't happen, right? Video or it didn't happen. You have one of those long, extended grabbers that you can operate. I need one. That's for sure. John Richards, what's going on with you? How you been? Well, I've been okay. Thank you. But the most exciting news is, you know, my co-host, Tercea De Plessis, the South African lady, she visited. Cool. Yeah, she's on holiday. Almost finished her UK holiday. That's a long trip. And was our house guest for a couple of months. Yeah, so we've actually met in reality. Okay. How was the, how was the meat space meeting? Where you guys like tapping each other's shoulders was like, why isn't he closing? Like, what's going on here? Like, why can't... How do I end this conversation? This is so much easier online. What's going on here? Yeah, I discovered that she is touch sensitive. There's a story. Okay. Hi, you know, I'm doing good. I'm doing good. I'm doing good. I'm doing good. I'm doing good. I'm doing good. I'm doing good. I'm doing good. I'm doing good. I'm doing good. I'm doing good. Sky checking in on you. I love the shirt. How you been? Thank you. I'm doing good. Good. Rote all night. A three, three part. Articles from my blog. Of course. Research had a good time. Nice and quiet at night. I'm looking forward to next week because there's a lot of weird stuff going on at work, but also looking forward to the conversations I'll have with my coworkers about today's show, because interestingly enough, a lot of the people at my job watch this show. And when I say a lot, it's about maybe eight people or so, such that when we're done, when I'm done with a week show, say we do a class on like the surgeon general's warning on the Bible, like that sparked a lot of conversation at work because afterward they'd be like, hey, I saw that that was funny. Here's my thoughts on XYZ. This is what I would have said. And it's sort of a harsh conversation because we're not all atheists, but it's enough of a multicultural group that likes science that it's an interesting thing when you meet other people who are thinking the same thing. You thought, you were thinking, but you didn't think because you thought you were the only atheist at your work. So like, you know, like one guy was like, hey, I'm an atheist. It's like, oh, I am too. Let's be friends, let's be friends. What, you got a radio show? Let me hear about that. Let me at least subscribe to that. So, go ahead, John Richardson. This is one of the most important aspects of what we do. We're actually putting a human face onto the title atheist and showing that we are reasonably normal people and not, you know, immoral purposes, God-haters. Angry, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. That needs to be done often again and again. Yes, absolutely. Constantly, because the reverse is constant, the put down is the bad word. The backflow is always present, right? Yeah, by the way, Ty, can you throw another baby on the barbecue? Sure, sure, sure, let me fix that. Okay, anyway, I think Skye's the one barbecue when he's got the smoke going on, right? No, I think they're the one barbecue right now. It's okay, I'm making a smoothie over here. Yeah. The idea is, though, one of my, one of the coworkers who listened to the show is homeschooling her daughter. And the homeschool curriculums in Tennessee, something I didn't know, follow a strict curriculum. So you can't just like teach your kid, obviously, a bunch of books and then give them a degree as your parent. You have to follow like a school curriculum, you just do it at home. The problem is, is the school curriculum that she's following, the biology classes, are very steeped in religious dogma. And it tends to be the case that that's how a lot of homeschools curriculums are. And it's why a lot of parents option for homeschools so they don't have to deal with the hard... Evolution. That come with a standardized education. Is it Viny Chance, A-C-E education? Could you say that again? Is it Viny Chance, A-C-E homeschooling, accelerated Christian education? I don't know, I don't know. I didn't delve that deep into it. So she did reach out and was just essentially asking me, hey, Tyrone, do you know any resources where I can get like a biology textbook that doesn't talk about the creator or doesn't like obfuscate things with like saying design in the wrong way? I'm preferably free. Yeah, that'd be even better. That'd be even better. In my head, I was just like, well, you know, I've gone through a lot of biology books and I know some ones to watch out for like the one that had the panda on the cover. Like there's a really nice history behind that. But when I looked online for like, you know, secular biology books, I thought I'd find like a thousand entries. It turns out it's, when you type that in, you just get a bunch of non-secular homeschool textbooks for biology that don't talk about evolution in the proper way, like for biology in the proper sense. Yeah, like it's already been set up where the added. So you don't have to specify non-secular is already in the phrase. John Rich's, what do you think? What you should do, you should go to a British website biology books from there. As I could send you biology books that are not polluted by any religion. Good. Okay, well, there's a resource. We're going to touch back on that. So what I was thinking was, is like, okay, let me look what I did when I was in grad school. When I was in grad school, I found a website that not only had basically open source textbooks, but they were all gate kept. In a sense or like maintained by scholars in the field who weren't privy to, you know, religious dogma infiltrating the manner of what they're teaching. And because it's open sources, it gets easily fact checked every single time. It's updated on a yearly basis. And I want to introduce what that show is. John Riches, I see your finger, what's up? What do you got? Well, the trouble is you see, if American children are brought up learning proper biology, right from British biology books, when they come to do the exam, which is American Christian biology, they'll fail. Okay, so you're saying that the dangers of using a British textbook is that they, when they take an American test, they'd fail? Yes. They're not going to learn about creationism and indulgent design. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so thankfully, thankfully the concern I have, it's never gotten that bad. It's never gotten that bad in the sense where you are properly taught biology and you take a class at a school that's so steep in religion that if you espouse the three pillars or the three laws of biology, which include evolution, you'd fail it. It hasn't gotten that bad of my experience. Usually the tests come from the state level or the federal level, but I'd say state mostly. And those are not generally religious oriented. It's the opposite that happens. It's where we have a kid who's only taught the religious version of biology who gets into an actual school that's like, so tell me about evolution and they're completely unequipped to be able to pass that class. And through some very exchange and persuasion among their fellow students to just copy homework or tests or whatever, just to pass as any way they possibly can and get the degree anyway. And then they're like, yeah, I know biology. I had this degree. It's like, yeah, but you were never taught the real thing. It's like, yeah, but I got the degree. It's like, that doesn't mean anything if you can't demonstrate that you actually understand the tendency you're talking about. Did you get it from Liberty University? Yeah. And it's like, I went to a Christian college. It's like, yeah, you weren't actually going to an actual college. Unfortunately. Not accredited. But if you go to like any other legitimate standardized school that gets like federal funding college for the most part, you have to know the actual biology. And so the class that I, the resource that I'd like to recommend to everybody is a website called openstacks.org. That's open, S-T-A-X.org. And what this website is is a really, really cool thing. It's basically any collegiate level or high school level textbook on any subject, astrophysics, molecular biology, rocket science. They have books on that. Chemistry, AP, AP, chemistry, philosophy. Like mechanical engineering, paper making. Like they have a resource on every book written by people who understand the science of it and are not persuaded by religious dogma. You can search through the books. You can download them as PDFs. You can have access to them on the website. You can search for them in any wake or capacity you want. You can share them. They're free for you to distribute as you need to. And it's given out by a university in by name, I think it's Rice University is the one that distributes them as part of their curriculum to say, hey, you don't have to buy textbooks to get an education. In fact, we want to make sure that they're available to anyone who wants to pass our class. So if you go to our university, the textbooks are already online. You can use those as a resource and they're always available to you. And you don't have to carry around a box, a backpack full of them. They're just always available with you. And I love that open door philosophy through to accessible education because now I feel like on my free time, I just want to check out this website, see which books are available and actually read and try to learn more about areas of science that I don't have as much knowledge in. It's just a wonderful thing. Open specs, openstacks.org. John Richards, did you have any comments or thoughts on that? Well, I think that's utterly admirable. Rice University initiative because it's my contention that education should be free for everyone and that it should also be free of religious paint. Good points. Two good points I support fully, honestly. It's just a wonderful thing. I'm looking over the... Go for it. There's two schools of thought about the possession of knowledge. There's the Lawyer School of Thought. Now, I've got friends who are lawyers, so I'm not knocking them as people, but the mentality of a lawyer is I have access to privilege knowledge and I can earn this guy's money by applying it. He can't do it himself because he doesn't have my knowledge, whereas I'm a teacher. My attitude is I have access to privilege knowledge. I want to give it to you. I want to give it away, right? I also have the idea that not all textbooks were written equally and even if you did purchase or required to get a required textbook for a class that was like terrible because I've picked up terrible textbooks before. They're just horribly written because they're probably written by the professor who's just trying to make extra money by making that book required for his class. It's nice to have a supplemental resource that cares about the material well enough to explain it in a different way that could be a useful supplemental approach to understanding it. And the cool thing is if I have a bad textbook that's trying to teach me calculus and I have this free resources trying to teach me calculus, as long as I understand calculus, I'm set up to pass whatever demonstration attest there is because that's how science works. It's not the resource that you get it from, it's about the demonstration of the knowledge and the tennis that you have. That's what you're testing. And so... I have been toying with the idea of trying to make it over to Finland to work on my doctorate because they will pay me to go to school. School is free, books are free. They will give me a stick to live on and I can stay there six years. Isn't that for citizens only though? No, no, anyone, anyone at all? Wow, let's go. That's the... That's some Apple money right there. Yeah, it's like... There's another advantage to that idea. It's because you'll be finished before you start it. Oh. Oh, no. All right. Larry, hot seat. What recommendations would you have for anyone who's looking for a reasonable, credible source of education? Is there anywhere I can go that's ideally free? Well, open stacks. I just learned about that a minute ago. No, not this week because of you. But I don't know of any other free textbooks online. It doesn't even have to be a textbook. Like, for example, you do data analysis, you've done a lot of work for the Navy. Like, is there a resource that you relied on to help you get through that that has been useful for you that maybe you even accessible online? Well, when I was in the Navy, the only resource was the library. Well, you didn't have the internet. That's a good one. That's a good one. That's a good one. Noxlive.org is ours on the internet now. So go to the library. Yeah, you hit the point on the head because when I was in Knoxville, Knoxville has a great library. The books can be checked out online or in person. And you have them for a period of time, but you can also just recheck them back out again. And so if you have a phone, you have access to basically an entire library in Knoxville. You don't even have to live in Knoxville to get Knoxville's library going on. So libraries are great resources for getting a bunch of information in my opinion. And when they've functionalized themselves to online services where you can access everything from like a phone, there's fewer excuses not to properly get yourself educated. What's up, John Richards? Well, I'm worried about the availability of non-biased scientific material in America. Do you think that when you put in the search string, whatever it was that you wanted for a biology book that wasn't Christian, do you think that you're fighting Google? I mean, Google is there to make money and it wants to sell stuff. So it's got to have the most popular stuff at the top. So do you think Google is actually on the side of the theists? And I'm worried about that because over here, you know, we got Google too. So we may be suffering from your algorithms. So while I do feel like when you do searches, Google is in the business of making money at the end of the day, right? And so if I'm making a religiously minded biology textbook that is not secular and I'm going to put it on the internet for people to find, right? I'm not going to just put, hey, this is, hey, fellow Christians, this is your best book. I'm going to try to money the water and put some search terms in there that atheists are going to trip over and maybe then that's how we get more people into reading our textbooks. And then I'll just give the money to Google and Google's like, thank you for the money. Here's your placement on our ad listings, right? It is, it goes a long way for us to recognize that you don't get a good education by mistake. You have to search for it. And when it comes to developing like these good skill sets for like questioning things, even when you have a good education, you also have to like question the sources and the manner in which you get these things too. So John Richards is really good point, but like it's more of the, it's less of an education, more of a lifestyle skepticism. And it's really important for us to remember that that you can't necessarily read a textbook and understand how to understand things. You just have textbooks to inform yourself, but it's still up to you to ask questions even from the resources that you get. So even when you open up OpenStacks, this is why I like about OpenStacks. Say I wanna check out a biology textbook. There's a search bar at the top when I open up biology one or biology two, I can search through every single utterance or incident of any word and I can search for God and I see what the options are and it's talking about like the cuts of quadril. Some people had beliefs on Aztec gods, but it's not talking about religious gods or like the Christian gods. I'm just like, that's nice. Like you're me on some stuff. I'll type in creator, I'll type in design. I look for words that I'm like, I'm used to seeing correlated to religion in textbooks on strictly science basis. And I found that like, oh, I'm not seeing any red flags here. This is really great. I'm searching for it myself. I'm not just relying on the reviews and the five-star number to get it for me. I can do that research myself. And then at that point, I can be, I'm in a position where I feel like I'm comfortable enough with this that I would recommend it to someone else. And so I did make that recommendation to the coworker that we had at our job and she was really happy about it. And it's free. And if it's wrong, I'm willing to recommend something else and that'll be another show in the future. But I would recommend that anyone who's interested in available textbooks that are good for you, check out your local library if they're online, check out the Knoxville library if they aren't because the one in Knoxville, Tennessee is particularly good. And then openstacks.org for just, hey, I just want to learn some subjects for my free time. You can fill your open stacks as PDF files. Yeah, absolutely. And not only that, but they're just website accessible. So you can just go through them and search them there. They have, there's also YouTube classes as well if you want to be able to see. When I was in meteorology classes when grad school, I found that Georgia Tech offers some classes just straight up through YouTube. Like you can find those classes on YouTube and just day by day, watch each lecture on a weekly basis or bi-weekly basis as you want to at your lone leisure. I'm also, for example, really, really invested in learning or refreshing my ability to use sign language. And I know that's a little bit off topic, but deaf people are, oh man, I'm about to get, don't clip this, but deaf people don't have access to a lot of other people to talk to. And it tends to be the case that they congregate at churches. So like a lot of the terminology that you use and a lot of the people that you mean in deaf communities are very religious. And there's not a lot of deaf atheists as a result or ones that are willing to speak out. And so when I'm an atheist, and I don't want to go to church, I've cut off my access to a lot of deaf community people that I can speak to. I actually know two deaf atheists. Good friend. Fantastic, fantastic. It's not the majority, but I consider my mom not a deaf atheist, but at least someone who is open to the idea of atheism and is okay with her son being one. But if I want to talk to deaf people and it's not on religious boundaries, right? I need a way to be able to do that. And I found like YouTube has been a good way for me to both look at someone's sign and learn new words, but there's also like Zoom meetings where you'll have conversations with deaf people as well. And that's a good way for me to reach out. But yeah, you have resources online. It's basically what I'm saying, where you can get really good access to information. I got library from Larry Richard or Larry. I got open stacks from me. John Richards, you were telling us about this British website that we can go to get textbooks. Is there, what would you recommend? Well, I wish you'd asked me earlier. I got to research this, but I'm sure if you go to Oxford Books, for example, or maybe Cambridge or University Bookshop or something, maybe one of the London Bookstores. I can't think of the names of them now, long time since I've been to a London Bookstore, took my daughter a few years ago, but they have decent resources. We don't carry off pandas and people. Okay, good. We have the real thing. Nice, nice, nice. And the main thing I wanted to say before we go out to a break is that you have a right to religion, whether, in my opinion, whether people say you do or you don't, but it needs to be exercised through a willingness to actually get it, right? And what I find religion is very good at is making you believe that you already have the answers such that you don't need to get the education. And so one of the most biggest dangers you can have is feeling like you already know what all the dangers are. And if that's the case, it's a willingness to understand that you don't know everything that pulls you towards trying to learn. And if there's anything that I'd like to foster as a main point in this conversation is that it is so worthwhile to always be in a state where you're learning new things. Yes. There's nothing worse they had mindset, particularly one that feels like it's already satisfied because we live in a very, very complicated world that's always changing. I talked recently with a lady and she asked what I did and I said, I'm a scholar. And she asked me to elaborate and being a scholar is not a thing. It's a lifestyle. You're always trying to learn. The quote I like that I see as a meme once in a while is science is the quest for answers. Religion is thinking you already have them. There it is. There it is. There it is in that show. Though I would be nice when we come back to the show what we would do to tweak the secular, what we would do to tweak secular education. Maybe there's some better routes that we can go with even that because if we're open to changing and learning new things what can secular education learn from that? We'll have that in the second half of the show. After some listener comments we got a bunch from data straightening room. Anyway, Larry, feel free to take us out. Stay tuned for the second half of the digital free thought radio hour on WOZO radio 103.9 LPFM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We'll be right back after this short break. Welcome back to the digital free thought radio hour second half. I'm doubter five and we're on WOZO radio 103.9 LPFM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Let's take just a moment to talk about the atheist society of Knoxville. ASK was founded in 2002 which puts us in our 20th year. We have over a thousand members but we have weekly in-person meetings in Knoxville's old city at Barley's Taproom and Pizzeria in the evening starting at around 5.30 and going to about eight o'clock. We also have Zoom meetings and you can find us by getting the link from us by sending us an email. Send us an email at askanatheistatnoxvilleatheist.org or by emailing let'schatseatgmail.com. You can also find ASK on Facebook meetup.com or their website, Knoxvilleatheist.org or you can just Google Knoxville Atheist that'll bring it up. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville then you should still go to meet up and do a search for an atheist group in your town. Don't find one. Start one. That's right. Or you wanna pick up. So we were lauding the value of being able to get quality education untainted by the hands of religious dogma. I recommended openstacks.org. It's successful to you. Check it out. Offered by Rice University. Wonderful resources of textbooks that are available to you right now to learn about almost any subject that you want. And it's not a Wikipedia article or it's just internet trolls trying to one-up each other with very obtuse verbiage. It's actual textbook that'll teach you things and it's a resource that I would recommend that you check out. Larry Rhodes recommended the Knoxville Library System. You can Google that. They have most of their books available online. You can check them out. You can turn them back in. You can check them out immediately afterwards. It's digital files. I don't know why libraries still do that, but hey, it's what it is. Anyway, you can also go there in person and check that out. John Richards, would you mind popping some of your recommendations before we move on? Yeah, sure. I looked up a couple of London bookstores which are famous for students to go and get their resources from and have a very good science department. One's called Foils and it's got about seven floors. And the other one's called Dillens and that's very near to the British Museum. And I thoroughly recommend both of those. And I'm sure they've got websites. You can order stuff online and have it shipped to you. But also, if you want to avoid the taint of commerce at which often comes with a Christian bias and you want to do searching, why not try not Google, but Bing or DuckDuckGo? Yeah, nice. Good recommendations. You know, I have this weird thing. John Richards, are you aware of the blowback that happened in America to Harry Potter when it came over to U.S. when Christian parents were like, my kids are reading about what? Witchcraft? Are you familiar with that? Dude, that colored my whole childhood for quite a while. Did it? Yeah. Well, the trouble is, you Americans have been disney-fied. And some of you have difficulty distinguishing imaginary from reality. I remember that as a Christian thinking back in the time, thinking it's not real magic. There's no real such thing as witchcraft. But and then and then like the ardent parents being like, but there is a real thing. And this book is trying to teach my kid to be a wizard. He's putting a little sickness on their forehead and stuff. And I saw it on a screen and that they did play Quidditch. And there was no magic tricks. If you go to King's Cross Station, which is just up the road a bit from behind where I'm sat at the moment, allegedly, then there is actually a platform 9A. Nice. Which is which is actually it's a brick wall, you know, because that's what Harry Potter runs at with his suitcase on a trolley and and it's got platform 9A written about of it. And there's a half trolley that's stuck in this wall as though it's. And you can stand there holding the trolley, looking and getting photographed. Wow, that's great. Mentor. OK, Harry Potter. Very cool. Sky, you recommended we all move to Finland and get that free education. Let me let me recommend something else. We have in New York City, we have the largest used bookstore in the world. It's called The Strand. They have over a million titles, including textbooks of all kinds. Nice. You go online and find a book you want. Google The Strand, get the phone number, call them and dine to donuts. They're going to have that book and it will be a lot cheaper than getting a new one. Very true. I like it. Hey, Larry Rhodes, what do you got? Oh, you're my my friend. Sorry, this radio station is publicly well, probably on. But still, we need to worry about commerce. We don't need to be doing advertisements for commercial entities per se, especially that we don't want to say go there or do something. But we can certainly recommend something if we like it. But that's about it. OK, strong recommendations. So Finland or New York from Sky, we got Knoxville Library Free, not a commerce site. We got Dylan's and a seven story building of books. Imagine how many floors are dedicated to just talking. And like arguing with people who cook food too powerfully. I want to know how many aisles that is. It's like, you overburned the crumpets, Mary. That's that's all seven. That's all seven. And then the the scrumpets are on all four. But I would also say, hey, open stacks, check it out. It's good. What we're going to be talking about right now is some listener feedback comments. Thank you guys so much for leaving comments. That is trading room. You left us so many comments, but I'm going to go over them. First comment is from Abby Kane, who on our last episode or the last episode I was on called UFOs, Loch Ness and Bigfoot. Oh, my. Abby Kane had a point that she'd like to make or he'd like to make that I think works pretty well. It's in reference to when we were talking about the idea that if humans were to go to another planet to understand how, you know, it operated or if alien life came to us, we'd have to worry about potentially affecting the life there inadvertently by the fact that we have a bunch of bacterium or viruses on us that might affect the life forms on the planet that we're trying to study. And Appcain says, I'm going to slightly disagree with the dangers of a virus. The analogy would be better if every time humans go in the ocean, we have a chance of infecting prawns with human diseases. For us to infect the aliens and vice versa, there would need to be more genetic similarities than life on earth has. That isn't always the case since some diseases can jump species, but it's a larger barrier than some people take into consideration. We'll do a round table. What do you guys think about that? You think? Well, I think that may be true for virus that definitely uses the chromosomes and the engine of your cell to reproduce. But for bacteria, I don't think it would matter much. We got a bacteria on earth that will eat pretty much anything, including nylon and plastics. They they will adapt. They will evolve to eat anything. So just be another competitor on that. Right. Eating the croaks loose in the ocean. Sure. Sorry. Going to say we're letting these plasticating microbes loose in the ocean. Right. We're trying to. There's just the rate of consumption is pretty low, but we're making them faster slowly in Japan, at least. Yeah, I do. I do agree that maybe we stress the analogy too far when we use viruses because that is making use of a cell. Though just going to run this out. Why risk it? You know, you know, it wouldn't be a terrible thing if we get onto a planet. And it turns out for genetics to work, they kind of has to work in this very tight window, which is the one that we're experiencing now. So it's that if we have a bunch of viruses that we've gotten very good at fighting off, but could potentially infect life with a carbon based similarity to us. Maybe that could be a thing. But why, like, if we hear my final point, if we see a beautiful new planet, that doesn't mean we should take our garbage there. Let's just enjoy the fact that we can observe it from a distance and learn how everything works without us being like, yeah, let's bring country music over and and and and like a bunch of double A batteries. And like, let's go. Nick's signs is like, dude, those are cultural viruses. Let's let's also throw those into the the trunk or the boot, if you will, and just enjoy the new life as we see it. Larry Rose, what do you got? Well, I think I take exception to that because like in Mars, we pretty much determine there's no indigenous life there. There's no I mean, we've sent all kinds of probes and dug in the earth and flown over and all that. I think now is the time to start terraforming. We need to like Carl Sagan said back in the 70s. I think it was we could send some moss and lichens that live in extreme temperatures and drop them on the surface and they can then start using the carbon dioxide and what little sunlight they have to terraform the surface for us and they make their own copies. So that kind of thing, I think we could do now as far as finding a new planet and not taking any steps to make sure it had indigenous life. We need to do that, of course. But you know, this is there's a point where we're going out of room here, right? Resources or whatever, especially the way we're multiplying. We do need other places to go. If we don't, we're doomed. Or learn how to or also learn how to get our stuff together here on earth, because I feel like if we I don't think that I mean, that's even if we got our stuff together, the way that we're advancing in medicine and repopulating and doubling our population. That's only a matter of time. We can only push that time out so far. We've got we either need to expand or perish eventually and maybe a way down the road, but that's where it's going to come to. John Richards, what do you got? Yeah, I think we're going to have to flip to another another planet. But I don't think that there's much of a prospect of terraforming Mars. I think we're going to always have to live either underground or under glass domes or something, because it's not big enough to have sufficient gravity to keep to hang on to an atmosphere of any of any pressure. It does have an atmosphere, but of course, there's not much pressure to it. But I agree that that's a tough one. I also feel like if we do go to a planet with indigenous life, let's take some of the lessons we've learned with how humans have reached other indigenous populations and and not repeat those same mistakes. I feel like we should really understand that the manifest destiny philosophy that we use here is not good long term and probably shouldn't be something that we should take into space. If we find an abandoned planet that we can make use of, great. But if there is already intelligent life there, which I feel like is some of the things that Abby came was probably referring to, maybe a long distance communicate communication setup would be much more sufficient rather than being like, hey, we got billions and billions of people over here. We're going to have to put some of them here. That's like, oh, OK, we'll just point the cannons towards they're coming in from. You've got a problem. You can fix it. That's not our problem. You know, you've got an overpopulation problem. That's that's a significant problem. We figured that out already. Yeah. Anyway, data straight. Joe, Sky, did you have any thoughts on that that you like to go ahead? All right. All right. So data straighter room wanted to make a comment on the episode called Jesus units. Jesus units being what if we had a number that was a reference to everything that we were aware of throughout the time that Jesus was walking around? And how would that number change over a period of time? And let's see. We were talking about nuance and details in a great length. And data straighter says speaking about the devil in details. Everybody's speaking about evidence for the resurrection. Can anyone show any evidence that Jesus actually died? And how would anybody know that? And so it sort of feeds into the idea of like, hey, a Jesus unit. Why even call it after Jesus in the first place? Doesn't that like laud the idea that he was a person who resurrected? Or he actually resurrected? Why are we focusing on just Jesus? Larry, what do you think? And what kind of evidence do we have? I mean, they say there is evidence, but I mean, stories aren't evidence. Right. Especially anecdotal stories from two thousand years ago when everybody was supernatural or thought things were supernatural or real. Right. I mean, it makes no sense that they would call it evidence when it isn't. You know, the weird thing, too, is we have examples of people who were medically dead and brought back, but no one talks about them anymore. But we're still making a big deal about Jesus, where it's just like there are people who have been, you know, for a couple of seconds or even for like a period of time, like flat line dead, not brain activity. Dead, obviously, that's a completely different thing. So like there are people who have been resuscitated, resuscitated, but no one, no one's no Christians are like, tell me everything. It's like, oh, I didn't see anything. It's like, OK, you're done. See you. Go out the door. You're good. Well, there was a little boy. There was a boy who wrote a book about going to heaven when he died on the table. And then later recanted that. Yeah, because little boys can't write books that well. It was his parent. Have you seen the nature of that book? It's like long ago in the grand annals of my youth, it's like eight year olds on top like that. Like, I know you didn't write this book, and he has to apologize that he wrote that book. You know, his parents are just setting him up for failure. I just feel really bad about that. Don't worry, he's just going to blame your eye. Did he give the money back? Yeah, right. OK, so we're going to another comment from Dottice Trading Room on UFOs, Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot. Oh, my I have seen a UFO and I wasn't alone. We were a bunch of young guys just after a game of soccer and we were dressing up just about to go home. It was still daylight, though, just after sunset. We saw a bright object silently moving up high into the sky. One of those cigar like fiery UFOs leaving a tail behind it. It was a newspaper as the following morning. It was fascinating. We all watched it in silence as if memorized, mesmerized. It was only quite recent that I learned about Bolides, which if traveling at high enough speed will not. How do you pronounce that? Bolides. Bolides. OK. Which if traveling at B-O-L-I-D-E-S. OK, thanks. Bolides, which if traveling at high enough speed will not fall onto the surface, but simply continue going on just through Earth's atmosphere. So he did see a UFO, and I think we said in the show, I think we support what UFOs, UFO sightings. I support those entirely because I've seen UFOs. I've seen weird things like rings of light specks in the sky only to realize that I just didn't have enough information to recognize what that thing was. So it's just an unidentified object that's in the sky. That's all it is. UFOs, unidentified objects. That's right. It doesn't mean that it's aliens. Doesn't necessarily mean it's alien. Doesn't mean it's a religious thing. Doesn't mean it's Jesus still coming back, being like, oh, I left my sandals. I left my sandals, guys. I need to pick them up and go back up again. But UFOs, absolutely, that's just a recognition of, hey, there's something I can't recognize. Let's not weaponize ignorance for, for, you know, dharma, you know, or for conclusions that we can't support. And so I support UFOs. In fact, I support UFOs more than I do Bigfoot or Loch Ness in terms of actual existence. I can, I will, I fully sign up to those conventions, but I don't tie them to any sort of conclusive proof or anything. John Riches, what do you think? Well, what you mean is that there are unidentified things flying through the air. That doesn't mean that they've come from anywhere. Exactly. Yeah, but we just can't identify them. That's all. And they're probably balloons or lightning balls or something. What did you call them? Bolides, yes. But you'll be pleased to hear that Hollywood being Hollywood, like the little boy who went to heaven and came back is now a movie. So it doesn't matter to them if it was false, as long as they can just pass it on as truth and. And like a conversation with God became a movie. It's called Heaven is for Real. And it was, it was released way back in 12 2014. Same kid. Oh, man, what is going on? His name is Colton Burpo. Purpo. Nice. Yeah, we got a guy's. We got so many comments. We got another comment from Anonymous. He had a issue with our last or my last episode, UFOs, Loch Ness and Bigfoot on my. He said he has umbrage with dread. I wish he was on the show, but maybe we can handle it for him. I don't know where you got that idea from dread about quantum communication. You are completely wrong. There is no such thing as quantum communication. Entanglement cannot be used for communication purposes. And you can check out any quantum physicists about that. By the way, you should stop listening to Michio Kako. That guy is a total mythicist. Really? They're right about that. Yes, yes, he's he's the same. He's trading on his previous reputation as a serious scientist to make a lot of money by speculating in ways that he knows the audience wants to hear. It's a very lucrative market. It's a very lucrative market of I was an I'm an established smart person. Now it's talking nonsense that nonsense. People can listen to him and actually think that I'm by association of my academic career. I'm also smart too. And I don't want to see as a cultural hero in Japan. No doubt. Yeah, no doubt. I'm not saying I'm not saying fires and I'm just saying like it's it could be used for really bad things. So I also feel like I don't want to get into it too much in physics. But if you read open stacks, go to open stacks, you'll find that communication has speed limits. And if we're talking about going faster than the speed of light, you may not necessarily be talking about information in that sense. And there's a lot of things that appear to be moving faster than speed of light that have information associated with it that are in factually that are factually not. Packs of communicative information. It's an interesting thing. It's an interesting thing. There's some models. I'll do a quick one. We got man tendons before the end of the show. So like if I if I have like a pair of scissors and a really bright flashlight, right? And I and I close the scissors in front of the flashlight and I shine that flat bright flashlight on the moon such that I can actually see the scissors move on the surface of the moon. It's like, oh, I'm seeing the shadow of my scissors that are only moving like two inches move miles or hundreds of miles on the surface of the moon. It's almost as if the tips of the scissors on that shadow is so much moving faster to the point where if I had a bright enough flashlight, I might even be able to make those tips of those scissors move faster than the speed of light. But it's not it's not true motion that's going faster. It's just the packets of light that are hitting the the scissors are going out in an array and you're seeing a delayed response. That's just in a stacked order. So it's not like the scissors are actually moving faster. You're just seeing a bunch of shadow moving through space and hitting an array on the light on on on the sun. If I'm not making this analogy, absolutely clear. The main thing is like it's a difficult thing to describe why information is locked to a very specific speed. And because of that, because of that, we can't say, oh, quantum entanglement will solve that. It's just another field of physics that we're understanding that doesn't have the power to resolve some of the known limits that we understand about science. It's just another thing that we can learn about or another model of science that doesn't necessarily up and or resolve a lot of other issues that we're getting in other places. What you've just done is explained that shadow, in other words, the speed of dark. Yes. The speed of light. Yes. Yes. All communication tends to be limited by the speed of dark or the speed of light. Gravity is the same way to its its mount. It's literally the same speed because that's the fastest. Anything that is a thing can move through space and you can't make communication travel faster than that. That's that's less and less. Larry is getting back into it. Unless if you had what a what? If you want to look, you know, Morse code. I know more. Aware of it. On and off. Well, if you had two quantumly linked elemental particles that were, you know, hundreds of light years apart and you switched one, wouldn't the other immediately switched? So the only the only problem with that is like the model has been explained so abstractly or empirically that people think that that's a thing. It's like when people say, so what is string theory is just two points that are connected very far apart? The model isn't saying that they're all atoms are actually strings. It's just a model to explain how a different way of looking at. No, no, I'm not talking about string theory at all. I'm just talking about two point only tangled elemental particles. They're supposed to be quantically linked so that if you switch one, if you flip one, the other would flip immediately, at least that's the way I understand. So listeners, if you have a better understanding than that, then let me know and tell me about it in the comments. But it's my understanding that if they could do that and they flip it instantly, then you could almost use it like a computer code, you know, zeros and ones or Morse code or something to be able to pass information faster than it's being blind. Sure, sure, sure. Comment that the only the only thing I'd say on top of that is the the outlining of a scientific model is not necessarily demonstration that it actually exists. It's just a way of thinking. So like if I made a Google Maps that showed me the route to McDonald's, it's a flat earth model that it's taking me to McDonald's and it's estimating it's take 20 minutes, but it's a line on a flat line. We know the earth has curvature to it, but it's just a nominal, useful model to explain how long it's going to take me forget from here to McDonald's. It doesn't have to account for the church. I understand. Same thing with quantum entangle. It will simplify some things, but that doesn't mean that that's how it actually is or operates. It's just a way of thinking about stuff that makes things easier to understand as a model. John Richards. Quantum mechanics is a very thoroughly supported theory. And according to our current understanding of it, what Larry says is correct, but it's still in the realm of theory. And and it's very I believe it until it's being demonstrated in practice. I want to say I want to see the second part of the the job of discovery performed, you know, because coming up with an idea is one thing, but testing it against the natural realm is something else. And this hasn't been done yet. And it will be enormously difficult to do. I mean, how are you going to get one half of an entangled pair? Thousands of miles or hundreds of thousands of miles a year. My years. Yeah, yeah. How would you then know that it flipped instantly? Yes. Yeah. OK, I guess we're getting down to the top of the hour. Anybody have any last words? Yeah, I'll do one more from Doddus Trading Room, because he had so many. And I think we should probably do the rest of them in future shows. But all right. So and finally, we mentioned Aaron I run raw on the show. He says there is no missing link. That's not how evolution works. Someone may have mentioned or we may have been talking about evolution. Check out our and raw about that one. And it's not your anus. It's a new accent on the raw, same as in our and raw. So yeah, you're wrong. Yeah, you're on this, you're on this. There it is. Yeah. All right. That's it for me. I would like to say something real quick about it. You get to purchase tweaking education. I think the most important thing we could be teaching in our schools that we aren't is critical thinking. It should be every curriculum. Yeah, it should be in every curriculum. Right. I agree. John Richards. Our kids are dumb. I mean, really, our kids are dumb. That's a friend of mine. Dr. Stephen Law, philosopher. A editor of think exclamation mark, one of the magazines of the Philosophy Society of the UK has got a just that a critical thinking course which is available to purchase for a very modest fee online. So I would recommend that. Very cool. Last words. Time. The more we understand any scientific model, atomic theory to like gravity or anything like that, we also have to remember that we're open to changing it as we learn more information as we talk about space travel or as we talk about science who may even take place on different planets or in different planetary or physics systems in the universe. We might learn more about the models that we're using. And that might mean that we have to continue to continue to ask questions about the theories that we're employing and practicing. So the same thing with biology or or open stacks or any of the resources that we talk about today, be willing to change on a dime in the face of better evidence whenever that comes about. And understand that the models that we come up with are simply just models that helps us understand reality aren't necessarily reality themselves. Can I plug my next show? Go for it. Because next week in my free thought hour, I have got Chet Anderson, who is a philosopher of enormous brain power. I'm going to have to, I don't know, take drugs or something to keep up. Well, good luck. Yeah, that's my free thought hour on Free Thought Channel. Thank you so much. Thanks so much for all the comments. Feel free to leave more. We're going to go through them all. I guarantee it. Very good. My content and this show can be found at digitalfreethought.com. Be sure to click on the blog button for a radio show archives, atheist songs and many articles on the subject. If you have any questions for the show, send them to askanatheistatnoxfilatheist.org or let's chat s e dot or at gmail.com or just leave a comment. 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