 103.9 FM, WZO Radio, Knoxville. Ladies and gentlemen, digital free thought radio hour. Rational thought, humanism and the sciences. And conversely, we also talk about religion, religious faiths, 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 free thinking 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 breaks. Also, did you know that there was a streaming atheist calling video show broadcasting from Knoxville and it has been for over 10 years? Did you know that one bit? Yes, but I'm only interested in the halftime show and the commercials. Okay. Well, we'll try to make them interesting. Sure. Entertaining. If you like to entertain, I'm sorry, enter, he blew my mind. If you'd like to interact with us during the show, go to Facebook and search for the digital free thought radio hour page and use the messaging function to send us questions or comments. Well, I'm bad. What do you have for us today? Topic wise. Hey, so welcome to digital free thought radio hour. I wanted to talk about vaccines and why they're important, but really the myths that are against them. Vaccination myths. Yeah. Vaccination myths because they've been kind of rampant so far. And surprisingly, even in like my workspace, they are have some hold and you know, it only takes a couple of questions for you to crack into like the whole, oh my gosh, people don't think like me. That's that's really bizarre, but like, why don't they think like me? Why what's going on here? And so I want to, I want to dive into that. We have a really, really great group of people here already. And before we do that, like do a quick super, super fast. Super, super, super, super, super fast, super quick assessment on everyone's life story over the last week. Boudreau, how you been? How you been? How you been last week? I've been good. I've been good. The weirdest thing happened this morning. If I can share shortly, I have this cup here and I poured ice in it and then some water. Okay. I started bubbling. It was like bubbling like profusely. I looked at my wife. I was like, what is that? That's fine. Just air in the pockets, air pockets in the ice. It's fine. I was drinking on it. No problem. No problem. And then set it down. And then, you know, 20 minutes later, it's like, you know, I drink my water all day. I like to, and I took a sip and it was super bitter. And I was like, oh my God, what is it? Something's going on. This is wrong. I'm spitting in the sink. And I poured it out and I look in the bottom and there's a little tiny like stain at the bottom. It looked like, dude, what's going on? I was freaking out. I was like, I don't know what's going on. Yeah. And then I'll, I think he took another sip after this. That's the weird part. Oh yeah. I handed it to my kid. Here, try this. Then it dawned on me and I realized I take a meprosal for heartburn occasionally. And I put the pill right here on the top and set it down to, you know, to go get something. And then I was going to take the pill and then drink. And it slipped down into the little, there's a little hole there. Ah. It dissolved. Ah. So good. Good. It was something you were supposed to have anyway. All right. And listen, first of all, ice cubes aren't supposed to bubble. Like that should be your first indication. I know you love your wife, but like as soon as you say that, you're just like, I know. And he's like, you're so right. And you pour it down the sink as she says, and you keep nodding your head. That's how you score husband points. And you get some new ice and a new cup if necessary. And you continue on with your life. Good theory, but you can't really prove it wasn't a ghost. That is true. Scott speaking of ghosts. I should believe it in the meantime, right? That's great. Until it's proven wrong. Absolutely. That's how you, that's how science works. Everybody knows that. Scott, how you been since last week? Have you seen any ghosts? Great as again. Ooh, lights up. This is a new one. Flashy. More stuff. More stuff. So you have two keyboards now. So for people who are just listening to audio, Scott has been collecting more gadgetry for making music. He is a well-known, well-versed, well-accomplished, very talented music producer under the name Dub Shine on SoundCloud. I'll put a link in the description for you. Thank you, man. And what he just showed us right now is this glittering soundboard, other panel glittering buttons and lights. Synth engines. What does that thing do? It generates what they call FM synthesis, which is just, it's a synthesizer engine. So you're able to, it's frequency modulation. So you're able to change the sounds up and create stuff. It just gives you a lot of opportunities and ways to, you know, create your own unique synthesizer sounds and stuff like that, which is really important for the kind of music that I like to, you know. So yeah, it gives you more than just the 60s notes that come with like a keyboard. Now you can like construct your own sounds for your own sounds. Sounds out. That's right. Yeah, it gets out of the presets. Yeah. I had to, Eric, you might appreciate this too. Like we're all musicians here, but I have been experimenting with different ways of playing my electric guitar to make new kinds of sounds as like atmospheric backgrounds for the stuff that I'm making. So it's not like, I found a way to play it where it makes it sound like a flute. I found a way to reverse the reverb. So it makes it sound like it's the whole songs in like a dark tunnel, but it like has like this really nice low end. It doesn't interfere with the music, but it like builds on the body of it. There's cool things that you can do. It makes me listen to music very differently. Because before I used to be like, man, I love this song. And now I'm like, shh, I love this song. It's pretty good. This is the best song ever. Like I got to hear it though. I'm listening for things. Larry, how have you been since last week, my friend? I'm doing fine. Just staying in, staying safe. I'm 70, so I don't get out a lot anyway. But yeah, I'm just playing computer games and working on Facebook and post for atheism and all that. I heard you've been mowing down terrorists on islands. Well, just virtually in computer games. I got into Far Cry 5 and the game editor. So I've created a few levels there that I've posted. I guess I'm pretty good at it. I haven't gotten less than a four star rating on it and out of a five star series level. So I'm enjoying doing it almost as much as playing or maybe even more. So listen, Larry, if you need a copy of Horizon Zero Dawn, I will send it to you because that game will blow your mind. You think you're having fun with Far Cry. Larry fancies himself a gamer, but he doesn't know he's talking to an 80s kid who lived and we're the developers now. You're playing the games that people in my generation are making right now and there's levels, man. And I'm telling you Horizon Zero Dawn is probably my game of the year from last year only because you're going to send me a copy. I'll send you a copy if you need a copy. I will send you a copy if you need a copy. But imagine doing everything you're doing with robot dinosaurs at the same time too. It makes no sense. It's super fun. It's super, super fun. Sounds good. All right. I'm up for it. So, hey guys, speaking of robot dinosaurs, Eric, you got vaccinated. Isn't that right? You got your second vaccination done? Yep. Well, for the first 14 hours, it was great. No problem. But it hit me pretty hard. But I always try to preface that statement with, but that's okay. It is okay. I mean, I literally got to plan on it. You know, I knew there was a chance it was going to hit me a little hard. And really it was only about 24 hours of kind of fever, body aches. But I could plan on it. I knew it was going to potentially happen. So I cleared my schedule. Yeah. No problem. I think I took three warm baths in that 24-hour beer. But it's my body doing its job, right? So walk me through it because you don't look like you're over 75. Like, how are you? How dare you have these magical? Yeah, I know. What's going on? Why are you special? It turns out when you fill out the form, if you're an atheist, you're allowed to lie. Because there's no God watching you. He's not being serious. No. My wife and I both kind of got in, we think, the only way we can explain, because we know several people all in the same boat, some younger than me, that got it that first batch. And it was UK trying to kind of test the system. They didn't have time to prioritize. They did immediately the next week. The next week, it went to K through 12 teachers and people over 70. But I think they had doses they had to use. They had to figure out how to do the system. I was already in the UK's HMO. So they had all my info. So you weren't getting big. I think so. At least logistically for the system. For the system. At least for that version. Not for the vaccine. So I'm absolutely lucky, blessed, I suppose. Hashtag blessed. Yeah. So my situation is I'm also vaccinated, at least the first half. I got my second dose coming up in March. What? My situation is that a friend of mine had a, she was a home health care worker. She went to go get a vaccine in a very small county in Tennessee. And there were so few people attending, despite the fact that they signed up for it, that they not only vaccinated her, the person she was caring for, but her as well in the car. No paperwork, no nothing. They just said, hey, we have them. If they're thawed, I mean, if we already, you know, thawed them, we can't put them back into the. Exactly. It's not like it's guacamole. You can't put it back in the fridge and just use it the next day, right? So she's like, they have vaccines here. They want people to use them. They said, tell your friends and family, because we're not getting enough people coming at the rate that they need to come for us to use all these up. And so she emailed that out to myself and like my boss. And the first thing I did was get in my car and drive down to that small county was only about a half hour away. And so I go there and there is literally one car in line. Compared to the town I'm in now where it's like, you know, 25 cars, they're turning through way people. This town, this county, one car in line. I go up there and like, do you guys have extra vaccines? I mean, I was like, yes, had four ladies waving me down saying, yes, please, please come in. We got the Moderna vaccine. The shot on my arm. They said, here's the car. Come back next month. Tell your friends and family, we need people to come in. We need people to use these up. And I was like, fantastic. All my coworkers, four of my coworkers got them the next day, more going in next week. But I think what's good is the sentiment of someone who might sign up for a vaccine and turn it down. Or someone who might be aware that there's vaccines available and not use them all. The anti-vaccine mindset, just the, ah, it's raining. I don't need to get vaccinated today. The anti-vaccine mindset. Tomorrow. Manana. That wastes a very precious commodity. Or the guilt. Or the guilt of someone like us, young, like, no, I'm not going to go, I don't want to take it from someone else. Yeah. It's like, it's going to get thrown away. Yeah. I might sound like I'm justifying it to myself. Maybe I am a little bit. No, I think it's absolutely valid. I think it's a thing of, hey, if you don't use this, this goes in the trash. And that is not only bad for the allotment of vaccines, but it makes one additional person who could have gotten vaccinated, not vaccinated, which increases the number of vectors and hurts everybody. So if you are in a situation, so here's my tip, here's my initial tip. And Scott, let me know about the morality of this, because I'm going to go to you with this next. But if you are in a situation where it's like, hey, I'm in a really big city. I'd like to get vaccinated, but there's, they have, you know, strict protocols. There's no rules in place or there's rules in place and I can't get them. Meanwhile, super, super small county is trying to do statistics, but everyone's wearing, you know, the red MAGA hats. They'd rather just drink bleach and you're like, they have vaccines. There's no one using them. And when I, and I'm hearing that they, the nurses there want people to go there and get them, I'm going to make a half hour trip. I'm going to make an extended lunch break, go and pick one up, see if they have it. See if they have it. If they say no, that's cool. What do you think about that as far as a moral choice or at least an effective voice towards reducing the number of available vectors for the virus? Yeah. I think that, um, I don't, I don't, I don't really see anything wrong with it because, um, as long as you are not forcing your will on somebody else, you know, that's really, for me, that, that's, that's one of the main criteria for, for, um, morality for me is like, if you force your will on somebody else of, you know, without their consent, then that's immoral, but I don't see how that situation fits that criteria. Right. Especially if you're doing it just on the chance that they may have extra ones and they can't use them at the time and, and are willing to be turned away if that's the case. Yeah. If you're just making yourself available, I don't say anything immoral about that. That's exactly what happened to my co-worker. He went there, asked them if they had extra. They said, well, it's still early today. If you don't mind parking out here, and, and there was a group of other people parked, we'll, we'll wave you in when we're getting towards the end. By the time they got to him and his wife, they only had one left. And he asked them to vaccinate his wife. Good husband points. Good husband points. Yeah. Yeah. And they said, not only that, but it's like, come back tomorrow. Cause it'll be the same things. Come back tomorrow. And we'll most likely have one for you. Do the same situation. Just show up like the last half, hour and a half. So that way we have a good idea of the rate. And then we, yeah, we'll get vaccinated too. And I'm like, that uses up the supply. That's good. And that's, that's what we want. We want people to be vaccinated here. So overall good thing. Here's the thing though. I talked with one of my coworkers. The only two on our team left who haven't been vaccinated. And I don't, like Scott said, I didn't want to pressure anyone to do it if they don't want to, but I did ask why they didn't want to. And this person told me that they thought it was unsafe cause once upon a time they had a flu shot and they got the flu or at least had the symptoms of the flu and they didn't like it. And so I'm like, oh, so many things I want to say. Have you heard about that before? Have you ever heard that before? I mean, you know, I got a COVID vaccine and I got symptoms like it, but man, so much less severe. And you know, I didn't have the coughing fits and the respiratory. Yeah. Maybe, maybe at this time we should talk about how vaccines work. Larry, why don't you lead us on that? Okay. The problem with the virus is that your body is not set up to handle them until they're exposed to it. You have no antibodies in your body to handle the virus that comes in. Of course, antibodies are the body's response to an invasion of a bacteria or a virus to be able to handle it and get rid of it. Basically. Kind of like little signs that say, hey, this is a bad thing. Like little post notes for the virus. When you get a virus like COVID, it hits your body cold. You don't have any antibodies. So it works real hard as quickly as it can to build up the antibodies that it needs to fight off the virus. However, sometimes it's not enough. It's not quick enough and the virus overwhelms your body and you die. What vaccines do is they take a snippet of the DNA of the virus. Just a small portion of it will harm that the full virus does. And they inject you with it and your body recognizes that as a foreign body starts building antibodies. And before long, you have all these antibodies built up in your body that would recognize that piece of DNA were to be exposed if you were to be exposed to it in the future. Like come in contact with the actual virus. At that point, when you're exposed to the actual virus, you don't want to be exposed to the virus. You don't want to be exposed to the virus. And they fight off the virus hopefully before you even show symptoms. Can I just just some clarification? You're you're you don't have any expertise in this area. It's okay. You did a you did a fantastic job. I'm just going to say instead of DNA, they use something called messenger RNA, which is a genetic information that's not the two newer vaccines not mRNA. I thought I heard that. So the one I'm not shot with was mRNA. That's Moderna. I don't know what Pfizer uses. Pfizer was mRNA to the two new ones, Johnson and Johnson and then one other. I didn't. I thought maybe they both of them weren't mRNA. Maybe not. I think there are also one shot only or something like that. At least one of them is a one shot. So let's do a quick history on vaccines as well. They used to just straight up. Oh, actually, Boudreau, you know about the first vaccines that they ever used. Why don't you know? Remember? Yeah. The guy who invented that. Yeah. Yeah. Remember my. The guy who who understood how vaccines work was Louis Pasteur. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Because the first guy was just like, what's going on with it? Didn't didn't know why it was working, but I'm taking this person and put it in the cats and the cats are dying. What's going on? Okay. So, well, do you know in the name of that guy, the the the original dude to do it, but not understand really what he was doing? I don't remember who was the guy that that's fair. That's fair. I feel like we're disregarding an entire branch of science, but there was a guy who was essentially understanding that people cough up these weird things. And when you put those weird things in healthy people, they get sick too. But if you do it enough times, they don't get that sick anymore. And he was like, this is a cool little weird thing. I wonder if them might be useful in the future for something. Science used to be super baller back in the days, guys. It was just mad and crazy. And then they had laws. They had to put them. But the mad scientist, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The mad scientist was, you know, let's not forget that the Nazis during World War II were doing an awful lot of science work. Okay. I feel like when you pull out the Nazi card, I feel I have to make some justifications here. But yeah, yeah, yeah. It was it was pretty nice. They experimented on my father. I'm sure they had him in a Nazi prisoner war camp for nine months. And he had to operate him on like nine times when he was in there. Though I would say the guy who was doing the vaccine stuff was not a Nazi, was not some evil dude who was just like cows get sick. Let me try to do this. The best science, best science at the time, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was useful. And then Louis Pasteur was like, oh dude, what are you doing? Like, come on. This is good data that you got. But clearly what's going on is you're building up an immunity to this. Maybe we can try cooking the pus and kill what's ever inside of it because they didn't really understand germ theory back then. So like maybe if we heat it up and then put it in a person and they don't get as sick, they'll be more mean to it later on in the future. Maybe we can have a better way of everybody being healthy. By the way, you guys are eating raw food. Don't do that. Here's a great way to like make milk last for a really long time. Hey, I got a lot of ideas. I'm Louis Pasteur, baby. I'm doing all sorts of cool things. Like calm down, guy. Calm down. It's like, you're only going to be known for one thing. Not back then, man. Right. You only get one. You only get one, Louis. He's like, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine. Maybe we should mention Jonas Salk at the same time while we're talking about all this. Who's that? Go ahead. He was the guy who developed the vaccine against polio. People my age will have a little mark on their arm where they had to not only just give you a shot, but the way I remember it was that they put it on your skin and then used a pen or a needle to make multiple puncture rooms. And that would get into the wound and it would make you immune to polio. Wow. As a matter of fact, it pretty much eradicated polio from the 50s on. I mean, I was born in 1950 and people were dying and being paralyzed by polio during that time. But now, of course, polio is still making a comeback in third world countries. But if we can get the vaccine to them, that won't take care of it. Yeah, absolutely. And it's important to stay vaccinated. It's for even if the disease is in your country, which is one of the myths that I wanted to address today. Like just because the disease is in your country doesn't mean you shouldn't get vaccinated because we live in a world culture where everyone affects everybody. But I want one last thing. So it used to be take a disease and put it in a person and that's how you built the community. Then it was destroy the disease or like destroy any kind of viruses and just send that stuff in. Now we know we don't have to send the whole virus. We can literally just send the chain that gives instructions on how to build the outside of the virus, put that into person. And such that when they react to it, they're not even reacting to a real virus. It's just a piece of it that the immune system recognize so much more quickly. So you will still have what is called an immuno-response. You'll still get sick maybe. You might have a fever for a bit. You might feel really lethargic for a bit. You might have to take a nap. You may have a sore arm. But those are all good signs. Those are signs that your body is like. And for those listening and maybe new listeners, Wombat is Dr. Wells. He's a PhD microbiologist. Biochemist. I don't know how many times I'm going to have to tell you this, Larry. We've been doing this for so many years. I don't know how many times I've told you about the TV show. Okay. He's coming back at me. Okay. But anyway. Yeah. So it's just a really cool thing because the chances of you getting the virus from a piece of a virus is so small. In fact, it's literally not. I hate being absolute. I hate being absolute. You guys know that about me, but it's not feasible. Okay. You would have to have been coughed on by somebody as you walked out of the building for that to happen. So the immune responses are good things. And I'll throw this out to Scott because I'd love to get your feedback on it. Have you ever met someone who may not have wanted to get vaccinated and like what kind of encouraging things would you tell them knowing that you don't want to impose your will on them, but you want to definitely make sure they're informed. Right. So there's a couple people. There's a couple set of excuses that people give you for not getting vaccinated. The latest one I got from a friend was saying that he didn't want to get vaccinated. He's an African American and he doesn't trust. Oh, is he Charlie Starran? His brother or something? No, no, no. This is a personal person. Is he a black guy or is he from is he from Africa? Yeah. Black American. I'm just playing with you. All right. Cool. His thing was this could Tuskegee. Tuskegee experiment. Tuskegee? Yeah. The simplest study? No. There's that mistrust there with, you know, thinking that it's just a way to get any pig, you know, black folks or whatever. Absolutely. Then there then there was another one where someone told me that it's because the, you know, they rushed it to get out. It was so fast, you know, like vaccines not safe because it was rapidly developed and tested. So what I told them is, you know, many pharmaceutical companies invested a lot of resources in a quickly developing vaccine for COVID-19 because the worldwide impact on the pandemic. So the emergency situation kind of warranted an emergency response. And that doesn't mean that the companies bypass safety protocols or didn't perform adequate testing. You know, they started, they made the vaccines just in case. Like while they were testing, they went ahead and produced them. So Justin Kate and some lost the bet and had to throw them away. Right. Yeah. So that's a good counterargument to that point is that, hey, they went ahead and just started making it so that if it passed the trials, we already got it made. Yeah. That's why only the biggest companies have one right now because they could afford to take that loss. Yeah. And in all these cases, it sounds like the whole thing is about trust. People don't trust what they hear. They don't trust science. They don't trust the media. There's a lot of distrust going on. Unlike it was say back when the polio vaccine was introduced. I don't think I remember reading about that. This big anti-vax movement back then. At least my dad didn't tell me that. And we talked about that not long ago. Yeah. No, I think the science was held in a generally higher regard at that time than it is now. There's so much misinformation and conspiracy or series out there that it's taking like it. Yeah. Exactly. And some folks also think that these vaccines are going to alter your DNA. Hmm. I got things to say. But Scott, you made an interesting point. We've had an administration where the last four years had fostered an anti-intellectualism wave in America. And we also as Americans have very recent history where we would take people who are minorities and experiment on them and documented black and white absolutely egregious form. Yeah, red and white. And it was really unfortunate and not only unfortunate, but like it's just such a thing where it's like I can't believe a sitting government would allow this to happen. And you expect me to believe you the next time there's an emergency? No, like that kind of mindset's fostered through generations just as much as hate or love can be. Like distrust is a thing that can be passed on generationally. And so here we are in a situation where there is an actual threat. Like someone is crying wolf and you have the people who are concerned by the scientists because they weren't taught it very well or their leaders don't show or sign a respect for it or that they do have a love of science but know for a fact that the government has completely held them in such a low regard that they would use them as guinea pigs. How could you ever come to trust someone where it's like, Nick, get in line. You got to get this vaccine. I was like, hold on, hold on, hold on. Right? Like I said, I wouldn't force my will on someone. But in a sense, what is your motivation? What are you trying to go to? What's your goal? And what's the best way to achieve that goal? Like what's the epistemology of your thought process? What's the methodology that you're using to try to maintain the best welfare possible? And what options are there that allow you to do that? Is it trusting the conspiracy theorists? Is it just having a distrust in science in general? Will that help you have a better welfare? Or is there a possibility that maybe you don't have to be first in line? I doubt you'd be first in line. Everyone kept saying that. My mom was like, I don't want to be first in line. There's no way you're first in line. They did so many trials and tests. You're never going to be first in line. But after a point, could you look at the data and look at the people who are coming about? Is there a path for information that you can accept that will make you feel at least more accepting of the fact that this could actually be a helpful thing for you if your goal is to be helped? And I think we have that information now. I was never skeptical of vaccines, but I was skeptical if they had come out a month later. Like if someone said COVID was happening and they were out in the next month, I'd be like, who's the president? No, I'm not taking that vaccine. You're not going to put that in my body. I'm waiting till a Biden administration comes in. Or anybody else. Right, right. But it took a year. Oh, go for it. I was going to say, what would you say if you came up in line and the person given the vaccine went to a different drawer to grab? Oh, man. I drive. I drive, dude. I'm serious. I'm serious. It's just like, no, no, no, no. Oh, wait, we got yours right over here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like in a bucket. You're like, no. It's like, that's Gatorade. Come on. All right. So, hey, we're at the bottom of the half hour. How about we take back and we'll go into more vaccine myths when we come back to the main show. Okay. This is digital free thought radio hour. We're on WOZO Radio 103.9. We have 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. And we'll be right back up to this short break. Back to the second half of the digital free thought radio hour. I'm doubter five and we're on WOZO Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee with us on the show today. We have Wombat, Boudreau, Dot Fire. Welcome all. Today is Sunday, February 7th, 2021. Let's talk about the atheists and free thought groups that you can join right here in Knoxville. First, there's the Atheist Society of Knoxville or ASK, founded in 2002. We're in our 18th going on 19th year now. ASK has over a thousand members and we have weekly zoom meetings during COVID and personal meetings in a bar or restaurant. After we all get vaccinated. Nice. You will find us online at Facebook or go to KnoxvilleAtheist.org for our website or go to meet up or Google Knoxville Atheist and you can find us. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville you should still go to meet up and search for an atheist group in your town. Don't find one. Maybe just in time. Earlier in the show we said we'd talk about the Atheist video show broadcasting here from Knoxville. Well, it's called Freethinkers United Coalition of Knoxville and look forward to it on YouTube. That name's way too long. Atheist Society of Knoxville. It's like we should create an initial sport. An acronym. Get it's own country. Also, we did that for 10 years on a local TV station and local access TV station called Freethought Forum Knoxville and you can find the archives for that on YouTube as well. Where do we want to pick up today? We're talking about the best ways to keep vaccines cool when they get thawed so that people can use them and they started using fans, guys. What a fan. What a fan. What a mighty good fan. What a mighty, mighty good fan. You guys are horrible. All right. So quick, quick, quick. We were talking about a really interesting subject last week which was quit hijacking my culture, dude. Well, we talked about how people gave up stuff that was native to their culture, lost in memory, lost in time because maybe a group of Catholic priests came and showed up at their shore one day and wiped that whole stuff out. Or evangelicals. Yeah, or evangelicals. Or just culture in general. It happens all the time. Culture evolves, culture changes, but we can sometimes lose it and get hijacked. So we got some really, really funny comments today and one of them's from Data's Trading Room who wanted to correct me on my pronunciation of ventilator, which I threw out to Buffalo. He says, I pronounced it as if I was Polish. Like, I gave it the wrong starting sense. Yeah, because V sounds like W in Polish at least. So it's like, when to later is how I should have pronounced it. And I asked him, okay, cool. Well, how do you say fan? Like, if Buffalo comes back, that's a good way to say fan in Polish. He's like, you just say fan. Like it's already colloquialized. The word for fan got hijacked in Poland. It just means you just say fan and they'll understand it. But you will probably say it with more of a Polish accent. We got some other channel comments too in general. This is on some older stuff. Eric, you'd been asked about free will. Nope, we only have about a half hour left in the show. All right. So the question was, it sounded, I can give you the impression of the question because it actually kind of long, but it was like it sounded as if you were choosing that free will does not exist because you knew that there were two options, whether it could or could not, but you have chosen to believe that there's no free will. Gotcha. Checkmate. Dude, you win. I mean, I don't know what to say other than like, do you don't choose to believe in God or not? Like that's the whole... Believe what you're convinced of. Right, right. And that's the whole like Pascal's wager debunked because I'm not going to choose to believe in a God just in case. I mean, he'd see right through that, wouldn't he? If he's worth assault. So yeah, I don't choose to not believe in free will. I just, here's the evidence. And I'm not convinced that we have free will. So is that... So you're determined by the evidence? I would say generally like belief is not a choice. I can't believe that I'm wearing a red shirt. Like I'm based... Yeah. My belief is a function of when I'm convinced is true, right? Yeah. So yeah, the low determinology there is there. So yeah, it's not as much of a checkmate, though it does sound nifty. Like that is enough to get enough, middle Tennessee and stuff. That's the kind of logic that gets you in a political office, but not necessarily a degree. I'm being nice here. I'm trying to be nice. I'm trying to be nice. Hey, Scott, we got a question from our last week's video when we were talking to a Christian who was momentarily undetermined whether or not slavery was a bad thing and had to refer to his book to verify that. K. Reel Vivo says, Why can't Christians admit that God only exists inside their heads? Which is probably a straightforward question, a rude, but we are an atheist radio TV show. Scott, why can't Christians admit that God only exists inside their heads? For some reason, there's basically two categories here, imaginary things and concrete things. They want to smuggle their imaginary gods into the concrete category, and they feel like it has more legitimacy. It has more bites. It has more objective. You can ground something objectively in a God that's a concrete God, but the problem is, as kind of implied in the question, they won't admit that because it's not true. They know that God is a concept and a subjective because we have many, many, many gods over long periods of time and different cultures. If there was an objective God we could all look at and we'd all say, hey, guys, this is God. It's like we say, this is the Pacific Ocean, but you don't do that with God for some weird reason. Larry, I'll throw the same question at you. Why do you think that Christians cannot admit that God only exists inside their heads? Because it's a major part of their worldview. That's how they interpret the world around them. Apparently, they don't understand science or many of them don't. I can't think of a good example. Where did we come from? That would be a constant question for them, but if they believe in God and they were raised to believe in God. Are you okay? Get that microwave. Yeah, there's a truck backing up over here. It's just a way for them to interpret the world and a big part of that interpretation is God. They would have to have it and it'd have to be real. I'm glad I had into the rink and I'd love for you to follow up on it, but I'm considering that when you are part of a religious outlook or religious doctrine, the appeal of the religion is that you don't have to deal with the concept of death because, as Larry would say, it's more of a change of address rather than the punctuation mark of your lifetime. If you are raised never having to deal with the reality of death or come into terms with the fact that your life will end, it is a much, much harder thing to deal with when you're already in your adulthood or past teenage years and you're just like, whoa, whoa, what? I have nowhere to deal with all these emotions of finality and mortality. I'd rather just continue to believe in this God question because maybe there's a chance of this drill and I will take whatever chance is necessary to believe in this reality that I've constructed for myself or that other people are willing to engage me at than what could be objectively true in the sense of there's no good reason to believe in this God and that, in fact, I will die one day. Death is scary and that's why I think it's the major motivation to keep people in the church pews. Boudreau, what do you think? Yeah, I was thinking exactly the same thing and I'll add to it that I think it's about seeing your loved ones, too. You throw in the fact that, you know, and that's why I think, too, religions, often an accident of birth, you don't want to, Larry? Is there a comment? Don't go ahead, I was just going to throw something in later. Yeah, but having all of your relatives believe in the same God or gods kind of puts you all in the same basket to where you get to see each other all together. You know, I think otherwise you'd have people believing in different gods from their parents and their cousins and, you know, but if they're all going to different heavens, then that doesn't work. So yeah, the fear of death, but also the wanting to see your loved ones again, and I get it. Makes sense, certainly, if you tell it to a child. Sure. Larry? I don't really think that it's death per se that keeps people in the pews, or even the fact that we live forever, it keeps people in the pews. It's a fear of hell, because if we just all lived forever and all believe that we live forever, whenever we die, we just go to the next plane of existence. There's no reason to go to a church and re-initialize our goodness so that we will go to the correct place because we want to avoid the bad place. What do you got? Well, because I was a joke witness for so many years, I know that some people will join the most fundamental religions, not because of fear of hell, because joke witnesses don't believe in hell. They believe when you die, that's it. So it's not necessarily the case, but I would agree that many, many, many people argue that, hey, if you, you know, Pascal's wager, if you don't believe in this stuff, then risk going to hell and being tortured. But we know that many religions don't teach hell or even afterlife. Some religions don't even teach in afterlife at all. Maybe you could help me with my understanding of Jehovah's Witnesses. You say that Jehovah's Witnesses think that death is the end? Yeah. People that are... The vast majority of joke witnesses will not see a... On the vast majority, but the chosen few will see the heaven. Is that what you're saying? 144,000 will see heaven. As of revelations? As of the revelations? Yeah, out of revelations. So chances are if you're Jehovah's Witness, don't bank on afterlife. Not only with that lottery ticket. Revelations also said it's just going to be virgin Jewish men too, but do they take that in consideration? Yeah, so spiritual Jews, so people that were grafted into the New Covenant, which means that there's two different classes. There's the great crowd class, which are the majority of Jehovah's Witnesses that will live forever on earth and a paradise on earth. If they, like Moses, Abraham, people like that, people that lived before Jesus, they didn't get the chance to get saved by Jesus for their sins. They'll be resurrected on a paradise on earth to be judged for a thousand years. But, Scott, I think I got your main point. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't want to keep going. Everyone's not fueled by hell as a motivator towards... I have to do more research into that. I didn't know that, so I'll check it out. Yeah, it's a lot to it. Same with Jews. Like, they don't have a... Yeah, they don't have a hell or heaven. Except for like the Orthodox, I think. Or the never ending Bar Mitzvah. Yeah, there's always a splintered group that believes different things, several splintered groups. But yeah, even when I was a Christian, I found the concept of nothingness more fearful than hell. Because at least in hell, I'm being punished for being me. I exist in some capacity. And even if it's like a thing whipping me, I'd be like, yeah, but I'm still me, and I can still like Smash Mouth. I don't care. At least the people I'm hanging out with aren't Grammar Nazis, and I might meet some really cool people down here. There was that silver lining to it. And even the devil in the Bible goes up to heaven to hang out with God and make bets on humans. So it was like, I'll really be that bad when you think about it. If the leader of hell is up there, hey, you should strike some lightning on this guy. And God's like, oh, I can totally do that. I'll do 20 bowls. It's like, God, this dumb story ever. According to me, I don't want to be rude. We had Christian on the show who are very, very enthusiastic about that story. And that's its own video. Anyway, vaccination guys, I want to go over some quick myths. Eric, I am noticing a distinct lack of infected autism in your body. What's going on with that? Because you just had two vaccines and you don't look anyway. I don't show it. The autism, I think, manifests as a superpower. Yeah, that's just as a reference, a reality check reference. There's a lot of comparisons to taking vaccine and getting autism as a result or cancer or any other kind of disease. Larry, what do you think about this? Well, I was going to address that. I've got it up here. I got a couple of short sentences that says that addresses that the widespread fear that vaccines increase the risk of autism originated in a 1997 study published by Andrew Wakefield, a British surgeon. The article was published in The Lancet, a prestigious medical journal, suggesting that the measles, mouse and rubella vaccine was increasing autism in British children. The paper has since been completely discredited due to serious procedural errors, undisclosed financial conflicts of interest and ethical violations. Andrew Wakefield lost his medical license and the paper was retracted from the license. The Lancet, excuse me. So it was just a monk paper and so many people took off on that. But he wore a lab coat. When he was doing the YouTube video of it, he was very short sentences. No big words. And he looked around the camera, the best camera in the world, and he spoke to the world and the people, very good people. There were good people everywhere. And Kent Holden said he was a scientist, a teacher. And the fact that he lost his position is proof that it was true. Right. Yeah. It's all part of it. So basically vaccines, autism, originally tied to measles vaccine or what was the other disease that you were talking about? Measles mumps. Measles mumps. It was a bunk paper. It's not real. It's not true. You will not get autism from taking vaccines. Though there are people who will say like, you know, there are, you know, there are trace metals and salts and stuff in the vaccines that might harm you, mercury, stuff like that. And it is a bizarre thing to say. I'm eating banana right now. There are probably more trace metals in this banana than I'm eating. And there are the vaccines that are being inoculated into my system. Unless you need trace metals. Yeah. I'm a big nerd on banana trace metal stuff. And we don't have time to talk about that today, but we will in the future. But man, I can tell you some cool things about bananas. But yeah, they're like radioactive. They got a lot of stuff in them. And we don't, because we just eat them all the time, we just think inherently that they're safe and that's a natural thing. We don't forget about it. But then when it's a vaccine and it has orders of magnitude less of the same things that we consume every day, it's like, oh, no, no, no. They're eating their Cheetos. I mean, like, you don't know what's in that thing. I'm like, you know why that thing's fluorescent orange? Anyway, so here's the thing. When you guys get vaccinated, that means you're immune, right? That means you don't have to wear a face mask anymore. It means you don't have to wash your hands. Isn't that correct? What's going on? Scott, you're smiling. You're looking forward to the day. You don't have to wash your hands anymore. Like, once you get the vaccine, you won't even have to wear a mask anymore. Yeah. You know, because you know how that works, but the fact is, it takes every one time who wants a COVID-19 vaccination to first of all, get one. But then while the vaccine may prevent you from getting sick, it's unknown at this time, you know, if you can still carry on and transmit the virus to others, so until it's understood, then you can't just go and, you know, believe that kind of stuff. It's unfounded. There's no evidence. Yeah, me not being able to get sick by something doesn't mean that I can't spread it, which is an interesting concept, but it's absolutely valid. And you know what, I said this before, the filter, like I'm a filtration scientist as well, the filters that we were originally using were not very effective towards keeping droplets, you know, you know, away from people in a very non-sterile environment for extended periods of time. So eventually that little piece of material will get saturated and it'll be blowing out just as many droplets as you are, you know, protecting yourself from. But something I did not anticipate, and so I will correct myself on this, is that I did not understand the cultural impact there was in seeing people wear masks all around you and you wearing a mask, and that as a reminder that, hey, there's a current threat going on, stay six feet away from this person. Oh, I saw some masks. I'm going to wash my hands a little bit longer today. Ah, I'm going to make sure I, if I cough, I either do it in a mask or cover my elbows. I'm going to do, I'm going to be a little bit cleaner, a little bit neater and a little bit more pathetic for the people around. Mindful of our situation. And I think that's the, that's the effect that these masks really have. I think that's the true profound effect. Far greater than the filtration capacity or efficiency for the period of time that you're wearing it, just the fact that we are a culture all on the same team, trying to help ourselves get better. Like that's, that's, that's caring. You can't treat, you can't, you can't ordain that. You have to, you have to have people naturally and genuinely care about each other to make that happen. Eric, no, actually, Larry, this is a good one for you. So are you looking forward to the microchip that they're going to put into your bloodstream when you get vaccinated? Yeah. That way, I'll always, I'll just look it up on the internet. Where am I? I will get you a tile instead. I'll make it a lot easier. I'll make it a lot easier. Yeah. Yeah. But, uh, yeah, there is the idea of, um, and I think this is actually a CUNA on, um, uh, conspiracy where the vaccines are, means this is not true. And I'm going to be looking forward to the day where we never have to talk about CUNA again. But, uh, the idea was they're using vaccines as a way to trace sheep, sheep being people and getting a vaccine means you're going to be put into the system. And when you're part of the system, you can't get back out again. Six, six, six. Larry, are you worried about that? No, not at all. How do you know it's not true? Well, first of all, have you seen the needles? Are you going to get a chip through that needle? Okay. Um, you know, it just, it's, it's plus the, you'd have to have an entire bureaucracy set up just to be able to handle all the information that would be generated by it. Uh, it's just, it's just dumb, but, you know, it's conspiracy. People believe all kinds of dumb things without good reason. Well, I mean, Bujo has two chips in his body. What do you think about that? Well, that's right. I've got one too, right here over my heart, but it was, it took surgery to implant it. Actually, I embrace our cyborg future. I just, just me, but yeah. Eric, what do you think about the conspiracy of microchips and vaccines? What, what can be said presented without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. I love it. It's like, I can make up anything I want. Yeah. The conspiracy theory, it's so, it's such a flimsy, such a flimsy argument, but yet people kind of comes back to religion. People, I think want to believe this stuff for whatever reason. And maybe it's like you said, well, a lot, a lot of times people think that if they think that something that the government says is wrong, that they're smarter than the government. It's a self-boistering thing. I'm so much smarter than them. I don't believe that stuff. Right. You know, it's very true. You can ask someone who says that, where, where, why do you believe that? Like, what is the root of that theory? Like, where did you get that from? And what they'll tell you in a lot of cases is they'll say, well, this started after the comments made by Bill Gates himself from the Gates Foundation about a digital chip that they're going to put in you. And he didn't say that at all. If you go back to the TED Talk and stuff that he was talking back then, he was talking about a digital certificate of vaccine records. And the technology he was referencing is not a microchip. So they're just wrong for that. They're just, they're just conflating, you know. Eric, you want to say something? Yeah, yeah. I think I lost my, lost my train. But, you know, yeah, I think it, I think it comes back to what you were saying, Mom, bad about trying to get people to conform, put these masks on. Now you're just, you're feeding the sheeple narrative that these folks have where now you're going to tell us what to, so the masks don't really even work, but you're going to make us wear them because you think it makes us wash our hands more. That's just controlling us. And then you start putting something in my arm and it's just like everything about it is, and then it ties into politics because it's, you know, it's big government and it's telling me what to do. Yeah. And it's just like, you know what? And that's always the unfortunate side when science becomes political because then there's always going to be 50% of the population that regardless of how sound the sciences are like, nope. And then there will always be just the fashion that's just like, don't tread on me. Don't tread on me. But also the side that's like, Hey, I believe you, but you have a bad history government. I just don't like you. It's, you know, it's just basis of it. Hey, I will throw out this, I think this could probably be our last example. Oh, before we go there, Scott, you had mentioned, um, you asked someone, where did you get that information from? It's quick SC tip just for me, just my two cents. Whenever I ask that question, I always fall into a rabbit hole of getting into the weeds of someone's holy book. And I don't want to go there. I want to get straight to their methodology. So instead I'll ask them if they tell me something, what does that mean to you? That way I can at least hear them paraphrase the information that they're saying, not parroting, but paraphrasing. So they're using their mind to think about what was being said. And then I immediately go from, what does that mean? Or what do you, what does that mean to you? And then finally, how can we test that? How can we both test that together? Those tend to be much more constructive conversations. How can we test that? And how reliable is that test? What do you mean by that? How can we test that? How reliable is that test? I can't wait till COVID is over. One to swim and then two to hit Nashville and finally do more. But I will be still social distancing and stuff like that. But looking forward to getting my S.C. back on. All right. Here's the last one, guys. You know, sometimes it's just better to get coughed on. Sometimes it's just better to get actually sick than to take vaccines. That's how everyone should really vaccinate. So you just get coughed on instead. The disease is a much better way of building immunity than the vaccine. The whole months approach. Yeah. What do you think, Larry? Getting infections to help us build immunity better than vaccines? I think that it will certainly do it. The problem is, like I mentioned earlier, that the disease or the virus can overwhelm your system. And it also can have side effects that are long lasting, can last you for the rest of your life in the full blown virus. And if you do that and you succumb to it, game over. That's it. Or you're dealing with a situation for the rest of your life. It's better to build the antibodies before you're exposed to the full disease. Correct. A disease might actually compromise your immune system long term to make you sick to a whole bunch of other stuff. Right. Good point. All the vaccines doing is bolstering your antibodies specifically for that disease. But it's not even the disease that's in you. It's just a piece of it. And it's such a great little system. Boudreau, you came out with a new song. Tell us a little bit about it. We're going to try to see if we can play it during the break today. Awesome. Yeah. I met this guy on a Facebook group for our love of bad religion. And we did a bad religion cover. And we did a social distortion cover. And he's like, Hey, I want to write this song for my wife. And would you play bass on it? And then he had electronic drums on it as well. And I convinced him, I was like, Hey, man, I can do some acoustic drums. I can do some real drums. It came together really, really well, I think. And all we have is the past. It's on YouTube now and hopefully be shared on the show. Absolutely. Scott, what's the one that we're looking for to the next, you know, giant opus with all these electrical devices you got? Oh, yeah. So I've got there's like maybe two more pieces I'm trying to I'm trying to wait for. So I'm thinking probably in two weeks, I'll have everything completed. And then I'm going to just start recording everything and releasing stuff. But this the project, the there was another project I was working with the Grammy writers. Well, I've already got like three or four songs in the can with them. They're just going to be releasing them every so often, like I think three or four months spread apart. So those will keep coming out. And as soon as they get released, I'm going to keep you updated on that. But as far as my new equipment and starting this whole new project, yeah, it's going to be about a month. I'm going to start dropping. Okay. And it's stuff out there. Very cool. Very cool. And what can we find your stuff at? And you can find it at dubshine.bancamp.com. That's the best way that it is directly downloaded from my site. And you can find my stuff. Let's chat here on YouTube. Feel free to leave a comment. We'll go over on next week's show. Larry, I have a really Howard problem. I've been telling you about this all the time. I have all this atheism in my closet back here. And I don't know what any of it is about. It's all over the place. It's got threads on him. I don't know what this is about. What is this? I can tell you George is coming in. George is. Yeah. Yeah. My book is called atheism. What's it all about? It's available on Amazon. Hello, George. Hi, last minute. Yeah. My local meeting here in the middle of the state just ended. Cool. Okay. Well, you say start when somebody did. Cool. Very good. Glad to hear it. I got all this atheism. What is it about, Larry? Tell me. Okay. Well, this has been a digital free thought radio hour. Remember, everybody is going to somebody else's hell. Sure as hell are. 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. Say bye, everybody. We'll see you next week. Bye, everybody. We'll see you. Bye-bye.