 103.9 FM, WOZO Radio, Knoxville. Ladies and gentlemen, Digital Freethought Radio Hour. Hello, and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio Hour on WOZO Radio, 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today is Sunday, February 28th, last day of the month of 2021. I'm Larry Rhodes, our Douter 5, and as usual, we have our co-host, Wombat on the line with us. Hello, Wombat. Happy last day of Black History Month. Black Lives Still Matter. You can't forget that. It didn't happen. It's still there. We've got one more day left. Then we go back to normal. Don't forget. We still matter. I guess today are GeorgeBoudreaux.fire. Welcome all. And 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, 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 atheists, 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 break. Also, did you know that there was a streaming atheist called in video show, TV Slice Show here, broadcasting from Knoxville has been for over 10 years. Did you know that one about? I really want to get into it, but I can't afford a Hulu account. What can you do for me? Hulu. I wish we were on it. Was it on Disney Plus or was it on Netflix or was it on Amazon Prime or was it on Hulu? It was on YouTube. Oh, it's YouTube's free? Okay, okay. I'm back in again. Let's go. Go to YouTube and do a search for Knoxville atheists or Knoxville free thought, and you should find them. If you'd like to interact with us during the show, go to our Facebook account, digital free thought radio hour, and use the messaging function to send us questions or comments. Wombat, what's our topic today? Hey, today we're going to be talking about the wonders of science. I still get confused with that camera right here. I got to make sure I'm looking into the right camera. Wonders of science versus wonders of religion. You're going to dial us with science. I want to talk about some cool things that are interesting in our lives personally, that science has given us, and then cool things in our life that have been brought to us through religion. Maybe if we can see if there's a nice comparison there. I know we're a wrinkle of atheists. But we're going to try. We're going to try to make this a fair. We're going to make this a fair fight. It's not a competition necessarily, but it kind of is. Anyway, before we get into that, I want to do very quick, very fast, very rapid, short estimate summation of your entire lives over the last month, maybe half your lifetime, whatever you got. George, it's been two weeks since we've seen you last. How you been? Why don't you pick on somebody else? George. I seem to have two different zoom presences here. I'm trying to straighten out. Oh, I thought that was George from Buffalo. I thought that was Buffalo, George, that just came in. No, it was me. We're all screwed up here. So speaking of science, he's battling science currently. That's technology. Come on. Can you all see me right now? I can't see anything. You're not the cat emoji, are you? No. No, he's not a cat. No, the radio audience can't see you at this point. Mujro, how you been? How you been? I think you're getting ready for your second vaccination shot, or if you've already had it. What's going on? I'm going to sign probably about three weeks ago now. We're my wife and my brother. Yeah, we're. So we were actually a little bad, and we took the kids last week to South Carolina. We went to Hilton Head. The island was actually really good about masks. I guess they were really locking down on mask requirements outside of the island. It was really scary because nobody was wearing masks. You're in South Carolina. We tried to get a bite to eat on our way back from the Magnolia plantations. And as we were coming back, it was pretty late. We were like, let's grab a bite to eat. It was Friday night, and we had to walk in and out of places. Go nope, like 35 minute waits and just tons of people. So yeah, you know, we were playing it safe. I mean, our kids are still, you know, unvaccinated, they are children. So that's they're they're safe, safer, I suppose. But we're grocery stores and, you know, masks. And we did a lot outside stuff. It was great. It was really much needed vacation for us to just get good. That's really good to hear. I'm also a little concerned. Like I desperately want to go out to restaurants again. But I think the idea of waiting 30 minutes to eat is sort of just like one of those bonkers things. I wish they had forgotten. Like, wait, waiting lists, waiters hitting like, I hate this. I forgot about all this stuff that I hate. I just want to know the things I miss the most is eating out. Yeah. Yeah. About all this. Anyway, cool. Scott, how you been? We're all going to be quiet. Hey, been doing really good. Hopefully my echo is not too bad. But yeah, I've been doing pretty good. Still working on music projects and placing music for companies and jingles, commercials, YouTube shows. You name it. So I've been utilizing my new studio. When can we hear any of your cool new stuff that you're coming out with? Really soon. Like really soon. Like soon as pot like maybe next week. Okay, cool. Not as in the next week. We'll do to it. It's just, I just need to put it up somewhere. Cool. All right. Thank you, Scott. Larry, how you been? Doing fine. Just staying in, staying safe and playing computer games. What was the last time? When you're 70, you don't get out a whole lot anyway. Yeah. You've been trolling people on the internet. I can imagine. Yeah. Well, I'm not trolling them, but I do interact with them. I like doing that. It keeps me involved, I guess, with the community. Cool. I am so looking forward to getting my second vaccination shot because I live right nearby a public pool. And I don't want to jump into that pool. I know they say Corrine doesn't kill COVID, but I don't know if the science is out on that yet. I just like, I just want to take, I don't want to take my chances. Until then I've been running to get my shape back in form so that I could be wearing swimsuit in public and not feel bad. And knocking out five Ks. I'm having a fun time. But I want to talk really about what I'm really excited about, which is wonders of science. And I want to start today with a purchase I've made on the internet. And it's this little dude. It's not an endorsement. It's just, there are, there are thousands of products just like this. And what this is. Well, yeah. The radio audience can see that. Sure, sure, sure. Right, right, right, right. It looks like one of those tremors that you stick up your nose, except you stick them in your ear. And it's not a tremor. It's a camera with a pic at the end of it. And the idea behind it is, you can, you're, so believe it or not, you're not supposed to use Q-tips in your ears. Did you guys all know that? Yeah. Oh, we got some thumbs up here. Yeah. It is one of those things that you just assume that you do, because everyone uses it, but on the box it says not for ear use. So it's a question of like, what do you even use these things for in the first place? Q-tips will actually compact that ear wax already in your ear canal and make it even harder for it to come out. And you may end up losing your hearing as a result. And so what you're really supposed to do is pick the earwax out, either by a professional or you get one of these and you can do it yourself. And what the cool thing is, this has a tiny little Wi-Fi enabled camera. Your cell phone basically acts as the monitor. You connect it to the pic and you can see a live feed of yourself pulling out ear wax out of your ear. It sounds gross. Trust me, it is. But let me tell you, once you clean out your ear canal for like the first time in years, it is an insane sounding experience. It's not just, I can hear when, I can like feel the direction of when, just like from my ears. It's like, oh, Southwest by Southeast, about six knots. It's insane. It's so crazy. I'm not saying I hear music any better. I still feel like I had pretty sensitive hearing, but I think this is a wonder of science that I can just do this by myself without having to worry about COVID, making an appointment, driving out, commuting, all that stuff. Just buy this and I can do this as many times as I want. Clean my own ears. I think it's great. So Tyrone, do you mean that you said it has a camera on it? It has a tiny little camera. Yeah. So where do you see the picture? I see the camera coming out of the tip. And so I literally see the point of view of the tip of the cleaner as it goes into my ear. Do you see it on your cell phone or on your laptop? I see it on my cell phone. I see a live feed of my cell phone about 30 frames per second. It's pretty good. I saw my own eardrum for the first time yesterday and it was like this wild experience of like, whoa, I've always heard about you, but I've never seen you. That's so cool. My ears are very, very clean now. I love it. I love it. It's really pink and fresh on the inside. Can you all hear me now? Yeah, we can hear you. Oh, OK. I'm back. How about this? I know you're battling with technology. Is that a Casio keyboard that's going on behind you? Yes, it is. Very cool. I got it at the seventh day Adventists thrift shop for $5. Did you get it on Sunday? Because they aren't supposed to be open. I got it on a Tuesday actually. Their thrift shop is open one or two days a week. And I just lucked out it had the wrong power supply. It came with a power supply for a laptop computer in the wrong voltage. And if I had connected it, I would have blown the thing up. Yeah. That's a great thing. That's an easy fix too. So it works and everything? Yeah. Well, I took the power supply from an old modem and changed the plug and everything works. Did you want to talk about that as your wonder of science? Well, no, no. I am a musician by training. And so I always wanted to have a keyboard of some kind. So that's what that is. I'll talk a little more about my musical involvement later in the program because it's relevant to your science topic. So then what is your science topic then? What's my science topic? Yeah, yeah. What's your wonder of science? Well, let's get into that later because I want to tell you about my week, my two weeks. Since I've been here. Tell me about your two weeks. Well, as you know, this is a Knoxville Atheist program. And Larry, if I've got this correct, you're the only person who's actually in Knoxville. That's true. Of all of us. My heart's in Knoxville though. And I'm the one who started the group too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. Our hearts are all in Knoxville. I think I'm the, I may be the closest one other than you, Larry, and I'm about, I'm 60 miles. We feel loved. Yeah. What's that? We feel loved. Oh, yes, I do. With all your hearts being here. Yes. And I really feel loved. So anyway, I got my second COVID shot. Oh, good. Nice. And it was a strange experience because my car's been in the repair shop and I was driven by somebody else. And we went to the wrong place. I went to, we went to the place where I got the last shot. And there was nobody there. It was the county park. Oh, geez. So the person who called me to tell me I was scheduled neglected to tell me that the joint had been moved. It had been moved back to the county health department a few miles in the opposite direction. Wow. So off we went. And it was a different experience than the first time, but you know, the people were there. Now, for one thing, my friend had been signed up in another county. So the signup procedure had been changed. And the new signup procedure was you sort of called a state phone number. And they asked, they would ask him, do you want the next available appointment? And he said, yes. And he said, well, the next available appointment is in Meigs County. Would you like to go there? And he said, yes. So they signed him up in the county where he doesn't live. So in the meantime, he's younger. He's in a younger age. George, what's the science? It's a whole different topic. It's a whole different topic. I'm still back on. Okay. Okay. Okay. We're still doing the show though. We've got people waiting to say things too. Okay. Let me go to the bottom line here, which is that nobody told me that I would experience side effects after the second shot. And I did. So that's what I want to share with all the rest of the show. I've heard several people say that they didn't have any side effects until they hit the second shot. Exactly. I didn't hear other people say that they were pretty bad, but not going to keep me from getting a second shot. No, but what I want to say about it is that the side effects that I experienced were the ones that are on the CDC website, plus some dental pain and you know, a little weirdness, but it all went away. It went away within 12 hours. How long did they last? Well, they didn't come on until about 12 hours after the second shot. And then within 12 hours of that, they were gone. Okay. Cool. So that's what I experienced. I would say two things. There's a hidden gem in there of science because you weren't just getting, one, you got an awesome vaccine. That's a great miracle of science if you wanted to call it that. But also when you got side effects who had access to a network of databases that can tell you, hey, this is normal. CDC has done this extreme research, summarized it so that anyone can understand it and made it available for you to access at your leisure. But none of the nurses, none of the nurses at my county health department told me that. They didn't even tell you where to go. I would write them off. Yeah. And they said to my friend, hey, would you like a shot too? Yeah. Good. Good. I'm glad they're giving it. He got his first shot because of their mistake. Yeah. Yes. He got his first shot. First shot. Your driver. My driver. Yes. That's right. Okay, cool. Boudreau, I want to know a miracle of science from you. And is that a pair of underwear that I'm looking at in the background? It is. And I use it to wipe sweat from my face when I'm exercising. Well, you got to do it. You got to do it. You got to do it. Is it your underwear? That's a thing. No, it's yours, Larry. It's mine. It's mine. It's mine. It's mine. I keep careful track of my underwear. I only have one pair, Larry says. I think I'm always amazed by kind of radio wave technology, you know, any, any remote control, the infrared or, or radio or, or, you know, unlocking a car remotely. I mean, you know, the beauty of how a relay works where I can push a button here and it can send a radio signal to my car and it's hooked up to a battery. So there's a relay that, you know, it connects and it starts or it unlocks. That to me is, you know, that's, it's just seems like magic because it's not, you know, physical, you know, it's no wire. There's no wire. Yeah. There's no wire connecting. And, and I've done a little, little dabbling and building these types of circuits and playing around with them. And it's just remarkable, you know, turning on going into ham radio. Well, okay. That's, you know, getting voice over, over radio. That's, I mean, that's pretty impressive too. But no, I've never been a big, I guess I had a CB as a kid. Oh, that's different. Isn't it? But yeah, anyway, I was a radio man in the Navy and I'm a ham radio net guy now. You're a bit of a ham still. I'm a ham on the air too. Yeah. But ham means amateur radio. For those who may not know. Yeah. CB is central broadcast or something like that. The citizens ban. The citizens ban. Yeah. What's going on in my mind. Oh, go for it. Good. No. Okay. I was saying what's going on in my mind nowadays is because I had this wireless thing, right? But I also have Bluetooth tiles, which if I lose my keys or if I lose my wallet, it's going to be a little longer, an hour long, you know, stress episode for me. I just push a button on my phone and it rings if I'm within 500 feet of it. And I'm like, so great. I lost my cat in my, I opened up my backyard. Oh, he's got it. I opened up my backyard and my cat walked into my little porch area. I have a little like storage shed and I closed it with him in it because I didn't realize it because he's black. He's a black cat. Well, cats will do that anyway. Yeah. And I walk home and I shut like two doors and I'm like, it is suspiciously quiet in this house. What's going on here? And I pushed my tile thing and it's like, I could hear it ringing. I'm like, oh, he's outside. Open up the door. He's outside somewhere. Open up the storage shed. He comes walking straight out. I'm like, I'm so glad I have this thing. So yeah, very good. I'm talking about little devices that use radio waves. Well, I just got a heat, I mean, a meat thermometer that you plug into your turkey or whatever, put it in the oven. And it communicates through Bluetooth with your cell phone. Oh, that's cool. And she can be watching TV and it'll go beep, beep, beep, telling her that the meat is done. Nice. Isn't that awesome? That is amazing. Cooking is so much better with technology, I think. I think it's just going to work. There was an interesting thing on the news talking about science. And I just saw it last night. It said the scientists have actually discovered a way of transmitting electricity from space directly to the earth. Anybody else see that? It's not like a superpower weapon or anything. Yeah, don't get in its way. Don't stand on anything copper. Yeah. But no, that's interesting. Oh, George, you're on mute. I'd like to comment on that. Go for it. Go for it. First of all, Nikola Tesla proposed that idea. Nikola Tesla was an alternating current junkie. He kept on just coming up with more and more and more permutations of alternating current and ways that you could use it. And broadcast power was one of them. Right. And a matter of fact, he tried to sell the whole concept to the financier, JP Morgan. He can't get past the inverse square law. When you broadcast like he was talking about, you know, he set up a big central area. Broadcasting electricity to the devices wirelessly around the central broadcast unit. And they would work. But inverse square law says that if you get twice as far away, you get a quarter of the power. And that, you know, that diminishes very quickly. He was, I have a lot of respect for him. But he went around showing these devices and trying to rage money for his project. And that's just a step shy, I think, of fraud because he could never put that into use. Hold on. Hold on. I'm going to give you. I got to step in a little bit. There's nothing wrong with selling the pitch and the dream. And raising money off of it? Because that technology would advance by now if it was, you know, started to be integrated way back when. Like, we have now phones that can charge on platforms. And we have, to an extent, things that can charge at somewhat a distance away. Yes, it's still subject to the inverse square rule or inverse square law. But we can get better at technology through working at it. Like, think about the guy who was ejecting himself with cow pus and being like, I think this is making me healthier. I have a dream that this might actually solve COVID when we're not doing the cow thing anymore. It wouldn't work. Yeah. But at a certain point, you have to try it. I have to give them a lot of credit for sending, I mean, backing the alternate current because that's the way it went. And that's the best way to go. Well, I think also, one last point, one last point. Like, for example, electric cars, what if we had streets? What if we just figured out a different way to transport the energy sources so that it's easier to the things that we want to charge? Like, there are ways to engineer our way around it. But you got to make a first step somewhere. And I wouldn't say it's a fraud to be like, hey, it could be awesome. Please give me money so we can at least start getting there. Like, I don't think that's as big of a push. Well, I want to talk a little bit for a second here about the wonders of science in the concept of radio broadcasting. We really are putting power into the air, you know. And the proof of that was way back when transistors were pretty new. There was a magazine called Popular Electronics and they published a fascinating circuit that you could build at home. Very simple, which was a double transistor radio. It was two transistor radios on one little tiny platform. The second radio brought in power from a radio station and used that power to run the first radio and produce sound that you could hear. Ooh, that's so clever. Yeah. So it sucked power from radio station number two so that you could hear radio station number one. Stuff like that's awesome. Scott, what's your wonder of science? You know, I really think it's cool about the perseverance, the Mars land rover that landed on Mars not long ago. That was awesome. I've seen the pictures, the videos, things of that nature. Do you know which, aside from perseverance, do you know what land rovers are still working on Mars and which ones are not? Since we have a bad echo, why don't you answer your question? So Mars opportunity is dead. It died last year in July. And Curiosity is still functioning. So it's one that was sent up there earlier. I don't know when it was sent. I think back in 2016 or something like that, but it's still working. But it's just amazing how they can do that. It's really awesome. It's an interesting fact that there's a planet in our solar system that's totally populated by robots. I love it. Also, why is it that they can send that to Mars, but Amazon still takes a week to send this guy to me? Like, come on. Can we get these technologies to talk to each other, handshake? So, hey, we just talked about some wonders of science. When we come back, we're going to be talking about wonders of religion. Well, I have a wonder of science that I want to talk about a little bit too. How about we do it right after the break? Sure, that's fine. It's a wonder of music. Larry, take us right back. This is the Digital Freethought Radio Hour on WOZO Radio 103.9L-PFM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. And we'll be right back after this short break. Hello, and welcome back to the second half of the Digital Freethought Radio Hour on WOZO Radio 103.9L-PFM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. I'm Dr. Five, and this is Sunday, February 28th, 2021. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you should still go to Meetup and search for an atheist group in your town. Don't find one. Start one. That's right. Earlier in the show, we said we talked about the atheist video show that's broadcasting here from Knoxville. It was originally broadcast on Community Access TV, so we've gone directly online. You can find us on YouTube by searching for Knoxville Freethought or Freethinkers, or specifically the Freethinkers United Coalition of Knoxville. Oh my gosh. That's a long name. With us on our show today, we have Boudreaux, George, and Duffer. That's it. One bit where we're going to pick up on this. We're talking about wonders of science, and there's no greater wonder of science than the fan. What a fan. What a fan. What a fan. What a mighty good fan. What a mighty good fan. Guys, we are going to go over fan comments, listener-supported feedback on our channel. We had a really, really good one from Natalie Cruz. This is on our last week's episode, which was Do Your Actions Match Your Beliefs? And Natalie Cruz says, I can understand where the line can get blurred with actions or beliefs and actions, especially more so when it intersects with our familial relationships. For example, most of all my family on my mother's side are Catholic or Ecstion. Ecstion. What if I can X on it? My grandparents are both Catholic or Ec-Christian. My grandparents on both sides are so generationally as it goes. Anyway, some sayings are almost embedded in the way that we greet each other in a culturally respectful way. We say benediction, and 9.5 out of 10 times, they'll also say dosti bendiga, which translates to blessings, and God bless you. I participate in these actions with my grandparents as a way of respect. Although I am an atheist, I don't tell them, and it's better that they don't know. And although I believe in no gods, I take these actions because they are a way to maintain respect. Great conversation, gentlemen. Thank you very much, Natalie, for the comment. We appreciate that. Have you guys... I think we've had a topic about this before where we've said happily, bless you, if someone's being, or merry Christmas, or happy Ramadan, if someone celebrates Ramadan. My perspective is I don't have a horse in the race. I'm just showing respect to you as another mutual human being on this planet. So I don't have a problem. I'd have no problem saying anything I need to. The way I look at it is if they're celebrating... I knew that they're celebrating Ramadan. I wish them a happy Ramadan. Because that's what they're going to be doing. They're happy things again. Same with Christian. I mean, Christmas or whatever they're celebrating. If I don't know, I may just say happy holidays. Actually, I want to take that back. Ramadan is when you can't eat. Eid is when you can't eat. So they're way more excited about Eid than they are about it. Anyway, we're talking about wonders of science. That conversation is done. Now we're going to boot up wonders of religion. No, we have a wonder of science left. I'm going to get to you. I'm going to throw this out real quick because I think our topics connect and merge a little bit. I think it's both a wonder of science that we have access to all these novel instruments. Just look at the stuff that Scott's doing. He has a new computer button panel every week. But I also think religion has a lot of wonder and full contributions towards science or towards music. I don't think a lot of the things that religion touts is factually accurate. But the impact that it has on music as an art form is without question. And I think for the most part, it's pretty good. I think you can't listen to Tyler, the entertainer, or Chance the Rapper when you're doing a cathedral hall scene. It just doesn't match. You need that hard choir sound. You need Christian pop. Sometimes you just need some good GCF music chorus in your face. Anyway, George, I'll leave it up to you for your story. What's your science contribution along with an idea of wonder of religion? Well, OK. It all will work actually because I have a question of science which has been bamboozling me for most of my life and it could make me religious because I don't have an answer for this. It has to do with the way musical instruments are tuned in our society. And we use an equal tuning system which was the inspiration for piece of music by Johann Sebastian Bach called the well-tempered clavier. Well temperament means the inequality of musical keys, one with another, with another, with another. And the way this is achieved is by tuning a piano, let's say, deliberately out of tune. Now, I was an instrument technician. You have all heard my work. I have not mentioned this before here. I was the leading harpsichord technician in New York during the early 1960s. And most of my work was done, in fact, for popular music, top 40 in particular. And that's why I say you've all heard my work. Harpsichord was used as a color sound. For instance, Rosemary Clooney's pop tunes all had harpsichord in because the harpsichord was the sonic trademark of her arranger, who she hated, by the way. And I worked on the Mitch Miller show. I worked for ABC, NBC, CBS, et cetera, et cetera. The issue that has fascinated and frustrated me is the fact that musical instruments are deliberately set a little bit out of tune so that they are acoustically imperfect because the science does not add up. And that could make me a religious person because I do not have an answer for this. I think it's a little better for things to be slightly out of tune when they're all playing together because they blend better that way. This is a very... It's the same sinusoidal way. This is a very specific kind of out of tune. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We all agree that it's in tune when it isn't. And to make that even further, not only within the octave, but it's been traditional for piano tuners to expand the octaves just a little tiny bit so that the top of the piano can be a quarter tone out of tune with the bottom of the piano. And we accept this. I mean, I think there's a psychological penalty to pay for tuning this way as well. But I won't get into that. The fact is that we all accept this as being in tune when it, in fact, is not. So that's like a wonder of science. And that's the wonder of psychology. I have no answer for this. That's fair. That's fair. Yeah, well, that's the answer. The answer is I don't know. Oh, I love it. I like it a lot. And there's no reason to go to a religion about that. I mean, even deism thinks that there is a God, but it doesn't do anything, doesn't really have anything to do with us and either personal relationship or anything like that. We cannot know anything about that particular God. And he may not have been still be around. He might have got blown up in the explosion of Big Bang. Who knows? But so I don't consider anything like that a religion because you're not like worshiping it. You're not like, you don't have a holy book. You don't have any dogma. So even if you say, I don't know, and it's weird, it's strange, and there's no way we could find out. Religion is not a word I would use in that context. You need to have a funny hat to be a religion. We all know that. Where's our funny hat man today? We'll come back. Larry, I feel like we missed out on your science topic. I'm sorry for skipping over, buddy. Did you have a wonder of science that you wanted to talk about? A wonder of science. Well, I'm like Neil deGrasse Tyson. I'd always wanted to be like a space physicist and astrophysicist. And the wonders of the unanswered questions of the very large and the very small intrigued me. And I guess you may or may not know what the grand unification theory is, but we still have one. You may never have one. You may never have one. Which is really strange because we can have science all the way from like, you know, everyday things that we see around us all the way up to, you know, megastars and black holes in the universe itself. But we can't take that science down to the micro level. It doesn't work. You need a different branch of science. The classical sciences of Newtonian physics don't work at the lower level. Because they had no idea of the forces that were at play. And we can't really convert them without a grand unification theory. But anyway, that is a thing that intrigues me. And I've read, I guess, most of all the wheelchair guy. I can't think of his name. He's done so many more things than being in a wheelchair. You could have gone so many directions. I'm terrible with names. You know, the guy... The big nose guy who talks about the start. Let's switch this over to atheism because it's practically an atheism show. What really gets me is I'll get online and I'll come across these Christians who adamantly acclaim the Christianity. I mean, religion, one, and Christianity specifically is responsible for all modern science. And I've made a meme of it. It's got four distinct points of it. I'd like to go into it just for a second. Oh man, meme run. Here we go. People were practicing science while before Christianity was established. I mean, religions per se were forwarding answers, but they were not doing science. Two, the early Christian sciences could be hardly anything but Christians. The church would have either banished in prison or tortured or burned them if they had denied the tenants of Christianity. Three, whenever they made discoveries that went against the teachings of the Christian dogma, the church stood in their way and oppressed the resulting studies, often burning their books and papers and sometimes the scientists. And now we have Republicans that do that. And fourth and last, when those early Christian scientists were doing science, they were not doing religion. And vice versa, religious examinations into nature resulted in no discoveries or advancements whatsoever. Which brings us to the next area. Everybody was talking about the great scientific areas that they love to get off into. Let's talk about any religious discoveries. I want you to not look at this skeptically. I want you to think of a good religious contribution, Larry. And I know you want to be skeptical. Now, you said contribution, scientific contribution. I want a wonder of religion from you. I want it to be nice. And I want you to just swallow and be nice for just two minutes. Take that saltiness out and just give me a nice little compliment about religion if you got it. Well, I'll say this. It has been used as a means to congregate. Okay, we'll take that. And you don't need religion to do that, but that has been the main contribution to society the religion has brought. That is fantastic, Larry. I feel like Scott wants to weigh in. Scott, did you want to say something? Yeah, I was going to piggyback off what Larry said earlier when he talked about the grand unification and how religion comes into this, because I hear a lot of times that this is a perfect opportunity to sneak our God in. See, we don't have an answer. And so this is a perfect place we can put Yahweh or Jesus. But that's like Neil deGrasse Tyson said, if that's the game you want to play, then you're going to have to say religion is an ever-receding pocket of ignorance. But on the positive side, if I had to say, what did religion bring to people that's of value? Well, there's a lot of things. I could say philosophy, a lot of philosophical thoughts spun off of religious ideas and things of that nature. You could say music, like social interaction, meaning and purpose. A lot of people get meaning and purpose from associating with this concept of God. Now, how true it is, I mean, I personally don't think that there's any truth in it, but if I had to say what sort of value, maybe a subjective kind of value, maybe. But that's about as far as I can go. But that's everything, really. I mean, our subjective life is everything, really. It's really what gives us happiness, joy, meaning and purpose. And I always say, if I had to decide between truth and happiness, I would go with happiness every time. No, I disagree. Truth every single time. They're not mutually exclusive terms. You could be truthfully happy and ruin a lot of people's lives in the process. Echo. You'd be happy and ignorant and ruining people's lives left and right. Truth, you need truth, you need truth. Absolutely. All right, Eric, do you want to weigh in? Yeah, well, ignorance is bliss, maybe in that context. No. It's a completely different world. I was going to put a hidden brain episode. I don't know if anyone listens to Hidden Brain. But there's an episode called Creating God, which I highly recommend. Look it up podcast. It's really cool. But one of the things they talk about is, and I think a credit to religion was, you know, when we were in very, very, when humans were in very, very small groups, you know, it was easy to see if somebody wasn't pulling their weight, contributing, you know, so as those groups started, you know, and they would kick them out or hit them with a rock or whatever we would do. I'm saying it to him. I'm assuming the men are the ones not helping. It's probably those girls that are hitting rocks. Women aren't doing that. You know that. We all know that. Right. You could talk to Lisa. It's like, no. Yeah. But as the group like rocks, as those groups got bigger, it got a lot harder to detect if somebody was, you know, not contributing and, you know, there's, you know, these tribes are getting bigger. You could kind of free ride everything. And so someone said, wait a second, you know, kind of almost like, you know, talking about Santa with your kids, you know, there's this big guy in the sky watching you. And if you aren't contributing, you know, and here's what's kind of creating some morality, some, some, some check to make sure you're doing, doing your part. And, you know, I think that really helped. I'd be willing to bet that it really helped us grow bigger and be able to have a bigger civilization without, without that kind of invisible hand. Yeah. Eric, I like the way on this because I think it touches on the point more eloquently than I was saying with truth versus happiness. There are, there is no monopoly that religion has on motivating people to do good things and, and leading towards better societies. But it has also been the crux for, for example, kamikaze pilots, you know, crashing into planes or terrorist activities flying into buildings or a number of atrocities that have happened during the crusades. What's going on currently now under like more conservative Christian values going into other nations and, and changing and instilling democracy in places that maybe didn't really ask for it in the first place. But I would say like, it's a difference between is it, is it worth it because we're making people happier or is there a more truthful approach that we can go to making people more motivated to do the work that needs to get done so that we can have a better society. And I would argue like in every capacity where we can find a shortcut to lie to people about a higher power that's making them do work. If we were just truthful to them, explain the mutual benefit of them being able to do the work and instilling some sense of community service in them, that would be much more healthier in the long run than to maintain a big lie that could potentially lead to more problems. But to be fair, talking about it in a historical context when folks didn't have the vocabulary and the technology and, maybe the people you're trying to explain that to can't even understand it. But if you say, you be good, God kill you, you know, that's about as far as you can go. Okay, okay. I hear you, Eric. Larry, what do you got? Good point though. No, good point. No, I certainly acknowledged that point Eric was making the thing about it is the long-term effects, you can't mention the good without the bad long-term effects of that type of psychological programming is devastating over a long time in generations. I mean, I've always thought of it as the very definition of paranoia. Somebody is watching you and reading your thoughts every single minute of the day ready to cast you into hell forever for the wrong one. I mean, that's not a recipe for psychological health. You got a good question. What's up? Yeah, I was going to say religion though doesn't always seek out happiness. In fact, religion seeks out truth at the expense of happiness because even the Jehovah's Witnesses were called the truth. So they're claiming truth and in claiming truth they're telling you have to deny yourself of what feels good to you or what satisfies you intellectually because I get happiness from learning about true things, right? But religion oftentimes doesn't want you to really seek truth. They just want to monopolize this word truth as though they contain it. I take exception to that. They don't seek truth. They seek obedience. They claim truth. They don't have any evidence for that, but they seek obedience. And that's the whole point behind it. Buju, I totally get your point that if I am Village A and there's a Village B that's coming after us tomorrow and I need to find a way to round up every able body to set up a fight against these people and motivate them to maybe put their lives in the line. The whole God wants you to do this. And with me works very effectively in a passionate moment. I can't deny that utility. I also don't like the slow burn. In a completely different context, the slow burn of like, hey, we're not at war, but I just want 10% of your paycheck and you gotta do it. And also, can we get rid of the gays? Because I don't like them either. I want to do this and that and this and that and I want to control these things. I want you to raise your kids this way. I don't want them to be more long-term hurt. I feel like we've pushed the needle way away from protecting ourselves from other religious zealots and more of just like crowd control and I wish that wasn't the case because the long-term detractions that we're putting in by instilling religion don't outweigh the benefits that we might be getting from them. This is how I see it. George, you've been quiet. I want to know what you think. I know you said you don't know about music but here's my question. Do you think it's worthwhile to have a religion say, hey, we have an emergency situation. I don't have the time to explain morality to you. Just believe in this God and do these sets of actions. And we've done that in the past but do you think... Hell no. Hell no. Because I mean my background is Jewish and I must say that Jewish people have been brutalized by Christians for so many centuries. Murdered, killed, exterminated. So I don't know what to say about that. I see my own people who come from the same tradition that I do. Committing atrocities against other people and using their religion to kind of hold themselves together as a group. It was grounds for enslavement of people. I'm sure again like could someone make the argument that someone had to pick this cotton but the long-term damages of that don't outweigh the benefits of having caught an underwear for a couple of years. I think it's obvious we owe it to ourselves to seek the truth in all cases and just because something claims to be the truth doesn't necessarily mean that it is the truth. It's like a stolen election for instance. And if we care about the truth it means we need to have standards for truth because that's the only way we can actually properly determine what the truth is. And I feel like one of the benefits of science and I think the catch-all benefit, the catch-all one for science is that it gives us the best means of testing for truth which religion has offered nothing in that realm whatsoever. How are we going to convince the religious people that we're telling the truth? Truthfully and it takes one at a time we'll do it one at a time but I don't see any other reason a very disgusting vitamin milkshake, right? Doesn't taste good but it's good for you. Lies are always going to be delicious and after a certain point you'll realize this tastes too good to be true. Truth has a little grit to it. Truth doesn't necessarily care about my feelings. Truth isn't necessarily like trying to be interested in making me look good. Truth is good and doubt is very good too even though a lot of people have bad connotations of doubt. Doubt is always on your side it's a thing telling you not to jump in that tiger pit and punch that tiger in the face confidence says do that I can't wait for you to jump in that tiger pit. Doubt is like I don't think you can win that fight. Doubt is always on your side. Truth is always a thing worth going towards and with those two things combined you have the start of a really great standard to determine true things from false things. There's no other way around it. We have to have an appreciation for truth and doubt and I think like the conversations that we do whether it's an ask an atheist table whether it's at the summit whether it's through music whether it's through just this show that we're having a conversation with or a socratic examination I think it's worthwhile to have those talks when still a sense of critical thinking in other people. We are coming down to the bottom of the show Scott where can we find your music where can we get these jingles on my friend oh yeah you can go to dubshine.bandcamp.com and check them out download them and support it and we'll be putting more stuff up daily at this point so check it out very cool Boudreaux when you get a bus open that new mic show me some cool things that you're doing you got podcasts coming up you got so many things going on what's going on yeah well vacation slowed down all that work but I would like to maybe push aside my contributions right now and can I mention someone else's contributions that I learned about on vacation on Black History Month we went to the Magnolia Plantation and visited these houses these structures that were 1800s 1900s where and I'll say this the way they put it they weren't slaves they were enslaved people were living inside these quarters they were like duplexes and this group called the slave dwelling project they actually go to these structures stay the night in them all across the country these are ones in near Charleston South Carolina but I'm told they also go to Louisville where they have some here in Kentucky so I don't know if you're aware of this project but it was kind of a fascinating demonstration where they would show you how they cooked food only using the ingredients that they had and the equipment that they had back then and just really just an opening experience of how how they were living or not living as it seemed but very cool I'm really interested in that thanks for sharing that George, is there a song that you are excited to play on your new keyboard not at all I'm very bad at it it was my first instrument tonight I'm sure you're going to get better at it sometime I would love to hear a thing that you could do in the future for sure we got to make that a thing I would say this last day of Black History Month get to know some black atheists I think it's important for the most part we are very familiar with white male atheists and I think most people be hard pressed and they even like five black atheists I'm one of them how do we find black atheists that's a bizarre question there's a thing called the internet you could easily find that stuff out there's also a thing called comedy and you will be surprised that most black stand up comics are very well aware of being able to take falsehoods or truths and convert them into ways that are palatable but also entertaining and also speak about a heart set truth and a lot of famous comedians who are black Eric Andre, Hannibal Bress and a number of others I don't want to go through them all but like those guys are atheists they're outspoken about it as well and they'll tell you some things about religion that I think are worthwhile so if you're a Hannibal Bress fan if you're a Ron Funches fan if you're a Eric Andre fan he has a show on Adult Swim check him out other black atheists Mandisa Thomas check them out artists, Tyler the creator he's an atheist as well because there's a lot of voices that make this community I'd also say this too on the internet on Reddit someone made a post saying where are all the black atheists and in the comment threads for that I got a ping that someone had mentioned my name and I was like oh that's kind of cool there was a list of them and I was on that list and I was like hey that's me that's kind of cool so yeah shout out to Reddit thank you for that Larry anything else you want to say we were talking about the truth and if you want the truth you need to start with the questions like science does start with questions look for answers that match the questions and repeatable testable answers you don't start with the answers like from a book and then just only validate the things that support those answers and ignore the rest of the way go my own real content is on digitalfreethought.com I have a blog there to make sure you click on the blog button if you don't land on it already we have radio show archives there these archives atheist songs and articles on the subject my book is called atheism what's it all about it's available on Amazon and if you have questions for the show you can send them to askanatheist noxbillatheist.org and we'll answer them for you if you're having trouble leaving religious your religious beliefs behind you have emotional problems psychological problems there's a group for you called recovering from religion.org if you're watching this on YouTube be sure to like and subscribe this has been the digital freethought radio hour remember everybody is going to somebody else's hell 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 and we'll see you next week say bye everybody bye everybody bye