 and the listener comments. Hello and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio Hour and W.O.Z.O. Radio 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We're recording this on Sunday morning, January 14th, 2024. I'm Larry Rhodes, or DJ Douter 5. And as usual, we have our co-host, Wombat on the line with us. Hello, Wombat. He dribbles. He shoots the three. He scores! Yeah, that's Wombat. Always scored. Excuse me. Our guests today are Keith Simple, welcome, and the Dread Pirate Higgs, all the way from Western Canada, at minus 37 degrees Celsius. Yeah, that's pretty darn cool. Or really, really, really, really cold, American. Yeah, my goodness. 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, Astropharianism, God's holy books and superstition. And if you get the feeling you're the only non-believer in your town, well, you're just not. Here in Knoxville, in the middle of the Bible Belt, we have a group of over 1,100 of us. We're the atheist society of Knoxville, or ASK, and we'll tell you more about us after the mid-show break. So be sure to stick around. Wombat, what's our topic today? I want to talk about growing pains and why hobbies that we take on also have sort of like the glory and the guts, the great stuff and the not so great stuff, the cool and the complicated. We're going to talk about it. Also, the philosophical growth. True. You gave me an alliteration. I can't listen to the philosophical and the factual. How I don't know what you want to. There you go. As you expand, you'll tend to like hit barriers and that push your comfort zones into to mandatory new areas. And we'll talk about how that that's part of growing pains and why it's important to still stress yourself in that capacity. But before we do, I'd love to go into our first entree of the talk today, which is our own noodley passage by our own dread pirate Higgs. Would you mind leading us on our weekly vacation? Our noodley Lord, who art in a colander, El Dante be thy noodles, thy blood be rum, thy sauce be yum with meat, as it is with vegetables. Give us this day our garlic bread and forgive us our cussing, as we forgive those who cuss against us. And lead us not into ketoism, but deliver us some carbs for thine are the meatballs and the sauces and the grogues, whatever and ever. Oh, man, Keith is getting to this too. Keith, wonderful to have you on the show again. You're looking in super high fidelity than ever before. What's different? Oh, I have a nerd friend. That's pretty much it. I have a I have a friend who understands how the cameras work. That's pretty much it. Are you calling it from like the DSLR setup? I mean, there's like a really nice bokeh behind you and everything. Like what what do I do? Yeah, so I've been updating all my stuff for the podcast, you know. So like the the the computer is new. The camera's got a real high end lens, you know, and everything. And it itself focuses, which is why you got such a good chin earlier. Just that chiseled chin for you, you know, it's all it's all coming together. I mean, literally, like I said, you know, because I it was a late one for us plus the drive home last night was white knuckle, like white knuckle. It's not quite as cold as where dread is, but it was minus 10, I think. So it was pretty brutal. Well, Irish accent. Yes, sir. Ah, OK. Oh, dread, have you guys not met before? OK, so dread, yeah, this is a key symbol. I'll do a musician. More than welcome to the timing. The reason why a chin so chiseled is he's a professional singer, multi music artist. But, you know, constantly use this job for smiling, promos and and singing the true gospel. He's a if I can if I can use this appropriately, sort of like a. You do music that speaks to the the the truth of being secular minded, particularly in a world that's covered in dogma, right? Would you mind talking about that? Yeah, I'd love to, holy moly. So I do I do have a band called the Siberium Dread that's like allows me to talk about all this stuff, you know, like the single we just released. Actually, I think you guys I should send you the link if I didn't already. I think maybe some of you guys did see it, but it's called wrong turn. And it's basically a metaphor for going too far right in your politics, essentially, and how that leads to bad choices and bad decisions on all things moral and all things political. The more the more right you get, the more things become black and white instead of gray, which is what all things really are all morals. Dilemas are always like there's right and wrong, but there's also a million kind of OKs in between. And just like when you see a bunch of hominids or homo skulls, you can't tell which one is actually human and which one isn't because they're just too many gray areas of choice. It's a spectrum rather than an economy, right? Right, right. Right. And everything is like it. Yeah, every decision or every moral dilemma is always that way. I've never I've never been presented with one that isn't OK. There's definitely a kind of a strong morals, positive end and a strong negative end, but there's there's all sorts of choices in between. I can think of that aren't necessarily black and white. Yeah. And what's just a touch on that just a quick thing. A lot of times with science is we generate models to help simplify or make difficult concepts more you know, utilizable, right? So like I might make a map that's flat that I could use for transporting myself from one city to another city, but it's using a flat earth model to get me to where I need to go. It's not calculating the curvature on every hill or the curvature of the earth because I don't need to know that to get from here to McDonald's, right? But that model is not what real reality is. And oftentimes in science, we will come up with models to dictate how social things would work or how statistics on groups of populations might work. And we need to recognize that this the model might be black and white, but it is at best a caricature of what reality is. And we there's always room for nuance if we're willing to continue to engage with more observation and realize that we can always improve the model to take in that nuance. But we should never be so stand fast and say, no, it's just this or that. This is the dichotomy. It's like that's great. But even numbers aren't like I can never have two apples. I throw this example out. I can never have two apples because there's always going to be slightly. What do we mean by a unit of apple? Like is it based on mass? Because this apple slightly more than this apple, this apple weighs more. This apple might be green. Are these the same thing? They're not the same thing. How can I have two of them? Right. So we need to understand that we come up with variables and those are at best just abstractions of reality. And we might have a very concrete model, but we still have very nuanced reality that we're placing that off of, which is why science is cool because we can continue to engage and interact with stuff like that or make music or make art based up of it. This is the beauty of being alive, like figuring out how the universe works with all this nuance and taking it in and improving our understanding of the universe alongside it. Go on, Kate. Tyrone, it's funny that you said, because that's also what it's like when I'm writing lyrics about this stuff, because, you know, you've got this very complex idea and then you've got to write a lyric. Yeah, about it. So it's got to be done in basically a line or two. And so, you know, it the metaphorical it's how how direct do you want to go to the point? And it's funny because in this song, for example, I actually get right to the point for a change. Normally, I'm very metaphorical, but on this song, I'm like, you know, basically, you know, no God is going to be coming to sort this idea out for you. You've got to do it yourself. And it's all social human interaction that's going to decide whether a woman has has rights to her reproductive system or not. It's, you know, if there was a God that cared about that stuff, he probably would have been more precise about what he wanted people to do. Yeah. And yeah. And not five thousand versions of each religion would all disagree. Like, I don't think Judaism has any problem with abortion. But I know that, you know, evangelicals sure do. But I don't think Islam does, for example. But yet they'll, you know, potentially chop your hand off if you steal. So big difference there, right? But it's supposed to be a black and white subject to some people. Whereas as we all know, it's a very complicated, very, you know, hard decision for any woman to make. Fred, I was going to say, you know, like we invent these these representations to help us understand the world and then conflate them with reality without realizing it in many cases and then acting as though our simplified notions of the world are in fact a direct representation of what we're trying to describe. That's that's that's half the problem. That's so totally true. I also want to make sure I extend the favor from Keith to you, Dred, because if you've never met Keith, Keith, let me explain why this guy's wearing a tricorn. He has, in my opinion, he believes in a cool God that in the same way that models can be conflated with reality and we can overstep our ignorance or overstep our knowledge into ignorance. What what the flying spaghetti monster is, for my impression, is sort of a celebration of the fact that, hey, listen, you're not going to know everything. You're not going to understand everything. Here is a embodiment of that unknowing this. And it's not something to be afraid of. It's not something to obey or follow dogmatically. It's more of just a celebration of the fact that, hey, life is complicated. Go eat some spaghetti. You think that's fair? Yeah, that's very good. And it's a safe description. Yeah, it also means that you can't have a religion that's not authoritarian or autocratic. It's it's a religion that you rejoice in life. Right. And if I'm willing to celebrate a dogmatic God, I also have to celebrate, you know, even the God of celebrating non-dogmatic thinking at the same time, too. It's an equal sharing field and don't post one over the other because the God that says, hey, you don't know an open really truly knows. Right. It's saying, hey, everybody, calm down. Let's just have some peace and eat some noodles with going ahead. Oh, everybody. So I was just going to say, I have, if you can see, I not quite his noodleiness, but I do have the invisible pink unicorn. Can you see that? Oh, nice. There. Yeah, they're there. Yeah, for those who are listening on radio or podcasts, we record this on Zoom and put it on YouTube. So you can see these images if you want to buy by looking for digital free power in the invisible pink unicorn regardless. But yes, you're right. You're right. We don't want to disappoint our listeners. Well, it was it was funny because I actually posted when I got this. This was the first tattoo I ever got because it was, you know, it was me in a nutshell, really. And I I posted online and the lady who created it reached out. And she has a thing now called the friendly faces of atheism, which I love, you know, a positive, trying to show show the world that we are just, you know, the four coolest dudes in the world. And, you know, and especially Dred. And, you know, he's pretty cool. He's pretty cool. He might be the coolest. But I was a dread. Just so you know, I was so tempted and I still might get his noodliness somewhere if I've got any room left on my skin. So we'll see. I want to go to support of that, Dred. I'd like to touch on this because I think you hit something really interesting. We conflate our models that we come up with with reality. You said we conflate them with reality. I find more often than not it's it's charitable to say that we conflate them with reality more often. We're conflate them with our biases. And we have a prejudice that we hold and we get a piece of data that we don't necessarily entirely understand, but we think it confirms something that we deeply hold to be true. We will just use that and it's as an excuse to further help put more confidence in that prejudice rather than actual reality. More often than not. Well, you know, I think at latest count, there's something like two hundred and eighty seven recognized cognitive biases that have been described and defined. So that's a lot. And, you know, regardless of how well you think you think, you're still subject to biases that you don't necessarily recognizing yourself. Yeah, you always have to be on guard, essentially. You have to be on guard, you know, good cognition and good reason and good logic is a matter of practice. It's not a matter of being gifted with it. You have to practice it. And so you have to always be sort of vigilant and on guard of your own thinking to make sure that these things aren't creepy in and shutting you down, right? Yeah, for your own mental health, too, I would say. Keith, it looks like you're about to say something. Yeah, I was just going to say, Dredd, I wanted to ask you guys all this to get your opinion on what you just said. Dredd is, of course, everybody has biases, but would would you agree that the people who understand the concept of this and they understand and I would call them skeptics like myself and probably all three of you approach things in a way that minimizes the chances of being wrong? You shouldn't get that. So like, what do you think? Absolutely. Well, isn't that the basis of the scientific method, right? Is, you know, you start with a hypothesis and then you develop ways to test whether that is false, you know, falsifiability and then using Bayesian inference to update your priors and all that good stuff. I know that might be terminology, you know, some of the audience wouldn't recognize, but it's worth learning about, for sure. And I agree 100 percent key. I'm going to throw this out. I think that the ability to not be wrong on things is sort of like falling into is sort of like driving on a flat road. Like, yeah, you are good on a level playing field, you're driving on a more or less pothole free road. But if you have a poor standard of evidence, it's almost as if you're falling into every pothole, every single crevice, every single crack in the pavement, right? But as you become educated and more skeptical, yes, you won't fall into as many grooves or potholes or imperfections in the road. However, you're still not immune from falling into deeper, you know, holes or sink holes and stuff like that. So the hazards are still there. Your risk of running into them is lower, right? Just by virtue of you being good at it. Correct, but you'll still have the same mechanics to pull yourself out as anyone else. But you still need to watch out. The way I say it, like smarter someone is and they're still in like some sort of like cognitive dissonance. It's just a deeper level of cognitive dissonance. Absolutely. And because smart people are very good at convincing themselves that they're right. And that's and the smarter they are, the harder it is to get them back out of that that that sinkhole. Oh, you know, I'll just I'll just mention, you know, I don't use this as a means to brag, but I am a mensant. And I find that in my in that community, that's exactly what happens there. One that is that these, you know, in many cases, there are people who who think they're so smart that they've got it all figured out and are impervious. Right. Impervious. Yes. To any kind of criticism or conflicting information. They just, you know, they're not willing to say, I don't know. Right. They think just by virtue of being intelligent. Right. That that automatically grants them a sort of level of right. Yes. That, you know, well, we'll just think this out. You know, and it just doesn't work. Because pride is very frustrating. Keith, I just wanted to give you guys a cool example of how the scientific method was affected recently for me was. So I just got back from Ireland. I went literally as soon as new year turned, we got on a flight. So it was, you know, a bit of a tiring few days. But but my dad, I think I told you guys that my dad is a geologist. So it's what he's done his whole whole life. And, you know, he's a very good one. And all my daughters wanted to do when we got there was go fossil hunting, which is what I told them about when when I was young is we have literally got well, they're ice cream tubs, but you don't really have ice cream in the same format here, the way they sell it normally is like a tub about, you know, I'd say eight inches by six inches deep type of a thing. Anyway, they're full. We've got literally thousands of fossils. And it was just the idea of I loved to see having my daughters see science in real time and how a hypothesis is tested and becomes a verifiable thing. And then it's repeatable. It suggests that it could be true, but not always true and so on. So what happened was we went down to the beach where where my dad, by the way, you guys would just love it so much. It's it's it's a geologist's dream. So it's basically any curious person's dream is it used to be a volcanic area Northern Ireland, it's not anymore, obviously, but when it was, you can see the line of the I think it's the Cretaceous to Jurassic period that literally the change between the stones coming down the side of the mountain and heading along the beach and you see it just it's black rock, black rock, black rock and then like gray rock. It's one line of billions of lines of rock formation. It's incredible to see. But my dad was like, well, because of this here and the line, if we go down to this beach where this is and we look just passed into the sort of slightly softer clay that used to be under the water, but has now come up, what we should find is tons of sea life fossils that were around that time, which is 200 million years ago. So we go down to the beach. Now, I already know, of course, I've been down a thousand times. It was a lifestyle for us, but the girls hadn't and they went down and they were their eyes were just they could not believe it. We moved one big rock. And my dad says, right, just digging this, digging the thing. And within, I don't know, five minutes, they had 10 fossils each. And I mean, like perfect little starfish and crustaceans and little things that were that have been sitting there or, you know, stuck in the same spot for 200 million years. And they just it just blew their mind because they're big dinosaur fans, you know, and it was like this was alive. This was probably stood on by one while it was, you know, drinking or whatever. Thanks for freeing me. Wait, don't put me in that ice cream tub. I just. Yeah, 200 million years. That's OK. I could wait another 15 million years. You don't feel long for a long time. Yeah, you won't be around as long. So I just wanted to give that example, dread of high, you know, that's awesome, you know, by, by, by hypothesizing of where things, where, where the geological column was at that time and knowing about how things have changed since we were able to show my daughters just exactly where to look. And there's what they find. Larry, that's awesome. So you don't take the pass for granted. We get it. We get it. Larry, you mentioned something about science making prophecy. Yeah, no, there's a lot of all these religions saying that they have profits, you know, and that they can tell the future and stuff. But just that little simple. Example that Keith gave just a minute ago says, well, from this and this, this line of geologic rock here, if we follow this down, I predict I prophesy that if we go to this place and look for fossils, we'll find it. It's just like they found that, that pre-Cambrian fish from, you know, the one that theoretically walked from water to the, to the, to the land because they knew the history of the areas of earth and knew which area to go to to look for that particular exposed rock from that period. And they found it science making prophecy. Oh, no, you guys are wrong. Let me explain why you're wrong, Larry. Let me explain why you're wrong, Keith. Well, so let me explain why you're wrong, Dred. Please do that line of granite leading to the from black to to white rock. That's God's ice cream tub. And the fossils that we found in there simply because it says marbled ice cream. Yeah, you put it on the pole path or put them in the ground and you found them and you think, oh, 200 million years. This that this like, no, I heard it was, I heard it was Satan did it. OK, have you noticed how they go through levels of cognitive bias? So like at first it's like, no, no, no, it's not that's not really a fossil. Then you show them how it's a fossil and you show them how and they're like, well, OK, it's a well, I mean, is it and then you show them how. Yeah, but how do you know it's that old and then you show them how dating works and how accurate it can be to within a few thousand years. And then the each bias falls off, but it still maybe becomes, well, OK, it's a fossil and OK, it's 200 million years old. But God must have that's that's the damage moving the goalpost. Right. But and moving the goalpost back. Damage comes from the extra levels of indoctrination. If you get to people and teach them these critical tools before they even get indoctrinated, they'll be they'll jump on board with the first standard of good evidence that you can present to them. That's justifiable, falsifiable, testable, repeatable. They'll understand that they'll eat that. Like I like to think of it as like a lot of people don't like vegetables. But there is a point in your life where you're like, hey, vegetables are pretty good, like your brain stops caring about sugar when you're a kid and starts thinking about long term nutrients. And when you start realizing like the value of nutritious data, high quality and data with a good integrity, you realize I'd rather have this than the promises that my pastor was telling me. Because even though the world doesn't tell me what I want to know, it does tell me things that I find to be far more reliable and that keep me more safe and keep me more in line with what I want. There's there's one last point I want to make before we break to the half and then we can continue this conversation in Tennessee, the one of the Bible belts of America. We have a bunch of rocks. The town that I'm living in has a bunch of rocks on both sides of the highway. You can stop by any of those highways, pull out a rock, almost random crack it, and you might find a really cool cost fossil called Constellera fabulosa. The first thing about fossils is one of my favorite ones, really beautiful term. It's a it's a it's the back of a shell of an animal that lived about 140 million years ago. Sea life has stars embedded all the way around it. And it's a beautiful fossil. It's used by the oil industry because they will dig down until they find that fossil and then dig down further below that because they know that's where we know that. Because they know they may not sell it as much, but they know the fact of where you find these fossils. You will find oil underneath it. They understand the mechanics and whether it's the people who actually do the digging or the people who benefit from them, follow a more dogmatic view of the world is fine. But the scientists who know where to dig use that as your keep as your share of that technology and understand. I just wanted to show you guys it real quick. Sorry, I don't know. Go ahead. I just wanted to show you guys my daughter brought them down for us to show you. I know some people won't be able to see if they're just listening in, but this should focus on this, I believe, if I get out of the way. It goes. It's almost focusing. Oh, we see it. Yeah, it's nice. Nice. It's like a little rod. It's a lot like. Oh, yeah, yeah. There you go. There you go. Rod. And then here's checked out the show. Here is a perfect starfish. Oh, yeah. Very cool. And if you look, you can see it's little, you know, it's a little flower. It looks like it looks like me lucky charms. They're magically delicious. Oh, I left those in Ireland. Darn it. I think once once per episode, some guys have to try it. I think that's all we need to take a break now. So this is 86 percent Irish. So this is the digital dread. This is the digital free thought radio hour and W.O.C.O. radio. 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We'll be right back after this short break. Hello and welcome back to the second half of the digital free thought radio hour. I'm doubter five and we're on W.O.C.O. radio 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Let's take just a moment to talk about the Atheist Society of Knoxville. ASK was founded in 2002. We're in our 21st year now and have over a thousand, oh, actually 1100 members. We have weekly in-person meetings every Tuesday evening in Knoxville's whole city at Barley's Taproom in Pizzeria. Look for us inside at the high top table or if it's pretty weather outside on the deck. You can find us on Facebook, meetup.com or go to our website at KnoxvilleAtheist.org or just Google Knoxville Atheist. It's just that simple. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you should still start to go to meetup and do a search for an Atheist group in your town. Don't find one. Start one. Start one. Wombat, where do you want to pick up? Hey, I wanted to talk. We were getting to science. I never want to impede that. When we slow down, we'll talk about growing pains to wrap up the show. But you were talking, Keith, about the beauty of fossils, educating your daughters on it and getting them into the idea of testing ideas over time. The value behind that being that, one, it makes them less likely to fall into potholes that are fairly shallow as they grow up older because they now have a good idea of how to be a good driver and how to navigate these things. But we also, as Dredd was pointing out, just because you've had the education doesn't mean that you now have wings on your car. You still can fall into much deeper holes. And the fact that deeper the hole that you get into, the more effort it might even take to be pulled out. So this sort of feeds into the idea of, yes, it is less likely that you will find yourself stuck on the road of life if you have a good skeptical mindset, but it doesn't make you immune to folly. And you should always be vigilant. And typically, the more smarter you are, the less rickety your drive, but you're still just as vulnerable as anybody else. And so always question everything. Because just because everybody in the room agrees doesn't mean it's good. And it's about having a reliable methodology for testing and examining the things that you think are true. Right. And also on a willingness to do that, use that strategy too. Because the best methodology in the world is useless if you're not willing to use it, right? Absolutely. Right. Okay. So speaking of which, I was, I had a really, so I'm not as cool as Dredd. Dredd is, by the way, in a place that is negative 37 degrees Celsius. Negative 36 right now. Oh man. Can someone do the math for me to figure out what that is, right? Is that like negative? I think at minus 40, there's some point at where the scales actually meet. Sort of meet at minus 40. I can't remember where they meet. Wow. Minus 40 is where they meet. Minus 40 is where they meet. I thought it was minus 40. All right. So this did come from a comedian. So I'm not telling a joke, but I did think it was very useful as a mnemonic to figure out how Fahrenheit works and why it's useful for weather because it's just basically percent hot. Like when it's 100 degrees Fahrenheit, it's 100 percent hot, right? When it's 50 degrees Fahrenheit, it's 50 percent hot. All right. Like a really easy mnemonic to figure out. Zero degrees Fahrenheit, it's zero percent hot. Like it's going to be really cold out, right? But negatives are when it starts getting really crazy. So like you're nearly at negative 40 degree, negative 40 percent hot. That my brain has already broken the scale. Like I can't even interpret that in my head. I'm much closer to absolute zero than you are. Yeah. So like you're telling me I can get a 40 percent hotter and it's still super cold. And we're still at near at zero percent hot. Like that makes no sense. I don't understand it. Like that's really, really cold. All right. Science is fun, guys. Speaking of which, this weekend I went out to go to a charitable event where a high school was hosting a robot challenge. The robot challenge is called the VEX challenge. And the kids would build robots and come to an event from schools all around the state. Come to this one school and at the school, they will reveal what the challenge is. The challenge was to knock off cubes off certain areas of a track and drop them into buckets. And the and the kids had a robot that was multifunctional. And they'd have to design a program and design contraptions that can fit onto that robot. That day of or a couple of hours beforehand to make the robot do the test that they were supposed to do. And I was a volunteer judge along with some of our coworkers and some other local businesses around the area. And we had a really good time viewing a lot of different kids. What was interesting though is there was a period of time before the kids came out to do their interviews with us and show us the robots where you get to talk to the different judges. And some of the judges were like old hats. They had been engineers for a long period of time. They retired. And we got to talk about like the nature of science and engineering and why it's wonderful to instill that in kids. And more and I wouldn't say more often than not. But a lot of the times the people who I talk with would start to infuse, man, I'm just so blessed to be here. It's so good to see the glory of God and these children. And like they were going to work hard to fix things like, you know, because the world isn't going in the right place, you know, like, you know, I just hope we're going to be good, but it's in God's hands. And I hope these kids can be like the shining light for our future. And the whole time, like no, like God made the problem. God made the problem. The kids are going to solve it. Like if God made everything, he made the bad things too. I'm willing to play with you as far as that goes. Like if we were agreed that climate change and the reason why we need a sustainable future and like an overpopulation, those are like God given problems. It's going to be engineers and scientists who solve them and figure that out. And like I even put my head down and I was like, no, God made the problem. We're going to fix it. That's what our job is. Like that's what we do. Like that's, and you too, you're a part of it too. Whether you recognize it or not, like we work together to fix that. And I realized, you know, even like now, that is sort of a blunt way of approaching that kind of a conversation, right? Though it is frustrating to have to deal with that a number of times. So I'm going through the growing pains of learning how to better talk to people about stuff, right? Larry, I saw you raise your hand. I was just going to mention that the whole field of medicine is addressing problems that God crosses. That's what I'm saying. It's almost as if the growing pains of becoming an atheist is learning how to still stay engaged with the people who have those ideologies that you know not to be true anymore, right? That you know are faulty. And it's like, but I know emotionally where you're coming from. However, I know if I just give you the logical statement, it's not going to be of any use to you. And there's like a growing pain that comes with that. The idea of the additional empathy that you need to package logic to people. That's that's frustrating in in this own right. It's a growing pain. But one worth growing through. What do you think, Keith? It's funny, I was just tying in both things. What you were saying there is I saw a great meme and I've seen versions of it. But basically, you know, it's some right wing conservative person saying something along the lines of, oh, God created you as a man. Therefore, you know, you shouldn't be trying to change what you are essentially, right? Is it an argument against trans people, right? And then the person replies, well, and he's like, you know what, you're right. He's playing along. He goes, you know what, you're right. But you know what, you're wearing glasses. How dare you try to correct what God gave you, right? And then he goes like, oh, and you're using a hearing aid to hear. How dare you try to correct what God gave you? And he runs down all this list of things that we, you know, very small things that everybody just takes for granted as being what are sort of additions to. How dare you cut your hair? You know, just going through the extreme of it. And I just thought that was a brilliant way of, well, that argument particularly, but just showing you all the things that God, if he actually existed, got wrong. As far as, you know, you're like, you couldn't even get eyesight, right? Yeah. You couldn't even get eyesight, right, God? Well, it's interesting, dude, because they use, the eye is often used as the irreducible complexity argument. And there you have it right there. Well, if it's, you know, so irreducible complex that only a God could create it, why did he do such a bad job? Right, right. It's hilarious. Make so many mistakes that we have to live with. And evolution, yeah, evolution has actually created the eye 40 or different times. So like, in different ways, like, yeah, like obviously the eye has evolved. Wings have come about three different ways, at least three different ways, but, well, no, at least four because of the pterodactyls, right? Well, that's still at least three. If at least four and at least three would still fall in the same umbrella, right? There you go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So when I do work for, when I do work for at my job, I always say it'll be two weeks or less. Even when people like show up in my door and like, we need it now. And I was like, yeah, it'll be ready in two weeks or less. They'll be like, but Ty, I need it now. Two weeks or less is also now, right? I'm all about setting up the expectation window. And if I do it, and if I do it like tomorrow, it's done tomorrow, but that's two weeks or less still. Like, it makes people upset, but it also helps to standardize, hey, don't just show up at my door with work, right? There's a standard that- Your lack of planning does not necessarily mean an emergency for me. No, it's spoken like a well-treated IT guy. That's a good one. Funny, Tyrone, it's funny because you were saying about growing pens and about before we came on, we were talking, and it's just funny because I just had that conversation yesterday with the friend of mine who's also doing another podcast and we're sort of growing together. And it was funny how I'm in my 40s now, and I know I don't look it, but I was just funny. In the last three weeks, I've learned so many new life skills that I, well, A, didn't even exist when I was a child, but just because I've decided things don't really get done unless I'm going to do it myself kind of an attitude and not being mad about that, just being understanding that the goal that you're setting, nobody else really cares about it. They can be positive and they can be encouraging, but the things that you want to achieve are solely your things. And so I've now mastered how to do like graphic design so I can do really cool thumbnails for my podcast episodes. And I've just learned how I just did my last music video that's coming out in a couple of weeks. I did it myself. Oh, that's so cool. And I did a green screen, which Dredl appreciates. And I did a green screen and I did like, I'm interacting with old 80s and 90s computer games. So I'm like falling off a cliff and I'm flying through the air through all these computers. I'm dodging the Space Invaders game where the, you know, they're shooting at you and stuff. And I managed to get it all done just by basically, I didn't know how to achieve a thing. I would YouTube it. I would Google it and I would figure it out and somebody, you know, I would always joke, there's always some teenager who's already mastered it on YouTube. He just goes, well, here's how you do it. And they talk about that mixture of growing pains, of knowing that you're a competent person, but understanding at the same time that there are people out there that have mastered skills that maybe 20 years ago, we would all have considered to be like who cares. But now they're literally life changing skills, like being able to make really cool transitions in a movie or whatever. Now that person could be making, you know, an amazing living doing that just because they've mastered that one skill that makes them employable or whatever. So I just wanted to say that I've been thinking about the whole growing pains thing of like, I feel like I'm starting again. Yeah, it's like you're investing in your life. And you're seeing those capital gains, but at the beginning it's so small and a lot of work. But at a certain point, the gains start to outweigh the effort that you're putting into it to the point where you're just so fortunate that you had started in the first place, right? But there's that growing pain period, right? That makes it worthwhile. Larry, what's your thought? Well, the one we first started, the growing pains topic, I was thinking more in line of as you grow from being taught, you know, religious ideas at the very youngest age and then you learn that those ideas are not necessarily true and then you find out that they're pretty much false and then you find out there's nothing magic, supernatural in the world. You just grow and you grow and you grow and you're... But there are a lot of pains involved in that too because I mean, I talk to people all the time online where they're friends and family are falling away from them because they have grown past them. They can't really relate to them anymore. Right. And I always try to tell them to find an atheist group in their town or find an atheist friends because you'll find out that when you make these new friends, they will be valued friends. They will be not friends and family so much because you pick your new families as you grow. We love the real you, right? You don't want to have to think first of yourself. These pains have solutions and the solutions are rewarding. Yes, absolutely. You can use the growing pains to find a true family that loves you, who you are, the whole you, the most authentic version of yourself. Right. And not just putting up with you. That feel. Putting up with you, not just bearing with you. Yeah, they're not busy praying for you to come back to the fold. And considering you have flawed center all the time that they interact with you. If I can fill out something a bit more personal, I think it's also useful to go through the growing pains to better understand yourself. So I am a sexual. What does that mean? It means I don't really experience sexual attraction. And for the longest period of time, I thought that meant that I was a straight person with something wrong with me, like a low libido. Or like I'm straight, but there's something wrong with my hormones or balance. And maybe I just, you know, forced myself to be in a relationship with somebody. So that way I can like still, you know, act like the same as everybody else and maybe you'll kick in eventually. Maybe there's some reason why I'm not attracted to girls and I'm not. Maybe you're the next step in evolution. What's going on here? Yeah. So for a long time, all the way up until like my late 30s, I just thought there's just something wrong with me. I'm going to figure this out. Don't worry about it. I'll I'll I'll just and I've gone through a number of relationships, but like I felt like I was wasting other people's times because my goals or my interests didn't line up with what everybody else did or what they enjoyed doing. I only understood what a sexuality was through funny enough, like a YouTube search. And then I started going to a rabbit hole and I realized similar how I did with atheism, that this term wasn't as scary as I thought it was and that there was a term that applied to what my outlook was. And it wasn't just because, oh, I just didn't find the white girl. It was just simply, I'm just not attracted to to people. Period. Like, and that's OK. And it framed my entire mindset from something being wrong with me for the entirety of my life to, oh, I'm actually pretty normal. And there's other people who are just as normal as I am. And if I and there's nothing wrong with me and that I should just continue to love myself and be doing the things that I love to do and make myself happy and find people who appreciate me for being me. And I'm like an express. You expanded your definition of normal. Right. And express different kinds of love. That's the fun story behind it. But what came with that was a lot of uncomfortable conversations that I felt like I needed to have about with people who would who would hear my story and say, oh, but there is something wrong with you. You just haven't found the right person yet. Or there is something wrong with you. Have you tried doing this or that? I'm like, no, you don't get it. The framework is completely different. It's sort of like talking to. I've had a good friend of mine tell me, oh, you just in front of the right girl. And I said, you know, you're straight. You're married. You maybe maybe you just didn't find the right man. All right. Like the same mindset. Though I have found people who who who think who I want to explain this to them. They're like, you're asexual and the way you're describing it. Sounds like you have a superpower. It sounds like you just have an extra half hour a day where you're not horny and you can basically fill that in with hobbies. And now I understand why you got your PhD and you can play all these instruments and you have time to walk dogs. And you do like when you talk, when I tell people about what I do on my weekend, they're like, how do you have time to do all this stuff? Disc golf and you're learning how to rock climb and you're learning how to swim and you're doing it. It's like, where do you get the time? It's like, because I just have time. I don't know if you guys ever remember Seinfeld, the TV series, there's the episode where George stops having sex for a week and all of a sudden he's the smartest guy in the group, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm that guy 24 seven, but I didn't realize that that that's not a problem. It's just what you could do with your mind when it's focused, like incredibly focused on stuff. It's really great. Anyway, that's it. Oh, Keith, you my friend, you're on mute. But anyway, the growing pains was worth it because I learned how to love the real me in that process. And, you know, when I came out to my mom like a couple of years ago, she was fully accepting of it. And that, for a jovial witness, was really, really powerful for me because she was willing to, like, overlook her own dogma to still appreciate me. And I have friends and I have work. I let my boss know it's not a big deal in my mind as much as it was before. And I feel like the more I express it, the better it is to just live in my own skin. But yeah, that's about it. There's worth those growing pains. I was just going to tell you what you and Larry had said together there with an example of the Catholic Church. I think it's the Catholic Church. They would often tell women to just deal with it in abusive relationships, you know, going to the other extreme. They would say, like, oh, well, you know, divorce or whatever is a sin. So, you know, I mean, really, even in any kind of marriage up until the 60s, it was kind of taboo to say you wanted to leave or whatever. And they would put up with, you know, getting beaten and getting verbally abused and all this stuff. But it was just like because of the way society was, you just had to kind of go, well, I guess this is what marriage is. My happiness is irrelevant, you know. And seeing the change in society now, you hear these people complain and sort of suggest, again, that oh, somehow, you know, marriage is feeling, for example, is a terrible thing because the percentage is so high. I'm like, yeah, but what percentages of those marriages really should have been together A in the first place or B should still be together. And C, why are they still together? Do they actually enjoy each other's company still? Do they enjoy, you know, watching the same movies? Do they enjoy the same topics? Do they enjoy a conversation? Do they still enjoy each other physically? You know, that these are important things. Yeah, I've heard people express it. And I think it might be a good idea to have marriage contracts that are renewable every two years. Oh, interesting. You say, I'm not going to renew. You watch it, I'm not going to renew. You know, I've always said like a lot of people will throw out, you know, the divorce rates in America or like rising or they're getting high or they're too high, right? And I've always had the impression of the divorce is a good thing in the sense that it's solving a problem. Right? Like if two consensual people don't want to consensually be married to each other anymore, let the adults do what they want to do, whether it's, you know, union or disembark on that, or I'm sorry, what's the opposite of union dread? You're my work guy. What's the opposite? Disjoin, disconnect. Now you put me on the spot. All right, he's the Mensa guy. He just, he just said, I'm Mensa. I'm like, what's the word? He's like, I don't know about words, man. I just got the card. I'm like, all right, fine. Disconnect, but you should be able to do that because it's good for families when there's, especially for kids who are like, might be stuck with parents who like are constantly being bitter with each other, like, hey, split up, be happy. And if it works out, if you want to come back together again, come back together again. If you're happy with other people, be happy with other people. But don't drag me through this relationship that you guys don't even want to be in at the same time too. Disillusion. The force of solving problems. Disillusion. Disillusion. Love it. Not disillusion. Disillusion. Disillusion. Disillusion. Disillusion. Disillusion. All right. That was the example with my family, just so you know, Tyrone, my mom and dad split up when I was 14 and it was the best thing that happened to our family in every way. My mom got her romantic relationship that she wanted. My dad kind of got his freedom back. We got to continue with the life we'd always known, but have two happy parents instead of just one. Exactly. And that's something that you only maybe understand later in life that your parents are people too. Yes. You know, that's something that was very hard for me to realize. And I was like, wait a minute, my mom was just a young teenage girl once who had all these hopes and dreams. And so it was my dad. And they ended up together and had us, but they're still people and their lives didn't need. Their lives didn't. Your parents are individuals too. Yes. You know, they have their own traits, their own likes, their own habits, their things they're used to. And that leads into growing pains because you could live your entire life thinking, oh, my parents are these super powerful beings infallible in every way. Or you can grow up realizing, oh, they were just like me when now that I'm at this age and they're still just as capable as making as many faults and that they're people. And even though I'm a person, there are people, they're a person too. And like that colors the entire perception of how I think about authority or people of authority in my life as well as why I should care about people because they're just like me at the same time too, even if they're older, right? It's tying that into religion, tying that into religion. Everyone is, I try to remind myself that the people who are indoctrinating their kids actually think they're doing the right thing by them. I try to remind myself of that even though some of them I think are just, you know, maybe not. There's obviously some bad actors out there, but essentially I feel like most people are trying to instill good morals and principles in their kids, which is what I'm trying to do just from a completely maybe more objective or subjective point of view. But I try to not get too mad at people when I see that, because I realize that that's what their goal is and it's an honest goal. It just leads to a perpetual bad state, if you want to call it that. Right, right. I have, so for example, a quick story. I have a friend named Aaron. He is a guy who I like to hang out with, invited him to his family or has held us many times, questioned me on my atheism and then eventually told me, you know, I don't celebrate you, but I will let you hang out with my family. Just don't be an atheist around my daughter. And I'm like, so like I was already being an atheist around your daughter because I wasn't necessarily worshiping God left and right, right? I didn't say that to him, but like what does that even mean to a person whose name is from the Bible, who has parents whose names are from the Bible, who has grandparents whose names are from the Bible, who grows up in a Bible belt, right? Who is also homeschooled and by family who taught him from the Bible, like has sisters who have biblical names. He never had a chance to think anything else. So I can't hate him or fault him for being afraid of people who are different, who come to Tennessee from outside his, you know, echo chamber and just be themselves. And that's not within his framework of understanding. I don't blame him for having that. However, in the same way that I won't be angry or mad at him because I know he's just trying to do the best that he can for his family, I also have to recognize that I have a higher standard for myself with the people that I can be with and the people that I can hang out with. And if you value yourself, I say, hold yourself to that higher standard and just say, it's good that I have friends that don't want to celebrate me and I have friends that do want to celebrate me. When I have free time, I'm going to choose the ones that do celebrate me. No dis against the people that don't, but I got only a limited amount of time I'm going to spend it wisely, right? I got an email yesterday. I wanted to discuss which is exactly about that point. I wrote it was a disappointing email from a fan and it was basically like, I've been a fan of yours for 15 years. I love everything you do, blah, blah, blah. But then you started this podcast. It was one of those things, right? And it was very much a, you know, I can't follow you now and I will actively make a point of not seeing anything that you do, et cetera, et cetera. I'm very disappointed that you would feel it's okay to voice that opinion in public type of a thing. And so I responded privately and I basically explained to her like, who was the moral high ground on this decision? I was like, what you feel to realize is that the entire time you've been a fan of mine, I thought this way and openly expressed it and never once hidden it. And I said that the person that you've been a fan of and celebrated all this time has thought the exact things that you've heard me say on that podcast this whole time. It hasn't changed who I am as a person to people. It has the person that you liked and the person that you've celebrated was an atheist and is an atheist and is proud of it. I was just gonna say the fact that you're aware of it now does not change who I was before and saying that you're not gonna follow me now because I openly express it even though I always have and never hidden it my entire life. It's like I don't tell you not to come to my concerts because you're a Christian, right? You see the difference there? Who's on the moral high ground? Sorry, Larry. No, I think that his friend is basically just telling him to shut up about it around his daughter. That's all he's really doing. I mean, don't be an atheist. You can't stop being an atheist around or you're just lucky to stop existing. But he's just saying don't talk about it around her. I feel that atheism is a positive position anyway, right? It's not like you're making a claim about something. It's that you don't have evidence to support a claim that others are making. So saying not to be an atheist, does that mean you have to believe in God while you're hanging around his daughter? You know, I'll throw one last thing out and then we gotta end the show. He also was speaking to that about both my atheism and my asexuality. And like in the back of my head, I'm like, so what do you want me to do? Start hitting on your wife? Just stop coming around. I would guarantee, I'm much more physically fit than you. I make more money than you. Are you guaranteeing that you want me to stop? You don't want, you want me to just start hitting on your wife now? I don't understand it. I don't get it. But again, I have higher standards of friends like you guys. I'm happy to hang out with you. Larry, go ahead. And I see you cutting off your neck. Let's let's wrap up the show. Running out of time pretty quickly here. This is the Digital Freethought Radio R. You can find this show on podcasts everywhere. Just search for Digital Freethought Radio R. If you're watching this on YouTube, be sure to like and subscribe. If you're having trouble leaving religious beliefs behind, you can get help at recoveringfromreligion.org. You can find my book, Atheism, What's It All About on Amazon? 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 Wednesday night at 7 o'clock. Say bye, everybody. Bye, everybody. Bye. Check out my entire YouTube. Nice. Cool.