 Hello and welcome to Digital Freethought Radio Hour on WZO Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today's January 5th, 2020. And if it's not, then you're listening to a rebroadcast of the show and should not be trying to call in. I'm Dodder Five and as usual, we have the Wombat on the phone with us. Say hello, Wombat. Hey, it's the Wombat. I hope you're having a great new year. I did. It was great. And we also have plenty of guests today, a Bukku bunch of guests. We'll have Fanny Boudreaux, Sarah Hale-Saiton, Red Pirate Higgs, and Doubtfire. Did I leave anyone out? No, I think it's a full point. No, I don't think so. No, either. Very cool. Nice. Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a call-in talk radio show about atheism, free thought, ray rational thought, humanism, and the sciences. And conversely, we also talk about religion, religious faiths, God's holy books, and superstition. And if you get the feeling you're the only non-believer in Knoxville or East Tennessee, then you're just not. There are several atheists, free-thinking, rationalist groups that exist right here in Knoxville and we'll tell you how you can connect with them right after the mid-show breaks. And did you know there was a call-in television atheist show? Here in Knoxville has been for almost 10 years now. Yeah, it's been around forever. I know about it. I've played games since I was a little kid. Mario Saving the Princess, Jumping on Turtles, Stars. I know about this. Why are you even bringing it up? Of course I know about it. I love the series since I was a little kid. It's a TV show. It's not a game, not a movie, and not a series. But anyway, you can find out about the atheist call-in TV show right after the mid-show break. We'll give you more details about it. We'll also tell you how to go to YouTube and watch some of their old shows. And in spite of what Steve Martin would have, you think there are an awful lot of atheist songs out there and you'll be hearing them right here on this program and generally on the station as I have put them in rotation. Well, I'm back. What's our topic today? Pseudo-science and general weirdness? Something like that. Yeah. Hey, it's been a while since we had a chance to talk about the sciences and there's been a lot of science in 2019. Despite the efforts of many people, we've made some really cool progresses, but also pseudoscience. And I thought it was really cool to see, you know, from the really extravagant things that we figured out using science versus sort of the extravagant extraordinary claims brought forth by pseudoscience. What's a good way to tell the difference between the two? And I thought we can bring up some good examples from both sides and talk about them to the show today. Well, one of the things I've always heard is like pseudo-medicine is an example of pseudoscience. You know, we get medicines through scientific efforts. And if it were actual medicine, then we'd be called actual medicine. We'd be called homeopathy or other names, you know, like that. Alternative medicine. The alternative medicine. They give another name. I recently got Swimmer's Ear a while back. Not a bad case, but just a little itch. And I was looking online for like eardrops. And I'm going on Amazon looking for like Swimmer's Ear eardrops. And the real cure is just 3% hydrogen peroxide. You drop it in, you're good to go. But there's like brand name hydrogen peroxide droppers that you can get that have like 0.0 a zillionth percent of hydrogen peroxide in it because the healing factors of, you know, a very, very small percentage of an actual medicine is enough to refuse the rest with it. Homeopathy says that almost like the least, the less you have in it of active ingredients, the more effective it is. Yeah. And I'm just like, man, I'm buying water for seven bucks, but no, I don't think so. I'm just going to get some hydrogen peroxide. Homeopathy also says that water has memory. Like that it remembers where it's been. So like, you know, it's been the liver of somebody else. I guess it's more the other effect like the placebo. Yeah. Yeah. But also remember, water goes down an awful lot of toilets. Do you really want that in your body? Yeah, the memory of a one drop of water is really hardcore, especially in like New York where like every drop of water goes through like 40 people's kidneys, right? Before it gets here. I have a really cool pseudoscience product that I want to bring up before we get into like some of the real meat and potatoes. Just a silly thing I saw on the internet. It's basically a twisted piece of metal that you can stick into a pipe that, you know, issues out water in your home. And what the twisted piece of metal does is vortex the water as it comes out of like a sink drain or like your shower. And it's called the vortex water revitalizer. And when I look at this, I was like, why do you need this? It costs a lot of money. It's like 400 bucks. But it has some really, really great, you know, properties to it. It can cure arthritis. It proves the taste, feel and quality of water. It can release gases into your bloodstream to help you like cure a whole bunch of other diseases. It kills bacteria. The website has like so many really great things about it. And it's easy to be skeptical. But then you look at it and you're just like, okay, but is there any actual science behind any of this? Yeah, you're, I guess you're adding more energy to the water, which might make it necessarily, I don't know, oxidize a little bit better, maybe it improves the taste. Don't think so. No. One bad one bad. When you think about it, anything that creates additional friction to a flow is actually deep. Okay, well, wow, wow. So then maybe it increases the heat of the water a little bit. Maybe you get slightly hotter water because it's more energetic by millions of a degree. Hey, that's that helping a path. You know, that's all you need. So it's called shrew burger technology. And when I went on the website, I was really impressed with how many scientific terms they use throughout all of this. They really try to bolster bad science by making it look like good science, which I find to be, you know, it irks me a little bit when I see stuff like that. Though I would say this. Maybe we should, sorry, no, go for it. Maybe we should, maybe we should counter argue their, their studies with the same methodology saying like, if that is true, that super diluted substance and chemicals in the water can affect you. We should use the analogy to say like, look, in the ocean, like in a cup of water, there are more molecules of water than cups of water in the ocean. So when you're drinking a cup of water, you actually consuming because of the cycle of water, you're actually consuming water that have gone through very smart people through, you know, like you should actually get some cellular memory out of a, I don't know, Einstein and even other people, you know, like scientists and all this stuff. So the power of suggestion that would probably, they would probably say, oh, that's why I remember Napoleon, you know, I talked to Napoleon and they have people that will go on TV and say that. Yeah, good argument for their claim. So I will just say this, if you're going to drink something or consume anything, put it in your body, whether it's medicine, homeopathy, or just the tap water in your, in your home, make sure you know what's, what's going in it and try to put some effort into like investigating the science behind it because it just because it comes in a bottle or sold by a company may not necessarily mean that it's good for you or worth your time. Yeah, or it could be educational. Well, it's interesting. It reminds me of a cartoon where a guy walks up to a vending machine and it says, are you gullible? Put him dollar, you know, to find out. And, you know, he saw you, you're spending $400 to find out that you're gullible. Yeah. Well, there you go. I was going to say that here in, or in British Columbia anyway, a bottle of water doesn't go through the sort of testing that's required for tap water. Yeah, that is absolutely true. So a bottle of water off your shelf. Yeah. Wow. It's absolutely true. And thought of that. Yeah. I'm, I'm waiting for the documentary to explain where bottled water comes from, or at least like the, the, the political or the any sort of body of government with regard to here's a bottle of water in a store where to come from because your tap water is very regulated to the point where it's like, we need to know exactly parts from million of all the organic. We're looking at you nicely. Yeah. It's just like, where is that water coming from and how what's the difference between your osmotic process versus your purification process versus your distillation process? Is it all the same thing going in the same bottle? What's the percentage of what? There's no regulation there. We want to know. All right. So yeah. We're going to say that the bottle of water actually, this is a kind of like a very important subject of nowadays the climate change also is something of the, the bottles of water, like the plastic ones that we consume, they actually use more than a bottle of water to be produced. Wow. Yeah. You guys have heard of this? No. No. When you talk about how the plastic bottles are bad for the environment to produce those half a liter, 500 milliliter, 500 milliliter bottle of water, we spend a bottle and a half of resource and, you know, everything. So that's why it's bad to use those those small portions of plastic bottle. I didn't know that. Okay. Yeah. Shoot. Well, you know, talking about saving the planet, I got one other piece of science that I think is actually kind of cool. This is legitimate. This is what we'll talk about, like how we can tell the difference later. But this was a YouTube post by Bill Knight of Science Guy. He has a YouTube channel called Big Think where he answers questions from people who have like these general questions about science. The question that was presented was, are we actually aliens? Like are humans or life on earth? Are we the origination of like a primordial life, but from a different planet that just now got to here? And Bill and I presented the idea that there's, it's not outside the realm of possibility to consider that. It's called Pamspermia. Exactly. Yeah. Hey, why don't you explain it? Well, no, we have found amino acids floating in space. Exactly. They come to earth and they can be the building blocks of DNA and life itself. So why not fully formed DNA? You know, they may have blown into space from like an asteroid hitting another planet that's populated with living creatures. It's not unheard of and certainly they wouldn't come to earth and have any kind of real, what, what's the word I'm talking about, mass so that it would burn up in the atmosphere. We just float, you know, to the ground and go into the, any water that may be there. Or in case some like ice and then complied with the earth and the ice just absorbs a lot of the air. Sure. Meteors, comets, all of that stuff that could be the delivery systems for something like that. Or the other, another thing is a lot of people may think that our DNA was intentionally placed here by another alien species. Like Superman? So, well, you never know. And they have come. That's the story of Superman, right? Yeah. Just like, hey, we got lots of movies on that one. Yeah. But we do know that how we formed human DNA didn't come to earth that way. It's just like RNA or the very crude first copies of DNA may have been placed here. But we have no reason to believe it was. I mean, we have the science to know how it could form. And we know that amino acids can't come to the planet. So, it just makes, it begs the question anyway, if it didn't form here and was put here, how did it form at the other place? Hey, there's a good question. Right. Right. It just pushes the answer back another step because we don't know where to originate. Yeah. It goes from one, I don't know to a, hey, I really don't know. Yeah. It's answering a mystery with a mystery. Right. Right. It actually is jumping in an assumption from no evidence and just because we don't know. But it would be a natural explanation as opposed to a supernatural explanation where we never had any examples of. One, that's huge. And two, it's okay to say you don't know. That's an actual answer. It just means, hey, we got to figure out more stuff. That's not, it's not affirmative of like a conclusion. It's more of like an indication that more data needs to be gotten. Right. And it's not an acknowledgement of the feet. Yeah. Exactly. But it doesn't say we can't know. It says don't currently know. Yeah. And that's why I love about it. That's why, okay, so I want to hear Boudre's thoughts on this, but that's why I think when I hear someone tell me, hey, we could be Martians or from a moon of Europa compared to a guy who's like, hey, this tap water will kill bacteria when you put this vortex thing in it. I look at the vortex dude, I'm like, you're crazy. And I look at the guy who's telling me we could be aliens. I'm like, hey, you have a point there. Why? Boudre, what do you think about that as a standard? Like what do you think I might be employing to tell the difference between the two claims? Yeah. So interesting. My first thought when you brought this up is, you know, it gets back to your confidence level where, you know, believing in the deity that they created life, pretty low confidence, you know, from my perspective. But, you know, ancient aliens, as I've heard it, or, or having just some DNA floating into the atmosphere, I mean, these are also, I don't know, no real evidence for it, but now my confidence is, could be a little bit higher on that. And, you know, again, it's not supernatural, it's natural. So it's, it's more, you know, more believable. But I think like everyone else was saying, I mean, what, what good are we doing by, you know, just shifting this mystery to another, another position? I mean, that Lawrence Cross had a fantastic book on the, the how something could come from nothing. And talking about, you know, the origin of, of, you know, everything and, and being, being plausible. And, you know, that right there is based on science and, you know, smart people have found evidence for it. And I mean, we can keep looking into it, sure. But it's, it's one of those things where I don't know that we need to make up fantastic ideas to explain things that, you know, maybe we just don't understand. Yeah. I don't know is a generally a good, honest answer if that is in fact the case. If we don't know something, we shouldn't say we do just to get past the question. Yeah. I also like how the, the scientific model that's presented by Bill is using things that we already know as to be true, to construct the narrative. So like, we know we have ice in space. We know ice is a really good insulator. We know we have amino acid clouds in space. We know things from one planet can sometimes collide into other planets. We know there's parts of moon, there's moon rocks on the earth because well actually there's earth rocks on the moon because it started off as one thing and then split into two. We have dust from Mars on earth from, you know, things that had collided off of Mars and landed on earth. You can buy moon rocks right or Mars rocks right now that we have been on earth for like billions of years probably. It's just a really cool idea that you can take all these small facts that we do know and use it to construct a likely scenario for, right, that could explain in the case, not saying it's confirming, but like just saying like if someone said, hey, it's possible that DNA may have come from a different planet other than earth and maybe just came on earth and then continue to evolve from there. It establishes possibility. Yes, there you go. Thank you. No, I think the point is like it doesn't matter if they came from the space is still coming from nothing. I think the problem that most of people have is to accept that everything would come from nothing. And then for some reason they think a superpower, supernatural, super powerful being that should be more complex than everything could come from nothing to make everything. And the thing on the DNA coming from space would still come from nothing ultimately. So I don't see any problem. I think the probability of the DNA being insurgent, becoming to exist in earth or outside of earth and then becoming in the earth doesn't change much of the spectrum of the beginning. Yeah, the big fundamental picture or big fundamental questions are still there. It's just a question of transporting. And we know things can transport. So it's not that crazy to say we could be aliens. Nothing unnatural about the process. Nothing unnatural about us being Martians. Larry, you want to talk about simulation theory? Well, you know, there's this thing saying that the universe may be a simulation. And we often think that some incredibly advanced alien program or somewhere created simulation and put us in it. Just like Super Mario, we were talking about at the start of the show. Like you said there was this big atheist Super Mario show. But that still doesn't say where we came from. If the universe is a simulation and somebody put us in it, that's something else, but it doesn't answer the question about us. And if the universe is a simulation and we are part of the simulation, what does that make us? Are we just pieces of computer program? And if that's true, then we have no free will because we can only do that, which we've been programmed to do. My issue with the simulation theory is that if the universe is fake and it's made up of fake parts, we have fake evidence to base that off of, which means that the things that we're pointing to to say, hey, this is evidence that this is a simulation is in itself simulated. We don't have a frame of reference for what something that's not similar looks like. We don't have any evidence to show that this is substantial proof that we are outside of a system. And their senses are also simulated. And once again, it makes the question. Yeah. And what about diseases? Are they actual diseases that the computer programmer create them? Are they computer viruses that attack the living simulations without the programmer's intention permission? You were saying something just that it begs the question. Once again, in asking, is this a simulation that begs the question who created the simulation or the simulator? Yeah. And is the simulator a simulation of another simulator? Yeah. Is there a super simulation? What's the super, super simulation? And then so on and so on. Turtles all the way down. I think it falls into those unfalsifiable claims because every time you try to bring back like, okay, we understand we have senses that are limited, but we can both claim each other's existence. And that's how we exist. But if they do put inside the simulation, we're both running into the same program, and there's no way to find out that is what Tyrone said is like it's unfalsifiable because there's no way to find even evidence against it if you're like being controlled with that. There's no real evidence if everything is a simulation. So like you can't point at something that's fake and be like, ah, it's fake. It's like, well, that's your evidence is fake. So like, what's something that's real that we can contrast that with? Otherwise, we're stuck with a, I don't know. And cause it falls back into the burden of proof. Right. The person that need that's claiming this needs to bring us evidence that we are inside the simulation and not the other way around. Sure. And I also like that because I don't know, I don't believe it. Right. I can also say, I mean, I don't believe what you're telling me, because I don't know if it's true or not. And yeah. Yeah, you don't even know another day. I don't have evidence to support it. Right. The time to believe something that was one of the evidences presented. Exactly. And accepted. Though it is a very sexy theory, I'll tell you that, to think like, hey, somewhere there's like a DLC waiting for me that I can just download and learn Kung Fu in a quick couple of seconds. That'd be great. And it's like, oh, Elon Musk isn't necessarily more talented than I am. He just found the code faster than I did. It can explain, it can explain away a lot of like personal drama, but hey, there we go. Hey, science is cool. Pseudo science is cool, but you know what else is cool? Taking breaks. We're at the bottom of the half hour. You're listening to 103.9 FM low power coming out of Knoxville, Tennessee. This is digital free thought radio hour. We're going to be back right after the break. See you in a minute. You're listening to the digital free thought radio hour on Wozo 103.9 LP FM in Knoxville, Tennessee. Feel free to join in on the conversation at 865-333-5937. That's 865-333-5937. And now back to the show. Welcome back. I'm Dr. Five, and this is the digital free thought radio hour on Wozo Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today's January 5th, 2020. And we're going to tell you now about the free thought groups that you can join right here in Knoxville. There's the Atheist Society of Knoxville, been around for almost 20 years now, 18 years let's say, has 980 members as of this morning. And you can find us online at KnoxvilleAtheist.org. There's also the Rationalists of East Tennessee, and you can find them at Rationalist.org. They have been around for more than 20 years, and they meet at the Pellissippi State Campus. ASK or the Atheist Society of Knoxville meets at the Barley's Taproom in Pizzeria every Tuesday evening here in Knoxville. So around happy hour, 5.30 or so, if you're in downtown, old city, Knoxville, go by Barley's Taproom in Pizzeria, walk in the door, look to the right, there we are at the long table, having a great time. There's also the Secular Student Alliance, which is programs at UTK and other schools, high school and college, all around the country. So if you're in school, look for the Secular Student Alliance, or do a Google search for it, and find out where you might be able to meet like-minded folks in your school. Earlier in the show, we said we'd talk about the Atheist Call in TV show. Wait, there's an Atheist Call in TV show? Yes, there is. It's been around for almost 10 years now. It's called Free Thought Forum, and you can see it most every Wednesday nights between 6.30 and 7.30. And come cast Channel 12 or Charter Channel 192. Don't have cable? Don't worry about it. Just go to ctvknox.org, and you can watch it there. It's at the same time, 6.30. You can also go to YouTube and search for three words to find some of their shows there. Search for Free Thought Forum, Knoxville. Also, if you're interested in getting involved in the TV show or the radio show, come to an ASK meeting or RET meeting and talk to us about it. You can be our next co-host or guest. Now, back to the show. We talked about science. Now, we're going to get into some really cool territories. Hey, Boudreau, you had some topics for us. I did, and it was topical in that this morning, my daughter was 11, asked if she could go with her friend to church. We don't go to church. It means very open about her thoughts on religion and doesn't believe. And she has gone a couple of times to this church. We're basically there to play in a bouncy house and play a game called Gaga, apparently. I think it involves a ball. But she has a hoot and it's really playtime. But I imagine there's some proselytization going on and some things and Bible talking and things. But I guess I wanted to explore a little bit with you guys. Should this bother me? Should I allow it? Well, I would start off by saying, if she's out to her friends and everybody knows that she's not really a believer and she's honest about going to church just to have fun, I wouldn't worry about her friends giving her a hard time. But she is going among a bunch of adults, religious adults who may or may not decide that she's possessed with demons or something. You never know what thoughts are going to come into their mind and what thoughts are going to prompt them to act in the name of their Lord. Who knows? That's the only problem I'd worry about. I have three words. Danger, Will Robinson. That's kind of, my wife and I talk about this, and she's like this too, but she doesn't, this doesn't seem to bother her as much as it bothers me. And I'm probably, I'm probably overthinking it. The parents aren't, you know, they're religious, but they're they're not fundamental. You know, I don't, I don't see them as, I don't think they're gonna, I'm outed in the neighborhood as an atheist, so the whole neighborhood knows. They can tell we're not a church on Sunday, I can't. I wonder if I can share something, something similar that's going on here. So Gary, you're telling me about like a superhero show that is out of public school that still has a hidden message for religion in it, like in the background? Yes. Wow. Yes. Yeah. So, and it relates to Scott. I think he's just concerned with his daughter attending the issue. Okay. So he can, he can relate with you, Eric, because he, he sees the same thing happening to him when he looks at this, you know, superhero display that has a hidden religious message in it. I don't know. My heart. Yeah, exactly. I don't know. I'm sorry. What's your wife's perspective on this? Did you, you said your wife is a little bit more cool with it? Have you talked to her? What's her, what's her position? Yeah. Well, I mean, I think she knows I, I think about this stuff a lot, a lot more, you know, doing summits and doing this show and others. So she actually was like, you know, hey, I will back you 100% on whatever, wherever you want to do. If you want to tell her she can't go, or if you, you know, let her go. She's basically saying, you know, you make the call. I don't feel super strong. She's, she's inclined to just let her go, not make a big deal. I think she is, if it becomes a pattern to where it's like every Sunday, if she goes like three times a row, we may intervene at that point, but this seems kind of my one off. I'm a little worried we're just kicking the can down the road. You know, this is, this is the third time. I don't know how it comes up that she decides to like Vivian, but, you know, I don't know. I, I, yeah, please fan him. Yeah, I was, I was going to say like, because I, my daughter is not that old, but I have a kind of a plan to raise her in contact with all the little myths, like instead of like, like, because my criticism with religious people is like most of religious people are raised believing that their God is true because it's the only God. When they face the reality that there are almost 3000 gods around the world, it breaks down a little bit. So I think for your daughter that is already 11 that sees that you don't have faith and there are people that have. She is a little, like I said, you should please feel safe that she's kind of a inoculated about that. Maybe, maybe talk to her about this thing on the face that bothers you because I think it is important in the sense that you can tell her like I'm worried about how people are going to behave towards you. So watch up or, you know, or even mention like that you, you, you don't want just her to, to go through any type of little that can happen. And I actually was not even being pessimistic, like Larry mentioned the way that they can buy something that her behavior or anything they could, oh, she's possessed by demons. But I can imagine this happening to my daughter in Brazil, because when, when she was born and I told people that are heavily religious in Brazil, that I would not baptize her, they were almost like taking her for the baptism, because you can't do it. Your daughter is like, no, I can't. Baptism is nothing than one of religious retro from one church. And people were like, no, you have to baptize her arguing with me on the streets, because I hadn't baptize her. Or I don't know what is if she died without baptism, she would go to hell, whatever. I don't know. I did not even try to understand their point. But I don't think prohibiting is a good way. I was, I was a non believer since I was like, I don't know, six, seven. And I was really against the religious indoctrination in the schools. I asked to not participate on religious class when I was 12, but I would still go to the church activities with my friends until I was 15, I think, just because of this social encounter. Sure. So there is a lot of nuances and considerations. Yeah, I see. But I think the best way is to talk to him. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, I appreciate it. I have a relevant story growing up as being indoctrinated into a Catholic family. The pressure to send my kids to a Catholic school was very heavy. So when my wife and I started having children, at the time I was still a Catholic, and my view was, let's send them to a public school, and then they can influence the kids in the public school. And it turned out to be the complete opposite where they went to public school, and all my kids are atheists. So it can work the other way around as well. Yeah, it's true. It is true. What's the most your, Vivian's been exposed to religion, or like religious people, like, have she had any exposure? Yeah, so once she was younger, she and Vincent, he's eight right now, but several years ago, when they would stay with my grandparents, my wife's parents, they would occasionally go to church on Sundays. And I remember there was even a time where I was like, well, parents want to watch the kid, but let's pick him on Friday, and we'll pick him up Saturday, so that we would avoid the chance that they would go on Sunday. But honestly, since, Ty, you've been tried on that summit. Yeah. So in the last several years, five, six years, he's been more open about his thoughts. And I think we stopped taking our kids to church. So they did have a spell where they were going, but they were pretty young. I think my point would follow along Fanny's point where it's like, we've all, I don't know about everyone actually, but I know for myself that I was a Christian because it was the only thing that I knew, because I didn't know there were any other options. But once I knew there were other options, like the lure of Christianity started to fade. Like I was where like, oh, I'm on a team. How do I get on this team? Let me figure that out. And I come from a family where my sister's Muslim and she's Muslim because that's the only thing that she knew. And my mom's a Joel witness because that's what she subscribed to because her sister was a twin, her twin long story. Well, that was the only thing she knew. And so like it only came from opening up my boundaries and meeting a lot of different people that I'm able to be like, okay, I get that a lot of people have a lot of different conventions just because they're religious doesn't mean that they're bad or stupid. Just because someone's an atheist doesn't mean that they're smart. It's just a really nice potluck out there. And for the most part, I'm willing to believe once I have good evidence. And once that's the standard, I'm willing to believe it. I'm willing to curbstop atheism once I have a good reason to. But until then, I'm totally fine with where I'm at right now. And let's go play bouncy house. What about you loading her up? Is she prepared to maybe talk to other people if people actually try to indoctrinate her in some subtle way, asking her like, oh, why don't you believe? Don't you think there is a creator? Would she have some answer to that? Would she say like, well, but to which creator, for example, because I think that is the best thing to bounce back to her friend. No, I think an SE approach would actually be a really great way to turn the tables on it. Does she know like how to have impossible conversations? Actually, some of the SE stuff might be really helpful. She has actually had conversations with friends at school arguments and such about a religion. We're in Kentucky, and the kids go to a great school. But yeah, most of the kids go to church. So she's actually gotten bullied a little bit in the past, picked on. She actually has found an atheist friend that she can find school. That's great. I have actually, since I heard about some of the bad stuff happening, I told her like, hey, bringing up religion with your friends is probably not the best thing in the world right now. So I think I'm going to better prepare for that. But I was thinking there were some times where she would she would discuss religion with her friends. And I did talk to her quite a bit about Lawrence Krause's book, Something from Nothing. And, you know, I think she has a fairly good understanding of how you don't need a creator to explain why we're here. And I think she has a small understanding of infinite regress to where it's like, if she's she's mentioned before that she's told her friends, well, if God created all this, who created God, and then, you know, and then, and then, and then, and then. So may I suggest maybe an SC approach where it's just like, hey, I'm willing to believe that if I have something that's reasonable, and can we test it? No. Okay. Maybe I don't know. It's the best like maybe if I put the coin and I can't see the result, it could be heads. Maybe there is a God, but until I have a good reason to believe that, that's God's problem to figure it out, tell me. And I'm willing to say, Hey, I'll keep an open mind out until then I'm going to pay my bills or do whatever kids do. It's been a while since I've been 11 homework, walk the dog. Can I put a challenge out there? Go for it. Ty, how about how don't you make a video of teaching SC to kids? Yeah, why not? Yeah. I've actually done SC with six years old, six year olds, and they're on point. They know it. Yeah. I had an interview with a six year old kid named Nolan. He believed that he saw someone die, like like got murdered or something. But I asked, we found out it was just from the movie Frozen. And so I was like, so it was a character that was in a movie that died. He's like, Yeah, I guess it was a fake movie. So I was like, Yeah, fake movie. It was like, Yeah, I probably didn't actually see someone die. It was just a cartoon. And I was like, And I'm like, you can, you can, you can have the SC conversation on topics that aren't even about religion, just to exercise critical thought. Because once they realize, Oh, I have these faculties in my mind that helped me parse true things from false things. That's the makes the world a difference. And you would find that whether it's pseudoscience or science, religion, or realism, whatever you want to call it, we will be able to parse the difference between the two regardless of your age. Yeah, I hope you never sees a Rambo Rambo movie. Yeah, I just kept rewinding and he died over and over and over again. Yeah. Um, so yeah, uh, Gary, what do you guys think? Can I suggest a book to to his daughter for him to buy his daughter? It's a book that I have bought myself is really nice. It's it's more for kids, but it is really big. It's Richard Dawkins, the magic of reality. I have a book actually. You guys are nerds. Yeah, I've got it. If I'm not mistaken, though, didn't Dawkins recently write a book for even a younger audience? Oh, there is one. Is this the the magic of reality? No, this is the same. Yeah, magic of reality came out three or four years ago, I think, right? Oh, I bought one when I was in Brazil. So yeah, how we know what's really true. Yeah, that is it's a great book. Oh, that's a great title. Hey, I'd like to make two story recommendations. The first one would be an emperor's new clothes because it is low key. One of the best stories of atheism that I'd never even realized was about atheism is just the idea of two people can come into a town with so much confidence and a false like they present both the disease and the cure is like, hey, you don't look great. This will make you look great. You can't see it, but you're an idiot if you can't see it. So you must see it, right? It's like, yeah, I can see it then. And people playing on ego and emotional states to to push themselves into a higher, you know, state of power in like this town, even the kings in on it. And it takes the courage of one boy to be like, hey, that guy is not wearing any clothes for everyone else to be like, oh, I guess it's okay for me to say that too. Or or feel that way as well. You know that the freedom from religion foundation gives an annual award called Emperor has no clothes award. Nice. Yeah, to the active free thinker of the of the year. Very good. I love it. And I think it's a good story. It took a while. I didn't see I didn't see for what it was until I was already over the fence, but I think it's a really, really good story to just put things into reference. You might also want to check out and this is going to sound a little silly, but atheism for dummies. If there's a book series called for dummies, the one atheism is really, yes, great reference. It's just layman explaining like all these really fancy terms and as well as counter apologetics, maybe even raising family on atheism, explaining to people what you're about without like triggering them, recent trends in atheism, old things that happen, philosophy points. It's just a really interesting and fun. Yeah. When I was, I was president of the rationalist speech Tennessee a couple of years ago, and we had the author into Knoxville to have to give us a speech at our annual event. Wait, you have the author for a place for dummies? Yeah. What? That's awesome. It was a great speech. And of course, he sold a bunch of books. Yeah. No doubt. No doubt. Okay. So, uh, hey, and I would also say this, if you guys have time, whether, whether you have kids or not, you might want to check out some really cool SC videos. You can find a playlist on SC dash playlist.com. That's SC dash playlist.com. What SC is is just a really, really fun way of talking to people. You can think of it as like a Socratic examination or what it's really called the street epistemology. It's a way to talk to people about their, you know, deeply held beliefs without making them feel like they're being challenged or defend, have to defend the point or it's an argument. You're not challenging the beliefs themselves. You're, uh, challenging the method that they arrived at those beliefs. Yeah. You're working with them to see if the way they reach their belief is reliable and you're working on that together. And when you do that together and realize that you can't get anywhere, that you reach a dead end, that's more telling them you're saying, Hey, you're wrong because you came out this way in a really weird way. Did you watch the interview with James Lynn Santai? I think I did. Yes. It's a little bit of what we talked about. They, they meant it's a topic on the book, the unread library effect. It's how to expose and how to show people their own biases. It's to behave a little bit like the kids on the Y or the, you know, you just keep asking how, why, and, and then they have to explain better. And then, and then they realize they don't understand so well about that subject as they do. And they should not have that much confidence. So it's really good for a street epistemology. You know, I was just thinking about this too, like you're the, the parents of Vivian, I'm not Vivian, but Vivian's friends who are religious are probably thinking the exact same thing, the drill that you are, where it's like, oh man, I don't want my kids hanging out with those, you know, atheists, like, where do they get their values from? Where's all this stuff? Like what I feel like with the ability to do S.E. Well, or just the ability to at least try or the willingness to try, you can like reach out to even talking to, you know, going with them to church and just being like, hey, I know where I'm at. I'm going to have some fun conversations so people will know where I'm at. But also, maybe I can try to figure out something from them too. And that way they see a nice atheist and maybe I'll might need some nice Christians, maybe we'll invite them over for a summit. Like this could be like a fun thing where we don't just identify people by what they believe, but know them as people that have a lot of colors to them. And there is one important thing on that thing. On when you talk about maybe we get together and then go to church and then talk about this, it is very interesting. It is very important. And it's the only way to actually change people mind is to go and actually have conversations. But also one thing that we have to attach very much on the street epistemology and more even on the, like a part more partnership, a conversation, then a debate is to create the rapport before. So it has happened, like my husband have like, have, has friends or colleagues at work that want to get together and then are religious. And the first thing they did do is to invite us to go to church. So I told him that, no, thanks, because I don't think it would be good for the first encounter. We go to their church, not because of us, more because of them, because like, we're going to end up going to pizza place or whatever after. And they will not like to hear what we would give back as response to whatever they ask after the mess. So I think it's like, let's try to maybe first go to a bar seat, talk about the things we have in common. And then in the second, third meeting, we can go to church. And then we can actually even criticize each other's divergences, you know, because I have had more effect on my friends of long time, because we have such an intimacy that I can actually criticize them in some topics. And when I actually criticize their feminism or their religiosity, our relationship was strong enough to go through it. And actually, you bring up a good point that's worth mentioning for others if it's helpful. We've lived in this neighborhood eight years, and we've made really good relationships with all the other parents, the kids all play together really well. It's fantastic. If I would have come out as an atheist right away, that would have been horrible for the situation. Luckily, I got to know people. We became friends and slowly over time, they found out. I told a couple of them and then I kind of spread, but I even got comments from some of our really religious, my neighbor, saying, man, you're really nice for me. I got kind of those. But I think, fortunately, I think there's a lot of separation. And, you know, they go to church on Sunday, but the other days of the week, everyone's super cool. We do the crowds on the streets. And actually, one of my neighbors has come to a few summits, and so it is pretty cool. I'm not looking to try to change their minds. Right. You are basically just trying to be a good billboard for, this is what an atheist looks like, not what your pastor tells you, but like me. And we don't fight. We're normal people. And I think, again, your daughter lives in Kentucky, she's going to see, she's going to be Christians, no matter what, probably, she could probably hang out with them too, because she's going to be in the future. But I won't tell you, I won't, my only thing would be like, it may not be as bad, and it might be good for her to start practicing gauging now, because these are really good habits and social skills that she'll need in the future. And the last thing you want is for her to be an adult and be like, oh, what's a Christian? I have no idea. And then some really charming guy comes in and he's like, hey, try my Camaro, let's go to this Baptist place. And you're like, oh, I hate this guy. I think it would be good for you to meet these people that are the parents of her friends that she goes to church with. Yeah. Mona, even just because you're curious to know how they would behave with her, not being religious. So it would be a good way to measure that you coming to hang out with them and then knowing that you're an atheist and see how they are going to behave with you. It is a good way to find out how they would behave with her. I also like the idea of having your kid be an out eighth. And I won't say this, this probably may be taken too far. But I'd say I like the idea of your kid going there with the understanding that her friends know that she's an atheist ahead of time. That way, you know, it saves from going through the script. And you can see if they're really interested in hanging out with her or just trying to convert her so that they can have another plus one tithing. Yeah, I think it's the first bit, the former. And one of the things I do think we're going to do, and I'm really appreciate everyone helping with this and I didn't mean to dominate the topic here, but yeah, I will sit with her tonight at this afternoon and we'll talk to her about it and just get a better feel what happened. Richard Dawkins Outrowing God is the book that came out recently. That's the new one written for a much younger age. Magic reality, I was surprised it was 2012, it came out. But both of those I think are probably good, but this one's for a younger, younger audience. Sorry, I want to make sure. Also, if you're a teenager and you like cursing, you might want to check out the atheist experience. There's a lot of naughty dirties on the show, but it's really good. Examinations of rhetoric and you get to hear actual Christians call in what their best arguments and after a while, after about 300 episodes, you're like, oh, it's one of those again. Like, I know this pattern. I know these responses. That's good. No new arguments. Yeah. Speaking of podcasts, we should tell everybody this is available on podcast. Oh yeah, go for it Larry. Yeah. We're available on iTunes, Stitcher, Listen, Notes, Luminary, podcast. You name it. Heart.com. So just do a search for Digital Freethought and on your favorite pod program. I'll even put this up on YouTube so we get more people to have eyes on this. Yeah. So just look up for your podcast, Digital Freethought Radio Hour. Also, Shue Pebbler who's listening on the show, he's texting me. He says another good example of a book that we should check out is called Parenting Beyond Belief. Yep. Isn't that a damn barcode book? Hey, maybe. Pretty cool. So, hey, we got a couple of minutes left in the show. How about we do a round table closing out? Fanny, what are some of your closing thoughts for the show today? For this week in general? Oh, wow. Pretty good show. So for every time we have the movie series, it's amazing. Thank you guys very much and check my YouTube channel in the last interviews with Peter Bogosian and James Lienstein. These are huge names. Don't just throw them out so casually. Yeah. I was just talking to some huge people. Yeah. What's the name of the channel? Yeah. My channel, Fanny and Zai. Fanny and Zai. Okay. You guys will get the book, Peter Bogosian, James Lienstein, How to Have Impossible Conversations. I'm going to throw a book club on my Discord channel that I'm going to be reading one paragraph of each chapter per week and then we can throw in a big salad of the culture or issues and topics, hot topics of the internet. Nice. Pretty cool. Dread Pirate. What are some of your closing thoughts as you sail away into the seas in silent seas? Well, I wish I could have said more about possibilities. Go for it. Well, we're actually moving towards being an offshore region. Can you still hear me? No. I love you all. Happy New Year. Okay. There you go. Happy New Year. Hey, Gary, if you type out what you're saying, I'll say it for you on the show for sure. And then we'll go. I'm going to set up my studio next time. Nice. Next issue next time. Okay. So, Rudro, what's some of your closing thoughts? Well, I would say first my sympathies go out to Fanny and in the story of hearing about the people that threw Molotov cocktails at folks for making the movie about gay Jesus on Netflix that I'm really interested in. But apparently it's really pissing people off in Brazil. So they threw Molotov cocktails at the creators of this. I guess it's a movie that depicts actually Jesus Christ was gay. So that sucks to hear that these religious people... If you want to talk about this, contact me. We can do a talk about this through on the channel. That would be great. Well, yeah. Happy New Year, everyone. And I'm glad to be part of this series. That's super sweet. Okay, let's see. Shu Pebbler, you're also here, but you you sent me some really, really, really interesting texts. Thanks for jumping into the show. Thank you for our listeners. I would say my thing that I'm kind of disappointed in is the false advertisement of Taco Bell. And I can tell you the sad story. I love the double decker. Back when Shaquille O'Neal was like still playing basketball, you can buy a double decker for like $1. Now they were like $3.76. I'm like, gas is still like about $2. Why is double decker so expensive? Turns out they took double deckers off the menu completely. And since like, I guess of last year to save costs because Taco Bell is losing money left and right. But they brought them back for a special weekend where they're now $1. But they changed the recipe and it's no longer refied beans inside that's combining the soft and hard taco. It's cheese. It's that gross cheese that they use. And I went there saying like, hey, could you instead of using the gross cheese, just use the refried beans. It's literally right there. You have the ingredients are like, we can't do that. I'm like, why? So it makes no sense. So yeah, don't false advertise. Also, I would say, hey, when you have a commercial that looks like it's going to be a delicious taco, don't sell me the gross cheese. You got to look inside the taco. So that's that's my that's it's a long winded way of going back to you. You got to look inside the taco. You can't just take false pseudoscience and be like, yeah, I'll eat this. It's no problem. It's like, no, you got to look inside that. Make sure you're getting what you think you're getting. Right. There you go. Wrap that up in a bow. What's your closing thoughts? Oh, well, I was like, say that if you like the content of this podcast, be sure to visit our site at digitalprethought.com and click on the blog button. If you have any questions you'd like to submit to the show, send them to AskAnAtheist at KnoxvilleAtheist.org. Yep. And finally, remember, everybody is going to somebody else's health. And the time to worry about it is when they prove souls, heavens, health are real. And until then, don't sweat it. Enjoy your life. Been a great show. Thanks, guys, for coming on and appreciate you being here. Great. Thank you. Thank you. See you next week, guys. Yeah. Take care. Thank you. See you.