 103.9 FM, WOZO Radio, Knoxville. Ladies and gentlemen, Digital Freethought Radio Hour. Hello, and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio Hour on WOZO Radio 103.9 LP FM, right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We're recording this on Sunday morning, November 7th, 2021. I'm Larry Rhodes, Board Outer Five, and as usual, we have our co-host, Wombat on the line with us. Hello, Wombat. Shoot from the hip. We always do. And our guests today are George Brown, the two and a half. How are you? Originally from Brooklyn. Yeah, I'm fine. And we have Dred Pirate all the way from Canada. Hello, Dred. Oh, how are you there? Nice. And D. John Richards from England. What part of England are you in, London, I think? That's my house. Yeah, that's Arundel Castle, which is in West Sussex, which is on the south coast. Okay, cool. Welcome. The Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism, and the sciences. That's someone. And conversely, excuse me, my ice maker went off there. Conversely, we also talk about religion, religious faiths, gods, holy books, and superstition. And if you think you're the only nonbeliever at Knoxville, then why are you just wrong? In Knoxville, we have a group of over a thousand of us. Excuse me. And we'll tell you more about the ASK or Atheist Society of Knoxville after the mid-show break. What's our topic today? Why am I wearing underwear if this is a finely tuned universe? And all the other problems with that argue. Good question. Yeah, good question. But before we get into it, I'm going to throw in Dred Pirate Higgs for our weekly invocation. All right. Our noodley Lord, who art in a colander, I'll dente 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 noodles, and the sauces, and the grog, whatever and ever. Gary, I love the passion. I love the passion on that one. No, it's so good. I like that. That was probably the best condition yet. Guys, I have some bad news. Oh, go ahead, John. John. I have a confession. Yeah. I didn't close my eyes in the invocation. It's OK. There's enough. There's enough noodles. Either did I. Yeah. Oftentimes a pastor doesn't. So there you go. Congratulations. Got some bad news, everybody. There's no better sign that fall or summer is over than when Larry has stopped wearing his fancy shirts. So he just has the muted colors. Great. Great. And slightly off-grade panel shirts. I hope you enjoyed your summer. It's over. And I can tell it's really, really cold out. Guys, speaking of which, so cold, but I hope you guys are having fun. Let's do a quick catch-up, see how everybody's been. John, what have you been up to now that it's no longer summer anymore? Well, it's barely noticeable. The leaves haven't fallen yet. The weather's still mild. It's not gone below 10 degrees, which in your land will be 40, no, 50. Yeah. And so I'm still going about in my shirt. Mind you, it helps to have an electrically heated seat in your car. Yes. I remember when I got that for the first time, it was one of the best things. They even have electrically heated steering wheels, which I think the next level is cool. No, I haven't gone that far. They got motorcycles that heated handlebars. I think that's kind of awesome too. Larry, now your queen came, your queen came here to the United States and we had to provide her with electrically heated toilet seats. Really? Really? I find that hard to see. It's true. Surely just mink clad would have done. Those I never got, because it's like, find electrically heated toilet seats. Anytime I need to use a toilet seat, I need to immediately sit on a toilet seat and not wait for it to heat up. If I remember sitting on one, it's a solved problem in a couple of minutes. I don't understand that. Do you know you've shattered an illusion now because I didn't think the queen pooed. That's right. Exactly. It's not regal, is it? Sure, sure. Larry, how you been? How's your fall turning out? Fine. Brought the motorcycle in and it's put up for the winter. Brought the plants in from the deck. So, you know, it's definitely getting there. It's nice not to be sweltering hot outside, although we did have a month or so there of really nice weather. Right. It's cool for sure. Yeah. We get like two... Time changed last night. It sure did. We're going to get into that, trust me. But like we got two good months of weather each year in Tennessee. And that's when you get the transitions from the really hot to the really cold. And it's beautiful out every day. But then, you know, when our winters come and we're getting ready for the snow, let's go. Gary, who knows better than snow than you? How... What are you... What's your anticipations coming up for winter over there? I mean, you're no longer having that heat wave, right? Are you... Is there going to be a cold? Oh, yeah. Well, yeah, we're looking forward to the cold snap coming up here in about a month. Galena Mountain is to the south of me. It's actually in America. Oh, cool. Because we're saddled right up against the border. And Galena has had its first permanent snow on the top. Yes. Which is a sign that winter has arrived. Okay. So that's a good thing. Now, I want to show this to the court, but you did say Galena Mountain is in America, as in not in Canada. Is that accurate? That is correct, yes. How many times have I been corrected by a Canadian when I said it's in America? And then they say, we're America too. We are America too. But it's... You guys know what I mean. I was like, no, no, no. You meant you when you said America. We're also America. It's like fine, fine, fine, fine. My farm, I have a farm. Me and my dad, we have a tree farm. And it is actually right up against the border. Okay. We're as close to the border as you can get. In America. Fred. Yes. How's the plans for the border wall coming along? It's already up. It's just... You can't see it. You can't see it. The new technology. You ought to see it. It's the new technology. Like where that... Where that slings are being come from? I do want to mention that I'm on a weight loss thing here. I lost... In the last month, I lost 19 pounds. Wow. Yeah. Good job. Good for you. I'm going to do that again. And then I should be where I want to be. 19 pounds. Yeah. Nothing high into your life. But like, isn't that like 10% of your body weight right now? No. Okay. So how are you doing? Actually, it's pretty close. It's pretty close to 10%. 19 pounds. 19 pounds. Yes. 19 pounds. Yeah. Okay. Don't get me started on the metric system. Because we'll have this argument if you really want to have it. But pounds are the unit for weight. If you want to talk about mass... If you want to talk about mass, we can talk about mass, but there's a reason why America has a space program and England doesn't. Okay? That's right. We do now actually. 19 pounds. Yeah. You would want us dread. You want to get the hole in your pocket sewn up. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. Lost 19 pounds. I get it. All right. All right. All right. There could have gone a lot of different ways, but I'm glad it went that way. Oh, boy. George Brown, what's up? How you been? I got my COVID shot, my third one on Friday, and I've been pretty miserable from that. So, I've been miserable from something else that I want to share with you all. Talk to me. Which is this. I go on food binges every once in a while, and I have gone on a food binge with Matzah. Okay. What is the word on that thing? Manischewitz. Manischewitz, that's the brand name. Wow. I've never heard that word, but I've never seen it. Now, this is unofficial, Matzah. This is not for Passover or anything else because it's got spices and salt and poppy seeds, I think. It's very yummy. It's Ramazza. I odied on this. Now, this is unleavened stuff. I gotta tell you, this is like eating lead balls. You gotta stop odying on the Matzah. Lead balls? Lead. Lead. Lead. Lead. Oh, lead balls. Yeah. Yeah. I paid for that binge. Don, what's up? You got a lot on your occasion. Do not odie on Matzah. We won't. We won't. Don, what's up? It's none of my thing. This is Poppy Day because it's next week. The parade will go past this house. Now I have an actual question. Is that an actual flower? Did you daughter draw that for you? Is that a sticker that your daughter drew? Yeah, you can buy these in the street. One of the ones with the pen, you know. Yeah, exactly. All new information for me. Guys, I have been waking up at one hour early for the last two weeks preparing my body for what I think is one of the dumbest holidays in American culture, period, that I wish we, including Canada, just for our argument of Canadians out there, but I think a lot of the other parts of the world do this too. I wish we would stop. I wish we would get rid of it, but it's daylight savings time where effectively in fall, we move forward or we fall behind one hour, fall forward, we fall forward one hour. Fall back. Fall back. Fall back. We fall back. Whatever it is, I lose an hour of sleep. Is that accurate? You gain an hour. My whole circadian rhythm is slowly messed up. No, this is why I hate about it. This is what I hate about. This is what I hate. So you say I get an extra hour of sleep, but basically you're saying I also don't have anything I can do in the sunlight after I'm done with work, because now when I get out of work, it's pitch black dark and I can't go to the park. I can't go for walking. I can't play disc golf. I have to figure out, you have to wake up extra early so I can get off an extra hour later or earlier so that I can have time with the sun or deal with it until February comes up. Dred, what's up? There are actually in BC here anyway, there are communities that have opted out of it. Yeah. So like Golden, they choose not to abide by it. Yeah, it's a good thing to push for. It's an artifact of our agrarian culture. To walk me through it, why do we have that? Well, it's because of the harvest time and all that kind of stuff. Why in hell do we do this really? Why do we do it? I thought it was because... What is the reason? I thought agrarian was summer vacation, but also like, hey, if you only have candles in your home, here's a good way to not have to spend so much money on candles. We'll just all wake up a little earlier in time with the sunrise and now we have more wax for stuff. If we all agree to this, we'll all save money on candles. We're all in agreement? Great. Now we got LEDs. Now we got incandescent lamps. Now we got solar panels. Now we have so many different ways of properly lighting indoors and buildings, but we haven't even updated this policy. It's kind of bizarre. George, what's up? I saw you raise your hand. Well, first of all, I want to say that for now, a dread pirate is now correct when he says standard time, because we are in standard time. Yeah. But I had to learn this back when I was doing radio work. I had to announce the time change. And so it has been engraved in my brain now for eternity. Spring ahead, fall back. Yeah. But it could just easily be spring back, fall forward. So it's one of those terrible mnemonic devices that could easily... That's what I had to announce. And so it stayed in my mind. But the whole thing is so stupid. Like the rest of you, I spent an hour this morning setting my clocks. I mean, in fact, I still... Oh, I can't even bother doing that. I'm doing one at a time. Larry, what's up? I was just going to say, I did a quick lookup on why DST. And it said the nominal reason for daylight savings time was to save energy. It was first changed and instituted during World War I. And then instituted again during World War II as part of the war effort. That makes sense. Yeah. Whole world is going to work. Safe fuel. I'm just reading that. John, what's up? During World War II, we had summertime all the year round. And when it came to summer, we had double summertime. Really? Why was that? Two hours. Two hours ahead of creating. Oh, so what was the reason for that, John? Daylight saving. Yeah. So that we didn't need to consume fuel to light our way in the dark. So we wouldn't have to do that if the universe actually fine-tuned for us. So no, let me tell you how I can... Nice segue. Thank you, Gary. Thank you, Larry. I was trying to get there. But like, here's my thing. If I live in a world where I have to do daylight savings time, let's just pretend that's the universe we're in. I'm not even going to come up with a world war II one excuse, but thank you very much for bringing it up, Larry. I should be able to set my clock internally to whatever the external clock is. Why do I have to wake up groggy or extra tired every single day? Why do we have to live in a world that if it's finally tuned for me has our daylights completely off balances where no one can have like a consistent, you know, after-school curriculum or after-work curriculum, or depending on how old you are, just things that you can do when you're not working or whatever you're having fun with the same amount of daylight every day so that you can have like consistent seeing your life. You know, we could be in a binary system where we have two suns and never get dark. We could be on Tatooine. Yeah. Yeah. We could have just had like really nice eye flaps overhead that like actually block out all light so we can go to sleep properly or just get used to sleeping in the sunlight. There's so many things that we could have done to fine-tune this universe better than it is now. It peeled the earth like an orange. Yeah. And flattened it out. You know, flat earth, that would be perfect. We'd all share the same day and night exposure. And while we're still going on to this round tangent, I still have the underlying fundamental issue that I have with the fine-tune universe. I still have nipples and I don't know why. I don't understand if God was made in my image why he has nipples. I don't understand why I got nipples. There's twice as many nipples as there need to be on earth and no one's figured this out. That was my mind. What's up, John? Well, there have been a few medically verified cases of men actating for what purpose? For what purpose not? When the mother dies and the babies left hungry. When I run out of cream for my coffee. In a fine-tuned universe. In a fine-tuned universe. There would be an available Walmart with a prepaid card in my pocket. There you go. I mean, let's get to the nuts and bolts for talking about fine-tuning in this episode. And gripes that you have. Does it need for underwear? Yeah. And the need for underwear. Why am I wearing underwear if this is a fine-tuned universe? What is fine-tuning? Why are we bringing it up? Maybe we should start with basics. John, have you ever heard of the fine-tuning argument? I mean, you mind walking us through it? Yes, I have. And I've also heard of the refutations like the puddle that thinks this hole must be made for me because it's such a perfect fit. Yep. Yes. This is... There is... There's no evidence that anything was... When you assume that fine-tuning is a thing... What is fine-tuning? What are you referring to? Just help us out from the very beginning. The universal constants being within the ranges that they are. Okay. And if they weren't, the universe would not exist as we know it. So, like, fine-tuned dials to make sure that life on Earth, specifically here, is just for us to exist and have a happy life. So, if you're making that claim, then you're assuming, first of all, that the constants are tunable, and they aren't. That's why we call them constants. Or that there's a tuner, which really, really coalesces with the religion. That's what they want. That's why the theist loves the fine-tuning argument because it means that there's somebody with their fingers on the sliders and an agent that's doing it. A little disco tech, guys. Like, all right, it's your time. Turn your clocks forward or backwards. I don't know. I'm having a fun time. Confetti is not pushing. John, why do you hate this argument so much? Well, as I said, there's no evidence that the constants are tunable. They are just what they are, you know? And we've called them constants because they are values that we've measured. Right. And they don't and can't change. Indeed, yes. So there's no tuning happened. There cannot be any other value. Exactly. So it's a non-claim. The issue I specifically have with this on top of that, John, is that not only is it no evidence to support fine-tuning, but it also flies in the direct contradiction of what the scientific perspective is, is that, no, this universe isn't fine-tuned from as far as we can tell. In fact, this universe hates life for the most part, and we're actually quite fortunate that we're in the place that we are right now. Yes, you're right. If any of this changes, which it's bound to, we're not going to be around for a long time. So we better start figuring out how to get along with each other and make shifts that go to other places where we can also survive because resources are all right. Dread comes next, but there's something I want to come back with later after you, Dread. Dread, okay. Yeah, well, I mean, again, it seems to be just another expansion of this, you know, we're anthropocentric viewpoint or view of the world. And it's just, I mean, first it was the Earth and the solar system and, you know, the galaxy and now it's just thrown out to the universe. It's just an ever-expanding bubble. Right. John, what's up? Well, the other aspect to it is, if you do assume that the constants are tunable, then you've got to assume that they have been set with an intention. And this intention was formed nearly 14 billion years ago. And it's quite difficult to imagine that at that time there was enough knowledge of what might happen in the future for the intention to stand a chance of coming true. Right. And it's like saying that my great-great-great-great-grandfather married my great-great-great-great, I've forgotten how many grandmother with the intention of producing me generations later as an offspring and ignoring the fact that there were going to be all sorts of events that were unpredictable in the gaps. Right. That's a brilliant way of playing it. Man, George, I would like to have your feedback on the idea of what John just said. Like, is it possible that you know what you're going to have for breakfast 14 years from now? Or, like, next month? Like, the idea that you can plan something now with such an incredible gap seems like such an extreme gambit. Yeah. It'll be massive. Yeah, what a terrible way of planning things. The Lord works in mysterious ways. He knows the phrases, guys. Now, to get to... I was once faced with the challenge of having to tune a French harpsichord for a recording session. Okay. And, oh, my God, the French, you know, are known to do nothing like anybody else in terms of design. And nobody does anything like the French. And this harpsichord... We're talking about tuning. This harpsichord had two tuning pins for each string, a coarse one and a fine one. Yeah. I could not tune that instrument. It was my downfall as a harpsichord technician. Tuning things is difficult. It's very, very complicated. Well, I mean, this was like... I had never seen this before, I had to live up to a reputation that preceded me and I couldn't do it. I mean, I couldn't even hear this instrument. And it was so strange. But what I'm getting at is the concept of tuning. We are in agreement as a society that we will tune to a certain standard. And I think that rock music has helped, like, enforce a standard worldwide for tuning instruments. Because before that... I think you're on a brilliant point because why even bother tuning a universe when you could have made it perfect at the very beginning? Like, if you were playing it for 14 billion years... Why make a harpsichord that goes out of tuning when it could have just been an electric harpsichord that sounded just as good as the real thing and you never have to tune it? Or some other, if you're a higher power, you can not go out of tune. Just make a universe that doesn't go out of tune. God, it's like that. You had all the options at the beginning. You're all powerful. What are you doing? I think that the thing that we like about authentic acoustical instruments is the fact that they are buggy. They are imperfect because they're made out of imperfect materials. The electronic instruments are too perfect. They are consistent. Yeah. Go ahead, Dredd. You can even think about a guitar. You can tune it down or you can tune it up depending on the kind of sound you want to produce. Yeah. But I was going to say you can tune a harpsichord but you can't tune a fish. Exactly. God could. But he's not doing it. Now we got fish with legs and we got fish with gills. What am I doing on the land? This makes no sense. I'm going to have to use evolution to make legs and all this other stuff. Why would he make a world that relied on evolution to fit humans to this environment when he could have made us out of titanium so they could live in space or at the bowels of the earth or whatever and travel between the stars. Yeah. Oh, man. You just tripped on something really terrible because if you have Christians that believe in fine tuning but also don't believe in evolution so that they can stay happy with that scenario because some Christians just don't believe in evolution yet they believe in fine tuning which is small changes hopefully over a grand period of time. What is the definition of evolution? Isn't it literally that? Isn't that the third pillar of biology? Can't have one the other. I'm going back to my rant with the Confederate flag and the American flag because things aren't compatible with each other. Pick one. It's not that they don't want to believe in evolution. They can't believe in evolution because the perfect word of God says that humans were created whole the way we are now in his image. So if they do fold and accept evolution then they have to throw that part out of the window. If there's no garden of Eden then there's no original sin. If there's no sin then there's no need for Jesus to have died. The whole thing crumbles. They're left with a lot of fear unresolved fear with death and a lot of questions that they never had a chance to properly think about or answer or contend with. I just want to clear up something that George said earlier about acoustic instruments and why we like them so much because the voice is an acoustic instrument and the reason that choirs sound so good and the reason that we do double tracking of our own voice on a recording is because we love the thickness that going in and out of phase gives it. It also hides up some good mistakes too. It's a good way. Guys I think we're at the bottom of the half. Larry is that accurate? Pretty close. This is the digital free thought radio hour on W. O. Z. O. Radio 103.9 L. P. F. M. right here in Knoxville, Tennessee and we'll be right back after this short break. Welcome back to the second half of the digital free thought radio hour. I'm doubter 5 and we're on W. O. Z. O. Radio 103.9 L. P. F. M. right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Now let's talk about the atheist society in Knoxville or ASK who was founded in 2002 we're in our 19th year. ASK has over a thousand members and we have weekly in person meetings at Knoxville's Old City at Barley's Taproom in Pizzeria every Tuesday night about 5 30. Come down and look for us out there on the patio. If you'd like to join our Tuesday evening Zoom meeting let's say you can't get out you don't want to get out it's cold or you live out of town. You can email us at askanatheistatKnoxvilleatheist.org and we'll be more than happy to include Jenner meeting. All are welcome. You can find digital free thought radio hour on Facebook, meetup.com I'm sorry ASK or Knoxvilleatheist.org or just Google Knoxville Atheist and you can find us there it's just that simple by the way if you don't live in Knoxville you should still go to meet up and search for an Atheist group in your town. Don't find one. That's right one bet where you want to pick up. Guys there's a great YouTube channel called Prehistoric Tools and Prehistoric Stories where it's essentially people building things using prehistoric tools but there's no commentary. It's literally guy with a bowl who's just digging in the dirt and then you skip to the end of the video and all of a sudden he has like a swimming pool and you're like how do you build that with just a bowl and if you go step by step you can see him building using a bowl to make like a clay thing and then using the clay thing to have a fire kiln and then using the fire kiln to like drop metals in and like make actual hard metal based tools and using those metal based tools to like dig deeper holes and then carving everything immaculate like how it needs to be in order to make a swimming pool and when you watch it from the very beginning of the show sometimes it's as silly as like guy planting seeds in the ground and like you're like what the hell's going on here and at the end he has a sandwich and you're like oh I get it from beginning to end I wanted to touch on something that John was talking about like making things with intention like there's a scope where it starts being really really silly like the further out you're looking ahead of the things that you're about to make and yeah when you consider that God made if God made and God probably did it let's be honest 14 billion years ago try to make this that we're in right now with the with the concepts of like well let me make gravity this and let me make heat this and enthalpy this and entropy that and it'll come out to people with internet talking about me in the future and then phrasing me in small churches all around this one little blue planet it's a result thing John what's up and then he was prepared to wait 13.8 however many hundreds of millions of years until we turned up because we've only been around for about I don't know 300,000 years right he was a very special guy channel possible it's the most bizarre YouTube live stream positive like it's called wait for it the God podcast it's like wait for it it's going to be amazing it's going to be amazing what did it pay off to like to get to this after 13.8 billion years to have one planet like this being like God is so good he's so good you could have made Christian music at least even better like the lyrics are terrible come on Larry what's up and all of that leads up to where we are now which we expect Jesus to come back next weekend and destroy the whole thing I mean you talk to any evangelical Christian and they're going to tell you that Jesus is due and when he comes it's going to be a thousand years of I don't know Satan rule on earth and then it's going to just burn right that's a whole build up to it Gary going ahead oh well I was just going I think about my other family members who are all Christian and some more so than others and just thinking the idea that you could be happy in heaven knowing that your atheist father is burning in hell how do you reconcile that how do you think I feel with my mom my mom wants to go to heaven she knows I'm definitely not going to be a Jehovah Witness if I was going to be any religion it'd be like some weird I'd be possibly probably or Janus or something like that but like it is a it's a sincerely baffling concept that someone can be happy knowing that their son is not anyone could be happy in paradise knowing that there's a place that's not paradise where people are internally suffering like anybody who's in heaven isn't good enough to be in heaven if they're okay with the hell like right so in my head either heaven's empty or has like one crazy person in it heaven is filled with sociopaths right well just one just one crazy sociopath because that's be perfect for everybody and it can only be perfect for one person that's be perfect for everybody right if you look at it as someone who is creating the religion you know thousands of years ago it creates a template where not only do you have to be in the church but everybody that you love has to be in the church and you have to put pressure on them to get them in the church you know because you don't want to see them burn yeah it turns the burden on the believer to convince everyone around them and not the idea of God should have had better messaging because literally if I had better messaging I'd be able to make a weighted decision on if this is a better evidence yeah because devil had it devil knows that a God exists yet he's not going to heaven so give me at least that same evidence I can come up with it myself George what's up are you talking to me I'm talking I don't see anyone else you know I'm I'm doubly damned in this country because I'm Jewish for one thing that makes me an outsider and second thing is I'm in an atheist so I'm a Jewish atheist I'm doubly damned and therefore I don't know what you guys are talking about because you're all Christians at birth and now very Christian at birth we were raised Christians from birth we were we were born without a religion we were indoctrinated into right okay correct yeah so my question not not knowing about this is if if I'm an official let's see if I'm an official Southern Baptist okay is somebody who is an unofficial Baptist gonna go to hell because they're not in my church depends on which church you go to you're gonna hear a different thing in almost every single different church just count the number of Cadillacs the pastor has you know that's your best intention I would say this I find the idea that the Christian narrative for how the universe was made with fine tuning to be a really sad and depressing format for how to explain the universe because I found every single instance that fiction is never as incredible as fact we can make up something and have a really cool story but when we go to the actual facts of the matter when we actually look at the universe and see how expansive it is and how little we do know and the amazing things we still can discover every day I am overwhelmed with how amazing facts are compared to any sort of fiction and when I hear well there was a God 14 million 14 billion years ago and he decided all the concepts and the factors and the knobs make the universe where this earth exists and now we're here I find that to be a such an not an unpalatable story but just a boring story compared to what the reality is where it's just like listen we don't even know how this stuff started but here's some theories and then at best we have this giant bang of an explosion energy bursting out everywhere matter condensing from in material space to finally getting where these planets are forming and the stars are exploding and making heavier particles and coming back together we have fission, we have planets slowly turning into gas giants and then condensing into like solids for the first time we have comets flying through space where there's glycine molecules they got water contents and they're landing and all of a sudden you have like simple amino acids and then you have RNA and then you have an RNA world period and then all of a sudden you have like DNA and it's still evolving even now like you can find microorganisms that are still hey have you guys upgraded DNA, DNA, yeah it's like yeah we've done that like millions of years ago catch up guys like nah nah nah we're good we're good it's an amazing thing to like right now have a snapshot of like all the eukaryotes and probaric probiotics prokaryotes yeah yeah yeah and then us walking around and there's still microbes inside of us like mitochondria that like used to be their own organisms but now have their own little DNA cell and you're just like whoa every cell in my body is like technically two things that you suggest hang out with each other and then with like very permeable cell walls they like now hang out and that's just the start that's just the start of how crazy this world is every single thing is amazing and so open to discovery yet I feel like Christians wanting to accept the story of a fine-tuning universe and way things are is such a bizarre condition because it just lacks it lacks imagination it lacks so much compared to what the things actually are George what's up well if I if I can paraphrase what you just said how I interpreted it was that fact in other words reality is much more diverse and much more interesting than then the alternative which is very rigid and confining and I think that what I'm dealing with here to understand it is an understanding that it's natural for people to want things to be familiar a lot it's comforting the familiar is comforting and what's that? and simple yes and simple yes and which is less and I think that there's something within us that likes this you know it's a childlike the unknown is threatening it just goes way back to where we were always were but the unknown is so interesting it is you get a taste for it it's like ooh I love this it's like when you love hot sauce for first time you're like this needs to be in everything Gary what's up yeah I just wanted to I had started reading this book some time ago it's called Religion Explained and it's by Pascal Boyer he's the loose professor of collective memory and individual memory at Washington University in Missouri a fascinating read and it really goes into why humans actually came up with you know this they have a propensity for religion and what is the basis of it it's just an amazing read so if anyone is really interested in kind of delving into the nuts and bolts of why religion actually came to be a thing in the first place Religion Explained by Pascal Boyer is a great book Dredd I'm not going to answer the book for you so hopefully don't let me know if this is a spoiler but I just feel like humans have a desire to know we have a craving to understand but we don't have a standard for the answer that we are given we have a craving to know but if we are given a terrible explanation we'll go with it we'll put in our pocket and work with it until we can't work with it anymore and what I wish is we had just as high as an appreciation for standards of evidence as we did for that craving to know so that way when we are given an explanation for how something works or how something needs to be or why we should do a certain thing we are critical of like figuring out better opportunities to move forward with information and with our actions because right now I feel like we just are subservient to misinformation and that has led us to so many a myriad of circles that we've gone through culturally and still trying to get out of human up to now in my head won't say it's a spoiler let me know if that's even close well I just wanted to mention so where I match in this book it talks about the tendency of people to look to other people as experts or as specialists and that sort of it's sort of a differentation that happens in culture and society where people some people gain more money or gain more goods or gain more knowledge and then there's a tendency for people to respect and appreciate that right and then that is how religion kind of came about I mean that's kind of where I'm at that's a really really over simplification because it's a 300 page book and I've just put that into about one paragraph so George go ahead yeah the thing that I'm thinking about Gary is is that we have not just one religion in the world not just the religions that we are familiar with in North America or Europe but we've got a whole bunch of different religions around the world what do they all have in common and I think not being an expert the first thing is that a lot of people gather together and accept each other as part of the group and the group as a whole so it's a social thing I am included I am not excluded when I go to church on Sunday okay but there's an interesting point there's an interesting point he makes about the place of rituals and that ritual of course you find a lot of ritual in religion but religion is not a necessary part of the performance ritual you know the one is often seen as the cause of the other when in fact it's the other way around that ritual happened first and then religion kind of formed around it as a justification for performing ritual well Gary's alluding to the inclusion of supernatural agents and what not stupid hats existed even before religion so just because religions have stupid hats which falls into my three tier list of is this religion stupid or not when I eat bacon do you have stupid hats and the third one is still something I'm working on but let me eat bacon don't let me wear a stupid hat that's good your hat is deliberately weird but it's okay John what's up don't forget magic underwear magic underwear that's targeting it's a thing though that segues us back to our topic which is why do we have to wear underwear if this is a finely tuned universe why do we have to wear underwear if this is a finely tuned universe well because it's not there's no tuner there's no tuning it just is what it is and we evolved in it it's like the puddle and the hole on the ground it's just we are here because the universe is the way it is now if there are other universes that don't have these settings then there wouldn't be life there wouldn't be people saying why I'm here why are the settings the way it is we're here because the settings are the way it is so we can all go with no pants then can't we that's right sure go ahead Dred what's up it just reminds me of head checkers guide to the galaxy when the improbability drive transforms the two objects into a whale and a flower pot and the whale is talking about its experience as it's coming to the ground and then the flower pot says oh no not again oh yeah yeah that's funny have you guys ever seen there was a Pixar movie called soul I haven't seen that yet but it plays into the same trope of there's a bunch of souls waiting to come to earth oh yeah and they get to choose the personality and all that stuff I can imagine a realistic more grounded version of that where it's like you're a soul in heaven and God comes out to you and he's like okay guess what I made this whole universe for you it's all fine tuned and all you need is one here's your body by the way it has two eyes in the front okay second thing you got an immune system because there's all sorts of things that's going to kill you here are your lungs you need to breathe all the time even when you sleep you must keep breathing or you'll die don't breathe just any air though by the way and I didn't put any filtration systems in your body so just be in a place where there is air that you can breathe not counting the ocean you can't breathe liquids either sorry about that I didn't figure that out just like the earth in it disclaimer session like should I be taking notes no no no no it's going to be good you have no notes whatsoever I'm just going to hope that you're born in a place where the people know how to take care of you you got at least a 30% chance unless you're Adam unless you're Adam which I don't know what happened with that guy I even forgot I don't know what happened with that guy anyway but I can imagine just the craziest like little briefer power point presentation on so you decide to be a human being on earth okay alright let's go okay oh man there's so many different directions it'd be like one of the most best dark comedies or like the best horror movies all together and then it ends and it's just like walk out of the movie theater or like oh yeah I can't walk in movie theaters anymore because we got COVID well there's your own there's your additional there's your sequel right there but it is a fantastic thing to imagine that we are still here that we are old generally like we've survived so many times around the sun despite the fact that the sun even is trying to kill us and doing its best job possible to heat us from so far away it's like why aren't you dead yet die already but you guys don't have UV blockers but you have I'm doing nothing but nuclear fission all day long why am I not killing you guys because the lord works in mysterious ways terribly mysterious terribly patently objectively horrible and horrendous outcomes inefficient and a ridiculously inefficient and that was the devil responsive and that was the devil yeah so fine-tuned universe I would say final conclusions John Richards final conclusions on fine-tuned universe yeah sure you mentioned something interesting there about how we've got two eyes to look forward for prejudice we have to breathe all the time well fortunately we've evolved a subconscious mechanism to keep us breathing all the time so we don't have to think about it and we and it was asleep and still wake up but dolphins they don't have that they don't have an automatic sharks no they don't have an automatic breathing but it's important for dolphins because they've got to come up for air so they don't have an automatic breathing mechanism it's a deliberate choice to come up and breathe for them it means that they can commit suicide they can't just by deciding not to and this has been observed yeah it's pretty nuts this world is so crazy so crazy world all right that was a dark take Dredd what is your final words on fine-tuning aside from suicidal dolphins yeah well I just wanted to mention here Loma who watches the live stream regularly he says fine-tuning seems to imply perfection is there a difference between perfection and fine-tuning and I suppose even if the universe is fine-tuned it's clearly not perfect because like you say we have to wear underwear right exactly George Brown you got final words on fine-tuned universes well boy the history of musical tuning has been of constant change in fact that and geographically difference different so what is considered in tune in New York let's say in a complete ensemble is different than what's considered in tune in the Hague Netherlands and I have experienced that by myself I won't go into it but in music in our experience of music we do want to hear things in tune in resonance very much so and we don't like it when we hear it not done that way and this is a phenomenon that I think we all agree upon so to me as a person who's worked with resonances I also enjoy paradox the times when it's not true and I don't understand it Billie Holiday sang out of tune and we all love listening we all love listening to her so what did she do that was different I can't answer that she sang out of tune well she did with emotion two points I'd like to bring up one is fact is always going to be better than fiction in terms of a storytelling fact is always going to be a better storyteller than fiction believe it or not and if you can tell the story well there's no challenge it doesn't matter what you come up with I can pull up a microscope and show you something way crazier in the universe that I can come up with on the spot way better than any Star Wars universe or anything like that but the thing is if I were to make a comparison that's like more analogous to what I'm talking about it's sort of like if there was a CD album anthology I don't know if you ever heard of called kids bop which is kids singing classic or alternative modern music parents will buy that cover for their kids to listen to it's kids bops is the third eye blind kids bops wage against the machines kids bop uh green day and it's just kids singing their classic hits in a choir it's really terrible and the music is kind of like lower down just a little bit so it's not as extreme so the kids can sing it in the car as they drive to disneyland or whatever and my head that is uh fiction kids bop the CD anthology is fiction and the real music that they're basing on off of is fact and if you don't understand it that with that breakdown I don't know what else I can tell you but the second thing I bring up is um I can easily make a more fine tuned more efficient universe anyone can and I think the easiest first step I do is I just make half as many nipples because we got way too many nipples in this universe and there makes no sense why I have two of them I I could have dealt with one but I got two and I need I don't I won't ever need them in my life why do I have everyone there are superfluous five six seven eight nine ten more nipples on this podcast show there are ten superfluous nipples here they take up entropy what are you doing we can get close to a I heat death universe dread what's up well I was going to suggest that uh because this is this is a really interesting topic but maybe uh next week or in a coming show we actually talk about also the anthropic principle sure because that is like fine tuning but a little more I think in depth and a different a different take on the same thing sure why not I think it's a I think it's a good topic cool John what's up I see you on the subject of nipples I know we all like to talk about nipples but it's bilateral symmetry and of course other animals don't just have two nipples they have maybe ten we could have had zero that's still symmetrical but that's what I'm saying we could have had one in the center of our chest what I don't I don't believe in this bilateral symmetry argument because we only have one nose two nostrils but a friend of mine had three he had an extra one down there he called him triple nipple okay tripp knit Larry save us we're at the end of the show well I was just for that argument we if you talk to most what is it people who doctors who help women have babies they'll tell you that most embryos start off as female and that's probably where the nipples come from and then over the gestation period it you know because of the chromosomes it will develop into a male or a female and they have to come in but you still have your nipples you know so it's there's a natural inclination even if there isn't a are you saying God started off as a woman well at least he started off as an embryo that's the whole thing of course I don't think he exists at all but that's a common contention that we have with others here's something really controversial then you could say that women failed to become men no or we are an aberration on femalehood we're an aberration on female kind we're an aberration with her mutation makes more sense that way in some weird ways right alright guys hey what's atheism Larry I have no idea what it's about well I do have a book to tell you what it's all about it's called atheism what's it all about nice and you can find other digital free thought stuff on my website which is digitalfreethought.com click on the blog button for our radio show archives atheist songs and many articles on the subject you can find my youtube channel by searching for doubter 5 or Larry Rhodes if you're looking for a podcast you can find us on apple tunes podcast there it is amazon or podcast everywhere if you have any questions what's the name of that podcast oh digital free thought radio hour just like this program yep and by the way if you have any questions for the shows send them to us at askanatheist at noxvilleatheist.org I don't know is that org yeah or what was your email for your let'schatse at gmail.com there we go by the way if you're a member of the clergy a preacher an emom or pastor or priest but no longer believe the claims of religion there is help for you at theclergyproject that's clergyproject.org if you're watching this on youtube be sure to like and subscribe remember everybody's going to somebody else's hell the time to worry about it is when they prove that heavens and hells and souls are real until then don't sweat it enjoy your life and we'll see you next week say bye everybody bye everybody bye