 Hello and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio Hour on WOZO Radio 103.9 LPF. I'm here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We're recording this on Sunday morning, October 23rd, 2022. I'm Larry Rhodes, or Doubter 5. And as usual, we have our co-host, Wombat on the line with us. Hello, Wombat. Hello. And our guest today is D. John Richards, all the way from across the pond in England. Welcome. How the devil are you? Doing well. Thank you. Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism, and sciences. And conversely, we'll also talk about religion, religious faiths, gods, holy books, and superstition, and today, scientism. And if you think you're the only nonbeliever in your town, well, you're just not. In Knoxville, in the middle of the Bible Belt, we have a group of over a thousand of us, the atheist society of Knoxville or ASK, and we'll tell you more about them after the mid-show break. Wombat, you want to get into our topic for today? I do, but I did want to touch on something that happened to me last night. I was watching a fighting event, USC 280. And it took place in Abu Dhabi and they have a lot of different fighters from all around the world fight in a cage and they go through combat. And when they're done, they do an interview with the person. And it turned out this is strange enough, but every single winner wanted to thank God for their performance. And I was just like, what a bizarre thing that we don't allow fighters to take, like, certain supplementals or like testosterone, but we allow them to use God as a way to enhance their performance. Can we please ban God as a performance-hancing drug? Because that's really unfortunate. And if anything, God should just let us know which one he picked ahead of time so that way the other person doesn't have to get beaten up. Because it seems to be 100% of the time. Well, the other aspect of this is that presumably the losers also invoked the assistance of God. So he's obviously any successful 50% of the time. Now, here's my thing. I thought about that. I thought about that long and hard. I was thinking to myself, maybe God just didn't like that person was lying. And if God was just more straight up about with who his favorites were, that would help the betting lines. It would help people not have to go through needless harm of getting beaten up. Just be like, oh, God chose this person, not you. Fantastic. We already know who's going to win. You're done. You're done. Yeah, but why don't the losers blame God for not winning? I mean, if he gets credit, he should also get the blame. And there's another can of worms as well, because if God has favorites... Yes. What's his criteria? Is he a racist? Is he homophobic? How's he picking these people? If there's one thing we know about God, he loves to pick and choose. God's love to pick and choose. I'm just saying, just make that public that way. Because I can't be in a person if someone's using God and I only have push-ups and fish filets. I need more stuff on my side. What do you think, Larry? Yeah, true. I saw a meme the other day. It was kind of funny. It showed some Hasidic Jews in their traditional dress. And it says, these are God's favorite people according to the book they wrote. Right, right, right. Good one. According to the book the Mormons wrote. Right. God's favorite people. Hindus or whatever. It was a weird thing because there were both Christians and Muslims at this event in Dubai. And it was weird when the Islamic winners were like, they were saying in their language, I love God. God's good, great. And everyone's cheering. And then when a Christian wins, and I did this through the blood of Jesus Christ and everyone's booing. And I'm like, what in the world is going on? Just like, at least consistently pick the God that's in the area. At least that way everyone can have a good time. That's all I was saying. Got to work on the favoritism a little bit. Just make it more clear. God is so generic. The word God, I mean, everybody claims it. That's why it's on our money, I'm sure. The job description, not a identity. We have to remember that. John Rich is just like to check in with you before we dive into it. How you been? Yeah, I've been fine. Thank you very much. I've been doing my usual nefarious deeds. We had an interesting, it was just to us here and I again, because our guests didn't turn up for free thought hour. We don't know why. So we're hoping that he's not fallen a victim of some nasty incident. But anyway, if you need a new guest, let me know. I'd be happy to tap in or if you need someone to just if the hours work out right, just let me know. Yeah, yeah. Excellent. Very kind. We shall definitely do that. Thank you. Shoot me a reminder too. I should be able to drop in depending on the course. Excellent. Yeah. The problem with having a cat is just wake up with a bed full of cat points. We try to schedule. We try to schedule guests throughout the calendar. And so we have our vacancies start in November, I think now. But yeah, we definitely put you on the list. Great. Thanks guys. Cool. So what else have I done? I've been preparing to go on holiday because I am taking three female children to France tomorrow. Very fancy. Wow. Yeah. So is it as impressive in England when you say we're going to France as it is in America? Because when you say that in America, it's just like, whoa, you guys are going to Mars basically, but for you, it's just a hop skip and a jump across the. It's a drive nowadays. Yes, that's right. 35 minutes through the tunnel. 35 minutes through the tunnel. Wow. Yeah. Beautiful though. Okay. Well, that's great. Larry checking in with you. How you been? Oh, speaking. Fun. Yeah. One quick thing in sign language holiday because Larry is wearing suspenders going on vacation is doing this. So like. Or. So like, I think the idea is if you're a farmer, you're on outside and you're just like snapping your suspenders. I think that's the rule for it. Strange. The etymology behind it is weird. Let me, I'm going to have to look. Larry, how you been? Fine. Fine. Playing my computer games and working every day. I did take the bike out yesterday for the final ride of the year. I say that because all summer long, I kept it parked outside with a cover over it. And, but during the winter, I put it in. In the garage and I put it in yesterday. So I don't guess I'll be getting him back out until next year. Okay. Not bad. All right. Looked it up real quick. It is this, but the problem is, is like you're snapping your suspenders as a farmer taking a break. So you're not working. You're just like standing up just like, you know, chilling. That's what the word vocation vacation comes from. By the way, it's a different thing in a British sign language. So it will be. I was going to say that is so American sign language. And this makes such good radio. Very true. Very true. Very true. We're not only not a farming community basically, but we also don't have what you call suspenders. We have braces and they're out of fashion. Oh my bad. So yeah, you know, I've been looking for a good sign language podcast. I haven't found one yet. So, you know, there's a good one out there. Hopefully we'll, we'll find it. But on radio, it's kind of rough guys. I've been talking about. Scientism all week with our friends over on Reddit. Who have listened to last week's shows and let us some really great comments and thoughtful ideas about the idea of people worshiping science. And I thought, well, what do you even mean by that? And it turned out to be this whole, you know, Mount Hills of Canada, Canada worms of pejorative terms that Christians use against people who argue science or people who think that science is the absolute best way to understand the universe exclusion to any other point of view. And I'm like, well, this is a lot to think about. I'd love to have, you know, some of these ideas mold around by you guys. And I think we're a better place to start with. Then what are the different usages of scientism and how do you guys use those terms? Larry, we'll throw it up to you first. What do you think of the word scientism? Don't you dare pull up Webster's dictionary. Oh no. Scientism. I think it, well, it's a prerogatory, a prerogatory word. It's a demeaning word. In other words, they're trying to throw the onus on scientists and people who believe that scientists reveal truth about the world. And, you know, it's just, it's kind of a curse word that they use against us. And of course there are, it's not in the dictionary and it's not a real word. It's just something they made up so that they could kind of put it, could put us down with it. Well, that's how it's come to me. And yes, originally. Yeah, I'm, I'm aware of the word in the dictionary, but not in the use that you are using it because I agree that. Scientism is an insult. Scientism is a word in the dictionary. Yeah. But it's also, it's also an insult that people throw out at each other. And I don't know if that usage is in the dictionary, but I'm aware of that in pulp culture where people will be like, oh, well, you're, you're claiming that I'm wrong because I believe in the Bible, but you just believe in whatever Einstein wrote in his book or what Darwin wrote in his book. And it's just a scientist and we're both using faith. You want to see we're both using the same thing. What makes your system better than mine? Yeah. Yeah. Jonas is, what do you think? Well, the trouble is here, people have taken a word which was coined fairly innocently. Right. It's just to mean, and I have got a dictionary definition in front of me here. The opinion that science and the scientific method are the best or the only way to render truth about the world and reality. Now I don't entirely agree with that. Same. That is the gist of how the word came about. That's what people originally meant it to me. But of course, what's happened since then is it's been bowed their eyes. It's been manipulated by people with an agenda who want to use it to agandize their mission. And as, as Larry said, it's become it's become to be used pejoratively. And so it's now taken the assumption is by these people who aim it target science scientists with this word. They're claiming that these scientists are claiming to know everything, which no real scientists would claim to know. Right. I do. I'll go ahead Larry. I was just going to say they wouldn't even claim to know anything outside of their specialty. Right. Right. You know. So I have my science. Yeah, I have an issue. I have an issue with both terms. Obviously, we can go into the pejorative in more detail, but at least from the strict term of. Science is the belief in a general sense going off the top of my head that all things in the universe can be empirically tested. And that through empirical testing, we can come up with the best way to derive actionable certainty. So like when it comes to determining what we're going to do next, the scientific method is the best way or empirical testing is the best way to do that test. What do you think John Richards? Well, yeah, I got a couple of things to respond to with that. So currently, not everything can be measured. Right. So, so a lot of things are outside the purview of science right now. However, science continually extends its boundaries as, as new technologies are invented to investigate new phenomena. Right. Like, you know, when microscopes were invented up until then we didn't know there was a microscopic world. We were following microscopes. We did. How terrifying was that for the first kind of you like, eww, they're everywhere. They're everywhere. They're everywhere. Oh, this is terrible. Yeah. Imagine that. Absolutely. Don't drink that pond water. So we've been doing that for hundreds of years. And of course the most recent one was LIGO. The technology which enabled us to detect gravity waves for the first time, which was successfully detected gravity waves in 2017. So we're continually pushing the boundaries of science outwards and being able to apply it to areas where it couldn't previously be applied. So, but at the moment it would be a foolish thing to do to claim that we can use scientific method to apply to everything because you know somebody's going to come up and say, love, you can't apply it to love. Well, you know, we're working on it. If you can define the variable well enough, then yeah, I believe to an extent we can be measured. I also say this. Science has this very useful thing. In fact, in my opinion, the most useful thing in science. And it's, you might have seen it in math like UND or undefined or I don't know. Or just plain X. Yes. Or unknown variables. Science has explicit unknown variables, which means we can't come to determination yet because we don't have the mechanics or the criteria to properly figure out what this thing is. Science has room for that. There's room for I don't know in science. And I don't mind that to be the most useful impact and any sort of method because you're not forcing yourself to a conclusion that could be wrong. You're emitting when you don't know something and science has that. And so when I say there's room for application and science and everything, I mean, even in the areas where it's I don't know, that is the scientific indication of pursuit because you're not making any claims of knowledge. You're at least recognizing I have room to grow here. And science does grow. And I find like that's such a great. Intellectually honest way of going about trying to figure out how everything in the universe operates. Not only that, but even the measurements that we can make. They have probability bars. Don't they? Yeah, they do. They get that little place in this range somewhere. Yeah. So when I say, at least when I say, I feel like science could be used for anything in the universe. Obviously things that aren't things wouldn't be applicable in that statement. So like gods, ghosts, souls, we can't apply science to that, but it's still be one big. I don't know, but also with the caveat of being. Please at least determine that this is a thing that's worth investigating first before we actually spend any time doing it because right now there's no evidence for it. Just like unicorns or pixie dust and stuff like that. Yeah. Oh, go ahead, John. Good scientists wouldn't claim to know everything or even to know to know anything with absolute accuracy. Correct. However, what people who accuse us of scientism want us to do is to do that is to claim that, you know, we can solve everything. But the thing is what alternative method do they have? There, there's the crux that I have a problem with. That's the crux. That's the crux because it's a, it is an argument that sounds very tantalizing to me, but it's also. So like the idea is you have to exclude all other points of view except for science because there's no other method that has been equally as good as science. Right. There is something better out there. Please present it to me because I don't see it. Isn't that bordering along the lines of a black swan fallacy where it's like, I've never seen a black swan. I'm only seeing white swans. If you're saying there's a black one presented to me, otherwise there's only white swans. It's like, just because we can't demonstrate to you in this moment, the better method doesn't mean that there couldn't necessarily be one out there. What I like about science is that it is willing to adapt to the best method. Science isn't necessarily its own codified thing. It's just the best method and process that we can use to understand the universe. If a better method is presented to us, that becomes our new science. That's the way how I see it in my head. Larry, what do you think? Yeah. It's like those people who say you can't trust your senses. You know, they're trying to make a point or something. Yeah, I saw them. Well, you can't trust your senses. What else are we supposed to use? That's it. Right. Right. We have a hard limitation on like our five sentences, our five senses and how or our many sentences, and how we interpret the universe with our own cognitive biases and all that other stuff. But if we can find a way to subvert that maybe and like a robot showed us like, Hey, this is how we can do it without limitations of smell, sight, understanding, childhood trauma, all this stuff. This computer is the best way of doing it. Or like these aliens who have like this better technology who came down and showed us what's up. That will become our new science. So we'd still be using science. Our science would evolve, but it's not necessarily the idea that the science that we have now is the end all be all best method possible. It's just this evolutionary process. Larry, what do you think? Well, we do have science that will develop technology to extend our senses. I mean, we can now see things in infrared. We can hear things. You know, all of that stuff, but it still comes down to our senses reading the readout of those instruments. Right. I mean, we still have to depend on those senses. Right. Like, for example, we have this device in our lab called a scanning electron microscope. It sees things that are too small for you to see with light because light doesn't travel in a straight line. Light travels in waves. And those waves are so big that things that are smaller than the wavelength of light can't really be seen very well. So we have to use electricity to zap it because electricity moves through space more or less in a straight line. And it hits our sample. And what the SCM does is convert an electrical signal into a visual signal that we can that we can appreciate. All the SCM is the microscope that we have is a electric city to light translator just so that we can appreciate what we're looking at. But at the end of the day, it's still our eyes looking at it and who knows what what small, you know, defects come about from that translation process. But it is a way for us to see things that we can't necessarily see with our eyes. We are extending our capability of seeing things through technology. And, you know, I can't imagine that what we have right now is going to be the best method a thousand years from now. Like a thousand years from now, we're going to have something substantially better. That's still going to be our science. Thankfully, that's still science. That's still that's just the progression of what we've developed. And I want us just to recognize that. Yeah, we may not be able to find a better version of science right now, but we're making a better version every day. And so if you give us tomorrow next week, we're going to have something better than when we had last week ago. That's huge. When we say, Hey, show me a better method than science. It's like science isn't a thing that's stationary. It's not a snapshot. It's a process. Right. You got to remember that constantly moving, constantly improving, which makes it better than dogma because it's always willing to change and recognize when it doesn't know something. That's what I value so much about it. John, do you have any points? Yeah, well, something that's moving but never gets anywhere is my vote here. My background. But I wanted to say that the important thing to get here is that it's, it's not about knowing everything. It's about discovering. It's the best method for investigating that we have. And as you say, tomorrow we'll have a better method like the, up until 2017, we didn't have the, the LIGO interferometer. So we couldn't reject gravity waves, but now we can. Correct. Yes. So now let's get into the more, I think, hot topic, which is we've discussed scientism in the, the empirical sense. We understand what science is. What do Christians mean when they call us scientists or scientism, scientism. And we can't speak for Christians, but we at least have, you know, comments from Christianity blog posts where they equate their religious points of views with how atheisms. Appeals to experts in science. And they say, you know, this guy isn't a biologist yet. He'll believe what a supposed authority in biology claims what happens to human beings, you know, what they claim billions and billions of years ago. And in my head, I get little red flags where it's like, you know, it's not so much that we're believing it just based on because someone said it. It's that there's a substantial degree of evidence to support it where every step of the way of that evidence is a fairly mundane claim to where it's a much less extraordinary claim to, to interpret all of this than a God did it, which is still a substantiated and a very extraordinary claim that needs more than a book for me to believe that it's true. My problem generally with the, the pejorative sense of scientism is that it tries to equate baseless faith with. And I find that to be a very dangerous equivocation. John, do you have an opinion? Go for it. Yeah. What you're talking about there is the appeal to authority fallacy, which, which Christians and other thieves are very prone to do. They, they love a big powerful now all in, and they have subsidiary novels in their hierarchy who represent God's just a big no at all. Like, Yes, I am. Okay. But, but, but what we have, what we, if you look at a science book is written very differently from the way a Bible or other scripture is written. They're all about stories. Right. There's no story in a science book. It's boring stuff. It's about this. These were the ingredients that we used in the proper, the, you know, they, what we started out with this is the method that we applied. And this is what we observed and it's, it's very dry reading. It's not a page turner. No. So, and the point about that is anybody, it's like following a recipe to cook a pie, you know, anybody with access to the correct equipment could repeat that claim and get the answer for themselves. Right. It's not about appealing to an authority. It's about the potential ability to repeat it yourself. It's also falsifiable in the sense that if I don't get the same result you do, I can contact the author and be like, this doesn't work. You need to revise something because I did everything exactly as you said. And if enough people say that, then the passage, something needs to change. You can't do that with the Bible. Every single time I don't get a prayer answer and I can't be, you're not allowed to criticize or, or complain about the Bible's claims. But the thing about science is we love to be criticized and to find fallacies in our thinking because that's how we progress. Right. Larry. Yeah. No, even today, if you're, if you talk to believer, you won't be very long before they bring up an anecdote about somebody in the church or the next church over in the next date who had a miracle performed on in church and everybody saw it. It's an anecdote. And they rely so much on these anecdotes that just go around between the parishioners. It's, it's obvious to anybody outside, but not inside because basically the Bible is a book of anecdotes that you're supposed to take on based on how you. So here's the scary thing is for some of the people, a significant in my head, a significant percentage. It is just as obvious to them that it's just a book of claims, but in order for them to rationalize the time that they're spending staying in the church and avoiding all the backlash that they'll come from them leaving their faith, they have to say, well, I guess this is okay to come to the conclusion that a God exists. And I guess this is a good method for figuring out that things are true. A book where people just say that it happened. And when I look outside at science, I see them looking at books where they, there are people who are claiming things happen. So that just must be the way that, you know, that's a good way to determine things are true. And the problem is that that's a very dangerous mindset because then they read the news and they're like a billion people said that this country should be bombed. They're like, well, I guess that's true because, you know, that's what my news is saying. That's what my president saying. That's what my local friend group is saying. I'm just going to go with the flow. What do you think Larry? Yeah, but they don't take it one step further that every religion has their own holy book. And they contradict each other. They can't all be right. Yeah. And not only that, but they'll vote on stuff like that too. That's why this is a problem because, you know, we're in midterm elections right now. Stuff like your beliefs matter because they inform your actions. And so when it comes to like actionable certainty, I prefer empiricism rather than spiritual claims. And when people want to call me a scientist or say I'm using scientist for that, let them because I also think gravity is a thing. Does that make me a gravitism as well? You know, like we have to be able to draw the line somewhere. And I find like what we understand science to be, it's a very useful method for determining true things from false things. Larry, we're near the end, the bottom of the half. We are listening to comments after the break. Well, sure. Be sure to stay tuned for the second half of the digital free thought radio hour here on W O Z O radio. 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. 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 five and we're on W O Z O radio. 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Let's talk for just a moment about the atheist society of Knoxville. ASK was founded in 2002 and we're on our 20th year. We have over a thousand members now creeping up on 1100. We have weekly in person meetings every Tuesday evening at Knoxville's old city at Barley's taproom in Pete's area, which starts around 5 30. Look for us inside at the high top tables or if it's pretty weather outside on the deck. Also, we have Tuesday evening zoom meetings on ask. If you'd like to join us, email us for details at ask an atheist at KnoxvilleAtheist.org or let's chat s e at gmail.com. You can find us online on Facebook meetup.com or at our website, KnoxvilleAtheist.org, or you can just Google Knoxville Atheist if it's easier to remember. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you can still go to meet up into a search for an atheist group in your town. Don't find one. Start. Oh, no. Oh, no. I looked up how to say holiday in British sign language and it is the most offensive thing I've ever seen. Oh, no. I can do this because it's radio. I'm not making this up, but the sign for holiday or they don't say vacation in British sign language. It's called exclusively holiday. Oh, my God. Oh, no. I know. And we can't repeat that. We can't repeat the radio, but that's exactly what that is. How bizarre. Wow. What a beautiful language. The double finger. The double finger. Great. Anyway, guys, we are talking about Scienceism today and we're going over some listener comments. Feel free to leave more in the YouTube channel. Our posts when we open up a chat room on Reddit, we'll be happy to take them. We're going to go through some comments that we've selected before the show. First, we'll just do a recap of the first half because SpaghettiO asked, what is Scientism? And John Richards, would you mind giving us a quick recap on what Scientism is? Well, sure. The first original meaning is that it's the proposition, the concept that scientific method is the best or only way to discover the truth about the world and reality. And I subscribe to that, but that doesn't mean that I could claim that it does, that it's finished, you know, that it has already discovered everything. But when theists use it pejoratively, what they are claiming is that scientists and people who believe that science is that best investigative tool are claiming that they've solved all the mysteries. That isn't the case. Right. Larry, anything to add? No, there still be mysteries no matter what. You were saying a little earlier that we can investigate things like souls. And we could, if we had an example, but in 2000, 3000 years nobody has ever supplied us with an example to examine. Not even the ghost hunters. And they're professionals. That's right. Give us a sample and science will take off. Right. If it's not ghost hunters, who are you going to call? My whole thing is when you can demonstrate that it's worth pursuit, then we will begin the pursuit. But until then we live in a world where we have a limited amount of time. Right. And pixie dust, unicorns, souls, ghosts, the Kraken and all these things need to be demonstrated that there's an option for them to exist first before we even begin to analyze it. Because when I do research, it's not from the idea of like, well I'll just Google it and determine if it's right or wrong there. No, it's like we're going to actually spend money on this. We're going to actually try to figure this out. We're going to take man hours. We're going to investigate it. Let's make sure it's worth our time. And until you can demonstrate that it is at least potentially worth our time, don't waste our time basically. John Richards, what do you think? Look at the alternatives to scientific method that we've experienced in the past. They include a crystal ball, you know, palmistry, reading the tea leaves. Boris Gobs. Yes, they're just laughable. So at the moment, science is the winner. And willing to adapt and change as needed. That's the most powerful tool behind it. Absorbs good ideas and gets rid of bad ones. That's why science is so great. Larry, I'm going to throw this one out at you. This is a comment from formerly committed scientism evolutionist Darwinists. You know, it's all noise used to generate or used to try to bastardize people from the rest of society to make it easier to attack them. Should people who believe in gravity be called gravitas or a Newtonian? What do you think? Or electricians. Right. It's all a way of demonizing the other as religion is so famous for doing. They've separated people and individual groups for centuries, millennia saying we've got the truth you don't and therefore, you know, we shouldn't have to pay attention to what you're saying or what you do. We should accept hateful labels should we? We should. We are so good at making them. If anybody's going to label me, I want it to be me. Okay. I actually know a guy named me at our lab and it's very I know a guy named you. I know a guy named me and I know a guy named her. But so it's just a very, very well, the very, very interesting lab space that we're in. Let's see. Schizmo also concurs. He says just another label. We don't need scientism. Thank you. But no thanks. Larry, I'm going to throw this one out at you. John Richards, this is for you. This is on evolutionary creationism. So, and this is by text bliss. She writes. So how could one affirm evolutionary creation while at the same time try to claim or embrace the historical Christian faith. It's like understanding that all the toys under the tree are Christmas are from your parents. Reindeer's can't fly and elves don't work at all in the North Pole, but still believing that Santa is real. What's that cognitive dissonance all about? It's a desperate attempt to justify belief in creation, isn't it? Because what they're saying is that evolution is true, but it was actually kickstarted by our God. And there's no evidence for that. We call that wishful think he annity. Whoa, say that one more time. Wishful think he annity. I love it. Wishful think he annity. Okay, cool. I'm going to keep that in mind. Go ahead, Larry. Oh, I thought my audio went out. I was scared for a second. Oh, and it's also a way of putting God in the gaps. We don't have a particular explanation for a phenomenon, so we'll shoehorn God in there. And Neil deGrasse Tyson says, if that's your philosophy, then your God is an ever receding gap in human knowledge. So have fun. As we discover stuff, so he retreats. I couldn't think of a more pointed, you know, indictment against the being than the more you understand the world, the smaller they become, you know, like, what does that say about the religion in the whole? All right, so I have a heavy topic right here. This is from a commentator from last week and she mentioned that she wanted to stay anonymous this week and she says, thanks for taking this topic from last week's discussion. I'm a disclaimer that I am an atheist, happily so, and a researcher. Scientism, to me, is real and defined as people taking scientific claims as fact or faith without applying the same degree of skepticism that generated the claim in the first place. Quality research produces reports that are accessible to anyone, including folks who just sit and skim information online from their arm chairs. However, armchair research isn't the same as the process that generated the data in the first place, yet people can just as easily identify and fight on reports as if they internalize them despite lacking credentials, practice, experience, or authority on the subject. Just like dogmatic people can read a verse from their holy book and assume that they're experts on morality and wisdom. I understand that this reckoning will be difficult to swallow and may even hurt a lot of people's feelings, but honestly, there's a reason scientists are hired from academia and not Craigslist. It's annoying to see niche areas of science get popularized by people who don't understand it, because then it just mystifies what science is. To avoid a longer rant, religion isn't annoying because it's religion, it's annoying because it causes people to turn off their skeptical mindset. When science is used in the same way, it can be just as annoying and dangerous. Even the most scientific claim from the most confident person is not an excuse to stop being skeptical. Question everything. Wow, I'm glad that that was accepted well. I generally believe everything that was said, and I think there was a longer discussion in the chat thread on the idea of well, is that being actually scientism or not? In a nutshell, in a nutshell, what that person was saying, and thank you for phoning it in, was that dogmatism is universally bad. We should not, nobody, scientists, atheists, whatever, nobody should be dogmatic. If you watch scientists being interviewed, they're always very careful about their expression. They don't claim that anything is perfectly correct. They say the evidence indicates And that's why I don't have really much of a problem with deism. They don't have any dogma. They say God created the universe, but it's not a God we ever heard of. We don't have any idea what's in his mind or her mind or its mind. We can't tell you what it or she wants you to do. There's no book. Deism, to me, is harmless, but there are atheists that don't want to stop there, don't want to allow that to happen and continue berating a person who believes in deism. And I don't know, I don't go along with that. If every religious person was a deist, yeah, a lot of things would be a madly better. We wouldn't be on the radio. We'd be like, my job is done and he'd fly into the sun. Right. To me, deism is mother nature and I can accept that. Right. Except again, deism seemed to, like any God would think that it has a purpose or what a mind will per se. And I don't think nature does. No. I've had an analogy brought to me before that I always like going back to, but it's sort of like, if you're on an island that has worms underneath a banana tree and you only eat the worms under the banana tree because you don't want to climb up to get to the bananas because that takes effort. And so you're just spending your day just eating worms, gross worms from the dirt when there are bananas right above you, if you just were willing to climb up high enough to get them. That's how I kind of see deism is sort of like if you're right there, you don't have any of the baggage of dogma, but you're still using this weird methodology to believe in a supernatural being even if it is dead and it's not affecting your life, you still have this hang up. If you just took one extra step, you'd be able to at least be in a position where you have a better methodology of appreciating true things and false things because if you're still convinced that a God is, that was real, but is just dead, that's still bad because you don't have any evidence or any rational basis to convince that that's true. Speaking of evidence, it really gives me when believers question the evidence that scientists presume, I mean presented, like carbon dating, things like that. You have all the mountains of evidence and they say, well, it's not real, it's not true because blah, blah, blah. And it's almost like if you had good evidence, but they don't and they don't demand any evidence from their own beliefs, their own religious teachings, you just have to take that on faith. Yeah, slight blast there. A little bit. I got a comment from YouTube that I think would be useful. Please guys be nice to this person. Alright, so this one is, oh Ty, remember that story where you talk about the guy drowning and what God answered him according to your version? Well, you are wrong about that. You see, the afterlife is the goal. It doesn't matter how one dies and gets to the live in eternity. Does God can not like or dislike any type of death because always dying should satisfy the goal which is getting to the afterlife. So if you guys don't understand the context behind this, I told a story where a guy was drowning and he asked for God to help him, but he ended up drowning anyway and he goes to the pearly gates and God's like, I like drowning people. Haven't you read my book? I do it a lot. I love it. I love it. And so like it's a twist on the idea of like the boat coming and then like a lifeguard coming and then a helicopter coming and the guy still drowns and it's like, God's like, I give you the helicopter, the lifeguard and all this other stuff, but the idea is is this commentator saying that any way you die is okay because that gets you to the afterlife and that's the goal. What do you think about that? So if the goal is the afterlife, what is stopping and not corresponding from suicide now? I said be nice. I said be nice. Didn't I start that anyway? Larry, I don't know how to respond to that. Well, he's glorifying death in one vein and minimizing the harm of it or the badness of death in the other. Remember for the religious death is just to change vajras and you know, it's almost like why should we avoid it and type of mentality. Also, excuse me, if they say the purpose of life is death, what is the purpose of life after death? Because once you're there, you've received your goal and you've got the eternity to sit there with no purpose. Right, right, right. So Dada's trading room has responded and I'd love to get your feedback on this and why people just don't suicide. He says, if that would be the truth passed on to people, most people would likely choose to die instead of suffering on life on Earth. After all, the quicker ones get their internal paradise faster and that's better, right? So some justification for staying alive, even if in misery had to be invented, one such justification is sin and the threat of internal torture in hell. And so that's the reason you kill yourself with sin. Yes. So is he in favor of assisted dying for the terminally ill then? You know, I remember that argument being brought up for assisted suicide. People being like, you're condemning these souls to die and people who are literally in pain for the rest of their short lifespan are like, please don't let this story, you know, completely delete my quality of life from my last, you know, a couple of months. I like, I want to go as soon as I possibly can. Please. Wow. It's depressing how this actually does affect people's lives. We can have this like, cordial conversation here, but there are people actually suffering as a result of the dogma that people leave. Yes, we've gone to a dark place. Hmm. All right, let's go into the next comment. Thank you, Dottice Trading Room, always for the comments. Next one, I'm going to throw out to Larry. Larry, full disclosure. Oh, here's, here's three rules. Number one rule, and this is given to us by Grumpy Kong. Doing science is awesome. Number two rule, worshiping science is not. And number three, the tendency is not limited to the scientifically illiterate. It does nothing to forward the cause of scientific excellence to worship science. At best, it encourages fanboy behavior. At worst, it justifies charlatans. Sometimes those charlatans cost people their lives. Larry, what do you think? Well, he's just made a series of claims. I'm not sure there's a question in there to answer. I want your feedback. He doesn't have to be an answer. Just doing science is awesome. Worshiping science is not, and the tendency is not limited by the scientific illiterate. So, you know, I agree with him on the worship. I don't think we should worship anything. Worshiping is counterproductive. It sets your mind to not asking questions, not holding anything to accountability. We shouldn't worship anything, not in science. Absolutely. Who's educating worship? Not me. Not me. And we're all saying we shouldn't worship science, right? No, we just, we're convinced that it's the best approach to take to find out, find answers from nature. Right. All right. So I got another one for you, John Richards. This is a comment that I'd like to get your feedback on. It's written by, uh-oh, Ibear. And I bear says, scientism is essentially just another word for empiricism. It's just the belief that the scientific method is the correct way to understand the universe. That's the definition that you guys were talking about originally. That's what scientism actually is. But most of the time when you hear scientism, you're hearing a believer accusing a non-believer of worshiping science. Right. It's an attempt to pretend that the non-believers position is equivalent to the believers in foundation and support. And that's a lie. Um, that's not scientism, not by the official definition or the more common pejorative meaning you are talking about something else. If you say otherwise, something that is not scientism, you need to understand that. What do you think it's, it's distorting definitions as a weapon to try and get your message across. Right. I agree. Bellability is not the same thing as scientism. Uh, what do you think Larry? Well, one of the things you said earlier was, uh, intriguing. I thought I'd address it. Uh, it says, um, why do people just believe science? They can't, uh, the, we're talking about people who don't do the science. We just, uh, listen to what the scientists say and believe them. And, uh, generally, uh, that's the, that's the concern of believers when they see us, um, quote, worshiping science as it were. You know, you don't do the science, but you know, you, you claim to know that evolution is true because of the science. Right. Well, you know, it says, there's a meme here that I'm looking at. I can't give the credit to whoever wrote it because I don't know who it is. It says creation, evolution. Nobody really knows for sure how that stuff began, but I'd rather trust the dudes in the lamp coats who aren't demanding that I get up every early, every Sunday and overdress and apologize for being human. I mean that there's a lot to that in that, um, religion makes an awful lot of demands on people. Um, tithing, tithing, you know, going to church several times a week, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And they do want worshiping. Yes. And they threaten you. Science doesn't threaten you with eternal life, you know, eternal pain. Uh, it's, you know, they, they present the results. Their peers evaluate the results. And when they agree, they publish the papers and we have a new science. Well, something we need to respect and recognize is that religion is marketing in its peak form, right? The product that no one can see taste smell here, but yet everyone has a personal experience with it. And you produce it by constantly making a iconography that people have to, you know, put on their bodies, tattoo on their arms, chest, whatever your, their kids are sent to schools that have the same marketing appeal. Uh, people are shunned if they don't have the same idea or the brand loyalty that you profess to have them yourself. This whole strategy is just very targeted propaganda towards a particular product or a brand. And alternatively science has a very good brand as well. It's brand association would be tied to credibility, smart people, authorities and fields that like seem to be technologically very useful and everyone loves technology and having new cool things. So what religion is trying to do oftentimes is pool the useful aspects of the science brand and, and accommodate it in its brand of dogma. And I find that to be, you know, a scary thing because who can champion against that other than adherence for critical thinking and who's listening to us compared to like who's listening to religious people. But also it should be indicative. It should be indicative that science is doing a good thing on its own. It's not asking you for your typing. It's not asking for your soul. It's not asking for your worship yet. The people who are are trying to borrow as much as they can from it to get the credibility from it. That should be telling because science isn't doing the other way around. Science is like, you guys have nothing to want. I have nothing for your gods. I don't even want them. I'm just going to keep doing our own laboratory thing. And people are going to keep trying to pull credibility from us because we are, in my opinion, the most credible way to try to figure out two things from false things. That's why you have religions called Scientology or why people try to lambass scientism because they're trying to denigrate science down a little bit and propose their religion up just a little bit or at least put them on equal footing. I think we should hit back at them and coin a word religiology. A religionist. Because your religiology is telling you that. Is your scientism telling you that? What they're trying to do is make claims that they can't justify. But they want us to adopt. That's definitely like scientism. With the easement bit on the end. An ideology of sorts. But it's without the foundation that science actually has. Right. I got a closing comment. Before we end up the show. There is a very, very speaking of cool technology. There is a website called writer. RYTR. And it's an AI research. It's an AI writer. And all you have to do is give it a prompt. And you say make an article about why the. The. Why France's economy is. 2% higher today than it was yesterday. You just put that as a sentence and it will. Generate. Like a one page report, three page report, whatever you want. That sounds like if it was written by a human being. Sounds like there's all the same tones enough because it's just using algorithms to pull together. Artificial intelligence. And it is terrifying because now I realize that a lot of the articles I'm reading are basically pulled by the same algorithm as well. So two things I'm learning one, even for things that I, I respect the sources. I should be willing to be skeptical about them because I don't know what was produced or what was used to make the articles that I read. Right. Or what the agenda was behind them. So even scientific articles, I need to be, you know, skeptical against, but also if you prompt this AI robot to write an argument for the existence of God, it just flat out says, I don't have a belief in God. I'm sorry. You have that problem. So. What's the name? What's the name of this? It's D pack Chopra. Okay. Okay. Okay. I just hope the high school students don't get a hold of it. No, I'll never, I'll never turn in a paper again that it's their own. I love a eyes that don't do our dirty work for us. They're like, no, that's not worth my time. I'm not going to do that. Anyway, we're near the end of the show. John Rich is anything that you like to play before we head out. Yeah. Well, I've, I've done a, a, a UK. Anything is a UK podcast this morning. That was very good. I had Esther, our guest. And we talked about. Not my religion. Because there's a lot of people who begin to perceive that there's something wrong with their religion. But they don't want to give up the entire thing. So they put it on the pick and mix counter. And select the bits they like and say that these are in my religion and these aren't. So they're, they're sorting it out, sort of watering it down. And they won't go to that last step. It can mix. I've never heard that before. That's great. That's like cherry picking what we say. Yeah, yeah. I'll say, I'll leave this. Thank you guys so much for your comments. Feel free to leave more and we'll get to them in next week's show. Thank you everybody. And Larry. I still don't know what religion is all about or atheism. You've got to figure out a way to, you know, people write books on that. Oh man. You should. I happen to have done that. You can go to Amazon and find my book. Atheism. What's it all about. And actually you can go to my website. Digital free thought. Dot com. Click on the link. I'll see you guys next week. Actually, you can go to my website. Digital free thought. Dot com. Click on the blog button and read many of the articles that are in that book. Also, we have a radio show archive there. Atheist songs and many articles on the subject of atheism. That's digital free thought. Dot com. If you have any questions for the show, you can send them to ask an atheist at Knoxville. Atheist. Dot org. Or let's chat. At gmail.com and we'll answer them on future shows. Remember, you can find the atheist society of Knoxville at Knoxville Atheist dot org or just Google Google Knoxville Atheist. And if you're having trouble re re leaving religious beliefs behind, you can get help at recovering from religion. Their website is. Rationally enough, recovering from religion.org. You can find this show and podcasts everywhere. Just search for digital free thought radio hour. Remember, everybody is going to somebody else's hell. The time to worry about it is when they prove that heavens and hells and souls are real. I don't believe they are until then don't sweat it. Enjoy your life and we'll see you next Wednesday at seven o'clock p.m. Say bye everybody. Have a nice day. And good. Thank you very much. Thank you.