 Oh, thank you already. Hello and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio Hour on WOZO Radio, 103.9 LPFM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today is May 29th, 2022. I'm Larry Rhodes or Doubter 5. And as usual, we have our co-host Wombat on the line with us. Hello Wombat. Hey, that's me. I'm the Wombat. All right. And our guests today are Boudreaux from Kentucky. Hello, Boudreaux. Yeah, George Brown, the second and a half, formerly from Brooklyn, now of East Tennessee, and Dred Pirate Higgs, all the way from the west coast of Canada. Pretty much. Welcome. Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism, and the sciences. And conversely, we'll also talk about religion, religious faith, God's holy books, and superstition. And if you get the feeling you're the only non-believer in your town, well, you're just not. You're in Knoxville, in the middle of the Bible Belt. We have a group of over a thousand of us. And we'll tell you more about that group after the mid-show break. Wombat, what's our topics today? We're going to be talking about value and all that comes with it. I think it's going to be an interesting conversation. But I forgot to mention that I'm not just the Wombat. I'm carrying... I was going to make a bad joke. I'll say, I'm the Wombat plus these guns. Let's go. That's me. The transformation complete. Yeah, we're going to get into a really meaty topics regarding value today and a bunch of other stuff. But before we get into those meats and potatoes, we're going to throw it up to Dred Pirate Higgs for our weekly invocation. Arrrrrr, our noodley Lord, who art in a colander, al dente be thy noodles, thy blood be run, thy sauce be yum, with meat, as they are with vegetables. Give us this day our garlic bread and forgive us our cussing, as we forgive those who cuss against us. And lead us not into ketoism, but deliver us some carbs. For thine are the meatballs And the sauces and the grog whenever and ever. Robbin. I love it. I love it. I love it. Guys, I have been having some fun playing some disc golf. I've been having some fun with enjoying the weather. I had my mom over here for a whole week last week, had a really good time showing her around the city, letting her open up my life. I hadn't seen her since COVID. So that was what's been going on with me. And now she's back home. She's safe. We had a great visit. I'd love to hear how everyone else has been doing. Let's go around the horn. Boudreaux, what you been up to? How have you been? Hey, everyone, been great. Two shows in a row for me. This is great. Not bad. Not bad. Not bad. Fully tuned bass guitar or it looks like a bass guitar in the background. Not bad. No, wait, that's not a bass guitar. I feel bad now. That's a five string bass. Yeah. OK, let's go. All right. Nice. Nice. Nice. DJ. So actually, I've been I've been playing some Chris Cornell songs with some friends. Nice. Just this month was his five year. The five year anniversary of his death. So we're going to play a bunch of Chris Cornell songs for some friends. And yeah. Fantastic. Oh, and I caught COVID. No. Are you sure? Is it right now? Right now, you're sick. I'm not sick, but I've tested positive. So let me tell you the great thing about this, isn't it great to be sick now when most people are vaccinated? The the hoarding has stopped. You know, you can go to the doctor's visits. There's plans in place like that. That's the how it should be working. Like now it's not as big of a deal. And I'm I'm really happy. Happy for you to get it now. And then the rest of it, it looks like you'll bounce back. I did have a funny story about Boudre when I visited his home. He was like, oh, you play guitar. You can play guitar like he has some guitars on the walls, but they're all like condition tailors, like very high level guitars that you don't just like pick up and strum. I'm like, I don't want to break this. I barely know this guy. I feel like he's setting me up for an insurance fraud sort of situation. Please take back your instrument. Thank you. Hey, how have you been? I've been doing pretty good over the last week, getting lots of stuff done now that we're finally getting some half decent weather. So nice and doing a lot of catch up for our spring has been a month and a half behind. So, you know, the the things that need to be done pile up rather quickly. And and so, yeah, the moment the sun shines, I'm out there getting it done. But the weird thing is you have too many hobbies. You're either you're either firemanning. I'm not I'm not firemanning anymore. I that's been done for a while. I have you touch the top of the iceberg. It's the Higgs boson particle discussions, classroom. Anarchy, driver's license, rebellion, hosting weddings, fighting off Cougar, security guard, tech talk, man. That's right. I don't know what just doing. I'm just getting things done, Ty. I was like, that could mean 40 different things for Dredpire. Who knows? Yeah. Well, the latest thing that happened was that I had been issued my security and private investigator license with with my tricorn. So now you're Dredpire Higgs PI. That's it. But interestingly enough, just in this was in February when I was issued the license. I just got a letter from security programs division on Monday saying, hey, we've made an administrative error. You have to send back that license. And and here's the one without you wearing the tricorn. So I wrote him back and I said, hey, look, this is I told you before that my, you know, this is a passport quality photograph and I'm wearing it because of my religious convictions. And I am seeking counsel because this represents an existential threat to my livelihood. And I will not have it. Good. So because you said they they put a a self-aggressed stamped envelope in there saying, put the put your old license in there and send it back by June 5th or something. Right. And and so anyway, like I said, I'm I'm I'm running with this. I'm going to go for it. Go for it in the office and your job and tell them our religion's silly, you know. If it's for everybody or not or no, that's for anybody. But don't start picking. That's right. That's not your job. Can't pick and choose. Can't pick and choose. I dig it. I dig it. Keep fighting it. Like I said, if I was in Canada, I'd be doing like, get me a license to. I got free time. Give me whatever you want. George Brown, second and a half, man of mystery. Well, I won't stand for it either. So I'm on I'm on your side. I'm on your side. It's it's easy. Yeah. Now, we're investigators. You're watching the watchman. That's right. So there, yeah. Now, to comment upon Boudreau's bass guitar, I would say if I were reincarnated as a musician again, I would want to come back as a bass player because I think there's nothing cooler than to play the underpinnings for everybody else. I think that's really cool, like to sit there on the low notes and just do whatever is going on above. Let's go for it. Let's go for it. Let's go. Yeah, I would do that. Isn't that cool? So something that in my in my county where I live, the vaccination rate against covid is about 41 percent, if I understand it right. And the dead bodies just keep piling up and piling up and piling up. It's the number that I look at is is the covid death rate. And sometimes when I tell people that I'm concerned about this, they say, oh, the numbers are misreported. The hospitals are getting paid extra money for reporting covid bodies, you know. And so I just when people say stuff like that to me, I check it out and believe it or not, no, no less an authority than Fox News said that the numbers were not being inflated by the hospitals. They were being paid. They are being paid extra for covid covid deaths, but they're not taking advantage of it. Yeah, I mean, the thing is, why would they get paid to report deaths because you don't care, take care of dead people. You take care of live people who are sick. Well, the deaths probably, in other words, the deaths happened in the hospital, so they had to do something. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's the corners that actually record those numbers, not the hospitals. Well, I mean, the simplest thing I've always heard is, is look at excess deaths, you know, look at compared the deaths, you know, this year, you know, to 2019 to 2018, you know, account for population. And that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. And when you look at it, we have like a hundred what was it, one million excess deaths from a disease that was largely preventable with just good planning and vaccination in America only. Even accounting for excess, you know, mental health deaths, they've even they've even seen an uptick in that and and and pulled those out of the equation and said, even even ignoring this. Right. And in highway deaths, we've had more highway fatalities than than previous years, even though we've had fewer crashes. Well, all here. Wow. Wow. Wow. L2 is out from your thirties. It's new thesis stats. If we remember correctly, he's doing a touring dissertation highway public safety. That's some true facts from Virgil. You can only get that here. I was I was going to say this before you transition to the main topic. You may ever want to try buying a violin or a violin bow and playing it with your base. It actually plays and oh, OK, he's gone. It looks like he's already had the idea. But what about the basses usually come with bow? I mean, people buy bows for basses. Oh, he's got it already. Yeah. Oh, it's a nice short one. Yeah, that's probably a lot better. Yeah. This is for the double. It's for an opera. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. When I figured you could do that, I was like, what? So out of a bass guitar, you can do it as well. You have to worry about the little rosin getting on. But it's it's basically turns your base guitar into like an electric violin that has like a deep sound. Anyway, you're right, Larry. We thank you for helping us get back on topic. I haven't even found out what doubter fires been up to. Oh, yeah, doubt or five. What have you been up to help? He's been waiting for us. Yeah, I put a picture up. I actually went to this church this weekend. I didn't internally combust. But it's the first time I've been in a church for a long time. I had a few a funeral. Yes, this is the Big Butter Jesus Church in just north of Cincinnati, Ohio. But it had set through the usual sermons that they do in addition to the eulogy to the deceased. And in this particular time, they were telling everybody what actually is going on in heaven with her, which was kind of a stretch. Even, you know, I would think for a Baptist church. So the whole story behind Big Butter Jesus for folks who who haven't been catch up on the show, we're a radio show and we play music in between the break. And there's a song that we love on the show called Big Butter Jesus about a yellow statue of Jesus that is at the location that Larry went to to go to church that actually got hit by lightning and melted and fell apart as if it was made out of butter. They rebuilt it, but it's also a funny thing where it's like a statue of Jesus being destroyed by an act of God. I was corrected there. It was what the preacher imagined was happening in heaven. So he wasn't making it plain, as it were. OK, fair enough. It's still a weird picture at the end of the day because you only see Jesus from the back, right? You know, OK, well, guys, we got emails. I made a friend playing disc golf. He was actually at the Sunday Assembly National. We had he came to our course and he sent me a follow up email based on the recommendation of this show. And I just want to share it with you guys. Hello, Ty, I really enjoy watching your podcast. I'll be playing it when I'm on disc golf courses in the future. Hello, Ty. Sorry. Your latest. So he goes into talk. I'm hearing a little bit of an echo. OK. So he does say does religion have the capacity to add value to anything or does it imply value by devaluing other stuff such as women's rights, personal freedoms, et cetera. And this is the the meat of why he's asking that. Your latest show topic reminded me of a show called Severance. It's a streaming show about corporations that can sever your work life persona away from your home life in a way creating two versions of yourself. The work life personas are stuck at work for the rest of their lives and find it a living hell, but can't get out of it until their home life versions agree to set them free. And so there's an interesting comment on value that I like to get your thoughts on, given that the characters, the home life characters get value by devaluing the lives of the workers. A character on the show stated something that resonated with me. Things have value because we devalue other things. People are no different. So does religion have a capacity to add value to anything or does it simply imply value by devaluing other stuff such as women's rights, personal freedoms, et cetera. And we'll go round table. Does religion add value to anything or does it actively add value to anything or does it operate by devaluing other things and changing, arranging that hierarchy? We'll throw it out to Bujo. I'd love to hear what you think about it. Oh, does it add value? I think, yes, it does. And in absence of of other, you know, codes of morality, for sure. I mean, you know, if we were all just born without anything, let's say we were born with just language and that's it, no, no source of morality or anything like that. That's not at all values. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think. I mean, I think it would add adds value, but, you know, I had a cost because, like, like you said, there are catches to it, you know, right? You can add value in some ways, but take away devalue things like women's rights or and really any of the religions, most of the religions, it seems like they're, you know, devaluing other religions, right? Or at least saying if, you know, you don't believe in this God or these gods, you're going to have a bad time in the afterlife. So I don't know that first bit, though. I've struggled with that in the past because I, you know, I like to think that there's there's value in kind of just like the core, some of the core morality pieces of the Bible. But also, I've been kind of just told that all my life. So I don't know that, you know, I'd love to separate, right? Like, yeah, yeah, Catholic, but I don't know. I wasn't I was never very involved in pay attention a whole lot. So I don't know if it's just subconscious or not. You know, so, yeah. OK, OK. Dredg Pirate, what do you think? Does religion add value to anything or does it operate by devaluing? Maybe a mixture of both? I don't think it adds value, but I don't think it necessarily operates by devaluing, though in some cases it does. What always interests me is the sort of Mexican standoff between the three abramic religions where they are, of course, mutually exclusive, even though they all believe in the same God. So, you know, in terms of what Budra was saying is, you know, people make fun or devalue other people's religions to elevate their own. So in that sense, yes, there's a bit of devaluing going on. But again, I've always I was having this image in my head. Um, you know, yesterday with Moses, Jesus and Muhammad standing in a Mexican standoff position, you know, sort of pointing guns. So that is just be careful if you draw. Just be careful if you draw that. That's all right. Yeah, right. I don't want to be a hubbill or whatever. OK, George Brown, love to hear what you say. Yes, I your hand raised. What's up? Well, well, that's just like a joke, you know? Rabbi and Imam and a minister walk into a bar, you know? Right, right. And I don't know. They look like they look like what are you doing here, emergency for concussion. Yeah, I don't know the rest of the joke. But that's I'll start of maybe we can make up make up the rest of the joke among us. Sure. But OK, about has religion given us anything? Yes, it has, in a way, or at least it has formed a focal point for the arts at different times. I mean, thinking in my own discipline and music, the the Catholic Church during the Renaissance was a wonderful arena for musical musical composition and performance. And then in the Baroque period, the Protestant, you know, the German Protestants could give us wonderful, wonderful music. And so I have to honor that part of it. And I mean, it's all turned to garbage after that. But, you know, at least in those period and that artwork, too, I think. I hear what you're saying. I definitely I definitely think it was like a university. It formed a structure where like-minded individuals can get funded to generate some beautiful art, right? I like that. I like that. Yeah. And then in more extreme cases, religion, the same religions even are also responsible for saying no music is allowed. You can only sing these holy texts or no dancing is allowed. Or this this instrument is too suggestive in its form and is no longer holy. And we don't accept that here anymore. So long saxophones, stuff like that. So, you know, it makes me feel like it's not so much the generator of the brilliance, but instead just got brilliant people in the room for our moment in time to come up with work that they could have made without religion being a part of it anyway. Though I definitely don't think we would have some of the chamber music that we have if we didn't have the religious impact. Larry, would you like to add to this? Do you think you're basically saying that inspiration is responsible for or this quality of the stories are responsible for it. But it also brings I think the inspiration is what you're talking about, to bring people together to act on it, to be able to generate music or plays or whatever artwork. However, as far as devaluing, I think it goes a long way to devaluing humanity itself, saying that we're sinful creatures and not worthy of you know, life as it were without divinity in it. But what is it? Morality itself, a societal morality is devalued in the divine command theory because it says, you know, you can't really be moral if you don't have a moral agent telling you what to do as represented in the holy books. So it does devalue some things to make itself more valuable. I would agree, because otherwise you would have been a regular person. But once you fall into a religious dogma, you're now a sinner or subservient to a thing that you can't even see, view, test, talk to, et cetera. It's it's right. It's a devalue of your humanity. Pujo, do you follow up that? Yeah, I guess the other piece I didn't make that I think is important. There's a temporal aspect to the question, too. If we're talking, you know, thousands of years ago, that I like to plug the podcast Hidden Brain, NPR is Hidden Brain Podcast. They had an episode called Inventing Religion that went back to kind of a good hypothesis that, you know, religion was kind of invented as we as we grew as a society to where we got so big that people could kind of freeload and they could not do the work or they can they they wouldn't be caught doing bad things because the group was so big. So they said, Hey, just like we do around Christmas time with our kids, you know, we can't watch them all the time, right? So, hey, the big guy in the sky is watching you. So there was there was a value added there where you you had this like punishment for people and an incentive not to misbehave because you told them you lied to them, but you told them something someone was watching you. It kind of got us to to operate in bigger groups, at least more successful. I totally agree. And I hear what you're saying. And I'm going to devil's advocate that point, too, because it feels like that put our society on the path where you have to have the God fear to be a good person. Whereas if we if I know it, I know this is the part where I push. But like if we set ourselves up to where independently we knew the consequences of our actions, that we really made it a diligent matter to educate children on their behavior, their inhibitions and what it means to be empathetic and in a in a society where our actions affect other people, maybe we could have had a society where we never needed to have that God fear to to manage our conduct. We could have just had good behaviors from the get go because we've had it indoctrinated in us to teach our kids to be compassionate members of society. And because we haven't done that, now we're in a situation where, you know, every single time we turn on the news, there's something terrible going on, right? I'm and I wonder if that could have put us on a better track than where we are now. And now we're trying to struggle to get ourselves caught up. And I think maybe that's the cost that we had, like, because we take a shortcut. I agree, except I wonder if it would have taken us a lot longer to get there, possibly. But but no, you're absolutely right. It seems like it backfired or it had some some some pretty bad consequences. It would have been a cost either way. I think there's probably no perfect option for that. But I do like what you're alluding to. And then we get to Dredd and in fact, let's get to Dredd. I'll go back to what you're going for, Eric. What? Yeah, well, I was just going to, of course, point out that value is, of course, an entirely subjective matter, right? Talk to him. So well, I mean, you know, people who are in Sconston religion will certainly say, yeah, I see all kinds of value to my religion and my belief system. So and, you know, is it is all are all values valuable, I guess is what the ultimate question is, like, is there a meta value? OK, that we can actually refer to and say these values actually don't kind of match up with the meta value. Say meta value is the advancement or the, you know, improving the lives of people, generally speaking, sure, in more empirical ways. If that was the meta value, then we could say that the values of different religions may vary as they progress towards that or don't at all. I got an epistemological approach to this, because I really don't care too much about objective value, but I do care about how we measure value. Right. And like the process that we're going to say, this is more valuable than this or less valuable than that, that I can't ever assess the truth because I agree with you, Dredd. I do agree that it's ultimately subjective. But I do think we can come up with some sort of objective standard and lacking that, at least for the sake of this conversation. I can say that if I if it is subjective to an extent, I can say, let's start off with an even playing field, right? And be like, there's people, there's my car, there is my disc golf collection. There's this empty can of soda that's at my desk. Are they all the same value? If not, how do I am I going to rank them, right? And then I have like people at the top and then like my car and then my items at the bottom of stuff like that, right? But then that's what I was talking about meta values, right? Right, right, right. And I guess and I guess I put people at top because I'm a person, right? And I sort of bias in that way and that's the subjectivity to it. But I do feel like religion takes another step and says, OK, what's these people or it's this group of people who are more valuable than this group of people? And I'm wondering like what criteria you're basing that on other than God said so or some tribalistic benefit that you get from that belief because they're going to do the same that other groups are going to do the same thing with their gods on the top of the list. So God tells you he's on the top. It's true, true. God says, don't look at any of the other gods. I'm the one guy that's like, wait, they're the most valuable guy. I'm the most valuable. Only one of my thing that is better than all the other ones are the things that are here. That's the first commandment. Terrible first command. We'll get into why that could have been better. We got like eight minutes before the end. I want to highlight something that you were saying, Eric, in that way back when, when we had to use religion and had to pass a word of mouth and make that that story recorded through volume of people speaking, that was like the best way that we could record folklore and stories of people who aren't around anymore. And in my sense, I think like we don't know what happened on a normal Tuesday in Viking culture, but we know the stories of their gods. We don't know about Egyptian culture. What happened 14 on the fourth month of every year. But we know stories about Anubis. We know stories about what Kanchu, all their gods, right? Because that's what gets passed down. That's what gets recorded. And it gives us impressions of their culture. That mythology, as we accept it as a mythology, is what gets recorded. And I think there's value in understanding how people thought, how they set up their values through religion. But we can accept it as a mythology. And what I would appreciate is can we teach religion now, like the Christian religion and other popular Abrahamic versions as mythologies, and we just accept it as models that are similar to how other people use those similar models in the past. Just don't teach it as a literal truth. And then it'll be, in my opinion, all value and no devaluing. If we just like, here's a good story that people pass down as part of human mythology. And I can study in comparative religion. Right. And this is the way people thought then. Yes. Yes. The exact same situation is like when we hear the story about Icarus and the wax wings and he's flying up to the sky. We understand the the story of hubris from that story. There's a good underpinning of human behavior and psyche and why we should be wary about pride coming before a fall. Right. We got that story. We don't have to actually believe Icarus had wings. Right. So can we look at the stories of Jesus and be like glean whatever nice things you want from it. But we know that it's not a literal truth. And and then you're happily free to teach that to kids. And there's some silly things that can go on there. You can still teach the Moses story. You can still teach the Noah story. But we don't have to accept it as true. And we can still pull useful idioms from it. What's up, George Brown? Well, I was just wondering if if Elon Musk's rocket ship has Dr. Zarkov on it. I don't know what any of those words are. Yeah. Yes, Larry. Yes, Larry, I got the reference. Is that from Dr. Who or something? No, no, no, that's from Flash Gordon. Oh, yeah, I think it was a bit. There was a guy there was a guy on the rocket ship who was the scientist who just kind of sat there and grunted, you know. OK, so I guess we'll do a quick review that before we head out to the break. So we do see some value ads by religions to societal value ads, morality value ads, folklore, recording story ads. And then also we understand that value is subjective. And so there could be some problematic ways of how religion sorts things for us. But if we were to accept religion as a non real model or like fiction, if we were to accept it just simply as fiction, maybe we can glean the values that we get from other cultures, mythologies from the ones that are currently, you know, oppressing us at that. Well, how else can I put it? And then we move ourselves from all the devaluing that comes with subjecting ourselves to a supernatural being or thinking that we're sinners or controlling lives of people who should have autonomy over their body or whether they cover their face or not, etc. I think there could be a lot of value given to us if we just accepted religion as the fiction as it is. And leaving it there, let's go to a break. How about that? It works. Stay tuned to this channel for the second half of Digital Freethought Radio R and WOZO Radio 103.9. I'll be up and right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. And we'll be right back after this short break. Question, Larry. Yeah. Can I. Welcome back to the second half of the Digital Freethought Radio Hour. I'm Dr. Five and we're on WOZO Radio 103.9 LPFM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Let's take a moment just to talk about the atheist society of Knoxville. ASK was founded in 2002. We're in our 20th year now. ASK has over a thousand members, and we have weekly in-person meetings in Knoxville's Old City at Barley's Taproom in Pizzeria. Look for us inside at the high top tables or outside on the patio if it's warm and nice as it is nowadays. We're usually the loudest and happiest group, so you can find us easily. We also have a Tuesday evening Zoom meeting. Ask Meetup. If you'd like to join us on Zoom, send us an email at askanatheist at Knoxvilleatheist.org or let's chat SE at gmail.com. And we'll send you the link for that. You can also find ASK on Facebook, meetup.com or go to the website at Knoxvilleatheist.org. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you should still go to Meetup and do a search for an atheist group in your town. Don't find one. All right. Right. What do you want to pick up? Hey, I want to give thanks to KTroy for sending me that email. It was a really good conversation that we had. KTroy, good friend of mine from Sunday Assembly, looking forward to playing more with them in the future. Guys, I had another conversation about atheism as well. This is not an email. It was just a standard conversation we were having. It was based on a comment that Larry made on a show a couple of weeks ago where he was saying that he played, wow, World of Warcraft, which is a long game that has been around for a long time and has been diligently designed and retooled to make itself entertaining for more players over generations now. The thing is that game was beta tested. That game was very diligently made so that all the mechanics of that world worked or compatible. And when it was released, was retooled as needed to make sure that the players had a very good and pleasant experience as they're playing. Does not sound like reality. If you look at reality, while reality is constantly retooling itself, it's almost doing it against the interests of life and happiness and almost every every turn in every advent, whether it be climate change or pandemics or just our own societal, you know, manifestations coming about just due to lack of good human behavior. And so I wonder, you know, if you're a god and you're making reality, did you beta test it? And what kind of tools would we suggest that any god would employ in order to sort of improve some of the things that we've been facing recently? Like, what would be your comment section if you had a means of sending concerns to the the original manufacturer? And I guess we'll throw this out. Dred Pirate, you got a very stern look on your face. What do you think? Well, you know, that's funny. It's a funny question. You know, God created the universe. How would he know what tools he needed in order to improve it? Like, I don't know. Like I like I always maintain, you know, if there was a God that created the universe, there wouldn't be need for atoms and forces and constants. And we'd all just be made a goop, and it would just all be a magical thing. And working goop. Yeah, working goop. Why do we got to need physics in this? Just like just make everything work just magical, right? I mean, exactly. And that's and that's why it works so well, you know, thousands of years ago is because they didn't have a pre-appreciation and appreciation for the, you know, the constituents of nature outside of Aristotle. I guess he was the first one to kind of start figuring that out. But certainly, you know, in the culture of Jesus and the Jews, they had no idea everything was magical. And there was no need for explanation outside of a God created it. And that's all there is to it. Let me get right to that point, too. I if you look at a game like Minecraft, which is a very popular game, kids love it. If you don't know, ask your six year old. But that game has things like fire and diamonds, et cetera, has different elements and stuff. But fire is just hot. There's no oxidation that takes place in that world's physics. It's just a bit of data that says fire is hot. That's it. Diamonds are hard. They're like one of the hardest things. That's it. It doesn't have to worry about the crystalline structural carbon molecules right enforcing the rigidity of a structure. No, it's just or that is made of carbon, right? Exactly. Anything. Right. It's all bits of data that simply and it states what it is and it isn't broken. And there's no way to, you know, cheat through the system. It's just fires hot. Diamonds are hard. What else? What else you got? And I feel like we could have benefited from a simple system like that. Larry Rose, what do you think? Well, I just want to know why you think this isn't a beta test. No, it could be the virtual reality testing, you know, the testing ground for new worlds, you know, and here's my complaint going wrong. It's just part of the plan. So here's my complaint. And this is coming from a person who is making a virtual system for my job right now in terms of like handing paperwork. You always have a survey section at the bottom of the experience where someone can rate the experience from one to five stars or one to 10, whatever you want. And then they add a little comment section detailing the problem that they had. You've seen it from Microsoft. You've seen it from billion dollar companies that size. You see it as small as little surveys that I'm making. It works and it's helpful and we need that. What do you think, Pedro? How do you know we don't have to take a survey when we die? Oh, that would suck, man. That could be the pearly gates right there. The exit interview. If I'm doing, I would love to see that as a movie. That was one, first of all, that's a great pitch for a movie. The good place, the series. It's just a room and a piece of paper. It's like, feel free to write down all your thoughts and you can milk it for as long as you want if you just want to live in that purgatorial hell or you can just be like, this sucks. See you later, bye. I don't know, whatever you want. Throw me back in. Throw you back in, powerful, powerful, powerful. So there are some good thoughts there. I love that, that was great. George Brown, second and a half. Are you familiar with beta testing of the concept? Oh, yes, very much so. Remember, I've worked in high tech and usability testing is usually not in the picture. And I have the proof of it here. This phone made by a company named NUU is the most horrible user hostile piece of product I have ever used in my life. Wow. Because nobody tested it for usability. Wow. It's just a totally frustrating experience to try to use this telephone. I'm stuck with it because it's the only flip phone offered by my phone company. And usability to me is a very, very important thing and aspect of beta testing. And in the software world, usability is very rarely a part of the equation. Now it is on the internet. I think Google has it down very well. Their products are very seductive. They are very user friendly. But in my experience, most software is not user friendly. And so as a person who's done a lot of technical writing, I find that the leading word processing programs are just awful to use. Right. Because they're just dreadfully user unfriendly. Right. Whereas the programs that were user friendly from the days of DOS, wonderfully, well handling, they had like a good professional musical instrument when you were trying to write the program Xyrite in particular, X-Y-W-R-I-T-E, never made it into the world of Windows, the graphical interface. So I find that we've gone backwards. Right. There's a competitive market. There was a competitive market of both industries and ideas to help facilitate good customer experiences and funnel out the bad ones. And if anything, the ones that are winning still do surveys where they can reply back and say, hey, please fix these things. I hope people read them. If anything, comment forms. But like we need that for reality because right now it does feel like reality has not been beta tested, which is what we're talking about today. Swedish Steve, thanks for coming in. Boudreau, did you have any comments? What do you mean by reality? Don't make me define it. Boudreau, did you have any ideas on like bugs in reality that you think could have been beta tested out if the system was just a little bit stronger? Yeah, I think the fact that our source of light gives us cancer and you can't even look at it. I mean, like, how, I mean, how was that not just a no brainer to put a source of light? Here's the thing, too. It gives us so, you know, it does that whole nuclear cancer causing thing. But for all the wars that have happened, have been energy resource based. If we had just made the sun not cancerous, the light that it gives us non-cancerous and a little bit more efficient in terms of how it impacts Earth, we would have had all of our energy problem solved. Maybe that could have been world peace like ages ago. Dredpire, Higgs, PI, what do you got? I saw you added that in there. That's funny. Well, just the fact that the universe is 99.99999 unlivable, uninhabitable. Right. That's a pretty bad beta testing point there that, you know, it should have been much more habitable if it was to be of any use at all. Sweetest Steve, I also have this one, too. This is my personal pet pee with the state of our reality build right now. There's just twice as many nipples. There doesn't need to be that many nipples. Wouldn't you agree? Like world capacity of nipples is two times higher than it ever needs to be. Like, you could have reduced it in half and everyone would have been totally fine. I mean, like, oh, okay. But if a woman get twins. She let women have the nipples. Oh, but males have nipples. We don't need that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We need nipples. Why? The ones was a Kenyan man who started lactating when his wife died. Yes. So, and for the kinky people with the fetish of shit, sorry, BDSM and stuff. You can buy plastic nipples on Amazon and just put them on you. Yeah, I've seen them. When I lactate, I lactate wine and beer. Yeah, I also disagree with the concept of, it's not a bug tie, it's a feature. It's like, no, no, no, it's stuff like that that you need to get out of your compiler as soon as possible. Yeah, but if you're going to reduce the nipples, then we can reduce a lot of things. Why two testicles? Why two ovaries? Why two kidneys? You're only needing one kidney. Just one simple one and then get rid of the thing that would cause you to have extreme landing life, right? Just put it in the middle. Put it in the middle all the way up, you're done to go. Why do, okay, butchering what we have. Can we point out here, though, that we're arguing against intelligent design when really we should be thinking about the only reason we have men have nipples and all these other things we're talking about is just a byproduct of evolution, which has no purpose. It doesn't have a goal. We're going to end up with inefficient things. We're going to end up with things that are useless, tailbones and such. So I think in some ways... Right there, that's a good argument against a beta test. Yeah. Yeah, just be like, make the thing that works on the thing that we need to be on and call it that's done. Please, save us all a lot of problem. Think about all the life forms that didn't make it through evolutionary process. We're lucky that we're here. We're six successful organisms to an extent, right? I was going to say that's a point that Richard Dawkins makes is that there's far more many ways not to be alive than there is to be alive. Right, right, right, right, right. It's staggering the thought that there's just... Even up to today, babies born without fully formed hearts or people born with malnourished brains or incidents where if their mother's didn't get enough iron they now have some weird disease that they can't resolve and they die in the womb or Alzheimer's even, you know, or dementia. I mean, all these things, like, yeah. And, Dred, you mentioned something that I still stick with me even to today. It's the idea of even for a perfectly healthy person they still have no control of their sensory feeling of pain. And wouldn't it be great to have pain be like a notification on your phone where it's like, yes, I agree. I'm in pain. Check, mute for the next 24 hours. I still have other stuff to do. I get it. I get it. I get it. But you don't have to keep reminding me. It was like, I understand my foot hurts. Especially chronic pain when it's not a serious illness that's not causing you a lot of harm, but you still have to experience the pain. We have a lot of things we would write down in that room. Give me that purgatory room. I'll write down some bullet points for you. And then I'm checking out. Wasn't that someone's wish list? Didn't someone wish for... We did some kind of a wish list on the program once and someone said, I wish we had a check box for pain. Yes. Yeah, that was great. I think it was that conversation. Yeah. So we basically promoted two really good movies before we close out the show. Larry promoted the whole, what if we are in a reality? And this is the beta test. I love that. I'd watch that. I'd watch that student film for a half hour. I have the attention span for that. And then the second one is the, you die and it's just an empty room with a survey. It's just a blank piece of paper and a pencil. And it's your exit description form. And you just basically, if you want to, detail all the things that you hated about reality so that they can, you know, consider your comments on the next build. And then for the most part, it's up to you whether you want to... And loved if you want to. Sure. Why not? Why not? The next universe expansion pack. The next universe expansion pack. I love it. Yeah, like, wow, expansion packs. Guys, we're nearing the end of the show. We've got six people on here. Let's do a round table. Things that you'd like to talk about or things that you would like for our audience to check out next week. And then anything that you'd like to plug. We'll throw it up to Dred Pirate Higgs, PI first. Anything you'd like to plug? Yeah. Well, I didn't bring it down here, but I'm still working on Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell, which is an awesome book about religion. And it's actually addressed to people who are currently in religion or have religious faith. And he doesn't pull a lot of punches, which is nice, but at the same time is very articulate and respectful on why people believe the things they do and why it's a good reason to reconsider your position in the face of evidence. So nice. I dig it. I dig it. Nice. Daniel Dennett, right? Yes. Boudreau, anything you'd like to plug or anything that you'd recommend to check out? Yeah. Yeah. How about something that ties nicely into what we talked about today? A plug for one of my favorite bands, Bad Religion. A lot of their songs are about about religion. And one of their songs, Better Off Dead. I'm not going to torture you and sing it, but a quick read of the first, the opener here. It ties in nicely. Bad Religion, Better Off Dead. I'm sorry about the sun. How could I know that you would burn? And I'm sorry about the moon. How could I know that you disapprove? I'll never make the same mistake. The next time I create the universe, I'll make sure we communicate at length. Nice. I love it. I love it. I love it. Sweetest Steve. Bad Religion. Okay. Producer at large. Anything that you'd like to plug? Anything that we should check out before next week? No, just, just, just help your local abortion organization. I love it. I do love that. That's a good one. And we need it. If there's something I'd recommend, I know George Brown, the second and a half is setting up for a joke. So I'm going to say my part before he takes the show, but I found a really good story folklore related. It's also a religious sort of thing from Africa, where the common is between the sun and the moon, the moon is more trustworthy, even though it's always telling a lie. The lie that it's saying is that I'm bright when all it's doing is reflecting the sun's light. However, you can keep an eye on it. And I like that. And that's what that's something like. So it is lying, but it's also more trustworthy than the sun. So it's one of those weird colloquialism. George Brown, second and a half. Well, I decided to put my joke off for another time. All that buildup. Yeah, I'll do it. I'll do it. I'll do it another time when it's more appropriate. I'm as disappointed not as a religion. I just wanted to say this, this flip phone was made by a company called and you, you this is the one that has been frustrating me so much because it is so user hostile. So I want to give them special credit for making the most user hostile consumer product I've ever tried. The company's theme is and you, you knew. No, I'm down for and you, you. Yeah. No new here. I am small correction. That's not an African story. That's a West Indie story, which I just found out I have as part of my ancestry. So that's like kind of cool. Good visit. Like I said, with my mom being like, no, no, no, you're from here. Oh, I didn't know that. I didn't know. Anyway, Larry, feel free to take us out. Okay. I'd like to recommend that if, if you're going through the throws of really just deconversion, a lot of times it helps to read what other people have gone through for that. And Reddit has a collection of deconversion stories that I'd like to have people look at and at least be knowledgeable off. It's called the great project. And if you just do a Google search on Reddit, the great project, it will take you straight to it. This is the digital free thought radio hour. My, my content can be found at digital free thought.com. Be sure to click on the blog button. You can find our radio shows there. All our archives are atheist songs and many articles on the subject. My YouTube channel can be found by searching for doubter five or Larry Rhodes. I have a book at Amazon called atheism. What's it all about that. We'll give you the incident as well. Atheist thinking is about. If you're having trouble leaving religious beliefs behind, you can get help at recovering from religion.org. Thank you for joining us on the digital free thought radio hour. Remember, if you're watching this on YouTube, be sure to like and subscribe. And remember everybody is going to somebody else's health. The time to worry about it is when they proved that religions and health 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.