 Hello and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio Hour on WOZO Radio 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We're recording this on Sunday morning, October 9th, 2022. I'm Larry Rhodes, or Daughter 5, and as usual we have our co-host Wombat on the line with us. Hello Wombat. Hello, it's me the Wombats. Nice to meet everybody. Our guest today is John Richards from England. Welcome. Hello. Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism and the sciences. Inconversely, we'll also talk about religion, religious faiths, gods, holy books and superstition. And if you get the feeling that you're the only non-believer in your town, well I'll bet you're just not. In Knoxville, in the middle of the Bible Belt, we have over a thousand of us in the Atheist Society of Knoxville, or ASK. And we'll tell you more about them after the mid-show break. Wombat, what's our topic today? We're talking about design, and I can't think of a better group with a better design name than Ask for an Atheist group. Isn't that wonderful? That's right. You should ask. Keep asking those questions. I still remember that business card I found, and I was just like, this is just the coolest thing possible. Okay, but Atheist Society of Knoxville, definitely check them out. Where did you find that card? So you had given me that card the first day we had met when I went to the Meetup Group. And I had, whenever I accept cards, I remember I didn't look at the back of it until like I already got home. And I was just like, oh, Atheist Society. Ask! That's fantastic. I love that. Back in the early days of ASK, I printed cards on my own computer and left them everywhere. So the people would find them. And I was just wondering if you'd found one of those somewhere. Yeah, I put it up on our bulletin board at work when I was in Knoxville. Oh, pretty good. So guys, I want to catch up, see how everyone's doing, and then we can delve into the topic of design and what we mean by it. Because it means probably different things to different people. So how about this? We'll open it up. Larry, tell me how you've been over the last couple of weeks. And what do you think design means to you? Well, last week I wasn't available for the show because I was on vacation. And I spent most of the week just playing computer games and just generally taking it easy. But on the weekend when we do the show, I was in West Tennessee visiting my niece. And that was very nice. So it was all good. Cool. And what does design mean to you, my friend? Design. Yeah. Well, when something, someone, an entity, a person generally lays out a plan to build something and then they follow that plan to create the thing that they're going to build. It's pretty straightforward. Pretty straightforward, you would think, right? We'll see. We'll see. John Richards, you're all around the globe and anticipating even more spots of globe trot. But how you've been, don't show off too much. And tell me what design means to you. Well, I've been okay. Thank you very much and doing my usual scheming and, and wheeling and dealing. Love it. And having fun. This is the advantage of being retired. You can, you can, you can do what you want pretty much. So what does design mean to me? Well, it's, it's the first part of making something. You can't make something without having an idea concept of what it's going to be. And that coming up with that concept and creating the detail of it. That's designing. Yeah, it's sort of like setting out the outline or a goal for something, right? Yeah. Making intent. The foundation intent. Yeah. The interesting thing about it is for agents like humans, it can be done from blank. I mean, you can start with a clean sheet of paper, nothing on it at all. And that's where you make your design, which is very different from evolution, of course, because evolution doesn't start from a blank. It, it's the opposite. It starts with something that exists and then tries to modify it. Now, every Christian will tell you every scientist says that evolution says the world came from nothing, but that doesn't make any sense. But what are you saying? Well, evolution, of course, doesn't deal with how the world began. It just deals with how the diversity occurred. We've got a good explanation for diversity, but we don't yet have a good explanation. We've got some hypotheses, but we don't have a, a, an agreed theory for how it all began yet. Right. But the thing about evolution is it's like it would be like in, in sort of design terms, it would be like going into your designer's shop, your studio where he does a design, giving him a tank, you know, as a military vehicle and saying, I want you to turn that into a jumbo jet. That's what evolution does. Right. Yeah. That's not, that's not what creation does. I love the way how you said it at first. It's just, it's the first part of making something, but along with that comes an intent to make a particular thing. It's not just, hey, anything that works is, is fine. It's more of like a varied, you're trying to get to a defined point of creation or, or a product. And it's sort of like in my head where if I gave that sheet of paper and I gave it to like four people and I said design something and there's at the end of the day there's just scribbles all around that piece of paper. There's like screws on one corner because they didn't want to work together. There's like a bird on one side, someone drew a tree on the other side. I'd be like, you didn't design anything. Sure, you try to make something and this paper is different than when I gave it to you, but there's no coalescence of like intent. You know, you have to design something together or make a singular thing as a group, but you didn't do that. There's no intent for what you guys are planning on making. And I find like, what are you, what are those four kids called? That's evolution. It's sense because evolution is very much a I'm throwing everything I possibly can on the wall. I'm going to see I don't even care if it works or if it doesn't work, but if it does work fantastic. That's great. Now we have some biodiversity. Now the next, you know, environmental change, maybe it kills some things, maybe it doesn't kill some things. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm just trying to be different at every opportunity. And the mutations that come about through evolution are not designed or planned out ahead of time. They are literally random changes in DNA that cause slight mutations and offspring and some diversity. Larry, what do you think? Well, absolutely. It implies intent, but also don't forget, I'm sure you don't that there are rules involved. There are chemical rules and physical rules, you know, physics involved. All of the design, I mean, all of the evolutionary changes have to follow those particular rules. Even from the very start, or we couldn't get where we are. Nothing would work if it didn't follow those rules and they are enforced by the laws of nature and laws of physics. The way I think about it is instead of saying as rules because it implies it was a rule maker. There's simply limitations. There's physical limitations. I like that. Yeah. And it's not like I can put marshmallows into DNA like that's not going to work, but like I can work with certain base groups. And the sad thing is the sad thing. And this is an actual thing is while there are chemical limitations, there are there can be cases where the chemical limits are pushed too far. And the thing that is produced through evolution is not capable of sustaining itself through life. Not viable. Right. Not viable. And life is filled with a plethora of these non viable forms that either suffer or are stillborn or never make it to a point where they have a fair chance of survival in a cutthroat universe. And so it's really unfortunate because we do have this appreciation for, you know, the world as if it was created by a grand designer. But unfortunately, I would say like a lot of this doesn't seem like it was intentionally made. It seems like we have a scenario where we're just operating through trial and error physically and chemistry, chemically wise. John Richards, what do you think? Well, I want to say a bit about constraints and the laws of nature because the laws of nature. They're not laws in the sense of this is what you can do and this is what you can't do. They are what we have observed nature doing. Right. And they don't actually restrict nature in any way. There's no sort of barriers to the ends of them. In fact, they're just models that we have noticed happen. And in fact, we've changed them periodically for better models when we discovered that they don't really fit. Right. Yes. And I like to think of it as well as it's not a it's not a lot. It's more of a prescription. The laws of the universe are more prescribed by just observers of the universe at best. And and we come up with not proscribed. Right, right, right. There's always this hunt for intent by the by dogma or religious minded people when they look in the universe. Yes, they need that intent because they needed intent or they needed a creator or designer layer. I think you just posted something you want to talk about that real quick. Yeah. Many times I'll be talking to this and they'll say, when I'm talking about evolution, they say yeah, but that's, that's designed by accident. That's what you, you know, so ever all of this stuff came by accident. And that accident implies thwarted intent. You're you're trying to throw like a creator in your very definition of what you think evolution would be. No, it's, it's, it's designed, like I say, by the laws of physics and the laws of chemistry, working together. The laws of physics, the way they were, there wouldn't be a world to have life on. Right. Didn't have the chemistry, the way it is, you know, you wouldn't have beings on that on the world. But language is a very persnickety thing, particularly English language, no, no offense, John, but like the English language man it's so rough. It's so rough if only we could have something more less, less baggage with every word because when we say the laws of physics are right. A theist can hear that and be like well then who made the laws, right. Yes, yes. We're the ones who described the laws and created the laws, and sometimes the laws need some tweaking we don't always get them correct. With the worldview of there is a creator there is an intent or there is someone who designed all this a law is a very appealing term to describe limitations that we found in the physical world and prescribe to certain rule sets right. By saying a lot you think to yourself well I know how laws are made they're made by a person who has authority that in that pans them down to other people, and that could be my God and what better analogy is therefore creator of the universe is humans decide how humans live, but God decides how reality works. And those are both as that makes sense to me I'm really to go out of here I pass physics right. The English language any language really it's not just English has ambiguity and what I say goes into your head has a different connotation. Very unfortunately, the word law is one of those very ambiguous words because in the legal sense. If I was speaking to a lawyer, he would know what he means by the word law. That would be an edict that has been decided by authorities, and that there are sanctions for disobeying. But that's not what we mean by laws in science not we just observe something so frequently we think it's likely to be true. That is such a salient point because it's just a question of what your background is what your education is, and I can tell you this as an engineer as a scientist and an engineer right, I wear both hats. We design a lot of things in our labs, but design the word has become a very controversial term I've noted, because when I try to talk to people about the work that we do. And then we maybe transition into more of a religious philosophical conversation. I find myself using the same word design in both cases where it's like, well the world's design like blah blah blah oh you just said design. Therefore there must be a designer it's like well I don't know a better word that I can think Lee. Oh I'm totally open to it. I'm totally open to it. Well, the whole point of the show is to figure this out. Okay, for a long time, I assiduously avoided using the word design in connection with life, and any living thing, because I knew that it would go into the ears of creationists, and they will assume that it was their designer what done it. And I even had an argument, well a disagreement with one of our national icons national treasures, and a broadcaster and scientists called Dr Alice Roberts, who up until recently was the president, the honorary president of humanism UK. I met her some time ago, and I said, I watched your television shows. And every time you said this has been designed to do that. In relation to some fossil or something. I threw my slipper at the screen. So she's like, I will eat only two times. Why are you getting so upset. I've only had to. I said, no she's had a whole series. She's a number of a number of series she's a very great. How many slippers do you have, or do you just sit with slippers next to you. There it goes again there goes again. All right. Really. That's design. That's so great. The thing is I said to her that, you know, you annoyed me by saying that word why didn't you say adapted. That's a perfectly good word. They adapted. And she said, listen to this. She said, we've got to reclaim language back from the creationists. I like that idea to honestly. Larry. Oh, one point I always like to make when I hear these. I'm on them. I'm on Facebook a lot. I do a lot of arguing about theism and atheism. And whenever I see someone post a design argument, I always post a meme, because I don't want to type in all the stuff every time. The points out that design doesn't get us any closer to a God than deism. It doesn't point to any particular God that we've ever worshipped in the history of mankind, or some job, some God that we don't know anything about it, even if all of the design claims were true. He gave up and said, yes, okay, it was a God doesn't mean it was your God doesn't mean it was a God. It could have been a simulation designer we could be living in a simulation. It doesn't get you to your God. My favorite God is uncle uncle Lou. To her God. Okay, go on ahead. No, that's what you've mentioned there is my favorite God deaths. Oh, my bad. They don't qualify. Okay. Not judge you at the bottom of the sea I would think since you guys, I like the idea of using adapted. I want to throw out a story of what prompted this show in the first place to when I was just or let's see Friday I was doing a seminar on how we design things in our story. And we, I brought up a really great high modification picture of a fiber that we're producing. It's like a hollow tube that has to be stronger to high pressure. So the walls of the tube have this very porous like material because we designed it to be structurally rigid and and have a very high structural integrity and tensile strength and all that stuff. And when you do a cross section of it, it looks just like a bone. It looks just like that spongy material. And a girl who was watching the show or watching my seven I was like, that looks just like a bone. Right. And I was like, yeah, it kind of does. We, that's not by accident. We were doing when we were making this fiber was we asked ourselves, what was the most structurally stable and resilient kind of form fact that we can develop. And we found like this very poor structure was a great way to handle stress from any sort of direction. So that's right. We didn't stumble in it through a bunch of trial and error steps we looked into nature. And this is where I made the mistake. I said we looked into nature to find what had the best design. Oh, no. I made the fiber and in my head I'm like, Oh, I said the D word. Oh, I just kept going. Thankfully, though, the people that are talking to are both atheists. They're all atheists. My head I'm like, I need a better word for this. I feel like I do. You're absolutely right because not only has nature, open air quotes, designed clothes air quotes, everything to fit a purpose. But also, it's so your spongy bone and your hollow bones, they are the best structures for rigidity. That's why that's why tubes work and you can save all the material that you would have had in the middle if it was a rod, make it lighter by taking that middle out and the outside is still as strong. So nature has come up with that air quotes design, but not only that nature has designed things like that several times. So it's redesigned and then re redesigned and often comes down to the same design because that's the best. Yeah, yeah, Larry. And if you'll notice that if you look at things that artificial intelligence have designed, they tend to follow the same type of thing. It's, it's open and that is a lot of air pockets in it, but it has a lot of structural connections in there that don't seem to they seem willy nilly. They go in every different direction. But when you look at the overall thing it has the outside purpose design is is correct for the function, but the inside is just mostly air but with Chris crossing supporting structure. So you brought up, you guys both brought up really great points. John, as an as an amendment to saying design maybe I could have said, if you look at the nature for what's best adapted for structural stress. Then you'd see like we just basically pinpointed our design towards that. And when we, and we could have used, for example, artificial intelligence, because we do have something called generational development, which is sort of like a program that designs things through iterative process on a computer. And it will typically design things based on trial and error and stimuli that we program into a model, and it'll build the most structurally resilient model it will probably look exactly like the tube that we already have. The problem is is that it's a program that was designed by people, but the method that it uses is almost identical to evolution where there's millions of drafts that just don't make it and only one iterative process that keeps getting improved on. The tube that we designed, we were just like, what's a good fit here. Let me look at, oh, you know, bones are really strong. Yeah, we're going to design it kind of like bones in like three steps. We were there in and we made it in like about a month or so. So I find like what design does is, we had the plan. We, we had the intent to make a very particular thing. We designed that specific thing, we made the process to build that thing and then we made that thing. And that's fantastic, but there was no those very little scrap behind very little money and time wasted. And that is the value of design, when it's actually an operation, because there's just so little waste as a result it's very lean process when you use it properly. I want to revisit the story I was telling about meeting Dr. Alice Roberts and talking about the use of words and how they are perceived. Because although she made the point, which is a good point that we ought to be able to use language to mean what we wanted to mean without it being polluted by these creationists who wanted to mean what they wanted to mean. That is a good point, but we're never going to do it, you know. Hold on, hold on. Is it like 50% growing 51% of non believers now like this is the time to strike why give up now. Well, that's, that's true. But nevertheless, it's still too big a job, changing the meanings of words is a mountain of a job that. So I'm going to stick to using adapted. And I want to give you an example of how difficult a job is. I'm just going to throw one thing we as a straight white man you can say that but listen outside that's happening all the time like words are changing like every single day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Either of like every established group is like why are we changing changing. You make up new words every four hours. Again, you're absolutely right and you profile straight white man because of the word gay, which of course has changed his meaning over the centuries. Yeah, yeah. But the point is that we didn't have control of that. It was the population, the culture that made that happen. And me going out there and saying, when I say design I mean adapted is not going to cut much mustard. And to give you an example of that. We had a prime minister called Margaret Thatcher a few years ago, who she introduced a tax that she called the community charge. The idea was instead of charging buildings you charge everybody. And the opposition referred to this as the poll tax because it, it charged everybody who was on the list of poll people you know the people who had a vote. And she kept saying community charge they kept saying poll tax eventually got the country adopted poll tax for as the name through the newspapers and so on. And eventually, she stood up in parliament and referred to her own community charge accidentally as the poll tax. And you should have seen I'm sure it's still a clip that you can find. You should have seen the hilarious reaction in parliament when she said poll tax. So the American version of that would be Obamacare, because when Obama came out with hey we don't have health care as a nation this kind of sucks. And everyone was like we just going to disagree with whatever you say because that's our job is to be the lawyer. And I was like, okay, well I'm just going to try to make a government Medicaid, you know, that's really regulated supported so that you can afford health care can get health care. You wanted to widen. Right, you wanted to widen Medicaid. That's Obamacare. They're like, don't call it after me don't call it after me gave it four years next thing you know it's like it's Obamacare guys is just like, okay we know what that is. This is this is language being weaponized. That's what that is. Yeah, but the context of it can flip by the culture to so like words that mean met like words that meant bad things, or use in a in a prerogative prerogative prerogatory manner can flip to very good things and be embraced. And I imagine like, yes it's not controlled by any one person. But we have a culture right now that is moving towards this non believing position and I think if we were just to clarify what we mean when we say certain things that are ambiguous, but still be firm with who we identify as and and and maybe even use other country words along with that. I feel like that could be a really good way of just continuing the, the trend that we're on right now where more people are, you know, I think we have more critical thinkers now today than we've ever had in the past. I hope I live long enough to see design being dis an entity. Yes, that would be fantastic. No, see the thing is, here's the problem with Christianity they change words to, and I know we're getting closer to the half but it's not only that they change words faster than the the the non believers can go through changing it so like when design came up, there was no Christianity concept of it. And then when science established that like listen, here are the limitations of the universe, blah blah blah they said Well, now what's intelligent design is there's design, and now there's intelligent design, and that's us, even though you disfigurized and tell designed to mean no creator, we've now re implanted a new version of it with intelligence, the hat to come from a higher I got some stuff to say about that. Let's take it after the break though. Yeah, after the break. This is the digital free thought radio hour and w o z o radio 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Stay tuned for the second half 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 about the atheist society of Knoxville for just a moment. ASK was founded in 2002. We're in our 20th year and have over 1000 members. We have weekly in person meetings at every Tuesday evening at Knoxville, Old City at Barley's Taproom in Pete's area. Look for us inside at the high top tables in the woods of it. Pretty weather outside on the deck. We also have weekly on Tuesday night, zoom meetings. If you'd like to join us on zoom email us at ask an atheist at Knoxville atheists or or let's chat se at gmail.com. You can find ASK on Facebook meetup.com or go to the website at KnoxvilleAtheist.org, or you can just Google Knoxville atheists it'll take you to us. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you should still go to meet up and do a search for an atheist group in your town. Don't find one star one. Guys, we're going to be talking about listener comments and I'm sure we're going to delve into intelligent design. How about we meld the two together and we'll start with one of the comments from first aid man 87 Thank you so much for posting to our thread with a very thoughtful comment. His comments on intelligent design and his, his comment is intelligent design is just selected by us. If our planet was made of lava and humans drink that for whatever reason, religious folk would say that some that somehow was designed for us. It was so unlikely. It seems to me that whatever unlikely thing results would be called design, when really any result is probabilistically really unlikely to happen, just because we are one of them doesn't mean that one of them was predestined. This seems like an adequate response to any intelligent design argument thoughts. What gets me is that they, they use the watchmaker argument like you're walking along along the beach or in a fork you see a watch you know that's designed. And they say, you know, but by the same thing everything else in the world is designed and the cosmos designed. Well, then why would you notice that a watch is different. I mean if everything in the world designed by man or by God was all designed they would all look the same wouldn't they. Yeah, so what really sucks is, there's so much circular thinking here because like you need to compare you need a frame of reference to make something claim like that and everything's designed, then you don't have a frame of reference of what's not designed. No, but if you talk to Christians sometimes they'll be like well God's not designed was like you haven't seen God. Nope. He never shows up. What God looks like and you're like well he's invisible and you have a relationship with like, well, you're, you're literally just at this point you could have just said pixie magic. Right. Like, there's no true distinction if you know every time they use, and every time they use the G word they're talking about their particular God. Yes, and every other religion in the world would say no, it's our God. Right. Yeah, and that's how in God we trust made it on the money. Every religion can point to inside our God. And the truth from the real frustrating thing is it's not so much that I'm saying that well your God's not the product of design. I'm just saying, if you don't have way to test that claim. You still don't have a frame of reference with literally everything else other than God is a product of design. You still don't know what something that's not a design looks like. So you can't come out with complete justification with the claim, when you don't have any frame of reference to even make it. That should be one of the red alarms in your head being like, whoa, whoa, whoa, I have a problem here, unless if you want the conclusion to be true. And if that's the case, then yes you do have a select bias. Yeah, what you're saying, what you're saying is what characteristics do they look for in order to establish that something has been designed by their God. Very nice. Yeah, that's a good one too. I like that. All right, another one, because this feeds off of Larry Big Brown House commented, you know, intelligent design is an old argument. Christian say that the universe looks like it was designed, which implies there's a designer. The starting point of the argument is to establish some means of distinguishing design from chaos they'll talk about how we can investigate whether certain archaeological funds or natural formations versus ruins of a civilization or something like that. But then the argument concludes by saying that everything in the entire universe is designed. So the original premise of their own argument is refuted by the conclusion. So when we look around, we have no way of distinguishing design from chaos, because they just concluded that there is no chaos at all anywhere. Has anyone else noticed this other than it's so frustrating. It's very true. I've noticed it, I've noticed it. You need to have a frame of reference you can't be like every can of soda is sprite. By the way, I don't know what's what things that aren't sprite look look like. My clothes drawer is a sock by the way I don't know what anything that's not a sock looks like everything in my utensil drawer is a fork. Anything that's not a fork though I don't know what that looks like though it's just like you you're literally making no sense. It's cancer by the way I don't know what things that aren't cancer look like I wouldn't go to that doctor. Right. So why are you to say that everything's by a project design come on guys come on Christians. It's that easy. Yeah. And of course, intelligent design is a peculiarly American thing that was brought about by the laws, the federal laws that forbid the teaching of creationism as a science lesson. So they had to come up with an alternative way of getting their ideas into science. And that's why they came up with the phrase intelligent design. Right. Got round the law. Right. So we have to remember that, yes, words can change and we can come up with new words too. But so can Christians so can religious people and the problem is, Christianity has a great marketing team. Because they are selling basically a product that costs nothing for them to make, which is essentially false hope. There's no production there's no inventory. They can sell it. They can distribute it over any line of communication immediately and people want, people want the product, because everyone's afraid of dying. And their complaint department is pretty much empty, because after you find out that the product doesn't worry we all you're in no position. Yeah. And the, and the fact of the matter is is when you're indoctrinated into this world view like how I was and I believe where you also have the same experience you don't realize you've been drinking poison until, you know, someone else pulls you out of it. And it's almost as disconcerting as being pulled out of the matrix is like, wait a second, I had a good time in the matrix, I could eat I can learn kung fu. Now I'm in a ship in a beat up sweater eating oatmeal every day like this sucks. It feels like you've lost something but you've never really had a true thing to begin with it takes a deeper appreciation for the truth to realize that Christianity is false not necessarily getting a perfect argument to realize that you're in that your reasoning is invalid. It takes a deep appreciation for knowing true things and false things. That's what gets you out of it, the critical thinking criteria. Larry, what do you think? Well, I was just gonna make a point you were talking about it's really hard to get out of it because you don't know you're in it and it's really hard to pull somebody out of it. If they they're thoroughly brainwashed. I was gonna make a point that the only time a congress a US congressman was ever killed in the line of duty was trying to get one of his constituents out of Jonesboro. The cult of Jonesboro. Wow. It went down there to get him get the congregate. And Jonestown sent him a Yeah, a contingent and killed him. Yeah, and the saddest thing is is the daughter of that Laman is also now in a cult right now. And think about that in terms of like one of the most you infamous cults in the world that killed the person's father, the the offspring of that person who was like a young adult at the time is now in a cult herself. It's not a fact that bad things happen to you that you get critical thinking, or that you're born with it. It's that it preys upon people who think they don't need it. And so you don't develop it. And truly appreciate it to the point where you're willing to disregard or let go of falsehoods in the search of true things even if you don't have them yet you can at least take the position of I don't know if you can't do that you make yourself very vulnerable to those who want to take advantage of you. And what's really bad is that religions tend to use two things that most people want. They want love and they want truth, and religions, you know, will tell you that they own pretty much both of those terms. Yeah, you know, we are love God is love. Right. And the Gospels are truth. Yes, the capital T No witnesses don't even call their religion jovo witnesses and they just call it the truth. Right. Yeah, that's right. Let them trademark that. Speaking of which, you know, we had a comment from classic got, I'm sorry, let's see I read this. Classic got to me giddy says design also applies to religion. Take Buddhism. You should be happy without owning anything. Be nice and docile or else you'll be reincarnated into a life of suffering. All the basic principles of Buddhism enable the ruling class to take advantage of the common people. Like most religions. And while I consider Buddhist values noble due to some of their inherently humanist principles. If you think about it from this perspective, it's still disgustingly obvious what this religion was designed to achieve. And Larry you make a great point. Yeah, that is part and parcel of every single religion up there. You know suffering this world and have a paradise in the next. And that really helps an oppressive ruling class. Yeah, John Richards I'll let you make a go for it go for it. Well, you, Larry's just reiterated it but you mentioned false hope selling false hope and Larry's given the example of offering paradise after death. Yeah, and this country I may have told this on the show before but in this country. A couple of years ago we had a group of churches in the city of Bath, who clubbed together, printed some leaflets and started standing on street corners handing them out. And the leaflets promised that if you went and worshipped in their churches, you would have all your diseases cured there's all list of diseases from a to Z at the bottom it said, and any other condition. But in this country we have something called the advertising standards authority. They were reported by a couple of skeptics to the advertising standards authority who instructed them to stop giving out these leaflets because they offered false hope criminal Larry go for it. We do have truth and advertising laws here. However, religions have never ever been held to those laws, and generally because 90% or 8% of lawmakers and law enforcers are all part of that religion. The other part was the point I was going to make is that the one thing that theists say that atheists take away from them from people is hope. And there's no reason in this world that you just, you can't hope for a good afterlife if you want to do you don't have to join a religion of a structured practicing religion to have hope in an afterlife you want to hope for an afterlife do it. You know, nothing stopping you. We're not taking anything away. We don't have any options. Right. Right. It's guys we don't believe in we don't. I mean, a lot of us don't also believe in souls, but you can believe in soul if you want to design your own heaven. It's a great genre of music. What else. Yeah, nothing to sell. No. Right. John, Larry, you had made the comment that most religions have the idea of being docile and not rebelling against authority and not wanting to have your own positions owned to you and just being nice and only concerned with what you're going to do in the next life. I know of a religion, and we've had guests on the show who practice Satanism. And not like the, not like the, the sense of, well, who cares. I know there's two different versions of Satanism, but I feel like in both cases, the idea of rebelling against dogmatic authority, valuing your possessions valuing who you are making a point to I'm sure that you aren't docile in the face of administrative changes on you. And I'm like, Why isn't the case that the only one religion where you're fighting for your personal rights and freedom is the one that's demonized by Christians left and right. And it feels like, huh, there's, there is something to that. Anyway, we're going to go to one of our last comments today. And this one is based from an anonymous commenter messaged me personally and said, Actually, I'm still an atheist but I want to come up with a justification for intelligent design. The proponents of intelligent design claim that the entire universe is designed for humans. And a common rebuttal is that humans cannot naturally exist anywhere in the universe. I mean, as far as we're aware, except for a small planet on earth, you know, a small part of Earth on land in But perhaps the people who claim ID or intelligent design as a thing, they mean that the universe can be conquered by humans, due to us having the highest intelligence of all known species. Unlike other species, we can access all parts of the universe. I know it's an assumption, maybe some of it. But as we can understand the world and create solutions which other animals cannot do maybe this is what they mean by intelligent design. Wow. That's stretching. What. Well, John, what do you, what do you got to say to that. Well, I think he's casting a very wide net and trying to catch and everything in it. There's no justification for that. And he started out on the right foot by saying that we can only survive in a very tiny part of the universe. So, in that case, surely, the description, unintelligent design should apply to the rest of the universe. After all, it's a failure, isn't it? If it was intended for us. Yeah, all this black space and radiation. Oh my gosh that you kind of overdid it on that side. Yeah. I mean, if that were the case, you would think that he would have put it, you know, in his holy book, he would put some some of that type of intent in his holy book. But according to the holy book, you know, the earth is supposed to end with Jesus coming back and starting a thousand rain, a thousand year reign of Satan rolling the earth for a thousand years, and then it's going to be destroyed. There is no intent to go just to the rest of the universe. And why the heck would he create even create the rest of the universe. In the first place, if we're just going to live for a thousand years and die after, you know, pretty much the Bible comes out. Right. It just makes no sense. I found this. Oh, gone in. When's the next rapture guys. Right, right. There's a website time for it. There's a list of upcoming rapture events. We didn't get after nobody that we know about rapture. So last couple of weeks. Yeah. So my idea is this goes back to the docile nature that's not necessarily enforced, but it coerced, perhaps is the better term or encouraged in the most fair sense by religion. They want to have docile followers. They want to have docile rebuttlers or people who disagree with them, because that light enables them to have more authority and power. And when you make a desperately incorrect claim, targeted towards trying to continue to sell your false hope. You want people to be like, well, maybe they got a point to maybe we can all be right. Maybe they are making a sense if I stand on my head they do kind of have a point. So when someone says ID, it's important for you to speak up because it's in being quiet that you give them more confidence to be loud about it. And what we found, historically, is that the confident loud voices tend to be the ones that people listen to the most. Silence implies consent. And in many ways, science can even be betrayal and in a situation like this and the stakes are too high. The stakes are simply too high when we have, as Larry pointed out, majority of congressmen and senators and politicians all caught in this fold that we put ourselves in where they believe in their own separate dogmas they actually have authority to control other people's lives, and they can work in Congress together, both in the word and as their job title, we have a problem, especially when we elect them into like, Living in the south, it's, it's the worst. It's rough. It's so rough. So I say living's not here can be basically traced directly to the religious right, keeping our rights down our personal rights down in deference to the religion. What they have privileges, they don't have rights, they have privileges. Right, they do. I'm also going to throw this out to don't make an argument up for them. It would be my other argument to like don't try to rationalize a bad argument for someone. Leave that to them. It's their job to do that for them. Don't be like, well, this is a way how it can make sense. Like, no, you still don't make sense until you make sense. I'm not going to do it for you. So it's up to the intelligence design people to continue to stop until they make their nonsense not nonsense anymore. It's not up for me to post ad hoc rationalize nonsense as is given to me. I have too many other things to think about during my day. And, and I'm not saying that's a me turning my brain off. That's just me recognizing that they have accountability for the things that they claim to be true. Let them come up with a method to determine if that's true or not. And in the meanwhile, they are in the, I'm not considering them as a viable option until they come up with some sort of reasonable credit to put me on the list of things that I should be doing. They have the burden of proof. There's no need for us to act as advocates for them. Right, right. And we should be willing to speak out when some and you know atheists have a bad reputation for, for being adversarily argumentative, but truly if someone is making a case that is not true. It is worthwhile to speak up or at least let them know, hey, until you have a better criteria to know if that's true or not. I'm not going to believe that or I disagree with that, based on the fact that you haven't met your standard of evidence for it. And what else are things the same, feel free to have a position up. I don't know if that guy's telling the truth or not. I'm not saying that you're wrong. I'm just saying you haven't made a point yet. So please establish that with some evidence and I'll be happy to describe it. It seems if you're saying an intelligent designer made it, you still have this big gap of proving that an intelligent thing exists. And where's your criteria for that you can't look at trees and be like well that's proof of it because that's just proof that a tree exists. Can't look at a rock or a sponge or a bone and say that's proof of my God, therefore my intelligent God exists like no that's just a bone. That's just proof that a bone exists. And I can tell you how that bone came about with better methodologies through tests and practices designed that was actually or adaptations through life that we can track through a record. You know, that's fairly accurate. What they're doing. What they're often doing here is saying, I can't understand how that could have come about that tree without there being a God. Well that's commonly known as the fallacy of personal incredulity. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah, argument from incredulity. Yeah, Larry. We can't be talking about intelligent design without talking, at least mentioning the Dover trial. You may be familiar with the monkey trial. The was it was the name of the scopes trial. Thank you. They took place a little bit south where I live down in. What was it? I can't remember the name of the town. Anyway, it's about 50 miles south of Knoxville. Yeah, in 1925. However, in 2005, there was another evolution trial in America called the Dover trial and Dover Pennsylvania. It was a movie made on it by, excuse me, Nova called intelligent design on trial. I encourage everybody to go out and if they're interested in the subject, go find that and find out how ID did not win that case. So design failed and mostly because they lied. Under oath to try to protect the fact that they claim. Because they put their faith, their faith above law, because they think they have. Now, here's a weird thing. If they just called it stupid design, I'm going to flip this on their head. If I be stood for idiotic design, I don't know if I would have a problem with it anymore because that would be a terrible way of designing things. And now I'm like, maybe there's just an idiot designer in the universe. Great big idiot. That's constantly putting making birds with three wings or kids with only half their hearts or like tails. Yeah, or tails and just like, you know, I think I'm going someone with this. Oh, by the way, I got some, I got some other things to do and he's just constantly distracted. I'm like, there might have a better argument down that road than what we appreciate in design. Well, I'm offended. I'm offended. I'm offended now because you've just blasphemed against Uncle Uncle Lou. Oh, no, my bad, my bad. I do have one last thing I'd like to say I'd be remiss if I didn't say it but this is an example I bring out all the time but a lot of people imply that the complexity of the universe is is proof part and parcel of intelligent design. I think we know for a fact that if I had to flash bulb or I had to light bulbs, and one took one step to screw into a hole, and one took 1000 steps to screw into a hole, but made the same light. I think we can argue that the one that's simpler in design is the better design. And that's not just for light bulbs. It's true for bicycles is true for car engines is true for anything that simplicity is the hallmark design. And I'm looking at a room full of guys, and there's six nipples across those. We don't need any of them. Yeah, we have so many extra body parts that we got that we don't need. There's so many extra parts to the universe that exists that are far more complex and they need to be. And as john Richard says, small tiny miniscule part of the universe that we're in, surrounded by all this other stuff. It seems like yo you could have simplified this so much more than it was now to get to more or less the same test or trial that we're under the complexity that's been added to the universe is not an indication of intelligence design, if anything, it's just proof that we are on our on our own capable of coming up with what we have now, through our own understanding, through our own trials and adaptations. And because of that we don't need to give credit to a God we can say hey we're here we're in control. Let's make this better. Let's use real design, make this society and tools that we have available better and stop wasting time and all these old books and dogmas think of what we could do if we all billions and billions of minds, put our minds to improving the lives that we have here on this planet this life this life we make this life better. We can do that. How much, how much more so we're alike than we are different. Right. We keep concentrating on differences. Yeah, we need to make a better world just for us as a human species. We need one less God. That's it. Going back to our earlier conversation about the ambiguity of words, you used the word own a lot in your little speech just now. You wanted to form our own opinions, having critically examined the evidence rather than just take somebody else's downloaded view. The trouble with that is, own has another meaning, because it means that something belongs to you as well. And a lot of people possess their religion, as though it's part of their identity. Yeah, and that they do that because they don't have any evidence for it. They just accepted emotionally. And, and that's why I gave my example just now saying I'm offended because you, you've just Uncle Uncle Luke, because that's their mindset. Yeah, my boss used to say, I was a programmer, and I used to get upset if he if he what just my program if he disrespected it if he said something bad about it. This is all I understand your program is your baby. Right. And, you know, their religion is their baby, identify with it. You have to get to the mindset where it's like the personal ownership is different from the accountability, or you want your, you want to, you want your identity to be separate from the you might be nearby or possession. That's hard thing to do. It really is. Yeah, I've got a, I've got a four word expression for that. Got it. Ideas can't be your baby. Oh, it's five words. All right. I love it. I love it. We'll make that the title of today's show. How about that? Larry, why am I taking this out? I think we're near the end. We find your stuff at right. That's where it's at. And I'm focusing on taking down Islam more from now on because a lot of people have complained. Are you only targeting Christianity? Oh, no. No. I want to take out Buddhism because a lot of when I was in California, a lot of people who are Christians is Christians too cool for me or too bad. I'm now a Buddhist. It's like. They have the exact same. My cat's shaking scratching himself. That's why I'm shaking. Taking the table. Oh, no, it's an earthquake. Larry, why are you getting me out of here? Okay. My content can be found at digital free thought.com. Be sure to click on the blog button when you go there, though, for we have our radio show archives, atheist songs and many articles on the subject of atheism. You can also find my book atheism. What's it all about on Amazon? By the way, remember, everybody is going to somebody else's hell. The time to worry about it is when we prove that heavens and hell's and souls are real and we haven't until then don't sweat it. Enjoy your life. And we'll see you next Tuesday. Take care. Everybody say bye. Bye. Bye. I think so.