 Hello and welcome to the digital Freethought Radio Hour on WOZO Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today is Sunday morning, it's December 13th, 2020. I'm Larry Rhodes or Doubter 5 and as usual we have our co-host Wombat on the phone with us. Hello Wombat. It's people! Silent Green is people! Spoilers, in case you're watching that movie we are going to. I'm on our show with us today. If you'll raise your hand when I mention your name, Doubt Fire, Dred Pirate, Boudreaux, and George, hello George. And we'll have Dred Pirate here in a little bit. He stepped out for a second and will be right back. Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a talk radio show about atheism, freethought, rational thought, humanism, and the sciences. And conversely we'll also talk about religion, religious faiths, guides, holy books, and superstition. And if you get the feeling you're the only non-believer in Knoxville, why are you just not? There are several atheists freethinking irrationalist groups that exist here in Knoxville. And we'll be telling you how you can connect with them right after the mid-show break. Also, did you know that there's an streaming atheist calling video show broadcasting here in Knoxville? Did you know that one about? Right. I wanted a bell and they said they don't sell them, even though they call themselves Taco Bell. And I'm like, I know you have tacos, but where's the bells? Why would you call your store Taco Bell? Tacos don't even ring. What are you doing? So I have to go to Walmart instead. I got tacos and bells there. It was good. I'm just going to assume that you're going to watch that. I think it's an atheist show. We'll go on. What's the deal? We'll talk about it. If you want to know more about the show, we'll tell you after the mid-show break. And if you'd like to interact with the show, go to Facebook and search for digital freethought radio hour and use the messaging function to send us comments or questions. Or you can email them to ask an atheist at KnoxvilleAtheist.org. Well, I bet what's our topic for us today? It's a topic that our own Scott Doubtfire came up with, which is, can anything be proven by logical arguments? And before we go into it, normally we would have Dread Pirate do his invocation, but he's having some difficulties connecting to us. He'll come right back whenever he can and we'll go ahead into it. How about we just do a quick round about, how's everybody doing today? Doubtfire, how are you doing today? Actually, I really want to know how the music life is going for you, because I just recently found out you're a musician about a week ago. What's going on there? Oh, yeah. So, you know, being a musician and writing electronic music has always been a love of mine, you know, since I was a kid, which was a long, long, long, long, long time ago. Same here. Same here. Same here. Just, you know, just continues and continues, but to the point now where, you know, I'm collaborating with a Grammy-nominated songwriter, Audrey Martell, and a few other writers, Mike Greenlee and myself. I'm not a Grammy-nominated writer, but, you know, they teamed up with me to try to help me get there. Yeah. So, yeah, so that's, so we released a record last month called You're the One with Deborah McGone, which is the artist. She's mainly an R&B and rock indie artist. And so we teamed up all together. She sang the lyrics that Mike Greenlee and Audrey Martells wrote, and I did the music on that. And it's released now on Bentley Records. And I'm just busy promoting it right now a little bit. So that's what's going on in the music scene. Let's plug it again at the end of the show, because I think that's really cool. Sure thing. Does your wife participate in this at all? Yeah, with a lot of different tracks that I've released over the years with different independent record labels. She's kind of contributed a little bit to a few of those tracks that really did well in the DJ record pools and things like that. Very cool. So, yeah, no doubt. Speaking of which, we have a lot of other musicians on the show. George has been, I don't know, like classical trainer and participant in music for his, I want to say most of your life, right? George, how are you? That's correct. I'm good. I'm really good. I'm sitting here drinking in my voodoo doll coffee cup. Nice. I'm drinking Pete's coffee, halfway between Knoxville and Chattanooga, Tennessee. This is from California. This is from Berkeley, California. This is the world's best coffee. Very, very cool. And I can buy it right here in Tennessee. So, I am very, very happy. You know, the best food, I think, comes from, if you're going to eat food in America, the best food comes from California. And people will get angry at me at that. The reason why I say that is the garden of the world is really the Salinas Valley in California. We look forward to your letters. The what? We look forward to your letters. Go for it. Go for it. Come at me. But like, until you eat, like a literal, like I went to high school where they picked the world's supply more or less of strawberries. And like, when I had a babysitter, they would like, hey, we just picked these strawberries. You want one? And I was like, what? This tastes completely different than the ones they freeze and then gas and carbon monoxide and ship to like different states and stuff like that. No, this is a fresh strawberry. It sparkled on my tongue. It was so spicy. Like, whoa, this isn't a real thing. It's like, absolutely. It's real. All of them. See, we have to acknowledge that you come from Salinas. Okay. Sure. Yeah. John Steinbeck country. So, when you raised the question a couple of moments ago, my mind jumped to the Central Valley, which is the real big home of America's produce. Yeah. The corporate farms there are actually scary to me. It's always a conspiracy. You know, really, you drive through California on Route 5. Uh-huh. And it's at the west side of the valley and you don't see buildings. No. And it's kind of... You see broccoli and garlic for as far as I can see until it hits the beach. And then you're just like, whoa, beautiful. Just beautiful. You don't need buildings. You don't need buildings, maybe. Plus, not only that, but it's California. They'd fall apart if they were there. They're just going to collapse. Lujro, also a fellow musician. How you been doing? What's the music thing going like with you? Hey, I've been doing pretty good. I've been recording another song with a buddy of mine. I met through that Bad Religion page. Nice. It's another cover, but we're going to release a social distortion song. I think we're finished with it. And Ty, I know you've been waiting for this. I think we're going to put together an original. Oh, yeah. He's writing a song for his wife. And I listened to the song. I got a bass line in my head ready to just kind of muddy that song up. So we'll scout it. So whenever I'm doing my bass lines, I start off sort of apprehensive in the process. Like, it's like, yeah, this is the heartbeat of it. But then it's like, by the time I over track it or like do some additional takes, it gets way too complicated. And I'm like, now I'm just competing with everything in the song. Yeah. Do you ever have that go on with you? And like, how do you? Oh, yeah. For a long time as a, because when I played an orange whip, we were a bit more progressive than most. Generally, I would never play the same thing the guitarist is playing. We couldn't be, we couldn't be playing the same notes unless it was really. But then, but then we'd listen to bands where the, where the bass players getting paid by the note, you know, you know, it's like, come on. Yeah. Yeah. So, so I kind of always use that as my barometer to like, I want to get paid by the note, but I also don't want to play the same thing the guitarist playing. So I just go right in the middle. I love that. I love it. Okay. Larry, how you been? It's been always good to see my friend. It's been a good week. Doing well. Yeah. Just staying in, staying safe. How are you staying entertained beyond games? Well, I always want to know this. Oh, Netflix or Netflix debating the sun line on Facebook. I spent a lot of time doing that. Following the news. There's so much news nowadays that it's almost full time job. Just keep up with it. So I can tell you now that it's no longer as depressing. I have been slowly opening up my door to news again. And it's still bad. Like it's still very much. We're trying to sell you dog food. So keep that attention, baby. But I am finding like the late night talk show comedians I'm willing to open myself up to. Right. And it's fun to see Stephen Colbert. We used to watch Stephen all the time until just so much Trump was in the news and we were so tired of listening to him. Right. My wife's so bad about it that I had to mute it. I had to have the remote in my hand. And every time that Trump came on saying something, I'd have to mute it or just get to her. Okay. It's getting better. This is a random fact I know about Larry. He's part cyborg and he has basically a Bluetooth enabled hearing aid. Right. And you can control TV from just the hearing aid. Can't you just mute it from your ear? Can you just be like, I don't want to listen to that. Well, I would, but we're both watching TV at the same time. Okay. It's coming from the TV. Okay. She just needs to be a cyborg too is what I'm saying. Like hopefully we're at the end of that road for a while. Yeah. Hopefully. Forever. Dread pirate. Are you here? I am. Nice. Dread pirate. How are you doing? Not too bad. Well, I'm actually on a movie set. I'll turn on my video and show you my locale. If you're allowed to. Yeah. Go for it. Hang on here. It's turning on. It looks like a scary movie. Oh, yeah. It looks like a ship. Oh, no. It's a pirate ship. I would have to turn off my background in Canada. But I'm actually in this place called the Timmy Bay. And it's a jump by Vancouver horseshoe Bay and all that kind of stuff. And they're shooting a Disney film here. So very cool down here doing some security. Very, very cool. Very cool. So, hey, you know, it's been a while. How about you lead us with our weekly invocation? Absolutely. Our noodley Lord who art in a colander. I'll Dante be thy noodles. Thy blood be rum. Thy sauce be yum with meat as it is with vegetables. Give us this day our garlic bread and forgive us our cussing as we put up with those who cussed against us. Lead us not into ketoism but deliver us some carbs for nine are the noodles and the sauces and the grog whenever and ever. Very good. I am trying to cut back on carbs myself. I'm getting that age. Last for me. Yeah, I know. I just had a birthday about a week ago and I'm thinking like, what can I do next year to make myself a little bit better? What I did last year, what I did two years ago, it said no more candy. And that's actually been incredible. Like I just it changed my entire taste palette. And now I can taste food for what it is rather than just, hey, sugar's here. Keep eating this. And the thing I did last week was make sure I don't go on dumb websites that just bum me out. There are websites that used to just go to just bum myself out like Twitter and all that stuff. I was like, nah, just stop going to those things. We're cutting off for a year. And I just feel who I don't know what I would have done. If I had kept on those websites, it would have been a completely different person. Just help imagine the people that watch Fox all the time. Crazy. Must affect their psyche. Yeah, not only that, but it's freed up a lot of my time. And I want to say something. I'm not sure if I can prove this logically, but I'm going to probably leave that question up first. Scott, but I've been thinking about like, you know, I've had a lot of time to think, which is generally a good thing and a bad thing. But like, what is the power of rationalizing things? And for example, Scott, you brought up this really great question that I was actually touching on a lot. I could go, but can anything be proven by logical arguments? And my gut reaction was saying, yeah, of course, you can prove a lot of things in an argumentation through logic. Like that's how logic works. But then I focused on that word prove. And I'm like, ooh, but that is a very, very strong loaded word in terms of like logic is like, how do you prove something to be the case? Like objectively prove something. I can make arguments for it. I can rationalize for it. I can demonstrate something to be the case, at least temporarily, right? But how do I prove it to be the case? Unless I have emaculately well defined terms and values like math and stuff like that. And even with the idea of math, I'm still open to being wrong or learning new means of proving something which could ultimately undo the thing that I tried to prove initially. So all it can do is present a proof, but I can't prove something even as objectively as a math. So it's just this weird thing of what can I prove? Scott, what did you mean when you asked this question? Maybe we can touch on that for a while. Yeah. So, you know, I'm a fallibilist myself, you know, philosophically, so I always leave open room to be wrong. Otherwise, you know, it gets kind of circular. So, you know, just kind of watching debates this week between like, you know, the classic atheists versus Christian debate or theist debate. And, you know, Christian will make all these elaborate argumentation for God, for example. And they can all be internally consistent. You know, if this, therefore that, and on and on, the atheists can come back and refute it by saying, no, well, maybe multiverse is the thing that we're trying to promote versus God. So if multiverse, then therefore this, this and that. And it seems like the flaw in that whole thing is would be to actually think that, you know, that argument proves your case, right? Like these Gnostic atheists will say, well, it's not God. The real, you know, metaphysical truth here is multiverse or something like that. But that's just metaphysics. Again, that's just as metaphysical as saying God is the, is the non contingent thing that everything hinges on. So both parties are making really the same argument and pretty much, but they can't demonstrate the thing that they're pointing to. Like the theist can't really point and say, hey, here's God right here. If you just lift this stone up, you're going to see God and it's well defined. It doesn't happen like that. It's just an argument, no matter how consistent it is. So what would you do? Sorry for interrupting, but how would you handle the claim where a Christian would say, well, when you lift up that rock, underneath it is God and the rock is God and everything around that rock and that thing that you're saying is God. How do you respond to that? Right. So that would be, for me, it would be a subjective sort of value that you've kind of, you've kind of defined things into existence. So you could say the universe is the universe or you could say the universe is God. You're just kind of relabeling and playing a language game and it may have utility for you and it may be something that's, that works for you in your life, but I don't think that you can objectively say that this is the absolute truth of the matter any more than someone who says that it isn't the case that the universe is God. It's like, it just depends on a perspective. It's a philosophical argument. It's not really something, you know, science works to sort of tell you how the universe works, kind of describe how things work in reality, but it doesn't, it's not set up to tell you why necessarily things are the way they are or have some sort of intrinsic essence of truth about things necessarily. So it leaves it to metaphysics. That's why we have metaphysics and philosophy, which is really great if you want, I mean, some things can be shown to logically be inconsistent. And in that case, your argumentation fails and it can't be true. Like we had a show that, you know, not long ago about logical arguments, you know. Larry, what do you think? Well, I hear this a lot of times in my little ask and atheist tables when I'm talking to people in public. It's a big, it's a mid-sized table. Don't belittle yourself. It's a mid-sized table. It's a pretty big table. It's a nice table. Yeah, his chairs are small. The table's okay. No, they seem to want it both ways. They want their God to be the God of the Bible, which has intention. He has particular things that he wants you to do. He's a person that has presented himself and wrestled with humans, brought plagues, done all kinds of things interpersonally and cares very much about the outcome of certain interactions. And the universe doesn't care anything about that. I mean, if they're saying their God is the universe, then it's not the God of the Bible or the Quran or the Hindu gods, any of that. Because they have agencies and particular things they want theoretically. You know, and they're just trying to gloss it over like they do when they point to the God on the money. And say, you see, that's my God. Well, Hindus point to that too. And say, that's my God. And Muslims point to it. And pantheists point to it. And they say, that's the universe. They all say they believe in God, but it's all a different thing. Sure. You know, the way how I see it, and let me know if this isn't in two simple terms, but if one, two, three, four, five, six people sit in a room and all come to the conclusion logically that I'm wearing a red shirt right now, it doesn't make it true that I'm wearing a red shirt. Like they could be a logical argument that I am wearing a red shirt. It could be the lighting. Yeah, you can finesse it. You can make the lighting somehow something. You can show, you can logically come up with a means of satisfying all six people in that room, but it doesn't necessarily make it the case. And likewise, you could have a billion people say logically, we've come up with an argument to prove that a God exists, but there's still the effort to demonstrate the claim. And what I found with a lot of people is they will supplant the demonstration step with just more claims. And that's really unfortunate, because that is basically a conflation between claims and evidence for the claims. And so when they point to the Bible as confirmation of their claims. Exactly. They're just pointing to the claim. What they're doing is repeating it. The Bible is a claim. And so when someone says, hey, I'm looking under this rock to see if God's there. It's like, well, the rock's God and everything on the rock is God. It's like, that's just more claims. I needed to supplant that with better evidence. Dredd, what do you think? I was just thinking that a lot of people use anecdote as evidence in support of the claim. He says that anecdote in Canada, they don't say antidote. How you're supposed to say it was antidote with a hard S. Come on, America, let's go. Yeah. So, yeah, no, I was just actually I just recently had a conversation with somebody about dousing. And he says, wow, I don't know how it works, but I know it works. And I know lots of people who do it. And that's how they, you know, they have fine water and, you know, and et cetera, et cetera. And I said, well, you know, that's not quite the same thing as setting up a tent like Richard Dawkins did and have a bunch of, you know, like double blind essentially set up or, you know, some of the containers have water and some have sand. Yeah, could you take your dowsing rods of choice and figure it out? For anyone that has grown up with loony tunes, could you describe what dowsing is for just potentially our younger audience out there? Well, dowsing or witching, as it's also known, is the practice of using rods held in the hands that you search for water basically underground when the rods cross that is supposedly where water is directly beneath you. And so it's a magical way of finding water. Yeah. It typically doesn't work either. Though people have got lucky. It doesn't work any more than random. And that's what Richard Dawkins pretty well demonstrated. So when it comes to, you know, this course coming up, I'm going to actually have that as a demonstration in City Park. Oh, I love it. I love it. That's such a great exercise. I love that. That's great. You could even just make it like Dixie Cups with jelly beans. And people would be like, I randomly found some jelly beans. Like, great, you're about 50% chance of finding jelly beans. Exactly. That's actually a good idea. It saves you a trip. Boudreau, I love to get you away on this. The original question is, can anything be proven by logical arguments? Why do you think is the power versus the limitation of a logical argument? And can it actually be used to prove anything? Well, I think the power is, is persuasion, right? Because you're, if you make a logical argument and somebody's tracking it, you know, in their, you know, we're translating the words you're saying into, into thoughts. And if it's a compelling argument and it tracks and it makes sense, you know, you can, you can convince somebody, that's the power, I think. And that's, that's the beauty of it. But the downside is, I like your example of, if all of us said you're wearing a red shirt, you know, that doesn't prove, you know, consensus is, is a beautiful thing in science, but it has to be demonstrable. So I guess I wanted to follow up with your analogy and say, okay, all of us claim or, or express that you're wearing a red shirt. Well, let's cut a little piece of your shirt off or two pieces and let's take one of them and let's put it on what, what real people think is red. Yeah. Let's take another one. Right. On, on another color sheet. This guy's a doctor. You can tell. All right. You have, you have three seconds to find the piece of cloth. Here's a red shirt. And here's a, you have one on a red blanket, one on a black blanket. I guarantee people are going to find it faster on the red blanket because it's a black shirt. And so that, yeah, to me, that's the, look at him, look at him fitting up this whole scientific experience. It's like, you could have just been like, just hold up the piece of paper and be like, is this red or black to a stranger? But it's like, no, let's, let's do this objectively. And, and let's have more than an N of one. I love it. I love it. That's a good test. That's a good test. Yeah. So, but what can, can anything be proven? I guess I'll just ask you this flatly, Boudreau. I mean, what's the closest thing that can be proven with logical arguments? What's the close, what's the best thing that we can prove? I mean, I, I, I guess, uh, I like your, your point that, um, you can make a proof, but, you know, and you can get, you know, basically you, it's like an asymptote. You get as close as you can to that line. You can't fully, yeah, absolutely a hundred percent prove it. But I mean, if you do something a thousand times in a row and it never fails, I mean, isn't that are too confident enough? I mean, that's really what it comes down to, right? Yeah. I'll, I'll throw this question out to the group. Uh, I think the closest thing we can prove with a logical argument, and I got this from a street epistemology chat I had with two girls, their name were Katie and Emma. Uh, is that the only thing you could be certain about is that you can't be certain about anything. And I feel like you can prove that logic. Socrates, right? I, I don't want to credit those two girls because that's exactly as they put it. And I think, I mean, I think certainty is overrated. I like certainty, but I don't think absolute, I think absolute certainty is impossible. Right. But I can't even be certain about that. I just feel like the only thing I can be certain about is that I can't be certain about anything. And I like that as a, as a both a motto. Dred, what'd you think? I was just going to say that when you say proving anything by logical argument. So a sound logical argument, of course, is if the premises of an argument are true, the conclusion must be true. And that is a sound logical argument. So sometimes you can have sound premises, like you can have true premises and your conclusion is true, but the whole argument is absurd. Right. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. So you can prove something absurd is true by way of logical argument, but it being so ridiculous, it's not a, you know, it's not true in our universe sort of thing. And I just want to, I just want to highlight that when we say true in the context of logical arguments, what we really mean is valid, like it's non-contradictory and it's a valid, coherent statement. We don't necessarily mean that it's demonstrably the case or that it's objectively shown to be actual or reality. And those, and there's, there's that barring of words from different fields of science that a lot of people picked up on. They're like, hey, God is good and God, and good exists, therefore God exists. He's like, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh. We took a couple of steps too far here because logically it's true if these premises are true. Logically, that's a valid argument. That's a valid argument. It doesn't mean that it's true. That's right. It doesn't make it true. We have to make sure we know what words we mean when we say them. Scott, I saw, I think I saw your hand raised. Oh, actually. And then we'll go to George because George hadn't said anything. Go for it. I was just going to say that, like for me, the Kalam cosmological argument. You're going to have to define what that means. We're not all nerds here. What's going on? So you say everything that began to exist had a cause. The universe began to exist. Therefore, the universe had a cause. And a lot of people will say, well, that proves God. But all your, all the argument really is proving is that the universe had a cause. So then there's like this extra claim like you were talking about that, oh, oh, this cause has to be God. Well, now that's a separate argument, you know, and then you're talking about which God are we talking about too? So that's kind of where we're going. So, but what I would say is that the reason why arguments don't work and why science is a better way to prove things at least to some degree of certainty is, I think the best way is predictions. If you can do testable, repeatable predictions, then that's a good way to solidify an argument to say, well, you know, if I drop this pen, if I let go of this pen, it's going to fall. Boom. And I do that all the time. Well, I've just demonstrated that argument that, you know, gravity works or whatever my argument might be in that case. So that's just what I would say. It depends on definitions too. True. I feel like I've been a terrible host. I want to hear from George before we go to our break. George, do you think anything can be proven by logical arguments? Well, in my mind, listening to everybody talking here, the question in my mind is what's the context of the arguing. So in other words, who am I arguing with? And what is their reality system? If I'm going to get through to that person, I have to get through to them. They are in, not mine. So, you know, here I am in the middle of the Bible Belt. And I'm living in a country which has gone very far to the fascist side. And I think that I'm living in a society that is largely delusional. And, you know, how do we convey reality to these folks? How do we do the heavy lifting? And I think that if we are going to convince anybody of anything, we have to do it in a way that makes sense to them in their echo chamber. And that's going to be a big job. That's not going to be easy. I agree that common ground is good, but truth. And we can talk about this more when we come back. Truth is truth. Truth plus a layer of sugar on the top is just obscure truth. Larry, how about we get into this more when we come back from the break? You can take us out. Sure. This is the Digital Freethought Radio Hour. We're on WOZO Radio 103.9 LP, FM, right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. And we'll be right back after this short break. I said lay down. Welcome to the second half of the Digital Freethought Radio Hour. I'm Doug Herft. I'm on the show with us today. We have George Boudreau, Dot Fire, Dread Pirate Higgs, Wombat, and myself. Hey. And where do we want to pick up Wombat? So we were going over the menu items of Taco Bell for a sense for the last half hour. And the last time I was at Taco Bell, I was like, OK, so you guys don't have bells. What do you guys have? You have the gordita crunch. And it was like 329. I'm like, that's a lot of expensive. It only used to be a dollar. And then it was like the double decker is like 159 now. And I'm like, oh, that's so expensive now, but you guys don't have the thing I'm looking for. Where is it? OK, so guys, last week's episode, this is a listener feedback section, by the way. Feel free to leave a comment and anywhere we'll track it down and we'll put it into the next week show. We got some comments from last week, which was about critical thinking being a crime in Nigeria. And we had John Richards on and he talked about how thought crime is an actual thing in Nigeria and people are being arrested. John Richards represents the Atheist Alliance International Corporate Hunt group. And they do a lot of international work, obviously, especially about supporting atheists in other places where it's not OK to be an atheist. Or trying to get them out of those places. True. And so he was talking about how people are being wrongly arrested or disappearing from just off the streets because of their outspokenness about critical thinking, just critical thinking. And so we had some really good comments on. Loma said, thoroughly enjoyed this episode. I look forward to seeing John again on the show. And I do too. And in fact, he was on just this morning and I'm sure he'll be back later on. Beautiful family, by the way. Anthony Magna Bosco let the comment on the show he says, love the show. It chills me out. Thank you, fellas. Black Lives Matter. Very good. Yeah. Moving on. Carlos says, hey, is this podcast on iTunes or Spotify? Larry, I'll leave that up to you. Do you know if we're on iTunes or Spotify? Well, I think it's on. I know it's on iTunes. I'm not sure about Spotify, but I would. I would think so. We're definitely on iTunes and we're definitely on Stitcher as well. What's the name of our podcast in case anyone can know? Digital Freethought Radio Hour. Digital Freethought Radio Hour. Right. And then, you know, you can also watch these on YouTube. Larry, you have your own channel. I have my own channel. Dred will post this stuff. He'll livestream it on Twitch. We are eventually going to coalesce this to, like, more streamlined things, but Digital Freethought Radio Hour is, like, one of the best places you can find all of our previous episodes. And we go back how many years? We're not on Patreon yet, though. We're not on Patreon yet. I want to think about that. Okay, cool. We got a comment from Trumpet Party. Now, let me tell you something about this guy. So, you guys remember when I did an SE at Politicon and I was talking to a guy that looked like Trump? Mm-hmm. That was Trumpet Party. And it was this Trump impersonator who was very, very good. He'll go to your party and he'll Trump it. He'll make it more like Trump. But he is clearly on the side of good, but his impression is so spot-on. And he's a very, very witty guy. This is the funniest conversation I ever had with anyone where the things you were saying was like, that's so spot-on, but I know, I can see the glimmer in your eye where it's like, I know I'm blowing the character. Plus, on his YouTube channel, he plays piano and he'll play it as if he was Trump and he'll do Rocket Man. He'll make fun of himself. And since Trump's currently being kicked out, he's been doing a series of videos from where he's on the pulpit and he's like, no, there were some good times. There were some bad times. A lot of bad times. That's the times, baby. I don't know. Just really good stuff. I can't do it. I can't do it, but yeah, he's doing really good. Trumpet Party says your voice is as smooth as... Your voice is as smooth as a 20-year-old whiskey. Not that I drink. That's what his comment was. Anyway, good stuff. Good stuff. Guys, leave a comment if you want to know more about how to get your voices on the show. We'd love to have you on the show in the future as well. Before we get back to the main point of the show, we were talking about, can anything be proven in biological arguments? George, you had an interesting comment where you had said, if only we can reach out to the people who are so lost in their own echo chambers and try to pull them back onto the side of rationality. And like, what's a good way of doing that? And I love that... I love that ask. Well, I said... I was emphasizing that in order to do that, I think that we have to come to them through their own color filter. In other words, through their own system of logic. We all have it. We all have our own filtration system through which we view the world. I think each one of us has a different one. Sure. Or a different gestalt that we live within. And so that I really think that... considering that in this age of the Internet and an explosion of, let's say, digital media in general, that there are multiple channels of delusion out there that are agreeing with themselves, with each other. And if we want to get through to somebody, how do we penetrate that fog? Cool. I'll throw this out to the group. I think this would be a really good roundtable discussion. And I don't want to color it first. How about we throw it out to Boudreau first? Boudreau, what's the best way to reach out to these people in the echo chamber? Well... Yeah, go for it. Go for it. Go for it. I've thought about this a lot too, especially after hearing a podcast on the brainwashing of my dad, that whole idea of Fox News kind of infiltrating, you know, guys about my dad's age and such. But I think... I hate to say it, but I think the answer is we have to kind of expose ourselves to other media sources. You know, we talk about mainstream media being, you know, just the left. Well, I think there's so much media now and there's so much, you know, Fox News and others. Could you leave Fox News on for an hour and just listen to it? And I know you're shaking your heads, but if we do that, you know, maybe that's how we can come up with better arguments. Can I tell you, there's a guy at my gym who shows up every hour that I'm there. And so I've had to change my scheduled hours because this guy will go in the gym maybe about five minutes before I do and literally turn every television, every single television. I don't know why, but every single television we switch to Fox and he'll play them all out loud. And even though his treadmill has a TV screen on it that you can just Bluetooth connect or put his headphones in, he has to hear Fox News on literally every channel around him. And I walk in the room and I'm like, oh, it's Fox News and everyone's like, I'm watching it, but if you need to change it, I'm like, it's like, no, it's all good. I'll just walk to another room and work out there. Got the same guy at mine. It's the most painful thing to listen to. He wants you to watch the Fox. There you go. And I'm not doing it. And there's nobody in that room. Maybe he's doing that. That's a social distancing strategy. Wombat, have you ever thought about finding out if the default pin for those cable things? I was looking at that this morning. And then blocking the channel. I was literally there this morning. It was like one, one, one. I was like, no, this may not be good for me. Larry, it's not like you're about to say something. What's up? I was just wondering what the workout place was, what commercial has done. It's the nearby gym where my place of residence is. And individual rooms have certain workout. How many machines to a room? There's one very, very large room where all the ellipticals and all that stuff are that have TVs lining all around the walls. But that's not the one he does. That's the one he does. And it's like a very large one. Yeah. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. There's one universal remote control that controls everything. And it's just like, what are you doing, dude? But, you know, as rude as that is, it's like it is painful to listen to Fox News. It's very painful also to listen to pop country music. Yeah. Trying to working out to that is like, oh my God. Yeah. It was a, I love hoody and the blow flush. I love Darius Rucker, but he had his new song called Moonshine and Beer or something like that, or like hand shakes and whiskey or something. Some two non-offensive things combined together that he just sings for about for three, exactly three minutes and 30 seconds in CGFG. CGFG. Just the most mundane song possible. He's auto-tuned. The chorus comes right when you think it is. The title of the song comes immediately after the chorus. So you're just like, oh, this is so formulaic. What's going on? I cannot listen to this anymore. Anyway, that's the stuff that drives me nuts. Fox News is that. Fox News is that. It's just like, I know I'm going to listen to something crazy if I walk in the gym and it's Fox News everywhere. And it is, and it's always something crazy. I don't know if I could do that. I don't know if I could do that, Boudre. But I don't think I can either. I'm just saying maybe that's, I don't know. I don't know. Scott, what do you think? I thought I'd do that. Yeah. I actually do that. I actually, the things that I don't agree with, I try to make myself like just listen to them. Like I'll go, like I'm not a Christian and I debate and talk with Christians all the time. And what I'll do is I'll go watch, you know, church programs for a whole hour. Like just listen to different figures and update. Yeah. Listen to all these things. Politically. I'll go listen to Fox News or, you know, whatever. Just just to kind of understand where they're coming from. Because if I don't really understand the argument, then how can I make an argument against it? If I don't really understand, if I can't get into their frame of reference, then I don't know what we're arguing about. I'm only spewing out my own stuff. And I'm not really connecting with them, you know. Yeah. Dredd, what do you think? Yes. Often I'm more interested in how people who watch those kinds of news feeds interpret what they see and regurgitate it, how they filtered it and how it comes out. Once it's passed through the filters of their own heads, right? Yeah. Yeah. And that's because, and because, you know, in dealing with people, that's really what you're trying to respond to is not to the news. It's to help people to interpret the news that they watch. As a quick example of that, I remember when Kaepernick, the NFL quarterback who was kneeling during the Star Spangled Banner, whatever they try to do to force patriotism in the NFL. He was kneeling as a response to like, hey, you know, like we're all millionaires here, but I have, I represent a community that's very, very marginalized. And while you guys are all happy, like there's literally blood on our streets and it's undue. And I don't think that's cool. And I'm just going to kneel to show some respect to the people who don't have the chance to say that and say like, everything's fine. And so when that first happened, media went nuts. Media went complete nuts. And I remember hearing on NPR, not NPR, some conservative news that I sent my radio to so my cat will have some company. And then I remember driving to work. And it was like the same news thing, saying the same sound bite where it's like, I can't believe he's doing this against our country. And then I go to work and I had a boss from Arkansas who like was in the cafeteria who wanted to talk to me about NFL for some reason, because I'm the only black guy there. And it's just like, hey, I can't believe he's doing this to our country. I'm like, that is word for word, the sound bite that I heard for the last two days. And in my head it's like, wow, did you come up with that idea entirely on your own? I didn't say it because I didn't want to get fired. I'm glad I don't work there anymore. But it is amazing how people just absorb things and think I came up with this idea. The fact that it was phone spoon fed to them. Yeah. It's a weird thing that we live in. We all have to be on guard against that. We do. We all have to try to be as conscious as we can about what we believe and why. And be able to articulate it in our own words because that would demonstrate to ourselves anyways that this is my thought. I'm not being brainwashed into some stuff. So I think it's helpful to really examine your own beliefs and why. And a big thing is to check your own biases, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Larry, I want to weigh in on you. How do you feel about the nature of... Do you feel like we need to modify truth? It's packaging in order to make it more palatable to people who are lost in their own echo chamber? I don't know. The only way that I really interact with people who might be in their own echo chamber is when I go into public on my Ask an Atheist tables. But on Facebook, I will go to some Christian apologetics site and talk to them there, challenge their assumptions, give them something to think about, post memes. Of course, I make a lot of memes. But I don't generally go to extreme-right Facebook pages, conspiracy theory Facebook pages. But what you do is just engage them, give them alternate views, give them reasons why you think the way you do that's opposite of the way they do, and just hope for the best, because it all depends on how entrenched they are, how resistant to change they are, and what might work with them, which you really can't find out until you talk to them. But I think straight epistemology is an extremely good way of... Socratic examination is an extremely good tool to that end. But as far as truth, I think that the religious thread is used, truth with a capital T pointing to the Bible for so long, it's really poisoned that well. I think we need to just stay away from claiming we have truth and really just talk to them about the reality filter that they have and why it may be flawed. Okay. You know, when I take a step back, I sort of remember seeing something on YouTube a while back ago, maybe this was several years ago, but it was a class in Jamaica, and it was a bunch of black students arguing with the teacher that the science that he was purporting or teaching at the curriculum wasn't black science, because there wasn't like any discussion on like the culture of like voodoo or mysticism that they were more familiar with there. And it didn't have like any black representatives of the people that they were teaching there. And in my head, it was like, what an unfortunate thing that, you know, we... The filter isn't necessarily on the people who are wrong or aren't being rational. The filter could literally be on science itself. And what I mean by that is, we're not opening up the doors to how everyone's interacting with science and improving science together. And that might be the gateway to get people in their echo chambers to come to our side. If you show, for example, a back country guy who's like, hey, listen, I have to figure out how to make moonshine better. The methanol levels are too high. It was making people blind. And I found this really cool way of distillation that actually resolves all these problems. And I'm just a backwards boy and I'm doing the best I can. It's like, this could be the spokesperson of a guy who has that same kind of mentality. Maybe they even vote for the same person when it comes to election to say, hey, this guy thinks like me and helped out in science. He's not just some liberal guy in a suit in a bow tie who's looking down on me. We probably hang out at the same church. He's a cool dude and he's a scientist. I'm going to figure out what this guy is like because he's my access route to this wonderful world of science and critical thought. And I'm thinking we're so... When you look at who we teach in science today, it's typically of a very small window of unfortunately just powerful white men for the most part. And when you say, who invented the light bulb? Thomas Edison immediately. When really, it was Larry Lattimore who came up with the filament for carbon fibers. And the reason why I came up with it is because it was very hard if you're poor or just recently weren't a slave anymore to keep your home a lit. So what's an affordable way to do that, aside from just having candles, right? Which were also expensive back in the days. So when you have a carbon filament, when you apply an electrical voltage to it, it lights up. And Thomas Edison was like, hey, I'm going to take that and make something called an incandescent lamp, which I stole parts and bits from like 40 other engineers. I'm just going to slap my name on it. And now I'm going to be the famous guy and make sure you put my name in the newspapers and make sure I buy all the patents and boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And this guy's just going on and on when there's like a whole community of many different kinds of people from all around the world, women and men, immigrants, all sorts of different people at the top. It's everyone who made this wellspring of ideas. And I feel like if we just shine more light there, that's how we get people who might be lost in their own idea of like, science isn't for me because it doesn't represent me. Science isn't for me because it doesn't look like me. To get them on board and be like, no, science was built on contributions of people who are just like you, who think like you, who look like you. And you have means to contribute to this as well. And that's why it's so important to learn how valuable science is now because we can all benefit from it because you are part of this as well. It's not just a them thing. It's an us thing. We all mutually benefit from this. I think that's how we do it. There's a really, really neat NPR hidden brain episode called People Like Me where it gets into that exactly where they found if your doctor looks like you, same ethnicity, you're more likely to listen to what they say. It goes pretty deep into just how we trust. You trust things more when it comes from your cultures. I think you're on to something. Yeah, absolutely. I read a book a few months ago about the psychology of why people claim to believe what they believe and they found out that most people don't really come to their conclusions for the reasons they think they do. That's kind of an afterthought. Really what moves people to believe certain things and behave certain ways is feelings, like emotional. It's all emotional. So we reject science because it seems like a white thing or it seems like something else or they're not of our political party. Only liberals or only Democrats like science. So we have to hate science. There's so many good things here. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's where we're at. That's where we really are at now. Yeah, that's sad. I think it's a joke, but this is the reality. There's hope because anyone can know this information. It's all available to us on the internet and it's not like it's a hard thing to find people who contributed to science who are black or Mexican or women. You can just type and look on YouTube great female scientists or great black scientists, etc. You can have deck of cards in your hand that if you find someone who's struggling or if you find someone who's like I bet I can make this person appreciate what I'm trying to say more if I can just present these names and contributions to them. That's an avenue that can be used, particularly if you're an educator. I highly recommend it. What we really need to do is just adjust our curriculum so that we reflect that this is a melting pot community effort. It's not just about learning or man-thing. It's an everybody thing and it benefits everyone. Dredd, why don't you give us some final words and where can we find your stuff at? Well, I mean of course I haven't done a lot in a while so my YouTube channel is a bit barren of late, but it can be found on Mind Pirate, P-Y-R-A-T-E. The rollout date for my course in critical thinking. Skepticism 101, Adventures in Critical Thinking. So once that is all firmed up and we get more than two people signed up to attend it I'll share the link. You're going to be surprised. You never know. I have three in my class right now. I'm going to be looking for a couple of you folks there to help out if you're interested. I know Ty and Larry have both said they're interested. Yeah, that's what's going on so far. Boudreau raised his finger too. Hey! Put me down for a class on free will, huh? Yeah! Sorry, I'm too loud. Be prepared to multi-tiered Star Wars-enabled discussion. Boudreau, where can we find your stuff at? So you're going to have I'm going to share another link when we get our cover song done but I'm really excited to actually try our original song again. It's been a long time. Yeah, it has been. I will post that to the group and hope you guys share it and play it on the show. The guy I'm collaborating with, he's a bad religion fan so he's obviously one of us so maybe I'll try to get him on the program sometime too. Very cool! Scott, I asked you to plug again at the end of the show. What can we find your stuff at? And give us that from the end. Yeah, so the best place to go if you want to check me out is dubshine.bandcamp.com then you can listen to a whole library of stuff I've got and you can support me and download some music if you like it. So yeah, certainly dubshine. Your stuff is like a throwback to old electric disco trope. I feel like it is like if you ever played Dance Dance Revolution this is it! This is like the comeback for it. Oh, this is Naoka, this is Bhimani. These are all these soundtracks that I grew up on like in little high school time. It was great, yeah. George, you're stretching out your arms. You're looking like you're about to transcend at the... I feel wonderful. He's feeling good. Is there anything that you recommend that we check out by next week? Is there anything that you think we should check out? Absolutely not. Okay, okay, okay, fair enough. Not today. I'll think of something in 10 minutes. Okay, okay. Larry, go ahead and... Oh, my phone went off. So I'm...let's chat. You can find me on YouTube. Feel free to leave a comment. We'll talk to him on the next week's show. And listen, it's holidays. It's been a long year. Take your time, relax. It's been a wonderful road when you survived and you're here. And I think that's important. But if you have a chance to check it out, go on YouTube and figure out some scientists that are, you know, from minority groups that you might not have been aware of and find out what their contributions are. You might find out like the things that you love are actually an assemblage of many different people from all around the world. It's amazing to figure that out. Yeah, it is the case. Larry, why don't you take that? Well, you can find mine. It's my stuff at digitalfree.com. Be sure to click on the blog button when you go there. You'll find our radio show archives, Atheism, many articles on the subject. My book is called Atheism What's It All About. It's available on Amazon. If you have any questions for this show, you can send them to askanatheism at KnoxvilleAtheist.org and we'll answer them in future shows. If you're having trouble leaving religion, having emotional problems, psychological problems, or any other kind, you can always find some help at recoveringfromreligion.org. If you're watching this on YouTube, be sure to like and subscribe to be notified when new episodes are posted. And this has been another episode of the Digital Freepot Radio Hour. Remember, everybody is going to somebody else's hell. The time to worry about it is when they prove that heavens and hells and souls are real. Until then, don't sweat it. Enjoy your life and we'll see you here at OZL Radio next Wednesday at 7 o'clock. Have a good life and say bye-bye everybody. Bye-bye everybody. Bye-bye.