 103.9 FM, WOZO Radio, Knoxville. Ladies and gentlemen, Digital Freethought Radio Hour. Hello and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio Hour on WOZO Radio 103.9 LP, FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today's Sunday, August 30th, 2020, I'm Larry Rhodes or Dour 5, and as usual we have on our show the co-host Wombat. Hello Wombat. Hello and a special shout out to everyone who is still dealing with the after effects of Hurricane Laura. Stay safe. Yeah, for sure. Our guest today are J.W. Kennedy, Dred Pirate Higgs, George, Red Leader, and that's about it. Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism and the sciences. And conversely, we'll also talk about religion, religious faiths, God's holy books and superstition. And if you get the feeling that you're the only non-believer in Knoxville, well you're just not. There are several atheist, free thinking and rationalist groups that exist right here in Knoxville and we'll be telling you about them right after the mid-show breaks. Also did you know that there was a streaming call-in video show slash TV show broadcasting right here in Knoxville has been for over 10 years? Did you know that Wombat? I did research this time. I know all about it. Okay. So this is what it is. Family Matters. Three years. I'm doing the math right now. Looks like it's about 11 years. It's a show called Family Matters. It's an American television sitcom that originated in NBC from September 22nd, 1989. It's known as a spinoff of perfect strangers. Did you know that? And it's about a middle-class African-American family living in Chicago, Illinois. It's an atheist TV show. What? You never told me this. I did. I told you that once or twice. You're my infoguy, you need to tell me stuff like this. And we'll be telling you more details about how you can watch it, maybe even get involved after the mid-show break. If you'd like to interact with us during the show, go to Facebook and search for Digital Freethought Radio Hour and use the messaging function to send us questions or comments. Wombat, what do you have for us today? So last week we talked about death and how it can impact us and what we can learn from it. Today I want to bring it up a little bit and talk about why life is important. But before we get into the topic, I'll fill it up to our own Dred Pirate Higgs for our own weekly invocation. If God is benevolent, why do all living things have to die? One day I'll be asked such a question and tasked to resist all temptation to lie. Ah. Ah. Man. That's beautiful. Hey, before we go into our main topic today, let's do a round of How's Everybody Doing? Dred, that was a really good poem. Do you write these now or have you started writing your own lyrics now? I'm going to because I'm writing out of material online. I'd recommend it. I think you always would be particularly clever. Yeah? Yeah? I think you're going to have a good time. J.W., it's been a while since you've been on the show. I'm glad to hear your hair. What's going on? You're getting hairier by the week, by the way, too. Yes. I've decided to just grow out my hair and my beard and see what I can do with it. I just started a new job about a month ago, trying to get used to that schedule. So last week I was unavailable, sorry about that. But I did end up still reposting the recording. So hopefully I got you guys a few more views. Hey, thanks. We appreciate that. And you know what? I would say about our audience, small but loving and very good with the tension because the average time that's being watched on these radios shows is around 40 minutes or so, which is insane as far as YouTube goes. Dred, what do you got to add? I just wanted to let you know that one of our regular viewers on the live YouTube dream, Min, is saying good morning, everyone. Good morning. Good morning, Min. Good morning, Min. Like I said, very, very nice, very polite group. I'm happy with this. I don't want to draw in extra hate or anything like that. I want to keep this like an exclusive club of nice folks watching us per week. Dale, you look relaxed. You look particularly cool as a cucumber cucumber. What's going on? Nothing. The only news I have is that I've decided to convert to atheism. Hey. Some would say you were already there. Almost brought a tear to me. I but hey, welcome, welcome. So, George, hey, what's going on with you? How I don't see an arm brace around you anymore. That's right. I'm recovering very well. Very nice. Nice. And I want to report that here in the middle of tennis of Eastern Tennessee between Knoxville and Chattanooga Square, between them, my occupational therapist reads The New York Times. Nice. Nice. And I'm tickled about that. Cool. What is it about the New York Times that you find particularly nice? Because it's not like it's a local newspaper. Like they mostly talk about world events anyway. So, like, what is the appeal? Oh, it's just that I grew up reading it, you know. Sure. And it's I like the paper. I mean, it's it's been wayward at times and seems to always come back. You know, it's a paper that I'm comfortable with and I trust mostly. Cool. It's a point of connection. I appreciate it. And the fact that somebody here in Athens, Tennessee, actually reads it, just blows it away. Yeah. Hey, so Larry, we're going to throw this out at you. How do your biking trip go since last week? Well, I haven't been out on the bike except get on the bike. A short run around the in the neighborhood, you know, down to the Solway and back, which is about 10 miles. Just enough to wake up all the people on night shift and all the dogs. Oh, no, I don't get it out. I don't get it out at night and I don't keep it out late. Matter of fact, lately, I don't keep it out till after dark. So nice. Cool, cool, cool. How you been otherwise? So fun. Good for an old guy. Need the haircut. Now, I think you're looking good. I think you're looking good. So I want to throw up the topic of why life is important. Dred Pirate, you want to leave that? Sure. Well, you know, like last week when we were talking about death and, you know, sort of our ideas around that, it just, of course, led me to think about something I brought up at the time about the fact that that life is, you know, everything has one of it. What I mean? So in some respects, you know, people who, you know, make a, you know, make a bit of a façade vegetarian is making a fuss about not killing animals to feed themselves and yet have no compunction on stepping on a spider or swarming at a mosquito. Fly like last week, right? Or fly like last week. Exactly. Needle, needle, needle. And so what my interest was was to try and discern amongst the group here what, what are feelings about why life is important to begin with and how do we differentiate between the things that we think are okay to kill and the things we don't. Oh, this is a very heavy topic. Okay, okay. So when I first heard this topic, I was generally thinking of like, Hey, we talked about death. Let's bring it up a little bit positive and say, Hey, life is important, but I feel like that could be like a very super level, superficial kind of talk, because I think most people would agree, Hey, lives are important, though there are people who protest against it. I think we can all agree that everyone's life is just as important as everyone else's. And man, what a struggle it is just to let people even know that. But in general, we do have an appreciation for, you know, being well versus being sick and extending the quality of our lives. And if we can, the quantity of it as well. But what do we use as a line to justify like versus like killing bugs versus like veganism, stuff like that. Oh, that's interesting stuff. Could you condense that to a couple of questions? Maybe we'll go around the table and through. Well, I mean, geez, now you put me on the spot. Yeah, like what's the main what's the main good first question that you'd want to deal with? Well, I would really like to get a sense of other people's understanding of what why life is important to them. Okay, generally speaking, and which ones like which animal lives, societies, they don't exactly. And another question that's always interesting to me is, you know, these unusual pairings of animals where, you know, a donkey will help a goose or something like that, you know, as a lifelong companion. What what drives animals to help each other? And does that carry on into humans? You know, how does that translate that way? You know what I mean? Sure, let's go. Larry, what do you think first as like, which lives do you think are most important? And how do you distinguish that? Well, I think in broad general rules, if they have intelligence or the more intelligence that they have, the more importance we give to them. If they're mammals, of course, they they mean more to us than the non mammals. None of them have higher higher ranking in our estimation. I think just are they like us? Are they not like us? And how much is the difference? Yeah, like, I will I will be the first to admit that we have a very human centric point of view with regard to the importance of life, but we are humans. And I have no problem being on team human. Sorry, I'm sorry, dolphins. I like humans more. Go long and thanks for all the fish. I know, right? You'll figure it out eventually. But I do think Larry's right on the point. Like we we have a hierarchy of animals based on like their close relationship to us, like intelligence, vertebrate, mammal, all that stuff. And as you go down the list, we find that the further away you are from the classification that leads you towards, you know, homo homo. And how well they relate to us, too. And how well they really don't relate to us at all. The further we're like, OK, we can turn them into food. They can be food. But these guys can be pets. These guys can be our best friends. These we can marry, right? Like we have that. George, what do you think? How do we determine how what life is so important? Well, authoritarians, dictators over the centuries have liked to make us versus them comparisons to their followers. And they they like to refer to the outsiders as animals. And therefore, it's OK to slaughter them. And it's a sound and spookily familiar to you know, something current here. Yeah, yeah, not only that, but it also old stuff that you can find in the Bible, too. Or it's just I mean, a lot of the phrases in the Bible are not even for your white, suburban guy from Colorado. They're talking about ancient Hebrews and the people they're they're talking against are the people who are fighting against the Hebrews. We've just compartmentalized it to belong to us. But George, I'm sorry for stepping on your point. But yeah, you're right. There is a lot of dehumanization by leaders in politics. Yeah. I watch my neighbor across the street. Oh, here we go. Yeah, one day your neighbor across the street is going to watch this show and he's going to be like, who is this guy? You know, send him the show. Yeah, I know he's talking about me every week. Yeah, I notice how compassionate he is towards animals. Very loving towards animals. And yet is very much against people he doesn't know as an automatic as an automatic response. You know, the stories that he hears on wherever he gets his stories from. Yeah, well, Fox News. This is a story. Need your card. That's where I was going. Yeah. What was that? Yeah, Fox News doesn't put out stories against blue jays like on a 24 seven basis. So like you're in grain to work better with a blank slate than you are something that's poison water, right? Yeah, yeah, sometimes I think it's a warped view of thinking that those you do care about are under threat from those strangers that you mentioned. You know, so some people think that, I don't know, it's just kind of a combination of being empathetic toward the ones you care about and antagonistic toward the ones that are different. I don't know. It's definitely a complex situation. Yeah, I agree. I definitely agree. Dale, I'd love to get your way in on this. Like, how do you determine what life is important or like worth supporting, worth fighting for? Like, what do you do you use as a determinator for? This is something that's important to me. That's a living being like bacon. I'll eat it, but human bacon. No, I'm not eating that. Why am I eating human bacon? Like, if you have like a line, just like, how do you determine the line? Is Dale frozen again? I don't. I don't. I have, I had that. This is such a general subject that I'm going off in all different kinds of directions. I can say this. We like our dog. We love our dog. We love the dog. The dog is sentient. We eat the pig. The pig is sentient. So there's really no difference there. So it's just a bunch of hypocrisy. And as far as valuing human life, if we vote in leaders who obviously are racist and who are more concerned about the stock market than they are about hundreds of thousands of people dying, then all it is is a big conundrum. And it just goes round and round. When we don't act on our own self-interest, it ends up hurting everybody. And yeah, you're right. There is really not much distinction between pig and dog. Like it's a very facile level of, of a barrier that we say, oh, this is different from this. Like, no, they're really basically the same. I've had, I've had two pet pigs. I've raised two as part of 4-H. Warchester pigs. One was a black one and they knew their own name. And I remember the first day we met the pigs, Agriculture Commissioner's office came to us as like, that's, that's Wilbur. And that's Raven or something. It's like, Raven, go here, Wilbur, go through that gate. And the pigs split and just literally did exactly what the guy said. And I'm like, oh, wow, these things are smart and delicious. I still eat, I don't care. But you know what? Some people eat dogs too. And I'm like, I won't, I've had coyote jerky before. And that, that made me sad because I was like, I didn't know there were dogs. Like, don't feed me dogs. But in the head, I'm like, why am I making such a weird and big of a distinction about this dread? You want to say something? Well, yeah, I just wanted to, like in, in Grand Forks here, we, we have a very large white tailed deer population. And it's been a very divisive issue here in Grand Forks. Because some people, of course, view the deer essentially as these, as animals that ought to be cared for, ought to be fed, not to be culled, for instance. And then, of course, there's the other camp that believes that, you know, they are essentially just an oversized mount or might, you know, and they're vermin in their own, in that sense. So again, it speaks to our, our emotional responses to different kinds of life as to how we value them. And here, I thought that was a bit touching on the issue there. Shred, I'm going to touch on this question for you. There is the idea of if left unregulated, these deer can not only grow so much that they harm their own populations, but hurt human populations as well and need to be culled. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. In fact, a number of years ago, I was, I've worded at the contract to undertake a humane cull and, you know, limited success just because of the sheer number of animals out there. But, you know, out in the wild, for instance, deer always generally have two, you know, two young each spring with the idea that attrition will pair that population down to one per, per doe. But in a city, you know, in a city environment, there's no predation. And there's a lot of back eating going on. So very quickly, you have essentially an exponential rise in the population, which as you point out, they're now the scarcity of food, the competition for food that's available. They're very unhealthy animals. And not only that, they're being fed food. That is not a customary part of their diet. Yeah, like French fries or lasagna. I don't want to see that video. George, go for it. What is a humane way of culling deer? A bolt gun. So we have these, we have these big, they're, they're big, good rectangular traps that once they go in, they're baited. The full, the trap will collapse upon them. Like we just collapse upon them and hold them down. And then two bolt gun shots to the head and they're just wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Yeah. Well, it likes detail for me in a weird way. We do cull dogs as well, because that's not a population that we can control. We have like these things called pounds and remain societies that say there's too many dogs, not enough people want to take care of them and they can't be left in the wild. So we cull dogs as well. Not to the same order that we do with pigs, but we pigs, if left on their own, would also turn into wild, fairer wars, destroy our agriculture. And we can't have that happen. So we have to domesticate them. And there's an infrastructure in place to feed people because we don't have an alternative that can sustain seven billion people. So like we, we, we have made definitely an impact on earth on a nature natural level that we have to compensate with industry, infrastructure, and maybe rules that aren't necessarily non-hypercritical, but they are the rules that we have right now. Doesn't mean that we can't get them better. And I think it is worth thought to think about what can we do to make this process at least more humane, you know? Yeah, I'd like to say, adjust something. The dread pirate Higgs said, I'm sure he didn't mean it this way. But he said, dear have two children are two fawns every season with the idea that one of them will die. Of course, he, he, he's really talking about evolution and evolutionary processes, which there is no goal in sight. If deer were one of those species that only had one child or one fawn in the environment that they used to live in, then these species would have died out. If they had had more than two, then they probably would not have been able to sustain giving them, you know, raising them to adulthood like they do with two that would cost them too much energy in the process. And they would have died out as a species. It's just a way of natural selection that has honed them to have two children or two fawns. And it's adapting to the environment they're in, right? Exactly. Right. For instance, there's no idea involved. Yeah. For instance, a deer, you know, in, in a very food-scarce environment, a doe will actually absorb one of the, one of the fawns in it while it's gestating or to, to sustain itself because a doe, a dead doe can't bear too many children, right? Yeah. There are some real deer consequences within the doe. J.W. Kennedy, I'm going to throw a question out at you. What do you think about plant life? Is plant life important? Say we could, for example, avoid having to make burgers out of cows. But instead of killing one cow, we have to kill 10,000 plants in order to make the same patty. Like we kill like 10,000 lima beans or whatever. Well, I'd have to see the data on that. And, you know, the, the models us to see if they're, if we're consuming more than we should. And, you know, like, what are the dangers of running out of food in that particular aspect? But I guess let me throw this out. I know it's a, it's a biased hypothetical, but I'm just saying, like, what if we could replace protein or animal meat with a facsimile of plant meat or plant protein, but we just have to kill way more plants? We could do it sustainably, but the lives of plants will buy orders of magnitude be killed on a more frequent basis. Well, I think it would be significantly more moral because the plants don't have a nervous system. Interesting. But they have a life. But they have a life. Yeah. Pointless matter. And why, why only, and why do only with nervous systems matter? Yeah, yeah. I think we also have to have to consider, you know, we are a part of nature and we do have a job to win if we, if we want our species to continue. I love when you're on the show. It's a, it's a, it's a hard, it's a, it's a hard question. No, that's such a great quote. We're a part of nature and we have a job to win. Like that, that's nature. That's totally true. Yeah. Dale, we've got to find that balance of, of, of winning and also caring for what's here. So I love that. That's a perfect, that's a perfect answer. Dale, what do you have? You can grow more plants. And I rarely hear talking about killing a plant unless you're talking about your rose bush. You're talking about a corn field. My grandpa never said anything about he was going to kill his corn. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah. Like we just gotten so used to it that the normal. Do you think it's one of those hypocritical, hypocritical situations, Dale? Yeah. Absolutely not. Plants, their destiny is to be eaten, to be consumed. As a matter of fact, a lot of plants. Destiny. Yeah. All right. And some, some plants has been official for them to be consumed because, you know, birds eat certain seeds and they make parts to be, they don't. But yeah, the wholesale killing of them. To, well, yeah, one thing brings us to mind. My brother used to have an aversion to using paper towels. He says, with the population of the world and everybody using paper towels, every time you like pull one off the roll, it's like blowing up a tree. That much tree goes into the paper. But he didn't. It's not true. The thing about it is he didn't consider the trees are a renewable resource and that people make their living by growing trees so they can make paper towels. But still at the same time, it gets us back to the question of the valid validity and of life itself and what rights trees would have. But I just thought that was funny and I thought I'd inject it. I'd like to interject just one last thing. We actually know for a fact that in some ways, plant cells are way more complex than any other kind of mammal cell or proto bacteria cell. So like we have, so there are things called bacteria and they're inside our bodies even and they have one more or less set of DNA that's in their nucleus. We have two. We have one that's in our nucleus and one that's in something called mitochondria. You might have heard of it. It's like the powerhouse of the cell. A long, long time ago, mitochondria were their own little, tiny little bugs independent and they were hanging around single cell organisms like other bacteria and they fuse and those cells later became the complex eukaryotic cells that we have in our bodies now. Like every cell in our body is what you know about it. Oh, I thought you might mention your credentials. No, I'm sorry. I have a biochemist. I'm a PhD biochemist. So the cool thing is plants have three sets of cells. They have the nucleus DNA, they have mitochondria and they have chloroplasts or an organelle in their cells that are capable of using sunlight and turning that into energy too. They have three different kinds of DNA each of their cells. If an alien were to come down here and they'll be like, I'm looking for the most complex organism. They're looking at us and we're here like shoveling coal into into like pots so that we can stay warm in the winter and like killing plants just so we can eat them and we need to survive. We will literally die if we don't do anything for three days. Whereas plants are just like, hey man, I'm cool. I got a plant back there. It's just like, I'm literally just put water on me and put me in front of a window and I will live, I will outlive you. That's all I need. I'm like, the aliens are going to be like, these are the guys we're bringing back on this shit. The oldest living things on the planet are on our planet. They'll be taking all our roses. Yeah. Damn, you guys are making me hungry as hell. So, Dredd, you wanted to talk, I saw your lies light up at the mention of destiny. Was there anything that you wanted to mention about that? Well, I, destiny of plants. Just the idea that, you know, a statement can be justified by a word that doesn't have a lot behind it. I appreciate that you don't like the word destiny. However, destiny seems to fit here since they can't propagate without somebody eating them or something, but I will say it is a pretty charged word. They'll, they'll finish, finish, Dredd, let them finish. Go for it. I will substitute the word inevitable in order not to bother you much. OK, hey, that's not bad. I also say plants are pretty good at propagating without our help. They just don't do it as organized, but they can do it and they have been doing it. They just their their fruits don't look as big as a result. They're like, I'm not trying to feed an entire human race. I'm just making enough for that tiny little bird to spread this one little seed. That's all I need. I'm very efficient. All right, guys, believe it or not, we're already at the bottom of the half hour. Isn't that crazy? Yeah, it's strange. Larry, why don't you take us out? OK, this is digital free thought radio hour on WZO radio 103.9. I'll be at them right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We'll be right back after this short break. I felt so ashamed because I was extremely unhappy. And I remember telling my mom and dad, seriously, like, this is how I felt. 103.9 FM WZO radio. I'm back to the second half of the digital free thought at radio hour on WZO radio 103.9 LPF. I'm right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today is August 30th, 2020. Let's talk about the free thought groups that you can join right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. First, there's the Atheist Society of Knoxville, founded in 2002 or in our 18th year now with over 1,000 members. Nice. You can find us online by searching for Knoxville Atheist or go to KnoxvilleAtheist.org. By the way, if you live in Knoxville, you should still go to the meet up and search for it and join us there. Don't find a group in your town. Start one. Another large free thinking group here in Knoxville are rationalists of East Tennessee. To find them, go to rationalist.org and click on their upcoming events. Fairly earlier in the show, we said we'd talk about Knoxville Atheist calling TV shows. Well, it's really more of a streaming online show now, but it was on TV for 10 years. Right, Steve Urkel is my favorite character. He was really, really popular. Free thinkers United Coalition of Knoxville Online, YouTube Streaming. You can also find those 10 years of archives of the TV show by going to YouTube and search for Free Thought Forum, Knoxville. And if you're interested in getting involved in the TV or the radio show, just come to our pages. There's a Facebook page for either one of them. Rationalists of East Tennessee or AASK. And join us there. Let us know you'd like to be part of the show. With us on the show today, we have the Wombat, J.W. Kennedy, George, and Red Pirate Higgs, or Red Leader. Where do we want to pick up? So I want to talk about Netflix, because I was watching a really, really interesting movie called The Incredibles. I don't know if you guys ever saw that. There's a really cool character called Iceman. And there's a really funny scene where he's looking for a super suit. And he's like, looking for a super suit, looking for a super suit. He goes to his wife, and he's like, where's the love? Guys, we're going to go over some fan. I feel weird saying that. Yeah, I feel weird saying that. But there's so many great places for you to reach out to us. And I just want to make sure that I have pulled it up. Give me a second, Lent. I'll edit this appropriately. Yeah, my son lost it. Whenever he gets mail, it doesn't matter if it's a bill or whatever he says. Oh, they love me. They write me all the time. They send me love. Right. So we had some great feedback from Nathan Matthews who watched our last show when we were talking about death in a good way. Nathan Matthews writes, great talk. We can all benefit from discussing death more often. I learned some new things thanks to Dread Pirate Higgs, things like compunction, and Jack Kevorkian. Some of my family and friends cling to their religion for comfort in their afterlife. Ignoring that faulty reasoning, my experience has been contrary to this. I had constant fear of whether I was going to go to a good afterlife due to the lack of a consensus on the rules. Now being an atheist, death no longer carries that threatening unknown. Death is simply the end for me. It gives me appreciation for the time that I have. Thank you very much for that, Conn. That was really great. Nice. Very good. Dread, do you have anything from our streamers or watching this show live on YouTube? Well, Min had put in a comment about our last topic there. He said, plants are not sentient beings. Besides, they could be... Sorry. Exactly, and that's a great question. Besides, they can regrow while animals cannot. Right, right, right. We know that because they don't have a central nervous system. They don't have any kind of a location. Yeah, that's what I was saying. Yeah, if you don't have nerves, you don't have feelings. Everybody knows that. It's like a way to process them. Ants behave like they're sentient, but are they individually? Yeah, but they're like free-floating cells. I mean, the entire hive, don't they... I mean, can't they act as an entity by themselves? Yeah, there's actually some pretty individualistic answer out there. I would say this, though. There's one more love and respect thing I want to go for. I recently did a college lecture for Dalton State College. That was, I believe, last Tuesday, and I gave a presentation on street epistemology or how to talk to anyone about anything. I'll post a link to that in this YouTube channel, but I also got some weird feedback on that as well from the members in that college class that I had over Zoom, along with on YouTube. And thank you, everyone, for those comments. We need to dedicate a show where we just do listener feedback. I think it would be good. Maybe next time, maybe next one will just be listener feedback. Catch up on it, but thank you guys for it. Please continue posting or leaving comments. We'll go over them over the show. All right, so are we, while we're debating on whether or not organisms that don't have a central nervous system can respond to external stimuli? Was that what we were discussing? Yeah. Because that is an interesting topic. Yeah. Plants, plants, definitely. A lot of plants can respond to external stimuli. If they're attacked by certain bugs, they can put out certain pesticide or pest repellent things. Yeah, some can apply straight up. Plants that, yes, there are also plants that have a, they, trees, I'm thinking of pecan trees right here, where they have a sort of an umbrella where they can control the incursion of other plants so that they can keep more water and all. They do respond to their environment. Plants have to, or they would not have evolved as they would. We didn't have flowering plants for millions of years, but now they have used an evolutionary strategy in order to propagate themselves. And one of the things that here in East Tennessee, we may know of as being very successful at that, is kudzu. Is that bluegrap? No, that's the vines that grow over everything, right? Everything. Houses, other trees, everything, right? They're incredibly invasive plant that just comes out of everywhere. George, it looks like you're doing jazz hands. Did you want to say something? I'm stretching, sorry guys. I'm doing my exercises. Stretching is great, okay, cool. Yeah, I think someone had mentioned ants and whether or not they can behave individualistically. There are, so like similar to bees, where some live in hives, there are species of bees that don't. There are species of bees that like, more or less, carpeted bees, for example, more or less have very small families of just, them, the spouse, literally, and they're offspring in little holes on the wall. And yeah, and there are, of course, the murder hornets that are going on right now, they act in hives, they're individualistic hornets that aren't necessarily as dangerous, though they unfortunately get killed as frequently as what we perceive to be harmful, invasive hornets. But there are organisms that are insectoid of that variety that live more or less on their own, know how to hunt, don't like people, have their own ways of like deterring pests, strategies that they have for attacking their prey. They, there's like, comprep mentalized thinking on their parts of like, hey, I'm gonna take this, I'm gonna bring it home, I'm gonna put my babies in it. And I'm gonna like, wall off this section, I'm gonna have the babies come out of this dead body, because that's the way how I propagate. But I have to plan for that. Like, I have to like, wait in certain areas and stuff like that. And I'm like, bees are also really cool too. I just love the fact that there's this animal that we have no problem eating their spit and packaging and selling it. And they have a communication that's based, they have a language that's based on dancing that we've already deciphered. And we know like, oh, they fly in, they wiggle this way to point their initial direction. They turn to show how far you have to fly in that direction. And they vibrate really hard to show, I need four other people to come with me. Like I need four of the bees to come with me. I need six more bees to come with me. That direction, based off the sun settings. Like, you're so smart. Fascinating. The sign language would be so much more efficient. Oh, they have six appendages. They'd be amazing, wouldn't it? But I don't think we give things that don't have a central nervous system enough credit. I think there's, I mean, it's nice to have it. Definitely understand it better. But there's some cool things. Derek Pryor, what do you got? Yeah, and I mean, this is the field I work in is entomology and plants. I'm a crop consultant and a crop protection manager. So a big part of what I do is scouting fields, looking for the presence of pests and disease and also the presence of beneficial insects that may be working at managing the population. So I have had the opportunity over the last 15 years to see sort of in situ how these interactions, how these interactions are performed and just the amazing variety of what on the one hand, if it came from a human, we would consider it intelligent. Right. You're seeing it on the insect level or on the disease level that it's not. So it gives me the sense that what we consider sentient or intelligent is really on a sliding scale that's really hard to dial down to, that we can't see the chink points on the scale to say, oh, clearly that's intelligent or sentient and clearly that's not. I think that the scale slides much more smoothly through a range rather than a discrete point-by-point sort of process. I would argue one that the scale isn't serving us as far as rationally determining what sentience is and two, I would also say there's no real scale because no one knows what it's like to be a bat. Like we just have to assume based on the behavior of a bat what that bat's thinking. And some species, we totally ignore their intelligence like pigs and stuff and just try to meet them anyway. Yeah, yeah, and that's scary too. Sometimes we know pretty well and we just don't care. Right. But yeah, I'll get my shout out to plants. There are still things that plants do today that we are reverse engineering in particular like when I was doing my work. There are redwood trees that are capable of drawing water from the ground up multiple hundred feet straight up into the air just from a capillary effect. Like we have a very well-understand, good understanding of how the capillary effect works and there's a point where gravity will offset the benefit of that force. Like there's no way that you can capillary force water up that high. Yeah, plants figured that out. And we are still trying to figure out how that's possible. Like is it like, is an ion charge that they're displacing? Like what's going on inside this tree? That's doing this. And I guarantee you there's some really great research articles out now that's still like, we don't know how trees work. They must be actively doing something that when you kill them, they don't do anything for them. That's right, I'm sorry. So now I'm raising my hand. George, what's up? What's up? Well, I'm getting hungry listening to all of this. And so- Go get some food. What? I have a 50-50 burger. Yeah. Well, my mind goes- Yeah, let's talk about food for the next four. Okay. So what am I gonna do when I go to the supermarket? Yeah. That's the bottom line here. Yeah. You know. I can tell you, I've been trying to eat more healthy now that I've realized, you know, I am getting older. It'd be nice if I put less chemicals in my body, like less candy, less processed, stuff like that. I don't think I'd go full vegan, but I can definitely change the kinds of meats that I'm eating. Like, I can stay away from like the sausage and pick more like fish and stuff like that. Have you ever done any research on the Mediterranean diet? No, talk to me about it. Like- I read this book and I recommend it to everybody. It's Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy by- I may be getting the name wrong, but the name of the book is right, but the name of the author, I might get wrong. Dr. Mitchell Willets, I believe. And basically, it's all science-based stuff. He divides the, you know, the bullcrap from the truth and he is very supportive of Mediterranean or plant-based diet. He's plant-based himself, but he still says the benefits of chicken and fish. And that's simply Mediterranean. You got high in mono-saturated and polysaturated fats, low in sugar, low in bad carbs. This is a lot of good stuff. And he's basically, most of the book is supporting why the Mediterranean diet is one of the healthiest diets and how it matches up with what we've learned in science and long-term studies, which is important. What I'd be interested in seeing is if there is a anti-killing diet. Like I would like to talk to the Janus and see if they figured out a way to just eat things that are naturally produced from animals without calling them like milk or fruits, stuff like that. Dred, what do you have? Soilent green. Soilent green is from soy. You have to kill soybeans to make soilent green. No, no, no, no. Soilent green. Charlton has no. Oh, you mean just people? I regime top people. Oh, okay, that, not the product. Okay, well, there's a product called soilent green. I eat dead people. So you could, what if you ate already dead things? Would that be more listically any way better? I think we're off on a real, real wide tangent. I wanna talk about something that I wanna bring up after the show. I wanna do a quick round table on things, the weirdest things you've heard, I know this is a bit targeting, but the weirdest things you've heard from Christians that now that everyone here is an atheist, you can look back and be like, what? What, I believe that? And I would throw- Where does one begin? Yeah, I know. I'll throw mine out under the hat. I remember when I was in high school, I was telling my, and I was in hardcore Christian back then, well, it was hard course you could be when you didn't know anything aside from just trying to impress your parents and stuff like that. But there was a show called Powerpuff Girls. And I made it a well-known fact about me that I did not watch the show because there was a bad guy in Powerpuff Girls who looked like the devil and he had little lobster hands and a red face. And I was like, I don't watch this show because there's the devil in that show. So if people were talking about it, like the new movie coming out, I'd be like, oh, you like Powerpuff Girls? Well, I don't watch it because there's the devil in it. And I had my little Jesus lanyard and everything. Oh, the cringe, it made me feel so bad. All right, so I'm gonna put people on the spot. I wish I hadn't done that. Well, yeah, I watched the show now and it's an amazing cartoon, by the way. But Dredd Bart Higgs, is there anything that you would say craziest thing Christian says even if it was you? Even if it was you at the time? Well, actually I was just on looking at some of those crazy signs you see outside churches. Oh, okay. And so, you know, we've just, of course, passed our, you know, 100 degree plus temperatures. Too hot to keep changing sign. Sin bad, Jesus good, he gales inside. That's good. I love it. I love it. Yeah, straight to the point. Larry, I'm gonna throw you under the bus. What do you have as like this one? Just doesn't have to be the most. But like recently... I'm just going for the most popular, the most I've heard. And the craziest at the same time. Why do you hate God? Ah. You know, I always turn right around and say, why do you hate Spider-Man? Or why do you hate... Why do you hate Spider-Man? It's not a clause, it's not a clause. Okay, you could say... Because how can you hate something you don't believe exists? Yeah, yeah. I mean, they haven't even thought that far. Exactly. And I'm just trying to get them to maybe start, take that first step. Also for them, it's easier to equate you not believing with you just hating the thing that they believe, right? Like that world view makes it a little easier for them. Making you part of the L group, right? Yes, yeah. Not only that, but there's... I found that I have less reasons to hate other fictional beings than I do God. Like if I were to hate... If God existed today, like you just proved it, I would not like that being if it was exactly as described in the Bible. But I don't have a reason to hate things that don't exist. So like, my people, I don't. But if you did exist, I wouldn't like you. So I put my head on the shelf, but I'm not applying it right now. There's other things I need more that I have to deal with on a daily basis. J.W., I'm gonna fill this out at you. Craziest thing you've heard from a Christian, or even if it was from you, what do you got? Well, back when I was religious, one of the things that for some reason it could have been from, because of childhood trauma, it could have been from filling the blank or just culturally or what I was used to. The self-degregation of many religions, especially Christian religion. For some reason, the songs that I was attracted to, there was a lot of self-degregation in the songs and the sermons. And I just look back now of things that once brought me chills like a drug. Now I look back and think about them. It just turns my stomach. Like it's just so obvious that it's rooted in self-hatred and unhealthy. And it's just, and it's rampant in Abrahamic religions, especially. Oh yeah. My mom has, my mom's Jehovah Witness. She has tried to turn me on to her persuasion. She showed me like their music and it's really, really old. It's like the exact kind of thing you get from like an old Pentecostal church that played music off cassette tapes. It's like one of those kinds of genres of song. Like the worst crown of Christian music. And all the lyrics are just, I'm so sick and you healed me. I was weak and you gave me strength. I was bad and you were good for me. I suck. And you were amazing. I'm like, why would you sing that? It's such an amazing grace. It's such a really abusive relationship with an imaginary deity. No doubt. Yeah. Why would you make kids sing that? That's so bad. Like. Or washed in the blood kind of thing. Yeah. It's really messed up. Anyway, but that's great. That's a great poll, J.W. George, you were born an atheist. So you, or I'm sorry, of course you were born an atheist. Everyone was. But like you never really had the religious brainwashing. Have you still heard weird things from Christians that made you go like, whoa, what's that all about? Especially now that you're in Tennessee. Oh, of course I have. What do you got? I was in the supermarket before my operation and wearing my mask amidst a few people who weren't in. Sure. Coming toward me in the supermarket was a woman also wearing a mask. And she said to me, are you having a blessed day? And I replied, no, I'm not. The words just flew out of my mouth. Whoa. It happens. It happens every once in a while that I failed to censor myself. Did you follow it up with, and I'm walking over here. What are you doing? Oh, well, she said something else. She said, well, I hope you do later. No, she sounds like a sweet lady though. And that's it. I mean, I just, I don't know how to respond to this. I think of it as like, if I was in Roman times, right? Like if I took time traveling back to Roman times and I was going to go on the river or walk on like next to a coast or go on a boat. And one of the locals was like, Poseidon be with you. Like he's giving me just his worldviews best shot at saying, hey, see you later, man. Like that's how they compartmentalize it. So like that's how I sort of deal with it. It's just like, you just tell me how I have a good day in Christian language. But it could be offensive in the sense like I just got over Christianity. I know how much little tenure there is in that in terms of truth. So like it sucks for me to hear that, but I can understand someone who's just from a culture being like, I give up about that. It's like, oh, okay. I'm in India. Like they're going to say that. Like that's cool. I'm cool with that. I haven't gotten used to this yet. You know, I don't know if I ever will. Well, I have a sister who's Muslim and she will tell me things like, Salam, there's like a lot of sayings. Oh man, why can't I remember any of them? Anyway, they're saying to us like, God willing, God be with you, stuff like that. And I take, I will say them back to her because for me like, it's just not vanilla ice cream anymore. It's just like, oh, this is kind of new. I don't, you know, I don't believe it. I'm glad you know, I don't believe it. And we can share these things back and forth as an atheist and a Muslim. I'm happy. Maybe that's what we have to do. You know, maybe that's, maybe that makes the most sense. I mean, as I see it right now, we are probably already living in a police state here in the United States. Yeah, we've been. I'm glad white people are understanding that now. I've been there for a while. Okay, well, that's cool, man. Yeah, it's not cool, but it is here. However, you know, my point is that, well, maybe we're there and we're going to be there for a long time, you know? I hope not. Yeah. But what I'm reflecting on about that is that intellectual people have existed and, you know, survived under dictatorships in the past. So I guess we're all going to survive. Maybe we'll do the best we can. Yeah, and it won't be without fighting for good causes. Dred, what do you have? We got eight minutes left in the show. What do you think? Well, one thing I was thinking about is one thing I challenge people on is following a sneeze. Bless you. Sure. What do you mean by that? Yeah, if you got the time for it. Also, I have no problem first letting people know that I'm an atheist and then still saying bless you just so that they know, like, oh, atheists say it too. Now I'm not going to assume Christians are the only people who say it so that when I hear bless you, I still have to guess on whether or not they go to my church or some other church nearby. Keep them thinking. I may assume that you're asking me to say it. I like to say it's untightened to bless them. Praise the seven. You can say that too. I've been getting to some Game of Thrones stuff. Dale, I want to say the best for last. I know that you've actually been compelled based on things that you've heard from Christians to even write a book on the subject. Not to force your answer, but like, has there been weird things that Christians have said that made you want to respond to them in some sort of published format? I have several examples in the book, but you have asked for an example of something a preacher has said that is odd. Sure. Recently, within the past three months, I think it was about three months ago, one minister was talking about the deaths from coronavirus, and he said, well, death for us, for Christians, and for me, death is an old friend. And I was thinking, wow, so death should be an old friend. Oh, by the way, three of his congregation died shortly thereafter. So if that's the sort of 81% of the evangelicals went for Trump, and if this is the way that they're going to ignore the stuff he's doing by just being hypocritical about their religion, maybe that's a good idea that we should notice at least. And also, I'll throw this out. As we head to the end of the show, have you made any sort of writing like a paper thingy, like a thing that you do this and there's like stuff in it? Like, is there anything like that that you're responsible for that you put out on the world? Dale, you have to plug it in for you. I don't write anymore. He doesn't write anymore. So don't go to his website. We don't have to talk about it. What's the thing that you wrote about miracles? If Jesus was a magician of his time, my book describes how he could do his miracles. Yes. Actually, I checked out your book. Even coming back from the dead, even putting the ear miracle, the wine, the water, the walking on water, all of it, the Bible clearly says, well, Larry's read it, the Bible clearly says how the tricks were done. Cool, yeah, very cool. It's found that. And where can we find it? How Jesus did it.com. Nice, very cool. Jay Pire, where can we find your stuff at? Well, we live streamed this show Sunday mornings at 8 a.m., Pacific Standard Time, or Pacific Daylight Time, depending on what it is. And it's found on MinePirate, M-I-N-D-P-Y-R-A-T-E. Ah, damn it, I missed it. It's already half old. Hey, no cursing. Oh my gosh, look at you, wordy dirty. Guess who's on mute for the rest of the show. Hey, Larry, what is going on? What, we'll do you next. J.W. Kennedy, what do you got? I got J.W. Kennedy on YouTube and Speak Your Beautiful Mind on YouTube. You can follow me at J.W.K., hates the news on Twitter, and you can follow me at your beautiful mind, spelled U-R, on Twitter, and that's the Speak Your Beautiful Mind page, which is content coming soon. I know I say that every week, but I promise you, it's coming. Hey, content. I'll be the first to tell you all, so. You don't owe content to anybody. I'll say that first before I go. You don't, you don't, you don't. You can put out as much as you want, and people will keep wanting more, but you're doing this out of a love. You're doing this out of your own hobby, and when it comes out, it comes out, and that's, your audience should respect your time as much as yourself, right? So, yeah, keep an eye out. Just subscribe in the meanwhile, and when it comes out, you'll be ready for it. My channel's called Let's Chat. I recently put up my lecture for Dolphin State College. It's now a series. I did a talk with them last year for a different class, and I'll probably doing a similar lecture for Judd Pirate Higgs when he does, when he starts his teaching as well. And then now that planes are beginning to open up more, and at least in the United States, I will tentatively, a couple of months from now, start doing more long distance in person chat. So looking forward to that too. George, what would you recommend, aside from the New York Times, for people to check out, learn stuff about? Well, I've been, on our Tuesday meeting, I mentioned a book called American Nations, and I think Canada's in there too. It's about the 11 different dominant cultures that have evolved and come to the United States and part of Canada as well. Sort of forming the diverse, often warring people who we are. Nice. Very cool. What's the name of the book again? American Nations. American Nations. And it's about, a matter of fact, while George was talking to himself. Written by Colin Woodward, published in 2011. American Nations. We got a couple of minutes left in the show. Larry, what's cool about you? Did you write a book? Cause I really want to know what atheism is all about. And I don't know where I can find out what atheism is all about. Is there something I can put into Google to find out where atheism is and what it's all about? Yeah, if you Google atheism, what's it all about, you might come up with my book. It's available on Amazon. And did you ever give me a copy of that book, by the way? Like, how long do I have to know you before I just got a free copy of that book? Another week. And you can also use a search engine which does not surveil you, such as Duck Duck Go. And Xquik, which is now called Start Page. Oh, by the way, howjesusdidit.com is free to read online. And I recommend it highly. Be sure to visit my blog at digitalfreethought.com. You'll have all of our radio show archives there, atheist songs, articles on the subject of atheism. If you'd like to listen to prior shows, all of our podcasts are available through iTunes, Stitcher, LuminaryPodcast.com, or digitalfreethought.com. If you have any questions for the show, you can send them to us via email at askanatheist at noxfolatheist.org, and we'll answer my future shows. If you're watching this on YouTube, be sure to like and subscribe and be notified when new episodes are posted. And 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, George, you had something to say before we finally say bye. You are going to somebody else's hell. No, we all are, according to the religion of the world. Join us again next Wednesday at seven o'clock on WOZO Radio for another digital freethought radio hour. Until then, say bye-bye, everybody. Bye-bye, everybody. They're rational. Bye-bye. Yeah.