Speaker 1: Understand the thinking atheist. It's not a person, it's a symbol,
an idea.
Speaker 2: The population of atheists this country is going through.
Speaker 1: The rule, rejecting faith, pursuing knowledge, challenging the sacred. If
I tell the truth, it's because I tell the truth,
not because I put my hand on a book and
made a wish and working together for a more rational world.
Speaker 2: Take the risk of thinking. Feel so much more happiness.
Truth Usian wisdom will come to you that way.
Speaker 1: Assume nothing, question everything, and start thinking. This is the
Thinking Atheist podcast hosted by Seth Andrews.
Speaker 2: There is video of the conversation you are about to
hear with my special guest, Dave Farina. Dave has a
BA in chemistry from Charlton College. He has an MA
in Science education from California State University Northridge. He taught
chemistry in classrooms for a long time until he turned
his attention pretty much to full time online science communication
and education, and he runs the Professor Dave Explains YouTube channel,
which is linked in the description box. With the country
on fire and science under attack, I thought it would
be a good idea to speak to yet another science
educator on the show today. Here we go. Today, I'm
going to talk to a friend and science educator who
has strong opinions about the anti science that is infecting
like a cancer, not just the United States, but the world.
Dave Arena glad to see again.
Speaker 3: Man AIDI, thanks for having me for those who.
Speaker 2: Are just now being introduced to you. Let's do our
due diligence. Who are you?
Speaker 3: What do you do? I'm a science communicator and I
focus mainly on a YouTube channel called Professor Dave Explains.
Started out mainly doing academic tutorials for high school and
college students in a variety of topics, mainly science, but
then branching out, but for the past five years or
so have developed an audience with debunking content where I
really aggressively go after these bad faith actors that are
peddling lies in pseudoscience and exposing them to the best
of my ability.
Speaker 2: Your channel is an interesting mix because there's a lot
of deep dives into hard science for kids. I say
kids thirty year old, you know who are undergoing masters
and PhD type programs and the sciences. So when I
say kids, maybe I just betrayed my age. No insult intended,
But on top of that, then you go after people
like Eric Weinstein. So I guess we'll start there. Who
is he and what's your problem with him?
Speaker 3: Oh? My god, how do we even begin? Eric Weinstein
is a pseudo intellectual fraud who is paid by Peter
Teel to spread anti science and anti establishment rhetoric on
the Internet. He's basically a propaganda mouthpiece. He's a guy
who goes on podcasts and pretends to sound as smart
as possible to trick gullibal A people into raging against
the university system and peer review and all of these
institutions that are the way we gather knowledge, the way
that we substantiate knowledge.
Speaker 2: Hang on, hang on, David, I'm sorry he's going hard
against peer review.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, he does it all the time. He did
it on the first Peers Morgan segment that I was
supposed to be on that I was kicked off at
the last minute. I think because Eric said he didn't
want me to be part of it. He wanted this
whole tirade with Brian Keating, like whining about how peer
review is like only very recent and it's just like
a gatekeeping method and all this stuff. I mean, you know,
the drill, Like, if peer review is keeping your pseudoscience
out of real journals, then it's corruption, right, It's not
just the system working the way it's supposed to and
highlighting bad science and preventing it from getting published in
real journals. You know. So that's his that's one of
his many sticks.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But I mean the guy's got a PhD from Harvard.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now granted it's mathematics not biology. But when somebody throws
out the degree like that, someone in my position is like,
oh shit, PhD Harvard, what do I do with that?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Look, I mean it's true he fumbled his way
through a doctorate at Harvard. You know, he's never published anything. Like,
he's not he's not a scientist right now. The problem
is that he is educated, So it's not he's not
Terrence Howard. Right, he does have the language and he
does understand what these words mean, which enables him to
better craft his script. So I mean the takeaway is, yes, like,
you don't just go PhD. Therefore the right you never
do that. There are Nobel Prize winners that descend into
crack pottery. Luke Montagnier won the Nobel for isolating HIV
and then for a decade or longer has been pushing
water memory and all this other crap, Like he's like
the quintessential Nobel disease crackpot. So yeah, that someone has
a doctorate makes them more likely to be correct. But
people with PhDs can be lying frauds. They can be
disgusting lying frauds. Eric Weinstein is one such person. And
people who play the credentials game will only do it
in one direction, right, They'll do it for Eric, But
then anybody like I just I had recently did a
piece covering he had a spat with Sean Carroll on
Piers Morgan as well.
Speaker 2: Now, who is Sean Carroll?
Speaker 3: Forgive me go ahead, sure, Yeah, Sean is a real physicist, right,
It's not like he's the most prominent physicist in the
game or anything. He's a working physicist, a respected working
physicist who is also an extremely popular science communicator, so
he has tremendous contribution with science communication, but is also
a working physicist. So if your big thing is looking
for a PhD, but you ignore all of the working
physicists to step up and expose Eric, right, which has
been happening increasingly. I've had several on my channel working
physicists go through his geometric unity, which is his incredible
theory of everything, which he released on April Fool's Day
in twenty twenty one, saying this is a work of entertainment,
it's not supposed to be taken seriously, only to then
go on the podcast circuit for years whining about how
academics won't take him seriously and he's being pushed out
of the conversation. It just serves his whole anti establishment paranoia,
conspiracy pedaling. But really what he was doing was just
avoiding scrutiny as long as possible, Right know what, he
educated actually look at this thing, so I can go
on podcasts and use all of my jargon and look
as smart as possible, so then I can then spew
my ridiculous Peter Teel funded agenda. But then you know,
it caught up to him. People started actually looking at
it and going, Wow, this is a gigantic piece of crap.
What are you doing pretending that this is something that
anybody educated should be looking at? And so he's really
descended in the past six months or so, I want
to say, it's been a joint effort. I did a
huge piece on him and his brother last year, but
then the Sean Carroll thing and then the blowback from that.
He's pretty universally recognized to be a complete fraud now,
and the blowback in the Teal sphere is compounding because
people likes to be in a Hasenfelder are going to
his defense, and then by proxy people are going, oh, wait, okay,
so she's a fraud too. It's incredibly hilarious Kurt Jaimunngall,
Brian Keating. All these sycophants are being exposed one by
one simply, not simply, but largely due to their willingness
to defend the blatantly fraudulent Eric Weinstein. It's quite delightful.
Speaker 2: Well, you mentioned Peter Teel. This is the billionaire oligarch
puppeteer behind much of the bullshit that's been happening in
the United States, extremely well funded and dangerous. You want
to speak specifically to Teal before I move on?
Speaker 3: Sure, I mean he has his hands in pallenteer and
and the Orwellian surveillance systems that are being put into place.
He basically hand picked the vice president. He was like Jdevance,
You're vice president. Now in so many words, that's essentially
what happened. I mean, yeah, he's just as he's a
billionaire wanting to do billionaire things, which includes just like
a huge part of it is control, right if you
want to when you have a situation when you have
a wealth inequality like we do today with just this rampant,
unfettered capitalism, where we're seeing the point one percent right,
the top handful richest people getting wealthier and wealthier and
wealthier at this alarming rate, while more and more people right,
the middle classes shriveling, and so many people are below
the poverty line. How do you maintain that transference of wealth? Right,
nobody's willingly going to coalesce with that, so you have
to manipulate them. It requires propaganda, and all of the
propaganda is centered around getting people to distrust scientists, institutions
of higher learning. Basically anybody that's telling the truth has
to be demonized so that people's behavior can be controlled,
their consumer behavior, their voting behavior. They want to keep
people in office that are basically just completely subservient to
the oligarchy, which is epitomized by the Trump administration obviously,
and this is the name of the game. And so
Teal needs mouthpieces, right, he needs pawns to disseminate his
propaganda on the internet. Eric Weinstein number one, Right, And
that's not even speculative, like he's been on the Teal
payroll on paper for fifteen years or whatever. So others
I've speculated sabin a Hasenfelder, and I've made a lot
of content about that. I can't prove it, but that
to me as clear as day. But this is the
currency he deals with, right, It's all. It's an optics game,
and he needs people on the internet spreading this message
and manipulating and twisting public perception against real scientists, and
against universities and against federal in institutions that regulate the
private sector. Right, EPA and HHS. Right, we're going to
talk about RFK in a minute. All of these institutions
must be gutted, their ability to regulate the private sector
rendered obsolete. That's the playbook essentially.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, as far as the power player with
too much power, far too much power. I read in
the Independent that Elon Musk has control over two thirds
of the active satellites in space. Right now, I mean
how much power and of course, many people are like, ah,
you know, boy genius Elon Musk, and I'm just thinking, Jesus,
you know really.
Speaker 3: No, yeah, I mean Elon Is. It's like, I don't
it's hard for me to comment on that guy because
I don't really I'm not good with tex So it's
like I don't understand what's on the horizon, and it's
hard to get a read on him. I know that
he's just interested in himself and ballooning his wealth and
his influence, and the whole Doge debacle was a farce.
And then it's been really hilarious watching the fallout between
him and Trump on Twitter, and.
Speaker 2: He's wanting to go to Mars for a while. I'm
just like, folly, with so much suffering on this world,
and he's like, well, now we need to go colonize Mars,
and I'm like, well why not. You know, we colonized
Earth and we totally fucked it up, so why don't
we fix it here instead of looking at this Really,
I think the physicist said this is just bullshit, this
idea that humans are going to relocate. I know that's
not your field either, but I wondered if you had
an opinion about it.
Speaker 3: Well, look, I mean why not. I mean, sure, colonize Mars,
set up a Mars base, and send people like, there's
nothing wrong with space. Space colonization is cool and we
should totally do it. But when this kind of rhetoric
is being pushed by oligarchs that are part of this cabal,
that are throttling any attempt at regulation of fossil fuels,
this is all activity that is ruining Earth and ruining
human society. So you can, on the one hand, be like, oh,
we needed this escape patch. We're going to go live
in Mars because everything is going to be bad here,
when you're the people who are ruining it here, you're
specifically the ones that are making it impossible to institute
regulations to save the climate, and just in general, are
worsening wealth inequality. So it's not like he obviously wants
to make it sound like he's a champion of the people,
but it's he's just the richest guy alive trying to
get way richer by whatever means possible.
Speaker 2: So, okay, you mentioned the actor Terrence Howard. Oh, he's
a piece of work. Yeah, he's on rogue and he
now he's he's been in some amazing films like Prisoners
and the first Iron Man film. But he also said
he could build the Milky Way galaxy with gravity and
a bunch of just wacky stuff with me about it,
Terrence Howard, would you?
Speaker 3: Terrence Howard is a genuinely mentally ill, delusional narcissist to
his convinced himself he's the greatest genius in human history
and has revolutionized physics and mathematics and chemistry and all
this stuff. And I think he really believes it on
some level. And so he had a moment of virality
about a year ago, and I kind of usurped it.
I took advantage of it and got my own little
viral moment because I've done a few pieces on him,
but the first one that I did based on his
first Rogan appearance. I don't think Rogan will touch him
anymore because the backlash has been, like, dude, what is
going on? Like who is falling for this stuff? But
he's just completely insane, spew's utter nonsense word salad with
science buzzwords that he does not he doesn't know what
they mean, and pretends to be a genius. And it's
interesting because The second piece I did on him was
when Eric Eric Weinstein went on Rogan with Terrence to
talk about all this stuff that Terrence says, and it's
fascinating because they're basically the same, except that Eric knows
what he's talking about a lot more than Terrence does.
Obviously he understands math, but they're both just trying their
hardest to sound intelligent to generate a cult following. They're
exactly the same in their intent, and they're relying on
the same anti establishment, anti academia narrative. So my second
piece was dunking on Terrence and more, but also dunking
on Eric trying to navigate this terrain of simultaneously putting
himself way above Terrence, which he is, but also lambasting
the academic community. How dare they? How dare Neil deGrasse
Tyson insult Terrence by responding with this very polite video
response critiquing his gibberish. You know, how dare they ice
him out of peer review? Peer review? The guy can't
do second grade math, Like, what do you mean peer review?
There's nothing to talk about here, so it's just a
it's a weird Yeah, I mean, Rogan in general, it's
just a complete circus side.
Speaker 2: He's just having conversations and you and I bang our
heads against the wall. You know, you talk about these
PhD types, which brings me into the Discovery Institute. And
these aren't people who like Ken Hoven got his degree
from a shack in Colorado, Right, I mean you got
Steven Meyer, you got doctor Michael Beahey, you got Demski
and a few others. You don't see them in peer review,
but you certainly do see them online and they're writing
and selling their books, etc. You have spoken about often
the Discovery institutes. You want to tell everybody what the
issue is there.
Speaker 3: Sure, yeah, Eric Weinstein is to Terrence Howard, as Meyer
and be He and those guys are to Kent Hovind. Right,
you have your bottom level raving lunatics that most people
can tell are full of shit. But then you have
this elevated version where look at me, I'm dressed a
certain way and I'm speaking very clearly in a scholarly
sounding manner. And yeah there's you know, oh, there's problems
with evolution, and the evolutionists don't want us. There's corruption
in the journals, and so we can't publish in the
peer review because it goes against the orthodoxy of the
othern No, it's just bullshit. You're just lying, but you're
doing so with this terminology that is difficult to penetrate, right,
Whereas Kent hovind, if you got to be or better
in ninth grade biology, you can go, well, that sounds ridiculous.
With the Discovery Institute stuff, you have to have a
certain level of understanding of whatever topic they're lying about,
and they lie about molecular biology, anthropology, geology, all of it. Right,
And so I've definitely made quite a stir with them.
I'm kind of on a my face is on a
dartboard over there somewhere, because I just have taken them
to tasks so hard. I have an entire series where
I just go down the roster and nail every single
one of them and just very undeniably, here's what they say,
the paper says, Here's what the paper actually says. Here's
the primary author of that paper acknowledging that they're lying
about his paper, just really very clearly outlining how everything
they say is a lie and outlining the agenda. Right,
it's there. They work for wealthy Christian nationalists. The idea
is to get religion taught in public schools as a
move towards the erosion of separation of church and state.
Very nasty, theocratic intent type stuff, which is very much
in line with the move towards fascism that we're seeing
from this administration.
Speaker 2: You know, I was given I don't know, people give
you books, because people like to give me books. They're like,
here's a book. Just read all of this and we'll
explain why you're wrong kind of thing. And I think
one of the more memorable ones I was given the
book The Dawkins Delusion by Alistair McGrath and I ask, okay, fine,
what's the angle? What's the book saying? I said, well,
I haven't actually read it, but I know that it's true, right,
And so they gave it to me. And then I
was given Stephen Meyer's signature in the cell saying that well,
within our very cellular structure, there is evidence that an
intelligence put it all together. Are you familiar with the book?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I did a piece out in ninety minute piece
on Meyer and went through his books. He has one
that's mainly on the Cambrian explosion, where he lies all
about that and then signature in the cell is just
him fumbling high school level genetics concepts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let me throw another name out, another entertainer, comedy,
And of course we want to congratulate Russell Brand on
his recent conversion to Christianity. Oh you you want to
talk about Russell Brand and what the hell's going.
Speaker 3: On Russell Brand. It's very easy to explain. The right
wing is a haven for sexual abusers, pedophiles, all that
kind of stuff. He got caught with a lot of
sexual abuse allegations. He's been a cheeky, naughty little monkey
for quite some time. And yeah, I kind of caught
up to him, and so he pivoted to become an
alt right grifter and now he's selling magic healing amulets
and he converted to Christianity to really drive it home.
And now he's just some jerk with a podcast that
spews conservative talking points, all kinds of anti vax crap
and is now like pro Trump and everything, and it's really.
Speaker 2: Come on, come on, Dave. I mean, he met Jesus,
he was baptized last year in the River Thames. It's
almost like someone a murderer or you know, someone guilty
of domestic abuse or some heinous crime, and they go
to prison and they find Jesus, and then that's the
story they tell the parole board. That's the vibe I get.
Speaker 3: Dave pretty much that, Yeah, like, look at how this
fabricated morality to divert, to distract from all of the
blatantly immoral things that I do.
Speaker 2: Still to common Dave. For Reena, I'm going to get
into Bill Maher, Piers Morgan and a few other gems
out there, and we'll talk about some other stuff as well.
There are several free thought events lined up up for
the remaining months of twenty twenty five. I'm going to
be at a few, but not all of these in
London on the first of October, the Effect of Apostasy
on Mental Health event that's going to be at the
Convent Garden Community Center. I'm going to be at the
Capitol Steps in Sacramento, California, as part of California Free
Thought Day the weekend of October eleventh. The Freedom from
Religion National Convention is October seventeenth through nineteenth. I'm in
Albuquerque October twenty fifth and Denver December sixth. You can
just go and click on all the links and details
at the Thinkingatheist dot com slash events. I'm speaking here
with science educator Dave Farina. You produced a video called
the Grifter Tier List. Who's the biggest scumbag I've debunked? Now?
I'll admit I just saw the title and didn't have
time to watch the video before we chatted today. You
want to spoil it for me? I mean, who's the
bottom of the barrel for you? Right now?
Speaker 3: Give you the number one? Yeah, I went through the
whole list. I realized after the fact and from a
lot of comments that I actually missed like five people.
I thought I went through the list and got everybody,
but no, it was a resounding win for Andrew Wakefield.
Andrew Wakefield is the biggest piece of shit I've ever debunked.
That would be the one.
Speaker 2: Now. This is the guy who is behind the pseudo
documentary Vaxed? Is that right? Is it Wakefield or Malone?
Speaker 3: No? No, I'm alone. Yeah, Wakefield had a hand in it.
I think it was a Dell big tree. There was
some people, a number of people cool.
Speaker 2: I think it was Wakefield who was behind it. And
it's a complete anti vax smear job on pretty much
the entire scientific community. It's a horror.
Speaker 3: Show, absolutely disgraceful. Yeah. I mean, what he's the most
famous for is penning the late nineties study in the Lancet.
It's the first attempt at the MMR vaccine autism link.
So every time you hear people talking about vaccines causing autism,
it all stems from this one fraudulent study. You had
these injury lawyers that wanted an excuse to sue vaccine manufacturers,
so they bribed this guy, Andrew Wakefield, he was a
gastro entrologist, into making the study who was incredibly unethical
lumbar punctures and all kinds of invasive procedures on children
that were known to have autism prior to getting MMR fabricated.
All the data just complete bullshit. Study was later retracted,
but it stuck, and just decades later, he's still haralded
as this champion, that whistle blowing hero that now is
just yeah, he's just purely an anti vaxx character on
the internet.
Speaker 2: It's a lose lose because the more he's debunked, the
more he's like the rogue whistleblower going up against the system.
He's the hero we need. There's almost nothing you can
do with that day.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, that's that's obviously a valid point. I
think that it just depends how thoroughly you eviscerate them.
So I think that if you really really do a
good job, the information gets out there, and then you
have people that two things happen. Number One, you have
people who are not familiar with what's going on, and
they're ready to be influenced by whatever media they see.
So you better make sure they see yours first and
not theirs, because there's this manipulative and full of lies.
So if they see mine first, they're inoculated, ironically to
whatever they're going to see from them. And then number two,
you arm the populace with the correct talking points and
the correct way to rebut these ridiculous anti vax talking
points so that they can have a small amount of
influence in their personal circles, and you fight it on
the ground, in the trenches, so to speak. But it
has to be done. I mean, it's just you can't
just do nothing, you know what I mean. I wrestle
with this too, but doing nothing for so long is
what got us to where we are. Today academics saying
this is beneath me. I don't have to pay attention
to this. This is just idiots raving on a street corner.
It doesn't affect me. Yes, it does. Public perception of
science and the resulting voting behavior that is tethered to
a growing anti science mentality brought us the Trump administration,
who was slashing funds for science across the board. The
ability to do science has been dramatically dampened, and it
is specifically due to public perception of science. So you
cannot be ignored. We have to be doing this. We
have to be aggressively exposing these frauds, and I'm seeing
in the past couple months this very slight shift in
what I view to be the correct direction. I'm a
bit biased because it's my way of doing it, but
just every like it's epitomized by like the way Gavin
Newsom is trolling the hell out of Trump right now
using his style of tweeting to what he say, just
like the disgusting toxicity of these figures, it needs to
be mirrored back to them. It needs to be reflected
back to them. They need to be treated the way
that they treat other people. So I've been doing that
for a few years, and I'm starting to see a
little bit of that kind of activity from others, and
they don't know what to do with it, right, they
can't handle being treated that way. They're used to very
you know, Oh, that's actually incorrect, because if you look
at this paper, doesn't work. Doesn't that do anything?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: I like that. I mean, I think we call that
demonstrating or exposing absurdity by being absurd, you know, I
buy that. I also like the idea of pre bunking,
not debunking. You get in front of it and you
sort of prep people, give them a bullshit detection kits.
I'm going to ask you. I brought a Robert Malone
physician who has some very very problematic opinions on COVID
and the COVID vaccine. I don't understand this, but Malone
had said vaccines, damn it t cell responses and caused
a form of AIDS. Can you tell me what that
means and whether it's right or wrong?
Speaker 3: Well, it doesn't mean, I mean, it's just completely fabricated.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: He's this is a guy who got famous spreading the
lie on podcasts that he developed the mRNA vaccines. No,
he didn't. The people who did won a bunch of
awards for that because they saved millions of lives. He
had some very tangential affiliation with some research that had
something to do with mRNA, but he absolutely did not
develop these vaccines. He's just another lying fraud going on
the podcast circuit, pretending to be a whistleblower, and the
establishment is silencing me. And no, it's just a bunch
of bullshit to generate this cult following.
Speaker 2: That's it, which brings me back to vaccines, which means
RFK Junior. I spoke to cell biologist doctor Ken Miller
about RFK. I don't want to cover too much familiar ground,
but I can't ask I can't not ask you about
RFKA Junior and the war on science and scientists and
the unbelievable everest sized mountain of bullshit that he has
been spreading. Yeah, he's getting people. I think he's getting
people killed. You know not he will, but I think
it's already happening. What are your.
Speaker 3: Thoughts already happening? The magnitude of the layoffs at CDC, FDA,
it's insane. He's just getting rid of anybody that has
any intellectual integrity and is going to stand in the
way of his state sanctioned pseudoscience. He got rid of
the entire Vaccine Safety Panel, filled it with Robert Malone
and these other guys that are just anti vaxxers, just
like the EPA is now full of climate change deniers.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: It's just this insane situation of the Trump administration where
everybody in every department is directly antithetical to the purpose
of that department. So the Vaccine Safety Panel is full
of anti vaxers, which means they no longer recommend certain vaccines.
And if those vaccines are not officially recommended by the
federal institution, then certain programs that previously offered those vaccines
for free to low income children because they're recommended by
the government are no longer able to provide them. Right,
So poor kids cannot get these vaccines that they were
supposed to get before going to school, can't get them anymore,
and so people will die. Children will die, no two
ways about it. And this is not new Blood is
already on his hands. There was a measles outbreak in
Samoa not too long less than a decade ago, eighty
three people dead. All his fault. He went over there,
met with anti vaccine activists, convinced everybody that there was
an issue with a batch of vaccines fueled vaccine hesitancy,
big measles outbreak, eighty three people dead. His fault. He
murdered those people. So it's he's ramping up to do
it here.
Speaker 2: What are your thoughts on the claim that COVID is
just a big money maker for the hospitals, You know,
the hospitals they're calling everything cod so that they can
fill their pockets and big pharma and all of that.
Do you want to speak to that at all?
Speaker 3: I mean, how are you gonna, like, how are you
going to pull off a conspiracy like that, a global
conspiracy every single healthcare provider in every single country. Like
what degree are we talking here? Like the bottom of
the ladder is that COVID doesn't even exist, so that
viruses don't even exist, if you want to go higher,
and okay, they're calling it COVID and it's not. I mean,
you can come up with a conspiracy like that about
absolutely anything. At what point do we just go, look,
viruses exist, pandemics exist, they happen, this is a pandemic
that happened and a bunch of people died. Why is
that such a hard pill for people to swallow?
Speaker 2: Now, it's almost like flat Earth, right, you think about
the magnitude of the conspiracy. The implication is like the
entire airline industry would have to be in on the
cover up, all world governments, every space agency, meteorology. I mean,
the idea that they're all sitting in a star chamber
twirling their mustaches fooling the rest of it is so
unbelievably bad, shit crazy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the number of people instant that are behind it
are outnumber the mark. Right, You've got six billion people
in on it and two billion that are you know,
it's like it just completely unravels. I don't know what
to do with it.
Speaker 2: So anti vacs Bill Maher. Now, Dave, you know, I
used to think Bill Maher was Okay. I never really
you know, followed him, but I watched Religious and I
know it's nice to see him go hard at religion
until he got into the Jesus Horus connection and it
was totally a lazy overreach. And then I started to
like raise an eyebrow. Hey wait a minute, maybe he's
not doing his due diligence, and then he's fallen for
some bad shit stuff out there. You want to talk
about Bill Maher, I mean, now he's out there banging
his drums, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Bill Maher sucks a lot. I mean yeah, like
he's okay, riligulous, Like, okay, let's give him a point
for figuring out that fundamentalist religion is stupid. Congratulations, you're
as smart as an average twelve year old, intelligent twelve
year old, Like, it's not that hard to figure out
that fundamentalist religion is stupid. He's been a smug douche
for a long time, but it's gotten way worse than
the past three years. He's gotten way anti woke. He's
just completely fallen for that whole movement. And he's also
gigantic Zionist piece of shit. So I don't know if
you want to get into that, but sure.
Speaker 2: Like Israel at all costs kind of thing, right, Yeah,
what Netanyahu does, he must be supported, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's just way pro Israel, which is absolutely indefensible.
I mean it's been indefensible since Israel formed, but especially
I think through the current genocide. I think in the
first six months or so, people who were not educated
about the history of Israel and the history of the
subjugation of the Palestini people and the occupation and everything,
didn't know and were thus privy to Israeli propaganda. And
so I want to have a little bit of sympathy
and let them have had a little bit of time
to come around. But today, if you're pro is Real today,
get the fuck out of here, Like, what are you doing.
You've had this long, You've had almost two years now
to just take thirty seconds of your time and go look.
Go look at what's happening in Gaza. Go follow any
gods and journalists. Look at all of the images and
videos of all the blown up children, all the hospitals
blown up, all the journalists murdered, everything that's happening, the
starvation that's happening. Now, if you're still pro is Real today,
you have no excuse. Bill Maher has no excuse, and
he should just be mocked until the end of time,
mainly for his Zionism, but also secondarily for all this
anti woke bullshit that he peddles.
Speaker 2: Dave Farina and I have this in common, for better
or worse, We both appeared recently on Piers Morgan. Now,
Dave I was contacted because Peers wanted to talk about
the Shroud of Tour and he had a couple of pahds, right,
and so he had one it was a first century
This has all been miracle. There was divine light that
burned the image and ooh ah, and here's a crucifixion,
spike and buy my book. And then there was another
PhD who was like, well, that's a bunch of bullshit.
This is almost certainly medieval era human made. This is
not the miracle. Even though I believe in Janie was
a Christian. He's like, even though I believe in God,
the Christian God, the shroud is bullshit. Something else. And
then they're like, well, let's they must have googled atheist
and they're like, hey, you want to come join, and
they promised equal times. So I got four minutes at
the end, And mostly, I mean, I'm not qualified. I'm
not an expert in medieval times. I don't know first
century history in that way. I'm not a carbon dating expert.
But I do talk Jesus a lot, so that was
mostly my angle. But I'm not a Peers Morgan fan.
I mostly went because I was invited. It's a platform,
it's a chance to sort of antibs the conversation. You're
not a Peers Morgan fan either, right.
Speaker 3: No, I would not say I'm a fan. It's very
interesting because I was so okay. It's three times. Number one.
I was asked to go on to talk about the
Terrence Howard stuff with Eric Weinstein and a couple other people,
and then I was dropped at the last minute. I
believe I can't prove it, but I think Eric Weinstein
was like, get rid of this guy. The second time,
I was asked to come on to talk about some
trans stuff, but I had a conflict and so I
had to decline. But then this time they actually asked
me for the Shroud of tourn They said, we want
you either for the RFK one or the Shroud of Turin,
and like you, I was like, well, look, strout of turn,
it's bullshit. We carbon dated it to like twelve hundred
or something like that. But I don't have like I
didn't know, and they always contact you like can we
do it in two hours from now, and so I'm like,
I don't have time to like go figure out all
the bullshit everyone is saying about the Shroud of Turin today.
So no to that, but yes to RFK because I
just a month or two ago did a very long,
like two hour RFK piece going into all of his bullshit.
So I was like, I'm ready to go on that one.
Let's do it.
Speaker 2: That shows you, by the way, why I'm rightly lower
in the hierarchy. They're probably a dozen other names under
yours before they got to me, and it was it
was like, hey, we're on at noon, can you go
right now?
Speaker 3: And hotly shit, I'm always just like could you give
me forty eight hours? Like I just it would be
nice to like because it's weird, like I don't know
how you feel. I don't actually don't know what you're
exect If your precise expertise is more philosophy or history
or anything like that. Mine is chemistry. But I'm a
generalist and so I make content on a lot of
stuff like archaeology and things like that. So if somebody
actually I forgot they contacted me another time to talk
about archaeology stuff, just because I had a semi viral
peace debunking Graham Hancock and his Loser Accolytes, and I
was like, look, man, I'm not an archaeologist. I made
a great piece. That's a great you know, a bit
of content for people to get educated from. But I'm
not going to be the guy. So I sent him.
I said, why don't you talk to Flint Dibble and
Milo Rossi and so they actually went on for that segment.
I sent it over there. But yeah, you're right, like
they don't know who knows what. They're just contacting anybody
with a certain level of following, and like you want
to do it, we don't care if you're prepared or not.
We don't care if you knock it out of the
park or humiliate yourself. We're just filling the segment. So
you know, either way, if you kill it, you great views.
If you tank great views for like, it doesn't matter
to them.
Speaker 2: So it was you know, my angle was in my
wheelhouse is counter apologetics, specifically in relation to Christianity. I'm
an expangelical and I've done sixteen years of this type
of stuff. We can get into Jesus. Let's talk Jesus.
So rather than focus on the shroud, you know, hey,
we'd like to talk about the magical cave cloth. I
was like, well, hang on, let's talk about the myth
that the whole cave cloth story is built on, and
let's talk about the Bible that presents that story. And
so I actually went back to more of a root thing,
and you know, that was my wheelhouse, and I think
that was the more productive place to go. Oh, this
piece of cloth is magical. Is not that interesting to me.
But Peers himself, his history is so problematic. He's so tabloidy.
I debated, but you know, I couldn't say no for
a few reasons. So I don't know Pierre's Morgan.
Speaker 3: I mean, you're right, like he is problematic, and it's
just interesting, Like it's been fascinating to see him flip
on Israel because at first he was all, do you
condemn mamas? Do you condemn mamas? Do you condemn mamas?
Every ten seconds? And now he's like very anti Israel,
he's very pro pouse signed. But it's totally for optics,
Like he watched the optics flip on the conflict and
was like, that's the winning side. Now I'm gonna voice that.
So it's like, on the one hand, purely in terms
of optics. Great, one more person taking Israel to task,
but it's so seedy the way that he does it.
But in general, my view of it is the same
as like if, like Joe Rogan knows who I am.
He mentioned my name on an episode once, and so
people were like, do you think he'll invite you on?
I'm like, I don't think he will, but would you
go on if he did. I'm like, you know, I would,
like I will. I did go on Piers Morgan. I
would go on Joe Rogan. I would go on these
because whether you want it to exist or not, the
platform exists and it has the influence that it does
whether you go on it or not, and so you
have an opportunity to prepare thoroughly and go on that
platform and make it bend to your agenda what you
want to do with that access, with that reach. And
so that's my view of it. It doesn't have to
be viewed as like I'm supporting the Piers Morgan platform.
It's I'm accessing his audience and the eyeballs that he
has access to to say the facts that I need
to get to these people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, you get the Joe Rogan ies in this
disinformation silo. It may be the only chance they have
to be presented with contrary ideas. Os case, I go
hard after Fox News And I used to be that guy.
I was a rush, lamball and culter Fox News er
back in my day. Wow, And of course now I
go I go hard at Fox and they're like, well,
the Fox News for some reason was to invite you
to appear, would you do it? And I'm like, hell yeah,
I mean as long as I could say what I
wanted to say. And my first question would be why
are you guys, dear leader State Television. That would be
a refreshing thing for the Fox viewership to hear. They
might send me a pipe bomb, but I think it
has to be said.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, mix it up, go on there, blow it
up from the inside. Just dismantle whatever platform you'll give
it an access to go on it and do what
you want to do, do what you have to do
with it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Do you ever watch Pete Budaesesh, Guy's a master. Every
time they try to push him into a corner or
ambush him, he just he devastates them, and he does
so with such an even voice. It's masterful.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I very quickly was like, oh, you're my number
two after Bernie. He's he's a smart guy. Yeah.
Speaker 2: My final segment with science educator Dave Farina, as we
talk about trans issues, the woke religion, and the transphobes
and all of these other hot button terms being grenaded
at each other. Holy snikes. Let's talk about the science
of trans with Dave Farina. Next. Talking here with science
educator and host of Professor Dave explains on YouTube Dave Farina, So,
you mentioned trans issues and the biology of transgenderism. This
is a hot button even within the free thought community.
I've seen people who were like, it's the religion of
trans or the religion of woke or the anti woke,
or you're a transphobe, and everybody's throwing out these things.
I know there are some out there who are navigating
what is uncharted territory and they genuinely don't know what
to think. So you tell me, as far as an
educator goes, how would you explain transgender to people who
were curious about whether or not it's science or anti science.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this is one of the pier segments. As
I was responding to the fallout of the freedom from
Religion Foundation debacle with Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coin, Stephen Pinker,
who unfortunately represent the part of the intelligentsia that is
swinging this anti anti woke way, pseudo scientific way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I may quickly doctor. Jerry Coin, the evolutionary biologist,
had written a piece that was signal boosted by f
fr RAF at the time, which I think they apologized
for afterwards. But he said biology is not big a tree,
and he was blasted, and then a bunch of the
eight tier freethinker types came forward and they stood with
him resigned from the board. It was a big blow up, yes,
and everybody shouting at each other over it. So I'm sorry,
I'll take it from there if you want day. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I made a whole piece on exactly this. It
was called more Things that I was supposed to say
on Piers Morgan because the first time I got booted
from the segment. The second time I had a conflict.
But I made a piece here this is what I
would have said if I was on talking to Jerry
Coin about all of this bullshit. Yeah, there's just this
very insidious the right is using transissues to polarize people,
to the right by offering these ridiculous straw men of
like liberals think men can have babies and they don't.
There's twenty seven genders or whatever. The hell has nothing
to do with any of that. All we're saying is
that there is sex, and there's gender identity. Sex refers
to a suite of biological characteristics. It is definitely, First
of all, it's not binary. They like to say that
it's just game meats. Right, you got sperm or egg.
Well that doesn't work because prepubescent boys don't produce sperm.
So are they not male until they produce? Right? There's
all these kinds of logical gaps in this kind of thinking.
So sex refers to game meats, gonadal apparatus, hormones, sex chromosomes,
different primary and secondary sexual characteristics. It's this suite of characteristics.
And then gender identity is a neuro anatomical construct. There
is such a thing as experiencing being male or female.
It is correlated with specific brain structures. Now I get
hit all the time just because I reference primary scientific
literature that is investigating this. It doesn't mean that we
have this like overarching, very solid comprehension of it. But
we have identified regions of the brain that correlate with
gender identity and sexuality. There's often overlap there, but they
are two different phenomena. And so that's being trans is
when your sex and gender identity do not align. That's all.
So when you have a transwoman, let's say that is
the vernacular that we have developed to refer to somebody
that is of was born of male sex, but has
female gender identity. We refer to them as a trans
because the sex and gender identity do not align, and
then we refer to them as trans women as a
courtesy to dignify them. Right, So, if it's a linguistic thing,
it's never the case that conservatives acknowledge what I just
said about male sex, female gender identity, but let's not
call them trans women. It's always just, ah, you don't
under you're denying biology and all this stuff. It's absolutely
other case. They just don't. They just absolutely want to
stick to this third grade understanding of boyce, penis, girls,
vagina and refuse to look at any of the science
that is referenced and just continue going, Ah, you think
men can have babies, which men? What are you talking about?
Are you talking about cis men because no nobody has
ever said that. Are you talking about trans women, because
no nobody has ever said that. Are you talking about
trans men? Yes, they can because they have uteruses, because
they're a female sex. So it's just always it's nothing
but distortion, completely bad faith, absolutely refusing to engage with
any of the commentary on the side of science. And
then they hide behind, unfortunately figures like Dawkins and Coin
who have sort of fallen for this anti woke fad
and they go, see, look the biologists agree with us. Yeah,
they just don't. They're just really old and cantankris and
refuse to learn something new. That's all it is.
Speaker 2: So I'm sorry you have joined the religion of woke. Yeah,
that's usually what I see in the comments section exactly.
That's an argument or something. I'm like, well, first define woke,
because that's informdly the jello that you can nail to
the wall or something like that.
Speaker 3: They just shit their pants and have nothing to say
every time. Nobody can define woke, No conservative can define woke.
You can humiliate them every time, no fail.
Speaker 2: It's the boogeyman of the twenty first century. It's the
equivalent in some ways of when it came to gay
rights and they were like, well, what's next. Identical sex
with animals. You know, that was the first place that
conservatives went right.
Speaker 3: One hundred percent identical. And nobody has learned their lesson
because in the seventies or seventies eighties kind of when
people were like, oh, like, it's not a mental illness,
it's a way that you can be Some people are
attract most people are attracted to the opposite sex. Some
people are attracted to the same sex. And by the way,
just like everything else in biology, it's a spectrum. There
are various gradations of bisexuality and so forth, and asexuality
and whatever. And nobody learned their lesson on the right.
Nobody can has the foresight to go, oh that again,
but with a different thing. Nobody can do it. So
it's really frustrating.
Speaker 2: You know, people want everything to fit in a box,
and then they either worship the box or crush the box.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's this very childlike insistence on everything fitting this
binary mode. So going back to sex, right, they'll say
sex is binary, Well, no it isn't, because look, you
have all these different characteristics and most of them don't
know that these conditions exist where you can have x
y sex chromosomes but express female genitals, or xx chromosomes
and express male genitals, and so it's like you have
these different characteristics that are associated with male or female
and they don't align. Binary code is zero and one,
not a half or three quarters or one point two
seven zero in one two states. You do not have
that with sex because it refers to this suite of
biological characteristics that do not always align. So it definitively
is not binary. And everybody who pretends that it's game
meats only that determine sex, you are wrong. I'm sorry.
If you remove a woman's ovaries, there's still a woman.
If you a prepebestent boy that's not producing sperm, still male.
It is not sufficient. It is not sufficient to look
at game meats alone to define sex. That's not how
we do it. It's a suite of characteristics.
Speaker 2: So well, speaking about you know, the fears, I was
in a fear of everything, and we were afraid of
trans people, we were afraid of foreigners, we were afraid
of Muslims. We were afraid. You know, don't don't shake
hands with a gay person or you know, be in
their vicinity because you've never known they might turn you
gay by osmosis kind of thing.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, So.
Speaker 2: That's just a culture.
Speaker 3: Culture has been around for a long time and pervades
to the stick.
Speaker 2: Teachers are allowing kids to shit in litter boxes in
high school bathrooms. It's just a crazy world day. Before
I let you go, I got it. Let's just talk
like real people, as if we haven't already been doing that.
I'm I'm not a pessimist. I'd like to think I'm
kind of a realist, but I've harbored hope. I used
to think, you know, things are you know, there are
people out there who were like me that were brainwashed.
They were in disinformation silos. They have not had the
benefit of what has been called the knowledge economy. They
just need a chance. Good people can have bad ideas.
I've been that guy. I want to be that guy.
But I will make a confession to you that I
look after ten years of the insanity and the cruelty
and the horribleness that's going on, I will admit that
in that dark space when nobody's looking, what I'm thinking
is these people are fucking stupid and they're not reachable.
I don't know what, Yeah, don't know. I be my bartender, Dave,
I mean, what do you think?
Speaker 3: I mean? Look, I'm with you on it. Unfortunately, I
have gotten significantly more pessimistic over the past five years
or so. And it's not so much like, yes, people
are stupid and many of them are unreachable. But it's
not so much how stupid they are, it's more how
insidious and unrelenting the propaganda is. Right, if it weren't
for that, I think they would be reachable. I think
they could be reasoned with, and I think that we
would see a very slow progress towards rationality. But they
are just getting slammed every day with more and more
sophisticated tech bro fueled, technocrat fueled, deliberate disinformation that is
aimed at manipulating the public. And it's only going to
get worse with AI and deep fakes, And what Musk
has turned Twitter into is just this like disinformation central
paradise for spreading wise on the Internet, and it's just
so like it's not it's not an even match. It's
not an even match between the front the liars and
the truth tellers. Right. We're on this side where we're
just like making YouTube videos and trying to reason with people.
The other side is billionaires constructing social media landscapes that
are just completely aimed at ruining epistemology and making it
impossible for people to know what the hell is going on,
and it's going to get worse.
Speaker 2: Well, I look forward to the day that somebody at
the Discovery Institute, or I don't know, just somebody on
TikTok makes a deep fake of you admitting that intelligent
design was rid all along. I mean, this is the
world we live in right where the post truth era.
Speaker 3: It is the post truth era, and we are we
are not. The tunnel is dark, but you are a light.
Speaker 2: In that tunnel. Do you see how I brought us
full search trying to be trying to how do people
find you and your work? Before I let you go,
Professor Dave explains on YouTube. That's about it, all right,
Dave Riena, thanks for us spending almost an hour I
don't know, inventing humoring me anyway. It's always a pleasure
to hang out here to do it.
Speaker 3: It's cathartic.
Speaker 2: All right, We'll talk again.
Speaker 3: Man, sounds good.
Speaker 1: Thank you follow The Thinking Atheist on Facebook and Twitter
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