Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to my podcast. This is an audio
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Speaker 1: since my videos are primarily made for YouTube, there may
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Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to my channel Vice Rhino. Here Donald
Speaker 2: James Parker. If that name means nothing to you, then congratulations.
Speaker 2: You're probably busy living your life, spending time with loved
Speaker 2: ones and enjoying your hobbies and stuff like that. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: for me, one of my hobbies happens to be watching
Speaker 2: bad movies, often with a particular focus on Christian movies,
Speaker 2: and Donald James Parker aka DJP aka Gramps is quite
Speaker 2: the prolific filmmaker. There's Gramps Goes to College, the story
Speaker 2: of how an old man went back to college improved
Speaker 2: to the college biology professor that evolution is a lie. Also,
Speaker 2: she's a hot cougar who really wants to him.
Speaker 3: Have you ever considered that maybe there really is a
Speaker 3: heaven and a hell and that people like you are
Speaker 3: condemning young people to eternal punishment because of your teaching.
Speaker 4: Have you ever considered just grabbing me and having some fun?
Speaker 4: But you don't need to be afraid, honey. You can
Speaker 4: take advantage of me any way you want.
Speaker 2: There's the Best Friend's Trilogy, which is the story of
Speaker 2: how hot cougars really want to fo him.
Speaker 3: You don't have a woman friend, not even clothes.
Speaker 4: Good looking guy.
Speaker 5: Like you shouldn't deprive all these lovely ladies of your company.
Speaker 3: You realize it.
Speaker 5: Females outing them are males by a pretty big margin.
Speaker 3: At our age, there would be a crime for you
Speaker 3: with allD love from one of us lonely women.
Speaker 4: He really be involved in criminal activity. But are I
Speaker 4: just a little too old for you? I like mature men.
Speaker 2: And in that story, because he gave in exactly one time,
Speaker 2: he very near ruined his chances of marriage because of
Speaker 2: the aides.
Speaker 3: A little over a year ago, I got tangled up
Speaker 3: with some woman who wasn't quite as wonderful as you.
Speaker 3: She seduced me and we became sexually active.
Speaker 6: Did you have a test for sexually transmitted diseases, especially AIDS?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 6: If you do have AIDS, this relationship can probably go
Speaker 6: no further.
Speaker 2: But don't worry if you're tired of the hot cougars
Speaker 2: really wanting to him. There's also movies like In Gramp's Shoes,
Speaker 2: the story of how his family will be driven back
Speaker 2: to him through financial need. One day, Hi, it's Amy, Amy.
Speaker 4: Amy. Isn't my daughter Amy?
Speaker 6: But you don't recognize my voice.
Speaker 3: It's been twenty years since I've heard it.
Speaker 6: I'm in trouble and I need your help.
Speaker 4: What's the matter?
Speaker 6: And he left me two years ago. He's disappeared. I
Speaker 6: have no idea where he is. He's not paying child support.
Speaker 6: I'm way behind on my mortgage. I am going to
Speaker 6: have the house taken away from me by the bank.
Speaker 6: I've got two kids.
Speaker 2: At which point he can prove to all of the
Speaker 2: teenagers that he's a fitness buff who can totally kick
Speaker 2: all of their asses. That old man is bionic.
Speaker 7: He's a machine, a running machine.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's like we've been suckered. He's sound kind of
Speaker 5: pro or something. Well out.
Speaker 3: Way way to go, Graham, take that and smoke you boys.
Speaker 7: Let me try that.
Speaker 4: Wow, he got all the way down.
Speaker 3: Two bit. Come on, now, come on, come onct you
Speaker 3: up there.
Speaker 2: Wow, this dude makes movies instead of going to therapy,
Speaker 2: is what I'm getting at. Anyway, he made a new
Speaker 2: one called Beauty and the Atheist, which is all about
Speaker 2: how he totally would have won his debate with Forrest
Speaker 2: Valcai a couple of years ago if only he was
Speaker 2: a hot young woman who could distract Forest with her
Speaker 2: feminine wiles. Now, I'm not going to do a review
Speaker 2: of the whole movie. Forest already joined the god Awful
Speaker 2: Movies guys and did that himself. But as I was
Speaker 2: torturing my partner by making her watch it with me,
Speaker 2: it occurred to me that the actual debate segment in
Speaker 2: the movie would be fun to respond to. So here
Speaker 2: I am. Let's take a look.
Speaker 5: Welcome to another episode of Chilling with the Renegade Scientist.
Speaker 2: I left that bed in too dispel any doubt that
Speaker 2: this character is in fact based almost entirely on Forest Valcai,
Speaker 2: who goes by the handle Renegade science Teacher online. I mean,
Speaker 2: if you've watched the actual conversation that Forest had with Gramps,
Speaker 2: it is obvious that this whole movie is a result
Speaker 2: of the shower arguments that Gram's won against Forest in
Speaker 2: the wake of that conversation. But here you go. This
Speaker 2: just makes it explicit.
Speaker 5: My guest today is Douglas Conners. He is a writer
Speaker 5: and maker of Christian movies. Welcome Douglas, Thank you, Trey. So,
Speaker 5: Douglas wanted to have a conversation about evolution, and obviously
Speaker 5: he has some difficulty embracing the truth. So Douglas, let's
Speaker 5: just first off and tell me why you were anti science?
Speaker 4: Hold on, not anti science.
Speaker 2: And thus we have the framing that Graham's has for
Speaker 2: this conversation. I am probably going to reference it a lot,
Speaker 2: so I may as well link to it now. But
Speaker 2: if you watch the actual conversation between him and Forrest,
Speaker 2: Forest was very much coming from a place of wanting
Speaker 2: to educate Donald. He was patient and non combative, essentially
Speaker 2: being in teacher mode the entire time. But apparently that's
Speaker 2: not how Gramp saw it. He thinks that Forrest was
Speaker 2: framing his questions in a way to make him look
Speaker 2: as bad as possible. Why are you anti science? Is
Speaker 2: a question that was never asked. The actual opening to
Speaker 2: the interview after the introductions, was Forrest trying to relate
Speaker 2: to Donald, telling him that His desire to teach what
Speaker 2: he believes to be true despite the pushback, is the
Speaker 2: exact reason why he goes by renegade science teacher. I
Speaker 2: you know what, though, my.
Speaker 7: Handle on like TikTok and everything they got me started
Speaker 7: was renegade science teacher. And it was for that exact reason,
Speaker 7: because I wanted to teach all the science that I loved.
Speaker 7: And I live in Oklahoma, which is like the buckle
Speaker 7: of the Bible belt. And I would get in trouble
Speaker 7: with the companies. I worked for a children's museum, I
Speaker 7: worked for different educational companies and everything. And when I
Speaker 7: would teach something that would religious person might not like,
Speaker 7: You're gonna lose us money and all this stuff. And
Speaker 7: so I did the same thing in the exact opposite direction.
Speaker 7: I wanted to teach the real stuff. I don't care
Speaker 7: if it gets me in trouble. I wanted to do
Speaker 7: the real thing. It's like, I love that I think
Speaker 7: you and I are both you know, got from the
Speaker 7: same cloth in that way that we're all you know,
Speaker 7: we're very excited to go talk about what we're passionate
Speaker 7: about and to try to fix what we see as
Speaker 7: problems in the world, despite the fact that we see
Speaker 7: very different problems. I think you and I a lot
Speaker 7: of the things that I think are good, I think
Speaker 7: you think are bad, and vice versa.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to be pointing this out every time
Speaker 2: he does this, but just keep in mind that in
Speaker 2: the real interview, Forrest was being very conciliatory and Donald
Speaker 2: still came away from it feeling like he was being
Speaker 2: attacked by a big, mean atheist guy.
Speaker 3: I am anti pseudoscience and definitely anti political science.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, all of you know that if you were
Speaker 2: anti pseudoscience, he wouldn't be a creationist, so I don't
Speaker 2: really need to harp on that. But I wonder what
Speaker 2: he thinks political science even is that made him feel
Speaker 2: the need to lump it in here. I think he
Speaker 2: might think that political sciences related to political correctness. But
Speaker 2: this is just a strange grouping, and it speaks to
Speaker 2: his unwillingness to learn the basics of whatever he's trying
Speaker 2: to debunk.
Speaker 3: Which involves this study that where the results are intentionally
Speaker 3: skewed based on who paid for the research. For example,
Speaker 3: a study on the dangers of butter paid for by
Speaker 3: the margarine industry or vice versa. Not all quote unquote
Speaker 3: sciences equal, you know.
Speaker 2: Okay, So I guess he thinks that political science is
Speaker 2: just science with the profit motive science that is just
Speaker 2: manipulating statistics to make your team look like it's the
Speaker 2: correct one. Yeah, okay. I stand by my assessment that
Speaker 2: he is unwilling to learn basics of whatever thing he
Speaker 2: wants to debunk me.
Speaker 4: I'm all about the truth, me too. So what is
Speaker 4: your primary objection to evolution? Ooh, so many to choose from.
Speaker 3: Well, my biggest objection is this that despite the fact
Speaker 3: that the idea is generated by evolution concerning the flora
Speaker 3: and fauna that we see around us, they're historical in
Speaker 3: nature can't be replicated and tested in the laboratory using
Speaker 3: a scientific method.
Speaker 2: Specific hypotheses about which species is the ancestor of which
Speaker 2: other species cannot be replicated in the lab. True, However,
Speaker 2: the critical aspects of evolution can. Mutations, for instance, are
Speaker 2: one of the primary mechanisms of evolution, and we've observed
Speaker 2: every kind of mutation that would be necessary for evolution
Speaker 2: in lab settings, and we can replicate these observations. At
Speaker 2: the end of the day, the genome is the key
Speaker 2: to what kind of organism you are. With that in mind,
Speaker 2: we can start with the genome of any organism on
Speaker 2: the planet, and using nothing but the types of mutations
Speaker 2: that we have observed in lab settings, that genome can
Speaker 2: be transformed into the genome of any other organism on
Speaker 2: the planet. Now, obviously this is oversimplified, and we have
Speaker 2: to keep in mind that evolution has no goals, so
Speaker 2: there will never be a scenario where one type of
Speaker 2: organism turns into an already extant organism in this way.
Speaker 2: But the fact of the matter is that this means
Speaker 2: that evolution, from even the simplest of beginnings is perfectly
Speaker 2: adequate to explain the diversity of life.
Speaker 3: Even though that's true, these ideas are forced down kids'
Speaker 3: throats and other people's throats.
Speaker 4: All over the world as if they're slam dunk factual.
Speaker 2: It's because they are slam dunk factual.
Speaker 3: Got them, and no real discussion about other explanations and
Speaker 3: possibilities is even perminated.
Speaker 2: Mainly because there is no other possible explanation that has
Speaker 2: anywhere near the evidence backing it up as evolution does.
Speaker 2: The closest I've ever come to hearing creation is actually
Speaker 2: tried to give anything a mant ounting to a positive
Speaker 2: case for creation rather than just assuming that creationism is
Speaker 2: a default position if they've managed to poke Nu hole
Speaker 2: as an evolution was that guy from a few weeks
Speaker 2: ago who tried to explain the process by which God
Speaker 2: could have cloned Eve from Adam's rib And he wasn't
Speaker 2: really providing any evidence that his idea is what did happen.
Speaker 2: He was mostly just trying to explain how God making
Speaker 2: a whole person from another person's rib was scientifically plausible.
Speaker 5: Okay, So just to be clear here, you are not
Speaker 5: advocating that the teaching of evolution be removed from the classroom,
Speaker 5: not at all.
Speaker 4: Not my mantras teach the controversy.
Speaker 2: Okay, but how does that apply when there is no
Speaker 2: actual controversy.
Speaker 3: Get kids to think, and you know, present the idea
Speaker 3: one that's been believed by billions of people over the centuries,
Speaker 3: that an omnipotent creator designed this universe and specifically this
Speaker 3: planet in all the life forms therein, right alongside Darwin
Speaker 3: and all those neo Darwinis who evolved his theory.
Speaker 2: That's basically an argument from popularity. Billions of people have
Speaker 2: believed this, so there must be something to it. Problem
Speaker 2: is there's really nothing to teach a biology class structure
Speaker 2: that way would still be ninety nine percent evolution and
Speaker 2: then a few minutes dedicated to Also, some people think
Speaker 2: God did it. I also rather enjoyed the vitriol with
Speaker 2: which he said that neo Darwin has evolved his theory.
Speaker 2: It shows that he expects scientists to behave like religious leaders.
Speaker 2: Evolution is our God and Darwin is his prophet. Darwin
Speaker 2: must not be questioned. So the idea that our understanding
Speaker 2: of the theory of evolution has changed as we learn
Speaker 2: more about it is just unthinkable to him. Why don't
Speaker 2: scientists punish heresy like the church does, Well, it's because
Speaker 2: there is no heresy in science. One of the most
Speaker 2: exciting things a scientist can do is prove the last
Speaker 2: guy wrong about something. So, yes, we have evolved Darwin's
Speaker 2: original theory, because as groundbreaking as Darwin's work was, it
Speaker 2: was just that groundbreaking. You wouldn't build a skyscraper by
Speaker 2: breaking ground and then never putting away the shovels and
Speaker 2: just keep digging down. No, you break the ground, then
Speaker 2: you build the foundation, and then Once you have a
Speaker 2: solid foundation, you start to construct the actual structure. I
Speaker 2: don't know if that's actually how you build a skyscraper,
Speaker 2: but you get my point. The first work to be
Speaker 2: done on a major scientific discovery is by the very
Speaker 2: nature of how science works, going to be quite different
Speaker 2: from the more developed work happening more than a century later.
Speaker 5: That's material for religion class, and religion and science should
Speaker 5: not be mingled.
Speaker 2: That's accurate. I would disagree with the implication here being
Speaker 2: that it's okay to teach it as though it were
Speaker 2: true as long as it's not in a science class.
Speaker 2: But yeah, you don't talk about creation by God in
Speaker 2: science class for the same reason that you don't talk
Speaker 2: about the Creb cycle in Civics class.
Speaker 3: Well, my definition of science is the discovery by man
Speaker 3: of the world that God created with all its laws
Speaker 3: and its elements and its properties, as confirmed by the
Speaker 3: scientific method.
Speaker 2: Now, I would actually argue that it's okay for religious
Speaker 2: people to define science as the study of God's creation
Speaker 2: as long as they are willing to actually follow the
Speaker 2: science to its conclusions. If you learn something about how
Speaker 2: reality works that is in conflict with your theology, it
Speaker 2: shouldn't be reality that has to bend in order to
Speaker 2: accommodate your views. Your views should change to accommodate reality.
Speaker 5: I'm afraid, Uglass, you don't get to define science. You
Speaker 5: should probably stick to defining religion.
Speaker 7: All right.
Speaker 2: I forgot faux forest is a big meanie.
Speaker 4: Pants Bible already did that.
Speaker 3: James wrote that pure religion is to visit widows and
Speaker 3: orphans in their distress and keep oneself on spotted.
Speaker 4: From the world.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 5: I bet the Muslims and the Hindus and the Jews
Speaker 5: and about a zillion other religions are just thrilled to
Speaker 5: hear that. And by the way, and there are a
Speaker 5: lot of atheists who give charity to orphans and widows
Speaker 5: and live according to their own moral standards.
Speaker 2: Aside from the weirdly specific category of orphans and widows,
Speaker 2: which I assume is just meant to be a catch
Speaker 2: all for helping those in need. An atheist would be
Speaker 2: extremely unlikely to add on to the bit about doing
Speaker 2: it in accordance with their own moral standard, especially an
Speaker 2: atheist whose whole job is talking to Christians about atheism.
Speaker 2: All that accomplishes is to set up the apologetic straw
Speaker 2: man of atheist morality for Donald to come around and
Speaker 2: knock down.
Speaker 3: Oh, so everyone gets to set their own moral standards.
Speaker 3: There's no universal standard that applies to everybody.
Speaker 2: There, you go, easy knockdown for Gramps.
Speaker 5: Well, that's the beauty of not believing in God. He
Speaker 5: can't force his values fun to us.
Speaker 4: But we digress.
Speaker 5: Our conversation was supposed to be focused on evolution.
Speaker 4: Let's get back on track, Ooky Doki, hmm, this.
Speaker 2: Is honestly a fascinating look into his perspective. I think
Speaker 2: what Donald was going for there is that Gramps had
Speaker 2: faux forrest on the ropes and was about to make
Speaker 2: the awesome knockdown argument when Forest suddenly felt the need
Speaker 2: to change the subject, and since the conversation was just
Speaker 2: supposed to be about evolution anyway, that gave him an
Speaker 2: easy escape hatch. Well, just to address the morality thing,
Speaker 2: The way I see it is that there is no
Speaker 2: such thing as morality unless there is some sort of goal.
Speaker 2: A goal that I think works well well is to
Speaker 2: increase net wellbeing and decrease net harm. If we agree
Speaker 2: on this as the goal, then we can measure the
Speaker 2: consequences of any action to see whether there has been
Speaker 2: an increase in well being and or decrease in harm,
Speaker 2: and thus determine objectively whether that action was moral or immoral.
Speaker 2: There is, of course more to it than that I
Speaker 2: specifically subscribe to a form of compassionate utilitarianism, which accounts
Speaker 2: for actions for which such a calculation would be impossible
Speaker 2: and doesn't wind up with the potential for justifying genocide
Speaker 2: that pure utilitarianism comes with. But as this is not
Speaker 2: the focus of the video, I will just leave a
Speaker 2: link to the video where I explained it in more
Speaker 2: detail and move on.
Speaker 3: Let me throw some names at you, Okay, Franklin Harold
Speaker 3: who happens to be a biochemist as a scientist, Douglas.
Speaker 2: I just can't with this guy's attempts to write banter.
Speaker 2: Every movie he writes has characters that are ostensibly friends
Speaker 2: but argue about everything in a way that I'm sure
Speaker 2: Donald thinks is witty banter. But that interaction you just
Speaker 2: saw is par for the course. It's just painful.
Speaker 3: He wrote in a book that was published by Oxford
Speaker 3: University Press. There are presently no detailed Darwinian accounts of
Speaker 3: the evolution of any biochemical or cellular system, only a
Speaker 3: variety of wishful speculations.
Speaker 2: Well, to quote one Forrest VALKEI, whatever creationist quotes a scientist,
Speaker 2: just read the next sentence, though in this case I
Speaker 2: think the previous half of the quoted sentence will suffice quote.
Speaker 2: We should reject, as a matter of principle, the substitution
Speaker 2: of intelligent design for the dialogue of chance and necessity.
Speaker 2: Remember earlier when I said, specific hypotheses about which species
Speaker 2: is the ancestor of which other species cannot be replicated
Speaker 2: in the lab. True, However, the critical aspects of evolution can. Well,
Speaker 2: that's what he was talking about. We know of and
Speaker 2: have demonstrated in a lab all of the mechanisms that
Speaker 2: would be required for the development of these biochemical and
Speaker 2: cellular systems. But to quote him again, same book quote,
Speaker 2: in the absence of time travel, we may never discover
Speaker 2: what actually happened, and so a modicum of doubt necessarily persists.
Speaker 3: Well, that's one man's opinion, one scientist's opinion.
Speaker 5: Okay, one scientist opinion, But there are a myriad of
Speaker 5: other scientists who will disagree with.
Speaker 2: Him, including the one Graham's quote. It at least he'd
Speaker 2: disagree with the way his quote was presented, as is
Speaker 2: made clear by the whole rest of the book that
Speaker 2: it's found in.
Speaker 5: And one thing I just I think we have to
Speaker 5: point out here right now is that interpretation is key
Speaker 5: in the quest for truth. First, Douglas, there's the interpretation
Speaker 5: of the evidence itself, and then we have to interpret
Speaker 5: the words of the scientists who are describing their interpretation
Speaker 5: of that evidence.
Speaker 2: I don't know, man, that sounds like something answers in
Speaker 2: Genesis would say. It's more about predictive power. Sure, there
Speaker 2: are interpretations, but different predictions can be made based on
Speaker 2: different interpretations of the same data, and the interpretation that
Speaker 2: makes the most accurate predictions is more likely to be
Speaker 2: an accurate interpretation than one whose predictions fail. For example,
Speaker 2: we can look at the rock layers with their myriad
Speaker 2: of fossils. The younger creationist interpretation of these data is
Speaker 2: that the fossils were laid down by Noah's flood just
Speaker 2: over four thousand years ago. The scientific interpretation of these
Speaker 2: data is that it shows a history of life on
Speaker 2: Earth going back hundreds of millions of years at the least. Now,
Speaker 2: with the creationist interpretation we have a few predictions. We
Speaker 2: wouldn't expect to find the fossils in any particular order.
Speaker 2: Any organism from any location could be found in any
Speaker 2: other location as it was swept away by the global flood,
Speaker 2: And there wouldn't really be much in the way of
Speaker 2: rhyme or reason as to which organisms would be near
Speaker 2: the bottom of the rock layers and which would be
Speaker 2: near the top. There also wouldn't be distinct rock layers,
Speaker 2: but let's set that one aside now. In the scientific interpretation,
Speaker 2: the organisms would be showing an evolutionary progression from simple,
Speaker 2: more generalized organisms to more complex and specialized organisms. What's more,
Speaker 2: we'd expect that we could make predictions about which specific
Speaker 2: features would evolve in which rock layers. For example, given
Speaker 2: what we knew about evolution in the nineteen nineties, researchers
Speaker 2: predicted that the tetrapod limb structure would first be found
Speaker 2: in Devonian rock layers. The researchers who made that prediction
Speaker 2: then set up shop on Ellesmere Island in northern Canada,
Speaker 2: because there's a bunch of easily accessible Devonian rock there.
Speaker 2: A few years later, they publish their findings. A basil
Speaker 2: tetrapod now known as tiktalic. When creationism can look at
Speaker 2: its model and say, we will find X kind of
Speaker 2: organism that we've never found before in why type of
Speaker 2: rock layer, then go out and actually find it, then
Speaker 2: we can take it seriously as an interpretation, because that
Speaker 2: is what the evolutionary interpretation can accomplish.
Speaker 4: That's a good point.
Speaker 2: Now it's not a good point, but I'm not surprised
Speaker 2: that he thinks it is. It is easy to win
Speaker 2: a debate when you're writing both sides, after all, though
Speaker 2: for plot purposes, he does eventually have to lose this one.
Speaker 2: He just couldn't resist the urge to get a couple
Speaker 2: shots in first.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what did Harold really mean when he said detailed
Speaker 3: Darwinian accounts?
Speaker 2: He meant that although we are aware of the mechanisms
Speaker 2: that are necessary to explain how the systems he was
Speaker 2: talking about developed, we don't know how it actually did develop,
Speaker 2: not in the sense that it wasn't possible, but in
Speaker 2: the sense that we don't have a time machine and
Speaker 2: so can't go back and see which of the many
Speaker 2: potential paths evolution actually took. And we can get that
Speaker 2: interpretation by reading more of his book than just out
Speaker 2: of context quotes on creationist websites. To quote Donald James Parker.
Speaker 4: You know, reading's kind of become a lost art.
Speaker 2: I couldn't agree more, Donald, I couldn't agree more.
Speaker 3: Read a book, Donald, it seems like the devil's always
Speaker 3: in the details.
Speaker 4: Huh. Well, I don't believe in the goal figure.
Speaker 3: Well, in my experience, just about every evolutionist it interprets
Speaker 3: all evidence is confirming evolution, and if they can't do that,
Speaker 3: they either reject that evidence or ignore it along with
Speaker 3: the people who bring that evidence to the table.
Speaker 4: You creationists have such a persecution complex.
Speaker 2: No, that's not their persecution complex. I mean they do
Speaker 2: have one, to be sure, but generally it's more about
Speaker 2: stuff like public school teachers facing some sort of consequences
Speaker 2: for refusing to teach true.
Speaker 4: Things, maybe with reason.
Speaker 3: You know, it is bad enough to ignore evidence, but
Speaker 3: I think it's even worse to manufacture and then you
Speaker 3: guys do that sometimes.
Speaker 2: Call back to two weeks ago where Calvin of Answers
Speaker 2: in Genesis Canada completely fabricated a quote and attributed his
Speaker 2: fabricated quote to an evolutionary biologist. So if we're throwing
Speaker 2: it out based on unrelated people having fabricated evidence. Then
Speaker 2: I guess creationism fails thanks to answers in genesis.
Speaker 3: Let me cite a concrete example. Don't worry, I won't
Speaker 3: mention Nebraska Man or Hackles drawings.
Speaker 2: Nebraska Man was a pig tooth that was misidentified as
Speaker 2: an early hominid and was promptly recategorized when the error
Speaker 2: was discovered. Hackel's embryo drawings are a bit more contentious.
Speaker 2: There is some question as to whether he drew the
Speaker 2: embryos inaccurately in order to make them appear more similar
Speaker 2: than they actually were. It is unclear if this is
Speaker 2: actually what he did, but the study of embryology has
Speaker 2: progressed largely independent of Hackel. His recapitulation theory was the
Speaker 2: idea that an embryo goes through all of the body
Speaker 2: plans that are in its evolutionary history while it develops,
Speaker 2: and that is what he would have been trying to
Speaker 2: show if he were actually faking his drawings. But as
Speaker 2: modern embryology shows a bunch of evidence for homology without
Speaker 2: relying on Hackel's drawings, then whether or not he actually
Speaker 2: did fake them is a moot point.
Speaker 3: Richard Dawkins likes to demonstrate how evolution works using a
Speaker 3: computer program analogy.
Speaker 2: Good for him, I guess I thought you were bringing
Speaker 2: up a concrete example of someone falsifying evidence.
Speaker 3: So there's a computer program that's going to spell a
Speaker 3: phrase me thinks it is like a weasel. So let's
Speaker 3: see if I can explain this so even a scientist
Speaker 3: can understand.
Speaker 2: He cannot. He explains it like someone who read about
Speaker 2: it once several years ago but doesn't quite remember it.
Speaker 2: So I will spare you his explanation and give it
Speaker 2: to you myself. Dawkins proposed this as kind of a
Speaker 2: response to the infinite monkeys bang on infinite keyboards to
Speaker 2: produce the works of Shakespeare thought experiment. As it turns out,
Speaker 2: if you limit one monkey to a single twenty seven
Speaker 2: key keyboard twenty six letters plus space, and instead of
Speaker 2: looking for the entire works of Shakespeare, you just look
Speaker 2: for the twenty eight character phrase methinks it is like
Speaker 2: a weasel, then, at a rate of ten million attempts
Speaker 2: per second, it would take several times longer than the
Speaker 2: universe has actually existed to randomly produce that phrase. But
Speaker 2: if you are allowed to iterate, keeping the first nonsense
Speaker 2: storing of characters and mutating it gradually over successive iterations,
Speaker 2: then his computer from the nineteen eighties was able to
Speaker 2: do it in under an hour, and that was before
Speaker 2: he refined the code to be more efficient and accomplished
Speaker 2: it in eleven seconds. Now, obviously this has a few issues.
Speaker 2: For one, evolution does not have an end goal, but
Speaker 2: somewhat counterintuitively, that actually makes things easier. If we continue
Speaker 2: the analogy, we can say that the rules of spelling
Speaker 2: and grammar are the equivalent of the selection pressures that
Speaker 2: make one genetic sequence favorable and another one unfavorable. With
Speaker 2: that in mind, we're no longer looking for a specific sentence.
Speaker 2: We're just looking for any sentence of any length that
Speaker 2: is correct in both spelling and grammar. The shortest grammatically
Speaker 2: correct sentence in English is the single word go. It
Speaker 2: is far easier to get the word go completely at random,
Speaker 2: but as it happens, we still get to use the
Speaker 2: iterative method. So even if we didn't get it on
Speaker 2: our first try, it won't take us longer to get there,
Speaker 2: or to any of a number of short sentences. But
Speaker 2: let's say that we do wind up at go and
Speaker 2: collect our two hundred dollars. Now it is free to
Speaker 2: mutate into just about any sentence you care to think of,
Speaker 2: in much the same way as I laid out earlier,
Speaker 2: with the genome of any organism being capable of transforming
Speaker 2: into the genome of any other organism through small changes
Speaker 2: that we know are possible. Now, let's skip past his
Speaker 2: explanation and see how he responds to it.
Speaker 3: And it continues that whole process until it spells out
Speaker 3: me thinks it is like a weasel, and then the
Speaker 3: program just stops.
Speaker 2: Oh so Donald took the analogy farther than it was
Speaker 2: supposed to go. Yes, the computer program stops because computers
Speaker 2: are man made machines that do as we tell them. Evolution, however,
Speaker 2: does not stop. I know a lot of creationists are
Speaker 2: under the misconception that evolution has finished at this point
Speaker 2: in history, now that it's reached its pinnacle. But it
Speaker 2: is still happening.
Speaker 4: And your point, my point.
Speaker 3: First of all, the computer knows the answer, knows where
Speaker 3: to drop in every one of those letters, and those
Speaker 3: when to stop.
Speaker 2: Okay, So Donald tells people that he was a computer
Speaker 2: programmer for most of his career. That means that he
Speaker 2: should be able to replicate the program that Dawkins made. Hell,
Speaker 2: I'm a computer programming college dropout and I whipped one up.
Speaker 2: Here you go, nice. It got it in sixty nine tries.
Speaker 2: I swear I didn't do that on purpose. So here
Speaker 2: I'll just run it again to show you it doesn't
Speaker 2: just go through the same sequence every time. There you
Speaker 2: go eighty four tries. That time, the nice results from
Speaker 2: the first run through still stand. My point is that
Speaker 2: generating a random string of characters the same length as
Speaker 2: the target phrase is literally the easiest part of the program. Sure,
Speaker 2: if we want to get all philosophical, we could get
Speaker 2: into the weeds about how it wasn't truly random. It
Speaker 2: was the outcome of a calculation performed on a seed
Speaker 2: number that was chosen in a way as to best
Speaker 2: appear random. But the same seed will always result in
Speaker 2: the same initial string of characters, so there is no
Speaker 2: true randomness here. But we are now way past where
Speaker 2: this analogy was supposed to end. For the purposes of
Speaker 2: the analogy, we can pretend that the computer really is
Speaker 2: is generating a random string of characters, So while it
Speaker 2: may know the target in advance, it isn't intentionally choosing
Speaker 2: the letters to make it easier to hit the target.
Speaker 2: If it were, it wouldn't have needed sixty nine iterative tries.
Speaker 2: It would have got it on the first try every time,
Speaker 2: at which point you may as well just have a
Speaker 2: single line of code that says print. Methinks it is
Speaker 2: like a weasel, which would then completely defeat the purpose
Speaker 2: of using this as an analogy.
Speaker 3: Natural selection doesn't have any intelligence to make such a decision.
Speaker 2: Indeed, but it doesn't need it. Remember, natural selection and
Speaker 2: mutations are two separate things. Random mutations happen. If a
Speaker 2: mutation provides as recipient with a benefit of some kind
Speaker 2: in its environment, the recipient will be more likely to
Speaker 2: survive and reproduce, even if only by a little bit.
Speaker 2: That is natural selection, the favorable traits tendency to proliferate.
Speaker 2: It does not matter where those traits came from or
Speaker 2: what they are. It's simply the fact that ones that
Speaker 2: help an organism survive will themselves survive along with those organisms.
Speaker 2: To bring it back to the program, there are several
Speaker 2: functions which served to from purposes. The mutate function goes
Speaker 2: through the characters of the parent and mutates them at
Speaker 2: a predetermined rate zero point zero five in this case,
Speaker 2: meaning that each character has a five percent chance of
Speaker 2: mutating to a random character. The fitness function goes through
Speaker 2: the characters of the child and the target phrase and
Speaker 2: sees how much of it is a match, giving it
Speaker 2: a fitness score. The program creates one hundred children in
Speaker 2: every attempt and selects the one with the highest fitness
Speaker 2: score to be the parent for the next attempt, discarding
Speaker 2: the other ninety nine. So in this program, the mutate
Speaker 2: function is the process of mutation and the fitness function
Speaker 2: is the selection process natural selection. The fitness function does
Speaker 2: not interact directly with the mutate function. It just looks
Speaker 2: at the results that the mutate function provides and decides
Speaker 2: which one has the highest fitness score. Now, obviously this
Speaker 2: is not a perfect analogy to nature, but it isn't
Speaker 2: meant to be. It is merely meant to show how
Speaker 2: pure randomness is insufficient on its own to explain the
Speaker 2: diversity of life, but it is sufficient when combined with selection.
Speaker 3: You know, it doesn't know what the goal is. In fact,
Speaker 3: it doesn't understand goals. It doesn't have any understanding, It
Speaker 3: doesn't have any intelligence. It don't know squat correct.
Speaker 2: As already mentioned, not having a goal actually makes the
Speaker 2: process easier. When our ancestors first of alved a light
Speaker 2: sensitive patch of cells, it didn't matter that it began
Speaker 2: a process that would eventually result in our eyes. It
Speaker 2: just needed to survive better than its cousins that did
Speaker 2: not have light sensitive cells.
Speaker 3: You know, it doesn't have any breaks either. It can't
Speaker 3: start mutations will and much less stop them. So in
Speaker 3: real life, if you've got to have mutations happening, there's
Speaker 3: nothing to stop them. We could have end up with
Speaker 3: a sentence methinks Richard Dawkins is a weasel.
Speaker 2: Yes, evolution has not stopped. It keeps going, and methinks
Speaker 2: Richard Dawkins is a bit of a weasel. So there
Speaker 2: you go. Actually, I take it back. Wouldn't want to
Speaker 2: insult the weasels after all.
Speaker 3: You know, this whole analogy is that logical hot mess.
Speaker 2: When you take it farther than it was ever meant
Speaker 2: to go, then yes, all it was ever supposed to
Speaker 2: do is demonstrate the difference between randomness on its own
Speaker 2: and randomness combined with selection. And it does that.
Speaker 3: But when Richard Dawkins trots out his little dog and
Speaker 3: Pony show, people like you stand up and cheer.
Speaker 2: Nope, Dawkins is long past his prime, and unfortunately for him,
Speaker 2: he neglected to take the opportunity to not tank his reputation.
Speaker 5: You know, I don't know know if about computers to
Speaker 5: doubt or even criticize Dawkins.
Speaker 4: Oh how convenient. Well I do.
Speaker 3: In fact, out of curiosity, I wrote a program to
Speaker 3: do exactly this.
Speaker 2: Oh huh. You know, I actually watched this multiple times
Speaker 2: before making my video. I watched the whole of his
Speaker 2: movie by myself, and then I watched it with my partner.
Speaker 2: Side note, DJP Movies encouraged fornication. She told me she'd
Speaker 2: have sex with me if only i'd turned the movie off.
Speaker 2: Thankfully I was able to resist her feminine wiles. But
Speaker 2: not all men are as strong as me, so you
Speaker 2: got to watch out for that. Donald. Then I watched
Speaker 2: just this interview part again, kind of watching it side
Speaker 2: by side with his actual interview with Forrest. But there's
Speaker 2: something about it that just stops it from becoming long
Speaker 2: term memory or something. This isn't the first time he's
Speaker 2: surprised me in this watch through where I was scripting.
Speaker 2: I honestly had no idea that he'd already written a
Speaker 2: similar program, despite my having him seen him say that
Speaker 2: at least three times by now, though, I would actually
Speaker 2: like to see his program. Maybe he'll pull it out
Speaker 2: of my memory hole and surprise me again. But I'm
Speaker 2: pretty sure he doesn't chose code in this particular movie.
Speaker 2: I might be wrong, but I don't think I am.
Speaker 3: Took me seventeen minutes runs in my PC in less
Speaker 3: than a second. It took about eight thousand on average
Speaker 3: mutations to spell out the whole phrase.
Speaker 5: All right.
Speaker 2: I also forgot that I skipped his explanation of what
Speaker 2: he thought the program was. He misremembered what it was
Speaker 2: actually doing. Based on his explanation, he would have started
Speaker 2: from one letter and then either kept it if it
Speaker 2: happened to be the correct letter, or else randomly mutated
Speaker 2: and only moved on to the next letter once it
Speaker 2: had a correct letter, rather than doing a full twenty
Speaker 2: eight characters at a time. And it actually still kind
Speaker 2: of works for the analogy that way, if you're allowed
Speaker 2: to keep the stuff that already exists as a foundation
Speaker 2: to build on it happens a lot quicker than if
Speaker 2: you start from scratch every time, so pure randomness loses
Speaker 2: to randomness plus selection.
Speaker 4: Am I supposed to be impressed with that fat chance
Speaker 4: of that? But that's not my goal?
Speaker 2: Actually, yeah, what even is your goal here? You wrote
Speaker 2: a program that accomplished largely the same thing as the original,
Speaker 2: but you misunderstood the point and so took the analogy
Speaker 2: farther than it was ever meant to go and then
Speaker 2: declared victory. I don't actually get it.
Speaker 4: Let me drop another name here.
Speaker 3: James Tour is a scientist who likes to debate other
Speaker 3: scientists using science all even though he is a Christian.
Speaker 2: He's a scientist who uses science to debate science science lea.
Speaker 3: But his opponents always attack his scientific arguments by labeling
Speaker 3: him as a Christian and a creationist, as if that
Speaker 3: invalidates any evidence that he brings to the table.
Speaker 2: Tour's primary opponent, as far as I can tell, is
Speaker 2: Dave Farina, of mister Farina fame, And it's been a
Speaker 2: while since I've watched his stuff, but what I remember
Speaker 2: was a whole lot of chemistry that I don't understand.
Speaker 2: Supplemented with interviews of origin of life researchers. Yes, he
Speaker 2: did call to her names, probably including creationist, but it
Speaker 2: was never a matter of you are wrong because you
Speaker 2: are stupid. It was always more of a you are
Speaker 2: stupid and you're wrong, and here's a detailed scientific explanation
Speaker 2: of why you are wrong, along with interviews of scientists
Speaker 2: who you said supported your position but actually don't.
Speaker 3: He goes out of his way not to mention God,
Speaker 3: and they always have to bring up the fact that he.
Speaker 2: Is religious, mainly because his primary audience are Christians, who
Speaker 2: use his supposed expertise to prove that God had to
Speaker 2: start life. But as it turns out, he's not an
Speaker 2: origin of life researcher. He is a synthetic organic chemist.
Speaker 2: None of his publications have anything to do with the
Speaker 2: origin of life. So despite the fact that chemistry certainly
Speaker 2: would have been involved at the origin of life, his
Speaker 2: expertise in carbon nanotubes or whatever the fuck does not
Speaker 2: translate to origin of life expertise. But on the flip side,
Speaker 2: you have people like doctor Francis Collins, who is a
Speaker 2: Christian and is very open about being a Christian, but
Speaker 2: nobody attacks him for it. At least not that I'm
Speaker 2: aware of, and that's because he doesn't bludgeon people over
Speaker 2: the head with demonstrably wrong conclude usions from fields outside
Speaker 2: of his expertise the way that Tour does.
Speaker 4: Tour is an idiot.
Speaker 3: So you've solved one of his challenges, you know. He
Speaker 3: said that if anybody solves one of them, you'll take
Speaker 3: down every one of his videos.
Speaker 2: Oh, I didn't even know he had a challenge, but
Speaker 2: I'd imagine that if anyone were to solve his challenge,
Speaker 2: he'd just shift the goalpost, because we've seen that sort
Speaker 2: of behavior from him before.
Speaker 5: Douglas he specializes in the origins of life that does
Speaker 5: not involve evolution, which is my focus, and involves the
Speaker 5: changes within life, not its inception.
Speaker 2: So this hits on one of the reasons why people
Speaker 2: attack him for his religion. It's because he doesn't specialize
Speaker 2: in the origin of life, but he does lie to
Speaker 2: his audience to claim that he does, and the Christians
Speaker 2: in his audience tend to believe it. But he actually
Speaker 2: specializes in synthetic organic chemistry. The origin of life is
Speaker 2: an intersection of biology, chemistry, geology, and even a sprinkling
Speaker 2: of astronomy, synthetic organic chemistry is people making organic compounds.
Speaker 2: Tour seems to specialize in material science, where he tries
Speaker 2: to find new ways to make graphine. If I recall correctly,
Speaker 2: there were some shenanigans in all the how his name
Speaker 2: winds up on so many publications, But that's a whole
Speaker 2: other can of worms. But yeah, faux Forest is correct
Speaker 2: in saying that the origin of life is not the
Speaker 2: same thing as evolution. Even if we knew nothing about it,
Speaker 2: we could still tell you that evolution is a thing
Speaker 2: that happens.
Speaker 5: So, okay, just so we're on the same page, what
Speaker 5: is your definition of evolution?
Speaker 4: Definitions are critical.
Speaker 3: Yeah, in fact, we should have started this discussion with
Speaker 3: this question. Okay, my definition of evolution involves macro evolution.
Speaker 3: I have no problem with micro evolution, which is changes
Speaker 3: and adaptations within a species.
Speaker 2: So his definition of evolution is that it includes macro evolution,
Speaker 2: but microevolution is defined as changes and adaptations with his species.
Speaker 2: It's a weird definition, but the actual definition, at least
Speaker 2: as put forward by the Berkeley Evolution one on one website,
Speaker 2: is dissent with inherited modification. But I guess you can't
Speaker 2: go with that one because it covers both micro and
Speaker 2: macro evolution. Since creationists can't deny microevolution, they are left
Speaker 2: uggling to explain how there is some magical barrier between
Speaker 2: micro and macro. Somehow the centimeters could just never add
Speaker 2: up to a kilometer, The pages can never accumulate to
Speaker 2: a book, the step could never rise to the level
Speaker 2: of marathon.
Speaker 3: Now, macro evolution is the good to you via the
Speaker 3: zoo theory that all life started out as one celled
Speaker 3: organisms and progressed through millions of years through gradual, non
Speaker 3: directed mutations to the DNA which proved to be advantageous
Speaker 3: to survival.
Speaker 2: Did you hear yourself, Donald, macro evolution is the gradual
Speaker 2: non directed mutations. That's small changes micro evolution that over
Speaker 2: millions of years add up to big changes macro evolution.
Speaker 2: You can't even define them without accidentally acknowledging that they
Speaker 2: are the same thing, just with different scales.
Speaker 5: Really, well, no wonder you'd have a problem with that.
Speaker 5: I would have a problem with evolution based on that definition.
Speaker 5: You know, evolution is so much more complex than justmutation selection.
Speaker 5: First of all, microevolution demonstrates the process that leads to macroevolution,
Speaker 5: and there's lots of other changes that are involved than
Speaker 5: just mutation selection.
Speaker 4: Are you familiar with the term epigenetics? Oh?
Speaker 2: This is painful. This is almost a direct mirror of
Speaker 2: his actual conversation with Forest, but he's turned Forest into
Speaker 2: this impatient asshole. It also shows that he was listening
Speaker 2: to the words that Forest said, but he didn't put
Speaker 2: any effort into understanding them, and Forrest was constantly checking
Speaker 2: in throughout the conversation to make sure that he was following,
Speaker 2: but instead of asking any clarifying questions, he'd just nod
Speaker 2: and say, okay, well, clearly not understanding. For example, this
Speaker 2: is the end of a segment where Forrest gave what
Speaker 2: I thought was a really good explanation of epigenetics directed
Speaker 2: at a layperson.
Speaker 7: And that's really important because in evolution, it's the phenotype
Speaker 7: is the physical body that gets selected for, not the genes.
Speaker 7: The genes cause the physical body, but not all of
Speaker 7: them and not all the time, and so it's a
Speaker 7: really important distinction. Does that make any sense what I'm saying?
Speaker 6: Okay?
Speaker 2: That would have been an excellent time for Donald to
Speaker 2: ask some questions about aspects that he didn't understand, but
Speaker 2: instead of doing that, he just wanted to move on.
Speaker 2: And I may be reading too much into it here,
Speaker 2: but what I sensed happened there is something that I
Speaker 2: experienced myself when I was a creationist. Forrest was making sense.
Speaker 2: And if Forest is right, then Gramps has a lot
Speaker 2: of reevaluating to do, and that's scary, so rather than
Speaker 2: look into it, he'll just move on. That happened to
Speaker 2: me with astronomy and the age of the Earth. I
Speaker 2: have called myself a former Young Earth creationist in the past,
Speaker 2: but if you've heard me tell the story before, you'll
Speaker 2: know that that's not entirely accurate. The problem was that
Speaker 2: I have always loved astronomy, so I knew that there
Speaker 2: were objects in the sky that we can see that
Speaker 2: are thousands, millions, and billions of light years away. And
Speaker 2: I knew that a light year was the distance that
Speaker 2: light can travel in a year. So if an object
Speaker 2: is billions of light years away, then that means the
Speaker 2: light had to have been traveling from that object for
Speaker 2: billions of years in order to reach us. And when
Speaker 2: I started looking into the creationist answers to this problem,
Speaker 2: I found them deeply unsatisfying, and that scared me, so
Speaker 2: I stopped looking into it and became non specific about
Speaker 2: my view on the age of the Earth. And that
Speaker 2: is what I think we just saw play out between
Speaker 2: Forest and Grams. I actually feel a little bit bad
Speaker 2: for the guy, just.
Speaker 5: A little No, okay, how about the leles No okay,
Speaker 5: I thought so well, without any changes to the DNA sequencing,
Speaker 5: epigenetic expression changes lead to new functionality in the phenotype
Speaker 5: containing that DNA.
Speaker 2: I really do love how the actor obviously had his
Speaker 2: lines written on the laptop so he doesn't have to
Speaker 2: remember all the big science he.
Speaker 5: Words, and the natural stressors also lead to such alterations.
Speaker 5: Without such knowledge, Douglas, you're not equipped to just go
Speaker 5: poking holes in any scientific theory.
Speaker 2: And science wins because the science guy threw out a
Speaker 2: bunch of complicated science words. I'm sure that's how Grams
Speaker 2: actually thinks this conversation went. It's it's sad. I know
Speaker 2: I said that already, but it is sad.
Speaker 3: You know, to rephrase the old chicken versus egg question,
Speaker 3: which came first DNA or the first mutation brought it about?
Speaker 2: A change that depends on which hypothesis about a biogenesis
Speaker 2: is correct, and what you consider to be a mutation.
Speaker 2: If the RNA world hypothesis is true, for instance, then
Speaker 2: mutations predate DNA. If metabolism first is true, then something
Speaker 2: like mutations would have been happening, but without genetic material,
Speaker 2: they wouldn't really fit the definition of a mutation. But
Speaker 2: I doubt Gramps is aware of either hypothesis, So let's
Speaker 2: rephrase his question to be more in line with what
Speaker 2: he probably understands. Which came first genetic material or mutations
Speaker 2: to genetic material? And when phrased that way, the answer
Speaker 2: becomes rather obvious genetic material and.
Speaker 4: Why you're struggling with that conundrum?
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot that I was supposed to
Speaker 2: be struggling with that for a bit. My bad.
Speaker 3: I'm going to throw out the bold statement that only
Speaker 3: a creator could explain the coding sequences that we find
Speaker 3: in DA.
Speaker 2: Why is it because you're a computer guy and so
Speaker 2: your understanding of code is in the programming sense, Because
Speaker 2: that's not actually how DNA works. That is an analogy
Speaker 2: that is sometimes helpful to high school students, but ultimately
Speaker 2: DNA works through chemical reactions, not instructions being carried out.
Speaker 2: The presence or absence of different chemicals or enzymes and
Speaker 2: whatever will change how the DNA is expressed. That's why
Speaker 2: your eye cells know to be eye cells, even though
Speaker 2: they have all the genetic material necessary to be liver
Speaker 2: cells or bone cells or muscle cells or whatever.
Speaker 5: Well, let me throw out a name for you, Douglas
Speaker 5: Stephen Hawking. Stephen Hawking said religion is a fairy tale
Speaker 5: for people afraid of the dark.
Speaker 3: Hum And John Lennox said that atheism is a fairy
Speaker 3: tale for people afraid of the light.
Speaker 2: Okay, So Hawking said something that isn't relevant to this discussion,
Speaker 2: and John Lennox responded with n uh, I'm not the
Speaker 2: scaredy pants. You're the one who the scaredy pants. I'm
Speaker 2: not sure what was supposed to be accomplished with that,
Speaker 2: but okay.
Speaker 5: Lennox is a mathematician and a senile old man.
Speaker 2: And Hawking was a cosmologist, so why he was brought
Speaker 2: up in a discussion on evolution is beyond me. That's
Speaker 2: basically the end of this segment of the movie. The
Speaker 2: rest of the movie is his hot daughter winning debates
Speaker 2: with fau Forest because she distracts him with her feminine wiles,
Speaker 2: before eventually converting him to Christianity with the question what
Speaker 2: is love? Baby? Don't hurt me. Don't hurt me now more.
Speaker 2: I won't subject you to that, though I did just
Speaker 2: subject you to my singing, which is arguably worse than
Speaker 2: that today's common to today. It comes to us from
Speaker 2: phil Lepperchhn six two four zero, who says, I wish
Speaker 2: I could remember where I heard or read it, but
Speaker 2: I saw something that said Nero's persecution of Christians was
Speaker 2: actually a fabrication of Eusebius in the fourth century CE.
Speaker 2: Sounds like something from maybe Apologia or Mythvisions, but I
Speaker 2: don't recall well. Regardless of where you heard it, it
Speaker 2: doesn't pass the sniff test for me. Tacitus was writing
Speaker 2: about Neuro persecuting Christians in the first half of the
Speaker 2: second century, and scholars nearly unanimously agree that the relevant
Speaker 2: passage is authentic. Suetonius also noted that under Nero, punishment
Speaker 2: was inflicted on the Christians, a class of men given
Speaker 2: to a new and mischievous superstition. So I'm not sure
Speaker 2: how a guy writing several centuries afterward could have invented it.
Speaker 2: Thanks for watching. I'll be back next Friday with more,
Speaker 2: but if you need to get your ryno fix in
Speaker 2: before then. I last stream of service every Wednesday eight
Speaker 2: thirty Eastern on my other channel, The Watering Hole, and
Speaker 2: periodically published shorts on the channel of Vice Rhino Shorts.
Speaker 2: Thanks to Piper for being my editor, and special thanks
Speaker 2: as always to my patrons, who are the bad movies
Speaker 2: made by the sad old Man. That is my channel.
Speaker 2: If you'd like to make a movie about how friends
Speaker 2: don't let friends be Jewish, seriously, that's one he made, go.
Speaker 7: Hangou.
Speaker 2: You can join us on Patreon for as little as
Speaker 2: a dollar per week over at patreon dot com, slash
Speaker 2: Vice Rhino, or by supporting the channel and one of
Speaker 2: the other methods that can be found at links dot
Speaker 2: vicerono dot com, which is also where you'll find links
Speaker 2: to my other projects. If for whatever reason you want
Speaker 2: to send me stuff, my pobox addresses in the description
Speaker 2: see and next time. H Okay, you know what's coming.
Speaker 2: You know what's coming. It's double O seven dan, the
Speaker 2: ln dan and then then then the lun dan and
Speaker 2: then then