Okay, welcome back after the break. Just before we went for our break, we were looking and studying First Timothy chapter 3, verse 16, where Paul is basically laying down or expressing the foundation of the Christian truth of the church, and he's basically quoting an early hymn, which expresses the foundation of Christian truth. And we were studying that in verse 16. Anyone has any questions? Any questions? Okay, regarding women's part in the church. Yeah, anyway, move on from that. But okay, Divya, I'll take your question. No worries. Go ahead. Yeah, it's nothing regarding the theology part of it, but I just wanted to know it in a practical sense, like, especially if for a season God puts us in a church where you know this doctrine is a little different in the church regarding women's role. So what is the best way, you know, to use your gifts at the same time, not go against, you know, the doctrines of the church. So it's a kind of like maybe God has put that person in the in the church for a reason and for a season. But, you know, you could be restricted in using your gifts because of that. Yeah, but yeah, just wanted from your experience or anything like from in a practical sense. Yeah, I just wanted to know, like, yeah, thank you.  You know, knowing that God has put you there and you can't move out of the church for some valid reasons, how can you use your giftings and your calling, right? That's what you're saying. Exactly, yes. Okay. Good question. Thank you. So, you know, basically, if you're not allowed to do it in church, but the church can provide opportunities, like for women to, even though not in the main adult congregation, but no women can, they have prayer groups, I'm sure. So they can pray for the life and the ministry of the church. They can also pray for those who are sick, you know, and people are healed, people are restored.  People are restored. Marriages are restored because there are people, women who are praying. Women can also impart to children. So even, you know, teaching is not allowed in the adult church, but of course they're not restricted. There's only women who basically, you know, teach thank God nowadays there are men, and they have been one or two men, but if you see mostly there are women who teach children. So it's a wonderful place to impart a truth and build up these children in the faith. Also, you can have your own prayer groups at home. You can have your own women's Bible study groups, you know, where women are meeting, studying the Word. You have an opportunity to preach and teach, to fulfill your calling.  The person is healed, the person is restored, experiencing, you know, the anointing and the power of the Holy Spirit flowing through you. You're just manifesting the gifts, also doing a lot of evangelism work, you know, ministering to the poor, the needy, the orphans, the old age, so you can do so many things apart from just preaching. You know, preaching is just one thing.  You know, utilizing so much of greater impact than just teaching and preaching in church. Yeah, totally understand. Yes, yes, that's true. That's true, pastor. Yeah. Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you, Divya. Okay, so we'll move on if there are no questions. So we looked at the truths that Paul is presenting. Firstly, that God is manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit. He was seen by angels, so we know there are various instances in the Bible. You know, Mark chapter 1 was 13. Luke chapter 22 was 41 to 43. You know, this is when Jesus was tempted and he was in the wilderness. Angels came and ministered to him. Also, in the Garden of Gethsemane, in the Garden of Gethsemane, sorry, that is Luke chapter 22 was 41 to 43, where, you know, Jesus sneered down and prayed and said, Father, take this cup for me, but not my will. Let your will be done. Then the angel came and angel came from heaven and strengthened him. We also see at his resurrection, his tomb, there was an angel that answered and spoke to the women. So we see that he was seen by angels and also, you know, was preached among the Gentiles. That is what Paul is saying. I'm doing basically, you know, I'm doing my best to fulfill my calling, to preach Jesus, make him known among the Gentiles, bringing the Gentile world to believe in him. And then finally he says, received up to glory. So these were the apostles were witnesses to and 500 more who were witnesses to him being taken up to glory who ascended. So it reminds us of Jesus' ascension. Luke chapter 24 was 51, where he parted from them, he was carried up into heaven. In Hebrews chapter one, verse three, where it talks about his finished work on our behalf, where it says in Hebrews chapter one, verse three, who being in the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. So he finished his work on our behalf and now he's present interceding on behalf of us. One John chapter two verse one talks about it says my little children, these things I write to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father Jesus Christ, the righteous. So basically Paul is laying down the basic core truths of the church, which is supposed to be the pillar, the foundation of the church. And he's saying, you know, appalled this, speak this, preach this, and do this.  So that's how he ends this part of his letter in First Timothy chapter three. Any questions? No questions. If there are no questions, we'll move on to First Timothy chapter four. So can somebody quickly read for us? First Timothy chapter four, please. Anyone who's not read before can read First Timothy chapter four. Can I read? Yeah, thank you, Sree Kumar. From which word to which? The whole chapter, please. Okay. Now the spirit speaketh expressly that in later times, some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirit and doctrines of devil. Speaking lies in a hypocrisy, having their conscience seared with a hot iron, forbidding to marry and commanding to abstain from meets which God had created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good and nothing be refused if it be received with thanksgiving. For if it is sanctified by the word of God and the prayer. If thou put the brethren in remembrance of these things, thou shall be a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished up in words of faith and of good doctrine where unto thou attain. But refuse profane old wives' fables and exercise thyself rather unto godliness. For bodily exercise profited little, but godliness is profitable unto all things having promise of life that now is and of that which is to come. This is faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation. For therefore, we both labor and suffer reproach because we trust in the living God who is savior of all men, especially of those that believe. These things command and teach. Let no man despise thy youth, but be thou an example of the believers inward in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity. Till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation to doctrine. Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy with the laying of the hands of the persevering. Meditate upon these things, give thyself holy by them that thy profiting may appear to all. Take heed unto thyself and unto the doctrine, continue in them for in doing this thou shall both save thyself and them that hear thee. Thank you, Master. Master, you are muted. Amen. Thank you, Sri Kumar. In verses one to five, we see that Paul starts this part of his letter by saying, now the spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith. So he's mentioning by saying that now the spirit expressly says, so Paul is especially saying that this is revelation from the Holy Spirit, which he's receiving. Of course, all that he's writing is inspired by the Holy Spirit is what he has received as a revelation, but he's just mentioning this maybe because it's either as a spontaneous word that he's received just as he is writing this. Or maybe he's quoting this as a previous prophecy that he has received, a revelation that he has received. But he's saying that take heed of what I'm saying now because this is something that the Holy Spirit has expressed to me, has revealed to me. It's not that what I'm talking about my own knowledge of what I have seen or what I've heard or received news from, various people who come and meet me from the Church of Ephesus, but this is something that the Holy Spirit has expressed to me or revealed to me. And he's saying that in the later days, later times, there will be people who will depart from the faith. And then he's talking about here, some will depart, which is talking about the danger of apostasy, which means apostasy basically means falling away from the truth. Those who fall away from the truth fall away from the faith. So he says some will depart, which means the danger of apostasy. Then he's talking about deceiving spirits, which is the danger of deception, where these Satan's demons will put deceiving thoughts, lying thoughts into the hearts and minds of people, which will deviate them from the truth, take them away from the truth totally. And also doctrine of demons, danger of false teaching. All of these false teachers who are fueled, inspired, who are led by the doctrine of these demons who put all of these thoughts into their heads. So he's saying all of this is going to happen in the time to come. And then he says that there will be some who depart from the faith. It does not mean that here, faith does not mean losing the ability to believe, but it's here talking about abandoning essential teachings of Christianity. So it's basically those who abandon the essential teachings of Christianity. And he says these men and women who are empowered or fueled by these deceiving spirits or these demonic spirits, they're going to promote such teachings that speak lies in hypocrisy and have their own conscience sneered. So basically these people who are empowered by these deceiving spirits and demonic powers, they are speaking lies in hypocrisy, which means it is describing those who depart from the faith. It also certainly points out to ones who are willingly embracing falsehood to justify their own sinful actions, to justify their own pride. But it also refers to those who claim that they are teaching the Word of God while using it to just support their own ideas and agenda.  And also those who claim to teach the Word and indulging in those sins, they would teach those lies to support their own ideas or their own agendas. And he says that these people who also promote such teachings, why do they do it? He says is because their conscience is seared, which means their conscience is basically at one point of time, convicts them of their sin, convicts them of the lies they are believing in, the wrong lifestyles, the wrong choices that they're making, or the false heretical teachings that they're teaching. But because they are not heeding to their conscience, they're not listening to their conscience and they have departed far away from the truth and so tangled and got into this whole web of lies and deception, which is fueled and empowered by demonic spirits, their conscience is so dead to the truth now.  So the whole concept that Paul had in mind when he was writing this, their own conscience is seared is he's talking about slaves, when slaves commit some grievous wrong or when they run away or when they do something that is really against the law, they have not done what is right. They have this hot iron which is taken and they're put on their forehead. It's like a mark for the rest of their lives to tell people that, hey, this is a slave who's broken the law and he's punished for it. So need to keep an eye on this guy or even for animals, when they want to put a mark on that animal that belongs to such and such a person or they put this hot iron. So that whole part of their body, their nerve endings is dead. So even if you do anything in that part, they would not sense or feel anything because their nerve endings are dead. They can't sense or feel anything.  And what is this that they are basically preaching and teaching about? He says, you know, simple things which might sound very trivial, not at all important. He's saying, you know, forbidding to marry and combining to abstain from food which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.  But, you know, he did not resurrect or he did not resurrect. His body was stolen away.  But I mean, something as small as forbidding to marry and commanding to abstain from food, you know, how can it, you know, how can it just take away people from the faith.  And that can be a kind of a beginning for greater, you know, lies that they can believe in, eros of doctrine that they can accommodate and going away totally from the truth and being led astray. So, you know, the two things that they were saying is forbidding to marry and abstaining from food, a certain kind of food. So, these describe the legalistic teachings of those who departed from the faith. They thought that, you know, they taught people that it was by following, you know, manmade rules that one is justified in God's sight and that, you know, one can be made holy in God's sight. One can be justified before God if they don't marry and if they don't eat certain kind of food. Okay. Now, we've had many people like this, even the early centuries, the early church, there were monks, monks who, you know, they went out to desolate desert places just to show how spiritual they are. They torture themselves, you know, some people never ate cooked food. They, some people stood all night leaning on a sharp rock so that it was impossible for them to speak.  And they thought they could do all this just to win the favor with God and, you know, somehow show everyone that how spiritual they were. And sometimes we also think, you know, when, if we make sacrifices or make sacrifice to God, example, you know, you know, giving up a right to marry or giving up certain food, then God owes us something. You know, this is, you know, kind of legalism at its worst because we're basically trying to manipulate God into giving us something that we want.  Because we are trying to manipulate him, we are trying to control him, we are trying to get things out of him. And it's basically going back to, you know, the original doctrine of Satan, where we should be God, right? What did the serpent, what did Satan tell Eve?  And what was Satan's whole agenda? He wanted to be God. He wanted people to worship him as God. And that is why he was, you know, fell and he was thrown out of heaven.  So basically all of these, you know, we can think these legalistic rituals are so trivial, so small, it is no importance. Why do we even have to think about it? But you see the far greater consequences that it has and how subtly Satan just brings it into simple things like marriage and food.   So when we hear teachings that goes against God's word and its controls and manipulates our choices, the way we live, the way we think, the way we go about doing our lives, you know, we need to be very, very careful.  All you need to do is, he's saying, you know, sanctify it and cleanse it with the word of God and prayer. And that is why, you know, we say grace before we pray. And then he goes on to say nothing is to be refused.   We also read this in Genesis chapter one, verse 29, where God gave Adam and Eve all the seed-bearing plants for food. In Genesis chapter nine, verse three, he gave them all the animals. But later on we see, you know, the Jews alone, their certain needs were forbidden as they were God's priests to the nations of the earth. However, this was not true for all other nations. But in the New Testament, we see even those regulations being removed, you know, when God declared that all food is clean. We read this in Mark chapter seven, verse 19, and also in Acts chapter 10, you know, in Peter's, the trance that he sees, you know, where God says, do not declare or call anything as unclean, which I have made clean. Of course, that had a far-reaching spiritual consequence or, you know, what he was going to show them in the physical. But, you know, these restrictions of food was all removed. So Paul is telling them basically, hey, you can eat any kind of food, you know, but what you need to do is make sure that you sanctify it and cleanse it with the word. And with bread. So of course, now, you know, we're not limited to any kind of diet. You know, what we eat does not make us more righteous or less righteous. But of course, we need to eat what is healthy, what keeps us healthy and fit. And not what kind of gets us all, you know, into various kinds of sicknesses because of overindulgence of food, but eating the right kind of food. And of course, you know, the Old Testament laws I have read, scientists say that, you know, the kind of food that God had given the Old Testament, the people, the Israelites in the Old Testament laws was very, very healthy for their bodies. And, you know, it's very, very good. So some of us getting back to those kind of, especially some of us who are rice eaters going back to eating barley and, you know, millets and all of those things, which is very good for our health is something that God told the Old, the people in the Old Testament, olive oil. Nowadays, you know, people say, you know, move on to olive oil, it's good for your heart, keeps your heart healthy. The kind of fruits like pomegranates and figs and all of those things which the people God, you know, provided for his people was the healthy kind of food. It's good to go back to those, you know, those that food laws obey it, live by it, because it is something that is good and healthy for your body. But yet, we are not limited to any kind of diet, but you know, we need to make sure that what we eat is not affecting our health, keeping us healthy.  So look at how Satan subtly, you know, is bringing in these very little things. You know, it's not about teaching about the Trinity, denying the Trinity, these people are not denying Trinity, the deity, humanity of Christ, or even they're not talking against the inherency of scripture, inherency of scripture, the truth of scripture, that you know, scripture is wrong, all of those things. But, you know, it's something that is something that is very simple, which people can easily yield into it. And, you know, these false teachers are focusing on these minor doctrines, you know, such as forbidding for marriage and specific food. But we see that, you know, like Paul says, you know, when he talks about sin in general in 1 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 6, where he says, don't you know that a little yeast affects a whole batch of dal, you know, and he's talking about this in the context of sin.  You know, just the sin of disobedience of the first Adam got the whole entire Adamic race into sin.  So also, that's sin. So also, that's false teaching that, you know, spreads throughout our lives and the life of the church. So Satan can, you know, take ground on just one small minor area of doctrine, and then he takes ground on an other minor area. And then sooner or later, you know, it just is kind of impacting the whole faith of the person, the whole faith is leaving, so to say, or impacted with this false doctrine. So see the subtlety with where things come in. So we need to be very careful about being very legalistic about some things in church because how Satan can use that so subtly, you know, to bring in and to leave in the entire church or the person in false doctrine and false teaching and going against the truth. Okay. Also, we see how Paul again mentions about conscience when he says, you know, you know, they're having their own conscience served with a hot iron. Okay, we'll move on to verse four, where he says, you know, you can eat anything and everything, but you know, make sure that you give thanks to God. So thanksgiving is very important. Thank God for what he has given you. And sorry, let me just, yeah, receive a thanksgiving and, you know, should be sanctified by the word and prayer. Okay, we'll move on. Anyone has any questions versus one to five? Yes, Divya. Yes, I just had a doubt about there are some people who not really like Christians who observe like Jewish fees, not in a way that they, they follow it or anything, but you know, they just, yeah, try to get the, you know, essence of it, like Jewish fees and such things. So is it wrong or does, does it, is it related to like these false doctrines that can creep into the church? You mean Jewish fees like the Passover and the harvest and Fendicost, the Feast of Harvest and all that. Of course, the Feast of Harvest Festival, we always celebrate in our churches as well. Just thanking God for, you know, for what he has blessed us with then, you know, the food and giving back to God. It's a good reminder of thanksgiving. The Passover is, I don't think we need to celebrate the Passover because we celebrate what the Passover in what Christ has done, right? With the, with his broken body and his shed blood, we are celebrating that. So we don't need to go back to celebrating what happened in Egypt, the Passover, because now, you know, we're celebrating what Christ has did on the cross for us. That has a far reaching eternal significance then the Passover festival as such. I don't think it's a necessity for us to celebrate. You know, unless, you know, you're doing it because you're getting to believe that if you don't do it, then, you know, you are going to receive curses or not going to receive God's blessing. But we're part of a new covenant, which we have. It's a far greater, you know, a better covenant, better blessings and far reaching, you know, consequences or far reaching blessings that we can receive. Celebrate that, I would say. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Thank you. I was specifically looking at this one like here and all people do celebrate Hanukkah, like the Feast of Destination, the Feast of Dedication. So it's just like a remembrance of how, you know, that God provided the oil for the eight days of feast. Like it's just, you know, just remembering that event as such. But I've heard my people bringing out and trying to relate it to the gospel, you know, like extrapolating it to the gospel message. So I just wanted to understand whether it is false teaching or a false doctrine. Because we just have the Feast of Dedication mentioned probably in one gospel, I believe, Feast of Dedication. Yeah, the history is not really mentioned. I think in the Old Testament, but yeah, there is Feast of Dedication that Jesus goes to celebrate in one of the gospels. I just wanted to know whether it is like a dedication of children or... No, it's Hanukkah or they also call it as Feast of Dedication. Oh, I'm not, I think I need to read up on that. I really don't know because I haven't seen any churches here celebrating that. We celebrate Harvest Festival, but not the Feast of Dedication. No, sorry, I don't have any insights on that. So maybe if I can read up and then maybe help you with that would be better. Okay, thank you. Thank you for that. Just wanted to ask because it's very prevalent over here. And yeah, it's like in schools and all they would want, you know, people to, if there are Jewish children like from Jewish background. So in schools, they can come and, you know, they can explain about this peace and all. So Hanukkah is pretty much celebrated in here. So yeah, I was just curious to know. Yeah, that was, I think, you know, the Jews still celebrate all of these festivals. They do it with great festivities, just like any other religions do. And just like in our culture, we have people from various other religious backgrounds.  And they also have special programs where they share what it's all about, what they do and things like that. So I thought you were saying it in the context of the church. So if in the school, I mean, yeah, there are Jewish children, they celebrate it.  So the other children also know what is their culture, what are the festivals they celebrate, which can be a good learning experience for children. But I thought you were saying it in the context of the church. Yeah, actually, there are there are in both ways, like there are Christians who who are like just try to remember like it's an eight day feast. So they light up the man or kind of there are people who do that. It's not like they are linking it to or they are giving it a different turn, but they're just trying to remember God's provision.  And they, they light it, they have it the entire night and they kind of put it off in the morning. And that's when Jesus entered the temple and then he says he looks at it and, you know, they were just putting off those lights and he says, you know, he makes a statement, I am the light of the world. So in that context, you're saying that right and this day they remember about God's his provision when they were traveling to through the desert. It's actually and I'm not sure about the New Testament reference when this is happening, but actually it isn't remembrance of the temple that was, you know, the, there was a Greek Antiochus Epiphany. He came and he succeeded the temple with like the pigs and all he brought in the temple. So this is when the Maccabees. Yes. Yes. Yes. And they get back. They get back the temple and they sanctify it and consecrate and then they light up the menorah. But they have enough oil for to last the eight, seven or eight days. But with the little oil that they had, they light it up and then God provides the oil for the rest of the days. So it's the remembrance of that event. And they celebrate that. And they light up the menorah and all that. Yes. And Jesus sent us a temple at that time. And then he, in that context, when they were putting all those lights, you know, he says I am the light of the world. Actually, the, that whole temple is so little, it kind of brings light to the entire, the city around them. And everyone celebrates. Yes. Yeah. So, you know, but basically Jesus is saying that, you know, when he says I am the light. And also that he is the one who gives light. So we don't have to really celebrate that because that was more like a revolt.  So I think we have, we move on to, you know, to who we are a part of in the New Covenant and what God has called us to and what we celebrate. We celebrate him. Yes. That's why I think Jesus says, you know, I am the light because there is not going to be any more light than the temple just for eight days is going to shine. But, you know, but Jesus is pointing out to him and say, look at me, I am the light of the world. I give the light. Yes. Okay. Anyway, Divya, thank you for that. Thank you. Thank you best. Thank you so much. I'll be move on. Verse six, you know, says if you instruct the veteran in these things, you will be a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished in the words of faith and of the good doctrine, which you have carefully followed. So in the view of, you know, the demonic activity that demons are promoting wrong doctrines to deceive people to draw them away from the truth, you know, or draw them away from the faith totally away from the faith. What is Timothy's role? So Paul is telling Timothy, this is your role. As a spiritual leader, spiritual overseer is to instruct believers and nourish them in the words of faith and sound doctrine. Okay. So we see that believers have to be fed. They have to be taught. They have to be nourished rooted in the words of the faith, the truth, the right doctrines that is in scripture. That is why we see at APC, you know, emphasis, great emphasis is given on teaching the word, the truth of God's word, you know, alignment to the doctrine in God's word. And this is so important to the times that they're living in because there's so much of false doctrine as compared to what, you know, when Paul was writing this letter as well. So the best way to overcome false teaching, false errors, wrong doctrines that are there is not speak about false teachers or false doctrines. Because when you teach about false teachers and false doctrines and this cultic movements and their philosophies and ideologies, people will get so interested that they will go to, you know, research and read and they will get so much into it and that, you know, you never know which stage of life they are in. You know, we said in churches, a family where all of us in different stages of growth, they can easily be led away. So what is important is when you as a leader, as a spiritual overseer, as someone who's mature and you're building up people in the faith, you are involved in teaching ministry. You know, it's to know what is the wrong doctrines, what is the wrong philosophies and lies that are being circulated, and, you know, talk about the truth related to those lies. But don't say these are the lies that these are the wrong doctrines. These are the cultic groups. These are the false teachers. These are the teachings. But instead of saying that highlight the truth. So when people are faced with the lies, when people are come in contact with these wrong doctrines or teachings, then all the truth that you have taught them and exposed to them from scripture, they're able to relate to, they're able to defend, they're able to talk, they're able to find their way through. Okay, so that is what we need to do. So he's saying as a good minister, Timothy, first of all, you need to establish, you know, you yourself have to be established in the words of faith and good doctrine, and be careful to follow them in your own life. He says, before you speak it, speak the truth, teach the truth, preach the truth, you know, you need to be established in the faith, established in the truth in the good doctrine, you know, you need to follow it in your own life, and then you'll be able to instruct and nourish others. He says, but reject profane and old wife fables and exercise yourself towards godliness for bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things having promise of the life that now is, and that of that which is to come. And this is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance. So he's saying reject profane and old wife fables.  Your priority must not be on focusing on them, talking about them, debating about them, exposing that, but your focus of priority should be on God's word, not on the words of man. And he, Paul is cautioning Timothy and saying keep focused on the word and not on the things that comes from man, you know, put your effort on preaching and teaching the word of God. And then he says, exercise yourself towards godliness. Now, the ancient Greek and the Roman culture, they put high value on physical exercise. You know, so that's why we even read in in the book of Romans, you know, he talks about, and he tells the people that you need to be like a soldier like an athlete, you know, so here also he's telling Timothy that you know, the same kind of work and commitment that others put, you know, towards their physical exercise, you should put in your pursuit of godliness. Okay. And it was something that was very prevalent in that culture, it was well understood that people gave great value and importance to physical exercise. So he's saying just like people put great effort and commitment towards physical exercise, you should also put it towards the pursuit of godliness. And then he goes on to say something very interesting says but broadly exercise profits a little, you know, broadly exercise for people are indulging in the exercise so much it has some value, but, you know, it, it just has value for this life. You know, it does not have anything to do with eternity, it's not a lasting effect. So, you know, the bodily exercise is good for while as long as you're living in this body, but when you exercise godliness, it is good for all eternity, it is good even for eternity. And he says godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life that that now is support here explains the value of godliness that he's saying, you know, the value of godliness has value both in the present, and in the eternal sense it has great value. So godliness makes the life that now is better. And he says, you know, you should not hesitate to believe it and tell people about this. So, as a man of God, you know, Paul is encouraging Timothy to exercise towards godliness. He says, look at that he says, you know, train yourself towards godliness or holiness. So godliness, holiness, growth in spiritual things comes through training. Okay, it comes through training and training is not very easy. It requires consistency, it requires discipline, hard work and sacrifice. So if you want to be godly, if you want to be holy, you know, if you want to grow in the things of God, if you want to grow in the spiritual things, then you need to train yourself. You need to put the time, take the effort, be disciplined, be consistent, work hard on that because nothing comes easy and so also with spiritual things. So we need to actually develop and grow in godliness. We must be willing to train ourselves because it has benefit both for this life and the life to come.  And he says, for this, to this end, we both labored and suffer was 10 and suffered approach because we trust in the living God, who is the savior of all men, especially of those who believe, and these things command and teach. He's saying, as ministers of God, we're laboring towards this, we're establishing God's people in words of faith and sound doctrine, we're exercising ourselves in holiness. And he says, even as we labor towards this, we also, you know, will be spoken bad about. People will backbite gossip or do harm to us. That's what Timothy was facing, but he says, but we trust in the living God, who is our savior. Okay, I'll stop here because our time is up. Any questions? We'll continue with this next class. Anyone has any questions? Okay. No questions. Okay, there are no questions. We'll end class. Thank you all for being patient. The last three hours listening to.


And everybody said when Shohei got over here at the age of 23, I guess he was not going to be able to do what we all thought he was going to be able to do because we as baseball Stooges, I as a baseball Stooges don't know anything about baseball.  I go, oh, that's the best player in baseball. No, not going to be able to do it. They said this is an impossible thing, an impossible feat. And I think that was kind of the end. This dude has debunked all science and makes no sense or probably never be another one of these guys. We should appreciate Shohei Otani whenever we have him right now. Yeah, for sure, because that was my big thing was like, yeah, he's unbelievable. You weren't the only one. No, right. But it was kind of like, hey, we'll see how long he can remain doing this because it's not mean like you're pitching every fifth day and throwing a bunch of pitches.  And then also on top of that, like you're hitting every single day, like you're not getting normal pitchers. You're getting five days of rest in between your starts. Like he's not, he's playing every single day.


God doesn't exist. Yeah, I totally agree. Humans came about by random chance processes over billions of years, just like this Elvis mug. Wait, wait, somebody made that mug. Wait, how do you know?  I know somebody made it because it exists. It just can't come out of nothing. But humans being infinitely more complex than a mug did come out of nothing? Uhhhh...


Welcome back to JSA TV Live, the newsroom for telecom and data centers. I'm Keely Dorian coming to you live from the floor of the Venetian of the Channel Partners Expo, where we're having a great time so far, and we've grabbed our next interview for the afternoon here. We've got Ian McClarty, president of Phoenix Snap. Thanks so much for being here and taking a few minutes to talk with us. Oh, thank you, Kelly. I appreciate the invite. Yeah, so before we dive in here, you guys have some really cool things that are going on. Can you just tell us a little bit about Phoenix Snap and what you do? Yeah, so Phoenix Snap is a bare metal cloud infrastructure company. We also do data center services out of the Phoenix Metro region. We actually started doing Metro Ethernet Connects in high density co-location in the Metro. Today we're going to expand that to a campus. So we have about 200,000 square feet. We're looking at about 530,000 square feet expansion that we're going to be doing in the next year. But our growth really has been around bare metal cloud globally as we scale that out. Yeah, let's talk about bare metal cloud. It's definitely one of the terms that's picking up steam in the industry. So for people who just aren't as familiar with it, can you just explain bare metal cloud and how that helps to advance networks? Yes. So for us, it's been an evolution of products. We've been doing the dedicated server market since the 1990s actually. That's in 1998. But as we started Phoenix Snap, we wanted to make sure that we focused on automation, orchestration, made it very easy, and more self-service. When we started bare metal cloud, we took a different approach. We said, all this work that we've done on automation orchestration is great, but we really want to focus on API. Now we're dealing with a very software developer focused audience. We want to make sure that we target that appropriately and meet around their needs. And so API first approach was number one for bare metal cloud, even though it's very dedicated infrastructure you get. It feels very much like a cloud-like environment. It's all optics. It's easy to launch. You can get dedicated infrastructure in a matter of a minute. So it's a very easy consumption model. How do you see bare metal cloud fitting into the future of infrastructure, especially as we're talking about edge more and more, and latency is just a huge demand right now, or low latency? Yeah. So we actually took that into consideration when we architected bare metal cloud. As a matter of fact, we work with American Tower. We have launched our first cell tower location. So that's true edge. You're talking about like cell towers in the middle of anywhere in the country. And we are going to launch our second one in Denver with them. And so we have taken an approach of bare metal cloud to make it very portable. Because we also know that there are maybe industries that may need even closer proximity, where even edge compute to them means having more on-prem, say your large manufacturing shops, and you like what we do from a performance perspective, and you like the interface, but you want to maybe want to have it on-prem. So the system was built to be portable. Yeah. It's such fascinating stuff. And you're doing such great work with folks like American Tower. And you're also doing some other things. I'm going to switch gears and just a little bit and talk about your work with Crown Castle. Because you had recently a big announcement with Crown Castle for your flagship data center. Congrats. Thank you. Yeah. Tell me about that. Yeah. So Crown Castle is getting into the fiber game, especially in the different metros that we're in. And it was a good partnership. They are putting a very strong fiber presence in our facility. That is one thing that we pride ourselves is to be neutral and also to have very heavy fiber dense networks servicing the facility, to that we have over 40 networks that are distinct, plus all three hyperscalers that are built out. That's really wonderful news. So you've given us some sneak peeks. Anything else that you can let us know that's on the horizon for Phoenix Snap? Yes. So we are right now, we recently, very recently, just launched more functionality with environmental cloud itself. Now we have full network constructs. So people that are very used to very advanced network users can now do inside better mental cloud, what they're used to do inside of the router or inside of our wall or a switch. We have enabled that with a partner called Netrous. And that was really one piece that we're missing from a cohesive environment for functionality. Now we are very, I would say from a functional perspective, we're on parity with anybody in the market that is even a hyperscaler. So we have really exploded the ability to orchestrate in the platform. You're doing such great things, and I can't wait to see what's next for you guys and to watch all of these projects come to fruition. I appreciate that, and I do have a couple more tidbits, if you don't mind. Not at all, please. So we are also looking at launching London this year. That's another one that we're looking at, and that's from Customer Demand. So we're very excited about that. That will be our third presence in Europe that we have for better mental cloud itself. We're looking forward to that deployment. Yeah, good thing you remembered. That's a big one. That's a big one. Absolutely. Where can we go to learn more about everything that you've got going on and to see how you could potentially help new folks? Yeah, so the name is Phoenix Snap, and that's NAP.com. Also, just a shorter one, PNAP.com also. We also have that will refresh you to the main Phoenix Snap.com website. Very good. Thank you so much for all of the great detail and for all of the wonderful work that you're doing. Absolutely. We appreciate you stopping by. Thanks so much. Thanks to our viewers for watching and happy networking.


103.9 FM, WOZO Radio, Knoxville. Ladies and gentlemen, digital free thought radio hour. Hello and welcome to digital free thought radio hour on WOZO Radio, 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today is Sunday, September 20th, 2020. I'm Larry Rhodes, your Douter 5 and as usual we have our co-host Wombat on the phone with us. Hello Wombat. To infinity and beyond. Where no man has ever gone before. There you go. And our guests today are George, red leader. Hello. Hello. Digital free thought radio hour is a top radio show on atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism and the sciences. And conversely we'll also talk about religion, religious faith. God told you books and superstition. And if you get the feeling that you're the only non-believer in Knoxville, well you're just not. There are several atheist, free thinking and rationalist groups that exist right here in Knoxville. And we'll be telling you how you can connect with them right after the mid-show break. Also did you know that there's a streaming atheist call in video show here in Knoxville? Right. Yeah, I was calling. I don't think they're taking much calling now that they've been doing a streaming video. But did you know that Wombat? Yeah, I'm actually really confused about this because the trilogy wasn't that bad. Like yeah, they weren't the best Star Wars movies, but to try to take the number off the end of them, I think that's a bit much. Don't you think? I don't think you... What's Hollywood doing? Just let them... It's only been ten years. Three years since you've been looking for it, I guess. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Eventually you'll still go for it. Well, I mean the movie trilogy is only like a couple years old. I don't know what you're talking about. No trilogy involved. Anyway, if you'd like... If you, the listener, would like to involve yourself with the show, go to Facebook and search for Digital Freethought Radio R. Use the messaging function to send those questions or comments. Remember, we record this on Sunday mornings at 11 o'clock Eastern, 10 central. So go there and put your questions in and we'll try to get to them during the show. So what's our topic today there, Wombat? Today we're going to be talking about atheism. What's it all about? What's it all about? I have a good friend of mine who sent me this book that I think is going to be the start to a really nice secular library that I'll be starting in my home. And I want to go over some of my favorite topics from the book. But also, since we have the author here somewhere among us, why don't we talk about what it means to them, how they came about, you know, making the book for themselves and how they can be used to help other people. So I think there's a lot of really cool things that would go over. But before we get into it, why don't we? Oh, no, Dred Pirates is not here. Well, I'll tell you what, we found a really nice quote from Mark Twain. We'll do over it real quick. Mark Twain says, but who prays for Satan? Who in 18th centuries has had the common humanity to pray for the one center that needed it the most? And I thought that was a really cute phrase. Yeah, he's not got his book out. We are a whole judgment until Satan has his book out. Yeah, we should have the Bible from the equivalent of the Bible, but from Satan's point of view.  That's good. I love that. Now there's a fun book to read. Yeah, I have a little quote here from Robert Jean Grissault. Go for it. In nature, there are neither rewards nor punishments. There are consequences. Very true. I've always liked that. I like that too. So yeah. Hey, you know, this wasn't so bad. And Dred, we miss you. When you come back, we'll be waiting for you. All right. So we're going to jump into the topic. Larry, where'd you want to talk about what's starting from this book? Well, how it came about, I guess would be a good one. About back when we had that downturn in 2011 for the economic downturn, the country, the company that I worked for went out of business.  As it were. So I started a blog, digital free thought blog. And I put started putting up articles and I would put up an article at least every few days. And by the time I had 60 or 70 articles, I figured I'd just make it into a book. And with that book you hold is the results of that. I've got 52 of my favorite articles in there. And like I say, if you go to digital free thought.com blog, you'll find those articles plus another 20 articles there. So hopefully there's lots of good reading there. If you're in the Austin, Texas area, there is actually a newsletter that comes out with the atheist experience. It's the Austin community, atheist community of Austin newsletter. And for all of last year, there has been every other month excerpts from this book and that newsletter. So yeah, you might have already read stuff like this. If you're a fan of reading this material. But the question is, why do you need to have an atheist book if it's just about not belief? Why do you have it? What is this? Why do you need it? Because the loyal opposition, the evangelicals, the religious right, the conservative religious or even just plain old religious people have concepts that are not founded in reality where religious, I mean, where atheism is concerned. They hear all these terrible things from the preachers about how we babies worship the devil, you know, all this stuff. Going back literally thousands of years for the crying unbelievers. So this is a book I put together to be able to set the record straight, at least. And I devoted the first several chapters to those people who have found out that they are related to somebody who may be an atheist. If you have an atheist loved one, someone who has left the faith that you once shared with them, I've got several articles in the front of this book that will talk about how to consider them now. You know, don't just disregard them and say that they're human firewood. They're still people. They're still the same people that you used to know. They're still lovely people. Read the books, read the articles and find out how you might be able to communicate with them. So speaking of getting to know some free thinkers slash non-believers or slash atheists or whatever, Dale will call himself this week. How about we go around and try to figure out how everyone's been? George, I see yourself stretching. How you been feeling? How you doing this week? I'm feeling great.  You've got some good range of movement going on there. Oh, wonderful. Look at this. Look at this. Yeah, it's so amazing. It's amazing. I'm recovering from shoulder surgery. You're doing quite well as your recovery process is going. And so as I sit here, I realize I'm stiff and I'm stretching.  No, no, no. But I've been drinking blood. Good. Yeah. What kind of blood? You have to get the A plus. Yeah. See, I come from a Jewish background. So I've been reviewing all kinds of mythology. Okay. You know, under the subject of anti-Semitism in general and pogroms in particular, and pogroms were kind of public events where Jews were hunted down and murdered throughout European history. And even after World War II, so I'm sort of steeping myself in the law. And aside from the fact that we every once in a while are accused of killing, quote, our Lord, we also are accused of draining the blood of certain Christian babies and mixing the men with the ingredients of matzah. And that is the fabrication. And it is still floating around now in the Middle Eastern Arab world. And therefore it's emerging again from you now to Middle Eastern. What we need from you is like Jewish atheism. What's it all about? We need that book. I have nothing to say. I am a logical person, but I don't express myself with logic very well. And I found philosophy in college. Yeah. You probably just had a bad teacher. What's that? You probably just had a bad teacher. My brain isn't wired to argue this way. So I have to acquiesce to you guys who have had to throw off the yoke of Christianity and that indoctrination. George, I have a lot of questions for you, but I also want to check in on Dale. Dale, it's been a week. How you been? And one's the last time you've eaten a baby. And what's your favorite race of baby to eat? I prefer Mexican, but you know, I have my ups and downs. Well, I don't know what to say about that. It's okay. I know China, Chinese is very popular, but I like to be controversial. I like my Mexican babies. What are you going to do? What is your religious disposition this week? If you don't want me asking? Well, I'm surprised that you would know I'm under existential crisis here. I was a low down dirty deist.  And then I decided that no atheism wasn't good enough because you needed to be the best atheist could be. So I went to atheism 2.0, which is the militant branch of atheism where we dress up like military people and rip people off of the Christians off the streets of Portland and have them deprogrammed. But even that wasn't good enough. So I went to atheism plus, which was founded by Jim McCrate. Yes, atheism plus is where an atheist embodies all of the other features, but also adopts some sort of humanitarian effort. There could be atheism plus Black Lives Matter. Atheism plus feminism, atheism plus environmental issues. Mine was atheism plus election reform. And then I realized that still wasn't good enough. So now I have become the absolute hot key. Keep going, keep going, keep going. So now I have become the absolute epitome of atheism, epitome of atheism. Which is? Which is bright. Oh, okay, bright. That way I can get rid of all of the baggage going with atheism. And I can also be brighter than someone else and be an absolute better atheist than them. Okay, so two questions. First, what is bright and then like why bright? It's just mainly it's like a PR. Okay. You don't want to. Is it just a different name for the same thing in a sense? Or is it like, is it more dedicated? It's greater than atheism plus. Okay. The bright is where you're is the absolute pinnacle of atheism. Okay. Okay. Okay. At least for this week. Not bad. And then switching it up from, from your perspective of someone who's actually swapped around the most, who's the best like, like potlucks, t-shirts, get-togethers, meet-up groups.  Everyone's really happy to have like a former, you know, atheist plus former militant atheist, former deist in their group. Like who has the best parties? The pagans. Yeah, they'll pagans always win. That's the same thing. George, I want to fill in one question back at you. It sounded like you have two forms of baggage on you as one, and non-practicing, but, but cultural Jew. And then second also as a act of atheists, like, have you felt weight from both of those stereotypes being put on you in any way? Oh, yes. Let me put it this way. I think there are, of course, a lot of people who have a much larger load of baggage in terms of being Jewish, especially in Europe still, you know.  You know, there's a lot of anti-Jewish sentiment. Yeah, some fighting for their lives. Never went away, you know. And, and, I mean, there was, there was a program, if I remember right, right after World War II in Poland. So, but, but anyway, in terms of my own personal baggage, I have been, I have lived on the coast of the United States for almost my entire life. And I have simply never felt it as, in other words, atheism. I have never felt a problem with that. And now that I'm here in Tennessee, it's sort of like it's in the air. Right. I'm a musician by training and I once performed in a church in Connecticut, because I loved playing Bach. Bach is my favorite composer, as it is for many classical musicians. And he was a profoundly religious man and wrote incredible religious music. Absolutely. So I had the honor to be performing a Bach cantata aria in a church. It was a congregational church. And so I sat and listened to the sermon and the minister started railing against atheists. Oh no. That's awkward. And there I was sitting there glorifying his God myself. As a Jew. Or as a non-artist. From music. Yeah. Actual and atheists. This is, this is. Exactly. This is us. So I've had to learn, you know, in my life to be comfortable with paradox, you know. And I think I just have to live with paradox all the time. And there are all these different paradoxes, if that's the correct plural. Larry, I'd love to hear you weigh in on that. Like what do you think? And does your book touch on the idea of living with the idea of even if you're an atheist, sometimes you're just going to have to find yourself in positions where you're going to have to deal with people who. I will, but I believe that Dale had his hand up. He was going to. Oh, I didn't see. Dale, what's up? Yeah, go for it. Well, I would like to help George out a little bit. The Jews are often accused of killing Jesus in the chapter 111 or whatever of my book.  And what book is that? Would you like to plug it? Go ahead. Yeah. You can read it free at howjesusdidit.com and chapter 11 is how he changed the wine. Chapter 23 is how he made a fish with a coin in its mouth. And chapter 50 something is how he cut the cut the put the did the ear miracle, so forth and so on. And all of it was non supernatural. And as a matter of fact, the Bible explains it in three part harmony. How all of these things were done. You take all of your evidence from the Bible too. Yeah. So what was your question? Would you rephrase your question to me? Larry, what do you think about living with parents? So I think George touched on something nice and that atheism is a lot like humidity. You only feel it when you're in the South. Right? Yeah. So finally a good one. Yeah. So I'm thinking like Larry, how do you deal with that? And have you talked about it in your book? How do I deal with the living as an atheist in the South? Among Christians and just the cultural of like religion and the stigma and like how do you deal with that? I've got an article in my book about coming out of the atheist closet.  By the way, if you are a preacher who are stuck in the pulpit as it were trapped in the pulpit, there's a group for you. It's called the clergy project and it's clergyproject.org that you might check into. They work with ex-preachers or current preachers to retrain them for secular employment. However, living for me it was pretty straightforward. I was self-employed. I didn't have to worry about being fired except by my clients.  But we are not supposed to. We're not supposed to stand up for what we believe and the things that the supernatural that we don't believe in. The important thing is to realize that you have just as much right to your beliefs as they do to theirs, and if they're going to come to your door and ring the bell and tell you about their Jesus, then you have the right to tell them that you don't believe in why. Even if it comes up in a conversation, as street epistemology says, you know, address the topic, go there, talk about methods of reaching conclusions, et cetera. But realize that you have just as much right to your beliefs as they do to theirs. Do you think there's tips that you could recommend right now from your book about how to deal with, I guess, not so much the sense of oppression, but the pressure that does come with knowing you're an atheist and other people aren't, or you may think that other people aren't? Like what's a good way to get over that, huh? Well, I don't really know that there's an easy way. I mean, the people are going to believe what they want to believe, and you're just going to have to deal with it and live in the society. The things that bother me are when people like I check out at a store and they say, have a blessed day. Oh, I hate that. I don't mind it. Yeah.  But they're doing it in religious speak. I will say two things on that. One thing that really bugs me is after they've found out that I'm an atheist. Yes. I'll pray for you. Yes. And that's simply saying you're broken and I'm going to try to fix you or have my boss fix you. That's the thing I hate. You touched it. So I would say if they don't know I'm an atheist ahead of time and they say something like, bless you. I take that as if I was traveling back in time to like Roman era and people are like, Apollo be with you on your journey. That's just your cultural flair of how you say have a good trip or something like that. So I'm told go for it, George. You know, I had surgery in the middle of March. I'm in the middle of July and I was driven to the hospital by a friend of mine who's an atheist. And just before I was wheeled into the operating room, she said, I will pray for you, Richard. And well, I guess her prayers have been answered. Because I'm doing great. Yeah. There was no other way for it to happen. Yeah. So Jesus is looking out for me. Jesus is looking for her. No, I was sure she wasn't. I was sure she wasn't Hindu because they say, bless me. They pray to, they pray to, to more gods even. So like probability wise, they're probably. She said she wrote on Facebook, which I don't use. She wrote something about me that was quoted to me by somebody else. And I thought I'd share that with you that, that just as the nurse put me back into her car, the nurse said to me, have, have a blessed day upon which I cursed at the nurse. Well, you just, I'm not going to repeat the words that I use because this is going to be a radio program. Was it snazzle, frazzles, margin snarky?  No. That's the New York. That's the New York aspect of it too. So there's like three aspects of George. He's got the, he's got the nice guy he's got to do. He's got the eighth. It's in New York or don't, don't get in my face. Um, I have had something like that happen to me. I've done like an epistemology session with someone at work for, he was a visiting contractor. We talked for maybe for like four hours because we're waiting for a machine to warm up and we got really into the conversation to the point where I was getting exhausted, but he really wanted to keep going. And at the end we found out he's just holding on to his faith because he can't think of anything else to hold on to. And it made him really uncomfortable. When we walked away, he deliberately said, uh, God bless you. When he walked away in my head, I was like, wow, I really got this guy thinking because he had to say that. Like he felt like he had to say that. And it probably didn't feel as how do you put it as non thoughtful or mechanical. Like it was something he threw in there as a way to like save some face in that conversation. Like, and now every single time he says it, he has to think about a little bit more. And I'm like, that's cool because I'm, it doesn't bother me. Like your God might be real, but I'm, I'm, you still haven't come up with a good excuse for it. That's the whole thing that I care about. George, go for it. So Larry, what do you answer when somebody, a checkout clerk, for instance, says to you, have a blessed day? I just say thanks. Yeah, same here. It's not a big deal. And unless I'm like, I've got an atheist hat or something on and or a T-shirt and they know I'm an atheist and that I just consider it just and say, have a nice day and their speak. Right. Exactly. Like if you're at your atheist table when you says talk to an atheist and someone says that, then it's like, okay, let's, let's, let me dig to my toe.  Oh, sacrifice a goat for you. That's right. I'll think for you. Generally, you don't come across these people. Yeah. I did come across quite a few of them when I was doing ask an atheist tables on university in downtown, you know, cause they'll come over and shout at me.  Right. Sometimes they will. The nice ones. Well, some of them are hitting run, you know, they'll just shout at you or give you the finger or whatever and go by. Now, this is your Christianity. Right. Right. The people who are supposed to love their neighbors and all that. And so, of course, there's a opposition.  If anyone says have a blessed day, do you have a particular phrase that you go to? Or is it all encompassing for you? Well, as a true militant atheist, what I usually do is take out a pen and paper and ask them to their name. Okay. And write their name down. And then they usually ask, why are you writing my name or look at their name tag? And I'm saying it so it can be reported so that you can be picked up off the street and deprogrammed. As necessary in this culture. As necessary. Yeah. Yeah. You should have said, because I have a death note. I don't know. That's very, that's a obscure. Oh, anyone get that. He's quitting. He's kidding anyway. But still no, no, no, no, no, no, that's threatening somebody was bodily harm and that's illegal. Well, you guys take all the fun out of it. Okay. I'm glad. I'm glad we live in a culture at least now where people know, even though it's been adapted for Americans, at least to random Japanese torture devices that are metaphysical. Anyway, we might even get into metaphysics in the later on, but we're actually at the bottom of the half hour. Larry, why don't you take us out? Sure. This is the digital free thought radio hour and WZO radio 103.9 LP FM. And we'll be right back after this short break. The digital free thought radio are the second half of the show. We're on WZO radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today is Sunday, September 20th, 2020. Let's talk about the free thought groups that you can join right here in Knoxville. First, there's the Atheist Society of Knoxville founded in 2002. We're in our 18th year. ASK has over a thousand members and you can find us online at KnoxvilleAtheist.org or you can go to meetup.com and search for Knoxville Atheist there. It's just that simple. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you should still go to meetup and search for an atheist group in your town. Don't find one. Start one. Start one. Another large free thinking group here in Knoxville, the rationalists of East Tennessee. Just go to rationalist.org and click on their upcoming events for more details. Earlier in the show, we said we'd talked about Knoxville's Atheist TV show. However, it's not really TV show anymore. They did that for 10 years on public access TV, but now they're streaming on YouTube. Freedom. You've been searched for Free Thinkers United Coalition of Knoxville and you'll find their streaming videos that are archived there. Also, we have the 10 years of public TV shows there under, what is it? Free Thought Forum, Knoxville. So just remember three words and you can find them there. Also, if you're interested in getting involved with the TV or the radio show, just come to an Ask Meetup or RET meeting and talk to us about it or come to our Facebook group and ask us about it there. You could be our next co-host or guest. With us on the show is our regular co-host, Wombat. There's a snake in my boot. And red leader and George, where do you want to pick up Wombat? So the first half of the show, we were talking about famous quotes from great presidents. As a reminder that we did used to have great presidents. I remember a great quote from John F. Kennedy who said, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask where is the love? We're going to go over some words. That's the power of love. So what did we even talk about last week? Well, first of all, the love we're talking about is our comments from the listeners. They send us love every week. That's right. That's right. And where can you leave this love? You can leave it in the comment section. In any of the videos that you watch this channel in or any of the comment sections of whatever podcast feeds and we'll go over them. We also have a Reddit R group, r slash street epistemology. You can check that out and make posts there. And we'll go over them over the show. In fact, pixel 917 says, hey, it's nice to hear you guys have subscribed to the audio podcast and it's cool to see you guys as well. Thank you very much pixel sacrifusion says since the last episode was about dreams, he had a little snarky comment that went like, oh, so you've had personal experiences that influence your belief that make you think that it's true. Can you give me your best example? Oh, I see. When you were 13, you had this very super vivid dream. And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we get it. Dreams aren't very convincing because we don't necessarily know if they worked out very, they don't know. We don't know if they are a good means to know if something's actually true or not because we can have dreams about true things and false things, all sorts of stuff. Nathan Matthews quotes on our YouTube channel. Hey, that was a great talk. Atheism Plus seems similar to ethical culture. Hey, here's a topic idea. What are your opinions on humanist organizations with congregations? Maybe we can do a roundtable on that after this quote. But his thoughts, Nathan's thoughts in particular is that when searching for a local free thought group, I found a local ethical society that has congregational structure. And I worry that this provides an experience over participation. I'm reminded of the dangers of the typical religious congregation where you blindly follow instead of engaging in your own critical thought. On the plus side, a large group with a united cost can bring greater opportunities for impact. Maybe my expectations are too low by comparing them to religious congregations. I think my thoughts on this is that secular congregations or secular groups that meet up in congregational styles can actually be really, really fulfilling. Because there is a scratch that is scratched in a spiritual sense by being with a group of people where you can see them on a regular basis, grow with them, share and confide with them. And maybe even tackle maybe some bigger topics that you couldn't have done by yourself. And universal, united universalists was a group that I was in when I was in Kentucky. And they would have very much the church-like structure. But there were Jews, atheists, pagans there. They would do sermons on Carl Sagan on so much different cool things. And I highly recommend it. So maybe there's some merit in that structure. George. Yeah. Yeah. What do you think? Well, I think I was four years old when I was taken to humanist lectures at the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture, which makes me wonder where our participant is located. The person who just asked the question, where did that question come from that he even or she even knows that there is such a thing as an ethical culture organization because there is one. It was founded, I mean the first one I know of was founded in New York and I mean Manhattan in this context. Around the turn of the 20th century, so around 1901 sometime, and it's still there. It's very big. It's located on Central Park West. And the one where I was taken to and became a later participant is the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture right next to Prospect Park on Prospect Park West in an old mansion. You told me about that one. Yeah. Both of these places have their own websites. There are other, let's say, branches of the Society for Ethical Culture. The Society for Ethical Culture is founded as a religion in New York. And recognized by the old draft boards as a religion, as a basis for a conscientious object or claim if you wanted to get out of having to serve in the Army. George, I'd love for you to plug those groups again at the end of the show when we do our final plugs. Dale, I'm going to throw this out at you real quick. Do you have a group of secular or do you have a non-religious group that you would be a part of? If I was going to do something like that, I'd probably just join the Unitarian Universalist Church. They're very inclusive of everyone. They are very good at organizing for whatever community activities might be and call for. You can socialize and all of that at least when COVID is not around. But they're very nice people and I don't believe they're very judgmental and it's not really necessary well I don't know if somebody wants to have their own little atheist thing, I guess that's fine too but most people really do enjoy getting together and seeing other people on a regular basis. We are, after all, social animals. I believe that's what most of the Christians use but benefit they derive from becoming, you know, gathering in my name type of thing. But you mentioned something from John Kennedy. As an atheist plus, my atheism is plus political reform and as of recently I've been letting people know that there's a thing called a contingent election that has happened in America in 1800 and 1824. That's where neither candidate gets to 270 votes and therefore the vote is thrown into the House of Representatives. So if everyone could please vote on a timely manner and not allow any state to uncertify or fail to certify their election then we may not have it happen that it's thrown into the House of Representatives because there there's one party that will lose that's the Democrats. And it's not each representative has a vote which would make a lane toward Democrats. It's one state has a vote of one vote. So it's for the Republicans. Anyway. So if the election was messed up so badly by mail going down and election going the machines going down and all it could be possible that states, some states could say we cannot certify their election.  Thank you for letting me share that with everyone one bat. We all know your love for Trump. Anyway, Larry, what is the value for social groups? I agree with Dale and says the value is getting together with your fellow humans. We've been so we're a social community. So we have a lot of information in form groups. Dan Barker said in his book losing faith and faith, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. If the churches go away then we need to keep the good things that are promoted in church. Absolutely the community socializing getting together it's all good. it's a secular student alliance. Yeah. High school and college. And if you don't have one, then you're school. They're virtual now. There's literally no excuse. You can just go to your nearest chapter. They will have a virtual session on Zoom. This COVID has made it even more easier for you to join groups like that, national, atheist, secular organizations. So what kind of group is this? Go for it. Secular student alliance. So if you're in high school or in college, you can start a local chapter of the Secular Student Alliance and have your own community, secular community that you can shmooze around and make friends. And when I was in Kentucky, I didn't know about the Secular Student Alliance. And I did not like the atheist group that was there. So I picked up Street Epistemology and made my own community around that. And I would say it helped me form connections with people, such that I have this group that I'm even talking in right now. And so it's particularly if you're living in the South and you need secular friends. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. No, you're fine. But a community is something that you can make. It's not something that's owned by religion. Religion doesn't own a monopoly on congregation. It's something that we can benefit from outside of even religious previews. I would also say Boy Scouts was a good outlet for me as far as meeting a bunch of kids. Yes, it's very much religiously mandated now, or at least it even was since inception. But when you are an actual 12-year-old in a troop, the Reverend component of Boy Scouts is the last thing that's ever, ever discussed or talked about. It is just like, I don't even think we've ever packed the Bible.  So yeah. But they certainly put it in their oath. They sure do, but most of us can't even remember those. OK. We were speaking of things that you remember and you should read and check out. Atheism What It's All About, we got the author Larry S. Rhodes on here. And we were just talking about why it's important for getting out of the atheist closet, in a sense, and making sure people understand where you're coming from. And that's actually the last chapter in this book. It's the blog section number 52. And one of the things I had in my job when I was a scientist, my previous job that I was working at, I was fairly open about my atheism because I was really getting into street epistemology. And I realized that it wasn't until I openly let people know, hey, I'm an atheist, that I realized that all the people who I thought were Christian were actually also non-believers. Like it went from I'm the only atheist that works in this building to actually, I think, like maybe 80% of the people are on the same level as me. If you don't come out, then you're assumed to be a Christian or the predominant religious group in the area. Exactly. And that one loud Christian who wears the necklace and talks about God every day seems like he's the default person for everyone and speaks for everyone because no one's challenging that person. It ain't the case. It's not the case. And it showed up in family members, like I had ladies being like, yeah, and I don't even believe in God. I was like, what? I have more friends than I realized. So it is a really good thing to stand out, or at least people know to stand out. Larry, could you talk about your, I know you, I know when you became an atheist, but like the impact of it on your part from, and also the push for atheism named groups. Could you talk about that? Well, we need to defend the word. It's a perfectly good appellation. Atheism means you don't believe in God, and that's all it means. But we, as a society, treat it as a curse word. And I'm not going to stop using the word simply because it offends the very people who made it a curse word in the first place. I am an atheist. I don't believe in God. If you don't believe in God, whether you call yourself an atheist or not, you are. That's what it means. It's like being a female male, if you say, I don't believe in God, but I'm not an atheist, which I hear, which is amazing to me. They just don't understand what it means. And there's nothing to hear. Don't wear clothes, but I don't call myself a nudist. It's like, wait, what's going on here? Right, it's an oxymoron. Dale? Yeah, I've heard that the word theist is reserved for a belief in a God that affects or does things or grants favors that interacts with humanity. That that word theist is reserved for that area. So when you say atheist, would that not mean I don't believe in a God who interferes with mankind or the universe? I don't think it's conditioned. Yeah, I think it's any God. Whether you believe in a God or not, Larry, I think there are definitely certain things I'll go for. I definitely think there are certain thieves who are like, if you don't believe in my God, you're not a theist. The original first usage of the word atheism was in Rome calling the Christians atheists because they didn't believe in the Roman gods. Right, which is kind of weird. And the Roman gods had an effect or meddled with humanity. But I mean, if you look up the word atheism, I don't think you'll find it says that a person without an interpersonal God, he just says a person without God belief. It doesn't differentiate. It's literally not a theist. So like whatever a theist is, whatever is not that as an atheist. There is George, have you I'm going to fill this question out of you as well. You've always been born. I mean, you've always been an atheist, but has anyone ever assumed that you were a Christian or something like that? You had to correct them on that. Yeah, I always, you know, I think I mean, certainly here in the South, they do. And, you know, I'm not used to being in the South. The South has always fascinated me, which is one of the reasons why I live here. But I'm not used to it. But I think that every time somebody says to me, have a blessed day, and it's happened right here in my own house, you know, I just had an occupational therapist wish me a blessed day on her way out the door. I mean, I think that's. Oh, no, did that break the romance we've been following for the last four weeks or so? Yeah, I've been in love with my OTs, yes. Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm assuming that they're they're making the assumption that I'm a Christian when they say that to me. Yeah, I mean, a couple of times, I've just casually said to people here that I'm Jewish. You know, God help me if I said I was an atheist, because I understand that atheists are the most commonly hated people in the whole country. Who help you? What's that? Who help you? Yeah, who help me? Yeah, and so when I said that I was Jewish, I was met with shock and horror. And I'm not used to that.  And so you don't have that. It's like, where are you going to find people and social people to help you out with? And like when I came out as an atheist, it was it was church wasn't even a place I had been to in the last five years. So like I didn't miss losing it, but I can imagine someone who's in the church pew realizing they don't believe what's being told to them and figuring out, oh, but if I admit that, I can't hang out with these people anymore. I can't be this person's god kid. I can't be this person's babysitter, this person's mentor. Like I lose all those functionalities. And that is really, really like what I find a double not the double edged sword, but like the ties that keep people into really bad dogmas. Just like the familial and societal ties that pull people back in. There's also the idea of like the history behind it. Because if Chris Rock says a really funny joke is like, if you're black and a Christian in America, you have a very short memory. Because the idea is like that is not a natural dogma demographic that got put together is naturally a thing. Like that was put on. It was crossed on you. Yeah, without much else. And there was the really good film called Roots where it was like, oh man, it's just really depressing when you consider how that happened. But how did it all turn around? Well, it was because there was a big abolitionist movement where churches in the North or in some of the South could network with each other and actually help to migrate slaves to freedom. And that was huge. And not only that, but when you're a slave, you don't really have much to rely on.  So like as a pillar to keep people together, as a pillar to help free people. And as just means to hold society together or community together as it is, church has played a huge part. But even in the South, like I noted that when I went to church in California, I went to church in Georgia. It's completely different. Cause in the ones in California, they're like, let's read from our Bibles.  Okay, you guys are good. See you next week. Whereas in the ones in Georgia, it's more of like, you need to get involved with these people. You need to know what's going on here. Here's this music. It's so loud, it's so loud, we're gonna dance. We're gonna get involved. But like the Bible wasn't even like the, I would say the core part of the church experience. It was, you need to know, let people know who you are. If you meet these people, these are good friends. This is a community that you can be a part of. And I get that vibe so much went in retrospect and that I ever had before. But it's a hard thing to let go.  It was very good for me to know that there are other people who made that jump and that there are people I could rely on on the other side of the fence. Black non-believers was a huge one in Atlanta. Yeah, and that's where I came in. So George, what's up? Well, my barber just opened a business called Big Daddy's Barbecue Shack. Okay. And he's a minister in the church of God and Christ. Do I open up to this guy? Honestly. He might, if he gives you better barbecue, I find the anger the person is who's making your sandwich, the better the sandwich. I mean, I've been going to this guy for a few years. Yeah. Why me? And it's bald. If it's a real friendship, I don't think it would matter. And I think that's probably the biggest point because I had friends who I've let know when I'm an atheist, even at my current job. And it's just made our friendship better because I know that these are people that I do want to invest more time in now that they understand where I'm coming from other than me keeping in the back of my head and they keep telling me parables about the Bible. It's like, don't you know that I'm about to sign up to Dale's bright slash atheist plus slash militant atheist slash deist club. Don't you know that? Like I'm almost there. I got the pamphlets ready to go. So there was a listener request from last week's episode about metaphysics. And we probably don't have a lot of time to get into it but I have found that it might be worth to just maybe softball what our impression of metaphysics are. I have a very low, I have a low opinion of metaphysics unfortunately. So I don't want to call it the conversation but in my opinion, metaphysics is what happens when you pull away all the scientific aspects, philosophical aspects, moral aspects, ethic aspects from something and try to ask yourself what's left, you know? And in my opinion, not much but maybe it's something cool. Bill, what do you think? I believe it's misnamed meta means above or beyond physics. This, metaphysics is simply a branch of philosophy has nothing to do with physics like nuclear physics or Newtonian physics or electronic physics. It's just a word. As a matter of fact, the word was hijacked in the 70s by all of the new age movements, the acrylic and photography people. Oh, I had acrylic and photography machine. The pyramid power people, I did that too. Rosa Crucians, what? Homeopathy, is that part of the new age movement too? I think so. Yeah. No. Oh. I'd believe homeopathy tries to call themselves more like science and they do metaphysics. Ah, that's very true. They misappropriated or appropriated that word for use when they wanted to add some scientific legitimacy to some of their crackpot ideas but it's just philosophy. One of our philosophers that was a member of the RET here in Knoxville, also tried to start an idea where he called it sci-fi which is scientific philosophy where he thought that philosophy should have something to do with scientific results or study. I believe it's just totally ridiculous to apply philosophy to that which can be quantified. Regulatory physics. Well, I think it's more about the use of it and not so much as verifying the results but how to use it. Yeah, because in a... Philosophy definitely has a place and it should stay there. Okay. George, you had something you wanted to say. I can't remember. Okay, the idea that we shouldn't quantify anything in philosophy, I feel like a way back when when we were trying to understand how science worked it was very much philosophical in its approach. Like what we know math means things we know numbers have values but what can we do with these values and how can we make them be true in the real world? Like what kind of models can we generate? And we got better and better at it to the point where it's now almost like a concrete you're either right or you're wrong it's very objective matter in the fields of math and it feels like biology and genetics stuff like that. We know what works and we know it doesn't work but we can still ask ourselves some meaningful questions but the gray area of like identity and like the nature of time and stuff like that we can have some... We can still have some wiggle room to come up with some interesting theories but as we become more concrete with our conclusions and can quantitate more it doesn't necessarily pull it out of the realm of philosophy it just means that we've now added quantitation into a realm of philosophy. So I think we can totally quantify things that are philosophical in nature. We can... I think the philosophical aspects is just the pursuit of asking questions in a meaningful way and we can add stuff to it and I think even in my field of science like biochemistry or even like engineering where there's a lot of questions always being asked but we just have more tools to answer them and we just get our solutions a lot more effectively. We got six minutes before the end of the show George, I asked you let's see we're going to test your memory I asked you to plug that club. Well, it's not a club. It's chartered as a religion under the state of New York and has been for over a century. What's the name of the club? How can we find out about it? Yeah, it's called the New York Society for Ethical Culture and it is part of a larger organization which is called the American Ethical Union. Very cool, very cool. And it has had, it has been kind of amorphous over the years. In other words, it has had chapters around the United States and I believe even in the UK that's sort of common go as people do. So I remember they had an affiliate even in the San Francisco Bay area in California and they have one I believe in Philadelphia. I haven't checked into it for a long, long time. Cool, if I just Googled it, would I find out more about it? Yes, oh yes. I maybe will give you a URL in fact. Sure, well, you do that. Dale, I had a quick question. Does Bright have a leadership structure or is there a website that I can find out more about what that is? No. Okay, okay. Is it just a name? No, it was started, I think it was like 2003. It was, it's mainly an effort to try to have better PR for people who tend to offend those who don't believe in the offendees religion. So it's agnostic 2.0 basically which is probably the next epitome of atheism. You might want to check that out. Larry, I'm about to head to you. We'll get the URL from George and put it in the description for at least this YouTube video. But you can find my videos on Let's Chat. I'm Ty, it's nice to meet you. I have a hobby where I think I can talk to anyone about anything and I highly recommend that you guys check it out because I post chats on that channel at least on a weekly basis. Larry, if there's anything else? Well, there is a Brights website. It's called the-brights.net. Their description is, Brights ethics and actions are based on naturalistic worldview. The Brights aspire to egalitarian civic vision, et cetera, et cetera. So just go to the-brights.net to learn more about it. But yeah, it's kind of an older movement now. It's been out five or six years and a lot of people have a problem with the name in that it assumes that you're brighter than the other person. Oh, there's a distinction in that one. That's what Dale was alluding to a little while ago. I believe you're muted, Dale. You're muted, Dale. Say what? We are brighter. That's what makes us bright. Okay, cool. Now, what was your other question, Dale? Larry, we got one minute in the show. Why don't you take us out? Okay. This is Digital Freethought Radio Hour, NWOZO Radio 103.9 LP FM Knoxville. Be sure to visit my blog at digitalfreethought.com. We have our radio show archives there, atheist songs and articles. We mentioned my book several times, Atheism, What's It All About, available on Amazon. Dale's book can be found at howjesusdidit.com for free to read online. If you're having trouble leaving religion, go to recoveringfromreligions.org and religions.org. And if you have any questions for the show, you can send them to askanatheistatnoxfilatheist.org and we'll answer my future shows. If you're watching on YouTube, be sure to like and subscribe and remember, everybody is going to somebody else's hell. The time to worry about it is that when they prove that heavens and hells and souls are free, until then, don't sweat it. Enjoy your life and we'll see you next week. Say goodbye, everybody. Goodbye, everybody. Bye.


So our next speaker is Aaron Lechle. I hope I've said that correctly. Aaron is a mixed farmer and sheep producer from Coomendook. Aaron and Annika, along with their business partners, Tim and Cheryl Freak, run a business, a mixed cropping and livestock operation. One of the most innovative aspects of their operation has been their use of EID and sheep, collecting data on wool traits and body weights at the level of the individual animal. And using this data to select replacement use. Today, Aaron will give us a local producer perspective on what it's been like adopting EID and individual animal management. So I hand over to Aaron. Thanks, Aaron. Yeah, so as you heard, we run a mixed farm of sheep and cropping located between Coomendook and Sherlock. So we've got fairly variable soils. Got some shallow limestone as well as non-wading sands and that's a mixed farm, suits fairly well. Yeah, we run about 3,500 breeding merinoe use. Half of them will get mated to a white suffix and the better half will get mated to a self-replacing, so to a merinoes. Just before I get into the EID stuff, there's a lot of other stuff on a farm that can make just as big an impact or sometimes bigger. That's good not to shy away and get just caught up on the technology side of things. Sometimes the basics can actually make a bigger improvement in your business. So just a couple of photos here. Got a bit of electric fencing to try and utilise pastures better. And then the confinement feedlot, which allows us to manage the paddocks better in the summertime. We can get all the sheep off of the land and not let it blow away. And also allows our paddocks to get away before they get sheep on them for lambing in middle of June or early June. So that's just a couple of little things that help us and we can feed them to whatever energy requirements they need and yeah, so that's been a big help in our business. Yeah, so why we choose to do EIDs pretty much just because we want to keep improving everything about our business. The flock management is easier and you're not just selecting blind, which yeah, is easy to do. Unless you track everything, you just can cut out the better sheep as Nathan was saying earlier and hopefully increase profitability. Yeah, and as Nathan said before, what's not measured is hard to improve on. And yeah, just up the top there, that's our stick reader that we use, EID ear tags that we use down the bottom corner there. So we'll start from the start, like how we start collecting data. So basically at marking time, yeah, the night before we'll scan in the tags as a single or as a twin and then put it in the right lamb and so that's what they're born as and yeah, hopefully in the future we can start weighing them as we mark them, which would be nice, but we're not quite there yet. Can weigh them at weaning now. So yeah, once we get that marking weight, we can track growth weights a little bit better. Yeah, so then yeah, those merino lambs will then get shorn in January and yeah, then go on to the next stage that they can get a data entry. So as a U-hogget, they will get just a rough visual classing just to weed out anything that doesn't look right, but then most of it's just done by using the technology. So at shearing time, we'll use that wand to scan the ear, take a little piece of fleece out and put in a bag and that gets sent away with the barcode on it and get the wool test on that and then that U-hogget will get weighed a couple of weeks after shearing, just let them recover a bit and then once we get that data back, we've got a bit of a profile on that sheet, what it's cutting, it's growth rates, what it's actually weighing now. So then we can make an informed decision on which ones go into the merino mob and which ones just get mated or what sulphate should get prime lambs. So this is how some of the data comes back. This is just some of the wool stuff mainly and the weight is there on that individual sheet and over there we'll have what it's born as and that as well. So we are reasonably, it takes a few years to get all the data in place and get it. So we're reasonably new at it but we're having a go. So yeah, that's obviously one of our better ones. It's ranking really well in the DP plus and the MP. It's yeah, a nice sheet, good fiber diameter and yeah, that was a really high body weight as well, that one, so that's obviously one of the better ones. So that one went into the merino mob and so this is how we do it. Just put them through the auto drafter, select what you want to be your cut off point and they'll just get drafted right or left or straight ahead. Yeah, according to which mob they're going in and then at scanning time we also scan that all the twins will get put in that they've been scanned as a twin so that'll go on their individual data and all the drys will get also scanned. Like currently we're just trying to build numbers like just about everyone is. So we have been keeping drys, given them a two or three chances but a dry will never get a second chance in a merino mob. So if she's dry, she'll go out and get mated to White Suffolk next time but she'll also have that cross against her name for the future. Yeah, and one other thing at weaning time also we go through them and get the dry. So if they've scanned in lamb and then they haven't carried their lamb through to weaning time, they'll also get kicked out and into the crossbred mob, the White Suffolk ram go over them. And then basically the reason why is it was brought up before pretty well. We just lack this one together roughly overnight. Yeah, so we can kick out those bad performers in our mob and increase the profitability of it. Yeah, so yeah, that's pretty much a quick spill on what we do without going into too much detail. Yeah, so any questions? Thank you, Barry. Just a quick one for me before we hit the floor. Can you tell us what some of the challenges or some of the easy wins that you've had from implementing EID in your business, I think? Yeah, so I guess there's always going to be challenges with technology, especially if you're not very technology minded. Yeah, some people's really good at that, but yeah. So always a lot of little technical issues, but you get past them and it's all about just learning how to run those programs and do it better and you probably are better off just letting the experts do the data stuff. Yeah, I guess some gains. If sheep ever get boxed up or anything, you just run them through the auto drafter and it's all problem solved straight away. And you can use that as a management tool. So when you need larger mobs to graze paddocks to get better past utilization, you can just run them through the auto, box them all up and then run them through the auto drafter when you need them in separate mobs again, which is very good. Yeah. Aaron, you said that you put your twins in the system as Lambda twin. When that comes to your indexing, do you just have a formula in the index that allows for that? Or do you class them as twins in single separately or how do you work that through? Yeah, so we've only just started getting that data in the system, so we need to let that go into, over to the experts basically to work out, to give them a preference, yeah, so that they get an extra little tick against their individual ranking. And yeah, so then in the long run, they're born a twin. They've had twins for three years in a row. They're going to be our most profitable shape probably with a good wall cut, so yeah. There's still a long way to go to get it all nailed, but yeah, you just got to start by collecting that data, I guess before you can actually get the opportunity to use it. Yeah, I guess when it comes to your shearing in your class and your wall, did that take much to implement through the working of the shed? No, not too much. Probably the main thing is you just got an extra labor unit in there, so you just got a person focusing on scanning that tag, getting a piece of wall, putting it in the bag and getting the barcode printed out, so it's just an extra, extra labor unit and yeah, you sort of got to be a little bit more switched on I guess if you keep an up loose here isn't to make sure that that sample is with that one. Yeah, but it's yeah, it's nothing that can't be done like it's, yeah. You can work out a system for it, so yeah. Do you have any problems with the sheep losing their tags or the shearers deciding it's a good idea to cut half a mouth? Yeah, I guess you're always going to have those problems that you had before EID tags, but yeah, it's only a small percentage and yeah, it's not the end of the world I guess, but yeah, a lot of times, yeah, the majority of them stay in. Have you had to try different tags to find what worked for you the best, Karen? Not really, we have used a couple of different tags, but yeah, we've been happy with both. Yeah, so they do the job as long as that chip stays on the head, so yeah. I really appreciate you taking the time out today to do that. Thank you. And thank you, and thanks for the opportunity to show you what we do. Yeah, on the farm, and yeah, we just want to keep improving the business and yeah, and definitely after your speech, I'm more excited about, yeah, about the future of the industry, like we do have a long way to go, but there's a lot of exciting stuff on the way, so yeah. Thank you.