 Hello and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio Hour and WOZO Radio 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We're recording this on Sunday morning, June 11th, 2023. I'm Larry Rhodes or DJ Douter 5. And as usual, we have our co-host, Wombat on the line with us. Hello Wombat. Yo, happy pride. Happy pride. And our special guest today is Boudreaux from Kentucky. Welcome. Hey, hey guys. Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism and the sciences. And conversely, we'll also talk about religion, religious faiths, God's holy books and superstition. And if you get the feeling you're the only non-believer in your town, well, you're just not. Here in Knoxville in the middle of the Bible Belt, we have a group of over a thousand of us. We're the Atheist Society of Knoxville or ASK. And we'll tell you more about us after the mid-show break. Be sure to stick around. Wombat, what's our topic today? Catching up with our friend Boudreaux, who's gone on a really cool trip. And then also talking about biblical diets. Biblical diets. Yeah, how to stay lean and have good cuisine in an age where, you know, everyone's constantly thinking about their body proportions. Why don't they just do what the Bible tells them with regard to what the best way to look is? Boudreaux, good to see you, though. I haven't seen you in a while, but I've seen your pics and I've seen that you've been busy. Why don't you catch us up? Hey guys, we went on a fun trip of vacation with a really big family. There were 13 of us. Wow. My wife and kids, her dad and her mom, and then her two sisters and their families. There were a lot of people. Hope it didn't turn out like family vacation, ladies. Right. And actually it was pretty uneventful in terms of mishaps, which usually somebody loses luggage or or kid. Yeah. Or kid. Yeah, we did. How much one kid? Don't stop Stephen. It's like, oh, that's rough. That's rough. Yeah. So where did you go this time? So we flew into Mexico City, but then quickly flew down south to Chiapas, a region near Guatemala. And did some adventuring around there. We did actually get to step foot in Guatemala, which is really neat. No passports or anything like that. And then I hope the border controls not listening. And then I think we got to see some Mayan ruins. Mexico City for a few days, but we got to see waterfalls, canyons. I mean, just I'll post it all on, on, on Facebook. But there were two kind of interesting religious things that happened that we can explore more here or just. I want to hear about it. I want to hear about it. I have someone out about this too. So, so George, one of our, our, our has has joined this show before commented to the group about how we were looking at the Mayan cross. Obviously the, you know, the Mayan religion was, was pretty big in this Chiapas region that, that didn't, didn't take the Catholicism kind of influx that was coming in. And they stayed with their kind of Mayan traditions, but they had a cross and it looks eerily similar to, you know, the cross from overseas. And, you know, George's comment was, you know, why is that, you know, as a scientist, he's like, why are those so similar? And, you know, the religious response as well, you know, maybe that's divinely inspired, right? It's sure it's the symbol that was, you know, given to both of these groups, which I find kind of, kind of silly in the sense that I mean, they're both talking about two very different God or gods, right? I mean, you know, some religions don't think of one single God. So I don't know a reaction from you guys. Is it divinely inspired or is there some other reason? I mean, it's obviously divinely inspired. What's the, what's the conversation? End of, let's just hang up the call. Yeah. Yeah, I remember there was a really cool sermon that I saw when I, when I say cool, I mean, just like, you know, a fascinating where they're talking about a particular protein. Proteins are these things in your body that have a very particular shape that do very specific functions. And your body produces them out of like a long chain of amino acids, and they eventually fall to a very particular structure that's used for a bunch of different stuff. If you change the order of the amino acids, you change the eventual structure of how that protein folds. And there's one protein that is responsible for some vital life functions in your body. And the thing is the protein is, is a fairly, I mean, while it does fold into a particular shape, it can be, it can be missed around. It's not like a rigid structure. But sometimes it looks like this. And when I do this, I'm doing a cross shape. And it looks like this sometimes. And so the sermon was like, there's a, there's a protein in your body. I talked to scientists, I talked about chemists, I talked to philosophers around the world. And they say, prove to me there's a God in your protein, prove to me there's a God in your, it's like, well, you can't live without this protein. Guess what it looks like. What's it up on the screen. Yeah. And I first thing I do is I, I Google that same protein. And it's like, yes, sometimes it's like this. Sometimes it's like a ball. Sometimes it looks like a little devil with horns on it. Because these things are flexible. Sure. So, in the event that the times that looks like a cross, do I find that as divine inspiration for how it actually always looks or is it just a coincidence. And I'm, I'm fine with things being coincidences because coincidences are demonstrable and all the time. And it happened all the time. And not only that, but it's a really simple structure. For example, if the cross was a very ornate thing like what the Jewish star like something. Nothing much more elaborate rather than just two lines with symmetry overlapping each other at right angles. I would then say maybe there's something to it. But otherwise, I see the cross in like the alphabet. I see the cross when I drop a bunch of toothpicks on the ground. I see the cross, you know, everywhere. It's just an intersection of two lines. And I couldn't be, I can't reprimand a can of a culture for appropriating it with with like some sort of copyright infringement when it's just such a basic shape. Can I also point out this. Yeah, yeah, we can human body. Yeah, human body is symmetrical by lateral symmetry was like the coolest thing ever. If now I would say this there's like this idea in US copyright culture where you can't copyright the word the, for example, right, you can't put a trademark on a sound a sound effect like the Wilhelm scream or like literally something that's the sound of like a gunshot and be like hey, they stole our sound your sound clips only five seconds long you can't copyright that it's too short, it's not meaningful. In the same way, I think we should have some credence that other people left to their own devices if they're still humans. It should be indicative of the fact that we came up with the same shapes, because there's just something inherent to human preference for bilateral symmetry and simple designs, and the more human bilateral symmetry is all through the animal kingdom. Exactly, exactly. Yes, yeah, absolutely. And so I've just find that to be the case Larry I'm sorry for for overstepping this there's a lot of stuff I can talk about this but did you have a thought on this. No, no, go ahead. You're doing fine. I just there's here. But you might know this because you went to to Greece in Rome, but like they have coins that you can like look at and say hey you're old fashioned coins from this really old period of time. And when you look at them they're not fancy they're just like slabs of metal with like some basic yeah stamp engraving you're like, Why aren't these coins fancier like how you know it is here with our industrialization is like, they were fancy. These coins used to be super super ornate and then they realized it's a pain in the butt to grave each of these coins. Let's just it's just Caesar's face just like kind of like and then just get it out the door so we can use it as money. And the simplicity of the design took over and it showed that the hallmark of a lot of designing is simplicity not complexity. And so, I'll go ahead. Oh, I'll be just taking a step out. So the main reason is why when I look at across. I look at a very simple structure, whether it could be used for crucifixion, or for holding some like elaborate stuff that you can like, or design or natively or to Right or to like build the what do you call them the hilts for sword, like it's a very uniform structure with a very simple design when you just have like a long line and like a flat parallel or perpendicular line to it. It's a very complimentary structure for a lot of things because it's inherently simple and it's fundamentally applies to a lot of different stuff. The surprise that I see from other cultures is my is my main takeaway, but is it the violent inspired who knows because I can't prove that the violently inspired things even exists in the first place but I'm not going to entertain the thought until I have a good reason to believe that such a thing exists in the first place to So if every religion or at least a vast majority of all religions. All had that simple symbol. Yeah, that would that would make me scratch my head a little bit more. I would say I had a little bit more. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it would be an incredible coincidence. But then, but then I'd be like, you know, I mean, yeah. Yeah, on the subject of scratching my head more if it was more complex and it's design. Absolutely. And if everybody did it, then yes, absolutely. There's a situation where we are now where a lot of popular religions don't have stuff like that. And it's a very, very simple structure like a one year old could draw it like I remember, you know, anyone can like just do this right like you play So you can draw a cross right. Well, we're also cherry picking to why why are we, why are we looking at the Mayan religion and, you know, Catholicism or, you know, coming under Jerusalem why are we cherry picking those and asking how these are so similar instead of asking, you know, yeah, I looked up the I mean the cross itself is not just a Christian cross. As a matter of fact a plain cross is is called a Latin cross. And if you look it up it's a derivative of daggers or obelisks used to indicate death. The cross originated as a pagan symbol in Asia and Africa countries. And then it was a platform for crucifixion in Rome, right, but had a much more ancient source origination. I think we're overlooking the more important question though where it's, how is it that we have a culture that has the ability to make all these beautiful monuments that still stand today like there's more stuff standing in Mayan culture, then there is from ancient Christian cultures like you go to Jerusalem, all that stuff's been leveled out, you know, like it's, it's people still there. But I, if you go to Mayan culture like they still have the temples they still have the, the, the weird sports ball circles up in the air like you can like, you can still play that game there like all you just need is a fresh bladder is like the monuments they built lasts so much longer. Why weren't any of them built in the scope of Christianity like why weren't they. Why does this ancient culture that was capable of so much build at least one thing that coincides with the narrative that's presented to us by Christianity. That would at least be a more powerful tool, not so much the idea of a cross but like if they built a giant Jesus statue, or like Noah's Ark, instead of one that had to you have to go to Kentucky to go see right, or they built something was just like hey by the way this about a flood or something that's like narrative consistent with the Bible, or any other religion that's you know, popular right now it doesn't have to even be specific to Christianity I just want some congruent congruity, congruity between all these different ancient temples, shrines, monuments, and, and, and the story that we're told because it's it's all pointing in different directions. What do you think? I love that because one of the other examples I was going to bring up and you surely both of you have seen a meme floating around where talks about the Egyptian pyramids and the Mayan pyramids and talk about how hey here's another another data point sample size of two but these two cultures built these structures right so similar, and it's like divine inspiration, you know, and, and you know the the engineer and me is thinking the exact roughly what the meme was saying is, this is a great way to stack blocks. Yes, they don't fall down for a really, really long time. It's a basic shape. A wide base, a short top. And it lasts it lasts so long all the structures that were uniquely different and weird and, and not the same fell down. Right, right, look at Stonehenge, like look at Stonehenge right now like that thing is halfway standing up like you look at that you look at Stonehenge and you will compare it to like a pyramid or like a Mayan temple you're like you guys aren't even this is just a couple of pieces like it looks way cooler back then it's like yeah but it's all falling apart like yeah we didn't have the good engineers to tell us why it at the bottom small at the top, we didn't figure that that yes like okay well you know so other people did. What do you think Larry. No that's fine. I wanted to get back to this divine inspiration idea. And we can't, you know, we don't believe that divine inspiration actually happens because there's no divine I mean there's no God, but there are a lot of artworks are inspired by the idea of the divine. And there's a distinction to be drawn there so that people understand what you're talking about. Yeah, I'm and in in with regard to the artwork. There's a really funny thing that you should really check out which is what does Jesus look like in other countries. Right, because if you go to and I had the benefit of growing up in California so like I would go to and we were like shopping around a lot too we were Christian back then. But when you go to like a predominantly white church. Jesus is like blue wide, he gives you a Bible where he has like a very basic I work at Lowe's sort of like hair facial hair. He's got like the perfect crop. Like, I just got out of Mormon school haircut. I have the boy I don't even have the Bible now but like it's my first Bible look like Tim Allen, like Jesus was right. And then you went to like the more churches that were more Catholic more Mexican, and like all of a sudden Jesus isn't like this big bulky lumberjack brownie guy. He's like this long haired flowing hair green I six pack app sort of like very Italian looking dude like he looks like he's like my name is Luigi my name's pizza. Like, I'm not a reason for that. It is and I had my head I was just like I don't really parse these two they're just both fair skinned people and but it didn't really hit me until I went to a church that was for black people are mostly black people, and I saw black Jesus on the cross and that's when my brain started going like, wait a second that's not Jesus. Wait a second black people are from Africa. Hold on a second or like, you know, like, it might have I'm starting to think wait a second. Wait a second why does Jesus look Italian. Catholic churches. Why does Jesus look like a white guy want to go to mostly white churches. And then I looked it up and it turns out there's an Asian Jesus if you go to like Korea they don't like try to sell. And when they proselytize back there they don't try to sell it white Jesus they sell like a very vaguely looking Asian Jesus that's also on a cross and I'm thinking to myself you can go on Google images and you can see what just Jesus looks like from any country. You can see how art is depicted as weight is is sort of a way to reinforce the inherent biases or the the beauty standards, if you will, of the people that they're trying to sell it to like you can sell something a lot easier if it's familiar to people, compared to if it's something entirely brand new, even if the storylines don't make sense, like why do these fair skinned people exist in like Persia, like makes no sense. And I thought, well at least we don't do this anywhere else. And it turns out we totally do, because how many times that we've seen a Roman movie, or a movie that takes place in ancient Rome where everyone has British accents, right. Like, you know that's not how they talk back there I know that's not how they talk back there but Americans associate for it with English, right, or like the English accent, and we just, we don't connect the dots until we talk to a person who's from England and that's not I we live right next to that country they can't find any Greek actors it's like I don't know why you're angry about this like I'm very angry about this if you talk to people who are from Greece and Romans like we don't talk like that what's going on. So, there's a video game series called Assassin's Creed and Prince of Persian, I don't know if you heard about those. Oh, this is the most fear anyone they did a, it's a historical game where you get to be an assassin you run around and stuff like that they did a game. It's a Assassin's Creed is made by French company. They are in France, and they made a game that was during the French Revolution. Every single person in the game has an English accent. It's, it made no sense to anybody, but they're like we're making this for Americans because they don't understand that French people have French accents I was like why we know we know game made a million dollars or game sold millions and millions of copies but it really blew everyone's mind. They finally fix it though and they made finally the ones in Greek have Greek actors and the ones in Persia have Persian actors, and they finally started doing this crazy radical thing where they change the skin color of the person to not always just be like a generic white guy if it takes place in like, like a very ethnic areas like now the new Prince of Persia is like this brown skinned person, and people are like, Oh, that's not my Prince of Persian I'm like why are you having you have you not seen persons they kind of look like that it's like Anyway, that's my weird soapbox but yes, absolutely people will modify art to be propaganda so that it could be familiar and more easily absorbed by the the intended demographic and clientele. I played the Assassin's Creed where it was ancient Greece. Yes, you're running around you hear people talking and it's everyone speaking English with a weird like Italian like voice really it's like you know what I mean it's like It's supposed to sound Greek but it really sounds like your Mario's running around you. I hear you and then wasn't there a movie 13 Warriors where they started the movie with subtitles and they were speaking the correct dialect and then eventually and Antonio Banderas I think learned the language and it went to English. Okay, for the audience. Yeah, yeah, I will throw out some highlights if we're on this subject there are some movies that do it. Right, but a little, but only because the context of the movie allows for it and one of them was the last samurai by with Tom Cruise I don't know if you guys ever seen that he gets a lot of flack for being a white guy in a movie called the last samurai but if you watch the movie. It's not like he's taking over Japan and he's like supposed to be a Japanese person he's clearly an American. That was like contracted to help a bunch of like Japanese samurai and he learns from the process to be a better person. And like he gets folding the ranks but he's not even I don't even think he's the last samurai in the movie. He's just unfortunately the box art poster guide to sell the movie, but there is a last samurai in the movie that is a Japanese person is just an unfortunate movie poster. It was ghost in a shell. I don't know if you know about this but it was a scar Joe scar Joe Hansen. She was portraying a Japanese person, who's body was put into a cybernetic body of like a white person, and she's still identified as Japanese could still speak Japanese like her body was like a ghost in a shell like that's the whole concept of the whole movie, and people are really angry it's like why isn't she an Asian person it's like, she's not even an Asian person in the, in the source material that they're pulling it from she's just like a beautiful person, and her body is like just a model of a robot that they can put in. So that was interesting to attack those movies weren't worth the flack it was just people trying to get upset because people like getting upset days to. Yeah, well we're getting a little far afield, do you want to try to get back to the biblical diet or, or whatever that we Larry that's a terrible transition golly, that was this the worst transition. I'm not really good at transitions if you haven't picked up on that. Okay, okay, okay, just just we ran into a wall how about we take a break and come back after the show we go into biblical diet. Okay, sounds real good. Welcome. Well, this is the digital free thought radio hour and w ozio radio, we're broadcasting from Knoxville, Tennessee, we'll be right back after this short break. Welcome back to the digital free thought radio hour on w ozio radio 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Let's take just a moment to talk about the atheist society of Knoxville. We started in 2002, we're in our 21st year now and have over 1000 members. We have weekly in person meetings every Tuesday evening in Knoxville's old city at Barley's taproom in Pete three. Look for us inside at the high top tables or if it's pretty outside out on the deck. If you'd like to join us. Go to our website at Knoxville Atheist.org. You can also find us on Facebook or meetup.com, or just Google Knoxville Atheist is just that simple. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville you should still go to meet up and look for a group in your town. Don't find one. But we're going to pick up. Thank you so much for sharing the the fun trip that you have with your family 13 people all staying together going from one place to another. That's that is both an accomplishment and a fun time. I'm just wondering like how do you feed that many people complimentary. Yeah, I mean it was it was some of the meals were included, you know, as part of the hotel or as a bed and breakfast or sometimes we just went to like vendors and got food. So a lot of pushing tables together and that kind of thing. Yeah, just walk into stores like hey can you feed 13 people is like, we'll figure it out we'll figure it out. Yeah, yeah. What's the strategy though do you feed them any kind of food or do you feed them the biblical diet. Yeah, well I didn't know about that until this morning. What you didn't know about the Bible diet is the one way to stay truly with God as you try to match your lean with your cuisine and and and feeling. What is it. Christine with God. So there's actually a way to stay completely. So you know some religions have diet restrictions right this isn't a new thing. But Christianity hacks also has some dietary restrictions if not characters in the Bible have had to deal with restrictions on what they can eat and what access to food they have is particularly when they're like going through deserts and stuff. And I say to ourselves, why don't we follow those same guidelines today, why are there still Christians that are wishy washy cherry picking what they can eat and what they can eat. If you if you do that in my head, you are only furthering your chances of not saving your soul so what we could do today is share the guidelines for a proper Christian diet and see how we feel about it both as non believers and then maybe even put on our Christian hats and figure out how we feel about it as Christians. So the first one is your breakfast right every good breakfast every good day starts with a good breakfast. A biblical breakfast is mana monotony. So you'll start your day with a hearty portion of mana straight from heaven. Don't worry about the variety or taste mana is a divine gift that tastes like honey wafers, as said in Exodus 1631 warning consuming mana exclusively may result in breakfast boredom and severe carbohydrate overload. What do you guys think about that. I mean, well, where do you get the mana. Literally falls from heaven. It does fall from heaven but it does taste like a honey wafers. Well, I've never seen. Oh, I have a dearth of mana here. Okay, okay, that's true that's true. We may have a hard time making mana though I'd starve to death of you only man. Yeah, the billion dollar question though is why hasn't. Why isn't mana something that you can buy from like a Christian organization or Christian store like why don't they just make mana we already have wafers. And we would be blasphemous, really God can make mana. Oh, but I mean, I don't know. If you bless it like God made the world I'm part of the world so if I make something God made it like like, I'm sure there's a crafty Christian out there is just like hey I made a man like it's not that bad. Okay, somebody's missing a marketing opportunity apparently. Exactly. So here's the next one. Lunch. Every good diet has a good lunch so lunch is fish frenzy enjoy an abundant selection of fish, including those with fins and scales Leviticus 11-9, you can save a variety of seafood such as salmon tuna or trout, but do not eat shellfish at all costs Remember shrimp and lobster are an abomination to avoid monotony try different preparations like grilling baking or poaching your fish. I actually like this. What do you think seems seems legit. I usually do fish for dinner. Is that a lunch? Okay. I love seafood. Yeah, we didn't say seafood. So Larry this is how you get on the path to sin. We said fish they have to have fins and scales. Oh, I like them too. Shrimp and lobster and abomination. I love my shrimp. It's it's always weird to me that God would deliberately make animals that you're not supposed to eat but also make them delicious at the same time to test you. It's to test you time. Yeah, but like also make them immediately accessible and like still like these animals are in a weird part of the food chain where they're just eating dead animals they're doing. I guess cleanup duty, but they taste really good. They're very easy to catch. Why isn't why why didn't you make them at least taste bad. It's just a weird situation. A lot of fish eat see eat crustaceans, but then you can eat the fish. Okay, but you can eat the crustaceans. Good point. Good point. Oh, I like that. That's even more convoluted than the apple and eat them. So yeah, good point. Yeah, since it's Pride Month, we got to point out there's that fast food restaurant that I won't name. If you eat their chicken, you have to hate gay people. No, you don't. Yeah. Well, it's part of it. You can just be finding their anti gay legislation efforts. You can just like a chicken sandwich and try to vote appropriately. Well, quest for snacks. Listen, if you need a snack, everybody needs snack. You can try a quell quest. What's a quell quest? Keep your energy levels high. Snack on a quail such as in the toll be told in numbers 1131 to 32. While the Bible describes the Lord providing quails and abundance for the Israelites in the desert, locating a convenient quail supplier might prove challenging, but hey, it's worth a try. Right. My only concern about this is I thought we were going vegan with this diet. And I feel like a lot of people who follow a vegan diet would have some issues by eating fish and quail and having honey twos off the table. Oh, yeah, that's a good point. Good point. So everything we described today is not vegan. Does that mean vegans or abominations? Oh, yeah. There are at least difficult conversation partners. The reason why I bring that up is the next thing that we're talking about is the vegan option. This is for dinner called vegan delights. Prepare a sumptuous feast of legumes, fruits and vegetables, such as told in Genesis 129. Embrace the plant based lifestyle. Enjoy lentils, chickpeas and a rainbow produce. You may experience endless spatulence and dietary imbalance. But remember, it's all part of the divine plan. That's the thing that we always forget. Isn't it that this is always part of a divine plan. There's no such thing as harm to your body if you're listening to God. That's the biblical basis for not eating honey. I hadn't heard that in a biblical vegan. Right. Right. I mean, it's like they won't. They don't drink milk, right? Because it comes from an animal. And I think it's more about the cruel. Well, I guess I don't fully know, but I think it's about the factory life. Yeah, trying to try to demonstrate sustainability is is feasible. I've always I've always respected the intention behind it. And as long as it's not like being proselytized or evangelized at me, you know, I'm fine with, you know, people choosing what they will make in their own choices. Yeah, exactly. Dietary restrictions from a religious basis always just felt like a bizarre set of arbitrary rules that people were following. Right. And, and it's a shame sometimes when I see people like starving and and saying like, Oh, but you can't eat cows because they're holy, or you can't eat, you know, shellfish, even though you live next to the ocean. I would prefer if like, even though I don't follow veganism, if there was like some sort of better underlying logic to support why people choose to do what they want and don't force other people to like follow the same set of rules. Anyway, guys, we're going to keep going. Southern wonders. This for dessert after breakfast after your dinner, indulge in unleavened bread Exodus 12 eight, avoid the fluff and yeast and savor the bland cracker like experience, get creative by smearing it with a thin layer of honey for a touch of sweetness. Remember, the lack of leavening agents means no fluffy cakes or bread with texture but it's all in the name of holiness. And this is you can actually buy unleavened bread. Have you guys ever eaten that before? No, no, but I've eaten crackers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, in my mind that's that's in the same ballpark unleavened bread tastes pretty good. It's like, it's like, it's not puffy, but it's flaky. It fills you up. If it's the only thing I had to eat, I would say, Okay, this sucks. But if I'm in the desert, it's an easy way to compact a lot of food and like a small form factor. A lot of food that worse that I'm seeing is basically food that was around during the time that did not take a lot of effort to prepare and kept you away from potentially food poisoning yourself by eating unknown forms of food. Do you guys see a theme with this at all? You'd said arbitrary rules, and I think looking back at it now it seems arbitrary, but in my mind, you know, these were probably put in place to keep people from getting sick or dying, you know, the rules on meats and how to cut things and things like that. I mean, I had a rational basis in the sense that they were, you know, you're trying to talk to some followers, so to speak, and get them to do the right thing. You know, if you if you say God says so it's a lot easier to get it. Yeah, especially pork when you got right real problems with pork but I never understood the reason why you would stay away from crustaceans. They're pretty safe food. So in my mind, crustaceans are the sort of food where once you kill it, you have to eat it, right? Whereas like a fish, you can kill it, keep it cold and like maybe eat it like. They didn't have cold back then. Salt. Right. Like if a salesman comes to your town, they're like, hey, I have some fresh lobster, but you don't know if it's actually fresh or shrimp and you don't actually know if it's actually fresh or not. You can eat that. You can be really sick for a long period of time. And that that's a drain on your society. Right. So like what's a good way to stop that from happening? Well, I mean, it could easily have been there. They're so handy about handing out rules in the religions. They could easily just say only shellfish if you're killing yourself and eat immediately. They probably didn't fully understand it though. They probably, you know, it was they were hearing of people eating shellfish and then getting sick. They didn't. They didn't do the math. They didn't have data to support it. They just, you know what, let's just not eat it. Right. Right. The civil engineering back acumen to make intelligent choice. They were just a reactionary. Like what do we do to keep ourselves safe these people? I've heard that people eat this and get sick. You know, or maybe you've seen it. Yeah, we're a tribe going through the desert. We can't afford to lose our blacksmith. Are she perder? Like let's just say no shellfish. Period. Flat flat down. Right that down. Right that down in the. Okay. No one can read though. So this is going to be. Let's just make it an oral tradition. I'm sure that'll be fine. No one's going to have an issue with that thousand years from now. So down the road to write it down. But it also strikes me as like, what about pork, right? Pork of like the main three meats that like Americans eat. That's the one that's most difficult to cook. The one that you have to actually properly cook. Why is it? Why is that the case? I would say. Pigs don't necessarily live in a clean environment. So like the way someone who can grow pigs may not necessarily be the most sterile butcher to begin with versus like someone who like kills cows. And the only thing cows do is like standing grass and their own manure. For the most part pigs are always in slop. They don't have good diets. They go wild. They can go feral. If you don't maintain them. There's a lot of stuff going on with pigs compared to like a chicken, right? Not only that, but when you have the meat, you have to like you have to properly sanitize it by cooking it thoroughly. There's no such thing as rare pork. You wouldn't want to eat that, but you can have a rare steak because the meat fibers are so thick. It's like typically hard for like bacteria to go in. You want to have, you wouldn't want to have rare poultry, but it's very easy food to cook thoroughly because the fibers are so much more less dense. So smaller too. Smaller cuts, right? Exactly. So the meat goes right or the heat goes right through, but pork is like dense and potential for a lot of bacterial infection. So I'm not surprised. And parasitic infections. Exactly. Yeah. There's a lot of stuff going on that pork's care are robust enough to live through, but humans can't if we eat their flesh goats, not as much of a problem sheet, not much of a problem, but definitely pigs. So I'm not surprised that the order on. Hey, I heard that a lot of people ate pigs and got sick. Let's just say no pigs, no shellfish. It's all the food that's that's prone to cause people to get sick that we were saying don't eat. Right? Yeah. Like it's not a coincidence. In my head, that's not even a coincidence. That's just a poor understanding of the time of what was germ theory. Right. And we didn't really have germ caring to like the 1600s. So like, or that was, that was a bizarre concept for a lot of people with being like, if I wash my hands and I give birth, the baby doesn't die as often. And the mother, right? Right. And that took like an extra 400 years for people to be like, maybe they're onto something with this. Yeah. I don't want to be a sissy washing my hands for those reasons. All right. I'm a doctor. Okay. Anyway. In that same vein, there's this really interesting dynamic between drinking water versus drinking alcoholic beverages, like mead or wine, because the alcohol that's in those beverages act as a natural disinfectant. And that's when it was very hard to get clean water. If you add access to. Like alcohol or fermentation capabilities and you could drink wine with that had some water content in it. That was like the way how people would stay unfortunately hydrated, which caused a lot of other problems, but we didn't study that very thoroughly. But it brings up the last part of this food diet, which is wine, wonderland beverages and your day with a glass of wine. One Timothy 523 citation. It's not just for communion. Wine was considered a blessing in biblical times. Be sure to enjoy it responsibly and moderately. Unfortunately, the divine that I does not include cocktails, spirits or craft beer, only wine. So say goodbye to your favorite craft brewery. Now that I didn't know. No beer was not allowed. Okay. Larry thoughts on that. Larry wine drinker. No, no, but I'll drink beer, but not wine very much. Now, the thing that blows my mind is. Grease has a lot of wineries. They have the proper climate to grow grapes. And a lot of the long lasting expertise in that area to be able to do so. But America, except for like Napa Valley or very like other weird locations, don't have access to wine. But all these foods that we're talking about are very specific to the geolocation of where these people are. Like wine, grease, I can point to it. Like, obviously man was rained on the certain people and who knows that I'm going to actually exist. But the beans that they're referring to the idea that there's fish and lobsters and shellfish to talk about like lobsters and shellfish don't live everywhere on the earth. They only live in various particular, you know, areas that are like next to the sea. And when you think about where did the Bible stories get like written, it's typically areas that have like Dead Sea Black Sea, you know, like right next to us, like that weird Persian Mediterranean Mesopotamian really truly area. I'm not surprised. We're talking about coincidences earlier in the show. And I'm just saying like in similar to how we see different cultures point to the same cross. I'm seeing a culture that surrounded by these very, very specific kinds of food being also responsible for making these kinds of food or listing these kinds of foods is the only ones you're allowed to eat. And I just find that like, yeah, that makes perfect sense for a group like that to be surrounded by those kinds of foods to make this very specific kind of list because this list wouldn't work in Native America. This list wouldn't work in Alaska wouldn't work in China. Right. They'd be like, what's a lobster? It's an abomination. Don't worry about it. And if you're in Japan and you can't eat, you can't eat oysters, like that's going to be a problem. So it's an interesting concept. All right, guys, we used to brew our own mead at home. Actually, my dad would make it. It was pretty cool. I'm working on making my own pizza dough where I'm making from scratch and I'm adding flour and active yeast. And I'm loving working with bacteria again. That's not in the scope of within a laboratory. It's just like, I know how to treat them just right and not shock them and like put them in water and let them ferment and be like, oh, you're so happy, aren't you? I'm going to wait for a couple of generations in this cup to like live and then I'm going to kill the rest of you guys as I make my pizza dough. But the idea that now that we understand the science, now that we have a better understanding of how all these things work, it's not necessarily as taboo anymore. And obviously we can find Christians that eat shellfish. We can find Christians that eat craft, drink craft beer. Is that, is that an evolution of Christianity? Or is it like, is it due to God being more lenient or is it due to us just understanding the science and how to better take care of ourselves? Larry, what do you think? Personally, I think they eat it because they want to and they pick and choose what they want to do out of the Bible or what, you know, what they don't want to do. And the things that they want to do is Biblically commanded and now which they don't is just analogy allegory. That's what they did back then. I can do what I want to do. That's an interesting idea. Bujo, what do you think? So, so yeah, that's interesting. You point out, you know, wines in the Bible, Timothy 523, you know, glass of wine a day. We've learned since then that, you know, drinking too much of it can make you kind of a menace to society possibly. So, so fast forward to Southern Baptist and they're like, no drinking whatsoever. Oh, that's nice. Now you have folks going, Oh, Southern Baptist, you don't get to drink. Oh, but Catholicism. I can drink all about it. I have to believe into the transubstantiation. Right. Okay. You know, body into bread and all that. So, okay. So yeah, the same, same point people are picking. Well, perhaps people are picking and choosing based on their wants and desires. You know, if you want to, you know, enjoy a beverage and this religion doesn't, doesn't allow for it. You know, flip through the Rolodex and find one that does. Eric, you have an interesting point. It sounds like you're saying Christianity has evolved. But the other thing that's going on with the revolution is it's not always to a very specific target. It's just bifurcations and whatever gets lucky gets lucky. Well said Baptist say no alcohol and the Catholic say alcohol all the time. It's literally the blood of our savior. And, and that just spreads out and we'll continue to bifurcate until we figure out who was right and who was wrong. Maybe one day wine becomes poisonous and only the path to survive. And that's the next generation of worldwide Christianity. And that's a long one of these evolutionary pathways, a culture of religion that understands, you know, they didn't understand the science back then. That's why it was disallowed because now we know how to properly cook food. Now we know how to properly balance the diet. Now we know how to better portion control so we don't become ornery or drunk or stuff like that. Is there not room for that kind of perspective? Larry, what do you think? Well, theoretically, they got their dietary restrictions directly from God who would know how to fix food. If he knows everything. Now, I'm going to have a question. But couldn't, couldn't, wouldn't that be a terrible cost for God to be like, listen, I got to explain biochemistry to you guys. I got to explain. Like it's just three words. Cook your food. You know, three words. You don't have to explain all that stuff. It's remember, these are dictates. Wash your hands. Wash your hands. Right. Don't eat this. Also the other words though. Yeah, well, don't eat that. Even simple. I'm hungry. My kids are starving. But that's back to your point, Ty, that, you know, some of these, some of these things were passed on orally. Right. And again, they didn't understand much about, you know, a germ theory and food safety. And they're passing on these things that like, like you said, help keep people alive. Right. And they're getting passed on. And then finally somebody writing them down. Right. And then, you know, it's, it's this long game of telephone where you say something to someone and they say it's someone else. And eventually it gets written down and translated in that. And then you got some Southern Baptist looking at the book, reading it. And then they're going to put their own interpretation on, you know, they said this, but the wine was really for this. And we'll just, we'll just get rid of it because it's causing problems. And then you look at Mormonism, all the restrictions they have and all the ones that they got rid of. I'm going to, I'm going to poke at us too. Cause I feel like even atheists have a problem where they, they pass on tradition, despite the fact that they know there's better science out there, yet they, they, they stick to the culture. And I'm throwing this out here. It's going to be something that you'll smirk and laugh at, but it makes a lot of sense. Americans use toilet paper. There is no reason to continue to be using toilet paper when the whole world, aside from America knows that the days are substantially more sanitary, efficient, clean, efficient at cleaning and less wasteful because it's just water. It's water that cleans your, if you get mud on your hands, you're not going to take a dry, rigid piece of paper, wipe your hand and be like, my hands are clean now. And you just go on with the rest of your day. You're going to wash your hands with water and rinse it. And maybe you'll use a smaller amount of paper to dry it, but that's basically it. We have the days that we can install in our toilets now that are available to us on Amazon for like 20 bucks. We had a pandemic that taught us that toilet paper is actually a very valuable commodity. And when you don't have it, it's almost enough to shut down your home. Unless if you have a reusable, sustainable option, which is bidet, which I've installed before even COVID happened. But when you try to sell the idea to Americans, it's even atheist Americans who love science. It's like, I don't know, that's too European or that's not sanitary or anything like that. So what's your excuses to people who don't have the days who both love science? I have small children. That would be a hot mess. But no, I think it's a paradigm kind of thing. You're just something you're used to and it's different. Because I'll admit, I was so happy to come home last night and flush toilet paper because I spent the last eight days pooping in bathrooms with trash cans in them. And you could not throw your toilet paper down the toilet. The plumbing just wasn't good enough, right? Actually, bidets would be a fantastic revolution in southern Mexico and in Mexico City because yeah, their plumbing can't handle the toilet paper. So everyone just throws them in a trash can in the bathroom. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that adds all kinds of sanitation, other things. Right. Yeah. I should get on Amazon. Larry, what's your excuse? What, for not using a bidet? Yeah. As a person who loves science understands cleanliness, understands sanitary and spent the last 50 minutes chastising Christians for not doing the best for society and for the sake of science and stop listening to tired tradition. Why don't you have a bidet? We have had all of that time while you were talking to think of an excuse and have come up with one. Exactly. So I'm not saying it's up to human nature. I'm just saying we can pick on Christians in the show, but we also pick on atheists too. Like you guys, we are susceptible to the same follies that Christians can be because we're both humans. And my idea is science is a tool designed not just for Christianity, not just for atheists, not just for men or women. It helps everybody. And the more we better understand it, the more we can immediately improve our lives. I was very iffy on the whole bad day situation. I thought it was bizarre. Then I had a, I don't know if I can see this on the radio, a clean back end. Is that the best way to say it? It is a substantially different sensation than using toilet paper. Like it's night and day to smear until you don't see a smear is such an archaic way of cleaning what is like one of the most dirtiest things possible compared to just pushing a button and being like, OK, it's clean now. Let me just try it. It was like immediately sensation wise. It's it's night and day difference. I can't imagine. I can't proselytize it to people. I won't go, you know, the aggressive. I'm just saying it's an option that's there to available to you. And if you have hemorrhoids or if you have any sort of weird, you know, altercations that can come from not having access to toilet paper or your plumbing being back up and live out of this. This is my constant. Really trying to think of a good segue. It's just the most sustainable thing that you can do. I'm not saying be a vegan. I'm saying you should use water to clean waste. It's the it's the most obvious thing that you should do is why we take showers and not just wipe ourselves with a for binder paper. Like we take we wash ourselves. So what's good? What's the best publicly approved food that you can eat so that you don't need a toilet paper? I would say the legume option. You need fiber. You need to be able to push through things with your intestines. But anyway, that's that is the show. I'm thank you guys so much. Sorry for the small putting you guys on the hot seat, but recommended recommended. It's only a $20 add on to any toilet. There's a whole bunch of different options for hot and water controls. It takes five minutes to install yourself. And even if you send me a link in the chat, you're never too old. You're never too young. It's something that everyone's going to have. If you go to Japan, the toilets they have there are insane. And they're for the whole families when I was in Sweden, they had heated seats. They had toys to talk to you. They had ones that play white noise to keep you from being self-conscious around the other people that you might be using bathroom with around. Yeah, it was amazing. Like our toilet technology is really, really poor in U.S. And you need to be able to recognize that and look at the science and improve upon it. It's good for everybody. And same thing with your diet. Look at science. Take care of yourself at the end of the day and don't let tradition or old rules dictate what you think is acceptable or what you're capable of doing. What would you recommend we check out before next week? Um, oh, can I just throw out that that other little, little Mexican thing? We did go through a church, a Mayan church that resisted some of the Catholic influences. It's good for them. Yeah. However, one of their, one of their things was if you had a sick, loved one that was, you know, ill, you could bring in, of course you bring in all kinds of things to, to give to the gods, flowers and food and things, but a live chicken, you could sacrifice. And they did it right there in the church. And my daughter was so uncomfortable in there. She had to run out. Um, and, uh, but yeah, they would, they would, they would kill the chicken, behead the chicken right there in the church, which was filled with, with pine needles on the floor and candles everywhere. I was scared to death. I didn't see a fire. I'm walking over one thing. Yeah. Yeah. There were dogs with the pine needles on the floor. I don't know. Yeah. Was it a single layer or was it three inches? No, it's a single layer. And it was, it was just, it was a single layer. And it was a single layer. And it was just a single layer. And it was a single layer. And it was a single layer. So, it was a single layer. It was a single layer. So, the, the, the, the, the divine protection, right? But yeah. So then, but then they would take the chicken home and bury it and the chicken would, would soak up all of the, the, the sins. Disease. And the person you wanted, the love, would heal. And I just couldn't help thinking, looking around. These people are poor. my head and I know it's the preserving the culture and I appreciate it and our guide was really cool and also agnostic um so because we had some conversations and he he kind of agreed but anyway sorry long winded but I wanted to share that that piece too just just sad to me to see a church again taking money from poor people for right medical reasons it it breaks my heart to know that that's also a story that has parallels in christianity with people burning goats because it hurts my heart to know that toilet paper companies are still making money off of dumbfounded americans who don't know that water is a better way to clean between their legs I have the same sympathy on all levels for the exact same reason where's your contradiction Larry go ahead well I'd like to remind everybody that if they're having trouble leaving religious beliefs behind um then you can get help from from uh recovering from religion at recoveringfromreligion.org my content can be found at digitalfreethought.com be sure to click on the blog button for a radio show archives atheist songs and many articles on the subject you can find my book atheism what's it all about on amazon and my youtube channel handle is at doubter five remember everybody's going to somebody else's hell the time to worry about it is when they prove that heavens and hells and souls are real until then don't sweat it enjoy your life we'll see you next wednesday night at seven o'clock here on w o zio radio say bye everybody bye everybody