 here. Five, four, three, two. Hello and welcome to the Digital Freethought Radio Hour and WOZL Radio 103.9 LPFM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We're recording this on Sunday, February 6th, 2022. I'm Larry Rhodes or Doubter Five. And as usual, we have our co-host Wombat on the line with us. Hello Wombat. Hello Wombat. Yes, that is me. Hello me. Yay. And George Brown, two and a half from Brooklyn originally. Now, Tennessee. Welcome. Hi. Hello. And the John Richards from across the pond in England. Welcome, as always. Hello. And Digital Freethought Radio Hour is a top radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism, and the sciences. And conversely, we'll also talk about religion, religious faiths, gods, holy books, and superstition. And if you get the feeling that you're the only non-believer in town, then that's very doubtful. You are not. In Knoxville, we have a group of over a thousand of us and we're just a little town in the Bible Belt. So hang in there. You are not alone. We'll tell you more about the atheist society of Knoxville after the mid-show break. Wombat, what are we going to be talking about today? Today we're talking about dietary dogma and the idea that people could be just as skeptical of what they put into their bodies as what they put into their souls should they even be proven to exist. But before we get into the meat and potatoes, I'd like to do a quick check on seeing how everyone's doing. John Richards, it's always good to see a weekly check-in. Still doing interviews, still publishing on Global Atheist News. How have you been? Yeah, I've been fine. Thank you. I've left COVID mark two behind. I'm forging ahead now. Had a great global atheist news and a great free thought hour yesterday. So just go to free thought productions to watch them. Oh, I'm plugging too soon. No, no, no. You can always plug. You're a welcome friend on the show. Though it was interesting that before we started recording, you were talking about how your daughter was learning piano. Now, Jess, as a quick update, is it the sort of thing where it's like you hear her do a song and you're like, okay, she's getting close. Now I got to hear this 46 more times. Or is it sort of like, oh yeah, turn that up. Yeah, we need to get her a new thing. Like how does that work out? Because it tends to be one of those sonorous instruments that you're like, get good at it already. It's like... She's not turning into an earworm yet. It was interesting because I started off, we've got a keyboard. It's an electronic piano, does all the voices, you know that thing. And I started out because I used to, I was taught piano way back. I've forgotten most of it. You taught piano. No, I was taught piano. Got it, got it, got it. As a small boy between about six and eight. But I've, I got stuck then because my piano teacher was recommended to stop doing something. She was overworking and she stopped teaching me. Okay, okay. So, so I got stuck at that level. And then I took up guitar and, and bass. And I ended up in, up until about my late thirties in a band playing and singing. That was great. I loved it. Wow. Oh wait, I loved how you transition to yourself when we, you can't plug you when we're talking about the kid. Yeah, yeah. That was an intro. That was an intro to talking about the kid. I saw your album coming up the other frame. It was like, by the way, I have this new thing I'm selling right now. We call ourselves John Riches in the Rockstones. It's very good. No, no, no, no. Never, never did that. And the disbelievers. How about that? John Riches, one last question. I want to throw this one at you. But is London Bridge a sacrilegious song to learn how to play? Because it tends to be one of the, London Bridge is falling down. Are you filming with the song? Yeah, yeah. Okay. No, no, it's, it's fine. It's an old folk song. Yeah. And London Bridge has fallen down at least twice. I have not been aware of that. Yeah. And, and you've got one of them in Arizona. Yeah. We have a London Bridge in Arizona. Yes, we sold it to you. You dismantled it and took it away block by block and reassembled it in Arizona. Wow. Well, Larry's looking that up. You've also got the Queen Mary too. Okay, not bad. I know the Statue of Liberty came from France. So, hey, it takes the whole community. George Brown, would you mind taking yourself off mute? Give me a catch up on how you've been over the last week. Can I just say? Oh, yeah, go for it, John. I just wanted to say you have to import your history. Very true. George, how you been? I'm trying to figure out what John just meant. I don't want to explain the joke. That's a bad thing. That's bad form, isn't it, right? But anyway, George Brown, how you've been over the last week? Oh, I've been, I've been fine. I've been drinking some Pete's coffee. It takes me, it takes me seven minutes to grind each cup by hand. So, I'm getting a workout grinding the Pete's coffee. And the other thing I'm doing, you may notice me changing headphones during this program. Okay. I am attempting to understand you people better. Okay. And I'm finding, even though I'm an audio expert, connecting to computers, to laptops especially, is so frustrating and confusing that I'm really having to work at it. The only thing you have to do is get the chip in your ear that you get when you get vaccinated, you know? Oh, the other thing is, here in my county, this is the controversy. They've banned Maus, which is a book that I imagine parody is Nazi Germany. No, it doesn't parody Nazi Germany. It's the story of the author's father and the descent into fascism and murdering of Jewish people. I mean, in particular, and various other kinds of people that the Nazis found undesirable as well. So, I was told through like, toy mouth or like, cute mice, like with the aesthetics of almost looking like a children's book. Yeah. Yeah. I've been meaning to read this for over 20 years. And a fellow knocked on my door last week and handed me this copy. So, I just finished reading it. I'm, you know, I think I see what the fuss is all about. It's got some strong language on the very final page. And supposedly, there's a picture of a naked person in this book, and I have not found it. Oh, well, I'm sure people are looking for it. Yeah. The fellow who lent it to me said that he would show me where it is. He dared me to see if I could find it and I haven't been able to. I always, I'm always worried when random people at my door give me, you know, Nazi votes and tell me where the naked people are. I want to know, I want to know why you get decent books to live at and I have to put up with this trash. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Let's keep moving on. Larry, how you been? Oh, fine. I've been losing myself in the in 3D world, the virtual world of Quest 2. Not bad. Yeah. I love this one app called Big Screen. Oh. He said in virtual theaters and watch movies or TV shows or just videos. They also, you can build your own room with a huge screen and invite people in, watch the movies and chat so you can have friends, like from across the ocean, watch sharing like a virtual living room and watching a movie with you. You know, so having to get together. It's awesome. Yeah, keep enjoying it. I can tell you this. Enjoy your Oculus while it continues to work. That's the only thing I'll throw out at that like Facebook known for a lot of things. The integrity of their hardware is still questionable. So enjoy. Enjoy. I am. Oh, I'm having, I'm having some issues, but generally wouldn't connecting with the PC is the main thing. Okay. Okay. Hey, speaking of losing yourself, I'll throw out my thing. I've been losing myself literally with weight loss since December and I made progress up to today of about 31 pounds since like mid December. And that runs out to an average of about two pounds a day, but I'm not tracking my weight daily. I'm doing it like once a week. I'm trying not to get stressed out on like weights. I'm making it as easy as possible. I'm not on Jenny Craig. I'm not on Weight Watchers. I'm not on Paleo. What is it? Keto, all these, you know, trends, they all work, but they all work on one premise basically, and that's maintaining a caloric deficit. So like, hey, eat less than what you burn in a day or a period of time. And if you do that, you're guaranteed to lose weight. It's the same premise as making money. Spend less than you make. Yes. Yes. Yes. And so like at the end of the day, it's just an input output thing. And when I saw on YouTube that just lying down and not doing anything burns energy, I was like, what? There's a basal limit of energy that I'm burning. It's like, yeah, know what that number is. And then you know what, know how much you burn from working out if you do workout and just make sure you always eat less than that and count the calories. And I'm like, is it that simple? And I've totally did it. And it's like, it's that simple. The fact is though, I've been going to work. And in fact, this is like my first XL shirt that I've worn in four years, five years or something like that. And it's fitting really comfortably. It's not like up on my sleeves and stuff. So I went to work and they're like, Hey, it looks like you're losing weight. What are you doing? I'm like, I'm just eating less than what I'm burning on a daily basis. Like I'm wearing smaller shirts. Right. Right. Right. They're like, no, no, no, but you got to not eat donuts or like you got to stay away from kale or you got to make sure you're eating four chicken breasts a day. I'm like, no, no, dude, you can eat anything you want. Just make sure caloric deficits is being maintained. Like that's that's functionally how it works. And if I eat, if I know in my head, I can eat whatever I want. I'm not under the condition where I'm craving food. So it's like, if I want pizza, I can eat pizza, but just kind of make sure I burn more energy. And the secret is to have a high activity in your life level wise. There was a five year period I was dancing on TV and I was dancing. No, you can't you can't just casually say that and expect us not to to hang on that for bit. You're dancing on TV casually on. Yeah, there was a there was an international show on the Nashville network called club dance. There was a country western show. And if you remember the old American bandstand, they had people that were regulars that would come on there and dance. Yeah, it's like soul train. Right. Right. Exactly. Well, I was I was a regular on club dance for about five years. Wow. I could eat anything I wanted to and maintain a low weight because I was burning so darn many calories. Exactly. Exactly. But people take that almost offensively. Even if you try to explain, I was just a calorie deficit. It's not that keto is necessarily a bad thing. I wasn't a kid either. I was in my 40s. So Larry, I'm trying to transition to the topic being like some people took me saying, no, it's just a calorie deficit. That's how that about that diet with the trademark name at the end of it is working. They're like, no, because this worked for me. I had a personal and true experience with this weight loss system. How dare you try to break it down into scientific terms? That's not how it worked at all. And I was just like, I kind of think it does. And then and and I've had two levels of conversations, one with people who are immediately offended with with any me not immediately adhering to their weight loss program. And if me breaking down to my simple, they're like, well, that's not for me. That doesn't work. It's like, you're doing the exact same thing I'm doing if you're way losing weight. That's how you lose weight. And then the second one is I asked people like in the process of you losing weight, like what changes have you found for you? It's like, oh, I've become way more aware of what's good to eat and what's not good to eat. I become less reliant on the government telling me what's needed to be in. I'm like, wow, you're asking a lot of questions like you must have changed how you think, you know, like health wise, like health wise, spiritual wise, religious wise, like religious wise, like, yeah, I've become even more religious. I'm like, no. If only you had the same amount of skepticism for your diet that you did for your gods. And so what I wanted to do is open up the topic of weight loss. Has anyone seen people be very dogmatic with the way how they lose weight and the idea of what kind of benefits would they get if they had a religion or a diet, if they applied dietary constraints to their religious views as well and thought about like, oh, maybe I should have the same amount of skepticism for what I consume versus what I pray to. John Richards, do you think I might be on an interesting track here? Well, you may be, but I'm just wondering, there's a mystery you could solve because all the waistbands of my underpants are shrinking. What's going on? Yeah, I've been there too. Yeah, I've been there too. Don't sell them. Don't sell them. You never know. You never know. Anyway, I've got plenty of examples of people being dogmatic about various things. It's a pre-election of the theistic mindset, but I can't for the life of me at the moment, just think of any particularly dietary related ones. Okay, that's interesting. So maybe it could just be the circles you in, but yeah, Larry, go for it. Jewish people and pork, you know, and Catholics and fish on Friday. Unleavened bread. You've got people who are just like, hey, I don't eat blank on Sundays. What's that about? It's like my pastor told me not to. I'm like, well, what's going on there? Jesus really likes wine and bread crackers for some reason. It could have been any kind of food, but he chose those two things. It's weird. George Brown, go on ahead. I thought we were doing weight loss though. Sure, sure, sure, but I'm helping you out by throwing you topics. George, what do you got? What do you got? Well, I just wanted to mention that about, I grew up about eight blocks away from where Woody Allen grew up, and then the same general neighborhood as Bernie Sanders. And there was a Jewish shopping street over where Woody Allen lived, and the Chinese restaurant there did a really great business among all the Jewish people who came in to eat pork. Okay. Yeah. Nice. I think pork is pretty good stuff. Pork is pretty good. It's kind of weird that they have renal restrictions that you can't eat pork in a lot of religious fashion. So for dietary loss specifically, I'll bring up a quick thing then. Did they come into the deli's disguised or were they out of the closet when they did it? The answer to that is too long, John. It depends upon which disguise you're talking about. I mean, because we had all the different kinds of Jewish people, including the guys with the big fur coats, the black fur coats in the summertime. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I have a sister that lives in Pakistan, and when she came to visit us for a while, she remembered we went to the grocery store. And the first thing she did was she pulled off products off the store and looked at the back, like where the nutrition facts were. And I thought she was looking at the calories and the protein content, but what she was actually looking for was a symbol on it to denote if that food was actually halal. And there's two concepts in Pakistan for haram and halal, for good food that you can eat religiously and bad food that you can't eat, or food that's deemed improper or unclean for you to consume. And there's a very specific logo she was looking for. Because we were in an American store, and it was like her first time being back. She didn't find any of that even like in the mereditarian section, Asian section, she's like, I don't think I can eat any of this food. And I'm like, what do you mean? Like it's all like there are probably ingredients in the things that do have your logo that come from things that don't have that logo on them. And she's like, I'm I'm strictly supposed to just eat these things because it's been working for me. It's the personal experience that I've had. And I've had a deep and close relationship with this system. And it's like it's almost as if we were talking about her God without actually talking about her God. And if you look at her, she's like 60 pounds soaking wet. She ended up only mostly eating eggs and chicken nuggets, only those two things for the entire time she was with us. John Richards, what's up? Well, the thing about halal is they kill all the animals without stunning them. So they're bled to death. And that's proved to be a big issue with the vegan and vegetarian sector in our society. So there's currently a bill going through parliament to try and prevent this non stunning way of slaughter from happening. And we want to stun all the animals first before we kill them, which means either an electric water bath or a bolt gun, which is, you know, just a captive bullet that goes into and out of the skull kill them instantly. Or in the case of chickens, we do it with carbon dioxide gas, which there's a shortage of at the moment. So we got a problem. How do we stun animals in a way that's acceptable to the Muslim community and to the vegan community, which doesn't want us to kill animals at all? Now, it's an interesting thing you bring that up. Let me just finish this point. Then we get straight to John because we did go to KFC and we did get some of that wonder meat, the one that's, you know, synthetically produced from plants and then deep fried and made to look like chicken meat. And she wouldn't even eat that. She wouldn't even feed the fake bacon that we had just so she can try it because she's ingrained in herself that I don't want to even taste food that is like food that is unclean because that's in its own right unclean. And I just felt it's not so much that she's missing out, but I feel like it was so closed off to things that in her own holy sense wouldn't have any purview or perspective on whether or not it was holy or not. Like this is completely a fabrication of a food and not tied to the unclean stuff that she she has sworn herself off to. Why not try it? But I mean, it's just one of those things. George, go ahead. You want to throw in some more stuff? I just wanted to say that there was a company in the American Midwest, a slaughterhouse outfit that is Orthodox Jewish and they have been dragged across the calls about cruelty and their slaughtering method, which I cannot remember what it was, but it sounds pretty grotesque to me when I heard it described. I mean, I think when vegans say that they don't want to eat meat, they can do it on a not a political basis, but on the stance of morality and ethical level and saying, hey, I'm not eating these particular foods. Yes, I'm healthy because I'm eating a non-western diet, really. But I'm also making the choice that I'm not eating food that's caused excess harm to all these additional animals and I get that too. Listen, I totally get the reason why people do like vegan keto and if they do weight watchers, if they take more exercise diet, I get all the principles. What I worry about though is when it starts to extend away from a dietary constraint to more of a lifestyle choice and then dictate conscious moves that aren't even related to food whatsoever and more of like determining what is societally valuable or good or morally ethical or not. And I'm like, oh, whoa, whoa, this is sounding more than just a diet. This is actually sounding like a life philosophy and like, are we are we applying the same levels of skepticism to that as we would to like law or to like God beliefs or anything like that? Or are we giving anything a free pass to get through just because a lot of other people are doing it and it's particularly fashionable and makes you look good because there's a lot of things that could do that that could lead to bad stuff. Larry, do you have a final comment? Not really. There's all kinds of dietary rules out there. Some of them are based in religions, some of them aren't. It's at the mismatch of all kinds of input. Whatever gets you to your desired weight, I think is valid. But I think it all comes down to why you were talking about caloric deficit in total. Basically, that's the science behind it. John. Well, I'm wondering how far away you have to go from the original intention of these taboos, these dietary taboos that are religiously based, because originally it was, you know, dislike of the pigs lifestyle, which turned them off, turned them off eating pig meat. And similarly, in other parts of the world with other types of religion, but now we can make ersatz, a German word, meat using either plant protein or, you know, lab grown in a pet food dish type of meat. How far away are we going to have to get before they find it acceptable? Right, right. Like if you were to think about it, tribe wise, if you had a tribe that by religion rules said, don't eat other people, and another tribe that was like cannibalism is okay. The one that, you know, forbid cannibalism probably can afford more energy building schools and roads and an economy because there aren't worried about the guy behind them trying to eat them all the time. So there's some, you know, when you think about it, it's not necessarily like religion has a monopoly on not being a cannibal, like you can figure that out even from a completely secular set. But the fact that it was explicitly described in certain books of like, these are the meats that you're allowed to eat, these are meats that you're not allowed to eat was like, okay, cool. But, you know, I think my main, oh, Larry, I see your raise your hand. I'll just conclude real quick. The main takeaway is that like, hey, rules have intentions behind them. And when you stray away from those intentions, now you have to ask yourself, what are these additional consequences of these new meanings that I'm giving to him? Larry, what do you think? Oh, I was just going to say that religions are dogma, not only dogmatic, but they're authoritarian. And they're pretty much authoritarian and expect obedience in every facet of life. And it would be amazing or surprising if they didn't also dictate certain foods that you could eat and couldn't eat. And you see that pretty much every religion. Right, right. And I think the intention of religious dogma is authority and obedience. It's not so much like, I really care about you being healthy and losing weight. It's like, no, I want you to listen to me. Authoritarianism. Because I wouldn't have it any other way. Right. You raised an interesting can of worms when you brought up cannibalism, because of course, you could make a strong case for the virtues of cannibalism because eating humans, you know, you're going to get all the nutrition that you need to make a human in the right proportions. Not if you're an American. Maybe not. I thought you were going to say can of fingers. You had the perfect opportunity right there too. But the thing is, thing is, of course, cannibalism was going on right up until the 1960s in the Philippines, somewhere like that. Okay. I don't know if it was religious, but they certainly thought that it was okay to eat their dead. Yeah. And not to get, this is a science issue. So I'll jump into it. But there are these things called prions, which are poorly folded proteins that are only a problem if you need those exact kind of amino acid chains as well. So like you can inherit diseases, in a sense, from protein that's too similar to your protein, because your body season is like, Oh, perfect. I know exactly where to put this. But that thing has a structural problem that can cascade into more problems around your body. If you aren't familiar with this, you may have heard of mad cow disease. It's why we don't eat certain parts of cow because there's enough commonality that can give us problems as well. But yeah, like I can definitely see some meaningful restrictions of like, Hey, don't eat this product, but cow, it can cause you harm, it can make you sick. And that that's not good for you versus a religious point of view of listen to me obey me. And by the way, don't eat this cow. But if you don't eat the cow, it's fine. Just keep obeying me. Yeah. I'll throw one last thing out too. When do you form encephalopathy? It sounds great in that accent, though. It sounds better than a power to say it. Crates filled Yakov disease. You don't want it. Let me. So I'm going to turn your audio levels a bit good lower. All right. So here's here's my other point. We have basically a culture that has a series of gods from all around the world, based on whatever geopolitical persuasion is, you might find yourself nestled into a God belief from birth, right? And as much as we are critical about, you know, whether paleo is the right kind of diet to go or veganism is actually effective or reasonable or vegetarian is the way to go or a weekend vegetarian or intermittent fasting or weight watchers or Jenny Craig. There's so many names. We can be critical and sit back on our table and be like, oh, yeah, but it's caloric deficit. That's fine. I feel like that's sort of like the atheist perspective on a lot of these things, just breaking it down into the non-fun scientific terms. But for gods, we don't really apply, I think, en masse the same level of skepticism that would afford us a more consistent dietary choices on which God to listen to by virtue of the fact that there's so many different gods to listen to. And if we were to just say like, let's just figure out what works and what doesn't work. Let's just spend one week praying to Vishnu, one week praying to Shiva. And if nothing happens, we'll just switch to the next one until one works. And then we'll be like, okay, you made it to the next level. We'll do it American Idol style. What do you think, John? Mike, wouldn't that be a good way? Certainly would. But another thought was cross my mind because if we're made in God's image, then presumably he has a diet which we should be copying. There you go. What's God's diet? And what are we going to do? Anyway, we're going to get ready for a break soon. I think that's a great point. Larry, go on and take us out. Yep. This is the digital free thought radio hour on WOZL radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. And we'll be right back after this short break. Me too. Five, four, three, two. Welcome back to the second half of the digital free thought radio hour. I'm doubter five, and we're on WOZL radio 103.9 LP FM here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Now let's talk about the atheist society of Knoxville for just a moment. ASK was founded in 2002. We're in a 20th year and we have over a thousand members and we have weekly in-person meetings in Knoxville's old city at Barley's Tap Room in Pizzeria. So if you're in the Knoxville area, come by Barley's on Tuesday evenings and see if you can find the group. Look for us inside at the high top tables, usually the loudest and happiest group there. If you'd like to join our Tuesday evening virtual Zuma meeting, email us at askanatheistatknocksvilleatheist.org, or you can send it to let'schatseatgmail.com. You can also find the group on Facebook, meetup.com or just directly to Knoxvilleatheist.org. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville, you should still go to meet up and do a search for an atheist group in your town. Don't find one. Where do you want to pick up? I want to touch a little bit more on this dietary doctrine and then we can go into some listener comments. I have a comment that I love everyone's feedback on and it's I think the government was lying to us so maybe George can get some kicks out of this. But the idea is there's something called the food pyramid. Did you ever see that growing up as a kid? You have like this pyramid that tells you the proportions of food you're supposed to eat, starting with bread on the bottom or grains and then meat, poultry, and then as you go it up, dairy, and then finally sweets at the very top of the pyramid in that small little triangle. The problem is that if you follow that kind of diet, you're actually going to have some a lot of problems because you're going to fill yourself up with a lot of simple carbohydrates that will make you feel more hungry and not feel as satiated as you want to be. And you'll end up overeating as the pyramid tells you to do on a bunch of carbohydrates that have a bunch of calories that will basically turn into fat. And I was asking myself, why did the pyramid look like that? And it's because we have lobbies, unfortunately, in America that dictate what the government will say. So groups of companies that have a sway on the overall messaging of these certain things and when they were making the food pyramid, it originally looked like a completely different. It was just a circle saying, these are the great foods to eat. But then the grain company came in and was like, hey, by the way, we make corn. If you say nine times as much corn as you want, we'll give you this much money. And the politician said, oh, that sounds great. I love it. And then dairy came in and was like, I know you're not supposed to drink other animal milk, but how about you put us in there too, and we can make this work out. And it completely skewed the way how I was educated on how to eat growing up. And a lot of the reasons why I was made it easy to lose weight was just an awareness of I was not necessarily being lied to, but I had very bad information that was given to me with an agenda that was not in my best interest. And so I'm wondering, I've learned that there's problems with the Western diet. You don't just eat until you're full. You don't just drink until you're thirsty. You have to eat good food. And I had to figure out what those good foods were. John, do you have a similar issue overseas? Is there a program that tells you what food you're supposed to eat? And is it accurate towards an actual healthy diet? We did. Going back many years, after World War II, we were still on a, what's the word, not a diet, but we were on rations. That's the word. Thank you. Rations right through until about 1953. And we couldn't eat sweets. There was no sugar available. Wow. Okay. And we had a generation of people that grew up that weren't obese because of the foods that were available in their childhood and teenage. And then the American big companies arrived. The first McDonald's opened in, I didn't say that, did I? The first McDogmeat opened in London with his maxi shakes. Have them so much now. And then there's a company which specializes in very sugary cola, which I won't mention the name. But I suspect that those sorts of things have been responsible for an outbreak of obesity in the U.S. of A. And it's coming here too. Right. I think so. Larry, when you were in the Navy, right? Like, was there any sort of food-based sponsors or did the military at least have a program that was, these are the foods you recommend to eat as a sailor? And this is actually better for you to eat than what civilians are eating? Like, was there any guidance in that? There really wasn't a lot of guidance. When you're on a ship, eat what they give you. And you can't go over to the fast food places. And you're usually out for a couple weeks at a time. So it helps tend to keep your weight down. Of course, when you're in port, a lot of sails have their own apartments. So it was just like going to work every day. So you could definitely become obese that way. But as a young man, you generally stayed active. So the younger ones didn't get very fat. Of course, the lifers tended to that. Definitely. Here's the thing that blows my mind every single time I see it. It's when you see like Olympic athletes, and then there's a banner for Coca-Cola as an ad behind them. And you're like, you said the words. Hey, I can say I'm calling them out. I'm calling out. But it's like, that is not a sponsor of a sports drink. Yet it's like a guy climbing up the mountain and there's like an ad and he reaches in his back and there's a nice ice cold Coca-Cola. I'm like, don't eat drink. He would. He would spit that out. Think about Coca-Cola. Now we've outed it. It's very clever because you feel thirsty. So you want to drink and they offer you a drink which doesn't quench your thirst. In fact, you imbibe more water needing sugar and therefore need another one. That's why that's why you have free refills. Very true. Yeah. And it's a cheap thing to make and charge money for to George Brown. I'm going to shot for you specifically against coffee. How about this coffee? Obviously has caffeine. Obviously, there's a problem. A lot of people that love caffeine. I don't have a problem with drugs in general, right? But I'm saying the idea that we have as a society deemed this, what's the right word to call it? Is it a psychotropic or is it a psychoactive drug to be completely okay? It's like, this is an okay psychoactive drug. You can have it. You can put sugar in it. You can feed it to kids. You can make candy taste after it. It's all good. But but anything else, not okay. I just find that the hypocrisy of it a little bit. Well, I want to get back to your food pyramid. Go for it, George. Because for many years, I have not trusted the food pyramid and I'm aware that politicians get bought by contributions to their campaign funds. Oh, yeah. And you know, and so the prevalence of that food pyramid has made me slightly distrustful of government agencies of all kinds. Because I can't trust the data that they're giving me. And I think it has affected my health. I think so too. I think so too. I think it's affected my health and many others as well. I'll throw this out at you as well. We can't trust, we know the government has lied. We see documents on this about the food pyramid and we know it's accurate, scientifically unsound and fabricated information. And we see the detrimental effects of it. Why can't we as a society apply that same level of skepticism to religion? Because we see in practice detrimental effects of raising kids and very close off dogmas. We see, you know, bigots fall part and parcel out of very conservative points of view, very indoctrinated points of view, or probably the other way forward. And I, well, the reason is, the reason is because there are certain agreed upon subjects which are taboo and other subjects which are not. So, for instance, you know, my religion is cool, but your religion is a cult. Right, right, right, right. It's like my drink. But we were talking about food. Sure, sure. But it's the same thing. It's the same thing. I feel it's the same thing with coffee, it's the same thing with Coca-Cola, same thing with like foods. It's like people have, they're in club and then the out club is not acceptable or anyway. But yeah, I'm sorry. You're making a great point, George. So we got listener comments too? Yes. Let's fill out the rest of the show with some listener comments. We have a couple, I'll go for it, John. Can I just mention all you can eat? Yes. That's not a thing over here. That's not a, you don't have the face? You don't, you don't find that in Europe very much. We've got one restaurant which does all you can eat for lunchtime on a Sundays because that's when they need the business. But apart from that, it isn't a thing. Very interesting. So those smorgasbord? Well, that's different, isn't it? You can pick and choose lots of different types of food and we have the Spanish tapas for example, but it's not all you can eat for a set fee. That's encouraging gluttony. Now you don't have bottomless bowls or anything like that? No. Buffet is a French word. It seems weird that it doesn't exist in Europe though. Buffet exists, but not, you know, unlimited food for a set price. I'm confused. What is a buffet if not that? A buffet is a range of food on a table that you can walk up and take from, but it's not like an all-you-can-eat restaurant where they try and force extra food on you. It's just selection rather than quantity. Okay. Okay. I think I get it. I think I get it. It's very nuanced, but I definitely feel like I get it. All right. So listeners' comments, thank you guys so much for leaving comments. I'm reading comments from my YouTube channel. Let's chat. Feel free to leave a comment on the show. We'll go over it. Last week we were talking about is it child abuse to raise your kid religiously? And there was some, all three comments, as far as I'm aware, deal with a point that we made regarding, is disciplining the same thing as abuse? And so what the first question we had is, what if parents never knew anything better? This came from Data Straighten Room. What if parents didn't know anything better? And if they raise a kid in a specific culture, maybe they spanked the kid. Is that considered abuse as well? And so we can go on a roundtable on this first question. John Richards, if a parent doesn't know any better and they spanked their kids as a form of instilling discipline, is that child abuse? Yes. Okay. Because if you go back in history, there would have been even worse examples where children would have been severely tortured. And ignorance of a good way to behave doesn't excuse you. I actually interview people who were abused as children. And they're very angry, let me tell you. They are campaigning to try and prevent this happening and make very different parents themselves. Larry, vote at you. You also got kids. Yeah, like John said, I have to agree. There were cultures that even abandoned children, if they had too many kids or if they thought the child didn't measure up or maybe a female. I think it was the Spartans that would like to leave them in jars next to the road or something. But yeah, ignorance is no excuse. There's no shown good reason to be violent toward your child. Interesting. In my opinion, it makes us trust you. Okay. George, you have thoughts on this? You also have sons. I do. It's spare the rod and spoiled the child. You have abuse that is sanctioned by large portions of society yet. But what the bottom line of this is, regardless of what the society condones or not, the bottom line is how is the child affected? It's going to be for the rest of the kid's life. So it is abuse even though maybe the whole society agrees. Oh yeah, let's spare the rod and spoil the child. It is still abuse as the child experiences it. Okay. Interesting round table. I don't have children, though I do have pets and I've moved away from spray bottles of water to air cans and I found that to be, they're not wet an hour later and still figuring out, why am I still wet? Because they don't have a long-term memory. But if you spray the air can, they're like, what was that? And then they'll stop doing whatever it is and then tow back to being a cat later on. It's really good. Yeah, go for it, John. Recommendation to you, Ty. Sure. What's up? I think that small humans make the best pets. Small humans make the best pets. I can tell you this, this is going to get dark very quickly, but I can lose a cat and not go to jail. Yeah, and cats don't generally wail for four hours at a time. Right, right, right, right. They come home potty trained from the kennel. It's great. I'll throw this one a new comment. Thank you, Sandy. Should they be penalized? It's just literally that. So in the event, so to fill this out, in the event that we do realize that it is child abuse to raise your kid religiously, should they be penalized? A parent? And if so, what should be the penalty? We'll throw it up to John Richards first. What do you think? We touched on this last week, didn't we, when we decided that they shouldn't be exposed to religion except under PG guidance, didn't we? So it is okay and your rule to do it if there's parental guidance present. Are we talking about cap corporal punishment? Are we talking about raising? This is raising your child in religion. And the comment is literally just, I mean, should they be penalized? And so I'm imagining that they're referring to if the parent raises their kid in a religious environment and we do condone that as child abuse. What is the penalty for it? And or if we all agree that it's child abuse, what do you think, Larry? Well, I think that if you're caught speeding and you do it a lot, they may send you to a class to explain to you why this isn't a good idea and show you the repercussions and problems with it. So maybe something like that. We're not talking about fines or jail time or anything like that, just showing them that there's a better way. Right. And you're talking about doing that for the parents, not the kids, right? Okay. Okay. It's like, Hey, we caught you, you know, indoctrinating your kid. I'm just going to show you what's up. You know, I kind of like also the PG 13 rating that we came up with before. It's like, Hey, if you're a parent, you can do it, but there's going to be a little tag next to every little thing being like, this requires parental guidance. Don't just be some random kid walking around with this stuff. You know, the trouble is, if you withdraw beating halfway through a child's upbringing, then all hell breaks loose because they think they can do anything. I can tell you about a lot of repercussions that you can apply. You can ground them. You can take away their allowance. You can, you know, there are, but it takes a while for those to bed in and to be regarded serious. I can tell you about a headmaster who came and took over a school I was teaching at. And previously we'd had caning. This is going back, you know, almost 50 years when that was the normal thing in most of the Western world. And this new headmaster came in and stood up in the assembly and he said, there will be no more caning. He could have not told them. He kind of just introduced the policy and let them find out over the course of the next several months and years. But he told them. And guess what? Some of the kids had crazy and some of the kids were like, I actually respect that he came out and told us that straight out. It was the naughty ones who were completely unfettered. They wrecked the place in no time at all. I'll tell you this right now. That's not the fault of all the kids that were there, though. That's still like how do I put it? I can't make much of a time machine, but the kids that will destroy a system like that would have done so in some respect, regardless either way. And like the notion that a kid needs to be beaten in to get respect out of is one that I will frequently challenge. Absolutely. They don't need to be broken in. But if they have been broken in, lived under that regime, and then he's taken away. I see what you're saying. He creates a power struggle, something like that. So yeah, maybe there's better ways of doing it. But I think I respect the teacher who's willing to treat me like an adult from the get go, even if that may have a juvenile response. But he stopped the immediate harm and let whatever foul had happened and won't move forward from there. I think it falls right into the next comment, though. Trading Room, what's up, George? What's up? Well, I just want to make a comment that I would wish for the abusers, in other words, the parents in this situation, to somehow be educated. I think that as a society, we need to focus on abusive behavior of people who are in charge in general because there is so much of it. And now how we are going to educate the people is another story. I have no answer about how to go about it, how to get their attention. Sure. Also, I feel like you can't necessarily take away the stick and then expect completed obedience immediately afterwards. It needs to be supplicated with a less harmful system. So if he just says, I'm not going to punish you anymore and walks away and expect that to resolve things without some sort of secondary system for helping obedience, there's a problem. Though I do feel like overall between the systems of continuing harm and not continuing harm, obviously not continuing harm is the improvement. Well, we've seen this happen certainly over my lifetime as a nation because coming out of World War II, there was a lot of military released on the public and they had military rules in their heads. They'd been institutionalized and how to behave. And the rest of society at that time was very deferential. It was, yes, sir, how I would like me to jump, sir. But that has all gone away. And now we have a disrespectful society that challenges authority all the time, which is much better for progress and for change. Yes. Yeah. Okay. So like I said, it was falling right into our next comment right here from Dallas Trading Room again. Like he says, I am a 62 year old man and I was actually abused by my father growing up in the sense that he would often whip my butt with a leather belt for anything I did that he interpreted as disobedience. Why did he act like that? Because he was very neurotic. And in those days, there was the notion that a child had to be broken in, even in schools. There was, I mean, this wasn't everywhere, but there were teachers who would spank a kid's palm with a ruler or placed them to stand in the corner of a classroom. No dunce hats, guys. But as far as religion in my country, especially in the communist days, this is a common story to tell. And so feeding right into the story that you're saying, John, like the idea of like corporal punishment being done in school, I went to a school in Georgia that had that as a system. When I found out about it, I thought it was the most bizarre concept I've ever heard of. Like there was the guy who's paid to slap kids butts. Yeah, yeah. Like and then in 2020 terms, it was just like, how is that not a lawsuit every single time? It just seems very bizarre. It's like, how do you even apply for a job like that? That's great. It's Victorian. But it came out of the Victorian culture of Queen Victoria's population. Really? Okay. Okay. But yeah, like the idea of okay, this system, is it in fact abuse? And I would say yes. And if it's direct towards kids, I'd say it's child abuse, even in the event that the person's ignorant of it. And it's not so much a question of do this or without it. Everything's going to chaos. It's more of like stop abusing and try to find a better system to instill obedience, right? Because it doesn't have to be one way or the other. There's there's much room for compromise here. And I feel like while I'm on a position to tell anyone else how to raise their kid, I can at least speak for the kids on the behalf and saying they don't like getting beaten and you wouldn't like it either if you were a child in the similar situation. So we have to take care of ourselves and your child's our part of you, right? And in the sense stretching this out. So as we get to our closing terms, there is the sense of taking care of yourself through your family, but also yourself through just what you consume and eat on a regular basis, right? And I would say if you're in America and you're listening to this, the Western diet is a well known bad thing to be on in a sense. And it's not an example of like, hey, stop eating Twiggy, stop eating donuts, all that pizza and stuff like that. If you have a craving and you can go for it, do it, but do so in moderation. And if you maintain a deficit afterwards, you will lose weight. You will be healthy, or you could maintain the weight that you're at right now if you're happy with where you're at. But don't eat to excess or to satiation on bad food that America is known for because it's not good for you. That would be my final points. George, what's up? Well, the problem that I have is that who are we going to trust for dietary advice? Good question. Because there are so many quacks out there who will tell us whatever, you know, and lack of regulation for, let's say, the natural food industry or the vitamin business. I mean, it's a wild west show. Who do I trust? Boy, I'd have no answer for this. I would also throw this out to the exact same way how we deal with manners of child rearing or science. It's not so much getting a bunch of facts and working with those bunch of facts because it is a science. Nutritionists follow scientific protocols and science changes, right? And so we are constantly learning better ways of how to keep ourselves healthy. And so it's not so much a matter of who do you listen to, but what's a good way for me to know true things from false things, right? And let me work. And the best way you do that is by asking questions and being skeptical of everything, not just things that you want to be true and give those a free pass. And if you question everything, and if you're skeptical of even the things that you are adhering to and because you're willing to change it for better information, I guarantee you will fall to the same objective truth that everyone else is leading towards. It's just a question of constantly being willing to question everything. And it's not a fact that it's a bad thing to do. It's actually a very healthy thing to do. So start with the healthy mindset of questioning and being skeptical first. And then I guarantee you, if you follow that pathway, you'll get to the truth. Guaranteed. You don't have to take my word for it, but don't question what I say too. Question even that. Let's see. Larry, if you got final words on the subject for today's show. Oh, you want to mute my front? I think I pretty much covered what I wanted to say about it. Okay, cool. John Richards, plug me and final words. Free Thought Productions. That's my channel. And it's where I've not only been doing global Atheist news for over a year and Free Thought Hour for more than two years in various forms, but I've also started recently doing Thought for the Day debunked. Yay. Very cool. So this is a weekly thing now too? Or is it a separate series of videos? It's almost a daily thing because the BBC churns them out every day except Sunday. And so they give me plenty of things to debunk. I'm having fun. Good for you. Good for you, man. BBC, what are you doing? What are you doing, though? Or you're like the lone soul superhero on top of that castle behind me being like, not today. Debunked man. Something like that. We'll figure it out anyway. Okay. Larry, feel free to close out the show. Doesn't do on radio. Just in that gesture. It's fine. It's fine. Well, my content can be found at digitalfreethought.com. Be sure to click on the blog button for our radio show archives, Atheist songs and many articles on the subject of atheism. I do have a book out there called Atheism, What's It All About, available on Amazon. I have a YouTube channel. Just search for Doubter Five or Larry Rhodes. If you have any questions for the show, you can send them to AskAnAtheist at KnoxvilleAtheist.org or let'schatasee at gmail.com and we'll answer them on future shows. If you're having trouble leaving your religious beliefs behind, you can get help at recoveringfromreligion.org. If you're watching this on YouTube, be sure to like and subscribe. Thank you for joining us at the Digital Free Thought Radio Hour. Remember, you can find this show on Apple iTunes, Pocket Cast, Amazon and other podcasts everywhere. Just search for Digital Free Thought Radio Hour. Remember, everybody is going to somebody else's hell. The time to worry about it is when they prove that heavens and hells and souls are real. Until then, don't sweat it. Enjoy your life and we'll see you next week. Say bye everybody. Bye everybody.