The Scathing Atheist

by Heath Enwirght, Lucinda Lugeons and Noah Lugeons

Sponsor:

Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the new brand of spiritual sanitation products from Oral Roberts Hygiene, Incorporated; Soul-gate.

So if you’re psyche is tarnished by doubt, logic and rationality, wipe it all away with Soul-gate brand Truth-paste and Transcendental Floss.

And now the Scathing Atheist…

Intro:

It’s Thursday, it’s August 22nd and our recording studio remains suspiciously lightning bolt free.

I’m your host Noah Lugeons and from Big Gulp Prohibitive New York, New York, this is the Scathing Atheist.

In this week’s episode:

• We learn all about the power of HIV positive thinking,

• National Geographic will debut their new “Jump the Shark Week”,

• And a Christian fundamentalist will prove that either dragons are real or god isn’t

But first, the Diatribe…

Diatribe:

It seems that if you want to get an op-ed about atheism published in a British paper, you have two choices when it comes to your subject.  You could either write about what a bunch of assholes atheists are or you could write about what a bunch of racists atheists are.

Take for example a recent op-ed that appeared in Telegraph by one Brendan O’Neill.  O’Neill is an atheist who titled his column “How Atheists Became the Most Colossally Smug and Annoying People on the Planet” and then backs it up by spending the entire column being colossally smug and annoying.

I made it as far as the headline before I decided to start writing a refutation of his points for this week’s diatribe and when I finished I looked back over my notes and discovered that I’d simply written “fuck you, fuck you, fuck you” for three pages, and while that perfectly captured my sentiment after reading this crap I felt I owed our listeners a bit more specificity than that.

So let’s look at the specific points he made, and don’t worry, there aren’t many.  O’Neill isn’t so much a “facts and data” guy as he is a “anecdotal assertions and hand-waving dismissals” guy, so there isn’t much to refute.

He starts the article by lamenting a time when atheists weren’t such smug pains in the ass.  When one could say one was an atheist without people assuming that they were (quote) “a smug, self-righteous loather of dumb hicks”.  Apparently he longs for the good old days when people would just burn you alive.

Why, it’s gotten so bad that when people ask him, he doesn’t even use the “A” word; he says he’s a very lapsed Catholic.  And think about how smug and annoying we had to get before somebody would rather associate themselves with a group that actively campaigns against the rights of women, the rights of gays and the rights of children not to have unsolicited penises inserted into them.

And what horrible crimes did we commit to make Brendan ashamed of his non-belief?  Well, for starters, we make pseudo-clever statements.  The example he gives is “Did you know that Leviticus also frowns on having unkempt hair?”  How dare some atheist point out the ridiculous shit in Leviticus!  What kind of asshole would try to diffuse the exact portion of the bible that is used to justify bigotry against gays?!  What kind of asshole would point out the inconsistency of using the book to justify discrimination while ignoring the parts about shellfish?

But don’t worry, that’s not all we did wrong.  We also had the audacity to be smarter than theists and recognize that.  He takes his atheist Facebook friends to task for sharing the recent meta-analysis we discussed last week that once again showed the correlation between intelligence and atheism.  O’Neill dismisses the whole study as being “Not scientific, not research” and is, in fact, (quote) “a pre-existing belief dolled up in rags snatched from various reports and stories.”

This is a meta-analysis of scores of studies weighted by the scientific rigor with which the studies were conducted.  While one can still argue causation if one wishes, the fact that atheists are, on the average, more intelligent than believers is undeniably true.  Mountains of data back up this assertion.  But that doesn’t stop O’Neill from pretending it was some flyer a crazy guy on the subway was handing out… Pre-existing beliefs, he says.  Well, yeah, because we already knew that shit long before they did this particular study you puddle of anal sweat.

To give you a true idea about what a bunch of brain feces he was throwing against the wall, he actually says at one point that Richard Dawkins’ Twitter followers (quote) “make those Kool-Aid-drinking Jonestown folks seem level headed in comparison”.  And he says this while lamenting other people being smug and pseudo-clever.

The biggest flaw in his reasoning, of course, is that he seems to think that people’s beliefs deserve respect.  He seems to believe that people should have carde blanche to spread whatever nonsensical and demonstrably false notions about the world they care to and nobody should ever point out that they’re wrong.  Because that would be smug.  Or annoying.  And it’s way better to be ignorant.  It’s way better to live in a world surrounded by ignorance.  One where scientific advancement is stifled, women are institutionally discriminated against, gays are flatly denied rights, children are physically and psychologically abused and looming environmental disasters are ignored on the authority of a book that can be proved fallacious by a ten year old.

So in conclusion to Brendan O’Neill, a man too cowardly to publicly embrace his own atheism, a man that would rather endorse the stereotype than prove it wrong, a man that would spend a whole column writing about how superior he is to all of those atheists with their superiority complexes, I want to say that we’d rather you identify yourself as a Catholic, too.

Headlines:

Joining me for headlines tonight is the Spic to my Span Heath Enwright.  Heath, are you ready to attempt to finish this intro without offending Hispanics?

No I am not.  We’re supposed to be worried about offending Hispanics now?  How many of them are there in the world?  Mexico’s not that big of an island.  

Island?  Are you telling me the Republicans finished their moat already?

Indeed they have . . . electric fence to come.  

And if the Cuban issue persists, Pat Buchanan wants to saw off Florida like Bugs Bunny.

Great visual image to kick things off with.  In our lead story tonight, it turns out that prayer cures HIV.  In a story that fails to be too horrible to be true only because it’s true, the BBC is reporting an alarming trend of Pentecostal preachers encouraging children with HIV not to take retroviral drugs and instead put their trust in the deity who, by their reckoning, created HIV in the first place.

God created vehicular manslaughter.  Why aren’t the preachers lobbying against seat belts too?    

God created fertile rapists.  Why are preachers so mad about Roe v. Wade?

Right.  Why pray for anything?  Hey god, you know that shit you were planning to do?  Do that.  Bam, we’re done and out in time for kickoff.

Perhaps we need to remember to folk story of John Henry . . .

Religion is an awful version of John Henry, and science is the obviously superior steam powered hammer.   And in the end, science wins the contest, and religions dies of a heart attack.

The difference is,  instead of competing against a badass steel driver dude,

science is competing against a guy who helps kids with AIDS die better.

The Children’s HIV Association surveyed 19 British doctors and healthcare professionals and 10 of them reported having encountered this problem in the last 5 years.  According to their data, 29 patients of the surveyed group reported having been encouraged to stop taking their medication and 11 had done so.

So the church is batting … like .380 at this particular murder by lies scheme.  Hall of Fame numbers.

The report quotes Pentecostal preacher Stevo Atanasio from the East London Christian Church who claims his faith healing bullshit has cured blindness, deafness and terminal illnesses, but he caveats all that by saying “We never tell people not to take their medicine, though.”  Instead, he tells them (quote) “First, healing comes from within.  It’s a spiritual healing… If you are healed from the inside, you are healed from the outside as well.” (End quote)  Hard to imagine how that vision of microbiology has led to any confusion.

Sounds less like microbiology, and more like a priest giving a rationale for some divine ass-play.  

I guess he could’ve been quoted out of context.  When asked about this problem, the head of British Pentecostalism said “garbled speaking in tongues shit”

Fundamentalist preacher encourages HIV patients to forget medicine and try god instead: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23729684

And in “The Line at the DMV Could Too Suck More” news tonight, two California men were found not guilty in Superior Court after being arrested for reading the bible to people in a DMV line.

As low as the DMV enjoyment bar has been set, preachers are still worse.  Not the way to improve the experience . . .  

Maybe they should look into some girthy colonoscopy equipment for everyone to share.

A few cats getting gang-fucked on the speakers…

Maybe a denied kissing booth, where you try to kiss a girl and she awkwardly turns her head away . . . that would be fun.  Good memories.  

Pastor Bret Coronado and his faithful sidekick decided that they would augment the bountiful splendour of the department of motor vehicles by adding some pretentious caterwauling about Jesus.  They were arrested under the charge of conducting a demonstration without a permit because there’s no law that just says, “being a complete asshole”.

Every time a preacher decides to do something, they need to ask themself . . .

“If a guy with a turban and a quran did the same thing, would I be okay with it?”

“If a guy with a science book of heretical truths did the same thing, would I be okay with it?”

The right to read a bible in front of a line on public property is, of course, free speech and since they could basically say “Hey, I was just reading the bible to my buddy because he forgot his glasses and he prefers it when I stand a little further off and address him diagonally and talk really loud and emote and shit”, the judge had no choice but to dismiss the case.

Two men found not guilty for preaching at DMV line: http://www.christiannewswire.com/news/8733472617.html

And from the “Fabulously Foxy” file, Fox news… is gay.

What a shocker?  Pun intended.

The self proclaimed champagne of journalism? The Miller High LIfe of truthful news?

They’ve been treating gays like a redneck high school bully does, but it turns out they actually love the cock.  The cock is loved by Fox.  Fox loves the cocks . . . Not the box.

I’ve always said Dr. Suess should have done some erotic fiction.  This news comes to us from ultra-conservative, ultra-anti-buttsex group “America’s Survival Inc.”, which probably isn’t really incorporated.  In a press release condemning Fox News’ limp stance on gay-hating, the groups head queer-hater argued that Fox News has abandoned its viewer base by failing to properly demonize homosexuality.

If Fox News is too socially liberal for you . . . you’re the premise of a joke.  You’re not even a joke.  You’re half a joke at best.      

The setup in search of a punchline in question, Cliff Kincaid, centers his accusations around Bill O’Reilly’s semi-recent remarks about the foes of marriage equality being “Bible Thumpers”.  In a sentence that makes recipe directions look witty, Kincaid says that Fox News is (quote) “…a channel that has lost its way and that viewers should lose their way too on the remote control.”  And just to make that garbled attempt at wordplay even more confusing, he used the wrong version of “too”.  And that pisses me off like men blowing other men pisses him off.

Yeah the gay-haters conference room must be a regular Algonquin Round Table of similar brilliant philosophical witticisms.    

“…so the doctor says ‘apostate’?  I thought you said ‘prostate’!”

In his press release, Kincaid multiplies the xenophobia by citing a report from professional bigot “Peter LaBarbara”, who we discussed on episode one of this program and holds the distinction of being the first person I ever made fun of on this show, unless you count Jesus.

Fox News becomes gay: http://www.goddiscussion.com/113925/conservative-group-says-fox-news-has-become-too-gay-bible-thumpers-should-switch-channels/

And in Muslim, Illuminati, Dictatorial Anti-Christ news tonight, yet another of Obama’s secret plans to imprison Christians has been foiled by a clever conservative conspiracy enthusiast.

I foil evil plots all the time too.  Like just yesterday, remember how nothing important happened?  That was me holding the fabric of the universe together for another happy day without incident.  

And for that we thank you.

Brilliant deducer of top secret plots Gordon Klingenschmitt, also known as “Dr. Chaps”, pieced together a series of disparate facts that would seem unrelated by those of us burdened by sanity and thwarted this latest federal ruse by releasing it to the award-eligible communications juggernaut Dove TV.

This could make some carreers over at Dove TV.  This is like their … Pentagram Pentagon Papers.  

The key to uncovering this dastardly conspiracy was the push for atheist chaplains, which can only mean a concerted effort by the Obama administration to make an all-atheist military.  And why would you want an all atheist military, unless you were planning on declaring war on the vast majority of your own country and, by all reasonable accounts, yourself?

This nihilist legion Obama’s forming is actually a compromise.  He was talked down from his original plan, which was an army of re-animated aborted fetus clones.  Apparently, he’d racked up a bunch of frequent buyer points at stemcellar.com that were burning a hole in his pocket.  

With more on this story, we turn to Lucinda Lugeons who is live at the secret Illuminati Headquarters.  Lucinda, how is the mood over there.

In a word, disappointed.  Look, they were only a couple of decades away from springing this plan, and now that it’s gone public, they’ve got to go back to the drawing board.

I don’t understand.  Can’t they still push forward with their nefarious intentions?  I mean, they do control every level of government and mass media.

Yes, but once a conspiracy is exposed they can’t go through with it.  Strict Illuminati policy.  That’s why none of the crazy sounding things these people warn us about ever actually happen.

I see, and how is the council of 13 taking it?

Lot of Ben & Jerry’s.

Now… help me understand this.  Do they know how Klingenschmitt figured this out?

They think at this point that the Leprechauns gave them away.

The what?

The Leprechauns, Noah.  You see, Klingenschmitt noticed that there were no Leprechauns in the military.

But that’s because Leprechauns don’t exist.

Or the military wiped them out and destroyed all record of their existence.  Exactly like they planned to do to Christians.

So he’s saying that if there’s no Christians in the military, soldiers will be willing to kill Christians?

Of course.

It’s a proven fact that all people are willing to murder other people as long as they believe in different gods.

But I don’t follow the logic anyway.  I mean, there aren’t any elderly women or Swedish nationals in the US military either.  The army hasn’t exterminated them.

And now that you said that, they probably never will.

Oh, shit.  My bad.  Thanks for joining us tonight Lucinda.

My pleasure.

Obama to use atheist military against Christians: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/klingenschmitt-obama-creating-atheist-military-attack-christians

And in “I’d Rather Listen to Those DMV Preachers” news tonight, the National Geographic Channel is hoping to capture a piece of the depressingly lucrative “Guys with beards doing jobs” entertainment market with a new reality show about snake handling Christians called “Look at What a Bunch of Dumb Asses We Found”.

Yeah, there’s nothing negative about snakes in the bible.  What’s the worst that could happen?

Among the show’s stars is one Jamie Coots, a Pentecostal Lunatic from the Full Gospel Tabernacle in Jesus Name Church of Middlesbury, Kentucky, which clearly got it’s name after a long and frustrating search on Go-Daddy-dot-com.

“Okay check the Pentecostal Front of Judea. Fuck!!! Check Pentecostal Front of Judea or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love God.  Fuck!!!  Dot Net?  FUCK!!!”

In a Nat Geo press release, Coots stresses the importance of showing people that there is more to them than just handling snakes.  And recognizing that, National Geographic points out that for those viewers who aren’t tuning in to see some brainless zealot get bitten by something that exists only to bite him, they offer other shows.

“You guys aren’t just gonna focus on the snakes right?  Because I feel like that show about the nudist midget religion didn’t have any segments delving into the minutiae of their belief system.  We’re not some crazy naked short people to be mocked.  We’re magical snake handlers that demand to be taken seriously.”

The snake handling tradition in Pentecostalism centers around a passage in Mark that most Christians have the sense to ignore.  It’s the part where we learn all the superpowers you get for believing in Jesus.  Included among the mystical abilities are immunity to poison and serpents, which means that any biblical literalist who won’t drink arsenic is full of shit.

Although if they did drink the arsenic, they’d only be slightly less full of shit.  

Biblical literalism requires a colon with more tube than London.

New Reality show to feature “Snake Handling Christians”: http://www.religionnews.com/2013/08/14/a-reality-tv-show-about-snake-handlers-to-debut-in-september/

And from the “If Spiderman wasn’t real, how would they know what he looks like to draw him?” file, Creationist Darek Isaacs unintentionally offered further evidence of just how stupid the doctrine of biblical inerrancy is when he recently suggested that if dragons didn’t exist, they couldn’t have been in the bible.

“So if God doesn’t exist, I suppose some PERSON just came along and wrote a book that happens to correspond perfectly to the word of God?!?  Quite a coincidence, don’t you think?!?”

If you handed a creationist a Taboo card with “God” and “Bible” on the banned list, they would be incapable of forming or communicating a single thought.  They’d start violently twitching, trying to play charades, until steam came out of their ears and they exploded.  

Whether it works or not, it would be worth a try.  In an effort to demonstrate that this really is as stupid as I’m implying, here’s the basic thesis, from the window licker himself:

(Soundclip)

So yeah, ten horned, seven headed dragons, giants, demons, witches, sea monsters, zombies, unicorns,  and talking donkeys, all proven to exist with that one statement.

Sounds like this guy’s pretty confident.  I think he’s ready for the arsenic test.  

What’s the opposite of a martyr?  He’d be an accidental atheist martyr.

If you can be tricked by Sicilian reasoning into killing yourself with iocane powder, you probably deserve it.   

Creationist argues dragons must have been real; they’re in the bible: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/15/creationist-darek-isaacs-dragons-biblical-times_n_3762395.html?utm_hp_ref=religion&ir=Religion

And finally tonight, in “The Booby Trap Joke Would Be Too Easy” news, Heathrow Airport is on an elevated terror alert amid fears that women suicide bombers might be carrying bombs in their tits.

Really?!?  A female suicide bomber?  What does she get, 72 jihadees?  A star-trek convention?

As frightening as this is,  I think we can all agree that it marks an important step toward gender equality in the Muslim world.

They’re finally letting women into the workforce, but just as suicide bombers.  

Citing fears that explosives could be concealed within breast implants, security checks have been increased leading to longer lines and 15 year old boys offering to do volunteer work.  Terrorism experts say that this is a serious threat so we definitely shouldn’t be snickering about it.  Because even though the word boob is really funny, people exploding isn’t.

Isn’t a woman in a burqa with breast implants already suspicious?  

Seems like most of the cosmetic surgery for these women would focus on the exposed upper nose region.  Unibrow cleavage implants and the like.

I honestly don’t know what scares me more, the undetectable explosives on airplanes or the invasive security procedures this might be used to justify.

Excuse me, ma’am. Before you board the plane, please step over here for some routine DVDA.  Why double vaginal, double anal?  I hate to make a bad pun right before I frisk you like a bowling ball, but you could say we’ve beefed up security twofold.

Al-Qaeda Thought to have developed “breast bombs”: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/breast-implants-suicide-bomb-threat-2172911

Okay, before you go for the triple I think we’re gonna have to close out headlines tonight.  Heath, thanks as always for joining me.

Jumanji !!!

And when we come back you’ll have missed us more than you expected to.

Calendar:

It’s time once again for the atheist calendar portion of the show.  This is the monthly moment we set aside to highlight some of the great atheist, skeptical and secular events taking place around the country and around the world.

And as it happens, September turns out to be a hell of a month to meet up with other free thinkers.  We’ll start out in the deep south… no, deeper than that.  We’re goin’ all the way to the land right under the land down under.  The New Zealand Skeptics Conference is coming up in Wellington from the 6th to the 8th of September.  They’ve put together a list of speakers that’s pretty impressive, including my 3rd favorite living astrophysicist, Dr. Pamela Gay.

New Zealand Skeptics Conference in Wellington the 6th to th 8th: http://conference.skeptics.org.nz/

Our next event is a little closer to home for the overwhelming majority of earth’s population.  The Pennsylvania State Atheist/Humanist 2013 Conference is only a couple of weeks away.  It takes place in Philadelphia on the weekend of September 13th.  A loaded speaker list includes Seth Andrews, Jamila Bey, Jamie Ian Swiss, Jerry DeWitt, JT Eberhard, Sean Faircloth, George Hrab, Joe Nickell, David Silverman and a bunch of people I’ve never heard of who will probably also be awesome.

Pennsylvania State Atheist/Humanist 2013 Conference in Philadelphia, 13th to the 15th: http://atheistpa.org/

If you’re anywhere near Nebraska, and lets face it, you’re not, you could check out Apostacon on the 20th through the 22nd.  A lot of the folks I just mentioned will be there, but so will Dan Barker, friend of the show Darrel Ray, Matt Dillahunty and Aron Ra. Also, even though he won’t physically be there, Richard Dawkins is Skyping in, so this is probably the best historical reason to ever be in Omaha.

Apostacon, in Omaha, 20th to the 22nd: http://www.apostacon.org/

But wait, there’s more.  On the weekend of the 27th we’ve got the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s 36th annual convention in Madison, Wisconsin.  They’ve got a really awesome lineup that includes some great musical and comedy acts including the incomparable Julia Sweeney, godless sensation Shelley Segal and a bunch of speakers that would make it worth going even if it wasn’t for all the comedy and music.

36th Annual National FFRF Convention in Madison, 27th to 28th: http://ffrf.org/outreach/convention/convention-2013-madison-wis

And finally don’t forget that September 30th is International Blasphemy Day.  Coinciding with the publication of some now-infamous Danish cartoons that ultimately led to 137 deaths, this is a day to raise our voices in sacrilege and to send a message to the world about just how archaic modern blasphemy laws are.

Blasphemy Day, the 30th: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasphemy_Day

That does it for the September Calendar, but don’t forget that there’s still time to make the Atheist Alliance of America’s National Convention in Boston over labor day weekend.  http://atheistallianceamerica.org/index.php/2-uncategorised/12-atheist-alliance-of-america-national-convention

If you’d like more information on that conference or any of the events discussed on this segment, you’ll find links on the shownotes for this episode.

And as always, if you’re involved in an atheist, skeptical or secular event that needs a little free publicity, get in touch.  You’ll find all the contact info on the contact page at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.

Feedback:

A recent increase in listenership has led to a recent increase in listener feedback and because of the influx of emails, Heath and I have decided to start doing a segment every few shows where we’ll respond to some listener feedback on the air.  So Heath, what’s our first email?

Rod in Louisiana writes us to say:

You guys should start doing a segment every few shows where you respond to some listener feedback on the air.

Sorry, Rod, it’s a good idea but it’s been done to death.

The next email comes to us from FatFett1 in south Georgia.  Not a question really, but a suggested use for the podcast.  He says:

When the line is too long at Dairy Queen I put Scathing Atheist on speaker and suddenly I have the place to myself.

I hear this also works well if the line is too long for communion.

Next we have a question from Ari who asks if we have any advice for how to tell his parents that he is an atheist.

So yeah, to be honest, between the two of us we have no relevant experience here.  Heath’s parents are atheists and mine probably knew I was an atheist before I did so there was never a sit down moment for either of us.

Just come out and say it: “Mom, Dad . . . I read a non-fiction book . . . and I liked it.”

The best advice I can give you is be prepared for the worst.  There’s no ticking clock here or anything, so if you’re risking will-altering alienation you’ll definitely want to consider your timing.  But it’s also worth saying that honoring thy mother and father only counts if they’re not complete assholes.

And it doesn’t count because you’re an atheist now.  

There’s no actual moral dictum that says you have to have a close relationship with any particular member of your family so if they’re not willing to accept you for who you are, maybe you’re better off cementing relationships with people who are.

Our next email comes to us from the land Down Under and Roger the Australian is going to stand in for a shit load of people that have emailed us with the same sentiment.

Roger says, Hey guys and gal, I love the show.  Really wish it was an hour.  Keep up the good work.

So yeah.  We wish it was an hour too.

Look, we could make an hour long show one of three ways.  One way would be for me to just talk at normal human speed which, as my wife will tell you, isn’t going to happen.  The other would be to put in twice as many hours as we already do writing, prepping, recording and editing the show and the third would be to make 30 minutes of it suck every week.

So we can’t promise twice the length, but we’ll try to double the girth this week.

So as flattered as we are that you want twice as much of us, for now you’ll have to settle for listening to us on “slow”.

And on to the “It’s okay to offend people who aren’t me” file, Hexa Helicene took us to task on Twitter for last week’s top ten reasons why you should give your money to us instead of starving kids in Africa: Scathing Atheist podcast does donation ask by putting down starving children. Low class move. Pick on pope and wing nuts.

Yeah, sorry about that.  We assumed anyone who would be unable to recognize that as a tongue in cheek admission that there are plenty of more important things you could spend your money on than this podcast would also be too stupid to download a podcast.

I’m actually surprised that we’ve managed to conceal our seething hatred for starving children for this long, to be honest.

I guess we could defend ourselves against this charge by pointing out that as tasteless as the bit was, we never actually “put down starving children”, but why bother when somebody else has already done so in a manner more eloquent than I could manage.  So we’ll close our feedback segment with an email from Dawn:

Just a thought on the whole money & starving kids thing–

I think giving money to any atheist cause is, in fact, a move toward eliminating those things that have caused a great deal of famine in the first place.  From the “settling” of traditionally nomadic peoples into farming land that was never meant for farming to the simply incomprehensible practice of denying birth control to the poorest of the poor, religious organizations have done much to spread famine and poverty further than natural forces could ever have done.

So that’s gonna do it for our inaugural feedback segment here, but if you have a question that you’d like us to respond to, you can find all the contact info on the contact page at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.

And if you want to up your odds of us actually answering it, keep it short and make it as easy as possible for us to respond with some hilarious shit.   

Outro:

Before we compress the soundfiles tonight I wanted to remind everybody that we offer a little bonus blasphemy over on our erratically published blog at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.  We don’t post often enough, but there are some fun archival posts there if you’re ever looking for something to read on the toilet.  As a special limited time bonus offer, newcomers to our blog can witness some dumbass apologist desperately try to justify biblical genocide while everyone else points and laughs.

Also if you haven’t checked us out on Stitcher yet, you should really do that.  We’re finally starting to compete with some of the big boys on our Stitcher ranking and moving up that list is a great way for us to grow our audience.  I’m also a huge personal fan of what Stitcher is doing, so if you haven’t checked out the Stitcher app, do that.  Seriously.  Because it’s free and I hear you like the podcasts.

Of course I need to thank Heath for allowing me to continually bask in his wit, I need to thank Lucinda for lending us her dulcet tones and I need to thank Steve over at the “A Matter of Doubt” podcast for providing this week’s Farnsworth quote and also for providing a really solid podcast.  He’s got a great voice for it and he’s really got a knack for the long-form interview so if you enjoy deconversion stories and in depth interviews with movers and shakers in the movement, definitely give him a try.  They’re doing a great job there and really aren’t getting the iTunes love they deserve.  You’ll find a link to their homepage on the shownotes for this episode.

But most of all we need to thank this week’s most exceptional people, Shelby, John, Other John, Scott, Lash, April, Don, Magnus, Michael, Viki, Richard, other Richard, Ullrich, Marcel and Takaro who have earned a spot in my heart, a spot in this segment and a spot in my inordinately fortified zombie bunker by giving us money.  Not everybody has the foresighted benevolence to give us money, but if you’d like to fend off the undead alongside Shelby, John, Other John, Scott, Lash, April, Don, Magnus, Michael, Viki, Richard, other Richard, Ullrich, Marcel and Takaro, you’ll find the donate button on the right side of our homepage.

It’s worth noting that thanks to the extraordinary generosity of our listeners, Heath and I have now paid off our initial equipment investment, all of our hosting fees and are now fast approaching Mongolian minimum wage for the time we spend on the show so seriously and sincerely, thank you all for your support, your encouragement and your money.

And an almost as big thanks to all the people who help us out by leaving rave reviews on iTunes, sharing our stuff on Facebook and the like, follow us on Twitter, subscribe to us on YouTube and send us messages of inspiration.

That’s all we’ve got for you tonight.  We’ll be back in 168 hours with more but in the meantime, if you have questions, comments or death threats, you’ll find all the contact info on the Contact Page at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.  All the music used in this episode was written and performed by yours truly and yes, I did have my permission.