Archive
Episode 69 – Partial Transcript
by Heath Enwright and Noah & Lucinda Lugeons
(Note: Transcript contains elements that were edited out of the episode due to time constraints)
Warning: This podcast contains obscene gestures.
Sponsor:
Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the new faith based tire sealant Cruci-fix-a-flat. Every twelve ounce can comes complete with no ingredients, because if god wanted you to get to work, he wouldn’t have put that nail in the road. Now get on your knees and thank him for not giving your children boils.
Cruci-fix-a-flat, because who needs a spare, when you’ve got a prayer?
And now, the Scathing Atheist
Intro:
It’s Thursday,
It’s June 12th,
And this big soccer thing is already getting in the way of NFL training camp coverage.
I’m Noah Lugeons,
I’m Heath Enwright, and from modern day Gomorrah, New York, New York,
And almost as modern as Gomorrah, Podunk, Georgia, this is the Scathing Atheist
In this week’s episode,
- The FFRF will make Iowa sit in the corner and stare at the wall for the rest of the period,
- Catholics will buttfuck kids and lie about it… again…
- And India still refuses to get down with the Sikhness.
But first, the diatribe.
Diatribe:
I saw one of the most epic beat downs in the history of theological debate last week and you may have seen it, too. If not, I’ll have a link for it on the shownotes and even though it’s long as fuck and your blood will boil every time the Christian sperm flake opens his mouth, it’s totally worth the two hours.
The title of the debate was “Is it reasonable to believe in god?”. Arguing in the negative was Matt Dillahunty of Atheist Experience fame. Arguing in the “La-la-la, I can’t hear you” was presuppositionalist testicle laceration Sye Ten Bruggencate. And his position was even more ridiculous than his name.
So after watching Bruce Lee fight the ensign in the red shirt for an hour and a half they do a Q&A in this overwhelmingly atheist audience. And the whole reason I bring this up is that one person sets up his question by asking, “Do you agree that democracy is the best system in a civilized society?” and Bizarro world Gandolfini shakes his head; “The best form of government is a theocracy”, and then he adds, of course, “A Christian theocracy.”
The whole audience gasped, but I doubt any of them were shocked that he believed that. I think they were just surprised he admitted it. Sure. I think democracy is the second best form of government behind a complete dictatorial monarchy that I’m in charge of. But I recognize that the latter isn’t practical so I settle for democracy.
And make no mistake, that exactly what the theocrats are proposing. When Sye Bruggencate says he thinks “God” should be in charge of our government, he’s obviously talking about his interpretation of his religion’s god, who conveniently feels exactly the same way that Sye Bruggencate does on every issue. We’re not electing Jimmy Stewart, we’re electing Harvey. We just need Jimmy Stewart to tell us what the invisible rabbit says.
Now, most Christians wouldn’t have been so honest, but you’re lying to yourself if you think they don’t agree. They love separation of church and state when it keeps them from having to pay taxes or provide comprehensive health care, but that’s where their love ends. They may pay lip service to it and if they’re part of a minority religion they might really believe in it, but when it comes down to it, they all want to put their god in charge of your country.
Everywhere you look in America, the Christians are fighting for their theocracy, and not just in honest ways. Can’t win the abortion issue through the courts or the ballot boxes? Well then just buy up all the hospitals and cut out the service. In the meantime, bullying, harassment and open calls for violence should suffice.
Your ideas don’t hold up to in academic fields? Well then just sneak them into classrooms every chance you get. And between now and then, just make your own schools and museums and seminars and colleges and peer-reviewed journals.
Can’t win in the court of public opinion? Well just make your own TV channels, radio stations, magazines, books and amusement parks and hide the real world from your children. With a little luck, you can just outbreed those socially responsible secularists one litter at a time.
You and I can disagree… hell, we probably do disagree on a lot of shit. But we can have a conversation about it and work out our differences and compromise. Hell, we can even change our minds. But if the person you’re debating thinks they’re a proxy for god then there’s no room for accommodation. Their opinion is infallible.
You can see this same MO in any number of issues… contraception, gay rights, science education, stem cell research, gender equality… doesn’t matter what the rest of the country has to say about it. Or the rest of the world. How could they possibly be swayed by the opinion of people who disagree with god? It doesn’t matter if it’s a small majority like it is with gay marriage or an overwhelming majority like we have with contraception. They will stand against demonstrable science, archaeological evidence and the laws of logic themselves! So why would we ever think something as insignificant as the majority will slow them down?
Headlines:
Joining me for headlines tonight is Turing Test Champion Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to mimic genuine human speech?
That’s very an interesting point. Perhaps I should, too.
Well, by the Facebook standard, I guess you nailed it.
Like Pontius Pilate … In our lead story tonight, House Majority Leader and “Worst Jew Ever” Eric Cantor was defeated in the Republican primary for Virginia’s 7th district by Tea Party prospect Dave Brat. This is extremely embarrassing for a few reasons: 1) Dave Brat is fucking awful … 2) It’s the first time a House Majority Leader has lost a party primary since the position was created in 1899 … And 3) The GOP just lost it’s “Token Congressional Jew”, so they’ll need to grow another one in the stem cell lab they just shut down. Awkward conversation …
Yeah, but if he rises again three days later, he gets his own religion. As far as consolation prizes go, that’s pretty solid.
Normally I’d be all about a conservative asshole like Cantor getting ousted in humiliation. But he lost because he wasn’t enough of a conservative asshole for Virginia 7. That’s right! … Eric Cantor – who supports legislative control of Fallopian tubes but not assault rifles – was too liberal for them. And “liberal” in this case, is Virginian for “killed Jesus”.
Of course, the main issue Brat exploited was Cantor’s inability to sufficiently hate Mexicans, but the Messiah-cide certainly didn’t help. He also took hits for raising the debt ceiling and eventually agreeing to end the government shut down, and that really played into Brat’s “Thunderdome 2014” platform.
Right … So Dave Brat – unlike Cantor – “unflinchingly” supports the Republican Creed, which includes the belief that: (quote) “Faith in God, as recognized by our Founding Fathers[,] is essential to the moral fiber of the Nation.” (end quote) …
And the last thing we need is moral constipation.
Not sure why it would matter what 18th century slave owners with wooden teeth thought, but just for the record, our founding fathers were secularists. Actually, that was the whole point. So faith in god as they recognized it, was – at best – something personal, that you shut the fuck up about when dealing with real-life things like organizing a society.
Eric Cantor not Republican enough: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/06/10/dave-brat-who-just-unseated-house-majority-leader-eric-cantor-believes-faith-in-god-is-essential-for-morality
And in this week’s installment of ridiculous bullshit excuses for Catholic child-fucking, we have Archbishop Robert J. Carlson, who claims there’s too much gray area about when you can and can’t legally stick your dick in a kid’s ass. <Yeah, it’s fuzzy…> Not at the age Catholic priests like them, but yeah, eventually they’re fuzzy. Now you’ll recall that last week we had the story of a lawyer arguing on behalf of the New Jersey diocese that priests are definitionally off the clock whilst diddling children. In a blatant display of one upmanship, Archbishop Carlson said during a deposition last week that he was unaware that there was a law against child-rape.
So as we often must qualify … This actually happened. Carlson was asked if he knew that pedophilia was illegal in the 70’s, and he responded: (quote) “I’m not sure whether I knew it was a crime or not. I understand today it’s a crime.” (end quote) … Then he was asked when he picked up this important nugget of wisdom, and he couldn’t recall … “They send out so many memos. We’re raping kids. Now we’re not. Now we’re catching, but not pitching. Now mouth stuff only. It’s impossible to keep track.”
Yeah, well the Memento guy of pedophelia probably questioned his lawyers advice on this one, to which his lawyer says, “Either you get some damn broad amnesia or you admit publicly that you knowingly allowed one of your priests to sexually torture children without exhibiting the slightest pang of humanity. So at that point sociopathic perjurer is actually the better option from a PR perspective.”
Archbishop not sure whether child-rape was a crime: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/06/10/catholic-archbishop-tells-lawyer-he-wasnt-sure-whether-raping-a-child-was-a-crime-back-in-the-1970s/
“Law?!? Child rape?!? Against?!? These are just meaningless mouth noises.” … Moving on … In “What if everyone carried a sword?” news, the Sikh relgion did the exact opposite of dispelling stereotypes, when an actual large-scale sword fight broke out during what appears from photographs to be a brightly-colored scarf-hat convention, at the Golden Temple in Amrisar, India.
But yeah, they should totally be allowed to carry those fuckers onto public transit. Because I’m sure Sikhs are way more respectful on buses than they are in the holiest shrine in their entire fucking religion.
From what I gather, the mustard yellow guys wanted to give their speech to the crowd first, but cornflower blue wasn’t having it. <No they weren’t> And since they were right there, on the set of Aladdin, with a staircase, a barrel, and an apple cart ready to go, they settled the dispute with a blatantly choreographed stage fighting sequence. Mustard yellow finally won after doing a backflip and yelling: “Haha!!! I’m not left handed either!!!”
Yeah, as cool as a group of elderly zealots swinging scimitars at each other sounds, this was the worst swordfight since the second Legend of Zelda.
So they were actually gathered to honor key martyrs for their now-booming religion, on the 30th anniversary of Operation Blue Star – a 1984 raid by Indian troops that killed over 400 Sikhs who were suspected armed separatists. They were at least armed, because part of the Sikh uniform for dudes, is one of those enormous curved bad guy swords.
But it makes you wonder if there’s some infinite regress of dead Sikhs going on here. You know, they make a holiday to mark this battle too, and then a swordfight breaks out at that one, so they make another holiday to mark that battle and so on… there’s gotta be a more efficient ways of ridding the world of Sikhism.
I’m sure we can think of something. In fact, 30 seconds on the…
Sorry, bro, there’s a line. No 30 seconds’ bits for genocide strategies.
You’re such a tease!
Swordfight breaks out in Sikh temple during ceremony: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/06/sikhs-clash-golden-temple-amritsar-india
And in “Iowa don’t owe-a you nothing” news tonight, the state of Iowa’s “Vision Iowa” program has seen the light and decided not to invest $140,000 of taxpayer money in the construction of a Christian themed park in Sioux City. “Shepherd’s Gardens” boasts $5000 worth of crosses, five designated “prayer spaces” and a website that loads up like AOL dialup.
What the fuck is a prayer space?!? When you’re talking to God, do the acoustics really matter?!?
Upon hearing of the state’s intent to partially fund a park intended to (and I quote) “[Counteract the] rise of secular influence in our culture”, the secular influence in our culture told them to fuck off. Specifically, the FFRF sent a letter explaining that this was (quote) “…one of the most egregious grants for a religious purpose FFRF has encountered” (end quote).
Yeah this seemed like a secret shopper testing the FFRF guy who’s in charge of Iowa … “We’d like to impose a tax on being Jewish, Muslim, and atheist to account for the terrible weather and school shootings they cause. And we want them to buy us a park. And a shrubbery.” No. We’re not doing that.
After first proposing that the state pay only for the non-Christian aspects of the entirely Christian park, a solution on par with pointing out that six out of seven orifices weren’t raped, legal counsel for the state and part time toilet paper tensile integrity guardian Timothy J. Whipple informed the FFRF that the board ultimately rescinded the grant.
Iowa capitulates on planned $140,000 grant for Christian themed park: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/06/07/christian-themed-park-will-no-longer-be-getting-a-140000-boost-from-iowan-taxpayers/
And in “Goldman Sacks Entire SEC” news, the financial watchdog agency that monitors the Vatican … is employed by the Vatican!!! And it seems Pope Fransparency felt the meaningless group of Italian people he hireld to ignore Nazi gold transactions, should be fired and replaced by an equally meaningless group of international people … that will ignore Nazi gold transactions.
The WWE referees of financial watchdogs. But as inept as these guy are at detecting fraud, I’ll do them the credit of saying that even they would have called that fucking goalie interference in game 2 of the Stanley Cup Finals. I mean… are you fucking kidding me!? He was butt-raping Lundqvist mid shot! For fuck’s sake…
So the Vatican has been blatantly and egregiously violating international anti-money-laundering standards for centuries. People just now realized this apparently, so to alleviate all the concern, Catholicism hired it’s own watchdog in 2010. Not surprisingly, this accomplished nothing. So in 2012, they put Swiss anti-money-laundering expert Rene Bruelhart in charge. Surprise twist … Turns out anti-money laundering experts are almost always also pro-money-laundering experts. And when the board members complained about being kept in the dark by the new transparency guru … they got fired.
In Pope Frandelay Industry’s defense, though, he’s already seen that the international media doesn’t see any difference between empaneling people to do something and doing something, and doing something is hard.
Pope Francis fires entire financial watchdog panel: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/05/pope-francis-bank-watchdog-board_n_5451637.html?utm_hp_ref=religion
And in “The only people who talk about ducks more than my autocorrect” news tonight, Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson has announced the imminent publication of a new bible that will focus on the core values of faith, family, fellowship and fag-hating. In addition to the regular bible, this version will include more than one hundred articles written by a man who thinks “Whoo hee hee” is a word and that the term “A real man” can precede the word “don’t”.
Do you wish poor people would just die already, but found that Atlas Shrugged was way too many pages??? Do you hate gay people, but couldn’t even get to Leviticus??? Then you’ll definitely be able to struggle through our new book … “I’m Borderline Illiterate, but God is my Ghost Writer” – by Phil Robertson
Publisher “Thomas Nelson Bible Group” is excited about the new project, pointing out that Wal-Mart just can’t keep the Duck Dynasty merch in stock. Vice President and Associate Publisher Robert Stanford told reporters, (quote) “We are honored and excited to be working with Phil and his son on this new Bible. Our demographic research shows that as long as the cover art contains these filthy rednecks and a cross, the rest can be Ipsum Lorem… it’s not like these fuckers can read.”
People who bought this book also bought “Mass Opiates for Dummies”, “Learn to Read”, and unreasonably large firearms … And a book by that same title.
Now, in case Robertson is listening, I think we should toss out some ideas for him, so 30 Seconds on the clock; proposed changes for the redneck bible. Go!
Like a more clear cut stance on homosexuality?
That would be a good start, but I was thinking about stuff like Jesus turning the water into Old Milwaukee.
The Book of John Deere
The lying down with beasts thing is more of a guideline than a rule.
As long as it’s a girl sheep …
I’m picturing The Last Supper at Cracker Barrel … And Jesus has the power mullet.
Say what you will about Cracker Barrel, but their gravy-fried gravy is awesome. Okay, so… Instead of Damascus, Paul was on the way to Dollywood.
When Jacob wrastles God, he wins by using a folding chair when the ref’s not looking.
They only have six commandments because they needed room in the ark for a couple beers and some bait.
For the Appalachian folk, God breathes life into the mouths, not the noses. They never learn the nose version, but now they know why.
Three words: Bandana of thorns
Twist ending: Jesus was dead the whole time. So was his dad. And the guy from Die Hard.
And of course, in this one Lot’s daughters don’t have to trick him.
Duck Dynasty stars to release their own redneck bible: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/05/duck-dynasty-bible_n_5452828.html?utm_hp_ref=religion
Jesus of NASCAReth … Awful!!! Who writes this fucking stuff?!? Puns aren’t funny!!! … And finally tonight, in a follow up to a story from last week, from the “Have your Cock, and your KKKake and Eat it Too” file, Richard Land – of the Southern Evangelical Seminary – has come to the defense of the homophobic Colorado bakery owner Jack Phillips, who refused to make a drag bundt cake for a gay wedding.
It’s about time somebody spoke up on behalf of the straights. And to be honest, I’ve been wondering where the Southern Evangelical Seminary falls on the “rights of gays to eat cakes” issue.
Well to help everyone understand his position, Land decided his thoughts would be best expressed with a hate group analogy … Because people get those. He claimed that laws against bigotry are unfair because they wouldn’t allow black bakery owners to refuse KKK pastry requests. Not sure if there’s any particular DNA sequences for hating blacks and Jews, but regardless, being gay … and Klanning … are at least slightly different.
They’re just two different ways of getting the sheets dirty if you ask me. Seriously. They both have parades, they both ride steeds, they both appreciate a well hung black man…
Earlier this year, Dick Land also dropped this science brilliant bomb: (quote) “A high percentage of adult male homosexuals in America were sexually molested when they were children […] Anybody who’s a counselor […] will tell you that.” (end quote) … So if kids would just avoid getting molested, and spend more time in church where that can’t happen … they wouldn’t keep catching the GAIDS, and we wouldn’t even have this cake problem.
Pastor: “Forcing a Christian to bake cake for gays is like forcing blacks to join the KKK”: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/05/pastor-gay-wedding-cake-kkk_n_5453277.html?utm_hp_ref=religion&ir=Religion
Well I guess that’s as close to an AIDS joke as we’re gonna get tonight, so we’ll close the headlines there. Heath, thanks as always.
Why is it so hard to cure AIDS?
Guess I begged for that. I don’t know, why is it so hard to cure AIDS?
It’s hard to get the mice to butt-fuck.
And when we come back you’ll pretend you didn’t miss us, but we’ll know you did.
Calendar:
It’s time for the Atheist Calendar portion of the show; this is the sporadic few minutes we set aside every 4 to 10 episodes or so to bring you up to speed on all the great secular, atheist and skeptical meetups going on around the country and around the world.
We’ll just assume it’s too late to talk you into hitting up a June conference and start off this week in Minneapolis on July 4th weekend, where SkepchickCon will be taking place within the larger umbrella of ConVergence. Debbie Goddard, Surly Amy, Rebecca Watson and PZ Myers to name a few and what the fuck else would you be doing in Minneapolis?
The following weekend we have an even cooler con in a much cooler place. The Amazing Meeting is the biggest annual skeptical conference in the country, they’re in their sixteenth year and it gets better every time. This year’s speakers include Daniel Dennett, Steven Novella, Julia Galef, Richard Wiseman, Eugenie Scott and if you haven’t been keeping up, they’ve recently added Bill Nye to the guest list. So yeah. Beg, borrow, steal, hitchhike, whatever.
http://www.amazingmeeting.com/
For our listeners in Brisbane, you’ve got a Skepticamp event coming up next month with friend of the show Jake Farr-Wharton from the Imaginary Friends show, Ross from Skeptically challenged and a host of other people I’ve never heard of that will probably still be awesome. That’s coming up on the 19th of July.
The Atheist Alliance of America will be holding their annual convention in Seattle this year. That’s August 7th through the 10th and includes Sean Faircloth, Steven Pinker, Richard Carrier and more. I heard great things about their con last year and look forward to hearing great things about this one in the near future.
http://www.aaaseattle2014.com/speakers.html
As always, you can find more information about any of these events on the shownotes for this episode at Scathing Atheist (dot) com. And if you’re involved with an event that needs a little PR, I’m happy to plug it. You’ll find the contact info on that very same website I was just telling you about.
Poem – Proverbs
There’s a pamphlet’s worth of wisdom buried deep within the Bible.
Between condemning all this random shit and killing Jewish rivals,
Between the stoning and the genocide, and the fifty-shekel price,
One pays for raping women, there’s a bit of good advice.
Though the majority of what’s in this lengthy book is quite unsavory,
Like the sexist, racist, homophobic stuff and nods to slavery.
There’s a begrudging bit of decent stuff speckled here and there,
But it’s as hard to find as black people in films by Peter Weir.
So I forgive you if you give up in a state of disenchantment,
When they miss a moral statement with two thirds of their commandments.
But I assure you if you read enough, and keep an open mind,
You’ll be surprised by bits of noble stuff you’ll occasionally find.
Take Proverbs, for example; with it’s nine hundred fifteen lines,
Most of which are useless shit, that you could see if you were blind.
A couple more are awful, and some are quite misleading,
But the twelve or so left over are certainly worth reading.
Like Proverbs Fifteen One, for instance, which reminds us to ask nicely,
And despite the verbose shit so far, it says this one concisely.
Or Twenty Seven; Two, in which it tells you not to gloat…
Which makes you wonder if god ever even read the book he wrote.
In chapter fourteen it explains that to believe on faith makes you a fool
And at the end of twenty four it all but states the golden rule.
Or chapter thirty one, which says to drown your grief in wine
Or the nineteenth verse of chapter five which says that titty fucking’s fine.
It’s relative, of course, as this books filled with vile spite,
But after Joshua, Mein Kampf is only kind of impolite.
But compared to all the books that don’t approve of genocide,
Proverbs is a sorry choice for someone’s moral guide.
Take for instance chapter one, verses twenty six through twenty eight;
Which reminds us that the lord will mock your broken-hearted fate.
In two and five, six, seven, nine and twenty one through thirty;
We learn you can’t trust women, as they’re odious and dirty.
Those filthy floozy harlot sluts, maliciously malign;
So make sure to choose a modest girl for your two-hundredth concubine.
Owning slaves is fine as long as you, abuse them all to hell.
Just treat them like your kids whom you, I guess should beat as well.
Yes, even in this relatively good part of the book,
I’d forgive someone for thinking that the translator mistook
The Hebrew for pinata for the english word for child.
So even when it’s better, the Bible’s still to be reviled.
Outro:
Before we slip into our PJs tonight, we’ve got a big announcement to make. After only twelve weeks, we’ve reached our Patreon goal of five hundred dollars per episode which means that starting next week, this show is going to be an hour long.
Now, we recognize that that’s gonna take a lot more work and we don’t want to risk lowering the overall quality of the show, so if we find that we can’t record an hours worth of podcast for you every week without sacrificing the level of quality you’ve come to expect from us, we’ll rethink this thing and find another way to fulfill our obligation to our patrons. So over the next four weeks, bear with us as we make the transition and by all means, drop us a line and let us know what you think of the changes.
I also want to let everyone know that just because we reached that goal, it doesn’t mean you have to stop donating to us on Patreon. We’ve set up a new goal that will allow us to significantly improve the quality of the show and churn out a lot more content for you. If we can reach $850 an episode on Patreon, Heath has agreed to quit his job and join me in my sub-Bible-Beltian exile. So if you haven’t already signed up for a per episode donation at Patreon (dot) com, please do exactly that and help reunite Heath and me.
That’s all the blasphemy we have for you tonight, but we’ll be back in 168 hours with more. If you can’t wait that long, you can always find little nuggets of Scatheism on our blog, our Twitter feed and our Facebook page… and I might as well say that there’s stuff on our Google Plus page too since nobody will ever know that there isn’t.
Can’t close things out without thanking Heath for begrudgingly succumbing to my relentless pressure to double the length of the show. I need to thank Lucinda for all the work she’s gone through to get back to fucking strength, of course I need to thank Pastor Roy of the Catfish Creek Trailer Park for begrudgingly providing this week’s Farnsworth Quote. He’s a regular guest on the Atheists On Air podcast which is absolutely phenomenal if you haven’t checked it out. You’ll find it linked on the shownotes for this episode, of course.
But most of all, of course, I need to thank this week’s most crucial chordates; Aaron, Bryce, Chad, Mike, Jason, Erik, Sakura, Jen, The Just, Kim, Crystal, Paul, Alex, Sonja, Jerry, Anne, Pascal, Henk, Raymond, Dan, other Mike, John, Kevin and Frank. Aaron, Bryce, Chad, Mike, Jason and Erik, whose tongues are ribbed for her pleasure; Sakura, Jen, The Just, Kim, Crystal and Paul, who have enough gravitas to bend light; Alex, Sonja, Jerry, Anne, Pascal and Henk, whose IQs have parentheses and greek letters in them; and Raymond, Dan, other Mike, John, Kevin and Frank, who have to schedule their erections with air traffic controllers.
These twenty-two selfless, soulless, sinless specimens of secularity have earned their way into my heart, my outro and my zombie bunker if that ever becomes necessary this week by giving us money. If you too would like to earn my love, my outrageous flattery and your share of those freeze dried legumes, you’ll find the donate button on the right side of the page at Scathing Atheist (dot) com, or you can make a per episode donation and that website, again, is Patreon (dot) com (slash) Scathing Atheist, which you’ll also find linked on our website.
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.
Episode 67 – Partial Transcript
by Heath Enwright and Noah & Lucinda Lugeons
Note: Transcript contains elements that were removed due to time constraints.
LINK TO SUPPORT US ON PATREON AND GET BONUS SHIT
Warning: The book of Proverbs says you shouldn’t listen to people of my gender… but fuck that book.
Sponsor:
Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Prostate Farm: Anal Virginity Single Prayer Health Insurance: Where you can bet your ass that we’ll pay your claim. Are you worried about the rectal risk of sending your children to church but still insist on sending them to church anyway? Are you afraid they might turn the other cheek the wrong way?
Well then let Prostate Farm cover your ass.
And now, the Scathing Atheist.
Intro:
It’s Thursday,
It’s May 29th,
And whole milk is still better.
I’m Noah Lugeons,
And I’m Heath Enwright. And from the city nicknamed after the fruit that brought you gravity; New York, New York,
And the state nicknamed after the one that looks like an ass, Podunk, Georgia, this is the Scathing Atheist.
On this week’s episode,
- Redneck preachers getting bit by poisonous snakes will get so common we don’t even bother to cover it in the headlines,
- God will punish me for that time I had an abortion,
- And Lucinda will join us to discuss Proverbs in this week’s Pope-rah’s Book Club
But first, the diatribe.
Diatribe:
I’ve got an analogy for you. Imagine you’ve got an aunt named Millie. And you were close to her when you were a kid, but in the last decade you only ran into her once at a wedding or something. And now imagine that Aunt Millie dies.
But your cousin Bob, who’s Millie’s only child, decides that he doesn’t want you to go through all the grief of losing your beloved aunt so he doesn’t tell you she died… ever. In fact, he goes out of his way to mislead you. He makes excuses for why she never shows up at family reunions, he tells you she doesn’t answer her phone any more because she’s convinced it’ll give her cancer, he sends you Christmas cards with her signature forged onto them. All in an effort to keep you from grieving.
So the question is; is Bob doing you a favor?
Now before you answer, let me add another layer to it. Imagine after a while the charade gets so wacky that you’re on the phone with Bob and you’re saying, “Wait a minute… she went back to pan more gold in Brazil even after the ocelot attack?” and it suddenly occurs to you that Bob might be full of shit. So you start having doubts and you ask him point blank; “Is Aunt Millie dead?”. But even then, he keeps lying to you. Doesn’t matter how elaborate of half-ass his answers get, he keeps up the act.
So I’ll ask you again, is Bob doing you a favor?
And I’ll also interrupt you again before you have a chance to answer, because to be thorough, I need to add one more layer to the analogy. Bob has to get something out of this for himself. So now imagine that up until now, every year you’ve sent Aunt Millie a really nice present on her birthday and on Christmas; and Bob’s been selling the gifts on Ebay and pocketing the money. He justifies it by telling himself that he works really hard to keep you from grieving and it’s a small price to ask for all his effort.
Now, I don’t need to ask you again because even before I started adding all the layers to it, you already knew that Bob was being an asshole… a well meaning asshole, maybe, but an asshole nonetheless. It’s not for him to decide if you can handle Aunt Millie’s death. He’s robbed you of your ability to grieve for her. What’s worse, he’s taken away the quintessential reminder of the impermanence of the people we love. What if knowing about Aunt Millie’s death would have driven you closer to Uncle Paul and Aunt Gretchen? What if you’d have otherwise been inspired to start a charity in her name, or take care of her favorite dog… or live in the comfort of knowing she’ll never break into your house again and molest your ferret. Whatever. Doesn’t matter.
Look, if we want to spread atheism we need to confront the issue of death. Not only do we need to confront it; we need to embrace it. We need to fall in love with mortality and sell it.
Of course, if you have no interest in spreading atheism, feel free to disregard everything I’m saying. You’re under no obligation to devangelize. But if that’s your goal, you need to find ways to help people put away their immortal security blanket. Because when we say, “Your religion is stupid”, what they hear is, “that hope that you’ll see your favorite dog and your grandma and the son you lost to leukemia is stupid.”
Now, I don’t think that means we should say their religion is stupid, because the idea that you’re gonna see your dog and your grandma and your kid is stupid, but we need to understand why so many people are so scared to agree. One way we can do this is by pointing out that religion doesn’t actually help you grieve, but the other is to help people understand that mortality is a good thing. It’s the greatest motivating factor on the planet. It’s the only reason we sometimes have to forgive and to reconcile.
Obviously we can’t offer them eternal life in paradise with virgins and mansions and shit because we’re limited to the truth. But it’s like Sam Harris says; when you learned that [spoiler alert] Santa Claus wasn’t real the truth that replaced it was nowhere near as fun, but at least there was a truth to replace it. We can’t afford to avoid this topic.
Think about all the people that you love, that you plan on outliving. And next time you say goodbye to them, remind yourself that this could be the last time. And next time you say hello to them, treat them like they just returned from the dead. That’s something you can only do if you let go of the afterlife; when we keep mortality in the front of our minds instead of burying it behind religions and superstitions and pithy bravado. Imagine how beautiful the world would be if we all just admitted that we’re all going to die.
Headlines:
Joining me for headlines tonight is stickler with a smart phone, Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to share your latest fact-bomb victory?
You must be referring to how I “Snopes-ed” the shit out of some guy at the bar the other day. He was trying to impress this woman talking about being a scientist. He used the general term “scientist”. Already suspect.
He’s a “Just Scientist?” Really? “Oh, I study sciencography… you know, the science of… things and stuff”
And, he bothered me earlier by ordering a drink using well above the 10-syllable max for dudes. And then he mentioned he was a devout Christian, and loved how science coincides with the Bible.
You know, those rabbits and their cud
So I absolutely couldn’t let him go, when he started talking about “glass actually being a liquid, which they discovered by looking at the window panes at cathedrals, that were thicker on the bottom.” No – it’s a solid. it’s technically an “amorphous solid”, but you didn’t even know that, so it doesn’t count. But it has a melting point, so it’s clearly not a liquid!!!
But as if he wasn’t already wrong enough, the whole thing about the cathedral windows being thicker at the bottom is bullshit anyway. So even if we grant him the bullshit on both sides of his bullshit equation, it’s still bullshit.
In our lead story tonight, from the “Shady Antebellum” file: Reginald Wayne Miller – president and founder of the totally-real-sounding Cathedral Bible College in South Carolina – was placed under house arrest, after receiving charges of felony-level ‘slavery and exploitation’.
I guess at a certain point you’ve really gotta do some crazy shit to stand out. Reggie’s sitting around thinking, “fucking kids has been done to death… the Vatican has money laundering, the Pentecostals have snake felatio, the Muslims have throwing acid on innocent women… What about slavery? Is anybody else doing slavery?”
Wow really??? Baby slavery’s taken?!? What about regular slavery? Yeah- Shotgun!!! Whip!!! … So Miller’s legal defense team plans to argue that the Bible and the free exercise clause justify the slavery and exploitation. The prosecution – on the other hand – plans to argue that the Bible and the free exercise clause justify slavery and exploitation … So those clearly don’t count, right?!?
And here’s the most fucked up thing… if the allegations are true (and he’s white so they probably are) there wasn’t even an actual college. He sets up this faux school for the express purpose of bringing exchange students over, putting them to work for between a buck fifteen an hour and nothing an hour, and revoked the student visas of the kids that complained. And I only point this out because biblical apologists like seem to think there’s good slavery and bad slavery so you have to be specific about what kind of slavery you’re dealing with. In this case; bad.
Now to the untrained South Carolina eye, Miller was simply running a legitimate indentured servitude Christian agri-business. However, his 2006 charge of exposing himself to an undercover agent at a bath house doesn’t help bolster his “At least it wasn’t sexual slavery” defense. “Human trafficking sex plantation?!? Who’s talking about HTSP’s?!? You brought that up!!! You guys knew that acronym.”
South Carolina Bible College president placed under detention for slavery and exploitation: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/05/25/south-carolina-bible-college-president-is-placed-under-detention-for-slavery-and-exploitation
And in “I’ll Render Unto Whoever I Want” news tonight, a federal judge in Kentucky has ordered the secular nonprofit American Atheists to go fuck themselves this week by dismissing a lawsuit that sought to hold the IRS accountable for its prejudicial policies regarding churches. This is not a “tax the churches” suit; though I’d be behind it every bit as much if it was. Rather, this suit challenges the preferential treatment and lack of transparency that the IRS exclusively affords to religious nonprofits.
Oh, right … The single most important political issue on the atheist platform!!! The hole we could plug, and save billions in stolen tax revenue every year!!! Are the employees of God really claiming they won’t take a pay cut? Are they supposed to get paid?!?
As is often the case in lawsuits like this, the question is one of standing: Is American Atheist harmed by this policy? U.S. District Judge William O. Bertelsman says no, and in a remarkable display of cognitive dissonance he justifies it by pointing out that American Atheist might be able to gain classification as a religious organization. <<So?>> Right! That’s like dismissing a racial discrimination suit on the basis of the plaintiff being pretty light skinned for a black dude.
“Dude just lie about your heritage, and learn to (talk like this) … You’ll be fine. Case dismissed.”
Further demonstrating their impressive “getting it” deficit; lawyers for the IRS pointed out that it couldn’t be a discriminatory policy because it was available to all people who are religious, regardless of their preferred space-dessert.
Federal judge dismisses atheist suit against IRS: http://www.kentucky.com/2014/05/23/3255571/judge-dismisses-atheists-challenge.html
And in “The asshole doesn’t fall far from the tree” news, Senator Ted Cruz’s father, pastor Rafael Cruz – in his expert capacity as the sphincter tree in that analogy – was a featured Tea Note Speaker at a conservative political conference held by a certain society … I don’t believe I have to mention it’s name … I will anyway … It’s the “Family Research KKKouncil”.
Okay, so the dude who spawned self-identified “proud wacko bird” Ted “The UN is coming for the golf courses” Cruz, speaking to a group of bigots on behalf of a hate group? I bet he said something poignant. Was it poignant?
I do not think that word means … what you think it means. Here’s Cruz the Elder’s inconceivably poignant thesis: Ever since we stopped forcing Christianity on public school students, it’s led to nothing but moral decay and teen pregnancy. No question 1963 was a tough year for many white Christians in the South. Bible study was out the door at public schools, and black people were in the door … Maybe not the same door, but baby steps.
Who knows… in another hundred years, maybe they’ll even desegregate the churches.
Now the ensuing decade of moral decay must have been great … And I don’t doubt the teen pregnancy numbers were high … But the teen parent numbers must have levelled off after Roe v. Wade, just nine years later … So it’s all good. We did that for you!!! Irresponsible pregnant teens can get abortions now. You’re welcome!!!
Yeah, there should really be a rule that you’re not allowed to be against both the problem and the solution.
Ted Cruz’s dad is also a dumbfuck: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/05/24/ted-cruzs-father-blames-the-end-of-public-school-bible-readings-for-increased-teen-pregnancy-and-moral-decay
And from the “Right Wing Hobby-Lobbyist” file, we’ve got a quick follow up to a news item we covered in episode 62 of this fine program. As you may or may not recall, Hobby Lobby president Steve Green is peddling a bible curriculum for public schools which, despite being a bible curriculum for public schools has been adopted by the school district closest to his company’s headquarters. They claim it’s a “bible as literature” course, and therefore legal, but those possessing cognition doubted that assertion.
I wouldn’t say the “as literature” part is the problem, although that’s ridiculous too, because it’s terrible literature. But does it really matter if it’s “Bible as Literature”, or “Bible as a Treasure Map”, or “Bible as a Way to Win Friends and Influence People”???
Well, look, maybe we should learn about the Bible in school… it’s important to our history, our literature, our culture… but among the extensive but far from exhaustive list of church/state violations the FFRF discovered in the textbook were things like chapter headings like “How do we know that the Bible’s historical narratives are reliable?”, claims that the bible created feminism, the inclusion of Christian apologetics around the nastier bits, the complete lack of recognition of non-Protestant Christianity, and a fundie-friendly rewriting of America’s founding.
Leading the Jehovah’s Witness a little bit there … “How do we know the Jews stopped beating their wives, only a few short centuries after they created feminism?”
Now, if you’re one of our many listeners that studies Oklahoma state regulations in their spare time, you may be wondering how the hell this curriculum is only now coming to light, despite the fact that it has already been adopted by a school board. After all, by state law, all school board meetings must be open to the public. Well, as it turns out, it only counts as a meeting if more than 50% of the school board is present, so on the advice of the morally upstanding Steve Green, they just split them into two groups when they discussed it. Because as any orthodox Jew will tell you, god loves him some loopholes.
Follow up on Hobby Lobby Bible curriculum: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/05/21/more-problems-with-the-hobby-lobby-public-school-bible-curriculum-as-ffrf-exposes-district-emails/
And in “Bible Belt Turniquet” news, after three recent heroin smuggling incidents at Daviess County Jail in Owensboro, Kentucky, Sheriff Keith Cain and Jailer David Osborne – not wanting to get their hands (and lower arms) dirty being thorough – opted instead for wishing the drug away really hard. But this time, the wishing took place in a church … and this is a new strategy … so we’ll see what happens.
See, this is where Baptists just fails. When you’ve got a problem with people hiding things in their ass, what you really need is a Catholic.
So ‘Prayer’ loses to everything in “Rock, Paper, Scissors, Prayer” … But even if these guys were doing this on their own time without technically wasting taxpayer money (and that’s not really true) … They certainly are selling Christianity pretty hard at their “Church and State Pen”, to a very captive audience. And you probably don’t wanna give Bibles to convicts too much.
Yeah, cause they’ll hide their rock hammer in it.
500 yards of bullshit doesn’t compare though … I’m reading it now, and the morality in the Old Testament so far is fucked up!!! If anything, we should be forcing a peaceful religion on inmates, like what’s the opposite of Judaism? … Islam.
Christians solve heroin problem with prayer: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/05/26/these-kentucky-officials-think-they-can-pray-the-heroin-away/
And in “Didn’t he used to run England?” news tonight, former celebrity Toni Braxton has scribbled a new autobiography, in which she explains that her son’s autism is almost certainly a punishment from god for having an abortion. Strangely, she didn’t comment on what god was punishing her son for by giving him a mother that’s such a horrible bitch that she would publicly describe her child as retribution.
The dude you’re thinking of … who used to be King of England … Pretty sure that’s Margaret Thatcher.
I know it’s hard to believe that something so stupid could come from the inimitable wordsmith that penned such brilliant lyrics as “Oh baby, oh baby, I can hardly wait to see your face; Oh baby, oh baby, heartbreak is gonna be the case,” but she goes on to explain that her parent’s divorce and her own lupus diagnosis were also divine vengeance.
Divorce and lupus?!? Really?!? Do you hear that? It’s the world’s shittiest violin, playing shitty, sad Toni Braxton music for shitty, sad Toni Braxton. Birth a child that isn’t too logical to love you, and we’ll talk. Oh, you can’t???
Braxton walked back the comments amid a firestorm of criticism, saying, (quote) “When my youngest son was diagnosed with autism I feared that I was being punished for my earlier actions. I have since realized what a calloused scut that makes me look like,” (end quote)
Toni Braxton: My Autistic kid is punishment from god for having an abortion: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/24/toni-braxton-autism-son_n_5385477.html?utm_hp_ref=entertainment&ir=Entertainment
And finally tonight, Atheist rappers Greydon Square and Tombstone da Deadman will perform in concert on July 26 in Temple Hills, Maryland, staging the event in collaboration with Grand Unified – a science-spreading artist collective.
Seems like more of a “calendar” segment than a “headline” segment”. Unless, of course…
Well that is pretty much the whole story, so I could vamp for 30 seconds … And that could go downhill really quick … Or instead, we could spend that same amount of time listing “Ideas for Atheist and Religious Music Festivals” … GO!!!
Oh good… I was afraid you were gonna say “Rappers” and I’d have to reveal just how white I was. How about the “Apostate Fair”?
I’ll start by cheating. Had these already. These are my personal hypothetical atheist rapper aliases: Notorious BIG Bang and Scientific Method Man
Maybe a Buddhist fest called “Nirvana-roo”…
Lots of big, naked, buddhists with eightfold paths, listening to KoAni DiFranco … Free Tibetter Than Ezra …
Coac-hellbound.
All-4-One With Everything?
Maybe William Lane Craig could have an Apologetics Festival and call it “South by Northwest”
I heard Fitty Shekels and Kanye West Bank were gonna be at “Gathering of the Tribes” … Jewish …
Fitty Shekels… love it. “Oy vey can you see?” Anyway, how about the “Warped Logic Tour”?
What about a Puritan music fest? … Burning Woman at the Stake …
“We wanted to see Motley Crucifix, but we ended up getting stuck with a set of Three Nine Inch Nails.”
Or Ray Comfort could host a creationism one; “Bananaroo”.
Phil Collins and the … I Can’t Dancers in Genesis ???
Or maybe… and we should maybe actually do this one… a festival to raise money for secular education for women in Muslim countries called, “Malala-palooza?”
Gotta assume there’s already some kind of shitty lute fest and humus mash-off called “Halal-apalooza”.
I thought there was no true festival but “Allah”-palooza.
And despite being completely irrelevant now, I’m sure they’ll bring up “Benghazi Ozbourne” …
Maybe the Arab gangsta rap giants “Sand NWA” …
By the way ladies, be careful to avoid the acid at Allah-palooza.
Atheist Rapper Concert: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/05/26/concert-event-featuring-atheist-rappers
Alright, well now that we can be sure we’ve offended everyone, I think we can close out headlines for the night. Heath, thanks as always.
And when we come back, we’ll learn that after Psalms, we can take just about anything.
Babble – Proverbs
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines a “proverb” as “a brief, popular saying that gives advice about how people should live”, but the biblical definition is more like a “statement of indeterminate length that expresses a notion that is either common-sense, true by merit of definition, or painfully, ridiculously wrong.” Chocked full of important nuggets like, “The clever do things intelligently, while the fool displays folly”, Proverbs does distinguish itself for being, at best, the least horrible book in the bible so far.
And it’s basically a lucky famous person giving stupid advice, because he confused covariance and causality. It’s King Solomon explaining how if we all heed the lord’s wisdom, then everyone will become the extremely wealthy King of Israel, just like him. See – it works!!!
So joining us to discuss a book that spends about 8% of its words warning us about the dangers of listening to women is a woman. Specifically, my lovely wife Lucinda. Lucinda, welcome back.
I am woman, hear me roar!
So despite being recently told by an inerrant book that the true purpose of a wife is to make sure that I (quote) “let your breasts satisfy me at all times” (end quote), we’re gonna talk about the bible instead. You mind starting us off?
- At first I was thinking to myself, “Who named this book? Alanis Morissette? Aren’t proverbs supposed to be short?”
- Right and instead we get unnecessarily long restatements of the same thing over and over again. They’re more like… con-verbs, or whatever.
- So these are ancient words of wisdom, and the very first one basically says: “If a bunch of dudes invite you to go ambush and murder some innocent people with them … Don’t do that.” So right off the bat, Solomon really drops some insight on us.
- And even when you shave it down to a pithy sentence, it’s still bad advice. Chapter two, for example, tells us that as long as we fear god and seek wisdom <<which are mutually exclusive goals>> we’ll never have to worry about having raunchy, sinful naked time.
- And chapter three teaches us that the true goals of wisdom should be living a really long time and getting rich.
- “Lean not on your own understanding, do not be wise in your own eyes, and pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.” So basically, don’t let judgment cloud your … judgment.
- Yeah, something of a pattern emerges right away. About 90% of the proverb is reminding you to pay attention to this proverb because it’s really, really important, and the other 10% vaguely tells you not to be wicked… without really defining wicked.
- Right. It’s like the verbose Leviticus.
- I don’t know, though, chapter five is pretty on message. It says, “beware vaginas”.
- But it also expressly endorses titty-fucking.
- As long as you “push in” at the last second.
- And I want to point out that whoever wrote chapter six was very familiar with the price of a hooker.
- Yeah, and it was only a loaf of bread back then, so I guess the ancient world wasn’t all bad.
- These days, with Atkins, it’s a meatloaf. Also in this chapter: (quote) “There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to him” (end quote) … Weird fucking way to present a list of 7 things … Anyway, most of them are pretty bad things like spilling innocent blook, lying, scheming, etcetera. But one of them … One of the seven things God could is capable of hating … is “haughty eyes”.
- This book is so obsessed with who you do and don’t fuck that through the first seven chapters it reads like the dorky guy who’s trying to explain why he never gets laid, “Well, yeah, there were a bunch of hotties down at the square begging me to fuck ‘em again tonight… you know, they’re all ‘I perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloe and cinammon; come let us take our fill of love until morning’… but I stayed righteous.”
- I fucked this girl from Moab at camp last summer. You wouldn’t know her. She lives a few tribes over.
- Then in chapter eight we meet god’s wife, I think.
- And apparently she has a nice house and she invites stupid people in.
- And then finally, after nine chapters of, “I swear I’m really smart and you should listen to me” bullshit, we get some actual proverbs.
- And apparently god sucks at proverbs. I mean, George Lucas wrote better wisdom than this. Couldn’t the guy that made Confucius come up with a few that would stick?
- There’s no puns, no rhymes, no wordplay of any kind. It’s a long, terrible, completley unclever version of Animaniacs’ “Good Idea, Bad Idea” segment … “Good Idea: Don’t be a mocker. Bad Idea: Mock.” Unforgettably eloquent stuff like that.
- Right. Chapter Eleven has 31 proverbs and they’re all variations on “Being righteous is preferable to being wicked.” Really? You’re divinely instructing your people and that’s all you bring?
- Yeah, you even get tautological shit like Chapter 12, verse 5 “The thoughts of the righteous are just; the advice of the wicked is treacherous.” So… evil people are evil. Thanks for clearing that up. No room for oral hygiene in this book, but we cleared up the whole, ‘are evil people evil?’ question.
- Thirteen has some really good advice on beating your children…
- Yeah, the advice is: “Beat your children with a rod.”
- Yeah, but just in case you didn’t get it then, they restate the pro-child beating case in chapters 19, 22, 23 and 29.
- And also there’s some good slave-beating advice in chapter 29.
- Perhaps my favorite, though, is 14:20 which states… (I shit you not) “The poor are disliked, even by their neighbors, but the rich have many friends.” That’s the whole thing. Be rich and people will like you more.
- Seems to be working for the Jews quite nicely ever since. Who doesn’t like the Jews? They’ve got all that gold.
- And a lot of focus on the “wise people are smart, fools are stupid” proverb. It’s restated maybe 50 times in the first fifteen chapters.
- Yeah, I’m willing to say that the tales of Solomon’s wisdom were greatly exaggerated.
- Well, he was the king… so who’s gonna argue. “Split a baby in half? That’s a great idea, your highness.” I picture him gorging on a turkey leg and a virgin, yelling, “Scribe! I have another one of those smart thingies for you. ‘Sometimes there is a way that seems to be right… but… um… in the end it is the way to death.’ Write that down. And put a little skull next to ‘death’… or no, make that the E in death… a little skull.”
- And he continues to be the inept minstrel that keeps missing the rhyme. “Good is good, and bad is bad. Evil stuff makes God real … pissed- SHIT!!! I suck at this!!! I’m such and idiot!!!”
- In seventeen we learn that it’s immoral to flog people for having integrity and we also learn that people in general should shut the fuck up.
- Apparently living alone is wicked, by the way. Never realized that, but it is.
- Every morning, I take a naked shit, with the door open, while drinking milk from the carton … Then it gets ugly. Didn’t have a google suggestion this week. Figured I’d just leave you with that image.
- Here and there there’s a weird one and a couple of times you get actual good advice, but most of them fall into one of three themes: Sit down and shut up; Stupid people are even worse than poor people; and evilness is evil.
- A lot of “god will fuck your shit up”, too.
- And since these are all attributed to kings, there’s also a lot of, “How awesome are kings?” ones too.
- We also learn repeatedly that lying is bad.
- It’s so boring, in fact, that if you’re not careful, you’ll miss the good blow job jokes. For instance, after the enigmatic proverb that tells us that lazy people say that the streets are filled with random lions, we get this gem, Chapter 22, verse 14 “The mouth of a loose woman is a deep pit.”
- Or a shallow pit, but it’s really wide. I don’t judge. They also mention that you’re not supposed to fuck with the property lines by moving ancient boundary stones. “Maybe I wasn’t clear earlier. I’m God … And I’m giving all the oil to the Jews … So it’s very important that they get to keep all this shitty-seeming dessert land, that I’ve marked off here.”
- And then we’re back to stupid shit like warnings that stingy people’s bread will make you puke and kids who don’t get beaten regularly will burn in hell.
- It also says that prostitutes are deep pits and adultresses are narrow wells, so apparently they’re saying if you’re gonna fuck around, try to get the tighter vagina of an adulteress before settling for a hooker.
- And in twenty four… or actually about halfway through chapter twenty three, we made a hard left out of the realm of pithy and onto just somebody saying something.
- Oh, and by the way, and apparently this is important, when you start eating honey, stop before you vomit.
- If you vomit, or hit the East River, you’ve gone too far. That’s helpful.
- Good thing god was around to inspire Solomon to tell Hezekiah to write this shit down.
- By chapter twenty six they’ve entirely run out of shit to say and start repeating earlier proverbs verbatim.
- Yeah, but if I’m not mistaken, chapter twenty six also has the bible’s first reference to dog vomit… so there’s some new shit sprinkled in there as well.
- And it’s such a weird mix of shit. Like in twenty seven we get a bit of generally good advice about not being a dick to your friends and then we close off with god telling you not to worry about the goat’s milk, because he’s got that covered.
- And even the stuff that sounds wise isn’t. Like 28:1, “The wicked flee when no one pursueth…” right, but they also flee when people do pursueth. Because if they weren’t fleeing, you couldn’t exactly pursue them. You’d just walk over there or something.
- And righteous pitchfork mobs don’t just “walk over there”. So correctly anticipating a lynch mob attack and going somewhere else, is evil???
- And sometimes it seems like they don’t understand that the two clauses in a proverb should be at least tangentially related. In 29:3, for example; “A child who loves wisdom makes a parent glad, but to keep company with prostitutes is to squander one’s substance.” Fucking what!? We go from making our parents proud to not wasting perfectly good semen in prostitutes?
- If you’re not getting A’s in school, you might as well be coming on a hooker’s back. Useful, everyday, false duality to guide your study habits and sperm targeting behavior.
- In 30 we learn that if you disobey your parents, vultures will eat your brains.
- In the King James it’s ravens plucking out your eyes and feeding them to eagles.
- And then after they finished the whole book, King Lemuel shows up with a poem that his mom wrote and said, “I want this one to be in the book, too.”
- And the whole thing is a ridiculous stereotype of Jewish moms. It starts off with her saying, “Don’t drink too much”, moves on to her asking when he’s gonna find a nice Jewish girl to settle down with and then ends by telling him how awesome he is.
And then it mercifully ends a hundred and nineteen chapters earlier than Psalms did. And while it seems more like something that belongs in a book of wisdom, it did leave me wishing god would go ahead and genocide somebody again or something. This book is getting boring even for this book.
I’d just like to point out that this book ends with an Epilogue about a wife of noble character… which is basically a list of shit she has to do with a smile on her face. She may not be charming and she may not be pretty but if she fears the lord you should praise her…. because apparently fear will make her get shit done.
So that does it for the Babble. We’ll be back in three weeks with Ecclesiastes, which I hear is by far the least bad book in the Bible, so that one might be harder to make fun of, but we’ll make due, I’m sure.
Outro:
Before we reach for the washcloth tonight, I wanted to congratulate a friend of mine on a pretty significant milestone. Carl from the Post Rapture Looting Podcast is about to record his 100th episode. Among his many podcasting accolades is the fact that he was the first person to ever interview Heath and me about this show. So huge congrats to him on number one hundred, which I recommend you download and listen to when it’s available and not just because he invited us back on to temporarily join in the festivities.
And speaking of shows that I’ll be on soon that you should be listening to even when I’m not on them, rumor has it that I’ll also be joining Jake Farr-Wharton on the Imaginary Friends Show this week, should be available over the weekend.
That’s all the blasphemy we’ve got for you this week, but we’ll be back in 168 hours with the incomparable Eli Bosnick to discuss the new film “Heaven is For Real” so be sure to have your popcorn ready for that one. Until then, you can keep up with us on the blog, on Facebook, on Twitter and on Google Plus.
I need to thank Heath once more for always having 190 seconds to spare for a segment called “30 seconds on the clock”; I need to thank Lucinda for powering through books of the bible post-op; and, of course, I need to thank Shawn from Alberta for providing this week’s Farnsworth Quote and Ukulele solo.
But most of all, I need to thank this week’s most bestest people in the whole wide world; David, Wally, Greg, Steve, Colin, Laura, Goran, Troy, Jeff with a “J”, SharpestOne, Tammy and Geoff with a “G”. David, Wally and Greg, whose cocks are available by prescription only in the state of Georgia; Steve, Colin and Laura, who are so intelligent that the next incarnation of personal communication devices might be referred to as “Steve, Colin and Laura”-phones; Goran, Troy and Jeff with a “J”, who are so legendary they named a planet, an ancient empire and a Lebowski after them, respectively; and Sharpest One, Tammy and Geoff with a “G”, who intergalactically notorious ninjutsu solves the Fermi Paradox.
These twelve paradisaic paragons have helped us paralyze a few more paragraph of paranoid parables from parasitic paranormalists this week by giving us money. Not everyone has the altruism, benevolence and discretionary income needed to give us money, but if you’d like to join the ranks of our financial supporters, you can make a per episode donation at Patreon (dot) com (slash) Scathing Atheist; or make a one time donation by clicking the “Donate” button on the right side of our homepage at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.
And if you’d like to help, but you only like us as a friend, you can also help us a ton by giving us a sterling review on iTunes, Stitcher or the nearest church’s bulletin board.
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 except Shawn’s ukulele bit was written and performed by yours truly and yes, I did have my permission.
Episode 64 – Partial Transcript
by Heath Enwright and Noah & Lucinda Lugeons
(Note: Transcript contains elements that were removed from the episode due to time constraints)
LINK TO BUY THE BOOK (PAPERBACK)
Warning: It would take a lot more than Orbitz Gum to keep these guys from saying Fuck.
Sponsor:
Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Uni-Psalm: Official Sleeping Pills of the Old Testament
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And now, the Scathing Atheist.
Intro:
It’s Thursday,
It’s May 8th,
And believe it or not, when black people play golf, they’re great chippers.
I’m Noah Lugeons,
I’m Heath Enwright. And from “De-Segregated Golf Club” New York, New York,
And “Deep Fat Friar’s Club” Podunk, Georgia, this is the Scathing Atheist.
In this week’s episode,
- California students deny the holocaust, and support their thesis with examples of Jews.
- We’ll knock out a whole episode in less time than it takes for an Oklahoman felon to die of a lethal injection,
- And theologians are still stumped by issues surround pre-op tranny weddings.
But first, the diatribe.
Diatribe:
I’m gonna do my level best tonight not to just say “ReasonCon” over and over again for thirty minutes because DAMN what a good time. Holy shit, all in one weekend, I get my first chance to hang out with our listeners, I get my first chance to hang out with other atheist podcasters in person, I get my ass handed to me in a debate with Tracie Harris, I get a private lecture on Hitler’s Table Talk monologues from Dr. Richard Carrier and I get to make masturbation jokes at the expense of a former pastor.
Okay, yes, I’m blatantly name-dropping and shamelessly bragging. Sorry about that, but DAMN what a good time. Holy shit what a good time. Had a blast.
This was actually my first time going to an atheist convention. I’ve been to some skeptical cons and some science cons and I’ve been to Comic Con and shit like that, and I’ve always had a great time. But it’s nothing compared to the knowledge that at any moment I can actually just say what I’m thinking without first planning an evacuation route. I can make the Jesus joke that occurs to me as it occurs to me. Not something I’m used to experiencing in public.
But I don’t want to make the weekend seem like it was all open bars, captivating conversations, hedonistic debauchery and brilliant lectures. There was way more to it than just that. I got something while I was there that I needed. Something I’ve never gotten before and probably couldn’t get anywhere else.
See, I was lucky when it came to religion. My parents were nominally religious but they were okay with me exploring spirituality in any whacky way I chose. I got beat up a few times for being a “devil wor’shupper” and I got ostracized by a few teachers for standing up for the First Amendment once in a while, but by and large I got through life with no religious scars. I started this podcast because religion annoys me and it’s bullshit. But that’s all it was for me; an intellectual annoyance.
And sure, I’m aware of the real victims of religion. I’m aware of the oppressed women and the abused kids and the sexually dysfunctional adults and the estranged children and the suicidal gays and the destitute marks, but I’ve never met them. I’ve never spoken with them. I’ve never looked into their eyes while they told me those stories.
This weekend I met Phoebe; an amazing young woman who is somehow filled with confidence and strength despite being dragged from one sexist cult to another through her youth. I met Derrick, whose mother hasn’t returned a message from him for three years because she’s so ashamed to have raised an atheist. I met Chris who spent years contemplating suicide because he couldn’t stop jerking off. I met Ryan whose stepfather couldn’t possibly have been abusing him and his brother the way he claimed because his stepfather was a good Christian man. I met Bobby whose father sexually abused him and used the Bible to justify it.
But the crimes of religion aren’t always so grandiose and they don’t have to be. Because I also met Ben, who was a well-adjusted, super-bright dude that almost gave up on his Chemistry major to pursue a career in pretending that space-Jesus was for real. He thought better of it, but he told me about a friend who didn’t. A bright, promising mind foregoing scientific advancement in favor of promoting ignorance.
Now don’t get me wrong here. I don’t think pursuing theology or biblical studies is necessarily a waste. I also met Richard Carrier this weekend and I’m damn glad he’s devoted his brilliance to examining the Bible. Every pursuit has value as long as it’s as the pursuit is honest. But what is the societal cost when intelligent people devote themselves to perpetuating a lie? How many chemists do we lose? How many doctors or biologists or engineers never got to do anything useful because they were busy turning crackers into zombified Jew-flesh?
Every college degree in divinity is a college degree in not-something-else. Every church is taking up space that could be used for a not-church. Every pastor who pounds a pulpit could be hammering a fucking nail. It’s silly to pretend that society doesn’t pay for this shit. Every time you see a nice church surrounded by shitty houses, you’re looking at the societal cost. Every time you see a wealthy preacher next to a struggling teacher, you’re looking at that cost.
And if you ever feel like you’ve seen it so many times your eyes have grown numb to it, I suggest hitting up an atheist convention. From what I understand, they have a way of opening eyes.
Headlines:
Joining me for headlines tonight is escaped ReAsonConvict, Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to regale us with tales from the event?
ReAsonCon in Hickory, North Carolina was the real deal!!! Plenty of free-range, locally-sourced, Hickory-smoked baby bacon. The best pork comes straight from the stork!!! MMMM GODLESS BITCHES!!! Big thanks to the everyone involved, including the dedicated, talented, and hilarious hosts of Atheists on Air … Cash and Love!!!
Along with Gene and everybody else from Hickory Humanists… It was a phenomenally awesome time, which was good, because I needed all the pre-existing good mood I could get when I woke up Monday and read our lead story for the week. Normally I’d try to write some witty headline to describe it or something, but I really don’t think I could do better than Andy Borowitz from the New Yorker, so in our lead story tonight “In Landmark Decision, Supreme Court Strikes Down Main Reason Country Was Started.”
Or in other words: “Roberts Court digs up James Madison’s grave and shits in his mouth.”
Okay, yeah… that was better than Borowitz. And of course we’re talking about the controversial 5-4 decision that upheld the right of the Town of Greece, New York to wrap the Bill of Rights around a pile of dog shit and then light it on fire and leave it on some old dude’s porch to see if he’ll stomp it out. Writing the Majority opinion, Anthony “What the fuck ever happened to you, you bumbling tit?” Kennedy said, and I’m paraphrasing here, “Fuck the first amendment. Ya’ll keep bringing up old shit.”
Can’t local politicians in Greece, NY just pray for their job to matter in the car, before they walk into the meetings? … That’s literally the trade-off here. We had to either scrap the First Amendment, or ask people to shit before the meeting. And we decided on diapers in the meeting.
Well, the majority opinion actually claimed that the prayers didn’t violate the first amendment because they didn’t (quote) “denigrate nonbelievers or religious minorities, threaten damnation or preach conversion.” Because isn’t that what the Constitution says? I believe the exact portion he’s referring to is the part that reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion unless everybody’s really nice about it. And then it’s okay.”
But they’re not even being really nice about it!!! In what sense is threatening damnation, and preaching conversion capable of being friendly?!?
Now in the aftermath of the decision, the American Humanist Association announced a program that will help train people to give secular invocations while the Freedom From Religion Foundation has offered a reward to the person who gives the best one. Because, let’s face it, if we were supplicant, we would be religious, which is why eventually we always win fights like this.
If the Scathing Atheists are allowed to make invocations before redneck town meetings, they’ll stop praying real fast.
I’ll be adding links to more info on the AHA and FFRFs efforts on the shownotes for this episode and I strongly encourage everyone who listens to this to take this one seriously. This is some activism we can all do in our hometowns that will really make a difference.
Supreme Court upholds prayer before public meetings: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303647204579543572388368040?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303647204579543572388368040.html
LINK TO AHA SECULAR INVOCATION INFORMATION
LINK TO FFRF SECULAR INVOCATION REWARD INFO
And from “The Most Dangerous Game Theory” file, one of Oklahoma’s tax-paid executioners botched a routine iocane powder procedure, and witnesses were forced to see that awkward, prolonged, death seizure look on the perp’s face for about 20 minutes. This is why atheists only murder unborn children. No eye contact.
Yeah, I hate it when state sponsored barbarism is so barbaric. If the two terms weren’t mutually exclusive, I’d suggest we execute prisoners like a civilized society.
In order to avoid bureaucratic ineptitude like this in the future – and keeping in mind they still want to continue murdering people – many Republican Christians are calling for privatization of the capital punishment industry, making it more efficient, and profitable at the same time. Or … instead of no-bid contracts for domestic vigilante Halliburton death squads, we could realize that capital punishment costs taxpayers more than life in prison … and also murder is probably wrong.
Just when you think the Republican irony meter can’t go any higher. As it turns out, they only had issues with the “state sponsored” part of “state sponsored death panels.”
I know it’s not a top priority like “Don’t whittle figurines”, but something along the lines of “Shalt not Kill” is in the 5-7 range depending on how you mistranslate the perfect word of god and his ten most important commandments. But more importantly – just in general – if somebody asks you if you should murder people … and you have to consult a textbook … that’s problematic … REALLY pedantic at best.
Death Penalty Sort-of Works Eventually: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/05/02/what-it-was-like-watching-the-botched-oklahoma-execution/
And in “Defrock ‘em in the ass” news tonight, the Vatican has finally released details of exactly how they’ve disciplined priests accused of child rape and torture. Before we get to the sanctions, I’d like to point out that they did so while being questioned by the UN committee that monitors the implementation of the UN Treaty against torture, so for the assholes that email me and tell me calling it torture is hyperbolic, fuck you. It is absolutely torture; it’s torture of the worst kind and the people doing the torture no longer dispute that fact. So stop standing up for child torturing rapists.
Yeah, let’s just take a moment and consider one more time, that Christianity is appearing before the UN Anti-Torture Committee. Must be a few awkward moments … “So this last part’s just a formality … Embarrassed to even ask, but it’s our last checkbox here … You guys keep the pedophiles away from kids after you find out, right? You’re not still setting them up with jobs as Chuck E Cheese bathroom attendants, right?”
The numbers also cast enormous suspicion on the whole “Yeah, sure, back in the 50s we fucked the hell out of some kids, but now we’re cool” argument the Vatican’s been peddling for the last couple years. More than 3400 credible accusations of abuse have been referred to the Vatican in the last ten years including more than 400 cases just last year.
If they’re gonna equate institutional pedophilia to cigarette smoking, then we get to put a Surgeon General’s warning on every bible from now on. Because they’re still smoking boy pole!!!
Warning: Do not use while operating civic machinery. I like it. So in 848 of the nearly 3500 cases, the priests ID card and his super-saver discount card were revoked. And that represented the tough punishment. They didn’t get to be priests anymore. Which means that in more than 2,500 instances they did get to be priests anymore! The Rapists!
Vatican releases stats on punishments for molester priests: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/06/vatican-figures-disciplined-priests-sex-abuse
And in “@GOP + @GOD = #BFF” news, the Republican National Committee tweeted the following over the weekend: (quote) “Religious freedom is our God-given right.” (end quote) … Also included was a link to a strongly-worded petition demanding that President Obama stop helping Satan by refusing to fill the crucially important position called: Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom. Rumors on the Hill suggest the currently serving Traveling Secretary to the Assistant Quidditch Game Warden is perfect for the job … But then you get Harry Potter fans petitioning Obama about the free exercise clause.
Right. The guys that have the judiciary running on fumes and dryer lint are worried about this unfilled post?
Knowing that Jesus was less about public well-being, and more about deadly weapons, the GOP recently bolstered it’s Christ-Cred even further, when it blocked the selection of an extremely qualified Surgeon General nominee, for his role in angering the NRA by suggesting bullet wounds may be harmful to your health. Doesn’t the First Amendment say Christians can’t vote because that would be crazy?
Yeah, but as of this week we’re not doing the First Amendment anymore.
RNC tweets about being the god party and Obama oppressing religious freedom: http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/republican-party-announces-it-is-officially-the-party-of-god/politics/2014/05/05/86744
And in “63% of Respondents said “Ungh….”” news tonight, a new study finds that Evangelicals are still stunningly stupid. (Stunningly?) A new survey by The Associated Press looked into America’s willingness to accept established, fully demonstrated scientific fact and to the surprise of nobody, we flunked miserably. The survey showed that the Evangelicals were leading the way, proudly marching toward hegemonized stupidity, but kind of running into each other and falling down a lot.
Like chickens proudly marching to the KFC factory … It’s okay to be stupid, but when all the smartest chickens do shitloads of research on KFC, and show you videos of the Fargo Chipper, you halt the fucking procession!!!
Yes, but this study casts doubt on any analogy that assumes Evangelicals have intelligence equal to that of a chicken. Okay, so the numbers. They looked at four key scientific facts and asked people if they were confident that these demonstrable, unambiguous FACTS were true. More than three quarters of Evangelicals expressed doubt in the big bang and evolution; with more than half doubting anthropogenic climate change and the established age of the earth.
We finally have actual evidence suggesting a flood, and the Christians are denying it???
This is further proof that we didn’t need that religion stifles scientific advancement and it’s not the sporadic influence the apologists would have you believe. I’d argue that if this was the only negative influence of religion, that would be enough to justify this show and my outrage. And it’s not. Because they also fuck kids.
Oh, right I forgot about that, since we covered it two stories ago!
Study: Evangelicals are still stunningly stupid: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/01/ap-survey-faith-science_n_5249154.html?utm_hp_ref=religion
And in “Wiles E Coyote Ugly” news, conservative North Carolina Senate candidate Steve Wiles – whilst campaigning on the gay-marriage-ban platform – was recently outed as a former drag queen emcee at a Winston-Salem gay bar, performing under the stage name, “Miss Mona Sinclair”.
The greatest part of this story is that when they asked the staunchly anti-gay rights candidate if he himself was gay, he said, and I quote, “I really won’t make any comment on that.” So yeah, he really dodged a bullet there. They almost figured him out.
Yeah close one … So after being fired from his/her job as a promoter for the 2011 Miss Gay America pageant, for (quote) “conduct unbecoming” to the organization, it seems Wiles decided he/she was better suited to perform conduct unbecoming to a politician.
What kind of a tease is it to mention “Conduct unbecoming of a Miss Gay America promoter” and then not give details. Motherfuckers…
Obviously we’ve already got 30 seconds on the clock for this one … “Republican Drag Queen Bar Names” … GO!!!
Forged Bush
The GOP Spot
I was gonna says the “Trans Old Party”
SantoRum and Coke
I don’t mind admitting, that place gives me a Boehner. How about “Gippers & Strippers: The Home of Trickle Down Your Back Economics.”
Ted’s Gay Cruise?
Colon Pow!
Tap That Ashcroft
Chris (equals) Christie? Great place to get your tunnel jammed.
Kind of like “Vicar/Victoria” …
The Oral Majority
The Dick Army Gravy Train
Prostate’s Rights?
Entrance in the Back Tucker Carlson’s
The LGBT Party.
Adam’s Applebees
Anti-gay politician once worked as drag queen at gay bar: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/anti-gay-north-carolina-republican-candidate-worked-drag-queen-gay-bar-report-article-1.1779271
And finally tonight, in “Holocaust of Living” news, a high school in Rialto, California learned the stupid way that you shouldn’t assign kids to write a paper entitled “Did the holocaust really happen?” Eighth grade students in the school were asked to do some research and write a paper explaining whether they believed the holocaust was (a) the holocaust or (b) a political scheme concocted to influence public emotion. And they somehow failed to know in advance that they’d reached “drooling into your soup” levels of idiocy here.
If I remember high school correctly, that means I could have gotten an A on a holocaust denial essay, as long as I used transition words like “moreover”, and somewhere included the phrase “encompassing a wide swath of cultural mores”.
I should point out that I don’t think the topic should be off the table for discussion or anything. If somebody wants to research the historical evidence on that one I invite them to do so because the historical evidence is FUCKING OVERWHELMING. I mean… just… what else happened to all the fucking Jews? There are censuses before the holocaust and there’s all these jews. And then there’s now. And all those Jews are gone. So sure. Look into it. Start with some of Michael Shermer’s excellent work on the subject. But don’t make a fucking history assignment out of it! And especially don’t do that if… and I don’t give a shit if this is unrelated… but especially don’t do it if the superintendent of the school is sporting the “I shit you not” name of Mohammad Z. Islam. That’s actually the dude’s name.
That was also the #2 answer when Family Feud asked 100 Texans to name the President of the United States. And the #1 answer: … George Bush.
Anyway, after fucking-duh complaints from the Anti-Defamation League, a number of other groups and most of the parents who weren’t assholes, the school apologized and scrapped the paper and replaced it with a less controversial sociology assignment entitled, “The Blacks: Do They Really Love Them Some Cornbread?”
“Rape: Legitimate Gripe or Bid for Attention?”
California School debates historical legitimacy of the holocaust: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/05/rialto-holocaust-assignment_n_5268840.html?utm_hp_ref=religion
Well I guess now that we can chalk up the rape joke we can close out the headlines tonight. Heath, thanks as always for joining me.
If they downloaded our podcast, they were asking for it.
And when we come back, Lucinda will be here to make excuses for not reading all the way through Psalms.
Babble:
Holy shit… which was, I believe, the working title for Psalms.
They also kicked around “Better Off Dead Poet’s Society” …
We had the supreme displeasure this week of reading by far the longest book of the bible and the only task less desirable than reading this shit is figuring out a way to break it down in a 10 minute segment.
Which is only slightly less desirable than Anne Coulter’s personality
Indeed. Not only is this book way too long for a meaningful overview; it’s also just a random anthology of needy, whining jews. There’s no story to talk about… it’s just a collection of crappy and often cadaverous prayers about random shit. So joining us to try to find a way to sum this sucker up is my lovely wife Lucinda. Lucinda, welcome back.
Good to be back… I’ve missed me.
As have I. So to give this discussion some kind of structure we’re gonna look not to the individual psalms, but rather to the five sections within the book. So Lucinda, why don’t you start us off with part one:
- Part one:
- So Basically you have two types of Psalms right off the bat. They’re either saying “Hey, you can tell how glorious god is because everything is going right for us” or they’re saying, “I know things aren’t going right for us, but that doesn’t mean that God’s not glorious.”
- Right. A lot of “Damned if I do, damned if you don’t” stuff… and it’s so funny coming right off of Job. The very first psalm basically negates the entire previous book.
- And they make sure to point out that good Christians are always prosperous because their parents own valuable coastal properties. So choose your parents wisely.
- And then there’s a bunch of “My god could beat up your god” and “Dear god, don’t let anybody fuck me in my sleep” shit for the next hundred and fifty chapters.
- Interspersed with some serious shit talk about atheists.
- Yes, apparently we’re cannibals and do only wicked acts. But that’s just because of the dude we sent back in time to terminate the Jesus pregnancy, or “Project: Hasta la vista, Baby Jesus”. That’s a nice brunch right there: Bacon, Egg, and Jesus, and a Bloody Mary with stem celery garnish.
- It worked better in part two, but they’re still waiting for the second coming anyway.
- Yeah, 18 is a weird one, too. It’s a mile and a half longer than all the other ones around it, but it’s about a scene where basically God kills a bunch of ninjas, so I didn’t mind so much.
- I liked 22, which I call “The prayer of the pantsed nerd”
- Yeah, right before the “The lord is my sheppard bit” we get the whole “My mom says you guys are only persecuting me because you’re jealous” Psalm… which was fun.
- And then in Psalm 35 we get the prayer of the RoadRunner… it’s all about my enemies getting caught in their own nets and accidentally strapping themselves to their own Acme rocket…
- “And God made the law of gravity, and the coyote fell, and it was good.”
- Part Two:
- Then we get to part two and it’s worth pointing out that there’s nothing that divides book one from book two except a header that says, “book two”. There’s no substantive difference between the content of either book.
- Right. The Psalms continue to basically fall into two themes: (a) Our enemies just got their asses kicked, how about god, huh? and (b) Our enemies just kicked our asses so what the hell?
- Is that what you guys were getting? I swear at a certain point I was just reading “goddy-goddy-god-god… god god ‘selah’”
- Yeah, lot of that too. But there was also plenty of backhanded praise in this one. A lot of “God, I know it seems like you’re fucking up all your godding and what not, but we know better.”
- And then there’s all the flattering, obsequious, “I sure hope god fucks my daughter” stuff … “God. God. God. Dad. Daddy. Yahweh. Hashem. Lois. Are you watching? Are you looking?”
- I giggled at Psalm 47, which was basically the biblical version of the Hokey Pokey.
- And I think it’s worth noting that Psalm 53 is basically identical to Psalm 14. They were hoping we wouldn’t notice, but we did.
- Probably not a coincidence that they doubled up on the Psalm that talked shit about atheists. Literally claims that every single atheist is evil. So all babies are evil.
- A lot of justifications for racism and genocide too. Psalm 58, 60, 63, 68… basically all the ones that aren’t telling god how massive his dick is.
- Yeah, 58 was particularly egregious. I believe that was the one where you ask god to rip out the teeth of your enemies children. Or at least make sure nobody is allowed to provide them with affordable medical coverage.
- Part Three:
- Then we get to part three. And I’m hoping that we’re gonna see some kind of change in theme or something, but I’ve been burned once before. Book One and Book Two were just randomly separated. But this time Book Two actually ends by saying, “Okay so that’s all of David’s shit.” So I got my hopes up one more time. Would something finally be different?
- No.
- Right. No. First Psalm in book three? Same “Damn is god awesome and damn do wicked people suck” nonsense for another 16 Psalms.
- Right, but this book is shorter so it feels like you’re getting somewhere. It’s like driving through New England. Every few minutes you’re going over another state line and even though you’re not actually getting anywhere any faster, you feel like you are.
- I wanted to point this one out, by the way, because I could be mistaken, but I’m pretty sure that in 74:11 god says he can’t help the Israelites because he’s busy fondling his own tits…. or whacking off or something.
- That’s how I read it.
- If I remember correctly – and I rarely do – in King James, God was giving himself a Rusty Trombone.
- And as you’re slogging through this thing, once in a while you get shit like Psalm 78, which is five Psalms long and basically rehashed all the highlights from Exodus through Second Samuel.
- But here and there you’ll come across a nugget of gold. Like verse 81:10 where god says to the Jews, “Open your mouths and I shall fill them…” and then starts talking about them sucking up his dripping honey. We’re all adults here. You hear milk and honey … You think arcing ropes of jism. God made us this way.
- Then you get a whole bunch of “when are you gonna get around to incinerating my enemies, god?” to wrap up book three.
- I was actually pretty fond of Psalm 89, which says, and I’m paraphrasing here, “Dear god, pretty sure you fucked up the last couple years of earth. Feel free to take a mulligan.”
- Part Four:
- And then there’s book four, which is just more kissing of the holy holey.
- And these fucking poems… when did the bible turn into a recently dumped highschool girl? “You want to read some of my poems?” “Of fucking course I don’t! Nobody ever honestly answered ‘yes’ to the question ‘Do you want to read some of my poems’!”
- But at least teenage girl poems have some important themes like slitting your wrists or getting finger fucked. These ones are all about how Jews are invincible and god is such a snappy dresser. Yeah I’d love to hear those, but maybe I can read the new unedited manuscript of that novel you’ve been working on, right here on the spot. And then you can play us that song on guitar you’re halfway through writing. And then the poems, right after that.
- Right, so moving on, we get another generous helping of “Hey god, did you notice how much more moral I was being than everybody else? That’s because they all suck and need a good smiting.”
- And I thought Psalm 96 was an interesting one. It basically says that god is great and he knows everything… but we still have to remind him how awesome he is constantly.
- Yes and in the following Psalm I believe we learn that if you have the right Poke-Ball, god can breathe fire, which is a pretty cool trick.
- Put perhaps my favorite of all of them was Psalm 101 which says, and again, paraphrasing here, but it basically says “God is peace and love and justice and I’ll kill any motherfucker who disagrees.”
- And you thought the Muslims made that shit up. Just another Jewish cover band like the Christians.
- Part Five:
- And then you mercifully get to Part Five and you’ve been through so much that you think it’s almost over… but you forget that just this part of this book is basically the length of Exodus.
- And it starts off right, with a Psalm that reminds us that if you starve or rot in prison or get sick and die or drown… it’s because god hates you and you’re evil.
- And we keep getting all the mixed messages. Like take Psalm 111 for example. It tells us that the lord is forgiving and trustworthy and infinitely just… and because of that, you should be scared shitless of him.
- Yeah, that’s something of a running theme in this book.
- But Psalms also has my favorite thing in the bible so far… the middle. Psalm 118 is the midway point so we’re definitely getting somewhere.
- And interestingly enough it’s sandwiched between Psalm 117, which is the shortest chapter in the entire bible, and Psalm 119, which is the longest chapter. And believe me, this meaningless coincidence has been the subject of billions of words worth of religiotic babbling.
- And 119 was clearly written by a 5-year-old learning the Hebrew alphabet with an acrostic poem.
- One of our listeners said on Facebook that he actually had to memorize that motherfucker in school. 3 pages of divine felatio… What a waste.
- I think it’s interesting that in Psalm 122 they specifically call for peace in Jerusalem. So… Jews and Christians have been praying for this for how many millennia now? And they still haven’t given up on praying?
- Seems clear that this god dude is a slacker.
- Yes, but as Psalm 123 explains at length, as much of a pathetic fuck up as god is, you’re even worse.
- And was it just me or was there a ton of thanking god for the wrong shit? Like in 126 where they thank god for no longer requiring them to be enslaved. Thanks for not hitting me in the dick with that weed eater again! Thanks for not fucking me in the ass between each pump!
- Or 135, which basically says, “As evidence of god’s infinite compassion, I submit the following list of people he’s killed…”
- And, of course, we have to talk about the most notorious of all the Psalms, number 137.
- Which essentially says “If a foreigner asks you to sing them a psalm, you refuse. Non-Jews can’t hear Psalms. They can listen to them, but they can’t hear them.”
- It’s probably a good idea to have this Psalm at the ready, though, if you think about it. Just in case somebody captures you and tells you to sing a song, it’s nice to have a song at the ready about not wanting to sing songs for your captors and smashing their children’s skulls. That’s just prudence.
- Not many songs about smashing baby skulls these days.
- A lost art, indeed.
- Then we get a bunch more “Have you ever met a starving kid in Africa? Bunch of assholes. Quit blaming god” type Psalms, and it draws to an overdue but merciful close.
And thus ends the longest book in the Bible and the only legitimate competitor to Vogon poetry. Next up is Proverbs which is still stupid long but it’s gonna seem like a cakewalk compared to Psalms.
Getting baptized by Sarah Palin would seem like a cakewalk after Psalms.
Yep. So no Bible for the next three weeks. Between now and then I’m just gonna read Billy Collins until my eyes hurt.
Thanks for soldiering through it, guys. Halfway and then some.
Aww, Only halfway? ( Shit.)
Halftime Score: Jews 1, Christians and Muslims 0
Outro:
Before we settle the tab tonight, I wanted to throw a huge thanks out to all the listeners that made it out to ReasonCon last weekend. It was our first chance to actually hang out with our audience a bit and it turns out we’ve got a hell of an audience. Thanks so much for making it an unforgettable weekend. Too many people to thank by name… and I’d probably fuck up and leave someone out… so just in general, thanks a ton. Really meant the world to us that so many of you were able to make it.
I also wanted to thank Paul from the Quranify Me Podcast for inviting me to take part in a skit he did for his show. Tom and Cecil, Adam Reakes and me all popped in for a few minutes and I believe you can hear that on his most recent episode. I’ll link to it in the shownotes.
Obviously, I need to thank Bobby C from the No Religion Required Podcast for providing this week’s Farnsworth Quote. I hate to admit that I still haven’t had a chance to check out his show, but I’ll be rectifying that today and with good reason. While we were at ReasonCon he caught some audio that was either one of the greatest moments in atheist podcasting history or we were all so shit-faced we just thought it was. What started off as a few minutes with Heath and I eventually turned into several hours with us, Cash and Love, Bill from Bar Room Atheists, Tracie Harris from The Atheist Experience, Dr. Richard Carrier, “Year Without God” pastor Ryan Bell… along with a dozen other hilarious drunken atheists. Not sure how good the audio quality will be, but if it’s even remotely good it will be well worth your time to check it out. If nothing else, it includes Heath and Cash competing for the most off-color abortion joke so that should be enough to get you there.
LINK TO NO RELIGION REQUIRED PODCAST
Speaking of Heath, need to thank him once more for all he does both on and off the air. Need to thank Lucinda for toughing it out all the way through Psalms. And speaking of Psalms, I also want to thank all our Twitter followers for all the words of encouragement during my one hundred and fifty hour Psalm-a-thon last week. Happy to have that over and done with. Thanks to everybody who favorites or retweeted or responded or whatever.
But most of all, of course, we need to thank this week’s most honorable hominids; Robert, Andrew, John, Mark, Kilburn State Records, Shane, Eric with a C, Robives (dot) com, Don, Daniel, Jonathan, Robert, Nicholas, Scott, Liam, Erik with a K and Steven. Robert, Andrew, John and Mark, whose erections give railroad crossing arms feelings of inadequacy; Kilburn State Records and Robives (dot) com, which would have made the list if it was the Fortune 502; Shane, Eric with a C, Don and Daniel; whose archery skills are too much for even the nimblest of neutrinos; Jonathan, Robert and Nicholas, who aren’t the droids you’re looking for; and Scott, Liam, Erik with a K and Steven, who make Mother Teresa look like a miserable bitch and not just because Mother Teresa really was a miserable bitch.
These seventeen people and companies (which are also people according to certain Republicans) have helped secure the sanity of coming generations this week by giving us money. Giving us money is a noble, selfless pursuit that was often used as a test of bravery by native American tribes. It also inoculates against alien abduction, witchcraft and the stupid thing where people think WiFi is nuking their brains. And it helps us keep doing the show.
And if you donate at Patreon (dot) com (slash) Scathing Atheist where, for as little as one dollar per episode, you can get extended cuts of each episode before the show is available to the general public. And for as little as more than one dollar an episode, you can get other bonus shit, too. So definitely check that out.
You can also support us with a one time donation by clicking the “donate” button on the right side of the homepage at Scathing Atheist (dot) com, or by picking up a copy of our new book “Diatribes, Volume One: 50 Essays From a Godless Misanthrope”, which is available on Amazon and the Kindle Store as well as other fine e-book retailers.
And if you’d like to support the show but we can go fuck ourselves if we think we’re getting your hard-earned dollars, you can also help us a ton by leaving a five star review on iTunes or Stitcher or wherever you like to leave five star reviews.
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.
Episode 44 – Partial Transcript
by Heath Enwright and Noah Lugeons
Warning: I took an Advil PM an hour ago so I can’t remember what I’m supposed to say, but Heath and Noah are gonna say fuck.
Sponsor:
Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the new Jesus-themed Chinese Restaurant chain “Wok on Water”; from the team that brought you the delicious Jewish/Asian Fusion Cuisine Cho-Zen. Come in and try this week’s special, Peking of Kings Duck with Easter Egg Drop Soup.
Wok on Water: The masters of cruci-fried rice.
And now, the Scathing Atheist…
Intro:
It’s Thursday
It’s December 19th
And Kickers and Defense shouldn’t count in fantasy football.
I’m Noah Lugeons,
I’m Heath Enwright,
And from bitterly frigid New York, New York, this is the Scathing Atheist
In this week’s episode,
-
We learn humans came on Earth via arcing ropes of panspermia.
-
We find out that reindeer games are more hockey than basketball,
-
And Friendly Atheist Hemant Mehta will join us to rescue a shred of dignity, after the Paul Walker necrophilia jokes.
But first, the diatribe…
Diatribe:
This past weekend Heath and I were playing each other in the semi-finals of the Fantasy Football League of Sinister Secularists; a fantasy league we play in with a bunch of other secular podcasters and bloggers. And I don’t just bring this up so that I have an excuse to mention that I trounced him and will face off against Cecil from Cognitive Dissonance in the Championship Game this weekend. There’s also a minor detail that clumsily segues into the point of this week’s diatribe.
So I’m watching Eddie Lacy lead an amazing comeback victory amid a burgeoning 24.3 point fantasy performance that would ultimately best Heath and end his fantasy season in crushing defeat and I’m doing so with a couple of friends. One of them is a nice enough guy, but he’s one of those athletic precog-wannabes that constantly says shit like, “Watch, this next one’s gonna be a touchdown”, or “I bet he throws an interception here”. He’s wrong as often as odds would suggest he would be but on the rare occasion that he gets one right, he starts planning his future as a psychic crime fighter.
And as I’m listening to Nostra-dumb-ass rattle off his predictions, I can’t help but think of all the easy parallels between that and religion. This tendency to take credit for shit you obviously had nothing to with even if it means willfully ignoring how often you’re wrong.
We talked about one of the micro-manifestation of this two weeks ago when I bitched for four minutes about athletes thanking god when they win and not sacrificing the appropriate number of bulls when they lose. Thanks for the win, Jesus, and sorry the desolate one got the best of you in the three consecutive losses that led to it. Thanks for the parking space, Jesus, and I’m sure you had a good reason for intentionally making me drive around SoHo for 20 minutes before you provided it.
And as much as it pisses me off to adopt the “good thing happened therefore god did it” attitude, it’s nothing compared to the equally common “good thing happened therefore Christians did it” attitude.
Consider it on the historical scale. There are plenty of Christians that will tell you the church led the charge to end slavery around the world. But they’ll conveniently leave out the fact that the church also led the opposition to the charge to end slavery around the world. They try to take credit for civil rights, for women’s suffrage for fuck’s sake. In fifty years they’ll be telling us how religion paved the way toward equality for gays.
But now dial it back a bit and consider it on the cultural scale. And I won’t have to reach too far to find my example. Consider all the “reason for the season” bullshit that pissed you off on Facebook this week. Consider the desperate attempts to claim authorship for all the various pagan celebrations that have survived and coalesced through societal evolution over the years and how jealously they guard their dominion over them.
I know the point’s been made plenty of times before, but none of the good parts of Christmas are Christian. The gifts, the lights, the tree, the mistletoe, the joy, the charity, the tinsel, the feasts, the family, the elvish reverse-burglar, the emotionally manipulative TV commercials, the caroling, the stars, the remote control helicopters… all of these things have non-Christian origins. And I’m willing to bet that if you keep all that shit and take out the Baby Jesus stuff and the guilt-induced church attendance, people wouldn’t stop celebrating Christmas. And if you took out the Pagan stuff it would be as popular as Epiphany or Ash Wednesday.
And as vociferously as they protest anytime somebody makes the claim that Christmas is a secular holiday, they don’t own it. They don’t have any claim to it. They don’t have a copyright on presents or Santa Claus or decorated trees. And while we’re at it, they don’t have exclusive claim to joy, forgiveness, happiness or goodwill. Hell, they don’t even have a monopoly on fictional guys with beards and magic powers that judge you morally and bestow gifts accordingly.
They started the war on Christmas when they stole in the first place. There’s nothing at all wrong with fighting back.
Headlines:
Joining me for headlines tonight is first runner-up in the semi-final round of the Fantasy Football League of Sinister Secularists, Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to watch jealously as I compete for the title next week?
Fuck Justin Tucker.
In our lead story tonight, Judge Brian M. Cogan of the Federal District Court in Brooklyn has granted the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York a judicial prophylactic against the provision of the Affordable Care Act that would require they provide contraceptive care to the employees of their non-profit affiliates. Judge Cogan found that giving the church no right to dictate the lawful sexual behavior of people they tangentially employed would be a violation of the first amendment.
Will the insurance cover paper towels to clean up after you pull out?
No, I think that still counts. Keep in mind that nobody’s asking these bishops to buy condoms and distribute them to their employees. And nobody’s requiring that anybody buy or use contraceptives of any kind. They’re just requiring that employers provide healthcare that covers contraceptives without a co-pay; and not just because Satan loves rubbers. It’s also at least subtly influenced by the fact that contraceptives are way cheaper than pregnancies and all the good kinds of abortion.
Are you sure about the good abortions? How much could it possibly cost to get all these women one coat hanger each?!? The ones that work in the same office could even share.
Court sides with Archdiocese in contraception controversy: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/17/nyregion/new-york-archdiocese-wins-ruling-on-contraception.html?_r=0&adxnnl=1&rref=nyregion&hpw=&adxnnlx=1387310059-n3uEUr09A3o8ZSYIdyqc4A
And in “Panspermia” news . . . No I am not talking about the new stir-fry dish at “Wok on Water”. Nor am I speaking of the penalty for being a shitty customer at Pizza Hut. I’m talking about the the book by alleged ecologist Doctor Ellis Silver, entitled “Humans Are Not From Earth: A Scientific Evaluation of the Evidence”.
Oh, well if it says “scientific” right there in the title…
First reaction: Real scientists shouldn’t need to expressly announce in the title, that their studies are (quote) “scientific evaluations of evidence”. Those are the fucking rules already.
Yeah, it does have an “I swear I’m not lying” ring to it…
That being said, let’s take a look at some of Dr. Silver’s super-sciencey stuff . . . which he chose not to publish in scientific journals, because he wants to engender non-expert debate on the subject.
Of course…
So he had a bunch of theories, including “Humans just don’t feel at home on Earth”. But my favorite one is (quote) “The size of babies’ heads present a problem for women when giving birth” (end quote). So he’s saying, if women aren’t aliens, why don’t they have giant vaginas?!? … If anything, the problem isn’t small vaginas . . . It’s our huge penises. Can’t speak for everyone, but Irish Brothas be performin’ C-Sections. So apparently aliens from Alpha Centauri are smart enough to travel multiple lightyears between solar systems, but can’t manage to find a planet that matches their snatch size?!?
Interesting story selection, by the way. It sounds less like a story we would normally cover on the Scathing Atheist and more like a story Andy would have given you for the InKredulous podcast we recently guested on before switching you out to a different story at the last minute leaving you with a fully written story you didn’t need. Weird.
Panspermians looking to debunk Darwin: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2507377/Humans-NOT-come-Earth–sunburn-bad-backs-pain-labour-prove-expert-claims.html
And from the “I’m Dreaming of a White Christian” file, Fox News anchor and shrieking bobblehead Megyn Kelly offended people who are and are not white last week when she insisted that despite the perplexing historical and genealogical implications, Jesus was white. And as if trying to camouflage the stupidity of that claim amid the larger stupidity of another, she couched it as an example to bolster the claim that Santa Claus is also white.
Well he’s giving gifts to a whole bunch of different kids, in different houses on Christmas, so he sounds more like a black guy to me. Although he is a job creator, so it’s hard to say.
This tangent into xenophobic insanity came as a response to calls for some racial inclusivity in the Santa legend. After all [spoiler alert] Santa doesn’t actually exist, so why can’t we warm our children’s hearts with stories about black men breaking into their homes once a year?
How about a compromise? Santa can still be white, but the elves that work for him without compensation can be black. And instead of reindeer he can have Mexicans. Hold on, that makes no sense. The sweat-shop elves should be Mexican, and the reindeer should be black.
On Shizzle, on Nizzle, on T-Bone and Pookie…
But it’s a white dude naming the black sleigh slaves . . .
So like “On Toby, on Rupert, on Django … on Pookie.”
Jesus can say say cracker: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-brad-hirschfield/santa-is-white-really_b_4433624.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003 <<and>> http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/12/13/the-unbearable-whiteness-of-being-megyn-kelly-jon-stewart-skewers-fox-news-caucasian-persuasion/ <<and>> http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/12/12/tabula-reza-foxs-megyn-kelly-insists-jesus-was-a-white-guy-reza-aslan-responds/
And from the “So Many Holes, So Little Crime” file, Judge Clark Waddoups of the US District Court in Utah, ruled in favor of the polygamous family from the reality show “Sister Wives”, declaring a law against their plural marriages unconstitutional.
And the anti-gay-marriage lobby’s collective echo of “Told ya so!” could be heard throughout the country. “Next it’s gonna be them fellers what fuck sheep an’ stuff!”
The show documents the life of Kody Brown and his family of four wives and seventeen children. Clearly wanting to set me up for a “Big Love” joke, Brown is about 6’4″ – 250, and appears to like his women the same way, with matching feathered, blond, David Spade haircuts.
Yeah, if we’re just going by weight, marrying any one of these gals is polygamy.
So now that we’re on the subject of the vagina-heavy sexual exploits of these genius bigamist bastards,
I see where you’re going. 30 seconds on the clock … Mormon Porn Stars and Titles: GO!
Does it have to be shit porn, like last week?- Nevermind doesn’t matter: “8 Wives, 1 Cup”
No it doesn’t have to be shit porn, but if it did, I would lead off with Glenn Pecker starring in “Nobody Swallows Shit Like Mormons”
“Dry County Golden Showers”
Clit Romney in “Nymphos and Nephites”… a follow up to her 2009 hit “Laying the Lamanites”
Brigham Hung in “The Great Salty Lake”
Damn it. I was gonna go with the “Great Salt Lick” but now I have to change it. Um… How about “Polygamy, myself and Irene… and Cassandra and Judith and Sharon and Anne”?
Ted Bundy’s Magical Undies … That’s right: Serial killer extraordinaire Ted Bundy was a Mormon.
I’m surprised the momos don’t advertise that more… it would make them seem less like pansies. Okay, how about Tony “Big Bologna” Moroni in “Brides and Prejudice”?
“Missionary Position: Finger on the Front Buzzer” . . . And of course: “Missionary Position Number 2: Getting Pushy at the Rear Entrance”
Described by critics as a Polyga-must see. And of course, the homo-momo-erotic classic; Trey Park-it and Matt Blown present “The Book of More-Men”
Utah judge strikes down anti-polygamy law: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/12/14/21903224-federal-judge-strikes-down-key-parts-of-utahs-polygamy-law-in-sister-wives-ruling
So I guess we’ll close it quick before Heath realizes that recently deceased crappy actor Paul Walker was a Mormon and starts suggesting Mormon necrophilia porn titles…
The Recently Passed and the Curious?
Well, they do practice posthumous baptism so they do have experience moistening dead people.
And on that lovely image, we’ll close headlines for tonight. Heath, thanks as always.
And when we come back Friendly Atheist Hemant Mehta will sit down with me for a much tamer conversation about the problems that young atheists face when openly declaring their disbelief.
Interview: Hemant Mehta
Link to Hemant’s Blog: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/
Link to Hemant’s Book on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/The-Young-Atheists-Survival-Guide/dp/1939221072
Link to Secular Student Alliance: http://www.secularstudents.org/
Link to Freedom From Religion Foundation: http://ffrf.org/
Link to Reddit/Atheism: http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/
Outro:
Before we set up camp for the night, I wanted to remind everyone that if you hear this before the 21st, you still have time to nominate us for a Stitcher Award at Stitcher (dot) promoTW (dot) com. You can nominate up to once per day and you can nominate us in multiple categories so we strongly suggest that you do that.
I also wanted to thank Cat and Mouse for giving Heath and I our first opportunity to actually meet a couple of our listeners. Probably a way bigger deal for us than it was for them so thanks for that and sorry for constantly looking over your shoulders to see how Le’Veon Bell was doing but hey, it’s the fantasy playoffs, you know?
I also need to thank Heath for being funny enough to get away with saying the shit he says. I need to thank Lucinda for lending us her lovely voice to open the show, I need to thank Hemant Mehta one more time and remind you that as good as the first half of that interview was, the second half is even better. And you have a week to read his book before you hear that, so if you want to do the homework, you’ll find a link to it and to his blog on the shownotes for this episode
And of course, I’ve got to thank Andy Wilson of the Merseyside Skeptics and the InKredulous Podcast for providing this week’s Farnsworth Quote and for inviting Heath and me to join him on his incredibly hilarious show. Look for that episode coming in the very near future and look for a link on our Twitter feed and Facebook page as soon as said link is available.
http://www.merseysideskeptics.org.uk/category/podcast/inkredulous-podcast/
But most of all tonight I need to thank this week’s most tremendous terrestrials, Jacqueline, Ward, Bill, Tim, Katja, Jeffrey, Wolfgang and Benjamin. Jacqueline, whose sexual magnetism carries a court-ordered pacemaker warning; Ward, whose statuesque physique would be a frustratingly persuasive argument in favor of intelligent design; Bill, whose voice is so sexy it makes automated operator’s come; Tim, who chops through flaming, steel girders with his dick; Katja, whose genetic perfection is so absolute they’re renaming a nucleotide after her; Jeffrey, whose legendary swordsmanship and nautical notoriety are the reason so many pirates are missing an eye; Wolfgang, whose name would kick anybody else’s name’s ass in a fight except possibly Magnus and Benjamin, whose inevitable greatness is so palpable that statues have already been commissioned in advance of his world-altering accomplishments.
These eight elegant, admirable and accommodating altruists proved themselves in the only non-Jenga related way that matters this week by giving us money. Only the atheists that believe in god the least have the incredulity required to give us money, but if you think you share the superlative skepticism of Jacqueline, Ward, Bill, Tim, Katja, Jeffrey, Wolfgang and Benjamin, you’ll find the donate button on the right side of the homepage at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.
And if you’d like to help us out but you have kids and it’s December, you can help us a ton for free by leaving us a five star review on iTunes and telling a friend about the show. If you need more Scathe in your life you can find us on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and we have a blog and occasionally, there’s shit on that too.
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.
Why Atheists Always Win at Twitter
by Noah Lugeons
I just reached the satisfying conclusion of a five day flame war on Twitter. My wife’s kind of new to the whole Twitter thing, so I’ve been explaining my technique a bit as I go. It’s been educational for both of us, as it’s forced me to think a lot more about it than I normally do. And over that period, I’ve developed a theory to help explain why I always kick so much ass in Twitter fights.
Now, it’s too broad a generalization to say that atheists always win on Twitter, unless you define winning as being the person who turns out to be correct in the end. I’ve seen a few atheists get their asses handed to them by clever apologists on Twitter, forums, Facebook threads, Reddit, blog comments… you name it. But it seems that the vast majority of the time, I see the atheist beating the religious clod into the ground until they’re pounding their keyboards randomly with shaking fists.
So before I lay out my theory, we have to define two things. One is what I consider “winning” in a flame war. The second is, strangely enough, the word “faith”. We’ll start with the easy one.
The old trope about somebody being wrong on the internet is used to justify a lot of losses in online arguments. I’m not saying there isn’t something to the notion that arguing online is often unproductive, but I think one goes to far when one says it’s “useless”. As I’ve said before on this blog, it helps you hone your skills in live debate, it helps you reinforce your understanding of your own position and it helps you build a community of online support. But there’s also another benefit; it can be really fun.
Debates online are okay. I usually let somebody else takeover when the philosophical arguments get too far in the weeds because that shit bores me eventually. I don’t have the patience to walk theist after theist through all the errors in “irreducible complexity” or “Pascal’s Wager”. But I never back down from a good old fashioned flame war. Hell, I’ve been doing that shit since CompuServe.
In all that time, the enemy hasn’t changed, the wars haven’t changed and thus my tactics haven’t had to change much. Once an argument moves beyond any exchange of rational ideas and turns into a name-calling, juvenile insult war, there’s only one way to win. You have to be the one who maintains your cool longest. Eventually, if you do it right, you’ll get a response like:
You’re a pathetic, tragic, stupid, evil waste of breath. FUCK YOU!!!!1!!!
And then you can break out the champagne because you’ve won. When you’ve reduced a person to something like that, they’ve admitted that they’re through being clever or even intelligent. You’ve cracked their facade of confidence and revealed them to be your intellectual inferior. What’s more, you can pile on all you want at this point because they’ve gotten emotional and you haven’t. You can make them drool if you try hard enough.
For my purposes, this is the only measure of victory in a flame war. Being the last person to lose their cool says that you’re the one presenting the rational argument and they’re the one presenting the emotional one. It doesn’t matter if that’s true or not because all participants have long abandoned the logical standing of their position anyway. It’s simply about who can piss who off first.
And it is in this way that I see atheists win over and over and over again.
Part of this is certainly the fact that we’ve just got the better arguments. There can be little doubt, especially in the mind of a non-believer, who is approaching this question logically and who is approaching it emotionally. It also helps that we are forced into positions where we have to justify our worldview far more often than theists (and, of course, I’m speaking only to the culture I’m familiar with. Can’t say how true that is for my readers outside the US).
And that ultimately brings us to the role “faith” plays in all of this. Religious people love to talk about “faith”, but when they use it, it has a special meaning. If I were to use faith, it would be to describe a near-certainty: I have faith that the porch will hold my weight; I have faith that Heath will show up to record on Tuesday; I have faith that I will win Twitter wars with theists. But that type of faith is entirely different than the “faith” that believers talk about. So much so that they should really have to use a different word. It’s almost the polar opposite of what I mean.
Me: Faith is the expectation that something will behave exactly like it always does.
Them: Faith is the expectation that everything will eventually behave in a way I’ve never observed it behaving.
Ask an atheist and virtually all of them will tell you that they’d be willing to change their minds on the “god” question if compelling new evidence appeared. Ask a theist and virtually all of them would tell you the opposite. Theists look at that and see doubt in the atheists, while we look at it and see doubt in them. After all, I’m confident that my porch will hold my weight, but it would only take one time of me falling through it to change my mind on the subject. It’s a belief I’m so confident about that I don’t have to worry about changing my mind on it.
But consider the religious type of faith in that analogy. They would have to keep walking out on that porch every day, even after it collapsed. They’d have to walk out the back door, fall into the pile of broken lumber below, pluck splinters from their limbs and tell themselves that the porch was still holding their weight. No amount of evidence would sway them from their “faith”. But our kind of faith breeds a certain kind of apathy. If you’re confident enough about a belief, you don’t care. You’re not emotionally invested in the belief that the porch will hold your weight. You don’t bother justifying the belief to yourself with logic puzzles and wagers from long dead mathematicians. I need invoke no syllogism to prove to myself that the porch will hold my weight.
Which brings us back to the flame wars. I won’t deny that I’m emotionally invested in the atheist movement. I’m as emotional about fighting against religious intrusion as I am about any subject. I passionately donate my time, money, creativity and effort to furthering this cause and that is all fueled by an emotional investment. But what I’m emotional about isn’t the fact that god doesn’t exist. I have faith in that the same way I have faith in my porch. I might need a fancy analogy or two to justify it to a believer, but I don’t need anything but the evidence (or overwhelming lack thereof) to settle that question to my own satisfaction.
So when I’m battling with a believer, they keep expecting to find that emotional trigger. They fire blindly because they think there’s something about my atheism that has spurred my activism. In reality, it’s actually something about their religion. Meanwhile, it’s kind of easy to find their trigger. They want to tear down your intelligence because it irks them to think that a smart person would look at the data and conclude that there is no god. So simply being intelligent with your responses is enough to eventually bring out the worst in them.
Sure, we can be disrespectful, scathing and vulgar (hell, that’s kind of my niche), but we never abandon reason. Even in the filthiest of flame wars, I’m always in the realm of logic. And eventually that leaves them in the realm of ad hominem Fuck-Yous.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go make someone drool.
Episode 7: Partial Transcript
by Noah Lugeons
Sponsor:
This week’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by all the awesome people who sent encouraging emails and tweets, left complimentary comments on the blog, gave us positive reviews on iTunes and otherwise helped convince us to start doing this thing on a weekly basis.
And now, the Scathing Atheist…
Intro:
It’s Thursday, It’s April 4th, and I’m already tired of changing my fantasy baseball lineup.
I’m your host Noah Lugeons and from decadent New York, New York, This is the Scathing Atheist
On this week’s episode,
- A Riyadh woman has consensual sex despite overt bicycle riding,
- God blames his mysterious ways on the lack of a father figure in his life,
- And Tom Beasley of an American Atheist join us to explain how he gets off naming his atheist podcast after a country that was clearly founded as a Christian nation.
But first, Heath Enwright with the diatribe…
Diatribe:
Many religions believe that the universe is created by an intelligent designer. Existence is an experimental game and god is the initial inventor of the game and is now an all-knowing spectator watching as we humans misuse the power of choice he gave us. This notion is fucking absurd, but let’s explore it anyway.
If god’s a sports fan, his model sport for humankind is definitely NASCAR. The world he built is a very similar, ridiculously dangerous situation . . . A bunch of crazy rednecks, competitively wasting fossil fuels and god’s just watching from the stands waiting to see the really good wrecks.
The takeaway here, is that if god is a NASCAR fan, he’s can’t be that intelligent.
So if he even exists, intelligent design is not the preferred nomenclature. I’d call it Military intelligent design at best. Even GOD didn’t think through his exit strategy. Intelligently designed games end elegantly, like checkmate in chess. For this game of existence on earth, his exit strategy seems to be nuclear holocaust.
I’m just saying, if religion were to dial back their stance on the intelligence, and just go for the design claim I’d still think they were silly but noticeably less so. But they don’t do dialing back very well. Admitting fault isn’t exactly in the church’s wheelhouse. Granted the faults they’d need to admit are often unspeakable, but I’m pretty sure that actually makes it worse.
The point . . . is that god’s clearly not that smart, and it looks like devoutly religious people agree. Everyone I’ve ever met who takes a religion really seriously, is always trying to justify absurd ways to bend the rules. Like god didn’t read his own fine print.
Great example . . . take butt sex. If you’re willing to bend over the rules a little, anal sex is the #1 virginity preservation method. I like to call this the poop-hole loophole . . . Like this somehow softens the blow later when you’re married, and trying to make your sexual history sound less bad; “No I’m a legit virgin. I’ve had huge amounts of cock in the hole right next to it, but that vagina is clean virgin territory.”
Bullshit . . . Even then, you know they’ve played, ‘just the tip’, a few times.
Speaking of just the tip, my circumcised friend from college, named Israel, also a firm believer in the validity of the poop hole loophole, was excellent at finding ways to just barely avoid directly breaking all these detailed Orthodox Jew-y rules he had to deal with.
For example, he’s not allowed to use any fire, electricity, or machinery of any kind on Shabas, which is sundown Friday until sundown Saturday. So if we were all hanging out smoking pot on Friday night, he couldn’t partake. Unless of course somebody drew a bong hit into the tube without inhaling it, and then happened by chance to leave that random, glass, smoke-filled column sitting on the table with a coaster over it, and then Israel happened to randomly choose to take one of his normal breaths of air while that coaster was quickly removed and that glass tube was on his face.
This would just be a chain of unrelated events. The fire used to burn the pot to make the smoke to fill the tube was wielded by someone else and the bong water acted as a mystical justification barrier, completely separating the fire from whoever might have, by chance, been breathing too close to the bong afterward.
Like Jew God is up there going, “Shit, yeah that bong water really ties my hands on this one. My boss – “God God” – will be up my ass about this if I smite this crafty stoner.” And as far as I know, Israel’s never been smote, so clearly the loophole worked. And this encourages further abuse of the rules.
So why are we so surprised about priests raping kids? Bunch of priests sitting around – trying to figure out loopholes:
“God says we can’t have sex, and can’t masturbate. What option does that leave us? Roll with me on this, keeping in mind, the lord works in mysterious ways. What if a kid gave me a Dutch Rudder?
“We’re not touching dicks. I’m touching my dick, and he’s just working my arm. So I’m not jerking it, and he’s not jerking it, and everybody wins.”
I guess not that many priests are big Kevin Smith fans. All I’m saying . . . it seems like nobody is telling the priests’ side of the story. Maybe the rape thing was a little extreme, but clearly the current rules aren’t sustainable. If I were a priest, I’d be lobbying for glory holes in the confessional booth. At least slutty sinners could try to buy indulgences with happy endings .
There is another solution. It’s nowhere near as fun as my glory hole idea, but probably more reasonable. The church could always just acknowledge that celibacy is ridiculous and goes against the biological instinct to reproduce, or at least the instinct to get laid. But this solution would never happen, because the church would end up having to reconcile its absurd universe view with contradictory things like evidence.
Church’s just don’t do epistemology. Figuring things out with reason is a giant hassle compared to faith.
Headlines:
Joining me tonight for headlines is the Tango to my Cash, Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to tango?
Alright, in our lead story tonight, Pennsylvania State Representative Tim Krieger has introduced legislation designed to act as an impediment to the first amendment. There’s a lot going on here, but the important thing to take away from it is that Representative Krieger is willing to boldly stand up to a beleaguered minority, as long as they’re kids.
Our story begins with Moses wandering down a mountain with a couple of tablets and placing them, in a roundabout way, in front of a school near Pittsburgh. A few secular students pointed out that a giant copy of the Ten Commandments shouldn’t be there. Officials refused to voluntarily remove it so the students got together with the Freedom From Religion Foundation and sued the school.
Well the judge in the case is trying to let them sue anonymously, but that’s reasonable so the Christians are against it.
Enter Tim Krieger, fanatical Christian blowhard and guy who looks like he would be second-in-command for a plot to take over the world, but not the main bad guy. He calls bullshit on that and proposes a law that would make it illegal for a plaintiff to sue anonymously regardless of the ruling of the judge in the case. But don’t worry; this would only apply to cases where religious monuments were being challenged on a Constitutional basis, so at least they’re not trying to pretend it’s fair.
Pennsylvania representative proposes law that would force atheist students to sue publicly: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/03/29/pennsylvania-rep-tim-krieger-doesnt-care-if-atheists-get-harassed-by-christians/
And in other centuries, the morality of Catholicism is in the news again, despite not having changed in generations. The latest incarnation of their pre-scientific ethics comes to us from Boston, home of the nation’s oldest public park, numerous substandard sports franchises and Boston College where officials have threatened disciplinary action against students for the unspeakable crime of promoting safe sex.
Yes, it’s the fucking condom thing again.
The group BC Students for Sexual Health was hit with a “cease and desist” order saying that the group’s goal of promoting common sense was (quote) “not in concert with the mission of Boston College as a Catholic and Jesuit University”
Boston College stops students from handing out condoms: http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/27/us/boston-college-condoms-dispute/index.html
In other news, our whirlwind tour of bat-shit crazy states makes a long-overdue stop in Utah where the Mormons look to cement their reputation as backwards even compared to other religions. The Christian Newswire alerts us to a new service offered by a Salt Lake City based Mormon pseudo-clinic that brings cyber-homophobia into the 21st century.
This is another one of those “pray the gay out” type of things where some callous charlatan takes money from a conflicted person whose preacher tells them they’re identity is offensive to god. In the press release they refer to homosexuality as “same-sex attraction”, which I thought was a nice touch.
Anti-gay web resource for Mormon homophobes: http://www.christiannewswire.com/news/8297071798.html
And from the “Somebody-Had-To-Say-It” department, a new study warns parents that extreme religiosity in a child could be a warning sign of insanity. Every article I saw on the study was really careful to point out all the beneficial corollaries of faith in kids, such as lower incidence of criminal behavior, higher self-esteem, better academic performance and less trouble fucking the preppy chicks, but the association between religion and crazy is pretty hard to ignore.
The study warns that extreme devotion to a religion could be emblematic of anxiety, unaddressed trauma or stress, obsessive compulsive disorder, bi-polar disorder, scrupulosity, schizophrenia, manic depressive or early onset of being-an-insufferable-dick.
Now, we make a lot of jokes about this, but this is pretty serious because one of the really pervasive side effects of religion is that it gives crazy people something to cloak themselves in. Everybody has to be at least a little “crazy” to profess some of the beliefs that organized religion demands, so it’s easy to imagine somebody delaying psychological treatment for a child because they don’t want to say, “he’s so religious it’s crazy”. Faith has been mislabeled a virtue so if something that would be clearly nuts in any other context pops up in the context of religion, people are way less likely to go, “that motherfucker’s crazy.”
Study warns that children who are “too religious” may be crazy: http://news.yahoo.com/child-too-religious-094552602.html
Moving on to some “Other-Countries-Are-Laughing-At-Us” news, an atheist shoe company in Berlin is charging that the US Post Office deliberately discriminates against them and backs up the allegation with an informal study that showed that identical packages with their abominable “Atheist” logo took an average of 3 days longer to arrive at their destination.
To be fair, this wasn’t exactly a scientific study and it wasn’t exactly published in a peer review journal, but the results look pretty damning for the USPS, especially since the whole experiment was prompted when US customers starting asking the company to leave off the telltale tape that said “Atheist-Atheist-Atheist” across it.
The take away, though, is that there’s a company that makes pretty cool looking shoes that say “Ich Bin Atheist” on them and they’re getting some free advertising on our show courtesy of the Post Office being a bunch of miserable dicks.
Atheist shoe company accuses US Post Office of discrimination: http://www.atheistberlin.com/study
And in this week’s living, breathing evidence against intelligent design, Dr. Joseph Mastropaolo has announced that he will impotently wave $10,000 around in the air in a vainglorious, insincere, meaningless publicity stunt.
Mastropaolo, a grown adult with an advanced degree who believes in Noah’s Ark is pretending to offer $10,000 to anyone who can “scientifically disprove” the literal creation account described in Genesis. And yes, that’s the one where they say god created night and day a full three days before creating the sun.
People with competent navigation of their own brains point out that “scientifically disproving” something is a meaningless term and thus an impossible standard to meet. They also point out that if Mastropaolo was so confident, he wouldn’t be insisting that anyone trying to claim the prize also put up $10,000. And of course, they also point out that the generally accepted foundations of biology, astronomy, geology, chemistry, cosmology, anthropology, literature and philosophy all “disprove” a literal interpretation of the bible to any reasonable standard.
Creationist offers $10,000 to anyone who can scientifically “disprove” creationism: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/27/joseph-mastropaolo-creationist-10000-disprove-genesis_n_2964801.html
And finally, in international news, Saudi Arabia makes a bold move to counteract the baseless stereotype that women are mistreated in majority Muslim countries. In a valiant and unprecedented move that would have made Elizabeth Cady Stanton look like Archie Bunker’s wife, the religious police in Saudi Arabia have lifted the ban on women riding bicycles.
Now, obviously you can’t do this all at once or you’d risk utter chaos, so they’ll be limiting this to specific parks and recreational areas, and, of course, the women will have to be chaperoned by a male relative and covered from head to toe in a potato sack, but I think it’s safe to say that sexism in Saudi Arabia is pretty much over.
Saudi authorities lift ban on women in bikes: http://news.yahoo.com/saudi-religious-police-lift-ban-women-bikes-111923001.html
That’s all we’ve got for headlines tonight, Heath, thanks for hanging out.
When we come back, Tom Beasley will join me to circle religion like a hungry buzzard.
Skit:
Occasionally we get feedback from listeners that really enjoy the show, but think that we sometimes get a little carried away. For example, in last week’s episode, when discussing the Westboro Baptist Church, my co-host Heath Enwright expressed a desire to savagely penetrate Fred Phelps’ rectum.
We received several comments about the segment but I chose two that represented what I’ve come to think of as the two distinct audiences that this program appeals to.
Jon on Facebook said he really enjoyed parts of the show, but felt that the anally penetrating Fred Phelps portion went (quote) “beyond edgy and made me squeamish”. On the other hand, we also got an email from Daniel in Plano who said, “Love it! I almost pissed myself when Heath started talking about butt-fucking Phelps!”
So in our ceaseless quest to push the envelope of podcasting, I’d like to offer two explanations of the Fred Phelps comments. And because the show is only 30 minutes, I’d like to offer both explanations at the same time.
So if you find yourself in the “Jon” camp that feared that segment might make them vomit, please remove your right earphone for the remainder of this segment. If you’re more in “Daniel’s” spontaneous urination camp, please remove your left earphone. And if you’re not generally inspired to exude any bodily secretions over our skits, feel free to leave both earphones in and get twice as much podcast for the next few minutes.
*
We live in a world where the walls of censorship are fast falling away. Where once some government (censor/ cock-stain) stood between your ears and the vulgarities of less (cultured/ prudish) (individuals/ motherfuckers), in the 21st century, you’re no longer protected from words like (George Carlin’s notorious seven/ shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, tits).
There is, of course, one (negative/ positive) consequences (While/…) it expands the scope of the first amendment to previously unimagined heights, we also (have/ get) to (endure/ enjoy) a lot more (off-color/ dick and fart) jokes and (lewd/ hilarious) social commentary. As a result, some (refined/ uptight) consumers of new media with little (tolerance/ appreciation) for vulgarity get (offended/ fucked).
As a producer of such content, one must act as one’s own censor and must thus strike a (delicate/ frustrating) balance between being too (vulgar/ boring) and being too (academic/ vulgar). While I respect and appreciate the concerns of the people who wish I would be (vulgar/ myself) less often, I’m naturally inclined to side with the group that most mirrors my own sense of (propriety/ humor). The unfortunate result is that I must occasionally ask some members of my audience to (endure in good humor/ go fuck themselves).
Take, for example, our recent headline segment about the (detestable bigots/ spunk-garglers) at the Westboro Baptist Church. During that segment, our mutual dislike for the group was obvious and my co-host made some (untoward/ hysterical) comments about their leader, Fred Phelps, and things that might be hatefully inserted into his (anus/ asshole), including Heath’s (hateful /throbbing) (member/ dick).
While some (people/ prudes) found this offensive, I think it’s important to keep in mind that Fred Phelps is (despicable/ an ass nugget) and deserves to be (mocked/ gay hate fucked) mercilessly. What’s more, we should do so with (unapologetic/ un-lubricated), (spite-filled/ splinter-filled) (voracity/ broom handles) in the deepest, most (scornful/ painful) way.
And when we, here at the Scathing Atheist, (comment publicly/ blow our juice) on Fred Phelps, we hope that we can hit him (where it hurts/ in the eyes) and really make it sting. A gifted few can do so by way of intellectual criticisms, but those of us without the (education/ desire) or the (verbal dexterity/ words and shit) to express such scathing distaste without resorting to (obscenity/ fuck) filled tirades (have/ get) to resort to the (basest/ funniest) type of humor.
The important thing to remember is that regardless of what words we choose, we all agree that if any target is deserving of our foulest utterings, it is the kind of (visceral/ass-brained) (animosity/ fucktardary) and (lunacy/ bullshit) promoted by the Westboro Baptist Church.
Okay, this (segment/ shit) is really hard to edit, so please put your (right/ left) earphone back in now.
Calendar:
It’s time for the Atheist Calendar portion of the show. This week we’ll be highlighting some of the great secular meet-ups and conventions coming up in April.
We’ll start in Lawrence, Kansas where “Reasonfest 3” will be taking place over the weekend of April 20th. The lineup is fantastic, led by Seth Andrews, JT Eberhard, Jerry DeWitt plus Matt Dillahunty in a debate called “Moral Combat” and something with the enticing title “The Godless Pervert Story Hour” featuring notable godless perverts Greta Christina, David Fitzgerald and more.
http://kusoma.org/2013/01/reasonfest-2013/
A lot of action the following week in the nation’s capital: The Secular Coalition for America will be hosting a Secular Summit from April 24th to the 26th that’ll include some great instruction on effective secular lobbying.
http://secular.org/lobbyday2013
Also in DC on the 27th of April the Center For Inquiry will be hosting “Why Tolerate Religion”, a day long symposium tackling the contentious issue of religion’s role in our supposedly secular government.
http://action.centerforinquiry.net/site/Calendar?id=103301&view=Detail
And for our West Coast heathens, CFI on Campus will be hosting a Leadership Conference in the City of Angels on the same weekend.
http://www.centerforinquiry.net/oncampus/slcla2013
Of course, wherever you are in the world, don’t forget that according to the Secular Students Alliance, Thursday, April 18th is National Ask an Atheist Day, so check your local listings to see if there’s any way you can get involved.
http://www.secularstudents.org/askanatheistday
If you want to learn more about this or any of the other events discussed on this episode, check the shownotes for episode 7 at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.
That’ll do it for this week’s calendar. As always, if you’re involved in an atheist, skeptical or secular event that needs a little free publicity, let me know. And if you’re not involved in an atheist, skeptical or secular event, what the hell are you waiting for?
Interview Links:
An American Atheist Blog: http://anamericanatheist.org/
Outro:
So that’s about all the time we’ve got for tonight. I want to thank Tom Beasley for hanging out with us, I want to thank Alan Blumlein for inventing stereo sound and also want to give a big thanks for Cecil & Tom from Cognitive Dissonance for providing this week’s circuitous Farnsworth quote. Those guys put on a really fun podcast, so you should definitely check them out at Dissonance Pod (dot) com.
I also want to thank the lovely Lucinda Lugeons for everything she does behind the scenes, Heath Enwright for everything he does in front of the scenes. But mostly I want to thank god for making this podcast possible by not existing.
Be sure to check back with us in 168 hours for the “Holy Babble” edition, in which Heath, my wife and I will do something that at least two of us will regret almost immediately. If you can’t wait that long, be sure to check out our erratically published blog, follow me on Twitter @Noah (underscore) Lugeons and like us on Facebook because apparently people still use Facebook.
If you enjoy the show, please help us spread the word by leaving us a glowing review on iTunes or whatever you use. Don’t forget to help drive up our Stitcher ranking by listening to us there and if you don’t have the Stitcher app yet, don’t worry, I’m not judging you for it the way all the attractive members of the opposite sex are.
If you have comments, questions 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.
Are Atheists Angry at God?
by Noah Lugeons
There are plenty of stereotypes about atheists that piss me off, but among my least favorite is this notion that atheists were driven to disbelief by their “anger at god”. Screenwriters and religious bigots would love for you to believe that atheists became atheists because god wasn’t there for them in their time of need. They’d love for you to believe that atheism is the byproduct of trauma that we’re all still working through.
But on this subject and many others, Carlin said it best. I became an atheist right around the age of reason. The same can be said of most atheists. Some of us have great stories about our deconversion, but most of us can’t pinpoint a single time or date or significant precursor. We just slowly came to realize that religion was bullshit.
That’s not to say that nobody becomes an atheist after a traumatic event. I’m sure there are plenty of stories of devoutly religious people abandoning their faith after personal tragedies, but to be fair there are also plenty of stories of nominally religious or non-religious people embracing faith after similar events. Either way, these anecdotes are in the minority. Most atheists are atheists because they correctly employ logic.
But if you cut the sentence short and put the question mark two words sooner, the answer is very different, and I think that’s why theists have such an easy time believing the cliche. Atheists are angry. We’re not angry at god, we’re angry at religion, but I can see how it’s difficult for a theist to draw a distinction there. It has to be hard to step completely outside the religious worldview, but if they did, I think they could see fairly easily why pretending to speak for god would piss off people who don’t believe in god.
I don’t know that this is an understanding that some theists can reach, but I offer the Venn-diagram anyway. It’s not as much for them as it is for all the other atheists that are sick and fucking tired of pretentious religious fuck-munches who, upon hearing that they are atheists, respond with a condescendingly ostentatious display of pity and the words, “what happened?”
Why Do You Believe?
by Noah Lugeons
One of my least favorite questions is, “Why are you an atheist?” and it’s nearly identical but more frequent form, “Why don’t you believe in God?”
It’s very tempting to answer “Because he doesn’t exist” and depending on my mood and the identity of the inquisitor, that’s often exactly how I answer. When somebody accosts me at a subway station to hand me some silly pamphlet I’ll usually say, “No thanks, I’m an atheist.” And if they pursue it any further, I’ll give them the short, testy answer.
But that’s not always appropriate. Like everyone else out there, I have a lot of friends, coworkers, family members and acquaintances that are religious and when they ask me why I’m an atheist, it’s usually out of a genuine curiosity and I feel like they deserve more than, “Because there is no Tooth Fairy.”
That is the honest answer, of course. I can dress it up in the language of politic and say, “Because there is no convincing evidence of the existence of a higher power, nor is there any logical reason to assume one exists in an absence of evidence”, but that doesn’t do much to soften the blow. The fact is, there is no way (that I’m aware of) to explain it without insulting the believer. What I’m saying, regardless of what words I choose, is, “I’m an atheist because I’m better at thinking than you.”
I honestly believe that this is why atheists have earned the stereotype of intellectual arrogance. The reason that one is an atheist is because one properly applied logic to the question of religion. Atheists are atheists because they thought correctly. Now how the hell does one explain that to a person who thought incorrectly without sounding pretentious?
The problem, as we all know, is that the question is facing the wrong way. It’s not for me to explain why I believe the negative proposition. We both claim A-Y, you just add Z. If you’re the one adding something, you’re the one with the burden of proof. But Google-forbid you flip the question on its head and ask them why they believe in God. You’ll get a laundry list of nonsense that goes on for an hour. You’ll hear about their personal relationship with Jesus and you’ll hear about the value of faith and tradition and the meaning that religion gives their lives and you’ll want to take a trowel to your eardrums by the time it’s all over.
So how does one tackle this question without coming off as scornful? More importantly, how does one tackle this question with any persuasive power?
The truth is that I have no idea. Tact is not one of my strong suits (you may have noticed) and usually I respond with something like, “So how ’bout them Yankees, huh?” But if somebody is insistent and I can’t avoid delving into it, I usually find something that we can both disagree with. I’ll ask them if they believe in Bigfoot or Alien abductions or Atlantis or Astrology or the giant diamond in Sam Harris’s backyard until I find something that we can both agree is bullshit. Then I’ll ask them why they don’t believe in it and let them make the argument against god for me.
And then, of course, I’ll play devil’s advocate by trying to convince them with all the arguments that are typically offered for religion; “But hunting sasquatches gives meaning to so many people’s lives”, “But how can you discount all those anecdotal accounts?”, “What about people who feel Bigfoot’s presence?”, “What about all the written accounts of Bigfoot over the many decades?”
Granted, I suppose I come off every bit as arrogant and scornful in this tactic, but it redirects the question and at the same time, it deflates all the worst arguments they can offer. When I then say, “So why do you believe in god?” they have to at least filter their answers through the “would-this-convince-me-there’s-a-bigfoot?” filter. Even things like “How do you explain the ‘order’ and ‘design’ of the universe?” can easily be answered with “Bigfoot makes noises in the night and there are noises in the night.” This is the intellectual equivalent of “God makes universes and there’s a universe” and is every bit as convincing if you strip away the veneer of intellectual honesty.
But in the end, as I said, I don’t spend too much time concerned with tactful answers to questions like that. It’s the question that is pretentious, assuming and arrogant so if I inadvertently insult the person who asks it, perhaps they’ll think twice about asking it next time.
And if it’s somebody that I really don’t want to offend; my mother, for example; I’ll just throw out this caveat: “You’re asking me why I think one of your most cherished beliefs is misguided and silly. Do you really want me to answer that question?”
Religious Debates on Twitter
by Noah Lugeons
There are two memes that sum up most people’s opinion of a religious argument on Twitter. One is the cartoon where the guy can’t come to bed yet because someone is wrong on the internet. The other one is offensive to the mentally disabled and you already know it anyway.
The basic message is that arguing on the internet is a waste of time. You’re not changing anyone’s mind, you’re not solving any problems and you’re never going to win. But I’d like to challenge that stereotype. I suppose if I wanted I could dig around for some anecdote about somebody being converted through a Twitter debate, but I trust our loyal readers to be too smart to be taken in by an anecdote and besides, I think I can argue for the value of a Twitter debate even if I concede that you’re not changing anyone’s mind, you’re not solving any problems and you’re never going to win.
I justify most religious debate by the audience. The people who watch William Lane Craig debate anyone with enough brain power to keep their saliva inside their head will probably walk away realizing that Craig is a jack-off who talks in circles and hopes his audience doesn’t know the difference between truth and truthiness. But you can’t really invoke that when it comes to Twitter. Sure, there’s an audience, but they’re just as partisan as the participants.
So you can’t win, solve problems, change minds or influence an audience. What does that leave? Well, (here come s the anecdote) you can hone your skills, refine your opinions, learn more about the debate tactics of the apologists, learn the various standard rebuttals, find whole new arguments that you never thought of before and be a counter-apologetic mental-ninja the next time you run into a condescending theist in the real world. I’ve watched my wife do exactly that over the last few days. She’s been locked in a debate with some absurd dingle-berry that is trotting out one tired, easily refuted fallacy after the next. And along the way she’s learning to refute all these stupid arguments in 140 characters or less (minus all the @so-and-so shit).
Think about how handy a skill that is to have in the real world. Once you’ve got it mastered you can shut down any religious assertion in about 5 seconds. And if you never take the time to jump into some of these asinine debates, you may never bother thinking of ways to refute some of the dumber ones.
So all hail the Atheist Twitter Trolls. And next time you hear that Special Olympics line, feel free to send this post to whatever retard said it.
The Scathing Atheist 
Episode 19 – Partial Transcript
by Noah Lugeons, Heath Enwright & Lucinda Lugeons
Note: Transcript contains portions that were removed from the show due to time constraints.
Sponsor:
Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the new off-Broadway musical, “Joseph Smith and the Amazing Technicolor Underpants”. Because Matt Stone and Trey Parker made mad bank lampooning Mormons in a play, why the hell shouldn’t we?
And now, the Scathing Atheist…
Intro:
In Thursday, It’s June 27th, and sorry about all that money you pissed away accidentally expediting a binding legal ruling in favor of gay marriage, Mormons.
I’m your host Noah Lugeons and from pizza Mecca, New York, New York, this is the Scathing Atheist.
In this week’s episode:
We’ll couch domestic abuse in a bunch of feel-good Jesus talk,
A new poll shows that Americans are as dumb as everyone thinks we are,
And God will kill an enormous number of people,
But first, the Diatribe…
Diatribe:
When I was 13 years old, my older brother gave me a copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and told me to read it. I was more of a climb trees, play sports, be sweaty and grass stained kid than a sit still for more than 30 minutes and read stuff kid, but it was short so I gave it a go.
It was the first time I’d seen religion treated with such brazen mockery. I was already doubting the conflicting messages from my Mormon dad and my Catholic mom, but when I read the Hitchhiker’s Guide I realized that it was okay to just call bullshit on all of it. After all, this dude wasn’t getting struck by lightening or brimstone and he certainly didn’t seem too worried about hell, so why should I?
And there’s a question that Adams poses in that book that’s been stuck in my craw for two dozen years: “Just who is this god person anyway?”
You’d think that in 5000 years of trying, the Abrahamic faiths would have come up with a concise definition, or, if not concise, at least consistent. But as we all know, if you ask 20 Christians to define god, you’ll get 20 definitions. Sure, there’ll be a few commonalities, but it’ll be clear pretty quickly that all these Christians are worshipping a different guy.
And none of them, none of the Christians, none of the Jews and none of the Muslims are worshipping the guy from the bible. The all-powerful, all-loving, all-knowing, moral, caring, forgiving, judicious, benevolent dude they talk about might make a cameo at some point, but he’s nowhere to be found in the first 4 books.
What’s worse, the guys who wrote the first four books of the bible, or more precisely, the guys who wrote the unrelated, independent sources that would later be woven together to become the first four books of the bible, also aren’t working from a coherent definition. Is god the dude who shows up in the Garden of Eden in Genesis or is he the guy that nobody can survive seeing from Exodus? Or is he the disembodied spirit they talk about in the gospels?
Is he the all-knowing guy from Jeremiah and Acts or if he the bumbling idiot from Genesis and Numbers? Is he the hard to anger guy they sing about in Exodus or is he the unjust, wrathful bully that was killing people for no reason right before they started singing that shit?
And if he’s all-powerful, why does he need Moses to do everything?
And if he’s all-loving, why is he such an asshole to virtually everyone he encounters?
And if he’s all-knowing, why do people have to keep reminding him of shit?
And if he’s moral why does he champion slavery so damn much?
And if he’s caring why does Moses have to keep talking him out of killing people?
And if he’s forgiving why does he punish kids for their parents crimes?
And if he’s judicious why can’t I find any Amalekites around these days?
And if he’s benevolent why does he have so much blood on his fucking hands?
Of course, these Christians that are so quick define god don’t know what the bible says because they’ve never read it. If you press them, they’ll often claim that they’ve read “most” of it, but then you start quizzing them and it turns out they don’t know that there’s a talking donkey in the 4th book. How much could you have possibly read? It’s the 4th fucking book! That’s like saying “I’ve seen most of the movie, but I missed all the parts after the opening credits.”
If I believed a book to be inspired by the all-knowing creator of the universe, let alone directly revealed by him, I’d know the damn thing by heart. But these dingbats, even the “literal word of the bible” folks, can’t be bothered to crack it open.
And I don’t think it’s because they’re too lazy, either. I’m willing to bet that many if not most of them started it at some point. And I don’t think they turned away because of the genealogies or the archaic language or the repetition or the bulk. I think they met their god and he scared them. I think they turned away because they started to realize that the more they knew about their religion, the harder it would be to believe.
Headlines:
Joining me for headlines tonight is my pan-racial color commentator who’s therefore allowed to say all the N-words, Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to use otherwise-offensive slurs in the proper satirical context while berating believers in the absurd?
Cracka please!!! Let’s get started. Which confederate states are violating the first amendment this week?
We’ll get to that, but in our lead story tonight, recent polls show that 34% of Americans would vote for Jesus in 2016.
Another white guy?!?!
Yeah, but he’d be the first Jew. According to HuffPo columnist and author Fred Rich, a recent YouGov poll had more than a third of Americans answering yes to the question “Would you favor establishing Christianity as the state religion,” with the majority of those saying they would be “strongly” in favor of such a move.
What percentage thought we had already clearly established Christianity as the state religion?
It’s like polling plantation owners on their views about the economic modalities of the southern colonies.
“De facto segregation ain’t enough. We need to get this stuff on paper. Maybe we should make a grand public statement . . . a Proclamation of Demancipation . . . we’ll work on the name.”
32% favored taking this beyond their individual state and support an amendment to the Constitution that would make Jesus-worship the national religion as well. So basically a third of our country has seen how well theocracy is working in Saudi Arabia and want a piece of the action.
Strange how closely this number mirrors the percentage of people that identify as evangelical . . .
However most of this group couldn’t spell theocracy, and probably couldn’t find Saudi Arabia on google maps.
As Rich points out in his column, this was a national poll, so the heathens in New England and California were skewing the numbers. Imagine what a poll like this looks like in just the stupid states.
Poll shows one third of Americans want a theocracy: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/fred-rich/breaking-news-34-of-your-_1_b_3461262.html
And speaking of the stupid states, our next story takes us to Kentucky, where Ken Ham seeks to rekindle the flagging attendance at his Creationism museum by adding… wait for it… zip lines.
After finding that dinosaurs and bullshit weren’t enough to bring in the kiddies, Ham and his knowledge-abhorring cohorts are turning to the time-tested technique of completely unrelated touristy shit like zip lines.
I bet the conservative group within his ultraconservative group are up in arms about this. Might not go over well with the physicists in the Christian Science Department. Aren’t there several bible passages that declare gravity an abomination?
“The Lord didn’t say Let there be heavy – He said Let there be light”
To unveil this new attraction, he invited Kentucky state representatives, Kim King, Bart Rowland, Tim Moore, Tweedle Dee and Foghorn Leghorn for the ribbon cutting, which hopefully involved safety scissors. Representative King showed just how little she cared about definitions and shit when she posted on Facebook that the (airquote) “museum” was (airquote) “educational”.
These guys are awful at this. How hard is it to get attendance when nearly everyone in a 5-state radius is brainwashed from birth about the theme of their museum?
If Mickey Mouse was in the bible, there would be Mini Disney Worlds in every WalMart.
Kentucky Creationism Museum unveils zip line attraction, complete w/ State reps: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/06/21/kentucky-state-representatives-visit-the-creation-museum/
And from Mickey Mouse to “Mecca-Mouse”, our next story takes us to the middle-east where Dubai will see Kentucky’s stupidity and raise them billions of dollars because Dubai is rollin’. In a probably-horribly-misguided attempt to combat the nation’s reputation of irreligion, the Dubai General Projects Department recently announced a Qur’an based theme park that will, I’m sure, be every bit as fun as that sounds.
I’m looking forward to “The Ideologue Floom” and “Twin Towers of Terror”
I believe that was our first 9/11 joke. Well done.
Anyway, Dubai apparently has a “Vegas of the Middle East” reputation that prompted a popular Saudi cleric to order women not to visit the city… because you know how women are about succumbing to temptations of the flesh.
How the women manage not to rape all those burka-less men is beyond me.
But Dubai officials hope they can counter this image by taking the only thing these rabid, undereducated fundamentalists give a fuck about and treating with the culture and sanctity we’ve come to associate with theme parks.
I think Islam is just angry as a whole, not about Western domination, or the Israeli Magic Act of 1948, but about being that 3rd guy out that nobody really cares about. They’re like Chris Bosh, Graham Nash, and the Green Party all rolled into one sad little box called “worst monotheists ever”.
Judaism and Christianity get all the attention, and little brother Islam gets ignored again. Historically, this leads to occasional bouts of radical attention-getting behavior.
Dubai plans Qu’ran based theme park: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/23/quran-theme-park-dubai-religious-pilgrimage
And from the “remind-me-why-they-venerate-the-murder-weapon-again” file, the city of Evansville, Indiana has approved a public art exhibit that will contain no fewer than 2 and a half dozen eight foot crosses all over the city’s waterfront.
Is this one of those avant garde things where the public interacts with the art, and they leave out hammer and nails to see what happens? Like a social experiment type of thing?
I wish… Unfortunately it’s one of those run-of-the-mill “I love the bible and the constitution almost enough to read them” things. Recognizing the constitutionally problematic nature of this project, the city insisted that the crosses not be overtly religious crosses, but rather secular crosses.
Sounds like a perfectly secular homage to the lowercase letter T.
City Attorney Ted Zeimer Jr. couldn’t agree more, explaining the rock-solid legal authority of the city to violate the first amendment by pointing out that the United Way was allowed to put up statues in this very same spot once.
So because Evansville, Indiana has a long, proud history of violating the 1st Ammendment, they’re claiming squatters rights to ignore the Bill of Rights.
Essentially, yes. Zeimer went on to explain that (quote) “We told them they could not have any writing of any kind on them so they’re statues. They might be a religious symbol to someone or they might be attractive statues to someone else.”
Yeah without the word Jesus actually written on them, they’re just an interesting demonstration of perpendicularity.
“If it ain’t a right wing angle, it’s a wrong wing angle.”
Let’s sell that T-shirt to Newt Gingrich.
City of Evansville, Indiana approved “30 Crosses” public art exhibit: http://www.courierpress.com/news/2013/jun/20/old167/
And moving on to our final story of the night, two weeks ago we talked about a Christian who was obsessed with men spanking their monkeys and this week we’ll turn to some Christians that are obsessed with men spanking their wives.
I’ll keep saying this until it starts happening . . .
How is every womens’ group not also an outspoken atheist group?!?
Well maybe this’ll help: The Christian Domestic Discipline movement’s website goes to great lengths to explain that they’re not a fetish site. So stop asking, damn it. They’re not interested in the type of spanking that both of the people involved enjoy, that’s satanic. They’re interested in the type of spanking where men physically abuse their wives until they do as they’re told… but only if it’s consensual, of course.
Right, because biblically, the women you marry, and the blacks you own, are entitled to similar privileges. Except the black aren’t guaranteed the consensual part . . . And really neither are the women.
Yeah, God doesn’t do consensual.
We should get down there and hand out some atheist-themed rape whistles.
Maybe setup some womens’ crisis centers called “Planned Penetration”. We probably won’t get bombed by evangelicals.
I’d be worried about them discovering and attacking our secret podcast HQ here in New York City, but the atheist trolls at each bridge into the city ask a series of logic riddles that slow-witted theist spies never seem to answer correctly.
Which is nice, but it fucks traffic on the GW all up.
The CDD Lifestyle also advocates other forms of infantilization and punishments like time-outs, writing sentences like “I won’t disobey my master” and being humbled by (quote) “some sort of nude humiliation”. But, and I can’t state this enough, this isn’t about being an abusive, misogynistic, felonious, psychopathic, cowardly, demonic piece of shit that should have his head drilled open and his cerebrospinal fluid sucked out by poisonous leeches wrapped in barbed wire because Jesus.
Christian group promotes spanking your wife: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/06/19/spanking-for-jesus-inside-the-unholy-world-of-christian-domestic-discipline.html
And on that mental image, we’ll close out headlines tonight, Heath, thanks again for joining me.
Fantastic time.
And when we come back, Lucinda will join us to regret suggesting we all read the bible.
Calendar:
It’s time once again from the Atheist Calendar portion of the show. This is the now monthly portion of the show we set aside to talk up some of the atheist, skeptical and otherwise secular events going on around the country and around the world… only this time just around the country.
On the weekend of July 4th (and for our international listeners, July 4th is the day that Americans celebrate the 4th of July), the Skepchicks will be taking over the Science & Skepticism Track at ConVergance in Minneapolis. Not sure about the rest of the conference, but the Skepchick part looks awesome. Rebecca Watson and her team of Skeptical female superheroes team up with PZ Myers which would make for an awesome conference and an even more awesome comic book.
http://skepchickcon.com/
Of course, the big one gears up on the 11th in Vegas. It’s called The Amazing Meeting, and if you’re listening to this podcast you’ve heard of it, so all I’m gonna say is if you register before the 1st of July it’s $125 cheaper.
http://www.amazingmeeting.com/
But if Vegas is there and you’re here, perhaps you can make it out to SSA East, the other half of the Secular Student Alliances bicoastal conference extravaganza this year. Except that it’s in Columbus, Ohio, which certainly isn’t coastal. So if you’re secular and you’re a student, it starts on the 12th and runs through the weekend.
https://secularstudents.org/2013con/columbus
And finally, I wanted to toss out a plug for the CFI’s upcoming leadership conference in Amherst, New York on the weekend of the 25th of July. If you’re a student and have any plans or aspirations to start a skeptical, secular or freethought group on campus, CFI is a phenomenal resource.
http://www.cfileadership.org/
You’ll find more details about this conference and all the other events I just outlined on the shownotes for this episode at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.
Poem:
NUMBERS IN RHYME
by Noah Lugeons
1 is the number of gods and he gives
2 shits about who gets killed and who lives.
3 times Balaam and his donkey have spats
be-4 god starts talking out of that Midianite’s ass.
5 chapter in things get scary for chicks,
6-tuff’s prescribed if they’re getting side-dick.
And 7’s for resting unless you need stones,
To break some stick gathering heathen’s skull and his bones.
8 too much Manna? Should you voice your critiques?
God will plague you and kill you, but he’ll send quail for weeks.
And that asi-9 bastard may invoke some damned clause,
To show you what a 10-uous promise that promised land was.
11 Tribes conscribe all their fighting age men,
but the 12th tribe (the Levites) just carry the tent.
20 is war-age, but like most things, you’ll notice,
The tribe that’s exempt is the one that has Moses.
30 Days mourning when god kills Aaron on high,
Then 40 years waiting for all the bad jews to die.
50 percent of this book we spend bored
Counting jews and the booty they offer the lord.
We get a couple of censuses from all of the tribes,
Enumerated offerings are in detail described,
As the name would suggest, the book’s obsessed with amounts,
But no number gets higher than god’s body count:
We could start with the animals, who are killed by the score,
Each time the tabernacle opens its doors.
Bulls, rams and donkeys, pigeons and sheep,
And a pile of quails about three cubits deep.
Israelites? Oh yeah, he kills them by the thousand.
He opens the earth and swallows whole houses.
He burns their encampments, sends serpents and plagues,
And what heinous encroachments elicit god’s rage?
Being hungry or thirsty, doubting Moses’ clout,
Going to the tabernacle once the candles are out,
Being honest when scouting, gathering sticks,
Complaining to Moses and acting like dicks.
Whoring with Moabites, lighting incense all wrong,
Being treated like shit and not just going along;
Thinking manna tastes nasty, being slow to obey
Or living in cities that stand in his way.
But it isn’t like God is always a villain;
When he orders Moses to murder all the Midianite children,
He says if they’re virgins and if they behave,
He can spare the young women and keep them as slaves.
Holy Babble:
The Book of Numbers rests between two of the most notorious books in the bible and, perhaps because of that, it doesn’t get as much attention as Leviticus and Deuteronomy. And sure, Numbers doesn’t have the homophobic flare of Leviticus or the “Thank God the Pentateuche is over” satisfaction of Deuteronomy, but if you were to insert it into any other book ever written, Numbers would almost certainly be the most fucked up portion of that book.
But mostly it’s just a horribly boring book that details one leg of the trip from Sinai to the promised land, punctuated with moments of brutal insanity that might just be there to keep you awake. Joining Heath and me to discuss this strange little hybrid of bookkeeping and genocide is my beautiful wife Lucinda. Lucinda welcome back.
I’d say I’m happy to be here, but after reading Numbers, I don’t think god would want me saying that without getting my husband’s permission first. So I’ll just say hi.
Yeah, this is probably the most sexist book we’ve come across yet and we’ll get to all of that. But first things first. If the jews are gonna take over the holy land, they’re gonna need an army.
Right, so we start with the original Schindler’s Enlistment.
Then they lay out the structure for the Judaism pyramid scheme, or Tetra-Hebron.
“Why are the Levites at the top of the pyramid, considering they already run the IRS? Because they used all the goat taxes to become job creators. Somebody has to start the game with the reds and oranges, plus all 4 railroads.”
And on top of that, none of the people in Moses’ tribe have to join the army and when they camp in the wilderness, they get to set up their tents smack in the middle of 11 armies.
Would you want rabbis in the front lines of your army? No, you want badass, Israeli-Commando-type Jews like Adam Sandler . . . Not pale, bearded, shitty drivers that started the Crown Heights Riots by running over a black pedestrian.
And of course, god needs money to go with his army.
Right, so in chapter 3 Aaron loses about 1365 shekels in a card game, and sets up the most ridiculous, elaborate, nonsensical story to get the money back, from his flock of ancient nomadic tribes that apparently all carry reasonable amounts of fungible hard currency at all times.
“So technically, 273 extra babies that should have been righteously murdered.
Which sounds a lot like an endorsement for abortion.
No it’s not abortion right after birth – that’s just righteous murder.
“What had happened is, God was gonna kill all your kids, but me and my family of 22,000 agreed to live a life of purported divine privilege, in exchange for saving them. But you all had 22,273 firstborn children, so God’s gonna need 5 shekels apiece for the accounting discrepancy. Us Levites will collect the cash here and write God a check.”
Then we get god’s overly-elaborate Tabernacle relocation strategy. Basically he spends chapter four channeling a foul-tempered old lady with alzheimer’s bitching at the moving guys.
“I said wrap it in blue cloth! No, I want the Gershonites to carry the curtains! And careful with those lamps or I’ll incinerate you with fireballs!”
And then we get started with the sexism. In chapter five we learn how to tell the if your wife’s been fuckin’ the goat-milkman using nothing but some dirty water, a handful of flour and misogyny.
The old grain offering dirty water miscarriage trick. Seems like this was just a way for dudes to save face when they had a slutty wife. Having her drink dirty water might make her sick, but I’m fairly certain it’s never led to an instantaneous immaculate hysterectomy. So every time they do the ceremony, the dude doesn’t look like an asshole, because his wife’s womb doesn’t fall out on the spot.
Yeah, I was expecting them to break out a scale and a duck at any moment.
Then we get the rules for the vow of the nazirites, which is spelled “Nazi Rites” which kind of fucks me up in the middle of a Jew book.
In chapter 7 God shamelessly ups the word count by spelling out the exact same 90 word sacrifice 12 fucking times!
The Levites shave all their hair and pubes and become elevated in the eyes of the Lord.
In chapter 9 we learn that god’s a cloud and don’t forget that Passover’s coming up.
Then god adds a brass section and they’re ready to go conquer the promised land.
If I’m being a stickler, God should have asked for brass, plated with silver, if he wanted a fuller timbre for those trumpets . . . Nobody’s perfect.
As soon as they hit the road, the Jews start bitching because they don’t like Manna and they want some meat.
Couldn’t god have solved the meat-shortage by not demanding so damn many sacrifices?
Sure, but I guess this was supposed to be some grand punishment for not appreciating the triscuit rain, but not too impressive.
Yeah what the fuck was he trying to say there? Did angels force feed their asses like Kevin Spacey’s character in Se7en.
And God was like, “Shit, yeah that doesn’t smite them much at all-AND PLAGUE!!! I said the quail thing AND PLAGUE!!! Nobody heard me, but I had said “and plague” at the end as I trailed off.”
In chapter 12, Aaron and his wife talk shit about Moses so god makes her a leper for a week.
And when Moses asks God to go easy on her so she doesn’t turn out like a stillborn baby with it’s flesh half eaten off, he justifies making her skin rot off by saying, “If her father spit in her face, would she not be shamed for 7 days?” Oh, well when you put it that way…
Next we meet Double “O” Shiv’a scouting out the promised land and they say that all the people already living there are too strong for all the quail engorged Israelites to displace.
And then God throws one of his patented temper tantrums and kills pretty much everybody for bitching too much. He curses their children, he sends a plague, he marched an army out to die.
And as if that’s not enough, he “unpromises” the promised land to everybody but Joshua and Caleb.
Yeah, it’s the part of the act where the hypnotist removes all the free-thinking non-sheep from the stage, leaving only the blindly faithful idiots who are truly qualified for Judaism.
And then in chapter 15, right in the middle of some proper goat-killing etiquette, we learn that Moses and the gang find a guy picking up sticks on the Sabbath so god commands them to stone him to death.
And in a whiplash inducing subject change, in the next verse after the stoning, God reminds them that he likes fringes on the outfits, so don’t forget to add fringes.
“So seriously, it may sound somewhat contradictory, but no faggots on Saturday, and tassles for everyone!!! Also, lest ye forget, I’m fucking God.”
Then we get a weird little mutiny. Some other Levites challenge Moses’ leadership so he challenges them to an incense burning match to the death.
“What?!? I’m not clearly high priest because of actually talking directly to God?!? Take out your censers bitches . . . I’ll outsmoke anyone.”
“Bitch, you light incense like Michael J. Fox on meth! You call that a grain offering? I’ve got more fiber in my stools.”
So God goes fucking nuts, opens the earth to swallow whole families along with their slaves and furnishings, he burns 250 people alive and then he kills fourteen thousand more with a plague.
And I must say, god is a total badass about it. He says “Moses, step away from those dudes.” And Moses says “Why?” And God says, “So I can burn them to death with giant fireballs.”
Right… so why they didn’t all just stand really close to Moses is beyond me.
Anyway, just in case the house swallowing, fireball chucking, plague sending message wasn’t clear enough, God also has Moses write everybody’s name on a stick and only Aaron’s stick grows flowers.
In chapter 18 we reinforce the “the priests get all the best shit” motif.
And in 19 we kill cows and we don’t touch dead people.
In chapter 20 God kills Moses’ brother for expressing a slight hint of doubt. And in the serial-killer-fashion I’ve learned to expect from deities, he doesn’t just plain murder Aaron, he makes his son watch his naked father die, and then walk back down the mountain wearing his murdered dad’s clothes.
Then God continues to be an asshole and sends a bunch of poisonous serpents to get the Jews to stop bitching… then finally Moses goes on the warpath and starts killing some motherfuckers.
And then in chapter 22 there was some kind of biblical writer’s strike so they had the folks from Disney step in for a few chapters, because all of a sudden everybody’s breaking into song and there’s a talking donkey.
And didn’t Balaam seem strangely nonplussed by it? He just carried on a conversation with his donkey like it was nothing.
Well he thought he was speaking to god earlier, so a talking donkey is far more plausible.
So basically the story here is that Balak is trying to get Balaam to go to war against the Israelites, but Balaam knows god’s on their side so he spends a couple chapters refusing… in song.
^^
^^
Then we get another census because, holy shit, it’s been almost twenty two chapters since we counted all the jews.
Well God had killed a lot of them since then.
Then we spend 3 chapters going over old shit, but we do finally learn what we’ve suspected all along; God’s been cheating on Moses with Joshua.
^^
^^
In chapter 30 we learn the difference between man vows (must be kept) and women vows (must be kept unless a man says so)
Yeah, just in case the “women are inferior to men” thing wasn’t clear by now, God hammers it home one more time.
Then they go to war with the Midianites and slaughter them. All the men of fighting age are killed. Moses is furious… because they failed to kill the women and children.
“I’m not getting God to divinely inspire our army, for you guys to not fully murder, pillage, and rape everyone. I’ve gotta be a stickler on this, or my boss yells at me and he’s always watching. You either murder them . . . or you rape them . . . or both in either order . . . Understood?”
Easily the most disturbing moment in the narrative so far.
Then, thanks to the cattle-rustlin’ Reubenites and Gadites, Jews start a long and storied tradition of building settlements in other people’s land.
Then we get a chapter that rehashes every spot where they camped for the last 40 years.
Riveting.
Then they divvy up the promised land (before actually possessing it)
The first use of short selling.
God takes a minute to spell out exactly what is and isn’t “murder”. And can I just say, I love the whole “city of refuge idea”… we should totally bring that back
It would make a great setting for a Nicolas Cage movie.
And we finish with a soft close concerning inheritances and marriage.
So what do we learn in Numbers? We learn, first of all, that God’s a wrathful, vengeful, abhorrent, petty tyrant.
Well . . . we re-learn.
We learn that women are worthless
we learn that donkeys can talk, we learn that genocide is a-okay
And we learn that anybody who read the first four books of the Bible and didn’t become an atheist needs to work on their reading comprehension skills.
So Heath, Lucinda, thanks for suffering through this with me.
We’ll take a couple weeks off of the Holy Babble, but we’ll all meet back here to break down Deuteronomy in episode 22 for those of you playing along at home.
Outro:
Before we shut off the lights tonight I wanted to respond to a slight criticism recently posted in an otherwise extremely complimentary review. Mr “Something Clever About God” appreciates the toilet humor, the 30 minute format and overall production quality, but offers the following critique:
“The commentary is more ‘witty’ than ‘laugh out loud funny’, so Heath and Noah could use more snickers and less belly laughs”
First of all, thanks for the rating, but I do want to take issue with that minor objection. Every laugh you hear on this show is genuine and Heath and I would never pretend to laugh at one another’s material and we certainly wouldn’t laugh at jokes that we wrote for the other guy and we certainly wouldn’t cut and paste genuine laughs and drop them into the audio later and I’m certainly not lying right now and it’s certainly not obvious.
We also need to take a few seconds to recognize this week’s most vivacious, tenacious, loquacious, sagacious, perspicacious, papilionaceous, gracious, curvaceous and hellacious people, Benjamin and David, who proved themselves worthy of the kind of praise that can only be fully expressed by Googling “words that end in A-C-I-O-U-S, removing the ones that are insulting and then adding a really obscure term for “butterfly like” by giving us money.
Only the most intelligent and sexually virile specimens of human excellence have what it takes to give us money, but if you think you can live up to my verbose laudations, you’ll find the donate button on the right side of the homepage at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.
And if you love the show but you lost all your money betting on Scotus outcomes, you can still help out by telling a friend about the show or leaving us a glowing 5-star review on iTunes. I should point out that as of this recording we have 68 reviews so there’s still time to be the sexually significant 69th reviewer if you’re into that sort of thing.
I need to thank Heath and Lucinda for joining me tonight and Remy G for providing this week’s Farnsworth quote. This is normally the part where I’d tell you that you should check out his awesome Facebook page called “Fuck Your Fucking God, You Ignorant Blinded Dumb Fuck”, which totally makes this podcast sound PG and had an awesome avatar of a nude Jesus giving you this “Hey baby, I’ve got enough orifices for everyone” look, but I can’t because Facebook is run by a bunch of cowardly pube-waxing assholes who took down his page because religious people have fragile feelings and his words make them cry.
So since they won’t let him say it, I’ll say it, “Hey religious assholes on Facebook, fuck your fucking god, you ignorant, blinded dumb fuck.”
Anyway, that’s all the blasphemy we’ve got for you this week, but we’ll be back in 168 hours with more. If you can’t wait that long, you could always check out our erratically published blog and like (slash) subscribe (slash) follow us on Facebook (slash) YouTube (slash) Twitter. You can also find our archives at Scathing Atheist (dot) com or you can help us bump up our Stitcher ranking by downloading the Stitcher App and listening to us there.
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.