The Scathing Atheist

by Noah Lugeons and Heath Enwright

Sponsor:

Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the Hebrew delivery service, “Jew P S”.  When you’ve got Hebrews that absolutely must be delivered out of bondage tonight, turn to Jew P S.  Remember, not hail nor boils nor falling frogs shall stay our couriers from their appointed rounds”

Jew P S, all package, no foreskin.

And now, the Scathing Atheist…

Intro:

It’s Thursday, It’s May 16th and either this show is moving to Comedy Central next week or Sylvia Brown is full of shit.

I’m your host Noah Lugeons and from pollen-plagued New York, New York, this is the Scathing Atheist.

On this week’s episode,

• We’ll meet a liberal Muslim fighting for women’s rights to be publicly beaten

• Jesus backs a loser in Miami

• And Lucinda will join Heath and me to discuss the only book of the bible named after a Bob  Marley album

But first, the Diatribe.

Diatribe:

There was a time in human history when religion served a purpose.  It was a doctrine of culture, a subset of knowledge, an honest attempt to know what was, at the time, unknowable.  The earliest assertions of religion were based on empirical evidence and we can hardly fault early humans for not quite figuring out shit like lightning and earthquakes.

So they pointed to the nearest place they couldn’t reach and said god was there, tossing down thunderbolts and shaking the ground.  He was just up on that mountain there, you know, the one we can’t reach the top of?  Yeah, that one.  He’s up there making all this shit happen so now we understand it and we can control it.  If the earth shakes, we offer some goat’s bladders or something and it’ll stop shaking.

And as misguided as it was, it wasn’t malicious.  It was a synthesis of the best available information.  The problem, of course, is that there wasn’t really any god up there so we had to rely on people to tell us what god was so pissed off about.  And once you become the conduit of god, it’s gotta be damn tempting to decide god’s pissed off about how many virgins you’re not boning, or how many feasts you’re not eating.  At the very least god probably wants you to spend the day in quiet contemplation while all the other saps plow the fields.

So at some point between the question and the answer, religion became something else entirely.  It abandoned its desire to find truth in favor of a new desire to dictate truth.  After all, the idea that god wants you to have more money and nicer clothes might not stand up to objective scrutiny so fuck objective scrutiny.

So when we got to the top of the mountain religion just pushed god further back.  Turns out he was on the clouds, see… the really, really high up ones.  But don’t worry, we might have been wrong about where god was but we were definitely right about him wanting us to bone more virgins and eat more food.  What’s that you say?  You build an airplane and checked on the clouds and he wasn’t there?  Did I say clouds?  I meant… what’s that stuff above clouds?  Space!  That’s what I meant.  God was in space this whole time.  What?  Checked there too, did you?  Well, when I say space, of course, what I mean is “alternate dimension that you can never get to no matter where you look” so quit asking so many questions and trust me on the nicer clothes and more food stuff.

Because when your power comes from your ability to dictate the truth, the real, actual, “doesn’t-give-a-shit-what-you-say” truth necessarily becomes your enemy.  You have to be an impediment to discovery, a nemesis of knowledge.  You have to literally set yourself in opposition to reality.  To reality!

So sure, it’s fine to map the heavens as long as you didn’t notice a major hole in church doctrine while you were doing it.  It’s fine to examine all god’s creatures as long as you didn’t figure out how they got there.  It was fine to study every word of the bible as long as you didn’t notice the ones that contradicted each other.

There is a large swath of history where I’m perfectly willing to forgive religion for existing.  Hell, even the first few centuries of the scientific revolution could have left an educated person in doubt.  But nobody who is alive today was alive when anybody was alive who was alive when religion could justify its own existence.  Today it’s degenerated into nothing but a disease; a cancer that exists only to perpetuate itself.  A tumor that doesn’t know when to die.

And to turn a blind-eye to it and say, “well that’s just what those people believe and that’s perfectly alright” is to intellectually subsidize the equivalent of the DoDo preservation society.  They’ve had enough time to find a reason to exist.  We’ve given religion at least eight centuries to find something useful to do, but they haven’t.  Instead, they’ve become a stumbling block on the path toward knowledge.  In a lot of ways they didn’t have a choice, but that doesn’t make the sin any more forgivable.  Faith is the exact opposite of science and they peddle it as a virtue.

Religion has nothing to offer the world but more religion.  Give it another thousand years or another thousand centuries and it’ll still have nothing more to offer.  But imagine what science could do with that time… especially if there was no religion there to stand in the way.

Headlines:

Joining me tonight for headlines it my color commentator, Heath Enwright.  Heath, are you ready to comment on colors?

I don’t care for whites.  It’s getting embarrassing for us.

Well done, sir.  And now on to the news.  Our lead story tonight takes us to a state known for comedically sized hats, giant hunks of dead cow and long stretches of highway with nowhere to take a shit, Texas, where a state judge recently declared the establishment clause optional.

Yeah they like to conveniently forget about the 1st Amendment, but the entire state can recite the 2nd one word for word.  I picture an entire state populated by the bad guys from “A Time To Kill”.

Fairly accurate from my experiences with the state.  Tonight’s story begins about 250 miles east of the part of Texas that doesn’t suck in a small town called Kountze where the high school cheerleaders are fond of holding up banners with wholesome messages like “But thanks be to God, which gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ”, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me” and, “Fuck atheists, people of non-Christian faiths and proper grammar”.

“And fuck you for already having come up with several Cunts jokes.”

Cunts is a small enclave, laying between Woodville and Lumberton, on Highway 69!!!.

I’m not even slightly fucking with you.  All those things are actually true.

It’s also adjacent to the “Big Thicket National Preserve” and it’s due south of “Beaver’s Bend National Park”.  Nice when geography just writes the jokes for you isn’t it?

The shape of the town on google maps even vaguely resembles a vagina with an oversized clit pointing up Highway 69 toward Woodville.

Priceless.

And with a tip of the cap to Kevin Smith, I’ll mention that an oversized clit is a lot like a small dick, and we can check off dick joke and vagina joke on story 1.

And a Kevin Smith reference so you’ve damn near hit for the cycle in the first inning.  So anyway, back to the story here, the Freedom From Religion Foundation politely pointed out that their football team isn’t allowed to directly endorse a particular religion, but a state judge disagreed, citing his eventual need to get re-elected.  The FFRF convincingly argues that this is tantamount to declaring an official school-religion.  Obviously we’ll have more on this as it develops.

Kountze needs to be told what to do.

I’m sure they would agree.

Texas Cheerleaders allowed to raise Biblical banner: http://ffrf.org/news/news-releases/item/17683-official-school-religion-ok%E2%80%99d-by-texas-court

Our next story takes us to the number one state in: agricultural non-point source nutrient reduction, per capita tornado deaths and prescription drug abuse, Oklahoma, a state which, despite having Seth Andrews in it most of the time, sucks.

If you take your state name, and add an exclamation, and you get the title of an old-timey musical, it doesn’t bode well for progressive politics in the region.

As evidence of that assertion, I offer one Muldrow high school, where a freethinking student recently complained about ten commandment plaques that hung in every fucking classroom.  The school was told to take them down and in a show of just how vapid the Christian comprehension of the whole minority consideration concept is, the students started a petition to revoke separation of church and state.

Can’t we just compromise and have a wall with plaques from all different religions . . .  

So that atheist kids can vandalize the wall, and everyone can get all symbolically incredulous.

Yeah, well this just proves once again that Christianity can’t stand on it’s own in a free market of ideas.  Christians have responded with threats against the complaining student and his family, some online bullying and a jackass pastor offering students free “ten commandments” T-shirts to remind kids that plaques or no, non-Christians are still a hated minority round these a’ here parts..

Isn’t there something about thou shalt not steal tax revenue for fictional purposes?

Student faces backlash after alerting FFRF to 10 Commandments displays in classrooms: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/05/12/oklahoma-high-school-student-seeks-removal-of-ten-commandment-displays/

And from the “Bet-You-Can’t-Collect-Em-All” file, Pope Frankie-Panky canonized over 800 saints all at once last weekend.  It’s not clear if this is related to poor dashboard-sales projections for the 2nd quarter, but I like his focus on productivity.

In a move that can have no outcome at all but to piss off Muslims, the Pope went ahead with Ex-Benedict’s plan to Canonize the 813 “Martyrs of Otranto” who were beheaded by Ottoman soldiers for refusing to convert to Islam.

This would be 813 good candidates for the Darwin Awards.  Choosing to die in the name of Catholic god – instead of pretending you like Allah – is borderline window-licker.  Why does an omnipotent god need people to die for him?  Either Catholic god is real and the martyrs don’t matter, or Allah is real and the martyrs don’t matter, or neither is real and the martyrs REALLY don’t matter.

And you know what else doesn’t matter?  Being a saint.  Sure, back in the 15th century it was a pretty exclusive club, but now they’re letting everybody in.  Aren’t you supposed to have 2 miracles before you can be a saint?  Even if we accept that getting a Pope who’s trying to patch things up with the Muslims to canonize you when all you ever really did was say “Fuck Muslims” back in the 1400s counts as one miracle, what’s the other one?

People caring 600 years later.

Pope names 800 new saints: http://news.yahoo.com/pope-francis-names-800-saints-one-235904106.html

And in “Fuck-The-Children” news, two elementary schools in Lake City, Arkansas cancelled sixth grade graduation ceremonies because a bunch of atheists wouldn’t let them include prayers.  Rather than adjusting the ceremony to Constitutional standards, the school district elected to rob their student body of the coming-of-age milestone that is a 6th grade graduation.

“Sorry kids, the uppity negro that runs the federal government stopped letting our backwards town embezzle tax revenue for the tooth fairy, so you’ll all have to get your meaningless ceremony fix at church on Sunday like usual.”

Yeah, because for the record, I’d be fine with this if they’d just cancelled it because a 6th grade graduation is stupid.

School in Arkansas cancels graduation because atheists won’t let them pray: http://www.takepart.com/article/2013/05/09/arkansas-school-prayer-wrecked-graduation

In other news tonight, we hear from the all-too-often silent progressive wing of Islam.  Controversial cleric Shaikh Isam Talimah says that stoning women for adultery is a practice that Muslims should abandon… in favor of whipping them.

I think it’s a personal preference thing.  The stoning is more murdery, whereas the whipping is more rapey.  So you’ve gotta decide what kind of Muslim husband you want to be.  

That’s right, Talimah isn’t arguing with the idea of physically abusing women publicly for consensual sex, he’s arguing with the method of physically abusing women publicly for consensual sex.

This is going to hurt the image of Islam as a peaceful religion, as it so clearly states in their subway literature.

Controversial Cleric claims that women should not be stoned… should be lashed: http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/qatar/stoning-is-not-shariah-says-qatar-scholar-1.1178703

And finally tonight, from the “Tell-Me-This-Is-Real,-Tell-Me-This-Is-Real,-Holy-Shit-It’s-Real” department, North Miami Mayoral candidate Anna L. Pierre recently put out a campaign flyer claiming an endorsement from none other than Jesus Christ.

And I can’t emphasize enough that this is a real thing that actually happened, despite the fact that this woman’s name is “Anal Peer”, which is exactly the kind of name we’d have given her if we were making this shit up.

How much clergy dick do you suppose she sucked to get JC Bump in an election?

And I should point out that that joke isn’t sexist.  Heath would have made the same joke if she were a dude.

In unrelated news, from now on, the Marlins and the Dolphins, will both be known as the Jesus Fish.

Well, not so fast because of the 8 candidates on the ballot, Pierre somehow managed to finish 8th despite the fact that in addition to Christ, the Savior, she also boasted endorsements from the “Bladder Health and Reconstructive Urology Institute” and “Sunset Ranches” over on Palmetto Expressway just past Popeye’s.  Some, including herself, blame her poor election day results on evil voodoo spells being used against her.  And again, this is all actually happening in the real universe that you and I live in.

Next week on Awful TV Show, God’s savior son and a dick doctor team up in support of a former Haitian pop star overcoming voodoo spells to contend in her mayoral race.

Sounds better than the “Teeny-Bopper Vampire” crap my wife watches…

North Miami Mayoral Candidate claims endorsement from Jesus: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/05/13/north-miami-mayoral-candidate-says-she-is-endorsed-by-jesus-christ/

Well, that does it for headlines tonight.  When we return, my aforementioned wife will join us to discuss a book that sucked even more than Twilight.

Poem:

Exodus in Two Minutes

by Noah Lugeons

The lord said unto Moses, “An Egyptian’s what you pose as,

But just look at all their noses, and you’ll see that you’re a Jew.”

Unto the Lord then replied Moses, “So what do you suppose is,

gonna happen when they know this? Just what am I to do?”

So he wandered as he pondered, of the Hebrews he grew fonder

So when he saw one get dishonored he attacked the perpetrator.

The dude was dead so Moses fled but in his head what Yahweh said

Still gave him dread as off he sped, telling Egypt “See you later.”

So when he finished with his fleein’ he wound up in Midian,

And he found a priest agreein’ to give up his daughter’s hand.

But the crazy shit he started seein’ left him guaranteein’

That his purpose would be freein’ all the Hebrews in the land.

See, he was tending Jethro’s flocks, when on some holy ground he walks,

He finds a burning bush that talks, and it tells him of his fate.

He asks god to choose another, since when he speaks he gets all buggered

God says, “Sure I guess you stutter, but your brother would be great.”

So upon this holy edict, they headed back to Egypt

And needed Gershom’s wee-dick when Moses wrestled god,

The Hebrews didn’t dare go, so Moses talked to Pharoah

With his eyes enraged and narrow and both his hands on Aaron’s rod;

He said, “LET MY PEOPLE GO!”  But the Pharaoh just said “No”,

And fearing that might be so, tossed down the staff that god empowered,

It became a snake but those Egyptians, also had magicians,

Both of their staffs started hissin’, but quickly got devoured.

Still the pharaoh, unimpressed, left this grievance unredressed,

And as you might have guessed, the plagues are here unveiled.

The bloody waters soon arise, frogs start falling from the skies,

He sends a bunch of gnats and flies; epidemics, boils and hail

Still, the Hebrews were unpardoned, when God’s locusts ate their gardens,

Since the pharaoh’s heart was hardened, Moses needed one last card to play.

Now with the firstborns lying dead, the pharaoh finally said,

“Take your unleavened bread, and go the fuck away!”

They rejoiced with sounds like thunder, when the pharaoh knuckled under,

They grabbed a bunch of plunder and followed smoke that god provided;

But soon doubts about the route came out, unto Moses the devout would shout,

“I guess god’s no fucking eagle scout, just look where we’ve been guided!”

You see, pharaoh sent his men of war, in hopes of settling the score,

And here the Jews are on the shore, trapped and ripe for slaughter;

So Moses, feeling like a schmuck, says, “God I think you got us stuck”

It looks like they’re completely fucked, until God divides the water.

Forty years of eating manna later, Moses talks to his creator,

So he could act as God’s translator and carve commandments into stone,

And on the impatient Jews behalf, Aaron makes a golden calf,

Which they then pray to, bringing wrath, for which no mercy would be shown.

Then starting in chapter twenty four, we mostly just discuss decor,

Despite their being plenty more, important things to tackle,

Important shit just gets ignored, as we spend the last sixteen chapters bored,

Learning exactly how the Lord, wants his tabernacle.

Outro:

Before we close out the show tonight, I want to remind everyone that Heath and I are pretty good at this speaking shit so if you’re involved with an atheist or secular group in the vaguely New-Englandish area and you’d like us to address your group with our off-color wit and topical critiques, you’ll find all the contact info on the Contact page of our website.

And before we cue the music, we have to spend a minute recognizing the generosity, ethical fortitude and enormous penises of this week’s best people; Matthew, Richard and Mr. Blue who proved their bravery this week by giving us money.  Only the most intelligent and righteous people give us money and I hope that Matthew, Richard and Reservoir Dogs Deleted Character Mr. Blue fully appreciate that even if they should together cure cancer one day, their support for this program will still probably rank as the most benevolent action of their lives.

If you, too, would like to guarantee yourself a front row seat in atheist heaven, you’ll find the donate button on the right side of our homepage at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.

That’s does it for tonight’s show but if you want more, there’s more.  You’ll find occasional nuggets of Scatheism on our blog, our YouTube Channel, our Facebook page and our Twitter Feed.  You’ll also find more than 11 and a half episodes in our archives, which you should really listen to on Stitcher because we’re on Stitcher and Stitcher likes it when I tell you to listen on Stitcher.

And if you enjoy the show, please help us out by leaving us a good review on iTunes and be sure to tell everyone at church about us.  And before we run out of time, a big thanks to Heath and Lucinda for joining me tonight, Justin Schieber for providing tonight’s Farnsworth quote and, of course, Matthew, Richard and especially Mr. Blue, who is addition to donating this week, also sent along some headlines for us and the great chemo bit I used after the diatribe.

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.