The Scathing Atheist

by Noah Lugeons & Heath Enwright

Sponsor:

Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Hostess’s new brand of Halal, vitamin rich, fast-friendly snackcakes for Muslims, Ramadan-a-Ding Dongs.  These whole-wheat, holy-month, wholly delicious treats are the perfect way to satiate yourself after a long day of needlessly starving yourself at the command of an illiterate, delusional horse-pilot.

Ramadan-a-Ding Dongs, because we really want our own fatwa.

And now, the Scathing Atheist.

Intro:

It’s Thursday, it’s July 11th, and vaguely spiritual agnostics piss me off too.

I’m your host Noah Lugeons and from <<<redneck repellent>>> New York, New York, this is the Scathing Atheist.

On this week’s episode:

• We’ll discuss a new ass-holistic cure for migraines,

• We’ll learn exactly how many rape jokes our listeners are willing to tolerate,

• And we’ll eat whenever the hell we please

But first, the diatribe.

Diatribe:

Last weekend Lucinda and I took Heath and his prostitute on a double date to see “This is the End”, which actually did me the favor of not sucking for the $13.50 I dumped on it.  The movie is basically Pineapple Express meets Left Behind.  And if those references don’t do it for you, it’s a movie about Seth Rogan and his buddies smoking pot during the apocalypse.  And it’s a pretty safe bet that if you’ve made it this far into an episode of our show, you’d probably like it.

It consists of a half-dozen Judd Apatow acolytes playing parody versions of themselves at a housewarming party when suddenly the end times cometh, the good Christians ride to heaven on a blue light and the folks leftover (including all the pot-smoking, self-absorbed actors) are tormented by demons and Danny McBride’s sperm.

And as hard as this movie tried to not make you think, I couldn’t help it.  After spending an hour and a half laughing about Jonah Hill’s exorcism scene, I started reflecting on the petty vengeance that underlies so much of modern Christian mythology.

In it’s lightest form it comes across in primetime TV shows where, let’s say, an atheist and a theist team up to fight both crime their mounting sexual tension.  Should they debate the existence of god at some point in the episode, nine times out of ten the atheist will end the episode with some perplexing oddity that may or may not be a sign from god.  After all, how else could that present gotten under the tree or whatever?

Shit like this doesn’t happen in real life because in real life there’s no god, but what does that matter to some hack TV writer?  Why not throw 75% of your audience a bone and end on the “maybe there’s a god after all” cliffhanger?

But in the extreme, it turns into that “torture porn” rapture crap.  The Left Behind, “despite all the evidence to the contrary the nutjobs were right all along”, “everybody but us good Christians gets ass-raped by thorny devil cocks” death-gasm fantasy.

For me, it’s easy to understand the appeal.  It’s gotta be hard for religious people to ignore the way science keeps being right all the time.  Science keeps pushing the boundaries of human knowledge and then they back it up with Large Hadron Colliders and iPads and missions to Pluto and shit.  And the whole time they keeps saying “oh by the way, that god stuff is silly, knock it off”.

Imagine how appealing it must be to step out of that real world where you’re never right and god never sends a sign and step into a dream-world where you’re right and you can rub the scientists faces in just how wrong they’ve been the whole time.

So Christians create these elaborate fantasies where they get the post-mortem last laugh and all of us non-believers that made fun of Jesus and owned them on Twitter have to cower under satan’s forty-five foot lava cock for a couple of months while they get blown by 72 virgins or whatever Christians get instead of that.

The obsession with the apocalypse is a relatively new thing in Christian culture.  Revelations has been there awhile and virtually every Christian from the apostles down thought they were living in the time of the second coming, but this infatuation with the literal 8 headed dragon and hell on earth and the coming of the anti-Christ is distinctly contemporary.

And I don’t think it’s any coincidence that the clearer it becomes that the tenants of Christianity are verifiably false, the more obsessed they get with creating some parallel universe where they can ignore all these damn fact that conflict with their faith.  The end result is that they read about heretics getting tortured and the sinful earth being destroyed as a guilty pleasure.

As disturbing as this is, I think it’s a good sign for the secular movement as a whole.  If kids didn’t get bullied, none of them would dream of being the Hulk.  If kids could spin webs they wouldn’t give a fuck about Spiderman.  If my wife was a pair of six foot Swedish bisexual contortionists I wouldn’t need porn and if God was real you wouldn’t need fictional accounts of his intervention in the affairs of humans.

I like to think of this as one of the most desperate defense mechanisms of Darrel Ray’s God Virus.  Once it loses it’s ability to justify itself intellectually or even fully compartmentalize itself the virus turns to fear in hopes of frightening the mind into submission with images of the inevitable torment and suffering awaiting the non-believers.

And as I reflected on all that I started to wonder about all those Christians who like to threaten atheists with hell.  We laugh at it and mock them for not understanding that one can’t be afraid of something one doesn’t believe in.  But maybe we had it wrong the whole time.  Maybe they were never trying to scare anyone but themselves.

Headlines:

Joining me for headlines tonight is my brother in blasphemy, Heath Enwright.  Heath, it’s been a while . . . Are you ready to blaspheme in religion’s general direction?

Let’s do it.  In 3, 2, 1 . . .

<<<Jesus swallows!!!>>><<<Fuck Buddha!!!>>>

In our lead story tonight, Pope John Paul the distraction has cleared the last hurdle towards full blown canonization by posthumously miraculously curing a Costa Rican women of a traumatic brain injury.

I heard he also was the guy who posthumously talked to Sarah Palin in a dream, and convinced her not to abort Trig, so really chalk up one more.  I love that kid.  Yeah, Palin had close ties to God and the dead Pope.  You can actually see the Vatican from western Alaska.   

And just to soften the blow of the Trig reference here, these are just the sort of jokes he won’t understand.

This miracle, which boasts the rock-hard credentials of being confirmed by a team of catholic theologians that really, really, really wanted it to be true and have no objective standard, will mark the second time Pope John Paul the sequel has used his magic pontifical death powers to halt a medical affliction.  The first was a nun who prayed over his body and was cured of her Parkinson’s disease.  Which is odd, since Pope Two-Beatles didn’t use his magical Parkinson’s curing powers to cure the Parkinson’s disease that had so recently killed him.

I heard he tried praying over his own body, but he just ended up masturbating.  What he needed to do, was find Rogue from X-Men, and get a ‘dutch rudder’ simul-stroke thing going to cure the Parkinson’s.

And also . . . What an asshole?!?! . . . He’s capable of miracle cures, and he only does it once during his entire life, just so some nun can be better at Jenga.

Often called the “rockstar” Pope by people who are kind of fuzzy on the definition of rockstar, Pope John Pauly Wants a Wafer was, himself a canonizing fool, churning out more saints in his tenure than the previous 800 years worth of popes combined, so it seems only fair that he should set records for the quickest papal canonization.

Pete Rose could cure the Costa Rican woman, cure cancer, get another 3000 hits, and still not get into the Hall of Fame.  And all he did was gamble on himself . . . no associations with institutional pedophilia scandals – consentual or otherwise.  I guess the Hall’s just gotta be a little more selective . . . for reputation management purposes.

Indeed, some have argued that canonizing a guy who presided over the largest pedophilia scandal in human history sort of diminishes the whole saintly image, but proponents of his canonization point out that some woman in Costa Rica was kind of cured of a non-specific ailment for which she also received traditional medical treatment.

What the fuck?!  She got real medicine too?! They didn’t even isolate the- Apparently, they’re allowed to make this shit up after the fact, so why not pick a better example?  Like the Trig Palin  thing.  

Now, there are some cynical atheists with pun-based nicknames that point out that the timing of this latest miracle is pretty auspicious amid the constant barrage of new evidence and allegations about the Vatican money laundering scandal, not to mention the Milwaukee Archdiocese recent involuntary release of thirteen and a half Illiad’s worth of sexual abuse documents, but the major news outlets have dutifully shifted their focus and given Pope Francis with Wolves the benefit of the doubt.

Yeah this is the part where a few people at the top of the shitty failing investment bank know it’s going under, and either lawyer up, flee the country with offshore accounts, or die and get sainted QUICK.

John Paul II (to be) declared a saint: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/07/05/late-pope-john-paul-ii-to-get-sainthood-vatican-says/

And from the “Drowning-People-Fear-Water” file, the Pew Forum recently released a new poll that showed that nearly half of Americans think that the growth in irreligion is a bad thing.  Of course, the fact that more than half of Americans are religious says a lot about this poll, but instead of focusing on the substantial portion of religious people who think the growth in irreligion makes no difference or is paradoxically a good thing, the media narrative on this one focuses on an admittedly surprising percentage of unaffiliated “nones” who say that the growth in irreligion is a bad thing.

So atheists really love religion.  Their absurdist confusing thesis has grabbed my attention . . .

Atheists have been in Freudian denial this whole time.  We actually LOVE religion.  We want to fuck our religion mother.  When we push religion on the ground, and pull religion’s hair, and do atheist podcasts, we’re not really displaying obvious intellectual superiority, like it seems.  We’re merely engaging in the beginnings of a rough sex ritual.

Not so fast.  As with all these polls, it’s important to draw a line between “unaffiliated” and “atheist”, as many of the “spiritual but not religious” dingbats are being counted along with the true non-believers and recent polls would suggest that they might even make up the majority of that subcategory.

Why the fuck would you count somebody who believes in a non-denominational spiritual being that created the universe, as an atheist in this study, or any other study, or any other use of the word atheist?!

Well, the study itself didn’t use the word atheist.  That was just the media.  But strangely enough, even those people who are quick to point out the difference between a “none” and an “atheist” when polls show non-belief on the rise have been slow to put it together with regards to these data and somehow frame the story as “even atheists know that atheism is a bad thing for society”.

And what we really want, is to have rough sex with nuns.  

To be fair, everyone wants Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.

New survey shows half of Americans think growth in irreligion is a “bad” thing:

http://www.pewforum.org/growth-of-the-nonreligious-many-say-trend-is-bad-for-american-society.aspx

And in “What-Does-Fox-News-Have-Their-Panties-In-A-Wad-About-This-Week” news, we bring you the story of a Michigan high school administration that recently had a nice talk with the football coach and reminded him that he can’t lead the team in prayer before the game and he also can’t stand to one side while one of the students leads the team in prayer.

Right, because that would be cheating.  Prayers always work, so if both teams pray, we’d get all ties.  But we don’t get all ties, and again prayers always work, so obviously both teams aren’t allowed to pray.  

For his part, the coach seemed understanding and said afterwards, (quote) “When it comes to discipline, whatever you allow, you encourage.”  The ACLU prompted the move by sending a letter to the school’s administration explaining that pre-game prayers have the potential to alienate students who do not want to participate or single them for not being part of the majority religion.

Here’s where it get’s tricky, from a legal standpoint.  There’s a time honored tradition in Christianity, and in American high school sports, of excluding Muslims and Jews.  If not before a football game, where CAN a Christian exclude these other heathen children?  And it’s not like the turbans, yarmulkes, and NSA surveillance don’t serve to single these kids out already.

What are you talking about?  The NSA doesn’t surveil jews… they just ask their moms.

So the ACLU did the right thing, the school responded in the right way and the coach acted like an adult about it.  It would seem that everyone involved behaved exactly as the first amendment would have them behave.  But at no point in the decision making process did anyone seem to give any thought at all to how this was going to affect the anchors at Fox News.

Yeah, this is a tough one  . . . Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any obvious ways to grossly distort the facts of this story.  Were they able to air a show?

Recognizing that this story would lack the punch to resonate with their audience, Fox News contributor Father Jonathan Morris pretended that the school had banned individual students from praying before or after the game.  He further pretended that the school had banned so-called “Tebowing”, a ritual where you throw the ball into the ground sixteen feet shy of your intended receiver and then blame god.

Oh I thought Tebowing was a term for the kneeling posture used to blow someone while they’re sitting down and Bradying.  It’s part of normal weekly practice for backup QB’s in New England.  You’d be amazed at some of the stuff they catch on hidden camera at Gillette Field.      

Yes, they are known for their hidden cameras.  Student Blaine Stannard also criticized the ban, wondering why the school would prioritize separation of church and state over the outside chance that this change could negatively affect the outcome of a meaningless high school football game.

He must have mistakenly thought this was America.

Michigan high school bans pre-game prayers, Fox News gets panties in a wad over it: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/02/michigan-football-prayer_n_3535414.html?utm_hp_ref=religion

And in a namaste of execution last week, a California judge ruled that school yoga programs don’t violate the establishment clause.  The ruling was in response to an attempted lawsuit from two parents who argued that because yoga comes from Hindu practices, teaching it in the schools is the same as promoting the Hindu religion.

These parents should be a lot more worried about all the science classes that promote atheism.  And math classes that promote atheism.  And history classes that REALLY promote atheism.  

Right.  The same argument could be used to say that teaching kids about planets promotes astrology, but rather than pointing that out, the judge tossed out the lawsuit citing the incredibly non-religious nature of the yoga program.  Basically, they teach the kids to stretch.

Judge Meyer said, “A reasonable student would not objectively perceive that Encinitas School District yoga does advance or promote religion.”  So I’m guessing the plaintiffs weren’t of the reasonable and objective ilk?  The Christian/Reasonable/Objective shared region seems to be almost nonexistent, almost by definition.   

Several parents objected to the use of Namaste in greeting at the classes and the use of terms for some yoga poses said to represent worship of Hindu deities.  Despite the brazen stupidity of these objections, the program stopped saying Namaste, took down anything that had any Sanskrit and renamed all the objectionable poses with things like “turtle pose” or “criss-crossed applesauce”, but even that wasn’t enough for Christian parents, who fear yoga is a gateway drug to satan.

Well then I probably shouldn’t mention how I was doing downward facing dog the other day, and out of nowhere it turned into gay sex.  Don’t even know where the other dude came from.  Behind, I guess.  I was gonna say from the front, but that’s such an obvious gag…

I’m still straight, but I can’t say the rape didn’t pique my curiosity just a little.  And it’s all thanks to yoga, so . . .

Sometimes you choose a sexual orientation, and sometimes a sexual orientation chooses you … by rape via yoga.  Christian parents beware.    

Make sure you sell the sarcasm there or you’re gonna get subpoenaed for the appeal.  The judge was almost as dismissive of this case as I was, pointing out that the prosecution plucked a lot of their facts from random websites and didn’t seem to care too much about whether they were true.  He even dubbed the case, “trial by Wikipedia” before grabbing the prosecuting attorney’s wrists, pummeling him with his own hands and saying, “Stop hitting yourself.”

“Let the record show that the prosecuting attorney is indeed hitting himself like I said.  Also, though I am throwing out this case . . . it will be noted that we are – as a nation – perhaps only a few toe-touches away from a Hindu theocracy.”

Yoga declared non-religious, ok for California school: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/02/us-usa-yoga-california-idUSBRE96016Y20130702

And turning now to the parts of the world that aren’t America, retired Los Angeles deputy sheriff and current bloviating street-bigot Tony Miano was arrested in front of the centre court complex during Wimbledon for spewing hate-speech about how immoral homosexuality is.

He didn’t get beat up by 90% of the womens tour?  I bet Martina Navratilova could throw some haymakers.  Remember that huge lefty serve?  

Right into this fucker’s testicles, yeah, that would be nice.  She serves and he makes the Serena Williams sound.  I like it.  Miano’s confusion about the first amendment no longer working when you’re not in America was overshadowed, in my mind, by his warning that his arrest presaged the coming of the “thought police”, somehow not understanding that being arrested for what you think is different when you’re shouting what you think to everyone who walks by.

And, if there were thought police like that, that could actually read your mind, they should be arresting people that have hate speech type thoughts going through their head.  Even the quiet ones.  In fact, especially the quiet ones.  Quiet bigots are at least as bad.    

During an interview with police, he was asked if he felt that what he did was 100 percent acceptable in a public place and if he intended to do it again tomorrow.  But since he not getting arrested wouldn’t be newsworthy, he opted for the “When in Rome, fuck Romans” approach and answered in the affirmative to both questions.

I guess the British jail system is a good place for him to learn more about immoral homosexual acts.  Of course I’m speaking of gay prison rape.  

Pastor “arrested” in UK for calling homosexuality a sin: http://www.christiannewswire.com/news/7921672394.html

Speaking of gay-rape, in our final story tonight, we turn to Cape Town South Africa where we confront the age old question “Is it still rape if it cures a migraine?”

See how I set you up so you wouldn’t have to make that difficult segue to rape?  There’s always that awkward moment when you go from ‘no rape’ to ‘rape’.  

Like white people hitting the dance floor.

This is the admittedly horrible story of a 17 year old boy who went to a local pastor to see if there was anything he could do to help him with his headaches.  Recognizing that the potential healing benefits of forcibly penetrating his own rectum with the boy’s erect penis and then forcing him to suck his cock and his man-tits had not yet been fully explored by medical science, the pastor allegedly tried that treatment regimen and the ungrateful kid called it rape.

“I’ve got a headache THIS BIG”

“Well are you hung like that too?  I’ve got an idea . . . “

Pastor Zanokhanyo Mnyukulo, who tried to protect his identity by having such a ridiculously unpronounceable name, argued in court that he was simply involved with a healing ritual and that no sucking of penises transpired.

I was about to ask about that.  The crux of the argument, with respect to the Pastor’s culpability here, seems to come down to whether anybody got their dick sucked, and if so, did anybody swallow?  “If he didn’t spit, you must acquit.”

The pastor was originally arrested on charges of rape but the charge was later reduced to indecent assault.

Well, drawing on my knowledge of the South African judicial system, I don’t think it still counts as rape if you rape your own ass with somebody else’s dick.  From a legal standpoint, it’s more like he tripped and fell, head over exposed asshole over heels, and accidentally raped himself on a nearby erect 17-year-old penis.  Indecent, maybe.  But assault?!?  Aren’t we splitting pubic hairs here?

Yeah, I’m thinking afterwards he re-read the pastor-child-rape manual and facepalmed.  “Oh, my dick in his ass… yeah, that would have been a lot more fun.”

If he had been ass-raping the kid, I could see him claiming the healing benefits of prostate massage.  But I’m pretty sure if you’re the masseuse, and your penis is doing the massage, poking the prostate of a gaypostate can’t help your headache.

It pisses me off that none of the articles I saw mentioned if it cured the headache, though.  I mean, it wouldn’t be my first choice of treatment, but I’ve had headaches where I’d have eventually gotten there.  “Alright, that’s it, this shit is killing me.  Get me a gay South African pastor with man tits.”

Somebody get this man an “anal”-gesic!

Pastor claims sexual abuse was intended to cure victim’s migraines: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/07/05/pastor-claims-he-was-curing-a-boys-headaches-by-sexually-forcing-himself-on-him/

And on that disturbing note, we’ll close out the headlines segment for the night.  Heath, thanks as always for joining me.

Pleasure as always.

And when we come back, there’ll be more words and shit.

Pitch:

Heath and I wanted to take a minute to respond to a recent review we got on iTunes from Senor Blanco, who said “Brilliant. Donate now so that Noah can give up his day job and fight idiocy full time,” and then backed it up with a donation.  A sage piece of wisdom we wholeheartedly endorse.

In fact, this show and a consenting Anna Kendrick are the only two things I dream of doing full time.

And if we could increase our donations by a scant 2000%, we could make that dream a reality.  But to help you see things Senor Blanco’s way we thought we’d share with you some of the great things that your donation might buy.

So remember, each time someone donates to the show, we’re that much closer to…

• Daily bonus content,

• A less erratically published blog,

• As many as one extra 30 minute podcast a week,

• 33% more montages of crazy You-Tube preachers.

• Improving upon my staple diet of “Kraft parmesan humidity clumps and scotch”.

• Giving you a drunken blow job you eventually… in fact, if you were doing coke in the northeast between 1997 and 2005, at least one of probably already has.

• We’d also be even more scathing if we could afford better whores.  Nothing gets the atheist juices flowing like renting an orifice or 3.

But it’s not just about what your money does for us, it’s also about what it does for you.  That’s why we’ve set up a new incentive program for our donors.

• For example, on every week we make more than $500 in donations, I promise to capture one Mormon with the trap door on my front stoop..

• And for every individual donation over $500, you will get one used Mormon personal slave.

• For a $20 donation, one of us will slap a bible from someone’s hands on the street the next time we get the chance.  And we’ll really do it.  We do this anyway.

• Anyone who donates over $25 can ask us any question, and we have to answer it.

• Anyone who donates over $50 gets 3 wishes.

• For every $100 donation, I will violently tackle one subway preacher.

• For every $200 donation, I will fart loudly in a church.

• The first person to donate over $1000 gets ownership of my eternal soul with signed certificate of authenticity.

If you’d like to help us realize that dream, you’ll find the donate button on the right side of our homepage at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.

Skit:

From time to time on this show, we like to set aside a few minutes to discuss some of the common apologetics used in defense of theism.  Heath, what ecclesiastical contortion do you have for us today?

Today we’ll be talking about one of the ballsiest of apologetics, presuppositionalism.

Gotcha.  So tell me, how does presuppositionalism purport to prove the existence of the divine.

By presupposing that they already have.

You’ve gotta be kidding me.

I wish I was, but it’s really come to that.  The argument goes like this: The bible is the inerrant word of god and Christ is lord.

And?

And what?  That’s the whole thing.

Yeah, but that’s a conclusion, but it’s not an argument.

That’s why they call it “Presuppositionalism”.  You’re presupposing your conclusion to be true.  God exists and he’s the god we think exists and that’s all there is to it.  That’s premise A, premise B and the conclusion all in the same tortilla.

But that’s not how argument works… Hell, that’s not even how thought works.

That’s how a burrito works.

That’s ridiculous nonsense.

Ridiculous?  Yes.  Nonsense?  Yes.  But that’s the beauty of the argument.  It’s too stupid to be wrong.

But it’s not.  I mean it is stupid, but it’s also wrong.  It’s utter horseshit.  It’s an upside down pyramid.  Hell, it’s named after an improper epistemological device.

Exactly.  And you can’t fault presuppositionalism for being presuppositional.  It’s in the name.  It has to be.

But I don’t understand how admitting that your argument is fatally flawed up front bolsters it.

Maybe it would help if you see it in action.  I’ll start with the assertion that the bible is the inerrant word of god.  Go.

Okay… the bible can’t be the inerrant word of god because it’s contradictory.

But your ability to recognize contradiction is derived from god, so by admitting that it’s contradictory, you’re admitting that god exists and, by extension, that the Bible is the inerrant word of god.

But I’m not admitting that in any way.  I’m doing the exact opposite; I’m demonstrating that it’s untrue.  And all you’re doing is putting the cart before the horse.

But we know that horses and carts are created by god, so by even using that metaphor, you’re admitting that god, who also invented metaphors, exists.

That’s not an argument, it’s an assertion.  What you’re doing doesn’t even count as debate.

Well, if that’s true, and you used words to form those sentences and god created both words and sentences…

Okay, I think I see where we’re going here, but I don’t see how it adds up to a defense.  It’s like the argument sketch from Flying Circus.

No it’s not.

Yes it is.  The point of an apologetic is supposed to be to offer a logical reason to assume that a god exists, not just deflect every question by pretending that your conclusion and your premises are interchangeable.

Aha, but that’s the beauty of presuppositionalism.  It’s not designed to prove anything; it’s designed to make you shut up without making me recognize any of the logical flaws in my theology.

So it’s the intellectual equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and threatening to hold your breath until you turn blue.

Well, I don’t know that it’s any more intellectual than that, per se, but it’s far more effective on Twitter and Facebook than the “La-La-La” defense.

But, by employing an apologetic that’s named after a logical fallacy, aren’t you kind of admitting up front that you’re full of shit?

Yes, but only to the person you’re debating… and they already know.  Presuppositionalism is less of a ‘convince you I’m right’ kind of an argument and more of a ‘fuck off and die’ kind of an argument.  

But you can’t just say “I’m right” and pretend that you’ve won a debate.

On the contrary, as presuppositionalism teaches us, you can say any damn thing you want and then pretend any damn thing you want… in any order.  

But that doesn’t make it a valid apologetic.

Valid or not, it’s an effective apologetic.  In fact, the success of presuppositionalism in making atheists walk away with their hands in the air muttering profanities under their breath is unrivaled.

Yeah, but that shouldn’t be the point of an argument.  Shouldn’t you be trying to win the argument rather than just evade it?

Well, sure, but only the side that’s correct can actually win the argument.

Okay, so if their goal isn’t to best us in a logical competition, how should atheists deal with presuppositionalism?

By invoking presuppositionalism, the theist is opening the door to logical-fallacy based arguments.  To level the playing field, the atheist might want to start invoking some fallacy-based arguments of their own.  For example, they could try “False-Dichotomism”.

Which is?

For example, “Well, if the bible’s the inerrant word of god, then why isn’t okay to rape your dog?”  Or perhaps they could try “ad-hominism”.

And I assume that’s where you just tell them to go fuck their mothers.

Precisely.  You can even get creative and offer fallacy combos like “Slippery-Slopism” combined with “Non-Sequiturism” in the form of “Well if the bible’s the inerrant word of god, It won’t be long before there’s nobody left to paint all those turkeys?”… or “Reductio ad Absurdumism” combined with “Straw-Manism” in the form of “Well if the bible’s the inerrant mid-coital exclamations of god, then you must also gargle with eskimo sperm.”

Okay, well… I still think there has to be a better way to convince a presuppositionalist that their logic is flawed.

They already know their logic is flawed.  Again, it’s right there in the name of the argument.  The precepts of presuppositionalism actually state that there is no mutual frame of reference that a presuppositionalist and an atheist can share.  That makes it impossible to defeat them in a way that they recognize.  So once that is established, the only real question that matters is how angry you want to make this asshole before he walks away.

Outro:

Before we reel in the nets tonight, I wanted to make a quick correction to last week’s show.  During the diatribe I was highlighting a few reasons why one should dismiss the nonsensical “Christians Tweet Happier Than Atheists” research out of the University of Illinois and as I was listing all the things wrong with the study, I accidentally said, “poorly constructed” twice in my list.  I meant to say “poorly conducted” the second time but either I misread the page or mistyped it, so my use of “poorly constructed” and “poorly conducted” was either poorly conducted or poorly constructed and for that I apologize.

I also wanted to respond to a dingleberry in Nebraska named Sam who wrote to us to explain the very real threat of hell our souls face for doing this show.  So Sam, on behalf of Heath, Lucinda, myself and everyone you’ve ever said that to, go fuck yourself with an unvarnished plunger handle.

I’d also like to take a few minutes to recognize this week’s most exquisite anthropoids, Eric, Kitty and Chris who proved their prodigious munificence by giving us money.  And not only have their donations purchased the peace of mind that can only be obtained by paying someone to tell God to fuck off, they can also bask in the knowledge that when the zombie apocalypse hits, I will see to their safety personally.

If you, too, would like to insure against death by swarms of the undead, you can earn your place in my zombie resistance protectorate by clicking on the donate button on the right side of our homepage.  And if you’re looking for a way to help without unpinching any of your pennies, you can help us immensely by leaving us a good review on iTunes or listening to us on Stitcher and helping our ranking over there suck less.

I also need to thank Heath for consistently going above and beyond to make this whole thing work, Jesus for taking it like a bitch and lastly, I need to thank Dan from Thank God I’m Atheist for providing this week’s Farnsworth quote.  He and Frank have an excellent podcast out of Salt Lake City and if you haven’t checked it out yet, you’ll be able to correct that oversight with a handy link you’ll find on the shownotes for this episode.

Link: http://www.thankgodimatheist.com/

That’s all the blasphemy we have for you tonight, but we’ll be back in 168 hours when Lucinda will join us to break down the final book in the Pentateuch.  If you can’t wait that long, you can always check out our erratically published blog, follow us on Twitter, subscribe to us on YouTube, like us on Facebook or vomit on Pat Robertson.

If you have question, 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.