The Scathing Atheist

by Heath Enwright and Noah & Lucinda Lugeons

Note: Transcript contains elements that were removed due to time constraints.

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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?

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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.