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.
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