The Scathing Atheist

by Heath Enwright and Noah Lugeons

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Note: Transcript contains elements removed due to time constraints.

Warning: This podcast contains obscene amounts of obscenities.

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And now, the Scathing Atheist.

Intro:

It’s Thursday,

It’s July 24th,

And I broke 2 ribs playing softball last Sunday … So why didn’t Adam build a harem?!?

I’m Noah Lugeons,

I’m Heath Enwright, and from “Gotham City”, AKA New York, New York,

And “Noah’s Arkham Asylum” Podunk, Georgia, this is the Scathing Atheist.

On this week’s episode,

• Ken Ham suggests defunding NASA to pay for building the thing from Cocoon and getting that water.
• Peter Boghossian will join us to make more atheists in the non-sexual way.
• And Eli Bosnick joins us to pan for wisdom in the Old Testament.

Yes, biblical wisdom is the pyrite of wisdom.  But first, the Diatribe…

Diatribe

My wife and I had a chance to catch up with an old friend the other day; a guy we hadn’t seen in more than a decade.  Since the last time we spoke he divorced the vindictive lunatic he was married to and found a new wife with more stable dopamine levels.  She’s friendly, funny and twenty years younger than him.  Which, in his mind, more than outweighs the fact that she’s religious.

He’s an atheist and not just by a little.  He comes from an extremely religious family and lived most of his life in one of the most religious enclaves in this country so he’s developed a pretty sharp axe to grind with the minions of faith.  And I don’t think he actually knows any other atheists so as soon as the subject of what I did for a living came up, ten years of pent up rage and anger came boiling to the surface and we spent a good half hour bitching about Jesus.

Clearly, I’m right in my element, and just as clearly, his wife isn’t.  She’s known for a while that they didn’t see eye to eye on the religion thing, but the look on her face made it clear that this was the first glimpse she got of the full extent of his ire.  And I’m guessing this southern girl raised in a strict Baptist household, had never been the only Christian in a room full of atheists.

So after about half an hour of uninterrupted vitriol, she felt the need to step in on behalf of her faith by politely objecting to our methodology.  We’d talked about priests raping kids, Mullahs promoting honor killings and acid attacks, evangelicals demonizing gays and standing in the way of science, Rabbis promoting sexism and disparaging education; and while she freely admitted that all those things existed, she claimed they weren’t representative.  None of the religious people she knew were like that.  And aren’t there sexists and bigots and child-molesters in every group of people?  Afterall, she’s not dangerous… and she’s more representative of faith than the people we’re talking about.

And my buddy made a concession that far too many atheists make and agreed with her.  Some of that might have been an effort to keep Jesus from interfering with his love life, but it’s still bullshit.

Now, she’s a nice person and she’s a guest in my home, so I’m not gonna go full diatribe on her, but I’m also not going to let such a patently false claim go unchallenged.

First I dismissed the idea that her breed of Christianity was “typical” of religion.  Nearly half of American Christians reject Darwinian evolution.  The majority of the world’s Muslims favor a sharia-based judicial system.  The opposition to gay rights is almost entirely a religious phenomena.  Almost all of America’s religious institutions have a legally exempted glass-ceiling that would be unacceptable for any other entity.

So no, the liberally religious, judge-not lest-ye-be-judged, “turn the other cheek” Christian is not representative of the average believer.  But that wasn’t even the most egregious thing about her argument.  Far more misguided was the premise that those same liberally religious, judge-not lest-ye-be-judged, “turn the other cheek” Christians aren’t dangerous.

I would argue, and I know a lot of people disagree with me here, so hear me out, but I would argue that those are the most dangerous type of believers.  Because if it weren’t for them, we as a society could stop giving religion a seat at the table altogether.

Think about it.  If every religious person you knew was a “God Hates Fags”, anti-evolution, anti-contraception rape apologist, it would be damn easy to dismiss them.  But if you can temper those assholes with a far greater number of regular people freely attributing the wisdom and morality they’ve developed over a lifetime of being humans to a mythical character, it gets a lot harder to reject.

In other words, it’s the charitable, congenial, selfless, cookie-baking old ladies that are fucking this up for the rest of us.  Because to keep the extremist voices relevant, you need five of them for every spittle-spewing homophobe.  You need a base to hold the capstone up.

There’s no example of a religion without a fundamentalist wing.  There’s no example in history of a religion gaining supremacy in a state and then not being used to marginalize other people.  There’s no example of a religion that wasn’t taken advantage of by the unscrupulous and the hateful.  And in every instance, the fuel for their unscrupulous hate was the sweet, congenial, cookie baking old lady wing of their religion.

I bring this up because it seems like a lot of atheists are possessed of the notion that if we could just steer the faithful toward the less destructive iterations of their faith, we could solve the problem.  But the problem is faith; faith in all its forms.  It reminds me of that idiot who says there shouldn’t be laws against drunk driving because he “ain’t killed nobody yet”.  The fact that you can personally use faith without fucking the world up doesn’t excuse faith every time somebody else uses it to blow up a school.

I’ll say it again and again; there is no harmless version of faith.  Faith is an attempt to replace reason with… something other than reason.  And where reasonable minds are concerned, that should be all the damnation it needs.

Headlines

Joining me for headlines tonight is guy whose name comes up in autocomplete before you type in the Y-S-I-S in atheist analysis, Heath Enwright.  Heath, are you ready to give us some deep, impactful canal-ysis?

You must be talking about the alimentary canal.  Which goes mouth to ass, so it’s all good.  Just don’t forget, you are what you eat.

And thanks to astute listener Joe for pointing that out to us and sharing a screen capture on our Facebook page in case you doubt our sincerity.

In our lead story tonight, from the “You are! … You’re the one … who doesn’t exist!  You don’t!” file … Despite findings irrelevant to the issue, it seems the naively faithful have latched on to recent scientific studies that suggest the human brain may be hard-wired from birth to believe in magical stuff like divine creation.  They’ve taken this to mean that atheists semantically don’t exist, therefore God clearly does … Because if newborn babies don’t disbelieve in leprechauns … all rainbows end at a gold pot.

We’re also born fascinated by our own shit, but I guess that’s just a different way of phrasing the same thing, isn’t it?

One particular article by Nury Vittachi, on the “Science 2.0” site, tries to loosely gather ideas from several such studies, and shoe-horn them into somehow explaining how I don’t exist … <Yes, “I think therefore I’m not”> Let’s begin with the title of the article: (quote) “Scientists discover that atheists might not exist, and that’s not a joke.” (end quote) … So keeping in mind that this science-y stuff we’re about to hear is definitely not a joke … Remember?  From the title?  “With that in mind, let’s look at some one-sentence summaries of entire experiments, and combine them into a perfectly valid master theory.  

Perhaps the most ridiculous bit of scat he left on the wall was the notion that because stories have elements of divine justice, atheists don’t exist.  So yes, the fact that even atheist authors write books where bad stuff happens to the bad guy is offered as evidence against the existence of atheists.

My favorite one … He cited a 2012 survey by Pew Forum: (quote) “38% of people who identified themselves as atheist or agnostic went on to claim to believe in God or a Higher Power.” (end quote) … So atheists don’t exist … because approximately 38% of atheists might not exist … QED!!!

Science: “Atheists don’t exist” http://www.science20.com/writer_on_the_edge/blog/scientists_discover_that_atheists_might_not_exist_and_thats_not_a_joke-139982

And in “Are You Smarter Than a Zeroth Grader?” news tonight, a new survey of kindergarten students shows that even five year olds can largely distinguish biblical stories from reality, provided they haven’t been brainwashed in favor of Jew-magic beforehand.

Well that’s odd … Seems to conflict somewhat, with the assertion from the last story that Kabbalah is a priori knowledge … Weird.  So how did they ever manage to demonstrate that being forced to believe wrong things leads to believing more wrong things?!?

The survey presented children with a series of stories.  Some were realistic, some included magic and some of the ones that included magic were biblical.  And to nobody’s real surprise, the children who regularly attended church were significantly less able to decide whether or not the presence of a magic wand in a story means it’s bullshit.

It’s partially unfair though, because kids that don’t regularly attend church are much more likely to have parents with intelligent DNA.

So yes, in light of our lead story resting on our innate belief in magical fairy-folk, data like these are damn important.  Maybe it doesn’t refute the absurd claim, but it shows that kids can outgrow that mental defect in about the time it takes to keep their sheets piss-free if you don’t actively steer them away from reason.

Kids exposed to religion shown to have harder time distinguishing fact from fiction: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/07/18/new-study-shows-that-children-exposed-to-religion-have-a-hard-time-distinguishing-fact-from-fiction/

And from the “Can’t we just tell them their fetus lives on a farm upstate?” file, anti-choice nurse Sara Hallwege unsuccessfully applied for a job at Tampa Family Health Centers, and is now suing them for discriminating against ‘people who refuse to perform the job’.  The health center in question is a “Title X” clinic … or a “Plan C” facility … Which means: Hallwege applied for a job she believes to be ‘baby assassin’, and now she’s mad at the people that wouldn’t give her that opportunity.  Like a fucked-up game of chicken … “I’ll kill those babies … We’ll hire you to kill those babies … “

“I brought my favorite abortion sword and everything…”

“Do you have prior experience killing unwanted fetuses? … No? … That’s fine … You’ll get the coat hang of it … And this part’s just a formality … Seems ridiculous that I should even need to ask, but … I see you’ve brought a picket sign with you to your own job interview … So I gotta ask … Are you willing to … do this job?” … Her answer was: “No, and I’ll see you in court.”

But it’s even worse than that because the job didn’t include real abortions, just sincerely held religious abortions.  They needed somebody who could prescribe birth control and this quarrelsome bitch actually listed on her resume that she was a member of a right-wing, anti-abortion society… I don’t believe I have to mention the name… and told the interviewer that empiricism be damned, she believes that birth control is murder and wouldn’t prescribe it.  Even if that was her job.  So they… didn’t let that be her job…

Defense lawyers are likely to mention Hellwege’s pre-interview on the phone, during which she was clearly warned about the pro-choice nature of the position: (quote) “You’re gonna see lots of graphic, close-up choices. Bitches gonna be choosing all over the floor sometimes.” (end quote)

I was gonna say this is like a quadriplegic suing the rodeo for not hiring him as a bull rider, but the quadriplegic didn’t choose to be immobile… so this is more like the intentionally inert suing the same rodeo.  Wow… this story is so stupid it’s analogistically challenging.

Well if the lawsuit doesn’t work out, maybe she can make some money refusing to serve drinks at gay bar in Boystown, Chicago.

Pro-life nurse sues for hiring discrimination job: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/07/19/pro-life-nurse-sues-family-planning-clinic-for-not-hiring-her-to-do-the-job-she-refused-to-do

And from the “City of Bloodthirsty Love” file tonight, two of those notoriously peace-loving Muslims have been charged with trying to chop the hand off of a suspected thief.  In Philadelphia.  Which isn’t exactly “first world”, but it isn’t exactly Pakistan hill country, either.

It’s a good thing the Hobby Lobby ruling happened, or else the hand-choppers would be in pretty big trouble.

The attempted behanding in Quran took place after the mosque’s amir Merv Mitchell and an as yet unidentified imam suspected a forty-six year old attendant of stealing.  Police say the two dragged the man to the back of the mosque, where, of course, they keep their giant fucking machete, and proceeded to try to whack the dude’s hand off.  And it’s not like they missed or he escaped or anything… they just didn’t chop hard enough.  The victim was hospitalized and will likely need reconstructive surgery to repair the wound.

Also, as far as I know, there’s not too many rainforest thicket areas in Philadelphia … So that’s a dedicated amputation machete …

And when you’ve got a dedicated amputation machete, every problem looks like a hand…

But here’s the problem … Now we’ve got a suspected thief with two hands.  What do you think “Jew-God 3.0” does do about this???  Somebody’s gotta get their fucking hand chopped off!!!

And that’s the point… you’ve got all these conservative politicians proposing legislation that bans Sharia law in the US.  Well this is Sharia law.  And even considering how far up its ass the Roberts Court’s head is, I don’t think we need to worry about them forgiving the chopping off of limbs under the auspices of a “sincerely held religious belief.”

Clergy at Philly Mosque accused of trying to cut off a dude’s hand: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/07/19/clergy-at-mosque-in-city-of-brotherly-love-are-accused-of-trying-to-cut-off-alleged-thiefs-hand/

And in “Priests distract rock star from drug metaphor lyrics by sexually abusing children” news, Tom Petty was somehow the first famous musician since Sinead O’Connor to find out about the breaking news regarding decades of clergy sex scandals … In response, he included a bonus track on his most recent album, which suggested artistically, that kid rapists should probably get in really big trouble and stuff.  More typical rockstar ‘fringe thinking’.  

But to be fair, for all we know that’s what he’s been talking about the whole time and we just couldn’t understand him through his Bob Dylan with down syndrome voice.

Like French Canadian Bruce Springstein with lockjaw … Somehow when it’s Irish Catholics committing the human rights violations, Bono gets strangely quiet.  But if U2 won’t help, and multi-platinum recording artist Tom Petty can’t change public thinking on this … hopefully anyone else would suffice … And – more importantly – we seem to have stumbled into this well of dick jokes … So let’s go ahead and put 30 seconds on the clock … “Songs About Pedophile Clergy” … GO!!!

“Pole Smokin’ in the Boy’s Room”

“Smells Like Tween Spirit”

“Another One Bites the Pillow”

“Bare Way to Heaven”

“Why Does My Fart Feel So Bad?”

Probably has something to do with that “Scrotal Eclipse” … And if ever Pete Townshend belonged on a list, I guess it’s now … “Let Guy Love Open the Door to Your Shart” … Townshend being such a notorious shart topper.

“The Priest You Can Do”

Phil Collins!!!  Good work!!!  But i could swear I could feel it coming in the prayer tonight …

“25? … or 6 to 4 year olds?”

Or “Working 5 to 9… year olds”

Different kind of sweat shop …

What about a little Unmarked Van Morrison? … “Brown-Eyed Boy”

“How Deep is Your Glove?”

I had a glove??? … What about: “Sitting on the Cock of the- … Nah, well you get it … Too easy … “I Heard it Through the <Still too obvious.> … Fair enough … But I could have said “Gape” … What about: “Sunday, Bloody Sunday School” ???

“Let Your Son Go Down on Me”

“Unfortunate Son … of a Preacher Man” … Didn’t figure this well had incest jokes … but there you go.  Gravy.

Yeah, but we did know that it had gravy.  How about “Cruelly, Gladly, Deeply?”

Bunch of Ravaged Gardens in this town … And by the way everyone, you can get lot’s of these tracks for free, at Ass Pirates Bay … It’s a pedo-phile-sharing network … like SlimeWire …

“Pope Paul Along the Crotch Tower” … Done.

New Tom Petty song about Catholic Sex Abuse Scandal: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/21/tom-petty-catholic-church_n_5605881.html?utm_hp_ref=religion

And finally tonight, in “Ham Nine From Outer Space” news, creationist taint mold and perpetual Scathing Atheist punching bag Ken Ham is back in the news condemning martians to eternal torment while calling for an end to America’s space program.

At the very least, he wants Ridley Scott fired from his director spot.  

Well at least there’s something Ham and I can agree on.  Anyway, Ham explains that it’s pointless for America to keep wasting money searching for life on other planets (which he apparently thinks is what NASA does) since in the extremely unlikely event that god isn’t using the “10 to the forty eighth times as big as it needs to be to house human life” universe as a backdrop for the vanishingly small portion of it he cares about, those aliens are obviously not worth knowing, as Jesus didn’t bother to die for their sins.

Those were not embellished remarks!!!  Ham actually said (quote): “You see, the Bible makes it clear that Adam’s sin affected the whole universe. This means that any aliens would also be affected by Adam’s sin, but because they are not Adam’s descendants, they can’t have salvation.” … So shut down NASA before they get up there, and find out they wasted all that money, and come home with zero alien souls … and egg on their face.

And Pope Fralfmadorian had already offered to baptize them so they’d be heathens squared.  Ham is seriously proposing this as a reason to defund NASA.   Now, it would be nice if I could say that the babbling incoherent verbal ejaculate from this pencil-dicked, shit-for-brains, science abhorring, bloviating simpleton could be ignored, but he’s convinced people to act on stupider breaches of scientific literacy than “Jesus didn’t die for no Klingons” before, so we’ll keep an eye on it.

Ken Ham: Aliens are going to hell: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/07/21/creationist-ken-ham-calls-to-end-space-program-because-aliens-are-going-to-hell-anyway/#.U81UYawpgsY.facebook

And after that uncomfortable trip own Ken Ham’s well lubed Rabbit Hole, we’ll close the headlines for the night.  Heath, thanks as always for joining me.

And when we come back, Lucinda and Eli will be here to help us wrap up the Wisdom books, but first, Peter Boghossian joins us to talk about an atheist creating book that isn’t the bible.

Interview Links:

Article on Using the Socratic Method with Children (mentioned by PB during interview)

(PDF) American Philosophical Association’s 1990 Delphi Report (mentioned by PB during interview)

Panel Notes: Wisdom Books

Unlike the Pentateuch and the Historical books, the Wisdom books actually seem somewhat biblical.  While the story of Job is overrated and many of the Psalms and Proverbs are downright terrifying, the Wisdom books at least seem like the kind of stuff a god would put in his book.

Except Song of Solomon, which strikes me as ancient jerk-material … like the stuff in Bin Laden’s no-longer-secret lair.  Who has a lair?!?  If you live in a lair … you gotta assume someone might murder you.  That’s his fault, for renting a lair.

Now, we didn’t do a recap when we finished the Historical books because, let’s face it, the Historical books basically just recap themselves over and over again, but before we move on to the final stage of the Old Testament, we thought we’d get the team together to retire this last section.  So joining us for the Wisdom book recap is my lovely wife Lucinda.  Lucinda, welcome back.

Glad to be here.

No misogyny this week?

I figured we’d be dealing with plenty in the Wisdom Book recap, no need for more this week. My head may explode as is.

Fair enough.  And rejoining us as well is everyone’s favorite glutton for punishment, Eli Bosnick.  Eli, great to have you back.

Psalms was the worst thing that happened to me this year…and my dad died this year.

Okay, so the problem with recapping the Wisdom books is that nothing really “happens” in them per se.  Other than Job there aren’t really any stories or characters of anything like that to talk about, so I figured we could just highlight a few of the Bests and Worsts of this section.  We’ll start with

• The best piece of moral advice in the Wisdom Books?

1. Well, I’m tempted to say Proverbs 5:18, which basically tells me I should spend more time lying with the wife of my youth and playing with her boobs, but I’m going with Proverbs 4:14, which says, “don’t be evil” I like simple and to the point and lets face it we don’t get nearly enough of that in this book.
2. Ecclesiastes 10:19 “Money answeresth all things” Finally. someone says this. These are books of wisdom right? That or a don’t date a stupid girl with a nose ring because even though she’ll do weird stuff she’ll also throw stuff when you break up with her.
   1. See, if it just came out and said that, I would be a Christian… or a Jew.
3. Ecclesiastes 5:3 “A fool’s voice is known by a multitude of words,” which could be summed up as “dumb people are verbose” if the author wasn’t a fool.
4. I enjoyed a related suggestion for dumb people … Often ignored … Proverbs 17:28: “Dumb and silent is easily mistaken for smart and pensive. So don’t say things unless you’re smart … Are you smart? … If you have to ask … probably Shhhhhh.”

• The worst piece of moral advice?

1. The path to true happiness being smashing babies against rocks (Psalms 137:9) Worst idea ever.
2. damn you stole my baby smashing! You are hungry because god is mad at your or all of the advice that job’s friends give him.
3. I would say the bits about not fucking loose women.

• Or tight men.  No high-hanging fruit either.

1. The Book of Job … Or maybe Ecclesiastes 8:17, which says “Science is impossible, so stop trying to know things.  Everything in books is stupid … Except for this …. And that … And that.”

• Best WTF Moment?

1. The bukkake sequence in Song of Solomon took me by surprise.

• You should have seen the look on your face.

1. Job 41 where god is drunk stepdad and just starts describing the leviathen for no reason

• “I made a big fish!!! … Bill Braskey!!!”
• A lot of unexpected monsters in the Wisdom books.  Look guys, if there are dragons and shit in the book, you need to toss that out early.  You can’t surprise us with sea monsters and unicorns half way through.

1. Proverbs 16:33 … “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD” … So dice only seem to be random.  Worst gambling tip ever: “Psst – buddy.  God’s actually cheating the whole time.  The way he cheats is by choosing each number exactly one sixth of the time.  We never had this conversation.” … So thanks, that was useful.   
2. The ravens god sends to gobble out your eyeballs if you disobey your parents (Proverbs 30:17 He probably pisses in your eyeholes when their done too, because… why the hell not.
   1. And it’s so oddly specific.  You’d think they would know they were tipping their hands on this one.  Fifth or sixth time you disobey your parents and don’t get your eyes pecked out…

• Worst Excuse for Wisdom?

1. Did anyone mention the hedonistic baby smashing? … Yeah? … Okay what about … Proverbs 13:24 … “Don’t be a hater … Beat your children with a rod … The less you know”
2. Building a door out of your boobless little sister, as discussed in Song of Solomon 8:8
3. Proverbs 11:22 which says a woman without discretion is like a pig’s nose-ring. What the fuck does that even mean? Why the fuck does your pig have a nose ring to begin with? And what the fuck does that have to do with a gossip mongering  Stupid Proverbs.
4. ugh fucking song of solomon. Song of solomon is like that girl who you wanna hook up with and she always dirty texts you but then your like “can i come over? and she’s like” what would you do if you came over…. and you just wanna fuck a person.

• “What would I do?  Is this necessary? … Uhhh … I’d fuck you in your damp, well-shorn goat teeth.  Okay?  We’ll start with mouth stuff!  Can I come over now?”

• Best Passage?

1. And I’ll get the obvious one out of the way for you.  Ecclesiastes 3:20, which basically says, “There is no god”
2. Song of Solomon 2:3 “I sat down under his shadow with great delight and his fruit was sweet to my taste.” That just sounds naughty.
3. The lord most high is terrible was actually my choice because it comes out of nowhere and it made me laugh for like ten minutes. or baby smashing…god i love baby smashing

• I keep picturing Gallagher, but with the watermelons switched out.

1. I’m going with Proverbs 26:11 … “As a dog returneth to his vomit; so a fool returneth to his folly” … Like a heroin addict swimming around a toilet bowl for an unfinished opium suppository.

• Worst Passage?

1. Song of Solomon 1:13 “He will lie between my breasts all night,” because how can that possibly be comfortable for anyone involved? Spoon or something, damn.
2. Well Lucinda already stole the baby-smashing Psalm so I guess I’ll settle for Psalm 38:7 where King David informs us that he has (quote) “a loathsome sickness in my loins”

• Crabs are not kosher.

1. Proverbs 21:31 … “The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but victory rests with the LORD.” … So you absolutely cannot affect the outcome … of anything … your entire life … “It’s stupid for us to even use the word ‘outcome’.  But fruitlessly try hard anyway! … So I can watch and laugh.”
2. psalm 53:1 The fool hath aid in his heart there is not god” I hate how many times a pius garbage human being has said this to me….also baby smashing. Also I don’t know if or where there is a place to talk about this but all of job is like a friend who’s drunk and wants to call his ex and you spend all night fighting him away from his cell phone and he wants to call her and he wants to call her so finally you let him and all he does is call her a bitch and hang up.

So on that odd but succinct summary, we’ll bid a not-so-fond farewell to the Wisdom books and move tantalizingly close to the end of the Old Testament.

So that … was the “wise” part??? … Doesn’t bode well for anyone, if they just climaxed on their wisdom.  What are they gonna do now? … Start predicting stuff?!?

Yeah, for a climax that took so long you’d have expected something bigger and more viscous.  Anyway, Eli, Lucinda, Heath, thanks again for fighting through the boredom and insanity.

Feedback

It’s time for the part of the show that comes next, listener feedback.  We don’t have a lot of time for this tonight so I won’t bother expounding on what the term “listener feedback” means, and instead I’ll trust you to puzzle it out for yourselves.

We got several emails, tweets, Facebook messages, et cetera regarding our characterization of a DO as opposed to an MD.  I believe Noah referred to Osteophathic Manipulative Medicine as “Magic bullshit doctors” and I called a DO the “Go-Bot, Mr. Pibb GED” of the medical world.  And apparently many of our listeners believe we were in error.  Matthew sums it up, writing (quote)

“In your last episode, you […] were remarking on, and mocking a new creationist medical school.  I have no problem with that.  An, as of yet, unaccredited medical school founded on the principles of anti-science deserves not just your mockery, but everyone’s outright contempt.

However, your implication that the degrees they are awarding, DOs, rather than MDs implies a lesser degree of medical education is flat out wrong.  While I have no faith (pun intended) in Liberty university’s ability to teach medicine in a legitimate, therapeutic, manner; that has little or nothing to do with the fact they are offering DO degrees.  The fact is, Allopathic (MD) vs. Osteopathic (DO), are putatively equivalent in the medical community, and  facultatively identical in terms of medical residency, specialization, and medical licensing requirements; at least in the USA.

Okay, so maybe the GED bit was a bit harsh, but other than that I don’t know that we actually got it wrong.

Right… DOs are real doctors… Just not Doctor Peppers … But nobody’s saying Mr. Pibb isn’t a real soda.  I’m just saying the med schools at Harvard, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, Yale, and Columbia … all serve Dr. Pepper in the cafeteria.  Blind taste test, maybe they tie, but people ask for the Doctor.

Exactly.  Go-Bots really do transform into little cars.

It’s true, they really do … But regardless … We are fully aware that the “DO” is a perfectly valid doctor degree in standard western medical practice.

Now, as to my comment about Osteopathic medicine being “magic bullshit,” I stand by that.  Sure, a DO is a real doctor and has sufficient training in allopathic medicine, but he or she is a real doctor precisely to the extent that they don’t use osteopathic medicine.

Right, if my dentist is also an exorcist carpenter … I guess I’m okay with that, but it’s at least slightly different … And just to be clear allopathic means “medical practices based on science and evidence” … So regardless of what the other thing means …

All that being said, if I left the impression that the medical advice or expertise of a DO didn’t carry the weight of the same shit coming from an MD, I apologize for that.  So for the record, DOs learn all the same stuff MDs do and they learn magic bullshit doctoring.  But they mostly don’t use the latter.

Maybe the medical community can stop naming important degrees after antiquated, non-evidence based witch-doctory … But I’ll do my best in the future not to exacerbate the problem by making it even more confusing.

And that’s all the feedback you get.  If you want more, keep those Tweets, Facebook messages and emails coming.  You’ll find all the contact info on the contact page at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.

Outro

Before we seal the envelope tonight I wanted to let you guys know what a fucking champ Heath is.  Broke two ribs on a diving play from second base on Sunday, still got the out and was back to work making dick jokes about Jesus the next day like it was nothing.  If you’ve ever broken a rib or two, you know how hard it is to laugh with broken ribs, but he was willing to do that for you.  A fucking champ.

I also wanted to let you know that “This Week in Misogyny” will be back next week… we just didn’t have room to squeeze it in tonight with the interview and the Wisdom book wrap up.  But if you were thinking maybe we’d defeated sexism as a world culture since our last episode, I’m sorry to say that no, it still thrives.

Of course I need to throw another big thanks to Peter Boghossian for giving us some of his time this week.  He’s an incredibly nice guy who is in this movement for all the right reasons.  We chatted off the air for a bit and the dude’s passion for reason is just palpable.  Again, his book is an easy read that is chocked full of the kind of data-driven, empirically tested methodology that we want and need to effectively devangelize.  If you haven’t read it yet, be sure to check our website for a link to buy it or just search “A Manual for Creating Atheists” on Amazon.

Also wanted to throw a big thanks to David Smalley for providing this week’s Farnsworth quote.  Hell of a guy who, as four of you know, hosts the excellent “Dogma Debate” podcast.  Very knowledgeable dude and if you don’t believe me, I can prove it.  You’ll find his show linked on this week’s shownotes as well.

Of course I have to thank Eli for helping us out again this week.  I know that it must seem like I’m trying to run him off by constantly asking him to watch shitty movies and read shitty books, but for some reason he keeps coming back and we’re damn glad that he does.

Obviously I need to thank the lovely Lucinda Lugeons for all that she does to make this show happen, which, incidentally, is a hell of a lot more than just the warning, the Babble, This Week in Misogyny and the Bible Stories.  Couldn’t make this show go without her.

But, of course, most of all I need to thank this week’s most stellar derivatives of stardust; Julie, Braunz, Paul, Jon, Adam, Samson, Larry, Mark and Joseph.  Julie, Braunz and Paul, whose wisdom is so legendary the number forty-two goes to them for answers; Jon, Adam and Samson, who god thanks when he wins awards; and Larry, Mark and Joseph, who could win a game of Monopoly with nothing but Water Works, Electric Company and a copy of Atlas Shrugged.

These nine fine doubters of the divine put a plus sign on our bottom line this week by giving us money.  Not everyone has the words ending in I-N-E it takes to give us money, but if you’re benign and inclined, you’ll can make a per episode donation at Patreon (dot) com (slash) Scathing Atheist, which you’ll find linked on our homepage… directly to the left of the donate button you can click if you’d like to make a one time donation.

And if you’d like to help us out but fuck all that donatin’ shit, you can also help us a ton by leaving us a five star review on iTunes.  We’re getting really close to four hundred and twenty reviews on American iTunes and if you don’t know the significance of that amount, I’m not gonna tell you.  Oh, and check us out on Stitcher because we’re fucking killing it on Stitcher and a few more people listening to us there could push us all the way to the number one Atheist podcast on that platform.  Cause look out, Dillahunty, here we eventually possibly come.

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.