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Episode 10: Partial Transcript
by Noah Lugeons & Heath Enwright
Sponsor:
Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the new brand of Christian Compact Fluorescents “Let There Be Light Bulbs”. Are you tired of seeing all the benefits that godless scientists have brought to your life? Are you sick of facing all the perfectly obvious physical evidence that your beliefs are wrong? Well try a little less illumination and a little more enlightenment with “Let There Be Light Bulbs”. Each bulb contains our patented “Through a glass darkly” technology that will allow you to easily blind yourself to everything that isn’t happening inside your head.
And now, the Scathing Atheist.
Intro:
It’s Thursday, It’s April 25th and we’re going for an hour tonight, so hopefully you hit traffic.
I’m your host Noah Lugeons and from sacrilegious New York, New York, this is the Scathing Atheist.
On this week’s episode,
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Heath, Lucinda and I will dig through 80 pages of Bible without encountering a single moral,
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I’ll rudely correct my wife when she says, “boringest”,
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and Heath will spend 4 minutes making God glad he doesn’t exist;
But first, the Diatribe.
Diatribe:
I got a very compelling email from Dan in Toronto a few days back and I started to draft a response, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought I should address Dan’s concerns in a wider venue.
It was a pretty long email, but I pulled a quick excerpt that I think sums up the point. Dan starts off by admitting that he really enjoys the show and it makes him laugh, but he wonders what the cost of those cheap laughs really are in the following paragraph:
“The problem is one of productivity. What do we, as a movement, gain by being so antagonistic toward religion? It’s hard to imagine a believer that listened to your show having any reaction but a calcification of their dogma. Ultimately you’re providing the caricature that religious leaders need to smear atheists as cruel, angry and uncaring. And to what end? Have you done more in the end than simply affirm opinions already held? Have you done more than preach to the choir?”
As to providing a caricature to the opposition, well, that may or may not be true. I’m sorry, but those Christians would find something to be pissed off about regardless of what I do. But I don’t want to be dismissive. I have a lot of respect for Dan’s opinion here and he’s not the first person to bring it up. Hell, Heath, Lucinda and I discussed it in depth before we recorded episode one. Clearly, we fell on the good-outweighs-the-bad end of the argument, but I do feel that people like Dan still deserve an explanation.
The question is basically one of purpose and the tone of Dan’s email suggests that he believes that the purpose of an atheist show should be outreach to the religious community. I don’t mean to oversimplify the objection, but the implication is there that the first goal of an atheist show should be one of PR. That does make sense when you belong to a group seen as less trustworthy than rapists, but I also think it sells us short.
There are plenty of great atheist outreach podcasts. The Atheist Experience, the Thinking Atheist, Reasonable Doubts, An American Atheist Podcast… these are all great shows that I could recommend to a religious person if they wanted to know more about atheism. But that doesn’t mean that the only purpose an atheist show can serve is outreach.
I don’t mean to downplay the importance of outreach, but I fear that if we focus on it too much, we lose sight of an equally important element of the movement: Mobilization. It’s not enough to sway minds if we can’t also sway the feet they’re connected to.
So when we started this show, we tossed “outreach” out the window and I try to make that clear in the first 12 seconds of the show. In fact, I tried to make that clear in the first two words of the title. I’d have called it the “Fuck Jesus Show” if I thought iTunes would still promote it.
Religious people are welcome to listen to this show, but they aren’t invited. This show isn’t for them. They’ve got enough.
I’ve gone to church before and I’ve never complained afterwards that the pastor didn’t include the atheist point of view in his sermon. I’ve never written an angry letter to a televangelist for not being nicer to atheists when he tells them they’re all going to hell. If a Christian listens to this show and gets pissed off about it, I look at it like a neighbor showing up at your barbecue uninvited. You welcome him in and give him a beer anyway and then he starts complaining because there’s no vegetarian menu.
There is a time and a place for nice, but there’s a time and a place for fuck you as well. And in this movement we need both. Nice is good for outreach. Nice is good for PR. Nice is good for winning converts and softening our image. But fuck you has its uses, too. Fuck you is good for rallying the troops. Fuck you is good for boiling the blood. Fuck you is good for reminding people why they got active about atheism in the first place. And what’s more, when people are trying to shove their religion into your schools, your government and your life, Fuck You is not only useful, but it’s the only correct response.
The end result it that I spend a lot of time preaching to the choir. But what’s wrong with that? Keep in mind that despite the connotations implied in the expression, the preacher man does still preach to the choir! You have to. You can’t just assume that somebody who read The God Delusion back in 2009 is still as fired up about as she was when she put the book down. We all have to be reminded from time to time that these battles are still being fought and we still need all hands on deck.
So thanks for the email Dan, and if you’d like to continue the conversation I look forward to your response. But keep in mind that you started your email with the words, “I really enjoy your show…”, and I would argue that that’s enough.
If I make some atheists laugh, I’ve really done as much as I need to do to justify the effort. I don’t think it’s fair to judge everything done in the name of atheism solely through the lens of its effect on religious people. Singing hymns help Christians convince atheists that there’s a god, but that isn’t the point of singing hymns. We accept that Christians can do Christian things for Christian reasons. Why can’t an atheist do the same?
Headlines:
In our lead story tonight, Pope Francesca shows exactly how paper thin that whole “reform and focus on the people” thing was when he voiced support for the Holy See’s crackdown on the “Nuns on a Bus” movement in the US.
Basically, the issue here is that these nuns have threaten the authority of the Vatican by proving that you can do good works without hating gay people and demonizing abortion, positions which the Catholics actually refer to as “radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic Faith”.
First of all, I wouldn’t call the abortion issue a feminist cause. I know lots of dudes who are psyched about Roe v Wade for good reason. Women as a whole want to be moms a lot more than men as a whole want to be dads.
Also, if you’re calling a group of nuns radically liberal, your organization is falling off the conservative side of a world you still think is 6000 years old and flat.
Yeah and the “radical” ones apparently comprise about 80% of all US nuns. The group says that the Vatican has reached “flawed” conclusions based on “unsubstantiated accusations”, though it wasn’t clear if they were referring to their own condemnation or the whole doctrine of Catholicism when they said that.
But I think this story really highlights the divide between what the Vatican is saying and what Catholics, at least here in the US are actually doing and believing. When 80% of your representatives are doing it one way and you’re still insisting that they do it the other way, you’re not allowed to then sit around and ask yourself, “Why are people leaving our church?”
But if they did want to sit around and ask that, it wouldn’t take too much brainstorming to recall a few other hiccups in their PR campaign of late.
Right, and here these nuns are with a slice of redemption on a silver fucking platter. If Pope Frankincense embraced their movement or even refused to condemn it, even people like me would have to stand back and say, “Hey wait a minute, this guy might actually be ready to bring the Vatican into the modern world”, but no. Status quo. Shut them women up so us men can get to important things like deciding what women should do.
You have to admit, the oppression of women as a group, has been successful on a global scale since Genesis 3. And it’s been good. Yes, we do a lot better job of hiding it in secular America than in Vatican City or Tehran, but we participate nonetheless.
http://news.yahoo.com/pope-francis-supports-crackdown-us-nuns-150211781.html
And in other news, the ephemeral nature of Pope Frankenstein’s “reforms” haven’t stopped a bunch of Catholic fundies from getting pissed off about them. The Society of Saint Pius X, a group that is described as “ultra-traditionalist” in comparison to the Catholic Church, charges that Pope Francophile is so focused on people not starving to death and shit that he’s forgetting to brainwash them.
These guys are lobbying the Catholic Church to stop being so progressive. They’re like the devil on the shoulder of the devil on the shoulder of the devil saying “I know the pitchfork is suspicious, but trust me you’re the angel. Pass it on.”
Pyschomachia cubed.
The leader of the group, Bishop Bernard Blowjob… I mean, Fellay, has made a habit of sharply criticizing the Vatican since Pope Benny was rockin’ the big hat. I’m all for sharply criticizing the Vatican of course, but unlike myself, he’s been arguing that the Vatican hasn’t been bat-shit crazy enough.
So I’m trying to decide what’s the ultimate example of politically untenable, and I settled on comparing these guys to holocaust deniers. Then I found out one of their prominent members for years was famous holocaust denier, Bishop Richard Williamson.
(THIS GUY WAS BORN IN THE UK IN 1940, AND DENIES THE HOLOCAUST!!!)
You can’t make this shit up. Granted he WAS recently expelled from the SSPX, but NOT because of publicly denying the holocaust.
At least when it comes to the holocaust, they’re equal opportunity appeasers.
The SSPX, which sounds like a group of British Special Ops Roller-Bladers, by the way, fears that the Vatican is modernizing too quickly, which is kind of like fearing that Rush Limbaugh might be too healthy. In an email that Fellay boldly nailed to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenburg, he accused the Pope of “man-centered philanthropy” rather than “true religious leadership”.
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What kind of philanthropy isn’t “man-centered”?
You’d think these guys might know a little bit of Latin and Greek. Doesn’t philanthropy mean “love of humanity” ?
http://news.yahoo.com/catholic-rebel-group-begins-criticizing-pope-173638858.html
And in the former Soviet Union, former sane person Vladimir Putin looks ready to enact a law that would make it illegal in Russia to “offend religious feelings”. The current bill limits the offended parties to Christians, Muslims, Jews and Buddhists and trust me on this one, at least 75% of those people are pretty easy to offend.
Blaspheming at Buddhists is tricky . . .
“Nothing isn’t not always or never everythingness!!!”
“Things matter and I am.”
Yes, much easier to offend is the craziest non-vampiric Vlad of all time. This bill is a reaction to the literal riot that followed Pussy Riot’s 2012 performance in which they criticized hang-gliding, bear-wrestling, hockey-phenom Vladimir Putin; for which each member of the group was given a two year sentence in a remote prison camp for (quote) “Hooliganism motivated by religious hatred”. So yeah, hard to imagine how this law might get abused.
I’m actually kind of surprised with the punishment. I would have assumed Putin would have something a little more theatrical, like a slow-moving crotch laser, or a shark tank dipper.
Well, if it helps, I’m sure he spelled out the details of his evil plan before he sent them to the Gulag.
But it’s not exactly a James Bond level situation here, is it? If an all-girl band, dressed like Fat Albert characters, is your arch enemy, then you might be the bad guy in a cartoon show for girls on Disney Afternoon.
Well if that’s the case somebody better get Princess Luna and Ms. Harshwhinny on the line because we’re seeing more and more of these blasphemy laws being enacted all over the world. As Americans, the idea of free speech is so sacrosanct that it immediately makes us queasy and this is one of those few areas where I think we Americans actually have it right. Blasphemy laws get the whole thing backwards to begin with. If you’re offended by what I say, that shouldn’t be my problem.
If you’re offended by hearing blasphemous things like science, stop hanging out around reality where all the science happens.
And moving so far south it’s practically north again, our next story lands us in the land of Hobbits and Hobbit-references, New Zealand. This story comes to us from Paul Fidalgo at the Friendly Atheist blog. Kiwi teacher Christopher Scott Roy alleges that he lost his job as a teacher at Tamaki College in Aukland for the egregious infraction of not believing that there’s a little man in your head somewhere that drives your body like Voltron.
Nice – 80’s cartoon reference # 2 for you on the day. My Little Pony, and now the Defender of the Universe.
I’m planning to squeeze Inspector Gadget in for the trifecta. Roy, who left the school back in 2010, alleges that the school had an outlook that (quote) “saw Christian [and] Mormon faith as a core responsibility”.
This story gets a little tricky, as he actually settled his grievances with the school a while back and is now claiming that he did so “under duress and had no access to legal advice at the time the… settlement was signed”.
What’s the atheist dramatic act for protesting this? Maybe a really pushy science fair occupying the college’s chapel space. With people reading text books really loud, like a baptist minister: “Endoplasmic Reticulum”
And in exploding dildo news, a Spanish “anticlerical pro-sex toys group” is claiming responsibility for a series of amateur bombings, many involving vibrating rubber penises. Several packages containing vibrators and what the article called “mini-bombs” were sent to prominent Catholics around Spain.
This is great . . . Normally we have to make unsolicited dick jokes and those can get confused with rape jokes.
But these guys really just teed up the dick jokes for us this time. This is such a perfect piece of news for our tiny niche of offensively humorous atheist podcasts. It’s like the day when the midget actor community heard the news that Willow was being cast.
Do you think when they read the article anybody said, “Hey, the bombs weren’t that mini”?
Shipping was free, but they probably had to pay extra for handling.
The only injury mentioned in the article was a minor injury to a postal worker who was handling one of these packages when it exploded prematurely.
Somehow, the driver got the shaft, and no tip.
Well, in their defense, the group apologized for that incident in an email later where they said that nothing like this had (quote) “ever happened to them before”.
The delivery person probably found it flattering. He should have just waited 10 minutes, adjusted his grip, and tried to deliver it again.
So far this group has been responsible for a largely comedic series of fuck ups so we’re making jokes quick while we still can, but it looks like pretty soon they’re going to actually blow some people up and then this shit won’t be funny anymore.
Must continue dick joke . . .
Ummmmmm . . . Toma-Cock Missiles . . .
One more . . . The Uni-Corn Bomber . . .
Ok I’m done . . .
Would a joke about oversize black dildo’s be stretching it . . .
Ok last one . . . Penis bombs for priests is one thing, but carpet bombs for nuns . . .
Ok really the last one. . . Instead of sending UPS, they should have dropped them with “sexual predator drones”.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/19/spanish-anarchists-catholics-explosive-vibrators
And in domestic news, a surprisingly rational decision from the Virginia Supreme Court confirms that you can’t sue your church for liking gay people. This story actually begins back in 2006 when a large contingent of the congregation at the Falls Church in Fairfax, Virginia started getting worried that the church was getting a little too lovey-dovey with the homo-butt sexers.
If I was donating money to the KKK, and they started tolerating blacks and jews all of sudden, I’d want my money back.
The group voted to leave the church but when they were faced with the daunting task of starting their own new gay-hatin’ church, they decided it would be easier to just sue the leadership at their old church and try to get the property in a homophobic coup.
That’s like paying for a homeopath to heal you magically, and then suing them after you get better, when you find out they cheated and learned to use some real medicine.
You know that actually happened with Zicam? I shit you not, they got in trouble for putting medicine in their medicine.
Anyway, somehow this shit got all the way to the Virginia Supreme Court and might yet go higher, but at the moment the court sides with the people who actually own the church and affirms their rights to not be bigots. Odds are high that we haven’t heard the last of this story though, as even if this one is settled, there are plenty of similar lawsuits going on all over the country.
“Put his hand on a bible and ask him how much he hates fags on a scale from 1 to 10. Anything under 7, and he’s clearly not fit to run a proper church.”
And in a combination of foreign, domestic and interdimensional news, the Vatican has confirmed a miracle in Colorado Springs. In the ongoing beautification of German nun Mother Teresia Bonzel, the vatican’s rigorous standards of evidence have confirmed beyond a reasonable doubt that the unexpected recovery of a four year old with cancer could only be attributed to the intervention of a dead nun from Germany.
Germany could really use this. Curing cancer is just about the only way to start getting the country a nice nod in the history books again.
Apparently the young man, who makes no claim whatsoever to having been cured miraculously, resents the assertion and isn’t a Catholic, had a tumor in his colon and despite a pretty miserable outlook, he got better. What distinguishes this from the all-too-infrequent but still plentiful stories of people suddenly recovering from grave illnesses? Why two nuns were reciting a magical incantation on or about the day that the illness reversed course.
This doesn’t seem like smart engineering by god here. Why not just get rid of cancer? But I guess that’s like everyone getting a trophy.
The then-boy, now-man at the center of this whole thing is skeptical of the Vatican’s claims, pointing out that God must spend a lot of time deciding to kill other kids whom nuns also prayed for, but that didn’t stop the Vatican from putting their seal of approval on it.
Every good thing is a prayer-induced miracle, and every bad thing is a mysterious oversight. Well, I can make up tautologies too. Heads, I fuck you . . . Tails, you fuck me.
And from the “Right-for-the-Wrong-Reason” department, Christian author Anna Ariel has a new book coming out titled, “Oprah Winfrey, The Most Dangerous Woman on the Earth” where she warns Christians about the dubious spiritual messages hidden within Oprah’s seemingly benign declarations.
Did “On the Origin of Species” finally get the Oprah Bump?
Not sure, but I know one book that won’t. Interestingly, the press release suggests that the author isn’t pissed at Oprah for promoting dangerous, pseudo-scientific, superstitious bullshit; she’s pissed at Oprah for promoting the wrong dangerous, pseudo-scientific, superstitious bullshit.
And look, I’m all about the “Most Dangerous Woman on the Earth” title for Oprah. She’s made a career of giving demonstrably incorrect medical advice to people too stupid to know any better and she’s made gazillions by pretending to be a philanthropist. Hint to Oprah viewers, by the way, if you’re getting rich off your philanthropy, you’re doing it wrong.
Yeah she’s like a mega-church without the guise of religion.
Now, I’m gonna tactfully avoid any potentially racist sounding references to kettles and pots here, but a book that claims the problem with Oprah’s promotion of pseudo-science is that it’s un-Christian is like attacking drone strikes because they’re noisy.
Like unborn children suing AIDS for the condom problem?
http://www.christiannewswire.com/news/3962071903.html
And finally tonight, in dry, dull and terribly unsatisfying news, a Christian couple is proudly proclaiming that they’ve managed to go two full years post-matrimony without having sex. After fourteen months of sexless courtship, Topeka couple Jon and Darla Crocker celebrated by not fucking for a further twenty five months and counting.
I think all Christians should take a cue from these wonderful role models.
They say they plan to continue to obscenely ignore their biological programming indefinitely, dedicating their sexual misfunction to their Lord and Savior in what they’re calling “Blue Balls for Jesus”. According to the seemingly real “Lark News” the couple occasionally has (quote) “bedroom thoughts”, but always pulls back. Among the tactics used to insure their unnatural state continues, the article lists poor Jon “eating a whole raw potato” to keep his sinful urges at bay.
You know what else is helping them? Jon being a gay, and Darla being a lesbian.
Talk clean to me, baby!
I loved the quote where Darla says that their abstinence was holy before marriage but it’s double-holy now. Look, since we got married, my wife and I have gotten “double hole-y” a time or two, but I’ll guarantee you it was more fun our way.
They could get double holey without breaking their streak, if they pulled off the “Finger-Cuff 69”, a very advanced maneuver in the poop-hole loophole toolbox.
http://www.larknews.com/archives/217
That’ll do it for headlines. When we come back Lucinda will join us and probably bitchslap me for the anal sex reference there.
Poem: Genesis in Two Minutes
by Noah Lugeons
In chapter one God makes the universe and it takes seven days.
In chapter two he makes it again… in a contradictory way.
By chapter three he’s made Adam, here he makes Eve,
Then he kicks them out of Eden cause they’re covered in leaves???
In chapter four God’s a dick to Cain, but not Abel,
So Cain strikes down his brother like he’s the tower of Babel.
In chapter six we meet Noah; God says “Get ready for bruises,
You’re going on the worst boat ride there’ll be until Carnival Cruises.”
Noah praises God for this unspeakable act,
But glancing at his cock’s an unforgivable act.
Then we spend an entire fucking chapter or two,
Learning ad nauseum who begat who.
By chapter twelve we meet Abraham and he uproots his life,
Takes his shit to Egypt and starts pimping his wife.
He fucks a slave, she has a kid and they exile that one,
But then at ninety-nine Sarah bares him a legitimate son.
Abraham tells God there’s at least ten in Sodom with class,
So he sends a couple angels that they try to fuck in the ass.
And when you try to ass-rape angels, what comes is your fault,
Whether your town’s burned down by brimstone or you’re turned into salt.
In chapter seventeen Abraham makes a crazy decision,
Regarding all his sons and slaves and adult circumcision.
In Twenty-Two he gets all screwy, and takes Isaac, his tyke,
Up a mountain and almost sacrifices him before the angels say, “Psyche!”
Later Isaac meets Rebekah, they have Jake and Esau,
The big brother’s got the muscle but the brains of a cow.
Jacob tricks him from his birthright for a warm bowl of soup,
And his old near-sighted daddy’s just as easy to dupe.
Jacob takes two wives, fucks both of them and their maids.
I swear a chapter’s dedicated to Jake getting laid.
In thirty four a dirty whore? No that’s Dinah, Jake’s daughter.
They demand the Hivites foreskins before commencing the slaughter.
Jake has a dozen sons in all but he liked Joseph the best,
So his bro’s conspire against him and they steal his vest.
They sell him as a slave and tell daddy he’s dead.
He winds up a slave of Pharaoh for not performing in bed.
Here he goes all psychic, starts interpreting dreams.
It takes a couple years but at last he’s redeemed.
He stores up food for famine and he gets filthy rich;
His bros come needing munchies and he makes ‘em his bitch.
Joey shows back up much to daddy’s surprise,
And Jacob, now called Israel, eventually dies.
Chapter fifty’s so uplifting, all the tribes makes a truce;
And by now god’s promised the entire known world to the Jews.
Calendar:
It’s time for the atheist calendar portion of the show where we set aside a few minutes to talk up some of the great atheist and secular meetups going on around the country and around the world.
We’ll start in Anaheim on the weekend of May 3rd when the Orange County Freethought Alliance Conference will be bringing in all my favorite atheists for a spectacular weekend of godlessness. PZ Myers, Greta Christina, Matt Dillahunty, Darrel Ray, Jamy Ian Swiss, Jessica Ahlquist and yes, I’m naming the speakers, not just all the prominent atheists I can think of.
MAY 3rd: Orange Country Freethought Alliance Conference in Anaheim, CA
http://freethoughtalliance.org/fta/annual-conference/
The friendly atheist Hemant Mehta would like to remind you that Sunday, May 5th is “Interview an Atheist at Church Day”. This is an experimental project but I love the concept. Atheists are volunteering to be interviewed at churches across the nation for a bit of outreach and while most pastors would rather eat glass, a few are taking the challenge. We’ll have notes and links on how to get involved in the show notes.
MAY 5th: Interview an Atheist at Church Day: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/04/18/interview-an-atheist-at-church-day-is-growing/
Looking beyond the borders of my homeland, we’ve got the 22nd Skeptic’s Congress coming up on the 9th of May in Cologne, Germany. I’d tell you more about it, but I don’t speak German. If you do, though, feel free to check the link.
MAY 9th: 22nd Skeptics Congress in Cologne, Germany
We’ve got a double whammy on May 17th with the Women in Secularism Conference taking place in DC and Imagine No Religion 3 ramping up in Kamloops, British Columbia. We’ll get to that in a second, but ladies first:
Women in Secularism 2 features a phenomenal lineup of speakers including but not limited to Susan Jacoby, Greta Christina, Ophelia Benson and the lovely, witty and talented Rebecca Watson. And if you don’t go, you’re a sexist, so there’s that.
MAY 17th Women in Secularism Conference in Washington DC:
http://www.womeninsecularism.org/
And finally in Kamloops we’ve got yet another mouth-watering list of secular speakers including Horseman number 3 Dan Dennett, Aron Ra, Victor Stenger, DJ Grothe and Mr. Diety. From everything I’ve heard about last year’s event, the folks putting this on put together a show you’ll never forget so if you’re anywhere near the area, it’s going to be worth the trip.
MAY 17th-19th Imagine No Religion 3 in Kamloops, British Columbia
That does it for this week’s calendar, but remember, if you’re involved with an atheist, secular or skeptical event that needs a little free publicity, let me know. You’ll find all the contact info along with links to all the events discussed on this episode on the “Contact Page” at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.
Roast:
Ladies and gentleman, welcome to the Roast of God!
I’m your roast master, Heath Enwright. Before we talk about the big guy in the sky, let’s meet our dais:
First, we have a Muslim prophet, who wishes to remain anonymous, appearing over Skype, with his image blurred to protect his identity. We’ll hear from him later.
We also have Mary Magdalene . . .
Where is that slut? . . . There she is; the Bible’s own Penny Lane. The filthy groupie whoo-err of Jesus and his crew. You must have been passed around the last supper like a side dish. You belong at a Duke lacrosse party.
Speaking of disgraceful fraternities, the apostles are here . . . The roadies for Jesus and his Judaism cover band.
And speaking of God’s fuckup-of-a-son, that’s right, he’s here tonight too, the Fredo Corleone of the Bible, the Red-Handed Stepchild” . . .
Give it up for Jesus Christ.
I heard this guy was a carpenter. Here’s a lesson you obviously missed . . . Carpentry 101: “Here’s your hammer and nails . . . Whatever you do, don’t get crucified.”
Dumbass . . . How’d that work out for you?
How does dying for my sins taste? Bitter?
You’re like a less interesting, more fictional version of the guy from the Dos Equis commercials.
What does Jesus have in common with the women he fucks? Without a first coming, neither of them can have a second coming.
If your genealogy is described by a Greek tragedy like the New Testament, you might be a redneck.
Y’all belong on a daytime talk show . . . “Were you conceived when your dad magically raped a virgin and secretly impregnated her? Were you almost the first justified abortion? Do you live in the greater Jerusalem area? You could be on our next show.”
All this attention for the man of the zero hour!
I’ll be honest . . . when they asked me to come here and roast God, I was surprised. I thought he was dead. I was sure I had read that somewhere.
But he’s not . . . Look at this bastard. Doesn’t look a year past omega. God is so old, he’s gathering dust to dust. God’s so old, he was here when quote “it was bad”. God’s so old, he lost his virginity to Pandora’s box.
Hey God: How’s your particle, by the way? You know, that boson, that has nothing to do with you? That secret particle you’ve been hiding? You can’t be too happy it’s already named after an atheist, who postulated that shit in 1964.
Caught your ass imbuing fundamental particles with mass? Nobody found that particle right? Cuz that would be embarrassing. I know you love those gaps, but scientists are gonna keep finding stuff. You’re losing real estate faster than Israel.
In closing, I’d like to say on behalf of creation. This isn’t a roast, as much as it’s an intervention. That’s enough with all the mysterious ways, already. You’ve gotta stop being so fucking mysterious; cancer, terrorism, rape, genocide. We all love a good plot twist, but you’re really pushing it.
All I’m saying, is the reveal better be god-damn amazing.
Song:
(G, Emin, G, Emin, G, Emin, C, Emin)
Atheists eat babies, that’s just the way God made ‘em;
I heard it on the news, that’s what that feller said verbatim.
He said lock up all yer young ‘uns and that feller’s never lied;
He said their Girl Scout cookies have Girl Scouts inside.
Them godless motherfuckers’ll never cop to what they done;
But if you turn your back a second, they might julianne yer son.
If you think that they smell good it’s all the baby breath they’re fartin’
Pourin’ milk over a cereal made from the baby on the carton.
(C, Dmin, Emin)
Well Atheists eat babies yes they do.
They’ll put ‘em in a pot and make a stew.
(C, Dmin, G, Emin)
And if you lost yer faith in Jesus you would eat them, too.
So I’ll see you ‘gain next Sunday in that pew.
Atheists eat babies, don’t tell me it ain’t so.
You say you want some proof? Well they proof ‘em in their dough.
I reckon that explains why they hate them Catholic priests.
Those pedophilic bastards always tenderize their meats.
So be careful if yer kids are ripe for atheist cuisine.
And remember that agnostics eat ‘em up to age thirteen.
Cause folks what don’t fear god eat kids with every meal;
There ain’t nothing they like better than the taste of human veal.
Well atheists eat babies, yes they do.
I swear to god and Jesus that it’s true.
Them grumpy goats in their blue housecoats eat kid fondue,
and maybe sometimes orphan cordon bleu.
Or roast them little tykes for barbecue.
For dessert they’ll have a toddler cobbler, too.
They don’t mean the same thing as me and you,
When they ask their waiter for a kid’s menu.
Cause Atheists… Eat Babies… Yes they do.
Outro:
We’ve got time to respond to one quick email before we close things out for tonight. From the “You say tomato, I say it correctly” department, Jordan from Birmingham writes to tell me that she would love the show if it weren’t for the “nails on a chalkboard” reaction she has every time I say the word atheist.
Now, before I dismiss the criticism, I’ll admit that Jordan is correct. It’s not pronounced atheist, it’s atheist, and I am definitely guilty of mispronouncing the shit out of it constantly. That being said, I’ve tried to get that hard T-H in there and when I do I get all lispy. Sorry. I talk fast and sometimes pedantic pronunciation is the first victim. I hope that in time you can come to forgive me.
We’ll be back in 168 hours with the “Did Jesus Masturbate” Edition. We’ll be back to our thirty minute format for that one, but we promise to be doubly funny to make up for it. If you’re one of those people that falls into a Ben & Jerry’s induced comatose depression when this show ends though, fear not, there’s more. You can get us in bite-sized doses on our erratically published blog at Scathing Atheist (dot) com. We’ve also got bonus content there including an extended version of last week’s interview with Carl from Post Rapture Looting.
You can also find us on Twitter, Facebook and You-Tube. Be sure to like us and/or follow us and/or subscribe to us and/or share us as you see fit. And don’t forget to swing over to iTunes and give us a review and if you haven’t checked us out on Stitcher yet, get on that shit. My patience is wearing thin.
A lot of people to thank. Obviously I want to thank Heath and Lucinda again for joining me tonight and helping me get through this tome of nonsense. I want to thank everybody who left us a review on iTunes, those really do make my day. I also want to thank everybody who sent us emails. There’s too many to thank by name, but I really appreciate your feedback and at this point I still respond to every email so if you want to drop me a line, you can find the email address on the Contact page of our website.
Most of all, tonight, I want to thank our very most favorite listener of the week, Laura, who gave us money. Only the best people give us money, and they deserve recognition for both giving us money and for being among the best of people. If you feel that you, too, are one of the best people, you can prove it by clicking on the “donation” button on the right side of our home page. In the interest of full disclosure, we’ll keep doing the show one way or the other, but Heath is way funnier if I buy him pizza before we record.
If you have questions, comments or death threats, you’ll find all the info on the aforementioned Contact page. All the music used in this episode was written and performed by yours truly and yes, I did have my permission.
Episode 9: Partial Transcript
by Noah Lugeons
Sponsor:
Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the new line of Christian feminine hygiene products, Penta-Douche. Remember, when you have that not-so-fresh feeling, it’s because you’re unclean in the eyes of God. So when you’re being shunned for seven days, as is proscribed in all of the Abrahamic faiths, be sure to use our new Adam & Summer’s Eve brand.
Penta-douche; because women are cursed and responsible for the fall of man.
And now, the Scathing Atheist
Intro:
It’s Thursday, It’s April 18th and due to an increase in promiscuity, Allah has cut it back to 54 virgins per Jihadee.
I’m your host Noah Lugeons and from scandalous New York, New York, this is the Scathing Atheist.
On this week’s episode,
- Pope Frankie names a group of 8 mini-bosses you’ll have to defeat before entering his lair,
- Carl from Post Rapture Looting joins me for some atheist Easter Egg hunting where we look for eggs we know aren’t there,
- And Representative Joe Barton moves to tackle global warming by first gathering two of every unclean species and seven of every clean one
But first, the Diatribe.
Diatribe:
A lot of theists have trouble accepting that we really don’t believe in god. They like to think that deep down we’re just suppressing our faith but when we find ourselves in a really tough situation, we’ll revert to our programming, we’ll drop to our knees and we’ll start praying. After all, when they look at the world, they see god. So how could we look at the same world and not see him at all?
Similarly, a lot of atheists have trouble accepting that theists really believe in god. We like to think that deep down they know good and damn well that it’s all a myth propagated by power-hungry shamans and that when the shit hits the fan, they’ll abandon their superstitions and turn to a secular solution. After all, when we look at the world, we don’t see a god. How could they look at the same world and see one?
Clearly part of this is just a lack of intellectual empathy. They think we’ve got a ‘god shaped hole’ in our hearts and we think they’ve got a ‘reason shaped hole’ in their heads. It’s a defense mechanism like the one where we demonize the opposite side of the political spectrum. It’s harder to Accept that they’ve looked at the evidence and come to a contrary conclusion than it is to create a caricature of their opinions and pretend that they’re all heartless or stupid.
And I suppose a lot of people would tell me to leave it there. I said something bad about one side and then I said something bad about the other and now can’t we all just get along?
But I think it’s too neat and tidy to write it all off as a self-delusion. After all, when I listen to somebody tell me that they believe that god’s in heaven and Jesus loves them and grandma and Sparky are at the pearly gates waiting for them, I don’t wonder how they believe it. I wonder why they’re not in a bigger hurry to die.
If I ask them, they’ll tell me that god has a plan for them on earth and that they’d miss their kids or their grandkids or their friends or whatever, but if you balance the time we spend on earth with the eternity they expect to spend in heaven, it’s an insignificant blink of the eye. Ten billion years from now your grandkids won’t even remember that you weren’t there while they were learning to poop.
And why aren’t they more eager for their loved ones to die? It seems to me that once mom has arthritis or even a persistent headache she’d be better off in heaven where she wouldn’t have to suffer anymore. How selfish is it for me to hope she lingers on in minor pain for decades just so that I can have her around to babysit the kids? Hell, it seems like as soon as your folks start hitting financial troubles you’d be hoping they’d die so they could move into that mansion god has for them in heaven.
I’ve watched friends grieve the loss of a loved one; both theist and atheist. And I can tell you from a statistically insignificant, unblinded anecdote that one didn’t seem to have any easier a time with it than the other. Somehow the person who professed to believe that their beloved was living in a mansion with a golden driveway in paradise was every bit as bereaved as the person who professed to believe that their loved one no longer existed at all. How could that possibly be?
When I say that I don’t think theists believe their own bullshit, it’s not something I’m basing on my own psychology, it’s something I’m basing on their behavior. If you honestly believed, all the way to your core, that you were going to meet the people you lose in a perfect world in the clouds, how could you possibly mourn their passing? How could a funeral be anything but a joyous occasion?
The religious dingbats of the world like to express their disbelief in atheists with one of the most pervasive and insulting clichés ever coined to smear rationalists; “There are no atheists in a foxhole.”
The idea is that even we heathens will turn to god if things get bad enough. Included, of course, is the unspoken assumption that when we experience this instantaneous conversion, it’ll be their god we’ll start praying to. It never seems to occur to them that if that’s how it worked, all the Christians in the foxhole would start praying to Allah, Shiva and Odin just to be on the safe side.
But I’d like to submit the opposite. When you’re in the proverbial foxhole, myths and superstitions are cold comfort. When the bombs are raining down, nobody’s saying “Shit, I sure hope that one hits us!” and if they were, we’d rightly assume that they’d lost their fucking minds. I submit that when we’re facing the uncertainty of our own deaths, we are all atheists by default.
Contrary to the adage, when it comes down to it, there are no theists in a foxhole.
Headlines:
Joining me for headlines tonight is my kemosabe Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to Lone Range?
In our lead story tonight, California legislators are subtly suggesting that perhaps the Boy Scouts of America should stop being bigots. A proposed law would strip the Boy Scouts of their tax exempt status along with any other nonprofit that excludes members based on sexual orientation, gender identity or religious affiliation.
There’s been a real outcry surrounding this proposal and strangely enough it’s not because this wasn’t done decades ago. How common sense is this proposal?
- I’d like to read a quote from christiannewswire.com: “Should SB 323 become law it would break new ground in using the tax system to punish those who are disliked by LGBT activists.” Those who are disliked by LGBT activists are called bigots. So the the tax system punishes bigots. Is that unreasonable?
- I’d like a tax system that punishes all sorts of shitty people. That’s actually the whole point of certain taxes. To discourage things with negative externalities, like the actions and opinions of the ignorant.
Yeah, hard to imagine why religious groups would be threatened by a law that strips tax exemptions from groups that institutionalize discrimination, huh?
While most of the major media coverage has focused on the gay stuff, this law would also force the Boy Scouts, and any other group seeking tax exemption, to allow the dreaded atheists to walk amongst them.
- Much like a black person disrupts the front of a bus, an atheist clearly disrupts a lesson in the tying of a bowline knot.
- What’s their problem?
The bill is saying, you can still be an asshole, and you can still have your asshole club.
The government just happens to offer extra credit on the test for clubs that are not assholes . . . So you assholes don’t get those particular bonus points.
- We’re bending over backwards to be tolerant of assholes. We’re just taking away the asshole subsidy they’ve been getting. And we’ll give it right back if they stop being assholes.
California pushes bill to end State tax exemptions for Boy Scouts because of anti-gay, anti-atheist policies:
– From a real news source: http://news.yahoo.com/calif-tax-bill-seeks-punish-scouts-gay-ban-193252719.html
– From Xian Newswire: http://www.christiannewswire.com/news/2250071876.html
From the “Should we call it the Reform Council or the Council on Reform” Department, the Pope has assigned 8 cardinals to advise him on thinking about talking about thinking about reform. While major media headlines like “Pope Makes First Big Decision Naming Advisory Board” and “Pope Makes Tough Decisions as Reforms Loom” would suggest that he’d actually done something, the actual meat of this story is downright vegan.
So Pope Frankfurter has commissioned an advisory panel to look into overhauling the Vatican Bureaucracy. Vatican officials point out that it’s been a quarter century since the bureaucracy was updated, somehow missing the irony that it’s been two millennia since any-damn-thing else about their church was updated.
- Yeah their literature could use a few retractions. Maybe a new edition, in light of all this new shit.
- I heard the advisory panel has a small delegation scouring the woods to confirm or disconfirm the presence of bear shit.
- Maybe the panel can also look into whether there will ever be some way to create individual cross-sections that divide up an entire loaf of bread into convenient pieces.
But the collective media cock-guzzle around Pope Frank-n’-Beans continues and everything he does from washing a foot to wiping lefty is dutifully reported as proof that he’s a real reformer and things are gonna be different under his watch. He’s not like that old creepy pedophile-protecting Palpatine lookalike. He’s an old creepy, pedophile-protecting Droopy Dog lookalike.
- He reminds me of Elmer Fudd, but with a sillier hat . . . doing the “Kill the Wabbit” song to Wagner’s “Flight of the Valkyries”.
- Sidenote: I’m thoroughly impressed by the lefty wiping. I tried to jerk it lefty one time, and I suffered an elbow injury and an eye injury.
Pope names 8 advisors to think about talking about thinking about reform: http://news.yahoo.com/pope-taps-cardinals-advise-governing-reform-124612388.html
And in earth-shattering international news, women are wearing man-clothes at the Western Wall. This news comes to us from the 1300s via modern day Jerusalem. Several female activists were arrested at the holy site last Thursday for wearing man-shawls and praying out loud.
- The man-shawls don’t help the sexual roles platform, and they definitely muddle the homophobia stance a little.
And as much as my liberal heart wants to stand behind the women involved in this protest, my rational mind says, “you’re trying to pray to an imaginary being whose very existence was largely manufactured to oppress your gender”, so it’s hard for me to rally behind them too much. If you want to advance women in these silly cultures, leave all the talking-to-walls to the men and maybe try reading or something. Just a suggestion.
- Yeah, why the hell do they want to go there or do that in the first place? They must have got Tom Sawyered.
- “Don’t even think about wearing that man-shawl and whitewashing this prayer wall with me.”
Clash with religious authorities at the Western Wall because women are wearing the “man shawls” http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/04/12/battle-of-the-sexes-at-western-wall/
And in “No-when-to-fold-em” news, a NY nun has admitted stealing more than an eighth of a million dollars to cover her gambling expenses. She now faces six months in prison, which, for the record, I would do in a heartbeat for $128,000. I mean seriously? Six months?
But before you go thinking the sentencing was light because she was a 68 year-old nun, I should mention that her attorney says she’s really, really sorry. And if we were more like Jesus we wouldn’t be so worried about the past.
- I guess you gotta support the habit somehow.
Vinnie “Knuckles” Malone, a source close to the case was quoted as saying, “That bitch just lucky she still has all her fingers. Nun or not, I’ll fuck that whore up.”
- The Knuckles brand of justice sounds surprisingly well-informed on the 1st Amendment.
NY nun admits to stealing $130,000 from churches to pay for her gambling addiction: http://news.yahoo.com/gambling-nun-pleads-guilty-theft-york-churches-224339427.html
And earning the honor of the stupidest politician in the national spotlight this week is Texas Republican… and I’d just like to point out that those two words very often precede the naming of the stupidest politician in the national spotlight on any given week…
- Texas Republicans making political decisions, are like the youngest brother in a big family getting to choose what everyone has for dinner on their birthday. You end up having to appease them once in awhile, so you try to take them seriously that one day, and they’re like “Deep Fried Chocolate Baloney Hot Pockets!!!”
Anyway, Texas Republican Joe Barton was trying to justify a bill to force Obama’s hand on the Keystone pipeline. And atheists, I’m sure, have differing opinions on the issue of this controversial energy project. But I think we can all agree that it takes a class A jackass to use the issue to write off climate change on the grounds of God’s predilection for flooding the whole world.
- The gradual melting of polar ice caps would be the lamest Great Flood ever. Not exactly an awe-inspiring demonstration of omnipotence.
- “Does the water look a couple inches higher to you? That’s it . . . I’m devoting my life to Jesus.”
- Decent amount of slavery in the bible, so that must not have been a man-made phenomenon either. Just pious plantation owners fulfilling their destiny. Somebody’s gotta get enslaved.
Now, if I quoted him directly, I’d probably get accused of making it sound stupider than it actually sounded, so here it is, in all it’s glorious fucktardary: [SOUNDCLIP]
Rep. Joe Barton cites the great flood as evidence that global warming is not man made: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/04/10/rep-joe-barton-biblical-great-flood-shows-climate-change-isnt-man-made/ (grab soundclip on this one, too!)
And finally tonight, the intrepid radio host and fundamentalist activist Bryan Fischer has uncovered our secret, homofascist plot to make Christians wear Christian badges like ghetto Jews in Nazi Germany.
- We ended up going ahead with that plot? I was thinking thorny crowns though. The sleeve patches are a little too subtle.
- Didn’t Fischer seem strangely preoccupied with the design of the Christian ghetto patch?
Our nefarious strategy had managed to stay so well-hidden over the years that not even the key players instrumental in its implementation knew about it, but despite this nearly preternatural level of secrecy, Fischer’s mind was able to twist through the various corridors of our labyrinth and figure out our plans even before we did. And he did so amidst the following random assemblage of gibberish: [SOUNDCLIP]
- Of course, you never want to hear about a holocaust. Of course. But if another one HAD TO HAPPEN, I’d say Christians are the logical victims. Hold on, what am I talking about? Muslims, obviously. What, it’s a fucking roast!
- I’d say that the most surprising thing I learned when I was researching this story is that spellcheck has no issues at all with the word “homofascist”.
Bryan Fischer discovers our homofascist plot to make Christians wear badges like ghetto Jews: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/04/12/bryan-fischer-homofascists-will-treat-christians-like-jews-in-the-holocaust/ (grab soundclip!!)
That does it for headlines, when we come back, Carl from the Post Rapture Looting Podcast will join us to discuss all the fun he had over Easter Weekend.
Skit:
Normally I save emails for the end of the show but I got one from a celebrity the other day and it got me really excited. I’m not sure if I he would want me to mention his name, but you know what? Fuck it, I’m pretty stoked, I’m gonna go ahead and tell you. It was from God.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. It’s an email and anybody could say there were God, but the way I figure it, I’ve got exactly as much evidence that this email was written by god as Christians have that the bible was, so I’m rolling with it.
Anyway, it’s pretty cool, so I thought I’d share it with you:
Dear Noah,
This email is intended as official notice that you have been damned.
This action was taken against you by me, the Lord Almighty on April 13th in the year of our me 2013 for trespasses including, but not limited to:
- Taking my name in vain while suggesting that I, Father of Abraham, Granter of Life, Alpha and Omega, am physically comprised of fecal-pornography,
- Making it sound on your show like Jesus is bad at finding keys when, if fact, he is damn good at it, and
- Making a blasphemous exclamation while masturbating on the Sabbath to impure thoughts about your neighbor’s wife in mixed garments.
As a consequence of your damning, the standing invitation of your immortal soul to return to heaven upon its earthly passing has been revoked. Alternate accommodations will be provided. In addition, your prayers will be ignored separately from those of believers, you will not be permitted to use a crucifix to ward off vampires and Jesus says from now on you can find your own fucking keys.
If you feel that you have been damned in error, please reply within 30 days with an explanation of any extenuating or mitigating circumstances along with heaps of sanctimonious praise and obsequious adulation. Failure to remit in the time frame outlined above will result in your damnation being converted to eternal status.
Praise and adulation will be judged at the discretion of the damning party and may or may not be deemed sufficient for salvation.
May God have mercy on your soul… Oh wait, too late for that Bitch.
Jehovah.
Calendar:
It’s time for the atheist calendar portion of the show. Normally we try to keep things light hearted and funny on this show, but sometimes there’s nothing funny about what we’re doing. And once in a while we need to step back and recognize that.
That’s why I’m dedicating this week’s calendar to the atheist bloggers and activists in Bangladesh that are risking their lives to do exactly what I’m doing. Freedom of speech is something I blithely accept as my birthright as an American, but not everyone is as fortunate.
I can’t possibly cover all the details of this story in such a short format, but I strongly encourage you to learn more about it. We’ll have links all over the shownotes and if you follow us on Twitter we’ll keep you abreast of the story. Suffice to say that a well-organized group of Islamic militants are trying to use their bully pulpit to divert attention away from their wrong-doing and a group of atheist bloggers have become their unwitting scapegoat.
Two bloggers have already been killed and Islamic leaders are calling for the execution of 84 more named atheist activists.
In response, atheist and humanist organizations all over the world have declared April 25th a day of action to stand with our fellow non-believers. And you can make a difference here. Write a blog, send a letter, join one of the many protests being organized across the country, or, if nothing else, take to social media and let people know what is happening.
Regardless of our beliefs, we can all agree that nobody should die for theirs. I urge you to check out the links at Scathing Atheist (dot) com and learn more.
And now, back to the fart jokes and stuff.
April 25th, stand with the atheist bloggers in Myanmar: http://freethoughtblogs.com/maryamnamazie/2013/04/11/on-25-april-2013-we-stand-with-bangladeshi-bloggers-and-activists/
Outro:
There was one email I wanted to respond to before we closed things out for the night, but first a quick correction. You’ll recall that last week Heath and I discussed a nincompoop that wrote an article about how Steven Hawking proved the bible correct by referring to dust. Anyway, I identified the numb-skull as Paul Hitchins, his name is actually Paul Hutchins. So I wanted to apologize, not to the Christian dingle-berry, but rather to the name “Hitchins”. So sorry about that, I owe you more respect.
Okay, so first email comes to us from Renee in Clemsdale and I’m not sure what state or country Clemsdale is in. Renee was very polite in his or her full condemnation of everything we’ve done on the show and, in a round-about way, everything I’ve ever done in my life. But I just wanted to tell Renee that I did love the email, especially the contradictory notion of condemning me to hell in one paragraph, but then hoping I have a lovely day in the next.
Sorry to end on such a somber note, but that does it for our show this week. We’ll be back in 168 hours, when we’ll crack open our bibles and tackle Genesis in the “Holy Babble”. If you can’t get enough of us, be sure to check out our erratically published blog and follow us on Twitter.
I want to throw a big thanks to Carl for joining me early on a Sunday morning for that interview. He had to miss church and everything, so I want to thank him for making the sacrifice. If you haven’t checked out his show, be sure to do that. Once again, it’s the Post Rapture Looting Podcast and we’ll have links to it on the shownotes for this episode. (http://postrapturelooting.net/PRL/)
I want to thank the person who gave us our first donation. Haven’t figured out how to find out who you are so I can thank you by name, but thanks. Really means a lot to us. If you’d like to join this exclusive group of one person, you can donate to the show as well. You’ll find the link on the right side of the page at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.
If you want to help us out but don’t want to part with any of your hard earned cash, you can always swing by iTunes and give us an awesome review. We really appreciate everyone who does that and we love them more than the other audience members… except the ones who give cash, who we love the most.
Of course, a huge thanks to Heath for everything he does to make the wheels of this podcast turn and a big thanks to everyone who decided to give us thirty minutes of their lives. We’ll be hard at work earning thirty minutes next time. Until then, check out the backlog and do it on Stitcher because seriously, our Stitcher rank sucks balls.
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.
Episode 8: Partial Transcript
by Noah Lugeons & Heath Enwright
Sponsor:
This week’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Mitt Romney’s new brand of baking soda, Mormon Hammer. Guaranteed to keep your fridge as free of odor as it is of alcohol, caffeine and gender-equality. So send one of your wives to the store and tell them to look for the whitest baking soda on the shelf: Mormon Hammer.
And now, the Scathing Atheist…
Intro:
It’s Thursday, It’s April 11th and bananas are my worst nightmare.
I’m your host Noah Lugeons and from climatically-schizophrenic New York, New York, this is the Scathing Atheist.
On this week’s episode,
- A Louisiana legislator tries to teach kids about religious freedom by taking it away,
- We’ll use the word “fuck” more times than there’s any real need to and
- My wife and my best friend will join me for the most disappointing threesome of all time.
But first, the Diatribe…
Diatribe:
“How Hubble Saved My Soul”
I rejected religion at an early age. My parents were religious but they weren’t church-goers and they only made a half-ass attempt to brainwash me. I can’t tell you exactly when I out-logiced religion, but my earliest atheist memory is at the age of 8 when my 3rd grade teacher settled an argument between me and some other kid by affirming that there was too a god.
Now, I’d say I was proud of that fact, but atheism is nothing to be proud of. Outsmarting a book that starts contradicting itself in the second chapter isn’t very hard. And, as I proved for many years after rejecting my parent’s faith, you can be both an atheist and a gullible dipshit simultaneously.
See, I didn’t do the whole religion thing, but I was every bit as irrational in my puerile new-age hippy tie-dye, goatee, anything goes, neo-pagan spiritualism. I dismissed all the doctrines, but I still had a soft spot in my brain for ancient wisdom. What’s more, I wanted magic and eternal life. I just wasn’t willing to get them from a church.
So I alternately identified myself as a Wiccan, a spiritualist, a Thelemite or, my personal favorite, a Pangeantheologist. I read books on witchcraft and Kabbalah and chakras and high magick and low magick and herbal magick and color magick and chaos magick and shamanic magick and Enochian magick. And I read the I Ching and I read Tarot cards and I read runes and I read palms. And I read Aleister Crowley and Raymond Buckland and Donald Kraig and Israel Regardie and Peter Carroll. And I went to pagan communes and I met gurus and I went on silence retreats and I danced naked around bonfires and I called upon ancient spirits and I invoked undines and deep down I knew the whole time that it was a load of shit.
The cognitive dissonance wasn’t that hard at first, because I was getting laid. But it got harder and harder as I learned more and more about this stuff. There was never any substance. It never made any more sense. There were never any deeper secrets and there were never any results.
My friends would all say, “Oh, you’ve gotta meet this guru” and when I do, I figure out five minutes in that he knows less about what he’s talking about than I do after reading three books on the subject. I would get together with some coven for a big communal spell and I would happen to catch them on one of those rare nights when nothing happened at all. Or worse yet, you would know the ceremony was over when the most gullible jackass in the room says, “Did you feel that?!”
And as I’m going through this whole five year acid trip of the soul, something else was happening too. And even though I wouldn’t realize it for a quite a while, it was steadily eroding the foundation of my bullshit; I started to see the images being returned from the Hubble Space Telescope.
Like practically everyone, I fell in love with these images as soon as I saw them. I was fascinated and I couldn’t possibly see enough. I wanted to know more about what they were and the incredible universe they revealed. But more than that I wanted to know how we got them and what they meant. It was slow and sometimes painful, but that was the origin of my love for science.
Somehow underpaid, uninspired public school teachers had failed to instill any real appreciation for something as fascinating as everything in my developing mind and it took seeing the universe in this scale for me to truly appreciate the wonders of human curiosity.
But it sure made that cognitive dissonance harder. After all, if science said what I believed was bullshit and they could back it up with pictures of the entire fucking universe, who was I to disagree? How could I cocoon myself in some arrogant worldview that places humanity in the center of it all when there were things like the Hubble Deep Field Image to contradict me?
Even the young religions had a multi-century head start on science when it came to this whole “heaven” thing and they were happy to tell you what it was like and who was in charge and how you could get there, but they never managed to take pictures. We never glimpsed the earliest stars through the power of herbal supplements. We never saw a cloud of dust four light years across through proper breathing techniques. We never saw galaxies forming with color-infused water. The methods and practiced that all my hippy gurus promoted had been around for centuries and sometimes millenia, and yet knowledge of their deep and mystical secrets had never managed something as stupefying and eye-opening as even the lowliest of Hubble’s observations. And yes, I’m talking about the blurry shit before they fixed it.
Sure, you eat enough mushrooms and get in a sweat lodge, you’ll see all the bright lights and pretty colors Hubble has to offer, but there’s nothing there. Just like every other silly little spiritual distraction, there’s nothing there. It’s all empty, hollow, meaningless, unsatisfying, Chicken Soup for the Brain drivel. It demands that you suspend your disbelief even to the point of suspending your own senses. It demands that you practice for years at something you can’t actually get better at. It demands that you nod along with every stupid post-modernist notion some yoga instructor blurts out because you don’t want to be the only one at the party wearing incredulity.
But science, as Carl Sagan said, brings the goods. The appeal of all the spiritual mumbo-jumbo was rooted in my desire to be part of something larger, but when I glanced at the universe through the eyes of a space telescope, I saw that science was offering me something larger than any new-age guru could dream of. And what’s more is that it was real; tangible; provable. Unlike the “truth” offered by faith, science demands nothing in return.
And that’s how Hubble saved my soul.
Headlines:
Joining me tonight for headlines is my fidus Achates, Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to, um… I don’t know, feed us?
In our lead story tonight, the state of North Carolina decided to declare a state religion last week, then the ether wore off and they wondered who that lump in the bed was and where that tattoo came from and what the fuck they were thinking.
This story starts in Rowan County, North Carolina (go Mustangs!) where a lawsuit threatened to stop county commissioners from opening their meetings with a prayer. They had two choices, one was concede, give up the prayer and not look like stupid assholes. The other was to try to rewrite the constitution.
- They were trying to invoke a silly little idea that I remember my 10th grade history teacher asserting. The idea is that the constitution only forbids congress from establishing a religion, not the individual states.
- I’m not sure if there’s any real constitutional ground for that argument but I’m skeptical and so is North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis, who killed the bill once the national media started to make a stink about this. Which suggests to me that somehow North Carolina legislators didn’t realize that people were gonna make a stink about this.
- And that’s why we need watchdog groups.
LEAD STORY: The North Carolina State Religion: http://news.yahoo.com/could-north-carolina-actually-declare-state-religion-130700725.html Follow Up : http://www.goddiscussion.com/108691/north-carolina-house-speaker-kills-bill-that-would-have-allowed-the-state-to-create-a-state-sponsored-religion-in-violation-of-first-amendment-to-the-constitution/
And in “I’ll see your state religion and raise you twelve pounds of raw bat-shit” news, Louisiana State Representative Katrina R. Jackson has proposed a new bill that would force students to recite the Lord’s Prayer along with the Pledge of Allegiance every morning.
With an inspiring effort to yet be the most destructive Katrina in Louisiana’s history, Representative Jackson attempts to justify the bill with some of the most Orwellian language since Orwell. She actually says:
- “Students shall be informed that these exercises are not meant to influence an individual’s personal religious beliefs in any manner.”
- The recitations shall be conducted so that students learn of America’s great freedoms, including the freedom of religion symbolized by the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer.
Louisiana state rep proposes a prayer-in-school law: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/04/05/louisiana-state-representative-students-should-learn-freedom-of-religion-by-reciting-the-lords-prayer-every-morning/
And following up on a story we covered back in episode 4, the big Jesus picture in Jackson, Ohio is coming down. You’ll recall a flurry of defensive posturing by the school board, who insisted that nothing on heaven or earth was going to make them take down their beloved Jesus pitcher.
Well, it turned out that all it took was an insurance company deciding that Jesus was a liability. And this goes to show you how heartless we atheists are. They tried to compromise. They offered to take the picture down from the Middle School and put it up in the High School but that wasn’t good enough for those secular humanist jackoffs.
But I do think it’s worth pointing out what a signpost this really is. It doesn’t take too many successful lawsuits by atheists to convince insurance companies to pull the plug on shit like this before it ends up wasting a truckload of taxpayer money.
Follow Up: School in Jackson Ohio agrees to remove Jesus painting: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/04/03/the-giant-portrait-of-jesus-is-finally-coming-down/
And in more shameful news, a new poll finds that 13% of Americans think that Obama is the anti-Christ. Many of our listeners will have already heard about this survey, as we’re not the only media outlet that found that number interesting. In addition to that statistic, the study also found that:
- 20% of Americans believe that childhood vaccines are linked to autism,
- 9% believe that fluoride is added to the water to control our minds,
- And 4% believe that shape-shifting lizards secretly control our government.
I find some of those numbers hard to believe and I hope that there was a lot of the “these questions have gotten so stupid I’m gonna start fucking with the interviewer” effect in it, but the fact that David Icke’s lizard theory is even well known enough to be included on the survey is plenty of evidence of some horrible failures in public education.
– I’d still be ashamed if only 13% of people believed that there would be an anti-christ.
Studies show that 13% of Americans think Obama is the anti-Christ: http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2011/PPP_Release_National_ConspiracyTheories_040213.pdf
And sometimes you’re combing through news sources and you see a headline so promising you know it’s gonna make the show even before you read the article. A headline on the Christian Newswire caught my attention the other day. It said, and I quote, “Stephen Hawking Solves Bible Creation Mystery Proving the Bible Accurate”.
And basically what we’ve got here is every bit as stupid as what you expect when you read it. This apologist Paul Hutchins is trying to employ one of the Muslim apologist’s favorite tactics, the one where you say, “look at all the science that my book of bullshit predicts.”
This is kind of a dubious tactic in my mind, since all but eight words of the bible are contradicted by science, but nevertheless, he’s trying to say that the creation account in Genesis is in keeping with our current beliefs about how the planet formed.
Now, I’ll give him the credit of saying that he does get there, but he asks for a few huge favors when it comes to interpretation, including but not limited to:
– When the bible talks about 6 days they just mean “6 unequal periods of indeterminate time”
– When the bible says “Let there be light” what they clearly meant was “Let the sun transition from a protostar to a main sequence star.”
– When it talks about god making the sun 4 days after making day and night, they meant that he made the sun visible through the cloud of pre-solar system planetary fragments.
- He keeps talking about how these things “correspond exactly” to the Genesis account.
Stephen Hawking Solves Bible Creation Mystery Proving the Bible Accurate (I shit you not, that’s what the headline says): http://www.christiannewswire.com/news/2911771800.html
And finally tonight, The Foundation Beyond Belief has announced is 2nd quarter beneficiaries. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Foundation Beyond Belief, it is a most excellent secular charity that gathers donations in the name of atheism and then distributes them to a number of deserving charities.
Basically, they do all the hard work of confirming that none of your charitable dollars are going to support one of these half-charity/half-proselytizing funds. Which is helpful if you’ve ever wondered exactly how much of the money you gave to the Salvation Army was spent opposing gay rights.
The five charities selected for this quarter are:
- The One Acre Fund
- The Innocence Project of Texas
- T’ruah
- Bernie’s Book Bank
- And Trees, Water & People
To learn more about these charities and all the news items discussed on this episode, be sure to check out the shownotes at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.
Foundation Beyond Belief Announces its 2nd quarter beneficiaries. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/04/03/foundation-beyond-belief-announces-q2-2013-slate-of-charities/
That does it for headlines tonight. Heath, appreciate your help as always.
And Heath, please stick around. When we come back, Lucinda Lugeons will join Heath and me for a little Bible study.
Skit:
Writer: Hey chief – Did you get a chance to look at the draft I sent you of “The Bible”?
Editor: Oh yeah the fictional allegory book . . . I looked it over . . . Why don’t you have a seat.
W: Sure, how did you like it?
E: (Sigh) I didn’t love it. I’m just a little worried people might take some of it literally.
W: Come on, seriously? The stories are absurd. How could someone take them literally?
E: Well… whenever the scripture department releases something, readers tend to get a little too carried away. Remember the shit show after we printed the Torah? Which actually brings me to my next concern . . . and if I’m way off base here, I’m sorry . . . But it seems like you pretty much plagiarized the entire Hebrew Bible for this first half. Is that what you did?
W: Listen, the Jews are not a very litigious people, so it’s not look they’re gonna sue us. But maybe I’ll add a few footnotes to properly cite the direct quotes.
E: Don’t get me wrong, that thing’s way overdue for a sequel, but do we really have to reprint the whole first book with it? That’s gonna cost a pretty shekel.
W: I’ll be honest, I had a little bit of writer’s block, and I couldn’t seem to get the ball rolling. I added some stuff though. Judith, Wisdom… um… Maccabees…
E: Yeah, we might have to trim that part.
W: Are you sure?
E: Not really no. Look, I understand borrowing from it, that’s not a huge problem. It’s not like a religious text is just going to pop into your head, divinely inspired, ready to print.
W: Right, I’m not just gonna find a bunch of golden plates with the words of god etched into them. So I did some research, and the Torah had a lot of stuff very similar to what I was looking to write myself. One god, omnipotent vengeance scenarios, get really mad at any future religion that also likes the Middle East. It just made sense as a jumping off point.
E: Okay let’s circle back to that. Open up your copy to the Leviticus section.
W: I’ve gotta stop you right there. I know what you’re gonna say. That was a really weird time for me. I had to stone my 4th concubine AND 3 slaves to death that month. Lots of mixed emotions. And my normal guy was out of town, so I had to call this delivery service I never used before, and I’m pretty sure they laced the frankincense with something crazy.
E: Listen, it’s understandable. I’m thinking maybe just a little disclaimer at the beginning. Novelty purposes only, or something.
W: I really think you’re underestimating the intelligence of our readership. It’s not like a giant population the world over is going to get swept up in some sort of crusade to make sure everyone agrees – word for word – with my little book here.
E: I guess you’re right. I’m probably being paranoid. I just had one other concern . . . Why all the hate against gays?
W: What?
E: All the anti-homosexual passages.
W: Where are there any anti-homosexual passages?
E: Right here in Leviticus. “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is an abomination.” Then later in Romans and again in Jude. It seems like you’re at least tacitly allowing the lesbian stuff, but still…
W: I thought it was clear that this section was tongue in cheek. I guess I really didn’t sell the sarcasm. And I wasn’t even talking about the sex part, just the lying in bed after. Nobody wants to see 2 men cuddling. That’s just faggoty.
E: And what’s with all the Yoda talk, and the weird numbering. You really think people are going to refer back to this one book, line by line, and need reference numbers? Normal page numbers, like every other book, should be just fine.
W: That was a software issue. I wrote the thing in Aramaic, and when the word processor translated the characters over to Times Old Roman Latin, a bunch of random numbers showed up by accident.
E: Okay, let’s skip ahead to this “New Testament” part. I get what you’re going for here and I like the idea of god having a kid in the sequel, but that whole part seemed way off to me. The first four chapters just seem to be telling the same story over and over and none of them agree on the details. It’s just weird.
W: Yeah, I started off with a “choose your own adventure” concept in mind but eventually I just slapped everything together in that opening chunk.
E: (Big Sigh) Look, I’m gonna be perfectly honest with you. Religious texts are hot right now and the epic poetry division hasn’t had a best seller in centuries. There’s a lot of problems here, but we’re probably gonna roll with it anyway.
W: Good to hear.
E: Do you have anything in mind for the sequel?
W: I’m thinking illiterate, child raping warlord on a flying horse.
E: Not bad.
Calendar:
It’s time for the atheist calendar portion of the show where we set aside a few minutes to talk up some of the great atheist and secular meet-ups going on around the country and around the world.
We’ll start off with a Skepticamp event in Essex County, Massachusetts on April 13th. Runs from 9:30 to 4, has some really interesting topics lined up and ends out with a Skeptical Trivia event that should be a lot of fun.
http://skepticamp.capeannskeptics.com/?page_id=45
On April 20th we have the South Dakota Conference of Reason in Sioux Falls. And I know that people who live in and around South Dakota have a lot of choices when it comes to atheist conferences, but this one should be worth the drive.
Facebook Page for conference: https://www.facebook.com/events/214700748667522/?fref=ts
On the 27th of April there’ll be another Skepticamp event in Denver with an equally impressive slate of topics including a pretty promising talk on pseudo-astronomy, woo in women’s health and teen atheist outreach.
http://skepticamp.org/wiki/Skepticamp_Denver_2013
And finally in Atlanta we’ve got a three day skepticamp conference starting on the 3rd of May and running through the weekend.
http://www.atlantaskeptics.com/skepticamp/
And how could I not mention the fact that the Brisbane Atheists are hosting a Pirate Party for their monthly meet up on April 30th. I’d love to go just to find out what pirate-speak sounds like with an Australian accent. And incidentally, if any of my Australian listeners want to settle that mystery for me, feel free to send an audio clip.
http://www.somewheretothink.com.au/events/pirate-party-australia-brisbane-monthly-meetup-2013-04-30/
That’ll do it for the calendar this week, but I want to remind everybody listening that if you’re involved with an atheist, skeptical or secular event that could use some publicity, let me know. Also if you’re aware of any good online resources for such events, let me know about those as well. You’ll find all the contact info on the contact page at ScathingAtheist (dot) com. And remember, we’re weekly now so I need all the help I can get filling this segment.
Outro:
I had a couple of quick announcements before we close out the show. We’ve been putting a few segments of the show on You-Tube so if you want to share one part of the show with somebody who might not be able to make it through the whole show, check out our You-Tube channel for some bite-sized pieces of The Scathing Atheist.
We’ve also added a donation button to the website so if you were anxious to give us money, you could do that. Those donations are tax-deductible, but unfortunately that’s only for residents of Tatooine, Mordor and the magical land of Hyrule. The rest of you still have to pay your taxes.
We’ll have the long version of the Holy Babble segment up on the extras page on the website soon so be sure to check that out. Wanted to thank everyone who’s made their way over to iTunes to leave us a five star review. Gotta thank Lucinda and Heath for helping out tonight.
And I want to give a big thanks to George Hrab for both providing the Farnsworth quote to start us out and for entertaining the shit out of my wife and I last Friday night. The guys an incredible musician so if you’re a fan of the music, find an opportunity to watch him live. It’s an incredible experience and I’ll have links to all his upcoming events on the shownotes for the page. He also has a really fun podcast that I’ll link to as well.
http://www.geologicpodcast.com/
That does it for tonight, but if you want more be sure to check out our erratically published blog, follow us on Twitter @Noah (underscore) Lugeons, like us on Facebook, subscribe to us on You-Tube, listen to us on Stitcher and give us money.
If you want to learn more about the news items and events discussed on this program, check out the shownotes for this episode. If you have any comments, questions 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 program was written and performed by yours truly and yes, I did have my permission.
Episode 7: Partial Transcript
by Noah Lugeons
Sponsor:
This week’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by all the awesome people who sent encouraging emails and tweets, left complimentary comments on the blog, gave us positive reviews on iTunes and otherwise helped convince us to start doing this thing on a weekly basis.
And now, the Scathing Atheist…
Intro:
It’s Thursday, It’s April 4th, and I’m already tired of changing my fantasy baseball lineup.
I’m your host Noah Lugeons and from decadent New York, New York, This is the Scathing Atheist
On this week’s episode,
- A Riyadh woman has consensual sex despite overt bicycle riding,
- God blames his mysterious ways on the lack of a father figure in his life,
- And Tom Beasley of an American Atheist join us to explain how he gets off naming his atheist podcast after a country that was clearly founded as a Christian nation.
But first, Heath Enwright with the diatribe…
Diatribe:
Many religions believe that the universe is created by an intelligent designer. Existence is an experimental game and god is the initial inventor of the game and is now an all-knowing spectator watching as we humans misuse the power of choice he gave us. This notion is fucking absurd, but let’s explore it anyway.
If god’s a sports fan, his model sport for humankind is definitely NASCAR. The world he built is a very similar, ridiculously dangerous situation . . . A bunch of crazy rednecks, competitively wasting fossil fuels and god’s just watching from the stands waiting to see the really good wrecks.
The takeaway here, is that if god is a NASCAR fan, he’s can’t be that intelligent.
So if he even exists, intelligent design is not the preferred nomenclature. I’d call it Military intelligent design at best. Even GOD didn’t think through his exit strategy. Intelligently designed games end elegantly, like checkmate in chess. For this game of existence on earth, his exit strategy seems to be nuclear holocaust.
I’m just saying, if religion were to dial back their stance on the intelligence, and just go for the design claim I’d still think they were silly but noticeably less so. But they don’t do dialing back very well. Admitting fault isn’t exactly in the church’s wheelhouse. Granted the faults they’d need to admit are often unspeakable, but I’m pretty sure that actually makes it worse.
The point . . . is that god’s clearly not that smart, and it looks like devoutly religious people agree. Everyone I’ve ever met who takes a religion really seriously, is always trying to justify absurd ways to bend the rules. Like god didn’t read his own fine print.
Great example . . . take butt sex. If you’re willing to bend over the rules a little, anal sex is the #1 virginity preservation method. I like to call this the poop-hole loophole . . . Like this somehow softens the blow later when you’re married, and trying to make your sexual history sound less bad; “No I’m a legit virgin. I’ve had huge amounts of cock in the hole right next to it, but that vagina is clean virgin territory.”
Bullshit . . . Even then, you know they’ve played, ‘just the tip’, a few times.
Speaking of just the tip, my circumcised friend from college, named Israel, also a firm believer in the validity of the poop hole loophole, was excellent at finding ways to just barely avoid directly breaking all these detailed Orthodox Jew-y rules he had to deal with.
For example, he’s not allowed to use any fire, electricity, or machinery of any kind on Shabas, which is sundown Friday until sundown Saturday. So if we were all hanging out smoking pot on Friday night, he couldn’t partake. Unless of course somebody drew a bong hit into the tube without inhaling it, and then happened by chance to leave that random, glass, smoke-filled column sitting on the table with a coaster over it, and then Israel happened to randomly choose to take one of his normal breaths of air while that coaster was quickly removed and that glass tube was on his face.
This would just be a chain of unrelated events. The fire used to burn the pot to make the smoke to fill the tube was wielded by someone else and the bong water acted as a mystical justification barrier, completely separating the fire from whoever might have, by chance, been breathing too close to the bong afterward.
Like Jew God is up there going, “Shit, yeah that bong water really ties my hands on this one. My boss – “God God” – will be up my ass about this if I smite this crafty stoner.” And as far as I know, Israel’s never been smote, so clearly the loophole worked. And this encourages further abuse of the rules.
So why are we so surprised about priests raping kids? Bunch of priests sitting around – trying to figure out loopholes:
“God says we can’t have sex, and can’t masturbate. What option does that leave us? Roll with me on this, keeping in mind, the lord works in mysterious ways. What if a kid gave me a Dutch Rudder?
“We’re not touching dicks. I’m touching my dick, and he’s just working my arm. So I’m not jerking it, and he’s not jerking it, and everybody wins.”
I guess not that many priests are big Kevin Smith fans. All I’m saying . . . it seems like nobody is telling the priests’ side of the story. Maybe the rape thing was a little extreme, but clearly the current rules aren’t sustainable. If I were a priest, I’d be lobbying for glory holes in the confessional booth. At least slutty sinners could try to buy indulgences with happy endings .
There is another solution. It’s nowhere near as fun as my glory hole idea, but probably more reasonable. The church could always just acknowledge that celibacy is ridiculous and goes against the biological instinct to reproduce, or at least the instinct to get laid. But this solution would never happen, because the church would end up having to reconcile its absurd universe view with contradictory things like evidence.
Church’s just don’t do epistemology. Figuring things out with reason is a giant hassle compared to faith.
Headlines:
Joining me tonight for headlines is the Tango to my Cash, Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to tango?
Alright, in our lead story tonight, Pennsylvania State Representative Tim Krieger has introduced legislation designed to act as an impediment to the first amendment. There’s a lot going on here, but the important thing to take away from it is that Representative Krieger is willing to boldly stand up to a beleaguered minority, as long as they’re kids.
Our story begins with Moses wandering down a mountain with a couple of tablets and placing them, in a roundabout way, in front of a school near Pittsburgh. A few secular students pointed out that a giant copy of the Ten Commandments shouldn’t be there. Officials refused to voluntarily remove it so the students got together with the Freedom From Religion Foundation and sued the school.
Well the judge in the case is trying to let them sue anonymously, but that’s reasonable so the Christians are against it.
Enter Tim Krieger, fanatical Christian blowhard and guy who looks like he would be second-in-command for a plot to take over the world, but not the main bad guy. He calls bullshit on that and proposes a law that would make it illegal for a plaintiff to sue anonymously regardless of the ruling of the judge in the case. But don’t worry; this would only apply to cases where religious monuments were being challenged on a Constitutional basis, so at least they’re not trying to pretend it’s fair.
Pennsylvania representative proposes law that would force atheist students to sue publicly: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/03/29/pennsylvania-rep-tim-krieger-doesnt-care-if-atheists-get-harassed-by-christians/
And in other centuries, the morality of Catholicism is in the news again, despite not having changed in generations. The latest incarnation of their pre-scientific ethics comes to us from Boston, home of the nation’s oldest public park, numerous substandard sports franchises and Boston College where officials have threatened disciplinary action against students for the unspeakable crime of promoting safe sex.
Yes, it’s the fucking condom thing again.
The group BC Students for Sexual Health was hit with a “cease and desist” order saying that the group’s goal of promoting common sense was (quote) “not in concert with the mission of Boston College as a Catholic and Jesuit University”
Boston College stops students from handing out condoms: http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/27/us/boston-college-condoms-dispute/index.html
In other news, our whirlwind tour of bat-shit crazy states makes a long-overdue stop in Utah where the Mormons look to cement their reputation as backwards even compared to other religions. The Christian Newswire alerts us to a new service offered by a Salt Lake City based Mormon pseudo-clinic that brings cyber-homophobia into the 21st century.
This is another one of those “pray the gay out” type of things where some callous charlatan takes money from a conflicted person whose preacher tells them they’re identity is offensive to god. In the press release they refer to homosexuality as “same-sex attraction”, which I thought was a nice touch.
Anti-gay web resource for Mormon homophobes: http://www.christiannewswire.com/news/8297071798.html
And from the “Somebody-Had-To-Say-It” department, a new study warns parents that extreme religiosity in a child could be a warning sign of insanity. Every article I saw on the study was really careful to point out all the beneficial corollaries of faith in kids, such as lower incidence of criminal behavior, higher self-esteem, better academic performance and less trouble fucking the preppy chicks, but the association between religion and crazy is pretty hard to ignore.
The study warns that extreme devotion to a religion could be emblematic of anxiety, unaddressed trauma or stress, obsessive compulsive disorder, bi-polar disorder, scrupulosity, schizophrenia, manic depressive or early onset of being-an-insufferable-dick.
Now, we make a lot of jokes about this, but this is pretty serious because one of the really pervasive side effects of religion is that it gives crazy people something to cloak themselves in. Everybody has to be at least a little “crazy” to profess some of the beliefs that organized religion demands, so it’s easy to imagine somebody delaying psychological treatment for a child because they don’t want to say, “he’s so religious it’s crazy”. Faith has been mislabeled a virtue so if something that would be clearly nuts in any other context pops up in the context of religion, people are way less likely to go, “that motherfucker’s crazy.”
Study warns that children who are “too religious” may be crazy: http://news.yahoo.com/child-too-religious-094552602.html
Moving on to some “Other-Countries-Are-Laughing-At-Us” news, an atheist shoe company in Berlin is charging that the US Post Office deliberately discriminates against them and backs up the allegation with an informal study that showed that identical packages with their abominable “Atheist” logo took an average of 3 days longer to arrive at their destination.
To be fair, this wasn’t exactly a scientific study and it wasn’t exactly published in a peer review journal, but the results look pretty damning for the USPS, especially since the whole experiment was prompted when US customers starting asking the company to leave off the telltale tape that said “Atheist-Atheist-Atheist” across it.
The take away, though, is that there’s a company that makes pretty cool looking shoes that say “Ich Bin Atheist” on them and they’re getting some free advertising on our show courtesy of the Post Office being a bunch of miserable dicks.
Atheist shoe company accuses US Post Office of discrimination: http://www.atheistberlin.com/study
And in this week’s living, breathing evidence against intelligent design, Dr. Joseph Mastropaolo has announced that he will impotently wave $10,000 around in the air in a vainglorious, insincere, meaningless publicity stunt.
Mastropaolo, a grown adult with an advanced degree who believes in Noah’s Ark is pretending to offer $10,000 to anyone who can “scientifically disprove” the literal creation account described in Genesis. And yes, that’s the one where they say god created night and day a full three days before creating the sun.
People with competent navigation of their own brains point out that “scientifically disproving” something is a meaningless term and thus an impossible standard to meet. They also point out that if Mastropaolo was so confident, he wouldn’t be insisting that anyone trying to claim the prize also put up $10,000. And of course, they also point out that the generally accepted foundations of biology, astronomy, geology, chemistry, cosmology, anthropology, literature and philosophy all “disprove” a literal interpretation of the bible to any reasonable standard.
Creationist offers $10,000 to anyone who can scientifically “disprove” creationism: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/27/joseph-mastropaolo-creationist-10000-disprove-genesis_n_2964801.html
And finally, in international news, Saudi Arabia makes a bold move to counteract the baseless stereotype that women are mistreated in majority Muslim countries. In a valiant and unprecedented move that would have made Elizabeth Cady Stanton look like Archie Bunker’s wife, the religious police in Saudi Arabia have lifted the ban on women riding bicycles.
Now, obviously you can’t do this all at once or you’d risk utter chaos, so they’ll be limiting this to specific parks and recreational areas, and, of course, the women will have to be chaperoned by a male relative and covered from head to toe in a potato sack, but I think it’s safe to say that sexism in Saudi Arabia is pretty much over.
Saudi authorities lift ban on women in bikes: http://news.yahoo.com/saudi-religious-police-lift-ban-women-bikes-111923001.html
That’s all we’ve got for headlines tonight, Heath, thanks for hanging out.
When we come back, Tom Beasley will join me to circle religion like a hungry buzzard.
Skit:
Occasionally we get feedback from listeners that really enjoy the show, but think that we sometimes get a little carried away. For example, in last week’s episode, when discussing the Westboro Baptist Church, my co-host Heath Enwright expressed a desire to savagely penetrate Fred Phelps’ rectum.
We received several comments about the segment but I chose two that represented what I’ve come to think of as the two distinct audiences that this program appeals to.
Jon on Facebook said he really enjoyed parts of the show, but felt that the anally penetrating Fred Phelps portion went (quote) “beyond edgy and made me squeamish”. On the other hand, we also got an email from Daniel in Plano who said, “Love it! I almost pissed myself when Heath started talking about butt-fucking Phelps!”
So in our ceaseless quest to push the envelope of podcasting, I’d like to offer two explanations of the Fred Phelps comments. And because the show is only 30 minutes, I’d like to offer both explanations at the same time.
So if you find yourself in the “Jon” camp that feared that segment might make them vomit, please remove your right earphone for the remainder of this segment. If you’re more in “Daniel’s” spontaneous urination camp, please remove your left earphone. And if you’re not generally inspired to exude any bodily secretions over our skits, feel free to leave both earphones in and get twice as much podcast for the next few minutes.
*
We live in a world where the walls of censorship are fast falling away. Where once some government (censor/ cock-stain) stood between your ears and the vulgarities of less (cultured/ prudish) (individuals/ motherfuckers), in the 21st century, you’re no longer protected from words like (George Carlin’s notorious seven/ shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, tits).
There is, of course, one (negative/ positive) consequences (While/…) it expands the scope of the first amendment to previously unimagined heights, we also (have/ get) to (endure/ enjoy) a lot more (off-color/ dick and fart) jokes and (lewd/ hilarious) social commentary. As a result, some (refined/ uptight) consumers of new media with little (tolerance/ appreciation) for vulgarity get (offended/ fucked).
As a producer of such content, one must act as one’s own censor and must thus strike a (delicate/ frustrating) balance between being too (vulgar/ boring) and being too (academic/ vulgar). While I respect and appreciate the concerns of the people who wish I would be (vulgar/ myself) less often, I’m naturally inclined to side with the group that most mirrors my own sense of (propriety/ humor). The unfortunate result is that I must occasionally ask some members of my audience to (endure in good humor/ go fuck themselves).
Take, for example, our recent headline segment about the (detestable bigots/ spunk-garglers) at the Westboro Baptist Church. During that segment, our mutual dislike for the group was obvious and my co-host made some (untoward/ hysterical) comments about their leader, Fred Phelps, and things that might be hatefully inserted into his (anus/ asshole), including Heath’s (hateful /throbbing) (member/ dick).
While some (people/ prudes) found this offensive, I think it’s important to keep in mind that Fred Phelps is (despicable/ an ass nugget) and deserves to be (mocked/ gay hate fucked) mercilessly. What’s more, we should do so with (unapologetic/ un-lubricated), (spite-filled/ splinter-filled) (voracity/ broom handles) in the deepest, most (scornful/ painful) way.
And when we, here at the Scathing Atheist, (comment publicly/ blow our juice) on Fred Phelps, we hope that we can hit him (where it hurts/ in the eyes) and really make it sting. A gifted few can do so by way of intellectual criticisms, but those of us without the (education/ desire) or the (verbal dexterity/ words and shit) to express such scathing distaste without resorting to (obscenity/ fuck) filled tirades (have/ get) to resort to the (basest/ funniest) type of humor.
The important thing to remember is that regardless of what words we choose, we all agree that if any target is deserving of our foulest utterings, it is the kind of (visceral/ass-brained) (animosity/ fucktardary) and (lunacy/ bullshit) promoted by the Westboro Baptist Church.
Okay, this (segment/ shit) is really hard to edit, so please put your (right/ left) earphone back in now.
Calendar:
It’s time for the Atheist Calendar portion of the show. This week we’ll be highlighting some of the great secular meet-ups and conventions coming up in April.
We’ll start in Lawrence, Kansas where “Reasonfest 3” will be taking place over the weekend of April 20th. The lineup is fantastic, led by Seth Andrews, JT Eberhard, Jerry DeWitt plus Matt Dillahunty in a debate called “Moral Combat” and something with the enticing title “The Godless Pervert Story Hour” featuring notable godless perverts Greta Christina, David Fitzgerald and more.
http://kusoma.org/2013/01/reasonfest-2013/
A lot of action the following week in the nation’s capital: The Secular Coalition for America will be hosting a Secular Summit from April 24th to the 26th that’ll include some great instruction on effective secular lobbying.
http://secular.org/lobbyday2013
Also in DC on the 27th of April the Center For Inquiry will be hosting “Why Tolerate Religion”, a day long symposium tackling the contentious issue of religion’s role in our supposedly secular government.
http://action.centerforinquiry.net/site/Calendar?id=103301&view=Detail
And for our West Coast heathens, CFI on Campus will be hosting a Leadership Conference in the City of Angels on the same weekend.
http://www.centerforinquiry.net/oncampus/slcla2013
Of course, wherever you are in the world, don’t forget that according to the Secular Students Alliance, Thursday, April 18th is National Ask an Atheist Day, so check your local listings to see if there’s any way you can get involved.
http://www.secularstudents.org/askanatheistday
If you want to learn more about this or any of the other events discussed on this episode, check the shownotes for episode 7 at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.
That’ll do it for this week’s calendar. As always, if you’re involved in an atheist, skeptical or secular event that needs a little free publicity, let me know. And if you’re not involved in an atheist, skeptical or secular event, what the hell are you waiting for?
Interview Links:
An American Atheist Blog: http://anamericanatheist.org/
Outro:
So that’s about all the time we’ve got for tonight. I want to thank Tom Beasley for hanging out with us, I want to thank Alan Blumlein for inventing stereo sound and also want to give a big thanks for Cecil & Tom from Cognitive Dissonance for providing this week’s circuitous Farnsworth quote. Those guys put on a really fun podcast, so you should definitely check them out at Dissonance Pod (dot) com.
I also want to thank the lovely Lucinda Lugeons for everything she does behind the scenes, Heath Enwright for everything he does in front of the scenes. But mostly I want to thank god for making this podcast possible by not existing.
Be sure to check back with us in 168 hours for the “Holy Babble” edition, in which Heath, my wife and I will do something that at least two of us will regret almost immediately. If you can’t wait that long, be sure to check out our erratically published blog, follow me on Twitter @Noah (underscore) Lugeons and like us on Facebook because apparently people still use Facebook.
If you enjoy the show, please help us spread the word by leaving us a glowing review on iTunes or whatever you use. Don’t forget to help drive up our Stitcher ranking by listening to us there and if you don’t have the Stitcher app yet, don’t worry, I’m not judging you for it the way all the attractive members of the opposite sex are.
If you have comments, questions 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.
Episode 6: Partial Transcript
by Noah Lugeons
Sponsor:
Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Jeru-Salem Cigarettes; because an addictive substance that gives cancer to you and all the people closest to you is exactly the kind of thing a loving god would create.
And now, the Scathing Atheist…
Intro:
It’s Thursday, it’s March 28th and guess which Sunday after which full moon after which equinox in which hemisphere’s coming up…
I’m your host Noah Lugeons and from profligate New York, New York, this is the Scathing Atheist.
On this week’s episode (and yes, I said that on purpose)
- Baptist Leaders pledge to civilly disobey gay marriage by not getting gay marries even just a little bit,
- Reasonable Doubts’ co-host Justin Schieber will join us to help me masturbate… er, master debate.
- And it turns out the Catholic Church agrees that when you have problems with somebody who has a checkered past with the Nazi party you turn to Argentina.
But first, the diatribe…
I’m often accused of cherry-picking the Bible and rightly so. They say, “Noah, there’s some really good stuff in the Bible, but you overlook all of it and obsess over the parts with genocide and rape and divinely sanctioned baby-murder and people being turned into salt and nut-grabbing prohibitions and scores of children being massacred by bears.”
I suppose it would be fair to point out that Christians are at least equally guilty of overlooking all the genocide and rape and infanticide and homicidal salinization and ursine bloodbaths and obsessing over the good stuff. In fact, I submit that when there’s a prophecy of a zombie apocalypse in your book, focusing on anything other part of it is off target.
But I have to admit that both atheists and Christians are guilty of cherry-picking the Bible. In a book that long and rambling, I suppose that there’s going to be something to support any view you have. That being said, I think that atheists can justify the assertion that the bible is, overall, an evil, horrible, demonically misguided book.
And I think we can make that case even if we have to set aside all the aforementioned butchery and carnage. Hell, let’s just look at the most sanitized selection of biblical nuggets we can find. Let’s just look at the Bible stories that they tell their kids:
– Jesus died for your sins. Because it’s never too early to learn about politically motivated accusations that lead to brutal capital punishment.
– The Exodus. Because it’s never too early to get your historical perspective from a slave narrative that makes Django Unchained look like a fucking documentary. And oh yeah, God likes to kill brown people.
– Job. Because your life and happiness might hinge on a bet between god and the devil and it’s okay if one set of kids dies as long as god gives you a new set later.
– Jericho. Where the heroic Joshua kills all the men, women, children and fucking animals except a family of turncoats that helped the Israelites in the aforementioned holocaust against her own neighbors… and their pets.
– And lastly, the most ubiquitous of all the “kid friendly” bible stories, Noah’s Ark, the single most horrible story ever imagined by humankind:
Here we have a story where God throws a temper tantrum so bad that it ends up killing all but a high school basketball team’s worth of people. He was so pissed at the humans that he killed all but two of the Patagonian screaming hairy armadillos.
And we’re not just talking about everyone dropping dead one day. God could’ve done that if he wanted to, but he decided to do it by flooding the whole goddamn world. Some of them are smashed to death with logs and debris, others drown quickly, still others get to swim for hours or float for days before eventually succumbing to dehydration or being pecked to death by scavengers.
Think about what a horrible vision this is for a child. They love the pictures of the two giraffes and two elephants and two lions walking into the ark together, sure, but what about the mental picture of every other giraffe, lion and elephant on the planet dying amid a horrible torrent of flood water tens of thousands of feet high. And it’s not like the evil genius that enacted this global catastrophe gets what’s coming to him in the end or anything. He’s the fucking good guy!
Consider legendary director Michael Curtiz who reenacted this disaster in a 1928 film. He decided that the coolest way to get the shot would be to tell all the extras to just act casual and then dump millions of gallons of water into the set without warning. He managed to capture the genuine horror of such a moment. Three of the extras were so inspired by this directorial decision that they improvised their own deaths.
Granted, we’ve largely forgiven Curtiz because Casablanca was so fucking good, but I think we can all agree that flooding that set was the work of a deranged psychopath. And he killed 3 people. And I should point out that none of them were infants. I’m not saying this excuses what he did, but it makes him less evil than god by at least 7 orders of magnitude. More if you count all the animals.
And keep in mind that the story doesn’t end with the flood either. It goes all 50 Shades of Incest a few chapters later when dad starts with the drinking again. Aronofsky is working on a new cinematic retelling of the Noah narrative and I’m thinking it could be brutal even compared to Requiem For a Dream.
Noah’s Ark is a horrible, awful, disgusting, repugnant story but it’s the one that makes the cover on most books of Children’s Biblical Stories. Now I ask you, if that’s the best you can do for a children’s story, how can you possibly argue that this book is anything but terrible?
Headlines
Joining me for headlines tonight is my co-conspirator Heath Enwright, Heath, are you ready to co-conspire?
Okay, so apparently there’s a new pope. I just heard about it and unfortunately the major media outlets have kind of ignored the story so I wasn’t able to find any real details. I guess we’ll have to skip that item until we can find some news coverage on it.
Moving on…
In our lead story tonight, a recent study shows that the more religious a country is, the more it sucks. Researcher Gregory Paul demonstrates a strong correlation between a nation’s religiosity and a host of negative descriptors including poverty, homicide rates, infant mortality and teen pregnancy and found that the more generally dysfunctional a nation is, the more religious it is likely to be.
Paul’s goal in publishing the research was to counteract the ridiculous notion that godless societies are somehow doomed to an inevitable decline into sybaritic dystopia but critics of the study point out that it makes religion look really, really bad so maybe we should just talk about baseball or something.
The major outlier in this study, of course, is good ol’ ‘Merica with a whopping 80% of the populace still believing in Aesop’s Fables despite our relatively high score on the scale of social success. But don’t worry, lawmakers in Washington are hard at work lowering that score to match our religiosity.
http://www.epjournal.net/wp-content/uploads/EP07398441_c.pdf & http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2013/03/05/f-religion-economic-growth.html
In other news, the ACLU has recently filed suit against the Puerto Rico Police Department on behalf of officer Alvin Marrero Mendez, an open atheist who was demoted, ostracized and publicly belittled by his supervisors for his lack of superstition.
The suit alleges that during a constitutionally dubious “closing prayer” after a briefing, Mendez politely excused himself. In response, his commanding officer publicly humiliated him, his service weapon was confiscated, he was taken off the street and given a new job in the department washing cars.
Clearly, the issue here is baseless discrimination, but if I was a Puerto Rican, I’d be far more concerned about losing a 14 year veteran police officer for the crime of being rational.
In more seditious news, Southern Baptist leader Richard Land has called for civil disobedience over same-sex marriage and the birth control mandate in the affordable care act. He and a group of like-minded Christ-ies explain that these issues are ‘non-neogtiable’ and worth the cost of paying fines and going to jail.
Yes, the Christians are actually claiming with a straight face that equality is a violation of their rights. Giving everyone else the same rights they have is a violation of their rights. They warn that they may soon lose their right to refuse to hire non-believers, their right to make medical choices for their female employees and their right to act on the belief that gay people are icky.
The first question I had when I read this is how exactly one goes about civilly disobeying something like gay marriage. I mean, civil disobedience is refusing to follow a law, so how exactly does a straight person civilly disobey gay marriage? When a married man introduces his husband to they just go “la-la-la, I hear nothing”? Do you go to gay weddings and pretend you can’t see anyone?
It makes no sense to me at all, but then again, this doesn’t make it at all unique amongst things Baptist Leaders say.
http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/us/2013/March/NRB-Christians-May-Have-to-Choose-God-over-Govt/
And what headlines segment would be complete without a facepalm prompting trip to the bible belt? This one comes to us from listener “Bad Teeth Alan” on Twitter. Back in episode 3, we marveled over the stupidity of a proposed Mississippi law that would allow student-led prayer in schools.
And on Thursday, March 14th, Governor Phil Bryant signed the fucking thing into law. Bryant admitted that a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the law is inevitable but seems confident that the law will stand up to the legal challenge. What’s more, he seems confident that one way or the other, the defense of this law is a worthwhile expenditure of Mississippi taxpayer’s money saying, I shit you not, (quote) “If we’ve got to spend taxpayers’ money, I think we would be honored to spend it defending religious freedoms…”
The more legally savvy politicians are careful to cloak their support for this law in the official story crap about protecting students’ already well-established rights to wear pro-Jesus shirts and organize religious groups on campus, but the less savvy religious leaders aren’t as shy about talking about the bill’s true purpose. Take for example superintendent for the Mississippi District of the United Pentecostal Church and person whose name sounds like it was directly lifted from a Cohen Brothers’ Script, Reverend David D. Tipton Jr. who attended the bill-signing and was quoted later as saying, “We have listened to the argument of the separation of church and state for too long.”
Mississippi law about school-led prayer (from bad teeth Alan on Twitter):
In other Bible Belt insanity, Tennessee resident and suspected incubator of demons Andrew Byrd has filed suit against his pastor, his pastor’s wife and a deacon for injuries sustained in what sounds like a WWE inspired exorcism.
I couldn’t find a hell of a lot on this story, but from what I can gather, the lawsuit alleges that Reverend Joel Arwood asked Byrd to attend a meeting at the church because he had a demon that needed casting out. Unfortunately the part of the brain that you and I have that would trigger a ‘fight or flight’ response if a backwoods pastor asked us to attend a special, after-hours exorcism was malfunctioning in Byrd so he went.
And from what I can gather, Reverend Arwood’s notion of an exorcism is just beating the fuck out of this dude while his wife screams encouragement and eats popcorn from the first row. I just envision this poor guy getting tag-teamed by a pastor and a deacon and muttering “shouldn’t you be throwin’ holy water on me or speakin’ Latin or somethin’?”
Anyway, by the end of it, he’d suffered a broken tooth, bruises on his face and additional injuries to his back and his legs. He’s suing for $200,000 in compensatory damages and 3.5 million in punitive damages but has indicated that he might be willing to settle out of court for fifty cents and some envelopes.
http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/weird/NATL-Man-Sues-Church-After-Botched-Exorcism-196844971.html
And finally tonight, proving that secular people are way better at protesting than religious people, the nonprofit group “Planting Peace” has enacted my favorite protest of the decade. 31 year old LGBT activist Aaron Jackson has purchased a house in Topeka, Kansas and painted it with the ROYGBIV rainbow of gay pride.
No official word on how the neighbors feel about it, but I think we can take a pretty educated guess as the neighbors are the Westboro Baptist Church.
Jackson purchased the house for apparently no reason but to antagonize the notoriously gay-obsessed Fred Phelps and had no trouble at all finding some local volunteers to help him paint it. Planting Peace has dubbed the place the “Equality House” and intends to use it as a resource center for LGBT equality and anti-bullying initiatives.
That’ll do it for headlines tonight, Heath, thanks for joining me.
And when we come back, Justin Schieber will join us for a public debate on the merits of public debate.
Calendar:
It’s time for the atheist calendar portion of the show. I haven’t had to dedicate a whole segment to a single weekend before, but it looks like if you missed the American Atheist’s convention in Austin, there’s a really good chance that there’s an awesome secular conference much closer by on the weekend of April 6th.
We’ll start in the Northeast with NECSS, the Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism. They’ve really outdone themselves this year with a phenomenal slate of speakers including Leonard Mlodinow, Simon Singh, Michael Shermer, Mariette DiChristina, Massimo Pigliucci and at least a dozen others worth mentioning.
There’s a lot to look forward to, but I’m most excited about a podcasting workshop I’ll be attending with Dr. Steven Novella and Doctor of Funk George Hrab. You can expect to see a marked improvement in the quality of this podcast after that weekend and if you don’t let me know so I can ask for my money back.
NECSS: http://necss.org/
If you’re in the North but not the east, fret not, as the Northwest Freethought Conference is taking place over the same weekend. Friend of the show Hemant Mehta will be the keynote speaker there but he’ll be sharing the stage with some other notable names like Darrel Ray, Valerie Tarico and more. It’ll be taking place at Portland State University and includes three action-packed days of events and speakers.
Northwest Freethought Conference http://www.nwfreethought.org/
If you’re in the North but kind of in the middle, I’ve still got something for you. In Minneapolis, the SkepTech conference will be bringing in Greta Christina, Jesse Galef, the seemingly omnipresent Hemant Mehta and the Doctor Octopus of Atheism, PZ Myers. There are plenty more great speakers all themed around skepticism and technology.
Also keep in mind that April 6th and 7th are also “Just Pray No to Drugs” weekend where a bunch of superstitious yahoos will call upon the power of their invisible space-rapist to end all drug use so if you were concerned about the ongoing meth-epidemic, don’t worry, the Christians have it under control.
And finally, of course, this weekend also marks the celebration of Easter, when Christians believe that baby Jesus rides his sub-mammalian, egg-laying lagamorph down from heaven to give cavities to all the boys and girls.
That’ll do it for the calendar this week, but as always if you’re involved with an atheist, secular or skeptical event that’s in need of some free publicity, let me know. You’ll find all the contact info, along with links to all the events discussed on the program at Scathing Atheist dot com.
Interview Links:
Reasonable Doubts Blog: http://freethoughtblogs.com/reasonabledoubts/
Reasonable Doubts You-Tube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/Doubtcast
Outro:
Interview ran a little long so I’ll have to close the show out pretty quickly, but he have really big announcement before we cue the music. Since we’ve started this thing, the most prevalent theme in our feedback has been “more please”, so I’m happy to announce that we’re doubling our workload and moving to a weekly schedule.
And from now on, I’m dedicating all the odd numbered episodes to all the awesome people who sent encouraging emails and tweets, left complimentary comments on the blog, gave us positive reviews on iTunes and otherwise helped us get this whole thing started. Thanks for all your support and we’ll be working hard to keep earning it every week.
We’ll be back in 168 hours for our “We’re Weekly Now” edition with co-host of an American Atheist podcast Tom Beasley for a pre-autopsy of religion, but if you can’t wait that long, be sure to follow us on Twitter @Noah (underscore) Lugeons and check out our erratically published blog.
Before we close it out, I want to thank author and indispensable activist Darrel Ray for providing this week’s Farnsworth quote… er… paraphrase. I also want to thank Lucinda for teaching me how to be a homo, Justin Schieber for being the world’s most patient interviewee and, of course, my partner in crime Heath Enwright for all of his numerous contributions to the show.
If you like the show, please help us spread the word by leaving a positive review on iTunes or adding us to your favorites on Stitcher. And if you don’t have the Stitcher app yet, get on that shit or the kids on the street will think you’re a square.
If you have questions, comments or death threats, you’ll find all the contact information along with links to all the events and headlines discussed on this program at Scathing Atheist (dot) com. All the music used in this program was written and performed by yours truly and yes, I did have my permission.
Episode 5: Partial Transcript
Sponsor:
Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Mel Gibson’s new line of South American anti-Semitic liquors including the award winning Pog-Rum and Tequila Savior.
So when you’re celebrating the conclave finally electing a pope from the continent where all the Catholics live, be sure to celebrate with pure grain alcoholocaust denial.
And now, the Scathing Atheist…
Intro:
It’s Thursday, it’s March 14th and I’m kinda wishing we’d recorded the headlines the day after they elected the new pope rather than the day before.
I’m your host Noah Lugeons and from hedonistic New York, New York, this is the Scathing Atheist.
On this fortnight’s episode:
- Heaven-bound Christians inexplicably buy health insurance,
- We’ll find a Bishop who finally decided to prick on someone his own size,
- And we’ll get the “too soon” clock started on Duane Gish jokes,
But first, the Diatribe.
Diatribe:
Alright, so when it comes down to it, Jesus was a pretty alright guy. And that’s true whether he existed or not. Atheist or no, I can admit that. Hell, I don’t like Superman comics, but I’ll admit that Superman is a pretty alright guy. He’s actually way more pretty-alright than Jesus, but that’s beside the point.
I mean sure, by the standards of today, Jesus is an amoral jackass, but it’s not fair to fault a historical figure for the immorality of his time. I mean, as long as you don’t go claiming he’s a divine incarnation of an omniscient being, you have to forgive him for not seeing 19 centuries ahead on things like gay rights, gender equality and capital punishment… hell, at least 50% of the major political parties in the US haven’t figured that shit out yet.
So if you set aside all the “son of god” shit and think of Jesus as an at-least-mostly-fictitious guy with impeccable morals, a timeless message of universal love and a scraggly hippie-beard, it’s pretty hard to find fault with him. If Christians were just people who applied the moral message of Jesus and set aside all the deific douche-baggery, it would be really hard to bitch about them.
But none of that matters. It’s an academic argument because Christianity has nothing to do with the moral teachings of Jesus. They talk about him a lot and they sing songs about him and they wear his murder weapon, but they’ve all but given up on his whole message.
Sure, you can trot out a Christian that follows the example of Christ most of the time, but I can trot out an atheist that does the same. And when I do, there’ll be two Christian ass-danglers following behind yelling about how he’s gonna burn in hell.
Sure, you can point to a humanitarian effort that was spurred on by Christians following the word of Christ. And I can show you a secular equivalent that’s spurred on by common sense and a basic sense of humanity. And when I do they’ll be the ones offering help to people even if they don’t swear allegiance to the correct space-wizard.
Sure, you can point to a Christian influence in every great social movement in American history, but I can also point to a Christian influence in the opposition to every great social movement in American history. And when I do, it’ll be hard to ignore the fact that my group is 1200 times bigger than yours.
The truth is Christianity is just a word and Jesus is just a name. The modern American Christian doesn’t worship anything about Jesus except his muscle tone. In fact, if you look at the issues that seem to enrage Christians, you could be forgiven for thinking that Christ spent most of his time talking about gun rights, abortion, condoms, stem-cell research, capitalism, violent video games, masturbation, gays, pornography and masturbating to gay pornography. And, oh yeah, something about feeding poor people to lions or something.
Think about it. Here you’ve got this guy who’s chocked full of good parables, forward thinking morality, miraculous alcohol making and unassisted water skiing, but they glaze over that shit and obsess over the 0.16% of the bible that deals with their savior getting brutally tortured to death.
So what exactly did Jesus say about gays? Well, nothing actually, but he did say something about loving the least of God’s children.
What did Jesus say about the right to bear arms? Well, there were no guns at the time, but I seem to recall him being anti-stoning.
What did Jesus have to say about capital punishment? Well, I’m not sure but I’m willing to bet that toward the end of his life he was against it.
What did Jesus have to say about video games and stem cell research? Well nothing because they didn’t exist.
What did Jesus have to say about abortion; something that absolutely, positively, undeniably did exist before Jesus ever reverse-popped his mommy’s hymen? Turns out he completely forgot to mention how against it he was. Luckily Pat Robertson was there to pick up where Jesus left off.
So talk Jesus all they want, but don’t invoke him when you’re trying to justify your religion. Jesus doesn’t need your dumb-ass religion to be a decent guy. I’m a big fan of Thoreau, and I don’t need him to be the son of god but actually god but actually a wafer in order to follow his moral philosophy.
In fact, I think it’s about time we officially retire old Jesus. He was kind of a pussy anyway. What modern day Americans need is an ass-kicking, name taking version of Jesus; a guy who would only turn the other cheek if he was setting up a spinning roundhouse kick. They need a karate-Jesus that has a utility belt and banters well with super villains. They need a nunchuck-toting Jesus that ignores poor people, embraces trickle-down economics, hates fags, smokes Marlboro Reds and always has a good one-liner before he takes out a motherfucker.
In other words, they need an AMERICAN Jesus. I mean, if you’re going to completely ignore the moral underpinnings of your religion, why not go all the way?
“American Jesus” Song Lyrics:
(Amin, F, Amin, C)
I love me some Jesus, yes I do.
He died on the cross for my IOU.
He’s a lean mean Nazarene fightin’ machine,
He took the money changers from the temple, kicked them in the spleen…
(Amin, Emin)
He said, “Kapow, Get out! Don’t make me shout, bitch,
I usually turn the other cheek, but I’m liable to switch.”
He said, “You’re full of flab, you usurious clod,
I’ve got six-pack abs and I’m the son of God!”
(Amin, Dmin, Amin, Emin)
(Amin, F, Amin, C)
Oh, I love me some Jesus, yes I do.
He’s a bad motherfucker, thought you knew.
Back in the Jurassic wrestled dinosaurs;
That’s why you don’t see ‘em around anymore.
(Amin, Emin)
He said, “Kapow!”, Took out, tyrannosaurus,
He’s a bearded badass make you forget what’s-his-name Norris.
He was slick, and quick and impossible to capture,
Took the dinos up to heaven in the veloci-rapture.
(Amin, Dmin, Amin, Emin)
(Amin, F, C, Emin)
Cause he’s American Jesus, eats unleavened grilled cheeses
And he’ll tear you to pieces with his sword!
American Jesus, man, he’ll cure your diseases,
Or kick your mortal ass for the lord,
Oh lord, oh lord…
(Amin, F, Amin, C)
Oh, I love me some Jesus, yes I do.
There’s no doubt that he’s my favorite Jew
On the day he was born there was an extra star in the skies,
Three dudes came up to visit, every one of them wise,
(Amin, Emin)
They brought him gold, and myrrh, and frankincense,
Seems like weird gifts for a baby, but to them it made sense.
One was black, one brown, the other vaguely Asian,
But don’t worry ‘cause Jesus was a regular Caucasian.
(Amin, Dmin, Amin, Emin)
(Amin, F, C, Emin)
Cause he’s American Jesus, eats unleavened grilled cheeses
And he’ll tear you to pieces with his sword!
American Jesus, man he’ll cure your diseases,
Or kick your mortal ass for the lord,
Yes he’s America’s Christ, won’t it be nice?
The way they crucified him once, but he’ll come back twice, man.
He’s America’s God, and whether you’re a sinner or not,
He’ll make you holier if it’s only when your ass gets shot,
He’s America’s Messiah, unless my uncle is a liar,
His eyes can shoot out lasers and his fingers summon fire.
He’s America’s Savior, it’s risky behavior,
Not to take a knee right now and let him save your soul___
Oh Lord, Amen.
Headlines:
In our lead story tonight, America’s 15th largest mega-church is facing foreclosure. The “Family Christian Center” of Indiana is more than $600,000 in the red and the First National Bank of Illinois isn’t buying the “we’re praying as hard as we can line.”
This is not the first time the congregation has faced litigation due to mortgage default. In 2011, the Evangelical Christian Credit Usurers… I mean Union filed a case against them when they fell behind on payments for their worship center.
So ask me why a congregation that brings in between 7 and 10 million dollars a year can’t pay its bills.
Apparently “pay taxes and mortgage on condos owned by the congregation” falls lower on the financial priority list than things like 1st class travel, executive perks and jet fuel.
To be fair, the Family Christian Center denies allegations that it’s flailing in the quicksand of financial ruin brought on by decades of decadent debauchery, but they also claim Jesus is Lord so they’re a dubious source at best.
In more mountainous news, a Colorado Appeals Court has upheld the controversial Douglas County initiative that would divert public school funds to religious schools. The “Choice Scholarship Pilot Program” offers $4,500 vouchers to students that can then be used for tuition at private schools. At the time of the recording, 18 of the 23 private schools participating in the program were religious in nature.
The ACLU partnered with the religious liberty watchdog group Americans United to politely remind Douglas County that we are still doing the whole “constitution” thing, but apparently 2 of the 3 judges hearing the appeal disagreed.
Judge Steve Bernard, the sole dissenter, said “that the Choice Scholarship Program is a pipeline that violates [a] direct and clear constitutional command”. Not sure what the other two judges were thinking, but my guess is it was something like, “look, if we got it right every time there wouldn’t be a state supreme court, now would there?”
In even more fucked up news, the Kentucky Senate has revived a bill that would not only allow a Christians-Only heath insurance provider to operate, but also exempt it entirely from insurance regulations. The bill specifically reverses an earlier ban on the non-profit, not-quite-insurance company “Medi-Share”.
You see, Medi-Share is like insurance in that you pay them each month in hopes that when you need medical care it will be taken care of or heavily discounted. But unlike insurance, they’re not really under any obligation to pay. Its website describes the service as “A modern day version of what the church started back in the book of Acts.” I’m not sure what they mean by that, but I assume that somewhere in their mission statement it talks about smoothing shit over with the Roman Empire.
In addition to getting away with shady business practices, the group is also allowed to discriminate against anyone who wants to buy into their sham that isn’t willing to lead a “biblical” lifestyle.
http://news.yahoo.com/senate-panel-revives-christian-health-000037587.html & http://news.yahoo.com/ky-bill-save-christian-health-133221588.html
But that’s not the only outrageously imprudent bill on the Kentucky House floor. We now turn our attention to House Bill 279, a bill that would allow people to sidestep anti-discrimination laws if their bigotry was based on a sincerely held religious conviction.
Never mind how Kentucky legislators intend to legally determine the sincerity of one’s convictions, the law is clearly aimed at helping insulate bigots who want to deny equal access to gays. Bob Damron, the democratic sponsor of the bill, offers some hand-waving bullshit about religious freedom, but opponents of the bill point out that its vague language could (quote) “give people permission to discriminate based on their religious beliefs, thereby… [imposing those] beliefs on others with legal authority to do so.”
Supporters of the bill point out that (quote) “we’re not goin’ after the kikes of the chinks or nothin’. This law is just about them lesbos and queers.” http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/03/10/kentucky-bill-would-allow-discrimination-based-on-sincerely-held-religious-beliefs/
Turning now to international news, we land once again in Vatican City where officials now admit to some of the accusations stemming from the wire-tapping scandal that stemmed from the vati-leaks scandal that stemmed from the Vatican gay sex blackmail scandal that stemmed from the Papal money laundering scandal that stemmed from the child rape and torture scandal that stemmed from the absurd decision to ask grown men to not use their dicks.
So let’s take that in reverse order, skipping over the dicks.
In March of 2012, the Vatican launched a nation-wide, city-wide investigation in hopes of finding out how the fuck the Pope’s personal diary and erotic letters to Jessica Simpson kept winding up on the front page of Italian Newspapers.
A couple months later they would discover that the butler did it in the rectory with the lead pipe, but not before the stream of incriminating documents would uncover evidence of bribery, blackmail, money laundering and a gay-sex prostitution ring.
Fast forward a year and the Vatican is finally admitting to at least a few of the allegations around the Draconian investigations, saying now that they “only tapped two or three phones” and that they “only listened to the verbs and prepositions”.
In other Catholic Old Gay Reality Show Blooper Reel Material, Cardinal O’Brien, the former archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh, has stepped down amid allegations of sexual abuse and impropriety toward 4 priests that served under him both figuratively and literally.
O’Brien initially denied allegations but days later recounted and agreed to step down only weeks before he was scheduled to participate in the conclave that would select the next pope. When asked about his reversal, O’Brien said “Initially [the] anonymous and non-specific nature [of the allegations] led me to contest them.”
So I guess once the details were filled in he said, “Oh those guys? Yeah, I sexually assaulted them, sure.”
http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/03/world/catholic-church-obrien/index.html?on.cnn=1
And in tonight’s Water-Is-Wet Report, a new study finds that offering criminals a religious doctrine of unconditional forgiveness doesn’t deter them from committing more crime. The study, which was published this month in the journal ‘Theoretical Criminology’ concludes that presenting inmates with religious doctrine does not reduce criminal behavior and instead may actually exacerbate it.
The researchers interviewed 48 inmates and noted a number of “elaborate and creative rationalizations” that they used to reconcile their religious belief with their actions. And some of these are pretty fun:
- “Cool” told researchers that he would say a quick prayer before robbing someone to (quote) “Stay cool with Jesus.”
- “Triggerman” explained that “God has to forgive everyone, even if they don’t believe in him.”
- “Young Stunna” said, “See, if you go and rob a motherfucker” and to be fair, I’m assuming he said mother fucker because all it says is “expletive” in the quote so I could have used anything here. But anyway, he said, “If you go and rob a motherfucker, then I’m still going to Heaven because, it’s like, Jesus knows I ain’t have no choice, you know?”
So the study provides evidence that (a) religion is not an effective deterrent to crime, (b) it can be and is used to justify further criminal actions and (c) that religious people use bullshit rationalizations to keep their faith from imploding around them.
And then they load their conclusions up with a bunch of shit that isn’t remotely supported by the evidence. They basically ignore the obvious conclusion: religion is not effective in deterring crime, and instead they pander and pussy-foot around suggesting that religion is definitely really awesome and good and all, but it just isn’t being employed correctly. http://www.vancouversun.com/news/national/study+raises+questions+about+religion+deterrent+against/7981683/story.html
American Atheist’s latest billboard campaign
Skit:
VOICEOVER:
Meanwhile, in Heaven…
GOD:
(in progress)
…and not a one of those mother fuckers thanked me.
Watch and see. None of them are ever gonna win
an Oscar again. I’ll DiCaprio the lot of ‘em…
SFX: Beeping
GABRIEL:
Uh-oh, the God-O-Tron!
SFX: Whoosh
GOD:
Jesus Christ!
JESUS:
Yeah?
GOD:
Looks like Mabel in Pulaski lost her keys again. See what you can do.
JESUS:
Got it.
GOD:
You know which one really irks me? Ang Lee. That jackass loads his
movie with Christian themes, I go to the limits of my omnipotence to get
a Best Director Award to a guy who…
SFX: Beeping
GABRIEL:
Wait, there’s more coming through…
GOD:
Damn it… now I’ve lost my train of thought.
GABRIEL:
Oh man, this is bad. A volcano is about to erupt and
kill hundreds of malnourished islanders! We’ve gotta do something!
GOD:
Still looking for those keys, Gabriel.
GABRIEL:
But God!
GOD:
One thing at a time, Gabe. I can’t do everything at once.
URIEL:
Well, actually, you can, sir.
GOD:
Nobody asked you, Uriel!
URIEL:
It’s just that you’re omnipotent, sir. You could…
GOD:
How many times do I have to tell you guys? I work
in mysterious ways!
URIEL:
(mumbling) When you work at all…
GOD:
What was that?
URIEL:
Nothing…
GABRIEL:
God, the volcano!
GOD:
Oh, Jesus H. Christ!
JESUS:
Yeah?
GOD:
Have you found those keys yet?
JESUS:
Did you ask her where she had them last?
GOD:
(Sighs)
If she knew that they wouldn’t be lost, now would they?
JESUS:
Still lookin…
GOD:
Oh yeah. Ang Lee. I mean, that dude just pointed a camera
at a green screen for a couple of weeks and I manage to
miracle him into Best Director. And then what?
SFX: Beeping
GOD:
(Sighs)
Doesn’t anyone know that I’ve got Oscars to bitch about here?!
GABRIEL:
It’s just messages.
JESUS:
Found them.
GOD:
Finally…
JESUS:
Oh wait. Those were earrings…
GABRIEL:
You want those messages, God?
GOD:
Fine, Gabriel.
GABRIEL:
Well… Lucifer says he’s still really, really sorry and promises
never to do it again if you let him back into heaven.
Mary called again but I deleted the message like you asked.
GOD:
Women…
GABRIEL:
Oh, and Noah’s making one of those podcasts
you hate so much again…
GOD:
What, Ark Noah?
GABRIEL:
No… the… Noah Lugeons. The “Scathing Atheist”? He’s
the one that…
URIEL:
The one that called you a Shit Porn.
GOD:
And he’s making another one? Damn it, where’s my Brimstone?!
URIEL:
Oh, like you’re really gonna smite him.
GOD:
I could smite him! You guys all seem to think I’ve gone soft, but I
can still smite. You’re talking about the guy that took out Sodom and
URIEL, GABRIEL & JESUS in UNISON:
…Gomorrah and flooded the whole world…
GOD:
Enough! Jesus, what are you doing? Did you find those keys?
JESUS:
She found some old photo album and forgot what she was
looking for. Now what was that about a volcano?
GABRIEL:
…too late.
Calendar:
It’s time for the Atheist Calendar portion of the show. With the atheist community all abuzz about the American Atheist’s 50th Anniversary Convention in Austin, I figured we’d devote the whole calendar this fortnight to all the fun and excitement happening over Easter weekend.
The bulk of the festivities begin on the 29th, but Registration opens at 5 o’clock on the 28th. There’s also a “Dinner with the Stars” fundraising event. For an additional $250 you can attend a dinner and auction with luminaries like Matt Dillahunty, Greta Christina, Pete Stark, David Silverman and more.
But the real fireworks start on Friday with talks beginning at 9:30 and running through the day. David Silverman will kick things off, but the list of speakers for the day is loaded, all culminating in a Music and Comedy show featuring Greydon Square, Blair Scott & Keith Lowell.
Saturday has a hell of a lineup as well. It starts off with a Parenting in Atheism panel and continues with an exciting series of speakers throughout the day, plus additional panels like Atheism vs. Humanism and Women in Atheism. And unlike congressional hearings, this panel on women will have women on it.
And while the rest of the country is looking for pastel-colored Jesus bunny eggs, we’ll be treated to a Sunday Sermon by none other than Jerry Dewitt. He’ll be followed by friend of the show Hemant Mehta and a bunch of other notables including but not limited to Seth Andrews, Edwin Kagin and, of course, the keynote address by AC Grayling.
Should be a ton of fun and as of this recording, tickets are still available. I hope to be attending as well. There won’t be a Scathing Atheist meet-up, but I’ll be easy to find: I’ll be the tall, thin, handsome guy standing next to me.
For a full and up to date schedule of speakers and events, check the shownotes for this episode. As always, if you’re involved with an Atheist, Skeptical or Secular event that needs a little free publicity, drop me a line. You’ll find all the contact info on the “Contact” page at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.
http://atheists.org/convention2013/schedule
Feedback & Outro:
Couple of quick emails to respond to before we close things out for the night.
The first one comes from Ellen in Texas. She appreciated the take down of Peggie Drexler’s op-ed in Episode 3, but she pointed out that I tragically overlooked the dumbest sentence in the whole article; one where she clearly inverts the order on the Javon Belcher murder/suicide, posing it instead as a chronologically-perplexing suicide/murder. I’m ashamed to have missed a perfect closing joke there.
Also wanted to respond to a miserable jackass who identifies himself or herself as “potbelly” and leaves the following nugget of brain poop in my inbox:
“It doesn’t take much to see who is right and wrong in the religious debate. When you hear Christians speak, they talk about charity, love and universal kinship. And when you hear Atheists talk they’re just calling other people motherfuckers. Noah could take a cue from the Christians if he took a second to stop degrading them.”
Well, “potbelly”, I have 3 issues with that email. First of all, you don’t capitalize “atheist”. I appreciate the effort, but we aren’t disciples of Athea the wise or anything.
Secondly, I’ve never called anybody a “mother fucker” on this show. I’ve called people things that are just as bad or worse, but I’ve never actually referred to anybody as a “mother fucker” so clearly you’re not paying attention.
And finally, I’m sorry that I didn’t think to take a cue from all those Christians I’m constantly degrading. Luckily, I’ve got a montage of crazy You-Tube preachers on hand to help me set the tone with some of that charity, love and universal kinship you were talking about:
And with that note of unconditional love and brotherhood I think we can safely ignore motherfuckers like potbelly.
That’ll do it for the show this fortnight, but if you want more, there’s more. Carl and Ben over at the Post Rapture Looting Podcast made the mistake of inviting Heath and I on to chat with them a few nights ago. The interview should be available on their feed on Saturday the 16th. Check out postrapturelooting.net or keep an eye on our website, as we’ll be posting a link as soon as it’s available.
http://postrapturelooting.net/PRL/
I want to thank the truly friendly atheist Hemant Mehta for providing the Farnsworth quote for this episode. In addition to being a superbly awesome-nice guy who gives people audio clips for no reason except his inherent sense of goodness, he also runs the closest thing on the internet to a one-stop shop for Atheist news stories. You can find him, along with a host of other great atheist blogs at patheos (dot) com. We’ll have a link on the shownotes, of course.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/
I also want to thank Jay, Santi and my partner in crime Heath Enwright for helping with the skit and the headlines tonight. But most of all, I want to thank you for giving us 30 minutes of your life. We’ll be working really hard to earn 30 minutes next time. If you enjoy the show, please help us spread the word by leaving us a good review on iTunes or Stitcher. And yes, we’re now on Stitcher so listen to us there. If you don’t have the Stitcher app, go to iTunes and get that because you’re not a fucking Flinstone, are you? I mean, iTunes? That’s where the Neanderthals got their podcasts. It’s all about Stitcher now.
We’ll be back in two weeks with co-host of Reasonable Doubts Justin Schieber for a discussion on the merits and techniques of publicly debating theists.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/reasonabledoubts
Until then you can find more on our blog at Scathing Atheist (dot) com, including links to all the headlines and events discussed in this episode. All the music used in this episode was written and performed by yours truly and yes, I did have my permission.
Episode 4: Partial Transcript
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And now, the Scathing Atheist:
Intro:
It’s Thursday, It’s February 28th and when I asked for more reviews on iTunes I meant good reviews, but thanks anyway.
I’m your host Noah Lugeons and from New York, New York, THIS is the Scathing Atheist.
On this fortnight’s episode:
- A school board in Jackson, Ohio decides there’s nothing explicitly Christian about a picture of Christ,
- Eli Bosnick will join me to try to fuck up the rhetorical meaning of the phrase “Is the Pope Catholic?”
- And I’ll try to figure out what all these little knobs on my new mixer do,
But first, the diatribe:
Diatribe:
Today I’d like to talk about being the only atheist in a room full of theists. It’s a diatribe I like to call “There is too a God, now pass the fucking string beans!” Because that’s usually where it comes up. It’ll be at some social event or a family gathering, you’re sitting around the table, minding your own business and suddenly those 7 fateful words’ll come up.
Somebody’ll say “So you don’t believe in God, huh?”
And you don’t want to have the conversation. You don’t feel like playing “stump the atheist”. You even try to distract them with something like “hey look, your kid’s on fire”, but it never works. They’re in that zone. They lean in really close and they put on their best “profound” face and then they’ll pose… “the challenge”.
The challenge usually come in the form of a question, and the question usually starts, “So how do you explain…”
And that’s where I stop them. I’ll say, “Hey man, I’m gonna let you finish your question and everything, but before you do, I’d like to point out that my ability or inability to answer whatever question you’re about to ask has absolutely no bearing on the existence of God. When I say that I don’t believe in God, I’m stating a lack of belief, not a claim of knowledge. I’m not an expert on the origins of life or the cosmos any more than the next guy and failing to be so doesn’t disqualify me from atheism. What’s more, whatever question you’re about to pose is also one for which you have no answer. I know that you think you have the answer, but ‘my guy has super-powers times infinity’ doesn’t really count at all… but by all means, carry on.”
I don’t want to dissuade them, after all. It’s pretty easy to argue with a Christian, since they only really have about three different arguments. So they’ll throw out Pascal’s wager or the Lunatic, Liar or Lord shtick or the First Mover argument or whatever and I’ll refute it in whatever way I refute it.
Sometimes you’ll even get that “sophisticated theist”, you know, that one who went on that there internet and looked up ways to stump atheists? And that’s always fun because you get to hear them try to pronounce words like “abiogenesis” and “flagellum”. And you can refute these points too if you want to, but there’s usually no point. Most of the time they don’t even understand the argument they’re regurgitating enough to know when you’ve countered it.
So you sit there suffering the slings and arrows of their tortured logic and you’ll come out on top, but eventually the tone of the argument will change altogether. It’ll no longer be a rational discussion on any level. It’ll turn into something like “Well I don’t want to live in a world without God,” or, “There is too a God, now pass the fucking string beans!”
And that’s when the real nature of the argument comes out. That’s when it becomes obvious that this conversation was never about logic, it was never about reason, it was about emotion. It wasn’t about the world you observe, it was about the world you want to observe.
Eventually you’ll have to come to understand that there is no logical reason to believe in God. If there was, atheists would believe in God. We got where we got by using logic and believe me, if there was a shred of evidence to suggest that I get to live on for eternity in space Disney Land, I’d take that deal even if it meant I couldn’t have fish on Fridays.
But even knowing that logic will never work, you’re still going to try to employ it you silly little Christians that stand between me and a second helping of mashed potatoes. So I’d like to make a request of you. Before you bring your “logical” argument to me, I want you to take a deep look at it and ask yourself, “If this was evidence going the other way, in other words, if this was offered as proof that God doesn’t exist, would it sway you at all?”
If I walked up to you and said something like, “I’m gonna prove to you that God doesn’t exist. Now let me tell you about the bacterial flagellum.” Would you listen to anything else I had to say at that point? And if the flagellum evidence ended up swinging the other way, would you give up your belief in God altogether? Are you subscribing to all the flagellum blogs and newsletter so you can know for sure if this God thing holds water?
You’re never going to win an argument with an atheist by using logic. We’re just better at it. That’s kind of our thing.
You have to admit going in that yours is not the rational argument. If you insist on arguing with atheists, at least be honest with yourself about where your beliefs come from. And I’ll give you a hint, it’s not your brain.
Headlines:
Joining us for the headlines this fortnight is Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to inform?
Hello, Noah Lugeons. As you said, I’m Heath Enwright . . . and there’s nothing clever about our names.
Now, before we jump into our lead story tonight, I should note that the Pope is still stepping down. Of course, we’ve known that shit for weeks, but that hasn’t stopped media outlets everywhere from covering it nonstop as though it somehow remained newsworthy even after everyone knew it. In fact, I’ve spent two weeks combing through news items for this segment and, like far too many altar boys in the past, I’ve been up to my balls in bishops and cardinals the entire time.
So what follows are the few non-papacy related nuggets I could dig up in that morass of ass-rapists and ass-rapist enablers.
—
In our lead story tonight, the House of Representatives recently passed HR 592, a bill that would allow taxpayer money to be allocated to houses of worship as part of FEMA federal disaster grants. The bill, which passed by an overwhelming 282 vote margin, was created in response to recent caterwauling by Christian Leaders over FEMA’s refusal to grant churches and synagogues relief money after Superstorm Sandy.
When FEMA abandoned black people after Katrina, I gave them a pass. But now they’re neglecting Christians and Jews. A line has to be drawn somewhere.
Amen brother. There are, of course, numerous compelling reasons not to grant federal money to churches, but strangely Christian leaders have chosen not to address any of them and instead opt for a policy of crying, whining, bitching and flailing about like wounded animals.
Take pastor, author and latenight-accident-attorney-infomercial clone Paul De Vries’ recent Op-Ed in the Christian Post. Rather than tackling the constitutional and logical concerns one might have against giving taxpayer money to organizations that don’t pay taxes, he instead chooses to obscure the issue with a series of points that can easily be refuted in three sentences or less. Are you up to the challenge, Heath?
Game on.
#1 “…[the policy] treats churches as outsiders” After all, why should a groups devotion to god make any difference when it comes to public policy?
1. That’s why they should be paying property taxes, rather than being treated differently in public policy because of devotion to god, and getting a tax exemption.
2. If they were paying taxes this whole time, they would – in turn – be eligible to receive federal disaster aid.
3. That’s how taxes work. .
#2 “This ‘discrimination’ could open the door to “other risky discrimination”. Will the government stop providing churches with firefighters and police officers?
1. They should stop providing them with police, fire fighters . . . roads, water, electricity, freedom of speech, and any other government-provided privileges, unless they pay taxes.
2. Again . . . that’s how taxes work, and this is a basic principle of organized society.
3. And even if they did pay all the same taxes as everyone else, churches are clearly not the most important thing to rebuild.
#3 “…[the policy] ignores the immensely positive roles churches have already played after Superstorm Sandy”, and then he lists how many millions of dollars churches donated and raised for victims.
1. Don’t they justify their tax exemptions by citing their benefit to society?!?
2. They’re honestly trying to say, “The reason we should get tax-funded aid without paying taxes is the same reason we don’t pay taxes.”
3. That’s like saying that a disputed book is valid because in several passages within the disputed book, it indicates that the disputed book is valid.
Not to mention that “look how much money we had to give away” is a shitty argument when you’re asking for money.
Is their an entire bad tautology department at Christianity HQ?
And finally, My personal favorite, #4: “blocking FEMA grants to churches is to pretend to be ignorant of the continuing soul care needed by the many and various victims…”
I guess we can always feed starving children with the bullshit the church consistently feeds parishioners.
And of course, deep-fried figurative cannibal wafers would be good soul food.
You’d think that somebody with a good batting average could have been praying for the hurricane to go offshore: If that praying shit works, forget the church volunteerism after the storm, and try some simple fucking preventative medicine, idiots.
Well, they’ll probably say that the gay marriage interfered with their prayer frequency.
Can’t imagine a lot of people needed blankets, jackets, and bibles. If you gave bibles to homeless people in NYC after Sandy, they would have been burned in trash cans, just like the bibles they started with before the storm.
One can only hope. Anyway, the bill will now go to the Senate where we expect it will die quietly.
Like the way god died.
De Vries Op-Ed: http://www.christianpost.com/news/femas-ugly-superstorm-sandy-policy-no-churches-allowed-89755/
—
Taking a page out of the Catholic playbook, a Baptist group has fired the independent investigators that were looking into child sex-abuse allegations against a member of the group mere weeks before the findings of their investigation were scheduled for release.
The Association of Baptists for World Evangelism, or ABWE has terminated the investigative firm “Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment” or “GRACE”. They cite a laundry list of general complaints about GRACE’s investigative technique, especially, one would speculate, the ones that result in them finding massive culpability within the group.
GRACE has issued a response to the allegations, pointing out that the ABWE refused to meet with them to address the alleged poor-practices that led to their eventual termination, repeatedly breached their contract by refusing to disclose documents and make witnesses available for interview, wantonly delayed the investigation and have the far lamer acronym.
Reminds me a little bit of the internal affairs department within the Gestapo. I think they were called Hitler Examines Internal Legality, or HEIL. They made sure that atrocities were carried out with dignity and GRACE. Brought it back full circle – nailed the joke. Seriously though, the Nazis would probably have gotten in big trouble if they hadn’t disbanded HEIL right before the release of their controversial report on the morality of holocausts. I’m led to believe that HEIL did, in fact, uncover one or two questionable practices.
Main Story: http://www.christianpost.com/news/us-missions-group-fires-child-sex-abuse-investigators-claims-process-fatally-flawed-90100/
GRACE’s response: http://netgrace.org/wp-content/uploads/GRACE-Response-February-10-2013.pdf
—
In other news, Heisman Trophy winner, Christian Evangelist and former 3rd string New York Jets mascot Tim Tebow has cancelled a planned April appearance at the First Baptist Church in Dallas. The church, which is led by controversial pastor Robert Jeffress, is decidedly anti-gay, anti-Islam and anti-Mormon.
Tebow, who claims to have only recently realized that this church is even more ridiculous than average, announced the cancellation on Twitter, but added “I will continue to use the platform God has blessed me with to bring Faith, Hope and Love to all those needing a brighter day, except the ones who are fans of whatever unfortunate team has me on its roster.”
If god wanted Tebow to be a star QB, and big spokesman for religion, why did he give him the throwing ability of Helen Keller’s less-coordinated little sister?
He looks like a drunk redneck throwing a folding chair at a bowling alley fight.
He looks like he’s throwing a gallon of milk, but without the container.
This is only the latest piece of evidence that suggests that Tebow is as bad at picking PR events as he is throwing a fucking football. You’ll recall that in 2010 Tebow appeared in an ad where he encouraged women to ignore any doctor who said they had high risk pregnancies because “what do those doctor’s know? Just look how good I turned out.”
We can’t deny that without the Tebow fetus avoiding responsible parenthood planning, the Jets certainly wouldn’t have been able to convert those 3 fake punts, salvaging a 6-10 season in 2012.
And I apologize to all our international listeners who could give a fuck less about all these American football references.
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/02/21/tim-tebow-pulls-out-of-speaking-at-dallas-church/
—
Sticking with the regional focus, Oklahoma becomes the latest in a dishearteningly long list of state’s that are pushing some cretinous law that would give creationism a foot in the door of public schools. Republican State Representative Gus Blackwell has introduced a bill which he, of course, vociferously insists has nothing whatsoever to do with religion, claiming [quote] “I proposed this bill because there are teachers and students who may be afraid of going against what they see in their textbooks”.
And in my mind, it’s about damn time somebody stood up for the right of students to ignore all those realities in the curriculum. What gives textbooks the authority to determine what is and is not a fact? Other than school boards, textbook guidelines, knowledgeable authors, federal and state educational mandates and rigorous review by experts, I mean.
Can’t students study falsehoods at church like they always have? Isn’t there already a chapter in the science texts at Sunday school, that’s discusses in detail, many baseless claims about creation?
But you don’t understand. Blackwell promises with all his heart, so help him die, that this bill is in no way informed by his religious views or the multiple decades he spent working for the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma.
Is he claiming that he intentionally erased his subconscious?
That probably wouldn’t be the dumbest thing he’s claimed.
Oklahoma Creationism Bill: http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/02/oklahoma-hr1674-science-evolution-climate-change
—
In other news, a horrible bitch is suing New York’s Department of Education because they did not grant a religious exemption to vaccination for her five year old daughter. Proving definitively that there’s no stupid like religious stupid, she argues that [quote] “To inject invasive and unnatural substances into [god’s] divine creation is showing a lack of faith in God and His way”.
I forget which verse, but I’m pretty sure the bible does eloquently suggest, that law suits against public school districts are a good show of faith in god and his way.
I believe it’s in the book of Macabee-otch
Is it? Could’ve sworn it was in the Penta-douche.
—
And finally tonight, Jackson Ohio has become a central front in the battle for the proper separation of church and state. A recent lawsuit by the ACLU and the Freedom From Religion Foundation charges that a portrait of Jesus that hangs in a public middle school illegally promotes religion and stands in direct violation of the first amendment.
Those Jews are always rubbing our smaller noses in the fact that they had Jesus first, aren’t they?
Rather than politely acknowledging their error and removing the portrait, school officials have dug in their heels and cobbled together an argument so disingenuous you almost expect them to use the word “quantum” at some point.
Damn godless hippies trying to take down our jesus poster. Somebody better stand in the way of this progress . . .
Is that approximately their argument?
Even worse, I think. They say that portion of the wall is reserved for clubs within the school to place pictures of “inspirational figures central to the club’s meaning and purpose”.
To get me pumped up before a big game, in my locker, I would always keep a little figurine of the sports god named Baal. I think he stood for good sportsmanship. I really idolized that little guy.
Well that’s, of course, the “now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t, pay-no-attention-to-the-man-behind-the-curtain” legal defense, but the layman’s defense is the same ones that worked so well when it was used to justify slavery, oppose women’s suffrage, rationalize prejudice against gays and validate circumcision: “It’s been there a really long time”.
http://news.yahoo.com/ohio-town-latest-focus-religion-legal-debate-204126487.html
—
That’ll do it for headlines, when we come back I’ll be joined by unlikely papal candidate Eli Bosnick.
Calendar:
I made a request in last fortnight’s calendar for help finding a good online source for atheist, humanist and skeptical events in Australia and I got a few responses, but I really have to single out one listener in particular, @workMX on Twitter seemed to take this as a personal challenge and helped out a lot, so I decided that on this episode I’d devote the calendar section entirely to March Meet Ups in the land down under.
On March 13th – The Brisbane Rationalists are meeting from 6:30 to 8 and encourage anyone who enjoys rational conversation in an informal environment to join them… Although I’m sure if you show up in a tux they won’t turn you away. The monthly meet up will be held at the Coffee Club on Albert Street.
http://www.somewheretothink.com.au/events/brisbane-rationalists-2013-03-13/
On March 20th we have a few events worth noting – The Central Victorian Atheists will be holding their monthly gathering at the Albion Hotel in Kyneton. Or Keyenton. Or whatever. I’ve gotten some mixed advice on the pronunciation there. All free thinkers in the area up for an evening of godlessness are encouraged to attend, regardless of how they pronounce it.
http://www.somewheretothink.com.au/events/central-victorian-atheists-2013-03-20/
Also on March 20th in Adelaide the Humanist Society of South Australia will be holding their monthly meet up as they do on the third Wednesday of every month. The meeting runs from 7 to 9 at the Weatsheaf Hotel
Moving 1400 kilometers due east, on March 24th Sean Faircloth, author of “Attack of the Theocrats” will be appearing with AC Grayling and other secular speakers at the Sydney Opera House. This appearance will kick off a national “Reclaiming a Secular Australia” tour organized by the Rationalist Society of Australia and the New Zealand Association of Humanists and Rationalists. Additional appearances include:
March 26th at Melbourne University
March 27th at the Kyneton Mechanics Institute
March 28th at the Wheeler Centre in Melbourne
For a full calendar of appearances, including stops in Perth and New Zealand, check the link on the shownotes for this episode at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.
http://www.somewheretothink.com.au/events/reclaiming-a-secular-australia-sydney/
That’ll do it for the Calendar this fortnight. On our next episode we’ll turn our eyes to Austin and breakdown the schedule of events for the American Atheist’s 50th annual meeting, which I hope to be attending.
As always, if you’re involved with or aware of an atheist, secular or skeptical event that’s in need of some free publicity, feel free to email me or send me a Tweet. You’ll find all the contact info, along with links for all the events covered on this segment, at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.
Feedback:
I wanted to respond to a couple of quick emails before I closed out the show. First a correction: how quickly we forget. The Pope announced his retirement and within days I’m already forgetting the asshole’s name, apparently. On Episode 3 I accidentally called him “John” Ratzinger. Quick slip of the tongue while my mind was focused on a pretty crappy “John Ratzenburger” joke. Sorry about that. Kind of kills one’s credibility when one does shit like forgetting the Pope’s name.
Anyway, on to a more serious correction. I woke up to a pretty compelling comment on the blog on Sunday. John took me to task for repeatedly calling Ex-Benedict a Nazi in the last couple of episodes. As he points out (and as I will readily admit), mandatory membership in the Hitler Youth does not a Nazi make. But rather than frame this simply as an ad hominem, John hits me where he knows it will hurt. It’s not just an ad hominem, but a lazy one. After all, why go after a spurious connection to Nazi-ism when one could just as easily point to all the horrible shit that he actually did without being forced to by the state?
So I apologize for calling that sexist, homophobic, child rape enabling, child rape ensuring, genocidally anti-condom, thoughtless, heartless, antiquated, purposeless, money-laundering, hypocritical, superstitious, felonious Palpatine lookalike a Nazi. It won’t happen again.
That does it for our show but if you want more, there’s more. The interview with Eli went on a lot longer than I anticipated and when I cut it down for the show I left a lot of great stuff on the cutting room floor. If you want to hear the full version, check out Scathing Atheist (dot) com and click on the “Extras” tab at the top of the page.
I want to thank Heath and Eli for joining me and I want to wish Eli good luck in his bid for the papacy. I encourage you to follow him on Twitter if for no other reason than to see pictures of him wandering around Manhattan on Ash Wednesday with a smiley face drawn on his forehead.
We’ll be back in two weeks with our Countdown to Austin Edition. Between now and then, check out our erratically published blog and follow us on Twitter. If you liked the show, help us spread the word by leaving a good review on iTunes. If you have questions, comments or death threats, you’ll find all the contact info 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.
Episode 3 Partial Transcript
Episode 3: The Valentine’s Edition:
SPONSOR:
“Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the new national restaurant chain for Christian cheapskates and penny-pinching pastors. If you’ve got a party of 12 rowdy jack-offs who’ve managed to forget Christianity’s central tenant on the drive from the sermon to brunch, bring them down to your neighborhood Papal-bee’s. Our friendly wait staff will be happy to accept a snarky message on the receipt and a Jesus-pamphlet in lieu of a living wage. So come on out to Papal-bee’s and enjoy the Last Supper… you’ll ever tip for.
And now, the SCATHING ATHEIST!
INTRO:
It’s Thursday, it’s February 14th and it turns out Catholics get really pissed when you lick your thumb and wipe the schmutz off their forehead. I’m your host Noah Lugeons and THIS is the Scathing Atheist.
On this fortnight’s episode…
Some ex-Nazi who ran the inquisition is looking for work,
We’ll toss all the legislators in the Bible Belt into the ring and see who can out-stupid who
And apparently I’ll sound like a more smug, more scripted Dennis Miller,
But first, the Diatribe…
DIATRIBE:
This diatribe can be considered a companion piece to an incomprehensibly stupid Op-Ed I found on the Huffington Post the other day. It’s by one Dr. Peggy Drexler and it’s titled, “Why Kids and Religion Mix”. If you’d like to get your bearings before I disembowel her argument and strangle it with its own intestines, you can pause the podcast and find the link on the shownotes for this episode at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.
Or better yet, don’t bother because it’s so engorged with stupidity that even a casual encounter with it might actually lower your overall capacity for intelligent thought.
Dr. Drexler, a Research Psychologist, Gender Scholar and bona fide horse’s rectum has decided that even people who don’t believe in God should still get their kids some good church-learnin’ and she makes the case for it in the circuitous way one has to if one intends to justify such a brainless proposition.
We start by meeting Sam, a child of two Catholic apostates who were surprised one night when their son decided to start a meal off by thanking Jesus for providing everything. They shouldn’t have been too surprised, of course, as we all know that Christians aren’t above proselytizing to children without their parent’s permission. But regardless, we now find Sam’s parent on the horns of a dilemma. They don’t want to force their kid to adopt their take on religion (after all, that’s what they’re parents probably tried to do to them) but they also don’t want their kid being indoctrinated by some morally-dubious charlatan either.
Personally, I’m a firm believer that this shouldn’t be a dilemma. On the one hand you have a group of people actively pushing unverifiable claims about the very nature of the universe and on the other hand you have reality. You wouldn’t want your kids muddying their minds with alternative forms of mathematics or biology. You wouldn’t leave it to them to decide if scientific or homeopathic medicines work better, so why would you feel any differently about religion? Sure, eventually you want your kid to go out into the world and make up their own mind, but shouldn’t you start them with a firm grounding in reality the way you would with every other subject known to humanity?
But as you might have guessed, Dr. Drexler would have you believe otherwise. She goes to great lengths to list all the perceived virtues of church-attendance, largely by vaguely referencing studies that she fails to cite.
But a lack of data doesn’t stop her from making rock-solid claims like “Participation in a religious community may help kids develop a strong moral core”, “religion seems to be somewhat comforting to kids” and “…[Religion] can provide a certain stability that children welcome in a world that’s full of change”. Well it’s hard to argue with facts like those. No, seriously… it’s hard to argue with. What the fuck does any of it even mean?
Later she says, “In the wake of Newtown and all the other tragedies worldwide, more and more we’ve had to rely on some kind of a God to get us through” and I assume she typed that with a straight face. I can’t speak for a theist, of course, but as an atheist I find it profoundly comforting that an intelligent, omnipotent god didn’t knowing allow the massacre at Newtown to take place. I would imagine that thinking otherwise would be a source of stark terror more than comfort, but then again, maybe that’s why I’m an atheist.
But the Op-Ed gets more asinine still. At one point she launches into a series of sentences that seem to be competing for the title of the stupidest assemblage of words ever accomplished in English:
“News-making men like Lance Armstrong, who cheated and lied over many years …give us reason to increase children’s exposure to people and ideas that will help them develop a strong moral code.” And with this, cue the pedophilia jokes.
Really Peggy? You’re really going to put the fucking CLERGY up as your standard for strong, moral behavior? You’re going to take the only profession in the country that is synonymous with child rape and suggest that they are the moral alternative to Lance Armstrong?
Okay, okay, so maybe I’m being too Vatican-centric here. Maybe Peggy and her flock would hear that and say, “not all priests are pedophiles”. This is true, but the very fact that you have to point it out is certainly ammo for me, but for the sake of argument, let’s set all of that aside. Let’s instead think of all the Baptists and Pentecostals and Evangelicals who manage to keep their dicks to themselves and instead simply instill good, Christian values like hating gay people and women who exercise biological autonomy.
Not good enough? Alright, let’s even set aside those assholes and consider the most liberal, open-minded, Six-Flags over Jesus church you can possibly imagine with a watered down message, a full time rock band and a fucking Starbucks. Let’s say that you found a church where the transgendered, pro-choice, anti-gun, pro-sunshine and puppy tails priest is a fucking Nobel laureate and gives 94% of his income to charity. What happens to the strong moral code when your kid starts reading up on Jesus and finds out that he’s a pro-slavery misogynistic bigoted liar that promised to return 2000 years ago and still hasn’t made good? In other words, what happens to an edifice built on bullshit when the shit starts to rot?
But wait, Dr. Drexler’s not through being stupid. Immediately after suggesting that the group of people that brought us the Inquisition, the largest pedophilia scandal in human history and Monsignor Meth are somehow better than a one-testicled cyclist on steroids, she throws out an assertion you couldn’t justify to a retarded sea-monkey:
“…in a world where evil often trumps good, religion can’t hurt.”
She makes no attempt to justify it at all. She just leaves it standing on the page their like a nerd who was just thrown naked into the girl’s locker room. RELIGION CAN’T HURT!? I’m quite certain I heard something about religion being used to start wars, subjugate minorities, justify slavery, inhibit science, oppress women, tyrannize nations, roll back social evolution, rationalize suicide bombings and otherwise validate every morally repugnant institution in the history of human civilization. In fact, if I’m not mistaken AS I SPEAK someone if being murdered because of it.
No, sorry Peggy, but you’re putting your stuffing your lunch up your ass again. It’s ATHEISM that can’t hurt. At its best religion is naïve and arrogant. At its worst it’s fatal.
HEADLINES:
Our top news item today, John Ratzinger is fallible again. As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, the Pope has decided to hang up his Mitre and his Zuchetto and call it quits. When asked why he has chosen to be the first Pope to resign since the death of Joan of Arc, the Pope responded “I’m 85 years old, which is pretty much dead.”
While the Vatican sites his advanced age, the blogosphere is abuzz with speculation that there might be more to it than that. Some suggest that he’s trying to avoid the fallout from the ever widening child rape and torture scandal; others propose that he’s trying to avoid the fallout from the looming money-laundering scandal; still others submit that he’s trying to avoid the fallout from being indicted by the International Criminal Court; still other suggest that all those atheists on Twitter finally got to him.
In domestic news, the Obama Administration recently proposed updated guidelines for the Affordable Care Act, designed to further placate Christian opposition to the requirement that employers provide insurance coverage for birth control. Arguing that they shouldn’t be mandated to pay for something they morally oppose, Christian leaders have managed to wring compromise after compromise out of the president.
The latest round of capitulations expanded the definition of “religious based organizations” to include religious hospitals, universities and charities. While employees of these organizations would still be able to receive contraception through their insurance, the employer would not be burdened by the cost or the unbearable encumbrance of guilt that paying for birth-control pills might incur.
Christian leaders aren’t satisfied with the compromise, of course, and vow to continue to fight the good fight until the exemption includes any-damn-body who wants it including Religious Institutions like Hobby Lobby and Chick-Fil-A.
Common sense, of course, would kindly ask these religious institutions to go fuck themselves as a law that was passed by a democratically elected majority is supposed to trump the prophetic dictates of an infanticidal space-phantom.
We’ll be keeping you abreast of further compromises as they occur.
In other Christians-thinking-they-should-have-special-privileges-and-getting-them news, the Southern California Christian School has filed suit against two former teachers who refused to provide proof of their faith. The teachers were asked to take their son, whom they love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering or, failing that, provide a statement of faith and a reference from a pastor.
Two teachers refused and were fired. When they threatened litigation, the school pre-sued, igniting a case that will challenge a landmark religious ruling by the Supreme Court last year. The Hosanna-Tabor (Tay-ber) ruling essentially exempted religious institutions from the laws all other employers have to follow with regards to religious discrimination. But by failing to specify what constituted a “religious worker”, the court left the status of teachers uncertain.
The school is seeking an injunction to prevent the teachers from suing for $150,000 each. Regardless of the outcome of the case, one can only hope that the discharged educators can go on to find employers willing to pay for their contraceptive insurance.
Amish defectors can sleep a little easier tonight knowing that the notorious drive-by stylist Samuel Mullet, Sr. will behind bars for at least a decade. Mullet, the leader of a splinter group considered stringent even by the standards of the Amish, was found guilty of forcibly shaving and barbering at least five Amish people. He and his fellow maverick Mennonites were sentenced to between 3 and 15 years in prison.
The team of criminal coiffeurs was convicted of conspiracy to violate a federal hate-crime law, which is probably the most sinister way you can possibly describe aggravated hairdressing. US Attorney Steven M. Dettelbach should be commended for not only procuring the conviction, but also thinking of something poignant to say afterwards to make the case seem way less bizarre and stupid than it actually was.
And in the ceaseless competition for the most pro-Christian, anti-Constitution piece of legislation in the bible belt, we have three worthy contenders this week:
Taking the Bronze medal is Virginia where the Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections recently voted to endorse an amendment to the State’s Constitution that would allow prayer at graduation and allow students to opt out of assignments if the assignment “violates their faith”.
Senator William M. Stanley, a sponsor of the bill argues unconvincingly that this amendment has nothing whatsoever to do with evolution. He points out that it would allow, for example, a Muslim student to be excused from dissecting a fetal pig in biology class.
This line of argument would be far more compelling if anybody believed for a second that there had ever been a case of a Muslim student being forced to dissect a pig or if we were all spontaneously generated yesterday with no memory or intellect.
Taking the silver is perennial contender Alabama where legislators are pushing for a law that would allow the 10 commandments to be displayed on any building in the state. The bill, which sports the Orwellian title: “The Alabama Religious Freedom Amendment”, would offer legal protection for a practice that is already pervasive in the state.
Despite the brazenly unconstitutional nature of the law, Alabama tax-payers needn’t worry about the state wasting any money defending it if it’s passed, as third party groups have already stepped up to offer funding when the inevitable lawsuit occurs.
But the gold medal goes to the reigning champion of stupidity, Mississippi, where we find a seemingly innocuous bill that makes it legal to pray before public school groups. The bill, which passed unanimously through the House Education Committee, would ban teachers from penalizing students for expressing religious views in schoolwork, it would require allowing students to organize prayer groups and religious clubs and it would force schools to allow religious groups to use school facilities in the same way as nonreligious groups.
So what does the law do other than legalize a bunch of shit that’s already legal and force schools to do things they’re already doing? It also allows for prayers before “limited public forums” in school, which doesn’t sound that bad until they define “limited public forums” as things like football games and the morning announcements. Apparently, by limited they also mean “all-encompassing and mandatory”.
And while they failed to reach the podium this time around, I thought I should still toss out an honorable mention for Arkansas where the state legislature recently passed a bill with overwhelming majorities in both the house and senate that would allow the carrying of a concealed weapon in church.
While this law is probably every bit as stupid as the other ones, I don’t think it qualifies as pro-Christian or anti-Constitution, but I’m sure Arkansas will try harder next time.
And, lest I get all the way through the headlines only fucking with the Catholics once, German Archbishop Gerhard Ludwig Muller has come under fire for saying that recent criticism of the church leaves [quote] “an artificially created fury… which sometimes reminds one of a pogrom sentiment”.
This statement was quickly condemned by virtually every sentient being on earth; who collectively pointed out that legitimate denunciation of the anti-gay, anti-woman, pro-child rape platform of the Vatican is not really very much like inciting a population to genocide at all.
In Muller’s defense, I’m sure people inciting pogroms probably did occasionally make accusations along the lines of “those Jews are a bunch of conspiratorial child-rapists”, but of course when they were saying it, it wasn’t true.
In other news, the Freedom From Religion Foundation sued florist Marina Plowman on January 25th in Rhode Island.
Atheists who follow the blogs will recall the case of one Jessica Ahlquist, who won a legal battle to remove a prayer banner at her high school and consequently became a target for religious blowhards throughout her community and the nation. In a show of solidarity with the young woman who was notoriously called an “evil little thing” by Rhode Island State Representative Peter Palumbo, a Madison, Wisconsin based secular group attempted to send the evil little thing some flowers.
Evil bigger thing Plowman refused to deliver to Ahlquist citing “fuck you, that’s why”.
The FFRF seeks a bouquet and an apology in the lawsuit, but they’ve indicated that they might be willing to settle out of court for fifty cents and some envelopes.
And finally today, a new Church in London called “The Sunday Assembly” has quickly garnered a large and enthusiastic congregation. The brainchild of standup comedians Pippa Evans and Sanderson Jones, this church offers what one attendant described as “a bit of community spirit but without the religion aspect.”
While its creators are careful not to call it an “Atheist Church”, seeming to prefer the term “Cultural Humanism”, it offers a clear and welcome alternative to religious ceremonies in the Western World’s least religious nation.
Services include singing, comedy, readings from books way better than the bible and discussions of science. While the service is meant to entertain, it also offers inspirational moments designed to invoke the wonders of life and the cosmos without placing any of its authorship in an imaginary being.
That’s it for headlines, when we return I’ll be joined by Lucinda Lugeons and Heath Enwright for a special Valentine’s Day panel discussion.
SKIT:
CARL
“Hi, I’m Carl, I’m the Assistant Manager here at the East 14th Street McDonalds. Thanks for coming in for the interview.”
POPE
“Yes, Yes.”
CARL
“Here, have a seat. Would you like something to drink? A Coke maybe?”
POPE
“No.”
CARL
“Alright, Mr… Rater…”
POPE
“Ratzinger.”
CARL
“Rat… in… zer?”
POPE
“Ratzinger.”
CARL
“Ratzenburger?”
POPE
“No. That is mailman from Cheers. I am Ratzinger… like, you sing to mouse, no? Rat-Singer?”
CARL
“Oh, Ratzinger, got it… now… I’m detecting a little bit of an accent there. Is English your first language?”
POPE
“No. German”
CARL
“Okay. Do you speak any Spanish? Because a lot of our guys only speak Spanish.”
POPE
“I speak 7 languages.”
CARL
“Wow… that’s pretty impressive…”
POPE
“9 if you count Ancient Greek and Biblical Hebrew”
CARL
“Okay, well… we don’t. There’s not a lot of ancient Greeks or biblical Hebrews here in Sheboygan, but still… you never know. Anyway, I’ve gotta say, this is a pretty impressive application. It says here that you used to be pope?”
POPE
“Yes. Was Pope.”
CARL
“Awesome. Did they do the whole colored smoke thing?”
POPE
“Yes… was colored smoke.”
CARL
“Awesome. And what would you say was your favorite part about that job?”
POPE
“Job come with… infallibility.”
CARL
“Well that’s a nifty perk. What would you say was your least favorite part about being pope?”
POPE
“…hm… The Hat.”
CARL
“They made you wear a hat?”
POPE
“A silly hat.”
CARL
“Ssss…. Now, you will have to wear a hat to work here. Would that be a problem for you?”
POPE
“No… I wear normal hat.”
CARL
“Yeah, a hat like mine.”
POPE
“I wear that hat, sure.”
CARL
“Okay. Cool.”
POPE
“So I have job?”
CARL
“Well…”
POPE
“What ‘Well’?”
CARL
“Well… to be perfectly honest, your application had a few ‘Red Flags’”
POPE
“What is Red Flag?”
CARL
“Well, for example, it says here that you’re a former Nazi. Is that true?”
POPE
“Hitler Youth.”
Carl
“I’m Sorry?”
POPE
“Hitler Youth. Was member of Hitler Youth.”
CARL
“Wow… See, McDonalds is kind of against the whole Nazi thing I think.”
POPE
“Was mandatory.”
CARL
“Oh… Okay. Well in that case it might be okay. I mean, we can’t hold it against you if it was mandatory… I think.”
POPE
“So I have job?”
CARL
“Well, there is one other thing… it says hear that you’re currently under indictment from the International Criminal Court. Is that true?”
POPE
“You know… is silly. They are silly.”
CARL
“Sssss…. Can you tell me what you’re under indictment for?”
POPE
(mumble mumble)
CARL
“I’m sorry?”
POPE
“I help cover up with the fondling of thousands of children. You know… is little stuff like that. Other charges are even sillier.”
CARL
“Other charges?”
POPE
“You know… inhibiting humanitarian efforts in developing world by opposing use of contraception in AIDS ravaged nations and places plagued by overpopulation. And parking tickets.”
CARL
“Ssss… See, I think that might really be a problem.”
POPE
“No, I make fry.”
CARL
“Yeah, I’m sure you make great French fries and all… but McDonalds corporate has kind of a policy against hiring people that are under international indictment for crimes against humanity… It’s an image thing, I think.”
POPE
“I… make… fry.”
CARL
“Sorry.”
POPE
“I am good enough to serve as head of world’s largest religion, but not to make fries in your crappy restaurant?”
CARL
“I’m sorry… but at East 14th Street McDonalds, we just have higher standards than the Vatican.”
CALENDAR:
Keeping you abreast of all the major happenings in the world of Atheist meet-ups and conventions, it’s time for the Atheist Calendar portion of the show. We’ll be skipping ahead a couple of weeks and focusing on some events around the country coming up in the first half of March as we build toward the big one in Austin on March 28th.
We’ll start in the Windy City where the Chicago Skeptics will be hosting a Skepticamp event on March 2nd. It’ll be held at the Irish American Heritage Center in Shy-Town from 11 am to 6 pm. If you’re going to be in the Chicago area and would like to meet up with some awesome skeptics, I hear they’ll have a few.
Skipping a week ahead and 150 miles Northwest, we’ve got Freethought Festival 2 in Madison, Wisconsin. The lineup offers a powerhouse of heavy hitters including Debbie Goddard, Darrel Ray, Dan Barker, Greta Christina, the Friendly Atheist Hemant Mehta, Andrew Seidel and more. If you’re like me and thinking this sounds way better than your plans for the weekend of March 8th, there’s still time to register.
Hell and gone from Madison? Perhaps you can attend the National Atheist Party’s first convention in San Francisco on the 9th of March where they’ll feature virtually every prominent atheist speaker that won’t be in Madison that weekend: Aron Ra, Jessica Ahlquist and Jerry DeWitt to name a few. Should be a good time for a good cause and tickets are available as of this recording.
On the Ides of March the Wichita Coalition of Reason will be hosting an event with the irresistible title, “The Skeptics of OZ” featuring speakers such as JT Eberhard, DJ Grothe and Darrel Ray, who is seems to really be racking up those frequent flyer miles. It’s an all weekend event and no offense to Kansas, but what the hell else are you going to do in that god-forsaken wasteland?
Finally, don’t forget Pi Day coming up on March 14th. Almost certainly my favorite math-inspired holiday, the holiday is typically celebrated by telling people that it’s Pi Day and then trying to explain what that means and then trying to explain why you give a shit.
A quick request before I close out this section: Apparently this podcast is getting quite a few downloads down under, so if you’re aware of a good online calendar of atheist and secular events in Australia or if you’re involved with a conference in need of a free plug, email me or send me a tweet. You’ll find all the contact info on the “Contact Us” page at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.
OUTRO:
Just a quick note before we close out the show. If you noticed a bit of inconsistency in the sound quality during the program, I apologize for that. We’re in the process of upgrading our equipment so some segments were recorded on one rig and others on a much better one. By our next episode everything should be smooth and steady and I thank you for bearing with us through these growing pains.
I also want to thank everyone who took the time to leave us a review on iTunes and everyone who sent us an email. I couldn’t be more stoked with the response we’ve gotten so far. I also want to thank everyone who’s listening. I appreciate you giving me 30 minutes of your life and I’ll work really hard to earn another 30 minutes.
And if you enjoyed the show and you haven’t done it yet, please take a couple minutes to hop on to iTunes and give us a review. It really helps us spread the word and, if you need a more personal benefit, 8 people left reviews and I bought a new mixer and two dynamic headset mics. So basically, leave reviews and the sound quality gets better.
Finally, I want to throw out a big thanks to Heath Enwright and Lucinda Lugeons for joining me tonight. We’ll be back in two weeks with a special farewell in the “Pope-ulation Zero” edition. Until then, if you can’t get enough of us, check out the blog at Scathing Atheist (dot) com or follow us on Twitter @Noah (underscore) Lugeons. If you have questions, comments or death threats, you’ll find all the contact info on the Contact Us page of the website. All the music used in this episode was written and performed by yours truly and yes, I did have my permission.
Episode 2 Transcript:
Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the world’s top-selling spiritual supplement, “5 Hour Piety”. So if you’re desperate to go to church but you’re still carrying the stench of Saturday night’s heroin, Wild Turkey and underage hooker sweat, reach for a bottle of Five Hour Piety. Hours of virtue now, no Jeremiah 2:13 feeling later. And NOW, the SCATHING ATHEIST.
INTRO
It’s Thursday, It’s January 31st and it’s hard out there for a Pope. I’m your host Noah Lugeons and THIS is the Scathing Atheist. On this fortnight’s episode, we’ll find a catholic priest who might be going to jail for something other than molesting children, we’ll look forward to the big game and figure out why Christian athletes always forget to thank god for helping them lose and Heath Enwright will join us for a seven and a half minute segment that includes no fewer than 85 poop jokes. But first, the Diatribe…
DIATRIBE
The numbers are in and once again in 2012, the world’s third largest religion was “Give me a fucking break”. In the recent pew survey on the global religious landscape, roughly one in six people identify with no religion at all; which puts the worldwide number of non-religious at well over a billion.
Numbers in the US are actually significantly better than the worldwide average. About one-fifth of Americans now claim “no religion”. That’s an increase of 25% over the last five years and it’s up from basically zero when they introduced color TV.
And as bad as this looks for the imaginary friends camp, it’s actually much worse. When you break down the demographics, the non-believers are more plentiful the younger you go. Nearly a third of Americans between 18 and 29 have kicked the habit-habit and the numbers are likely even higher for the under-18 category. Add to that the fact that religious people have a head start on senility and you can see where this is going.
And make no mistake, the divine-osaurs have seen it too. Their pathetic attempts to rationalize away the preface to their obituary are clogging the blogosphere like digital-cholesterol. They point to signs in some polls (but not others) that show that the rise in irreligion might be leveling off. They go all Orwellian and try to make “no religion” somehow mean “still pretty religious”. They rant and rave and try desperately to maintain some modicum of relevance in a world that’s already been to the heavens and brought back pictures.
But to be fair, I’ve seen a few atheists misrepresenting these data as well so let’s be clear on exactly what the numbers do and don’t say. In the recent Gallup poll, they asked respondents “What is your religious preference?” and then offered these choices:
- Protestant
- Roman Catholic
- Mormon
- Jewish
- Muslim
- Another Religion, or
- No Religion.
When faced with that question in 2012, 17.8% of people answered “No Religion” or refused to answer. And according to Pew’s annual study, we’re actually doing better.
The current media narrative on the “nones” is that most of these people aren’t atheists, but rather seekers, doubters and temporary apostates. But the fact remains that they answered “no religion” and the effective definition of atheist is “person with no religion”. Sure, these numbers include agnostics and those people who say that they’re “spiritual” and then can’t say exactly what the fuck that means. Only about 2% of people are actually willing to identify themselves as “atheists”.
Of course, a lot of the noncommittal are dictionary atheists. They’re people like Neil Degrasse Tyson who is quick to say that he’s not an atheist, but he doesn’t remotely believe in god or a spirit or any of those things one needs to believe in to not be an atheist. A lot of these people are atheists that simply don’t want to get lumped in with assholes like me.
Some are just atheists who’ve been convinced that there’s some intellectual nobility in riding the fence. They think that agnosticism is the logical default position when it comes to God. But look, I’m not willing to say with absolute “gnostic” certainty that I’m not going to get raped by bigfoot tonight, so maybe in a technical sort of way I’m agnostic about it, but I’m certainly not living my life with non-consensual sasquatch-sodomy as even the remotest concern. So am I a bigfoot-rape agnostic or a big-foot rape atheist? And when the chips are down, is there any difference?
But as much as we make in the godless community about the technical differences between agnostics and atheists, that’s not really where the nomenclature becomes a problem. I call it the “agnostic gambit”. What many of them are saying is “I’m an atheist as long as it doesn’t piss anybody off. I’m an atheist but I don’t want to argue about it. I’m an atheist as long as it doesn’t interfere with my chances of getting hired (slash) promoted (slash) laid.”
I understand where that comes from, but it has to change.
When I look at that 18% of non-religious, non-atheist respondents, I see opportunity. I see the target market for our devangelism. I see a group of people who are ready to have the conversation, ready to embrace the certainty, ready to hear exactly what we have to say. We may only be 2%, but keep in mind that that’s still six million people.
You’re never going to convert a devout 45 year old evangelical with a logical discussion, but a twenty-something wavering skeptic is ripe for reason. We shouldn’t be ashamed to devangelize. We shouldn’t hesitate to defend ours as the only logically coherent position.
I’m not suggesting you go out and knock on doors, hand out blank pamphlets and ask people “Are you prepared for the eventuality that you just die?” (Although incidentally, if you do, please send me the youtube link.). What I am suggesting that next time you hear someone say that they’re “spiritual” or “agnostic” or whatever, don’t be afraid to put on your best salesman smile and give them the pitch for atheism.
There’s a marketplace out there where people are selling “truth” every day. I’m just saying that I think the people who are actually telling the truth should get in on it.
Global Numbers: http://www.pewforum.org/global-religious-landscape-exec.aspx
National Numbers: http://www.pewforum.org/unaffiliated/nones-on-the-rise.aspx
HEADLINES
Hoping that the 4th time’s the charm, Missouri State Representatives have resurrected a piece of unconstitutional legislation that was already defeated in 2012 and twice in 2004. House Bill 291, or “The Missouri Standard Science Act” was introduced on January 23rd and seeks to require “the equal treatment of science instruction regarding evolution and intelligent design”.
Arguing that requiring science class to carry equal amounts of science and religious bullshit is something of a nationwide trend with Missouri joining Colorado, Montana and Oklahoma in introducing similar bills.
Lawmakers unconvincingly argue that there’s nothing religious about discussing religious theories in science class, so apparently the “not lying commandment” is less important than the not believing in biology one.
http://ncse.com/news/2013/01/intelligent-design-bill-missouri-0014690
Not to be outdone, Arizona Republicans have proposed a law that would withhold a graduating high school student’s diploma unless he or she took an oath swearing fealty to God.
To be fair, the oath is actually the Uniformed Services Oath, which ends with the lines “So Help Me God”. Of course, it also includes the words “I take this obligation freely”, so one way or the other it’s a pretty stupid thing to require people to say.
Archdiocese of Milwaukee is seeking Bankruptcy protection. Spokesperson, oh, I’m sorry, they’re Catholic… Spokesman Jerry Topczewski says that their savings, reserves and investment earnings have all been exhausted and it will be unable to pay its monthly operating expenses beginning in April.
Some observers cite the poor economy for the church’s troubles, others cite lower church attendance. Still others point to the more than 9 MILLION dollars the archdiocese has paid in legal fees and settlements in relation to an unending stream of sexual abuse litigation.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/25/archdiocese-of-milwaukee_n_2550425.html?utm_hp_ref=tw
The Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles made headlines when recently released documents prove that higher ups in the church went to great lengths to cover-up instances of child sexual abuse and worked to ensure that the abuse continued by moving priests into new, unsuspecting congregations.
In a related story, the sun rose in the east yesterday.
In other “What-the-Fuck-is-wrong-with-Catholic-Priests?” news, Monsignor Kevin Wallin was arrested in a drug bust in Connecticut on January 3rd. Authorities allege that this 61 year old, cross-dressing priest was selling upwards of $9,000 worth of Meth a week, laundering the money through his North Haven sex-toy emporium.
If convicted, he could face life in prison, where his experience with cross-dressing and sex-toys should be well appreciated.
Proving that you don’t have to be Catholic to be a conspiratorial pedophile, Hasidic leader Nechemya Weberman was sentenced last week to 103 years in prison for 59 counts of criminal sexual acts, abuse and child endangerment.
A popular and influential leader in the ultra-Orthodox Satmar sect, Weberman was convicted of abusing a girl over a three year period in a Brooklyn neighborhood where he worked as an unlicensed religious counselor.
After years of trying to bribe, discredit and bully the accuser, the Satmar community, which largely stood with the child-torturing rapist in the belief that such things should be dealt with inside the community, was ultimately unable to cover up the crime.
This case gives new hope to the unknown number of abuse victims in the community that are still seeking justice.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/01/22/new-york-hasidic-leader-gets-103-years-for-abuse/
In other legal news, the Supreme Court has declined last Tuesday to hear the case of three North Carolina men given excessive sentences by a religious zealot (slash) judge. Brothers Josiah and Andrew Deyton and friend Jonathon Koniak plead guilty to 11 counts of armed robbery with a deadly weapon. Their heist netted about $3000. During the robbery a gun was discharged, but nobody was hurt.
They were sentenced to between 53 and 71 years in prison. The reason for the extreme length of the sentence was, or rather, most certainly was not, the fact that the three chose as their target the Ridgeview Presbyterian Church in Bakersville, North Carolina.
Apparently the Supreme Court believes that the judge’s religious feelings were not a factor in his harsh judgment, despite the fact that during the sentencing he was quoted as saying, “You didn’t just steal money from those people. You took God’s money. You took the Lord’s money.” This revelation, in my mind, would suggest that it was a victimless crime, but apparently the judge felt differently.
http://news.yahoo.com/did-judge-insert-religious-views-case-supreme-court-163339659.html
The Supreme Court also declined hearing the case of Rob Sherman, an atheist activist who was trying to block the state of Illinois from appropriate $20,000 of tax payer money to restore a giant cross that sits atop Southern Illinois’ highest peak.
Apparently the justices also see nothing religious about a gaudy, 11-story, 63 foot wide, fully illuminated symbol of the Christian faith that can be seen from 50 miles away.
And now it’s time for an update on the number one threat facing humanity today. Montage of crazy You-Tube preachers, would you care to guess what it is? {Sound insert} No, I’m sorry, Condoms was the right answer. We were looking for Condoms.
In the Vatican’s indefatigable effort to defeat common sense contraception in over-populated parts of the world, the church is now attacking a new law in the Philippines that would provide free access to contraception to every citizen.
Luckily for the Philippines, the Catholic Church isn’t in charge and the people are pushing back against this stone-age dictate. Speaking to a reporter from the Calgary Herald, 30-year-old roadside vendor Giselle Labadan summed it up better than I could ever hope to, saying “I have prayed before not to have another child, but the condom worked better.”
A recent study from the California based Barna group shows that a majority of Americans are worried that religious freedoms will erode in the next 5 to 10 years. If you pair it down to only the religious respondents, a slight majority say that religious freedoms have already eroded. This is interesting because that’s not an opinion based thing. It’s either true or it isn’t. And it isn’t.
http://www.christianpost.com/news/most-americans-think-religious-freedom-fast-declining-in-us-88542/
Atheist Census
That’s it for headlines, when we come back, we’ll discuss one of the most controversial theories in all of Christian Apologetics.
CALENDAR
It’s time now for the Atheist Calendar portion of the show. I promised on the last episode that we’d be covering some international festivals and conventions on this episode and I’m a man of my word. We’ll get started with a couple of Skepti-Camp events. If you’ve never been to one of these events, well, join the club. I’ve hear good things, though, so even having never been to one, I feel confident in highly recommending them.
We’ll start out down under because who couldn’t use a little summer right in the middle of winter? On February 9th in the beautiful Aireys Inlet just southwest of Melbourne, the Great Ocean Road Skeptics are hosting the Surfcoast Summer Skepticamp. Sun, surf, science and secular skepticism in the middle of February… if anything’s worth a 20 hour flight, that might just be it.
http://www.eventbrite.com.au/event/5064686614/eorg
If you’ll be in the wrong hemisphere for that one or just prefer cold and ice to warmth and sand, perhaps you can make it to Skepticamp Ottawa on Febraury 24th. It’ll start at 1 pm and run until 6. The day will consist of a series of 15 minute talks by a variety of skeptics with the final lineup still being hashed out.
http://www.skepticamp.org/wiki/SkeptiCamp_Ottawa_2013
On the weekend of April 13th we’ve got an all-star event in Manchester, England. The QED is a two day conference on Science and Skepticism and will feature a who’s-who of atheist and secular speakers including (but not limited to) Ben Goldacre, Lawrence Krauss, Natalie Haynes and the paragon of gnu-atheism, Richard Dawkins. Unfortunately this one’s already sold out, so if you’re just hearing about it now, it’s way too late.
We’ve got two big events in May. For my German speaking listeners, you can check out the 22nd Skeptics Congress in Cologne from May 9th to the 11th.
For those who prefer their atheism in English, we have “Imagine No Religion 3” on the following weekend in Kamloops, British Columbia. This event features Dan Dennett, DJ Grothe, Mr. Deity and some people whose names don’t start with D as well.
Finally, beginning on June 7th and running to the 9th, we’ve got the British Humanists Association Annual Convention in Leeds. They’re still hammering out the lineup, and, of course, we’ll keep you updated as we learn more about this one.
As always, you can find more information, including links to the homepage for each of these events on the show-notes for this episode at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.
BIG-GAME PRAYER ADVICE (full version)
Heath Enwright will be joining be momentarily for an apologetics segment that’ll include the classiest run of poop jokes in Podcasting history, but first I thought we’d turn our attention to the Big Game coming up on Sunday.
There are three things I feel confident expecting: Some elusive play-making from San Francisco’s dynamic sophomore quarterback; some high speed, brutal hits from the rejuvenated Ravens defense and some egocentric Christian athletes thanking God when they do well and then forgetting all about him when they lose.
Of course, many people see thanking God for their success as a humble gesture and I’m sure that’s how the majority of these athletes see it as well. But to me, it’s the quintessence of arrogance to think that an all-powerful, all-knowing, father-of-all-things would have chosen to favor you over the defensive linemen during your touchdown run. After all, isn’t it this same “God likes me better” attitude that justifies all the wars religion starts?
I sympathize with the religious athlete, though. I can understand what it must be like to have your whole career dependent on a series of ultimately chaotic plays where centimeters can be the difference between mediocrity and glory. A wide receiver can practice 12 hours a day in the off-season, study tape for weeks before the game, perfect his routes and know every play backwards and forwards, but none of that helps if the Quarterback overthrows him or the corner makes a spectacular play on a well-thrown ball. All his preparation can be rendered worthless by a mistake of less than an inch, but what’s more, it doesn’t have to be his mistake.
So, when we’re faced with a situation that we can’t control, many of us turn to magic and bullshit in a fruitless attempt to control it anyway. The whole institution of religion is built on exactly that so it’s no wonder that a lot of these people turn to God and it’s no wonder why most of these teams have a prayer before the game. You can’t actually control every aspect of the game, so you might as well pretend that you can then pretend that you did and then put it out of your mind.
Sometimes this backfires, sure. If you actually start believing this shit you’ll accidentally start wars, inter-factional bigotry, oppression of women and minorities, opposition to science, fear of gays and suicide bombings. And of course, at best it’s a waste of time, so your best bet is to accept that praying is stupid and move on, but some people are clearly unwilling to do that.
But even amongst those of us who have, sometimes sports can be the exception. I’ve heard an atheist football fanatic chanting to the screen, “Interception… Interception… or just sack that bastard and knock them out of field goal range at least!” Now what is that if not a prayer? Sure, he might not say, “Please God, just that bastard and knock them out of field goal range in Jesus name, Amen”, but it’s the same basic concept. Of course, the atheist probably doesn’t think that his chant has any magical powers or anything, but he still does it. Or she. But probably he.
And think of all the silly little superstitions that sports still bring out in people. How many otherwise rational skeptics start crossing their fingers and turning their hats inside out when their team is down? How many generally rational or at least semi-rational athletes stop shaving or changing their socks (slash) underwear in some vain attempt to dupe fate into favoring them?
Now, obviously, I don’t believe in any of this crap or I wouldn’t be qualified to host this podcast. I tried out every stupid religion or pseudo-religion I could find for a while and found that science was the only thing that seemed less like a complete load of shit as I learned more about it. I cast away the demons of faith and magic a long time ago, but along the way, I did learn an awful lot about it.
And of course, the majority of people in this country and this world still do believe in this gobbledygook. They believe that somehow that some inter-dimensional, omnipotent space man will personally reach down from heaven and directly influence the outcome of what even I as a football fanatic will admit is a pretty silly competition. They believe that while he can’t seem to be bothered to end all the wars or cure all the diseases or do any of those things one would expect even the most derelict of inter-dimensional, omnipotent space men to do, he will nevertheless find the time to see to it that Ray Rice hit’s that first down marker or that Michael Crabtree gets both feet down inbounds.
Because I’m an atheist, of course, there’s nothing “absolute” about my beliefs. I have a pretty scientific approach to the world and I try to maintain the ability to change even my most cherished beliefs if new evidence appears that contradicts them. And while I don’t hold out any “hope” that God exists, I am willing to occasionally grant, for rhetorical purposes, that the possibility of him existing are greater than absolute zero.
So I figured that as a person who (a) knows a little bit about a lot of religions, (b) doesn’t believe in any of them and can thus speak from a detached perspective and (c) is willing to grant for rhetorical purposes that the possibility of God’s existence is non-zero, I’m uniquely qualified to offer the religious and otherwise superstitious folks of the world some advice if they’re going to be doing any pre-Superbowl praying.
- Pray with Pizazz – You figure, if there is a God (and there isn’t), he’s getting pelted with a million contradictory prayers before a big game like this. You gotta make your prayer stand out. Iambic pentameter is a must but if you really want to get his attention, make that shit rhyme. He’ll appreciate the effort.
- Be specific – If you’ve ever seen any of those angel movies (and for your sake I hope you haven’t) you’ll know that God’s a trick little fucker when it comes to teaching us larger lessons and what-not. Make it clear that you want the Ravens to win, but you want them to cover the 3 and a half point spread as well.
- Don’t Pray to Jesus – I know, I know, you’re Christian and praying to Jesus is kind of your thing, but trust me on this one. Everybody and their mother are praying to Jesus and he’s not even a football fan. So fifty million people pray to Jesus and each of them gets one fifty millionth of his devotion. But if you’re praying to the Gurzil, Alala or the Etruscan God “Larau”, you’ve probably got their undivided attention. And those dudes love some pigskin. And that lead me to…
- Pick the Right God – It’s not going to do you much good to pray for a Niners victory if you’re praying to a God who’s a Baltimore fan, right? Now clearly you never really know who a God is pulling for, but you can make some pretty educated guesses, right? I mean, if you’re a Ravens fan, pray to Odin. He loves Ravens. Seriously, just ask Huginn and Muninn. Who are Huginn and Muninn? Odin’s fucking Ravens.
- Burn Some Shit – Seriously, go all out. Don’t just put two hands together. You need to inscribe a circle of salt on the floor, burn some incense in a copper bowl, sacrifice a rabbit and whip yourself to you bleed. I can’t restate this enough: Everybody is praying. You’ve got to be praying harder.
- Spread the Love Around – Why pray to one god when you can pray to two, three or eighty six? If you’re going to waste time babbling to fictional characters, why not waste as much time as possible? Don’t stop at Gods either. Seriously, praying to Superman, Steven Spielberg and Hanna Montana are every bit as effective, so you might as well toss them in as well.
After all, if you’re not willing to pray to every imaginable God, follow the rituals and sacrifices described for them exactly, devote endless hours to it and self-flagellate, haven’t you already admitted that prayer is bullshit?
THE SHIT-PORN PARADOX
From time to time on this show, I’ll be setting aside a few minutes to tackle some of the more common apologetics arguments and a few of the paradoxes that arise in a world with an all-knowing, all loving God. On this episode, Heath Enwright had rejoined us to tackle one such debate, known in academic circles as the “Shit-Porn Irregularity” or the “Shit-Porn Inconsistency”. Heath, fill us in on the basics of this debate.
Sure thing Noah. In the Shit-Porn paradox, the skeptic argues that a universe in which God and Shit-Porn coexist is logically untenable. It was first proposed by the Greek Philosopher Heap o’ Crappus who noted that if an all-powerful and omnibenevolent God did exist, shit porn would not. Since shit porn does exist, it follows that an all-powerful and omnibenevolent god must not.
And what of the classic rebuttal to the Problem of Evil that suggests that God is simply allowing us to prove that we are incapable of ruling ourselves before he cures the world of Shit-Porn?
Well, the “Jehovah’s Shitness” defense can’t really be applied to the Shit-Porn Paradox. The existence of Shit-Porn shows that we’ve already crossed any reasonable line of depravity. Nobody can say where the line should be drawn exactly, but all philosophers agree that it should be drawn before Shit-Porn popped out.
Now, apologists haven’t taken this lying face down, they’ve pushed back against this intrusion in a number of ways, haven’t they?
Right, they weren’t just going to let this pass. Early apologists had a spotty record dealing with this paradox. At first, they tried to argue that shit porn didn’t exist. For a time that was the accepted defense, but in his seminal work “The Fecal Fallacy: Evidence for Shit-Porn”, Reverend Corholius Pile pointed to little known works such as Armegeddon Shit On, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turdholes and Stools of Engagement as unambiguous evidence that shit porn did, in fact, exist.
And of course, as we all know, his work was famously attacked by Cardinal Deficatus in his number two theodicy commonly called “The Poophole Loophole”, which was basically a much less watered down version of his number one theodicy.
Yes, the Shit-Porn Debate was buried for centuries until Deficatus stepped back into it in the late 1700s. He argued that Shit Porn might actually represent a higher good of which we are unaware; perhaps saving the participants from later digestive issues such as Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Diverticulitis.
I see where he’s going there, but couldn’t an all powerful God find a way to insure a high fiber diet for these people without having to resort to Shit-Porn?
Deficatus’ theodicies weren’t meant to redirect the argument. What they do do is soften it. They suggest that Shit-Porn might be a necessary kernel in the proper functioning of the human social unit. Could true purity exist in a world without Shit-Porn to counterbalance it? Could it be that without overcoming the lurid temptation of Shit-Porn, a soul could never achieve true communion with the Holy Spirit?
Of course, today’s apologists have stepped away from that line of argument altogether, isn’t that right?
Modern day shitologists hold their noses at it, yeah. The Poophole Loophole defense was really wiped away in the late 19th century when philosophers on both sides came to agree that Shit-Porn was too vile to be compatible with a loving God. While earlier works such as The Princess Diarrheas and Poop Fiction could be justified on the merit of their social commentary, the late 1800s saw the rise of titles like Number 2 Fast, Number 2 Furious and Mr. Smith Goes to Wash His Ass; heinous anus-related depictions of fecophelia that would have made Richard Gere blush. It was impossible to continue to argue that such depravity was part of God’s plan.
So what was the next real movement in the debate?
The whole thing really erupted again when noted British Philosopher Dr. Dick Brown took a back door approach to the question. There are three premises in the Shit-Porn paradox that apologists can attack: One is that Shit-Porn exists. Number two is that a world without Shit-Porn is preferable to a world with Shit-Porn. Attacks on those two premises had failed in the past.
But Brown took a different approach?
Brown looked at the third premise; that an omniscient God could create a world without Shit-Porn.
But if God is powerless against Shit-Porn, how can he still be all powerful?
Brown’s approach was to suggest God himself was a Shit-Porn and that if he were to rid the universe of Shit-Porn altogether, he would also have to remove himself from the universe.
And as popular as it was with laymen, a lot of his colleagues said he really didn’t know shit. In fact, this theory stained his academic reputation considerably, didn’t it?
Stained him? It damn near wrecked him.
So do modern day theologians still wrestle with this shit?
I guess the most familiar example of the modern argument is the Shit-or-be-Shit counterpoint first offered by American philosopher Ann L. Bead.
And for those who haven’ turd of her before, tell us who Dr. Bead was.
She had a number of duties at the Pew Public Policy Forum and briefly held the Lucasian Stool at Cambridge.
And her later career was absolutely covered in shit, isn’t that right?
It was.
Tell us what she piled on to the existing debate.
Bead proposes a mental exercise where someone was about to accidentally watch Shit-Porn and you could prevent it by shitting on them. Now, most people would agree that shitting on someone is justified in certain conditions.
If they were on fire, for example.
Or if they were singing “Whoop it Gangnam Style”, yes. But Bead takes the analogy one step further. What if you could prevent someone from watching Shit-Porn by Shitting on them, but someone was watching you and they were masturbating at the time? Would you then be Shit-Porn? Would it still be a moral act?
Well, as interesting a nugget as that is, I don’t see how it relates to the larger debate.
Here, Bead is straining to push through an analogy that spreads the blame around a bit without smearing it on God. Basically, she’s asking if we can know the true cost of Shit-Porn from a purely mortal perspective. The idea is that if you can introduce one instance of justifiable Shit-Porn, it stands to reason that God might have a higher purpose in allowing it to exist.
And given God’s well documented opposition to homosexuality, how does Bead’s argument hold up against gay Shit-Porn?
Great question. Some say that might be the fatal flaw in her argument. The whole thing really craps out when you start considering titles like Charlie in My Chocolate Factory or Jock, Cock and Two Steaming Barrels… and a cup.
So having weighed the arguments on both sides, what do you think it all says about God’s existence?
While it’s easy to argue that their might have been a divine touch in films such as The Turdman of Alcatraz, Fahrenheit 98.6 and Dark Shitty, I believe that films like Starship Poopers, Deuce Almighty and 21 Dump Street prove definitively that God is a load of shit.
EMAILS & COMMENTS
I want to close the show out today by responding to a few emails I got regarding our inaugural episode.
First a quick correction: last fortnight I accidentally referred to the American Atheists’ Annual Convention as the “Reason Rally”, which is, of course, incorrect. I had “from the people that brought us last year’s Reason Rally” written in the notes and managed to skip a line when I recorded it. Thanks to Doug in Jacksonville for pointing it out.
I also wanted to acknowledge an e-mail we received from a listener that didn’t leave their name. They were curious about my penis size and wondered if I’d like to enlarge it with an herbal supplement. So to this listener, look… I’m not sure what you’ve heard but I have a really small wife, so I think I’m good, but thanks for the concern.
And finally, I wanted to offer an apology to someone who commented on the blog in response to a post I put up a while back about how much of an asshole God must be if he exists (which he doesn’t). Autumn writes:
“Your points are very valid, but like most atheists you’re defining god as the Abrahamic god, a fatal error for your credibility. All you’ve put to shame is Christianity which isn’t very hard to do, and says nothing about the idea of god in general.”
The criticism was invalid, as the opening line of the post was “I sometimes argue with Christians” so I think I made it pretty clear that all I was tackling in this post was the Abrahamic God. That being said, I do want to apologize to Autumn for not putting her definition of God to shame as well.
Since the most convenient defense against having your beliefs eviscerated is failing to precisely define them, it might be some time before I happen upon whatever wishy-washy, evidence free incarnation of a logically impossible creative, theistic force you happen to subscribe to. Just be assured that I’m working on it and I’ll get to you as soon as possible. If you’d like to speed up the process, feel free to take me up on the long standing invitation to tell me exactly what your definition of God is.
That’ll do it for this episode. Be sure to check us out next fortnight for a special Valentine’s Day episode that’ll feature full frontal nudity. I want to thank Heath Enwright for joining me tonight and I’d also like to thank Zach, Nesbitt, Josh, Joel and Lucinda for brain storming Shit-Porn titles with us. If you enjoyed the show (and how could you not?) please help us spread the word by leaving us a glowing review on iTunes or wherever. If you have question, comments or death threats, you’ll find all the contact info at “Scathing Atheist (dot) com”. All the music used in the show was written and performed by yours truly and yes, I did have my permission.
The Scathing Atheist 