Freshly Boiled Blood

June 9, 2013 3 comments

by Noah Lugeons

My issues with religion are largely philosophical.  I live in a city rich with religious diversity and history among people who have long learned to overlook the demarcations of faith.  New York City hasn’t always been a pillar of religious tolerance, but today it’s home to at least some number of any devotion to any sect of any denomination of any religion you can imagine.  We have to share subways and sidewalks and parade routes and we’re constantly running late.  Most of us simply don’t have the time for religious friction.

The point is that if I didn’t seek it out, I would hardly ever have a reason to be pissed at religion.  I read the religious news, I seek out the abuses of religious authority, I immerse myself in religion’s festering underbelly.  But if I didn’t make an effort to do so, I’d hardly ever encounter the bad parts of religion in my daily life.

I constantly remind myself that this is probably true of most people in this country.  Sure, they know about the child rape and maybe they know about the fundamentalist camps, but what they see every day is religious people doing good things in the name of religion.  Unless they make an effort to see the ugliness backstage, religion comes off looking pretty clean and pretty most of the time.

Of course, much of it is simply slick PR.  When I was growing up, all I knew of the Latter Day Saints was from the heartwarming commercials they played during cartoons on Saturday morning.  A guy on bike would get splashed with mud by a guy in a truck.  Cut to guy on bike coming across guy in truck later.  Plot twist: Guy in truck is no longer in truck because his truck is broken down.  Resolution: muddy guy on bike stops and helps the asshole who splashed him.  Because Jesus.

But it would be petty of me to write it all off as a PR campaign.  Most of the sterling image of religion comes from the fact that most religious people are really awesome people.  I think this is probably because most people are awesome and any random selection of people will probably contain a majority of awesome ones.  But I don’t know that to be true.  What I do know is that when you give good people an outlet for their goodness, you usually get some good results.  You get some well fed homeless people or whatever.

Obviously I don’t think religion is necessary for charity, but I’m also not naive enough to overlook all the good.  When I step outside of my own perspective, I can see why atheists look like ranting assholes to a lot of people.  Why are they attacking this mostly good thing?  Why are they pissed off about bibles in cabins or god references on money or prayers at graduation ceremonies?  Why be so vindictive toward a mostly good thing.  After all, taking “In God We Trust” off the money isn’t going to stop any kids from getting raped.

But as I said, I seek out the bad.  And now that the podcast is starting to gain a wide audience, the bad is starting to seek me out as well.

If I’d really thought it through before I started the show, I should have seen this coming, but I didn’t.  I was ready for vicious hate mail and death threats (which I still haven’t gotten), but I was not prepared for some of the heart wrenching stories I now find in my inbox.

And for the first time today, I was moved to tears by one of them.  A fan of the show sent me an email detailing his personal experiences as a vulnerable child entrusted to the care of a sadistic Baptist minister.  He said he loved the show because it allowed him to laugh at the abuses of religion instead of simply welling up with impotent rage.

I’ve gotten a couple of emails like his so far.  None that detail such horror, but several from disowned sons, estranged spouses, alienated friends and psychologically tormented apostates and while I never expected them to come, I certainly welcome them.  I don’t want to hear these stories but I need to hear them.  They are the fuel that boils my blood.

I understand that a lot of people feel a need to share these stories.  I invite them.  I can’t help you much by listening to your story, but you can help me a lot by sharing it.  To keep up the effort this podcast takes, I sometimes need freshly boiled blood.

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Episode 16 – Partial Transcript

June 6, 2013 Leave a comment

by Noah Lugeons, Heath Enwright and Lucinda Lugeons

(Note: Transcript may contain material edited from the final episode for time purposes)

Sponsor:

Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the new brand of perforated Catholic Condoms, Kingdom Cum.  These confusingly labeled condoms are no more contraceptive than cheesecloth, but we’re willing to wager we’ll catch a few drunken fornicators with this ruse.

What, you think that’s immoral?  You should see what Catholics do when they take over a hospital.

And now, the Scathing Atheist:

Intro:

It’s Thursday, it’s June 6th and I know Jake Farr-Wharton has already opened up the show once, but the dude sent the quote to me in six different voices and I’m not letting good shit go to waste.

I’m your host Noah Lugeons and from abbreviated NY, NY, this is the Scathing Atheist.

On this week’s show,

  • We’ll add contractual obligation to the list of reasons not to get addicted to meth,

  • I’ll try desperately to come up with another nickname for Pope Francis,

  • And Heath and Lucinda will join me in discovering that Leviticus is every bit as fucked up as you think it is.

But first, the Diatribe.

Diatribe:

I’m sick and goddamned tired of hearing about where people fall on the “Dawkins Scale”.

Before I go any further, I should note that I’m a big fan of Dawkins and I admire his non-sexist parts…  he’s like the Benny Hill of atheism in that way.  And what’s more, I completely understand the rhetorical utility of his sliding scale of theistic probability.  In the hands of a skilled debater like Dawkins, it’s a valuable asset.  But in the hands of a lay-atheist, it’s often a hell of a lot less than that.

For those who aren’t familiar with the term, the “Dawkins Scale” refers to a seven point scale Dawkins proposed in The God Delusion.  A one on this scale represents absolute certainty that god exists, a seven is absolute certainty that god doesn’t exist.  The point he’s making is that atheists generally fall on the “6”, not the “7”.  It’s a useful explanation of the fact that atheism is the product of doubt, not certainty.

But certainty appeals to a lot of people, so when Dawkins talks about this publicly there’s often a backlash.  People in the media stammer about how Dawkins is uncertain and concedes that there might be a god afterall.  They don’t seem to understand that he’s not actually conceding that in any way.  They just see two guys in a debate where one is saying he’s absolutely sure and the other’s saying he holds a tentative position that’s in accordance with the observable evidence.  Somehow they don’t see this as an idiot vs. a responsible thinker, but rather they see it as confident guy vs. indecisive guy.

In the context of the book and in the context of some debates, employing this scale makes perfect sense.  But before we lean too heavily on it, we should probably point out that this scale can also be applied to any other belief.  Does gravity exist?  Well, I’m pretty damn sure it does, but as a responsible thinker, I’ve got to go with a 6 on the scale, because if convincing evidence arose to the contrary, I would change my mind.  I am not an immutable “7”.  We could be part of a computer simulation titled “what if there was gravity?”, so as a proper logician I have to carve out a little, tiny, itsy-bitsy “margin of error” on the gravity thing.

Same thing for evolution, right?  I mean, just because all the available data suggests and confirms it, that doesn’t mean that I’m absolutely certain beyond the shadow of a doubt, irrespective of future data.  I’d have to hold the responsible position of “6” on the scale.  But why hamstring oneself in debate by pointing this out only with respect to the thing you’re arguing about?

I feel the same way every time I hear Dillahunty, or anyone else for that matter, talk about Agnostic Atheism vs. Gnostic Atheism.  Before we start making this distinction, somebody show me one of these gnostic atheists.  Show me somebody who says that no matter what level of convincing evidence could be offered to the contrary, they would never believe in god.  Show me somebody who says he would still be an atheist if god appeared in the sky before the whole world at once and said, “I am god, sorry about all the mysteriousness and shit and to prove my godness you’ll note that all the people who had cancer are now cured.”  Show me that guy and then let’s start carving atheism up into gnostic and agnostic.

This isn’t just a semantic thing.  And it’s not just a “trip-you-up-in-an-argument” thing either.  The use of these devices is actually fucking this movement up internally.  I can’t tell you often I see atheists offering up false-equivalency compromises with this nonsense.  Search “Dawkins Scale” on Twitter and it won’t take long to find an atheist saying something like, “I’ll admit that being a 7 on the Dawkins scale is as ridiculous as being a 1”

What?  No the  fuck it isn’t!  That’s a complete misreading of the point of the rhetorical device.  Keep in mind that on this scale, 7 actually represents the thing that is right.  1 represents the thing that is wrong.  The point of the Dawkins Scale is to point out the flaw in “Absolute Certainty”.  But if you’re going to be absolutely certain of something, it’s still way better to be certain about the thing that conforms to all the known evidence.

Substitute anything else for the god assumption and it becomes painfully obvious.  Somebody who is absolutely certain that the earth is round should, for the proper employment of scientific thinking, concede that overwhelming evidence could sway him… from a pedantic, vulcan, it’s-an-oblate-spheroid-bitch point of view.  But that doesn’t mean that he’s exactly as wrong as somebody who is absolutely convinced that the earth is flat.

There’s a cat on my lap right now.  If I was pressed, I’d admit that it could be a hallucination, it could be a robot, it could be a phantasm from another dimension taking the form of my cat.  But if I say, “No, damn it, this is definitely my cat”, it may be technically wrong, but it’s certainly not as wrong as “No, damn it, this is definitely a phantasm from another dimension.”

The problem is with 7 point scales and binary choices like gnostic and agnostic is that there’s no way to truly express the 6.999999-ness of one’s atheism.  If god appeared before me right now and we had a twenty minute conversation, I’d assume I’d lost my fucking mind before I’d assume that it actually happened.  It would take a hell of alot more than than personal experience to overturn my conviction.  I’d need tangible evidence that could be verified by multiple sources and, in addition, I’d need volumes of refutations for the hundreds of logical contradictions his existence entails.  I’d need a world-overturning amount of evidence.  I’d need an amount of evidence that one can reasonably assume will never exist.

So as to where I fall on the Dawkins Scale, it ultimately comes down to the question of how many 9s you can put after the decimal place before you run out of 9s.

Headlines:

Joining me for headlines tonight is my fellow skeptic, Heath Enwright.  Heath, are you ready to sharpen Occam’s Razor?

Is another old book club making outrageous claims?

I’m starting to think god is worse than Oprah.

In our lead story tonight, Oxford University researcher and author Kathleen Taylor made waves this week when she suggested that religious fundamentalism may one day be a curable mental illness.  Now, when you and I hear this statement, the only new information is the word “Curable”, but when the religious folks hear it they’re once again forced to confront the fact that believing in magic people in the clouds is, technically, fucking nuts.

I hope the cure for religion comes out in some sort of weaponized form.  I’m picturing a reality dart, and you can heal the radically ignorant right in the side of the neck with a blowgun.

This is only the latest in a long line of academics accidentally forgetting that we’re supposed to publicly ignore the fact that extreme religiosity and mental illness spend a lot of venn diagrams spooning.

Definitely got a shared region in the extra-wide vagina shape.  That’s more like scissoring than spooning, I guess.

The media reports it like it’s a scandal and then they dig up a bunch of peacemaker psychologists who dutifully point out that technically it’s not a mental illness until it interferes with your day to day life and at the same time they’ll dutifully not point out that by the same argument believing that you’re Napoleon and your left testicle reminds you to water the house-plants is also not de-facto crazy.

And the Napoleon left testicle belief system is VASTLY more likely to be true than those of any major religion.

Worst thing that happens if insane people become radically orthodox about science is they make an atheist podcast.  Nobody’s ever protested a theist funeral, or bombed a fetus rescue clinic, in the name of Darwin or Dawkins.

But don’t worry, it’s not like we’re going to now have a rational conversation about this topic, as the major media outlets have reported that, in fact, the pachyderm droppings on the loveseat were likely man-made and placed there intentionally.

Pay no attention to the Republican mascot behind the curtain, taking a shit on society’s couch.

Could religious fundamentalism be treated as a mental illness? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/31/kathleen-taylor-religious-fundamentalism-mental-illness_n_3365896.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

And speaking of fundamentalism and mental illness, our next story brings us to Kentucky and Ken Ham’s ailing “Ark Park” where Ham is inadvertently demonstrating the absurdity of the Noah story by showing how hard it is to get an ark of that size built when you’ve got modern shipping channels and $25 million dollars at your disposal.

Well Noah had the old-man strength going.  You know how the best softball players are 45-year-olds?  Noah did all the ark stuff between the ages of 480 and 600, so unfair advantage.

Plus, Ken Ham probably has far fewer Jewish slaves at his disposal for the project.

In addition to not having enough money to build the ark that will fail to serve as the centerpiece for this not-likely-to-exist theme park, Ham’s team is also not building other Old Testament attractions, including not breaking ground on a Tower of Babel observations deck and not moving ahead on a planned “Ten Plagues” themed ride.

I think they need to reread Genesis 11.  They’re constructing a replica of the tower whose construction got god to smite everyone.  That’s like re-airing the seizure-inducing anime clip.  

Many atheists will remember hearing a lot about this park a couple of years ago when the state of Kentucky agreed to award it huge tax incentives to build it’s testament to credulous stupidity.  It would seem now that the “Ark Encounter” has found a clever way to circumvent that controversy by failing to raise the requisite funds for construction until the proposed tax incentives expire in May of next year.

So Kentucky said, “Yeah, you guys can have these huge tax breaks, as long as you can build an impossible boat and an entire infinite tower to heaven before next May.”

Ark Park having trouble: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/31/noahs-ark-theme-park_n_3367579.html?utm_hp_ref=religion

And in “Are-They-Still-On-About-That-Shit?” News, a number of prominent Baptist leaders have called for a mass withdrawal of support for the Boy Scouts of America after they slight  and decades overdue backpedaling of institutionalized of bigotry.  Arguing that we can’t allow gay people to learn how to tie such good knots, homophobic pastors across the nation are urging their flocks to cut their ties with the Boy Scouts.

“I know this seems like it’s about the gay thing, in the standard cause and effect sense.  But we’re just uncomfortable – in general – of a dozen 10-year-old boys and a weird adult in a tent, wearing matching short shorts and ascots.  Whether or not there are any actual homosexuals present, it’s just too faggoty.”

Pastor Tim Reed of Arkansas forestalled that argument when he told a CNN reporter that (quote) “It’s not a hate thing here”, adding a bunch of other thinly veiled lies and bullshit that he has to tell himself to continue to believe that he’s not a bigoted anal-wart that cherry picked through one of the most egregiously horrific parts of the entire bible, bypassed laws against tattoos, fabric mixing and crustacean eating and selectively chose to enforce the one line he found that reinforced his hateful bigotry.

“It’s not that they’re gay, it’s that they’re evil BECAUSE they’re gay.  It’s all in the book, you can check.  Our hands are tied.”

“We’d also be this pissed if they endorsed uncovering your wife’s daughter’s nakedness!”

Sorry Pastor, but it’s still racist when you say hockey players are better than basketball players at water polo.

Baptists plan exodus from Boy Scouts: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/05/31/southern-baptists-to-urge-churches-and-members-to-cut-boy-scout-ties/

And in quasi-constitutional legislative acrobatics this week, we’ve got the state of Ohio hoping to pass a bill that would award high school credits to kids for going to church and learning about how evil gay people are and stuff.

I’d be willing to give PE credit to altar boys, especially if, you know . . . they swallowed.

Proponents of the bill argue that (quote) “It’s an attempt to reinstall some of the same things that made this country great”, which, in the mind of Democratic representative Bill Patmon, include religious indoctrination and rewarding people for knowing things that are wrong.  Patmon went on to complain that we’ve taken prayer out of the schools, we’ve separated religious demonstration from learning areas, we’ve taken religious displays out of schools, I mean, it’s getting to where there’s hardly any way at all to exploit the public schools to evangelize.

“Some of these kids are going 7 . . . 8 hours in a row at school, in the middle of December, without seeing a single piece of visual Jesus propaganda.  Do the math.  You just can’t brain rape kids under these conditions.  I thought this was America.”

Opponents of the law point out that giving educational credit for things that aren’t actually “education” kind of defeats the purpose and then they just kind of stare at the proponents and wonder why this isn’t enough to persuade them.

I got my health credits in high school by interning with a psychic chiropractor who cured headaches with leeches.  And now look at me.  I run a lucrative wishing well business.

Shifty payouts for religion by state of Ohio: http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20130601/NEWS/306010059/Ohio-may-OK-public-school-religion-credits?gcheck=1

And from the “Who-Will-They-Molest-Now?” file, Las Vegas’ oldest Catholic School will be shutting its doors permanently at the end of the academic year.  The St. Joseph Catholic School has been instrumental in Vegas’ international reputation as a paragon of chastity and virtue since 1948, but a steep drop off in people gullible enough to entrust their children to Catholics has led to the school’s inevitable demise.

I think it’s telling, that the oldest Catholic school in Las Vegas, is named after Jesus’ stepdad, the patron saint of some other dude fucking your wife…the patron saint of “cuckolded by god’s dick”

Over the past decade about a quarter of all Catholic schools have been shuttered nationwide leading many to believe that god has abandoned us and no longer cares about the travails of mankind, instead focusing his divine attention on beating Contra without using the cheat code.

It’s all about the spreader gun.  Maybe the laser near the end.  The flamethrower didn’t get the good blast radius effect until Contra 2.    

Beating Contra without the cheat code is like god… I’ll believe it when I see it.

Oldest Vegas Catholic school to close permanently: http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2013/may/30/citys-oldest-catholic-school-falls-victim-low-enro/#axzz2UqCW1wru

And in this week’s forecast on international demon activity we find that despite papal intervention, the guy who thought that he was filled with devil spawn is still fucking crazy.  Despite the Pope Frankenberry’s exorcism that wasn’t, a wheelchair bound man identified in the press as Angel V. insists that he is still possessed by demons.

Looks like he has a malpractice case, at the very least.  They seem to have botched a fairly routine procedure.  But I’ve seen a lot of spinals, dude, and it sounds like this Angel guy is a fake.      

The fucking goldbricker claims to have undergone more than 30 exorcisms and somehow no matter how much holy water they throw at him while intoning latin platitudes, his clearly malfunctioning brain refuses to be miraculously cured.

What’s the problem, he’s hearing demonic voices, telling him to kill babies and eat them?  Everyone get those sometimes, right?  We don’t all have to act on them every time.

Instead of responsibly suggesting he seek psychiatric help, prominent Catholics affirm his harmful delusions by saying things like (quote) “the demons that live in him do not want to leave,” and (quote) “God exists”.

Man exorcised by Pope still possessed by demons: http://www.newsmax.com/edwardpentin/pope-excorcism-possessed-angel/2013/05/29/id/506975

And finally tonight, a story that comes to us from Friendly Atheist, prolific author and inaugural Farnsworth quoter Hemant Mehta and his Friendly Atheist blog.  It would seem that a couple of parents in Utah have finally found the secret to instilling the importance of good moral judgement on their children: Cold hard cash.

Mother Katie Hughes had her daughters sign a contract that promises a reward of $1000 at the age of 20 if the now pre-pubescent girls can refrain from the use of drugs, alcohol and premarital sex between now and then.

“We’re willing to pay as much as 34 cents a day for you to have a shitty, sheltered childhood.”

Seems like a non-binding legal contract might not be the best way to tackle the subject.  Are kids gonna need to start bringing legal counsel to have “the talk” ?

So yeah, setting aside the obvious fact that in another eight years these girls could earn that much in a night by breaking the pledge, one also has to doubt that the paltry sum of a thousand 2026 dollars will remain a sufficient carrot to forestall teen angst.

So, nine days of future minimum wage later . . . or drunken orgasms and cocaine now…

Mother offers daughter $1000 to stay a virgin: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/06/05/christian-mother-to-daughter-if-you-remain-abstinent-until-youre-20-ill-give-you-1000/

And since there’s nothing better to close on than drunken orgasms and cocaine, that’ll do it for headlines tonight, Heath, thanks as always for joining me.

And when we come back, Lucinda will join us to bust open our bibles and dig into the dirty parts.

Song:

After writing poems for Genesis and Exodus, I felt obligated to the Herculean task of capturing the mind-raping insanity of Leviticus in two rhyming minutes.  To complicate matters, I used a weird rhyme scheme and upon recitation it had this really awful “middle aged white guy rapping” feel to it.

In an effort to counterbalance that I put a little music behind it, but I want to apologize to any musicians who might be listening.  I was really under the gun on this thing so it’s basically A minor and E the whole way.

So without further ado, I present the book of Leviticus in rhyme:

Leviticus in Rhyme:

Let me tell you how to sacrifice a goat, bitch; First you cut it’s throat which,

seems a little mean and maybe more than a little gross, it’s

Nothing when compared to; What the Levites bear through,

Details of the entrails should be plenty enough to scare you.

The fat goes on a pyre; Set that shit on fire,

The smell’s a rancid hell but it’s the odor god desires.

How to kill a bird now; Case you hadn’t heard how,

Twist it’s little heard until it’s dead and when it’s burned, bow.

This is for atonement; Offer no postponement,

Couple jugs of blood is a critical component.

Now a proclamation; Regarding ordination,

light the candles right or you might risk assassination …From the Lord.

 

Thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not lie,

Thou shalt not do it guy on guy,

Thus unto Moses spoke the Lord.

 

Let me tell you what to eat bitch; Tell you who to sleep with

Tell you how to burn the heretics about that bewitch.

Tell you ‘bout your penis; And all it’s uncleanness,

For someone all-knowing I’m not much of a hygienist.

Oh, and if it pleases; Quickly on diseases,

Sacrifice a turtle dove if anybody sneezes.

Menstrual blood and semen; Need a lot of cleanin’

Best I never catch you whorin’ with all those goat demons,

Tell you ‘how to shave, man; Who you can enslave, man,

Tell you how to stone the motherfucks who misbhave and,

If you disobey me; I will not just slay thee,

Many generations I’ll be all up in your game, see …I’m the Lord.

 

Thou shalt be pure, thou shalt be true,

Thou shalt not get a damned tattoo,

Thus unto Moses spoke the Lord.

 

Thou shalt speak up, Thou shalt not cheat,

Thou shalt not dine on rancid meat

Or stick your dick in things that bleat.

Thou shalt not mix thy rye and wheat.

Thou shalt be just, thou shalt be kind,

Thou shalt not trick the deaf and blind,

Or touch cadavers left behind.

Or let two fabrics be combined.

Thou shalt fear god, thou shalt be straight,

Thou shalt not look to kin with hate,

Thou shalt not ever masturbate,

Thou shant put weasel on your plate.

Thou shalt not rob, thou shalt be bold

Thou shalt rise up before the old,

Don’t get your daughter’s pussy sold,

Thou shalt give all my priests your gold,

…Thou shalt be easily controlled.

Thus spoke the Lord.

Outro:

That brings us to a quick recognition of this week’s most astonishing vertebrates, Steven, Lindsay, Ward and other Lindsay.  These four vampire hunting, ninja decimating, time bomb deactivating, bus jumping heroes have distinguished themselves above all other carbon based lifeforms this week by giving us money.  Drawing on stupendous reserves of tenacity, intelligence and spare cash lying around, these four fine folks have provided an example that all tenacious, intelligent people with spare cash lying around should aspire to.

If you’d like to join these noble few in the pantheon of Scatheist glory, you’ll find the donate button on the right side of our homepage at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.  Oh, and Lindsay, if you’re listening, I was talking about the other Lindsay when I said, “other Lindsay”, not you.

That does it for tonight’s show, but we’ll be back in 168 hours with some hastily put together shit that’ll keep me up until 2 in the morning at least twice this week.  But if you can’t wait that long without risking a stress induced seizure, be sure to check out our erratically published blog and our erratically Tweeted Twitter feed.

Oh, and please help us spread the word about the show.  If you know any atheists that have auditory canals, please give us a plug when you can.  I put every diatribe up on YouTube and I’ll be putting the Leviticus song up this week as well, so if you wouldn’t be risking will-altering alienation from your family, I’d humbly ask that you give one of our videos a share on Facebook or whatever.

A quick thanks to Heath and Lucinda for joining me tonight and to a bunch of dead Israelites for making the jokes so easy on the Holy Babble segment.  And a quick thanks to you, dear listener, for giving us half an hour of your life.  We’ll be working really hard to earn another thirty minutes next week.

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.

Categories: Show Transcripts Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Live Blogging the Bible: Leviticus Preface

June 2, 2013 Leave a comment

by Noah Lugeons

On the suggestion of a professor that Carl interviewed on the Post Rapture Looting Atheist Podcast, when I set out to read the bible, I purchased the 4th Edition New Oxford Annotated Bible.  It was a bit more of an investment than many of my other bible options, but the annotations, reading guides, maps, apocrypha and summaries made it well worth the investment.

Each book in the New Oxford is preceded by a series of short essays that deal with authorship, interpretation, structure, history and a short “reading guide” aimed to help the student appreciate exactly what they’ll be reading.  Thus far these essays have been rather useful in structuring the discussions we have on the books as well as giving me a bit of a life raft while I’m drowning in the prehistoric insanity of this tome.

The reading guide for Leviticus contained a rather interesting suggestion that basically said the best way to read Leviticus is to not read it.  After a brief and desperate attempt to downplay the raving lunacy of this section of the bible, the scholars offered the following advice:

Because the focus of Leviticus’s narrative is the law and in its divine speeches, the book is most profitably read first according to legal topic rather than from beginning to end.

In keeping with the theme of our “Holy Babble” segment, of course, I ignored this advice and dove right in.  And it didn’t take long to figure out why they discourage such activity.  I would submit that it’s all but impossible to maintain the internal fiction of divine authorship after reading even the first several verses in Leviticus.

It’s also no wonder to me that while most of us our familiar with many of the stories in Genesis and Exodus, we don’t know a damned thing about Leviticus.  It certainly wouldn’t do well for the “divinely inspired” camp to try to rationalize the crazy shit in this book.  Let’s just say it’ll be a long damn time before some creationist group opted for the moniker “Answers in Leviticus”.

I’m sure it’s not the most fucked up book in the bible (I hear tell that Deuteronomy trumps it early and often), but it is certainly the most fucked up thing I’ve ever read.  There can be little doubt that this is a simple amalgamation of horribly misguided, pre-scientific tribal customs codified in a time before we understood medicine, meteorology, biology or succinctness.

Categories: Live Blogging the Bible Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

The T-Shirt Conundrum

May 31, 2013 4 comments

by Noah Lugeons

As I mentioned at the end of this week’s show, we’re going to be commissioning the design of three “Scathing Atheist” T-shirts in the near future.  We’ve been getting a lot of requests for merch and people are giving us money anyway, so we figured we might as well have something to give them in return.

Our idea on the shirts was for the back to simply say “Proud Sponsor of ” and then have the Scathing Atheist logo beneath it.  The front of each shirt would be an advertisement for one of our many fine sponsors.

We’re trying to get as much input as possible before we invest any cash in it, so we’re asking our listeners to let us know which sponsor they’d most like to see on a shirt.  We’re taking suggestions from Twitter (@Noah_Lugeons), on Facebook (/ScathingAtheist) via email (noahlugeons(at)yahoo.com) or here on the blog in the comments section.  Feel free to choose as many as you’d like when you tell us your preference (even if the stupid FB poll only lets you select one).

And to save you the trouble of double checking all the show transcripts, we’ve compiled all the eligible sponsors here:

  1. Jesus Pieces (Chocolate Covered Eucharist)
  2. 5 Hour Piety (Pious Energy Drink)
  3. Papalbee’s Neighborhood Restaurant
  4. Ameri-Quran-Line (Muslim Internet Provider)
  5. Tequila Savior (Anti-Semetic Liquor)
  6. Jeru-Salem Cigarettes
  7. Mormon Hammer (LDS Baking Soda)
  8. Let There Be Light Bulbs
  9. Penta-Douche (Biblical Feminine Hygiene Product)
  10. Homo-Momo.Com (Gay Mormon Dating Service)
  11. Jew P.S. (Jewish Delivery Service)
  12. Orthodoxy-Contin (Holy Book Analgesic)
  13. Celiba-Cyalis (Anti-Viagral Formula)

It’ll probably be a few weeks before we lock any of this down, so feel free to vote early, vote often and share.  Ask your atheist friends who don’t listen to the show.  Which of these T-shirts could they most see themselves in?  Ask your religious friends which one would most offend them.  We’re looking for all the data we can muster.

And we thank you for your help.

Categories: Feedback Tags: , ,

Episode 15 – Partial Transcript

May 30, 2013 Leave a comment

by Noah Lugeons & Heath Enwright

Sponsor:

Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the new anti-erection medication for all of your overnight camping trips with known pedaphiles and children needs.  The flaccidating power of new Celibacyalis will tame even the most immaculate ejaculate.

Celibacyalis, because only the Pope can be infallible, but anyone can be in-phallus-able.

And now, the Scathing Atheist.

Intro:

It’s Thursday, it’s May 30th and what the fuck Detroit? You were up 3-1 in that goddamned series.

I’m your host Noah Lugeons and from bohemian New York, New York, this is the Scathing Atheist.

On this week’s episode:

  • A recent law change in Texas will make it legal to not break the law,

  • Iowa takes concrete steps to be dumber and less vaccinated,

  • And we’ll make you laugh so hard a little bit of pee comes out,

But first, the Diatribe:

Diatribe:

I’d like to start off tonight with, an update on the soundclip that opened our show last week.  And for the apparently sizable percentage of our audience with bong related memory deficiencies, it was the one where Wolf Blitzer makes almost as much of an ass of himself as he did when he went on Jeopardy and proved himself to be biologically fungal in mental function. And if you somehow missed that clip on the YouTube, the Twitter and the Facebook, the story goes like this:

Man means woman, woman’s holding baby in front of a house recently destroyed by a tornado, man is a salivating news whore so he puts a camera in front of her.  So here’s this feeble-minded simpleton who managed to score a negative $4600 on the dumbed down Jeopardy they give to celebrities and he’s vamping for questions so he asks the poor woman if she remembers to thank god.

Now, I can’t really blame Wolf Blitzer for assuming that the random Oklahoman he was talking to was Christian.  You’re gonna win that bet a lot more than you’re gonna lose it.  Hell, it’s not like answering “What is Jerusalem?” when the clue was “Jesus hailed from this town”, but it’s still a stupid thing to ask someone about whom you know nothing.  But it’s Wolf “which appendages do the pants go on again?” Blitzer so you expect shit like that.

But what followed is something you wouldn’t expect.  Instead of looking at her shoes and muttering “well… yeah, whatever, I thank him, sure” she very politely and somewhat timidly said, “well, no, because I’m an atheist”.  And then Wolf laughs. Like retarded people getting pudding .

The woman he was talking to at the time, now identified as one Rebecca Vitsmun, didn’t have to self-identify as an atheist.  She could have just shrugged.  But she used the A word.  She said on national TV (albeit a channel nobody watches) that no, she doesn’t thank God because she doesn’t believe in God.  And if anyone had been watching, they might have said, “Hey look, there’s a regular person with real problems and an adorable baby that isn’t religious and seems like a normal human.”

Keep in mind that normally there’s no reward for saying, “No, I’m an atheist”.  In fact, when you live in Oklahoma there’s often something quite antipodal to a reward.  If she was doing it with any end goal in mind it was probably a subtle reminder to Wolf and the other newscasters out there that they shouldn’t assume people are religious.  It’s a bit of a sacrifice to send a very important message.

Wolf Blitzer won’t learn, of course, because he’s so stupid that he doesn’t even know he’s too stupid to go on Jeopardy, but I’m willing to bet that a number of other news anchors are taking notes.  But not Wolf.  Because it was rainy that day and his crayons don’t work in the rain.  And I’m sorry if it seems like I’m focusing too much on Wolf’s mental-impairments, but we are talking about a guy who once looked at a bowl of penne on a television screen and said, “What is fettucini?”  I mean, fettucini Wolf?  Are you fucking kidding me?

So I heard this silly little soundclip and decided to open the show with it.  And I wasn’t the only one who thought it deserved a share because within 24 of the live broadcast it was all over the atheist blogosphere and all over the english speaking world atheists were giving Rebecca an enthusiastic fist pump.  But the story doesn’t end here, because it turns out that wasn’t all we were giving her.

Enter comedian and secular church co-founder Doug Stanhope who sees this thing and realizes that it’s a perfect time to show the world the benefit of putting your faith in the faithless.  So he started an Indiegogo campaign called “Atheists Unite” to raise money to help our latest viral celebrity rebuild.  And it turned out that we atheists thought it a fantastic idea.

So thanks to the efforts of Stanhope, the inexplicable morality of non-believers and the power of the atheist blogosphere, the secular community was able to raise $50,000 for Vitsmun in less than three quarters of a day with more pouring in to help her and other recently smited people in Oklahoma.

Now, originally I was going to tack this update on to the end of the headlines section, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this story represented every single step between now and secular majority.  It begins with normal people standing up and proudly (if timidly) proclaiming their atheism.  It ends with secular humanism stepping in and serving those functions that we’ve left to churches for so long.

Christians have a lot of places to go when shit hits the fan.  Within hours of the storm clouds clearing there were religious missionaries there to help the religious people cope.  And most of these people are probably just good people that want to help.  They’d be happy to help the atheists too, but they’re not equipped.  They can only exacerbate the stress by talking about god’s plan and asking us if we remembered to thank Super Jesus.

In researching for this show, I come across a lot of shit that makes me wonder if there’s any point in fighting this fight.  I see laws being passed today that the 18th century would be embarassed by.  I see world leaders justifying their actions with Aesop’s fables.  I see people being killed by the hundreds for believing in the right imaginary friend the wrong way.  And it makes me want to start a podcast about hockey or something.

But once in awhile I come across a story like this and it gives me hope.  And it reminds me that there’s really some power in this community even if we are a bunch of unherdable pussies.  It reminds me that even our weird, nebulous, infrastructureless, leaderless movement can still get things done.  And it reminds me that Wolf Blitzer is verifiably nine thousand, two hundred Jeopardy-dollars stupider than NANCY GRACE.  And I like being reminded of stuff like that.

Atheist Community raises money for Wolf Blitzer’s surprise Oklahoma atheist: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/05/24/has-the-oklahoma-atheist-been-saved/

And Proof that Wolf is really that stupid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVC28oemocA

Headlines:

Joining me for headlines tonight is my fellow ignorance wrangler, Heath Enwright.  Heath, are you ready to corral the flock?

I’m trying really hard to be the shepherd.

In our lead story tonight, it looks like we’re all going to heaven, unless, of course, the infallible guy was wrong, which, according to the people who believe him to be infallible, he was.  The story begins at morning mass where the new, controversial pontiff controversially declared that everybody could get into heaven even if they’re not Catholic… and there was controversy.

I love when the pious get meaningless news…that they believe to be terrible news.  Turns out they’ve spent their entire seratonin-deprived lives hedging their bets on the losing end of Pascal’s Wager.  What’s wrong?  You been completely wasting your time confiding your darkest secrets to an asexual man in the next stall every Sunday?

Could have just as well been going to a Minnesota airport mens room, and getting more than just your ego stroked?

Couldn’t be less productive than confession.  Anyway, the atheist community, who, truth be told, could give a shit less what some senile old coot thinks about our chances of making it to space paradise, welcomed the statement and gave the pope a pat on the back for trying.  In fact, many people of a number of different faiths welcomed the statement, but you can bet your ass that none of them were Catholic.

As quickly as they could rev up the holy-laptop…

Is that a Gateway… to Heaven?

No, they’re pretentious so it’s probably an I-Maccabees.

Wouldn’t they spring for the Adonai-Pad?

Well, whatever they used, the underlings that pull the pope’s strings took to the series of tubes to clarify the statement and assure faithful Catholics that what he really meant was the exact opposite of what he said.  Despite infallible rumors to the contrary, only Catholics get sky-cake.

Nope, too late.  You heard him, and like you said he’s infallible.  “All my atheist sins of reason done been warshed away . . . Come on in boys, the water is fine.”

It’s gotta hurt to find out from Megatron that the heathen Autobots can have real cake, and sky cake, and eat it too.  That’s like blowing someone for drugs that you’re not going to take, and then finding out they’ve been giving away free drugs to atheists the whole time.

Pope Decides Atheists Can Go to Heaven: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/05/23/heaven-for-atheists-pope-sparks-debate/

And in “It’s-Not-Praying-If-I-Don’t-Agree-With-You” news, Arizona legislator Steve Smith called for a metaphysical mulligan last week after atheist representative Juan Mendez profaned that body’s ritual of morning incantations by offering his own prayer to start the session.  Steve Smith, who, in addition to being two washed up NFL wide-outs, is apparently also an old, white, bigoted fuck-plunger, was incensed by the audacity of equality and offered a second prayer in (quote) “repentance” for the godless heathen’s prayer.

That’s weird, because normally Representative Mendez arrives very late to these sessions, as Arizona law requires that he show his ID to any white person that sees him along the way.    

Sounds like Smith is being fairly open-minded.  He’s willing to allow anybody – even an atheist – to deliver a Christian prayer before the session?  

Smith offered this hilariously stupid analogy to justify his actions, “If you don’t love this country… don’t say ‘I want to lead this body in the pledge’ and stand up there and say… ‘You know what, I love England’.”

Yeah we can’t have politicians wasting their time dwelling on societal problems.  We need them focused on old books.   

So apparently the constitutionally dubious opening prayer is okay and doesn’t endorse a particular faith group, but if you don’t pray to Mary’s Baby-Daddy, the Christians still get to pray anyway.

Michael Richards isn’t racist . . . We had Chris Rock open for him.

Atheist Prayer Not Good Enough For Arizona Lawmaker: http://news.yahoo.com/arizona-house-non-prayer-sparks-christian-213521848.html

And in military news, the state of Texas has issued a preemptive strike in the war on Christmas with House Bill 308, which protects a teacher or student’s rights to say “Merry Christmas” without repercussions.  It also gives the districts the right to put up Christmas decorations, too.  So apparently they can open the gates of the prisons and let all those “Merry Christmas” wishin’, mistletoe-hangin’ hoodlums back out on the streets.

I heard this legislation is just a piggy back on another larger bill, re-affirming that under Texas law, murder is still frowned upon.  The amended murder ban would also include an exclamation point at the end.  Texans want to show how serious they are about not murdering, unless of course, you’re paid by the government to inject people with poison.

Now, as an atheist, my ears always perk up when I hear about state legislators making things legal that are already legal and you don’t have to dig too deeply into this one to see what the real goal is.  The bill doesn’t change a single letter of any law anywhere.  What it does is send a firm message that atheists can go fuck themselves if they think they’re comin’ after the baby Jesus and our manger scene.

Well, if they’re worried about somebody stealing the baby Jesus from their tax-embezzlement-funded, life-sized shoebox diorama, why don’t they just nail him down?

Are they sensitive about that for some reason?

And just to clarify the visual gag I was using during a podcast, my arms were extended outward as I made that suggestion.

Who says sight-gags don’t work on audio?  The bill specifically states that Christmas decorations are fine as long as there is at least one symbol from one other faith somewhere.  Like, a menorah in the closet or a buddha in the attic or something.

Like a Jew under the floorboards?

…at least you didn’t say in an urn.

…or oven.

In fact, it even says that “at least one secular scene or symbol” is sufficient to offset the Christian-ness of a nativity scene leading one to ask, what the fuck is a “secular” symbol?  I mean, are they saying as long as there’s a cross and a non-cross object, it’s okay?

Crosses are all about perpendicular, so they must mean secular objects like 2 lines that are extremely parallel.  

“I mean, sure, that’s a diorama of Christ on the cross, but look at this secular umbrella stand next to it, so… you know?”

I guess representations of factual a priori knowledge would be secular objects.  

I’m sure when questions like these come up, the highly-educated members of the Texas legislature routinely discusses Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, and the concepts behind the (analytic / synthetic) and (a priori / a posteriori) distinctions.  

Yes, I’m sure that Rick Perry can both comprehend and spell those concepts.

Texas mounts preemptive strike in the War on Christmas: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/05/24/texas-set-to-pass-bill-protecting-the-phrase-merry-christmas-from-well-no-one-really/

And in morbidly-obese-gubernatorial news, New Jersey governor Chris Christie has decided that they’re pretty much recovered from that hurricane shit and now they’ve got a spare 11 and a quarter million dollars to give to seminaries for capital improvements.  And no, I don’t have to be fucking kidding you, because I’m not.

You’ve must have been fucking kidding me when you said “I don’t have to be fucking kidding you”.

I wasn’t.

The appropriations are tucked away amid 174 less questionable grants going to 44 less questionable colleges around the state.  But if you go a-diggin’ you’ll find two line items totalling $11.25 million going to two religious schools.  And I’m not talking “We’re Notre Dame and we love Jesus and we’re religious” religious schools, I’m talking about “We’re training religious people to be more religious and only people of our religion can come here” religious schools.

First of all, I’m not ok with Notre Dame getting any public money if they’re going to teach students about fictional characters like god and Manti Teo’s girlfriend.  Also, after doing some google images research on this, I’m fairly certain that former Notre Dame head football coach Charlie Weiss is the same person as governor Christie.

Hard to believe considering that when Sandy hit, Christie was able to mount a defense.

The two grants include a $650,000 grant to Princeton Theological Seminary and a stereotype reinforcing $10.6 million to the Beth Medrash Govoha rabbinical school.  I think it’s worth noting that the latter of the two not only excludes non-Jews, but non-men as well so one must invoke exponents to express the unconstitutional nature of these grants.

Really?!?!  $11.25 million dollars going to teach clergy?  How much does it cost to build a new pseudo-science lab?  Are they demonstrating scripture concepts with large hadron colliders now?  

Something strikes me odd about a rabbinical school modernizing anyway.

Chris Christie Wants to Funnel Millions in Taxpayer Dollars to Seminaries: https://www.au.org/blogs/wall-of-separation/paying-for-praying-nj-governor-seeks-to-award-taxpayer-millions-to

And in “If-We-Stop-Testing-These-Kids-They’ll-Stop-Failing” News, the Iowa state legislature recently passed House File 215 in an effort to lower the bar of homeschooling standards so far that a person might theoretically trip over it.  HF 215 ensures the success of every child by removing any standard that would require them to learn or do anything.

Is this in response to an outcry that Iowa parents were making their homeschooled children too smart?

Or maybe too healthy, as among the standards on the chopping block here is the requirement that homeschooled children be vaccinated

Most homeschooled children in Iowa are baptised, so why would they need vaccinations?

What’s worse is that some of this other shit is worse.  This thing goes from relaxed to catatonic with revisions like:

  • Homeschooled children no longer have to spend a set number of days a year learning things

  • Homeschooled children no longer have to learn any things

  • Homeschooled children never have to demonstrate knowledge of things

What is this, “No Child Pushed Ahead?  Can parents get vouchers to cover the costs of not teaching?

Just the latest in Iowa’s aggressive strategy to end Mississippi’s reign as the stupidest state in the country.

And that’s a competitive category.

Iowa deregulates home-schooling: ttp://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/05/27/new-legislation-will-allow-iowas-homeschooling-parents-to-not-teach-their-children/

And in “We-Can-No-Longer-Afford-To-Be-Picky” news, the Church of England recently unveiled plans to allow people with vaginas to become bishops.  After decades spent debating something the rest of the world had figured out so thoroughly it had long been encoded in law, the Church of England had decided that women have functional brains, too.

The Catholic Church needs to take a cue here.  This would put a huge dent in the rape case numbers.  I’m not saying female priests wouldn’t be capable of abusing their power, but it would end up being consensual way more of the time.  When I was a 12-year-old boy, I would have happily taken a BJ from a toothless old nun.  

12 years old?  I’d still take a… oh, nevermind.

So perhaps it was for the toothless blowjobs,, perhaps it’s because you can’t fuck something up if it never has any actual results anyway or maybe it was spurred on by a genuine change of heart, the important thing to note is that they’re not going to rush into this.  They’re only one full century behind modern thought on this so they’re gonna give it a couple more years before they revoke their bigotry.

This sounds a lot like the way the Republican Party is being forced to reluctantly embrace colored people.  

And estrogened people at the same time.

Now, I have to point this out: In every article I saw on this they say that the church made “concessions” to the people who opposed women bishops, but I couldn’t find any details on that and I’m dying to know what that would entail.  I mean, what, they can be bishops but I can still call them “Toots” and they have to make me a sandwich if I ask?

Listen guys, the female bishop thing is happening, but as a concession . . .  From now on, “No” means “Yes”, and “Yes” means “Anal”.

Church of England to Allow Women Bishops in 2015: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/24/us-britain-church-bishops-idUSBRE94N0RV20130524

And finally tonight in our international forecast on demonic activity, we turn to Madrid where the devil seems to be winning one fiddle-battle after another.  An anonymous spokeswoman for the archdiocese of Madrid told the Associated Press that they had only one priest who was fully trained in devil-wrestling and that just wasn’t enough.

Is a spokeswoman like a female spokesman?  Like a woman talking?

I doubt it… they’re Catholic.

Now, apparently you can only make the normal water turn into magic devil-kryptonite if you’ve been authorized by a bishop to do so and, of course, the Vatican is well aware of how silly the whole exorcism thing looks to everyone except idiots.  As evidence, I offer the recent shit show that erupted when stories got out that one might have been performed in St. Peter’s Square last week by Pope San Francisco Treat.

You’ve been managing to get lots of mileage out of Pope Francis nicknames.  This time you’ve got him as gay rice.

Thanks you.  I project that by episode 24 I’ll be using shit like Pope Fart-rancis so enjoy it while you can.  But anyway, this leaves Spain in a delicate position because they’ve got one exorcist Bruce Lee-ing his way through the Spanish demon-hordes here and he’s in desperate need of reinforcements, but nobody’s coming to help.  And somebody please tell Michael Bay that I’d sell him that script cheap if he wants it.

So I would normally make a Michael Bay joke here, but where does one find anything to criticize in films such as Pearl Harbor, Bad Boys 2, The Island, Transformers, Transformers 2, Transformers 3, and Untitled Transformers Sequel?

I think that’s the most offensive thing you’ve ever said on this show, so I guess we can close it out there.  Heath, thanks for joining me.

And when we come back, we’ll HTTP colon… oh wait, that’s the link.

The Holy Babble Supplement:

I got an email the other day about our Holy Babble segment and it accused us of just cherry picking out the bad shit and ignoring the good shit.

Well that’s the point of our segment.  We’re not fact checking the bible line by line to see how bad their batting average is; we’re out to make circumcised dick jokes at its expense.  

And boy does this thing have dick jokes, but I’d still respectlessly disagree with the dink who sent this email because we really haven’t had to do that at all.  We’ve really just been telling the story as it’s written and it really is that fucked up.  In fact, if anything, we’ve left out some of the most fucked-up stuff so that we’d have time to talk about the spattering of good stuff.

Non-evil stuff anyway.

Right.  So as evidence of that, we’d like to offer you the top five horribly fucked up things we didn’t talk about when we broke down the first two books of the Bible in a segment we like to call…

The HOLY BABBLE… SUPPLEMENT

5) Genesis 6.

Now, we skimmed over the whole Noah’s Ark bit because plenty has been said about what ridiculous horseshit it is, so when we talked about it, we never even mentioned what an implausible concept it is.  Who feeds what to who?  What are they drinking?  And who’s shoveling all the shit?

Sounds like an impossible to solve LSAT question.  If you have a bag of grain, and 2 foxes, and 2 hens, and 2 of every other animal, on one side of the river, and an impossible ark on the other side . . .  Also, why did the birds need an ark to survive a flood?  

And what about the amphibians?  And where did Noah go to pick up two polar bears?  And how did they keep everything from fucking everything?

Seems like if FEMA had hired this Noah guy before Katrina, blacks might not be extinct in New Orleans.  

Yeah, they definitely needed a few more cubits of emergency housing.  Now, to keep things fair, I did look at what the apologists had to say about these questions and according to AIG, the ark would have produced about 11 metric tonnes of shit a day, a quota that Answers In Genesis can only aspire to.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v2/n2/caring-for-the-animals

4) Exodus 21:7

This is a verse that starts with the words, “When a man sells his daughter as a slave,” and doesn’t then go on to say, “you will castrate him with a rusty mayonnaise lid and let him bleed to death in the public square.”  How could we possibly be cherry picking the worst stuff if we skipped over the bit where it outlines the ethical way to sell your daughter as a slave?

Actually, I assumed I would cherry pick something from this, but their guidelines on this are surprisingly reasonable.  It even includes guarantees the whores won’t be sold to foreigners . . . so that’s nice.

True.  It even encourages you to continue to feed her after you get bored of fucking her.

It also says that if you buy her for your son and she marries the slave you have to treat the slave like your daughter.  Which sounds good until you consider that one book earlier Lot was tossing his daughters to rape-starved sodomites.

Which brings us to…

3) Genesis 19:30-38

Here we have a lovely little story about those same daughters repeatedly force-fucking their dad.  It doesn’t set anything up or connect anything to anything.  It’s just there to give perverse goat-herders an image to jackoff to and insult Moabites.

I guess the lesson here is “Dad’s dick is better than no dick at all.”  

That’s the moral, yeah.  So in this passage, Lot, after escaping from Sodom with his two date-rapist daughters and his favorite salt-lick, unwillingly impregnates his daughters with two inbred, incestuous, polydactyl prison babies.

Must have been legitimate rape.

Well, the Jews were probably worried about future persecution on account of their genetic superiority, so a few extra fingers and chromosomes just made sense.  Nobody figured every single Moabite would settle in the same 3-block radius in Brooklyn.

I guess the one good thing about being gang raped by sodomites is that you won’t get pregnant…

I wouldn’t say that’s the ONLY perk about being gang-raped by sodomites.

2) Exodus 21:20-21

There’s no way to dress this one up worse than it comes off in the actual bible, so here it is from the NIV version:

“Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property.”

I can’t help but picture a Jewish version of a Southern plantation owner.  Like Woody Allen instead of Don Johnson in Django.  

Yes, Exodus was full of fair and equitable treatment of one’s slaves.  For example, while one was encouraged to regularly beat one’s slaves and children, the gouging out of a slaves eye was frowned upon.  In fact, the rule says that if you knock out the slaves eye you have to let him go, so I figure if I was a slave, I’d just be moving my eyes in front of the whip constantly.

1) Genesis 9:20-27

And finally, the most perplexing parable in the book to this point, we didn’t even mention the crazy post-deluvian antics of Noah and his dancing weiner.

This is the “If your dad’s a drunk, you need to walk around your house backwards wearing a cape” chapter.  

Right, apparently they were supposed to walk around shading the lower half of their vision like the Bela Lugosi double in Plan 9 From Outer Space.

Not sure how the fuck we forgot to mention this part, considering I plan to be an alcoholic father one day.

As it turns out, if I want to smite my son and get him sent to hell, all I have to do is get wasted and pass out while hanging brain.  Or more directly, just wake him up with a tea bag.  

I guess that really shows the concern my dad had for my soul.  When I was a kid he would only take his dick out when he was behind me.

I think this chapter is the basis for the penis game in “Waiting”

I never saw that flick.  How does that game work? … Oh fuck dude!

Outro:

I had one quick but important announcement before we close things out for the night.  In response to a number of requests for Scathing Atheist shwag, Heath and I are commissioning the design of three Scathing Atheist T-Shirts that will be available soon if you’re willing to interpret the word “soon” in a geological sense.

But between now and then, we want your help deciding exactly what to put on those shirts.  We’ll be doing shirts for three of our many fine sponsors.  I’ll be posting a poll on our blog and on Facebook, so if there’s a particular sponsor you’d wear on a T-Shirt, let us know.  You can let us know over Twitter, on Facebook, via email or, if you want to make absolutely sure your vote is counted, you can add your preference to the end of a 5 star review on iTunes.

That’s all the time we’ve got for tonight’s show, but we’ll be back in 168 hours to tackle one of the most infamous books in the bible.  If you can’t wait that long, be sure to check out our erratically published blog at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.  You’ll also get your daily fix of Scatheism by following us on Twitter and liking us on Facebook.  And don’t forget to check out our You-Tube channel, even though everything on it is just a segment pulled from the podcast which you’ve probably already heard.

I want to thank Heath for all his help this week.  I also want to thank Reap from the Angry Atheist for providing this week’s Farnsworth quote.  Hard to believe he had the ten seconds to spare with all the content that dude is producing in a week, so if you haven’t checked out the Angry Atheist yet, I definitely recommend it along with ReapSow Radio, which you’ll find linked on the shownotes for this episode.

http://angryatheist.info/

http://www.reapsowradio.com/

But finally and most importantly, we have to take a minute to honor this week’s most sexually attractive human beings, Paul, Dee, Kevin and Graham, who distinguished themselves this week by giving us money.  Paul, whose clever inventions and godlike nunchaku skills will one day save humanity; Dee whose wit and sharp mind are the very metric by which future robot generations will measure their intellect; Kevin, whose agility, fearlessness and ability to banter well with supervillains are the envy of masked-vigilantes everywhere and Graham; whose very presence soothes children, moistens vaginas and lengthens telomeres even over Skype.  These truly  superlative citizens have all earned their place in history and in my heart with their stolid generosity.  And we love them all equally, except Graham who we love just a little more because holy shit, the dude donated a hundred bucks.  Which was fucking awesome and totally made my week.  Thanks bro.

If you, too, would like to earn your eventual spot beside these exceptional bipeds on the Mount Rushmore of altruism and erudition, you’ll find the donate button on the right side of our homepage at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.  Remember, not every donation goes straight to booze and weed.  Some of it goes to hosting and stuff.

If you have questions, comments or death threats, you’ll find all the contact info on the contact page of our website.  All the music used in this episode was written and performed by yours truly and yes, I did have my permission.

Categories: Show Transcripts Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Religion, Atheism and False Equivalency

May 25, 2013 4 comments

by Noah Lugeons

I’m so tired of hearing it that I’m tired of saying that I’m tired of hearing it.

Christians and their cohorts are desperate to seize the middle in the culture wars and that’s damn hard to do when you’re still dragging your heels on subjects like birth control, gender equality and premarital sex.  The tenets of religion are so far behind the mainstream that the only hope they have of appealing to the masses is taking the focus off how medieval and fucked up their beliefs are.

You can see this in their constant attempts to publicly back-pedal everything their religion stands for.  They’ve already distanced themselves from God, from all the crappy stuff Jesus said, from the entire history of their religion’s expression and practice, from the current hierarchy that controls it, from almost every passage in the bible and from almost every major precept of their faith.  They try to water it down so much that god just means love and there’s no way to disagree with them.

And that public face is, of course, contradicted by almost everything that the majority of the faithful do and say, but it doesn’t matter.  It’s a PR campaign and if you’re trying to sell a product that everyone knows breaks immediately, the first words you’re going to attach to it our “long lasting”.  Think about how often you hear about Islam being a “religion of peace”, Judaism being “modern” or Christianity being a “religion of tolerance”.  The hope is that if you can put your slogan on the complete opposite side from the truth, people’s opinions will land somewhere in the middle.

Which brings us to the false equivalency.  Because the Christians have no good answer for “your religion is insane, unverifiable and it’s a tool to justify bigotry, sexism, child abuse and ignorance”, they have to deflect.  They can’t reasonably stand there and try to pretend that their religion isn’t insane, unverifiable, bigoted, sexist, abusive and ignorant, so instead they opt for the “Oh, yeah?” tactic and say, “Well, atheists are even worse!”

Think about how often you hear a Christian imply (or directly say) that atheism:

  • Takes just as much faith as religion
  • Is just as militant as religion
  • Is just as unverifiable as religion
  • Can be used to distort morality just like religion
  • Is just as “bad” as religion

This seems to be the Argument Du Jour with online apologists right now.  They say that “Dawkins is just as bad as…” and then they’ll insert the name of somebody who just said something about how gay people should be beaten to death or that women should learn to shut up and listen to their men… in the name of the son, the father and the holy ghost, amen.

And as Dawkins recently responded via Twitter;

Yes, I’m just as bad as the fundamentalists.  Now excuse me while I throw acid in a woman’s face and then behead someone with a machete for disagreeing with me.

Shall I bother to refute it further?  Should I bother to point out that nobody has ever been killed in the name of atheism? (And remember apologists, being killed by an atheist isn’t the same thing)  Should I bother to point out that there is no doctrine or authority that can alter morality within atheism?  Should I bother to point out that the most “militant” atheist you can find has never called for the killing of anyone anywhere?  Should I bother to point out that even the really sexist atheists never talk about covering women from head to toe and then stoning them to death?

The answer to all of these questions is, of course, no.  The very act of refuting this type of argument gives it more credit than it deserves.  I’m an atheist blogger, podcaster and from what I hear, I’m one of the most vicious atheists out there.  And the worst thing I’ve ever done to a Christian is made him cry because I used potty words and talked about Jesus’ naughty parts.  I’m an “atheist extremist” and the only weapon I own is a thesaurus.

Categories: General Bitches and Gripes Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Going Too Far

May 24, 2013 4 comments

by Noah Lugeons

I’ll admit it; sometimes we go too far.

Between the two of us, Heath and I have no moral compass when it comes to humor.  We know in a academic way that there are things that are too offensive to make jokes about, but we’re not really aware of what those things are.

When we first started the show I was hoping that my wife could act as a “too far” barometer for us and point out the jokes that were just too over the top, but she had to drop out from that role.  Eventually she had to admit that almost every gag in the show was “too far” in her opinion and if we gave her full editing autonomy, I fear the show would often we 6 minutes long.

In editing, I often find myself weighing a particular joke or comment and trying to decided if it’s funny enough to make up for how horribly vulgar it is.  I hem and I haw and I almost always err on the side of humor, but once in a while, I do so with trepidation.  I include a joke that makes me wince a bit and I just have my fingers crossed that I didn’t just run off 20% of our listeners.

I found myself in such a position while editing episode 14.  After already making some horrible and border-line eugenic remarks about inbreeding in the Hasidic community, Heath doubled down with what I suppose may be the most blatantly offensive thing that ever made it passed the editing room.  He referenced Chris Rock’s infamous (and hilarious) “Blacks v. Word I Can’t Type Because I’m White” routine.

I tried to put out the fire on the spot by pointing out that his comment was a reference to that routine, but to be honest, that doesn’t exactly diffuse the offensiveness of the joke, it just gives it context.  When I was listening back over the headlines and we came to this bit, I stopped it and looked to Heath.  He shrugged and grinned so I looked to Lucinda.

“Was that too far?” I asked her.

She also responded with a shrug, “Yeah, but pretty much the whole show is.  I don’t know that it’s any more ‘too far’ than usual.”

With took that noncommittal reply as a semi-endorsement so I kept the bit in.  And then today when I listened back over it and we reached that part I realized that I probably shouldn’t have.  It was funny and if you understand the context fully it’s only kind of racist and only kind of antisemitic, but it’s still kind of racist and kind of antisemitic and it probably didn’t belong in the show.

I haven’t heard anything in response from any of our listeners so I can’t really say where anyone else fell on it, but if you bristled a bit when you heard it, I can assure you that you weren’t alone.  Sometimes things seem way funnier when you’re editing after midnight than they do when you’re a little more clear headed.

We will, of course, continue to go too far from time to time.  We’ll keep walking the tightrope of pushing the envelope without ripping it, but if you ever get the feeling like we’ve crossed the line from crude obscenity to pointless vulgarity, don’t hesitate to let us know.  We need all the help we can get with this moral compass stuff.

Categories: Feedback

Episode 14 – Partial Transcript

May 23, 2013 2 comments

by Noah Lugeons and Heath Enwright

Sponsor:

Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Zoroastra-Zeneca’s new brand of prescription painkiller designed to get you through the headaches brought on by reading your holy texts and trying to apply them to the real world.

So next time you’re banging your head against the Bible, the Talmud, the Koran or whatever antiquated revelation you prefer, take some Orthodoxy-contin and turn off the parts of the brain that asks questions.

And now, the Scathing Atheist.

Intro:

It’s Thursday, It’s May 23rd and normally I put a joke here.

I’m your host Noah Lugeons and from prohibitively expensive New York, New York, this is the Scathing Atheist.

On this week’s episode,

  • Texas lawmakers refuse to declassify the penis manual,

  • We’ll figure out what’s making those Hassidic kids look so cool,

  • And Heath will offend Christians, Jews, Women, Muslims, Blacks, People from Singapore and John Lennon fans.

But first, the Diatribe.

Diatribe:

I have nothing against raisins.  They’re compact, nutritious, vitamin rich and tasty.  I eat them when I hike and they actually make bran appetizing.  I really like raisins… when they’re in a box of raisins.

When I don’t like them is when I’m eating a danish or a cinnamon roll or something and for three or four bites it’s been raisin-free and then, all of a sudden and without clearly distinguishing itself from a dead insect, I’m chewing on some little rubbery, wrinkled morsel of undeniably bug-like dimensions.

Similarly, I’ve got nothing against Christians when they come in a box clearly marked “Christian”.  I can’t imagine an atheist walking into a church and saying, “Hey, what’s all this talk about Jesus, guys?  Can’t you see you have guests?”

Like every single atheist I’ve ever met or interacted with, I support the right of all people to believe and worship whatever they want as long as they’re willing to shut up about it during grown-up time.  As long as it doesn’t get all mixed up in decision making that affects others, you can spend your Sunday mornings being loved by whatever fictional character raises your pup-tent.

But if people constantly showed up at my door to ask what brand of raisins I preferred and whether I was prepared to accept their brand as the only true raisin, I’d hate the fuck out of those people.  I’d probably start a podcast about what a bunch of assholes raisin-evangelists are and I’d probably start a You-Tube Channel, Twitter Feed, Facebook Group and Blog about it too, like I did for this show, hint-hint, wink-wink-nudge-nudge, say-no-more.

My problem with both raisins and Christians is that they’re subversive.  They sneak into places where they aren’t welcome, they intrude on otherwise secular pastries and they seem to think that they have a right to be there and be all raisiny whenever the hell they feel like it.

I remember the families that would give out pamphlet ads for Jesus on Halloween despite the fact that it’s a secular holiday by any reasonable standard.  I remember finding a bible passage on some toy my unsuspecting atheist uncle gave me.  I remember finding Jesus ads on school handouts and I remember finding whole fucking sermons in the middle of Snoopy cartoons.

Christians would look at that list and see nothing subversive about it at all.  What’s wrong with giving out information about Jesus?  What’s wrong with putting our worldview out there?  What’s wrong with a message about Jesus in the middle of a cartoon about a Christian holiday?

It wouldn’t even occur to them to flip the question on it’s head and imagine Linus taking a couple of minutes to refute Pascal’s Wager during a Thanksgiving cartoon.  But it’s a secular holiday!  Why shouldn’t it have a secular message?  They would go apeshit if I started handing out little pamphlets of Dawkins quotes with my halloween snickers bars.  Fox News would probably be at my door by November second asking me why I hated America.  They would be apoplectic if some toy manufacture snuck a few sentences of David Silverman’s talking points on the package of their carpet-skates but yet they seem incapable of understanding why that pisses me off.

Instead, they just talk about the “Angry Atheist” and the Jesus-less depression that must fuel our animosity.  All the while they sneak their stupid little pamphlets into phone booths and subway stations and restroom stalls and airports and all manner of places we wish we didn’t have to be.  And they see nothing wrong with it at all.

And of course they don’t!  They’ve been programmed to believe that we’re all going to hell so if they’ve got to corrupt a parents autonomy to raise their child how they want to, it’s a small trespass if the result it saving a soul.  It’s despicable to annoy secular people on their deathbeds with last minute attempts to wash their dirty brains but they see it as virtuous.  A soul lies in the balance!  How could they stand silent when he was so close to the end and wanted nothing more than to not be harassed by used-afterlife-salesmen so he could enjoy the remainder of his life.

Sadly, there’s very little secular equivalent to this.  We’re not even allowed to put up billboards verifying our existence if the nearby community really, really needs it.  Our very existence challenges the most pervasive, and some would say, most important fiction at the heart of the religious virus; the notion that we “need” god.  If we set out to devangelize we might not need pamphlets or slogans.  We might make some headway just by knocking on doors and saying, “Hi, just wanted to let you know that at some point I’m going to die and I’m okay with that.  I fully recognize that there’s no post-mortem, magical Six-Flags waiting for me and yet I live an inspired and contented life.”

And until we can make them understand that, I’m gonna stay vocal.  I think reason is worth standing up for, and to be perfectly honest, I think that it says a lot about my worldview when it can grow and thrive despite having no computer generated anthropomorphic talking vegetables to sell it.

Headlines:

Joining me tonight for headlines is my fellow stickler about the use of reason, Heath Enwright.  Heath, are you ready to stickle the unreasonable?

I majored in stickling the unreasonable.

So you have a liberal arts degree, and now you bartend?

I provide free psychiatric advice and often prescribe beverages that I serve on premises, all whilst constantly wiping down the flat surfaces in front of me with a rag.  

So it’s like being a priest except the people are adults and they know in advance that there’s alcohol in their drinks.

Anyway, in our lead story tonight, we once again have to talk about how stupid Texas lawmakers are.  In response to unambiguous evidence of the whole and overwhelming failure of their eighteen year campaign to keep kids safe from the dangers of sex by pretending it doesn’t exist, Texas lawmakers have doubled down on their “Jesus Flavored” approach to sex ed.

Ahh, yes . . . the data-phobic ostrich approach.

In defense of ostriches I should point out that that’s an urban legend.  Unlike Texas legislators, ostriches don’t actually stick their heads in their own asses.

If you read the fine print on the Texas state charter, you’ll find it clearly stated that ignorance is an inalienable right, guaranteed by a separation of truth and state.

Clearly.  And for our first example we’ll travel back to a more innocent age when we thought the lowest the Die Hard franchise would stoop would be the one with Samuel L. Jackson in it, an antiquated time when we still thought that Mel Gibson was pretty cool, a bygone era when people still rewound shit, and a time when Texas high school students were still being taught a sensible curriculum with regards to sex ed.

They should have given us more practice with opening the condom wrapper . . .

And if you’re looking for more reasonable, progressive policies . . .

And you’re using Texas . . . from 2 decades ago . . . as your model . . .

Not a good sign.

Yeah, but as bad as things were then, they can always be made worse by putting George W. Bush in charge of your state.  And in his first year as Texas’ governor, lawmakers passed groundbreaking legislation that replaced the “See Dick Dick Jane’s Spot” curriculum with more of a “I’d love to fuck you, Barbie, but I have no genitals” approach.  The law actually gave the individual school districts the rights to forego sex-ed altogether and opt for a “La-La-La, I can’t hear you” based syllabus.

If a sperm fertilizes an egg, but there’s nobody there to understand it, who pays for the abortion?  These are the philosophical questions that need to be asked before we even consider teaching about things like penes and vaginae in a school.  

And now, 17 years after the new laws went into effect, the results are in and the results are pregnant because they didn’t know how a fucking condom worked.  Texas went from bad to worse over that period and now ranks among the 5 worst states in every relevant teen-pregnancy statistic.  And guess how Texas lawmakers have decided to tackle this disturbing problem?

More Jesus?

More Jesus!  They’ve decided that despite the fact that abstinence-only education has been shown to be significantly less effective than comprehensive sex ed (which, by the way, still mentions that not having sex is a good way to not get AIDS), the real problem here is that their approach to human sexuality isn’t Bronze Age enough.  SB 521 looks to further restrict student’s access to sex ed with requirements that parents fill out forms to approve teaching their kids that people have genitals.  It also seeks to ban any material or speakers from Planned Parenthood, which all but guarantees it’ll become a law.

They’ve still got some Jim Crowe v. Wade Laws down there, don’t they?

Texas doubles down on Jesus-flavored sex ed: http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/editorials/20130314-editorial-texas-lawmakers-push-social-agenda-as-teen-pregnancy-problem-grows.ece & ftp://ftp.legis.state.tx.us/bills/83R/billtext/html/senate_bills/SB00300_SB00399/SB00310I.htm

And in other bullshit Bible-Belt bulletins, the state of Georgia has also recently doubled down on stupidity.  This story starts with our intrepid hero, former president of American Atheists Ed Buckner, checking into a state owned cabin in the Amicalola Falls State Park and finding a bible there.

This is worse than when Al Sharpton found that subway ad for cotton white hooded sweatshirts.

As it is a state owned park, he politely informed the Park service that state-owned cabins shouldn’t endorse a particular religion and they said, “Holy shit, you’re right, our bad,” and took the bibles out.

That sounds impossibly reasonable.  There’s no way the state of Jaww-Jah left it at that.  

Of course not.  As so often happens in these stories, along came a spider in the person of Governor Nathan Deal who ordered the bibles returned to the cabins, arguing that they didn’t put the bibles there because they were bibles, but rather because they were free, and dog-gone-it, we’d have let anybody put any books at all in them there cabins if they’d ‘a givin’ some to us.

Even non-fiction books that contain dangerous, factual material?

Doesn’t the south have book-burning firemen to prevent stuff like that?

Right when you’re thinking it’s about time for the second rape joke, I go curve ball, and give you a Fahrenheit 451 reference.

So yes, this fucktard actually told the former president of American Atheists that they would happily accept any freely donated literature for use in the state-owned cabins.  And it just so happened that David Silverman had some Madalyn Murray O’Hair, Ibn Warraq, Hitchins and Dawkins lying around, so I’m sure that the Governor will be happy to stack all that shit next to the bibles and tell his constituents that it’s okay because the copies of “The God Delusion” were free.

Dispute about bibles in state-owned cabins in Georgia: http://news.yahoo.com/georgia-governor-engaged-bible-dispute-125757816.html & http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/05/18/atheist-literature-is-about-to-be-distributed-in-georgia-state-parks/

And in “at least you don’t live in Saudi Arabia” news, that nation’s senior religious leader has recently added “Twitter” to the long list of possible perils for your eternal soul.  Last Wednesday, top Saudi cleric, head of the Saudi religious police and guy with way too-damn-many names Abdul Latif Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh declared that Saudis who use Twitter forfeit their rights to Muslim heaven for doing so.  He warns that because what the hell ever he says goes and he says Twitter equals hell, you shouldn’t use Twitter.

Hold on there’s a shitty pun here… Lots of hash, no more tags.  

I would think it’s okay as long as you Tweet @Mecca.

They can’t be happy about him having accounts on Instagram and Pinterest.  

In the Mullah’s defense, with line-breaks you can ASCii-art mohammed now.

Twitter’s probably getting bumped because Halliburton’s new social media site, Cloud E-Arabia,  has an exclusive contract.   

Isn’t it remarkable how often god happens to be pissed off about whatever most immediately threatens the unencumbered rule of the theocratic government?  This is apparently only the latest in god’s repeated condemnation of Saudi Tweets.

Tweeters gonna tweet.  I guess this is just one of those times when god is powerless.  Weird.

Saudi Arabia’s Top Cleric declares Twitter may cause damnation: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/18/twitter-saudi-arabia-damn_n_3294209.html?utm_hp_ref=religion&ir=Religion

And in a sarcastically rare case of money collected for god being misused, we travel all the hell way to Singapore where mega-church founder Kong Hee is on trial for embezzling $40 million dollars of god’s money to support the failing career of his wife, Z-list pop singer Sun Ho.

The pop tart will not face charges, and is using the excuse that the enormous expenses went toward creating music that glorified Christianity.

Singapore’s Yoko Ono refused to comment, as she was too busy plotting to have her husband murdered outside the Dakota building on Central Park West to fund the next godly album.  

And before you send emails, it officially stopped being “too soon” to make John Lennon jokes at 3 pm Eastern Standard Time on February 11th of last year.

Sun-Ho, known sporadically as the semi-hot asian chick in that one Wyclef Jean video and back home as Singapore’s official “Least Admired Personality” of 2012 is apparently now directly in charge of the church’s finances since all the people who were embezzling money for her are under indictment.

I can’t help but wonder why you need to be a pop star if you can convince Christians to give you $40 million in the first place.

Evangelical Malaysian Church embezzles $40 million to fund unpopular pop artist: http://freethinker.co.uk/2013/05/19/evangelical-church-leaders-accused-of-embezzling-millions-to-boost-unpopular-pop-personalitys-career/

And from the “I-was-just-thinking-those-Hassidic-Jews-looked-hip” file, a Brooklyn Yeshiva recently sent a letter to parents warning of the dangers of modernity represented by the self-indulgent evil of thick framed eyeglasses.

The letter read, in part, “We are asking that everyone buy simple glasses.  The yeshiva will not tolerate thick plastic eyeglasses.  Thick frames… give the child a very fat look.”

Yeah, it’s probably the hipster glasses that are the root of the physical appearance situation in Hasidic communities.  

Because if you’re about to say it’s the generations of inbred recessive DNA, you are an accurate racist (which tends to be received as the worst kind of racist).

Is it still antisemitic if you exclude the reform Jews though?

You’re right, it’s not.  Hasids are the N-words of the Jewish community.  Every time a Jewish person wants to have a good time . . .

And if you’re not familiar with that particular Chris Rock routine, fuck it, Heath is just that racist.

Orthodox Jewish school bans “hipster glasses”: http://www.opposingviews.com/i/society/brooklyn-orthodox-jewish-school-bans-hip-glasses

And in legal news, the Supreme Court has decided to hear the case of Town of Greece, NY v. Galloway.  The suit challenges the Town Board’s predilection for opening their meetings with what they call “inclusive” prayers.

I’ve never been to church . . . What exactly is an inclusive prayer?  . . . Is that like a circle jerk?

No, because in this case only some people are getting fucked.  Now, I’m no legal expert, or anything expert for that matter, but I find it strange that the suit doesn’t follow the “who gives a shit how ‘inclusive’ they are?” line of argument and instead opts for the “inclusive my ass” defense.  And apparently both are valid.  The plaintiffs allege that the board basically opened every meeting with a Christian prayer and then when they bitched loudly enough in the press they would invite two Wiccans and a Jew and then go back to the old-boy’s club.

Two Wiccans and Jew walk into a bar . . . Bartender says get that Jew the fuck out of here.  Can’t even leave foreskin for the tip . . .

Hold on, I feel bad for singling out the Jews as bad tippers.  That’s mean.  

Christians, Muslims, Blacks, Latinos, Europeans, and women are all great examples of groups that are shitty tippers as well.

The 2nd Circuit appeals court unanimously got it right on this one, but that incited a legal “stercore procellarum” that included legal briefs backing the city’s mythological incantations from as many as 49 members of congress and 18 state attorneys general, spanning the political spectrum from the conservative wing of the Republican party to the really conservative wing of the Republican party.

As long as the party remains hijacked by Christianity, they won’t even allow themselves to be reasonable-adjacent.  The moment they sense moderate Republicans nudging up against logic, they have Rick “frothy-mixture-of-lube-and-fecal-matter” Santorum publicly express an opinion.

Speaking of which, was that Latin for “shit storm”?  Nice.  

Supreme Court to hear case of “non-denominational” prayers at town board meeting: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/05/20/high-court-to-review-church-state-dispute-over-public-prayers/

And finally tonight, from the “give-me-modesty-or-give-me-death” department we get a story so horribly stupid that it should be able to single-handedly end the debate about whether religion should ever be allowed to influence any decision about anything anywhere ever.

This story comes to us from the Friendly Atheist via Pensacola Christian College via a morbidly misguided hierarchy of priorities.  According to a former student and some representative of the college that was willing to admit this shit to Hemant Mehta via email, the school’s stated policy in case of an emergency is for female students to dress appropriately for evacuation.  They are asked to burn to death modestly before trotting out of a burning building showing a bit of thigh.

In defense of the college, this is a proven method for outing witches.  Although any women attending a college are already suspect.

What, they don’t have scales and ducks in Florida?

When friend of the show Hemant Mehta pressed the school’s rep on this they actually pointed out that the dorm rooms were arranged so that the closets were on their way to the emergency exits anyway so it shouldn’t be much of a problem to change while feeling your terrified way through a smoke filled chamber of death.

Aren’t these women required to be clothed at all times anyway?  It’s like they’ve never heard of a shower burka.

Christian college requires girls to dress appropriately before exiting in case of fire: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/05/17/this-school-has-the-worst-fire-safety-policy-youve-ever-seen/

And on the shower-burka visual image, we’ll close out the headlines.  When we return, Heath and I will discuss the apex of all alliterative apologetics.

Skit:

Hello?

Hi, Joey.

(sigh)… that’s not my name, Mary.

Okay, fine.  Jehovah. (playfully)

You… you should really call me God… or “Father Almighty” or something…

Fine.  Hi, God.

So… to what do I owe the pleasure Mary? (exasperated in advance)

Whatcha doin?

Mary, I’m, you know, governing the universe, ignoring African prayers… these gay-marriage proponents aren’t just gonna smite themselves, so unless you called about something in particular…

Well yeah, actually.  I wanted to let you know that I talked to our son the other day and he says he has another list of pedophiles for you to forgive.

Yeah, I know.  I saw his post about it on Facebook.

You know I’m a little worried about him.  He’s putting on a lot of weight lately.

Well, it’s Heaven, so, it doesn’t really matter.  He’s not gonna have a heart attack or anything.

I know but I worry.  He still hasn’t found a girl to settle down with and he’ll be turning 2014 soon…

Mary, I’m really busy here.

You’re always really busy when I call.

Yeah, Mary.  I’m God.  There’s a lot on my plate.

Why don’t we just talk anymore?

Mary, I’m just not gonna have this conversation with you again.

You told me you loved me, Joey.

(sigh) Mary, I’m all-loving.  I told you I was all-loving.  I love everyone.  It’s in the freakin contract.

So you admit that there’s somebody else!

Jesus, Mary, there’s everybody else.  I’m God.

Don’t you take our son’s name in vain with me.  I will not tolerate blasphemy.

It’s… not… blasphemy when I do it.  Look, I’ve really gotta go.

So when should I call you back?

You shouldn’t call me back, Mary.  We’ve been over this.

That’s it, I’m coming over.

Don’t come over.

I’m already putting on my shoes.

Mary, I’ll phenomenize a moat or a dragon or something.  Do not come over here again.  It’s over between us.  I still love you because I’m all loving and I have no free will by the dictate of the logical impossibility of my existence, but that thing was just a thing.  You’ve got to just move on.

You used me, God.

I created you.  I’m totally allowed to use you.  It was part of my divine plan.

You know what, fuck you and your divine plan.  You’re such an asshole.

No, actually, I’m perfect in all ways, but that’s beside the point…

(CLICK)

Yo, Adam!

“Here I am”

You want that rib back?

Calendar:

It’s time for the atheist calendar portion of the show, a time we set aside to annoy the shit out of the listeners that live way too far away to go to any of the great atheist, skeptical and secular events that we’ll be highlighting, so we’ll keep it brief.

We’ll start on June 15th with the SkeptiCal Con, which is really hard to google because it’s so damn clever that it’s actually just spelled “skeptical”, but that being said, it promises to be a great time if you’re gonna be anywhere near Berkley.  Dr. Eugenie Scott will be there along with DJ Groethe, Dr. Jill Tarter of the SETI Institute and there’ll even be a remote appearance from one James Randi, though I think they’re doing Skype rather than projecting him as a “Hell me Obi-Wan Kenobi” type hologram.

http://www.skepticalcon.com/

On the weekend of the 21st of June we’ve got the SSA West, one half of the Secular Student Alliance’s bi-coastal conference bonanza.  This one will be taking place in Sin City and there’s way too much good shit going on there to squeeze into this segment so I’ll just direct you to their homepage.

https://www.secularstudents.org/2013con/vegas

Over the same weekend we’ve got the Oklahoma Freethought Festival featuring Lawrence Krauss, Dale McGowan, Oklahoma’s own Seth Andrews and more.  And all I’m gonna say is with all the prayer-mongers descending on them, by June 22nd the state is going to be in dire need of an injection of secularism.

http://freeok.org/

That does it for June but don’t forget the big one July 11th through the 14th.  TAM is right around the corner so if you haven’t reserved your tickets get that done quick.  We’ll be talking about it a bit more next time we do the calendar segment but if you need to know more now, now, now, you’ll find a link to their homepage along with links to all the events discussed on this segment on the shownotes for this episode.

TAM Homepage

Counter-Apologetics:

From time to time one this show, we like to set aside a few minute to tackle some of the more common apologetics used in defense of Christianity.  Tonight, Heath has rejoined me to tackle one such topic.  Heath, what poorly formed insult to proper logic have you chosen for us today?

We’ll be talking about the Lunatic, Liar or Lord concept.

Okay.  And so for those who aren’t familiar with it, this is an argument by reduction of sorts, right?

Exactly.  The apologists argues that if Jesus existed and our record of him is correct, the only possible explanations are

1. He was insane

2. He was deliberately misleading his followers, or

3. He was the son of god, martyred to redeem humanity.  

He must be a lunatic, a liar or the lord.  Then they try to work backwards with evidence that he wasn’t insane and that he wasn’t lying.

So the idea is that if they can prove that full of bullshit or full of batshit, the only explanation left is that he is the messiah.

Exactly.

But you said that this argument rests on the premises that Jesus actually existed and that our record of him is accurate.  So it should actually be the Lunatic, Liar, Lord, Legend or Literary License argument, right?

Not so fast.  Within the confines of the mythology that Christianity is based on one could also explain the appearance of Jesus by saying that he was actually the devil sent to confuse our love of god with all the trinity crap.

So Lunatic, Liar, Lord, Legend, Literary License or Lucifer.

Or leprechaun.

Wait, what?

Jesus also might have been a leprechaun.  The theory goes that a person catches a leprechaun and wishes for a resurrected Jewish messiah.  That explains the story, but in that case, Jesus isn’t really the son of god, but more of a mystical, leprechaun apparition.

Now wait a second, we shouldn’t have to consider that.  I mean… leprechauns don’t exist.

It’s not that they don’t exist, it’s that there’s no evidence for their existence.

What’s the difference?

Look, there’s no evidence that god exists and no evidence that he could have a human son and no evidence that such a son would be divine and no evidence that if he was divine his martyrdom would somehow redeem humanity.  So to truly employ this apologetic you don’t just have to rule out the things that exist.  You also have to rule out anything that is within five degrees of not existing.

So what other kinds of things must the apologist disprove?

Well, Jesus could’ve been a were-Jew whose powers were unlocked by the full moon thus giving him the appearance of divinity.  Or perhaps he was somebody who’d suffered some type of brain damage leaving the part of the brain that knows it isn’t the son of god destroyed but the rest of his brain intact.  Or… or maybe he was one of David Icke’s shape shifting illuminati.

So we have to add lycanthrope, lobotomy patient and… lizard person?

Right.  And it’s also possible that he was a time travelling assassin that teamed up with a younger version of himself and went back to biblical times to escape from a price on his head and then pulled a switcheroo when they crucified the older him.

I don’t even know what you’re going for there.

Looper.

That Bruce Willis movie?

Yeah, or maybe he was a teleporter that, while containing some magic powers, wasn’t actually the son of god.  Or maybe the he had some weird necrotic disease that made him temporarily appear dead.  In fact, it’s even possible that he bizarre early form of cloning.

I’m guessing that’s not all.

Well, I suppose he could be an actor hired by the Romans to fake a messiah.  Or perhaps he was really a woman who loved Mary Magdalene and perpetrated this whole hoax just for some girl on girl action.  Or maybe he was just a hippy who thought people would listen if he pretended to be the son of god.

And I suppose he could be a liquid metal robot like the one in Terminator 2…

Ooh… good one.

And I suppose that if they filled his post-crucified body with helium he would be “lighter than air” and that would explain the whole thing where he rose to heaven.

Now you’re getting it.

Or maybe he’s just impossible as described by Christianity.

And don’t forget Luigi from Mario brothers.

Really?

Yeah, after accidentally taking a really fucked up “Warp Zone”.

I suppose he does have extra lives… Okay, so that means that what we’re really dealing with is the Lunatic, Liar, Lord, Legend, Literary License, Lycanthrope, Lobotomite, Lizard Person, Looper, Leaper, Leper, Lab Accident, Lead, Lesbian, Liberal, Liquid Metal, Lighter than Air, Logical Fallacy, Luigi argument.

Exactly.

And that’s all of them?

Yeah.

So to…

…that start with the letter “L”.

What?

Yeah, I always felt like if an apologist ever got past all that shit they would have a lot more trouble with the Myth, Mirage, Magician, Moron, Misrepresentation, Machine, Misleader, Menace, Manticore, Meth-Head, Marshmallow Man, Martian, Mario, Mushroom Trip, Messiah argument but maybe that’s just me.

Outro:

Before we lock things down for the night, I did want to offer a quick apology.  I was up late last week editing the show and apparently I fucked the whole thing up, which I didn’t realize until the following day when it was brought to my attention that episode 13 was only 29 minutes and 59 seconds long.

We strive for consistency here at The Scathing Atheist and our listeners deserve better than such lackadaisical oversight.  To make up for this error, I’ve added one second to this week’s episode and beyond that I simply throw myself at the mercy of the court.

That’s all that’s left but to thank all the people who made this episode go.  I want to thank C-Webb from the C-Webb Sunday School Podcast for providing this week’s Farnsworth quote.  Very interesting cast he has going on there and definitely worth a listen.  You’ll find a link to it on the shownotes for this episode.

http://cwebbssundayschool.com/

I also need to thank Lucinda for giving me her best creepy stalker chick, Heath, of course, for being the second, third and fourth wheel on this vehicle and, most of all, I need to thank Doug and April, this week’s most exceptional hominids.  Thanks to their unwavering bravery and enviable cunninOg, we have more money.

Not everybody has what it takes to donate to this show, but if you feel that you share Doug and April’s superhero-like capacity for compassion and justice, you’ll find the donate button on the right side of our homepage.

And if you want to help us out but you’re saving all your money for a vintage replica Indiana Jones fedora, you can also throw us a bone by heading over to iTunes and leaving us a good review there.  Remember, it takes 5 loyal listeners to counteract one Christian fart-vapor who sees the word atheist and gives us a one star ranking.

That does it for tonight’s show but we’ll be back in 168 hours with more.  If you can’t wait that long, be sure to check out our erratically published blog and follow us on Twitter because when I see that we have new followers I feel imperial.

We also put clips of the show up on You-Tube so if you want to share a segment with somebody who doesn’t do the whole podcast thing, be sure to check us out there.  And if there’s a segment that you’d like as a YouTube clip that we don’t have up there, let me know and I’ll get right on it.

Also if you’re on the Facebook, be sure to like us on the Facebook because we’ve only got about a hundred likes and that’s kind of embarrassing.  And speaking of embarrassing, our Stitcher rank could use your help as well so if you haven’t downloaded the Stitcher App yet, get on that shit or I’m calling your mom.

If you have questions, comments or death threats, you’ll find all the contact information on the contact page at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.  All the music used in this episode was written and performed by yours truly and yes, I did have my permission.

 

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My Blogging Dilemma

May 22, 2013 6 comments

by Noah Lugeons

I always feel like I should be blogging more.  I always find some news story or some Facebook argument or some personal interaction that leaves me thinking, “I should blog about this”.  And very often, as soon as I can, I set about organizing all the words that were swimming around in my head.  And if every one of those sessions eventually turned into a full blown post, I’d be one of the most prolific bloggers on the web.

Sometimes I abort the post when I realize that I’d have to do way too much research to support the point I want to make.  Sorry if that comes across as lazy, but in addition to the blog, the weekly podcast and all the ancillary social media stuff that goes with it, I’ve also got a full time job and a life.  So if I realize that I’d need to spend a couple of days on an eight paragraph post, I usually tuck it away in a the rearmost burner of my “I might get to it eventually” file.

But far more often, the potential post gets co-opted into material for the show.  I get a few paragraphs in and think to myself, “Shit, this would make a great diatribe”, or “damn, I should hold onto that joke for when Heath and I do this week’s headlines”, or “I could actually get a pretty good skit out of this”, or “this would be so much better with sound effects.”  And an instant later it’s off of WordPress and on to Google Docs to linger in my “Diatribe” folder for however long it takes me to not have something to bitch about that week.

There are certain times when I can overcome the issue.  When something’s just too short for a diatribe and too long for a headline or when I want more detail than I could justify on the show.  The “Live Blogging the Bible” segments I’ve been doing are a good example of that.  I know as I go through a book of the bible that I’m going to have way more commentary than I’ll be able to fit into the ten or twelve minutes we’ll be able to devote to it on the show, so I wind up with a few extra blog posts worth of material.

My fear, of course, is that if I make too much of a habit of doing this, the blog will become nothing but the 3rd best stuff that I deemed not funny enough to make the show and that would be a damn shame.  I’m making a concerted effort to blog a bit more often (about things other than how I should blog more often), but if you check back with us a couple days in a row and you don’t find anything new, rest assured that it means we’ve got some really funny shit for the podcast.

Categories: General Bitches and Gripes Tags:

The “Faith” of an Atheist

May 21, 2013 1 comment

by Noah Lugeons

I probably shouldn’t listen to “The Atheist Experience” while I’m on a crowded subway.  As much as I love to listen to Matt Dillahunty and Tracie Harris (and, to a varying degrees, all the other fine hosts and co-hosts) take on the lowest common denominator, sometimes the wall of intentional ignorance is almost too much to bear and I fear that I’ll just scream “LISTEN TO THE ANSWER YOU JACKASS!” in the middle a sardine-to-sardine throng of commuters.

The most recent example came yesterday morning as I listened to their most recent episode (#814 if you want to hear for yourself what pissed me off).  For those who aren’t familiar with the show, it’s a live public call in show where a few atheist hosts take calls from people on the subject of atheism, humanism, etc.  And very often these callers are Christian ass-danglers who rise to levels of vapidity that are absolutely staggering.

Case in point.  On this episode they had a guy call in named Asshat from Fucktardia (I didn’t want to listen to it again to get the details, sorry) and he wanted to trot out that old, stupid, delusional idea that atheists have just as much faith as religious people have.

Now, Dillahunty handled his business on this one perfectly.  He started off by explaining that the whole concept of atheism is a demand for evidence, which is exactly the opposite of faith.  He went on to explain the difference between rejecting a claim and claiming the opposite.  He then went on to explain exactly the same thing five or six more times because the dipshit refused to understand the answers.

And, of course, how could he accept them?  How could he even hear them?  To internalize the actual answers to these objections is to realize that you’re simply on the wrong side of the argument.  So he simply pretended not to understand them.  He put up his “anti-rationality armor” and kept making the same assertion no matter how many times or in how many ways it was countered.

To say atheists have “faith” in atheism represents a lack of understanding of the term “atheist”, “faith” or both.  Faith simply means to accept something without evidence or despite evidence to the contrary.  A less flattering word for the same trait is “gullibility”.  When atheists hear the god claim, we ask for evidence.  What are we showing faith in?  Evidence?  Logic?  Reason?  I suppose that we are, in a “3 in the morning hard-solipsism college philosophy minor debate” kind of way, taking all those things on faith.  But, of course, so is the person we’re arguing with… unless they’re a presuppositionalist.

I admire the patience and resolve of the people who host that show but I don’t envy them.  I fear my signature close would be “You’ve become too stupid to respond to now” and it would usually come within the first forty seconds of the call.

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