Archive
Diatribes, Volume One
by Noah Lugeons
I swear I spent almost as much time formatting and reformatting this thing as I spent compiling it, but it’s finally 100% done. By this time next week our first publication should be available on all major ebook retailers. It’s already available on the Kindle Store or, if you’re not a Kindle person (or just want to see me get a slightly larger chunk of your money) you can buy it on SmashWords in basically any format you might want.
Even if you don’t own an e-reader or tablet and have an aversion to reading stuff on your phone, you can pick it up as a PDF and read it on your computer. So basically, if you’re reading this blog, you can be a proud owner of “Diatribes, Volume One: 50 Essays From a Godless Misanthrope”.
BUY IT NOW
I know that some people will be thinking “why would I buy a book of the diatribes that I can get for free on your archives? Or transcripts?” And that’s a great question. I took care to make sure that even our most loyal listeners would get plenty of new material in this book. More than a third of the book is never before seen (or heard) material including expanded diatribes, a brief explanation of what inspired each essay, an all new preface and afterword, essays on common themes from our diatribes and more*
If you’d like a sample of what you’ll get, click on either of the links above and you can sample the first 20% of the book online (no downloading required). And, of course, if you’d like to help boost our visibility, we encourage you to take a few minutes and leave a review on Amazon. Even if you haven’t read the book, you’ve heard the diatribes, so you already know it’s five stars worth of good.
*Table of contents, copyright page and dedication… but the Table of Contents is all interactive and shit so that counts as new material.
Episode 55 – Partial Transcript
by Heath Enwright and Lucinda & Noah Lugeons
Note: Transcript contains elements that were removed due to time constraints.
Warning: The explicit language in this podcast is starting to rub off on the pope.
Sponsor:
This week’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the Hindu sex worker industry of South Asia.
For live shows, come on down to The HinDude Ranch. And if you want to get laid in your second life, visit our brother and sister websites; FudgePakistan.com and PunjabPoonJobs.com
And now, the Scathing Atheist.
Intro:
It’s Thursday…
It’s March 6th,
And Christian Mingle for godless, horny geriatrics should be called RadiocarbonDating dot com
I’m Noah Lugeons,
I’m Heath Enwright, and from “Black History Forgotten” New York, New York,
And “Black History Still Embraced” Podunk, Georgia, this is the Scathing Atheist.
In this week’s episode,
-
The pedophile ISN’T Catholic … Just kidding. He’s obviously Catholic.
-
We’ll hit you up for money at the end of the show,
-
And conception got pushed back again. It used to occur at orgasm, then it was the third pump (if applicable), and now it officially happens retroactively at puberty.
But first, the diatribe…
Diatribe:
I picture a group of people sitting around in hell. One says, “Yeah, I shot my wife” and another one says, “I burned down an orphanage” and the third says, “I baked a cake for some queers”.
Luckily, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer forestalled the national embarrassment of SB 1062 with a last minute pang of cognizance. But we were still one crayon-scrawled signature away from a state redacting humanhood for three and a half percent of their population. Or maybe two point two percent… I don’t know if bisexuals cakes are as sinful as gay cakes.
The law, which passed through both state houses and probably would have been signed into law if not for a tsunami of national media attention, would have allowed anyone the right to discriminate against anyone, provided the bigotry was based on (quote) “a sincerely held religious belief.”
We’ve heard that phrase a lot on this show. A lot of laws that try to find a way to legally protect homophobia and misogyny under the auspices of religious freedom and the only thing that makes SB 1062 noteworthy is that it got one step closer than most. There’s a huge national effort to build a big wall of bibles to hide behind when we secularists come to take away their god given right to hate men who love men. And women who love women. And… women.
And I’m gonna give the religious people a little more credit than most. Because I don’t think religion is the source of the bigotry at all. I think these people are just good old fashioned bigots and Jesus makes for a willing scapegoat. Anti-civil rights legislation was largely cloaked in religious liberty, but today the people who have those same religions generally don’t hate the coloreds. It wasn’t that religion was making them racist. They were just racists and religion was providing cover.
And therein lies the problem. As Anne Lamott points out, god hates all the same people you do, so hate can always hide behind religion. In fact, as soon as you invoke the words “religious liberty” you can hide anything back there you damn well please. To you and me, “religious liberty” means the freedom to practice one’s religion, but these theocrats are desperately trying to redefine it; to make it mean “freedom to do whatever the hell I want, regardless of the law, so long as Jesus”.
And of course, since Jesus can’t chime in, religions doctrines can’t be tested against reality and faith can’t be measured, that makes it a legal panacea. Don’t want to serve gays? Religious liberty. Don’t want to rent to an unwed couple? Religious liberty. Don’t think people should have recreational orgasms? Religious liberty.
It’s impossible to miss the smell of bullshit here. If you define religious liberty the way they’re trying to define it, nobody would fight for it. The bible tells me to murder my disobedient children, stone people to death for working on Saturday and sacrifice bulls at the altar. According to the Arizona legislature, that would all be perfectly legal as long as I sincerely believed it.
Not only does this provide the legal justification of shit like SB 1062, but it also provides the psychological justification. If you take away the god nonsense and force somebody to explain their objection to gays or gay marriage or gays eating at restaurants; pretty quickly they have to come face to face with an ugly part of themselves. But as long as you can retreat to Leviticus you don’t have to bother with real morality.
And people act like this is some intractable problem. How can you balance religious freedom and the interests of the secular state? How can we ensure that everyone’s rights are protected? They act like those are hard questions to answer, but if everybody just had to follow the same rules, the problem disappears. Just get rid any law that is contingent on a religious belief and we’re in the clear. If it’s illegal to suck a baby’s cock, it’s just illegal to suck a baby’s cock.
Seriously, is anybody actually arguing that the use of psychedelics is less dangerous if you think they’re carrying you into the spirit realm? Does anyone believe that bigotry is less dangerous if you think it’s divinely sanctioned?
Nobody wants to carry this all the way, of course. Even the rampaging bigots in Arizona draw the line at the United Methodist Church of Methamphetamines, so what they’re asking, nay, demanding the government do, is get in the business of deciding what does and doesn’t count as a religious belief. And I can’t imagine anybody wants that.
Headlines:
Joining me for headlines tonight is the oft-misunderstood Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to help everyone better understand the Scathing Atheist Satire System?
When I say things that sound sexist or racist … that part is satire. My true opinion on this issue is that women and non-white people – as groups – are generally much better people than men and white people.
Yeah, that should free up some time at the complaints department. Appreciate that.
In our lead story tonight, Seventh Day Adventist parents Nkosiyapha and Virginia Kunene admitted to something known as “secular manslaughter”, after causing the death of their five-month-old son by giving him rickets, and then refusing him rickets medicine.
How prehistoric do your views on medicine have to be to get rickets? That’s a fucking old-timey disease. That’s like dying of “the summer complaint” or milk leg.
Exactly. (Milk Leg!!!) … Two important points: Yes it’s really easy to prevent rickets: Don’t be an infant who is a vegan with no vitamin D in your diet. And yes, it’s easy to treat rickets … Vitamin D. It’s also now very easy to prevent polio, amoebic dysentery, and plague. Diseases that killed you on the Oregon Trail, shouldn’t be a threat anymore. If your kid dies of cholera, why were you bathing him in a dirty puddle?!? Or you should have just caulked the wagon. Your fault.
And they’ve made a lot about this vegan diet that the parents were on, but I don’t know why. There are plenty of vegan options for a five month old, provided you don’t also sequester them from medicine and try to stupid the malnutrition away instead.
Here’s a statement from Justice Singh, who apparently had to explain his reasoning when he ruled that when you murder your child because you’re stupid, it has to be at least a little bit illegal: (quote)
Did he just say “fuckin duh?”. I’m betting “fucking duh.”
“The law respects the right of everyone to freedom of thought and belief. However the right to manifest one’s religion is not absolute. It is limited in particular by the rights of others. The state has a particularly important duty to protect the right to life, especially when a young child is concerned.” (end quote)
So besides turning pro-life rhetoric against religion (tastes bitter doesn’t it), the Justice makes an extremely important distinction, that is really the crux of every argument about this. You can think and believe whatever you want, but you can’t manifest those beliefs in ways that threaten the lives of others, especially five-month-old children that are yours!!!
I noticed he also said that the couple’s views on Seventh Day Adventism were (quote) “very extreme and do not reflect the official doctrine of the church” (end quote) as though this absolves the religion from any wrong doing. Sorry, your honor, but anybody who pretended god existed or prayer did stuff has at least a little of this kid’s blood on their hands.
That’s right. A little bit of small pox infested infant blood on your hands. Can’t feel as good as you thought it would. Because you build it up as this great thing in your head. Inevitable letdown.
Parents jailed after trying to pray away baby’s fatal disease: http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/feb/28/parents-jailed-manslaughter-baby-rickets
And in “I’d Never Have Molested Them if You Aborted Them” news tonight, the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis is blaming a mother for allowing her children to be molested by one of their priests.
Well, he was a priest…
Reverend Curtis Wehmeyer, who I’ll grant couldn’t look more like a kiddie-diddler without a Pee-Wee Herman suit, molested two of her sons, age 12 and 14 and, upon discovering that the archdiocese knew he was a sexual predator before they hired him, she sued. And apparently they’re going with the “what kind of responsible parent would leave her kids with a Catholic priest?” defense.
Corollary to the “What kind of God would allow 12 and 14-year-old kids to be raped, without letting their mother win a large settlement which correctly puts a dollar value on the consent virginity and regular virginity of a child” … defense.
The mother was an employee of the church and felt that Wehmeyer (quote) “needed some friends” (end quote). So that nobody could mistake them for just half-assed evil, the archdiocese refused to let her use sick days or vacation days to care for her kids after this all came to light. What’s more, they reneged on a promise to pay for the kid’s therapy and they cut her hours back. And then they went to her house and ripped her kitten to pieces in front of her and pissed on her rug.
Minnesota diocese blames mom for letting her kids get molested by their priest: http://www.alternet.org/belief/outrageous-church-blames-mother-pedophile-priest-molesting-her-two-sons
And in “Praising the Steaks” news, the Kentucky Baptist Convention is promoting what they call “Second Amendment Celebrations”, encouraging churches to give away dead cow slices and deadly firearms to local heathens, if they’re willing to open a trial account with God. And despite nearly everyone in these flyover areas already owning livestock and murder weapons, the soul bribery seems to be working.
What’s funny is that in a way this reminds me of the story we covered a couple weeks ago about the racist “black history month” lunch menu. Because “Steak and guns” is probably the white trash equivalent of offering black people watermelon and cornbread. Except in this case the race being stereotyped is too stupid to realize it.
Their plan – reportedly labeled “outreach to rednecks” by a spokesman – sounds a lot like animated wabbit hunting … Luring godless Tea Partyers under a box, floating them by their nose with the cartoon smell of animal blood and gun oil, and then knocking the stick out that holds the box up.
Ooh… piece of candy.
Also, I’d like to preserve any extra half-minute segments we might have, so I’ll just quickly add, that a redneck meat retailer slash arms dealer should be called “Pistol Peter Luger”, “Beefed-Up Security”, or “Wal-Mart”.
Glad this is working, because plan B was the Duck Dynasty sex tape giveaway. And if you thought their facial hair was nasty…
Steak and guns for Jesus: http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20140228/FEATURES10/302280129/Kentucky-Baptists-use-gun-giveaways-lure-unchurched-men-Christ?nclick_check=1
And in “Bowing toward Megatron” news, an Iranian school teacher has developed the perfect Muslim; an unthinking automaton that does nothing useful and prays five times a day. Akbar Rezaie, who teaches mythology and doesn’t realize it at an elementary school in the Iranian town of Varamin has recently unveiled a small humanoid robot that he created to help teach children how to properly appease Muslim God.
If you follow the Koran and get to the Allah-Spark, you get 72 unused Sybian machines. Brand spankin’ new.
Rezaie hopes his robot will help make prostrating oneself before an invisible warlock “cool” again. Some people have criticized him for using cutting edge science to promote the opposite of science, but those allegations clearly overlook what a low-tech piece of shit his little robot really is.
What’s the robot’s name? … HALal 9000??? …
Also, I’d like to quickly note that the evil computer from “2001: A Space Odyssey” has the same name as Halliburton’s ticker symbol.
I’ll alert Alex Jones immediately.
Iranian teacher makes Prayer-bot: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/iranian-school-teacher-builds-robot-to-teach-children-prayers-9154038.html
And in “Catholic GeStopHo” news, an anti-prostitution operation in Phoenix, Arizona called Project ROSE is detaining suspected sex workers at a local church, and forcing them to choose between religious propaganda class and jail. And that’s a tough call, considering it’s risky to drop the soap at either venue.
Tough call… I don’t want Jesus inside me, but I don’t want Jesús inside me, either.
The orgasm specialists who wish to avoid prison must complete a 36-hour Jesus sexuality class, which teaches great ideas like prostitutes not using condoms.
(Or getting abortions)
In order to pass the program – which has a reported 30% graduation rate – the accused must also display sufficient amounts of sadness and shame. All sounds awful and stupid, but there is some good news … The First Amendment says the police have to wrangle whore-interns for atheist clubs too.
Now you tell me.
As long as we’ve got a bunch of sex workers forced into cages at church … The stage is set … And also, in honor of the Oscars last weekend … 30 seconds on the clock: “Religious Porn Parodies of Best Picture Nominees” … GO!!!
Okay, but first I want to thank god for giving me an award I don’t deserve rather than curing the disease the movie was about in the first place. And of course, the movie I’m referring to is The Phallus Buyers Club.
Good movie to watch with a cocktail …
What about: 12 Years Old A Slave
Topical. How about Little Mister Sunshine?
Kneeling in the Confessional Booth: Tales From The Squirt Locker
Diddler on the Roof… On the Roofies?
In the Shame of the Father
Fetal Attraction
Semen on the Brokeback Mount
The Maltese Fuckin’
The, uh, stuff that wet dreams are made of …
Lord of the Cock Rings Third Leg: The Second Coming of the King
Father Cassidy and the Un-pantsed Kid
The Father’s the Butch, and the kid’s the bitch …
50 Shekels of Silver Linings Playbook
Starring Jennifer Lawrence of the Labia?
Good climax, but it’s missing something … Might be “Consent of a Woman”
A Vicar Named Desire?
This doesn’t really count, but you’re gonna want some Schindler’s Listerine on set.
The Pleasure of the Sierra Padre
Working on a double, for the bonus points in Splatter-gories …
The Fugitive Priest: Around the World in 80 Gays
Million Dollar Baby-Fucking Settlement
Finding Neverland Ranch: The Kids Are All Tight
I think I already used “Priests of the Southern Child” for something, didn’t I?
You can reuse them. Okay one more try at the double bonus …
Vishnu’s Avat-Argo Fuck Yourself??? … I’ll show myself out.
Sex workers can have church or jail: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/02/28/project-rose-offers-sex-workers-a-choice-church-or-prison/
That’s alright, the band was playing us off anyway. So I guess that’ll do it for headlines this week, Heath, thanks as always.
Messiah-nara, bitches.
And when we come back Lucinda will be here to give you a double dose of biblical boredom.
Skit:
Hilarious email that I got this week that I absolutely had to share. If this is legit, and it honestly looks like it is, it’s from Ray Comfort. Apparently he’s aware of some aspects of our show and not others and he sent me this really complimentary message about how important it is for atheists to read the bible and how he’s sure Jesus will reveal himself to me along the way.
In fact, I guess he was so impressed by our commitment to get a broader perspective on the bible, he wanted to do, you know, whatever the theistic equivalent would be. Try something out that he dislikes and disagrees with in order to widen his perspective on it. So I guess him and Ken Ham got together and tried out gay sex.
And, as luck would have it, they were nice enough to send me audio of that erotic encounter.
I’m Ken Ham
Hi, I’m Ray Comfort
Well good evening.
When I arrived you had a hotel for me and a fruit basket
Oh he’s tall and muscley
Say that again?
He’s tall and he’s handsome and he’s the star. I’d really like to go out with him.
Thank you
Why do we wear clothes?
Well we all do that
See unless they’re taken off…
Can I just stop you there?
Don’t be intimidated.
There’s nothing I have to look at and say I’m embarrassed.
When it’s okay, whip it out.
Behold!
That’s a pretty big number, isn’t it?
How can you look at this beautiful creation and not give praise?
It’s enormous!
Notice how gracefully it sits over the human hand
A perfect creation
There’s a point at the top for easy entry and it’s just the right shape for the human mouth.
We weren’t told we could eat meat.
It’s even curved toward the face to make the process easier.
Yet another poke in the eye.
The contents don’t squirt in your face
But you don’t know and there’s a lot of evidence that that’s not so.
Okay it’s my turn
Check it out
There’s nothing I have to look at…
You don’t see that?
No I don’t.
I’m sort of little
Your dick. It’s this magic wand of nothing.
It’s not the outside that matters, it’s the inside.
Sir, this is a very important issue.
Now I want you to look at my point.
Well I said it was pathetic when I started
And what I want to show you is how this works.
Could you explain it to me?
This is where it comes from, right here.
That’s common sense.
Even if you’ve got a dead stick.
But you’re… you’re sprung.
There’s a book out there… With this diagram… They’re sitting one on top of the other
Why?
To make it gay
Tell me why
You’ll learn the lesson the hard way
If you could put your finger on…
No no no no no
Here’s a fork, stick it in there
But there’s limits.
Anything that fits.
No. We’re gonna look at dogs to help us understand this
I’ve gotta get to the bottom of this.
You know there was plenty of room.
Okay here it is
Okay, Alright
Oh, god!
Oh… oh…
And it’s a little difficult
It’s easy if you try
(Oh’s, Gods and Lords)
Wow!
This is so radical it’ll blow your mind
Of course it is
Sir I can’t go on, my brain is full
You have to let me finish
Would you come?
I came
You’re an animal.
Put another notch in my belt.
Why haven’t we already done this?
Babble:
Originally, the books of Ezra and Nehemiah were a single book and remain intact in the Hebrew Bible, which is odd, because the Hebrews aren’t really known for leaving things intact. Anyway, since they’re both short and they more or less tell a linear story, we elected to double up this week and give you twice the Babble.
Anything that gets us through it quicker. So in honor of Noah turning thirty-mumble, we decided to party hard with our Hebrew Lit Book Club. So happy birthday Noah!!!
And joining us, of course, in this masochistic endeavor is my lovely wife Lucinda. Lucinda, welcome back.
We always meet under the worst circumstances, the three of us..
Alright, so when we last left our intrepid heroes, they were scraping their way out of exile in Babylon.
-
Thanks to the good King Cyrus. He sends word to all the Jews that they can go back to Jerusalem and rebuild their temple, and he even gives back all the vessels of the house of the lord that Nebuchadnezzar stole
-
And apparently as they were reinhabiting the promised land they went through an amusement park turnstile and somebody checked IDs or something because in chapter two we get a precise headcount.
-
You approach the turnstiles leading into the ancient Jerusalem circus, and you know that when you get there, you have to give the man 2 shekels or he won’t let you in. But when you get there, everything goes wrong …
“Dogs fucked the Pope, no fault of mine.”
-
First things first, they celebrate Sukkot and then get to work rebuilding their temple.
-
The Sukkot tents doubled as a circus venue.
-
But the man always be holdin’ ‘em down. They start trying to build their temple but then the kids from the “cool” fraternity show up and start making trouble for them, so they have to stop.
-
“So you guys remember that Jewish tribe we enslaved, that we definitely can’t trust because we enslaved them after centuries of genocidal warfare? … Well Cyrus let them start building a giant God Castle again. Could be real God. Our prayers don’t do shit. Is this something we need to worry about?”
-
And you can tell that the bronze age FCC was getting on their ass about all the wars and genocides in season one, because when shit hits the fan in Ezra we get a vigorous letter-writing campaign.
-
I was hoping they would address the paperwork situation. Because building a temple, to an exotic God, without a permit, with- …
-
Within the Jerusalem city limits. That ain’t legal either.
-
I thought this was Trans-Euphrates?!? Are we not in Trans-Euphrates?!?
-
Eventually the Jews find all the necessary receipts and what-not and get permission to finish their temple, which they do.
-
And that’s great unless, of course, you’re a local bull, ram, lamb or goat, in which case you’ll be brutally slaughtered to appease Jew-God’s bloodlust.
-
-
And now that we’re two thirds of the way through the book we meet the titular Ezra, who know his Mosaic law like nobody’s business. And on the merit of this, King Artaxerxes gives him all of Jerusalem.
-
And then all of a sudden we’re in the first person, which is odd.
-
-
Taking over as objective narrator in God’s book … The balls on this guy!!!
-
So Ezra gathers a sufficient number of Jews, divvies up the cash, fast for a while and then head to the newly rebuilt temple.
-
Then he makes it very clear to everyone that the reason god exiled them was obvious: They weren’t being racist enough. So he make sure everyone knows to be extra racist this time around.
-
He even says that they can’t see to the “peace and prosperity” of the neighboring tribes so you’re not even allowed to be just passively racist.
-
-
The Middle East is like the crazy kid in school getting tricked into fighting the even crazier other kid. It’s a fun TV show for atheists … “Deluded Giant Squid vs. Equally Naive But Tribally Different Mega Shark”
-
So to keep Jew god from getting pissy again, Ezra orders anyone who married a foreigner to send away their wives and children…
-
And there’s even a detailed miscegeny list, with all the people who cheated and gave their kids illegal performance enhancers like dominant DNA.
So obviously Ezra just blew the right scribe to get his own book in the bible. The same is almost certainly true of Nehemiah, whose claim to fame was building a wall where once there was only most of a wall.
-
1. Right. First we meet Nehemiah, who spends chapter one shitting all over Ezra, basically. They rebuilt the temple, so he decides to lament the fact that they didn’t also do the wall.
-
2. So Nehemiah is all bummed. Meanwhile he’s landed this awesome gig “bearing the king’s cup” if you know what I mean.
-
So King Artaxerxes asks what he’s so bummed about, he tells him and the king’s like “Oh, here’s some lumber and stone. Have at it.”
-
Then he inspects the wall, including the unfortunately named “Dung Gate”
-
Talk about using the rear entrance
-
And then you get some blatant evidence planting. They’re working on the rebuild, and three rival officias – a Horonite, an Ammonite, and an Arab – might as well walk into a Jewish bar, and ask Nehemiah if his crew is gonna rebel against the king. So Nehemiah – as if wearing a wire – says: “Hello three people that represent the historical property rights of your entire future race, who agree that you have no claim, share, or historic right to Jerusalem whatsoever say-nothing-if-you-agree-forever-Done. Why do you guys care?!? “
-
-
3. And everybody goes out “Hands across Jerusalem” style and they all fix a little section of the wall.
-
6. And Sanballat, the mean-girl from a cheerleading movie of biblical villains, starts writing letters to Nehemiah telling him he’s gonna spread rumors about him and blow his boyfriend if he doesn’t stop building his wall.
-
7. And in case you missed the exhaustive list of which tribes all the returning exiles were from, we get it again in chapter seven.
-
If you want the book to be longer, just increase the margins, or the font size. Or add some chapters about morality. Or being reasonable. Or a “how-to” guide on reading allegories. Plenty of options.
-
-
8. Then they all get together to love god and live in booths.
-
9. And to be honest, I’m half convinced that if you started reading the bible at chapter nine of Nehemiah, you wouldn’t have missed much. Because Ezra spends this extremely long chapter going on and on about how awesome god is by rehashing most of the shit that’s happened so far in the book.
-
10. Then he drives home the two main points of the last six or seven books: One, god needs you to kill a lot of goats for him, and two, don’t forget to be racist. Whatever you do, don’t interbreed with any of those foreigners.
-
Yeah, let’s keep all these recessive genes to ourselves.
-
Withholding the blind, translucent, polydactyl piano prodigy. Smart.
-
“Stay Pale on three! One, two, three: STAY PALE!!! Jew-Ra!!!”
-
-
11. And lest you think we’re shitting you about how boring this book is, they spend chapter eleven telling which people moved to which towns as they repopulated.
-
“What?!? I’m making a detailed list of all the Jewish people, and their addresses … How would this backfire?!?”
-
-
12. And in a valiant effort to make chapter eleven seem interesting, they spend most of chapter twelve explaining who stood where during the ribbon cutting on their new wall.
-
13. Nehemiah then makes the mistake of turning his back for a second and within a few days priests are setting up rooms for their old frat buddies in the temple, they’re working on the Sabbath, they’re marrying foreigners.
-
Yeah, so he beats them and pulls out their hair.
-
Literally – Handfuls of soul-less ginger clumps.
-
Heck of a guy that Nehemiah.
-
So yeah, in summary the Jews are back and they have a temple and a wall again.
That’s all they really needed to say.
Esther’s up next and that’s another short one but it’s gonna get it’s own segment in episode 58 because something tells me we’re gonna want to spend a whole episode on Job. Anyway, thanks for bearing with it, guy and gal.
Outro:
Before we get played off tonight, I wanted to let everyone know about something I’m rather stoked about. At the behest of a number of listeners I spent the last few weeks compiling the first fifty diatribes into book form. Many of them have been rewritten or lengthened, and I’ve added a few paragraphs of introduction to each one so you can think of it as the director’s cut of the diatribes. More than a third of the book is all new material and that should be available as an ebook on the twentieth of March. We hope to have physical copies available by ReasonCon at the beginning of May. We’ll be talking that up a bunch over the next couple of weeks.
And if you were hoping for a poem tonight, sorry about that. It’ll be on next week’s show. Part of that was to make room for the scandalous Ham/Comfort sex tape, but after some discussion with Heath and Lucinda we’re all of the mind that it generally makes more sense to do the bible poems after we’ve reviewed the books in question rather than before.
That’s all the blasphemy we’ve got for you this week but we’ll be back in 168 hours with more. Between now and then I have to thank Heath for his continued commitment to excellence in excrement jokes; I need to thank Lucinda for all that she brings to the show and I need to thank David for providing this week’s Farnsworth quote and for his incredible generosity. Here’s hoping he sparked a bidding war to claim the title of our most generous donor ever.
But most of all, of course, I need to thank this week’s most valuable humans; Paul, Rebekah, Michael, Crystal, Andrew, Shane and Joel. Paul, whose mighty fists serve as the primary backup system for the Large Hadron Collider; Rebekah, who’s such a badass she has to let alligators tag-team when she wrestles them; Michael, whose dick is so big it has Lagrangian points; Crystal, whose intellect is so vast it could hold two of every unclean animal and seven of every clean one; Andrew who’s too sexy to play Jesus; Shane, whose biceps are powerful enough to run the flux capacitor; and Joel, who’s so hot Stacy’s mom sings songs about him.
These bright, shining examples of altruism have earned their spot in my anti-Putin bunker this week by giving us money. Only the smartest, strongest, sexiest secularists have what it takes to give us money, but if you feel like you’ve got all the requisite silibants, you’ll find the donate button on the right side of the page at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.
And, of course, if you love the show but you spent your entertainment budget on Romanian vampire porn, you can also help us out a ton by leaving us a glowing review on iTunes or whatever place you prefer to leave glowing podcast reviews. And if you just can’t get enough of us, be sure to like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, subscribe to us on YouTube and check out our erratically published blog.
If you have questions, comments or death threats, you’ll find all the contact info on the contact page at Scathing Atheist (dot) com. All the music used in this episode was written and performed by yours truly and yes, I did have my permission.
Episode 51 – Partial Transcript
by Heath Enwright, Noah Lugeons and Cecil & Tom
Note: Transcript contains portions that were edited from the final episode due to time constraints
Warning: This podcast contains all the dirty words Bill Nye wanted to say to Ken Ham on Tuesday night but couldn’t.
Sponsor:
This week’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Holy Whole Foods: Overpriced, Scripture-Approved Entire Groceries
Tired of secular supermarkets and their blatant disregard for ancient Middle Eastern dietary restrictions?!? Tired of their once-bitten synthetic produce, their partially-finished bottles of backwash, and their scooped out Reese’s Cups?!? For a large fee, we’ll change all that, and pay a guy to wave a wand near our warehouse.
Holy Whole Foods: Our Kosher Aisle is so big, it’s disputed by Palestine.
And now, the Scathing Atheist.
Intro:
It’s Thursday,
It’s February 6th,
And it’s the first week of White Guilt Month. Black jokes are still okay, but Asian jokes can be a slippery slope.
I’m Noah Lugeons,
I’m Heath Enwright and from “New Jersey’s Pimp”, New York, New York…
…and “Florida’s Ho”, Podunk, Georgia, this is the Scathing Atheist.
In this week’s episode,
-
We learn how to use bankruptcy to get free kid rapes,
-
Cecil and Tom will drop by for a little Cognitive Dissonance,
-
And we’ll end free speech, free sight, and free hearing … to make Helen Keller feel better.
But first, the diatribe.
Diatribe:
Time to hang up our spurs guys and gals. Turns out the war’s over… Apparently we won. Congrats. But now we’re done being atheists activists and we can just shut the fuck up about it. The Christians get it; they’re stupid, prayer doesn’t work and we all just die. They’ve decided to continue being religious anyway, but they get it so we don’t have to talk about it anymore. They’re still going to try to teach their religion in schools and claim legal exemptions based on it and influence foreign policy with it and shove it down our throats and everything, but they get it; there is no god.
And if you haven’t figured out what I’m sarcastically agreeing with yet, let me quickly summarize every god damn op-ed published about atheism by a major news outlet in the last three months.
“Hi, I’m an atheist, and like all atheists, I’ve always expressed my atheism by chasing religious people around after church and challenging them to explain the logistics of Noah’s Ark. I spent my days searching out religious people to berate about their stupid beliefs, until one day when I saw a sad person and they had a bible. And I realized that religion is a-okay and who am I to take that away from other people? Amen… I mean whatever we atheists say instead of Amen.”
I’ll link to a few examples in the shownotes but I hardly need to. This is the de facto media narrative about atheism moving into 2014. Atheists have had their say but now that all that stuff is out there we can just shut the fuck up about it. Religious people need their religion and if you try to take that away from them, you’re being a heartless prick.
The most egregious example I’ve seen was, no surprise, on the Guardian. In one of their bi-daily articles about what a racist asshole Richard Dawkins is last December holier-than-thou photographer Chris Arnade went so far as to claim that, and I quote “atheism is an intellectual luxury for the wealthy”. So down that <<Gran Patron>> and hide the rhodium plated triceratops skulls folks, they’re on to us.
He backs this up by claiming it several more times. His only citation is his anecdotal observation that a lot of heroin addicts are religious. Hey Chris, you know what else gives comfort to heroin addicts? Smack. I mean, while we’re using “things that comfort junkies” as our metric for societal benefit and everything…
This whole narrative is based on what can only be a purposeful misunderstanding of what motivates the atheist movement. Sure, we mercilessly mock the incestual implications of the Adam and Eve story and the sadistic perversity of the biblical god but that’s not what motivates us. We got into this not because we believe religion is silly, but because we believe it is harmful. The fact that it’s silly just makes it easier to mock.
In order to play the “poor people need religion” gambit, you have to first concede that religion is a beneficial force which is, of course, the exact opposite of what we believe. The author makes no attempt to justify the unspoken assumption that religion plays some positive role in the lives of these addicts. He just points out that a lot of them pray and have bibles. A lot of them have track marks and HIV too, so I’m not sure what point he thought he was making, but clearly it’s some derivation of the “Smart, affluent people like us can be atheists, but these lesser people need their psychologically-crippling, laughably antiquated paradigm.”
But even if you set that all aside and grant Chris’ wildly indefensible assertion that religion provides a comfort to destitute people that a secular worldview couldn’t, his point would still be meaningless. Who’s to say that geocentrism wouldn’t provide the same comfort? After all, thinking that the sun revolves around you would make you feel way more important, wouldn’t it? And wouldn’t we all be a little bit happier every day if we believed that Kermit the Frog was a real dude that we might someday happen upon at the deli? Wouldn’t we all feel better? Wouldn’t it give our lives more meaning?
So I’ll make a deal with you, Chris. I’ll try to keep my “slapping the bible out of the hands of heroin addicts” to a minimum, but I’m not throwing in the towel just yet. I didn’t sign the armistice, so anybody who wants to wave their white flag is free to do so, but I’ll keep my spurs on, thank you very much. Vive la raison!
Guardian Piece: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/24/atheism-richard-dawkins-challenge-beliefs-homeless
Headlines:
Joining me for headlines tonight is a man who hates more people by 9am than most people hate all day, Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to unload some pre-breakfast avarice?
This is word for word, what the guy in front of me at the bagel store said to the cashier. I burned it into my brain as I walked home: (quote) “It’s been really cold, but I heard it’s getting warmer today. Seems like everything happens in 20 year cycles. I guess that contradicts Al Gore’s global warming theory, like in books. I’m not a scientist, but I reed the internet. Gotta sell those newspapers. Anything’s possible.” (end quote) This is a full-grown adult human being.
Did you follow him long enough to see if he got the bagel into the correct orifice? I’m dying to know now.
Well his 47th chromosome kept dangling in the way, but for better or worse, he put the bagel in the same orifice the bullshit was coming out of earlier. Interesting two way valve … Bagel entry, bullshit exit.
Frees up room in his ass for his head, I suppose.
In our lead story tonight, from the “Mean jokes hurt my vagina through my legal briefs” file, Fordham University law professor and Willy Wonka stunt double – Thane Rosenbaum – is suggesting the First Amendment needs to stop protecting the mean kid that picked on him in school. Apparently he would always fuck up the rubber and glue thing, so he decided it’s probably best to constitutionally ban all speaking, if you don’t have something nice to say. Religious whiners have to promise not to abuse the proposed law.
And for the record, Heath’s not being vague here or anything. This dude is actually calling for the criminalization of words that hurt people’s feelings.
Rosencrantz argues (quote) “In placing limits on speech we privilege physical over emotional harm. Indeed, we have an entire legal system, and an attitude toward speech, that takes its cue from a nursery rhyme: ‘Stick and stones can break my bones but names can never hurt me.'” (end quote) … Yes!!! Of fucking course we do!!! Of fucking course we have a legal system that says physical harm is worse than emotional harm!!!
Not according to Rosenstein. He claims that emotional harm is even worse than physical harm. So I propose an experiment. Me and him, in a room. He gets a thesaurus, I get a ball peen hammer. Whoever cries uncle first loses. Science, bitches.
And it’s good, observational science. Maybe you could murder Ken Ham with a hammer too. I don’t like the fact that bigots and racists are allowed to talk, but I don’t always sell the sarcasm when I talk, so I’d be censored all the time too. If we’re drawing a line … “No being attacked with sticks and stones by constitutionally protected violent packs of Neo-Nazis” seems like a reasonable place. But you have to let them say ‘kike’, or else I can’t say ‘kike’ ironically like this.
Also, I left a comment on the article saying I was offended by the article and he didn’t take it down, so clearly this is all lip-service.
Exactly!!! Guildenstern seems to be ignoring the fact that ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING is offensive to some over-sensitive asshole. SCIENCE is offensive to a good chunk of this country!!! … I won’t mention any names – but there’s a Muslim religion out there that was incited to violent riots and murder plots, when a newspaper released some cartoon drawings of their dude. This is America, and our founding fathers intended for us to make YouTube videos of Muhammad getting hit in the crotch with a shovel, and sharing a cup with two girls. Can a brotha get a mental image fatwa?!? Please – I’m begging!!!
Mean jokes hurt my vagina: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/01/30/should-neo-nazis-be-allowed-free-speech.html <<and>> http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/02/04/law-professor-says-free-speech-in-the-u-s-goes-too-far-wants-to-criminalize-causing-hurt-feelings
And in “Go ahead and set up the clock right away” news, Pope Frango Unchained reserved himself at least 30 seconds of coverage on our show by blessing the parrot of an Italian porn star and former world-champion of male strippers with the stage name “GuyBlowj”.
Popes are bless-whores, though. He’s out there in St. Peter’s Square; “I’ll bless this bitch, I’ll bless that bitch… I’ll bless anything that moves!!!”
“I hate guys!!! I love birds!!!” So that all happened. Might as well get straight to it. I guess we’re looking for papal porn titles with bird involvement??? … And it’s almost like he’s challenging us – personally – to work all three concepts into the segment. I say we fucking do it!!! This might be the first ever list of triple entendre religious porn titles with birds. Right here, exclusively on The Scathing Atheist!!! Christian Pornithology Titles: GO!!!
Okay, but the transcript of this show is gonna link some pretty fucked up search terms to our blog… how about… fuck, this is really hard. How about… you go first.
“Mass Pirates of the Caribbean” … Someone would fuck the parrot at some point. Or maybe the parrot- you get the idea.
“Rectums in the Rectory: The Back Door to Parrot-ice”
“Fowl Balls with the Taint Louis Cardinals” … Tagline: “Sliding Head First Into Third Base”
Pope Who’s Your Fraddy and his Papal Balls in “Whip Out Your Tits”… because, you know, tits are a type of bird. Or hooters. I could have gone hooters. Or boobies.
“What Would Jesus Goo: Osprey it Forward”
“Canary-Caged Clergy: Albatrossing the Salad”
In honor of the champs … “Holy SeeHawks Tight End Vultures Touch Down There.”
And in honor of the 8th runner up for the last NFC Wild Card spot, “Jesus Falcon Christ”
“Priests Bask in Robin the Cradle”
The Cockring of the Kingfisher-man
“Blowing Through Bible College: Loads of Sermon Are Easy to Swallow”
“Woody Good-Pecker: Confessionals of a Sapsucker”
The Penis Miter than the Sword … Bird- Fuck!!! …
Pope blesses male porn star’s pet parrot: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/31/pope-francis-porn-star-parrot_n_4703413.html?utm_hp_ref=religion
And in “Muggin’ Queers for Jesus” news tonight, Colorado Springs fundamentalist reverend Michael Abromovich proved this week that it’s getting harder and harder to break into “Anti-gay pastor caught with gay prostitute” newscycle fame this week by adding a new twist. Instead of just fucking them and condemning them to hell, Abromovich allegedly kidnapped and robbed his man-whores while impersonating a police officer. Because felonies are like Pokemon.
And STDs, if you’re fucking gay prostitutes.
According to reports, the rascally reverend found his victims on a special website reserved for felonious perverts in search of vulnerable targets called “Craig’s List”. He would then arrange for a romantic rendezvous with them and when they arrived he would announce himself as a US Marshall, then handcuff and rob them.
Well the way some of these gay whores were dressed in their profile pic, they’re almost asking for it. Seriously though, if you actually wanted to sell that service, how do you legally advertise “I’ll be the terrorist’s wife, and you be the FBI Agent that abducts me and tortures me at GitMo.”???
A question I’ve been asking myself for years. An imaginary spokesman for Abromovich’s church told the Scathing Atheist that (quote) “It’s alright on account of he was just robbin’ ‘em, not fuckin’ ‘em in the butthole… so god’s cool with it”
Pastor hired male prostitutes and then robbed them by pretending to be a cop: http://www.christianpost.com/news/colo-pastor-charged-with-impersonating-police-robbery-and-kidnapping-after-propositioning-men-on-craigslist-113551/
And in “Decepti-Con” news tonight, the Southern Baptist Convention is hosting an event in Nashville aimed at teaching pastors how to trick people into abstaining from things like watching porn, being gay, … and being straight from age thirteen through nineteen.
Hmm… Well I guess nothing inspires abstinence like a southern baptist sex convention. Shame the pope blessed that parrot-fucker or we could put a few seconds on the clock for some Baptist abstinence porn.
I’d like to assume the general theme at this thing would be that nearly every single set of sexual behaviors is better than the church’s current go-to scandal makers. But even if they decided to be bold and come out against rabid homophobia and organized pedophilia, I’m sure they’ll have some nuanced panel discussions to really think it all through.
Yeah, because the absurd denial of the most potent animalian instinct has been working so well for them so far…
The church claims it might reword its current stance on sex, which reads something like: “Build up blue balls for about a decade, and then lose your virginity on your wedding night over the course of one pump, at which point you blow a 10-year load down her Fallopian Tubes like a shotgun, spawning octuplets. Repeat this 5-second experience once every nine months until your wife’s vagina explodes.”
Southern Baptist Convention to sponsor sex summit: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/01/27/topics-at-summit-hosted-by-southern-baptist-leadership-include-teen-sex/
And finally tonight, in “Helena Handbasket” news tonight, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Helena, Montana will become the latest diocese to declare bankruptcy in connection with forcing their cocks into children. The diocese is accused of covering up the molestation of at least 362 children in a state with the population density of the Sahara desert, so I guess kudos for finding that many kids of raping age.
That many unwilling kids … of raping age. By the way, what is the age of non-consent in Montana? Same as Vatican City?
A spokesman for the Vatican said, (quote) “Don’t worry about it, we’ve got plenty of money and we want to make sure that those poor victimized children that were subject to our sinister and willful neglect get full monetary restitution for the sadistic crimes we knowingly subjected them to, so we’ll step in and cover the bill” (end quote) adding (quote), “No, I’m fucking with you, we don’t give a shit about raped kids.”
It would be offensive to put a dollar value on rape victimhood, so they’re putting no dollars on it. If you’re willing to wait in the long “rape victim” line … which must operate like a busy DMV at this point … the Vatican can get you some shekels and a railroad bond.
No, the raped kids are getting some cash in the settlement. As it turns out there is a dollar value on one’s innocence and prepubescent anal virginity and that value is a little under forty grand before taxes. As part of the negotiated settlement the church will pay out 2.5 million dollars of the total 15 million they were ordered to pay to the 362 known victims of just this diocese. The remaining 12.5 million will be paid by insurers which means that, whatever they choose to call it, Catholic churches have “butt-raping-children” insurance.
Gotta cover your ass … When Geico wrote that policy, the premium must have been tiny. “What should I charge these guys? There’s NO WAY the Catholic Church is gonna systematically cover up thousands of clergy rapes … is there? Why would anyone even ask for this type of insurance?”
Well according to Thane Jewy-name from the lead story, at least these priests had the decency to rape their assholes instead of calling them assholes.
This show is so fucking highbrow that we have anti-semitic Hamlet references built in with our rape jokes. Shakespeare bitches!!!
Catholic Diocese in Montana files for bankruptcy with 350+ abuse settlements pending: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20140131/NATION/301310087/1041/LIFESTYLE04/Catholic-diocese-Montana-file-bankruptcy-protection
And on that liberal application of gravitas, we’ll close the headlines segment. Heath, thanks for joining me.
Jumanji!
And when we return Cecil from Cognitive Dissonance will be here to see which of us can say fuck more times in ten minutes.
Skit:
NOAH
Joining us tonight is intrepid podcaster and reigning champion of the Fantasy Football League of Sinister Secularists, Cecil from the Cognitive Dissonance Podcast. Cecil, welcome to the Scathing Atheist.
CECIL
Thanks for having me on.
NOAH
I invited you on to talk about your extremely funny and well-produced podcast, but before we get to that I suppose I should congratulate you. As many of our listeners know, we both participated in a Secular Podcasters’ Fantasy Football League this season and met in the championship game, where you exploited the unfair advantage of having both the number one fantasy quarterback in the league and the number one fantasy running back in the league to narrowly defeat me.
CECIL
Responds with good sportsmanship and humility
NOAH
Now you and your partner Tom do an excellent podcast called Cognitive Dissonance where you tackle atheist and skeptical issues with the same vulgar irreverence that Heath and I strive for here. In the past three years, you’ve interviewed some of the leading lights in the skeptical movement including David Silverman, Matt Dillahunty, Seth Andrews, Mike Hall, Sean Faircloth, DJ Grothe, George Hrab and Michael Marshall. So my first question to you is how the fuck does a person win a fantasy championship when they’re starting Logan-fucking-Paulsen at tight end?
CECIL
It’s actually funnier than that – I drafted Heath Miller, who was hurt for 4 weeks of the season, then when he got better he scored as many fucking points as he did on the bench. The Logan Paulsen thing was trying to fill a roster spot through free agency at the end of the year… You know like most of your team. HA HA Just Kidding! [Thinking you are joking around] No, it’s been great. We’ve had good guests…. blah blah blah
NOAH
Okay, and I guess the obvious question is whether it’s harder or easier to do your show every week with the guilty knowledge that you crushed the hopes and dreams of everyone else in our fantasy league. Have you lost any sleep over that?
CECIL
If anything I’ve been sleeping better. I find that my natural melatonin levels go up the more dreams that I crush. [still thinking you are joking around]
NOAH
Well, did it ever occur to you that for you to win, that meant everybody else in the world had to NOT win? That doesn’t eat away at you like a carnivorous bacteria? Because I think it should.
CECIL
Ummm – bro, it’s just a game…. Can we talk about podcasting now?
NOAH
Yeah… Sorry. I just… okay, so you and Tom have been a team for quite some time. You’ve recorded over one hundred and thirty episodes of Cognitive Dissonance and before that you guys did a movie review podcast together.
CECIL
Everyone’s a Critic, yeah.
NOAH
So do you think that your friendship will suffer if Tom ever learns what a heartless cheater you are when it comes to Fantasy Football?
CECIL
How the fuck did I cheat? I didn’t make a single trade all year. What, did I crack in the back end of Yahoo sports? How the fuck could you possibly cheat at Fantasy Football?
NOAH
A secret you’ll no doubt take to your grave.
CECIL
Do you have any actual podcast related questions for me, or did you just invite me on so you can be butt hurt about me beating you at Fantasy Football?
NOAH
Okay, I’ve got a podcast related question for you, Cheaty McCheaterson, do you cheat at that too? Do you just download your own show over and over again to move up the iTunes ranks?
CECIL
Did you fucking get multiple accounts to give us negative ratings? Jesus christ – I’m done.
NOAH
Yeah, you know, I figured you’d plead the fifth at some point, so I brought along a character witness as well. So in our best podcasting equivalent to someone running out from backstage slapping and pulling hair, after you failed a lie detector test about fatherhood, Tom, do we have you on the line?
TOM
Yep.
NOAH
Tom, welcome to the show, you are by far my favorite co-host of Cognitive Dissonance and, as I understand it, the one that never cheats at Fantasy Football.
TOM
Thanks. You have excellent taste in Cognitive Dissonance hosts.
NOAH
So, Tom, how much do you know about Fantasy Football?
TOM
About as much as I know about lunar geography.
NOAH
Okay, so let me give you a brief description…
TOM
I’d rather you didn’t…
NOAH (Talking over TOM)
It’s a game where friends get together and predict which players they think will perform the best each week. And it’s really fun until somebody like Cecil comes through and sucks all the joy out of it like a grid-iron succubus. So my question to you is, in your experience, is Cecil a big, fat cheater?
TOM
Well… he’s big and fat.
CECIL
Tom, I’ve watched you eat a whole half a cow in one sitting. You unhinged your jaw like a python so you could fit more in your face.
NOAH
So Cecil, when you’re cheating at Fantasy Football, do you find it easier if you dehumanize your opponents or do you just have a sociopathic disjunction with human empathy?
CECIL
(Sighs) Alright, Noah, enough. We get it, you’re a sore loser.
NOAH
Not when I lose fair.
CECIL
You started Jay Cutler at Quarterback! You put Percy Harvin on your roster 6 fucking weeks before he was healthy! You started Dwayne Bowe, for fuck’s sake. He hadn’t had a good game all season. Look, you invited me on to this show to talk about our podcast. If I’d known you were just gonna berate me for kicking your ass at Fantasy, I wouldn’t have bothered.
NOAH
Kicking my ass!? You won by less than four points!
TOM
Should I just go get a burger or something?
CECIL
It’s amazing what four well placed points can do….
NOAH
…Cheat Loaf Sandwich…
CECIL
When you…
NOAH
…Trick or Cheat…
CECIL
Alright, listen…
NOAH
…I’ll listen on my “Cheats by Dr. Dre” headphones.
CECIL
Okay, I’m done.
NOAH
Fine. Then I’m done too.
CECIL
Fine.
NOAH
Fine.
(a second of awkward silence)
TOM
C’mon guys. We’re all friend’s here.
NOAH
I’m not friends with… Cheater Frampton over there. [Cheater frampton made me lol]
TOM
C’mon, Noah… we all set aside some time this evening, set up the gear… it’s not too late to salvage the interview.
NOAH
Well, I’m not talking to Cheatwood Mac until he apologizes for cheating in the championship game.
CECIL
Until I apologize? I think if anybody here deserves an apology, it’s me.
NOAH
Tom, can you tell Don Cheatle over there that I don’t apologize to cheaters?
CECIL
Oh for fuck’s sake!
TOM
(Awkwardly) Cecil, Noah… um… doesn’t apologize…
CECIL
(Sternly) I heard him Tom.
NOAH
You see? You see how he gets?
CECIL
How I get!? You’re acting like a four year old. And what’s more, you do this all the time. You got like this every time you lost a match all year.
NOAH
Tom, can you tell Cecil, “Did not”?
TOM
Cecil, Noah says, “did not.”
CECIL
Really? Well it turns out that I also brought along a character witness. Heath, do we have you on the line?
HEATH
Yo.
CECIL
So Heath, you were in this fantasy football league with Noah and I. Let me ask you, is he a sore loser?
HEATH
He once put his head through my rear windshield over a game of washers. <<Game wasn’t even over yet.>>
CECIL
And in your estimation, is he a childish dick a lot of the time?
HEATH
Not only is he a childish dick, but according to Lucinda, he has a childish dick as well. <<Like a roll of quarters.>> [DIMES]
NOAH
Hey!
TOM
My wife says there’s nothing wrong with that.
CECIL
He’s like that when he does the podcast, too, isn’t he?
HEATH
We only recorded one segment with our dicks out, and I didn’t- Oh you mean being a draconian bastard… yeah.
CECIL
I don’t know why you do it. You know, you don’t have to put up with an abusive co-host.
HEATH
It’s tough, but I don’t want to do the editing.
CECIL
It’s not that hard.
NOAH
Tom, can you tell Heath that I’m no longer talking to him, either?
TOM
Heath, Noah’s not…
CECIL
Is recording with him always like this?
HEATH
Yep.
NOAH
Tom, can you tell Heath to tell Cecil that it is not?
CECIL
You know, Heath, we might have room for you over at Cognitive Dissonance, if it can help get you out of this abusive relationship.
HEATH
Really?
CECIL
Sure. You’re way funnier than Tom.
TOM
Wait, what?
CECIL
Sorry, bro, but it’s true. Have you heard this dude when he gets going?
TOM
(Offended) Well… Noah, can you tell Cecil that “Fuck you”?
NOAH
No, because I’m not talking to him, but I can text Heath and ask him to tell him.
CECIL
Just think about how much easier your life could be, Heath.
NOAH
Okay then, you know what, fuck it. Tom and I are gonna make our own show. C’mon Tom…
(Fade in Cog-Dis theme)
TOM
This is the Cognitive Atheist. Every episode we blast anyone who gets in our way; we put 30 seconds on the clock; we bring critical thinking, skepticism and naughty bible stories to any topic that makes the news, makes it big or makes for good dick jokes. It’s scathing, it’s political and there is no Cecil or Heath. This is episode number… um…(sound of shuffling through papers)
NOAH
One, Tom. This is episode one.
TOM
Right. Episode one.
Outro:
Before we declare victory tonight, I wanted to let everybody know about a very awesome book they might want to pick up. Just got a copy of it myself and I can’t recommend it enough. For those of you who have neglected our numerous warnings that reading the bible sucks and insist on reading along with the Holy Babble segment anyway, I’d like to recommend Steve Wells’ excellent “Skeptic’s Annotated Bible”, which gives you the full King James along with the kind of commentary and annotations our audience craves in a bible. We’ll try to get Steve on the show soon to talk about this massive undertaking, but between now and then you can pick up a copy on Amazon or check it out online at SkepticsAnnotatedBible.com. You’ll find a link on the shownotes.
Skeptic’s Annotated Bible on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Skeptics-Annotated-Bible-Steve-Wells-ebook/dp/B00I76ROXK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1391705185&sr=8-1&keywords=the+skeptic%27s+annotated+bible
Online Version: http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/
That’s all the blasphemy we have for you tonight, but if you want more, there’s more. I had the honor of being the first guest panelist on the new podcast Atheistically Speaking (from the people that brought you Thomas and the Bible) and you’ll be able to hear that… I believe next Thursday, but I’ll be posting links on Facebook, Twitter and the blog as soon as they’re available so keep up with us there.
Atheistically Speaking Podcast: http://atheisticallyspeaking.com/
Oh, and I’ve been told a number of times that I should spell it out, so if you want to find me on Twitter it’s at Noah Lugeons, that’s @NOAH (underscore) LUGEONS.
And speaking of Twitter, I wanted to thank Twitter Atheist extraordinaire “Secular Bloke” for providing this week’s Farnsworth quote. One of my favorite online Twitter-ologists, definitely worth a follow. I also, of course, need to thank Tom and Cecil for being such good sports. When I asked them to come on and do a skit with us, I doubt they were expecting me to send over a ten page script so thanks a ton for that. And of course, if you haven’t checked out their show, you’ve gotta do that. If you like our show, which, let’s face it, you do, you’re probably gonna like theirs as well. Same blasphemously vulgar lack of a moral compass as you get here, but longer. You’ll find a link to their website on the shownotes for this episode as well.
Secular Bloke on Twitter: https://twitter.com/secularbloke
Cognitive Dissonance Podcast: http://dissonancepod.com/
But of course, we reserve our heartiest thanks for this week’s most distinguished disbelievers; Vin, Deb, Donovan, Michael, Alden, Alan, the very worth checking out Robives.com, Derek, Don, Crystal, Jeffrey, Krithika, Duffamongus, Stephen, Shawn the female, Sean the male, Ted, Dylan, Lawrence, Mike, Andrew, Dan, Will, the Scathing Atheist’s official Washington state secular wedding specialists, Puget Sound Celebrant Services and Richard.
These twenty six exceptional people, websites and secular wedding specialists have earned eternally archived praise and gratitude this week by giving us money. Only the most praiseworthy and salient people have what it takes to give us money, but if you think you share Vin, Deb, Donovan, Michael, Alden, Alan, the very worth checking out Robives.com, Derek, Don, Crystal, Jeffrey, Krithika, Duffamongus, Stephen, Shawn the female, Sean the male, Ted, Dylan, Lawrence, Mike, Andrew, Dan, Will, the Scathing Atheist’s official Washington state secular wedding specialists, Puget Sound Celebrant Services and Richard’s praiseworthy salience, you’ll find the donate button on the right side of the homepage at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.
And if you’d like to help but lack the financial resources or the salient praiseworthiness to make a monetary donation, you can also help us a ton by taking a minute to leave us a glowing review on iTunes, sharing the show on whatever social media sites you frequent and telling a friend about the show.
If you have questions, comments or death threats, you’ll find all the contact info on the contact page at Scathing Atheist (dot) com. All the music used in this episode was written and performed by yours truly and yes, I did have my permission.
Episode 49 – Partial Transcript
by Heath Enwright and Noah & Lucinda Lugeons
Note: Transcript contains elements that were removed from the episode due to time constraints
Warning: This podcast contains explicit language in three… two… fuck.
Sponsor:
Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Pro-Scripture Strength Biblenol. Perfect for those biblically inspired headaches. It’s stronger than Prayer-Bayer and longer lasting than Bibliuprofen.
Biblenol; because somehow the Historical Books are even worse than the Pentateuch.
And now, the Scathing Atheist.
Intro:
It’s Thursday,
It’s January 23rd,
And the extra week before the Superbowl is worse for the NFL than Junior Seau.
I’m Noah Lugeons,
I’m Heath Enwright and from pro-federate enclave New York, New York,
And forcibly de-federate, Podunk, Georgia, this is the Scathing Atheist
On this week’s episode,
-
We revel in the joy of getting piss drinking and nun fucking in the same news cycle.
-
We’ll learn how to rape like a Muslim,
-
And Lucinda will join us to put on our Monocles to read One Chronicles
Beating me to the poem, I see. But first, the diatribe…
Diatribe:
My inbox is full of idiots.
As you may know, the other day I went on the most excellent Cognitive Dissonance podcast and gave Tom and Cecil a Tarot card reading. And since then I’m getting a vodka-piss stream of woo-merchants and dipshits emailing me to tell me just how wrong I’ve got it.
To their credit, these aren’t people who are actively out there scamming people and telling them “you’re grandma is gonna get cancer if you don’t donate a hot tub to the next person they lay eyes on… hey, hey, I’m over here” or anything. They almost certainly aren’t charging for their services, and they’re not consciously deceiving anyone. These are just people who have gotten really good at deceiving themselves.
The way they justify their pseudo-scientific hobby is by pointing out that Tarot isn’t about fortune-telling, it’s about divination; it’s about helping people through their problems with universal symbolism. It’s a way to reinforce positive messages and give people hope. It’s just a structured way for someone to try to see their problems from a new angle. What’s the harm in that?
Well, as I pointed out last Monday when I did the reading for Tom and Cecil which you can hear on episode number one hundred and thirty-four of their fine program, there’s plenty of harm. If your goal is to help people through their problems and aid them in seeing things from a new angle, don’t you think you should have some kind of qualification to do that beyond a spare fourteen bucks when you were at Spencer’s Gifts?
It’s belittling to psychologists and psychiatrists to think that any jackass who memorized the Zodiacal influences of some pretty pictures can step in and do their job with no chance of fucking it up. It’s the human psyche, for fuck’s sake; the most complicated thing that we know about. And you’re just gonna dive in there with nothing but the Idiot’s Guide to Vague Verbosity and ask me what’s the harm?
Now that should be all the answer I have to give, but it isn’t all the answer that I can give. Whatever spiritual caveats you might offer, as soon as you start shuffling your deck, you’re putting yourself in a position of authority that you didn’t have to do anything to earn. And it’s gonna be damned easy to take advantage of the person across the table. Even if you don’t succumb to that temptation, you’re just priming the pump for the less principled person that comes after you. And for what? So that you can spend half an hour giving them what DJ Groethe calls your “Aw shucks advice”?
You may think you’re giving them a positive message, but how the fuck do you know? You tell somebody to focus on what makes them happy, but you don’t know how much they love torturing rats with hacksaws. You tell them to never give up on love but you don’t know about the restraining order. You tell them to follow their dream but you don’t know if they dream about disemboweling postal workers.
People who are looking for help shouldn’t be pissing away time checking with sorcerers first. That goes for Tarot card readers, psychics, necromancers, astrologers, palm readers and crystal gazers and pastors, priests, bishops, reverends, rabbis, mullahs and monks. They should instead go to somebody who is qualified to help them through science-based means and they shouldn’t have to navigate a complicated menu to find them.
And yes, I group all of the above in the same category. I’ll freely admit that religious leaders are almost universally better trained to help people with personal crises, but at the same time they’re deferred a lot more authority because of it. For every person who would discount their doctor’s advice on the word of their cartomancer, there are a million who would do so on the advice of their priest. They’re given even more authority and even more opportunity to abuse it. And just like I’d say of the Tarot reader, the honest ones are just priming the adolescent buttocks for the dishonest ones.
Consider the strict licensing and regulation on psychiatrists and psychologists. If it came to light that a psychologist was sleeping with one of their patients, it would probably be a career ending scandal. But as Dr. Darrel Ray points out in both The God Virus and Sex and God, anybody who stays in a church long enough will hear about some pastor sleeping with some congregant. Sometimes the pastor is quietly moved to another church. Sometimes they’re not. But no horny pastor has ever lost his license to past over it.
And I don’t think I need to tell you that nobody ever lost their license to read tarot cards over any abuse of any kind ever.
There is no “harmless bullshit”. And I don’t really care how many paragraphs you can cram into an email, you’re never going to convince me that your faith is quantitatively better that the other faiths just because yours has playing cards.
Headlines:
Joining me for headlines tonight is hyperborean Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to migrate?
It is fucking freezing here. But I’m like an African swallow. The bird, not the ebony porn title. Non-migratory.
Don’t worry, I’m sure if the Weather Channel had an eleven day forecast there would be a high above freezing on it.
In our lead story tonight, from the “Sister Cum Mother” file, a nun working in Italy failed to plan her parenthood very well and recently gave birth, opting instead for termination of her job, for breaking the vow of chastity. According to her account, God secretly fucked her while she was masturbating on an airplane, but despite the well-known Joseph v. Mary precedent, her immaculate conception alibi was ignored.
Because it couldn’t just be that some nun fucked a dude multiple times. Because how the hell could that be international news, right? Nun fucks wouldn’t make ink on four continents, would it? So clearly there was some divine vine involved.
The ‘Last Scion’ released the following statement: (quote) “It was God’s dick … and I was married to God at the time. Just wait … My half-brother Jesus is gonna be right back, and he’ll tell you.” (end quote)
And apparently putting her money where her mouth is on the issues of contraception and abortion didn’t earn her any favor in the eyes of the Holy See.
As a tribute to the Scathing Atheist, and our mocking nicknames for Pope Francesco Rinaldi, the new mom named her son Francesco. Despite this revelation bringing down the average severity of their scandals considerably, the church feels like this has been a public embarrassment. And once again, Catholic leaders have a tail between their legs because of a child.
Well, I’m not just gonna come out and say that the Pope’s her baby-daddy, but he has shown a recent interest in tits.
Nun gives birth after seemingly immaculate conception: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/vaticancityandholysee/10581481/Nun-gives-birth-to-baby-named-after-Pope.html
And moving on to the “Ringing Endorsement From the Voices in my Head” file we bring you an update to a story we covered back in episode 38. You’ll recall Pennsylvania State Representative Rick Saccone from Heath making jokes about how his last name kind of sounds like a reference to testicular amputation.
And we all learned a valuable lesson: Buy your anal beads from the store.
And remember he said buy… not rent. In addition to Saccone’s lopsided nuts, we also discussed his braindead brainchild HB 1728, a proposal that calls for the words “In God we Trust” to be prominently displayed in every Pennsylvania classroom. While trying to justify this crevasse-wiping use of the constitution on a local television show last Sunday, Saccone claimed that the bill had the backing of the atheist community. He cited the off-the-record support of the unnamed head of “Pennsylvania Atheists”, a group that neither speaks for all atheists, nor exists.
Saccone’s running a board meeting: “We’re losing numbers. Gotta do something. Now keeping in mind I already printed a bunch of these … You guys think it’s all the hating women and fags, or you think it’s not enough propaganda posters?”
Of course, we’re all used to religious people taking advice from people who don’t exist so that came as no surprise. What really caught my eye on this story was his claim that “god” isn’t a divisive term since atheists can make it (quote) “whatever god they worship in the form of maybe […] materialism”. So yeah, we atheists can just pray to materialism so what are we so pissed about?
PA state rep makes up some atheists, pretends they support his proposal: http://www.examiner.com/article/atheists-demand-state-representative-apologize
And in “The Other Santorum” news, the Maldives has added ‘tape’ to the list of sticky red stuff that goes with rape. Abdulla Yameen, president of the Islamic theocracy, has vetoed a proposed law that would make it illegal to rape your wife while she fills out divorce paperwork. He called the rape ban (quote) “un-Islamic”.
Well good for it. What higher ethical standard can a law aspire to than “un-Islamic”?
This means two things … 1: Islam has justified rape! … and 2: The Islamic idea of justified rape specifically includes those awkward months before the woman gets tried for divorce. So just to be clear … You’re a woman, and you find out the hard way that you married a righteous rapist, and now you want a divorce. Getting your consent back, is harder than getting a gun. There’s a trial and a lengthy waiting period. Fortunately for women, the divorce settlement process itself, does not take very long, because women don’t own property.
In some cases, though, I think the husband can get visitation rights to the vagina on weekends.
According to the Religion News Service: (quote) “The bill says a husband cannot force his wife to have sex if the couple have filed for divorce, dissolution or mutual separation, and if the intent is to transmit a sexual disease.” (end quote) … So the bill didn’t even target rapists with AIDS, unless they were actively intending to infect their victim. Am I crazy, or did someone just use religion to defend the rights of AIDS-spreading rapists?!? Do we really need to keep making this podcast?!?
Maldivian President declared law against marital rape “un-islamic” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/17/marital-rape-bill-maldives_n_4611006.html?utm_hp_ref=religion
And from the “Golden Calf Showers” file, a Hindu cult in northern India is touting the medicinal benefits of drinking pre-dawn virgin cow urine. So they’re not complete idiots … At least they don’t go out there in the middle of the fucking day, and drink piss from slutty octo-mom cows, like a crazy person. Slutty cow piss burns when you drink it from the herpes. Either way, they’re giving a new meaning to the term India Pale Ale (or IPA).
Of course, it’s worth noting that this story comes to us from the paragon of journalistic integrity that is the Daily Mail, so we’ll take it with a grain of creatinine, but we’re reporting on it anyway because they had pictures. And honestly, if the real story here is “unscrupulous Daily Mail photographer coaxes Hindu man into catching cow urine with a drinking glass” it would still be newsworthy enough to make piss puns about.
According to the cult – and the studies they didn’t perform – the hot champagne helps fight cancer, diabetes, tuberculosis, stomach problems, and baldness. So even if drinking cow piss upsets your stomach, these guys have the cure for that … which is literally made up of the piss they made you drink.
See, that’s what I was wondering. Like, if you drink the cow piss and then drink your cow piss piss and then drink your cow piss piss piss, and so on, is that like Hindu homeopathy?
Jairam Singhal, a decade-long urinalcoholic, said the following about the undeniable success of the placebovine excrement remedy: (quote) “I had diabetes, but ever since I have started drinking cow urine, my diabetes levels have been under control” (end quote).
Basically: “I got a bunch of Diabetes about 10 years ago, and I immediately started drinking urine every morning. Thanks to the magic pee, I’ve completely avoided getting more Diabetes since. My levels haven’t gone up by a single Diabetus.”
I so want to see Wilfred Brimley doing a cow piss commercial now. And I’d point out that he is still alive to do it, but we record on Wednesday and release on Thursday so I don’t want to take any chances.
Large numbers of people dumb enough to buy urine, are lining up at local cow shelters. To keep up with surging demand, a successful “Milk, Milk, Lemonade Stand” has popped up in the city of Agra. Obviously, thanks to these honest-to-god piss-sippers, we’ll need 30 seconds on the clock … ‘Slogans for the Medicinal Urine Restaurant’ … GO!!!
“Not on the rug, man…”
“Eat shit and die. Drink piss and live.”
“Would you like to take a piss, or will that be for here?”
“The mens room and the dessert menu have Urinal Cakes!!!”
“Got cancer? Well urine luck!”
“Milk, Milk, Lemonade: Number One in your mouth, Number One in your heart.”
“Milk, Milk, Lemonade: Never avoid a void.”
“Home of Mixology’s first ever cure-all beverage: the Nitro-Gin and Tonic.”
“Why settle for McDonalds’ special sauce when you can have McTurated special sauce?”
“Milk, Milk, Lemonade: Drinking straight from the Bed Panacea.”
“Urinary Tract Perfection”
“Our famous Urine Sampler combo appetizer features assorted cheese whiz, golden drench fries, and potato leak soup.”
“The best leak since Snowden”
“We cross streams like Peter Venkman.”
“Bladder ingredients; Bladder Pizza”
Mop a Johns … What about: “The New Drinkable Cure For Cancer: Pittle. Yellow. Different. Better.”
Hindu cult thinks drinking cow piss cures cancer: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2538520/Urine-drinking-Hindu-cult-believes-warm-cup-sunrise-straight-virgin-cow-heals-cancer-followers-queuing-try-it.html
And finally tonight, in “Stimulate your clit for Jesus” news; wayward youth, dildo dealer and c-list porn star Farrah Abraham has announced a forthcoming book on Christian parenting; set to publish after the completion of her trilogy of erotic fiction. Or, as she actually said, (quote) “My next trilogy – so three books – is an erotic sex novel.” (end quote) Because, you know, she’s, like… a wordsmith and stuff.
And based on my extensive C-List research, she’s one of those dealers who’s also a user. She must go through dildos like a wood chipper.
You might remember Farrah from the MTV exploitation of soul-crushing adolescent mistakes and tragedies, “Teen Mom” but I’m kind of hoping you don’t. If you remember her at all I’d hope it was from the sex tape that she accidentally sold to a porn distributor for over a million dollars. Or perhaps you remember her from that awkward toe in the trigger guard of the shotgun moment you had when you realized that a teen mother cum porn actress cum sex toy seller wrote a book and it was a fucking NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER.
They say write what you know. And she knows getting knocked up at 15, the father dies in a redneck accident, “Lord of the Cock Rings” Trilogy, and finally Christian parenting. That’s a story people can relate to. Lots of dudes are thinking: “You just described my wife.”
And as sad as this story is for every piece of literature ever penned, I should note that it is a powerful reminder that someone can rise up out of poverty, teen pregnancy and untimely widowhood as long as they’re white and have great tits.
Good to know I’ve got potential.
Teen mom and B-list porn star to author Christian parenting book: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/01/17/teen-mom-who-leaked-her-sex-tape-announces-shes-writing-a-christian-parenting-book/
And on that reference to Heath’s moobs, we’ll close out the headlines tonight. Heath, thanks as always for joining me.
I’m holding a rocks glass of scotch in my cleavage.
And when we come back, Lucinda will join us to learn that books of the Bible apparently have reruns.
Poem:
1 Chronicles in Rhyme
Have I told you the story about the crappy king Saul?
The ass-hunting bastard who squandered it all?
The Philistine fighter who lost many men?
Oh, I have? Well fuck you, I’m gonna tell it again.
Have I told you the story about the other king David?
Who defeated the Moabites and left them enslaved?
Whom god loved in battle and whom won every war?
I have? Oh well, fuck you, I’m gonna tell it some more.
How about Solomon? Did I tell you his tale?
The palace he built at incredible scale?
Oh, I told you he’s wise, super-fertile and rich?
Well I’ll tell you again, cause I’m First Chronicles, bitch.
That’s right, I’ve got nothing unspoken to say;
God said “read this book” and you have to obey.
So consider the previous four books as primers,
And consider this one to be god with Alzheimers.
You don’t care who begat Hezron, or who Hezron begat?
Or maybe you do, but you’ve got it down pat.
After all, we’ve discussed it, and I’ll even admit
This isn’t even the first time we’ve repeated that shit.
We’re just assuming our readers have piss-poor retention,
And clearly the editors aren’t paying attention,
So we’ll just repeat repetition and duplicate verse,
We’ll restate and rehash and reprise and rehearse.
And rework, and remind and reform and redo,
And resay, and revert and recast and renew,
Reconstruct, recrudesce, reproduce and rewrite
Refashion, reiterate, relive and recite.
Cause fuck it, it’s biblical and that all that counts.
So here’s nine chapters of names that no one can pronounce.
And maybe a chapter with a god praising song;
That’s a rip-off of Psalms and is two pages long.
I find describing how dull this book is rather challenging,
But in hopes that I can, here’s my nearest analogy;
Your at grandma’s and there’s this adorable clip that she found,
On YouTube of dogs chasing lasers around.
It’s twelve minutes long and it sucks and what’s more,
She’s shown you this same fucking montage before.
So you sit through it all and she says “Here’s another thing!”
Well First Chronicles is like the parts where the next one is buffering.
So sure, this books useless, and just makes the thing thicker,
And inspires those reading it to put bleach in their liquor,
But they need to remind you that like it or not,
The bible suck’s monkey nuts, in case you forgot.
Babble:
If, like me, you make it through the first twelve books of the bible and say, “well that was crap”, don’t feel alone. It turns out the people writing this shit felt the same way, as One Chronicles is basically an alternate account that retells the entire fucking story to this point with a few minor tweaks and additions.
Yeah, apparently biblical reboots come faster than Spiderman reboots. Somebody read this thing and said, “It needs more exactly the same stuff again”.
So joining us to reiterate and rephrase is my lovely wife Lucinda. Lucinda, thanks for coming back for more.
Well, I tried the old “not tonight, honey, I have a headache” thing, but you weren’t having any of that shit so here I am with fucking bells on.
-
–
-
–
-
–
-
–
-
–
-
–
-
–
-
–
-
Apparently the people charged with summing up the first dozen books read them and said to themselves, “You know what parts suck? The ones that aren’t soul-crushing genealogies,” because they elected to start the book out with nine straight chapters of begats. So not much to summarize there, basically Adam was born and everyone who existed from then to the postexilic period is named there somewhere. What’s say we start in chapter ten?
-
Yeah, in case anybody forgot what a horrible fuck up Saul was, we rehash how the Israelites got their asses kicked under his command. Again.
-
And with Saul’s last words, he asked his gay slave to kill him, (quote) “lest these uncircumcised come and abuse me.” So the gimp refuses, and Saul falls on his own sword, to avoid capture and the inevitable lifetime of … apparently some sort of legendary Phillistine foreskin slap torture.
-
But then at the end it reminds you that it was because Saul consulted a medium instead of the Lord; so calling miss Cleo justifies the massacre and displacement of god’s chosen people. Got it.
-
Chapter eleven is a brief list of ancient Jewish badasses, and a few vainglorious accounts of the ass they kicked.
-
Yeah, at a certain point it just starts reading like a really long, rambling acceptance speech at the Oscars. You know, somebody who just won best costume design in a foreign language documentary is holding up the show thanking everyone they’ve ever met: “And I’d like to thank all the Benjamites and the Judahites that came to the stronghold of David; and I want to thank Ahiezer, Joash, Jeziel and Pelet for bringing David bread when he was unable to move about freely, and where all my Manassites at? Adnah, Jozabad, Jedial, Mikey, my main man Elihu…”
-
Yeah, so to summarize what Noah just said there, this book is boring compared to the Oscars. That should tell you all you need to know.
-
-
Then there’s the groovy remix of “Uzzah gets killed for touching the ark”
-
It’s like the book itself is admitting that it’s too boring to read. It’s saying “Yeah, this dude Uzzah exploded when he touched the ark but we can’t imagine you weren’t skimming when we talked about it before”
-
-
This book is sounding more and more like the Chris Farley show: Remember…Remember when “Seven And they carried the ark of God on a new cart, from the house of Abinadab, and Uzzah and Ahio were driving the cart. Eight And David and all Israel were celebrating before God with all their might, with song and lyres and harps and tambourines and cymbals and trumpets.” … That was awesome … Stupid- I’m such an idiot!!!
-
And so that you know we’re not overstating the boring here, consider this; we’re not just reading unpronounceable lists of bronze age Jewish royalty; we’re re-reading unpronounceable lists of bronze age Jewish royalty.
-
Well, re-skimming…
-
-
And in case you somehow managed to miss the entire central theme of the last four books we just fucking read, One Chronicles reminds us that David is awesome and kicks much ass.
-
I can’t help but think of the profound disappointment that people must have felt when Luther translated this thing. You know, it’s supposed to be this magical book of intrigue and answers that all the priests refer to, so you finally get a vulgar masses, Reader’s Digest translation, you leaf to a random page and land in One Chronicles. And it’s a list of the members of some ancient choir that sang at the “Ark Relocation” party.
-
Chapter seventeen reminds us that god liked David the bestest of everybody. Ever.
-
Yeah God is pleased with David for carrying his exploding death-box around, and also for fucking anything with three holes, so he gives him a really nice house for his harem of 3000 women and their shitty red-headed step-children. Bottom line: God’s happy and David’s getting more ass than Muhammad Ali aiming for pussy.
-
I get the feeling like this whole book was inspired by somebody reading the last four books and saying, “I can’t imagine a more boring way to present the history of Israel” and another guy saying, “I can”
-
It’s like listening to a kid tell a joke they don’t get over and over again.
-
-
Yeah reading One Chronicles is like listening to your shitty five-year-old nephew tell a joke on the phone. First you get 30 seconds of what sounds like … a litter of puppies fighting to lick bacon grease off the receiver … while the stupid kid gets the phone in his hand. And then they put italics and question marks in there for no reason … “Yeah and then Abishai? the son of Zeruiah? Killed 18,000 Edomites in the (breathe) Valley of Salt-okay-bye.”
-
In nineteen we revisit the whole Ammonite servant-shaving war… because… I don’t even know. Ancient Israel must have just been that boring.
-
Right? A few emissaries get wedgied by Hanun and they’re gossiping about it for four god damn centuries? Seriously?
-
-
Here’s a quote: “So Hanun took David’s servants and shaved them and cut off their garments in the middle, at their hips, and sent them away.” I think we made an ass-less chaps joke when they told this exact same story the first time. Which was hilarious … Ass-less chaps on dessert-dwelling Jewish midgets is just about 24-carat comic gold … But we didn’t mention the genius wardrobe suggestion for a Koran-friendly compromise on Muslim porn. The women can trade in their eye slit, for a tit slit, or a slit slot.
-
And you can tell there’s an inferiority complex driving this whole thing. It all reads like some subjugated motherfuckers sitting around going, “remember when Jews kicked ass?”
-
There’s a reason “Knocked Up” wasn’t two hours of Jonah Hill and Seth Rogen getting drunk and talking about the movie “Munich”.
-
And then we’re reminded of the evils of census taking. Which is weird, because Moses did it twice in Numbers and nobody had to be plagued to death over it. But yeah, the trip down memory cul-de-sac continues.
-
Yep. We relive all the excitement of counting the cedar trees used to build the temple as we transition from David to Solomon in chapter twenty-two.
-
Yes, and lest we forget, Levites don’t have to do work.
-
Probably the single most oft repeated edict in this book so far; Levites are special and don’t have to do shit that’s sweaty.
-
-
And chapter twenty-four is probably the current leader for the most boring individual chapter in the bible. It’s a detailed genealogy of Moses and Aaron, which we already read once in the Pentateuch, once at the beginning of this same book and again in the directly antecedent chapter!
-
And it holds that title until chapter twenty five, where we get a detailed twenty-four part genealogy of the lyre, harp and cymbal players. Fuckeringfuckatash.
-
I don’t get it. Jews are a musical people. But a possessed frontman having spasms and speaking in tongues … accompanied by lyre, harp, and cymbals … would be the worst band ever!!! First of all, lyre and harp are almost the same thing, so how is that two thirds of the instrumentation?!? And then add people smashing metal discs together. That’s not a reasonable composition.
-
And then they follow up the biblical “This one time at band camp” story with an even more detailed genealogy of all the bouncers that worked the temple door.
-
…And then one for all the civil servants.
-
I feel like an ass even covering this book. It’s just Samuel again. It’s the whole two fucking books retold. We honestly could have done this book as a “greatest hits” mash up of our last four Babble segments. In twenty eight we’re reminded of just how fucking gilded this temple Solomon was building was.
-
The temple of our housewife of Beverly Hills
-
-
And then David dies again, Solomon is anointed again, they kill a bunch of bulls again and holy shit this reading the bible shit was a horrible idea.
-
I’m so excited there’s another Chronicles coming up after this one … Like Hayden Christensen excited. Annakin was the bomb in Phantom Menace, so…
-
Word, bitch, Phantom Menace like a motherfucker!!!
-
I feel like a rape victim at half-time. It’s confusing … poignant moment.
I don’t know, I feel like we should apologize to our listeners for how boring the Bible is. An encyclopedia would be more fucking entertaining. I can’t imagine how we’re gonna keep from putting them to sleep when we do Second Chronicles.
Well, look on the bright side; at least you don’t have to write a fucking poem about it.
Alright, so after all that this is hard for me to say, but the Holy Babble will be back in episode 52 with Second Chronicles, but don’t worry, I’m sure that one will be awesome.
Outro:
Before we close the hood tonight I wanted to thank everyone for their ideas for mash-ups and flashbacks for our fiftieth episode next week. We’re still taking suggestions so if you have a favorite skit, moment, interview or vulgarity from our first forty-nine shows, let us know. You’ll find all the contact info on the contact page of our website.
And if you just can’t get enough me, you can find me all over the podcasting world this week. Tom and Cecil were kind enough to invite me back on Cognitive Dissonance to give them a Tarot reading; Cash and Love from Atheists on Air invited me on their show last Monday to talk about sex and circumcision and John and JD at Rational Talk invited me on to chat about this program and all the behind-the-scenes stuff it takes to pull it off every week. You’ll find links to all these shows on the shownotes for this episode at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.
Cognitive Dissonance; Episode 134: http://dissonancepod.com/?p=702
Rational Talk; Homepage: http://www.therationaltalk.com/
Atheists On Air; Episode 29: http://mythunderstoodalliance.com/029-sexpisode-iv-scathing-atheist-steve-wells-sab/
Of course I need to thank Heath for all his wit and wisdom. I need to thank Lucinda for suffering through probably the most boring book of the bible so far with us. I also really, really need to thank McKenzie and McKenzie’s mom for providing the hand’s-down cutest Farnsworth Quote to date. Lucinda and I listened to it four times in a row when we got it. Thanks, it was awesome.
But most of all, of course, I need to thank this week’s most stellar exemplifications of sentient stardust, Shelby, Vinnie, John, Geoff (Jeff), Magnus, Thomas, Ramesh and Ben. Shelby, who’s so kick ass they named a Mustang after her back when Mustangs looked cool; Vinnie, whose mighty member is worshipped by island peoples throughout the Pacific; John, whose legendary sexual prowess echoes on the lips of carnal professionals the world over; Geoff (Jeff), whose IQ has exponents; Magnus, the supreme chancellor of the intergalactic defense federation; Thomas, whose humility forced Time Magazine to settle for the Pope last year; Ramesh, whose so classy he gets his whoop-ass from a bottle; and Ben, whose ejaculations are measured on the enhanced Fujita scale.
This octuple of brave, soulless individuals have tested their mettle against the unforgiving crucible that is our donation page and returned stronger, smarter and more appealing to members of the opposite sex. If you think that you, too, have the psychological acuity required to become a sponsor of our show, you’ll find the donate button on the right side of the homepage at Scathing Atheist (dot) com. And remember, Lucinda and I need to buy a new timing belt and all the other requisite auto-parts that constitute a full vehicle, preferably all pre-assembled and fully functional, so every dollar helps.
And of course, if you want to help but you’re afraid we’ll just use the money to buy booze, you can also help us a ton by leaving us a glowing review on iTunes and telling your friends about the show, especially the ones who might listen to it. You can also find us on all the finest social media sites and Facebook and don’t forget to listen to us on Stitcher if you’re into that kind of thing.
If you have questions, comments or death threats, you’ll find all the contact info on the contact page at Scathing Atheist (dot) com. All the music used in this episode was written and performed by yours truly and yes, I did have my permission.
Episode 45 – Partial Transcript
by Heath Enwright and Noah Lugeons
Link to Episode
Link to Foundation Beyond Belief
Warning: This podcast breaks between 50 and 70 per cent of the commandments, depending on who you ask.
Sponsor:
Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Fox’s new “holistic programming” channel: Placebo FX; featuring an all-star line up of pseudo-scientific programming including hits like “Grey’s Astrology”, Chiropractor Who and Sons of Anthropometry.
Placebo FX: Because TV execs stopped trying when they realized people would watch American Idol.
And now, the Scathing Atheist…
Intro:
It’s Thursday
It’s December 26th
And we can finally listen to elevator music in public places again.
I’m Noah Lugeons,
I’m Heath Enwright,
And from city waiting for it’s balls to drop, New York, New York, this is the Scathing Atheist
In this week’s episode,
-
Belgium puts the youth back in euthanasia,
-
Optimus Prime will die for your sins,
-
And Hemant Mehta rejoins us to spackle some cracks in the wall of separation.
But first, the diatribe…
Diatribe:
Last week I was doing a little Insufficiently-Executed-Jew-Mas shopping at one of New York’s fine Fifth Avenue retail establishments when I happened upon 5 white haired little old ladies in matching smocks. And on these smocks they’d written, in glue and glitter, the words, “Granny Peace Brigade”. And unlike me, they weren’t giving in to seasonally induced mindless-consumerism. No, quite the opposite in fact. They were there to protest. And of all the evils that face our world, they’d chosen to invest their efforts of protestation on fucking video games.
And I stood there and regarded them with anthropological curiosity. Because clearly they’d put some time into this. They’d spent the money on matching yellow smocks and they didn’t half ass the glitter. They’d clearly each made their own, but each one had the team name written in block letters of approximately the same height. And they’d all met up for crafts and maybe some lunch or something and then headed out to show those evil retailers how they felt about them filthy computer whats-its with the blood and guts in ‘em.
So it’s not the they weren’t willing to put in the time to research it. They just didn’t do it. Do violent video games correlate with violence? There’s mountains of good data out there and much of it is available for free on the internet. The consensus seems to be almost certainly no and while there’s some indication that violent people tend toward violent video games, there’s no compelling evidence to suggest that violent video games lead to increases in violent behavior.
But these ladies didn’t bother to check. They’d already invested time and passion and glitter in this shit. You think they were gonna do some independent research that might have proved them wrong? Hell no! Obviously research wasn’t on the menu or they would have picked a store that sold video games.
Research, shmesearch. They looked at video games, saw violence, looked at the news, saw violence and they put two and two together. Sure, they got thirteen, but the important thing is that they had an excuse to get together with the bridge club and make a trip to Ben Franklins.
And when I see these misguided geriatric “blood”ites and their fruitless campaign to impact violence through good intentions and stupidity, I can’t help but think back to four mandatory years in high school of English lit with no classes on critical thinking. No pre-requisites about psychology or epistemology or formal logic. And nothing against English Lit, but so far in my adult life the ability to spot bullshit has been far handier than even the best of quatrains.
But thanks to religious fundies, critical thinking isn’t on the school menu. Because think of all the shit teachers get when they teach redneck kids about evolution. Imagine if the kids were coming home asking where Noah got his Patagonian pumas. Or how Moses wrote the parts about his own funeral. Or why we should thank god for sacrificing himself to himself in the first place.
I’m not going to say that religion is the reason people are stupid, but it helps. It fosters a stupid, overly-accommodating culture that says there are multiple ways to arrive at truth and the ones with evidence and data aren’t any better than the ones without. We have different ways of evaluating the truth and sure, yours uses your brain, but mine uses my heart. Or my pancreas, since that’s just as logical a place to say my thoughts come from as my heart. And my pancreas thoughts are as good as your brain thoughts because science can’t tell us everything and nobody knows for sure.
And meanwhile, if we could just set all that shit aside and agree on a consistent and logical way of evaluating claims (we could call it science) then we could figure out what matters and what doesn’t and put our time toward something more productive than protesting video games, but we’d rather not do that because we don’t like being wrong… and we’ve already made the smocks.
Headlines:
Joining me for headlines tonight is reigning Champion of the InKredulous Podcast, Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to throw down some of that award winning incredulity?
Why are we even talking about this?!? This entire podcast should go without saying!!!
If god existed, I wouldn’t win at anything!!!
Well done; now how about some of that award-eligible headline delivering?
In our lead story tonight, A&E suspended ‘Duck Dynasty’ star Phil Robertson, after the release of a GQ interview, in which he made several unoriginal homophobic remarks, including a hackneyed comparison of gay sex to bestiality. As a result, God-fearing, Christian, heterosexual sheep fuckers everywhere, are up in arms. And that means Westboro Baptist Church is up in arms.
Yeah, when the Westboro Baptist Church is coming to your defense, it’s a good sign your career is over.
So the heir to the “synthetic quacking fortune” released a statement…
Did it just say, “I’m a 67 year old Christian redneck from Louisiana that kills small animals for a living; of course I hate queers you idiots.”
No, it actually explained how he’s super tolerant of gays: (quote) “We just give ’em the good news about Jesus – whether they’re homosexuals, drunks, terrorists. We let God sort ’em out later.” (end quote) …
So that’s nice. He doesn’t put arbitrary labels on people, like gay … alcoholic … suicide bomber.
And as for that ‘good news’ … those groups are all equally going to hell fairly. So good news gay drunks who’ve been dying to get into terrorism: Nothing holding you back now!!! And good news lesbian Al Queda soldiers: Drink up!!! And good news bi-curious alcoholic suicide bombers: Might as well suck a dick while you’ve got the chance!!!
“Might as well suck a dick while you’ve got the chance”… okay, so when we get them to take “In God We Trust” off the money, we’ve got a ready replacement.
Along with the WBC, several other professional bigoted assholes have voiced support for Robertson’s traditionally acceptable hate speech, including the Family Research Council, and Quran-burning Pastor Terry Jones. They argue that A&E “not H-eight-ing fags”, denies Robertson’s First Amendment Right to exercise Christianity in a world where all corporations H-eight fags.
The Duck Dynasty Guy getting from the Westboro Baptist Church: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/20/westboro-baptist-duck-dynasty_n_4479995.html?utm_hp_ref=religion
And from the “Now Where Will We Crucify Voltron?” file tonight, a San Diego federal judge has decided that a 43 foot tall concrete cross on public property could be interpreted as a government endorsement of Christianity.
Or at least government persecution of Jews, Muslims, and Transformers.
Don’t say that around Michael Bay or I swear Optimus’ll be hanging from this thing in part seven. Now I think it’s worth noting that this is only the latest in a long series of judges ruling the Mount Soledad cross unconstitutional. Legal wrangling over the status of the controversial eyesore has been ongoing since 1989 and it was already found to be unconstitutional once in the nineties and again in 2011. Because it’s a giant, gaudy cross sitting on top of a mountain on public property and it doesn’t take a seasoned magistrate to see what’s wrong with that.
I’d say the best way to get rid of the cross would be burning it. Shouldn’t be too hard to find some Christians to get on board with that.
Proponents of the cross have tried everything from making the surrounding space a memorial to selling the land to transferring it to federal jurisdiction to avoid complying with the constitution, and despite the fact that a church a few hundred feet from the present location has offered to keep it on their property, proponents fight on because what’s the point of having a 29 foot tall cross on a 14 foot base if it isn’t on the summit of a mountain?
Judge orders that Mount Soledad cross be removed: http://marksilk.religionnews.com/2013/12/13/why-the-mt-soledad-cross-and-its-like-are-unconstitutional/
And in “Salvation Arms Race” news, the War on Christmas rages on, as bell-ringer Kristina Vindiola was punched really hard in the arm, while collecting donations outside an Arizona Wal-Mart. Reports indicate she provoked the violence when she started shouting anti-Christian epithets like “Happy Holidays”.
This may be the stupidest example of Christian dominionism. Set aside that before they started getting all uppity about it most people thought of “Happy holidays” as a way of getting Merry Christmas and Happy New Year out in 5 syllables; even if it means what they think it means, they’re getting pissed off at people for publicly acknowledging the fact that some people have a different religion than them. How dare some?
So an un-named “Merry Christmas Fundamentalist” heard Vindiola use slurs like the “H-words” several times, as well as other inflammatory synonymous phrases like, “BLANK-cember 25th”. The Christian shopper obviously became incensed, and shouted back something like: “Don’t you believe in God? It’s Merry Christmas, you godless cunt!” – and then assaulted Vindiola for being a terrible Christian.
Salvation Army volunteer punched for saying “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/17/kristina-vindiola-punched-happy-holidays_n_4460525.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003
And in equal opportunity genital joke news tonight, the Russian Punk Band Pussy Riot was released from a Russian prison last week when it was deemed that the national threat that their metronomic cadence and scaled down barred chords presented had sufficiently expired.
And the feminist movement takes another blow … which they hate. The most famous all-female band in history still has “Pussy” in their name. Pussy Riot surpassed the illustrious Pussycat Dolls on their climb to the top of the … tiny area below the glass floor.
The members of the all-girl band were originally imprisoned after recording a music video that criticized the Russian church’s support of Putin and in a theoretically abnormal abuse of anti-blasphemy laws, Putin incarcerated the group after painstakingly revealing the details of his evil plan.
And I suppose now that we’re this deep into the Pussy story, it’s inevitable that we put 30 seconds on the clock…
I can usually go twice that long.
Names for Vaginal Tribute bands. Go!
Bled Zeppelin
Johnny Gash and Tennessee Twat
Cooze Traveler
Cleft Leppard
Blue Oyster Cunt
Queef Latifah
Molly Hatchet Wound
And for the ladies who like in the Jazz; Cunt Basie and the Kansas Titty 5
Phish … Tacos
Queen Crimson, maybe? More like a gay joke than a pussy joke, I guess…
Grand Master Gash
Labio-Head?
Meat Loaf Wallet
Fleetwood Crack
Pink Void: featuring Roger Twatters
Hoo-Hah and the Blowfish
Snatch Box Twenty
I have a few more, but I think that’s enough feminism for the time being.
Amazing that in 17 vagina puns we never used “clit”
I looked for one but I couldn’t find it.
Pussy-Riot members released from prison: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/12/20/pussy-riot-rockers-convicted-of-religious-hatred-are-released-from-russian-prison/
And just a few quick items before we close the headlines . . .
Item One: 61 years after UK courts convicted math and computer genius Alan Turing of being too gay while cracking Nazi cryptography, and 59 years after his related suicide, the living Queen pardoned the dead queen, and apologized that he was offered chemical castration via female hormone sex-change injections in lieu of jail.
So soon?
Item Two is a quick update on the would be Satanic monument on the Oklahoma Statehouse steps that we talked about a couple of episodes ago. After receiving additional requests from Hindus and animal right activists, the state has declared a moratorium on new monuments, that will, of course, not affect the ten commandments monument that got this ball of shit rolling.
Oklahoma declares “moratorium” on displays at Statehouse: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/12/19/okla-wont-allow-new-requests-for-capitol-monuments-after-satanists-others/
Item Three: Human veal supply will spike after euthanasia was approved for youth in Belgium. And it’s about time . . . When you eat Chinese children, you just want to adopt another kid thirty minutes later.
http://www.religionnews.com/2013/12/19/belgium-debates-allowing-gravely-ill-children-right-die/
And quick, before it gets worse, we’ll close out the headlines. Heath, thanks as always.
And when we come back, I’ll be rejoined by Friendly Atheist Hemant Mehta to talk about what students can do to keep god out of their high schools.
Outro:
Before we apologize awkwardly and claim it’s never happened to us before tonight, I wanted to direct you to a hilarious episode of the InKredulous Podcast featuring Jay Novella of the Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe, our very own Heath Enwright and our very own me. You can Google InKredulous (with a “K”) or you can look for a handy link on the shownotes for this episode. Huge thanks to Andy for the invite.
http://www.merseysideskeptics.org.uk/category/podcast/inkredulous-podcast/
I also need to thank Lucinda for opening the show for us, I need to thank Heath for his humorous lack of a moral compass, I need to thank Hemant Mehta once again for a really productive and interesting conversation and I want to remind you that you can find links to his website and the Foundation Beyond Belief on our homepage and on the shownotes for this episode.
Of course, I’ve also gotta thank Dustin from the Atheist Nomads podcast for providing this week’s Farnsworth quote. His partner did one before but Dustin made more of the rock star entrance. If you haven’t checked out their podcast yet you have noone to blame for it but yourself. Again, links can be found on the shownotes.
I need to congratulate Cecil from Cognitive Dissonance for Grinching all the joy out of Christmas for me this year by defeating me by less than four points last week in the Fantasy Football League of Sinister Secularists, thus earning the first ever championship title in said league.
But of course, most of all we need to thank this week’s most exceptional vertebrates; Steve-O, Chester, David, Ryan, James and Magnus the Great Dane. Steve-O, who’s so cool they measure him in Kelvin; Chester, who’s fortified with 13 essential vitamins and minerals; David, whose athletic prowess is so great he hold records in sports he’s never played; Ryan, who is second only to the Hokey-Pokey in being what it’s all about; James, who shall one day inherit a kingdom and make a killing with it on ebay and Magnus the Great Dane, who is, by default more correct on the god question than more than three-quarters of the world’s human population because even a species that eats it’s own poop knows better than to believe in god.
These six notable and noble humanitarians and caninatarians have justified the proterozoic leap into multi-cellular life this week by giving us money. Not everybody has the compassion, composure and competence to compensate us, but if you think you share Steve-O, Chester, David, Ryan, James and Magnus the Great Dane complementable competence, you’ll find the donate button on the right side of the homepage at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.
And if you got duped by that old “better to give than to receive” line again this year and blew all your cash, no worries. You can also help us a ton by leaving us a review on iTunes and checking us out on all the various social media places you frequent. Oh, and check us out on Stitcher because I forgot to mention that the last couple weeks and our Stitcher ranking dropped so do that.
If you have questions comments or death threats, you’ll find all the contact info on the contact page at Scathing Atheist (dot) com. All the music used in this episode was written and performed by yours truly and yes, I did have my permission.
Episode 44 – Partial Transcript
by Heath Enwright and Noah Lugeons
Warning: I took an Advil PM an hour ago so I can’t remember what I’m supposed to say, but Heath and Noah are gonna say fuck.
Sponsor:
Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the new Jesus-themed Chinese Restaurant chain “Wok on Water”; from the team that brought you the delicious Jewish/Asian Fusion Cuisine Cho-Zen. Come in and try this week’s special, Peking of Kings Duck with Easter Egg Drop Soup.
Wok on Water: The masters of cruci-fried rice.
And now, the Scathing Atheist…
Intro:
It’s Thursday
It’s December 19th
And Kickers and Defense shouldn’t count in fantasy football.
I’m Noah Lugeons,
I’m Heath Enwright,
And from bitterly frigid New York, New York, this is the Scathing Atheist
In this week’s episode,
-
We learn humans came on Earth via arcing ropes of panspermia.
-
We find out that reindeer games are more hockey than basketball,
-
And Friendly Atheist Hemant Mehta will join us to rescue a shred of dignity, after the Paul Walker necrophilia jokes.
But first, the diatribe…
Diatribe:
This past weekend Heath and I were playing each other in the semi-finals of the Fantasy Football League of Sinister Secularists; a fantasy league we play in with a bunch of other secular podcasters and bloggers. And I don’t just bring this up so that I have an excuse to mention that I trounced him and will face off against Cecil from Cognitive Dissonance in the Championship Game this weekend. There’s also a minor detail that clumsily segues into the point of this week’s diatribe.
So I’m watching Eddie Lacy lead an amazing comeback victory amid a burgeoning 24.3 point fantasy performance that would ultimately best Heath and end his fantasy season in crushing defeat and I’m doing so with a couple of friends. One of them is a nice enough guy, but he’s one of those athletic precog-wannabes that constantly says shit like, “Watch, this next one’s gonna be a touchdown”, or “I bet he throws an interception here”. He’s wrong as often as odds would suggest he would be but on the rare occasion that he gets one right, he starts planning his future as a psychic crime fighter.
And as I’m listening to Nostra-dumb-ass rattle off his predictions, I can’t help but think of all the easy parallels between that and religion. This tendency to take credit for shit you obviously had nothing to with even if it means willfully ignoring how often you’re wrong.
We talked about one of the micro-manifestation of this two weeks ago when I bitched for four minutes about athletes thanking god when they win and not sacrificing the appropriate number of bulls when they lose. Thanks for the win, Jesus, and sorry the desolate one got the best of you in the three consecutive losses that led to it. Thanks for the parking space, Jesus, and I’m sure you had a good reason for intentionally making me drive around SoHo for 20 minutes before you provided it.
And as much as it pisses me off to adopt the “good thing happened therefore god did it” attitude, it’s nothing compared to the equally common “good thing happened therefore Christians did it” attitude.
Consider it on the historical scale. There are plenty of Christians that will tell you the church led the charge to end slavery around the world. But they’ll conveniently leave out the fact that the church also led the opposition to the charge to end slavery around the world. They try to take credit for civil rights, for women’s suffrage for fuck’s sake. In fifty years they’ll be telling us how religion paved the way toward equality for gays.
But now dial it back a bit and consider it on the cultural scale. And I won’t have to reach too far to find my example. Consider all the “reason for the season” bullshit that pissed you off on Facebook this week. Consider the desperate attempts to claim authorship for all the various pagan celebrations that have survived and coalesced through societal evolution over the years and how jealously they guard their dominion over them.
I know the point’s been made plenty of times before, but none of the good parts of Christmas are Christian. The gifts, the lights, the tree, the mistletoe, the joy, the charity, the tinsel, the feasts, the family, the elvish reverse-burglar, the emotionally manipulative TV commercials, the caroling, the stars, the remote control helicopters… all of these things have non-Christian origins. And I’m willing to bet that if you keep all that shit and take out the Baby Jesus stuff and the guilt-induced church attendance, people wouldn’t stop celebrating Christmas. And if you took out the Pagan stuff it would be as popular as Epiphany or Ash Wednesday.
And as vociferously as they protest anytime somebody makes the claim that Christmas is a secular holiday, they don’t own it. They don’t have any claim to it. They don’t have a copyright on presents or Santa Claus or decorated trees. And while we’re at it, they don’t have exclusive claim to joy, forgiveness, happiness or goodwill. Hell, they don’t even have a monopoly on fictional guys with beards and magic powers that judge you morally and bestow gifts accordingly.
They started the war on Christmas when they stole in the first place. There’s nothing at all wrong with fighting back.
Headlines:
Joining me for headlines tonight is first runner-up in the semi-final round of the Fantasy Football League of Sinister Secularists, Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to watch jealously as I compete for the title next week?
Fuck Justin Tucker.
In our lead story tonight, Judge Brian M. Cogan of the Federal District Court in Brooklyn has granted the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York a judicial prophylactic against the provision of the Affordable Care Act that would require they provide contraceptive care to the employees of their non-profit affiliates. Judge Cogan found that giving the church no right to dictate the lawful sexual behavior of people they tangentially employed would be a violation of the first amendment.
Will the insurance cover paper towels to clean up after you pull out?
No, I think that still counts. Keep in mind that nobody’s asking these bishops to buy condoms and distribute them to their employees. And nobody’s requiring that anybody buy or use contraceptives of any kind. They’re just requiring that employers provide healthcare that covers contraceptives without a co-pay; and not just because Satan loves rubbers. It’s also at least subtly influenced by the fact that contraceptives are way cheaper than pregnancies and all the good kinds of abortion.
Are you sure about the good abortions? How much could it possibly cost to get all these women one coat hanger each?!? The ones that work in the same office could even share.
Court sides with Archdiocese in contraception controversy: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/17/nyregion/new-york-archdiocese-wins-ruling-on-contraception.html?_r=0&adxnnl=1&rref=nyregion&hpw=&adxnnlx=1387310059-n3uEUr09A3o8ZSYIdyqc4A
And in “Panspermia” news . . . No I am not talking about the new stir-fry dish at “Wok on Water”. Nor am I speaking of the penalty for being a shitty customer at Pizza Hut. I’m talking about the the book by alleged ecologist Doctor Ellis Silver, entitled “Humans Are Not From Earth: A Scientific Evaluation of the Evidence”.
Oh, well if it says “scientific” right there in the title…
First reaction: Real scientists shouldn’t need to expressly announce in the title, that their studies are (quote) “scientific evaluations of evidence”. Those are the fucking rules already.
Yeah, it does have an “I swear I’m not lying” ring to it…
That being said, let’s take a look at some of Dr. Silver’s super-sciencey stuff . . . which he chose not to publish in scientific journals, because he wants to engender non-expert debate on the subject.
Of course…
So he had a bunch of theories, including “Humans just don’t feel at home on Earth”. But my favorite one is (quote) “The size of babies’ heads present a problem for women when giving birth” (end quote). So he’s saying, if women aren’t aliens, why don’t they have giant vaginas?!? … If anything, the problem isn’t small vaginas . . . It’s our huge penises. Can’t speak for everyone, but Irish Brothas be performin’ C-Sections. So apparently aliens from Alpha Centauri are smart enough to travel multiple lightyears between solar systems, but can’t manage to find a planet that matches their snatch size?!?
Interesting story selection, by the way. It sounds less like a story we would normally cover on the Scathing Atheist and more like a story Andy would have given you for the InKredulous podcast we recently guested on before switching you out to a different story at the last minute leaving you with a fully written story you didn’t need. Weird.
Panspermians looking to debunk Darwin: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2507377/Humans-NOT-come-Earth–sunburn-bad-backs-pain-labour-prove-expert-claims.html
And from the “I’m Dreaming of a White Christian” file, Fox News anchor and shrieking bobblehead Megyn Kelly offended people who are and are not white last week when she insisted that despite the perplexing historical and genealogical implications, Jesus was white. And as if trying to camouflage the stupidity of that claim amid the larger stupidity of another, she couched it as an example to bolster the claim that Santa Claus is also white.
Well he’s giving gifts to a whole bunch of different kids, in different houses on Christmas, so he sounds more like a black guy to me. Although he is a job creator, so it’s hard to say.
This tangent into xenophobic insanity came as a response to calls for some racial inclusivity in the Santa legend. After all [spoiler alert] Santa doesn’t actually exist, so why can’t we warm our children’s hearts with stories about black men breaking into their homes once a year?
How about a compromise? Santa can still be white, but the elves that work for him without compensation can be black. And instead of reindeer he can have Mexicans. Hold on, that makes no sense. The sweat-shop elves should be Mexican, and the reindeer should be black.
On Shizzle, on Nizzle, on T-Bone and Pookie…
But it’s a white dude naming the black sleigh slaves . . .
So like “On Toby, on Rupert, on Django … on Pookie.”
Jesus can say say cracker: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-brad-hirschfield/santa-is-white-really_b_4433624.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003 <<and>> http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/12/13/the-unbearable-whiteness-of-being-megyn-kelly-jon-stewart-skewers-fox-news-caucasian-persuasion/ <<and>> http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/12/12/tabula-reza-foxs-megyn-kelly-insists-jesus-was-a-white-guy-reza-aslan-responds/
And from the “So Many Holes, So Little Crime” file, Judge Clark Waddoups of the US District Court in Utah, ruled in favor of the polygamous family from the reality show “Sister Wives”, declaring a law against their plural marriages unconstitutional.
And the anti-gay-marriage lobby’s collective echo of “Told ya so!” could be heard throughout the country. “Next it’s gonna be them fellers what fuck sheep an’ stuff!”
The show documents the life of Kody Brown and his family of four wives and seventeen children. Clearly wanting to set me up for a “Big Love” joke, Brown is about 6’4″ – 250, and appears to like his women the same way, with matching feathered, blond, David Spade haircuts.
Yeah, if we’re just going by weight, marrying any one of these gals is polygamy.
So now that we’re on the subject of the vagina-heavy sexual exploits of these genius bigamist bastards,
I see where you’re going. 30 seconds on the clock … Mormon Porn Stars and Titles: GO!
Does it have to be shit porn, like last week?- Nevermind doesn’t matter: “8 Wives, 1 Cup”
No it doesn’t have to be shit porn, but if it did, I would lead off with Glenn Pecker starring in “Nobody Swallows Shit Like Mormons”
“Dry County Golden Showers”
Clit Romney in “Nymphos and Nephites”… a follow up to her 2009 hit “Laying the Lamanites”
Brigham Hung in “The Great Salty Lake”
Damn it. I was gonna go with the “Great Salt Lick” but now I have to change it. Um… How about “Polygamy, myself and Irene… and Cassandra and Judith and Sharon and Anne”?
Ted Bundy’s Magical Undies … That’s right: Serial killer extraordinaire Ted Bundy was a Mormon.
I’m surprised the momos don’t advertise that more… it would make them seem less like pansies. Okay, how about Tony “Big Bologna” Moroni in “Brides and Prejudice”?
“Missionary Position: Finger on the Front Buzzer” . . . And of course: “Missionary Position Number 2: Getting Pushy at the Rear Entrance”
Described by critics as a Polyga-must see. And of course, the homo-momo-erotic classic; Trey Park-it and Matt Blown present “The Book of More-Men”
Utah judge strikes down anti-polygamy law: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/12/14/21903224-federal-judge-strikes-down-key-parts-of-utahs-polygamy-law-in-sister-wives-ruling
So I guess we’ll close it quick before Heath realizes that recently deceased crappy actor Paul Walker was a Mormon and starts suggesting Mormon necrophilia porn titles…
The Recently Passed and the Curious?
Well, they do practice posthumous baptism so they do have experience moistening dead people.
And on that lovely image, we’ll close headlines for tonight. Heath, thanks as always.
And when we come back Friendly Atheist Hemant Mehta will sit down with me for a much tamer conversation about the problems that young atheists face when openly declaring their disbelief.
Interview: Hemant Mehta
Link to Hemant’s Blog: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/
Link to Hemant’s Book on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/The-Young-Atheists-Survival-Guide/dp/1939221072
Link to Secular Student Alliance: http://www.secularstudents.org/
Link to Freedom From Religion Foundation: http://ffrf.org/
Link to Reddit/Atheism: http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/
Outro:
Before we set up camp for the night, I wanted to remind everyone that if you hear this before the 21st, you still have time to nominate us for a Stitcher Award at Stitcher (dot) promoTW (dot) com. You can nominate up to once per day and you can nominate us in multiple categories so we strongly suggest that you do that.
I also wanted to thank Cat and Mouse for giving Heath and I our first opportunity to actually meet a couple of our listeners. Probably a way bigger deal for us than it was for them so thanks for that and sorry for constantly looking over your shoulders to see how Le’Veon Bell was doing but hey, it’s the fantasy playoffs, you know?
I also need to thank Heath for being funny enough to get away with saying the shit he says. I need to thank Lucinda for lending us her lovely voice to open the show, I need to thank Hemant Mehta one more time and remind you that as good as the first half of that interview was, the second half is even better. And you have a week to read his book before you hear that, so if you want to do the homework, you’ll find a link to it and to his blog on the shownotes for this episode
And of course, I’ve got to thank Andy Wilson of the Merseyside Skeptics and the InKredulous Podcast for providing this week’s Farnsworth Quote and for inviting Heath and me to join him on his incredibly hilarious show. Look for that episode coming in the very near future and look for a link on our Twitter feed and Facebook page as soon as said link is available.
http://www.merseysideskeptics.org.uk/category/podcast/inkredulous-podcast/
But most of all tonight I need to thank this week’s most tremendous terrestrials, Jacqueline, Ward, Bill, Tim, Katja, Jeffrey, Wolfgang and Benjamin. Jacqueline, whose sexual magnetism carries a court-ordered pacemaker warning; Ward, whose statuesque physique would be a frustratingly persuasive argument in favor of intelligent design; Bill, whose voice is so sexy it makes automated operator’s come; Tim, who chops through flaming, steel girders with his dick; Katja, whose genetic perfection is so absolute they’re renaming a nucleotide after her; Jeffrey, whose legendary swordsmanship and nautical notoriety are the reason so many pirates are missing an eye; Wolfgang, whose name would kick anybody else’s name’s ass in a fight except possibly Magnus and Benjamin, whose inevitable greatness is so palpable that statues have already been commissioned in advance of his world-altering accomplishments.
These eight elegant, admirable and accommodating altruists proved themselves in the only non-Jenga related way that matters this week by giving us money. Only the atheists that believe in god the least have the incredulity required to give us money, but if you think you share the superlative skepticism of Jacqueline, Ward, Bill, Tim, Katja, Jeffrey, Wolfgang and Benjamin, you’ll find the donate button on the right side of the homepage at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.
And if you’d like to help us out but you have kids and it’s December, you can help us a ton for free by leaving us a five star review on iTunes and telling a friend about the show. If you need more Scathe in your life you can find us on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and we have a blog and occasionally, there’s shit on that too.
If you have questions comments or death threats, you’ll find all the contact info on the contact page at Scathing Atheist (dot) com. All the music used in this episode was written and performed by yours truly and yes, I did have my permission.
Episode 43 – Partial Transcript
Oh, were you stopping by for the Stitcher Award Nomination Link? CLICK HERE… (and thanks)
by Heath Enwright and Lucinda&Noah Lugeons
(Note: Transcript contains elements that were edited from the episode due to time constraints)
Warning: This podcast contains adult language including two shits, a fuck, a piss, another fuck, dick, jizz, another fuck, motherfucker, bitch, two more shits, cunt, cock, fucktard, fuck-nozzle, several assholes, more fucks…
Sponsor:
Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the new chain of pre-apocalyptic rapture supply outlets; Genesis 7-11. Because now that they’re letting the queers get married, you know god’s judgment can’t be far off. Mention this ad and get a free set of swimmies with any purchase over twenty dollars.
Genesis 7-11: Thank you Jesus, come again.
And now, the Scathing Atheist…
Intro:
It’s Thursday
It’s December 12th
And my ass is less of a J-Lo, and more of a Cee Lo
I’m Noah Lugeons,
I’m Heath Enwright,
And from coniferous New York, New York, this is the Scathing Atheist
In this week’s episode,
-
We’ll learn that it’s hard to roll R’s with a dick in your mouth.
-
We’ll find out that everyone has an equal right to discriminate against gays.
-
And the perfect, plump roundness of Rush Limbaugh’s face is related to pi.
But first, the diatribe…
Diatribe:
If Tennessee is the buckle of the bible belt, South Georgia is the taint. Which works out well because clearly the Florida panhandle is the scrotum. So unless you consider the Mississippi delta to be the asshole, in which case coastal Alabama is the taint, South Georgia is the de facto Bible taint.
And boy what a taint it is. I should know. I spent a big chunk of my childhood there. I spent six formative years of my life living in a place where the two accepted religious affiliations were Baptist and Devil-Worshipper. Where you had to drive to a theater two towns away to see blasphemous films like, I shit you not, Wayne’s World. Where church groups organized dozens of people to protest a comic book shop because they were promoting, I continue to shit you not, Dungeons and Dragons.
My first job was washing dishes at a local pizzeria where I was dismissed as “the guy who thinks we came from monkeys”. The principle at my high school led the students in prayer during the morning announcements and before each football game. My 10th grade English teacher once spent an entire hour telling us about the dangers of Satanism and my 9th grade science teacher once told the class that gays were an abomination against god and should be dragged into the street and shot.
Religion was everywhere. It was in the school, it was at the mall, it was protesting in front of the movie theater, it was showing up uninvited at my house, it was scolding me from every church sign, it was staring at me from the bumper of every pickup, it was blessing me from every cash register, it was blockading my girlfriend’s vagina. It was inescapable, in charge and insane.
And the stories they believed weren’t just crazy, they were fucking silly. I couldn’t comprehend how anyone took them seriously. I remember walking past church services and wondering if it was all an elaborate hoax that everyone was in on but me. It felt like I was the only sane person on the planet.
I wanted to grab people as they came out of church and say, “can’t we at least agree that this is exactly what religion would look like if it was just made up out of whole cloth to oppress people? Can’t we at least agree that if a ten year old was lying about his invisible pet alien he would use the exact same debate tactics that you guys use? Can’t we at least agree that taking this book about dragons and talking donkeys and resurrected Jews seriously without asking for a shred of tangible evidence is functionally indistinguishable from clinical nincompoopery?”
I couldn’t understand it. Many of these people were reasonable and far more intelligent than me when we weren’t talking about resurrected Jewish messiahs, but as soon as that subject came up an otherwise rational human being would start spouting proofs that they’d never accept in any non-religious circumstance. All of a sudden basic moral precepts like “burning people for eternity is wrong” and “babies aren’t evil sinners” fly out the fucking window.
And for years I just wrote those folks off as stupid. And it’s damned tempting. It’s damn tempting to laugh off the Chicken Little campaigns against Harry Potter books and World of Warcraft and say that they’re the products of misguided, uniformed, paranoid minds. But if you leave it there, you’re underestimating them and you’re underestimating the consequences of growing up in a town that was willing to rise up as one to keep the scourge of Wayne’s World from the local youth.
Religion can only survive on ignorance. Information is the achilles heel of faith and unless they control everything a person watches or plays or reads or learns, nobody’s ever gonna buy into their bullshit. They won’t be able to shut the critical parts of their brain down in those critical moments. They have to fight against everything because it takes a lot of work to make people continue to believe in demonic snakes and octa-centurion ark builders.
But there was no internet back then. There was no way to fact-check them when they controlled the bookstores and the library and the schools. A kid could feel like he or she was the only person in the world with a fully functional brain. There was no internet and there were no forums or wikis or podcasts or blogs.
And maybe when you strip away all the post-hoc justifications, that’s the real reason I do this show. Just to know that when religion dies, I’ll have been a small contributor to the murder weapon.
Headlines:
Joining me for headlines tonight is fellow brain in a jar Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to dismiss hard solipsism due to it’s lack of functional consequence?
Dismiss what?
Well there you go then.
In our lead story tonight, Al Azhar – a prestigious Islamic university in Cairo – released a study last month examining the fatwas issued by Islamic theocrats in Egypt during the one-year reign of Mohamed Morsi that ended in July of this year. And if you’re anything like me, and you worry about your 10-year-old wife’s tiny vagina being torn to shreds by something other than your adult male penis, the rules all make perfect sense.
So we’re just shredding 10 year old vaginas right up front, huh? Just gonna show up for the blind date with dick in hand. No, that’s fine…
For example, common sense stuff like: “Avoid creating a comfortable rape environment by turning off the air conditioner when you expect your heat-sensitive rapist neighbor might stop by.”
And as much as I wish you made that up, no, that’s a real fatwa. Better your wife spend her days in an un-air-conditioned house in a country with an average high temperature over 90 degrees.
There was another decree that prohibited women from handling bananas, cucumbers, and other phallic flora … that they might shove inside themselves in rabid seizures of uncontrollable female desire. Lesbians were also banned from buying almonds, curtains, and modern art … and from existing in the country.
There was also a fatwa against having sex naked, though, so you never have to know exactly which gender you’re fucking.
My favorite fatwa was issued in response to a clever group of Muslim adulteresses, who were cheating on their husbands with salt water. Turns out the word for “ocean” is a masculine noun, and if the wrong arbitrary linguistic gender assignment touches your wife’s vagina, it’s adultery. But for some reason, it’s perfectly normal for men to swim in a sea of dicks.
Just don’t swallow. It’s salty as fuck.
The Muslim Brotherhood showcased a surprisingly good string of puns when they released the following headline in conjunction with the Adultery Swim Fatwa . . . (quote) “Buoys on the Tide: Sticky situation in the Perversion Gulf as married women swim in gland shark infested waters seeking salt water staffy and motion in the brocean.” (end quote)
I’m adding the Adultery Swim channel’s existence to Jet Pack and the Darth Vader butt plug in case Santa is listening.
But here’s the problem . . . The Arabic word for “nothing” is also masculine, which means she’s gotta put something in there, but only about half the things are eligible, so it gets tricky. Book, but not page. Finger, but not knuckle. Shaft, but not tip. And again, no veggies, so what’s a girl to do?!?
Fatwa: Women who swim in the ocean are committing adultery: http://www.richarddawkins.net/news_articles/2013/12/1/-fatwa-women-who-swim-in-the-sea-commit-adultery-should-be-punished <<also>> http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/fatwa-al-azhar-university-cairo-women-swimming-in-sea-adultresses/1/326883.html
And in “Satan debatin’” news tonight; devil’s advocate, posthumous lesbianator and head of the New York based Satanic Temple Lucien Greaves has made it back into the news this week by filing a request to place a Satanic monument on the steps of the Oklahoma Statehouse… right next to the one with the ten commandments on it. Greaves argues that if that space is reserved for religious displays, his religion has as much right to it as any other and unfortunately for Oklahoma theocrats, the stupid laws they recently enacted accidentally agree with him.
This is the great playground moment. That asshole kid makes up a shitty new rule about the endzone boundary, and the very next play he’s past the hydrant, so it’s out of bounds.
When asked about the possibility of a Satanic monument, representative Bobby Cleveland dismissed the idea and the Satanists behind it as falling under (quote) “the nut category”. And not because believing in a giant red monster with a pitchfork that tempts humanity and runs the HR department in Hades is nutty.
So the notion that Lex Luthor exists is ridiculous … but Superman’s obviously real!!!
The Temple says they’re considering a number of designs none of which, unfortunately, involve Jesus and sodomy. And I’d put 30 seconds on the clock here for Jesus Butt-Rape porn titles, but something tells me we’re gonna need that 30 seconds later.
But if anybody wants to chime in with a few, it’s been way too long since (hashtag) Butt Raping Jesus was trending on Twitter . . . I’ll get things rolling . . . Ass-Holy Communion: Receiving the Body of Christ . . .
Satanist seek to put up monument in Oklahoma courthouse: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/12/08/satanists-seek-spot-next-to-ten-commandments-monument-on-steps-oklahoma/
And from the “Popes Parting Velvet Ropes” file, Catholicism’s Rico Chart-Topper told Italian churchgoers that he gained valuable experience as a bouncer at a nightclub in Argentina, where it was also very important to correctly identify the age of a minor, no matter what kind of tip they offered. His only regret was jumping right into the priesthood, before he got more experience working the rear entrance.
I wonder how the Union of Argentinian Bouncers is taking this news. On the one hand they might be thinking of using it in their advertising; you know, bounce today, pontificate tomorrow; but on the other hand it’s gotta knock your badass image down three or four spots when people know your job could be done by the elderly hybridization of Woody Allen and Droopy Dog.
To bolster his reputation as the “people’s” supreme pontiff, Pope Frangioplasty made sure to mention that before he was even known as Reverend Whore-Gay Beer Goggles, he was just a normal blue-collar guy, checking fugitive Nazi ID’s, sweeping floors, and figuring out how to become humanity’s conduit to the implied omnipotent watch-maker of the universe.
Pope admits he used to work as a bouncer: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/12/03/pope-i-was-once-a-bar-bouncer/
And in the “Who Would Jesus Shitcan?” file tonight, we have the story of Michael Griffin, a former teacher at the Holy Ghost Preparatory school in Bensalem, Pennsylvania, who was a current teacher at the Holy Ghost Preparatory school in Bensalem, Pennsylvania until administrators recently found evidence that he was trying to marry a dude.
It’s weird that they find the ‘attempt to marry’ more offensive than the pre-marital butt sex.
And because US law somehow protects the rights of Catholic institutions to write in “no sucking off dudes” clauses into employment contracts, this bullshit is legal. When asked how being gay-married could possibly affect the performance of Spanish and French teacher, an imaginary representative of the school explained that (quote) “being a homosexual probably helps you with French but he has to teach Spanish, too.”
Gay Catholic School teacher fired for applying for marriage lisence: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/dec/08/us-catholic-school-fires-gay-teacher-marriage
And in “Rush versus The Holy Triumverate” news, Rush Limbaugh is furious at Pope Franno Domini for endangering the Republican Party’s delicate Christianity hijack mission, by reminding Catholics that Jesus – as well as Kindergarten – both teach that “sharing is nice”. Limbaugh believes the Pope is just bitter over losing to him in a “Jowl Roundness Contest”.
I’m dying to know how that thing was judged: I’m picturing them both holding one of those little Japanese drums from Karate Kid Two under their chins, flopping their heads back and forth. Next up, in the acorn hoarding round…
The Octo-Chinned Conservative Casey Kasem – who labeled the Pope’s sharing remarks as (quote) “pure Marxism” – became an expert economist while failing to graduate from Southeast Missouri State. In fairness, for all we know he could have breezed through at his safety school, which was West Northwest Southeast Missouri A&M.
Go Paddlefish!
Limbaugh released a segment called, “It’s Sad How Wrong Pope Francis Is [parentheses] (Unless It’s a Deliberate Mistranslation By Leftists)” . . . So built into his title – in parentheses! … as if almost tacitly understood! – is the claim that liberal spies have likely infiltrated the English translation department at the Vatican, for the purposes of sneaking references to “Das Kapital” into the Pope’s translated speeches, thus undermining American capitalism.
He’s not the best in the business for nothin’. Glenn Beck would have needed 10 minutes and a chalkboard to connect all that shit and Rush does it 14 words and some brackets.
In honor of shitty Christian commentators, as well as yellow and brown journalists everywhere, let’s put 30 seconds on the clock . . . Christian Assholes as Shit Porn Stars – GO!!!
And I’m adding the 30 seconds I didn’t use earlier because that’s fucking awesome. So now go.
I’ll start it out with a topical Flush Limbaugh … just as a courtesy.
Bowel O’Steen? Wait… that sounded better before I said it… um… Joel O’Stain?
Maybe Bowl Osteen? . . . No- Bowel Sharpton.
Or Bowely Graham, maybe?
Speaking of stretching the bowels: Bran Coulter?
Brick Perry
Dick Santorum’s too easy . . . Wolf Shitzer?
Cardinal Timothy Colon
Deuce Almighty
Fanny Crosby? That’s only funny if you’re a fan of late 17th century hymns, I guess. How about Pope Fran-Cesspool?
L Ron Buggered
No fair using Scientologists. My first thought was Shit Romney, but I didn’t use him, because Mormonism is a cult.
Anal Roberts
T.P. Jakes!
Scat Robertson
Rush v. the Holy Triumverate: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/12/02/rush-limbaugh-vs-the-pope/
Well, I hate to pinch off the poop puns early, but we’re outta time. Heath, thanks for hanging out.
And when we return, Lucinda will join us to ruin her chances at a future political career.
One Kings in Rhyme
I suppose that if I was a deity, who fashioned the earth and the seas,
Then covered all up in creatures and made some subordinate mes,
And I had a message I wanted to send them, something that I thought was vital,
I’d probably write them a list of instructions, or at least divinely inspire a bible.
It would be hard to decide what to tell them, though, since the book could be only so long,
I’d want them to know there was purpose, and to know the right path from the wrong.
And I’d stress over what I’d include there, and I’d stress over what to omit,
After all there’s a lot more to say than the space of one single book would permit.
See, I’d want to impart on them knowledge, and show them the value of peace,
And I’d probably want to include something in it, about the nature of germs and disease.
Should I remind them not to rape women? Or not to make people work without pay?
Should I tell them they can’t beat their children? Or beat off more than four times a day?
Should I explain that the sun’s in the center? Or the value of washing with soap?
Should I explain in unmistakable terms that there’s always a reason to hope?
Well, according to god the most wise course of action, is to leave out all of those things,
And make sure there’s plenty of space that’s left over, for a long list of Israel’s kings.
But I guess that’s why I don’t write bibles, and am just some anonymous tit,
And he’s the all-knowing creator of all, and the alpha, omega and shit.
If you read my book you’d know to be thoughtful, and to let people love who they choose,
But I’d fuck up and leave out important details, like who led the sixth century BCE jews.
I’d have skipped all the stuff about Solomon, and the temple he built for the Lord,
And instead I’ve had told them how telescopes work and what wonders they might point them toward.
I’d have droned on and on about hygiene, wasted time on nutritional facts,
And forgotten to mention who was leading the Jews when the Philistine army attacks.
I’d have pissed away pages on problems they would face as their populace grows,
And I’d have probably put is some stuff I can’t fathom that only a deity knows.
I’d have wasted a couple of chapters on the equality of genders and races,
And I’d have forgotten to smite them and punish their children for pillar and poles in high places.
I suppose that if I were to write it, you’d have questions at the end of the tome.
Like, “How long did it take for the third king of Israel to finish building his solid gold home?”
So I’ll submit that as I’m just a mortal, I can’t fathom a deity’s ways,
But from my perspective it’s fair to conclude that he sure writes in mysterious phrase.
Babble (One Kings)
One Kings; because god knows that you can never get enough mythologized Jewish history. This book babbles endlessly about a series of Israel’s kings as though it’s daring you to keep reading.
And I think the singular is pronounced “king”.
So joining Heath and me to celebrate being one sixth of the way through this book is my beautiful wife Lucinda, Lucinda, welcome back.
Always happy to be here.
The books are pretty linear at this point, so no need to set anything up; this basically starts right where Two Samuel ends.
-
Now King David is old and sick and we have to decide who gets to be the next king.
-
But before we get to all that, we have to tell you about the king’s new hooker, who he wasn’t fucking.
-
No, she was just keeping him warm.
-
“She wasn’t jerking me off! She was trying to start a fire with my cock.”
-
Yeah, King David was cold so his doctor prescribed a new virgin. And also Solomon became king and his bro Adonijah was more than a little pissed about it.”
-
-
The talent pool in the desert must have been running dry, considering the most attractive woman in the land is named “Abishag the Shunammite” . . . Sounds more like an orc general from Lord of the Rings.
-
Then we get this touching bit where David takes Solomon aside and offers his final words. And it’s basically a list of people he wants Solomon to kill.
-
Including Shimei, the dude that David promised not to kill in the previous chapter. He says, “All I said was I wouldn’t kill him. I never said anything about you, or other hired assassins. That wasn’t in the contract.”
-
And then Adonijah says, “Hey bro, since you got the whole kingdom and everything, you think I could have dad’s new hooker?” Solomon says “no” and then kills him for asking.
-
-
And then Solomon proves he’s wise by threatening to cut a baby in half.
-
This is actually a pretty fucked up story. Two women are accusing each other of killing their baby and swapping him out for a living one, which is fucked up enough before David starts threatening to split the baby down the middle.
-
So naturally the real mom says, “No, don’t chop the baby in half you fucking psycho!” but the other lady says, “Yeah, that makes sense. I’ll take half a baby. It’s enough for a stew.”
-
-
And this is Solomon’s tagline moment . . . His “Yippie Ki-Yay Mother Truckers!” His defining biblical event is an episode of Judge Judah, when he settles a maternity dispute between a murderous whore and a regular whore. Also, since when are single mother whores trying to keep their babies?!? I guess the name Johnson had to start somewhere.
-
And then chapter 4 is basically a list of Solomon’s cabinet, a list of what he eats and a list of people he was smarter than.
-
They make very sure to mention that he spake 3000 proverbs, and wrote one thousand … five … songs … Which is clearly bullshit. Those are the most obviously “made-up numbers” I’ve ever heard. There’s no way he hits EXACTLY 3000 proverbs and EXACTLY 1000 songs, but can’t resist writing 5 extra jingles.
-
And then Solomon gets the wheels turning on his new temple. And let me tell ya it’s gonna be one bitchin’ ass temple.
-
And in case you were wondering, say, how many cubits wide the nave was or how many sides the door posts have, it’s all spelled out in chapter six.
-
Yeah, and god has the same interior design sense as Jay-Z apparently.
-
-
HaShemTV Cribs . . . Sons of Joshua Cribs
-
And then we get all the important details about Solomon’s palace, including the latticework, the dishes, candle snuffers and spittoons. Really important shit going on here.
-
“I know I’m just a slave laborer helping you build a palace, but do you guys think it’s the best idea to put all the gold, and the god box, all in one place?!? I think we’re overdoing it a little. I’m literally carrying a single basket of golden eggs.”
-
And then he has a house party…
-
And for all his help building the temple and shit, Solomon gives Hiram 20 cities, but apparently they were his 20 crappiest cities.
-
This book of the bible is like a first date with a rich douche. Every few sentences we’re hearing about Solomon’s throne or his golden vessels or his fleets or his platinum butt plug.
-
I think we call this a … ‘teachable moment’ … Jews should only put the rarest of metals in their palace, and in their ass. “But hold on – Stop making golden calves. You guys always go straight to that!”
-
And in chapter 10 I’m pretty sure it brags about him fucking the Queen of Sheba, too.
-
I believe it said he gave her everything she desired, and a taste of the royal bounty on top. So I’m pretty sure they fucked, and it sounds like they even got a milk and honey shot in there.
-
And in case you were wondering what kind of mileage he’s getting with that dick of his, Chapter 11 actually starts with the words, “Solomon loved many foreign women” and went on to describe his harem of more than a thousand wives..
-
This guy spread more STDs to minorities than the Tuskeegee Experiments.
-
And if I’ve learned anything from this book, when vaginas show up, trouble can’t be far behind. So, of course, his wives talk him into turning against god and offering burnt offerings to other gods so real god concoct this convoluted, multi-generational revenge plot.
-
So Solomon dies and his son Rehoboam takes over. The people come to their new king saying, “Hey, it would be awesome if you stopped whipping us.” And Rehoboam endeared himself to the people by saying, “You don’t like the whips? No more whips. We’ll use scorpions instead.”
-
And then the kingdom was divided because god likes to go over his shoulder to scratch his ass.
-
-
And they open 2 Mooby Burgers.
-
So you’ve got Jeroboam who god gives a chunk of the kingdom to and he’s an asshole, too. He starts making non-Levite priests so god sends a prophet to tell Jeroboam that the shit’s about to hit the fan.
-
And then god kills the prophet with a fucking lion for eating food and drinking water.
-
-
Falls for the oldest trick in the book. Some guy walks up to him: “Are you a prophet from God? Get the fuck out of here – me too!!! Let’s go eat. Oh you have a note from God that says don’t eat. This is so crazy. I have a note. Also from God. Says that you should disregard your note and go eat with me, after which you will definitely NOT be mauled by a tiger.”
-
So basically you’ve got Jeroboam running Israel into the ground and at the same time you’ve got Rehoboam fucking things up in Judah.
-
Yeah, apparently they were making high places, pillars and sacred poles. And if that’s not bad enough (and it is), their temple prostitutes were the wrong gender.
-
Bunch of savages in this town.
-
-
Man-whores just aren’t cost effective . . . from an orifice perspective. Less bang for your buck . . . despite more “schmekel per shekel”.
-
And is it just me or is this book pissed off at you for reading it? It keeps saying stuff like “And are not the acts of Abijam, are they not written in the Annals of the Kings of Judah?”
-
Are you telling me the Gideons expect me to just guess what else happened to Abijam?!? I’m sitting here in my hotel room like an idiot … trying to get the whole story on this Judaism stuff.
-
And during this unending war between Israel and Judah the Israelis get some practice walling off territories and that’ll come in handy later.
-
And then we just start churning through one king after the other. King so and so reigned for so many years and did evil by the lord greater than all the kings before him and then he died, ad infinitum
-
And then we finally meet Elijah, who god is pawning around during a drought. And he’s pretty badass. He has birds that feed him and magic jars of food and he even brings kids back from the dead by rubbing his genitals against them.
-
Right … three dick rubs resurrects a dead baby. They don’t mention this, but if you do it right, that will also get you to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop. I learned that the hard way.
-
So Elijah shows up all Charles Bronsony and decides to prove that god is god by challenging the prophets of Baal to a divine Ox-burning contest, in which he kicks ass.
-
And then to emphasize how total his victory is, he kills all the prophets of Baal.
-
-
Then Elijah flees like a pansy and god commands him to anoint a few new kings.
-
And in a lost “who’s on first base” opportunity, Elijah meets Elisha
-
-
Then there’s some boring war shit and one king attacks another king… fuck, I don’t even know anymore. All I know is somebody didn’t kill the person god told him to kill so god gets all pissy.
-
And we learn this from a bizarre story involving a masochistic prophet and a divine lion attack.
-
-
Then Ahab wants Naboth’s vineyard, but he won’t sell it. So Ahab’s wife arranges to have him stoned to death.
-
God hears about this and gets pissed so he sends Elijah to tell Ahab he’s fucked and dogs are gonna eat his wife.
-
But Ahab fasts and wears a sack around so god says, “shucks, I guess I don’t have to kill you and have dogs eat your wife. I suppose we can save that punishment for your kids.”
-
-
And then it ends with this long, pointless story about Jehoshaphat and the King of Israel want to go to war with Ramoth-Gilead and all but one of the prophets say they’ll win, but one prophet says the other prophets are full of shit… and they were.
-
And the king gets killed in battle and, just as god had decreed, dogs lapped up his blood and, and in an understated twist, prostitutes bathed in it.
-
-
Yeah I’m confused by all the whore talk. Why would there be prostitutes … when they had slaves? Slave is the world’s oldest profession. That’s like buying CDs on Napster.
So I suppose the real mystery of One Kings is how the fuck they managed to finance the sequel. We’ll find that out in three weeks and in the meantime, we’ll be washing our brains out with soap. Heath, Lucinda, thanks for sticking with it.
Outro
Before we ring the final bell tonight, I wanted to make a quick correction. We covered a story last week about public prayer booths in Kansas City and it was almost completely bullshit. Sorry about that. Another fail in our story-vetting process. We’ll try to tighten that up and in the meantime I want to thank all the astute listeners who clued us in on that.
I also wanted to let everyone know that the nomination phase has started for the 2nd annual Stitcher Awards. Heath, Lucinda and I really, really, really want to win one and we need your help. You can nominate us up to once per day in as many categories as you think are appropriate. So if you have a few minutes and you’re feeling generous this holiday season, please head over to Stitcher (dot) promoTW (dot) com and nominate the shit out of us. Daily. I’m not too proud to beg. You’ll also find links to the nomination page on our blog, our Twitter feed and our Facebook page because, like I said, I’m not too proud to beg.
That’s all the blasphemy we have for you this week, but we’ll be back in 168 hours with a visit from the Friendly Atheist himself, Hemant Mehta so get excited about that. But if you can’t wait that long, be sure to check out episode 33 of The Herd Mentality Podcast with Adam Reakes, where you can hear my impression of Joel O’Steen orgasming to death on an 8 horsepower, turbocharged, solid gold butt plug.
http://herdmentalitypodcast.com/
I need to thank Heath for keeping it real, Lucinda for putting up with the two of us, I want to thank everyone who did some Holiday shopping on our Cafe Press site and, of course, a huge thanks to Evan Bernstein from the Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe for providing this week’s Farnsworth quote. He’s one fifth of my all-time favorite podcast, really cool of him to do it and of course, you’ll find a link to his show on this week’s shownotes, right next to the link to nominate us for a Stitcher Award.
http://www.theskepticsguide.org/
But most of all I need to thank this week’s most valuable humans, Wayne, Debbie and Vinnie; Wayne, whose ejaculations have seismological designations; and Debbie and Vinnie, whose altruism and advice deserves less of a one liner and more of a very genuine thanks on behalf of both my wife and myself for reminding us that generally speaking, humans are awesome.
And since I already hit you up for a Stitcher nomination half a dozen times, I’m not gonna bother reminding you that if you’d like to support the show financially you’ll find the donation button on the right side of the homepage at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.
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.
Episode 42 – Partial Transcript
by Heath Enwright and Noah Lugeons
Warning, this podcast contains explicit language and obscure SAT words.
Sponsor:
Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by…
Opus Dei-Quil Non-Drowsy Multi-Symptom Relief For Self-Mutilators. Are the infected, gaping flesh wounds on your back causing a fever? Did you share one too many bloody cilices and contract Opus DAIDS? Does Adonai-Quil make you groggy, Jewy or turn your meth green?
Then try Opus Dei-Quil: The official medication of the bad guys from “The DaVinci Code”
And now, the Scathing Atheist…
Intro:
It’s Thursday,
It’s December 5th,
And non-sequiturs have NO rules!!!
I’m Noah Lugeons,
I’m Heath Enwright,
And from mostly harmless New York, New York, this is the Scathing Atheist.
On this week’s episode
-
New Mexico offers a 90-day return policy if your god is broken,
-
We’ll bring a towel,
-
And Kansas City finds a way to escape the Matrix and get to Zion.
But first, the diatribe…
Diatribe:
So I was watching football last week, and no, you limey bastards, I don’t mean soccer. Clearly the word “football” belongs to the people who hijacked it for a game where kicking the ball is against the rules in almost every situation, despite the nearly global agreement to the contrary, led by the people who both coined the term and invented the language it was coined in. Because America, damn it. And sometimes Canada, damn it, too.
And speaking of damn it, damn it if the postgame interviews weren’t brought to you by Jesus. And Subway.
Some reporter is interviewing the paragon of intellectualism that stuffed the run on 4th down and ended the game and in response to the question; “Do you have to play the run differently when you’re dealing with a mobile quarterback?” This nincompoop prefaces his answer with “First of all, I want to thank Jesus Christ; it all starts with him.”
Yeah, run-blitzing starts with Jesus. Because how the fuck are you supposed to wrap up a tackle if nobody had died for your sins? And wasn’t it Christ the savior stuffing the A gap and forcing the runner inside? No? That was a real human that exists? Then fuck you and answer the question you blathering neanderthal. Nobody tuned into the broadcast this afternoon saying, “Boy, I hope we get some sage-like theological nuggets from the nose guard once this is over.” Your a linebacker. We don’t even want to hear you talk about football, let alone your lord and savior, baby Jesus.
This stuff pisses me off and not just for the obvious reason that it only goes one way. As Carlin points out, you never hear “The good lord tripped me up behind the line of scrimmage”. Except for Bills Wideout Stevie Johnson who once lamented over a dropped ball that cost his team a game by Tweeting, “I praise you 24/7 and this is how you do me!!!”
And beyond that, there’s the implication that god loves you more than the other team. When future hall of famer and probably murderer Ray Lewis talked to the media after last year’s Superbowl, he actually said, “If god is for you, who can be against you?” Implying that god personally decided that the Ravens would win and, in a roundabout way, that the 49ers are the minions of the devil.
And if that’s not enough, consider the insult to everybody who actually did something. Think about how many people directly impacted the team’s victory more than Jesus. He could have thanked his teammates, his coaches, his trainers, his mom, his fluffer… all of those people deserve the thanks more than some nomadic Jewish felon from the iron age.
But more than all of that; more than the selective application, the egocentrism and the corporeal snubbing, what pisses me off most when I hear these impromptu benedictions is that the Jesus-groupies have no idea that they’re being assholes. And even after that extensive but not exhaustive list of why it pisses me off, plenty of Christians would hear this diatribe and say “He’s just expressing his opinion! Why shouldn’t he be allowed to express his views? Why, Noah, you’re allowed to express your views every week on this podcast. Doesn’t he deserve the same liberty?”
No and fuck you rhetorical voice of opposition. It’s just another special privilege that religion gets and nothing else gets. If he wants to start a Christian podcast or thank Jesus at his church I’m not gonna bitch about it… as much. But we were talking about football and all of a sudden we’re on to the lord almighty.
Can you imagine if people were like that about their political views or… anything else at all? Some sideline reporter says, “How does this win affect your playoff chances?” and somebody says, “First of all, I just want to say that embryos aren’t babies, it all starts with that,” or “Before I answer that, I just want to thank Xena for all the erections,” or “Well, it all starts with the fact that the X-Men would fuck the Avengers up in a fight” I don’t care if I agree with what you’re saying or not, you’re still being an asshole. We’re not talking about politics or comics or warrior princesses or god-damned god, we’re talking about football.
But they don’t see it that way. They think they’re doing a good thing. They think they’re being humble and most of the people who hear it think the same thing. They ignore all the theological implication of a god who answers mid-third quarter prayers from millionaire athletes and ignores the kids with cancer and the people who had money on the other team. Something good happened, so it was Jesus. Thanks Jesus!
But I’m willing to bet they’d recognize the problem damn quick if he’d said, “I just want to thank Allah for being the real god” or even something like “I’d just like to thank Darwinian evolution for the genetic mutations that made me six foot eight, 330 pounds and able to withstand bovine doses of steroids.”
And besides, football has already disproven the existence of god. Just ask Tebow.
Headlines:
Joining me for headlines tonight is my equally atheistic about ancient Japanese gods co-host, Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to blaspheme against Fujin, Shinto god of the wind?
Love these opening segments. I feel like an atheist with Tourette’s. Fuck Fujin, Shinto god of the wind. Fuck him and the Akabeko he rode in on.
Well done. In our lead story tonight the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit against the US Conference of Catholic Bishops for the offence of owning hospitals while being a group of callous, misogynistic cock-warts.
Hospitals 101: Doctors should avoid cock-warts, and related calluses.
The lawsuit centers around the medical mistreatment of one Tamesha Means by the Catholic owned “Mercy Health Muskegon Hospital” back in 2010 and the story is almost fucked up enough to be Irish. Means made several trips to the emergency room due to complications in an 18 week pregnancy and, of course, medical procedure and human decency would suggest that the doctors should inform her that unless she terminated the pregnancy she was risking permanent damage, her own survival and, by the way, the baby would almost certainly not survive. But medical procedure and human decency were, in this case, trumped by Catholic doctrine.
Did they at least offer her the option of paying more for a real doctor, with a second opinion about maybe avoiding the double-murder scenario?!?
No and they didn’t have to because until now, no lawsuit has successfully challenged the deplorably insane concept of having men trained in nothing but superstition and bullshit setting medical policy. With 13 percent of American Hospitals already owned by Catholic organizations and more being gobbled up all the time, many have accused the Catholic church of trying to circumvent the laws they don’t like by taking over the medical industry, and in case I’m wrong about that, “Hello! They’re trying to circumvent the laws they don’t like by taking over the medical industry!” There. Now I’m right.
I’d be willing to allow the existence of Catholic hospitals like this, as long as they have a huge surgeon general’s cigarette warning on the building, and also doctors get to rewrite the Bible.
ACLU sues Catholicism for owning hospitals while being heartless pricks: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/aclu-sues-us-bishops-catholic-hospital-ethics-21074634
And in “Holy Craps Free Roll” news, Sagebrush Community Church of Albuquerque, New Mexico is offering a 90-day risk-free trial on their wishing well service. If you wager 10% of your paycheck as tithing, and God fails to answer your prayers during that quarter, you can request your money back, as long as you’re willing to literally take it from the collection plate held by the poor kid that would otherwise get the money.
God: As trustworthy as the slap-chop and the Turbie-Twist. Somehow that still doesn’t quite do it for me.
Here’s how the guy explained it to me, before trying to sell me a timeshare in Vegas: (quote) “That’s right, if you’re willing to pay up front, we’ll let you pray for free!!! If anything good happens like not dying, that was us, and we keep the money. If you die, that was also us, sending you to heaven, and we keep the money. In all other circumstances, we’ll issue a refund.” (end quote) So it’s basically after-life insurance, that pays off if you go to hell.
And there’s probably eternal lifetime limits, or they’ll say you were damned before you started tithing or something.
Albuquerque church offers refunds if the god you buy is broken: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/11/30/church-offers-a-90-day-money-back-guarantee-to-tithers-if-god-doesnt-reward-them/
And in “It’s Only Okay If I Fart in the Elevator” news tonight, Christians are incensed about a plaque that is now hanging on the walls of the Illinois Capitol Building courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. The plaque reads, in its entirety:
At this season of THE WINTER SOLSTICE may reason prevail.
There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell.
There is only our natural world.
Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.
Wow that’s WAY more tame than the atheist plaque we proposed.
Yeah, apparently they wouldn’t allow one made entirely of human fecal matter either. FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor explained that prosthelytizing atheism in a courthouse wasn’t exactly their goal. (quote) “We don’t think that religion, or irreligion, belong at the seat of the state government. But if religious displays are going up in state capitols, then our display representing the freethought point of view will be there, too.”
And incredulous religious people aren’t even aware that their anger proves our point … If religion thinks they can fart in the elevator, atheists are gonna take it a step further, and give them a dirty sanchez. For the uninitiated, I’m describing a shit mustache.
Which would not be the rudest behavior I’ve ever seen on a New York elevator. While some atheists have complained that the plaque is too strongly worded, though others have complained that it isn’t made out of fecal matter with the words “Fuck Jesus” printed in 666 point type.
FFRF places atheist plaque in Illinois Capitol building: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/12/01/atheist-sign-goes-up-in-illinois-capitol-building/
And in “Glory Hole-llelujah” news, Kansas City residents are flocking to public phone-prayer booths, complete with a kneeler bar, where they can comfortably and discreetly say prayers, blow God, and get wishes granted.
We’re in for a lot of cocksucking jokes, aren’t we?
Saw that coming?
No, I closed my eyes just in time.
The city originally planned to buy everyone a magic lamp . . . but there was the big genie strike, and it went over-budget. Realizing how ridiculous the lamp thing was, they installed the God Phones as a more realistic alternative.
It’s like the mailbox for Santa letters, only instead of cute, it’s tragic. They even have the little prayer hands on the side of them so you know you’re surrounded by stupid even if nobody’s in the act of immaculate felatio at that moment.
There’s a disclaimer, warning that although not required, (quote) “Religious actions may take place within these prayer booths.” They also mention that (quote) “Improper use will result in a penalty or fine.” So no trickery . . . No praying for more prayers. And secular hope is technically permitted, but highly frowned upon.
Although if you have a note from your Wiccan high priestess, I’m sure you could get away with beating off in one of those things.
One KC resident – and avid Chiefs fan – prayed for a Peyton Manning ankle injury in week 13. Instead, it turned out he was NOT physically injured by her phone call, he put up 403 yards, 5 touchdowns, and led the Broncos to a win. So results may vary … to include complete failure. If she really wanted the Chiefs to win, she probably needed to swallow.
Okay, that’s only five and a half pole-smoking jokes so far. I don’t think we’ve quite drained all the on-your-knees for Jesus, cum-guzzling potential out of this story yet.
No we haven’t. And we strive for every last drop. So according to an ad campaign by the new phone company: “God’s hung like Dr. Manhattan: Big, blue, and everywhere.” And speaking of too much blue tooth, it’s possible the Chiefs fan didn’t read the instructions. That’s right, the blowjob prayer phone . . . has instructions. Instruction Number 1: “No Blue Tooth, and Cradle Ma Bells.” So right there . . . And Instruction Number 2 (no pun intended): “Feel free to put your mouth on both ends of the receiver.”
Kansas town adds “prayer booths” to “call god”: http://topekasnews.com/kansas-town-installs-phone-prayer-booths-residents-can-call-god-whenever-need/
Quota achieved. Well handled. And in Strategic Gay-Bashing news tonight, Cardinal Timothy Dolan’s consolin’ the colon patrolin’ souls in his folds but he scolds them and holds that the souls with their poles in dude’s holes aren’t controlled because his goals were outsold. And if you were lost in the rhythm there, I he said that Catholics were “out-marketed” on the gay marriage issue.
They weren’t OUT-marketed. They were marketed . . . correctly . . . for free. Gays haven’t been left wondering what the Catholics have to say about the cosmic risks of misusing the word “marriage”.
Yeah, I think he’s wrong here, but it’s fair to say that as a whole, they’re getting their vatic-asses handed to them in the marketing department. They’re still reeling from the “institutionally butt raping children for generations” kerfuffle after finally getting over the “Conspiring with the Nazis” faux pas. It’s clear to me that the Catholic Church is, indeed, in need of a new PR department. Hell, when you can’t sell your bigotry in America, you’ve gotta be phoning it in.
Well they could stop raping kids, abetting holocausts, and hating gays. But I suppose a new marketing solution makes the more sense. If only there was something that was worth a thousand homophobic slur words.
And that’s why good bigots need good logos. Swastikas, burning crosses, the word “Fags” with the ghostbusters symbol over it… these have all proven effective in the past. The skinheads need something to tattoo on their faces and Leviticus 18:22 is too long for a prison tat.
Nothing says the N-word, the K-word, the F-word, the D-word, the sword, the T-word, the TR-word, the TH-word, and the Z-word, better than bigoted graphic design.
Cardinal Dolan: Catholics were “Out Marketed” on gay marriage: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/11/29/catholics-outmarketed-on-gay-marriage-cardinal-dolan-says/
And from the “Young Man-Slaughter” file, after God demonstrated his existence by allowing an infant to sustain traumatic brain injuries during a car crash in St. Petersburg, Russia, the confident theist parents rushed their bleeding baby to an emergency baptism. Unfortunately, the priest – despite being a talented holistic brain surgeon – was unable to revive the child, as the only water available on short notice was normal secular di-hydrogen oxide.
So what, are you saying the homeopathic medicine didn’t work either? And did he even rebuke the demon of brain trauma? Pat Robertson would have rebuked the demon of brain trauma.
After doing some extensive research, Russian authorities confirmed the existence of several medical doctors in the St. Petersburg area, and will prosecute the parents. When asked why they didn’t head straight for a hospital, the infanticidal maniacs explained how they were on the way to get a new brain from a scarecrow, but the Yellow Brick Road was jammed with rush hour traffic.
And in the minds of the parents they did the more important thing. If he might have died either way, at least this way Jew-god-cum-Christian-god wouldn’t burn him in hell forever as he is wont to do with unmoisturized babies. The only silver lining in this story is that the baby didn’t live long enough for the priest to rape him.
That would be a 50 shekel silver lining?
Russian parents jailed after choosing baptism over hospital for post car-crash infant: http://www.richarddawkins.net/news_articles/2013/11/29/baby-dies-after-parents-trade-hospital-for-church-after-crash
And in “If it works for Chia-Pet, it work for Jesus” news tonight, a Pennsylvania church is showing off the marketing savvy that Catholicism sorely lacks. In an effort to appeal to their core audience of stupid rednecks that are easily entertained and don’t go in for all that critical thinkin’ shit, they’ve announced an upcoming “Duck Dynasty” themed all-camouflage service.
Not sure how much more redneckitude them can cram into their clown car. This is a Catholic service in northwest Pennsylvania, so I imagine lots of parishioners will continue wearing the same camo tuxedo they had already been wearing every week.
Fictional church representative Jim Bob Leghorn explained (quote) “Well, we figgered what with the folks watchin’ that on the TV and us all havin’ our huntin’ gear and what-not, we might as well go a-huntin’ for some Jesus.”
Sounds like they aren’t aware that camo doesn’t work unless you paint the whole church interior camo too. The atheist swat team snipers are gonna pick them off way too easily.
And if you think about it, it makes sense to have these dress up days at church. You could have “Star Wars Service” or “Dress as yer favert NASCAR Driver Day”… I don’t know, “aborted fetus Wednesdays”? It’s all about filling those pews. And who doesn’t love dress up?
Every NASCAR driver looks the same to me . . . Like Jane Lynch with a mustache. With the track suit … and the mullet.
Pennsylvania church to attract with Duck Dynasty inspired “camo” service: http://www.christianpost.com/news/penn-church-targets-duck-dynasty-fans-hunters-with-camo-sunday-service-109919/
And from the “More embarrassing than Benghazi” file, the United States may have diminished Catholic God from all-powerful to mildly-powerful by relocating it’s Vatican City embassy to atheist Italy. Praying to Jesus was already working not at all, and Catholics everywhere are worried this embassy debacle could make those numbers even worse.
Or, the crazy right wing zealots who fail to recognize that the new embassy is actually gonna be closer to the actual Vatican than the old embassy and instead of maintaining two embassies we’re just consolidating two into one building… it’s not like we actually stopped pretending that this one city is a whole country all by itself because the reincarnation of Jesus lives there.
The other side of the story comes from American Ambassadors to the Holy See, who are relieved to be relieved of their impossibly awkward job. How many ways can you diplomatically ask someone, “Are you guys SURE . . . that you’re not a multi-national pedophilia conglomerate, involved in an elaborate sinister cover-up?!?”
Considering how infrequently we hear about sexual abuse in the church, this is a rare opportunity. Do we have time for some embassy pedophilia slang?
This is the Scathing Atheist! We’ll cut relevant information from another story if we have to. 30 seconds on the clock. Diplomatic child rape euphemisms. GO!!!
Visiting Pope Fran-dusky’s Happy Valley
How have I missed Fran-dusky all this time!? Damn it… wait, um… what’s the one they actually use? “Coming onto the children”… Yeah, that’s too direct. How about Spicing up confession?
Delivering Pee Wee’s Sermon on the Mount
Playing a game of “Kansas Prayer Booth”
Happy Meals in the Rectory
Taking the lord’s name and vein.
Wading Balls Deep in the Shallow End
Oh, I’ve got one… A Catholic Youth Retreat… and then advance… and then retreat.. and then advance…
Bang Cocks with Youth in Asia? Bang Cocks in Asia Minor? … Quaalude Prelude in A Flat Minor
Dipping your body of christ in milk?
Box Seats for Little Orphan Fanny … And I’d like to add that this gay pun’ll come out, tomorrow at 8am?
Bet your bottom dollar… which is my response to you and my last diplomatic child-rape euphemism.
America removes embassy from Vatican city: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/11/27/vatican-knocks-down-controversy-over-u-s-embassy-move/
But to make the 8 o’clock release happen, we’ll have to close out the headlines there. Heath, thanks as always for your wit and wisdom.
Glory Hole-llelujah!!!
And when we come back, we’ll make more jokes about dicks.
Skit:
It’s time once again to look into the perplexing plethora of pious commemorations from around the world in a segment we call “How the Hell is this a Holiday?”
Tonight, Noah and I will be answering the ten most commonly asked questions about the Jewish festival of diligent lamp oil, Hanukkah.
Question One: What does the word Hanukkah mean?
While it’s often referred to as “The Festival of Lights”, the word actually means “To Dedicate”… sort of. But who the fuck really knows when it comes to Jew words? After reading the first few “historical” books of their bible I’m even doubting what they say about etymology.
Question Two: What does Hanukkah commemorate?
It commemorates the re-dedication of the Holy Temple after the Maccabean revolt in the 2nd century BCE, when a flask that only had enough oil for one day miraculously kept burning for eight days, which was just long enough to make more magical Jew oil.
Question Three: Seriously? That’s it?
That’s Hanukkah in a nutshell.
Question Four: How do Jews celebrate Hanukkah?
They light eight lights and other than that they just pretty much make it up as they go along. They’ll do some family shit, pray a little. You know… have a Hanukkah dinner, buy a gift maybe. Whatever. For eight days.
Question Five: Seriously? That’s it?
Look, you’re lucky they aren’t living in huts and waving palm fronds around. We’re celebrating the longevity of kosher lard. What the hell do you want?
Question Six: Well if the holiday is that lame, why does everybody make such a big deal about it?
It was forced into prominence because of Hanukkah’s proximity to Christmas. Jewish parents couldn’t otherwise buy expensive sneakers for their middle school kids during the month of December. And that would make them falsely appear less athletic.
Question Seven: But… it happened at Thanksgiving. How the hell is that close to Christmas?
Yeah the Jew calendar and the Gregorian calendar don’t line up so Hanukkah can fall anywhere from late November to late December, which spans the latter third of what advertisers call “The Christmas Season”. Interestingly enough, Thanksgiving and Hanukkah are done coinciding altogether for another 70,000 years plus.
Using the word “interestingly” a little loosely…
Question Eight: So what’s the deal with the dreidel?
You have to spin the dreidel when Hanukkah starts. If it falls, it means you’re in the real world, but if it keeps spinning it means you’re dreaming about less shitty holidays.
Question Nine: I know this is a big off topic, but why don’t Jews tip?
Great non-Hanukkah question. It turns out that half of them offered a tip once at 8 days old and that didn’t work out so well for them, so they’re hesitant to try again.
Question Ten: How did the Jews manage to make Hanukkah music worse than Christmas music?
Generally, the Jews are a very musical people, but they did that to spite Christian parents at public-school holiday concerts.
So hopefully that clears up any questions you have about Hanukkah, but if not, feel free to send them to us by email or leave a question on the Facebook page because originally we planned on doing a feedback segment this week but we didn’t have enough emails so we had to do this bit instead.
Outro:
Before we cash in our chips tonight I wanted to congratulate Mark Nebo from BeSecular (dot) org, Cecil from the Cognitive Dissonance Podcast and our very own Heath Enwright, all of whom, barring something nearly as unlikely as Jonah surviving for an extended period inside a fish; will be joining me in the postseason of the Fantasy Football League of Sinister Secularists. I’d also like to thank all the other participants who tragically fell short of this chance at supremacy, who I won’t name out of respect. Except Carl from the Post Rapture Looting Podcast, who I will name out of disrespect because, damn does his team suck balls.
I also wanted apologize to our audience for a tragic oversight in last week’s program. Astute listener Jon Ownbey points out that when Heath and I were positing Christian euphemisms for masturbation, we missed the low hanging fruit of “Casting Out the Semens”, and also the ripe potential for low-hanging fruit jokes. Sorry about that, won’t happen again. Oh, and sorry if I’m mispronouncing your name, Jon.
Of course I need to thank Heath for finding something productive to do with his frighteningly twisted sense of humor, I need to thank Lucinda for opening the show up and for other things she’d rather I not spell out in detail and I need to thank Daniel from Atlanta for providing this week’s Farnsworth quote. Daniel didn’t have anything in particular to plug, but since he’s a truck driver, I’ll just say on his behalf that if there’s a truck behind you that wants to go faster, just get the fuck out of the way. He or she has shit to do and a family to get home to. Not something he expressed directly, but I’m willing to bet he’s yelled it into an empty cab once or twice.
But of course, above all things, I need to thank this week’s most enviable envoys of enlightenment; Dee, Magnus, Alan, Daniel, Willie, Søren and Torrey. Dee, whose philanthropy has inspired a petition to promote her titular letter 3 spaces up in the alphabet; Magnus, who’s so virile and well-endowed that they named a condom after him; Alan, whose angelic physique is consistently ranked as the number one reason for surreptitious time travel to the twenty-first century; Daniel, whose greatness can only be described through pharthindelical neology; Willie, whose variegated talents will all coalesce in act three, proving that he was the chosen hero all along; Søren, whose name I’m pretty sure I’m pronouncing correctly despite the fact that it has an alchemical symbol in the middle of it and who also slays ice-giants by the phalanx; and Torrey, who wishes to forego any adulation for his enormous intellect and member and would rather I throw a shout out to his little brother in Australia whose name he probably intended to include in the email, and who I would totally still give a shout out to by name in a future podcast upon receiving said moniker.
These seven magnificent magnates have magnified the magnitude of their magnanimity this week by giving us money. It takes bold and decisive clicking and typing of account information to give us money, but if you think you share Dee, Magnus, Alan, Daniel, Willie, Søren and Torrey’s finger dexterity and commitment to obscene podcasting, you’ll find the donate button on the right side of the page at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.
And if you’d love to give us money, but not enough to actually do it, you can also help us a ton by leaving us a stellar review on iTunes, liking our Facebook page, following us on Twitter, checking us out on YouTube, sharing the show with a friend, listening to us on Stitcher, purchasing a beautiful Scathing Atheist t-shirt on our Cafe Press site or just being there for us in our hour of need.
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.
The Scathing Atheist 