The Scathing Atheist

by Noah Lugeons

(Note: Transcript contains some segments cut for time purposes)

Sponsor:

Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by The Blasphem-Eats Cafe, purveyors of New York City’s finest atheist cuisine.

Our sinful selection of non-kosher, non-halaal, damnation delights has been hand-cursed by authentic clergy of all different faiths.  This week’s specials include infant back ribs served with a delicious Caesarian Salad.

Blasphem-Eats Cafe: Our food’s so good that unlike Jesus, you’ll come again.

And now, the Scathing Atheist.

Monkey Man:

This week’s filthy monkey man is Mechy from the “Autistic Jesus” Facebook page.  Thanks, bro!

Intro:

It’s Thursday, it’s August 8th, and Jesus probably faked it the first time he came.

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

On this week’s episode:

• Heath and Lucinda will be back for more Bible Learnin’

• Special Guest Eli Bosnick will help us recap the Pentatuech

• Professor Chris Altman will join us to teach me that it’s pronounced Pentateuch.

• And there’ll be so much good shit we’ll need a fourth bullet point on the intro,

But first, the diatribe…

Diatribe:

If a Christian told me that they were reading “The God Delusion”, I’d be impressed.  Even if they told me that there was no chance in hell that Dawkins was going to sway them and they were only reading it to see just how wrong he’d gotten it, I’d still admire the intellectual fortitude it takes to immerse oneself in something one intrinsically rejects.

So like the naive dipshit that I am, I assumed that Christians would react with the same appreciation when I told them I was reading the bible.  But when I’ve mentioned it to the religious folks I know, without exception they’ve responded with some variation on an eye-rolling, hand-waving, “Now-what-do-you-want-to-go-and-do-that-for?” castigation.  It’s like they’re insulted that I’m reading the book they keep telling me to read.

They tell me I’m “missing the point of Christianity by focusing on the Bible” or they tell me that “The bible is all about interpretation so there’s no point in a holistic reading” or they complain that I won’t take the time to truly understand each passage before writing some of them off as monstrous.  Or they invoke the magical biblical property where all the stuff they disagree with is allegory and the rest of it is literal.

But the message is always the same, whether they intend to send it or not.  What they’re telling me is “I don’t trust my holy book to stand on it’s own.”  Not one of them seems to think that the god is a talented enough muse to inspire me.  They’re basically admitting that the only possible way to believe in this thing is to decide you’re going to believe in it before you read it.

If a Christian read the God Delusion I wouldn’t care if he spent half the time doodling dicks in the margin.  Dawkins is an engaging author, he speaks clearly and he makes a convincing argument.  I’d assume that encountering such a potent case for atheism would establish a small thorn of doubt they’d have trouble setting aside.  I trust the text to make its point.

And this is a book by some British dude.  Not to downplay British dudes in general or Dawkins in particular, but the other guys have a book that they claim was written by god almighty for fucks sake.  I’m willing to trust Dawkins to do something they can’t reasonably expect from the omnipotent forger of the heavens?

And no fair pointing out that Dawkins won’t be relevant two thousand years from now.  He almost certainly won’t, but trying to create present day belief structures based on two thousand year old books wasn’t my idea.  I recognize that 2000 years from now Dawkins’ understanding of evolution and genetics will seem quaint and that the subjects he’s addressing will have little or no bearing on the modern world.  Because it’ll be two god-damn thousand years from now.  Everything we wrote will be, at best, interesting from a historical and literary perspective.  Even our morality will probably seem primitive.

Strangely enough, when I tell atheists that I’m reading the bible I get a big old pat on the back.  Part of it is a bit of “better-you-than-me” sympathy, but part of it is that genuine appreciation for intellectual integrity.  If I’m gonna spend so much time talking about this book, I should probably read it.  And while I certainly don’t think you have to read the whole thing to set aside the notion that it’s the inerrant word of god, if you intend to make dick jokes about Jesus on a weekly basis, you need to burrow deep into the literary asshole of Christianity and I don’t mind doing digging through those gargantuan dingleberries for the sake of, like I said, intellectual integrity.

But the Christians don’t share the atheist enthusiasm.  Perhaps they know that the bible is a moral guide like Caligula is a considerate host.  Perhaps they know that even as a work of pure literature it’s oversold.  Perhaps they know that it has the factual integrity of a Spongebob episode.  Perhaps they know that it’s just a ridiculous conglomeration of irrelevant myths from a barbaric cult.

But maybe I’m just being too quick to judge.  After all, how would a Christian know any of that shit?  It’s not like they read the thing.

Headlines:

Joining me for headlines tonight is fellow celestial teapot denier, Heath Enwright.  Heath, isn’t it nice to be unfettered by the burden of proof that comes with outrageous claims?

It’s nice, but it would be a lot nicer if outrageous claimers were aware when they’ve lost an argument.  Or even aware of the criteria by which one might decide the winner of an argument.        

Unsinkable rubber duckies, the lot of them.

In our lead story tonight, the pope said something that he definitely didn’t mean and probably didn’t say even though it’s on tape… again.

Wonderful Pope . . . Very free-spirited . . . We’re all very fond of him.  

In a well rehearsed “impromptu” press conference on the way back from Brazil, Pope Girlie-Name was fielding a question about the so-called “gay lobby” in the vatican and responded that (quote) “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?”  A question his subordinates answered with the words, “The fucking pope.”

Bill Cosby’s gotta be following him around for his new show: “Popes Say the Damnedest Things”

I’m picturing geriatric wranglers just offstage with tranquilizer guns, in case he starts confirming a Dan Brown novel.    

Vatican mouthpieces were quick to ensure gay people that, while the Pope might not be judging them anymore, god still is and he’ll send their asses to hell for it.  Cardinal Timothy Dolan even went so far as to excuse the remarks by explaining that the Pope was “on a high” from his trip to Brazil, though he didn’t specify what the Pope was high on.

High on top of a dude…  

How many gays do you figure snuck into heaven before the Vatican officially recanted his accidentally tolerant proclamation?  

What’s really newsworthy about this is that once again Pope Tiny-Francer manages to get the whole media world talking about some major change that he hasn’t actually made.  There’s nothing substantive here.  He hasn’t welcomed gay priests into the fold.  He hasn’t shifted the Vatican’s stance on homosexuality.  He hasn’t endorsed gay marriage or instituted a weekly Vatican rainbow party or anything, and yet the internet is once again abuzz about what a game-changer this new Pope is.

Kind of like how Obama talked a big game, but a dozen old white people still have nearly all the wealth that exists in this country.  

What?!?  I voted for him twice, so I can say the N-word.  

Who is the Pope to judge gay people? http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/07/29/pope-francis-on-gays-who-am-i-to-judge/ (And the backlash “he didn’t mean it” stuff) http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/07/31/bishop-pope-was-on-a-high-during-gay-remarks/ & http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/07/31/catholic-leaders-the-pope-still-thinks-sexually-active-gay-people-are-going-to-hell/

And in “Gee, I wonder what he was changing the subject from” news tonight America’s largest archdiocese just released another batch of documents that detail the extent and horror of the child rape and torture pandemic that we’ve all grown numb too.

What exactly are all these documents.  Did the church accidentally let the authorities see their notebooks full of time-stamped rape logs?  Emails that say “I raped another kid.  Don’t tell anyone.”?  Why was the church keeping such a detailed account of their rape stats?  When could that be useful later?!?     

Well what the point in everybody raping kids if nobody knows who’s winning?

“Put it on the pile.”

“There’s a pile?!?  Why the fuck do we have a pile for this stuff?!?”

This latest batch of unrequited felonious horrors sheds new light on exactly how much the church officials knew and how early they knew it.  A dozen child-rapists are detailed in all, including two nuns.  One priest boasted 21 victims over a period of nearly forty years, but the gold medalist was one Ruben Martinez, whose victimized more than 100 children in his career despite the Vatican’s best efforts to pray the pedophelia out of him.

Martinez wasn’t the only one with a wet back I guess.  

I’m sure karma provided a well-endowed cell mate for him.    

It might have if he’d ever been punished.  Despite a number of settlements paid to his victims, Martinez, now 72, has never been prosecuted, never been punished and is still under the direct care of the Los Angeles Archdiocese.  In a 2005 psychiatric assessment Martinez even bragged that he hadn’t had sexual contact with a child in 23 years.

“I haven’t had sexual contact with a child since BLANK” . . .    

Only a priest could think there’s a good way to fill in that blank.

Newly released documents show 1 priest molested over 100 boys in LA Archdiocese: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/31/sex-abuse-church-revealed-secret-files-los-angeles_n_3684329.html?utm_hp_ref=religion

And turning now to a pot smoking, gay atheist named Frank who isn’t running the Catholic Church, former Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank admitted last week that he was bullshitting about the believing in god thing and not smoking bong rips thing to get elected.

Just about every staunch theist I met in college did some faith questioning, and some bong hitting.  I was probably responsible for both in many cases, but I’m sure this was happening in most colleges, where the religious are bombarded with facts, and surrounded by superior fact checkers.  

And superior nugs.  Anyway, in an appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher, Frank flaunted the liberty he’d earned by getting out of congress right before the ship sunk when he admitted that he was a (quote) “pot-smoking atheist”.  No surprise that a politician needs to lie about this stuff for the sake of politics, but for those who don’t know the dude, it’s worth mentioning that Barney Frank is the most prominent openly gay politician in American history.  So before you start thinking we atheists have turned the corner keep in mind that the liberal gay democrat in Massachusetts still has to lie about two things: crimes and rationality.

Barney Frank is an arch nemesis for the religious right in politics.  Think about that… Atheists hate assholes like Rick Santorum for egregious acts of religion-inspired bigotry.  Bible-heads hate Barney Frank for enjoying cock, and also having the audacity not to endorse a book that says he’s an abomination who should be murdered.  And then sprinkle the pot on top, and they get really mad.   

As a consequence of this recent revelation, we at the Scathing Atheist would like to formally announce Barney Frank’s candidacy for the presidency in 2016 whether he likes it or not.

Barney Frank admits to being a godless pothead: http://www.examiner.com/article/liberated-barney-frank-admits-to-being-a-pot-smoking-atheist

And from the “Crazy People Flinging Verbal Feculence” file tonight President of the Texas Eagle Forum Cathie Adams took time off from arranging dental floss in symmetrical lines last week to warn us of the coming Sharia-Apocalypse that we’re ushering in with Immigration reform.

Really?!?  Muslim families aren’t exactly strutting right through the airport with ease in my experience.  If a Muslim watches Air Force One on NetFlix, they can be sent to Gitmo.  

They’re aren’t too many ways for this country to get MORE anti-Islam.  Maybe we should force everyone to eat a bacon strip at customs.  Bonus: Keeps out the Jews and vegans too.  

In a chain of logic that was bizarre even by the standards of Texas Republicans, Adams explained that immigration reform would open the floodgates to Islamic immigrants who, fleeing sharia law in their homelands, would work quickly to establish it in America, which will end in our foreheads being branded by demons and, of course, the End Times.

True patriots realize we’ll need to preempt this Islamic theocracy with a Christian theocracy.    

Appearing on a radio program that declares itself the only newscast reporting the countdown to the second coming of Christ, Adams explained her tortured logic in a way that would make Glenn Beck blush.  And before we dismiss her as some impotent wackaloon I should note that this fruit-loop briefly served as the chair of the Texas Republican Party so she’s damn potent for a wackaloon.

Crazy Person: Immigration Reform Bill is harbinger of the end times: http://tfninsider.org/2013/08/04/texas-eagle-forum-president-immigration-reform-will-bring-the-end-times/

And in the “They-Wouldn’t-Joke-About-AIDS-Now-Would-They?” file tonight we have the American Family Association of Kentucky circulating a petition that links the 1962 Supreme Court ban on mandatory school prayer with falling SAT scores, rising teen pregnancy rates and, you guessed it, AIDS.

I’m surprised they didn’t mention that when the mandatory prayers went away, that’s when kids first started choosing to be gay, so that’s where the AIDS came from.  Might as well blame the increases in teen pregnancy on the gays too.   

Factual Counter Point: It was actually us atheists legalizing righteous fetus murder in 1972 that led to the lowered crime rates in the early 1990’s.

Yeah, somehow they missed that one.  Instead, they point out that after prayer was removed from our schools violent crime rates went up and then back down and then eventually way lower than they were before, but at first they went up, but not right away or anything.  If that’s not conclusive enough, they point out that during the years immediately after that, also known as the 60s, the instances of STDs went up considerably.  During the 60s.  Because of school prayer and not increased amounts of fucking.  And as if those two rock-solid coincidences aren’t enough, they point out that SAT scores dropped for 18 consecutive years.  And then, you know, went back up.  And then went back down again and kind of leveled off and then went up again.

Are they aware that the SAT isn’t graded by the magically objective pre-cogs from Minority Report?  Also they stopped asking  the same questions every year.  And it’s graded on a bell curve, so the testing service decides whether the average score goes up or down each year.  Were they trying to say our national average score dropped relative to other SAT-taking, fundamentalist Christian theocracies, that have – unlike the United States –  continued to brainwash students with mandatory school prayer since 1962?  Also absurd, but less so.

You’re making this way too complicated.  No prayer equals angry god equals dumb people on drugs with AIDS.  Think about it: Drugs didn’t exist before 1962 and immediately after three years before that you’ve got the first known case of HIV.  And of course, based on these evidence-like-assertions, they conclude that the only solution to drugs and AIDS is to start mandating prayers in schools once again.

I know it sometimes looks like the cart is gonna keel over trying to push that huge horse . . .  

But there are actual statistics on this, from real scientific studies, with authentic isolated variables, and genuine correction for covariance.  As you might have guessed, brains that prefer creationism to science, are also quantitatively worse at problem solving and other smartness metrics.

Yes, well perhaps that’s why critics of this petition can’t make any headway..

Failing to pray in school causes AIDS: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/30/kentucky-school-prayer-petition_n_3676932.html?utm_hp_ref=religion

And finally tonight, from the bullshit archeology file, the four-trillionth piece of Jesus’s cross was uncovered in Turkey last week.  And I think we can all agree that a reputable news source like the Huffington Post would never report something like this if it was absolutely dripping with credulous camel crap.

Christians are acknowledging the existence of archeological evidence?  That’s quite a slippery slope, if they start allowing data from the “-ologies” into the argument.   

Lead researcher and person with no fewer than 4 diacritical marks in her name Gulgun Koroglu said that they found a chest and there was holy stuff in it and some of the stuff was wood so there you go.  And if you can’t trust a woman with three umlauts and a breve in her name, who can you trust?

I’m skeptical . . . Jewish wood in a Turkish box . . . It’s fishy . . . Doesn’t pass the smell test.                     

The fact that the church they were excavating was built more than six centuries after the crucifixion and that seventh century priests were not known for authenticating relics through carbon-dating might leave a person with fewer umlauts in doubt, but the researchers and the hack author who brought us the story have no time for things like skepticism and common sense.  The article actually ends with the claim that this discovery (quote) “provides further evidence of the historical Jesus”.  Yes, much in the same way that my old underoos provide evidence for the historical Aquaman.

How can they be sure this wasn’t wood from Gandalf’s staff or Santa’s sleigh?  Neither of them spent time in seventh century Turkey either.

Four trillionth piece of Jesus cross “found” in Turkey: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/01/jesus-cross-found-archaeology_n_3691938.html?utm_hp_ref=religion

That does it for headlines tonight.  Heath, thanks as always for joining me.

Pleasure as always.

And when we come back we’ll continue to not accept Christ as our Lord and Savior.

Skit:

Are you always preparing for raptures that keep falling through?

Are you constantly losing arguments to atheists?

How confident are you that you born into the right iteration of the right denomination of the right faction of the right religion?

All good Christians go to heaven, right?  Of course they do, as long as Christian Real God is in charge.  But what if Allah is in charge?  What if . . . Jew God is in charge?  What if there’s a bunch of gods all struggling for power and Christian god isn’t winning right now?

Any sophisticated investor in the afterlife, needs to consider these other-godly risks when building their eternal bliss strategy.  Most religions tell you not to pray to other gods, so hardly anyone is covering all their bases.  Here at Pascal’s Wager Afterlife Hedge Fund, we take care of all that for you.  We build a diversified portfolio of prayer on your behalf, to a wide variety of possible deities.  Our skillful pseudo-scientists are constantly monitoring the market, checking on what we believe to be real-time evidence, predicting which gods are most likely to be the ones that count.

But don’t take our word for it.  Listen to what some of our clients are saying:

As a Baptist, I’d never confessed my sins before.  Didn’t figger I needed to.

But as my agent explained, if you follow Pascal’s Wager to it’s logical conclusion, what have I got to lose?  Nowadays I confess, take communion, study the Torah, bow to Mecca and behead the occasional chicken.  And you know what?  I sleep easier because of it.

I used to think that accepting Jesus as my personal savior was enough to guarantee me a spot in eternal glory.  Boy was I a naive, stupid, gullible, small-minded, idiotic, foolish, misguided, doltish, obtuse, credulous, puerile, ill-advised simpleton back then.

Like any good hedge fund, our agents work hard to identify the exploitable loopholes in this dangerously deregulated sector.  Speaking of which . . . Non-Jews, call in the next 10 minutes and you’ll get one free loophole for gentiles hoping to appease Jew God, in the extremely unlikely event that he exists.

Sure, the idea of a monotheistic deity other than Christian Real God is preposterous.  But that’s what our form of insurance is for.  It’s for protecting you, in case of the preposterous.  What’s the worst thing that could happen?  You could go to hell and suffer eternal damnation.

Pascal’s Wager Afterlife Hedge Fund: Believe in one god . . . Pander to all of them

Babble:

There aren’t a lot of books out there that inspire a person to break out the party hats just for getting 19% of the way through them.  But if you make it a fifth of the way through the bible you deserve a hell of alot more than a hug and a cookie.

So joining Heath and me to celebrate this milestone are my lovely wife Lucinda.

Hello.

And also joining us as a special guest Scatheist this week is my good friend Eli Bosnick, Eli, welcome back to the show.

Now last time we heard from you, you were running for Pope.  How did that work out for you?

I didn’t get it.  Lost it to an old white guy… never saw it coming.

Damn racists.

Now you’ve actually read this whole damn book before, but you actually reread the Pentateuch for the purposes of this appearance and I’ve gotta commend you for that.  I mean, reading this shit is bad enough but going back to it when you already know how bad it is?  That’s a whole other level of masochism right there.

Alright, so the good news is that we’ve already read 5 of the 12 longest books in this thing and 4 of the 8 longest.  The bad news is that’s still a small fraction and there’s a lot more of this shit to come.  But before we dig into all of that, we figured we’d take a little time to highlight some of our favorite and least favorite moments from the Torah.

There are approximately eight billion characters in the first five books of the bible, so I might be asking a lot of you guys to narrow it down to just one, but who earns the honor as your favorite cast member so far?

• I really enjoyed Moses’ imaginary friend during all the wandering . . . Kind of like Gazoo from the Flintstones . . . The “God” guy.  Apparently he didn’t have much to do with Moses’ plot of creation, but he was a good side character.

• Balaam’s Donkey – I just couldn’t help but hear Eddie Murphy’s voice when I read it.  Plus, he was the only talking animal that didn’t condemn humanity for all time.

• Guys I gotta go with the snake. I mean. We are the snake. The snake also makes no invalid points which i always like.

• How could it not be Jacob?  This guy is a complete bastard.  He buys his brothers birthright with some broth, he tricks his dad with some decomposing bear skin, he pre-marries his wife’s sister and then he kicks god’s ass in a wrestling match.  What’s not to like?

As anybody whose been following along knows, the bible is chocked full of horrible shit, but can you guys tell me which of the macabre proclamations constitutes the worst verse in the Torah?

• I’m gonna go way out there and say Numbers 12:14- “If her father spit in her face, would she not be shamed for seven days?”

  • For like six days after that you were wandering around the house muttering that line over and over.

  • There was worse shit in there, don’t get me wrong, but god is justifying turning this chick into a leper because her husband was an asshole and he says it’s okay because her dad has the divine right to shame her with a loogie whenever the fuck he feels like it. “ If her father spit in her face…..” ( muttering fade out )

• I’m going way back to Genesis 38:10: “But what [Onan] did was displeasing in the sight of the lord, so he took his life also.”  And what did Onan do to incur God’s wrath?  He refused to fuck his brother’s wife.  Or actually, he did fuck her, but he refused to come in her.  And so god killed him.  And why was Onan obligated to fuck his brother’s wife?  Because god had already killed his brother.

• Gotta be Genesis 22:2 from the New American Bible.  This is God deceiving Abraham, setting up a fucked-up loyalty test: “Then God said: Take your son Isaac, your only one, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah. There you shall offer him up as a holocaust on a height that I will point out to you.”  Sacrificing your son because the voices told you is insane regardless, but only the Catholics would make it worse by keeping the word “holocaust” in their translation, when EVERYONE else says “burnt offering”.  They’ve had about seventy years to to make a simple diplomatic edit.  I think everyone can find a way to get by, without using words like niggardly and lowercase holocaust anymore.

• Guys. You are so wrong. Deuteronomy 22:13-21 if a woman be not a virgin on her wedding night stone her to death on her father’s doorstep.

  • You know what, yeah, I’m switching my vote.  A verse is automatically worse if the barbaric shit it’s talking about is actually still happening in the modern world.

  • Plus, why her father’s doorstep?  Isn’t it just as much the husband’s fault for marrying that slut?  Why should her dad have to clean up the mess?

And in a related category, I asked everybody to come up with the “Most Immoral Aspect” of the first five books…

• I mean, there’s a part in this book where god kills every breathing thing on the planet, so it’s hard to look at any other part and say “well killing all breathing life is bad, but it also endorses slavery.”  So I kind of have to go Great Flood on this one.

• Basically every part where a person with a vagina showed up, but if I have to pin it down I’d say Exodus 21:7 where they spell out the proper rules for selling your daughter as a slave-whore.

• I’m going with garden of eden. Of all the horrible mythical torture porn in the bible there is nothing quite so evil as equating truth and sin. Its the begging of the bible for a reason. The rotten foundation.

• According to chapter 22 of Deuteronomy, you’re allowed to rape women, as long as you pay their dad 50 shekels of silver each time, and marry them.  Apparently lots of rape victims find that marrying their rapist is the best way to punish them.  

Okay, so god spent a lot of time waving his dick, telling people to obey him and what bugs they can and can’t eat, but what would you guys say was the number one commandment that got missed?

• Rule Number Zero and Rule Number Eleven: “Don’t get carried away with this book of allegories.”

• Thou shall not accept handjobs. If she’s not going to use her mouth than forget it.

• I know there’s more important shit, but I’m going with “Don’t stop and look around at the top of the fucking escalator.”

• In my opinion, Thou shalt think for thyself should be at the top of the list.

And it’s hard to make the argument that he didn’t have room for all that stuff since he wasted a lot of our time on some pretty petty pronouncements.  So what’s your nomination for the most Superfluous Divine Dictate?

• exodus 22:18. thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. That’s right. The all knowing god makes sure to punish imaginary crimes. Or maybe he just hadn’t heard witches are real.

• I’m not judging it one way or the other, but we’d probably still be murdering plenty of gays in this country, with or without Leviticus 20:13  

• In Leviticus 11:20 God says it’s not okay to eat four legged birds.  He also makes it clear in Leviticus 11:23 that you shouldn’t eat four-legged insects.  So I’m nominating the “don’t eat mutants” proclamation as the one we most could have skipped.

• Deuteronomy 25: 11-12 … This is the part about us wives not grabbing another dude’s junk while they fight with our husband.  You really think we’d go right for the diversionary handjob God?  By using any other tactic we get to keep both our hands… eye gouging comes to mind….

And since reading five books qualifies you as the biblical expert in most groups of Christians, what part or aspect of this thing do you think would most freak out the average Christian?

• More than half of their Christian faith owner’s manual … Written by a Jew.  That’s right.    

• I’m tempted to go with Moses going ape shit over the jews leaving a few cows and infants alive in Media.  I’m tempted to go with the magical dirty water uterus expunging fidelity spell from chapter 5 of Numbers.  But I’m gonna lean on my interactions with a lot of Christians and I’m gonna say they’d be damn surprised by how many times god tells them to lay off the fucking immigrants.

• Based on the first 5 books, they’d probably be freaked out to know that they are all going to hell. I mean if we seriously consider the rules this book sets forth, not killing one’s daughter for being raped and not screaming loud enough would do it. Not to mention all that other crazy shit in there that anyone in their right mind would never do.

• Its not in the bible but I think the scientific fact that ALL of exodus just didn’t fucking happen is pretty important.

Alright, so imagine that you’re on the editing board for the Torah.  You’ve just read through the most recent draft and you’re allowed to give the author one rewrite note.  What would it be?

• So the main character is not very likable. He’s like holden caufield….but worse. We want to like this guy. He created the universe…and puppies. lets see more of THAT guy and less of the “lets get into the specifics of genocide

• I guess my top rewrite note, based purely on the Pentateuch, would be: “Rewrite the first five books.”  And if I’m giving a more specific example, while these so-called prophets are all discussing geography, maybe a little mention about future places to avoid.  I think plently of readers would have happily steered clear of Italy, Japan, Germany, and red states.

  • Not to mention Jersey.

• I don’t give a shit who anybody’s great-great grandfather is.  Seriously.

• How about not being such a cunt to the ladies. I don’t know, maybe refer to us as actual living, breathing human beings or something, that’d be nice.

And finally, if you could ask god one question after reading the Pentateuch, what would it be?

• What’s your name again?  I forgot . . . it wasn’t repeated in the last verse of Deuteronomy.  Was it Allah-something?  

  • Right.  And what’s this “I am that I am” shit?  Are you God or Popeye?

  • Also, “Can I speak to your manager?”  Asshole’s gotta have a boss in that infinite regression somewhere.  

• You made Shakespeare.  We know you made Shakespeare.  And yet you have your book written by a Bronze age stuttering James Patterson with ahlzeimers.  What the fuck?

• Since you STOLE my Shakespeare thing…before i thought of it no less…that’s the worst. Why make it so hard to believe in you? Why encode perfect morality (which not only you possess but embody if we’re asking Doctor Craig) into weird allegories. Why not a pamphlet with just one really great piece of advice on it? Why the most boring horrid genealogical study…ever

• I have to ask, Do you have mommy issues?

What a perfect question to end on.  Heath, Lucinda, Eli, thanks for joining me.

And if you’re playing along at home, you’ve got three weeks to trudge through Joshua before we dive in once again.

Outro:

Before we snuff the roach tonight, I wanted to thank way more people than I can possibly thank in a single show, let alone a tacked on segment on the end here.  Thanks to the generous help of Tom and Cecil over at Cognitive Dissonance our audience has more than tripled in the last week and I want to thank everyone who has shared the show, rated us on iTunes, sent an appreciative email, liked us on Facebook and told their friends about us.  We are flattered and humbled every day by the response the show gets and we’re hard at work to keep earning your listenership every week.

Of course, I’ve gotta thank Heath for going above and beyond over and over again, I need to thank Lucinda for joining us tonight, Eli for swinging by and lending us his wit and his wisdom and, of course, I need to thank Professor Chris Altman for being so generous with his time.  Incidentally, if you enjoyed the interview with him, be sure to check out the extended version.  I had to cut a bunch of really good information out to fit it into this week’s show but the whole unadulterated interview is available for free on the Extras Page at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.

But of course, above all else, I need to thank this week’s best people and holy shit was the world chocked full of awesome people this week.  For example, Alden, James, Ivy, Vincent, Jason, Nicholas, Adam, Lee Ann, Paul, April, John, Ward, Erik, Kerry, Derrick, Andrea, Tim and Richard who proved themselves this week by giving us money.  Only people who share the epicurean philanthropy of Alden, James, Ivy, Vincent, Jason, Nicholas, Adam, Lee Ann, Paul, April, John, Ward, Erik, Kerry, Derrick, Andrea, Tim and Richard have what it takes to give us money, but if you think you share Alden, James, Ivy, Vincent, Jason, Nicholas, Adam, Lee Ann, Paul, April, John, Ward, Erik, Kerry, Derrick, Andrea, Tim and Richard’s discerning benevolence, you’ll find the donate button on the right side of the homepage at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.

And if you want to give us money but you’ve been hurt by other podcasts before, you can also really help us out by leaving us a 5 star review on iTunes, adding us to your favorites on Stitcher, liking us on Facebook, following us on Twitter and subscribing to us on YouTube.  Oh yeah, and follow the blog.  Because we do all that shit.

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.