Archive
Learning to Podcast From the Best
by Noah Lugeons
My first podcasting love was “The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe”. My wife bought me the iPod for Christmas and I got bored listening to music with it after about three days. I figured I might as well learn something on my commute so I tried to put a college curriculum in there. I downloaded one history podcast, one philosophy podcast, a psychology one, a podcast about literature, a podcast about film technique and, of course, one on general science.
The last one is the only one of that original batch that I still listen to and it’s the show that I credit with changing podcasting from a way to kill time on a commute to my primary form of entertainment (and eventually my primary hobby). I’ve said before that I’ve been an atheist as long as I can remember, but I haven’t always been a skeptic and I largely credit that program with cementing a transformation that made me both a skeptic and a passionate lover of science. In my mid-thirties no less.
So when I heard that Dr. Steven Novella was going to be teaming up with George Hrab (also a podcaster of some repute) to conduct a podcasting workshop in NYC this year, I couldn’t get to a computer fast enough. To be honest, I think I’d have paid $25 just to eavesdrop on these two guys having conversation over lunch, so the workshop seemed like a steal.
Well, I went yesterday afternoon and I can say that it did not disappoint. The two presenters boast more than 700 episodes combined and have more combined years podcasting than there are total years in the history of podcasting. They’ve seen the entire medium change several times over and have managed to stay consistently relevant throughout, even when the world of podcasting started drawing the multi-billion dollar entertainment conglomerates.
My only complaint was that the workshop wasn’t long enough. I’m sure that I could have teased 35 hours of good advice out of those guys so an hour and forty-five minutes seemed like a tease. To be fair, I should note that it was only scheduled to go an hour and fifteen, so we did get some bonus-workshop.
Upon reflection, I really wish that I’d attended this thing about 7 episodes ago, as they covered a lot of the things I’ve already learned the hard way. But they also helped to alert me to some issues that I’ve got coming down the road and a few mistakes I just haven’t made yet.
I was also delighted to see that Dr. Novella and I use the same type of mixer. I’m not sure why I’m so tickled by that, but I am.
Anyway, not much to share here, but I wanted to make sure everyone knows that even when I’m on vacation, I’m still hard at work finding ways to make the show better.
Scathing Atheist on You-Tube
by Noah Lugeons
By popular request, we’re putting select segments from the show on You-Tube. We’ll be adding full episodes at a future date and Lucinda and I have been kicking around all kinds of weird ideas about adding puppets, animation, stop-motion and a bunch of other stuff that will probably prove more trouble than it’s worth.
Anyway, first things first. We’ve uploaded a couple of the diatribes already. You can check out our channel here and be sure to subscribe. We’ll be adding all kinds of cool shit eventually and you’ll definitely want to be in on the ground floor of that.
And if you don’t have time to subscribe just yet, that’s fine. You can get a sample here, too:
Episode 7: Partial Transcript
by Noah Lugeons
Sponsor:
This week’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by all the awesome people who sent encouraging emails and tweets, left complimentary comments on the blog, gave us positive reviews on iTunes and otherwise helped convince us to start doing this thing on a weekly basis.
And now, the Scathing Atheist…
Intro:
It’s Thursday, It’s April 4th, and I’m already tired of changing my fantasy baseball lineup.
I’m your host Noah Lugeons and from decadent New York, New York, This is the Scathing Atheist
On this week’s episode,
- A Riyadh woman has consensual sex despite overt bicycle riding,
- God blames his mysterious ways on the lack of a father figure in his life,
- And Tom Beasley of an American Atheist join us to explain how he gets off naming his atheist podcast after a country that was clearly founded as a Christian nation.
But first, Heath Enwright with the diatribe…
Diatribe:
Many religions believe that the universe is created by an intelligent designer. Existence is an experimental game and god is the initial inventor of the game and is now an all-knowing spectator watching as we humans misuse the power of choice he gave us. This notion is fucking absurd, but let’s explore it anyway.
If god’s a sports fan, his model sport for humankind is definitely NASCAR. The world he built is a very similar, ridiculously dangerous situation . . . A bunch of crazy rednecks, competitively wasting fossil fuels and god’s just watching from the stands waiting to see the really good wrecks.
The takeaway here, is that if god is a NASCAR fan, he’s can’t be that intelligent.
So if he even exists, intelligent design is not the preferred nomenclature. I’d call it Military intelligent design at best. Even GOD didn’t think through his exit strategy. Intelligently designed games end elegantly, like checkmate in chess. For this game of existence on earth, his exit strategy seems to be nuclear holocaust.
I’m just saying, if religion were to dial back their stance on the intelligence, and just go for the design claim I’d still think they were silly but noticeably less so. But they don’t do dialing back very well. Admitting fault isn’t exactly in the church’s wheelhouse. Granted the faults they’d need to admit are often unspeakable, but I’m pretty sure that actually makes it worse.
The point . . . is that god’s clearly not that smart, and it looks like devoutly religious people agree. Everyone I’ve ever met who takes a religion really seriously, is always trying to justify absurd ways to bend the rules. Like god didn’t read his own fine print.
Great example . . . take butt sex. If you’re willing to bend over the rules a little, anal sex is the #1 virginity preservation method. I like to call this the poop-hole loophole . . . Like this somehow softens the blow later when you’re married, and trying to make your sexual history sound less bad; “No I’m a legit virgin. I’ve had huge amounts of cock in the hole right next to it, but that vagina is clean virgin territory.”
Bullshit . . . Even then, you know they’ve played, ‘just the tip’, a few times.
Speaking of just the tip, my circumcised friend from college, named Israel, also a firm believer in the validity of the poop hole loophole, was excellent at finding ways to just barely avoid directly breaking all these detailed Orthodox Jew-y rules he had to deal with.
For example, he’s not allowed to use any fire, electricity, or machinery of any kind on Shabas, which is sundown Friday until sundown Saturday. So if we were all hanging out smoking pot on Friday night, he couldn’t partake. Unless of course somebody drew a bong hit into the tube without inhaling it, and then happened by chance to leave that random, glass, smoke-filled column sitting on the table with a coaster over it, and then Israel happened to randomly choose to take one of his normal breaths of air while that coaster was quickly removed and that glass tube was on his face.
This would just be a chain of unrelated events. The fire used to burn the pot to make the smoke to fill the tube was wielded by someone else and the bong water acted as a mystical justification barrier, completely separating the fire from whoever might have, by chance, been breathing too close to the bong afterward.
Like Jew God is up there going, “Shit, yeah that bong water really ties my hands on this one. My boss – “God God” – will be up my ass about this if I smite this crafty stoner.” And as far as I know, Israel’s never been smote, so clearly the loophole worked. And this encourages further abuse of the rules.
So why are we so surprised about priests raping kids? Bunch of priests sitting around – trying to figure out loopholes:
“God says we can’t have sex, and can’t masturbate. What option does that leave us? Roll with me on this, keeping in mind, the lord works in mysterious ways. What if a kid gave me a Dutch Rudder?
“We’re not touching dicks. I’m touching my dick, and he’s just working my arm. So I’m not jerking it, and he’s not jerking it, and everybody wins.”
I guess not that many priests are big Kevin Smith fans. All I’m saying . . . it seems like nobody is telling the priests’ side of the story. Maybe the rape thing was a little extreme, but clearly the current rules aren’t sustainable. If I were a priest, I’d be lobbying for glory holes in the confessional booth. At least slutty sinners could try to buy indulgences with happy endings .
There is another solution. It’s nowhere near as fun as my glory hole idea, but probably more reasonable. The church could always just acknowledge that celibacy is ridiculous and goes against the biological instinct to reproduce, or at least the instinct to get laid. But this solution would never happen, because the church would end up having to reconcile its absurd universe view with contradictory things like evidence.
Church’s just don’t do epistemology. Figuring things out with reason is a giant hassle compared to faith.
Headlines:
Joining me tonight for headlines is the Tango to my Cash, Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to tango?
Alright, in our lead story tonight, Pennsylvania State Representative Tim Krieger has introduced legislation designed to act as an impediment to the first amendment. There’s a lot going on here, but the important thing to take away from it is that Representative Krieger is willing to boldly stand up to a beleaguered minority, as long as they’re kids.
Our story begins with Moses wandering down a mountain with a couple of tablets and placing them, in a roundabout way, in front of a school near Pittsburgh. A few secular students pointed out that a giant copy of the Ten Commandments shouldn’t be there. Officials refused to voluntarily remove it so the students got together with the Freedom From Religion Foundation and sued the school.
Well the judge in the case is trying to let them sue anonymously, but that’s reasonable so the Christians are against it.
Enter Tim Krieger, fanatical Christian blowhard and guy who looks like he would be second-in-command for a plot to take over the world, but not the main bad guy. He calls bullshit on that and proposes a law that would make it illegal for a plaintiff to sue anonymously regardless of the ruling of the judge in the case. But don’t worry; this would only apply to cases where religious monuments were being challenged on a Constitutional basis, so at least they’re not trying to pretend it’s fair.
Pennsylvania representative proposes law that would force atheist students to sue publicly: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/03/29/pennsylvania-rep-tim-krieger-doesnt-care-if-atheists-get-harassed-by-christians/
And in other centuries, the morality of Catholicism is in the news again, despite not having changed in generations. The latest incarnation of their pre-scientific ethics comes to us from Boston, home of the nation’s oldest public park, numerous substandard sports franchises and Boston College where officials have threatened disciplinary action against students for the unspeakable crime of promoting safe sex.
Yes, it’s the fucking condom thing again.
The group BC Students for Sexual Health was hit with a “cease and desist” order saying that the group’s goal of promoting common sense was (quote) “not in concert with the mission of Boston College as a Catholic and Jesuit University”
Boston College stops students from handing out condoms: http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/27/us/boston-college-condoms-dispute/index.html
In other news, our whirlwind tour of bat-shit crazy states makes a long-overdue stop in Utah where the Mormons look to cement their reputation as backwards even compared to other religions. The Christian Newswire alerts us to a new service offered by a Salt Lake City based Mormon pseudo-clinic that brings cyber-homophobia into the 21st century.
This is another one of those “pray the gay out” type of things where some callous charlatan takes money from a conflicted person whose preacher tells them they’re identity is offensive to god. In the press release they refer to homosexuality as “same-sex attraction”, which I thought was a nice touch.
Anti-gay web resource for Mormon homophobes: http://www.christiannewswire.com/news/8297071798.html
And from the “Somebody-Had-To-Say-It” department, a new study warns parents that extreme religiosity in a child could be a warning sign of insanity. Every article I saw on the study was really careful to point out all the beneficial corollaries of faith in kids, such as lower incidence of criminal behavior, higher self-esteem, better academic performance and less trouble fucking the preppy chicks, but the association between religion and crazy is pretty hard to ignore.
The study warns that extreme devotion to a religion could be emblematic of anxiety, unaddressed trauma or stress, obsessive compulsive disorder, bi-polar disorder, scrupulosity, schizophrenia, manic depressive or early onset of being-an-insufferable-dick.
Now, we make a lot of jokes about this, but this is pretty serious because one of the really pervasive side effects of religion is that it gives crazy people something to cloak themselves in. Everybody has to be at least a little “crazy” to profess some of the beliefs that organized religion demands, so it’s easy to imagine somebody delaying psychological treatment for a child because they don’t want to say, “he’s so religious it’s crazy”. Faith has been mislabeled a virtue so if something that would be clearly nuts in any other context pops up in the context of religion, people are way less likely to go, “that motherfucker’s crazy.”
Study warns that children who are “too religious” may be crazy: http://news.yahoo.com/child-too-religious-094552602.html
Moving on to some “Other-Countries-Are-Laughing-At-Us” news, an atheist shoe company in Berlin is charging that the US Post Office deliberately discriminates against them and backs up the allegation with an informal study that showed that identical packages with their abominable “Atheist” logo took an average of 3 days longer to arrive at their destination.
To be fair, this wasn’t exactly a scientific study and it wasn’t exactly published in a peer review journal, but the results look pretty damning for the USPS, especially since the whole experiment was prompted when US customers starting asking the company to leave off the telltale tape that said “Atheist-Atheist-Atheist” across it.
The take away, though, is that there’s a company that makes pretty cool looking shoes that say “Ich Bin Atheist” on them and they’re getting some free advertising on our show courtesy of the Post Office being a bunch of miserable dicks.
Atheist shoe company accuses US Post Office of discrimination: http://www.atheistberlin.com/study
And in this week’s living, breathing evidence against intelligent design, Dr. Joseph Mastropaolo has announced that he will impotently wave $10,000 around in the air in a vainglorious, insincere, meaningless publicity stunt.
Mastropaolo, a grown adult with an advanced degree who believes in Noah’s Ark is pretending to offer $10,000 to anyone who can “scientifically disprove” the literal creation account described in Genesis. And yes, that’s the one where they say god created night and day a full three days before creating the sun.
People with competent navigation of their own brains point out that “scientifically disproving” something is a meaningless term and thus an impossible standard to meet. They also point out that if Mastropaolo was so confident, he wouldn’t be insisting that anyone trying to claim the prize also put up $10,000. And of course, they also point out that the generally accepted foundations of biology, astronomy, geology, chemistry, cosmology, anthropology, literature and philosophy all “disprove” a literal interpretation of the bible to any reasonable standard.
Creationist offers $10,000 to anyone who can scientifically “disprove” creationism: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/27/joseph-mastropaolo-creationist-10000-disprove-genesis_n_2964801.html
And finally, in international news, Saudi Arabia makes a bold move to counteract the baseless stereotype that women are mistreated in majority Muslim countries. In a valiant and unprecedented move that would have made Elizabeth Cady Stanton look like Archie Bunker’s wife, the religious police in Saudi Arabia have lifted the ban on women riding bicycles.
Now, obviously you can’t do this all at once or you’d risk utter chaos, so they’ll be limiting this to specific parks and recreational areas, and, of course, the women will have to be chaperoned by a male relative and covered from head to toe in a potato sack, but I think it’s safe to say that sexism in Saudi Arabia is pretty much over.
Saudi authorities lift ban on women in bikes: http://news.yahoo.com/saudi-religious-police-lift-ban-women-bikes-111923001.html
That’s all we’ve got for headlines tonight, Heath, thanks for hanging out.
When we come back, Tom Beasley will join me to circle religion like a hungry buzzard.
Skit:
Occasionally we get feedback from listeners that really enjoy the show, but think that we sometimes get a little carried away. For example, in last week’s episode, when discussing the Westboro Baptist Church, my co-host Heath Enwright expressed a desire to savagely penetrate Fred Phelps’ rectum.
We received several comments about the segment but I chose two that represented what I’ve come to think of as the two distinct audiences that this program appeals to.
Jon on Facebook said he really enjoyed parts of the show, but felt that the anally penetrating Fred Phelps portion went (quote) “beyond edgy and made me squeamish”. On the other hand, we also got an email from Daniel in Plano who said, “Love it! I almost pissed myself when Heath started talking about butt-fucking Phelps!”
So in our ceaseless quest to push the envelope of podcasting, I’d like to offer two explanations of the Fred Phelps comments. And because the show is only 30 minutes, I’d like to offer both explanations at the same time.
So if you find yourself in the “Jon” camp that feared that segment might make them vomit, please remove your right earphone for the remainder of this segment. If you’re more in “Daniel’s” spontaneous urination camp, please remove your left earphone. And if you’re not generally inspired to exude any bodily secretions over our skits, feel free to leave both earphones in and get twice as much podcast for the next few minutes.
*
We live in a world where the walls of censorship are fast falling away. Where once some government (censor/ cock-stain) stood between your ears and the vulgarities of less (cultured/ prudish) (individuals/ motherfuckers), in the 21st century, you’re no longer protected from words like (George Carlin’s notorious seven/ shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, tits).
There is, of course, one (negative/ positive) consequences (While/…) it expands the scope of the first amendment to previously unimagined heights, we also (have/ get) to (endure/ enjoy) a lot more (off-color/ dick and fart) jokes and (lewd/ hilarious) social commentary. As a result, some (refined/ uptight) consumers of new media with little (tolerance/ appreciation) for vulgarity get (offended/ fucked).
As a producer of such content, one must act as one’s own censor and must thus strike a (delicate/ frustrating) balance between being too (vulgar/ boring) and being too (academic/ vulgar). While I respect and appreciate the concerns of the people who wish I would be (vulgar/ myself) less often, I’m naturally inclined to side with the group that most mirrors my own sense of (propriety/ humor). The unfortunate result is that I must occasionally ask some members of my audience to (endure in good humor/ go fuck themselves).
Take, for example, our recent headline segment about the (detestable bigots/ spunk-garglers) at the Westboro Baptist Church. During that segment, our mutual dislike for the group was obvious and my co-host made some (untoward/ hysterical) comments about their leader, Fred Phelps, and things that might be hatefully inserted into his (anus/ asshole), including Heath’s (hateful /throbbing) (member/ dick).
While some (people/ prudes) found this offensive, I think it’s important to keep in mind that Fred Phelps is (despicable/ an ass nugget) and deserves to be (mocked/ gay hate fucked) mercilessly. What’s more, we should do so with (unapologetic/ un-lubricated), (spite-filled/ splinter-filled) (voracity/ broom handles) in the deepest, most (scornful/ painful) way.
And when we, here at the Scathing Atheist, (comment publicly/ blow our juice) on Fred Phelps, we hope that we can hit him (where it hurts/ in the eyes) and really make it sting. A gifted few can do so by way of intellectual criticisms, but those of us without the (education/ desire) or the (verbal dexterity/ words and shit) to express such scathing distaste without resorting to (obscenity/ fuck) filled tirades (have/ get) to resort to the (basest/ funniest) type of humor.
The important thing to remember is that regardless of what words we choose, we all agree that if any target is deserving of our foulest utterings, it is the kind of (visceral/ass-brained) (animosity/ fucktardary) and (lunacy/ bullshit) promoted by the Westboro Baptist Church.
Okay, this (segment/ shit) is really hard to edit, so please put your (right/ left) earphone back in now.
Calendar:
It’s time for the Atheist Calendar portion of the show. This week we’ll be highlighting some of the great secular meet-ups and conventions coming up in April.
We’ll start in Lawrence, Kansas where “Reasonfest 3” will be taking place over the weekend of April 20th. The lineup is fantastic, led by Seth Andrews, JT Eberhard, Jerry DeWitt plus Matt Dillahunty in a debate called “Moral Combat” and something with the enticing title “The Godless Pervert Story Hour” featuring notable godless perverts Greta Christina, David Fitzgerald and more.
http://kusoma.org/2013/01/reasonfest-2013/
A lot of action the following week in the nation’s capital: The Secular Coalition for America will be hosting a Secular Summit from April 24th to the 26th that’ll include some great instruction on effective secular lobbying.
http://secular.org/lobbyday2013
Also in DC on the 27th of April the Center For Inquiry will be hosting “Why Tolerate Religion”, a day long symposium tackling the contentious issue of religion’s role in our supposedly secular government.
http://action.centerforinquiry.net/site/Calendar?id=103301&view=Detail
And for our West Coast heathens, CFI on Campus will be hosting a Leadership Conference in the City of Angels on the same weekend.
http://www.centerforinquiry.net/oncampus/slcla2013
Of course, wherever you are in the world, don’t forget that according to the Secular Students Alliance, Thursday, April 18th is National Ask an Atheist Day, so check your local listings to see if there’s any way you can get involved.
http://www.secularstudents.org/askanatheistday
If you want to learn more about this or any of the other events discussed on this episode, check the shownotes for episode 7 at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.
That’ll do it for this week’s calendar. As always, if you’re involved in an atheist, skeptical or secular event that needs a little free publicity, let me know. And if you’re not involved in an atheist, skeptical or secular event, what the hell are you waiting for?
Interview Links:
An American Atheist Blog: http://anamericanatheist.org/
Outro:
So that’s about all the time we’ve got for tonight. I want to thank Tom Beasley for hanging out with us, I want to thank Alan Blumlein for inventing stereo sound and also want to give a big thanks for Cecil & Tom from Cognitive Dissonance for providing this week’s circuitous Farnsworth quote. Those guys put on a really fun podcast, so you should definitely check them out at Dissonance Pod (dot) com.
I also want to thank the lovely Lucinda Lugeons for everything she does behind the scenes, Heath Enwright for everything he does in front of the scenes. But mostly I want to thank god for making this podcast possible by not existing.
Be sure to check back with us in 168 hours for the “Holy Babble” edition, in which Heath, my wife and I will do something that at least two of us will regret almost immediately. If you can’t wait that long, be sure to check out our erratically published blog, follow me on Twitter @Noah (underscore) Lugeons and like us on Facebook because apparently people still use Facebook.
If you enjoy the show, please help us spread the word by leaving us a glowing review on iTunes or whatever you use. Don’t forget to help drive up our Stitcher ranking by listening to us there and if you don’t have the Stitcher app yet, don’t worry, I’m not judging you for it the way all the attractive members of the opposite sex are.
If you have comments, questions or death threats, you’ll find all the contact info on the Contact page at Scathing Atheist (dot) com. All the music used in this episode was written and performed by yours truly and yes, I did have my permission.
Religion as Child Abuse
by Noah Lugeons
Yeah, a lot has been said about this already so I’m not going to devote too much time to it here. The four horsemen have long since established what I feel to be a compelling and nigh undeniable argument that religion is often a guise for child abuse. And we’re not talking about the sexual abuse that has become so synonymous with religious leaders, we’re talking about the actual practice of teaching religion to children.
The apologists like to sweep this under the rug. When they address a crowd of hostile atheists, they downplay the literalism of the bible. They pretend that religious people all look at it like a divinely inspired-Aesop’s Fables. They like to pretend that Christians don’t treat the bible as being 100% accurate. But when we’re not looking, that’s exactly what they’re teaching their kids.
I recall a field trip I took in 3rd grade where my class was presented with a human skeleton and asked if we could determine whether it was the skeleton of a man or a woman. Without exception, every kid in my class immediately took to counting the ribs. Until then, there was no difference between the authority of a religious figure and a secular teacher. They were both grown-ups who told us things with authority. They were both people who our parents told us we should listen to and respect. How were we to know that one source was sound and the other bullshit?
But when all the little Christian Twitter trolls pop up to give us atheists the smack-down we so richly deserve, they have to answer for shit like this. When a kid gets really, really interested in science she or he might learn something that will aid them for the rest of their lives. But when a kid gets really, really interested in religion, she or he might do this:
Belittling Christians
by Noah Lugeons
Sometimes people say, “Noah, you belittle Christians a lot.”
And I respond, “Yeah, I do my best.”
So no, I’ll be offering no apology for it here or anywhere else in the foreseeable future. When people point out that I belittle Christians, I respond the same way that an Olympic sprinter would respond if somebody asked her why she was in such a hurry… After all, that’s kind of the point.
Now, there are those that would say that this is counterproductive. They say that the caustic brand of atheism I subscribe to is antithetical to the goals of minimizing the role of religion in society. They present a “circle-the-wagons” mentality that I might inspire if I’m too insulting. They point out that the more attainable goals of keeping religion out of science class and the courtroom can be hamstrung by the more grandiose goal of stamping out organized religion altogether.
And what’s more, they might be right. I still don’t care.
My goal as an atheist activist is to marginalize religion. I work toward a world where anybody who believes in something without evidence is embarrassed to admit it in public. I want reason by way of shame.
I think it’s a sad commentary on our culture that my unwavering belief that all truth-claims should be subjected to the same scrutiny puts me in the extreme wing of a minority. That shouldn’t be a bold stance. It should be nearly unthinkable to take any other stance and that’s precisely what I seek.
To be fair, I’ll concede that it’s entirely possible to take that stance without belittling anyone. A lot of skeptics do yeoman’s work by patiently walking sasquatch hunters, UFOlogists and homeopaths through the ladder of logic without a hint of condescension. I admire that ability but I do not share it.
And of course, many skeptics are crass and dismissive of nonsense like sasquatch hunters, UFOs and homeopathy. They don’t bother to spare anyone’s feelings and simply treat it like the demonstrable bullshit that it is. In the skeptical movement the battle between “soft” and “hard” is a hell of a lot more muted than the one in the atheist movement, but it’s still there. Some people just insist that the “kill-them-with-kindness” approach is the only valid one.
Many much wiser observers than me have pointed out that there probably isn’t one “valid” approach, so I’m not going to spend any time retreading that ground, but there is something I’d like to offer to the kindness camp. Sure, it’s an anecdote and can thus be easily dismissed, but I think it’s illustrative of the justification behind the approach that I share with a number of other scathing atheists.
Arrogance is a powerful force. Those of us who like to think or ourselves as intelligent don’t like to be told we’re stupid. It’s the only insult that really gets under the skin of some people. Now, when somebody says, “you disagree with me so you’re stupid” it’s meaningless, but if someone you respect intellectually lumps your beliefs in with a bunch of the other “stupid” ones, that has an impact.
I’m not saying there’s anyone out there that respects me intellectually, but there are a number of learned men and women in both the atheist and skeptical movements who sport intellects that are beyond reproach. An intellectually arrogant person hearing that his beliefs are stupid from those people will have an effect.
Now sure, some people are arrogant enough to just toss off the insult and say, “what does that ivy-league professor know?”, but those people are all-but unreachable. But for many if not most intellectually arrogant people, the root of the arrogance was real intelligence. And there are plenty of intelligent, arrogant people out there that still believe in some really silly stuff.
Those people are vulnerable to the caustic attack. I know because that’s how I arrived here. I got to atheism through simple observation and the correct application of logic, but I became a skeptic and (more importantly) a skeptical activist because somebody with an intellect I admire told me I was a dumb-ass. And what’s more, he didn’t try to cater to my ego by telling me how okay it was to still believe this dumb-ass belief.
Now I know that the research shows that most people are far more inclined to listen to and consider your viewpoint if you’re non-confrontational and I recognize that, generally speaking, this is the optimum approach. Hell, it’s the one I usually employ when I’m talking to someone in person. But just because it’s the most widely applicable approach doesn’t mean it’s the only correct one. A person like myself would never be swayed by it, as they would take the agreeable demeanor as a sign of intellectual uncertainty. They would toss off anything you said that didn’t crack the armor of their intellectual arrogance and the only way to do that is to be caustic.
My mother told me that if I didn’t have anything nice to say, I shouldn’t say anything. And a lot of people have told me the same thing since. I get it. I disagree. I feel that it would be intellectually dishonest to say anything nice and it would be socially irresponsible to stay silent.
And if you disagree with my approach, that’s fine. I strongly encourage you to get involved and run as far in the opposite direction as possible. We need all the help we can get. And I believe that we also need all the types of help we can get.
How Religion Makes You an Asshole
by Noah Lugeons
So I was just listening to episode #108 of the Ardent Atheist podcast. The episode’s title was “Why Would God Make Cripples” and the exchange that led to that title had me so furious that I had before I even made it home, I was already composing this blog in my head.
First, a bit of background. The Ardent Atheist is an interview show that brings on a variety of guests, but mostly comedians. They talk about an array of subjects, but as the name suggests, religion is always on the table.
In this episode, they had two guests, Roy Wood, Jr. and Anthony Ramos, both comedians and both of the wishy-washy, pseudo-religious variety. Roy confessed to being a Southern Baptist by merit of being born into it and never bothering to discard it once he realized it was bullshit. Ramos was a little closer to the agnostic camp, though still held out for an afterlife and a higher power.
But during the discussion of his religion, Ramos noted that if/when he got a chance to meet god, he looked forward to punching him/her/it in the face for giving him a degenerative muscle condition that leaves him unable to run and scarcely able to walk at this point in his life.
This led to the obvious question of why a loving god would create crippled people. You would think this would be a really tough question for a theist to answer, but only if you weren’t familiar with the kind of ramshackle bullshit that counts as an “answer” in the minds of a religious person.
Roy Wood, Jr., who to that point had presented himself as a perfectly reasonable, moral, amiable and funny guy let his religious side out for just a minute to defend his god and did so with a statement that was so deceptively demonic that I’m sure he walked away from it with no idea what an asshole he had been when he uttered it.
“You know, people would make the argument that you’re here to inspire others”
And what’s more, he manages to deliver it with a smug, condescending tone that says, “how dare you question god’s plan for you?”
Consider just how awful a thing to say that really is. Perhaps god has chosen to torture you for your entire life by teasing you with physical abilities that he knows he will soon rip away from you. He’s chosen to close doors to you while saddling you with lifelong pain, inconvenience and depression. He’s chosen to punish you unduly compared to his other children, and what’s more, he did so to inspire others.
He’s god, of course, so he could have reached deep into his infinite quiver of miracles to inspire anybody he cared to inspire, but instead of a subtle miracle or a divine whisper, he chose to condemn you to a life-altering disability. Your very existence is an afterthought to god, who could miraculously cure you from your degenerative condition at any time, but chooses not to every minute of every day because he needs you to act as a personified Chicken Soup for the Soul.
I doubt that Roy Wood, Jr. is anywhere near the asshole he came across in that brief moment. In fact, judging by most of the rest of the interview, I’m almost certain that he isn’t. But it doesn’t matter what kind of person you are. When you take it upon yourself to defend a notion as logically incoherent as an omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent deity, you almost have no choice but to be a jackass about it.
The frightening thing is that faith blinds you to it entirely. You could hear Roy getting angry every time someone would start applying logic to his pet superstition and at some point he was psychologically bound to lash out. At a crippled dude. Like an asshole.
Granted, this is quite low on the totem pole of what’s wrong with religion, but it’s one of those minor infractions that’s so common that even many atheists don’t notice it. In fact, I would imagine that many religious folks won’t understand what was wrong with that statement even after reading this post.
And that, in a nutshell, is the biggest problem with religion. It has the power to blind you to the problems with itself. And once you’ve crossed that line, it’s pretty hard to tell when you’ve crossed another.
Start Digging
by Noah Lugeons
The nature of most religious arguments is doomed from the start. It amazes me how often I’ll theoretically concede a point just to point out that even then, they’ve done nothing to prove their point. I will say, in effect, “You’re not right, but even if you were right, you still wouldn’t be right.”
How many religious debates hinge on things that barely crack the 3rd layer of the diagram above? How often does the would-be apologist fail to even break the surface? Arguing against evolution, the big bang, the secular root for morality, the existence of this or that miracle… none of this would even make it into the red.
It’s a really indicator of just how soundly we’re winning the debate. At one time the best we could hope for was to stand in the yellow and argue with the folks in the orange. Before Darwin, most learned men and women (and how woefully few learned women there were then) had to stand in the red and argue against the yellow.
But as empiricism charges forward, the mental-missionaries find themselves in constant retreat. When they pick away at tiny nuggets of their own ignorance about evolution or abiogenesis, they’re breaking their pick-axes against the blue. It’s gotten so bad for them that if they can convince one poor sap to even momentarily doubt evolution, they consider it a victory. Never mind that this does nothing to prove superstition, theism, religion or their own personal religion. They’re breaking out the party hats if they can simply convince someone to think perhaps something someone else told them might be flawed.
Going Weekly
by Noah Lugeons
It’s not a decision I came to lightly, but it was one that seemed inevitable from the start.
I was careful when starting this podcast to avoid biting off more than I could chew. When we made our first false start years ago, we were trying to produce an hour long, weekly show and I quickly became overwhelmed with all the work that went into it. So much so, in fact, that we never got the show off the ground.
Granted, there was a lot more wrong the first time around than just shooting for a high level of content. We also lacked the right equipment, didn’t know how to process sound and had no clue how to produce a podcast.
So when we chose to reboot it, I spent a few months learning the technical stuff before we got going. I also opted to do so with a “dipping-a-toe-in-the-water” approach, starting with a 30 minute, biweekly show. The last thing I wanted to do was to produce a few subpar episodes and throw in the towel like we did before. I didn’t really know how hard it would be to fit it in around the rest of my life and I didn’t want to risk promising more than I could deliver.
But truth be told, it was always our intention to eventually make it a weekly show. I told my wife when we started that I’d give it five episodes and, depending on the response, we’d move it up to once a week. I arbitrarily picked the number 1000 and said that if we had 1000 downloads after 5 episodes I’d double our schedule.
I’m not really sure where that number came from. I had no idea what to expect, I had no idea what was typical and I had no idea what was possible, but I figured if we had 200 people willing to listen after 5 episodes, it was worth my while to keep putting a significant portion of my time into it.
Turns out that I massively low-balled the guesstimate. We had 1000 downloads after 2 episodes and by the time episode 6 was ready to drop we were well over 12,000. What’s more, the feedback we were getting was almost universally positive and the predominant theme in the feedback was “more please”.
The request came in a number of ways. Many people feel obligated to dance around the subject a bit when they’re asking somebody who gives them something for free to give them more, but others are far more direct. Contrast commenter EDT who says, “I’d take more episodes if more were there for the taking” with PyrOphelia’s more forceful approach, “damnit, get off your lazy ass and give me more!”
For the record, when you’re telling someone that you so enjoy their creative endeavor that you wish they’d do twice as much, you don’t have to pussy-foot around it. I’m flattered and I’m sure I speak for most podcasters when I say that.
Obviously, doubling our workload is an intimidating prospect. There are plenty of podcasters out there producing a lot more than 30 minutes a week so it’s clearly not unobtainable, but it will require a lot more effort and a little more sacrifice. My fear, of course, is that the quality of the show could suffer if we find ourselves overtaxed.
We’ve committed to doing the next ten episodes on a weekly schedule, but we do reserve the right to return to a biweekly schedule if we feel that the show is suffering. I’d much rather give you 30 great minutes once every two weeks than give you a pretty good 30 minutes every week.
That being said, up to this point we’ve been constantly bumping segments and shoring up diatribes just to make room for what we have. I have a skit we wrote for episode 3 that I’m hoping to squeeze into the end of episode 7. Heath and I recorded a bit for episode 4 that’s still sitting on my hard drive waiting for a spare 4 minutes in an upcoming episode. I’ve got interviews lined up for episodes in June and July. Every week we have to shave three of four good minutes off the program to make the 30 minute limit.
In other words, we’re already producing more content than we’re using without even trying to. Something tells me we’ll get used to this weekly schedule pretty quickly.
Episode 6: Partial Transcript
by Noah Lugeons
Sponsor:
Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Jeru-Salem Cigarettes; because an addictive substance that gives cancer to you and all the people closest to you is exactly the kind of thing a loving god would create.
And now, the Scathing Atheist…
Intro:
It’s Thursday, it’s March 28th and guess which Sunday after which full moon after which equinox in which hemisphere’s coming up…
I’m your host Noah Lugeons and from profligate New York, New York, this is the Scathing Atheist.
On this week’s episode (and yes, I said that on purpose)
- Baptist Leaders pledge to civilly disobey gay marriage by not getting gay marries even just a little bit,
- Reasonable Doubts’ co-host Justin Schieber will join us to help me masturbate… er, master debate.
- And it turns out the Catholic Church agrees that when you have problems with somebody who has a checkered past with the Nazi party you turn to Argentina.
But first, the diatribe…
I’m often accused of cherry-picking the Bible and rightly so. They say, “Noah, there’s some really good stuff in the Bible, but you overlook all of it and obsess over the parts with genocide and rape and divinely sanctioned baby-murder and people being turned into salt and nut-grabbing prohibitions and scores of children being massacred by bears.”
I suppose it would be fair to point out that Christians are at least equally guilty of overlooking all the genocide and rape and infanticide and homicidal salinization and ursine bloodbaths and obsessing over the good stuff. In fact, I submit that when there’s a prophecy of a zombie apocalypse in your book, focusing on anything other part of it is off target.
But I have to admit that both atheists and Christians are guilty of cherry-picking the Bible. In a book that long and rambling, I suppose that there’s going to be something to support any view you have. That being said, I think that atheists can justify the assertion that the bible is, overall, an evil, horrible, demonically misguided book.
And I think we can make that case even if we have to set aside all the aforementioned butchery and carnage. Hell, let’s just look at the most sanitized selection of biblical nuggets we can find. Let’s just look at the Bible stories that they tell their kids:
– Jesus died for your sins. Because it’s never too early to learn about politically motivated accusations that lead to brutal capital punishment.
– The Exodus. Because it’s never too early to get your historical perspective from a slave narrative that makes Django Unchained look like a fucking documentary. And oh yeah, God likes to kill brown people.
– Job. Because your life and happiness might hinge on a bet between god and the devil and it’s okay if one set of kids dies as long as god gives you a new set later.
– Jericho. Where the heroic Joshua kills all the men, women, children and fucking animals except a family of turncoats that helped the Israelites in the aforementioned holocaust against her own neighbors… and their pets.
– And lastly, the most ubiquitous of all the “kid friendly” bible stories, Noah’s Ark, the single most horrible story ever imagined by humankind:
Here we have a story where God throws a temper tantrum so bad that it ends up killing all but a high school basketball team’s worth of people. He was so pissed at the humans that he killed all but two of the Patagonian screaming hairy armadillos.
And we’re not just talking about everyone dropping dead one day. God could’ve done that if he wanted to, but he decided to do it by flooding the whole goddamn world. Some of them are smashed to death with logs and debris, others drown quickly, still others get to swim for hours or float for days before eventually succumbing to dehydration or being pecked to death by scavengers.
Think about what a horrible vision this is for a child. They love the pictures of the two giraffes and two elephants and two lions walking into the ark together, sure, but what about the mental picture of every other giraffe, lion and elephant on the planet dying amid a horrible torrent of flood water tens of thousands of feet high. And it’s not like the evil genius that enacted this global catastrophe gets what’s coming to him in the end or anything. He’s the fucking good guy!
Consider legendary director Michael Curtiz who reenacted this disaster in a 1928 film. He decided that the coolest way to get the shot would be to tell all the extras to just act casual and then dump millions of gallons of water into the set without warning. He managed to capture the genuine horror of such a moment. Three of the extras were so inspired by this directorial decision that they improvised their own deaths.
Granted, we’ve largely forgiven Curtiz because Casablanca was so fucking good, but I think we can all agree that flooding that set was the work of a deranged psychopath. And he killed 3 people. And I should point out that none of them were infants. I’m not saying this excuses what he did, but it makes him less evil than god by at least 7 orders of magnitude. More if you count all the animals.
And keep in mind that the story doesn’t end with the flood either. It goes all 50 Shades of Incest a few chapters later when dad starts with the drinking again. Aronofsky is working on a new cinematic retelling of the Noah narrative and I’m thinking it could be brutal even compared to Requiem For a Dream.
Noah’s Ark is a horrible, awful, disgusting, repugnant story but it’s the one that makes the cover on most books of Children’s Biblical Stories. Now I ask you, if that’s the best you can do for a children’s story, how can you possibly argue that this book is anything but terrible?
Headlines
Joining me for headlines tonight is my co-conspirator Heath Enwright, Heath, are you ready to co-conspire?
Okay, so apparently there’s a new pope. I just heard about it and unfortunately the major media outlets have kind of ignored the story so I wasn’t able to find any real details. I guess we’ll have to skip that item until we can find some news coverage on it.
Moving on…
In our lead story tonight, a recent study shows that the more religious a country is, the more it sucks. Researcher Gregory Paul demonstrates a strong correlation between a nation’s religiosity and a host of negative descriptors including poverty, homicide rates, infant mortality and teen pregnancy and found that the more generally dysfunctional a nation is, the more religious it is likely to be.
Paul’s goal in publishing the research was to counteract the ridiculous notion that godless societies are somehow doomed to an inevitable decline into sybaritic dystopia but critics of the study point out that it makes religion look really, really bad so maybe we should just talk about baseball or something.
The major outlier in this study, of course, is good ol’ ‘Merica with a whopping 80% of the populace still believing in Aesop’s Fables despite our relatively high score on the scale of social success. But don’t worry, lawmakers in Washington are hard at work lowering that score to match our religiosity.
http://www.epjournal.net/wp-content/uploads/EP07398441_c.pdf & http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2013/03/05/f-religion-economic-growth.html
In other news, the ACLU has recently filed suit against the Puerto Rico Police Department on behalf of officer Alvin Marrero Mendez, an open atheist who was demoted, ostracized and publicly belittled by his supervisors for his lack of superstition.
The suit alleges that during a constitutionally dubious “closing prayer” after a briefing, Mendez politely excused himself. In response, his commanding officer publicly humiliated him, his service weapon was confiscated, he was taken off the street and given a new job in the department washing cars.
Clearly, the issue here is baseless discrimination, but if I was a Puerto Rican, I’d be far more concerned about losing a 14 year veteran police officer for the crime of being rational.
In more seditious news, Southern Baptist leader Richard Land has called for civil disobedience over same-sex marriage and the birth control mandate in the affordable care act. He and a group of like-minded Christ-ies explain that these issues are ‘non-neogtiable’ and worth the cost of paying fines and going to jail.
Yes, the Christians are actually claiming with a straight face that equality is a violation of their rights. Giving everyone else the same rights they have is a violation of their rights. They warn that they may soon lose their right to refuse to hire non-believers, their right to make medical choices for their female employees and their right to act on the belief that gay people are icky.
The first question I had when I read this is how exactly one goes about civilly disobeying something like gay marriage. I mean, civil disobedience is refusing to follow a law, so how exactly does a straight person civilly disobey gay marriage? When a married man introduces his husband to they just go “la-la-la, I hear nothing”? Do you go to gay weddings and pretend you can’t see anyone?
It makes no sense to me at all, but then again, this doesn’t make it at all unique amongst things Baptist Leaders say.
http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/us/2013/March/NRB-Christians-May-Have-to-Choose-God-over-Govt/
And what headlines segment would be complete without a facepalm prompting trip to the bible belt? This one comes to us from listener “Bad Teeth Alan” on Twitter. Back in episode 3, we marveled over the stupidity of a proposed Mississippi law that would allow student-led prayer in schools.
And on Thursday, March 14th, Governor Phil Bryant signed the fucking thing into law. Bryant admitted that a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the law is inevitable but seems confident that the law will stand up to the legal challenge. What’s more, he seems confident that one way or the other, the defense of this law is a worthwhile expenditure of Mississippi taxpayer’s money saying, I shit you not, (quote) “If we’ve got to spend taxpayers’ money, I think we would be honored to spend it defending religious freedoms…”
The more legally savvy politicians are careful to cloak their support for this law in the official story crap about protecting students’ already well-established rights to wear pro-Jesus shirts and organize religious groups on campus, but the less savvy religious leaders aren’t as shy about talking about the bill’s true purpose. Take for example superintendent for the Mississippi District of the United Pentecostal Church and person whose name sounds like it was directly lifted from a Cohen Brothers’ Script, Reverend David D. Tipton Jr. who attended the bill-signing and was quoted later as saying, “We have listened to the argument of the separation of church and state for too long.”
Mississippi law about school-led prayer (from bad teeth Alan on Twitter):
In other Bible Belt insanity, Tennessee resident and suspected incubator of demons Andrew Byrd has filed suit against his pastor, his pastor’s wife and a deacon for injuries sustained in what sounds like a WWE inspired exorcism.
I couldn’t find a hell of a lot on this story, but from what I can gather, the lawsuit alleges that Reverend Joel Arwood asked Byrd to attend a meeting at the church because he had a demon that needed casting out. Unfortunately the part of the brain that you and I have that would trigger a ‘fight or flight’ response if a backwoods pastor asked us to attend a special, after-hours exorcism was malfunctioning in Byrd so he went.
And from what I can gather, Reverend Arwood’s notion of an exorcism is just beating the fuck out of this dude while his wife screams encouragement and eats popcorn from the first row. I just envision this poor guy getting tag-teamed by a pastor and a deacon and muttering “shouldn’t you be throwin’ holy water on me or speakin’ Latin or somethin’?”
Anyway, by the end of it, he’d suffered a broken tooth, bruises on his face and additional injuries to his back and his legs. He’s suing for $200,000 in compensatory damages and 3.5 million in punitive damages but has indicated that he might be willing to settle out of court for fifty cents and some envelopes.
http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/weird/NATL-Man-Sues-Church-After-Botched-Exorcism-196844971.html
And finally tonight, proving that secular people are way better at protesting than religious people, the nonprofit group “Planting Peace” has enacted my favorite protest of the decade. 31 year old LGBT activist Aaron Jackson has purchased a house in Topeka, Kansas and painted it with the ROYGBIV rainbow of gay pride.
No official word on how the neighbors feel about it, but I think we can take a pretty educated guess as the neighbors are the Westboro Baptist Church.
Jackson purchased the house for apparently no reason but to antagonize the notoriously gay-obsessed Fred Phelps and had no trouble at all finding some local volunteers to help him paint it. Planting Peace has dubbed the place the “Equality House” and intends to use it as a resource center for LGBT equality and anti-bullying initiatives.
That’ll do it for headlines tonight, Heath, thanks for joining me.
And when we come back, Justin Schieber will join us for a public debate on the merits of public debate.
Calendar:
It’s time for the atheist calendar portion of the show. I haven’t had to dedicate a whole segment to a single weekend before, but it looks like if you missed the American Atheist’s convention in Austin, there’s a really good chance that there’s an awesome secular conference much closer by on the weekend of April 6th.
We’ll start in the Northeast with NECSS, the Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism. They’ve really outdone themselves this year with a phenomenal slate of speakers including Leonard Mlodinow, Simon Singh, Michael Shermer, Mariette DiChristina, Massimo Pigliucci and at least a dozen others worth mentioning.
There’s a lot to look forward to, but I’m most excited about a podcasting workshop I’ll be attending with Dr. Steven Novella and Doctor of Funk George Hrab. You can expect to see a marked improvement in the quality of this podcast after that weekend and if you don’t let me know so I can ask for my money back.
NECSS: http://necss.org/
If you’re in the North but not the east, fret not, as the Northwest Freethought Conference is taking place over the same weekend. Friend of the show Hemant Mehta will be the keynote speaker there but he’ll be sharing the stage with some other notable names like Darrel Ray, Valerie Tarico and more. It’ll be taking place at Portland State University and includes three action-packed days of events and speakers.
Northwest Freethought Conference http://www.nwfreethought.org/
If you’re in the North but kind of in the middle, I’ve still got something for you. In Minneapolis, the SkepTech conference will be bringing in Greta Christina, Jesse Galef, the seemingly omnipresent Hemant Mehta and the Doctor Octopus of Atheism, PZ Myers. There are plenty more great speakers all themed around skepticism and technology.
Also keep in mind that April 6th and 7th are also “Just Pray No to Drugs” weekend where a bunch of superstitious yahoos will call upon the power of their invisible space-rapist to end all drug use so if you were concerned about the ongoing meth-epidemic, don’t worry, the Christians have it under control.
And finally, of course, this weekend also marks the celebration of Easter, when Christians believe that baby Jesus rides his sub-mammalian, egg-laying lagamorph down from heaven to give cavities to all the boys and girls.
That’ll do it for the calendar this week, but as always if you’re involved with an atheist, secular or skeptical event that’s in need of some free publicity, let me know. You’ll find all the contact info, along with links to all the events discussed on the program at Scathing Atheist dot com.
Interview Links:
Reasonable Doubts Blog: http://freethoughtblogs.com/reasonabledoubts/
Reasonable Doubts You-Tube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/Doubtcast
Outro:
Interview ran a little long so I’ll have to close the show out pretty quickly, but he have really big announcement before we cue the music. Since we’ve started this thing, the most prevalent theme in our feedback has been “more please”, so I’m happy to announce that we’re doubling our workload and moving to a weekly schedule.
And from now on, I’m dedicating all the odd numbered episodes to all the awesome people who sent encouraging emails and tweets, left complimentary comments on the blog, gave us positive reviews on iTunes and otherwise helped us get this whole thing started. Thanks for all your support and we’ll be working hard to keep earning it every week.
We’ll be back in 168 hours for our “We’re Weekly Now” edition with co-host of an American Atheist podcast Tom Beasley for a pre-autopsy of religion, but if you can’t wait that long, be sure to follow us on Twitter @Noah (underscore) Lugeons and check out our erratically published blog.
Before we close it out, I want to thank author and indispensable activist Darrel Ray for providing this week’s Farnsworth quote… er… paraphrase. I also want to thank Lucinda for teaching me how to be a homo, Justin Schieber for being the world’s most patient interviewee and, of course, my partner in crime Heath Enwright for all of his numerous contributions to the show.
If you like the show, please help us spread the word by leaving a positive review on iTunes or adding us to your favorites on Stitcher. And if you don’t have the Stitcher app yet, get on that shit or the kids on the street will think you’re a square.
If you have questions, comments or death threats, you’ll find all the contact information along with links to all the events and headlines discussed on this program at Scathing Atheist (dot) com. All the music used in this program was written and performed by yours truly and yes, I did have my permission.
How To Not Believe in God
by Noah Lugeons
It baffles many atheists when religious folks say things like “I just don’t understand how you can believe in a world without God.” They’re baffled because they’re quite certain that the theist is familiar with both of the constituent principles involved; god and not believing in something. How can a person who themselves rejects some beliefs be confounded by the notion of rejecting some beliefs?
The problem, of course, is one of cognitive dissonance. They’ve insulated the god-concept so much in their mind that they can’t apply reason to it in the same way that they can to claims of the paranormal or other religions. It sounds like I’m being dismissive, but how else can you possibly explain a person who thinks god has demanded the tip of their penis as a sacrifice laughing at how silly someone else’s beliefs are?
When I was a younger and less experienced atheist, I used to appeal to all the other religions that they didn’t believe in. I was often thwarted by hand-waving explanations of the various interpretations of the one god. It was only much later that I realized that intelligent people who have decided to ignore logic and be theists anyway have to build a hell of a defense around it. So much so that when they see somebody who has embraced the obvious, they don’t even know how we scaled the wall in the first place.
So I offer the chart above as a quick and easy visual aid for any theists that seem confused by your choice to reject all religious myths instead of all but one. And as it turns out, the Redditors love the charts and graphs, so expect to see more of them.
The Scathing Atheist 