Archive
Episode 55 – Partial Transcript
by Heath Enwright and Lucinda & Noah Lugeons
Note: Transcript contains elements that were removed due to time constraints.
Warning: The explicit language in this podcast is starting to rub off on the pope.
Sponsor:
This week’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the Hindu sex worker industry of South Asia.
For live shows, come on down to The HinDude Ranch. And if you want to get laid in your second life, visit our brother and sister websites; FudgePakistan.com and PunjabPoonJobs.com
And now, the Scathing Atheist.
Intro:
It’s Thursday…
It’s March 6th,
And Christian Mingle for godless, horny geriatrics should be called RadiocarbonDating dot com
I’m Noah Lugeons,
I’m Heath Enwright, and from “Black History Forgotten” New York, New York,
And “Black History Still Embraced” Podunk, Georgia, this is the Scathing Atheist.
In this week’s episode,
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The pedophile ISN’T Catholic … Just kidding. He’s obviously Catholic.
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We’ll hit you up for money at the end of the show,
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And conception got pushed back again. It used to occur at orgasm, then it was the third pump (if applicable), and now it officially happens retroactively at puberty.
But first, the diatribe…
Diatribe:
I picture a group of people sitting around in hell. One says, “Yeah, I shot my wife” and another one says, “I burned down an orphanage” and the third says, “I baked a cake for some queers”.
Luckily, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer forestalled the national embarrassment of SB 1062 with a last minute pang of cognizance. But we were still one crayon-scrawled signature away from a state redacting humanhood for three and a half percent of their population. Or maybe two point two percent… I don’t know if bisexuals cakes are as sinful as gay cakes.
The law, which passed through both state houses and probably would have been signed into law if not for a tsunami of national media attention, would have allowed anyone the right to discriminate against anyone, provided the bigotry was based on (quote) “a sincerely held religious belief.”
We’ve heard that phrase a lot on this show. A lot of laws that try to find a way to legally protect homophobia and misogyny under the auspices of religious freedom and the only thing that makes SB 1062 noteworthy is that it got one step closer than most. There’s a huge national effort to build a big wall of bibles to hide behind when we secularists come to take away their god given right to hate men who love men. And women who love women. And… women.
And I’m gonna give the religious people a little more credit than most. Because I don’t think religion is the source of the bigotry at all. I think these people are just good old fashioned bigots and Jesus makes for a willing scapegoat. Anti-civil rights legislation was largely cloaked in religious liberty, but today the people who have those same religions generally don’t hate the coloreds. It wasn’t that religion was making them racist. They were just racists and religion was providing cover.
And therein lies the problem. As Anne Lamott points out, god hates all the same people you do, so hate can always hide behind religion. In fact, as soon as you invoke the words “religious liberty” you can hide anything back there you damn well please. To you and me, “religious liberty” means the freedom to practice one’s religion, but these theocrats are desperately trying to redefine it; to make it mean “freedom to do whatever the hell I want, regardless of the law, so long as Jesus”.
And of course, since Jesus can’t chime in, religions doctrines can’t be tested against reality and faith can’t be measured, that makes it a legal panacea. Don’t want to serve gays? Religious liberty. Don’t want to rent to an unwed couple? Religious liberty. Don’t think people should have recreational orgasms? Religious liberty.
It’s impossible to miss the smell of bullshit here. If you define religious liberty the way they’re trying to define it, nobody would fight for it. The bible tells me to murder my disobedient children, stone people to death for working on Saturday and sacrifice bulls at the altar. According to the Arizona legislature, that would all be perfectly legal as long as I sincerely believed it.
Not only does this provide the legal justification of shit like SB 1062, but it also provides the psychological justification. If you take away the god nonsense and force somebody to explain their objection to gays or gay marriage or gays eating at restaurants; pretty quickly they have to come face to face with an ugly part of themselves. But as long as you can retreat to Leviticus you don’t have to bother with real morality.
And people act like this is some intractable problem. How can you balance religious freedom and the interests of the secular state? How can we ensure that everyone’s rights are protected? They act like those are hard questions to answer, but if everybody just had to follow the same rules, the problem disappears. Just get rid any law that is contingent on a religious belief and we’re in the clear. If it’s illegal to suck a baby’s cock, it’s just illegal to suck a baby’s cock.
Seriously, is anybody actually arguing that the use of psychedelics is less dangerous if you think they’re carrying you into the spirit realm? Does anyone believe that bigotry is less dangerous if you think it’s divinely sanctioned?
Nobody wants to carry this all the way, of course. Even the rampaging bigots in Arizona draw the line at the United Methodist Church of Methamphetamines, so what they’re asking, nay, demanding the government do, is get in the business of deciding what does and doesn’t count as a religious belief. And I can’t imagine anybody wants that.
Headlines:
Joining me for headlines tonight is the oft-misunderstood Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to help everyone better understand the Scathing Atheist Satire System?
When I say things that sound sexist or racist … that part is satire. My true opinion on this issue is that women and non-white people – as groups – are generally much better people than men and white people.
Yeah, that should free up some time at the complaints department. Appreciate that.
In our lead story tonight, Seventh Day Adventist parents Nkosiyapha and Virginia Kunene admitted to something known as “secular manslaughter”, after causing the death of their five-month-old son by giving him rickets, and then refusing him rickets medicine.
How prehistoric do your views on medicine have to be to get rickets? That’s a fucking old-timey disease. That’s like dying of “the summer complaint” or milk leg.
Exactly. (Milk Leg!!!) … Two important points: Yes it’s really easy to prevent rickets: Don’t be an infant who is a vegan with no vitamin D in your diet. And yes, it’s easy to treat rickets … Vitamin D. It’s also now very easy to prevent polio, amoebic dysentery, and plague. Diseases that killed you on the Oregon Trail, shouldn’t be a threat anymore. If your kid dies of cholera, why were you bathing him in a dirty puddle?!? Or you should have just caulked the wagon. Your fault.
And they’ve made a lot about this vegan diet that the parents were on, but I don’t know why. There are plenty of vegan options for a five month old, provided you don’t also sequester them from medicine and try to stupid the malnutrition away instead.
Here’s a statement from Justice Singh, who apparently had to explain his reasoning when he ruled that when you murder your child because you’re stupid, it has to be at least a little bit illegal: (quote)
Did he just say “fuckin duh?”. I’m betting “fucking duh.”
“The law respects the right of everyone to freedom of thought and belief. However the right to manifest one’s religion is not absolute. It is limited in particular by the rights of others. The state has a particularly important duty to protect the right to life, especially when a young child is concerned.” (end quote)
So besides turning pro-life rhetoric against religion (tastes bitter doesn’t it), the Justice makes an extremely important distinction, that is really the crux of every argument about this. You can think and believe whatever you want, but you can’t manifest those beliefs in ways that threaten the lives of others, especially five-month-old children that are yours!!!
I noticed he also said that the couple’s views on Seventh Day Adventism were (quote) “very extreme and do not reflect the official doctrine of the church” (end quote) as though this absolves the religion from any wrong doing. Sorry, your honor, but anybody who pretended god existed or prayer did stuff has at least a little of this kid’s blood on their hands.
That’s right. A little bit of small pox infested infant blood on your hands. Can’t feel as good as you thought it would. Because you build it up as this great thing in your head. Inevitable letdown.
Parents jailed after trying to pray away baby’s fatal disease: http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/feb/28/parents-jailed-manslaughter-baby-rickets
And in “I’d Never Have Molested Them if You Aborted Them” news tonight, the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis is blaming a mother for allowing her children to be molested by one of their priests.
Well, he was a priest…
Reverend Curtis Wehmeyer, who I’ll grant couldn’t look more like a kiddie-diddler without a Pee-Wee Herman suit, molested two of her sons, age 12 and 14 and, upon discovering that the archdiocese knew he was a sexual predator before they hired him, she sued. And apparently they’re going with the “what kind of responsible parent would leave her kids with a Catholic priest?” defense.
Corollary to the “What kind of God would allow 12 and 14-year-old kids to be raped, without letting their mother win a large settlement which correctly puts a dollar value on the consent virginity and regular virginity of a child” … defense.
The mother was an employee of the church and felt that Wehmeyer (quote) “needed some friends” (end quote). So that nobody could mistake them for just half-assed evil, the archdiocese refused to let her use sick days or vacation days to care for her kids after this all came to light. What’s more, they reneged on a promise to pay for the kid’s therapy and they cut her hours back. And then they went to her house and ripped her kitten to pieces in front of her and pissed on her rug.
Minnesota diocese blames mom for letting her kids get molested by their priest: http://www.alternet.org/belief/outrageous-church-blames-mother-pedophile-priest-molesting-her-two-sons
And in “Praising the Steaks” news, the Kentucky Baptist Convention is promoting what they call “Second Amendment Celebrations”, encouraging churches to give away dead cow slices and deadly firearms to local heathens, if they’re willing to open a trial account with God. And despite nearly everyone in these flyover areas already owning livestock and murder weapons, the soul bribery seems to be working.
What’s funny is that in a way this reminds me of the story we covered a couple weeks ago about the racist “black history month” lunch menu. Because “Steak and guns” is probably the white trash equivalent of offering black people watermelon and cornbread. Except in this case the race being stereotyped is too stupid to realize it.
Their plan – reportedly labeled “outreach to rednecks” by a spokesman – sounds a lot like animated wabbit hunting … Luring godless Tea Partyers under a box, floating them by their nose with the cartoon smell of animal blood and gun oil, and then knocking the stick out that holds the box up.
Ooh… piece of candy.
Also, I’d like to preserve any extra half-minute segments we might have, so I’ll just quickly add, that a redneck meat retailer slash arms dealer should be called “Pistol Peter Luger”, “Beefed-Up Security”, or “Wal-Mart”.
Glad this is working, because plan B was the Duck Dynasty sex tape giveaway. And if you thought their facial hair was nasty…
Steak and guns for Jesus: http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20140228/FEATURES10/302280129/Kentucky-Baptists-use-gun-giveaways-lure-unchurched-men-Christ?nclick_check=1
And in “Bowing toward Megatron” news, an Iranian school teacher has developed the perfect Muslim; an unthinking automaton that does nothing useful and prays five times a day. Akbar Rezaie, who teaches mythology and doesn’t realize it at an elementary school in the Iranian town of Varamin has recently unveiled a small humanoid robot that he created to help teach children how to properly appease Muslim God.
If you follow the Koran and get to the Allah-Spark, you get 72 unused Sybian machines. Brand spankin’ new.
Rezaie hopes his robot will help make prostrating oneself before an invisible warlock “cool” again. Some people have criticized him for using cutting edge science to promote the opposite of science, but those allegations clearly overlook what a low-tech piece of shit his little robot really is.
What’s the robot’s name? … HALal 9000??? …
Also, I’d like to quickly note that the evil computer from “2001: A Space Odyssey” has the same name as Halliburton’s ticker symbol.
I’ll alert Alex Jones immediately.
Iranian teacher makes Prayer-bot: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/iranian-school-teacher-builds-robot-to-teach-children-prayers-9154038.html
And in “Catholic GeStopHo” news, an anti-prostitution operation in Phoenix, Arizona called Project ROSE is detaining suspected sex workers at a local church, and forcing them to choose between religious propaganda class and jail. And that’s a tough call, considering it’s risky to drop the soap at either venue.
Tough call… I don’t want Jesus inside me, but I don’t want Jesús inside me, either.
The orgasm specialists who wish to avoid prison must complete a 36-hour Jesus sexuality class, which teaches great ideas like prostitutes not using condoms.
(Or getting abortions)
In order to pass the program – which has a reported 30% graduation rate – the accused must also display sufficient amounts of sadness and shame. All sounds awful and stupid, but there is some good news … The First Amendment says the police have to wrangle whore-interns for atheist clubs too.
Now you tell me.
As long as we’ve got a bunch of sex workers forced into cages at church … The stage is set … And also, in honor of the Oscars last weekend … 30 seconds on the clock: “Religious Porn Parodies of Best Picture Nominees” … GO!!!
Okay, but first I want to thank god for giving me an award I don’t deserve rather than curing the disease the movie was about in the first place. And of course, the movie I’m referring to is The Phallus Buyers Club.
Good movie to watch with a cocktail …
What about: 12 Years Old A Slave
Topical. How about Little Mister Sunshine?
Kneeling in the Confessional Booth: Tales From The Squirt Locker
Diddler on the Roof… On the Roofies?
In the Shame of the Father
Fetal Attraction
Semen on the Brokeback Mount
The Maltese Fuckin’
The, uh, stuff that wet dreams are made of …
Lord of the Cock Rings Third Leg: The Second Coming of the King
Father Cassidy and the Un-pantsed Kid
The Father’s the Butch, and the kid’s the bitch …
50 Shekels of Silver Linings Playbook
Starring Jennifer Lawrence of the Labia?
Good climax, but it’s missing something … Might be “Consent of a Woman”
A Vicar Named Desire?
This doesn’t really count, but you’re gonna want some Schindler’s Listerine on set.
The Pleasure of the Sierra Padre
Working on a double, for the bonus points in Splatter-gories …
The Fugitive Priest: Around the World in 80 Gays
Million Dollar Baby-Fucking Settlement
Finding Neverland Ranch: The Kids Are All Tight
I think I already used “Priests of the Southern Child” for something, didn’t I?
You can reuse them. Okay one more try at the double bonus …
Vishnu’s Avat-Argo Fuck Yourself??? … I’ll show myself out.
Sex workers can have church or jail: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/02/28/project-rose-offers-sex-workers-a-choice-church-or-prison/
That’s alright, the band was playing us off anyway. So I guess that’ll do it for headlines this week, Heath, thanks as always.
Messiah-nara, bitches.
And when we come back Lucinda will be here to give you a double dose of biblical boredom.
Skit:
Hilarious email that I got this week that I absolutely had to share. If this is legit, and it honestly looks like it is, it’s from Ray Comfort. Apparently he’s aware of some aspects of our show and not others and he sent me this really complimentary message about how important it is for atheists to read the bible and how he’s sure Jesus will reveal himself to me along the way.
In fact, I guess he was so impressed by our commitment to get a broader perspective on the bible, he wanted to do, you know, whatever the theistic equivalent would be. Try something out that he dislikes and disagrees with in order to widen his perspective on it. So I guess him and Ken Ham got together and tried out gay sex.
And, as luck would have it, they were nice enough to send me audio of that erotic encounter.
I’m Ken Ham
Hi, I’m Ray Comfort
Well good evening.
When I arrived you had a hotel for me and a fruit basket
Oh he’s tall and muscley
Say that again?
He’s tall and he’s handsome and he’s the star. I’d really like to go out with him.
Thank you
Why do we wear clothes?
Well we all do that
See unless they’re taken off…
Can I just stop you there?
Don’t be intimidated.
There’s nothing I have to look at and say I’m embarrassed.
When it’s okay, whip it out.
Behold!
That’s a pretty big number, isn’t it?
How can you look at this beautiful creation and not give praise?
It’s enormous!
Notice how gracefully it sits over the human hand
A perfect creation
There’s a point at the top for easy entry and it’s just the right shape for the human mouth.
We weren’t told we could eat meat.
It’s even curved toward the face to make the process easier.
Yet another poke in the eye.
The contents don’t squirt in your face
But you don’t know and there’s a lot of evidence that that’s not so.
Okay it’s my turn
Check it out
There’s nothing I have to look at…
You don’t see that?
No I don’t.
I’m sort of little
Your dick. It’s this magic wand of nothing.
It’s not the outside that matters, it’s the inside.
Sir, this is a very important issue.
Now I want you to look at my point.
Well I said it was pathetic when I started
And what I want to show you is how this works.
Could you explain it to me?
This is where it comes from, right here.
That’s common sense.
Even if you’ve got a dead stick.
But you’re… you’re sprung.
There’s a book out there… With this diagram… They’re sitting one on top of the other
Why?
To make it gay
Tell me why
You’ll learn the lesson the hard way
If you could put your finger on…
No no no no no
Here’s a fork, stick it in there
But there’s limits.
Anything that fits.
No. We’re gonna look at dogs to help us understand this
I’ve gotta get to the bottom of this.
You know there was plenty of room.
Okay here it is
Okay, Alright
Oh, god!
Oh… oh…
And it’s a little difficult
It’s easy if you try
(Oh’s, Gods and Lords)
Wow!
This is so radical it’ll blow your mind
Of course it is
Sir I can’t go on, my brain is full
You have to let me finish
Would you come?
I came
You’re an animal.
Put another notch in my belt.
Why haven’t we already done this?
Babble:
Originally, the books of Ezra and Nehemiah were a single book and remain intact in the Hebrew Bible, which is odd, because the Hebrews aren’t really known for leaving things intact. Anyway, since they’re both short and they more or less tell a linear story, we elected to double up this week and give you twice the Babble.
Anything that gets us through it quicker. So in honor of Noah turning thirty-mumble, we decided to party hard with our Hebrew Lit Book Club. So happy birthday Noah!!!
And joining us, of course, in this masochistic endeavor is my lovely wife Lucinda. Lucinda, welcome back.
We always meet under the worst circumstances, the three of us..
Alright, so when we last left our intrepid heroes, they were scraping their way out of exile in Babylon.
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Thanks to the good King Cyrus. He sends word to all the Jews that they can go back to Jerusalem and rebuild their temple, and he even gives back all the vessels of the house of the lord that Nebuchadnezzar stole
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And apparently as they were reinhabiting the promised land they went through an amusement park turnstile and somebody checked IDs or something because in chapter two we get a precise headcount.
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You approach the turnstiles leading into the ancient Jerusalem circus, and you know that when you get there, you have to give the man 2 shekels or he won’t let you in. But when you get there, everything goes wrong …
“Dogs fucked the Pope, no fault of mine.”
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First things first, they celebrate Sukkot and then get to work rebuilding their temple.
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The Sukkot tents doubled as a circus venue.
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But the man always be holdin’ ‘em down. They start trying to build their temple but then the kids from the “cool” fraternity show up and start making trouble for them, so they have to stop.
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“So you guys remember that Jewish tribe we enslaved, that we definitely can’t trust because we enslaved them after centuries of genocidal warfare? … Well Cyrus let them start building a giant God Castle again. Could be real God. Our prayers don’t do shit. Is this something we need to worry about?”
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And you can tell that the bronze age FCC was getting on their ass about all the wars and genocides in season one, because when shit hits the fan in Ezra we get a vigorous letter-writing campaign.
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I was hoping they would address the paperwork situation. Because building a temple, to an exotic God, without a permit, with- …
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Within the Jerusalem city limits. That ain’t legal either.
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I thought this was Trans-Euphrates?!? Are we not in Trans-Euphrates?!?
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Eventually the Jews find all the necessary receipts and what-not and get permission to finish their temple, which they do.
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And that’s great unless, of course, you’re a local bull, ram, lamb or goat, in which case you’ll be brutally slaughtered to appease Jew-God’s bloodlust.
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And now that we’re two thirds of the way through the book we meet the titular Ezra, who know his Mosaic law like nobody’s business. And on the merit of this, King Artaxerxes gives him all of Jerusalem.
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And then all of a sudden we’re in the first person, which is odd.
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Taking over as objective narrator in God’s book … The balls on this guy!!!
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So Ezra gathers a sufficient number of Jews, divvies up the cash, fast for a while and then head to the newly rebuilt temple.
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Then he makes it very clear to everyone that the reason god exiled them was obvious: They weren’t being racist enough. So he make sure everyone knows to be extra racist this time around.
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He even says that they can’t see to the “peace and prosperity” of the neighboring tribes so you’re not even allowed to be just passively racist.
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The Middle East is like the crazy kid in school getting tricked into fighting the even crazier other kid. It’s a fun TV show for atheists … “Deluded Giant Squid vs. Equally Naive But Tribally Different Mega Shark”
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So to keep Jew god from getting pissy again, Ezra orders anyone who married a foreigner to send away their wives and children…
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And there’s even a detailed miscegeny list, with all the people who cheated and gave their kids illegal performance enhancers like dominant DNA.
So obviously Ezra just blew the right scribe to get his own book in the bible. The same is almost certainly true of Nehemiah, whose claim to fame was building a wall where once there was only most of a wall.
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1. Right. First we meet Nehemiah, who spends chapter one shitting all over Ezra, basically. They rebuilt the temple, so he decides to lament the fact that they didn’t also do the wall.
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2. So Nehemiah is all bummed. Meanwhile he’s landed this awesome gig “bearing the king’s cup” if you know what I mean.
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So King Artaxerxes asks what he’s so bummed about, he tells him and the king’s like “Oh, here’s some lumber and stone. Have at it.”
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Then he inspects the wall, including the unfortunately named “Dung Gate”
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Talk about using the rear entrance
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And then you get some blatant evidence planting. They’re working on the rebuild, and three rival officias – a Horonite, an Ammonite, and an Arab – might as well walk into a Jewish bar, and ask Nehemiah if his crew is gonna rebel against the king. So Nehemiah – as if wearing a wire – says: “Hello three people that represent the historical property rights of your entire future race, who agree that you have no claim, share, or historic right to Jerusalem whatsoever say-nothing-if-you-agree-forever-Done. Why do you guys care?!? “
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3. And everybody goes out “Hands across Jerusalem” style and they all fix a little section of the wall.
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6. And Sanballat, the mean-girl from a cheerleading movie of biblical villains, starts writing letters to Nehemiah telling him he’s gonna spread rumors about him and blow his boyfriend if he doesn’t stop building his wall.
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7. And in case you missed the exhaustive list of which tribes all the returning exiles were from, we get it again in chapter seven.
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If you want the book to be longer, just increase the margins, or the font size. Or add some chapters about morality. Or being reasonable. Or a “how-to” guide on reading allegories. Plenty of options.
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8. Then they all get together to love god and live in booths.
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9. And to be honest, I’m half convinced that if you started reading the bible at chapter nine of Nehemiah, you wouldn’t have missed much. Because Ezra spends this extremely long chapter going on and on about how awesome god is by rehashing most of the shit that’s happened so far in the book.
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10. Then he drives home the two main points of the last six or seven books: One, god needs you to kill a lot of goats for him, and two, don’t forget to be racist. Whatever you do, don’t interbreed with any of those foreigners.
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Yeah, let’s keep all these recessive genes to ourselves.
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Withholding the blind, translucent, polydactyl piano prodigy. Smart.
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“Stay Pale on three! One, two, three: STAY PALE!!! Jew-Ra!!!”
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11. And lest you think we’re shitting you about how boring this book is, they spend chapter eleven telling which people moved to which towns as they repopulated.
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“What?!? I’m making a detailed list of all the Jewish people, and their addresses … How would this backfire?!?”
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12. And in a valiant effort to make chapter eleven seem interesting, they spend most of chapter twelve explaining who stood where during the ribbon cutting on their new wall.
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13. Nehemiah then makes the mistake of turning his back for a second and within a few days priests are setting up rooms for their old frat buddies in the temple, they’re working on the Sabbath, they’re marrying foreigners.
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Yeah, so he beats them and pulls out their hair.
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Literally – Handfuls of soul-less ginger clumps.
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Heck of a guy that Nehemiah.
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So yeah, in summary the Jews are back and they have a temple and a wall again.
That’s all they really needed to say.
Esther’s up next and that’s another short one but it’s gonna get it’s own segment in episode 58 because something tells me we’re gonna want to spend a whole episode on Job. Anyway, thanks for bearing with it, guy and gal.
Outro:
Before we get played off tonight, I wanted to let everyone know about something I’m rather stoked about. At the behest of a number of listeners I spent the last few weeks compiling the first fifty diatribes into book form. Many of them have been rewritten or lengthened, and I’ve added a few paragraphs of introduction to each one so you can think of it as the director’s cut of the diatribes. More than a third of the book is all new material and that should be available as an ebook on the twentieth of March. We hope to have physical copies available by ReasonCon at the beginning of May. We’ll be talking that up a bunch over the next couple of weeks.
And if you were hoping for a poem tonight, sorry about that. It’ll be on next week’s show. Part of that was to make room for the scandalous Ham/Comfort sex tape, but after some discussion with Heath and Lucinda we’re all of the mind that it generally makes more sense to do the bible poems after we’ve reviewed the books in question rather than before.
That’s all the blasphemy we’ve got for you this week but we’ll be back in 168 hours with more. Between now and then I have to thank Heath for his continued commitment to excellence in excrement jokes; I need to thank Lucinda for all that she brings to the show and I need to thank David for providing this week’s Farnsworth quote and for his incredible generosity. Here’s hoping he sparked a bidding war to claim the title of our most generous donor ever.
But most of all, of course, I need to thank this week’s most valuable humans; Paul, Rebekah, Michael, Crystal, Andrew, Shane and Joel. Paul, whose mighty fists serve as the primary backup system for the Large Hadron Collider; Rebekah, who’s such a badass she has to let alligators tag-team when she wrestles them; Michael, whose dick is so big it has Lagrangian points; Crystal, whose intellect is so vast it could hold two of every unclean animal and seven of every clean one; Andrew who’s too sexy to play Jesus; Shane, whose biceps are powerful enough to run the flux capacitor; and Joel, who’s so hot Stacy’s mom sings songs about him.
These bright, shining examples of altruism have earned their spot in my anti-Putin bunker this week by giving us money. Only the smartest, strongest, sexiest secularists have what it takes to give us money, but if you feel like you’ve got all the requisite silibants, you’ll find the donate button on the right side of the page at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.
And, of course, if you love the show but you spent your entertainment budget on Romanian vampire porn, you can also help us out a ton by leaving us a glowing review on iTunes or whatever place you prefer to leave glowing podcast reviews. And if you just can’t get enough of us, be sure to like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, subscribe to us on YouTube and check out our erratically published blog.
If you have questions, comments or death threats, you’ll find all the contact info on the contact page at Scathing Atheist (dot) com. All the music used in this episode was written and performed by yours truly and yes, I did have my permission.
The One Thing Atheists Should Stop Saying
by Noah Lugeons
It’s rare that I so profoundly disagree with Hemant Mehta. Anybody who reads this blog or listens to the show knows what a high regard I hold the man in; after all, he was my nominee for 2013 Atheist of the Year.
But in a recent video post, Hemant offered a list of “9 Things Atheists Should Stop Saying“, and without exception, I disagree with every single one. While I agree with some of the larger points he was fitting within this framework, he didn’t actually come up with anything I think atheists should stop saying.
Let me break his points down along with my objections.
#1) “I lost my faith”
This was the only one of his nine where I had trouble even seeing what point he was trying to make. He starts off by claiming that “lost” carries a negative connotation (ie I lost my keys, I lost my job, etc.), then points out that this is false by bringing up the counter-examples of “I lost my virginity” and “I lost weight”.
The point he appears to be making is that when an atheist says, “I lost my faith” it sounds sad to a believer. I’m not sure if this is true or if it is relevant, but either way I don’t think it belongs in any reasonable “banned phrase” list. It’s a minor semantic objection and if we disabuse ourselves of this phrase we’re hamstringing our ability to talk with theists in the language they understand. I’d like to believe that when reasonable theists here someone talk about “losing their faith” they will attach it to the context in which the statement is being said. If it’s uttered by a forlorn shell of a human, it’s depressing. When it’s offered as a preamble to an enthusiastic defense of atheism, one would have to be almost willfully naive to see it as a negative.
#2) “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
The point he’s making here is that when we say this in the context of a religious debate, it sounds like we’re setting an uneven criterion. The claim that prayer works is extraordinary to you and I, but might not be for a Christian. It almost sounds like we’re setting up a double standard that asks their claims to meet a higher standard of evidence that theirs.
But rather than chucking such an important rhetorical point under the bus, I say that when you encounter this misunderstanding you should explain what it meant by it. Offer up an extraordinary claim in science such as the big bang and explain the extraordinary amount of evidence that was needed for the scientific community to accept it. Explain the precept of Occam’s razor. Explain what makes a claim extraordinary.
He also makes the point that many theistic claims fail to meet even the lowest bar of evidence and I agree that this should be pointed out, but this can be offered as an addendum rather than a replacement point. This claim is also spectacularly useful when dealing with claims that do meet a very low bar of evidence (think ancient alien conspiracies, for example).
#3) “Everyone is born an atheist”
Hemant’s point against this statement makes perfect sense when he presents it without context. As a stand alone statement, this would be a ridiculous claim. All babies are atheists in the same way that all rocks and staplers are atheists. It confuses the difference between explicit and implicit atheism and might confuse people as to what, exactly, we mean by atheism.
That being said, I’ve never heard this offered by itself. Perhaps I’m less “in the know” that he, but when I hear atheists making this point, it’s usually in response to references to “Christian” babies or “Muslim” babies. Hemant compares the statement that atheists are babies to saying that babies are “political independents”. And this makes sense, except that their aren’t people claiming that babies are republicans or democrats. People do claim that babies are “Christian” or “Jewish” or what-have-you and go so far as to surgically alter them in accordance with that belief.
In this context, I think it is very important to point out that all babies are atheists, though I’ll admit that such a notion could easily me misapplied by a novice atheist debater.
#4) “We can be good without god”
Here he draws a very compelling parallel. Christians might take this the same way that one would take the statement, “I can drive home without wearing my seatbelt”. Well sure, you can and you’ll probably be fine this time, but wouldn’t it be better if you did wear the seatbelt? The theist will take this statement at face value, but might counter with the notion that you could be better with god.
And maybe this is true of some theists in some situations. But I’d reckon that the minority. As Matt Dillahunty points out in his response to this same post, morality continues to be the major sticking point with most people that have issues with atheists. The claim that we have no “absolute moral code” or that morals can only exist with a divine lawgiver is pervasive in the religious community and I don’t know that there’s a single message we could be sending that’s more important than “We can be good without god.”
#5) “I trust science, not some 2000 year old book”
I can’t fairly summarize his point here, because I didn’t honestly understand it. It was something about this statement lending a false legitimacy to the bible, but I really didn’t follow him. If his point had been not to use the word “trust”, I might be inclined to go along since we don’t “trust” science; we demand from it the same evidence that we would from any other claim or sets of claims; but that wasn’t the point he was making at all.
#6) “You can’t reason someone out of something they weren’t reasoned into in the first place”
This is the closest I come to agreeing with any of his points, but again, I think he sets aside context when he says this. If the statement above is offered as a reason not to engage with theists, it is profoundly incorrect. We should definitely employ logic and reason in our efforts to move people out of the “believer” column. We shouldn’t belittle their mental function by pretending that they don’t prop up their beliefs through reason.
But that doesn’t mean there isn’t merit in this statement. I say it all the time and I’ll continue to say it, but when I do it isn’t to point out that reasoning with a religious person is impossible; it’s to point out that reasoning with them isn’t enough. Most atheists hold to their disbelief for logical reasons, but there is an emotional aspect to faith that can’t be ignored in debate. This statement serves as a constant reminder that reason might not be able to do the trick alone.
When I’ve successfully “deconverted” people, it’s been a long process that began with breaking down the logical walls, but ended when I helped them through the emotional hurdles of accepting a worldview without an afterlife or without a “divine plan”.
#7) “I don’t believe in god”
This one didn’t make a hell of a lot of sense to be either, to be honest, though I did like the larger point he was making with it. He points out that when you say “I don’t believe in god”, a theist probably reacts the same way we do when people say, “I don’t believe in evolution”. It doesn’t matter if you believe in evolution; evolution doesn’t need you to believe in it to exist.
And this is a good point; one worth keeping in mind any time you engage with a believer. But I don’t understand why one would avoid saying it. I don’t believe in god. That’s an accurate statement. What’s more, the replacement he offers is all but a distinction without a difference: “I don’t believe that any god exists”. I’m not sure how this solves the perception issue, as I’d be no more impressed if a creationists said, “I don’t believe that any selective pressures that cause speciation exist”.
#8) “Religion doesn’t make any sense.”
Again, completely devoid of context, this is probably a useless statement. As Hemant points out, quantum mechanics don’t make any sense. But more than that, it offers the theists a mental refuge. When you say, “Religion doesn’t make any sense”, you’re saying that you don’t understand it and the theist can retreat to the comforting thought that if you understood religion, you’d be just as religious as them.
But again, it’s not like this statement is generally offered as a standalone. I would assume that the majority of atheists would follow this statement up with a few examples of why they don’t think that religion makes sense and, if done well, those supplementary points would aptly demonstrate that the atheist does know as much (or more) about the religion than the theist.
And if the theist counters with a point about quantum mechanics not making sense, the atheist can offer in response that quantum mechanics is able to demonstrate its claims. Cellphones work and we can prove that. There is no religious equivalent when it comes to demonstration.
#9) “You can’t just pick and choose what you believe”
This is a fairly common practice among atheists while I’m not ready to draw a circle and a line through this statement, I actually do agree with the larger point he’s making here… or at least I tangentially agree with it. He’s talking here about “cafeteria Christians” that believe in the good parts of the bible and disagree with the hating gay people and stoning adulteress parts. Atheists very often enter debate with an “all of nothing” attitude about the bible that doesn’t reflect a realistic understanding of their opponent’s position. After all, who is an atheist to tell a believer how to believe in their religion?
But again, this only makes sense when it’s divorced of context. I’ve used a variation of this in debate before but never when talking about religion in general. This is an excellent point when discussing the bible. If a theist offers a biblical justification for belief x or belief y, it’s perfectly acceptable to point out all the horrible shit in the bible and say, “You can’t just pick and choose the biblical passages that support your point and ignore the ones that refute it”. In other words, if they want to use the bible in their defense, their stuck with the whole thing, warts and all.
——
Nine for nine. I didn’t agree with a single point he made.
Now, to be fair to the Friendly Atheist, he was using this framework to make a series of larger points, many of them quite valid. But none of them justified the concept that atheists should “stop using” this phrase or the other. It’s important that we take time to reflect on what we’re saying and how it’s being interpreted, which is precisely what Hemant was doing with this blog entry, but it’s also important that we phrase it correctly. None of these are statements that atheists should, “stop saying”, but they’re all things atheists should think about and reflect on before using them in conversation.
In my opinion, there’s only one thing that atheists should stop saying, and that’s what other atheists should and should not say.
Episode 53 – Partial Transcript
by Heath Enwright and Noah & Lucinda Lugeons
GUEST LINKS:
The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe Homepage
The Skeptics’ Guide YouTube Channel
Homepage for NECSS (Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism)
Warning: This podcast contains Heath Enwright
Sponsor:
Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Sharia Law & Order: Sinful Victims Unit.
In the Islamic Justice System, female victims of sexually based offenses are considered especially culpable. The dedicated detectives who investigate these vicious women are an elite squad known as the Sinful Victims Unit. These are their stories.
And now, the Scathing Atheist.
Intro:
It’s Thursday,
It’s February 20th,
And now that Paul Walker’s dead, his roles will be played by Aaron Paul – aka the “Miracle on Ice”
I’m Noah Lugeons,
I’m Heath Enwright and from the city that never sleeps, New York, New York
And the city that never flosses, Podunk, Georgia, this is the Scathing Atheist
On this week’s episode
-
We’ll open with a series of bullet points,
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We’ll get through a snake-handler story with no masturbation jokes,
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And Jay Novella joins us share non-culinary advice for atheist parents
But first, the diatribe…
Diatribe:
I was accused in an email exchange the other day of “hating religious people”. And I was about to email back that “I don’t hate religious people, I hate religion”… but I stopped myself, because I didn’t want to be dishonest. I do hate religious people.
But it’s not because they’re religious… it’s because they’re people.
Think about the copious amounts of ass that people suck. I hate most of them. And I’d guess that about 80% of the people I hate are religious. And 2% of them are atheists. And 18% of them are spiritual, agnostic or “other”.
The whole notion that the atheist movement hates religious people is even stupider than the assertion that atheists hate god. Religion is an oppressive force and it harms religious people a hell of a lot more than atheists. I’m in no danger of foregoing life saving medicine and opting for prayer. I’m in no danger of being swindled by a preacher. I’m in no danger of being butt-raped by a Catholic Priest… well, no, I guess we all are, but I’m in a low-risk demographic at least. But the whole premise is asinine. It’s like saying abolitionists were motivated by their hatred of slaves.
Of course, this came about in one of those stupid “How can religion be bad if so-and-so exists?” arguments So-and-so being, of course, some morally incorruptible person. And whether the example is Martin Luther King, Jr. or the sweet old lady across the street, it’s no less stupid an argument. Lucinda and I have a couple of neighbors that are as nice as two people can be, except the fact that they disowned their son for being gay.
And sure, they’d run into a burning building for us, they’d donate a lung for us, they’d fight off a pack of she-bears for us, but does that make homophobia any less egregious? Does the fact that the axe murdered also fed stray cats a reason to go easy on axe-murdering? And if good religious people mean that religion is good, what the hell do bad religious people mean?
But there’s more wrong with this argument than it’s simple failure to sequit. I’ll give you a great example in the form of my landlord.
The dude is as nice as anybody you can imagine. Seventy two years old, spry, intelligent, he’s got a good sense of humor and he’s quick to hurry over and fix shit that goes wrong, provided it doesn’t do so on the Lord’s day. He’s super-religious and it would be physically impossible to dislike him.
The other day I was talking to him and he brought up his church which he is often wont to do. He had a bit of a sunburn going and when I asked him about it he said he got it mowing the lawn at his church. The two acres around this church. That a seventy-two year old man is mowing for no compensation. And why, pray tell, is the old man mowing the lawn? Well, the church was concerned with their finances and they feared they could no longer afford the monthly landscaper’s fees. And they figured that Jesus would really appreciate it if somebody volunteered to mow that giant-ass shadeless lawn once a week under the unforgiving South Georgia sun.
But it’s not that they were taking advantage of him. Au contraire. He understood how important it was. Why, unless somebody donated their labor to the church lawn, they wouldn’t be able to send any money to the Southern Baptist Convention.
So the church is sending a septuagenarian out to mow their lawn so they can properly fund an anti-gay hate-group that was founded on White Supremacy and only got around to apologizing for that shit in the mid-nineties. How moral of them.
So no, I don’t hate religious people… at any higher rate than I hate non-religious people. And I’d even go so far as to say I can prove it. If I really hated religious people and I really wanted to stick it to them, I’d stop doing this show, I’d just shut up about atheism and I’d let the church have ‘em.
Headlines:
Joining me for headlines tonight is Olympic Vanadium Medalist Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to go for the Chromium?
Hey, don’t knock Vanadium. It has the highest melting point of any period 4 transition metal.
Take that titanium!
In our lead story tonight, Australian chemist Simon Horsfall is slipping disapproving notes into the package when he sells oral contraception to those customers of his pharmacy that don’t share his Catholic beliefs. In other news, Australian pharmacists mistakenly refer to themselves as “chemists”. They count pills, and collect people’s money every week. They have the same skill set as a drug dealer. They’re not exactly inventing new plastics for NASA.
This actually explains why the Australian Space Agency is still lagging so far behind Latvia. Reminds me of those Fosters commercials. You show an uppity fucker eyeing me suspiciously when buy syringes for my diabetic cat and it says “Chemist” and then it shows a cheap can of carbonated dingo piss and it says “Beer”… but it’s Australian so it’s three syllables long and they never quite get to the “R”….
Here’s a statement from the (air quote) “chemist” (end air quote), who’s been writing self-righteous notes like this for 12 years: (real quote) ”It’s about integrity – if you say one thing and do something else, that is hypocrisy. We practise what we preach.” (end real quote) … First of all, ‘practice’ doesn’t have an ‘S’ … It has a ‘C’ … Second, he doesn’t practeeze what he preaches at all. He’s been making money selling contraceptives for at least 12 years!!! He’s going to hell, and he’s talking about integrity and avoiding hypocrisy?!?
It’s more like hypocrisy squared. “I’m against this, but I’m gonna profit off of it, but I’m gonna call you an asshole for giving me your money.”
I’m willing to consider the merits of both sides of the abortion issue. But contraception?!? Wearing a cross around your neck is pretty good contraception. Money shots are contraception. It was happening before condoms, just not well. So like it or not – and whether or not one particular outer-suburban pharmacy (slash) Pfizer Lab in Australia approves – widespread availability of real contraceptives is one of the greatest public health accomplishments of the last century.
Yes, I think it’s time we moved beyond the “orgasms are evil” doctrine.
Australian Pharmacist puts disapproving note in every bottle of contraceptives: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/take-note-this-chemist-disapproves-of-contraceptives-20140213-32jz1.html
And in “god forsakes the flakes who partake in the shaking of snakes” news tonight, Kentucky pastor and squamate appetizer Jamie Coots died of stupidity last Saturday after being gnawed on by a venomous rattlesnake. Coots is part of the Darwinian oversight known as “Snake handlers”, a group of Pentecostals who believe that god is the only anti-venom they need, despite the extraordinarily high rate at which their pastors demonstrate otherwise.
It’s literally gotten to the point that if this happens again next week, we’d almost have to skip the story out of boredom. Maybe we just do occasional segments when zero Pentecostal preachers committed suicide by serpent venom that week.
Yeah, snake handlers have been done to death at this point. Coots was bitten during a Saturday night service but rather than seek medical attention for the treatable but otherwise mortal wound, he instead opted for the “Jesus take the presynaptic neurotoxin” approach and treated the bite by laying on his couch and praying… even after EMTs showed up at his home and offered him real-universe medicine.
It’s a good thing I’m not an ambulance guy. I would have made a joke about it being “Pastor Expiration Date.”
Yeah, your sense of humor might not work well in any emergency medical profession. Now, if the name Jamie Coots sounds familiar, it’s because be discussed this celebrity death-pool lock back on episode 27 of this show when National Geographic tapped him to star in their visual testament to faith-inspired idiocy “Snake Salvation”. Nat Geo has issued an apology and vows to replace the show next season with more responsible programs like “Cutting Yourself for Jesus” and “Rabbi Rosenbaum’s Wide World of Long Distance Circumcisions”.
Yet another snake handling preacher killed by… wait for it… snakes: http://www.wbir.com/story/news/local/2014/02/16/pastor-dies-after-snake-he-was-handling-bit-him/5529907/
And from the “Not in Ken’s Ass Anymore” file, the state House of Representatives in Kansas has overwhelmingly approved Jim Crow Laws for gay people. Proponents of the legislation seem to feel this is necessary to facilitate a smooth transition to humanhood for the queers, following their recent liberation from slavery in the state. An existing gay resident can be grandfathered in for full humanhood right away, however he may be required to prove his grandfather was gay.
Which sucks for straight Kansas grandfathers. What a dilemma; “Hey grandpa, they’ll let me use hospitals and pharmacies, but only if you’ll go down the county registrars office and gobble some cock.”
Should the bill be signed into law, gay couples could legally be denied service absolutely anywhere, and if gays are permitted inside buildings at all, I’m certain they’ll be required to use the rear entrance, which is really just an exit for everyone else. (…) I guess this must be the Christian response to the hordes of gay couples in the Bible Belt, who were ruining public parks for everyone else, with lewd displays of deep-throating water fountain spigots? …
Shit yeah, the “Spite a bigot, blow a spigot” campaign. Of course, it’s worth noting that the leader of the state senate has already come out and said that there’s no way in hell they’re gonna pass this thing, but the fact that Kansas is trying to compete with Russia and Uganda when it comes to legislative gay-bashing is still newsworthy.
And just to be perfectly clear, this would allow a public hospital to refuse treatment, or a police officer to refuse policing, as long as the homophobes make their decision “based on a sincerely held religious belief”. Lucky for anyone in Kansas with the sincerely held belief that hateful assholes should be brutally tortured for even suggesting this – they should soon be able to carry out their vigilante water-boarding spree of religious zealots with full impunity.
Kansas gay segregation: http://www.ryot.org/kansas-tries-implement-anti-gay-segregation/571197 <<and>> http://www.kansascity.com/2014/02/13/4822324/senate-balks-at-kansas-religious.html
And from the “Keystone Caliphate” file tonight, a suicide bombing instructor in Iraq shook up this year’s Darwin Award standings last week during an accidental pop quiz. While demonstrating how to kill oneself and a score of bystanders, Professor Aggressor the Lesser accidentally killed himself and a score of bystanders.
This does shake up the Darwin standings, but I’d say the bystanders are at the top of the list. If there’s anyone dumber than a suicide bomber conducting a demonstration, it’s the people who showed up for the demonstration. That’s the sort of meeting you might want to Skype in.
In addition to the instructor, twenty-one students were killed, 15 pupils were wounded, 8 militants were arrested and 1,548 virgins were very disappointed. The instructor’s name was not released but Iraqi officials say he is a well-known terrorist recruiter who will forever be remembered for his poignant last words; “whatever you do, never do this.”
Instructor accidentally blows up a class full of suicide bombing students: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/11/world/middleeast/suicide-bomb-instructor-accidentally-kills-iraqi-pupils.html?_r=0
That’s why you never buy your bomb fuses at the Acme Store. Moving on to “Sacred Cowboys” news: UConn’s new assistant football coach Ernest Jones has resigned, immediately following controversy surrounding his violation of the university policy that says you can’t preach about Jesus while you’re working. Jones, as well as head coach Bob Diaco, were both hired from Notre Dame, which would be impressive 30 years ago. In 2014, all it tells me is that Mantai Teo’s imaginary friend delusions make a lot more sense.
In an “immaculate deception” sort of way…
Among other useless coaching methods, Jones told players that football wouldn’t exist without the Christian lord and savior, and that Jesus belongs in the huddle, even though that’s obviously a 5-yard penalty.
Twelve disciples in the huddle, yeah.
So, in honor of the newly resigned (read about to be fired) Jones … Let’s put 30 seconds on the clock … “Failed Religious Sports Teams” … GO!!!
Notre Dame!
Well played! But I was thinking more like … JC Milan … Re-Allah Madrid … Oakland Raiders of the Lost Ark
If we’re allowing movies about failed religious sports teams, then my answer is Rudy.
Well played again! But I mean like … The Nashville Sexual Predators … The Dallas Plow Boys
Sounds like they play in “A Catholic League of Their Own” …
Ok I Iike the movie titles … Let’s roll with it … What about “Million Dollar Baby Jesus”?
Original Cinderella Man
Papal Bull Durham
Parting the Red Seabiscuit
Any Given Sunday School
Bang the Kids Slowly?
King of Kingpins
Judas Iscariots of Fire
Semi-Pro Life
Raging Bullshit
The Fast Boy Scout
Or Run Altarboy Run. Either way, the priest ends up with Varsity Blue-Balls.
Bad New Prayers Don’t Work
Christian asshole resigns from assistant football coach position at UConn: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/02/18/uconn-assistant-football-coach-who-said-jesus-christ-should-be-in-the-center-of-our-huddle-resigns
They don’t. And I think that’s actually as good a point to close on as any we’ve made. Heath, thanks as always for joining me.
And when we come back, Jay Novella from the Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe will be here to Skeptically Guide us through the Universe.
Outro:
Before we dismiss the royal guard tonight I wanted to make everybody aware of a very cool fundraiser that our friends at Secular (dot) FM are putting together. They’re doing a 24 hour live broadcast to raise money for the Foundation Beyond Belief. It’s running all day this Sunday, the 23rd, starting and ending at midnight. Tanner Campbell, Mark Nebo and David Viviano are hosting the thing and they’ve got a list of guests that makes me drool: Dale McGowan, Seth Andrews, Shelley Segal, JT Eberhard, DJ Grothe, Jessica Ahlquist, Jerry DeWitt, Dave Muscato… and I’m seriously just scratching the surface.
I’d strongly encourage you to check it out; it should be a lot of fun and it’s for a good cause. You’ll find links to more info on the shownotes for this episode.
https://www.facebook.com/secularprogramming
I also wanted to apologize for the 2 Chronicles poem getting bumped again but we needed the time for the interview. I promise it’ll be on next week’s show.
And, of course, I need to give Jay another big thanks for coming on the show. Very awesome guy, super passionate about what he does and one of the real pioneers of podcasting so thrilled to have him on. I also need to thank Heath for his indefatigable sense of humor, I need to thank Lucinda for opening the show up tonight and I need to thank Matt from Chicago for his awesome Farnsworth quote (slash) Cafepress plug (slash) rape joke.
But most of all, of course, I need to thank this week’s most prestigious paragons of personhood, Thomas, Tim, Brad, Tyler, Kenny, Shelby, Vinnie, Geoff, April, Leo, Wayne, Liam, Richard and Tom. Thomas and Tim, whose reflexes and strength are so great they could be empowered by radioactive spiders and not notice; Brad and Tyler, whose levers are long enough for Archimedes if we could just find the fulcrum; Kenny and Shelby, the Wonder Twins of atheism, except that neither of them has a power that sucks compared to the other one; Vinnie and Geoff, who are hot enough to melt vanadium; April and Leo, who are so awesome they named a month and a sign of the zodiac after them; Wayne and Liam, whose attractiveness holds the key to zero point energy; and Richard and Tom, who have to turn away more pussy than a Friskies audition.
These fourteen upright, upstanding, uproarious, uplifting individuals have proved their up-ness this week by giving us money. Only the most atheistic of all atheists have the atheism it takes to give us money, but if you think you disbelieve in god enough, you’ll find the donate button on the right side of the page at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.
And remember, size matters. Help us grow our social media presence by liking us on Facebook, following us on Twitter, subscribing to us on YouTube and circling us or whatever on that Google one. And rate us on iTunes and favorite us on Stitcher and subscribe to our blog and Jesus I’m needy.
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.
Video Bible Stories Coming Soon
by Noah Lugeons
A while back I decided to start putting the diatribe from each week’s episode on YouTube as a way of spreading our content around a bit. And then I fell behind on it and then I got caught back up and then I fell behind again. And then I fell really far behind.
I’m back it catch-up mode now, but we’re still 18 episodes away from up to date and despite getting 4 of them up over the weekend, I fear I might have inadvertently delayed things when I put the last video up. Lucinda and I were chatting about potential YouTube videos and she was lobbying to put up the “Lucinda’s Bible Stories for Kids” segments.
As much as I liked the idea, I told her that if we were going to do that I’d want to do it with some artwork; a slideshow of story-book style drawings illustrating all the graphic horrors. And at about the same time, somebody who saw one of the new diatribe videos on YouTube tweeted us suggesting that we put Lucinda’s Bible Stories up with storybook illustrations. And that’s all the encouragement I needed.
So I went through the first Lucinda’s Bible Story (Lott’s Daughters; episode 20) and made some notes on what pictures we would need to make it happen. To do what I want I’m looking at about 48 sketches, all of them relatively simple stuff, so nothing that should take longer than a week. It might make it a bit tougher to get up to speed on all the diatribes, but I’m willing to bet it’ll be worth it.
As I was talking Lucinda through my concept, I drew a couple of samples to give her an idea the style of artwork I had in mind:
What you’re seeing here is, left to right, god, Lott with his two daughters and a hamster peeking out of someone’s ass. Why is there a picture of a hamster sticking out of someone’s ass? Well, that’s just one of the many reasons you should be looking forward to the finished project.
Episode 51 – Partial Transcript
by Heath Enwright, Noah Lugeons and Cecil & Tom
Note: Transcript contains portions that were edited from the final episode due to time constraints
Warning: This podcast contains all the dirty words Bill Nye wanted to say to Ken Ham on Tuesday night but couldn’t.
Sponsor:
This week’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Holy Whole Foods: Overpriced, Scripture-Approved Entire Groceries
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Holy Whole Foods: Our Kosher Aisle is so big, it’s disputed by Palestine.
And now, the Scathing Atheist.
Intro:
It’s Thursday,
It’s February 6th,
And it’s the first week of White Guilt Month. Black jokes are still okay, but Asian jokes can be a slippery slope.
I’m Noah Lugeons,
I’m Heath Enwright and from “New Jersey’s Pimp”, New York, New York…
…and “Florida’s Ho”, Podunk, Georgia, this is the Scathing Atheist.
In this week’s episode,
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We learn how to use bankruptcy to get free kid rapes,
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Cecil and Tom will drop by for a little Cognitive Dissonance,
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And we’ll end free speech, free sight, and free hearing … to make Helen Keller feel better.
But first, the diatribe.
Diatribe:
Time to hang up our spurs guys and gals. Turns out the war’s over… Apparently we won. Congrats. But now we’re done being atheists activists and we can just shut the fuck up about it. The Christians get it; they’re stupid, prayer doesn’t work and we all just die. They’ve decided to continue being religious anyway, but they get it so we don’t have to talk about it anymore. They’re still going to try to teach their religion in schools and claim legal exemptions based on it and influence foreign policy with it and shove it down our throats and everything, but they get it; there is no god.
And if you haven’t figured out what I’m sarcastically agreeing with yet, let me quickly summarize every god damn op-ed published about atheism by a major news outlet in the last three months.
“Hi, I’m an atheist, and like all atheists, I’ve always expressed my atheism by chasing religious people around after church and challenging them to explain the logistics of Noah’s Ark. I spent my days searching out religious people to berate about their stupid beliefs, until one day when I saw a sad person and they had a bible. And I realized that religion is a-okay and who am I to take that away from other people? Amen… I mean whatever we atheists say instead of Amen.”
I’ll link to a few examples in the shownotes but I hardly need to. This is the de facto media narrative about atheism moving into 2014. Atheists have had their say but now that all that stuff is out there we can just shut the fuck up about it. Religious people need their religion and if you try to take that away from them, you’re being a heartless prick.
The most egregious example I’ve seen was, no surprise, on the Guardian. In one of their bi-daily articles about what a racist asshole Richard Dawkins is last December holier-than-thou photographer Chris Arnade went so far as to claim that, and I quote “atheism is an intellectual luxury for the wealthy”. So down that <<Gran Patron>> and hide the rhodium plated triceratops skulls folks, they’re on to us.
He backs this up by claiming it several more times. His only citation is his anecdotal observation that a lot of heroin addicts are religious. Hey Chris, you know what else gives comfort to heroin addicts? Smack. I mean, while we’re using “things that comfort junkies” as our metric for societal benefit and everything…
This whole narrative is based on what can only be a purposeful misunderstanding of what motivates the atheist movement. Sure, we mercilessly mock the incestual implications of the Adam and Eve story and the sadistic perversity of the biblical god but that’s not what motivates us. We got into this not because we believe religion is silly, but because we believe it is harmful. The fact that it’s silly just makes it easier to mock.
In order to play the “poor people need religion” gambit, you have to first concede that religion is a beneficial force which is, of course, the exact opposite of what we believe. The author makes no attempt to justify the unspoken assumption that religion plays some positive role in the lives of these addicts. He just points out that a lot of them pray and have bibles. A lot of them have track marks and HIV too, so I’m not sure what point he thought he was making, but clearly it’s some derivation of the “Smart, affluent people like us can be atheists, but these lesser people need their psychologically-crippling, laughably antiquated paradigm.”
But even if you set that all aside and grant Chris’ wildly indefensible assertion that religion provides a comfort to destitute people that a secular worldview couldn’t, his point would still be meaningless. Who’s to say that geocentrism wouldn’t provide the same comfort? After all, thinking that the sun revolves around you would make you feel way more important, wouldn’t it? And wouldn’t we all be a little bit happier every day if we believed that Kermit the Frog was a real dude that we might someday happen upon at the deli? Wouldn’t we all feel better? Wouldn’t it give our lives more meaning?
So I’ll make a deal with you, Chris. I’ll try to keep my “slapping the bible out of the hands of heroin addicts” to a minimum, but I’m not throwing in the towel just yet. I didn’t sign the armistice, so anybody who wants to wave their white flag is free to do so, but I’ll keep my spurs on, thank you very much. Vive la raison!
Guardian Piece: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/24/atheism-richard-dawkins-challenge-beliefs-homeless
Headlines:
Joining me for headlines tonight is a man who hates more people by 9am than most people hate all day, Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to unload some pre-breakfast avarice?
This is word for word, what the guy in front of me at the bagel store said to the cashier. I burned it into my brain as I walked home: (quote) “It’s been really cold, but I heard it’s getting warmer today. Seems like everything happens in 20 year cycles. I guess that contradicts Al Gore’s global warming theory, like in books. I’m not a scientist, but I reed the internet. Gotta sell those newspapers. Anything’s possible.” (end quote) This is a full-grown adult human being.
Did you follow him long enough to see if he got the bagel into the correct orifice? I’m dying to know now.
Well his 47th chromosome kept dangling in the way, but for better or worse, he put the bagel in the same orifice the bullshit was coming out of earlier. Interesting two way valve … Bagel entry, bullshit exit.
Frees up room in his ass for his head, I suppose.
In our lead story tonight, from the “Mean jokes hurt my vagina through my legal briefs” file, Fordham University law professor and Willy Wonka stunt double – Thane Rosenbaum – is suggesting the First Amendment needs to stop protecting the mean kid that picked on him in school. Apparently he would always fuck up the rubber and glue thing, so he decided it’s probably best to constitutionally ban all speaking, if you don’t have something nice to say. Religious whiners have to promise not to abuse the proposed law.
And for the record, Heath’s not being vague here or anything. This dude is actually calling for the criminalization of words that hurt people’s feelings.
Rosencrantz argues (quote) “In placing limits on speech we privilege physical over emotional harm. Indeed, we have an entire legal system, and an attitude toward speech, that takes its cue from a nursery rhyme: ‘Stick and stones can break my bones but names can never hurt me.'” (end quote) … Yes!!! Of fucking course we do!!! Of fucking course we have a legal system that says physical harm is worse than emotional harm!!!
Not according to Rosenstein. He claims that emotional harm is even worse than physical harm. So I propose an experiment. Me and him, in a room. He gets a thesaurus, I get a ball peen hammer. Whoever cries uncle first loses. Science, bitches.
And it’s good, observational science. Maybe you could murder Ken Ham with a hammer too. I don’t like the fact that bigots and racists are allowed to talk, but I don’t always sell the sarcasm when I talk, so I’d be censored all the time too. If we’re drawing a line … “No being attacked with sticks and stones by constitutionally protected violent packs of Neo-Nazis” seems like a reasonable place. But you have to let them say ‘kike’, or else I can’t say ‘kike’ ironically like this.
Also, I left a comment on the article saying I was offended by the article and he didn’t take it down, so clearly this is all lip-service.
Exactly!!! Guildenstern seems to be ignoring the fact that ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING is offensive to some over-sensitive asshole. SCIENCE is offensive to a good chunk of this country!!! … I won’t mention any names – but there’s a Muslim religion out there that was incited to violent riots and murder plots, when a newspaper released some cartoon drawings of their dude. This is America, and our founding fathers intended for us to make YouTube videos of Muhammad getting hit in the crotch with a shovel, and sharing a cup with two girls. Can a brotha get a mental image fatwa?!? Please – I’m begging!!!
Mean jokes hurt my vagina: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/01/30/should-neo-nazis-be-allowed-free-speech.html <<and>> http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/02/04/law-professor-says-free-speech-in-the-u-s-goes-too-far-wants-to-criminalize-causing-hurt-feelings
And in “Go ahead and set up the clock right away” news, Pope Frango Unchained reserved himself at least 30 seconds of coverage on our show by blessing the parrot of an Italian porn star and former world-champion of male strippers with the stage name “GuyBlowj”.
Popes are bless-whores, though. He’s out there in St. Peter’s Square; “I’ll bless this bitch, I’ll bless that bitch… I’ll bless anything that moves!!!”
“I hate guys!!! I love birds!!!” So that all happened. Might as well get straight to it. I guess we’re looking for papal porn titles with bird involvement??? … And it’s almost like he’s challenging us – personally – to work all three concepts into the segment. I say we fucking do it!!! This might be the first ever list of triple entendre religious porn titles with birds. Right here, exclusively on The Scathing Atheist!!! Christian Pornithology Titles: GO!!!
Okay, but the transcript of this show is gonna link some pretty fucked up search terms to our blog… how about… fuck, this is really hard. How about… you go first.
“Mass Pirates of the Caribbean” … Someone would fuck the parrot at some point. Or maybe the parrot- you get the idea.
“Rectums in the Rectory: The Back Door to Parrot-ice”
“Fowl Balls with the Taint Louis Cardinals” … Tagline: “Sliding Head First Into Third Base”
Pope Who’s Your Fraddy and his Papal Balls in “Whip Out Your Tits”… because, you know, tits are a type of bird. Or hooters. I could have gone hooters. Or boobies.
“What Would Jesus Goo: Osprey it Forward”
“Canary-Caged Clergy: Albatrossing the Salad”
In honor of the champs … “Holy SeeHawks Tight End Vultures Touch Down There.”
And in honor of the 8th runner up for the last NFC Wild Card spot, “Jesus Falcon Christ”
“Priests Bask in Robin the Cradle”
The Cockring of the Kingfisher-man
“Blowing Through Bible College: Loads of Sermon Are Easy to Swallow”
“Woody Good-Pecker: Confessionals of a Sapsucker”
The Penis Miter than the Sword … Bird- Fuck!!! …
Pope blesses male porn star’s pet parrot: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/31/pope-francis-porn-star-parrot_n_4703413.html?utm_hp_ref=religion
And in “Muggin’ Queers for Jesus” news tonight, Colorado Springs fundamentalist reverend Michael Abromovich proved this week that it’s getting harder and harder to break into “Anti-gay pastor caught with gay prostitute” newscycle fame this week by adding a new twist. Instead of just fucking them and condemning them to hell, Abromovich allegedly kidnapped and robbed his man-whores while impersonating a police officer. Because felonies are like Pokemon.
And STDs, if you’re fucking gay prostitutes.
According to reports, the rascally reverend found his victims on a special website reserved for felonious perverts in search of vulnerable targets called “Craig’s List”. He would then arrange for a romantic rendezvous with them and when they arrived he would announce himself as a US Marshall, then handcuff and rob them.
Well the way some of these gay whores were dressed in their profile pic, they’re almost asking for it. Seriously though, if you actually wanted to sell that service, how do you legally advertise “I’ll be the terrorist’s wife, and you be the FBI Agent that abducts me and tortures me at GitMo.”???
A question I’ve been asking myself for years. An imaginary spokesman for Abromovich’s church told the Scathing Atheist that (quote) “It’s alright on account of he was just robbin’ ‘em, not fuckin’ ‘em in the butthole… so god’s cool with it”
Pastor hired male prostitutes and then robbed them by pretending to be a cop: http://www.christianpost.com/news/colo-pastor-charged-with-impersonating-police-robbery-and-kidnapping-after-propositioning-men-on-craigslist-113551/
And in “Decepti-Con” news tonight, the Southern Baptist Convention is hosting an event in Nashville aimed at teaching pastors how to trick people into abstaining from things like watching porn, being gay, … and being straight from age thirteen through nineteen.
Hmm… Well I guess nothing inspires abstinence like a southern baptist sex convention. Shame the pope blessed that parrot-fucker or we could put a few seconds on the clock for some Baptist abstinence porn.
I’d like to assume the general theme at this thing would be that nearly every single set of sexual behaviors is better than the church’s current go-to scandal makers. But even if they decided to be bold and come out against rabid homophobia and organized pedophilia, I’m sure they’ll have some nuanced panel discussions to really think it all through.
Yeah, because the absurd denial of the most potent animalian instinct has been working so well for them so far…
The church claims it might reword its current stance on sex, which reads something like: “Build up blue balls for about a decade, and then lose your virginity on your wedding night over the course of one pump, at which point you blow a 10-year load down her Fallopian Tubes like a shotgun, spawning octuplets. Repeat this 5-second experience once every nine months until your wife’s vagina explodes.”
Southern Baptist Convention to sponsor sex summit: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/01/27/topics-at-summit-hosted-by-southern-baptist-leadership-include-teen-sex/
And finally tonight, in “Helena Handbasket” news tonight, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Helena, Montana will become the latest diocese to declare bankruptcy in connection with forcing their cocks into children. The diocese is accused of covering up the molestation of at least 362 children in a state with the population density of the Sahara desert, so I guess kudos for finding that many kids of raping age.
That many unwilling kids … of raping age. By the way, what is the age of non-consent in Montana? Same as Vatican City?
A spokesman for the Vatican said, (quote) “Don’t worry about it, we’ve got plenty of money and we want to make sure that those poor victimized children that were subject to our sinister and willful neglect get full monetary restitution for the sadistic crimes we knowingly subjected them to, so we’ll step in and cover the bill” (end quote) adding (quote), “No, I’m fucking with you, we don’t give a shit about raped kids.”
It would be offensive to put a dollar value on rape victimhood, so they’re putting no dollars on it. If you’re willing to wait in the long “rape victim” line … which must operate like a busy DMV at this point … the Vatican can get you some shekels and a railroad bond.
No, the raped kids are getting some cash in the settlement. As it turns out there is a dollar value on one’s innocence and prepubescent anal virginity and that value is a little under forty grand before taxes. As part of the negotiated settlement the church will pay out 2.5 million dollars of the total 15 million they were ordered to pay to the 362 known victims of just this diocese. The remaining 12.5 million will be paid by insurers which means that, whatever they choose to call it, Catholic churches have “butt-raping-children” insurance.
Gotta cover your ass … When Geico wrote that policy, the premium must have been tiny. “What should I charge these guys? There’s NO WAY the Catholic Church is gonna systematically cover up thousands of clergy rapes … is there? Why would anyone even ask for this type of insurance?”
Well according to Thane Jewy-name from the lead story, at least these priests had the decency to rape their assholes instead of calling them assholes.
This show is so fucking highbrow that we have anti-semitic Hamlet references built in with our rape jokes. Shakespeare bitches!!!
Catholic Diocese in Montana files for bankruptcy with 350+ abuse settlements pending: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20140131/NATION/301310087/1041/LIFESTYLE04/Catholic-diocese-Montana-file-bankruptcy-protection
And on that liberal application of gravitas, we’ll close the headlines segment. Heath, thanks for joining me.
Jumanji!
And when we return Cecil from Cognitive Dissonance will be here to see which of us can say fuck more times in ten minutes.
Skit:
NOAH
Joining us tonight is intrepid podcaster and reigning champion of the Fantasy Football League of Sinister Secularists, Cecil from the Cognitive Dissonance Podcast. Cecil, welcome to the Scathing Atheist.
CECIL
Thanks for having me on.
NOAH
I invited you on to talk about your extremely funny and well-produced podcast, but before we get to that I suppose I should congratulate you. As many of our listeners know, we both participated in a Secular Podcasters’ Fantasy Football League this season and met in the championship game, where you exploited the unfair advantage of having both the number one fantasy quarterback in the league and the number one fantasy running back in the league to narrowly defeat me.
CECIL
Responds with good sportsmanship and humility
NOAH
Now you and your partner Tom do an excellent podcast called Cognitive Dissonance where you tackle atheist and skeptical issues with the same vulgar irreverence that Heath and I strive for here. In the past three years, you’ve interviewed some of the leading lights in the skeptical movement including David Silverman, Matt Dillahunty, Seth Andrews, Mike Hall, Sean Faircloth, DJ Grothe, George Hrab and Michael Marshall. So my first question to you is how the fuck does a person win a fantasy championship when they’re starting Logan-fucking-Paulsen at tight end?
CECIL
It’s actually funnier than that – I drafted Heath Miller, who was hurt for 4 weeks of the season, then when he got better he scored as many fucking points as he did on the bench. The Logan Paulsen thing was trying to fill a roster spot through free agency at the end of the year… You know like most of your team. HA HA Just Kidding! [Thinking you are joking around] No, it’s been great. We’ve had good guests…. blah blah blah
NOAH
Okay, and I guess the obvious question is whether it’s harder or easier to do your show every week with the guilty knowledge that you crushed the hopes and dreams of everyone else in our fantasy league. Have you lost any sleep over that?
CECIL
If anything I’ve been sleeping better. I find that my natural melatonin levels go up the more dreams that I crush. [still thinking you are joking around]
NOAH
Well, did it ever occur to you that for you to win, that meant everybody else in the world had to NOT win? That doesn’t eat away at you like a carnivorous bacteria? Because I think it should.
CECIL
Ummm – bro, it’s just a game…. Can we talk about podcasting now?
NOAH
Yeah… Sorry. I just… okay, so you and Tom have been a team for quite some time. You’ve recorded over one hundred and thirty episodes of Cognitive Dissonance and before that you guys did a movie review podcast together.
CECIL
Everyone’s a Critic, yeah.
NOAH
So do you think that your friendship will suffer if Tom ever learns what a heartless cheater you are when it comes to Fantasy Football?
CECIL
How the fuck did I cheat? I didn’t make a single trade all year. What, did I crack in the back end of Yahoo sports? How the fuck could you possibly cheat at Fantasy Football?
NOAH
A secret you’ll no doubt take to your grave.
CECIL
Do you have any actual podcast related questions for me, or did you just invite me on so you can be butt hurt about me beating you at Fantasy Football?
NOAH
Okay, I’ve got a podcast related question for you, Cheaty McCheaterson, do you cheat at that too? Do you just download your own show over and over again to move up the iTunes ranks?
CECIL
Did you fucking get multiple accounts to give us negative ratings? Jesus christ – I’m done.
NOAH
Yeah, you know, I figured you’d plead the fifth at some point, so I brought along a character witness as well. So in our best podcasting equivalent to someone running out from backstage slapping and pulling hair, after you failed a lie detector test about fatherhood, Tom, do we have you on the line?
TOM
Yep.
NOAH
Tom, welcome to the show, you are by far my favorite co-host of Cognitive Dissonance and, as I understand it, the one that never cheats at Fantasy Football.
TOM
Thanks. You have excellent taste in Cognitive Dissonance hosts.
NOAH
So, Tom, how much do you know about Fantasy Football?
TOM
About as much as I know about lunar geography.
NOAH
Okay, so let me give you a brief description…
TOM
I’d rather you didn’t…
NOAH (Talking over TOM)
It’s a game where friends get together and predict which players they think will perform the best each week. And it’s really fun until somebody like Cecil comes through and sucks all the joy out of it like a grid-iron succubus. So my question to you is, in your experience, is Cecil a big, fat cheater?
TOM
Well… he’s big and fat.
CECIL
Tom, I’ve watched you eat a whole half a cow in one sitting. You unhinged your jaw like a python so you could fit more in your face.
NOAH
So Cecil, when you’re cheating at Fantasy Football, do you find it easier if you dehumanize your opponents or do you just have a sociopathic disjunction with human empathy?
CECIL
(Sighs) Alright, Noah, enough. We get it, you’re a sore loser.
NOAH
Not when I lose fair.
CECIL
You started Jay Cutler at Quarterback! You put Percy Harvin on your roster 6 fucking weeks before he was healthy! You started Dwayne Bowe, for fuck’s sake. He hadn’t had a good game all season. Look, you invited me on to this show to talk about our podcast. If I’d known you were just gonna berate me for kicking your ass at Fantasy, I wouldn’t have bothered.
NOAH
Kicking my ass!? You won by less than four points!
TOM
Should I just go get a burger or something?
CECIL
It’s amazing what four well placed points can do….
NOAH
…Cheat Loaf Sandwich…
CECIL
When you…
NOAH
…Trick or Cheat…
CECIL
Alright, listen…
NOAH
…I’ll listen on my “Cheats by Dr. Dre” headphones.
CECIL
Okay, I’m done.
NOAH
Fine. Then I’m done too.
CECIL
Fine.
NOAH
Fine.
(a second of awkward silence)
TOM
C’mon guys. We’re all friend’s here.
NOAH
I’m not friends with… Cheater Frampton over there. [Cheater frampton made me lol]
TOM
C’mon, Noah… we all set aside some time this evening, set up the gear… it’s not too late to salvage the interview.
NOAH
Well, I’m not talking to Cheatwood Mac until he apologizes for cheating in the championship game.
CECIL
Until I apologize? I think if anybody here deserves an apology, it’s me.
NOAH
Tom, can you tell Don Cheatle over there that I don’t apologize to cheaters?
CECIL
Oh for fuck’s sake!
TOM
(Awkwardly) Cecil, Noah… um… doesn’t apologize…
CECIL
(Sternly) I heard him Tom.
NOAH
You see? You see how he gets?
CECIL
How I get!? You’re acting like a four year old. And what’s more, you do this all the time. You got like this every time you lost a match all year.
NOAH
Tom, can you tell Cecil, “Did not”?
TOM
Cecil, Noah says, “did not.”
CECIL
Really? Well it turns out that I also brought along a character witness. Heath, do we have you on the line?
HEATH
Yo.
CECIL
So Heath, you were in this fantasy football league with Noah and I. Let me ask you, is he a sore loser?
HEATH
He once put his head through my rear windshield over a game of washers. <<Game wasn’t even over yet.>>
CECIL
And in your estimation, is he a childish dick a lot of the time?
HEATH
Not only is he a childish dick, but according to Lucinda, he has a childish dick as well. <<Like a roll of quarters.>> [DIMES]
NOAH
Hey!
TOM
My wife says there’s nothing wrong with that.
CECIL
He’s like that when he does the podcast, too, isn’t he?
HEATH
We only recorded one segment with our dicks out, and I didn’t- Oh you mean being a draconian bastard… yeah.
CECIL
I don’t know why you do it. You know, you don’t have to put up with an abusive co-host.
HEATH
It’s tough, but I don’t want to do the editing.
CECIL
It’s not that hard.
NOAH
Tom, can you tell Heath that I’m no longer talking to him, either?
TOM
Heath, Noah’s not…
CECIL
Is recording with him always like this?
HEATH
Yep.
NOAH
Tom, can you tell Heath to tell Cecil that it is not?
CECIL
You know, Heath, we might have room for you over at Cognitive Dissonance, if it can help get you out of this abusive relationship.
HEATH
Really?
CECIL
Sure. You’re way funnier than Tom.
TOM
Wait, what?
CECIL
Sorry, bro, but it’s true. Have you heard this dude when he gets going?
TOM
(Offended) Well… Noah, can you tell Cecil that “Fuck you”?
NOAH
No, because I’m not talking to him, but I can text Heath and ask him to tell him.
CECIL
Just think about how much easier your life could be, Heath.
NOAH
Okay then, you know what, fuck it. Tom and I are gonna make our own show. C’mon Tom…
(Fade in Cog-Dis theme)
TOM
This is the Cognitive Atheist. Every episode we blast anyone who gets in our way; we put 30 seconds on the clock; we bring critical thinking, skepticism and naughty bible stories to any topic that makes the news, makes it big or makes for good dick jokes. It’s scathing, it’s political and there is no Cecil or Heath. This is episode number… um…(sound of shuffling through papers)
NOAH
One, Tom. This is episode one.
TOM
Right. Episode one.
Outro:
Before we declare victory tonight, I wanted to let everybody know about a very awesome book they might want to pick up. Just got a copy of it myself and I can’t recommend it enough. For those of you who have neglected our numerous warnings that reading the bible sucks and insist on reading along with the Holy Babble segment anyway, I’d like to recommend Steve Wells’ excellent “Skeptic’s Annotated Bible”, which gives you the full King James along with the kind of commentary and annotations our audience craves in a bible. We’ll try to get Steve on the show soon to talk about this massive undertaking, but between now and then you can pick up a copy on Amazon or check it out online at SkepticsAnnotatedBible.com. You’ll find a link on the shownotes.
Skeptic’s Annotated Bible on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Skeptics-Annotated-Bible-Steve-Wells-ebook/dp/B00I76ROXK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1391705185&sr=8-1&keywords=the+skeptic%27s+annotated+bible
Online Version: http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/
That’s all the blasphemy we have for you tonight, but if you want more, there’s more. I had the honor of being the first guest panelist on the new podcast Atheistically Speaking (from the people that brought you Thomas and the Bible) and you’ll be able to hear that… I believe next Thursday, but I’ll be posting links on Facebook, Twitter and the blog as soon as they’re available so keep up with us there.
Atheistically Speaking Podcast: http://atheisticallyspeaking.com/
Oh, and I’ve been told a number of times that I should spell it out, so if you want to find me on Twitter it’s at Noah Lugeons, that’s @NOAH (underscore) LUGEONS.
And speaking of Twitter, I wanted to thank Twitter Atheist extraordinaire “Secular Bloke” for providing this week’s Farnsworth quote. One of my favorite online Twitter-ologists, definitely worth a follow. I also, of course, need to thank Tom and Cecil for being such good sports. When I asked them to come on and do a skit with us, I doubt they were expecting me to send over a ten page script so thanks a ton for that. And of course, if you haven’t checked out their show, you’ve gotta do that. If you like our show, which, let’s face it, you do, you’re probably gonna like theirs as well. Same blasphemously vulgar lack of a moral compass as you get here, but longer. You’ll find a link to their website on the shownotes for this episode as well.
Secular Bloke on Twitter: https://twitter.com/secularbloke
Cognitive Dissonance Podcast: http://dissonancepod.com/
But of course, we reserve our heartiest thanks for this week’s most distinguished disbelievers; Vin, Deb, Donovan, Michael, Alden, Alan, the very worth checking out Robives.com, Derek, Don, Crystal, Jeffrey, Krithika, Duffamongus, Stephen, Shawn the female, Sean the male, Ted, Dylan, Lawrence, Mike, Andrew, Dan, Will, the Scathing Atheist’s official Washington state secular wedding specialists, Puget Sound Celebrant Services and Richard.
These twenty six exceptional people, websites and secular wedding specialists have earned eternally archived praise and gratitude this week by giving us money. Only the most praiseworthy and salient people have what it takes to give us money, but if you think you share Vin, Deb, Donovan, Michael, Alden, Alan, the very worth checking out Robives.com, Derek, Don, Crystal, Jeffrey, Krithika, Duffamongus, Stephen, Shawn the female, Sean the male, Ted, Dylan, Lawrence, Mike, Andrew, Dan, Will, the Scathing Atheist’s official Washington state secular wedding specialists, Puget Sound Celebrant Services and Richard’s praiseworthy salience, you’ll find the donate button on the right side of the homepage at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.
And if you’d like to help but lack the financial resources or the salient praiseworthiness to make a monetary donation, you can also help us a ton by taking a minute to leave us a glowing review on iTunes, sharing the show on whatever social media sites you frequent and telling a friend about the show.
If you have questions, comments or death threats, you’ll find all the contact info on the contact page at Scathing Atheist (dot) com. All the music used in this episode was written and performed by yours truly and yes, I did have my permission.
Episode 50 – Partial Transcript
by Heath Enwright, Noah & Lucinda Lugeons and Eli Bosnick
(Note: Transcript contains elements that were edited due to time constraints)
Warning: This podcast contains explicit language. And this week, we’re going for the record.
Sponsor:
This week’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the new Nepalese cancer-curing carbonated cow piss soda, Mount Hin-Du.
Mount Hin-Du; we put the Brahman in Brominated vegetable oil.
And now, the Scathing Atheist.
Intro:
It’s Thursday,
It’s January 30th
And we’re doing a full-hour this week, so you have to pay double.
I’m Noah Lugeons,
I’m Heath Enwright and from nearly 4th Avenue-less New York, New York…
…and less-than-4-avenues-having Podunk, Georgia, this is the Scathing Atheist.
In this week’s episode,
-
A preacher learns the hard way that despite what the Bible says, poison can kill you,
-
I’ll offer a Nebraska state senator a rim job,
-
He’ll bargain his way up to a rusty trombone,
-
And Eli Bosnick will join us to justify a fourth bullet point.
But first, the diatribe.
Diatribe:
The other day I got an email from Tyler. Tyler used to be an atheist, but now he or she has accepted Jesus Christ as his or her personal savior and wanted to come on the show to tell all of us heathens the wonderful news about Jesus. He or she offered to answer any questions we might have about Jesus-iness with the warning that he or she was (quote) “not an expert in theology”.
So here I have this rare opportunity to speak with somebody who loves Jesus and doesn’t know what the fuck they’re talking about. How could I say no? Well, here’s how:
“Thanks for your email, Tyler. I can only assume that you’ve never listened to the show and are only responding to the word ‘atheist’ in the title, but let me assure you that nobody who listens to our program wants to hear you talk about Jesus. Thanks anyway.”
To which Tyler offered a one word reply, (quote) “okay.”
This is not the first Christian who has tried to wriggle their way onto our docket of future guests. It used to happen once a month or so, but now I’m getting requests like these at least once a week. Some of them are from theists that want to debate the merit of their particular fantasy and some are from avid listeners that just want to hear that debate.
And my answer is always the same, though when it’s a listener I phrase it a bit more congenially. My answer is “no”, and if I’m pressed for an explanation it’s some derivative of “‘cause I don’t wanna.” I don’t want to engage these people, I don’t want to pretend that there’s some merit to their argument, I don’t want to listen to the blithering bastardization of science in their arsenal, I don’t want to be polite and I also don’t want to shout “go fuck yourself” at somebody I’ve invited on the show. What’s more, I don’t want to subject our listeners to it.
Not all of these aspiring guests are as cordial as Tyler, of course. Many of them lash out at me in response and accuse me of cowardice, of intellectual dishonesty, of insulating myself behind a wall of like-minded opinions. They paint the picture of a terrified psyche, desperately clinging to the untenable belief that invisible wizards play no part in human affairs, fearful that if somebody comes on our show and says Jesus a lot my worldview will crumble around me and the god-sized hole in my heart will bleed out.
The arrogance here would be staggering if I weren’t already so familiar with the audacity of Christian privilege. They seem to think that as an atheist I’m duty bound to offer equal time to the opinion that we started the podcast to offset; as though I’m under some obligation to use the platform we’ve created to promote the point of view antithetical to my own. It’s not enough for them that there are five hundred Christian programs for every atheist program, they want to be on ours as well. What’s more, they feel that they have some kind of divine right to it.
And why? Is it a staple of Christian entertainment to bring on the biblical scholar and show them how wrong they’ve got it? Do most sermons end with an atheist counterpoint? Does Joel O’Steen spend much time debating heathens on his podcast? And do these same bitter fuck monkeys that contact me also write in to Jewish podcasts and Buddhists podcasts and Wiccan podcasts demanding that they defend their faith in an Oxford style debate?
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not against public debates. As long as they’re not being used to raise money for an institution dedicated to anti-scientific indoctrination (ahem) Bill Nye (ahem), I’m all for the atheist community engaging. I’m glad there are people like Sam Harris and Shelly Kagan out there making William Lane Craig look stupid. And I’m happy there are shows like the Atheist Experience that take all comers and engage with whatever nincompoop calls in. I’m glad that shows like that exist, I just don’t want to host one.
And no, it’s not because I’m afraid I’ll lose. It’s pretty easy to win a debate when the other side is trying to prove that Jack’s beanstalk really existed. But just because I can shovel a large pile of shit doesn’t mean I want to, and it sure doesn’t mean that anybody would want to listen to it if I did.
Besides, debate isn’t just about presenting the better argument. Sometimes the person with all the facts on their side can lose a debate in the eyes of the audience just by seeming arrogant, condescending and deliberately insulting. And if there’s anything this show has proven in its first 49 episodes, it’s that I’m arrogant, condescending and deliberately insulting.
Headlines:
Joining me for headlines this week is semi-professional vulgarian Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to be vulgar?
What, no fancy montage for me?
(Heath cursing montage)
Do I really fucking curse that much?
In our lead story tonight, Oklahoma Republican lawmaker Mike Turner has proposed a bill that would protect Oklahomans from the dark forces of two-cock wedlock this week by banning marriage altogether. Arguing that the fucking baby shouldn’t have been mixed in with the bathwater in the first place, Turner argues that the courts have left him no other legal recourse for his wretched, small-minded hostility.
Are they under the impression that the gay-marriage-ban thing has been working so far?!? If they let this one slide, dudes are gonna start having butt sex for the first time? Spawning gay families?
The scrap of sanity hidden in his morass of malevolence is the Libertarian notion that states shouldn’t be in the business of regulating marriage, a point that might have debatable merit if it weren’t derived entirely from faith-fueled fanaticism. To his credit, Turner makes no attempt to sell this legislation as based on high-minded principles; crediting the inspiration for the move entirely to god’s well-advertised hatred of fags.
Can we stop pretending that legislation about the definition of the word ‘marriage’ makes any fucking difference. This is Christian assholes finding absurdist measures to make sure gay people can’t get taxed fairly. As if eternal damnation isn’t punishment enough.
Ryan Kiesel, executive director of the Oklahoma ACLU characterizes the move as desperate political posturing that is all but guaranteed to fail. When asked about the proposed ban, Kiesel called the legislators backing the bill (quote) “…out of touch with most Oklahomans” (end quote), though off the record I’m sure he called them a hell of a lot worse than that.
Oklahoma Republican introduces bill to block gay marriage in by outlawing marriage: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/25/oklahoma-republicans-bill-would-block-same-sex-marriage-by-stopping-all-marriages/
And in “Ejaculate the Ripper” news, Georgia church official Craig Lamar Davis was found guilty of felony charges, for willfully spreading the HIV virus, despite his defense that his AIDS diagnosis only happened because of all the crack he smokes. When asked by prosecutors: “Then why are you taking AIDS medicine?” … Davis responded that it’s a preventative measure, after he heard a rumor that coincidentally all the women he sleeps with have AIDS somehow.
So here’s how fucked the Davis defense team was: Apparently part of their defense strategy was to put some AIDS denialists on the stand and argue that there’s no such thing as AIDS. And that AIDS doesn’t come from HIV. And that HIV tests are all bullshit anyway. Hard to imagine how they lost this one.
Apparently it’s easier to get a job at a church than it is to become an Amsterdam hooker. And Amsterdam hookers can literally be high on crack in the interview, as long as they don’t also have AIDS. Bottom line: They preside over similar amounts of sexual activity, but Dutch pimps are far more responsible about it (and consensual about it) than God’s HR department.
The thing they actually found him guilty of was “reckless HIV”. That’s how they actually phrase it; two counts of reckless HIV. Makes me think of him accidentally jacking off on somebody’s salad or something, “Oh, I’m sorry, did I get HIV on your plate? How reckless of me.”
And because I’m also a twisted fuck, this story made me think of Billy Joel playing $10,000 Pyramid with Peter Griffin …
Billy Joel: “AIDS … Crack … Bernie Goetz …”
Peter Griffin: “Things that kill black people?”
I was gonna go with “things that have been in Amy Winehouse’s vagina”
But I think we’re a little off track, so just to summarize: The church official didn’t know about his AIDS because of the crack, and then couldn’t help but jizz-murder those women, because good Christians don’t use condoms.
This story has crack, HIV, and church: http://www.ajc.com/news/news/defendant-in-hiv-trial-found-guilty/ncwb6
And from the “At the Very God Damned Least” file tonight, a Nepalese court has ruled that when you rob children of their youth in order to worship them as temporary incarnations of a mythical being for a few years before tossing them back into the world educationally and socially retarded, you have to give them money.
Right assuming they only work their prepubescent slave-goddesses 60 hours a week for 5 years, they get about 78 cents an hour back-pay, spread out over 10 years, assuming laid-off Pre-Cogs can get new work and survive in society for that long.
The ruling was a small step toward righting the insane and despicable institution of “Kumari”, in which little girls are worshipped as living goddesses until they get a muff tuft. Apparently the girls are selected by strict physical criterion that includes shit like (quote) “an unblemished body, a chest like a lion and thighs like a deer.” But just in case the thought of a team of experts examining the chests and thighs of prepubescent girls didn’t boil your blood at all, the few girls who are unlucky enough to meet the strict physical requirements must then prove their bravery by not crying while watching a buffalo get slaughtered. At ages as young as FOUR. And then the winner gets to live in a temple where they’ll be paraded around as objects of worship while not getting an education or having a childhood.
America has a more efficient system for dealing with the JonBenet Ramseys in our culture, when we’re done with them.
I think it’s important to note that the court isn’t ending this practice. They’re not phasing it out or forcing the temple to give the girls eight hours a day of education and some free time to fuck around with a rainbow loom or anything. All they’ve done here is ruled that the girls have to be paid a pension for a few years after all this psychological abuse. So apparently they weren’t even doing that.
Nepalese girls kidnapped by prehistoric nonsense to be compensated: http://www.gulf-times.com/nepal/250/details/377883/ex-kumari-welcomes-pension
And in “C-word isn’t just for Caucasian” news, Christian talking head and vice-presidential candidate abortion Sarah Palin celebrated Martin Luther King Day by telling President Obama that in honor of her nigga MLK, he should stop playing the race card … Which is physically impossible. Black people can’t stop playing the race card. Barack Obama, despite his very best efforts, can’t just get a white library card and stop being a black President.
Yeah, she’s on a limb even in her own party on this one. Most republican Christians don’t want to revoke the race card; they just want to make sure you bring three forms of ID when you renew it.
There is speculation that Palin’s comments were a response to a recent New Yorker article, in which an Obama quote points out that some people like the idea of a black President, and some people dislike the idea of a black President. Apparently this self-evident truth came off as a venomous Black Panther rant to the Alaskan hockey mom, who runs a neighborhood watch that helps NORAD visually detect Russian nuclear attacks. If she’s scared of Obama, I want to see her interviewed with Richard Sherman.
Well she does have some credential on this issue. She was the governor of Alaska and you can see black people from Alaska, so she probably knows her shit.
So is it just me, or do you wish that MLK could hate fuck Sarah Palin, and you could pay $100 to watch??? … Famous civil rights leaders fucking awful white bitches … That’s a porn goldmine. Which segues smoothly to about half a minute of clever new titles we’ll think up on the spot, right now.
30 seconds on the clock. Civil rights leaders fantasy porn titles: GO!!!
“White Dicks Palin Comparison to Malcolm’s XXL”
Susan B. On-her-knees starring in “The Undergown Railroad”
Right, with Harriet Chubman as the black hermaphrodite.
“Nelson Mandela Living in Bondage: Apar-Tied to the Bed Posts.”
Three Missing Civil Rights Workers, One Cup? Too soon? To do another two girls one cup joke?
No such thing. The whole point of the genre is to see Anne Coulter get shat on …
So what about “Scat Turner’s Revolt”??? … “Desmond’s Number Tutu”???
Gotta get some guy on guy golden shower titles in there too, like “Martin Luther Queen in ‘I Have a Stream’”. I believe Frederick Dug-Ass was in that too.
Pee at last! Pee at last! …
Louis Farra-Conjugal Visits: The Insemi-Nation of Islam … Filmed on location at Martha Stewart’s Country Club Jail: Where choking a bitch is a white collar crime.
I like the Suffrage and Discipline stuff. Like Elizabeth Cady Strap-on.
“Rosa Parks It in the Rear” … That one’s ironic, because black women don’t usually like anal.
Jesse Jacks-Off Jesse Jackson?
What about “Hand Jobs for Strokely Carmichael: Finally some white people doing manual labor.”
W.E.T. DuBoys and Medgar Whenevers in N Double D CP
Sarah Palin lectures Obama on race for MLK Day: http://www.latimes.com/local/abcarian/la-me-ra-on-mlk-day-tonedeaf-sarah-palin-says-obama-plays-the-race-card-20140120,0,3099194.story#axzz2rPG7wjaO
And in the disturbingly thin “Midwestern lawmakers who aren’t dogmatic turd-cuddlers” file, Nebraska state senator and openly atheist pioneer Ernie Chambers has introduced a bill that would eliminate state property-tax exemptions for churches. Because you’d have to be a fucking idiot not see the logic in that. Unfortunately for the future of the proposal, his colleagues largely don’t see the logic in that.
I love this guy Ernie Chambers, but his title “Most Atheist Member of the Nebraska State Senate” isn’t that impressive. Neither is “Smartest Member of the Nebraska State Senate” or “Blackest Member of the Nebraska State Senate”. It’s like “Oldest Kid in the Cancer Ward”.
The language of his bill read almost like an audition to be a co-host on this show. He basically just copied the existing list of exemptions and crossed out the word “religious” wherever it appeared. He didn’t delete it, mind you, he left it there, but crossed out. And as if that wasn’t awesome enough, in his statement of intent for the bill he reminded his Christian colleagues that Jesus was all about rendering unto Caesar what was Caesar’s and closed with the following actual quote: “All things considered, I expect my colleagues to say, regarding this bill: “Let thy will be done.” To which I can atone: “Amen.” (end quote)
Yeah his whole statement of intent was hilarious. My favorite line might have been his opener: (quote) “The purpose of LB 675 is to help the State gain more revenue, rather than less, by taking away churches’ property tax exemptions.” (end quote)
Yeah, I would almost lick this dude’s asshole based solely on this story. Of course, unlike the “outlaw-marriage so fags can’t have ‘em” bill we discussed earlier, this one has absolutely no chance of success, but it did boost Chambers into potential running mate status with Barney Frank in the Scathing Atheist’s involuntary presidential ticket for 2016.
Senator suggests taxing property: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/01/23/nebraskas-atheist-state-senator-introduces-bill-that-would-force-churches-to-pay-property-taxes
And in “Natural Born Again Killers” news, it’s been 613 days, so it’s no longer too soon to laugh at West Virginia preacher Mark Wolford, who died from a rattlesnake bite after performing a service with the deadly reptile on May 27, 2012. As is often heard when redneck psychopaths have a mishap, someone yelled: “You get the truck! I’ll get the snake bite juice!” But instead of driving the truck to the hospital, Wolford was taken to a nearby safe house where they routinely take snake bite victims to rest themselves back to health. And because that’s stupid, he died.
If only all stupid was that fatal.
These guys are pushing that envelope as best they can. Adherents of venomous snake handling cite God’s words from Mark 16: “In my name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.” (end quote) …
This particular passage of the Bible has caused an entire category at the Darwin Awards. Among the former winners is Wolford’s father, who also died of a snake bite the same way. And as he watched his father die, he saw God give a subtle wink, which was apparently the really tricky sign this guy needed to carry on the family business.
So when this shit happens… generationally… it has to either be proof that Jesus isn’t a viable anti-venom or proof that these people don’t really love Jesus. I think it’s probably the latter so my suggestion is that all true Christians attempt rattlesnake cunnilingus so that we can weed out the imposters.
Why aren’t they focusing on the other suggestions?!? “Take up serpents” is obviously the worst one. It would be far less destructive if they fondled breast cancer patients, and didn’t heal them. Or if they just killed themselves by drinking poison.
West Virginia snake handling preacher dies from rattlesnake bite: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/05/30/11956841-snake-handling-preacher-dies-from-rattlesnake-bite-in-west-virginia
And in “I bet these idiots were wondering who Acklew was” news, the ACLU has filed suit against the Sabine Parish school district in Louisiana for a prodigious list of constitutional violations. The suit accuses the school of a (quote) “long history of proselytizing students and promoting religion” (end quote) including, but not limited to incorporation of Christian prayer into school events, religious iconography in the halls and classrooms, an electronic marquee with a constant scroll of bible verses, the inclusion of the words “god exists” on the statement of beliefs for the school district, faculty led bullying and ostracization of non-Christian students, religious questions on science exams, the explicit teaching of creationism, offering extra-credit for believing in the Christian god and holding mandatory prayer assemblies.
For the church to pay back all the tax money they’ve stolen, and then add all those 50-shekel payments to new dads on top of that … They’re financially and morally bankrupt 1000 times over, and therefore no longer allowed to exist!!!
Oh, believe it or not, this story gets worse. The ACLU is suing on behalf of a 6th grade Buddhist, whose science teacher allegedly included questions like (in all caps) “Isn’t it amazing what the (blank) has made” followed by, I shit you not, 32 exclamation points, and then called him stupid in front of the class when he refused to write “Lord” in the blank provided. When his mother complained to the Superintendent she was apparently told that this was the bible belt and if she didn’t like it her son should either change his faith or move to another district where there are (allegedly quote) “more Asians.”
Whoa!!! That’s Clossing the Rine!
ACLU sues LA school district for all kind of Christian bullshit: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/01/23/this-district-just-got-sued-for-teaching-creationism-offering-extra-credit-for-writing-bible-verses-on-tests-more/
Moving on to “Not Quite Two Birds With One Drone” news, Pope Franti-matter helped two children almost publicly murder a pair of “peace doves”, by releasing them from his weird little speaking window above St. Peter’s Square, only to be immediately attacked by two of Obama’s atheist drones, disguised as a seagull and a large black crow. The President denies any involvement, but he did give me a fist bump as he made the denial . . . And then he did this thing where he blew it up. Like (blow up sound) … Black people are so cool.
Yeah. When white people try for cool handshakes it ends up looking like Michael J Fox playing roshambo with Stephen Hawking. Black people got the style and the big dicks so I don’t know why they’re still so pissed that we got all the impartial justice and living wage jobs.
Catholics are traumatized, and suspect this is the work of Satan, Star Scream, or the Jews. Strangely enough, nobody suspects the godless, Kenyan, Muslim, homosexual in the White House, who was likely also behind the August 2013 sabotage of an Oral Roberts jingoism rally, in which they hired a bald eagle to fly on stage, and instead it crashed to the floor in epic failure as an auditorium full of idiots chanted “USA!!!”
And I’m surprised nobody’s put it together. Don’t they know that Kenyans can communicate with animals?
I saw his birth video when he talked to Mufasa … And what’s with white people and our endangered species fetish?!? We’re always doing ridiculous shit, like renting bald eagles, shooting pterodactyls with assault rifles, eating panda steaks, bow-hunting black people. Somebody needs to stop us, or we will continue ruining the world.
Pope releases peace-doves, which get attacked by atheist birds: http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/pope-francis-s-peace-doves-attacked-by-birds-at-vatican-1.2511761?cmp=fbtl
And on that somber admission we’ll close out the headlines, Heath, thanks as always.
Happy to be here.
And when we return Eli Bosnick will join us to remind everybody that he’s funny as fuck.
Pitch:
On January 18th of 2013, at 7:17am Malaysian Standard Time, a new podcast was born, released into a cruel and unforgiving world with only it’s wits to guide it.
That podcast, was this podcast.
And since that day we’ve consistently brought you a new show every Thursday without exception.
Except for the first five episodes when it was biweekly.
We’ve consistently provided 30 minutes of high quality dick jokes…
Except episodes 10 and 25, which were an hour..
And we’ve had them to you at precisely 8am Eastern Time, every week.
Except episodes 43 and 48, which you fucked up and dropped early.
Heath and I work tirelessly every week,
(ahem)
Heath, Lucinda and I work tirelessly every week to bring you the best half hour of blasphemy we can muster, often working upwards of 200 hours a week to make it happen.
There are only 168 hours in a week.
I meant between the 3 of us.
That’s still way high.
More like 100.
That’s still probably high.
But it’s a lot. And if you don’t believe me, just ask my wife.
And if you don’t believe me, just ask my vagina.
Wait, your vagina talks?
No, that was a joke.
But the point is that we work really hard.
We do.
Yeah.
And to continue to provide you with the highest quality fart jokes in the other religion podcast subcategory on iTunes, we need your help.
Specifically, your money.
Because, holy shit, this thing has turned into a full time job.
And a part time job.
And another part time job.
And just as you count on a new episode each week to get you through your Friday commute, we count on your donations to make it possible.
You stole that line from Brian Dunning.
Pretty much, yeah.
So if you’d like to help us keep the Scathing Atheist ad free, you’ll find the donate button on the right side of the homepage at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.
Wait, we weren’t gonna put ads in it…
Yeah, but they don’t know that.
And remember, if every listener donated just a dollar a week, we’d be fucking loaded. But they won’t, so you’ll probably have to give more than that.
Panel Notes:
Award season is in full swing. You’ve already skipped the Golden Globes, avoided the Grammys, forgotten all about the People’s Choice Awards and you’re actively not giving a shit about the Oscars so we figured; why not squeeze one more meaningless ceremony into the season.
And in accordance with the fact that religious idiots think atheists believe in Satan, he we are hosting the “Penta-Grammys”.
That’s right. And in addition to a ready made pun, this also provides us a great opportunity to bring back friend of the show and audience favorite Eli Bosnick. Eli, welcome back. It’s been too long.
(screaming in terror)
Alright, so here’s how the Penta-Grammys work. We’ve randomly chosen a few categories for this inaugural ceremony and each of us will offer our nominee. And since winning awards was rendered meaningless in 2010 when they gave Sandra Bullock an Oscar, we’ll just leave it at the nomination phase.
Our first category is an obvious one and Heath, you’ll start us off; Best Religious News Item of 2013
The Scathing Atheist headline read something like: “Imaginary Jesus voices tell area man to exorcise Satan by blowing up the family puppy with an IED.”
Or, as friend of the show Tom from Cognitive Dissonance put it, “Worst shock collar ever.”
These were apparently the same voices that told him to prepare for a rapture, that kept not happening despite the Mayan Calendar not being infinite, and despite a now-dead Harold Camping having calculated the first derivative of the Bible to solve for Apocalypse. So the December 2012 rapture didn’t happen, the year 2013 did happen, Jesus helped murder a labrador retriever, and the End Times Calculus asshole died. Lots of good atheist lessons here, but the puppy murder takes it for me. We all know religion can trick people into torturing, raping, and killing other people, but that doesn’t seem to be a deal-breaker. Maybe the puppy thing will do it.
Satanist Memorial thing let this begin a movement all over.
Strangely, we actually haven’t had occasion to talk about the Satanic Monument on the show since they unveiled the design, so if you were pressed to describe the proposed monument to the audience, what would you say?
(description)
Okay, so this isn’t a particular headline or anything, but I’m nominating the rise of the atheist church, or the godless congregation or whatever I have to call it to not piss off the people who don’t like them. I know a lot of people are stand-offish on the whole idea, but I look at it as a necessary step toward national secularism. So that’s my nominee for News Item of the Year.
Yeah stuff like Sunday Assembly is getting some steam in the States now too. Nice to see early evidence that people can hang out in groups on Sunday, without being self-righteous bigoted assholes about it.
Moving right along to our second category, this is a dubious distinction, I would think, but our second category is “Religious Figure Who Has Done the Most to Promote Atheism” and Eli, why don’t you start us out?
Pope Francis. Just changing his mind about everything. Next week he’s gonna be like “Eh…its a myth…who wants to get some PUSSY”
It really has been amazing. Just a quick list of some of the crazy shit he’s said in his first year of papacy:
-
“Who am I to judge gay people?”
-
“Atheists can get into heaven”
-
“Bare tits in church? That’s cool”
-
“I cast you out, unclean spirit, along with every Satanic power of the enemy, every spectre from hell and all your fell companions; in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ”
Didn’t he also mention something about “There is no Catholic god.”??? Maybe we can get him on the show to elaborate.
I’m going with Antonin Scalia. He’s not a religious figure per se, but he’s religious and he’s a figure. And he aptly demonstrated this year that no amount of education and academic achievement can make a Catholic not sound like a raging lunatic when he starts talking about religion.
For those who don’t recall, Scalia did an interview with New York Magazine where he admits to believing in an actual, physical, existent devil. And as if that wasn’t terrifying enough from a Supreme Court Justice, when he was pressed about why we never see any evidence of this magical embodiment of evil, he explained that (quote) “The devil’s getting wilier”
Despite the Pope’s skeptical stance on this guy, I’d like to nominate Catholic God. He’s clearly gone out of his way to be more than fair with us logical people recently. He’s literally bending kids over backwards to make atheism look good. And forwards. More bending over forwards, really. Depends if they’re blowing a second priest.
And when Pope Frandle in the Wind tries to get too hippie about shit, god kills his birds, so yeah, good nominee.
Of course, If this was the Oscars there would be a poorly cobbled together musical number here, but luckily, it’s not, so we’ll just move directly to the next category; “Moment in 2013 That Most Conflicted With the Concept of a Loving God.”
And at first I was gonna go with those big ass typhoons, but they mostly only killed brown people so I went with a story we covered on episode 26 of this program; and it was a story about a congregation in Fresno, California that was convinced that a tree outside their church was weeping holy tears. And even after it was painstakingly explained to them that the “tears” were actually aphid shit, they continued to not only worship them, but DRINK them.
And if there was a god there’s no way he would make it that easy on us.
I’m with Noah on this one, but I’d like to expand the nomination to any of several times that God made people literally eat shit and drink piss. This all happened in 2013 … We’ve got the aphid shit mistaken for magical Jesus sap, we’ve got God letting churches set up shit-water basins to use as “holy water”, we’ve got a guy being prosecuted for telling a bunch of shit-sippers that the crying Jesus statue is just a leak from a nearby public restroom sewage pipe, and we’ve got a Hindu cult drinking virgin cow urine … and still having cancer afterward. And also, I’d like to nominate cancer in general.
The death of paul Walker. The 2nd hour of the wolf of wall street…or all those starving kids…I dont know…
Awesome. Okay, so this next category is a tricky one. I originally wrote it down as “Biggest Asshole”, but despite Heath’s first choice for nominee, we’re not actually basing this on anal circumference.
So “African Altar Boys” doesn’t work.
Right. What we’re looking for here is the person the world could most have done without in 2013. Eli, who would you most like to scrub from the population statistics?
Jenny Mcarthy
So for this one my nominee was obvious; Pat Robertson, but the tricky part was deciding which egregious lapse of humanity to nominate him for. Should it be for the AIDs decoder ring quote? For asking how he can respond to gay people’s posts on Facebook if there’s no “vomit button”? For comparing transgendered people to his castrated horse? For diverting charitable funds to his secret blood diamond mining operation, which I’m not just making up to make him sound more like a GI Joe villain?
And after a long night wrestling with that question, I decided to opt for “none of the above” and just nominate him for not having the decency to go ahead and fucking die.
I’m going with Muslim God on this one. Next to asshole in the dictionary, I think there’s actually a picture of a generic deity lashing a female rape victim with a bull whip. This is the same imaginary guy that told several countries to install Gaydar and prostate exams at airports. The same non-existent asshole that insists women dress like lepers … and sponsors death bounty fatwas on people that don’t like all the stuff I just mentioned. I’d also like to mention all the faithfully rapey Muslim men that make it all possible. And the fundamentalist clerics. And the whole crew over at Hezbollah. And those crazy niggas over at Al Queda. And of course Mr. and Mrs. Kazaam – Allah’s magical mom and dad.
Alright, and our final category is a little bit more on the serious side. It’s also the only one I can imagine anybody being happy about winning and it’s the only one that I’m absolutely certain will appear again in next year’s Penta-Grammys; gentlemen, who would you like to nominate for 2013’s Atheist of the Year.
I’d like to nominate our very own, Noah Lugeons. Not only for his tireless work on what many are calling the greatest atheist podcast of all time. And not only for marrying the talented Lucinda Lugeons, the woman many are calling “The Anti-Coulter”. And not only for his many great appearances on other atheist and skeptical broadcasts. But most importantly, for pointing out the following when I suggested a Mormon necrophilia joke in honor of Paul Walker …
“Well, they do practice posthumous baptism, so they do have experience moistening dead people.”
Well now just to be fair I think I should toss out one of your best quotes on the show. How about that time when you were talking about how awesome I was and you said (quote) “what many are calling the greatest atheist podcast of all time”? That one was probably my favorite.
Okay, so for my nominee here, I was damn tempted to go with Valerie Dodds, the Nebraska porn star that got in trouble for breaking into her old Catholic school and publishing video of her using a crucifix as a dildo, but I don’t know for sure she’s an atheist and this one was supposed to be at least kind of serious, so I’m going with friend of the show and inaugural Farnsworth quoter Hemant Mehta.
Amen!!! Among many other things, nobody aggregates daily religious jack-assery in perfect format for scathing atheist headline researchers like the Friendly Atheist He-Man.
His indefatigable work has not only made atheism more visible, but his charity work has done a lot to give atheism a more friendly face, a more relatable face. And even though it seems like we’re actively working to undermine that every week, I think we can all agree that atheism can’t succeed as a movement if it’s just made up of assholes like me.
And bigger assholes like me … at least in circumference.
Sam Harris.
Alright, so that’s gonna do it for the First Annual Pentagrammy awards, Eli, thanks for dropping by.
And Heath, thanks for fifty great episodes man. Here’s to fifty more. And then a few crappy ones because this shit is getting exhausting.
The 40, the 45, the 50 – Jew-Manji!!!
And with one more quick thanks to everybody who wrote in with their favorite moments from our first forty-nine shows, we’re gonna leave you with a few of the Scathing Atheist’s greatest hits.
Outro:
Before we flip the breakers tonight, I wanted to offer an apology and a quick correction; on the calendar segment in episode 48 I gave dates for a few of the major conferences coming up this year, including the dates for TAM 2014, which actually haven’t been announced yet. Fucked up on the research and accidentally listed the dates for last year’s TAM so sorry for any inconvenience that caused. We’ll get the correct dates to you as soon as they’re announced.
That’s all the blasphemy we have for you this week, but if twice as much us just isn’t enough, be sure to check out my guest appearance on The Imaginary Friends Show with Jake Farr-Wharton; you’ll find me along with the incomparable Martin S. Pribble and the only slightly comparable Thomas from Thomas and the Bible and the brand spanking new “Atheistically Speaking” podcast. You’ll find all of that on episode 166 of Jake’s show, which will, of course, be linked on the shownotes for this episode at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.
http://imaginaryfriendsshow.com/2014/01/27/ifs-166-youre-absolutely-right/
Of course we can’t close this thing out without thanking Heath for all that he’s done and all he continues to do to make this show what it is. I need to thank Lucinda for adding her unique brand of vulgarity and wit to the show. I really need to thank Eli for making time for us this week. And I also want to thank everybody who ever sent in a Farnsworth quote for the show. To those people that didn’t make it into the montage at the beginning of this episode I apologize; the damn thing just got too long when I included everyone.
I also need to offer a true and sincere thanks to everyone listening for making this whole project fun enough to do fifty times in a row. We really appreciate you giving us a half hour of your life every week, and occasionally an hour; and we’re already hard at work trying to earn another half hour next week. Thanks for making the show possible.
But most of all, of course, I need to thank this week’s most notable humans; William, Evan, Alan, Cherie, Chris, Christine, Jeffrey, Tony, Joseph, Justin, Jerry and April. William and Evan, whose mighty fists act as emergency backups for the Large Hadron Collider; Alan and Cherie, who are faster than a speeding Kryptonian; Chris and Christine, whose intellects are so legendary their iPhones ask them questions; Jeffrey and Tony, whose erections have been declared Tsunami safe-zones; Joseph and Justin, who are so attractive they each have an event horizon; and Jerry and April, whose very names probably inspired spontaneous orgasms in at least 10 percent of our listeners just now.
These twelve valorous and unblenching heroes earned eternal praise, unwavering appreciation and over-the-top compliments this week be giving us money. Giving us money is a noble, selfless, laudable act; so if you’d like to test your nobility, selflessness and lauditute, you’ll find the donate button on the right side of the home page at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.
And if you’d love to help but you spent the family fortune pursuing the perfect robotic delouser, you can also help us with nothing but an internet connection. It only takes a few minutes to leave us a glowing review on iTunes and the reward lasts a lifetime. Also, don’t forget to follow us next time you’re on Twitter, subscribe to us next time you’re on YouTube, like us next time you’re on Facebook and call out our names next time you masturbate.
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.
Now With 25% More Jesus
by Noah Lugeons
It’s been almost a decade since I lived in the deep south. It hasn’t changed but I’m discovering quickly that I have. I suppose the pro-Jesus stickers on the shop windows and the biblical passages on the newspaper and the Christ-praise on the menu board and the “Christian Owned” notes on the print ads were there the whole time. And I’m sure I noticed them before. But I don’t recall them pissing me off quite so much.
I’m seeing them everywhere now. Every fourth business I walk into makes it damn clear that they’re Christian. It’s a selling point for them: “Get your taxes done here because we love Jesus more than H&R Block!” And it must be effective or so many businesses wouldn’t be doing it. Sure, they lose my business when I see a big “Jesus Loves You” sticker next to the one that tells me that they accept Discover Card, but obviously I’m outweighed by the people who see the sign and say, “I’d rather support a Jesus-loving dry cleaner than a heathen one.”
But perhaps that view is hyper-capitalist. The bakers who sue for the right to refuse the money of gay customers might get some residual business from fellow bigots, but I doubt that’s the motivating factor. They’re doing it because they hate gay people and their bigotry trumps their desire to make money. If I told a business owner that I was going to take my business elsewhere because of the Jesus sign on the door, he or she would probably be happy to hear it. They would probably rather not cater to a godless spawn of the devil anyhow.
The exclusionary nature of faith somehow remains invisible to a vast swath of the faithful. They actually argue that religion (or more specifically their religion) encourages universal fraternity, fellowship, community, inclusivity… and then they build a wall between themselves and non-believers, members of different faiths, gays, women and the scientifically literate.
So far I’ve kept my mouth shut when I see these “Christian owned business” signs, but eventually I’m not going to be able to. I’ll go up to the proprietor and demand proof that he’s more Christian than the other barber. I’ll ask if he would sacrifice his son as a burnt offering to the lord if so commanded. I’ll ask if he would massacre babies in an armed conquest upon the lord’s decree. I’ll ask if he thinks women should be allowed to speak in public. And if he answers in the truly Christian way, I’ll point out that he’s a sociopathic fuck who shouldn’t be allowed to work with scissors.
Atheist Tithing Option:
Podcast RSS
- 519: Decade and Counting Edition January 26, 2023In this week’s episode, the church created by a king he could fuck other women opines on the sanctity of marriage, Texas considers a heartbean bill to regulate its chili, and Marsh will introduce us to his magical slipper connection. --- To make a per episode donation at Patreon.com, click here: http://www.patreon.com/ScathingAtheist To buy our book, click t […]Puzzle in a Thunderstorm, LLC
- 518: Surgeon Popularity Edition January 19, 2023In this week’s episode, we’ll give George Pell the musical send off he deserves, a 6-foot tall spray painted dick in Fort Lauderdale gives Mar-a-Lago some competition, and Tom and Cecil will be here because they initially thought ‘vitriol’ was a kind of lube. --- To make a per episode donation at Patreon.com, click here: http://www.patreon.com/ScathingAtheis […]Puzzle in a Thunderstorm, LLC
- 517: Handling a Cockatrice Edition January 12, 2023In this week’s episode, we’ll find out which congresspeople weigh the same amount as a duck, Donald Trump Jr. is selling another ghost written book, and I’ll add in the Norwegian story that I forgot we teased in the intro last week. --- To make a per episode donation at Patreon.com, click here: http://www.patreon.com/ScathingAtheist To buy our book, click th […]Puzzle in a Thunderstorm, LLC
The Scathing Atheist 
Live Blogging the Bible: 2 Chronicles
by Noah Lugeons
It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these “Live Blogging the Bible” segments, so for that I apologize. I have to admit that I’m only doing this one because I’m desperately searching for an excuse to do something other than read the damn thing. The blinds are wiped down, the cat pan is changed, the floors are mopped, the dishes are done and I’m running out of excuses.
I can’t possibly express how horribly boring this book is. I’ve been told by sources that I trust (perhaps out of desperation) that this is the low-point in the book; that Chronicles is the most boring it gets and that I can read the rest of the bible with the consolation that at least I’m not reading Chronicles again.
Now, consider what I’m saying here. We’re talking about a book that has managed to have a cumulative 1.8 pages worth of interesting stuff in the last 634. It’s a book known for long, pointless, repetitive genealogies. We spent 16 chapters of Exodus learning the dimensions of a tabernacle. We spent half of Numbers counting Jews. We spent nearly all of Deuteronomy revisiting the dullest parts of the previous four books. And Chronicles is boring compared to that.
How does it achieve this almost preternatural level tedium? To understand that, we have to briefly revisit the books of Samuel and Kings.
Both of these are split into two books in Christian bibles. This was actually born out of necessity, as the histories recounted in them were so long that if they were contained on a single scroll it would be cumbersome. Those two books sketch out a supernatural pseudo-history of the kingdom of Israel that is obsessively concerned with cumbersome details like how many nails were in each plank that held the molten sea outside the temple. And if you wrote either one of those out on a scroll it would be too heavy for the average person to carry.
For four long, excruciating books, we learned about the lineage of Israel’s kings with spasmodic details sprinkled in ranging from the mundane to the miraculous; each schizophrenic biography ending with assurances that there were even more pointless details recorded in the annals of the kings of Judah.
We read one book every three weeks, so for twelve weeks we were reading through this extended and pointless fantasy. 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings and 2 Kings. And when we finally reached the end, we get to 1 and 2 Chronicles, which just retell the same damn story again, with ever more monotonous details. So it’s like reading a phone book and then reading the Reader’s Digest version of that same phone book.
Which brings about the obvious question of why the fuck it’s there to begin with. It adds almost no new information, subtly contradicts the earlier account and makes me want to wash my blinds. Why the hell did nobody ever make the executive decision to cut this one?
Think about the amount of time and effort that went into copying and recopying the bible back in the pre-Xerox days. Monks were hand-copying this damn thing day after day and it never occurred to anyone that Chronicles wasn’t worth saving? For fuck’s sake if you were married to the book count you could have dispatched them with a sentence like “See the four previous books”.
I might be selling the biblical editors short, of course. It’s entirely possible that they knew exactly what they were doing when they kept this book in. Perhaps it’s purpose is to dissuade anyone from reading on. Perhaps it was meant as a firewall to keep readers from completing the book. After all, if you give up halfway through you could be left with the impression that all the answers they were talking about came at the end.