The Scathing Atheist

by Noah Lugeons, Heath Enwright & Lucinda Lugeons

Note: Transcript contains portions that were removed from the show due to time constraints.

Sponsor:

Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the new off-Broadway musical, “Joseph Smith and the Amazing Technicolor Underpants”.  Because Matt Stone and Trey Parker made mad bank lampooning Mormons in a play, why the hell shouldn’t we?

And now, the Scathing Atheist…

Intro:

In Thursday, It’s June 27th, and sorry about all that money you pissed away accidentally expediting a binding legal ruling in favor of gay marriage, Mormons.

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

In this week’s episode:

• We’ll couch domestic abuse in a bunch of feel-good Jesus talk,

• A new poll shows that Americans are as dumb as everyone thinks we are,

• And God will kill an enormous number of people,

But first, the Diatribe…

Diatribe:

When I was 13 years old, my older brother gave me a copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and told me to read it.  I was more of a climb trees, play sports, be sweaty and grass stained kid than a sit still for more than 30 minutes and read stuff kid, but it was short so I gave it a go.

It was the first time I’d seen religion treated with such brazen mockery.  I was already doubting the conflicting messages from my Mormon dad and my Catholic mom, but when I read the Hitchhiker’s Guide I realized that it was okay to just call bullshit on all of it.  After all, this dude wasn’t getting struck by lightening or brimstone and he certainly didn’t seem too worried about hell, so why should I?

And there’s a question that Adams poses in that book that’s been stuck in my craw for two dozen years: “Just who is this god person anyway?”

You’d think that in 5000 years of trying, the Abrahamic faiths would have come up with a concise definition, or, if not concise, at least consistent.  But as we all know, if you ask 20 Christians to define god, you’ll get 20 definitions.  Sure, there’ll be a few commonalities, but it’ll be clear pretty quickly that all these Christians are worshipping a different guy.

And none of them, none of the Christians, none of the Jews and none of the Muslims are worshipping the guy from the bible.  The all-powerful, all-loving, all-knowing, moral, caring, forgiving, judicious, benevolent dude they talk about might make a cameo at some point, but he’s nowhere to be found in the first 4 books.

What’s worse, the guys who wrote the first four books of the bible, or more precisely, the guys who wrote the unrelated, independent sources that would later be woven together to become the first four books of the bible,  also aren’t working from a coherent definition.  Is god the dude who shows up in the Garden of Eden in Genesis or is he the guy that nobody can survive seeing from Exodus?  Or is he the disembodied spirit they talk about in the gospels?

Is he the all-knowing guy from Jeremiah and Acts or if he the bumbling idiot from Genesis and Numbers?  Is he the hard to anger guy they sing about in Exodus or is he the unjust, wrathful bully that was killing people for no reason right before they started singing that shit?

And if he’s all-powerful, why does he need Moses to do everything?

And if he’s all-loving, why is he such an asshole to virtually everyone he encounters?

And if he’s all-knowing, why do people have to keep reminding him of shit?

And if he’s moral why does he champion slavery so damn much?

And if he’s caring why does Moses have to keep talking him out of killing people?

And if he’s forgiving why does he punish kids for their parents crimes?

And if he’s judicious why can’t I find any Amalekites around these days?

And if he’s benevolent why does he have so much blood on his fucking hands?

Of course, these Christians that are so quick define god don’t know what the bible says because they’ve never read it.  If you press them, they’ll often claim that they’ve read “most” of it, but then you start quizzing them and it turns out they don’t know that there’s a talking donkey in the 4th book.  How much could you have possibly read?  It’s the 4th fucking book!  That’s like saying “I’ve seen most of the movie, but I missed all the parts after the opening credits.”

If I believed a book to be inspired by the all-knowing creator of the universe, let alone directly revealed by him, I’d know the damn thing by heart.  But these dingbats, even the “literal word of the bible” folks, can’t be bothered to crack it open.

And I don’t think it’s because they’re too lazy, either.  I’m willing to bet that many if not most of them started it at some point.  And I don’t think they turned away because of the genealogies or the archaic language or the repetition or the bulk.  I think they met their god and he scared them.  I think they turned away because they started to realize that the more they knew about their religion, the harder it would be to believe.

Headlines:

Joining me for headlines tonight is my pan-racial color commentator who’s therefore allowed to say all the N-words, Heath Enwright.  Heath, are you ready to use otherwise-offensive slurs in the proper satirical context while berating believers in the absurd?

Cracka please!!!  Let’s get started.  Which confederate states are violating the first amendment this week?

We’ll get to that, but in our lead story tonight, recent polls show that 34% of Americans would vote for Jesus in 2016.

Another white guy?!?!

Yeah, but he’d be the first Jew.  According to HuffPo columnist and author Fred Rich, a recent YouGov poll had more than a third of Americans answering yes to the question “Would you favor establishing Christianity as the state religion,” with the majority of those saying they would be “strongly” in favor of such a move.

What percentage thought we had already clearly established Christianity as the state religion?

It’s like polling plantation owners on their views about the economic modalities of the southern colonies.  

“De facto segregation ain’t enough.  We need to get this stuff on paper.  Maybe we should make a grand public statement . . . a Proclamation of Demancipation . . . we’ll work on the name.”  

32% favored taking this beyond their individual state and support an amendment to the Constitution that would make Jesus-worship the national religion as well.  So basically a third of our country has seen how well theocracy is working in Saudi Arabia and want a piece of the action.

Strange how closely this number mirrors the percentage of people that identify as evangelical . . .

However most of this group couldn’t spell theocracy, and probably couldn’t find Saudi Arabia on google maps.

As Rich points out in his column, this was a national poll, so the heathens in New England and California were skewing the numbers.  Imagine what a poll like this looks like in just the stupid states.

Poll shows one third of Americans want a theocracy: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/fred-rich/breaking-news-34-of-your-_1_b_3461262.html

And speaking of the stupid states, our next story takes us to Kentucky, where Ken Ham seeks to rekindle the flagging attendance at his Creationism museum by adding… wait for it… zip lines.

After finding that dinosaurs and bullshit weren’t enough to bring in the kiddies, Ham and his knowledge-abhorring cohorts are turning to the time-tested technique of completely unrelated touristy shit like zip lines.

I bet the conservative group within his ultraconservative group are up in arms about this.  Might not go over well with the physicists in the Christian Science Department.  Aren’t there several bible passages that declare gravity an abomination?  

“The Lord didn’t say Let there be heavy – He said Let there be light”

To unveil this new attraction, he invited Kentucky state representatives, Kim King, Bart Rowland, Tim Moore, Tweedle Dee and Foghorn Leghorn for the ribbon cutting, which hopefully involved safety scissors.  Representative King showed just how little she cared about definitions and shit when she posted on Facebook that the (airquote) “museum” was (airquote) “educational”.

These guys are awful at this.  How hard is it to get attendance when nearly everyone in a 5-state radius is brainwashed from birth about the theme of their museum?  

If Mickey Mouse was in the bible, there would be Mini Disney Worlds in every WalMart.  

Kentucky Creationism Museum unveils zip line attraction, complete w/ State reps: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/06/21/kentucky-state-representatives-visit-the-creation-museum/

And from Mickey Mouse to “Mecca-Mouse”, our next story takes us to the middle-east where Dubai will see Kentucky’s stupidity and raise them billions of dollars because Dubai is rollin’.  In a probably-horribly-misguided attempt to combat the nation’s reputation of irreligion, the Dubai General Projects Department recently announced a Qur’an based theme park that will, I’m sure, be every bit as fun as that sounds.

I’m looking forward to “The Ideologue Floom” and “Twin Towers of Terror”

I believe that was our first 9/11 joke.  Well done.

Anyway, Dubai apparently has a “Vegas of the Middle East” reputation that prompted a popular Saudi cleric to order women not to visit the city… because you know how women are about succumbing to temptations of the flesh.

How the women manage not to rape all those burka-less men is beyond me.

But Dubai officials hope they can counter this image by taking the only thing these rabid, undereducated fundamentalists give a fuck about and treating with the culture and sanctity we’ve come to associate with theme parks.

I think Islam is just angry as a whole, not about Western domination, or the Israeli Magic Act of 1948, but about being that 3rd guy out that nobody really cares about.  They’re like Chris Bosh, Graham Nash, and the Green Party all rolled into one sad little box called “worst monotheists ever”.  

Judaism and Christianity get all the attention, and little brother Islam gets ignored again.  Historically, this leads to occasional bouts of radical attention-getting behavior.   

Dubai plans Qu’ran based theme park: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/23/quran-theme-park-dubai-religious-pilgrimage

And from the “remind-me-why-they-venerate-the-murder-weapon-again” file, the city of Evansville, Indiana has approved a public art exhibit that will contain no fewer than 2 and a half dozen eight foot crosses all over the city’s waterfront.

Is this one of those avant garde things where the public interacts with the art, and they leave out hammer and nails to see what happens?  Like a social experiment type of thing?

I wish… Unfortunately it’s one of those run-of-the-mill “I love the bible and the constitution almost enough to read them” things.  Recognizing the constitutionally problematic nature of this project, the city insisted that the crosses not be overtly religious crosses, but rather secular crosses.

Sounds like a perfectly secular homage to the lowercase letter T.

City Attorney Ted Zeimer Jr. couldn’t agree more, explaining the rock-solid legal authority of the city to violate the first amendment by pointing out that the United Way was allowed to put up statues in this very same spot once.

So because Evansville, Indiana has a long, proud history of violating the 1st Ammendment, they’re claiming squatters rights to ignore the Bill of Rights.  

Essentially, yes.  Zeimer went on to explain that (quote) “We told them they could not have any writing of any kind on them so they’re statues.  They might be a religious symbol to someone or they might be attractive statues to someone else.”

Yeah without the word Jesus actually written on them, they’re just an interesting demonstration of perpendicularity.  

“If it ain’t a right wing angle, it’s a wrong wing angle.”    

Let’s sell that T-shirt to Newt Gingrich.

City of Evansville, Indiana approved “30 Crosses” public art exhibit: http://www.courierpress.com/news/2013/jun/20/old167/

And moving on to our final story of the night, two weeks ago we talked about a Christian who was obsessed with men spanking their monkeys and this week we’ll turn to some Christians that are obsessed with men spanking their wives.

I’ll keep saying this until it starts happening . . .

How is every womens’ group not also an outspoken atheist group?!?

Well maybe this’ll help: The Christian Domestic Discipline movement’s website goes to great lengths to explain that they’re not a fetish site.  So stop asking, damn it.  They’re not interested in the type of spanking that both of the people involved enjoy, that’s satanic.  They’re interested in the type of spanking where men physically abuse their wives until they do as they’re told… but only if it’s consensual, of course.

Right, because biblically, the women you marry, and the blacks you own, are entitled to similar privileges.  Except the black aren’t guaranteed the consensual part . . . And really neither are the women.

Yeah, God doesn’t do consensual.

We should get down there and hand out some atheist-themed rape whistles.  

Maybe setup some womens’ crisis centers called “Planned Penetration”.  We probably won’t get bombed by evangelicals.

I’d be worried about them discovering and attacking our secret podcast HQ here in New York City, but the atheist trolls at each bridge into the city ask a series of logic riddles that slow-witted theist spies never seem to answer correctly.  

Which is nice, but it fucks traffic on the GW all up.

The CDD Lifestyle also advocates other forms of infantilization and punishments like time-outs, writing sentences like “I won’t disobey my master” and being humbled by (quote) “some sort of nude humiliation”.  But, and I can’t state this enough, this isn’t about being an abusive, misogynistic, felonious, psychopathic, cowardly, demonic piece of shit that should have his head drilled open and his cerebrospinal fluid sucked out by poisonous leeches wrapped in barbed wire because Jesus.

Christian group promotes spanking your wife: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/06/19/spanking-for-jesus-inside-the-unholy-world-of-christian-domestic-discipline.html

And on that mental image, we’ll close out headlines tonight, Heath, thanks again for joining me.

Fantastic time.

And when we come back, Lucinda will join us to regret suggesting we all read the bible.

Calendar:

It’s time once again from the Atheist Calendar portion of the show.  This is the now monthly portion of the show we set aside to talk up some of the atheist, skeptical and otherwise secular events going on around the country and around the world… only this time just around the country.

On the weekend of July 4th (and for our international listeners, July 4th is the day that Americans celebrate the 4th of July), the Skepchicks will be taking over the Science & Skepticism Track at ConVergance in Minneapolis.  Not sure about the rest of the conference, but the Skepchick part looks awesome.  Rebecca Watson and her team of Skeptical female superheroes team up with PZ Myers which would make for an awesome conference and an even more awesome comic book.

http://skepchickcon.com/

Of course, the big one gears up on the 11th in Vegas.  It’s called The Amazing Meeting, and if you’re listening to this podcast you’ve heard of it, so all I’m gonna say is if you register before the 1st of July it’s $125 cheaper.

http://www.amazingmeeting.com/

But if Vegas is there and you’re here, perhaps you can make it out to SSA East, the other half of the Secular Student Alliances bicoastal conference extravaganza this year.  Except that it’s in Columbus, Ohio, which certainly isn’t coastal.  So if you’re secular and you’re a student, it starts on the 12th and runs through the weekend.

https://secularstudents.org/2013con/columbus

And finally, I wanted to toss out a plug for the CFI’s upcoming leadership conference in Amherst, New York on the weekend of the 25th of July.  If you’re a student and have any plans or aspirations to start a skeptical, secular or freethought group on campus, CFI is a phenomenal resource.

http://www.cfileadership.org/

You’ll find more details about this conference and all the other events I just outlined on the shownotes for this episode at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.

Poem:

NUMBERS IN RHYME

by Noah Lugeons

1 is the number of gods and he gives

2 shits about who gets killed and who lives.

3 times Balaam and his donkey have spats

be-4 god starts talking out of that Midianite’s ass.

5 chapter in things get scary for chicks,

6-tuff’s prescribed if they’re getting side-dick.

And 7’s for resting unless you need stones,

To break some stick gathering heathen’s skull and his bones.

8 too much Manna? Should you voice your critiques?

God will plague you and kill you, but he’ll send quail for weeks.

And that asi-9 bastard may invoke some damned clause,

To show you what a 10-uous promise that promised land was.

11 Tribes conscribe all their fighting age men,

but the 12th tribe (the Levites) just carry the tent.

20 is war-age, but like most things, you’ll notice,

The tribe that’s exempt is the one that has Moses.

30 Days mourning when god kills Aaron on high,

Then 40 years waiting for all the bad jews to die.

50 percent of this book we spend bored

Counting jews and the booty they offer the lord.

We get a couple of censuses from all of the tribes,

Enumerated offerings are in detail described,

As the name would suggest, the book’s obsessed with amounts,

But no number gets higher than god’s body count:

We could start with the animals, who are killed by the score,

Each time the tabernacle opens its doors.

Bulls, rams and donkeys, pigeons and sheep,

And a pile of quails about three cubits deep.

Israelites?  Oh yeah, he kills them by the thousand.

He opens the earth and swallows whole houses.

He burns their encampments, sends serpents and plagues,

And what heinous encroachments elicit god’s rage?

Being hungry or thirsty, doubting Moses’ clout,

Going to the tabernacle once the candles are out,

Being honest when scouting, gathering sticks,

Complaining to Moses and acting like dicks.

Whoring with Moabites, lighting incense all wrong,

Being treated like shit and not just going along;

Thinking manna tastes nasty, being slow to obey

Or living in cities that stand in his way.

But it isn’t like God is always a villain;

When he orders Moses to murder all the Midianite children,

He says if they’re virgins and if they behave,

He can spare the young women and keep them as slaves.

Holy Babble:

The Book of Numbers rests between two of the most notorious books in the bible and, perhaps because of that, it doesn’t get as much attention as Leviticus and Deuteronomy.  And sure, Numbers doesn’t have the homophobic flare of Leviticus or the “Thank God the Pentateuche is over” satisfaction of Deuteronomy, but if you were to insert it into any other book ever written, Numbers would almost certainly be the most fucked up portion of that book.

But mostly it’s just a horribly boring book that details one leg of the trip from Sinai to the promised land, punctuated with moments of brutal insanity that might just be there to keep you awake.  Joining Heath and me to discuss this strange little hybrid of bookkeeping and genocide is my beautiful wife Lucinda.  Lucinda welcome back.

I’d say I’m happy to be here, but after reading Numbers, I don’t think god would want me saying that without getting my husband’s permission first. So I’ll just say hi.

Yeah, this is probably the most sexist book we’ve come across yet and we’ll get to all of that.  But first things first.  If the jews are gonna take over the holy land, they’re gonna need an army.

1. Right, so we start with the original Schindler’s Enlistment.

• Then they lay out the structure for the Judaism pyramid scheme, or Tetra-Hebron.  

• “Why are the Levites at the top of the pyramid, considering they already run the IRS?  Because they used all the goat taxes to become job creators.  Somebody has to start the game with the reds and oranges, plus all 4 railroads.”

2. And on top of that, none of the people in Moses’ tribe have to join the army and when they camp in the wilderness, they get to set up their tents smack in the middle of 11 armies.

• Would you want rabbis in the front lines of your army?  No, you want badass, Israeli-Commando-type Jews like Adam Sandler . . . Not pale, bearded, shitty drivers that started the Crown Heights Riots by running over a black pedestrian.  

3. And of course, god needs money to go with his army.

• Right, so in chapter 3 Aaron loses about 1365 shekels in a card game, and sets up the most ridiculous, elaborate, nonsensical story to get the money back, from his flock of ancient nomadic tribes that apparently all carry reasonable amounts of fungible hard currency at all times.  

• “So technically, 273 extra babies that should have been righteously murdered.

• Which sounds a lot like an endorsement for abortion.

• No it’s not abortion right after birth – that’s just righteous murder.  

• “What had happened is, God was gonna kill all your kids, but me and my family of 22,000 agreed to live a life of purported divine privilege, in exchange for saving them.  But you all had 22,273 firstborn children, so God’s gonna need 5 shekels apiece for the accounting discrepancy.  Us Levites will collect the cash here and write God a check.”        

4. Then we get god’s overly-elaborate Tabernacle relocation strategy.  Basically he spends chapter four channeling a foul-tempered old lady with alzheimer’s bitching at the moving guys.

   1. “I said wrap it in blue cloth!  No, I want the Gershonites to carry the curtains!  And careful with those lamps or I’ll incinerate you with fireballs!”

5. And then we get started with the sexism.  In chapter five we learn how to tell the if your wife’s been fuckin’ the goat-milkman using nothing but some dirty water, a handful of flour and misogyny.

• The old grain offering dirty water miscarriage trick.  Seems like this was just a way for dudes to save face when they had a slutty wife.  Having her drink dirty water might make her sick, but I’m fairly certain it’s never led to an instantaneous immaculate hysterectomy.  So every time they do the ceremony, the dude doesn’t look like an asshole, because his wife’s womb doesn’t fall out on the spot.  

• Yeah, I was expecting them to break out a scale and a duck at any moment.  

6. Then we get the rules for the vow of the nazirites, which is spelled “Nazi Rites” which kind of fucks me up in the middle of a Jew book.

7. In chapter 7 God shamelessly ups the word count by spelling out the exact same 90 word sacrifice 12 fucking times!

8. The Levites shave all their hair and pubes and become elevated in the eyes of the Lord.

9. In chapter 9 we learn that god’s a cloud and don’t forget that Passover’s coming up.

10. Then god adds a brass section and they’re ready to go conquer the promised land.

• If I’m being a stickler, God should have asked for brass, plated with silver, if he wanted a fuller timbre for those trumpets . . . Nobody’s perfect.  

11. As soon as they hit the road, the Jews start bitching because they don’t like Manna and they want some meat.

• Couldn’t god have solved the meat-shortage by not demanding so damn many sacrifices?

• Sure, but I guess this was supposed to be some grand punishment for not appreciating the triscuit rain, but not too impressive.

• “Hey, do you guys have a 3-foot-tall pile of quail in your yard?  Ok, I guess since we’re NOMADIC, we just eat a bunch now . . . maybe not so much that quail actually oozes out of my nostrils, but a lot . . . and then start heading toward the next place on Moses’s desert obstacle course.”

• Yeah what the fuck was he trying to say there?  Did angels force feed their asses like Kevin Spacey’s character in Se7en.

• And God was like, “Shit, yeah that doesn’t smite them much at all-AND PLAGUE!!! I said the quail thing AND PLAGUE!!! Nobody heard me, but I had said “and plague” at the end as I trailed off.”      

12. In chapter 12, Aaron and his wife talk shit about Moses so god makes her a leper for a week.

• And when Moses asks God to go easy on her so she doesn’t turn out like a stillborn baby with it’s flesh half eaten off, he justifies making her skin rot off by saying, “If her father spit in her face, would she not be shamed for 7 days?”  Oh, well when you put it that way…

13. Next we meet Double “O” Shiv’a scouting out the promised land and they say that all the people already living there are too strong for all the quail engorged Israelites to displace.

14. And then God throws one of his patented temper tantrums and kills pretty much everybody for bitching too much.  He curses their children, he sends a plague, he marched an army out to die.  

• And as if that’s not enough, he “unpromises” the promised land to everybody but Joshua and Caleb.

• Yeah, it’s the part of the act where the hypnotist removes all the free-thinking non-sheep from the stage, leaving only the blindly faithful idiots who are truly qualified for Judaism.  

15. And then in chapter 15, right in the middle of some proper goat-killing etiquette, we learn that Moses and the gang find a guy picking up sticks on the Sabbath so god commands them to stone him to death.  

• And in a whiplash inducing subject change, in the next verse after the stoning, God reminds them that he likes fringes on the outfits, so don’t forget to add fringes.

• “So seriously, it may sound somewhat contradictory, but no faggots on Saturday, and tassles for everyone!!!  Also, lest ye forget, I’m fucking God.”  

16. Then we get a weird little mutiny.  Some other Levites challenge Moses’ leadership so he challenges them to an incense burning match to the death.  

• “What?!?  I’m not clearly high priest because of actually talking directly to God?!?  Take out your censers bitches . . . I’ll outsmoke anyone.”

• “Bitch, you light incense like Michael J. Fox on meth!  You call that a grain offering?  I’ve got more fiber in my stools.”

• So God goes fucking nuts, opens the earth to swallow whole families along with their slaves and furnishings, he burns 250 people alive and then he kills fourteen thousand more with a plague.

• And I must say, god is a total badass about it.  He says “Moses, step away from those dudes.”  And Moses says “Why?”  And God says, “So I can burn them to death with giant fireballs.”

• Right… so why they didn’t all just stand really close to Moses is beyond me.

17. Anyway, just in case the house swallowing, fireball chucking, plague sending message wasn’t clear enough, God also has Moses write everybody’s name on a stick and only Aaron’s stick grows flowers.

18. In chapter 18 we reinforce the “the priests get all the best shit” motif.

19. And in 19 we kill cows and we don’t touch dead people.

20. In chapter 20 God kills Moses’ brother for expressing a slight hint of doubt.  And in the serial-killer-fashion I’ve learned to expect from deities, he doesn’t just plain murder Aaron, he makes his son watch his naked father die, and then walk back down the mountain wearing his murdered dad’s clothes.   

21. Then God continues to be an asshole and sends a bunch of poisonous serpents to get the Jews to stop bitching… then finally Moses goes on the warpath and starts killing some motherfuckers.

22. And then in chapter 22 there was some kind of biblical writer’s strike so they had the folks from Disney step in for a few chapters, because all of a sudden everybody’s breaking into song and there’s a talking donkey.

• And didn’t Balaam seem strangely nonplussed by it?  He just carried on a conversation with his donkey like it was nothing.

• Well he thought he was speaking to god earlier, so a talking donkey is far more plausible.

23. So basically the story here is that Balak is trying to get Balaam to go to war against the Israelites, but Balaam knows god’s on their side so he spends a couple chapters refusing… in song.

24. ^^

25. ^^

26. Then we get another census because, holy shit, it’s been almost twenty two chapters since we counted all the jews.

• Well God had killed a lot of them since then.

27. Then we spend 3 chapters going over old shit, but we do finally learn what we’ve suspected all along; God’s been cheating on Moses with Joshua.

28. ^^

29. ^^

30. In chapter 30 we learn the difference between man vows (must be kept) and women vows (must be kept unless a man says so)

• Yeah, just in case the “women are inferior to men” thing wasn’t clear by now, God hammers it home one more time.

31. Then they go to war with the Midianites and slaughter them.  All the men of fighting age are killed.  Moses is furious… because they failed to kill the women and children.  

• “I’m not getting God to divinely inspire our army, for you guys to not fully murder, pillage, and rape everyone.  I’ve gotta be a stickler on this, or my boss yells at me and he’s always watching.  You either murder them . . . or you rape them . . . or both in either order . . . Understood?”

• Easily the most disturbing moment in the narrative so far.

32. Then, thanks to the cattle-rustlin’ Reubenites and Gadites, Jews start a long and storied tradition of building settlements in other people’s land.

33. Then we get a chapter that rehashes every spot where they camped for the last 40 years.

• Riveting.

34. Then they divvy up the promised land (before actually possessing it)

• The first use of short selling.

35. God takes a minute to spell out exactly what is and isn’t “murder”.  And can I just say, I love the whole “city of refuge idea”…  we should totally bring that back

• It would make a great setting for a Nicolas Cage movie.

36. And we finish with a soft close concerning inheritances and marriage.

So what do we learn in Numbers?  We learn, first of all, that God’s a wrathful, vengeful, abhorrent, petty tyrant.

• Well . . . we re-learn.

• We learn that women are worthless

• we learn that donkeys can talk, we learn that genocide is a-okay

And we learn that anybody who read the first four books of the Bible and didn’t become an atheist needs to work on their reading comprehension skills.

So Heath, Lucinda, thanks for suffering through this with me.

We’ll take a couple weeks off of the Holy Babble, but we’ll all meet back here to break down Deuteronomy in episode 22 for those of you playing along at home.

Outro:

Before we shut off the lights tonight I wanted to respond to a slight criticism recently posted in an otherwise extremely complimentary review.  Mr “Something Clever About God” appreciates the toilet humor, the 30 minute format and overall production quality, but offers the following critique:

“The commentary is more ‘witty’ than ‘laugh out loud funny’, so Heath and Noah could use more snickers and less belly laughs”

First of all, thanks for the rating, but I do want to take issue with that minor objection.  Every laugh you hear on this show is genuine and Heath and I would never pretend to laugh at one another’s material and we certainly wouldn’t laugh at jokes that we wrote for the other guy and we certainly wouldn’t cut and paste genuine laughs and drop them into the audio later and I’m certainly not lying right now and it’s certainly not obvious.

We also need to take a few seconds to recognize this week’s most vivacious, tenacious, loquacious, sagacious, perspicacious, papilionaceous, gracious, curvaceous and hellacious people, Benjamin and David, who proved themselves worthy of the kind of praise that can only be fully expressed by Googling “words that end in A-C-I-O-U-S, removing the ones that are insulting and then adding a really obscure term for “butterfly like” by giving us money.

Only the most intelligent and sexually virile specimens of human excellence have what it takes to give us money, but if you think you can live up to my verbose laudations, you’ll find the donate button on the right side of the homepage at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.

And if you love the show but you lost all your money betting on Scotus outcomes, you can still help out by telling a friend about the show or leaving us a glowing 5-star review on iTunes.  I should point out that as of this recording we have 68 reviews so there’s still time to be the sexually significant 69th reviewer if you’re into that sort of thing.

I need to thank Heath and Lucinda for joining me tonight and Remy G for providing this week’s Farnsworth quote.  This is normally the part where I’d tell you that you should check out his awesome Facebook page called “Fuck Your Fucking God, You Ignorant Blinded Dumb Fuck”, which totally makes this podcast sound PG and had an awesome avatar of a nude Jesus giving you this “Hey baby, I’ve got enough orifices for everyone” look, but I can’t because Facebook is run by a bunch of cowardly pube-waxing assholes who took down his page because religious people have fragile feelings and his words make them cry.

So since they won’t let him say it, I’ll say it, “Hey religious assholes on Facebook, fuck your fucking god, you ignorant, blinded dumb fuck.”

Anyway, that’s all the blasphemy we’ve got for you this week, but we’ll be back in 168 hours with more.  If you can’t wait that long, you could always check out our erratically published blog and like (slash) subscribe (slash) follow us on Facebook (slash) YouTube (slash) Twitter.  You can also find our archives at Scathing Atheist (dot) com or you can help us bump up our Stitcher ranking by downloading the Stitcher App and listening to us there.

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.