Archive
Episode 26 – Partial Transcript
by Heath Enwright, Lucinda Lugeons and Noah Lugeons
Sponsor:
Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the new anti-vangelcial disinfectant, Pew-rell.
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And now the Scathing Atheist.
Intro:
It’s Thursday, It’s August 15th, and there’s no evidence to suggest anything important happened 2,013 years ago.
I’m your host Noah Lugeons and from begrudgingly heterogenous New York, New York, this is the Scathing Atheist.
In this week’s episode:
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A judge in Eastern Tennessee will hand down a verdict in the case of State of Tennessee vs. Whoever the fuck I say you are,
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We’ll learn about the lighter side of Nazi symbolism,
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And we’ll meet a man who blew up the family dog for all the wrong reasons,
But first, the diatribe…
Diatribe:
For some reason, the fact that atheists are smarter than religious people is controversial. The fact that it’s a fact isn’t controversial, of course. That’s been born out by study after study, and regardless of wealth, education, gender and religiosity of the parents, atheists as a group always outscore theists when it comes to the ability to think.
Yes, of course, the smartest Christian is way smarter than the dumbest atheist, but on the average, the nonbeliever is significantly more intelligent than the believer.
And as well established a fact as this is, it’s absurdly polemical. It’s just not polite to talk about. Why, it’s downright rude to point out that people who believe logically incoherent things based on the authority of a guy in a silly hat are dumber than people who don’t. Even if you use big words they’ll know you’re picking on them from the tone of your voice.
Take for example the response to the new meta-analysis from psychologists Miron Zuckerman and Jordan Silberman. You probably saw it on Facebook under the heading “Fucking duh”.
Their study, which was recently published in Personality and Social Psychology Review, looked at decades worth of data from sixty plus well-designed studies and found that, to nobody’s surprise, atheists are still definitely smarter than theists.
And sure, this study has its detractors because religious people are really good at getting angry at reality when it fails to conform to their desires. So sure, a bunch of Christians are yelling “we’re not as stupid as we are!” and a bunch of scientists confirming that they’re wrong. Nothing new to see here. In fact, the only really interesting part of the study was the bit at the end where they try to answer the “why” question.
This is always really tricky for sociologists dealing with this issue. What we have here is a stupid question that demands an intelligent response. Why are atheists smarter than theists? Well, if you define intelligent as the ability to come to correct conclusions when given sufficient information you’re asking why intelligent people are smarter than non-intelligent people. But sociologists aren’t allowed to end their paper with “We conclude that religion is stupid”. So instead they offer up three possibilities to explain the data. And all of them are commendable attempts at not rubbing it in, but none of them stand up to intellectual scrutiny.
The first is that intelligent people are simply less likely to have conformist personalities and are therefore less susceptible to religious indoctrination, leading to lower levels of religiosity later in life. Now I’m sure that this is true and is a contributing factor, but at best it only partially explains the data. Even if you separate out just the people raised without religion, the atheists in the remaining group will still, on the average, be smarter. This fact, which is in their data, completely dismisses possibility number one.
Possibility number two is a little more reasonable. It posits that intelligent people are less likely to accept any belief that isn’t subject to empirical testing or logical reasoning. But as reasonable as this is, it still has no explanatory powers because all they’re saying here is that intelligent people are better at thinking. And yeah, that’s true, but it still doesn’t address the parlor pachiderm.
Which brings us to possibility number three, which is the “gee, shucks” bullshit explanation that relies on four dozen assumptions that are unsupported by their data. They say that perhaps intelligent people are simply less likely to “need” the things religion “provides”. Of course, try as they might, they fail to demonstrate any “benefit” of religion, so this lacks any explanatory powers as well.
It’s worth noting that some of the nonsense in their third possibility is directly contradicted by their own findings, as one of the explanations they try to use is that atheists are generally wealthier and in less need of a supplemental feeling of control. But since the data shows that the trend holds even when you account for wealth, this clearly can’t be the case.
I don’t want to be too hard on the researchers of course. They did the best they could to draw attention to a fact that needs to be given more credence in public discourse.
But if we were being fair, the question “Does an invisible person listen to you when you wish for things?” would be on the IQ test and if you answered yes you shouldn’t be allowed to have an IQ at all, but I know we’re not gonna get that. Still, the premise of this question is pretty simple if you grant that there is a correct answer to the god question. Basically, what we’re saying with this study is “People who got this major question right also tended to get other questions right”. It’s like a study that finds that people who know that capital of Belize are better at geography.
Why are atheists smarter than religious people? Because getting answers correct is the definition of intelligence.
Headlines:
Joining me for headlines tonight is the brains of the operation, Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to be statistically more intelligent than your theistic counterpart?
As an atheist, I walk into a church. There’s a guy nailed to a cross, there’s an 80-year-old likely pedophile giving a speech, and there’s a whole bunch of people hanging on his every word. Who’s the Vegas favorite to be smartest guy in the room?
In our lead story tonight, the Obama administration filed an amicus brief in favor of prayer at public meetings in advance of an upcoming Supreme Court challenge to the unconstitutional practice.
I thought Obama was an atheist . . . Uncle Clarence Thomas Aquinas . . . turncoat bastard.
That was a Wheel of Fortune ‘before and after’, a literary race traitor reference, a religious supreme court justice tie in, and a religion connection, all in one.
Give yourself more credit than that, it was a Wheel of Fortune “before and after and after plus before again.”
Anyway, the brief claims that as long as a prayer isn’t clearly intended to proselytize and doesn’t denigrate a particular faith, it is an entirely reasonable way to open a meeting of elected representatives. After all, as the brief points out, the House and Senate both have chaplains and when have either of those bodies ever fucked anything up?
What the fuck does a Congress chaplain do? Pray for separation of church and state? Pray for themself to be fired for a First Amendment violation?
And ALL wasting of taxpayer-funded time denigrates atheists. Live animal sacrifice has the same statistical success as Christian prayer in causing things to happen. Let’s just skip the prayer, save the goat, and have legislative bodies spend ALL their time preventing progress like they’re fucking supposed to.
This is just the latest attempt to reach around to the religious community, to offer a stroking hand of friendship, to bend over frontwards in hopes of attenuating the Prince of Darkness reputation Obama has among evangelicals.
Have I already made a joke about rosary anal beads?
Yes, but you can never make too many.
They’re acting like the beliefs of Christians are somehow informed by facts and occurrences in the real world.
Right, and despite the impressive string of compromises, concessions, copouts and consolation prizes, the fundies continues to clean their guns and stock up on freeze-dried legumes against the inevitability that the population will be imprisoned and forced to pledge their souls to satan.
Obama administration files amicus brief supporting prayer at government meetings: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/08/09/obama-administration-backs-legislative-prayer-in-amicus-brief/
And in “nautical nincompoopery” news tonight, sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip that started from a tropic port when some homophobic weasel-eating rednecks lost the ability to separate Fox News from reality and decided to endanger the lives of their children in a fruitless and ill-conceived attempt to escape the abortion-loving US in favor of the rapidly sinking Kiribati islands.
Listen, I’m not saying bringing your children to almost die with you on a boat is the same as abortion . . . I’m saying it’s MUCH MUCH WORSE!!!
Abortion is quantifiably good for society.
Whereas negligent almost homicide, even bible-inspired negligent almost homicide, not good for society.
30 year old Sean Gastonguay and his 26 year old wife Hannah cited a number of imaginary reasons they chose to leave ‘Murica, including tax payer funded abortion, state control of churches, mandatory homosexuality and the tiny robots that sneak into their brains when they sleep.
Well they’re bluffing about that last thing, because they can’t know about the brain nanobots. That’s the whole thing with nanobots.
As far as the tax-funded abortion, that sounds weird, because I usually get my abortions done at a private doctor, but I never got any voucher checks.
I go to Jerry Orbach as Jennifer Gray’s dad in Dirty Dancing . . . the first and last likable abortion doctor in a movie.
“Nobody puts baby in the dumpster in the corner…”
Anyway back to the harrowing story of our deficient defectors, figuring that nothing goes better with stupid than more stupid, they opted to escape the country by sea; setting sail across the Pacific Ocean with a 3 year old, a baby and absolutely no knowledge or experience in navigation. Hannah explained that they (quote) “decided to take a leap of faith and see where God led us”, which, as it turned out, was floating aimlessly in the Pacific ocean for three months after rough weather crippled their laughably under-equipped vessel.
I guess it’s a no-brainer for atheists, but if they didn’t get rescued in time, who gets eaten first on that boat?
Family sails away from the gay, abortion loving US and gets lost. http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/219129631.html?page=all&prepage=1&c=y#continue
And in “Not the preferred nomenclature” news tonight, it turns out there’s a legal limit to how weird a black person’s name can be. Or at least, that’s the opinion of the dishonorable Judge Lu Ann Ballew, who decided to change a 7 month old babies name of her own volition during a custody dispute.
If black people weren’t allowed to give their kid any name they want . . . I’d probably be able to make a racist-sounding analogy right here. But I can’t, so black mothers – and occasionally black fathers – can name their kids whatever they want.
The Eastern Tennessee Judge was hearing a custody case involving a baby named “Messiah” and despite having not been crowned emperor and thus having no legal right to do so, she decided to overrule the birth certificate, explaining that Messiah was a title, not a name and it had only been earned by one person and that person was our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Right, because the word messiah comes from Hebrew and appears in the Old Testament, which was that book all about Jesus.
In an effort to explain her actions, Ballew asserted that the name Messiah could cause problems in the largely Christian area. And while I understand the sensitivity to insult a person whose last name kinda rhymes with swallow and has the word ball in it that adjudicates in Cocke County certainly has, that still doesn’t afford her the jurisdiction to rename people’s kids.
Quick story time . . . My atheist friend was being raised Catholic to placate grandparents, and when he got confirmed, he had to choose a saint to have as his confirmation name. So he tried to have “God” as his confirmation name, claiming that Jesus is a saint, and Jesus is God, therefore God is a Saint. To which his priest responded, “Wait, you lost me at therefore” . . .
Tennessee Judge renames baby during custody hearing: http://www.goddiscussion.com/113836/parents-told-by-tn-judge-they-cannot-name-their-baby-messiah/
And in yet another “naked, alien-worshipping lunatics redeeming Nazi regalia” story, the Raelians are in the news for the third time in as many decades this week with a misguided effort to rehabilitate the swastika.
Against all odds, they found something less-defensible than their existing cult beliefs.
And gratuitous mention of terrible attention-grabbing things like swastikas, Nazis, genocide, rape, cancer, abortion, and whatnot . . . That’s no way to get attention. Unless you’re our podcast.
Even I wouldn’t wear an ironic hipster swastika t-shirt.
Boasting a worldwide following nearly equal to the population of Pawtucket City, Rhode Island, the Raelians bill themselves as the world’s largest UFO religion, a statistical advantage cemented by the frequency with which their competitors commit mass suicide.
At this point, if you’re part of some alien cult, and somebody sets up any kind of punch bowl situation, you’ve gotta see that coming.
But if you think about it, they can only claim that because Scientologists are too embarassed to admit what they believe in public.
In the latest installment of their thinly veiled attempt to get people to talk about Raelians, the group flew a swastika laden banner over a popular Long Island beach sporting a web address where people could join them in their fight to reclaim the true meaning of the swastika.
This sounds like the worst Kurt Vonnegut book ever. Some galactically important alien plot that revolved around using swastika shapes for communication, and the Nazis unwittingly fucked up their whole plan, and Kilgore Trout had something to do with it somehow.
Fuckin’ anti-semite tralfamadorians…
Raelians work to take back the Swastika: http://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2013/aug/11/ufo-religion-raelians-reclaim-swastika
And in this week’s installment of CSI: Nazareth, Kenyan Lawyer Dola Indidis is fighting to overturn the conviction of one Jesus H. Christ. Arguing that Jesus clearly didn’t do it, Indidis has filed a case with the International Court of Justice against Pontius Pilate, King Herod and a ham sandwich.
How are Christians mad about this? Didn’t the Romans and the Jews kill Jesus for your sins? Follow the money. Who benefits from Jesus dying? Everyone. We all get to sin for free now. Plus, none of you are supposed to believe Jesus really died! This is all in the script(ure).
Included in his list of defendants are the modern day nations of Italy and Israel. The stuff that Indidis uses in place of logic supposes that Italy incurs guilt for pretty much being Ancient Rome and Israel incurs guilt by being full of Jews.
If they’re found guilty in court, what happens? We crucify a rabbi and a soccer player? Kenya owns Vatican City? Obama takes over as interim Pope?
In one of the greatest dismissals of all time, the International Court of Justice, which exists to hear claims pursued by states rather than individuals working on the behalf of bronze-age superheroes said that (quote) “it is not even theoretically possible for us to consider this case.”
Can’t waste time on religion bullshit, when that princess is still kidnapped, and that Bowser guy is still at large.
Kenyan lawyer works to overturn Jesus’ death sentence: http://www.policymic.com/articles/58445/this-kenyan-lawyer-wants-to-sue-italy-and-israel-for-killing-jesus
And from the “plumps when you cook ‘em” file tonight, police in Stevenson Washington arrested a man last Sunday after he decapitated his dog… with a homemade bomb… because it was possessed by the devil.
Here we are – atheist podcasters – basically reverse-publicists for religion. And they go ahead and start murdering puppies. We don’t even have to try anymore. I don’t think there exists a PR gaff worse, than having your institutional fairy tales lead to puppy murder. I’m gonna say religion and puppy murder one more time.
Feels good doesn’t it? The way we get to link those things because crazy people are almost always deeply religious? Anyway, 45 year old religious puppy murderer Christopher Dillingham was arrested on charges of reckless endangerment and possession of an explosive device last Sunday after strapping a black powder bomb to his labrador retriever and blowing it the fuck up in his backyard at four in the morning.
Bunch of savages. At least when an atheist murders a puppy with an IED, it’s not for an awful reason like religion.
Dillingham explained to police that his ex-girlfriend had given him the dog after imbuing it with evil spirits. When police asked why his windows were broken and a bunch of his shit was strewn around the yard, he explained that many of his utensils were also possessed and that purging his cookware of demonic forces was all part of his rapture preparation strategy.
Crazy people are capable of crazy shit like this, regardless of their feelings about Jesus.
But when sane people start filling crazy people’s heads with shit about impending apocalypses and seven headed dragons rising from the sea, aren’t they at least partially liable for the puppy murder?
I loved that when reporters asked why Dillingham wasn’t facing charges of cruelty to animals the sheriff actually said that such a charge requires proof of the animal suffering and when you blow a dog’s head off, it’s admiring its new collar one second and…
Man blows up family dog because it had devil in it: http://www.christianpost.com/news/man-preparing-for-rapture-blows-up-family-dog-because-it-had-the-devil-in-it-101756/
And finally tonight, in “If that tree wasn’t magic why would it be weeping tears of aphid shit?” news, a group of gullible spunk monkeys in California have managed to convince themselves that a tree outside their church is blessed with holy tears.
They need to bottle that stuff. It only takes 3 god tears to cure a person of homosexuality, and just a dab on the taint restores anal virginity.
Providing yet another example of the cognitive dissonance that religion can inspire, they’ve managed to maintain that belief despite the fact that the “tears” have been identified as a known phenomenon that is not only common in the area, but common on that fucking street!
Yeah it looks like God might have also been crying on my laptop screen and a sock I wore yesterday.
So according to people with knowledge and shit, what we’re actually dealing with is aphid poop. The aphids suck out the tree sap and crap out what arborist Jon Reelhorn describes as a “honey-dew excrement”.
How does this so-called “tree expert” know it’s aphid shit? He’s probably never even read the section of the bible that discusses the fecal form often taken by god’s tears on earth.
Though it wasn’t mentioned in the article, I’m willing to bet the parishioners are now employing the “space-peanut” defense by claiming that it’s a divine honey-dew excrement.
The Holy Shit defense lacks consistency. Not as solid as they think. Hard to digest . . . And a little bit corny, from what I’ve seen.
People pray to “weeping tree”; tears turn out to be bug excrement: http://www.wptv.com/dpp/news/national/People-pray-at-tree-outside-St-Johns-Cathedral-in-Fresno-California-say-tree-weeps-Gods-tears
That’ll do it for headlines tonight, Heath, thanks as always for joining me.
Pleasure
And when we come back we’ll be one up on Jesus.
Donation Pitch:
Here at the Scathing Atheist, we know that you could be spending your donation dollars anywhere and sometimes it can be difficult to decide to give them to us.
On the one hand you could support underprivileged people, handicapped by a misfortune of geography and desperate to taste the smallest fraction of the wealth our nation enjoys. On the other hand you could give it to a couple of middle-income New Yorkers who make fart jokes.
So to help you make the right decision when it comes time to donate your hard earned dollars, Heath and I would like to present our top ten reasons to give your money to us instead of starving kids in Africa.
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10 – African kids are awesome at starving to death and who are you to take that away from them?
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9 – No matter how you slice it, we’re funnier than starving kids.
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8 – AIDS is already an appetite suppressant.
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7 – The entire African economy is based on bony kids with flies crawling on them. How are a bunch of chubby kids going to inspire a coffee a day’s worth of sympathy?
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6 – A lot of Africans are Muslims.
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5 – These kids live in tribal Africa. The rent out there is nothing! It costs $450 a month to park your fucking car in Manhattan. When’s the last time subway fares went up in the Burundi? Never? That’s what I thought.
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4 – The swarm of flies around one kid is CGI just for the commercial.
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3 – Statistically speaking, at least some of the kids you’d be feeding are total assholes.
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2 – This should go without saying but podcast hosting costs money. Starving is free.
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1 – In the words of the late, great George Carlin, “Fuck the Children”
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Also in the words of the last few popes.
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So if jokes about starving children with aids and a little pedophilia humor tugs at your heartstrings the way it tugs at mine, you’ll find the donate button on the right side of the homepage at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.
Bible Story:
“Run get the young ‘uns folks! It’s time for Lucinda Lugeons Bible Stories for kids”
Today we’re gonna open our bibles up to Genesis and learn all about the first people that god ever made, Adam and Eve.
Adam was god’s finest creation, whom god fashioned in his own image. And Eve was an afterthought made from a rib when Adam decided bulls, sheep and hamsters were inadequate companions. And together they lived in the Garden of Eden.
The Garden was a beautiful paradise where the weather was always nice and there was always enough to eat. There were plenty of delicious fruits to eat, but the very most delicious fruit of them all was the only thing in the whole garden that they weren’t allowed to have, because it would give them knowledge.
God could have made the fruit they weren’t allowed to eat taste really bad or he could have just not put it there at all, but he decided to put the only thing they couldn’t have right there where it would be really, really easy for them to get it. But they didn’t because god had told them not to.
But then the devil came to them in the form of serpent and he spoke to Eve. Because, yes, boys and girls, the devil can inhabit snakes and talk to you. And it’s okay to tell kids that because they would probably have nightmares anyway.
God also could have not made devil snakes or been there when he knew that the devil was tempting Eve, but he decided not to because god is mysterious, so instead he allowed Adam and Eve to disobey him, even though he already knew that they would before they did, because god knows everything.
And when Adam and Eve ate the fruit, they realized that they were naked and they were ashamed of it because people should be ashamed of their bodies no matter what and nakedness is evil. And it’s okay to tell kids that because they’d probably already have plenty of suicidal thoughts in their teen years anyway.
So Adam and Eve made clothes out of leaves and they hid when they heard god coming because they didn’t want him to see their naughty bits. So god asked them, “Hey guys, where’s your cock and tits and stuff?”
And Adam told god that he didn’t want god to look at his penis anymore. So god got really mad. And it’s okay to tell kids that because the priests would have probably overpowered them even if they weren’t theologically predisposed to letting authority figures see them naked.
And god said “Did you guys eat the fruit I told you not to eat?”
And Adam said, “It was all Eve’s fault” which meant that god wasn’t the only one who wasn’t gonna see her naughty bits for a while.
So god became so angry that he stole the snake’s legs and made it crawl on it’s belly, which is a punishment even though it’s an equally valid method of locomotion that is better suited to the snake’s ecological niche than legs would be.
And god got so mad at Eve that he made childbirth hurt for all animals forever and ever. And he also kicked them out of the beautiful garden and made them live in a crappier world with hurricanes and earthquakes and disease and stillborn puppies. And he also cursed every human being who would ever live to carry the sin of Eve. Because she ate a fruit god told her not to eat.
And nobody ever lived happily ever after again. Because of a fruit.
The End
Outro:
Before we power down the engines tonight I wanted to apologize to anybody who got the impression last week that we’d changed to an hour long format. It was an hour long special because of the subject and the divisibility by five but we never actually said that during the show so if you were expecting 30 more minutes at this point, I do apologize.
I also wanted to offer another apology to one of the world’s most important bipeds, Evan. I was checking back over some notes and I’m almost certain that I forgot to thank him a couple of weeks ago for his generous donation. I’m really not sure how it happened and how I managed to keep missing it for several weeks, but Evan, thank you, you’re more awesome than almost everybody on earth and I’m really sorry.
And finishing my trifecta of mea culpas is an apology to Mechy from the Autistic Jesus Facebook page who provided last week’s Farnsworth quote and then didn’t get the plug I promised him in return for it. He’s just getting his page started there but if you can’t get enough godlessness on your Facebook wall, you’ll find a link to his page on the shownotes for this episode.
https://www.facebook.com/AutisticJesus
I also need to thank Heath for making this podcast so damn much better than it would otherwise be and I need to thank my beautiful wife Lucinda for doing a bible story this week despite her miserable head cold.
But of course, most of all, I need to thank this week’s most momentous multicellular organisms, Harry, Kevin, Will, Matthew, Richard, other Richard, Anne, Ben, Tyler and Michael. Harry, Kevin, Richard and Will who are feared by supervillains almost as much as they’re loved by damsels in distress; Other Richard, Anne and Michael who are formidable on their own, but together form the greatest robot warrior in the universe and Matthew, Ben and Tyler, three men with the scientific acumen, the penis girth and the bravery to rape dinosaurs but the willpower not to. These TEN brave and illustrious examples of humanity proved themselves this week by giving us money.
Of course, not everyone has the tenacity, capacity, veracity and sense of bold personal style required to give us money, but if you think you share Harry, Kevin, Will, Matthew, Richard, other Richard, Anne, Ben, Tyler and Michael’s eleemosynary proclivity, you’ll find the donate button on the right side of our homepage at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.
And if you want to help us out but only if it’s free, you can also help us a ton by leaving us a sterling review over on the iTunes, adding us to your favorites list on Stitcher, liking us on Facebook, following us on Twitter, subscribing to us on YouTube and following our blog. Or doing some combination of those things as you see fit.
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 24 – Partial Transcript
by Heath Enwright and Noah Lugeons
Sponsor:
Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the new line of supplication supplements from Dei-Pfizer. Their new line of Holy Gesticulation Hormones and other Piety Enhancing Drugs is guaranteed to increase the effectiveness of your prayer by at least 600%.
Dei-Pfizer, because there’s no mathematical law against multiplying by zero.
And now, the Scathing Atheist:
Intro:
It’s Thursday, it’s August 1st, there’s a new royal baby and he looks delicious…
I’m your host Noah Lugeons and from psychotropic New York, New York, this is the Scathing Atheist.
In this week’s episode,
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North Carolina preemptively declares their independence from Saudi Arabia,
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We’ll get almost all the way through the headlines segment without making a rape joke,
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And we’ll learn that Alfredo Borodowski is one wascally wabbi.
But first the Diatribe:
Diatribe:
Tom and Cecil over at Cognitive Dissonance invited me on their show last week. We had a blast hanging out and you can hear most of that blast on episode 109 of their show, which you’ll find linked on the shownotes for the episode.
http://dissonancepod.com/?cat=700
But shameless self promotion is only part of the reason I bring it up. See, when I first started doing this podcast, I thought of all the other atheist podcasts as “the competition”. I’d listen to Reasonable Doubts and I’d say “Damn it, those guys are way smarter than us,” or I’d listen to Atheist Experience and say “Damn it, those guys are way more persuasive than us,” and I’d listen to Cognitive Dissonance and get pissed if they said something funnier about the thing I talked about than the thing I said was.
But then I heard something on Cognitive Dissonance that I could hardly find fault with. They said, “Hey, we just heard this podcast called the Scathing Atheist, it’s really funny, you should really check it out.” And that kind of changed my perspective.
I came to realize that these guys aren’t the competition. They’re the community. I realized I should be doing everything I could to help everyone spread this message. It probably would have occurred to me sooner, but like a lot of atheists, I’ve never been part of a community that accepted me. I had no idea what that would even feel like.
In my neopagan, hippy… shrooms and peyote, quasi-religious days I’d been welcomed by plenty of communities that were happy to have me as long as I was willing to play along with their bullshit. When my highschool sweetheart said I couldn’t bang her unless I got saved I experienced a similar thing. But I’ve never been part of a community that would welcome me if I said the shit I actually thought.
I can admit that I envy religious people for that. A religious family moves into a new town and there’s a community waiting to take them in. They’ll give their kids a chance to make new friends, they’ll give mom and dad a chance to meet people their age and all they ask in return is ten per cent of their income and that you keep a straight face when they praise the Jesus ghost.
Which brings me to a topic that’s been big in the atheist blogosphere of late; so-called “atheist” churches. Here we have some much maligned attempts to bring exactly this to the atheist community. You’ve got Jerry DeWitt down in the atheist haven of Louisiana, you’ve got Doug Stanhope’s Sunday Assembly on an international tour and you’ve got dozens of smaller congregations hanging out their shingles all over the world. They’re humanist chapels or secular missions or atheist churches or whatever.
And a lot of atheists hate them. I see where they’re coming from, of course. They argue that these things are a step toward turning atheism into a religion. They’ve seen this whole “yeah, but just sit down in pews and let’s chat about morals” thing before and they didn’t like where it led. They fear that even the non-tenets of non-belief can be perverted if you wrap a church around them.
I know a lot of really smart people disagree with me on this so I’ll grant that there may be objections I’m not aware of, but from what I’ve seen I think the pros far outweigh the cons. What’s more, I can see why a lot of atheists wouldn’t recognize the pros at all. After all, seven months ago I had no idea what it was like to be part of a community.
But we’re not talking about some vague, heartstring and platitude kind of benefits. There are scientifically proven advantages to belonging to a community. Benefits like not dying and not being a miserable old fuck while not dying. In fact, a lot of the research that Christians love to toss around that shows how religious people are happier and live longer can be entirely explained away when you separate out church-goers and non-church attending believers. It turns out those benefits aren’t coming from the pastor, they’re coming from the pews.
Secularists have made plenty of attempts to fill the void. We do our conventions and our skeptics in the pub outings and stuff and nobody has an issue with it. But as soon as you replace the lectern with a pulpit the radars start going off.
I say we’re making a big mistake if we voluntarily give religion a monopoly on getting together to talk about morality and forgiveness and community and family and love. I think we’re buying into their bullshit sanctity if we say that atheists can’t get together on Sunday mornings and sing songs and talk about ethics and get fired up about charity work and the beauty of the world.
Some people reject these things because when they instinctively refuse to believe that there’s anything good about a church, but that belies the data. Others simply think it’ll be easy to abuse. But if the message is one of critical thought and a love for science and wonder, I think we owe it to the world to embrace these places wholeheartedly. Still others reject them under the pedantic argument that atheism is simply a lack of a belief in god, god damn it.
But I also think there are plenty that eschew the idea because they’ve never tasted a welcoming community before and they simply don’t know that it’s awesome.
Headlines:
Joining me for headlines tonight is fellow subtly sarcastic satirist Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to be less grossly offensive than our words indicate?
I am ready, and with that in mind, let’s take a moment to discuss God’s latest mysterious way: The George Zimmerman verdict.
By all means.
So Florida is part of God’s jurisdiction, right?
If you’re in godly Florida, and you get murdered, it’s your own fault, as long as the gunman established his position before you accidentally walked through his hallowed standing grounds.
They talk about it like Zimmerman took a charge in basketball. But even in the NBA, an offensive foul doesn’t award you two shots . . . and definitely not two shots to the chest.
Great job weeding out the easily offended, now on to the news.
In our lead story tonight, North Carolina is set to become the 7th state to piss away taxpayer funded time to pass a law against doing away with the American judicial system in favor of Islamic theocracy.
New York is working on a similar law that would also prohibit Islamic murder, Islamic grand theft auto, and Islamic loitering south of Houston in lower Manhattan. Muslims in north Jersey can walk around and stuff, but they’ll continue to be monitored at all times by the NYPD.
And with them now making up significantly more than a quarter of a percent of North Carolina’s population, North Carolina legislators are fighting back against the inevitable demise of American values by introducing a bill that makes renaming a post-office seem constructive.
Much like invading a Muslim nation, this is pre-emptive anti-Muslim legislation.
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“They was fixin to legislate against us!!!”
This move has prompted criticism from both of North Carolina’s Muslims as well as national watchdog groups that point out that it’s as pointless as enacting a law against basing our justice system on the Code of Hammurabi or Robocop’s directives because no-fucking-body is trying to do that.
And as is often the case with southern lawmakers, we shouldn’t have to explain this, but . . .
Infinite Hamlet monkeys couldn’t create an exhaustive list of all your desired bigoted policies.
Proponents of the bill point out that there are only so many ways that one can legislate one’s bigotry against Muslims and the Burqa bans aren’t working out so well for the Frenchies.
In fairness, it’s not just the burqa . . . they’re banning any clothing that can conceal dynamite vests and pre-martyrdom facial ticks. Muslim rights advocates would probably like to point out that this is de facto segregation, but that would be admitting that Muslims are de facto terrorists.
I want to be part of a religion that requires everyone to wear the power loader robot suit from Aliens.
North Carolina set to become 7th state to pass “Anti-Shariah” bill: http://www.religionnews.com/2013/07/26/nc-muslims-hope-gov-pat-mccrory-vetoes-anti-shariah-bill/
And in this week’s “If God Loved you he wouldn’t have put you in Alabama” report, we have the story of a Baptist minister who was invited to open a meeting of the Alabama Public Service Commission with a prayer. As if opening a meeting about utility company rates with an invocation to a Jewish deity wasn’t bad enough, Minister John Jordan offered up this doozy:
(Soundclip: “We have murdered your children, God, and said it’s okay to have same sex marriage… we have sinned against you and we ask for your forgiveness)
Clearly it takes an Alabaman to see the connection between dollars per kilowatt hour and abortion, but I’m sure if you give Rush Limbaugh 5 minutes and a Vicodin he could explain it.
I save my aborted fetuses . . . to use in my Matrix-style power farm that puts electricity back into the grid. And I use them for cooking, obviously. I use the whole bloody undifferentiated mass. I’m like a Native American when it comes to environmentally sound birth control.
They also make great sea monkeys.
But the reason this is newsworthy shouldn’t be the extreme nature of the prayer. If he opened up the meeting by praying for more butterflies and happiness it would still be a violation of the First Amendment.
And a stupid way to go about getting more butterflies and happiness.
But Commission President and part time My Little Pony aristocrat Twinkle Andress Cavanaugh has responded to media criticisms of the prayer by explaining that it is her divine right as an Alabaman to be an idiot. In response to a HuffPo article, Cavanaugh sent an email explaining that (quote) “without a doubt, our nation needs more prayer, not less.” She then failed to add “So fuck the constitution.”
In Alabama . . . divine right and genetic destiny end up getting muddled. The gene pool down there’s just barely wide enough for a single, cousin-laden white stripe. Ideal for breeding gap-toothed theists named Twinkle. She sounds like part My Little Pony, part stripper. So like a live show in Tijuana called My Little Pony.
Alabama agency prays for forgiveness for abortion and gay marriage: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/25/alabama-prayer-gay-marriage_n_3651756.html
And in other “Seriously, Alabama is just stupid” news, the FFRF is hard at work trying to forestall the efforts of a misguided Alabama schoolboard to create an “Alabama School Prayer Caravan”.
Like a bunch of Muslim students on camels?
School district officials in Cullman County are planning to travel to all the district schools in August and have a 10-15 minute prayer stop with students at each one. And because the prayer sessions are described as optional, the dim-witted nincompoops behind this move think it’s legal.
Requiring students to do something stupid, is wrong.
Giving students the option to do something stupid, is also wrong.
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“Only door number 3 has a pit of fire.” . . . Not a good excuse.
And eating a baby at your atheist initiation is optional too, but does the group ever really accept you? No.
Superintendent and person who should probably always wear a helmet Billy Coleman explained the legality of this thing in a way so droolingly stupid I almost felt sorry for him. He said that it was legal because it wasn’t voted on by the school-board, which, in his mind, means that the school system isn’t sponsoring it.
No that means he should get fucked two ways. The school board should fire him for conducting illegal activities without their approval, and taxpayers should sue him for wasting real, secular money on those activities. Even after you factor in the ZERO effect of prayer, he’s in the wrong.
Right: The elected head of the school-board declares by fiat that kids will be excused from schools to pray with him, announces it on the school district’s website and then says it’s not a school sponsored event. So what the hell is it then?
Yeah, it’s like he’s saying, “It’s okay because I’m not doing this as the superintendent.” Does he wear a mustache and glasses for all the religious stuff? Is it okay for some random person show up at a school and start screaming about Jesus as long as they’re not affiliated with the school?
That’s certainly how it sounds.
FFRF tries to stop Alabama school prayer caravan: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/07/26/alabama-public-school-district-plans-prayer-caravan-to-bless-schools-for-the-upcoming-year/
And in other news, it’s not okay for some random person to show up at a school and start screaming about Jesus. And while this seems self-evident to people not elected to public office in Alabama, it somehow also eluded a New Hampshire mother who took it upon herself to show up at the school steps each morning to vocally pray for the safety of the children.
I’m sure she pleasantly shared the space with the Ramadan ceremonies and Quran readings being performed by a local Muslim parent.
Then a Jewish mom started handing out pamphlets and now the rural New Hampshire school entrance looks like Times Square subway station.
And of course there’s all the atheist truth ceremonies called classes going on inside the building. So it all balances out. Nothing grossly untenable about the situation.
Concerned mother and part time Edgar Rice Burroughs antagonist Lizarda Urena started her vigil when she heard reports that two bullets had been found in a school toilet. Seeing this as a sign of either forthcoming violence or a really fucked up lunch menu, she took the action that any probably-clinically-disturbed person would and started her public morning prayer regime.
Lizarda Urena . . .
Sounds like one of the Russian chicks James Bond fucks after the chase scene, before the opening credits . . . who is also plotting the murder of Harry Potter.
Does she not understand that the kids bringing weapons to school aren’t all secretly hiding a heart of gold like Judd Nelson in Breakfast Club?!
…he was fucking’ harsh.
So did anyone hand over their concealed weapons and doobage, in response to those non-consensual 7am bible readings that high school kids and New York City commuters love so much?
Recognizing that this was illegal, insane and really embarassing for her poor kids, superintendent Christine Rath banned her from school property. The move was applauded by the FFRF, the New Hampshire Civil Liberties Union, the president of the schoolboard and most of the right-minded people aware of the situation.
But that can’t be the end of it . . . Whenever right-minded people make a decision, some asshole zealot lobbyists manage to seek and destroy whatever societal progress may have occurred.
Indeed because Urena’s insanity has some religion in it, some wingnut conservative group had to come out on the side of the crazy lady yelling about Jesus to schoolkids. The “Alliance Defending Freedom” argues that silencing the ranting lunatic trying to evangelize to children entering a school is a violation of her freedom of speech. Of course, the fact that she now simply prays loudly from the gas station across the street kind of diffuses that argument…
Yes she gets freedom of speech. No she doesn’t get a pulpit for that speech, paid for by taxes. And I’m pretty sure there’s a building in every town since the beginning of towns, where it’s appropriate to discuss the Tooth Fairy’s horribly-compiled biography, or other equally useful books.
New Hampshire Mother banned from screaming about Jesus on school steps: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/26/lizarda-urena-prayer_n_3660904.html?utm_hp_ref=religion
And from the “Rapid ranting Rabbi Racket” file tonight, we bring you the story of Alfredo Borodowski, a Rabbi who was recently arrested for several accounts of allegedly pretending to be a police officer so that he could yell at people for driving slowly in front of him.
Really?!?! A rabbi yelling about bad drivers and their black kettles? I’m pretty sure every Rabbi in New York co-owns the same 1992 minivan that doesn’t go over 25 miles an hour.
Come to think of it, I’ve never seen a convertible with pais blowing in the breeze…
Borodowski’s attorney explains that he has bipolar disorder, and while I readily admit to my ignorance regarding the specifics of bipolar disorder, I’m reasonably confident in saying that waving a plastic badge at people and telling them you’re going to arrest them for not using a turn signal isn’t a typical symptom.
Well I’ve only read 5 chapters of the Old Testament, and I’m already feeling a little Norman Bates coming on. And I’m aware I should read it as fiction. This guy based his life on that fucked up book. Can’t be healthy.
In light of his arrest he was released from his position at the prestigious Temple Emanu-El, but continues to act as the head of the Congregation Sulam Yaakov in Larchmont. The congregation released a statement saying that they stand by their spiritual leader while he recovers from the illness that made him repeatedly impersonate a police officer.
Yeah how will the down-trodden masses of ghetto Jews in Larchmont, New York ever survive, without continuity in their spiritual advisor on where to charitably donate their 2012 Range Rover?
If nothing else, one has to appreciate that in a single news item, Borodowski manages to reinforce the stereotypes of men by driving like an asshole, reinforce the stereotype about people named Alfredo by being a criminal, reinforce the stereotypes of Jews by using the cheapest, plastic, piece-of-shit badge he could find and reinforce the stereotypes of New Yorkers by using his crime spree to cuss at people for cutting him off.
A rabbi posing as a pig can’t be kosher.
Rabbi arrested for multiple counts of impersonating a police officer: http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/new-york-news/larchmont-temple-stands-rabbi-despite-arrest
And finally tonight, a Hawaiian pastor and founder of the Hawaii Cannabis THC Ministry is hoping that the First Amendment will be extended to bong hits for Jesus. Currently enjoying non-consensual anal-sex at one of Hawaii’s lovely federal detention centers, sixty-four year old Roger Christie was indicted in 2010 on charges that include conspiracy to manufacture and distribute marijuana.
This is a weird one . . . because I thought turning 60 implied consent. Above a certain age is statutory consent, right?
No big deal . . . There’s an old slogan on the island, “I’d rather be raped in Hawaii, than loved on the mainland.”
You lived in Hawaii for a while . . . I’m guessing you found that slogan to be true.
Like you said, I lived there for a while.
Christie argues that the THC Ministry is (quote) “a universal religious organization that uses cannabis to exalt consciousness, facilitate harmony and become close to God and nature and each other,” which is certainly no more or less a load of shit than the claims of other religions.
At least weed has an active ingredient that actually exists, and actually improves certain ailments. Religions just have sucrose and faith. I’d rather have the THC Ministry Shaman in the chemotherapy wing, than a medically useless Chaplain. Somehow I doubt Mr. Christie started his organization so he could do not-for-profit work in cancer wards, but he could have.
The church’s holiest day is April 20th and their Sunday service involves a volcano vaporizer, an extra large inhalation bag and some… I forget the other shit, but basically it comes back to the inherent problem with exempting religious people from laws. If I say jerking off on your cat is part of my religion, who are you to say it isn’t?
“And who the fuck are you to infringe upon my religious freedom by installing that jizz fence around your cat’s backyard play area?! How am I supposed to jizz on my neighbor’s cat and get to heaven like it says in this old book?! I know it sounds weird, but before you ask, yes, the book itself is irrefutable, according to itself.”
We’ll keep a close eye on this story, of course, as if Christie is successful, Heath and I will be starting an equally reasonable religion of our own.
Like, perhaps, The First Assembly of Statutory Rape
Our Lady of Mercy Killing
Maybe the Cuniling-regationalists?
Tax Evasion Orthodox
Lot of branches of that denomination already. How about the Whole Damn-Week Adventists?
Crystal Methodist
Hawaiian pot-pastor seeks 1st Amendment protection for getting shit-faced: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/20/us/marijuana-infused-faith-challenges-the-definition-of-religion.html?ref=religionandbelief&_r=0
Oh shit, that reminds me, I need to be elsewhere for 90 seconds, so that does it for headlines tonight, Heath, thanks for joining me.
Pleasure as always.
And when we come back, we’ll have been worth the wait.
Discussion:
From time to time on this show, we like to set aside a few minutes to discuss some of the common apologetics used in defense of theism. Heath, what sad distortion of logic do you have for us today?
Today we’ll be discussing the moral argument.
I see. Is this the one where theists say that if there was no god, it would be okay to eat babies and fuck puppies and stuff?
There are actually a number of different iterations of this argument and the canine-penetration conundrum is only one of them. While it maintains popularity with laymen, a lack of documented baby eating and puppy-fucking has forced the more savvy apologists to refine the tactic.
I see. And how is it stated in its current form?
The syllogism goes like this:
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Premise one: Without god, morality cannot exist.
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Premise two: Morality exists.
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Conclusion: God exists
So I guess to dig into this argument, we’ll have to start by defining morality. How do apologists typically define morality for the purposes of this tactic?
They don’t.
Well it seems like it’s pretty important to the foundation of the argument.
Which is exactly why they don’t define it.
I don’t follow.
Look, if you define morality either you have to invoke god in your definition, in which case this is a circular argument, or you have to define it without invoking god, in which case you’ve just defeated your own argument.
Well then this one is pretty easy to refute. I mean, how is that any different than saying, “Without god, trees can’t exist; trees exist, therefore god exists”?
It isn’t, and that’s actually one of the strengths of the argument.
How so?
If anyone ever definitively disproves the argument from absolute morals, they can quickly shift gears to the argument from absolute trees. And if that one is defeated they can switch to the argument from absolute snails, and so on.
Okay, but my point is that the logical construction of the argument is flawed. It’s just a case of begging the question. Premise one is the conclusion.
Yeah, the flaw in this argument is that anyone smart enough to know what a syllogism is would also be smart enough to refute it. But this isn’t the only form of the moral argument. The second form is far more common and far more persuasive.
And what form is that?
It’s called the “What about Stalin?” defense.
I see. And how is this one formally stated?
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Premise One: Stalin was an atheist
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Premise Two: Stalin was immoral
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Conclusion: Atheists are immoral.
Well that’s just shit logic on the face of it.
That’s why this one isn’t usually formally stated. It’s more for people who don’t get the syllogism thing to begin with. The more common form of it is:
“If there ain’t no Jesus, how come you don’t just rape women and sheep all the time?”
Well it’s just as absurd when you state it that way.
Let me put this to you another way. When you first became an atheist, how many kittens did set on fire?
None!
(Sarcastically) Oh… yeah… me neither. But seriously, how many?
I’ve never set a kitten on fire!
Oh, Mr. High and Mighty over here. Well, regardless, I think we can both agree that there’s nothing in the atheist bible against setting kittens on fire.
There’s no such thing as the “atheist bible”.
So you admit that there’s no source for morality in atheism at all.
No, there’s no morality inherent in atheism, but there’s no morality inherent in Chinese food either. But that doesn’t mean that people who eat Chinese food are immoral. There are plenty of sources for morality other than Holy Books. What about democratic legal codes, societal imperatives, basic altruism, the minimization of harm? These are all examples of sources of morality that don’t rely on divine revelation.
Yes, but what about Stalin?
What about Stalin?
Stalin was an atheist. He was immoral.
Yeah, but what the hell does that have to do with anything?
And Kim Jong Il. He was an immoral atheist. And House. That dude’s a total prick.
But citing examples of immoral atheists doesn’t do anything to prop up the argument. I can list really moral atheists too. Or immoral theists. Or I could just cite the statistics on ethical national barometers in religious versus non-religious nations.
Yes, but Hitler.
What?
Hitler. Guy that killed all of the Jews?
Yeah, I know who he was, but what does he have to do with anything?
He was immoral too.
Hitler wasn’t even an atheist. He was a Catholic. But that’s beside the point…
C’mon, do you really think a Catholic would kill all those Jews?
A Catholic did kill all those Jews… with tacit approval from the Vatican. And inspiration from Martin Luther for fuck’s sake.
So he must have been an atheist.
He wasn’t, but it wouldn’t matter if he was. Hitler was also Austrian and he was also a painter. So does Hitler being evil make Austrians and painters evil as well?
Of course not. God makes Austrians and painters evil.
No, immoral acts make them evil… if they’re evil, I mean.
Right, but Pol Pot.
Right, Pol Pot was immoral and he was an atheist. But is still doesn’t bolster the shaky premise of this argument.
So you’re saying you agree with Stalin and Pol Pot?
You know what, sure. About the non-existence of god, I agree with Stalin and Pol Pot. I also probably agree with them that… you know, the sun rises in the east and having a penis is awesome.
Interesting point… but Mussolini.
Alright, I guess this could go on forever so how do we counter the moral argument?
Fucked if I know. As far as I can tell we’re screwed until somebody finds a more consistent and inerrant guide to morality than the bible.
Outro:
Before we tie things off for the night, I wanted to finally getting around to answering an email we got a few weeks ago after doing a story about Christian evangelists that target strip clubs, brothels and porn conventions.
Ann wrote to us to express a very polite concern she had with many of the porn and prostitution jokes we often do on our show. And before you label her a prude, I should express that her concern wasn’t the frequency of such jokes, but the nature of some of them. Heath and I obviously joke about some things far more objectionable than prostitution and porn, but when we do, we’re careful to ensure that the butt of the joke is never the victim. We make more rape jokes than are psychologically healthy, but the rapist is always the target of our humor.
And while I think a reasonable argument can be made that prostitution and pornography don’t necessarily victimize the men and women involved, I don’t think you can make a reasonable argument that the current form of prostitution and pornography don’t often victimize the participants.
Anyway, I wanted to apologize for the oversight and I wanted to thank Ann for reminding us that as our audience grows so too do our obligations to that audience. And while we’ll still be making plenty of porn and hooker jokes in the future, we will be working hard to tell only the best porn and hooker jokes.
And of course, we also need to take a minute to gaze in awe upon the blinding benevolence of this weeks best people, Steven, Zachary, Jeffrey and, if you can believe this, April again. Steven, whose deadly agility against swarms of ninjas is matched only by his seductive agility on the dance floor; Zachary, whose lightning reflexes and chiseled features are the envy of professional athletes, professional models and amateur podcasters everywhere; Jeffrey, whose wit and wisdom are so unrivaled that the IRS has deemed them taxable assets and April, who has donated to the show, like, 83 times now or something and is thus deserving of more words of praise than I have in my vocabulary and my thesaurus combined.
These four noble souls have renewed my faith in humanity, boldly redefined honor and embodied the most exalted form of dignity by giving us money. If you think you have what it takes to give us money, you’ll find the donate button on the right side of our homepage at Scathing Atheist (dot) com. Remember, all donations to this show are tax deductible unless you live inside or outside the contiguous US… or right on the border
And, of course, if you want to help but you need to hold on to your cash for eventual ransom, you can also help us a ton by leaving us a 5 star review on iTunes. You’ll be helping us spread the word and giving me something to smile about when I hop on to iTunes at 2am.
I need to thank Heath for all his help as always. I also need to thank Lucinda for stepping up and providing this week’s Farnsworth quote at the last minute. I also want to mention to anyone out there who has a blog, a podcast, a Facebook page or any other medium of interest to secularists, I’d be happy to throw you a plug in exchange for an audio clip of you quoting everyone’s favorite mad-scientist from the 31st century.
Oh, and as I was running crazy late with it last week as well and already had the outro recorded by the time I got the sound file, I also didn’t have a chance to thank last week’s Farnsworth quoter, Allie from the Crafty Heathens Facebook page. If you’re into crafting and/or being a heathen, I recommend you give her page a day in court. You’ll find a link on the shownotes for this episode.
https://www.facebook.com/CraftyHeathens
That’s all the blasphemy we have for you this week, but if you want more, there’s more. Be sure to check out my guest appearance on Cognitive Dissonance’s most recent episode and check out our erratically published blog, follow us on the Twitter and like us on the Facebook and subscribe to us on the YouTube.
And seriously, if you haven’t checked Stitcher yet, do that. It’s the most convenient way to listen to all your favorite podcasts and if you listen to us there, you help out our Stitcher rank, which is still kind of crappy compared to our iTunes rank.
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 23 – Partial Transcript
by Heath Enwright, Lucinda Lugeons and Noah Lugeons
(Transcript may contain material edited out of the final version)
Sponsor:
Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Fox’s new reality talent show, American False Idol. Watch as cult-leader contestants from around the country compete against each other and against god in feats of talent and existence.
The last prophet standing wins their own religion and a lifelong tax exemption. American False Idol, because even when Fox puts the name of the sin in the title, Christians still watch it.
And now, the Scathing Atheist…
Intro:
It’s Thursday, it’s July 25th and it’s not too late to wave some popcorn under a Muslim’s nose tomorrow afternoon.
I’m your host Noah Lugeons and from statistically more rational New York, New York, this is the Scathing Atheist.
In this week’s episode;
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Former celebrity Kirk Cameron is told by Facebook to cease and desist the fuck up,
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A new law in Louisiana won’t not make it not not legal to obey the law.
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And we’ll make fun of Fred Phelps’ dead mother,
But first, the diatribe.
Diatribe:
Boy, this new pope sure is awesome. He’s a reformer. He’s a radical. He’s a beacon of light illuminating the dimmest hour of Catholic decline. He’s beloved by all, Catholic and otherwise. He’s approachable, off-the-cuff and lovable. He’s the antithesis to Pope Palpatine the second. He’s a game-changer.
Except for all the places that matter.
The major-media outlets are suffering from a bit or “Protestant Guilt” after spending two decades covering stories about Catholics butt-raping children so I guess I understand why they’ve been so quick to cram into the papal-fellatio waiting room, but in their eagerness to finally have something good to say about the Vatican, I think they’ve forgotten that balanced doesn’t equal honest.
So let me make something clear about Pope Franks-but-no-Franks: He hasn’t done a fucking thing.
Despite the publicity juggernaut to the contrary, carrying your own bags and posing for a photo-op in a jalopy doesn’t count as reform. Living in a palatial guest house instead of a palatial palace doesn’t count as reform. Washing feet and ad libbing shit about atheists going to heaven doesn’t count as reform. To reform something, you have to actually do something.
Let’s face it, during the reign of Pope Bene-dickhead we had some pretty legitimate complaints about the papacy. And none of them were, “That old fucker won’t even carry his own luggage!”
So where does Pope Frankly-my-dear-I-don’t-give-a-damn stand on the big issues?
He’s against condoms. He fully endorses the genocidal opposition to contraception that exacerbates the AIDS epidemic in Africa. It would take nothing but waving his magic pope wand to halt these detrimental policies, and yet he’s done nothing.
He’s against ordaining women. Not only has he made no moves on that, but he also left a long line of politically motivated misogyny behind him on the way to the Vatican… not to mention a few allegations of war crimes.
He’s staunchly homophobic. He’s actually described the move in Argentina to legalize gay marriage as “a war against god” and shows no signs whatsoever that he’ll be moving the Vatican into the twenty-first century with regard to gays.
He staunchly supports celibacy for priests despite the fact that it isn’t biblical (and actually directly contradicts the biblical prescription for priests and their sex lives) and could give a damn less if it’s harmful psychologically.
Come meet the new pope, same as the old pope. In all the ways that matter, he hasn’t done a fucking thing. And yet everyday I hop onto a religious news site and read about all these great “symbolic” reforms he’s making. Symbolic actions are great unless they’re coming from somebody who has the authority to make real change.
But the media is so desperate to paint him as a reformer that I’ve seen him extolled for coming out “strongly against the financial misdealings of the Vatican bank.” Like there was some other pope who was all about publicly endorsing money laundering for the mafia?
Look, maybe the media is right and I’m wrong. Maybe Pope Franky-Doodle-Dandy really is planning on reforming the Vatican from the ground up. But he hasn’t started yet. And when you take over as the head of the most corrupt institution on the planet you don’t get any extra credit for dressing less flamboyantly than the last guy.
Headlines:
Joining me for headlines tonight is my fellow expositor Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to exposit?
I’m all about exposition. Whenever I need extra cash, I make an exposit at the sperm bank. That’s what that means, right?
In the interest of getting the sperm jokes started early, we’ll say yes.
Sperm gags are all about coming early.
The Spanish Inquisition of sexual events.
In our lead story tonight the state of California is considering a bill that would help child abuse victims receive compensation if they were otherwise unable to file suit because of time or age restrictions. Obviously, this bill enjoys wide, bipartisan support because who on earth would actually oppose allowing victims of child sexual abuse to pursue long overdue justice?
Catholics.
That’s right. The Los Angeles archdiocese made the mistake of taking the high road on justice for sex abuse victims back in 2002 and the bill California passed back then almost wiped them out. So this time they’re fighting against justice for abused children with everything they’ve got.
So a whole bunch of those tax-deductible donations to churches, are going to pay for pedophile advocacy experts. There’s a positive social externality in there somewhere.
Yeah, one has to imagine the lobbyists are all hoping not to get the “maintain strict statutes of limitations on child rape” assignment.
They’re trying to argue that “A certain day needs to exist, on which these people wake up, and they’re no longer a rape victim.”
Usually it’s the other way around in Christianity … Fall asleep a virgin, and wake up a rape victim. That’s how it went for Jesus’s mom, and lots of slutty altar boys, I imagine.
The archdiocese recognizes the public relations tightrope one must walk when vociferously siding with pedophilic rapists, so they’re hard at work trying to sell this bill as a prejudicial witch-hunt against Catholics.
If the tightrope represents the right way to side with pedophilic rapists, then I wouldn’t say the church is walking it. I don’t think they can see the tightrope from where they’re standing. I’m not impressed by “The lord rapes kids in mysterious ways.”
Well, they point out that the bill would not allow victims to sue public schools for abuse that had passed the statute of limitations, so clearly they’re just going after Catholic child rapists. After all, allowing victims to sue for tax dollars is directly analogous to allowing them to sue a private institution that is still largely governed by people who were and are actively involved in covering up the details of child rape and torture, isn’t it?
I don’t think the public school system could have pulled the same moves to cover for pedophile teachers . . .
“What?!? We sent the rapiest ones to teach Nazi grandchildren in Argentina.”
Catholic Church fighting child abuse bill in California: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/07/17/catholic-church-private-schools-lobby-against-california-childhood-sex-abuse/
On now to the ever-burning question “Could we have freed the slaves but not kept the South?”, we turn to Louisiana where Democratic state senator Mary Landrieu has introduced a piece of legislation called the “Freedom to Pray” bill, which would, in her words, “protect American’s right to pray.”
Was that part of the larger, “Right to Being and Nothingness Bill”?
This might mean the end of the atheist psychic nanobot thought police.
And as we long ago learned, making legal shit legal is a favored strategy for sneaking bullshit religious laws through the legislature and this one is no different. If you dig even a little, you’ll find that the intent of the bill is clearly to allow state and federal funds to go to programs that are explicitly religious in nature.
Does the legislation explain exactly how The Bill of Rights no longer applies in Louisiana? And if the church needs more money, they should just pray for it, hold their breath, and die.
Amen. Anyway, this all comes as a response to a recent hullabaloo about a quasi-military religious indoctrination camp being run by a Louisiana Sheriff’s department. The program was denied $15,000 in federal funding due to the ubiquity of prayer within the program along with pledges to “attend the church of my faith” and to “Love god”.
Bible Camp for redneck cops makes me nervous. Like ‘venerated obsoivances and rituals’, ‘Waco, Texas’ nervous.
Well hopefully you’ll be reassured by the evangelists running the program, who insist that the prayers are voluntary and a whole room full of people praying around you isn’t coercive at all. And that’s enough for senator Landrieu, who would clearly have no problem with a state run, federally funded program encouraging her children to bow to Mecca, as long as it was voluntary.
In theory, this would create an awkward, alienating situation for any Jewish or Muslim officers. But Jews and Muslims certainly don’t get hired by police departments – or sold property – in Louisiana, so in practice, it’s a moot point.
Louisiana Senator proposes bill to protect religious groups that receive federal funding: https://www.au.org/blogs/wall-of-separation/prayer-posturing-la-officials-seek-taxpayer-support-for-religious-program
And in satanic lesbian news tonight, Fred Phelps’ dead mother is now gay thanks to the efforts of the New York based Satanic Temple. Person whose name left him no career options except arch-villain or spokesman for the Satanic Temple Lucien Greaves explained that the action was meant to convey (quote) “a message of love in the face of hate”.
Like a money shot all over hate’s face. Chicken fried hate smothered in white country gravy. Phelps needs a Chia Pet, so people everywhere can put sticky seed all over his face.
6 sperm jokes already. He’s going for the record!
Anyway, the ceremony, which the Satanic Temple refers to as a “Pink Mass” was performed by Greaves and two same-sex couples and took place at the Mississippi grave of Phelps’ mother. The goal of the ritual was to turn the mother of the notoriously sodomy-obsessed preacher’s spirit into a posthumous lesbian.
This strategy makes sense, given the way shit works in the bible. This can even get her expelled from heaven. Jesus stops having pre-emptively died for your sins if you posthumously witness gay sex near your gravesite. Plus, that bitch natured and nurtured her bile duct of a son.
The ceremony was, of course, tongue in cheek, as in some dude’s tongue in some other dude’s cheek.
Jelly? Syrup? Rusty Trombone? What does a party like that cost? I guess if I have to ask, I probably can’t afford it.
Apparently the ritual called for two prolonged homosexual makeout session over the headstone along with some divine cock-stroking. Phelps’ mother, who died as the result of god’s retribution over our butt-sex loving culture, could not be reached for comment.
Satanic church holds same-sex ceremony at Fred Phelps’ mom’s grave: http://www.thegauntlet.com/article/28311/The-Satanic-Temple-Performs-Same-Sex-Ceremony-At-Westboro-Baptist-Church-Leaders-Family-Gravesite
And in “Apparently there’s a snooze button on your 15 minutes of fame” news tonight, Kirk Cameron, who you’ll remember from trying to remember where you remember him from, is in a tizzy because people can tell the difference between him being earnest and spam.
Who could forget about Mike Seaver and his best friend Boner? Classic member of the shitty 80’s sitcom canon. And let’s not ignore Cameron’s illustrious film career, including “The Growing Pains Movie” in 2000, and of course the Godfather 2 of sitcom movie sequels, “Growing Pains: Return of the Seavers” in 2004.
Cameron, who has used his post-C-list celebrity decline to promote creationism, has a new movie coming out and he’s been having a bit of trouble promoting it on social media. It began when Facebook blocked promos for his movie and called them “abusive”, “unsafe” and “spammy”.
It’s good to hear that Facebook is using algorithms that can sniff out abusive, unsafe, spammy shit like religion. Software that can process content, and then quantify its level of malignant wrongness – love it. Or maybe they just noticed Kirk Cameron’s name on it.
Facebook later apologized when almost dozens of Cameron’s fans made a fuss but just as Facebook unblocked him, YouTube gave him the boot calling promos for his film, “spam”, “scam” and “deceptive”. This block was later lifted as well, though promos for his film are still “spam”, “scam” and “deceptive”.
Spoiler alert: God did it. He was the rapist in the end.
Which end?
I was impressed by Cameron’s unflinching optimism when he boldly used the plural form of theater in describing the film’s upcoming release.
Further proof that you were never really a celebrity if people could say of your solitary known vehicle, “The star of that show was really Alan Thicke”
Kirk Cameron’s movie blocked on Facebook: http://radio.foxnews.com/toddstarnes/top-stories/facebook-blocks-kirk-camerons-new-movie.html & http://www.examiner.com/article/facebook-apologizes-to-kirk-cameron-for-blocking-new-movie
And in this week’s papal back-walking report, the Vatican is offering time off from purgatory for his Twitter followers, unless you ask Catholic pundits, in which case they definitely aren’t, because that would be stupid.
And if you retweet a papal bull in the next 10 minutes, the Pope will personally murder you, and send you directly to the good part of heaven with the comfy chairs for all the rape victims.
The latest in an illustrious Catholic tradition of trading imaginary favors for real ones, this story reminds us all that Catholics still kind of endorse the antiquated notion that you can earn perdition vouchers for climbing certain stairs and attending certain parties in Rio.
Also, if you duck for 3 seconds while standing on a white platform, you can fall into a 3rd dimension, and get a whistle that takes you to a warp zone that bypasses purgatory altogether.
The story begins when the Apostolic Penitentiary issued a document offering a plenary indulgence for those who attend the upcoming World Youth Day in Brazil. And because the Apostolic Penitentiary is known for being cutting edge and hip, they extended the indulgence to those who follow the event on Twitter.
For those who don’t want to be kidnapped by a dance-fighting cocaine cartel, they decided to allow the Twitter exception to participate without actually entering Brazil. . . I’m okay with that. But why not just go all the way, and put up some indulgence buy-it-nows on eBay?
That sentence may very well have contained earth’s first capoeira joke. Well done.
Recognizing that everyone loves a good “Damn is Catholic theology stupid” story, headlines like “Follow Pope online and reach heaven sooner” started popping up all over the place. Because, you know, that’s exactly what they said. But the accuracy of these mocking headlines didn’t stop Catholics from getting pissed off about them.
When your group is regularly offended by things that are true, it’s your group’s fault, not truth’s.
Try explaining that to Reverend James Martin who wrote a lengthy blog for CNN where he explained that you can’t get time off from purgatory for following Tweets, as that would be silly. It doesn’t count unless you follow those Tweets contritely.
Pope offers indulgences for following him on Twitter: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/07/17/sorry-you-cant-get-out-of-hell-by-retweeting-the-pope/
And finally tonight, in lubricated jew dick news, we bring you the story of Trigg laboratories where a congregation of rabbis from the Rabbinical Council of California have recently declared their “Wet” brand of personal lubricants to be Kosher, making it the first sex lube that is approved for orthodox jews.
Unless you count the fact that “Moses parting the Red Sea” was code for using menstrual blood as a lubricant.
Check out the mid-rash on that one . . . is what they would say about an unkosher vagina.
It’s important to note the implications of this move. Kosher laws are dietary laws. There is no requirement that suppositories, cosmetics or vaginal cleansers be approved by rabbis unless somebody plans on eating them. So this sex lube hasn’t been cleared for use as a sex lube, it’s been cleared for use as a condiment.
Yeah I could see marinating a chicken in that . . . and then shoving it up a Jewish girl’s ass, if she was into that sort of thing. I mean I wouldn’t suggest it, but if she asked, I’d step up.
And this is great for the Jews . . . They can finally go ass to mouth without worrying about the dietary repercussions.
You never go ass to mouth!
Ass to mouth notwithstanding, this does open up a wide range of new orifice/object permutations for Jews.
Yeah, just what are the rules about sucking orthodox cocks?
In other words, is it okay for women to kneel before the wailing balls?
Can Hassi chicks suck Hassi dicks?
This new lube opens the door to some easier Schindler’s fisting.
Maybe now they can finally put a glory hole in the wailing wall.
Gives new meaning to “Torah new one”
I guess it’s just the latest in the ongoing rabbinical debate on whether or not it’s okay to suck a dick that isn’t eight days old and recently mutilated.
To be fair, when CAN YOU suck an eight day old dick, if not right after you mutilate it?
Also to be fair, whose recently mutilated dick CAN YOU suck, if not that an eight day old boy?
Kosher lube opens orthodox jews to oral sex? http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2013/jul/17/kosher-lube-oral-sex-jews-lubricant
That does it for headlines tonight, Heath, thanks as always for joining me.
You’re not gonna trim the end of those circumcision jokes off in post are you?
And unlike Jesus, we’ll be back soon.
Calendar:
It’s time for the atheist calendar portion of the show. This is the time we set aside once a month to talk up some of the great atheist, secular and skeptical events going on around the country and around the world.
We’ll start in Toledo, Ohio on the weekend of August 18th where the Great Lakes Atheist Convention is welcoming JT Eberhard, Zack Kopplin, Jerry DeWitt and many more, including the Mayor of Toledo, which I find encouraging. And let’s face it, if a speaker lineup can get me thinking “I wish I was in Toledo”, it’s gotta be pretty damn impressive.
http://lanyrd.com/2013/great-lakes-atheist-convention/
Moving 7 days ahead and 7 thousand kilometers away, we’ve got the 15th European Skeptics’ Congress in Stockholm, Sweden on the weekend of the 23rd. Even though parts of the website are in Swedish, the conference itself will be in English
The speakers list includes DJ Grothe, Max Maven and a bunch of Europeans I’ve never heard of that have really interesting topic lines for their talks.
We talked up the Atheist Alliance of America’s upcoming National Convention in Boston last week, but it seems like every time I look at their website they’ve added more awesome speakers. Aron-Ra, Ed Buckner, Seth Andrews, Steven Pinker, Greg Epstein, Sean Faircloth and the list keeps going.
That one’s taking place in Boston over Labor Day weekend.
Lastly, of course, over that same weekend in Atlanta you’ve got DragonCon, which isn’t an atheist or humanist convention, but it’s awesome and it has a hell of a skeptical track so definitely worth checking out if you’re going to be anywhere near Atlanta. Michael Shermer, David Silverman, Rebecca Watson, Mythbusters Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage.
If you want to know more you’ll find links to the homepages for all these events on the shownotes for this episode. And, of course, if you’re involved with or aware of an atheist or secular event that needs a plug, you’ll find all the contact info at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.
Top Ten:
Ah, Ramadan, the only holiday that could also be considered a war-crime. It’s that desultory time of year when Muslims gather together in misery so that they can be reminded that sometimes being a Muslim really sucks. Considered to be one of the five pillars of Islam, Muslims work hard to ensure that Ramadan will never be commercialized like Christmas by making it as miserable as possible.
But knowing that our listenership might not be as familiar with the Muslim customs as they are with the Christian ones, we decided to dedicate a few minutes to answering the top ten most often-asked questions about Ramadan.
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Number ten: How do you celebrate Ramadan?
You don’t. This isn’t the kind of holiday you celebrate exactly. In fact, it’s kind of the opposite of celebrating. During Ramadan, all post-pubescent Muslims are required to observe a month long daylight fast. From sunrise to sunset, they aren’t allowed to eat, drink or smoke and are also expected to refrain from sex and foul language throughout. This is in addition, of course, to the lifelong Islamic prohibitions against alcohol, pork and critical thinking.
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Number nine: Does everyone have to fast during Ramadan?
Not everyone. Pregnant women, people who are ill, women who are breast feeding and people who are travelling are allowed to forego the fast as long as they make up the days later in divine detention.
…writing “I will not comprehend” on the chalkboard.
And while Muslims are quick to point out that little kids aren’t required to fast, because in most of the world that would be considered child-abuse, they are certainly encouraged to as practice for later in life.
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Number eight: Why?
Because the month of Ramadan is believed to be the month that Allah first revealed himself to Mohammed so Muslims mark the occasion by hating life.
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Number seven: When is Ramadan?
Easier asked than answered. Because Muslims use a lunar calendar, Ramadan moves around in the year. Each year it begins 11 days earlier than the year before, so sometimes they fast in the short days of the winter when you need food the most, and sometimes it falls in the summer when not drinking water is borderline suicidal in most of the Muslim world.
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Number six: What does the word “Ramadan” mean?
Yeah, even the word itself foretells of the general shittiness of this custom. It comes from the Arabic word ‘Ramida’ or ‘ar-radam’, and while there is no direct English translation, the gist of the word is “Heat and scorching dryness”.
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Number five: Why the hell would anyone do this?
Because religion makes people do dumb shit. Muslims justify it by pointing out that it helps them focus on the spirit rather than worldly things, as though ignoring reality in favor of imagination was a virtue. They also claim that it helps them master self-control without recognizing the irony that by doing it they’ve explicitly surrendered control of themselves to a fictitious autocrat.
But most of all, they say it helps them empathize with the less fortunate
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Number four: Well what about the sex part? Are they also trying to empathize with ugly fuckers?
Yeah, they never really address the fact that even people who are starving and thirsty are still allowed to jerk off.
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Number three: Is fasting like that unhealthy?
No… how could foregoing all the life giving sustenance for absurd amounts of time possibly harm you? And what’s more, how could believing that failing in this Herculean task would offend god himself damage a 14 year old psychologically?
Of fucking course it’s unhealthy.
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Which leads us to the Number two most often asked question about Ramadan: Seriously?
You bet your ass seriously. And we’re talking about Mulsim seriously. They’ve got levels of seriously we can scarcely comprehend. In fact, it’s even encoded in the laws of many Muslim countries.
The ones that have laws, that is.
Right, like Kuwait, where publicly eating, drinking or smoking during the day carries a heavy fine during Ramadan. Or the UAE, where it’s punishable by hundreds of hours of community service and in Algeria daylight mastication during Ramadan can land you in jail for years.
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And finally, the number one question asked about Ramadan…
How the hell do they get away with calling this a holiday?
It’s only a holiday in the technical sense of being an annual observance. In all other ways, it’s a punishment for being religious. The only real “holiday” part comes at the end of the month with a celebration called Eid al-Fitr, which means “festivity of breaking the fast”. It’s a day when Muslims reflect on the fact that if you hit your testicles with a hammer over and over again for long enough, the act of not hitting yourself in the testicles with a hammer seems like a reward.
Bible Story:
Gather ‘round boys and girls. Today we’re going to open our Bibles to Exodus and read about Moses’ wife, Zipporah.
Now Zipporah was a very important person in the bible. She was so important that we know her name, even though she was a woman.
She grew up in a desert with her six sisters and spent all day doing whatever her father told her to do or getting beaten because that’s what women do in the bible. One day her and her sisters took their sheep to a well so that they could drink, but a bunch of mean men told them to go away so that they could water their sheep first.
Zipporah was sad and angry, but there was nothing she could do because she didn’t have a penis. But luckily, there was somebody around who did: Moses.
Moses was sitting by the well wondering if the corpse of the man he’d recently murdered was starting to stink yet when the bad shepherds shooed Zipporah and her sisters away. Moses decided to step in and help Zipporah water her sheep.
“How can I ever repay you?” she asked.
“A hand job?” Moses suggested.
So she invited him back to her tent so she could tug on his cock for a while, but when they got there her dad was home so she married him instead.
(Hooray!)
Moses loved Zipporah so much that he didn’t marry any other women even though he could have because that was okay back then. He took a job tending her father’s flocks, but one day he came home and told her that God had spoken to him and ordered him to free all the Jews in Egypt.
His eyes were red and he wreaked of burning bush, but Zipporah was a woman so she had no choice but to do what her husband said. So she grabbed their newborn son and left for decades of aimless wandering and random smitings.
But one night, on the way to Egypt, god decided to come to earth in human form and wrestle Moses to death at an inn. God was winning because he was god, so Zipporah decided she would have to help her husband out. But she couldn’t out-wrestle god, so what could she do?
Luckily, there was a baby weiner nearby, so she chopped a little piece of it off and touched it to Moses’ foot so that he could wrestle better. Then Moses suplexed god and everyone lived happily ever after. The end.
Outro:
Before we call it quits for the night, I have a very important apology to make to one of the most adept, admirable, altruistic, adroit, awesome, amazing, accommodating, astonishing, astounding, awe-inspiring anthropoids in the animal kingdom, April. April, I am so sorry that I neglected to thank you last week for your generous donation. Because of the extreme level of your magnificence, I had originally thanked you separately from the rest of last week’s best people, and then in a hasty, late night edit I cut it out without realizing it.
And to those of you who aren’t April, I should note that April told me she and her husband were competing to see who could get more mentions on the podcast through their extraordinary generosity and because of my mistake, April spent a week unjustly occupying the lower portion of the leaderboard in that noble competition. So to make up for that, I’d like to point out to April’s husband that I’ve now mentioned her 6 times in the last 33 seconds.
And in keeping with the “A” themed opening to this outro, I’d also like to thank two more prime examples of human DNA in action whose names also begin with A. Andrew, whose transcontinental philanthropy serves as a shining example of godless morality and another person who would rather remain anonymous but is also a biological exemplification of wit, wisdom and selfless magnanimity.
And while we’re on the topic of apologies to people whose names start with A, I’d also like to apologize to Ann who sent us a very eloquent and well-reasoned email a few weeks ago that deserves an on-air answer. And unfortunately I don’t have time to give it the response it deserves so for the time being I’ll simply say sorry about not making more pimp jokes. We’ll work on that.
That’s all the blasphemy we have for you tonight, but if you want more, there’s more. Tom and Cecil over at Cognitive Dissonance invited me on to chat with them and while it’s not available yet because it hasn’t actually even happened yet, I have reason to believe that you’ll find our conversation on episode 109 of their program, which I have reason to believe will be out on Monday.
And if you can’t make it until Monday, you can find occasional nuggets of Scatheism on our erratically published blog, our Twitter feed @Noah (underscore) Lugeons or our Facebook page at (slash) Scathing Atheist. And people who leave us 5 star reviews on iTunes are better than people that don’t. I also have it on good authority that the Flying Spaghetti Monster will give them mansions closer to the beer volcanos in the afterlife so Pascal’s Wager guys, might as well leave us a 5 star review.
If you have questions, comments or death threats, you’ll find all the contact information on the Contact Page at Scathing Atheist (dot) com. All the music used in this episode was written and performed by yours truly and yes, I did have my permission.
Episode 22: Partial Transcript
by Heath Enwright, Lucinda Lugeons and Noah Lugeons
Sponsor:
Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Deuteromino’s Pizza. Try some of our angelic wings, our cheese’s crust, or a delicious salad with all the cruci-fixins. Every pie is sliced by Christ, just for you.
Deuteromino’s: Delivering you from evil in 30 generations or less.
And now, the Scathing Atheist…
Intro:
It’s Thursday, it’s July 18th and during Ramadan, Muslims are like Mogwais in reverse.
I’m your host Noah Lugeons and from sweltering New York, New York, this is the Scathing Atheist.
In this week’s episode;
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We’ll learn that Deuteronomy is really repetitive,
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We’ll learn that Deuteronomy is really repetitive,
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And we’ll have to turn off the window unit while we record
But first, the Diatribe…
Diatribe:
This past Saturday, Heath and I were invited to emcee a roast for a mutual friend that was moving out of town.
We were delighted to do it, but the guy we were roasting is exactly the kind of guy you hate to roast: He has no flaws. He’s in good shape, he’s good looking, he’s confident, he’s talented, he’s intelligent and he seems to have a new woman on his arm every weekend. Not exactly the cornucopia of personal defects that you hope for in a roast victim. So most of us were forced to make jokes about the number of different women he’d slept with in the time we knew him.
Now, it’s a roast and in a roast the guest of honor isn’t the only one that gets ripped on. Everybody rips on everybody and that’s the fun of it. We make fat jokes about the fat guy, we make bald jokes about the bald guy, we make timid jokes about the black guy. And I’m the atheist guy so they make atheist jokes about me.
It’s a roast. I’m a good sport about this stuff so I smile and I laugh along. Hell, I started making jokes about god early on so I wasn’t about to take anything said about me or my beliefs personally. But there was one brief exchange in the roast that I thought was worth reflecting on.
Before we get to the exchange, I need to play a clip to set it up. It’s a skit I wrote that revolved around a mock-scrapbook of memorabilia that I was leafing through:
(First Sound Clip)
A little later, the dude that we all knew was gonna bomb was up. It was an awkward four minutes of him trying to figure out why he’d volunteered for this and as he wrapped up, he closed by turning to me and making corrections regarding two things I’d said that evening:
(Second Sound Clip)
Like I said, it’s a roast. I definitely didn’t take his little “believe in god” aside personally. Earlier in the night one guy did a mock dialogue where I tried to explain the intellectual justification for my atheism to Saint Peter (which was actually fucking hilarious) and another guy thanked me for providing an example of atheism that would lead so many people to Christ. It’s a roast. That’s the point.
And if the only time a Christian had ever said to me “You should try believing in god” was during a roast, I wouldn’t have bothered to reflect on it at all. But I think we’ve all heard this or the equivalent of this plenty of times before. You say “I’m an atheist” and somebody just stares at you wide-eyed and jaw agape and offers an incredulous, “Really!?”
It’s hard to imagine this kind of reaction to other groups. It’s hard to imagine a person saying, “Have you tried not being a Jew?” or, “Muslim, huh? How the fuck did that happen?” or “Did you become a Christian because Buddha disappointed you?” but in at least most of this country, when you meet an atheist it’s socially acceptable to throw holy water at them and yell “The power of Christ compels you!”
In the interest of fairness, there are also plenty of places in this country where you’d get the same blank-faced stare if you said you were Christian. Places like institutions of higher learning, science labs and the East Village. And in the parts of this country where I grew up you could earn such a stare for any answer to the faith question other than “Baptist”, so we’re not the only ones who face this kind of shit.
That being said, I think it’s fair to say that through most of America, atheist is the only religious choice that people feel no social qualms about trying to talk you out of. And I think it says a lot about religious people that they’re more comfortable with you having a religion that is irreconcilable with their own than they are with you having no religion at all.
Headlines:
Joining me for headlines tonight is a man who needs an introduction, Heath Enwright. Heath, you’ve been introduced. Say something to all the listeners.
I’d like to apologize for a Sarah Palin joke last week that mentioned her son Trig, who happens to have Down’s Syndrome. He’s actually a lot brighter than you might think. He’s only 5 years old, and he’s already reading as many newspapers as his mother.
All of them?
In our lead story tonight, it turns out that despite rumors to the contrary, atheists are normal humans. And apparently a lot of people were waiting for some hard data before they were willing to make this call.
Well, not quite normal. Apparently we do have a normal ‘personality distribution’ . . .
But our atheist group has statistically better IQ test-taking ability, or IQ.
We’re also – by definition – better at ontology, and that’s really the crux of the whole argument, isn’t it?
Yes, but the study was not without its flaws. It sloppily categorized nonbelievers into 6 groups and the divisions prejudiced the fuck out of their conclusions. Some of the categories made sense; they separate out “Seeker Agnostic” and “Non-Theist”, which they define as a person who is completely apathetic to religion. But after that shit gets pretty wonky.
Like Gene-Wilder-as-Willy Wonky . . .
The whole study seems like a confused attempt at examining a superior race of aliens.
Were they hoping to use atheist stem cells to help cure faith cancer? Like real faith healing?
Not sure where they were going, but I don’t think they got there. Here are three separate categories of non-believer, according to University of Tennessee researchers: “The kind of atheist that reads books and learns stuff”, “the kind of atheist who is an activist” and “The kind of atheist who thinks religion is harmful to society”. They actually treat those three characteristics as though they were mutually exclusive.
Doesn’t it seem like the study was conceived by the characters from Lord of the Flies?
One of the kids says “Hey I think I should explain what a Venn Diagram is.”
“Put that nerd’s head on a stick!!!”
Right, and because they ignored Piggy,they were able to make some insanely stupid statements like “activist atheists are the least narcissistic” and “anti-theists are the most angry and dogmatic”, without bothering to point out that since these two qualities almost always co-exist in a single human, they’re using shit like dogmatism and narcissism to define the fucking categories in the first place.
These guys love them some Juicy Juice logic.
“But it says what I’m saying on the tele-prompter, and in the fictional book about which we’re arguing.”
In all, I suppose I have to be happy that they’re not treating “thinks god is bullshit” as an abhorrent monolith.
Study shows that nonbelievers are as diverse in personality as any other group: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/07/02/atheism-study-authors-congratulations-non-believers-youre-just-like-everybody-else/
And in a transparent attempt to force Heath and I to make testicle jokes tonight, Ball State made waves this week by hiring one Guillermo Gonzalez as a new professor of astronomy despite his 2004 authorship of a book that pretends that intelligent design is valid science.
When he gets fired for lying on his resume about being a scientist, the headline will surely read: “Ball Sacks Nutty Professor”
Heath Enwright, king of the ball joke.
Apparently “The Privileged Planet” was bad enough to prompt 120 faculty members at Iowa State to sign a petition renouncing it when it was rumored he would be working there. Gonzalez claims this was a political move and that a single blogger who isn’t even an astronomer was responsible for it. So yeah, not only does he believe god made shingles on purpose, but he also believes that one blogger can be responsible for a petition of 120 people.
And why would the blogger (or anyone else) need to be an astronomer to know that intelligent design is complete nonsense?
Is he suggesting we should go check with the astronomy community, and they’ll back him up on the intelligent design thing?!?
What’s worse, this news comes on the heels of another non-testicular reason to make fun of Ball State. There’s also an ongoing investigation into Ball State assistant professor of physics Eric Hedin who is accused of essentially teaching a Creationism class in the science department.
Shouldn’t teaching wrong things – in any class anywhere – be considered a bad thing?
Also, gotta squeeze more testicle headline jokes in here while we can . . .
It’d be a slap in the face not to. There’s plenty of low hanging fruit.
Facing Hairy Situation, Ball Trims Staff.
More of a sticky situation.
There’s a new wrinkle everywhere you look.
Now Ball clearly has two dicks.
Feeling His Taint, Ball Gives Hedin Shaft.
What can I say, you’re the king.
Ball State hires creationist professor: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/07/09/ball-state-comes-under-scrutiny-for-hiring-professor-who-wrote-book-on/
And in this week’s child-fucking report, the UN’s Committee on the Rights of the Child has posed a list of tough questions to the Vatican in preparation for the stern talking to they’ll be giving them next January over the systematic child rape, child torture and consequent global cover up that has come to define the papacy in recent years.
Define is a strong word . . .
But “Rape Scandal Blues” is definitely track 1 side 1 of the Vatican’s greatest hits.
I like the older stuff, but they seem to prefer the younger stuff, and that’s illegal.
As insubstantial as a voluntary meeting with a group that has no enforcement powers may seem, this will actually represent the first time that any international panel has had the chance to publicly question the Holy See about the scandal.
“Did you guys rape those kids?”
“No, no, no, . . . a bit . . . we did do the nose . . .” — “Many of them had headaches!”
The Vatican, for its part, is quick to ensure the UN that they are doing everything necessary to keep pedophiles away from kids, they’ve weeded out the bad seeds, they’ve definitely stopped running slave-laundries in Ireland and they can totally prove it. But they can also totally pull out of the treaty on the Rights of the Child, so they’re gonna definitely do one or the other.
Too bad they didn’t pull out of those kids assholes when asked nicely the first time.
I think I understand part of the confusion though.
In the Bible, know means begat, but in the real world, No means No.
So these weren’t rapes as much as homo-phone issues. Just a little case of consent getting lost in translation.
UN probes Vatican child abuse scandal: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/07/10/uk-vatican-abuse-un-idUKBRE9690LK20130710
And in “How the fuck are we even discussing this?” news, the Senate may soon consider a revision to FEMA policy that would allow untaxed houses of worship to collect federal disaster relief money.
FEMA doesn’t have time for this.
They’re just barely started with fishing te black people out of New Orleans harbor.
Also, I thought those houses of worship were designed more intelligently, to withstand even the most catastrophic acts of intelligent design.
Under current law, federal disaster relief can only be used to rebuild and repair homes, businesses and infrastructure. And since churches aren’t necessary, should be insured and can go fuck themselves, they’re left to fend for themselves with hopes that the combination of not being taxed and selling a product that doesn’t exist for money that does will be enough to keep them through hard times.
Yeah what’s the overhead on selling indulgences? Not getting a good enough markup on those lies? They manage to get people to pay today for an impossible hamburger they won’t get until after they die on Tuesday. How fucking dumb do you have to be?!
But thanks to the bi-partisan pandering of Republican Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri and Democratic bitch that I actually voted for Kirsten Gillibrand, all of that could change. Both our tax dollars and our potential future disaster relief might be diverted to characters from Jew-sop’s fables.
How are churches going to learn to compete in the free market economy?
You know the competitive marketplace loved so dearly by the political party they hijacked?
But don’t worry, the bill does stipulate that the federal money could only be used to cover the costs of the building itself, the doors, the windows, the building envelope, physical plant support spaces, electrical, plumbing, heating, ventilation, air-conditioning, sprinkler systems and related site improvements. So apparently they’re not allowed to use federal money to buy bibles or pay off sex abuse victims but everything else would be okay.
Didn’t think this would need mentioning or repeating, but money is fungible. The $10,000 FEMA check stolen from secular taxpayers, is very similar in value to 10,000 different dollars.
By the same token, giving the church 40,000 taxpayer quarters, or 100,000 taxpayer dimes would also clearly violate the First Amendment.
Senate may lift House of Worship ban on FEMA: http://www.christianpost.com/news/us-senate-may-take-up-bill-to-lift-fema-ban-on-aid-to-churches-100094/
And finally tonight, we bring you the story of the this month’s greatest sleight against god. Montage of crazy YouTube preachers, would you care to guess what it was?
(Soundclip)
No, I’m sorry, while I’m sure that all those things pissed him off, he also got snubbed from a Sam Adams commercial this month.
Snubbing God in your beer commercial . . . Always a good decision.
This might be the best God snubbing decision since Roe v. Wade.
The ad in question uses a brief appended quote from the Declaration of Independence, with the spokesman saying that people were (quote) “endowed with certain unalienable rights” while conspicuously leaving out the part about those certain unalienable rights coming from a magical man-fairy.
You said “coming from a magical man-fairy” . . .
Sounds like a Joseph on Joseph version of the immaculate conception.
Those type of conceptions do tend to be immaculate.
Imagine how much better the world would be if abortion had been legal when God went all Roethlisberger on Mary?
Yeah, even the conservatives tend to make exceptions in the case of incest and rape and that was both.
Was that God’s first time too, by the way? Did God lose his virginity during a magical rape when he was over 1000 years old?
And proving once more that there is no rung of pettiness under which religious people can’t limbo, the Sam Adams facebook page was bombarded by Christian jizz-rinsers demanding that the company love and fear the lord, our god, and threatening to boycott the brand if they don’t issue an apology to Jesus.
The beer is named after Sam Adams so why didn’t they just use the founding father’s actual, documented opinions on religion?
Tell me this wouldn’t move some brew: “Sam Adams’ Beer; because Catholicism ‘leads directly to the worst anarchy and confusion, civil discord, war and bloodshed’. Please drink responsibly.”
Idiots pissed about beer commercial not paying homage to god: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/2013/07/samuel-adams-defends-ad-omitting-god-reference/
Poem:
“Deuteronomy in Rhyme”
by Noah Lugeons
Deuteronomy’s on to me, I’ve got say, honestly;
I’m not paying the bible the attention I wanna be.
It’s long and it’s dull and it’s so full of bull,
that the stress of the process is hurting my skull.
I’m plodding through and I’m human; I’ve got shit to do, man.
I can’t study each verse like a Hassidic Jew can,
So I skim and I skip, and I flip through and scan,
I glance at the footnotes here and there when I can.
But I’ll admit I hit bits I don’t get and I’m split,
Should I study it further or not give a shit?
After all, we’re not scholars and I got no white collar;
I’d trade biblical knowledge for Liberian dollars.
Besides, most verses are worthless like the begats and the curses,
That god intersperses with no discernable purpose.
What’s worse is the verses they don’t read in the churches
I’m not sure why they skip ‘em, though, it be a hell of a service.
But I digress. And I guess what I mean to express,
Is that no one who reads this thing knows what it says.
How could you? Why would you? It’d do you no good, you’d
be mem’rizing words that no one understood. True,
I guess there’s a few who have nothing to do,
that obsess over passages and pretend that they’re true.
But what about the incredulous rest of us who stopped listening at Exodus
We’re bored and it’s nebulous and among the effects of this,
Are low comprehension and even lower retention
So in hopes of prevention and to hold your attention.
Moses proposes verboseness, he know us;
He rightly supposes we’ll be losing our focus.
So Deuteronomy’s a colloquy that repeats all the policies,
God laid down earlier about sex and idolatry,
A dishonest anthology that restates the chronology,
And explains the pathology of Jewish theology.
So the gist, if you missed it, is that when god gets pissed
It’ll likely consist of him swinging his fist.
He insists he exists and if his laws are dismissed,
You’ll be reaping his vengeance and he offers a list:
And it goes like this…
He’ll curse your cities and your countries and your basket and your bowl,
He’ll curse your womb and curse your vineyard and your cattle and your soul.
He’ll cause your enemies to rise before you, sword in bloody hand,
He’ll curse you coming, curse you going, drive you screaming from your land.
The lord will send to you disaster, and frustrate your every whim,
He’ll cover you in leprosy from limb to fucking limb.
He’ll inflict you with consumption, inflammation, heat and drought,
He’ll turn the ground below to iron so no sustenance can sprout.
Your corpse will be a meal for every creature on the earth,
And your wife will eat your children and her bloody afterbirth.
The lord will give you boils, ulcers, scurvy and the itch,
You’ll be abused and robbed and helpless and your home will be a ditch.
Begrudging food to your own brother and to the wife that you embrace,
You’ll be a pariah to your people and he’ll remove you from his grace.
You’ll starve and want for water and screw up everything you touch.
Because the lord is wonderful and he loves you very much.
The Holy Babble:
Ah, Deuteronomy, the rewrite notes of the Pentateuch. It’s repetitive, immoral, disgusting and verbose, but beyond that, it manages to simultaneously shock and bore you in a way the other books could only dream of. So joining me to discuss this chore of a book is my lovely wife Lucinda. Lucinda, welcome to the show.
And of course, triangling out this trifecta is Heath Enwright who you’ll remember from 3 and a half minutes ago. Heath, welcome back, it’s been a lonely few minutes.
So where does Deuteronomy rank so far in terms of boring?
You get Moses telling us what god told him that he already told us that we already read. So pretty fucking boring.
It was like reading about somebody being bored by the book they’re reading.
Yeah, the word Deuteronomy literally means “second law”. It consists of three speeches that Moses gives before he dies and almost no new information comes out. Sure, there’s an odd testicle-grabbing rule here and a revision to meat slaughtering custom there, but basically he’s just repeating shit. It’s like getting to the first big battle scene in Braveheart and then listening to Mel Gibson deliver the “They’ll never take our freedom” speech over and over again for an hour and a half.
Except it comes off less like William Wallace, and more like Woody Allen complaining. It seems like they got Ridley Scott to direct Genesis and Exodus, but by the time they get around to producing Deuteronomy, they’re stuck hiring his suicidal brother.
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We spend the first three chapter listening to Moses brag about his greatest hits. It basically recaps the bloodiest highlights of Exodus through Numbers.
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Then we spend chapter 4 rehashing all the crap that just happened in the first three. We rehash the rehash.
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And reinforce the message that only god is god, god damn it.
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And since we’re clearly dealing with Moses’ farewell concert here, you knew he was gonna do “The Ten Commandments”, and he gives us the long version with the full blown sax solo and everything.
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“Play Exodus: 20!” “No – Play Exodus: 34!”
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And of course the asshole musician has to do it all new and different, so nobody really likes it. “It’s called Deuteronomy: 5 now, man! No more of that tired Exodus crap!” Wouldn’t want to play it like it sounds on the fucking album that brought everyone to the concert in the first place.
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Then in chapter 7 God spells out the importance of a good, thorough genocide.
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If you’re a Jew, you gotta be worried about running into some sort of genocidal backlash one day. Although their strategy of concentrating themselves all in a safe place like Israel seems to be working.
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By chapter 9 Moses has completed his transformation to Chris Farley; “You remember that time when I went up on that mountain and talked to god for a month? That was awesome.”
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More rehashing, but an interesting phrase in my translation at 10:16 “Circumcise, then, the foreskin of your heart, and do not be stubborn any longer.” So let’s hope the biblical literalists never make it this far…
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We don’t want those dicks or hearts getting hard, now do we?
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By chapter 12, Moses’ Alzheimer’s has turned into full blown dementia. Now he’s telling the Jews they can eat meat in the same way you would eat gazelle or deer, which are, of course, vegetables.
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And we’re reminded that you can only be Jewish with the help of union rabbis at the union temple.
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Then we learn that if you should ever have tangible evidence that god is bullshit, it’s just god testing you.
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Oh, and kill the person with the evidence.
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We rehash the rules about diet then slavery, then holidays, then judges. I swear this fucking book reads like a filibuster.
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Reads like a James Joyce filibuster
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Reads like a Dan Dennett analysis of a James Joyce filibuster.
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Give your shit to the priests when they tell you to, kill sorcerers and if anything in this book later proves to be untrue, we know it isn’t the word of god. Because it says so.
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Moses repeats himself some more and throws out the “eye for an eye” line.
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And then in 20, Moses spells out the rules of engagement:
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Before making war with a city, at least offer to enslave all the citizens.
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So you start by offering them a Billy Martin. “Listen, we’re willing to overlook the whole thing where you stole our land while we spent 40 years over there in the woods . . . Just submit to slavery, we takes the women you have on you, and we calls it even.”
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Yeah, we’re awesome slaveowners. Tell you what, I poke out your eye, I’ll let you go. Promise.
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Be sure to kill all the men.
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Steal the women, children, livestock and riches.
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Unless the women and children are Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites or Jebusites. In that case, kill them, too.
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And whatever you do, don’t cut down the fruit trees like a barbarian.
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In chapter 21 we get CSI: Promised Land. If you find a dead body in the street, just break a cow’s neck, wash your hands over it… you know, the usual stuff.
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Also, marrying captive women is okay if they’re bald and naked.
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Slave harem etiquette is important. We’re not savages.
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And if you’re into government sponsored murder, don’t hang the victim on a pole for more than a day. In the sequel, we’ll get into using 2 poles to form a T-shape that’s useful for public murder of Jew-traitors.
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Then we get the chapter where Glenn Beck gets his morality from:
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Here we finally learn that god hates trannies, though we were suspecting it the whole time.
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“Bitches shalt not steal my boxers and favorite T-shirts after sex, and then wear them home.”
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We learn the etiquette of when you can and can’t stone someone to death for having a vagina.
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Oh I missed something – when can’t you do that?
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The Sabbath?
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And don’t forget to bleed profusely when your husband fucks you.
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We learn that if a woman is raped in town she gets killed along with her rapist, but if she’s raped in the country, she gets to just be a rape victim.
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Being female, in a town, and out of earshot – that’s basically asking for it.
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And again with the fucking tassels…
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Chapter 23 starts with the words, “No one whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off shall be admitted to the assembly of the lord.”
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More on nocturnal emissions
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God actually gives proper instructions for taking a shit.
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No shit, cum, or atheists allowed in a foxhole.
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There’s a chapter that’s almost moral…
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And then we’re back to crazy, random shit. This is the chapter where we get gems like:
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If your brother dies you have to fuck his wife and if you refuse, she gets one of your sandals and she spits in your face.
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If a woman grabs a guy’s nut-sack when he’s fighting her husband, you should cut off her hand.
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Kill every Amalekite on the fucking planet.
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This book is a sign that says “Read this sign”. I swear, half the book is spent saying “obey this book or I’ll fuck your skull”.
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And I think it’s worth mentioning that In three chapters of curses, there’s no mention of an afterlife, no mention of postmortem retribution, no concept of heaven or hell.
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Now, follow me on this one. This book tells the story of the writing of this book. And then in chapter 31 it starts talking about shit that happened once the book that I’m reading was done being written. So the Deuteronomy explains the aftermath of the writing of Deuteronomy… and the death of it’s author, but that’s later.
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Even back then they had to know that they weren’t gonna get away with having Moses say the exact same fucking things he’s repeated half a dozen times again.
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Yeah, so in chapter 32 he sings them! He actually sings about how skull-raped you’ll be if you piss god off.
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And apparently the Israelites were holding up their lighters, so he breaks into another song in chapter 33. One for each tribe for fuck’s sake.
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By now it’s clear that God said, “Go say your last words and then I’m gonna kill you, Moe” and Moses is obviously just milking it at this point.
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And then Moses dies on a mountain and according to the book it’s a pretty spectacular death, but you know how it is when people tell you about their own deaths; they always exaggerate.
It was frustrating to learn that we could have just skipped from Genesis to Deuteronomy and not missed anything but Moses’ origin story and some Tabernacle details.
In all honesty, though, I’m actually kind of looking forward to Joshua now… it’s like I’m done jerking off but I’m still watching for the money shot. You know, like, I don’t care about anything that’s going on in the story, but I’ve made it so far I want to see these bitchy jews inherit the holy land already.
Or at the very least, see some jizz on somebody’s face, so I can get up and wipe my hands on the cat already.
Seems like exactly the right note to close on, so Heath, Lucinda, thanks again for joining me.
We’re gonna take a few weeks off of this book, but the Holy Babble will be back in three weeks to wrap up the Pentateuch in an hour long “5 down, 61 to go” special.
Outro:
Before we shut down the oven for the night, I wanted to take a minute to thank this week’s most unabashedly, flagrantly, shamelessly awesome humans, Rob, Richard, Andrew and Ann, who affirmed their high-minded beneficence this week by giving us money. In addition to providing all the stuff that makes this show possible, giving us money has been clinically tested to improve lung function or something. Seriously, because advertisers now say shit has been “clinically tested” for stuff and hope you hear “clinically proven”.
Remember, if you’d like to be slathered in praise by someone who knows nothing about your discriminating taste if podcast financing, you’ll find the donate button on the right side of our homepage at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.
I also need to throw a big thanks and a big shout out to President of the Atheist Alliance of America, Chuck Vonderahe for providing this week’s Farnsworth quote. It’s a great organization, they do great work and they also have a great convention coming up next month in Boston.
The Atheist Alliance of America’s 2013 National Convention is stacked. Host of the Thinking Atheist Seth Andrews will Emcee and the speaker list includes Dr. Steven Pinker, Ed Buckner, Aron Ra and the keynote speaker Paula Apsell, Senior Executive Producer of NOVA. They’ve got early-bird pricing still going so check out the link on our shownotes for the complete list of speakers and events and do it with great haste.
Oh yeah, and follow us on FaceTube and subscribe to us Twicher Plus and don’t forget to leave us a review on iTunes or wherever you found us in the first place.
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 21: Partial Transcript
by Noah Lugeons & Heath Enwright
Sponsor:
Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Hostess’s new brand of Halal, vitamin rich, fast-friendly snackcakes for Muslims, Ramadan-a-Ding Dongs. These whole-wheat, holy-month, wholly delicious treats are the perfect way to satiate yourself after a long day of needlessly starving yourself at the command of an illiterate, delusional horse-pilot.
Ramadan-a-Ding Dongs, because we really want our own fatwa.
And now, the Scathing Atheist.
Intro:
It’s Thursday, it’s July 11th, and vaguely spiritual agnostics piss me off too.
I’m your host Noah Lugeons and from <<<redneck repellent>>> New York, New York, this is the Scathing Atheist.
On this week’s episode:
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We’ll discuss a new ass-holistic cure for migraines,
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We’ll learn exactly how many rape jokes our listeners are willing to tolerate,
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And we’ll eat whenever the hell we please
But first, the diatribe.
Diatribe:
Last weekend Lucinda and I took Heath and his prostitute on a double date to see “This is the End”, which actually did me the favor of not sucking for the $13.50 I dumped on it. The movie is basically Pineapple Express meets Left Behind. And if those references don’t do it for you, it’s a movie about Seth Rogan and his buddies smoking pot during the apocalypse. And it’s a pretty safe bet that if you’ve made it this far into an episode of our show, you’d probably like it.
It consists of a half-dozen Judd Apatow acolytes playing parody versions of themselves at a housewarming party when suddenly the end times cometh, the good Christians ride to heaven on a blue light and the folks leftover (including all the pot-smoking, self-absorbed actors) are tormented by demons and Danny McBride’s sperm.
And as hard as this movie tried to not make you think, I couldn’t help it. After spending an hour and a half laughing about Jonah Hill’s exorcism scene, I started reflecting on the petty vengeance that underlies so much of modern Christian mythology.
In it’s lightest form it comes across in primetime TV shows where, let’s say, an atheist and a theist team up to fight both crime their mounting sexual tension. Should they debate the existence of god at some point in the episode, nine times out of ten the atheist will end the episode with some perplexing oddity that may or may not be a sign from god. After all, how else could that present gotten under the tree or whatever?
Shit like this doesn’t happen in real life because in real life there’s no god, but what does that matter to some hack TV writer? Why not throw 75% of your audience a bone and end on the “maybe there’s a god after all” cliffhanger?
But in the extreme, it turns into that “torture porn” rapture crap. The Left Behind, “despite all the evidence to the contrary the nutjobs were right all along”, “everybody but us good Christians gets ass-raped by thorny devil cocks” death-gasm fantasy.
For me, it’s easy to understand the appeal. It’s gotta be hard for religious people to ignore the way science keeps being right all the time. Science keeps pushing the boundaries of human knowledge and then they back it up with Large Hadron Colliders and iPads and missions to Pluto and shit. And the whole time they keeps saying “oh by the way, that god stuff is silly, knock it off”.
Imagine how appealing it must be to step out of that real world where you’re never right and god never sends a sign and step into a dream-world where you’re right and you can rub the scientists faces in just how wrong they’ve been the whole time.
So Christians create these elaborate fantasies where they get the post-mortem last laugh and all of us non-believers that made fun of Jesus and owned them on Twitter have to cower under satan’s forty-five foot lava cock for a couple of months while they get blown by 72 virgins or whatever Christians get instead of that.
The obsession with the apocalypse is a relatively new thing in Christian culture. Revelations has been there awhile and virtually every Christian from the apostles down thought they were living in the time of the second coming, but this infatuation with the literal 8 headed dragon and hell on earth and the coming of the anti-Christ is distinctly contemporary.
And I don’t think it’s any coincidence that the clearer it becomes that the tenants of Christianity are verifiably false, the more obsessed they get with creating some parallel universe where they can ignore all these damn fact that conflict with their faith. The end result is that they read about heretics getting tortured and the sinful earth being destroyed as a guilty pleasure.
As disturbing as this is, I think it’s a good sign for the secular movement as a whole. If kids didn’t get bullied, none of them would dream of being the Hulk. If kids could spin webs they wouldn’t give a fuck about Spiderman. If my wife was a pair of six foot Swedish bisexual contortionists I wouldn’t need porn and if God was real you wouldn’t need fictional accounts of his intervention in the affairs of humans.
I like to think of this as one of the most desperate defense mechanisms of Darrel Ray’s God Virus. Once it loses it’s ability to justify itself intellectually or even fully compartmentalize itself the virus turns to fear in hopes of frightening the mind into submission with images of the inevitable torment and suffering awaiting the non-believers.
And as I reflected on all that I started to wonder about all those Christians who like to threaten atheists with hell. We laugh at it and mock them for not understanding that one can’t be afraid of something one doesn’t believe in. But maybe we had it wrong the whole time. Maybe they were never trying to scare anyone but themselves.
Headlines:
Joining me for headlines tonight is my brother in blasphemy, Heath Enwright. Heath, it’s been a while . . . Are you ready to blaspheme in religion’s general direction?
Let’s do it. In 3, 2, 1 . . .
<<<Jesus swallows!!!>>><<<Fuck Buddha!!!>>>
In our lead story tonight, Pope John Paul the distraction has cleared the last hurdle towards full blown canonization by posthumously miraculously curing a Costa Rican women of a traumatic brain injury.
I heard he also was the guy who posthumously talked to Sarah Palin in a dream, and convinced her not to abort Trig, so really chalk up one more. I love that kid. Yeah, Palin had close ties to God and the dead Pope. You can actually see the Vatican from western Alaska.
And just to soften the blow of the Trig reference here, these are just the sort of jokes he won’t understand.
This miracle, which boasts the rock-hard credentials of being confirmed by a team of catholic theologians that really, really, really wanted it to be true and have no objective standard, will mark the second time Pope John Paul the sequel has used his magic pontifical death powers to halt a medical affliction. The first was a nun who prayed over his body and was cured of her Parkinson’s disease. Which is odd, since Pope Two-Beatles didn’t use his magical Parkinson’s curing powers to cure the Parkinson’s disease that had so recently killed him.
I heard he tried praying over his own body, but he just ended up masturbating. What he needed to do, was find Rogue from X-Men, and get a ‘dutch rudder’ simul-stroke thing going to cure the Parkinson’s.
And also . . . What an asshole?!?! . . . He’s capable of miracle cures, and he only does it once during his entire life, just so some nun can be better at Jenga.
Often called the “rockstar” Pope by people who are kind of fuzzy on the definition of rockstar, Pope John Pauly Wants a Wafer was, himself a canonizing fool, churning out more saints in his tenure than the previous 800 years worth of popes combined, so it seems only fair that he should set records for the quickest papal canonization.
Pete Rose could cure the Costa Rican woman, cure cancer, get another 3000 hits, and still not get into the Hall of Fame. And all he did was gamble on himself . . . no associations with institutional pedophilia scandals – consentual or otherwise. I guess the Hall’s just gotta be a little more selective . . . for reputation management purposes.
Indeed, some have argued that canonizing a guy who presided over the largest pedophilia scandal in human history sort of diminishes the whole saintly image, but proponents of his canonization point out that some woman in Costa Rica was kind of cured of a non-specific ailment for which she also received traditional medical treatment.
What the fuck?! She got real medicine too?! They didn’t even isolate the- Apparently, they’re allowed to make this shit up after the fact, so why not pick a better example? Like the Trig Palin thing.
Now, there are some cynical atheists with pun-based nicknames that point out that the timing of this latest miracle is pretty auspicious amid the constant barrage of new evidence and allegations about the Vatican money laundering scandal, not to mention the Milwaukee Archdiocese recent involuntary release of thirteen and a half Illiad’s worth of sexual abuse documents, but the major news outlets have dutifully shifted their focus and given Pope Francis with Wolves the benefit of the doubt.
Yeah this is the part where a few people at the top of the shitty failing investment bank know it’s going under, and either lawyer up, flee the country with offshore accounts, or die and get sainted QUICK.
John Paul II (to be) declared a saint: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/07/05/late-pope-john-paul-ii-to-get-sainthood-vatican-says/
And from the “Drowning-People-Fear-Water” file, the Pew Forum recently released a new poll that showed that nearly half of Americans think that the growth in irreligion is a bad thing. Of course, the fact that more than half of Americans are religious says a lot about this poll, but instead of focusing on the substantial portion of religious people who think the growth in irreligion makes no difference or is paradoxically a good thing, the media narrative on this one focuses on an admittedly surprising percentage of unaffiliated “nones” who say that the growth in irreligion is a bad thing.
So atheists really love religion. Their absurdist confusing thesis has grabbed my attention . . .
Atheists have been in Freudian denial this whole time. We actually LOVE religion. We want to fuck our religion mother. When we push religion on the ground, and pull religion’s hair, and do atheist podcasts, we’re not really displaying obvious intellectual superiority, like it seems. We’re merely engaging in the beginnings of a rough sex ritual.
Not so fast. As with all these polls, it’s important to draw a line between “unaffiliated” and “atheist”, as many of the “spiritual but not religious” dingbats are being counted along with the true non-believers and recent polls would suggest that they might even make up the majority of that subcategory.
Why the fuck would you count somebody who believes in a non-denominational spiritual being that created the universe, as an atheist in this study, or any other study, or any other use of the word atheist?!
Well, the study itself didn’t use the word atheist. That was just the media. But strangely enough, even those people who are quick to point out the difference between a “none” and an “atheist” when polls show non-belief on the rise have been slow to put it together with regards to these data and somehow frame the story as “even atheists know that atheism is a bad thing for society”.
And what we really want, is to have rough sex with nuns.
To be fair, everyone wants Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.
New survey shows half of Americans think growth in irreligion is a “bad” thing:
http://www.pewforum.org/growth-of-the-nonreligious-many-say-trend-is-bad-for-american-society.aspx
And in “What-Does-Fox-News-Have-Their-Panties-In-A-Wad-About-This-Week” news, we bring you the story of a Michigan high school administration that recently had a nice talk with the football coach and reminded him that he can’t lead the team in prayer before the game and he also can’t stand to one side while one of the students leads the team in prayer.
Right, because that would be cheating. Prayers always work, so if both teams pray, we’d get all ties. But we don’t get all ties, and again prayers always work, so obviously both teams aren’t allowed to pray.
For his part, the coach seemed understanding and said afterwards, (quote) “When it comes to discipline, whatever you allow, you encourage.” The ACLU prompted the move by sending a letter to the school’s administration explaining that pre-game prayers have the potential to alienate students who do not want to participate or single them for not being part of the majority religion.
Here’s where it get’s tricky, from a legal standpoint. There’s a time honored tradition in Christianity, and in American high school sports, of excluding Muslims and Jews. If not before a football game, where CAN a Christian exclude these other heathen children? And it’s not like the turbans, yarmulkes, and NSA surveillance don’t serve to single these kids out already.
What are you talking about? The NSA doesn’t surveil jews… they just ask their moms.
So the ACLU did the right thing, the school responded in the right way and the coach acted like an adult about it. It would seem that everyone involved behaved exactly as the first amendment would have them behave. But at no point in the decision making process did anyone seem to give any thought at all to how this was going to affect the anchors at Fox News.
Yeah, this is a tough one . . . Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any obvious ways to grossly distort the facts of this story. Were they able to air a show?
Recognizing that this story would lack the punch to resonate with their audience, Fox News contributor Father Jonathan Morris pretended that the school had banned individual students from praying before or after the game. He further pretended that the school had banned so-called “Tebowing”, a ritual where you throw the ball into the ground sixteen feet shy of your intended receiver and then blame god.
Oh I thought Tebowing was a term for the kneeling posture used to blow someone while they’re sitting down and Bradying. It’s part of normal weekly practice for backup QB’s in New England. You’d be amazed at some of the stuff they catch on hidden camera at Gillette Field.
Yes, they are known for their hidden cameras. Student Blaine Stannard also criticized the ban, wondering why the school would prioritize separation of church and state over the outside chance that this change could negatively affect the outcome of a meaningless high school football game.
He must have mistakenly thought this was America.
Michigan high school bans pre-game prayers, Fox News gets panties in a wad over it: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/02/michigan-football-prayer_n_3535414.html?utm_hp_ref=religion
And in a namaste of execution last week, a California judge ruled that school yoga programs don’t violate the establishment clause. The ruling was in response to an attempted lawsuit from two parents who argued that because yoga comes from Hindu practices, teaching it in the schools is the same as promoting the Hindu religion.
These parents should be a lot more worried about all the science classes that promote atheism. And math classes that promote atheism. And history classes that REALLY promote atheism.
Right. The same argument could be used to say that teaching kids about planets promotes astrology, but rather than pointing that out, the judge tossed out the lawsuit citing the incredibly non-religious nature of the yoga program. Basically, they teach the kids to stretch.
Judge Meyer said, “A reasonable student would not objectively perceive that Encinitas School District yoga does advance or promote religion.” So I’m guessing the plaintiffs weren’t of the reasonable and objective ilk? The Christian/Reasonable/Objective shared region seems to be almost nonexistent, almost by definition.
Several parents objected to the use of Namaste in greeting at the classes and the use of terms for some yoga poses said to represent worship of Hindu deities. Despite the brazen stupidity of these objections, the program stopped saying Namaste, took down anything that had any Sanskrit and renamed all the objectionable poses with things like “turtle pose” or “criss-crossed applesauce”, but even that wasn’t enough for Christian parents, who fear yoga is a gateway drug to satan.
Well then I probably shouldn’t mention how I was doing downward facing dog the other day, and out of nowhere it turned into gay sex. Don’t even know where the other dude came from. Behind, I guess. I was gonna say from the front, but that’s such an obvious gag…
I’m still straight, but I can’t say the rape didn’t pique my curiosity just a little. And it’s all thanks to yoga, so . . .
Sometimes you choose a sexual orientation, and sometimes a sexual orientation chooses you … by rape via yoga. Christian parents beware.
Make sure you sell the sarcasm there or you’re gonna get subpoenaed for the appeal. The judge was almost as dismissive of this case as I was, pointing out that the prosecution plucked a lot of their facts from random websites and didn’t seem to care too much about whether they were true. He even dubbed the case, “trial by Wikipedia” before grabbing the prosecuting attorney’s wrists, pummeling him with his own hands and saying, “Stop hitting yourself.”
“Let the record show that the prosecuting attorney is indeed hitting himself like I said. Also, though I am throwing out this case . . . it will be noted that we are – as a nation – perhaps only a few toe-touches away from a Hindu theocracy.”
Yoga declared non-religious, ok for California school: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/02/us-usa-yoga-california-idUSBRE96016Y20130702
And turning now to the parts of the world that aren’t America, retired Los Angeles deputy sheriff and current bloviating street-bigot Tony Miano was arrested in front of the centre court complex during Wimbledon for spewing hate-speech about how immoral homosexuality is.
He didn’t get beat up by 90% of the womens tour? I bet Martina Navratilova could throw some haymakers. Remember that huge lefty serve?
Right into this fucker’s testicles, yeah, that would be nice. She serves and he makes the Serena Williams sound. I like it. Miano’s confusion about the first amendment no longer working when you’re not in America was overshadowed, in my mind, by his warning that his arrest presaged the coming of the “thought police”, somehow not understanding that being arrested for what you think is different when you’re shouting what you think to everyone who walks by.
And, if there were thought police like that, that could actually read your mind, they should be arresting people that have hate speech type thoughts going through their head. Even the quiet ones. In fact, especially the quiet ones. Quiet bigots are at least as bad.
During an interview with police, he was asked if he felt that what he did was 100 percent acceptable in a public place and if he intended to do it again tomorrow. But since he not getting arrested wouldn’t be newsworthy, he opted for the “When in Rome, fuck Romans” approach and answered in the affirmative to both questions.
I guess the British jail system is a good place for him to learn more about immoral homosexual acts. Of course I’m speaking of gay prison rape.
Pastor “arrested” in UK for calling homosexuality a sin: http://www.christiannewswire.com/news/7921672394.html
Speaking of gay-rape, in our final story tonight, we turn to Cape Town South Africa where we confront the age old question “Is it still rape if it cures a migraine?”
See how I set you up so you wouldn’t have to make that difficult segue to rape? There’s always that awkward moment when you go from ‘no rape’ to ‘rape’.
Like white people hitting the dance floor.
This is the admittedly horrible story of a 17 year old boy who went to a local pastor to see if there was anything he could do to help him with his headaches. Recognizing that the potential healing benefits of forcibly penetrating his own rectum with the boy’s erect penis and then forcing him to suck his cock and his man-tits had not yet been fully explored by medical science, the pastor allegedly tried that treatment regimen and the ungrateful kid called it rape.
“I’ve got a headache THIS BIG”
“Well are you hung like that too? I’ve got an idea . . . “
Pastor Zanokhanyo Mnyukulo, who tried to protect his identity by having such a ridiculously unpronounceable name, argued in court that he was simply involved with a healing ritual and that no sucking of penises transpired.
I was about to ask about that. The crux of the argument, with respect to the Pastor’s culpability here, seems to come down to whether anybody got their dick sucked, and if so, did anybody swallow? “If he didn’t spit, you must acquit.”
The pastor was originally arrested on charges of rape but the charge was later reduced to indecent assault.
Well, drawing on my knowledge of the South African judicial system, I don’t think it still counts as rape if you rape your own ass with somebody else’s dick. From a legal standpoint, it’s more like he tripped and fell, head over exposed asshole over heels, and accidentally raped himself on a nearby erect 17-year-old penis. Indecent, maybe. But assault?!? Aren’t we splitting pubic hairs here?
Yeah, I’m thinking afterwards he re-read the pastor-child-rape manual and facepalmed. “Oh, my dick in his ass… yeah, that would have been a lot more fun.”
If he had been ass-raping the kid, I could see him claiming the healing benefits of prostate massage. But I’m pretty sure if you’re the masseuse, and your penis is doing the massage, poking the prostate of a gaypostate can’t help your headache.
It pisses me off that none of the articles I saw mentioned if it cured the headache, though. I mean, it wouldn’t be my first choice of treatment, but I’ve had headaches where I’d have eventually gotten there. “Alright, that’s it, this shit is killing me. Get me a gay South African pastor with man tits.”
Somebody get this man an “anal”-gesic!
Pastor claims sexual abuse was intended to cure victim’s migraines: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/07/05/pastor-claims-he-was-curing-a-boys-headaches-by-sexually-forcing-himself-on-him/
And on that disturbing note, we’ll close out the headlines segment for the night. Heath, thanks as always for joining me.
Pleasure as always.
And when we come back, there’ll be more words and shit.
Pitch:
Heath and I wanted to take a minute to respond to a recent review we got on iTunes from Senor Blanco, who said “Brilliant. Donate now so that Noah can give up his day job and fight idiocy full time,” and then backed it up with a donation. A sage piece of wisdom we wholeheartedly endorse.
In fact, this show and a consenting Anna Kendrick are the only two things I dream of doing full time.
And if we could increase our donations by a scant 2000%, we could make that dream a reality. But to help you see things Senor Blanco’s way we thought we’d share with you some of the great things that your donation might buy.
So remember, each time someone donates to the show, we’re that much closer to…
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Daily bonus content,
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A less erratically published blog,
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As many as one extra 30 minute podcast a week,
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33% more montages of crazy You-Tube preachers.
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Improving upon my staple diet of “Kraft parmesan humidity clumps and scotch”.
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Giving you a drunken blow job you eventually… in fact, if you were doing coke in the northeast between 1997 and 2005, at least one of probably already has.
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We’d also be even more scathing if we could afford better whores. Nothing gets the atheist juices flowing like renting an orifice or 3.
But it’s not just about what your money does for us, it’s also about what it does for you. That’s why we’ve set up a new incentive program for our donors.
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For example, on every week we make more than $500 in donations, I promise to capture one Mormon with the trap door on my front stoop..
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And for every individual donation over $500, you will get one used Mormon personal slave.
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For a $20 donation, one of us will slap a bible from someone’s hands on the street the next time we get the chance. And we’ll really do it. We do this anyway.
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Anyone who donates over $25 can ask us any question, and we have to answer it.
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Anyone who donates over $50 gets 3 wishes.
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For every $100 donation, I will violently tackle one subway preacher.
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For every $200 donation, I will fart loudly in a church.
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The first person to donate over $1000 gets ownership of my eternal soul with signed certificate of authenticity.
If you’d like to help us realize that dream, you’ll find the donate button on the right side of our homepage at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.
Skit:
From time to time on this show, we like to set aside a few minutes to discuss some of the common apologetics used in defense of theism. Heath, what ecclesiastical contortion do you have for us today?
Today we’ll be talking about one of the ballsiest of apologetics, presuppositionalism.
Gotcha. So tell me, how does presuppositionalism purport to prove the existence of the divine.
By presupposing that they already have.
You’ve gotta be kidding me.
I wish I was, but it’s really come to that. The argument goes like this: The bible is the inerrant word of god and Christ is lord.
And?
And what? That’s the whole thing.
Yeah, but that’s a conclusion, but it’s not an argument.
That’s why they call it “Presuppositionalism”. You’re presupposing your conclusion to be true. God exists and he’s the god we think exists and that’s all there is to it. That’s premise A, premise B and the conclusion all in the same tortilla.
But that’s not how argument works… Hell, that’s not even how thought works.
That’s how a burrito works.
That’s ridiculous nonsense.
Ridiculous? Yes. Nonsense? Yes. But that’s the beauty of the argument. It’s too stupid to be wrong.
But it’s not. I mean it is stupid, but it’s also wrong. It’s utter horseshit. It’s an upside down pyramid. Hell, it’s named after an improper epistemological device.
Exactly. And you can’t fault presuppositionalism for being presuppositional. It’s in the name. It has to be.
But I don’t understand how admitting that your argument is fatally flawed up front bolsters it.
Maybe it would help if you see it in action. I’ll start with the assertion that the bible is the inerrant word of god. Go.
Okay… the bible can’t be the inerrant word of god because it’s contradictory.
But your ability to recognize contradiction is derived from god, so by admitting that it’s contradictory, you’re admitting that god exists and, by extension, that the Bible is the inerrant word of god.
But I’m not admitting that in any way. I’m doing the exact opposite; I’m demonstrating that it’s untrue. And all you’re doing is putting the cart before the horse.
But we know that horses and carts are created by god, so by even using that metaphor, you’re admitting that god, who also invented metaphors, exists.
That’s not an argument, it’s an assertion. What you’re doing doesn’t even count as debate.
Well, if that’s true, and you used words to form those sentences and god created both words and sentences…
Okay, I think I see where we’re going here, but I don’t see how it adds up to a defense. It’s like the argument sketch from Flying Circus.
No it’s not.
Yes it is. The point of an apologetic is supposed to be to offer a logical reason to assume that a god exists, not just deflect every question by pretending that your conclusion and your premises are interchangeable.
Aha, but that’s the beauty of presuppositionalism. It’s not designed to prove anything; it’s designed to make you shut up without making me recognize any of the logical flaws in my theology.
So it’s the intellectual equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and threatening to hold your breath until you turn blue.
Well, I don’t know that it’s any more intellectual than that, per se, but it’s far more effective on Twitter and Facebook than the “La-La-La” defense.
But, by employing an apologetic that’s named after a logical fallacy, aren’t you kind of admitting up front that you’re full of shit?
Yes, but only to the person you’re debating… and they already know. Presuppositionalism is less of a ‘convince you I’m right’ kind of an argument and more of a ‘fuck off and die’ kind of an argument.
But you can’t just say “I’m right” and pretend that you’ve won a debate.
On the contrary, as presuppositionalism teaches us, you can say any damn thing you want and then pretend any damn thing you want… in any order.
But that doesn’t make it a valid apologetic.
Valid or not, it’s an effective apologetic. In fact, the success of presuppositionalism in making atheists walk away with their hands in the air muttering profanities under their breath is unrivaled.
Yeah, but that shouldn’t be the point of an argument. Shouldn’t you be trying to win the argument rather than just evade it?
Well, sure, but only the side that’s correct can actually win the argument.
Okay, so if their goal isn’t to best us in a logical competition, how should atheists deal with presuppositionalism?
By invoking presuppositionalism, the theist is opening the door to logical-fallacy based arguments. To level the playing field, the atheist might want to start invoking some fallacy-based arguments of their own. For example, they could try “False-Dichotomism”.
Which is?
For example, “Well, if the bible’s the inerrant word of god, then why isn’t okay to rape your dog?” Or perhaps they could try “ad-hominism”.
And I assume that’s where you just tell them to go fuck their mothers.
Precisely. You can even get creative and offer fallacy combos like “Slippery-Slopism” combined with “Non-Sequiturism” in the form of “Well if the bible’s the inerrant word of god, It won’t be long before there’s nobody left to paint all those turkeys?”… or “Reductio ad Absurdumism” combined with “Straw-Manism” in the form of “Well if the bible’s the inerrant mid-coital exclamations of god, then you must also gargle with eskimo sperm.”
Okay, well… I still think there has to be a better way to convince a presuppositionalist that their logic is flawed.
They already know their logic is flawed. Again, it’s right there in the name of the argument. The precepts of presuppositionalism actually state that there is no mutual frame of reference that a presuppositionalist and an atheist can share. That makes it impossible to defeat them in a way that they recognize. So once that is established, the only real question that matters is how angry you want to make this asshole before he walks away.
Outro:
Before we reel in the nets tonight, I wanted to make a quick correction to last week’s show. During the diatribe I was highlighting a few reasons why one should dismiss the nonsensical “Christians Tweet Happier Than Atheists” research out of the University of Illinois and as I was listing all the things wrong with the study, I accidentally said, “poorly constructed” twice in my list. I meant to say “poorly conducted” the second time but either I misread the page or mistyped it, so my use of “poorly constructed” and “poorly conducted” was either poorly conducted or poorly constructed and for that I apologize.
I also wanted to respond to a dingleberry in Nebraska named Sam who wrote to us to explain the very real threat of hell our souls face for doing this show. So Sam, on behalf of Heath, Lucinda, myself and everyone you’ve ever said that to, go fuck yourself with an unvarnished plunger handle.
I’d also like to take a few minutes to recognize this week’s most exquisite anthropoids, Eric, Kitty and Chris who proved their prodigious munificence by giving us money. And not only have their donations purchased the peace of mind that can only be obtained by paying someone to tell God to fuck off, they can also bask in the knowledge that when the zombie apocalypse hits, I will see to their safety personally.
If you, too, would like to insure against death by swarms of the undead, you can earn your place in my zombie resistance protectorate by clicking on the donate button on the right side of our homepage. And if you’re looking for a way to help without unpinching any of your pennies, you can help us immensely by leaving us a good review on iTunes or listening to us on Stitcher and helping our ranking over there suck less.
I also need to thank Heath for consistently going above and beyond to make this whole thing work, Jesus for taking it like a bitch and lastly, I need to thank Dan from Thank God I’m Atheist for providing this week’s Farnsworth quote. He and Frank have an excellent podcast out of Salt Lake City and if you haven’t checked it out yet, you’ll be able to correct that oversight with a handy link you’ll find on the shownotes for this episode.
Link: http://www.thankgodimatheist.com/
That’s all the blasphemy we have for you tonight, but we’ll be back in 168 hours when Lucinda will join us to break down the final book in the Pentateuch. If you can’t wait that long, you can always check out our erratically published blog, follow us on Twitter, subscribe to us on YouTube, like us on Facebook or vomit on Pat Robertson.
If you have question, 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.
Embracing the Narrative
by Noah Lugeons
As many of you know, I recently appeared on the “Thank God I’m Atheist” podcast to speak for the “acerbic” brand of atheism. The debate was sparked over American Atheists recent dedication of America’s first monument to secularism in the form of a quote-laden bench. Frank and Dan (the hosts of TGIA) were two of the many atheists who saw AA’s approach as too caustic, too reactionary, too antagonistic. They wondered why American Atheists hadn’t used the opportunity to present a positive message rather than a chiseled “fuck you”.
Now, when I characterize the debate like this, I do a disservice to American Atheists, as the monument is certainly more than a “fuck you”. It contains a number of quotes from our founding fathers that demonstrate how important the separation of church and state was too them and how little they cared for organized religion. But it also includes a list of biblical punishment prescriptions for breaking the ten commandments, which can only be seen as a retaliatory strike to the ten commandments structure that prompted the bench’s existence in the first place.
So Frank and Dan wondered why we were so willing to play the villain? Why were we so eager to be exactly the people that the Christians said we would be? If we were going to send a message with the monument, why not send a message like “we all benefit from the separation of church and state” rather than a message like “your holy book is stupid”? Why play in to “us versus them” narrative? And, if we were going to do that, why do so in a way that reinforces the “Atheists are callous jerks” stereotype.
I understood their points, but I felt like there were a few major elements missing from their calculus so I had a little email exchange with Dan and before long it led to an invitation to discuss the issue further on their show. The interview went really well and while I think everyone left with the opinion they came with, I think all three of us also left with a better understanding and more respect for the other side. And barring the swaying of positions, this is probably the best outcome one could hope for from a conversation.
I think that Dan made some excellent points in defense of soft atheism, particularly in combating the notion that soft atheism is “non-combative” and I think Frank made some excellent points about what message we sent to the vast middle; the wavering believer, the uncommitted agnostic. In all, I think they did a great job making a case for their side; not just for the utility of soft atheism, but against the utility of hard atheism.
But I also think ol’ Noah made a few good points there, too. And I think the most important one came toward the end. We were talking about how big a job American Atheists has as the nations premier atheist organization. How does one provide a single voice for such an intellectually diverse group? We were all lamenting the lack of another prominent national group that advocates atheism with an approach that is antipodal to AA.
But, as I pointed out on the show, there are no shortage of groups offering to be that voice. Sure, they’re not as well funded as American Atheists, but there are plenty of individuals and organizations that represent atheism in a far more ecumenical style and the media isn’t talking to them. Bill O’Reilly isn’t inviting the warm, fuzzy atheist on his show, he’s inviting the rabid, angry, argumentative villain on.
But, of course, the debate rages on. Our discussion aired on their show last Saturday and yesterday I had a chance to listen to the follow up episode where, to no surprise, they discussed some feedback they got from their listeners regarding the interview. Among them were several voices raised in objection to the approach and while several of them were well-reasoned, none of them (and no answer I’ve heard so far) addressed that core objection: If an atheist is nice in the woods and there’s nobody around to hear him, does it make a difference?
The problem is that we still have to rely on the media to get our message out. Sure, there are blogs and podcasts and media sources that make the mainstream media superfluous, but the only people using those resources are the people already firmly entrenched in our camp. If we want to be heard, we still need CNN and the Washington Post and, as much as I hate to say it, Fox News. So how do we get them?
To hear the copacetic voices lay it out, we just be really, really nice so that whenever you see a quote from an atheist group, they’re showing up with an olive branch in hand, ready to explain how their position benefits not only the non-believer, but the vast majority of the nation. Separation of church and state, for example, tends to benefit everybody who isn’t part of the largest religion in the country and in America, that’s most of us. They prefer an approach where we take out the “Fuck you” and add a “Thank you” and deflate this stereotype of the negative, angry, arrogant atheist. I think of this approach when people say (as they do with increasing frequency) “Atheism can’t just be against something, it has to be for something, too.”
And, in a storybook kind of way, this all sounds good. The problem is that is doesn’t work. And that’s not just my opinion, it’s been proven for decades. Atheists didn’t just show up in this country when David Silverman took over as President of American Atheists. We didn’t appear when Sam Harris called us into existence in 2001. We’ve been here the whole time. And our public face, by and large, has been this above-the-fray, all-inclusive, what’s-good-for-the-goose persona. And yet, somehow, the atheist voice was never represented on the news. The atheist rebuttal was never given even a cursory glance in the story. The atheists were ecumenical and invisible.
But along comes somebody willing to play the villain and the media absorbs it like a sponge. Along comes an atheist willing to be the person that Christians fear and- presto -he’s all over the media. He’s spreading the atheist message on the most conservative political outlet outside of talk radio. He’s putting up monuments where all the major media outlets can’t help but go and when they get there, they can’t help but notice the circus atmosphere that these fundamentalist windbags have concocted around it. After all, you can’t ignore a voice that offends you.
And still, despite the overwhelming success of the Silverman approach, there are plenty in this movement who would have us reign in that acerbic voice. They’d have us throw a wet blanket over the caustic approach that has come to characterize Silverman’s approach. They pretend that now that the media has started talking about us, they’ll keep talking about us no matter what. They pretend that we’re somehow too big to ignore.
But look at the recent bullshit Time editorial that went out of it’s way to belittle the charitability of secularists even to the point of blatantly lying. Consider the recent nonsensical story on CNN’s website about Christians being happier than atheists on Twitter. Consider the narrative.
The major media is still in the business of telling stories and they have the narratives that they’re trying to sell. If you want in, you’ve got to fit into your niche in the narrative. They can’t have violent gays or thoughtful scientologists or nice atheists because that doesn’t fit the narrative. That’s not the story they’re telling.
People often say of David Silverman’s leadership “He’s great at getting press, but I hate the message he sends when he does”… as though we can somehow separate those two things. As though the caustic nature of his approach is in no way responsible for the amount of press he gets. As though we’d never tried the olive branch approach before.
Of course, to be fair, I should concede that the number of non-believers is a hell of a lot higher than it was before and it’s possible that the mainstream media is just starting to recognize that they can’t ignore us as a group. Some would argue that at this point in our movement, we’d be getting the press no matter what and we might not need the caustic crutch anymore.
While this is a fair point, I don’t think it’s a correct one. Just look at the mainstream media in the UK, one of the world’s least religious nations. I’m willing to bet that if you go to the atheism page on the Guardian’s website right now (regardless of when “right now” might be), you’ll find as many stories attacking atheists as you’ll find stories supporting them. And you’ll find that same damned “angry, militant atheist” narrative being trotted out over and over again.
The primary objection to the copacetic approach to atheism is that I think it’s utopian. Sure, when you’re talking to your wife’s mom or your kid’s teacher or your co-worker or your brother-in-law, that’s the way to go. But to dismiss the atheist bench and the acerbic approach to atheist activism represented by Silverman’s leadership as “theological dick-waving” (an admittedly clever term coined by one of TGIA’s listeners/voice mail opiners) is to overlook the fact that this guy has actually hit upon a formula that works. It gets the atheist message out there in a way that nobody else has been able to do in this country. He stays in the headlines, he forces the conversation and he’s been damned good at it.
Like it or not, when you embrace the media narrative, the media embraces you back.
And, in the interest of extending an olive branch to the olive branch extenders, show me an example of the other way working; working in terms of getting press and forcing the discussion, and I’ll reconsider everything I’ve said. But I’m first and foremost an empiricist and what I see David Silverman doing seems to be working, at least by my definition of working. Until then, I’ll defend every non-aesthetic decision that went into that bench.
An Email from an Asshole
by Noah Lugeons
I should admit that when I first started this show, I assumed that by now I’d be getting a lot more of my material from slobbering, frothing, angry Christians who were sending me improperly capitalized death threats. Up to this point, I still really haven’t had an influx of hate mail. Almost all of the feedback we’ve gotten has been frustratingly positive.
So considering that, it wasn’t going to take much to earn the title of the biggest asshole that’s emailed the show so far. But thanks to Roger in Iowa, that bar has been raised. And unfortunately, the title currently belongs to an atheist. So how did Roger earn the coveted title of king of the rectums? Here’s a brief sampling of the ranting bullshit he sent me:
Why does every atheist seem to think I give a fuck about gays? Your show is supposed to be about atheism and you spend the half the show talking about fag marriage and how happy we should all be about that. What the fuck does that have to do with atheism? Atheism is just a lack of belief in god and I’m sick of people who try to make it into a political position. So if I don’t support gay marriage I’m not a “real” atheist?
And it just goes on and on like that for seven paragraphs (and that’s not even a whole paragraph there).
Now, buried amid his horse-fart rambling is a legitimate point that should be addressed. After all, the atheist movement often finds its weight being swung behind political movements that are only tangentially related to secularism. I’m sure this frustrates the libertarian wing of atheism up a wall, as these issues are almost exclusively liberal-leaning, but before I make any attempt to justify it, I should point out that there’s no pope of atheism. If the larger atheism movement swings one way or the other it’s only because a majority of its members swung that way. Nobody has the power to move us by fatwa.
But, that being said, there’s still a pretty logical reason why the atheist movement tends to rally behind things like gay rights; the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Most of the people who get active in atheism do so because they’re sick and fucking tired of watching people oppress other people in the name of religion. I’ve yet to hear the “secular” argument against homosexual equality so when I see the gay community win a victory, I interpret it as a victory against religion and religion’s influence in our society.
In fact, the framing of the discussion in episode 20 should make that pretty obvious. Heath and I hardly touched on the basic humanitarian justifications for full recognition of gay marriage. Instead, we focused on the ranting, petty, insane reactions from prominent Christians. We weren’t celebrating a step toward full human rights (though we probably should have been). We were celebrating the group we rally against getting smacked in the face.
So that takes care of the “legitimate” part of Roger’s point. Now let me address the larger “illegitimate” part. This whole argument that “atheism is just not believing in god so stop trying to make it mean more than that” nonsense really needs to stop. Yes, you pedantic fuck, that’s exactly what atheism means. So let me stop making any point on my blog or my podcast that isn’t simply a restating of the fact that god doesn’t exist. I’ll fill thirty minutes each week with not offering an opinion on anything except the existence of god. That should be fun.
Just back the fuck off and let this movement be what it is becoming. As atheism grows it will faction off and the people who want to just not believe in god can sit in their corner and just not believe in god. But those of us who choose to take it a step further and offer secular alternatives to the traditionally religious magesteria (morality, community, music, etc.) would appreciate being able to forge our path without dodging your stones.
The Scathing Atheist 
Live Blogging the Bible: Deuteronomy 10:21
by Noah Lugeons
Deuteronomy is boring compared to the other books of the bible.
That’s like saying someone is fat by sumo standards; ugly for a game show contestant; stupid for a CNN anchor. This thing is painfully, brutally, nut-crunchingly boring.
The book consists of three speeches that Moses gives and they have the feel of speeches you would give if there was no clock running on your last words. It has all the intrigue of a filibuster. It’s like reading about people studying people watching paint dry.
And if anything, I’m overselling the intrigue.
So when I say that I found verse 10:21 interesting, I feel that I should begin by qualifying the broad spectrum of relative application of the word interesting one must employ to apply it to something in Deuteronomy. We’re in the first act of Moses’ second speech where he’s rehashing the rehashing we were doing earlier and he’s reminding all the Israelites just what a bad mother fucker god is.
So he drops this line:
This is not the first time Moses appeals to empirical evidence to convince people of his holiness. God was more than happy to devour houses in Numbers or send gnats and flies in Exodus or make rocks bleed Aquafina in Leviticus whenever anybody started doubting his royal godness. Granted, he would then curse them, plague them and bury them in pheasants or something, but he wasn’t shy about appearing as a mountain of fire or wandering around the encampments in cloud form.
Clearly, then, god understands that we need to see some proof.
It seems reasonable to me to ask why it was reasonable for this one minuscule sliver of humanity to demand proof from god, but now that we have cameras and science and a million ways to verify the miraculousness of a miracle, god can’t be bothered. It’s somehow beneath him. Now that it’s easier than ever to communicate with the whole world at once. Now that it’s easier than ever to prove himself in a way that would satisfy even the most skeptical among us.
The standard retort of the theist is that god wants us to have faith, but that doesn’t sound like the genocidal ass-stain I know and love from the bible. He was all about flexing his muscle. What, did he mature? Was he imperfect back then and then grew up? Hard to imagine a timeless being maturing significantly in the eye-blink of human existence, but it seems like the strongest thread they have to hold onto.
Anyway, back to work. Somehow we’ve still gotta figure out how to do a segment about a book that does nothing but rehash shit we’ve already made fun of.