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Live Blogging the Bible: Joshua 2
by Noah Lugeons
On the one hand, I’m happy to finally meet a women in the bible who doesn’t fuck anything up, get raped, get turned into a leper or perform any defensive penis surgery. On the other hand, she’s a prostitute that sells out her own hometown to a couple of strangers because she’s afraid of them.
Meet Rahab, everyone, somebody who would probably, in retrospect, wish they’d left her profession out of the bible. No before we get into the non-heroic actions of this biblical hero, I’d like to draw attention to an element of the story that never occurred to me until I actually read it. We all know the story, of course, but for those who don’t recognize the name, this is the story leading to the fall of Jericho. Joshua sends a couple of spies to scope out the city and when the king here’s of their presence, he sends his men to find them and kill them.
Rahab the friendly prostitute elects to hide the men, lie about their whereabouts, mislead the royal guard and assist them in their escape. In exchange, she asks that they spare the life of their family. And to the credit of the women and baby and elderly people murdering Israelites, they keep their promise.
So lets start at the beginning, shall we? Joshua sends a couple of spies into Jericho to check out the cities defenses. So where do they go? Straight to a whorehouse! This part is usually glazed over and I’m sure most Christians and Jews think that they just took refuge in a whore’s house when the kings men came after them, but that is clearly not the case. The king sent men to this whorehouse because he heard the spies were at the whorehouse. Straight from god:
Then Joshua, son of Nun, sent two men secretly from Shittim as spies saying “Go, view the land, especially Jericho.” So they went, and entered the house of a prostitute whose name was Rahab, and spent the night there.
That’s the opening line of the story. It’s not until after that the king hears about their presence. Joshua sent two spies to check out the town and they decided to check out Rahab’s vagina first.
But that’s not the point. It’s just damn funny when you contrast it to the way these fundies feel about vaginas.
So the king sends his men, Rahab hides them in the roof of her house, misdirects the soldiers and sends them on their way. The spies go back and report everything to Joshua, then they have some dinner, cross the Jordan, circumcise themselves, observe passover and then attack the city. We might get into the pre-battle circumcision in a later article, but for now I’m just going to say I don’t recommend it as a military strategy. The reason I bring it up is that a bunch of shit happens between Rahab discovering that her hometown was about to be massacred and the actual massacre.
She had plenty of time to warn people. She had plenty of time to encourage her close friends to get the fuck out of Dodge. She had plenty of time to tell the king so that the city could be ready to defend the attack. But even failing all this, she also had a house that was a recognized sanctuary. The spies told her anybody in the house would not be killed, but anyone outside it would.
I’d like to think that if I was in that situation, you’d open my door after the battle and it would be packed like a fucking clown car. But we fast forward to chapter 6 and the only people in the house are her family. Really? Not one person outside the Rahab bloodline was worth sparing there?
I guess I shouldn’t complain. It’s one of the few acts in this book that isn’t horrible on every level. As bad as aiding in the genocide of your home town is, it’s the least reprehensible thing anybody’s done in the book of Joshua so far.
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 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.
Episode 20: Partial Transcript
Sponsor:
Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Scott’s new brand of retroactive thaumaturgical fertilizer, Post-Mortem Miracle Gro. Do you have a deceased pontiff a few miracles shy of canonization? Well just dump this fertilizer on that fertilizer and watch the Miracles Grow.
Miracle Grow… making miracles out of bullshit since 1868
And now, the Scathing Atheist…
Intro:
It’s Thursday, it’s July 4th and I only like snakes and sparklers.
I’m your host Noah Lugeons and from seasonably patriotic New York, New York, this is the Scathing Atheist.
On this week’s episode:
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We’ll learn why gay sex makes Jesus cry,
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Buddhists will weigh in on all that blasphemous YOLO shit
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And I’ll put the opening of the second chapter of the God Delusion to music
But first, the Diatribe.
Diatribe:
I had about half a dozen listeners email me the same article from the CNN Belief Blog this week. The headline read “Christians are happier than atheists… on Twitter.” Before I even clicked the hyperlink I was already salivating, ready to skewer the shit out of this pseudo-scientific nonsense. So I read the article and I took a look at the research and I read their conclusions.
And unfortunately, as much as I’d love to unleash both barrels of my verbal-ought-six on this thing, it turns out that there’s just nothing to criticize. The research was sound, the methodology was solid and the conclusions were perfectly defensible. It turns out they’re right. We’re a bunch of miserable, hateful, unhappy fucks.
I know this may come as a surprise to you, because you might often mistakenly think that you’re happy, but you can’t argue with science. In fact, you might as well just stop arguing altogether and dive head first into a tub of Caramel-Sutra laced with Xanax, for you will never know joy.
So quick before you slit your wrists while sitting in a running car and drinking bleach, let me explain how the advanced new science of Twitter-ology works. The first step is, of course, to draw a conclusion. As you’ll see later, if you don’t start with a conclusion, the data’s gonna be too messy to interpret later. So start off with a firm conclusion and hold on to it no matter what.
Step two is generating sample groups and remember, this is no time to worry about precision. To study atheists and Christians, for example, all you need to do is randomly select five prominent atheists and five prominent theists and call all of their followers your two groups. I know that not everybody who follows Dinesh D’Souza is a Christian and not everyone who follows Richard Dawkins is an atheist, but this is science… it doesn’t have to be exact.
So once you have your suspect samples, you analyze the words usage. Whatever words are used more often are indicators of deep psychological truths about the people using them. And we know this, because we just do. It doesn’t matter that there’s no credible research or even logical reason to believe in the core assumption behind this research. The people doing it wore lab coats or had pocket protectors or something and that makes what makes it science.
So with our rock solid assumption that people who say “happy” a lot are happy, people who say “family” a lot love their families and people who say “food” a lot are fat, we can go to work on our pseudo-data. And when we do we discover our conclusion, which, you’ll recall, we decided on before we started the research.
In this instance, we’ve proven that atheists aren’t as happy as Christians and they don’t love their families as much. Viola, conclusion reached, thesis proven, Nobel prize is in the mail.
Admittedly, some atheists have been a bit more critical about the research than I am. They point out that there’s no reason to assume that people who follow prominent Christians and people who follow prominent atheists are using Twitter for the same purpose. They point out that many atheists have multiple Twitter accounts and keep their atheism on one and their family stuff on the other. They point out that even with a perfect sample the study would still be nonsense, as the average Christian is older than the average atheist, more likely to have children and more likely to come from a large family and any one of these covariances would render all the data worthless. They point out that even if the data wasn’t useless, the conclusion still would be, considering that what they’ve proved is that a privileged majority is happier than the unprivileged minority.
But I think these critics are looking at it the wrong way. So before you toss out this study just because it’s poorly constructed, obviously biased, impossible to blind, poorly conducted, unscientific and stupid, I should point out some other things this study finds.
Consider the fact that atheists were shown to be far more likely to use words like “reason”, “think”, “idea” and “knowledge”, so if we accept the flawed premise of this flawed study it also proves that atheists are smarter than Christians. In addition, it shows that atheists are more likely to use words like “dick”, “fuck” and “pussy”, so clearly we’re also getting laid more often than the Christians.
After all, if we accept the first conclusion and the others are reached through the exact same process, it’s hard to ignore… not so hard that the researchers didn’t manage to ignore it, but hard to ignore nonetheless.
And if you need any further proof that this is sound science, consider the alternative. If this study isn’t legitimate scholarship, CNN just ran an article that used unproven science and half-ass conclusions to reinforce a hurtful stereotype that has no basis in fact and wouldn’t be newsworthy even if it did. And we all know that could never happen.
Song
“The God Song”
Well Jesus is great, he’s my best friend.
He’s the kinda fella who would die for your sins.
He says women should obey their men,
And ownin’ slaves is fine every now and again.
Well Jesus is my buddy and I’m really glad.
He’s the best buddy that a guy ever had.
And if you think some stuff he said was bad,
At least it’s nothing when compared to Jesus’s dad:
“Now let me tell you about that fella…”
He’s a homicidal, genocidal, pestilential, filicidal,
Petty jealous racist full of rage and spite.
Wicked and misogynistic, he’s a sado-masochistic
Homophobe that massacred Amalekites.
And Midianites.
And Sodomites.
And Perizzites and Moabites and Philistines and Benjamites,
Syrians, Assyrians, Ethiopians and Amorites.
And Egyptians.
“But we’re not yet, because he’s also…”
A Maleficent, Malevolent, Omnipotent, Irrelevant,
Megalomaniacal vindictive beast.
He’s ruthless and he’s useless; he’s an evil, brutal, futile nuisance.
Turned a chick to salt just for looking east.
Heartless, inexorable, rancorous and horrible,
He’s got a torture chamber and a thirst for blood,
He’s a fictitious, injudicious, vile, vicious, angry bitch;
His temper’s like a two year old with global floods.
He’s capricious and malicious and flagitious and pernicious
And an ethnic-cleansing bully of the highest sort,
Injurious, Inglorious, Nefarious, Notorious,
And when he raped a married virgin? Paid no child support.
Headlines:
Joining me for headlines tonight is my consiglieri Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to con-siggle?
I’d be happy to.
Well, not according to those Twitter-ologists, you aren’t, but I’ll overlook it.
In our lead story tonight, we’re one step closer to legalized goat-sex thanks to the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on the Defense of Marriage Act.
According to Rick Santorum, it’s not just one step closer… We’ve actually legalized the equivalent of goat sex.
As all but one of our listeners know, the nation’s highest court recently struck down a 17 year old piece of bigoted legislation that denied federal benefits to same-sex spouses.
And just fucking barely. The highest court in the land, which should be 9 of the most rational and intelligent people in the country, came as close as possible to a tie on this issue. Which is almost as embarassing as the fact that gay marriage and gay rights in general are even an argument that’s still on the table.
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“If we could have made no decision on gay rights, we would have, but there’s fucking 9 of us, so we couldn’t tie. And since Kennedy’s not a complete asshole, gays are people … according to 55.6% of us here at the highest court.”
The reaction of America’s religious leaders was surprisingly muted and tolerant:
(SOUNDCLIP)
The ruling was even enough to prompt scientifically-anomalous unhappy Tweets from Christians, calling the decision a “Tragic Day for Marriage and Our Nation”, declaring that the “Supreme Court Overrules God” and that “Jesus Wept”.
But don’t worry, it’ll only be a few decades before the prominent Christian voices are taking credit for this.
We’re forgetting the real victim here . . . the good people over at Merriam-Webster, who will now have to work tirelessly around the clock to go through every dictionary, and cross out the part that says, ‘between a man and a woman’.
No, trust me, I’ve read the Tweets, Jesus is the real victim here. Now, in honor of the DOMA ruling I put together my three favorite insane overreactions. My number three was Rick Santorum and you already beat me to the punch on that one. But I will say, in Rick’s defense, what is the difference between two consenting men or women entering into a legal bond of love and raping a donkey?
Mostly just the consent of the ass, I guess.
Number two was the verbal gymnastics of the guy with the most Christian name ever, Monsignor Charles Pope, who proposed the “freedom fry” option, suggesting that Christians just drop the word “marriage” altogether and switch to “Holy Matrimony”
Shit, yeah that would entirely disempower us f-word-lovers. Is that really what he’s going for?
But the gold medal goes to the head of the Catholic Church’s matrimonial court, Archbishop Oscar Cruz, who answers the question “Can gay men get married?” with “To lesbians, sure.”
What is he, multiplying negative numbers in his weird little head?
Supreme Court Decision on DOMA and bigoted reactions from churches: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/06/26/religious-reactions-to-scotus-decisions/ & http://wordnews.org/2013/06/26/reactions-from-christian-organizations-swift-to-supreme-courts-overturning-of-doma/
Catholic Priest: It’s okay for gay men to marry lesbians: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/428951/catholic-church-has-no-problem-with-marriage-between-gay-man-lesbian & Catholic Priest Suggests that in the wake of DOMA they should drop the word “marriage” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/28/marriage-holy-matrimony_n_3517019.html?utm_hp_ref=religion
And in a follow up to a story we talked about in episode 17, American Atheist president David Silverman unveiled America’s first monument to atheism in Fuckville, Florida last week. And, in the humble, deferential manner we’ve come to expect from Bible Belt Christians, a number of Evangelicals showed up to help us dedicate what inaugural Farnsworth quoter and blogger Hemant Mehta has deemed a “Non”-ument.
I was gonna say Skepti-Couch . . . or Secu-Lounger . . . or Seat of Doubt.
Protesters blasted Christian music and carried signs that read “Honk for Jesus”, “Preserve Florida’s Christian Culture” and “The South is a Christian Nation”.
Where the fuck do southern, conservative Christians get the balls to have pride as a group? And how does Christianity get southern blacks on board so well? Shouldn’t there be more awkward guilt around the South? You don’t see conservative Germans flying Third Reich flags . . .
And as if to lend validity to your point, according to our friends at Bar Room Atheist one of the signs actually read “Hook for Jeses”.
One lover of the lord tried to place a toilet seat on the bench during the ceremony, but not to be out-douched, prominent creationist and son of a felon Eric Hovind jumped on top of the monument to scream about how awesome Jesus was. Hovind said that he was happy that the American Atheist had provided him a platform to preach from that was 48 inches high; ten inches short of being one inch tall for every felony conviction for which his father is concurrently serving time.
So the genius who – at one point – was carrying around a toilet seat in public . . .
I’m just guessing, but he probably wasn’t making an artistic philosophical statement relating to Marcel Duchamp, was he?
I really hope somebody out there gets that.
The big news out of the unveiling ceremony is that the show was so popular they’re taking it on the road. Silverman announced that American Atheists are prepared to put up as many as 50 similar monuments all over the country in a social counter-offensive to the fundamentalist assholes who put Christian monuments on public property.
Excellent . . . Looking forward to The Seat of Doubt Tour <bunch of assholes>
Atheist Bench Unveiled in Starke, FL: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/atheists-unveil-monument-nonbelief-god-article-1.1386919 & http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/06/29/american-atheists-unveils-godless-monument-in-front-of-florida-courthouse-and-announces-many-more/
And in this week’s “How many felonies can the Catholics fit into one Scandal?” report, the Milwaukee Archdiocese was recently forced to release 6000 pages of Sexual abuse documents due to allegations of bankruptcy fraud stemming from some financial shenanigans allegedly intended to shield money from abuse victims.
Atheist Podcasters are already – as I speak – calling this the “Anal Leaks Scandal”.
Depends . . . but this could get messy.
And as it happens, Cardinal Timothy Dolan appears to have his hands about elbow deep in the anal leakage, too, as included in the documents is a deposition where he suggests moving money to a “cemetery maintenance fund” to keep it shielded from future claims.
So if it wasn’t obvious to everyone already, the Catholic Church is officially – financially . . . and morally – bankrupt.
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“Ok, yes . . . we raped a bunch of kids, but if the courts make us pay for it, that would be prostitution, which is wrong. We didn’t want to make whores out of these kids, just innocent rape victims. Rape victims go to heaven. Think about that trade. Rape victim for several decades on earth, but then eternal bliss. We’re doing favors, here. We’re raping stairways to heaven for these kids.”
To Dolan’s credit, most of the documentation I’ve seen up to this point shows him impotently trying whatever he can to get these pedophiles the fuck out of the priesthood and while I’m not sure I’m in love with his proposed solution of paying them to leave and never turning them into the cops, he’s made to seem far less villainous by the merit of the people writing him back and saying, “No, pedophile or no, we need all the priests we can get.”
Milwaukee Archdiocese releases sexual abuse files: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/01/milwaukee-priest-sex-abuse-records_n_3527980.html
And in “We’re-worse-than-we-thought” news, a new international religion poll from German non-profit Bertelsmann Stiftung makes me want to swim with toasters.
So I take it we didn’t do that well?
The survey compared religious views of 13 nations and if you’re grading this thing fairly, the US lost to pretty much everyone on pretty much everything.
Among the study’s findings:
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Americans lead all 13 nations in believing that (quote) “Only politicians who believe in god are suitable for public office”.
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The very first amendment clearly says, “Don’t do that.”
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Americans are the most willing to make sacrifices for their religion
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It’s really just happiness and societal progress . . . so not THAT big a sacrifice.
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And 50% of Americans find atheists (quote) “threatening”.
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They fucking should. We’re expediting their inevitable removal from the political decision-making process.
The survey doesn’t offer any answers to the obvious follow up question: “Is it too late to un-secede from England?”
I’d be down for an Evolutionary War, where we get back with England for atheist reasons, by taking them back over. And then give away Northern Ireland for spite. Maybe drop the South on waivers.
I’d also like some answers on what, exactly, that 50% is afraid we vile secularists are going to do. Are they afraid we’re gonna incur the wrath of their petty god? Are they afraid we’re gonna make it legal to gay-marry a harem of chinchillas? Or are they afraid we’re gonna prove they don’t get to go to eat sky-cake when they die?
Well I probably shouldn’t even be talking about this, but Phase 2 of our plot IS complete. That’s all I’ll say, but they should certainly be threatened.
Or . . . Is it that everyone on the wrong, backwards, misinformed side of every argument ever, is threatened by the truthier side? The 50% number would be higher if more theists were smart enough to recognize their obsolescence.
New Survey: 50% of Americans find atheists “threatening”: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/06/26/new-survey-50-of-americans-find-atheism-threatening/
And from the “How-Much-Will-You-Give-Me-For-This-Golden-Rule?” file, Australian priest, Anglican opportunist and shining example of Christianity in practice Terry McAuliffe got a little unwanted press last week over an incident involving a lost bracelet and an asshole.
Please tell me this dude found a bracelet in his asshole.
…or in his gay lover’s asshole.
No, were that the case it would have been the lead story.
Oh, so instead we’re sticking it somewhere in the rear?
The story goes like this; he finds a bracelet valued at around $6,500. He tracks down the owners and offers to sell it back to them for half the price. But don’t worry, he wasn’t only trying to fuck them on the deal. He also suggested that they continue to claim it as lost and recover the money by scamming their insurance company.
“Wait… you’re telling me I get the bracelet that demonstrably belongs to me and I get to pay you $3000 and all I have to do is commit felony insurance fraud? What’s the catch?”
Yeah, if it sounds too good to be true…
The one good thing he does here is suggest screwing the insurance company, but that doesn’t exactly make him Robin Hood here. He’s stealing from the rich, and stealing from the poor.
Once the story hit the news the good reverend had a quick change of heart and offered instead to return the bracelet at no cost, stop being an asshole and wonder why he hadn’t just raped some kids instead.
Anglican Priest finds bracelet, tries to sell it to owners: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/26/reverend-bracelet-terry-mcauliffe_n_3503644.html?utm_hp_ref=religion
And in “God-Hates-Your-Jiggly-Bits” news, the Christian Post brings us the story of two Christian ministries in Southern California who are willing to bravely venture deep into the heart of the satanic underworld of strip clubs and porn conventions to win souls back for Jesus.
Among those brainwashed into doing Christian charity work, I imagine a “missionary position” like that is highly prized, so they probably only have a couple of holes to fill at once.
With names like (I shit you not) “JC’s girls” and “XXXChurch”, the ministries go to strip clubs armed with gift baskets that contain things like (I still shit you not) “Lotions, lip gloss and hot pink bibles” these groups send their crew to (again, I still shit you not), “strip clubs, brothels and between 8 and 11 porn conventions a year”
“If just one hooker find solace in her new pink bible, after getting sodomized for money, then we’ve done our job. And if just one porn star uses her pink bible to block a money shot, we get some good free product placement.”
Ok let’s put 20 seconds on the clock – Church Porn Titles . . . Go!
Lord of the Thighs
Cream Piety
How about Nympho Nuns Nine: The Naughty Nazarite?
Missionary Impossible
12 Apostles, One Cup
Numbers Colon 69
Can you reach the colon, in a 69?
Sheri Brown, lead coordinator of the San Diego Chapter of JC’s Girls told the Christian Post that god calls them to “reach out in love”, “form bonds with desperate women”, “offer them fulfillment” and “bring them to their knees for Jesus”; and then honestly expects us not to make fuck jokes about it.
Ok so what you’re saying is, “Last call for missionary fucking jokes.” . . .
“The Consu-Matrix” immaculate conception porn, starring Holey Trinity as the Virgin Mary. . .
It’s a threesome with Mary, Joseph, and God.
I love the concept of immaculate conception porn.
Yeah, kind of looks like masturbation… you can’t really tell.
Christian Outreach focused on Strip Clubs and Porn Conventions: http://www.christianpost.com/news/christians-outreach-into-strip-clubs-porn-conventions-to-share-love-of-jesus-98899/
And with those sexy images swimming through your head we’ll close out the headlines for the night. Heath, thanks as always for joining me.
And when we come back, you’ll realize that we never really left.
Bible Story:
Run grab the young ‘uns, folks! It’s time for Lucinda Lugeons’ Bible Stories for Kids!
——————-
Gather around boys and girls. Today we’re gonna open the bible up to Genesis and talk about the story of Lot’s daughters.
Now once upon a time there was a man named Lot. Lot had two daughters whose names weren’t important enough to record in the bible, because they were women.
Lot and his family grew up in a town called Sodom, a town where a lot of daddies loved a lot of other daddies in the butt. God hates gay people so he really, really hates whole towns of gay people. So one day he decided to destroy the town and all the people who lived in it.
But don’t worry, kids. Lot’s daughters were safe. God loved them more than the other people who lived there, so he sent two angels to warn them. They wouldn’t have to die. It would only be their sisters, all of their friends and all the little dogs and cats and hamsters that lived there that would perish in a fiery catastrophe. And trust me, boys and girls, the hamsters that lived in Sodom were begging for death.
But when the two angels showed up to warn Lot and his family, all the villagers, young and old gathered around because they wanted to anally rape the angels. But anally raping angels is very naughty so Lot said “No villagers! Don’t rape the angels! You can rape my daughters instead.” And he threw his two virginal, innocent daughters to a mob of diseased, rape-starved perverts.
But luckily for Lot’s daughters, the villagers really wanted to rape the angels instead, so the angels struck them blind.
“Hooray!”
Lot and his family had to move very quickly because death and torment was about to befall everyone they’d ever known. So mommy, daddy and their two daughters ran away. But mommy looked back at the town, so god killed her by turning her into salt. Because if you look in the wrong direction, sometimes god kills you.
So with their mommy dead and all of their friends and pets burned alive, they hid in a cave and slept on rocks with nobody to keep them company but their drunken daddy. And what’s even worse, they had nobody to have sex with except their daddy. Of course, daddy wouldn’t want to have sex with them because daddy’s having sex with their daughters is naughty, so they got daddy really drunk and they force-fucked him several times.
They both got pregnant with inbred rape-children who they loved very much and the few people who lived through the story lived happily ever after.
The End.
Skit:
Henchman: “Heath, Noah… SCOTUS has overturned DOMA.”
(Sinister Laughs)
It’s all proceeding exactly according to plan.
Gather the others. We must meet tonight.
(Scene Switch Sound Effect)
I hereby call this meeting of the League of….
Um… Doctor Myers, Mister Dillahunty… The buffet is supposed to be for after the…
Whatever, I now call… you’re really gonna just take all the baby-bacon? The whole platter. No… that’s fine. Um… yeah. That’s fine.
Like I was saying, I hereby call this meeting of the League of Sinister Secularists to Order. The honorless Noah Lugeons presiding.
Thank you, Heath. Now obviously we all know there’s big news this week, but first things first. Heath, can you read us the minutes of the last meeting?
We all started off pledging allegiance to Darwin, we hated America for a little while, Greta gave us an update about her cats, Doctor Myers and Mister Dillahunty ate all the baby-bacon before I got to the buffet, and we decided to go with the bench instead of the Trojan-Horse Satan Sculpture I submitted.
Thank you, Heath. Now if there’s no new business, I’d like to move on to the… Um, Hemant, can you practice your sinister finger steepling some other time? This is important. Thank you. And um… Tom, Cecil… We’re all still really impressed that you can both do that with your testicles, but if you don’t mind, we’re trying to have a meeting here.
Now, as you all know, we’ve received word that the Supreme Court has struck down DOMA, leaving marriage completely defenseless.
(Hooray!)
Yes, we should all be proud of the job we’ve done, but this is no time to rest on our laurels. The family isn’t destroyed yet.
You can’t even legally marry a sheep yet.
That’s right! Polygamy, bestiality, child-sacrifice; none of that is legal yet. And nevermind gay adoption… why aren’t those kids being aborted in the first place?
Or made into bacon? Or both? Fetus bacon is like the pre-veal filet mignon of atheist cuisine. In French, ‘mignon’ means cute, so this makes sense. If babies are cute, then fetuses are fucking adorable. And small strips of that tender, undifferentiated fetus meat, slowly smoked, and then fried in its own almost babyfat . . . fucking delicious.
Exactly. We’ve won an important battle, but we can’t lose sight of the war. Heath, what are we doing to further cement the destruction of traditional American values?
We’re drafting legislation now that would make happiness illegal in the month of December. We’ve got some of our top agents planting more apocryphal evolution fossils. And we’re still looking into that end-of-the-world-building from Ghostbusters, see if that’s for real, but it’s not looking good..
That’s not enough! Is it still legal to be heterosexual!? Why haven’t we fixed that yet? Is it still legal to love your neighbor and be moral? We’ve been fighting against that for centuries to no avail.
I think it’s time to enact phase 3 of the plan.
Is that the one where we cease human births and turn to cloning just to piss god off?
No… that’s phase 6.
Oh, right. Three is the one where we kidnap Anna Kendrick and chain her up in your basement.
No, that’s phase 13 and that one was tentative. Phase three is the part where we make Christians get UPC symbols tattooed on their wrists and foreheads. I tell you, I’m starting to think nobody’s reading my memos but Glenn Beck. And how the hell did he get a hold of those anyway?
Yeah, we’re still looking into that.
Hemant, the steepling. Don’t get me wrong folks; I don’t mean to downplay the significance of this ruling, but as long as happiness, democracy and virgins are still out there, we can’t afford time to celebrate. Remember, we can’t take away their ignorance, but we can damn sure take away their bliss!
Outro:
Before we cash in our chips tonight, we need to take a few seconds to recognize this week’s most exceptional mammals; Lindsay, April, Jason, Douglas and Geoff spelled the cool way. The quintessence of non-quiescent quercine qualities, this quick-witted quintet quietly quelled the quarrelsome quandary about quartering our quirky, quodlibetical quest by quantifying their appreciation and giving us money.
If you, too, would like to be the subject of some archaic alliteration and earnest appreciation, you can help keep this whole experiment going by clicking on the donate button on the right side of our homepage at Scathing Atheist (dot) com and giving til it hurts. And then continuing to give because you can take it.
All jokes aside, in all seriousness, we really do want your money. But if we can’t talk you out of your hard earned dollars, you can always help us out by leaving us a glowing review on iTunes because that’s free.
That’s all we’ve got for you this week but if you want more, there’s more. Frank and Dan at Thank God I’m Atheist invited me over to defend the utility of acerbic atheism the other day. It was a really good discussion and you can find it on episode 85 of their show, which will be linked on the shownotes for this episode.
TGIA Archive: http://www.thankgodimatheist.com/podcast/archives.php
I also need to thank Heath once more for all he does to make this thing possible, and of course, my lovely wife Lucinda for providing the bible story this week and, of course, for performing adult services for me for 17 years and counting. I also want to offer a concurrent thanks and apology to my muse Richard Dawkins, whose voluminous vocabulary acted as the inspiration for the song this week, as anyone who’s read the God Delusion probably already figured out.
I should also point out that I’m in a constant state of scrambling for Farnsworth quotes so if you have a blog, a podcast, a facebook page or even a consistently interesting Twitter feed, I’d be happy to throw you a plug in exchange for a 5 second audio clip of you quoting the 22nd century’s most stylish professor.
And finally tonight, I want to thank you, dear listener, for giving us 30 minutes of your life. We’ll be hard at work trying to earn 30 more minutes next week but until then, you can also check out our erratically published blog and get occasional nuggets of Scatheism by following us on the Twitter, liking us on the Facebook and subscribing to us on the YouTube.
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.
Episode 19 – Partial Transcript
by Noah Lugeons, Heath Enwright & Lucinda Lugeons
Note: Transcript contains portions that were removed from the show due to time constraints.
Sponsor:
Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the new off-Broadway musical, “Joseph Smith and the Amazing Technicolor Underpants”. Because Matt Stone and Trey Parker made mad bank lampooning Mormons in a play, why the hell shouldn’t we?
And now, the Scathing Atheist…
Intro:
In Thursday, It’s June 27th, and sorry about all that money you pissed away accidentally expediting a binding legal ruling in favor of gay marriage, Mormons.
I’m your host Noah Lugeons and from pizza Mecca, New York, New York, this is the Scathing Atheist.
In this week’s episode:
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We’ll couch domestic abuse in a bunch of feel-good Jesus talk,
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A new poll shows that Americans are as dumb as everyone thinks we are,
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And God will kill an enormous number of people,
But first, the Diatribe…
Diatribe:
When I was 13 years old, my older brother gave me a copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and told me to read it. I was more of a climb trees, play sports, be sweaty and grass stained kid than a sit still for more than 30 minutes and read stuff kid, but it was short so I gave it a go.
It was the first time I’d seen religion treated with such brazen mockery. I was already doubting the conflicting messages from my Mormon dad and my Catholic mom, but when I read the Hitchhiker’s Guide I realized that it was okay to just call bullshit on all of it. After all, this dude wasn’t getting struck by lightening or brimstone and he certainly didn’t seem too worried about hell, so why should I?
And there’s a question that Adams poses in that book that’s been stuck in my craw for two dozen years: “Just who is this god person anyway?”
You’d think that in 5000 years of trying, the Abrahamic faiths would have come up with a concise definition, or, if not concise, at least consistent. But as we all know, if you ask 20 Christians to define god, you’ll get 20 definitions. Sure, there’ll be a few commonalities, but it’ll be clear pretty quickly that all these Christians are worshipping a different guy.
And none of them, none of the Christians, none of the Jews and none of the Muslims are worshipping the guy from the bible. The all-powerful, all-loving, all-knowing, moral, caring, forgiving, judicious, benevolent dude they talk about might make a cameo at some point, but he’s nowhere to be found in the first 4 books.
What’s worse, the guys who wrote the first four books of the bible, or more precisely, the guys who wrote the unrelated, independent sources that would later be woven together to become the first four books of the bible, also aren’t working from a coherent definition. Is god the dude who shows up in the Garden of Eden in Genesis or is he the guy that nobody can survive seeing from Exodus? Or is he the disembodied spirit they talk about in the gospels?
Is he the all-knowing guy from Jeremiah and Acts or if he the bumbling idiot from Genesis and Numbers? Is he the hard to anger guy they sing about in Exodus or is he the unjust, wrathful bully that was killing people for no reason right before they started singing that shit?
And if he’s all-powerful, why does he need Moses to do everything?
And if he’s all-loving, why is he such an asshole to virtually everyone he encounters?
And if he’s all-knowing, why do people have to keep reminding him of shit?
And if he’s moral why does he champion slavery so damn much?
And if he’s caring why does Moses have to keep talking him out of killing people?
And if he’s forgiving why does he punish kids for their parents crimes?
And if he’s judicious why can’t I find any Amalekites around these days?
And if he’s benevolent why does he have so much blood on his fucking hands?
Of course, these Christians that are so quick define god don’t know what the bible says because they’ve never read it. If you press them, they’ll often claim that they’ve read “most” of it, but then you start quizzing them and it turns out they don’t know that there’s a talking donkey in the 4th book. How much could you have possibly read? It’s the 4th fucking book! That’s like saying “I’ve seen most of the movie, but I missed all the parts after the opening credits.”
If I believed a book to be inspired by the all-knowing creator of the universe, let alone directly revealed by him, I’d know the damn thing by heart. But these dingbats, even the “literal word of the bible” folks, can’t be bothered to crack it open.
And I don’t think it’s because they’re too lazy, either. I’m willing to bet that many if not most of them started it at some point. And I don’t think they turned away because of the genealogies or the archaic language or the repetition or the bulk. I think they met their god and he scared them. I think they turned away because they started to realize that the more they knew about their religion, the harder it would be to believe.
Headlines:
Joining me for headlines tonight is my pan-racial color commentator who’s therefore allowed to say all the N-words, Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to use otherwise-offensive slurs in the proper satirical context while berating believers in the absurd?
Cracka please!!! Let’s get started. Which confederate states are violating the first amendment this week?
We’ll get to that, but in our lead story tonight, recent polls show that 34% of Americans would vote for Jesus in 2016.
Another white guy?!?!
Yeah, but he’d be the first Jew. According to HuffPo columnist and author Fred Rich, a recent YouGov poll had more than a third of Americans answering yes to the question “Would you favor establishing Christianity as the state religion,” with the majority of those saying they would be “strongly” in favor of such a move.
What percentage thought we had already clearly established Christianity as the state religion?
It’s like polling plantation owners on their views about the economic modalities of the southern colonies.
“De facto segregation ain’t enough. We need to get this stuff on paper. Maybe we should make a grand public statement . . . a Proclamation of Demancipation . . . we’ll work on the name.”
32% favored taking this beyond their individual state and support an amendment to the Constitution that would make Jesus-worship the national religion as well. So basically a third of our country has seen how well theocracy is working in Saudi Arabia and want a piece of the action.
Strange how closely this number mirrors the percentage of people that identify as evangelical . . .
However most of this group couldn’t spell theocracy, and probably couldn’t find Saudi Arabia on google maps.
As Rich points out in his column, this was a national poll, so the heathens in New England and California were skewing the numbers. Imagine what a poll like this looks like in just the stupid states.
Poll shows one third of Americans want a theocracy: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/fred-rich/breaking-news-34-of-your-_1_b_3461262.html
And speaking of the stupid states, our next story takes us to Kentucky, where Ken Ham seeks to rekindle the flagging attendance at his Creationism museum by adding… wait for it… zip lines.
After finding that dinosaurs and bullshit weren’t enough to bring in the kiddies, Ham and his knowledge-abhorring cohorts are turning to the time-tested technique of completely unrelated touristy shit like zip lines.
I bet the conservative group within his ultraconservative group are up in arms about this. Might not go over well with the physicists in the Christian Science Department. Aren’t there several bible passages that declare gravity an abomination?
“The Lord didn’t say Let there be heavy – He said Let there be light”
To unveil this new attraction, he invited Kentucky state representatives, Kim King, Bart Rowland, Tim Moore, Tweedle Dee and Foghorn Leghorn for the ribbon cutting, which hopefully involved safety scissors. Representative King showed just how little she cared about definitions and shit when she posted on Facebook that the (airquote) “museum” was (airquote) “educational”.
These guys are awful at this. How hard is it to get attendance when nearly everyone in a 5-state radius is brainwashed from birth about the theme of their museum?
If Mickey Mouse was in the bible, there would be Mini Disney Worlds in every WalMart.
Kentucky Creationism Museum unveils zip line attraction, complete w/ State reps: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/06/21/kentucky-state-representatives-visit-the-creation-museum/
And from Mickey Mouse to “Mecca-Mouse”, our next story takes us to the middle-east where Dubai will see Kentucky’s stupidity and raise them billions of dollars because Dubai is rollin’. In a probably-horribly-misguided attempt to combat the nation’s reputation of irreligion, the Dubai General Projects Department recently announced a Qur’an based theme park that will, I’m sure, be every bit as fun as that sounds.
I’m looking forward to “The Ideologue Floom” and “Twin Towers of Terror”
I believe that was our first 9/11 joke. Well done.
Anyway, Dubai apparently has a “Vegas of the Middle East” reputation that prompted a popular Saudi cleric to order women not to visit the city… because you know how women are about succumbing to temptations of the flesh.
How the women manage not to rape all those burka-less men is beyond me.
But Dubai officials hope they can counter this image by taking the only thing these rabid, undereducated fundamentalists give a fuck about and treating with the culture and sanctity we’ve come to associate with theme parks.
I think Islam is just angry as a whole, not about Western domination, or the Israeli Magic Act of 1948, but about being that 3rd guy out that nobody really cares about. They’re like Chris Bosh, Graham Nash, and the Green Party all rolled into one sad little box called “worst monotheists ever”.
Judaism and Christianity get all the attention, and little brother Islam gets ignored again. Historically, this leads to occasional bouts of radical attention-getting behavior.
Dubai plans Qu’ran based theme park: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/23/quran-theme-park-dubai-religious-pilgrimage
And from the “remind-me-why-they-venerate-the-murder-weapon-again” file, the city of Evansville, Indiana has approved a public art exhibit that will contain no fewer than 2 and a half dozen eight foot crosses all over the city’s waterfront.
Is this one of those avant garde things where the public interacts with the art, and they leave out hammer and nails to see what happens? Like a social experiment type of thing?
I wish… Unfortunately it’s one of those run-of-the-mill “I love the bible and the constitution almost enough to read them” things. Recognizing the constitutionally problematic nature of this project, the city insisted that the crosses not be overtly religious crosses, but rather secular crosses.
Sounds like a perfectly secular homage to the lowercase letter T.
City Attorney Ted Zeimer Jr. couldn’t agree more, explaining the rock-solid legal authority of the city to violate the first amendment by pointing out that the United Way was allowed to put up statues in this very same spot once.
So because Evansville, Indiana has a long, proud history of violating the 1st Ammendment, they’re claiming squatters rights to ignore the Bill of Rights.
Essentially, yes. Zeimer went on to explain that (quote) “We told them they could not have any writing of any kind on them so they’re statues. They might be a religious symbol to someone or they might be attractive statues to someone else.”
Yeah without the word Jesus actually written on them, they’re just an interesting demonstration of perpendicularity.
“If it ain’t a right wing angle, it’s a wrong wing angle.”
Let’s sell that T-shirt to Newt Gingrich.
City of Evansville, Indiana approved “30 Crosses” public art exhibit: http://www.courierpress.com/news/2013/jun/20/old167/
And moving on to our final story of the night, two weeks ago we talked about a Christian who was obsessed with men spanking their monkeys and this week we’ll turn to some Christians that are obsessed with men spanking their wives.
I’ll keep saying this until it starts happening . . .
How is every womens’ group not also an outspoken atheist group?!?
Well maybe this’ll help: The Christian Domestic Discipline movement’s website goes to great lengths to explain that they’re not a fetish site. So stop asking, damn it. They’re not interested in the type of spanking that both of the people involved enjoy, that’s satanic. They’re interested in the type of spanking where men physically abuse their wives until they do as they’re told… but only if it’s consensual, of course.
Right, because biblically, the women you marry, and the blacks you own, are entitled to similar privileges. Except the black aren’t guaranteed the consensual part . . . And really neither are the women.
Yeah, God doesn’t do consensual.
We should get down there and hand out some atheist-themed rape whistles.
Maybe setup some womens’ crisis centers called “Planned Penetration”. We probably won’t get bombed by evangelicals.
I’d be worried about them discovering and attacking our secret podcast HQ here in New York City, but the atheist trolls at each bridge into the city ask a series of logic riddles that slow-witted theist spies never seem to answer correctly.
Which is nice, but it fucks traffic on the GW all up.
The CDD Lifestyle also advocates other forms of infantilization and punishments like time-outs, writing sentences like “I won’t disobey my master” and being humbled by (quote) “some sort of nude humiliation”. But, and I can’t state this enough, this isn’t about being an abusive, misogynistic, felonious, psychopathic, cowardly, demonic piece of shit that should have his head drilled open and his cerebrospinal fluid sucked out by poisonous leeches wrapped in barbed wire because Jesus.
Christian group promotes spanking your wife: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/06/19/spanking-for-jesus-inside-the-unholy-world-of-christian-domestic-discipline.html
And on that mental image, we’ll close out headlines tonight, Heath, thanks again for joining me.
Fantastic time.
And when we come back, Lucinda will join us to regret suggesting we all read the bible.
Calendar:
It’s time once again from the Atheist Calendar portion of the show. This is the now monthly portion of the show we set aside to talk up some of the atheist, skeptical and otherwise secular events going on around the country and around the world… only this time just around the country.
On the weekend of July 4th (and for our international listeners, July 4th is the day that Americans celebrate the 4th of July), the Skepchicks will be taking over the Science & Skepticism Track at ConVergance in Minneapolis. Not sure about the rest of the conference, but the Skepchick part looks awesome. Rebecca Watson and her team of Skeptical female superheroes team up with PZ Myers which would make for an awesome conference and an even more awesome comic book.
Of course, the big one gears up on the 11th in Vegas. It’s called The Amazing Meeting, and if you’re listening to this podcast you’ve heard of it, so all I’m gonna say is if you register before the 1st of July it’s $125 cheaper.
http://www.amazingmeeting.com/
But if Vegas is there and you’re here, perhaps you can make it out to SSA East, the other half of the Secular Student Alliances bicoastal conference extravaganza this year. Except that it’s in Columbus, Ohio, which certainly isn’t coastal. So if you’re secular and you’re a student, it starts on the 12th and runs through the weekend.
https://secularstudents.org/2013con/columbus
And finally, I wanted to toss out a plug for the CFI’s upcoming leadership conference in Amherst, New York on the weekend of the 25th of July. If you’re a student and have any plans or aspirations to start a skeptical, secular or freethought group on campus, CFI is a phenomenal resource.
You’ll find more details about this conference and all the other events I just outlined on the shownotes for this episode at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.
Poem:
NUMBERS IN RHYME
by Noah Lugeons
1 is the number of gods and he gives
2 shits about who gets killed and who lives.
3 times Balaam and his donkey have spats
be-4 god starts talking out of that Midianite’s ass.
5 chapter in things get scary for chicks,
6-tuff’s prescribed if they’re getting side-dick.
And 7’s for resting unless you need stones,
To break some stick gathering heathen’s skull and his bones.
8 too much Manna? Should you voice your critiques?
God will plague you and kill you, but he’ll send quail for weeks.
And that asi-9 bastard may invoke some damned clause,
To show you what a 10-uous promise that promised land was.
11 Tribes conscribe all their fighting age men,
but the 12th tribe (the Levites) just carry the tent.
20 is war-age, but like most things, you’ll notice,
The tribe that’s exempt is the one that has Moses.
30 Days mourning when god kills Aaron on high,
Then 40 years waiting for all the bad jews to die.
50 percent of this book we spend bored
Counting jews and the booty they offer the lord.
We get a couple of censuses from all of the tribes,
Enumerated offerings are in detail described,
As the name would suggest, the book’s obsessed with amounts,
But no number gets higher than god’s body count:
We could start with the animals, who are killed by the score,
Each time the tabernacle opens its doors.
Bulls, rams and donkeys, pigeons and sheep,
And a pile of quails about three cubits deep.
Israelites? Oh yeah, he kills them by the thousand.
He opens the earth and swallows whole houses.
He burns their encampments, sends serpents and plagues,
And what heinous encroachments elicit god’s rage?
Being hungry or thirsty, doubting Moses’ clout,
Going to the tabernacle once the candles are out,
Being honest when scouting, gathering sticks,
Complaining to Moses and acting like dicks.
Whoring with Moabites, lighting incense all wrong,
Being treated like shit and not just going along;
Thinking manna tastes nasty, being slow to obey
Or living in cities that stand in his way.
But it isn’t like God is always a villain;
When he orders Moses to murder all the Midianite children,
He says if they’re virgins and if they behave,
He can spare the young women and keep them as slaves.
Holy Babble:
The Book of Numbers rests between two of the most notorious books in the bible and, perhaps because of that, it doesn’t get as much attention as Leviticus and Deuteronomy. And sure, Numbers doesn’t have the homophobic flare of Leviticus or the “Thank God the Pentateuche is over” satisfaction of Deuteronomy, but if you were to insert it into any other book ever written, Numbers would almost certainly be the most fucked up portion of that book.
But mostly it’s just a horribly boring book that details one leg of the trip from Sinai to the promised land, punctuated with moments of brutal insanity that might just be there to keep you awake. Joining Heath and me to discuss this strange little hybrid of bookkeeping and genocide is my beautiful wife Lucinda. Lucinda welcome back.
I’d say I’m happy to be here, but after reading Numbers, I don’t think god would want me saying that without getting my husband’s permission first. So I’ll just say hi.
Yeah, this is probably the most sexist book we’ve come across yet and we’ll get to all of that. But first things first. If the jews are gonna take over the holy land, they’re gonna need an army.
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Right, so we start with the original Schindler’s Enlistment.
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Then they lay out the structure for the Judaism pyramid scheme, or Tetra-Hebron.
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“Why are the Levites at the top of the pyramid, considering they already run the IRS? Because they used all the goat taxes to become job creators. Somebody has to start the game with the reds and oranges, plus all 4 railroads.”
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And on top of that, none of the people in Moses’ tribe have to join the army and when they camp in the wilderness, they get to set up their tents smack in the middle of 11 armies.
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Would you want rabbis in the front lines of your army? No, you want badass, Israeli-Commando-type Jews like Adam Sandler . . . Not pale, bearded, shitty drivers that started the Crown Heights Riots by running over a black pedestrian.
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And of course, god needs money to go with his army.
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Right, so in chapter 3 Aaron loses about 1365 shekels in a card game, and sets up the most ridiculous, elaborate, nonsensical story to get the money back, from his flock of ancient nomadic tribes that apparently all carry reasonable amounts of fungible hard currency at all times.
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“So technically, 273 extra babies that should have been righteously murdered.
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Which sounds a lot like an endorsement for abortion.
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No it’s not abortion right after birth – that’s just righteous murder.
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“What had happened is, God was gonna kill all your kids, but me and my family of 22,000 agreed to live a life of purported divine privilege, in exchange for saving them. But you all had 22,273 firstborn children, so God’s gonna need 5 shekels apiece for the accounting discrepancy. Us Levites will collect the cash here and write God a check.”
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Then we get god’s overly-elaborate Tabernacle relocation strategy. Basically he spends chapter four channeling a foul-tempered old lady with alzheimer’s bitching at the moving guys.
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“I said wrap it in blue cloth! No, I want the Gershonites to carry the curtains! And careful with those lamps or I’ll incinerate you with fireballs!”
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And then we get started with the sexism. In chapter five we learn how to tell the if your wife’s been fuckin’ the goat-milkman using nothing but some dirty water, a handful of flour and misogyny.
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The old grain offering dirty water miscarriage trick. Seems like this was just a way for dudes to save face when they had a slutty wife. Having her drink dirty water might make her sick, but I’m fairly certain it’s never led to an instantaneous immaculate hysterectomy. So every time they do the ceremony, the dude doesn’t look like an asshole, because his wife’s womb doesn’t fall out on the spot.
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Yeah, I was expecting them to break out a scale and a duck at any moment.
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Then we get the rules for the vow of the nazirites, which is spelled “Nazi Rites” which kind of fucks me up in the middle of a Jew book.
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In chapter 7 God shamelessly ups the word count by spelling out the exact same 90 word sacrifice 12 fucking times!
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The Levites shave all their hair and pubes and become elevated in the eyes of the Lord.
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In chapter 9 we learn that god’s a cloud and don’t forget that Passover’s coming up.
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Then god adds a brass section and they’re ready to go conquer the promised land.
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If I’m being a stickler, God should have asked for brass, plated with silver, if he wanted a fuller timbre for those trumpets . . . Nobody’s perfect.
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As soon as they hit the road, the Jews start bitching because they don’t like Manna and they want some meat.
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Couldn’t god have solved the meat-shortage by not demanding so damn many sacrifices?
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Sure, but I guess this was supposed to be some grand punishment for not appreciating the triscuit rain, but not too impressive.
- “Hey, do you guys have a 3-foot-tall pile of quail in your yard? Ok, I guess since we’re NOMADIC, we just eat a bunch now . . . maybe not so much that quail actually oozes out of my nostrils, but a lot . . . and then start heading toward the next place on Moses’s desert obstacle course.”
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Yeah what the fuck was he trying to say there? Did angels force feed their asses like Kevin Spacey’s character in Se7en.
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And God was like, “Shit, yeah that doesn’t smite them much at all-AND PLAGUE!!! I said the quail thing AND PLAGUE!!! Nobody heard me, but I had said “and plague” at the end as I trailed off.”
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In chapter 12, Aaron and his wife talk shit about Moses so god makes her a leper for a week.
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And when Moses asks God to go easy on her so she doesn’t turn out like a stillborn baby with it’s flesh half eaten off, he justifies making her skin rot off by saying, “If her father spit in her face, would she not be shamed for 7 days?” Oh, well when you put it that way…
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Next we meet Double “O” Shiv’a scouting out the promised land and they say that all the people already living there are too strong for all the quail engorged Israelites to displace.
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And then God throws one of his patented temper tantrums and kills pretty much everybody for bitching too much. He curses their children, he sends a plague, he marched an army out to die.
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And as if that’s not enough, he “unpromises” the promised land to everybody but Joshua and Caleb.
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Yeah, it’s the part of the act where the hypnotist removes all the free-thinking non-sheep from the stage, leaving only the blindly faithful idiots who are truly qualified for Judaism.
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And then in chapter 15, right in the middle of some proper goat-killing etiquette, we learn that Moses and the gang find a guy picking up sticks on the Sabbath so god commands them to stone him to death.
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And in a whiplash inducing subject change, in the next verse after the stoning, God reminds them that he likes fringes on the outfits, so don’t forget to add fringes.
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“So seriously, it may sound somewhat contradictory, but no faggots on Saturday, and tassles for everyone!!! Also, lest ye forget, I’m fucking God.”
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Then we get a weird little mutiny. Some other Levites challenge Moses’ leadership so he challenges them to an incense burning match to the death.
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“What?!? I’m not clearly high priest because of actually talking directly to God?!? Take out your censers bitches . . . I’ll outsmoke anyone.”
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“Bitch, you light incense like Michael J. Fox on meth! You call that a grain offering? I’ve got more fiber in my stools.”
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So God goes fucking nuts, opens the earth to swallow whole families along with their slaves and furnishings, he burns 250 people alive and then he kills fourteen thousand more with a plague.
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And I must say, god is a total badass about it. He says “Moses, step away from those dudes.” And Moses says “Why?” And God says, “So I can burn them to death with giant fireballs.”
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Right… so why they didn’t all just stand really close to Moses is beyond me.
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Anyway, just in case the house swallowing, fireball chucking, plague sending message wasn’t clear enough, God also has Moses write everybody’s name on a stick and only Aaron’s stick grows flowers.
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In chapter 18 we reinforce the “the priests get all the best shit” motif.
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And in 19 we kill cows and we don’t touch dead people.
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In chapter 20 God kills Moses’ brother for expressing a slight hint of doubt. And in the serial-killer-fashion I’ve learned to expect from deities, he doesn’t just plain murder Aaron, he makes his son watch his naked father die, and then walk back down the mountain wearing his murdered dad’s clothes.
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Then God continues to be an asshole and sends a bunch of poisonous serpents to get the Jews to stop bitching… then finally Moses goes on the warpath and starts killing some motherfuckers.
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And then in chapter 22 there was some kind of biblical writer’s strike so they had the folks from Disney step in for a few chapters, because all of a sudden everybody’s breaking into song and there’s a talking donkey.
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And didn’t Balaam seem strangely nonplussed by it? He just carried on a conversation with his donkey like it was nothing.
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Well he thought he was speaking to god earlier, so a talking donkey is far more plausible.
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So basically the story here is that Balak is trying to get Balaam to go to war against the Israelites, but Balaam knows god’s on their side so he spends a couple chapters refusing… in song.
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^^
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^^
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Then we get another census because, holy shit, it’s been almost twenty two chapters since we counted all the jews.
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Well God had killed a lot of them since then.
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Then we spend 3 chapters going over old shit, but we do finally learn what we’ve suspected all along; God’s been cheating on Moses with Joshua.
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^^
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^^
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In chapter 30 we learn the difference between man vows (must be kept) and women vows (must be kept unless a man says so)
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Yeah, just in case the “women are inferior to men” thing wasn’t clear by now, God hammers it home one more time.
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Then they go to war with the Midianites and slaughter them. All the men of fighting age are killed. Moses is furious… because they failed to kill the women and children.
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“I’m not getting God to divinely inspire our army, for you guys to not fully murder, pillage, and rape everyone. I’ve gotta be a stickler on this, or my boss yells at me and he’s always watching. You either murder them . . . or you rape them . . . or both in either order . . . Understood?”
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Easily the most disturbing moment in the narrative so far.
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Then, thanks to the cattle-rustlin’ Reubenites and Gadites, Jews start a long and storied tradition of building settlements in other people’s land.
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Then we get a chapter that rehashes every spot where they camped for the last 40 years.
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Riveting.
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Then they divvy up the promised land (before actually possessing it)
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The first use of short selling.
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God takes a minute to spell out exactly what is and isn’t “murder”. And can I just say, I love the whole “city of refuge idea”… we should totally bring that back
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It would make a great setting for a Nicolas Cage movie.
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And we finish with a soft close concerning inheritances and marriage.
So what do we learn in Numbers? We learn, first of all, that God’s a wrathful, vengeful, abhorrent, petty tyrant.
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Well . . . we re-learn.
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We learn that women are worthless
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we learn that donkeys can talk, we learn that genocide is a-okay
And we learn that anybody who read the first four books of the Bible and didn’t become an atheist needs to work on their reading comprehension skills.
So Heath, Lucinda, thanks for suffering through this with me.
We’ll take a couple weeks off of the Holy Babble, but we’ll all meet back here to break down Deuteronomy in episode 22 for those of you playing along at home.
Outro:
Before we shut off the lights tonight I wanted to respond to a slight criticism recently posted in an otherwise extremely complimentary review. Mr “Something Clever About God” appreciates the toilet humor, the 30 minute format and overall production quality, but offers the following critique:
“The commentary is more ‘witty’ than ‘laugh out loud funny’, so Heath and Noah could use more snickers and less belly laughs”
First of all, thanks for the rating, but I do want to take issue with that minor objection. Every laugh you hear on this show is genuine and Heath and I would never pretend to laugh at one another’s material and we certainly wouldn’t laugh at jokes that we wrote for the other guy and we certainly wouldn’t cut and paste genuine laughs and drop them into the audio later and I’m certainly not lying right now and it’s certainly not obvious.
We also need to take a few seconds to recognize this week’s most vivacious, tenacious, loquacious, sagacious, perspicacious, papilionaceous, gracious, curvaceous and hellacious people, Benjamin and David, who proved themselves worthy of the kind of praise that can only be fully expressed by Googling “words that end in A-C-I-O-U-S, removing the ones that are insulting and then adding a really obscure term for “butterfly like” by giving us money.
Only the most intelligent and sexually virile specimens of human excellence have what it takes to give us money, but if you think you can live up to my verbose laudations, you’ll find the donate button on the right side of the homepage at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.
And if you love the show but you lost all your money betting on Scotus outcomes, you can still help out by telling a friend about the show or leaving us a glowing 5-star review on iTunes. I should point out that as of this recording we have 68 reviews so there’s still time to be the sexually significant 69th reviewer if you’re into that sort of thing.
I need to thank Heath and Lucinda for joining me tonight and Remy G for providing this week’s Farnsworth quote. This is normally the part where I’d tell you that you should check out his awesome Facebook page called “Fuck Your Fucking God, You Ignorant Blinded Dumb Fuck”, which totally makes this podcast sound PG and had an awesome avatar of a nude Jesus giving you this “Hey baby, I’ve got enough orifices for everyone” look, but I can’t because Facebook is run by a bunch of cowardly pube-waxing assholes who took down his page because religious people have fragile feelings and his words make them cry.
So since they won’t let him say it, I’ll say it, “Hey religious assholes on Facebook, fuck your fucking god, you ignorant, blinded dumb fuck.”
Anyway, that’s all the blasphemy we’ve got for you this week, but we’ll be back in 168 hours with more. If you can’t wait that long, you could always check out our erratically published blog and like (slash) subscribe (slash) follow us on Facebook (slash) YouTube (slash) Twitter. You can also find our archives at Scathing Atheist (dot) com or you can help us bump up our Stitcher ranking by downloading the Stitcher App and listening to us there.
If you have questions, comments or death threats, you’ll find all the contact info on the contact page at Scathing Atheist (dot) com. All the music used in this episode was written and performed by yours truly and yes, I did have my permission.
The Scathing Atheist 
Live Blogging the Bible: Deuteronomy 12:31
by Noah Lugeons
God loves a good genocide.
I can’t help but feel like they’re going out of their way to make this god character an asshole so that it’ll be more cathartic when he’s redeemed, but I’ve gotta be honest, even with 61 books to do it, I’m not sure if there’s any way they can make me like this guy.
So in chapter 12 god reminds us why we can’t realistically entertain the “moral guide” notion of the bible by spelling out all the good reasons to thoroughly destroy every member and memory of the cities they’re all about to ravage. This is late in the chapter after a thrilling and detailed reminiscence about proper meat-eating etiquette.
God’s explaining why you shouldn’t worship any other gods or even know about how other people worship, which he reminds us of no fewer than infinity times in the book of Deuteronomy. And in an apparent effort to soften the blow of killing women and children, livestock and slaves, then burning homes, buildings, temples, possessions, clothes and any remnant of a civilization to the ground, Moses takes a minute to remind us just how horrible these societies are:
My first thought was of Abraham taking ol’ Isaac for a midnight stroll so the actual depth of the irony of this passage took me a second to process. God’s in the middle of telling them to kill all of these heathens, even the children. Their god is telling them that they have to burn their enemy’s children because their enemies would burn their children for their god.
But it’s totally still divinely inspired, though…