Archive
Live Blogging the Bible: Numbers 5:11-31
by Noah Lugeons
Numbers is a tricky book. It rests there in between Leviticus and Deuteronomy, two of the most notorious books in the bible, and yet it manages to have very little reputation at all. It’s known for boring lists and the titular numbers, but little else. And you can read a few chapters in without seeing much more than that. It tries to put you to sleep with all the census lists and exact recounting of sacrifices, perhaps with hopes that you’ll overlook the talking donkey.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. I started this book off with no real idea what to expect and for the first four chapters I was starting to worry that we’d have nothing interesting to talk about in next week’s “Holy Babble” segment. And then I reached chapter five and we got something so weird it could fill the whole 9 minute segment if we wanted it to.
This is essentially a biblical Montel Williams recipe. If you want to know for sure if your woman has been faithful, apparently there’s just one way to know for sure and it’s outlined in detail for 20 full verses of Numbers, Chapter 5. Now, I’ll skimp a bit on the details, but essentially the process breaks down as follows:
- Take your wife to the temple along with a tenth of an ephah of flour.
- Get some water, put some dirt in it and muss up your wife’s hair.
- Say a magical incantation over the dirty water that turns it into adulteress poison.
- Make her drink it.
If she’s been faithful, she’ll be fine. If not, apparently her womb will fall out, she’ll be in horrible pain and she’ll never conceive.
Despite the divine seal of approval on this method, I suppose it’s easy to see why it fell out of favor. Obviously today’s women are much harder to talk into drinking dirt, but beyond that the price for finding out she’s been banging the UPS guy is pretty high. I’d kind of rather not know than have my wife’s womb fall out. But I suppose that’s just a by-product of the sissification of my secular lifestyle.
Episode 18 – Partial Transcript
by Noah Lugeons and Heath Enwright
Sponsor:
Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Sony’s new Pray Station Portable Pocket Placebo: When you need to credit random events to a nonexistent force and a sugar pill isn’t enough, reach for the Sony Pray Station.
PSPPP – Because Sony wouldn’t sue God, would they?
And now, the Scathing Atheist:
Intro:
It’s Thursday, it’s June 20th and we’re still waiting on that God fossil.
I’m your host Noah Lugeons and from the perpetual parade that is New York, New York, this is the Scathing Atheist.
On this week’s episode,
-
It turns out they did make a good Superman movie… in 1980,
-
The Pope will continue to suck at the infallibility thing,
-
And Dan from Thank God I’m Atheist will join us for a little “Faith No Mormon”
But first, the Diatribe…
Diatribe:
Even in a city as diverse as New York, an atheist can still apparently be a rarity. I learned this while fighting crime the other day when a co-worker approached me to ask about this podcast. She’d heard from one of the other masked vigilantes that I was an outspoken atheist and she was curious. She’s one of these people that was raised with religion, accepted it without any real devotion and never really bothered to question it.
To these folks, the idea of atheism is completely foreign. God’s there because he was always there and why wouldn’t he be there?
She said she had a million questions, but since we were both on the clock, I asked her to narrow it down to one. And from her bouquet of inquiries, she plucked one that perfectly encapsulated how little she understood about the atheist worldview.
“Don’t you want to live in a world where you’re part of something larger than yourself?”
Of course, three words in she’d already fucked up. I don’t base my beliefs on the world I ‘want’ to live in, I base them in the world I do live in. To suggest otherwise betrays not just a lack of understanding about atheism, but a lack of understanding about understanding. It isn’t a rejection of a world without an afterlife or a loving god or a divine plan. Rather it’s a recognition of such a world.
But that’s not even the dumbest thing about this question. Now I’ve heard it before so I didn’t give her the blank faced glacial blink that it deserves, but I couldn’t give her the answer that she deserved either. I didn’t have enough time to explain the vastness and limitlessness of the universe I’m a part of. Or to elaborate on the modest role I’m playing in the enormity of history. Or to expound on the profundity of working my way through a world while authoring my own path.
From the perspective of a theist, the universe exists for them. It was brought into being for them and the billions of light years that surround them is just a decoration. What’s more, the grandest knowledge will never be known and the grandest knowledge that ever will be known is already known. The purpose may be mysterious, but the goal is established. The further the theistic mind wanders from the center of god’s love, the smaller and less significant the cosmos becomes.
But for a mind unleashed by the wonders of science, I know that from one perspective I’m an imperfection on a speck of dust and from another I’m as grand as a galaxy. I know that every cell in my body is born of billions of years of evolution and that their key elements are older still, forged in the hearts of stars too massive to comprehend.
When I raise my eyes to the heavens I’m no less in wonder of them than a person who looks there to see god. When I see a dim star nearly invisible amid the endless curtain of space I think of the journey those photons took along their epic voyage to our night sky Thousands or millions of years ago they were ejected from the boiling surface of some nuclear furnace at the speed of light.
Did they pass by some distant world along the way? Were they part of some beautiful alien sunrise before they got here? Did they narrowly miss a spacecraft from some species thousands of technological years beyond our own? Did they pass by some rogue planet drifting through the abyss of interstellar space? What astonishing marvels might they have happened by on their million year pilgrimage to my eye?
But the wonders of science aren’t limited to the grandiose. I can find that same awe when I look down at a community of ants or into a drop of water. I find that wonder when I contemplate the mundane because I know that the mystery isn’t any less beautiful because it’s solved. I look at the rainbow and I find that I admire it more because it was unweaved. Magnets are more fun when you do know how the fuck they work.
She asked me if I wanted to be part of something larger and by that she meant some tiny little god that rules over some tiny little fraction of some tiny little world. The product of tiny little minds from the distant past that had never tasted something as grand as a light year; a fiction conjured by an imagination that couldn’t begin to comprehend how big the cosmos truly was and how small they were in comparison.
But I didn’t have time to tell her all of this because somewhere out there, my arch-nemesis was plotting something counterintuitive and unnecessarily complicated so I had to settle for a short answer:
In the third episode of Cosmos there’s a phenomenal bit where Carl Sagan is answering questions for a bunch of kids at his old elementary school in Brooklyn. One of the kids asks him if the sun is considered part of the Milky Way and he gets that smile that teachers get when they get to tell you something you’ll never forget. He nods and he says, “You are considered part of the Milky Way.”
Headlines:
Joining me for headlines tonight is my fellow empiricist, Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to continue being angrily correct?
Indeed I am. Also, you haven’t had any introductory announcements, so . . .
Anchoring the headlines as always is my fellow disbeliever in the evidently non-existent, Noah Lugeons. Noah, are you ready to begin your systematic weekly skewering of the bumbling, theist masses?
There’s only one way to know for sure…
In our lead story tonight, Warner Brothers might have found a use for churches after all; captive-audience marketing. With “Man of Steel”, the latest Zack Snyder computer generated, testosterone-vomit of a film hitting theaters this week, Warner Brothers wanted to make sure it had all the marketing angles covered, including sending “discussion guides”, “sermon notes” and a special “faith-friendly” version of the trailer to pastors all over the country.
Nobody can sell bad fiction like the Christian church.
Ironically, the “Superman” title should really belong to God’s eulogist, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Which makes one wonder whether Hasselhoff might have been a better casting move.
I agree. He would have made a way better Lois Lane than Amy Adams. Now, if you’ve seen the movie, you’ll have noticed that you don’t really need a preacher to point out the heavy handed Jesus allegories in the movie and if you haven’t seen it, (spoiler alert) it sucks.
Wait, wasn’t Superman created by a couple of Jews?
Yeah, but to be fair, so was Jesus.
So how overboard did they go on the Jesus stuff?
Couple of examples:
-
Young Superman asks his stepdad “Did God do this to me?” and Jonathan Kent responds “You have another father and he sent you here for a reason.”
As shitty a director as Snyder is, he might have done that by accident.
-
When an image of Superman’s Krypton dad says, “You can save them all,” Superman stretches out in a crucifixion pose, despite the fact that he’s floating through a jagged hole in a spaceship at the time so it’s kind of a counter-intuitive arm position.
Yeah, but they could’ve been referring to any crucified savior.
-
Superman, at age 33, is wrestling with a moral dilemma in a church. Behind him is a stained glass window with an image of Jesus wearing a red cape. The scene climaxes with the priest explaining that sometimes you just have to take a (quote) “leap of faith”.
I don’t know, that’s a pretty tall building.
-
The bad guy’s hench-girl says, amid mid-battle banter, “There’s no point in fighting, evolution always wins.”
To be fair, I did learn two things from watching this movie. It doesn’t matter if you can tell what’s going on, as long as you know it’s an action sequence and you should always take the 3D glasses off before facepalming.
Warner Bros. pushing “Super-Jesus” at the pulpit: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/06/14/superman-coming-to-a-church-near-you/
Moving on to a news item that isn’t just me bitching about a crappy movie, Pope Fran-Sista-Please admitted last week that there was a (quote) “gay lobby” in the Vatican. In the seemingly weekly ritual of the Vatican trying to somehow distance itself from the Pope’s declarations, the Pope-wranglers have this time opted for the “That shit never happened because you don’t have it on tape” defense.
Well I’m pretty sure gays don’t show up on video or in mirrors, so . . .
To be fair, this report comes from a private meeting between the Pope and a group of Latin American Catholic leaders so nobody at the meeting was trustworthy, but rumors of an increasingly powerful gay-lobby within the Vatican have been gaining legitimacy ever since the Vatileaks scandal.
The gay-lobby, also known as the Fudge PAC, has indeed come from behind, and has now managed to widen and deepen their impact on those assholes in Washington. I guess they’re tearing it up inside the Vatican now too.
It would also explain who was hiring all those male prostitutes. This would represent the first official confirmation of such a lobby, except that it isn’t official and it isn’t confirmed.
Seriously?! The reports that some Catholics might be gay is being called “unconfirmed” ?
“I can’t say for sure, so let’s not get cocky and call this ‘confirmed’, but is that a priest’s dick in my son’s ass? And now out of it . . . And now in it again.”
“I could swear that’s a . . . Take a look at the this angle here . . . Is it safe to say that my son was ‘unofficially’ gay raped by that priest who had his penis out in the video?”
What?! Gays?! Here!? Wearing these clothes?
Just because of all that holy seed on the walls?
And I love that they justify their paranoia by noting that Cardinals and Bishops engaged in gay relationships would be vulnerable to blackmail. Well, yeah, but not if you stopped being a bunch of queer-hatin’ rednecks about this shit. See how that works? If you stopped being bigots, they wouldn’t be afraid of your bigotry, right?
Pope Francis admits to “gay lobby” in the Vatican: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/06/11/pope-francis-gay-lobby-exists-inside-vatican/
And in other “It’s a gay! Kill it!” news, Danielle Powell, a lesbian student at Grace University in Nebraska was recently expelled for being a lesbian student at Grace University. Citing the general ickiness of gays, the Christian college gave her the boot only a few months before graduation.
Lesbians aren’t gay in the evil sense of the word. I thought everyone had agreed to a perfectly legitimate double standard on this. Gay bad, lesbian good.
The bible says nothing at all about women lying with women… I think it’s okay for women to masturbate as well, as long as they don’t squirt. But as much as the Omaha school hates gay people, they don’t seem to hate gay people’s money, as Powell received a $6000 bill from the school for matriculation. What’s worse is that it wasn’t tuition she owed them for the semester or anything. This was for reimbursement of federal loans that she’d only lost eligibility for because the school kicked her out.
And Grace University receives federal funding, yet somehow doesn’t have to follow federal anti-discrimination laws.
Yeah, according to the Department of Education, schools “controlled by religious organizations are exempt from some federal requirements that might conflict with the organizations’ religious tenets.”
So the spirit of the law is:
You can’t hate the homos… unless you cite your sources. “It’s not that I hate fags, as you can see here in this bronze age goat-herder’s manual, the omnipotent universe creator hates fags.”
It’s worth pointing out that in addition to their “no being in love with an unapproved gender” rules, this school also has rules against students having premarital sex, kissing on campus or even, prolonged hugging. Yes. This school has a policy about the acceptable duration of hugging.
Sounds like they’re pretty tight-assed . . . rosary anal beads might help.
Yeah, but then you’ll never get rid of the gays.
Lesbian expelled from Christian college for being a lesbian; charged tuition anyway: http://news.yahoo.com/christian-college-expels-lesbian-charges-tuition-233514855.html
And in “Uh, Uh, Uh, You Didn’t Say ‘Jesus Says’” news, 64 year old Margaret Doughty, a UK citizen who has spent more than 30 years living in the US was recently denied citizenship based on the non-religiousness of her morals.
“You can’t REASON OUT your belief system. If you do that, new information could change your opinion. All of a sudden we’re talking about open, rational discourse. This isn’t some sort of parliamentary democracy, you limey logic snob.”
Exactly. What’s worse is that this is really just a punishment for being honest on the paperwork. Among the questions she was asked was one of her willingness to take up arms in the defense of the country. We’re talking about a 64 year old woman so she could have just said, “Sure, what the hell”. But instead she opted for full disclosure.
Her answer read, in part, “Since my youth I have had a firm, fixed and sincere objection to the participation in war.” Now, this is a perfectly acceptable answer as long as you finish with, “Because it would make the baby Jesus cry.” But you’re not allowed to just find killing people in the name or regional conflict wrong; it has to be against your religion.
“It’s okay to have a fancy watch that works, but only show it to Christians twice a day. Don’t be an asshole.”
So based on her honesty and her unwillingness to pretend to be religious for the purposes of dodging the granny-draft, she was ultimately denied her bid for citizenship.
This really pisses me off. If we don’t let the British immigrants in, who’s going to correctly pronounce all the words that Americans don’t want to correctly pronounce?
Woman being denied citizenship for having non-religious morals: http://dividedundergod.com/2013/06/14/woman-being-denied-citizenship-because-her-morality-doesnt-come-from-religion/
And in “magical hat” news this week, the Quebec Soccer Federation was recently suspended by the Canadian Soccer Association because apparently both of these groups exist. The suspension was in response to a recent international uproar against Quebec for its failure to lift the long standing ban on wearing Turbans during matches.
In fairness, the “towel header” maneuver, does give an unfair advantage. Plus, these teams don’t need to employ a towel boy.
Those are both valid points, but instead, they cited safety concerns, which supporters of wearing magical hats point out is pretty silly, as soccer players all over the world wear turbans and there’s no record of turban-related-injuries. Of course, the Quebecois can’t just come out and say, “No because fuck people in turbans” in so many words.
Right, because Quebecois can’t speak English.
And according to people in France, they can’t speak French, either. Now I know a lot of atheists are on the fence about stuff like this and I understand it, because there is an element of xenophobia to some of these burka-ban type moves. But I for one support any move that denies some special privilege to religious people on the merit of what their imaginary friend demands.
At least the Jews are sensible enough to avoid similar yarmulke-related issues by entirely avoiding sports as a group.
Quebec bans soccer-players wearing turbans; idiots outraged: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/soccer-ban-on-sikh-turbans-leads-to-backlash-against-quebec/2013/06/14/63f30292-d523-11e2-b3a2-3bf5eb37b9d0_story.html?
And finally tonight, Rick Perry is a callous, misinformed, obtuse, asinine, fallacious, babbling, unthinking, dogmatic, sectarian zealot. And his mother dresses him funny.
And in breaking Rick Perry news, he thinks Texas needs to replicate the success of the TV ad that made New York City into the financial center it is today.
“Texas doesn’t suck because of all the shitty, racist, rednecks. It’s because we never put out an infocommercial. Everyone loves infomercials. Remember how well Ross Perot did?”
We first talked about Texas’s so called “Merry Christmas” bill back on episode 15. This bill essentially acts as an impediment to secular challenges against unconstitutional religious displays in schools and on public property. The bill sailed through the house and senate and could hardly land all the way on governor colostomy-hose’s desk before he signed it into law.
During the bill-signing extravaganza, in his tireless campaign to make George W. Bush look good in comparison, Perry was actually quoted as saying, “Freedom of religion isn’t freedom from religion,” to which secularists all over the country responded, “Yes, the fuck, it is.”
Yeah, freedom of religion is freedom to one religion. Exactly. You can’t go having no religions. We’re not hearing any of that shit.
The number of religions you are free to have shall be an integral number not equaling or exceeding 2, and not equal or less than 0.
And three is right out!
Nice
Thanks, but this asshole makes it pretty easy. He might as well have said, “Freedom of peaceable assembly don’t mean the cops have to peaceful.”
Right, “The first amendment isn’t a license to yell ‘fire’ in the middle of a burning building.”
Rick Perry signs “Merry Christmas” bill; says “Freedom of religion isn’t freedom from religion.” http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/06/15/gov-rick-perry-religious-freedom-does-not-mean-freedom-from-religion/
Well that does it for headlines tonight, Heath, thanks for joining me.
And when we come back, Dan from the Thank God I’m Atheist podcast will join us and teach me the secret Mormon handshake.
Outro:
Before we close things out for the night we need to take a few seconds to recognize the magnanimity, intelligence and pulchritude of this week’s best people Jason, Anne, Michael, Lindsay, Benjamin and Bryan.
Jason, the sharp-witted demolition expert with a heart of gold; Anne, the exotic and deadly master of disguise; Michael, the devastatingly brilliant computer genius with a black belt; Benjamin, whose sharp tongue and rugged good looks are urban legends in 14 countries; Bryan, whose indispensable wisdom is almost as valued as his katana skills and, of course, Lindsay, the fearless and brilliant leader of the team. Together, this duo of trios is known notoriously throughout the halls of villainy as the Fantastic Six, the Dirty Half-Dozen or sometimes the Hexa-Decimators. They’ve all earned our admiration and gratitude by taking bold steps to keep the world safe from stupidity by giving us money.
Not everyone has the magnificence and biological acuity that it takes to give us money, but if you share Jason, Anne, Michael, Lindsay, Benjamin and Bryan’s altruistic commitment and intellectual refinement, you’ll find the donate button on the right side of the page at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.
And if you’d like to help but you’re money is yours damn it, you can also help us a ton by swinging over to iTunes and leaving us a good review there. Every review makes a big difference and it’s a great way that you can help us expand our audience. It also takes, like, 9 seconds and it’s free.
I also need to re-thank Lindsay (yes, the fearless leader) for providing this week’s Farnsworth quote. I’d also like to take this opportunity to apologize to 51% of the world’s population for it taking 18 episodes for us to have a woman’s voice doing the quote. I also want to plug Lindsay’s very cool Facebook page, “Have You Hugged an Atheist Today?”, which you’ll find linked on the shownotes for this episode. Her and her sister run it, they always manage to find some funny stuff and they get good discussions going on the big issues, so I strongly encourage you to check it out.
https://www.facebook.com/HaveYouHuggedAnAtheistToday
And hey, while you’re there, you might as well like the Scathing Atheist page as well. And then go to Twitter and follow us there. And then go to YouTube and subscribe to us there. And then go to the blog and subscribe there. And then go to Stitcher and listen to our archives there.
Lastly tonight, I want to thank Lucinda for the bible lesson, Heath for the color-commentary and, of course, Dan from the Thank God I’m Atheist podcast. He and Frank have one of the best produced atheist podcasts out there. They’re funny, well-informed and they provide a really important voice to the movement so I strongly suggest you give them a day in court as well. Again, you’ll find a link on the show notes. And while you’re there, you can hear an extended version of the interview on our “Extras” page, along with a bunch of other cool extra stuff.
Thank God I’m Atheist Website: http://www.thankgodimatheist.com/
Thank God I’m Atheist on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/thank-god-im-atheist-podcast/id481105796
Thank God I’m Atheist on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TGIAtheist
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.
“Messiah of Steel” – A Movie Review
by Noah Lugeons
I’m a fan of movies, but I won’t pretend to be qualified to critique them. Sure, in the “everyone’s a critic” sense, I can tell you if I liked a movie (I usually didn’t) and why (or why not). But I’m not going to be able to comment intelligently on the cinematography or the score or the nuances of the performances. But I like to think of myself as something of an expert at critiquing irritating Christian themes that sneak their way into otherwise non-Jesus-things, so it is in that capacity that I’d like to take on Zack Snyder’s latest in a series of brain-splitting computer-generated testosterone-vomit films, “Man of Steel”.
This is the same guy that brought us “300”, which you’ll recall for its endless sequences of computer generated abs moving in alternately really slow and really fast motion. This is the same guy that managed to stay relatively true to the graphic novel when he made “Watchmen”, but still somehow managed to make it suck. And now Warner Brothers has given him Superman to artistically rape.
I was nervous as soon as I saw that Snyder was attached to the picture, but I hoped that producer Christopher Nolan would be there to hold his leash and keep him from fucking it up too bad. And while I hated everything beyond the first 30 minutes or so, I’m sure that Summer audiences will eat this crap up with a spoon and we’ll be treated to a couple more of Snyder’s feeble attempts at film-making in the inevitable trilogy to come.
So the big summer blockbuster Superhero movie sucked. Not exactly a blog worthy occurrence. I’d have left my bitching on Facebook and Twitter if it weren’t for all the heavy handed, brutally overdone Jesus allegories that plagued this movie that was managing to suck plenty enough by itself without Jesus.
I should admit up front that I’d already been researching a story about how this movie was being marketed to Christians, so I did go into it looking for the Jesus stuff. I was primed to find Jesus allegories and I did. But Zack Snyder has never been accused of subtlety and I’d venture that blind people who were hard of hearing could have picked up on the Jesus allegories in this flick just by smelling the print.
And before I’m accused of projecting these onto the film, let me give you a couple of examples of what I’m talking about (and don’t worry, no spoilers):
- Superman is conflicted. He’s sitting in a church talking with a priest. The priest is telling him about the importance of sometimes taking a “leap of faith” in something you don’t trust. When we see Superman, the background is a stained-glass window of Jesus wearing a red cape. When we see the priest the background is just a big crucifix.
- Superman is in a spaceship and he punches the wall out. A friendly character tells him “You can save Lois,” and then, as he continues the line with the words, “You can save all of them”, Superman holds out his arms in a crucifixion pose for no fucking reason at all and floats out into space. He holds this pose, which is completely pointless and counter-intuitive when one is floating through a jagged hole in a spacecraft, for a couple of seconds in case anyone was looking down at their popcorn.
These were the worst offenders that I noticed, but there were plenty more.
So one can’t help but wonder why all this Jesus crap got stuck into a Superman movie. Is Superman a particularly Christ like character? You’d have to really stretch to say that he was. Sure, he performs miracles and he’s moral, but Jesus can’t fly and Superman can’t make wine. Plus, martyrdom is sort of the key to the Jesus thing and Superman doesn’t die. Is Superman more Christ-like than Spiderman or Martian Manhunter? I think not.
Christ allegories aren’t really a signature of Snyder’s work. This movie had all the things we’ve come to expect from Zack; more CGI than reality, long and horribly unsatisfying action sequences, a crappy script, a disappointed audience… but where’s all this Jesus coming from?
I can’t help but feel that ultimately it was a marketing ploy and the way that the film is being marketed through churches backs me up on this. The studio wagered that if they got the Christians talking this movie up they’d make a lot of money even if it sucked (and it did). They saw all those Passions dollars rolling in and they said, “why go to the trouble of making a good movie when you can just make a good preview and stick some Jesus stuff in there?”
Sadly, they’ll win the bet. I absolutely hated the movie, but I’m sure I’ll be in the minority. I’m sure I’ll spend the next month hearing how it was “almost as good as the Avengers” (a sentiment I actually agree with, but that’s another story for another day) and everyone involved in making the Jesus gambit will see it pay off. And in the sequel, I’m sure Lex Luthor will be the anti-christ and in the third one Braniac will nail Superman to a kryptonite cross.
This isn’t much of a problem if it’s just the Superman franchise they’re fucking up with it. But we do have to consider the consequences if this becomes a trend. Will we get more religious figures sneaking their way into super hero movies? Will the Hulk ride upon a winged horse? Will Ironman force all his servants to get circumcised? Will Wonder Woman immaculately conceive? Will Will Gleek the Monkey die for our sins?
It’s hard to imagine that there’s a way to make the “superhero” genre suck more, but it’s comforting to know that they’re working on it.
Looking to Heaven for the Answers
by Noah Lugeons
The other night I was standing on my back porch and glancing up at the thumbnail moon. New York City is likely the worst place in the world to live for an astronomy buff, but on a clear night we still get eight or nine visible stars. I glanced from the moon to one of them and I found myself in a familiar reverie.
I don’t know what star I was looking at or how far away it was, and odds are that if it was bright enough to see through the New York light pollution it was way too big to harbor intelligent life, but I found myself imagining it anyway. Perhaps there was a tiny ball of rock floating around that distant star that had at least the first dustings of unicellular organism. Perhaps spinning around that celestial furnace was the answer to whether or not we are alone in the universe.
And of course, perhaps there was more. Perhaps this star was home to some intelligent species; one that might have grown elsewhere and now colonized a small patch of atmosphere somewhere around the point of light I was glancing up at. In fact, it’s possible that on their way to my eyes, those exact photons had passed right by some being with an intellect I cannot fathom.
Floating around that star or some other there might be a species that has figured out the cure for illness, the secrets of interstellar travel, the antidote to war. Perhaps when our ancestors lifted their eyes to the Milky Way and hoped for knowledge, the knowledge was actually up there to be found.
Theist or atheist, we all look to heaven for the answers. Science has a better track record of actually finding them so I’ll bet on them. But I often think of these reflections when religious people claim that science robs you of your sense of wonderment. When I look to the heavens, I’m in no less awe than they.
Episode 17 – Partial Transcript
by Noah Lugeons and Heath Enwright
SPONSOR:
Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the new brand of Biblical shampoo, Seconds Acts Brain and Body wash. Our maximum strength indoctrination formula is powerful enough to wash away IQ points.
Hell, by the time we’re done with you you’ll be buying shampoo with vitamins in it. Like your hair can metabolize vitamins…
And now, the Scathing Atheist.
INTRO:
It’s Thursday, It’s June 13th and I can prove that if I have to.
I’m your host Noah Lugeons and from pre-apocalyptic New York, New York, this is the Scathing Atheist.
On this week’s episode,
-
A high school valedictorian will boldly stand with the many against the few.
-
American Atheists will give the devil a place in Florida to rest his cloven feet.
-
And the New England Patriots guarantee us at least one more season of Tebow jokes,
But first, the Diatribe.
DIATRIBE:
There’s an apologetics tactic that seems to be gaining popularity of late. This one isn’t showing up in any formal debates, mind you. This one is reserved for the “infantry” of religious debaters, the drooling ass-hats that you find commenting on You-Tube videos and trolling Reddit. It’s a tactic I call “God, the ingredient-less sandwich”.
It goes like this: First, I, the apologist, upon seeing your blog post or YouTube video or whatever, tell you how wrong you’ve got it. Then I offer a definition of god that is so vague and meaningless it would make Deepak Chopra blush. By the time I’m done, I’ve defined god to be absolutely nothing. He’s a sandwich with no ingredients. He’s “all things” or he’s “the transcriber of physical laws” or he’s “the part of us that knows the divine” or he’s “innate sense of goodness in each and every one of us.”
And then you, the counter-apologist, have nothing to argue with. Sure, you can point out that if the term “god” just means “all things” then there’s no point in the term “god” because clearly we both agree that “all things that exist” exist. You can point out that if, by god, I don’t mean an all-knowing, all-powerful, omnibenevolent, all-creating, conscious force, then I should probably come up with a different word to use, since that’s what the rest of English has decided that the word “god” means.
But I’m never wrong. Because whatever you say about god, I’ll just exclude from my definition. Let me give you a real world example:
I do a segment on the blog called “Live Blogging the Bible” where I jot down some of the craziest shit in the book as I come across it. Among the passages that inspired a blog entry was the one in Exodus where Moses outwrestles god by calling upon the magical powers of his son’s penis wreath.
So some theist pops on and gives a response along the lines of “Tee-hee, yeah, this part is really silly. But boy is that book still really, really divine though. Like, really, really importantly, sacredly, divinely inspired. But tee-hee, yeah, the individual passages are really silly.”
This has been a pretty common criticism of the whole “Holy Babble” segment. A Catholic friend of mine told me I was missing the point of Christianity by focusing on the bible. Who reads Leviticus, after all? I felt obligated to point out that Leviticus is the one they use to justify the homophobia thing so, you know, it matters. But as I’ve said before that’s not the point of the segment. We’re not out to “disprove” the bible or offer a textual critique. We’re here to point and laugh and make dick jokes about it.
So I respond, he responds, I respond. He seems overwrought by the fact that somehow his innocent defense of the bible on a website called the “Scathing Atheist” turned into a debate. He gives me his ingredient-less god in the form of “I don’t claim to know all the answers like you atheists do. I don’t claim to know what god is. I’m just open to the possibility and believe that it’s true.”
Well bully for you.
And this “liberal” defense of theism; this “I’m open minded and you’re not because I’m willing to believe logically incoherent things and you aren’t” defense really pisses me off. It brings out the worst in me. These nearsighted fucktards defend some wishy-washy, intangible notion of religion and because of that, they think they can wash their hands of all the bad shit religion does.
Religion starts wars. Yes, but not my type of religion.
Religion oppresses women and gays. Yes, but not my theological bent.
Religion opposes science. Yes, but not my vision of god.
It doesn’t fucking matter, jackass. If you’re setting out to defend “god” against the atheists, you don’t get to just defend your gelatinous definition, because that’s not the only one I’m attacking. Yes, it’s bullshit, too, but it’s not the only bullshit. You’re involving yourself in a social movement and if you win, you don’t just win for your little slice of your side. You win for every homophobic, misogynistic, child indoctrinating, anti-science, anti-education, anti-abortion, anti-equality fucktard who wears the cross. And I think it’s worth noting that there are a hell of alot more of those Christians than there are of you.
Keep in mind that I’m not talking about what you believe. Believe whatever you want. I might make fun of it, but I really don’t give a shit what you believe. I’m talking about what you choose to publicly defend; what you choose to put the weight of your intellect behind.
So eventually this commenter writes me off under the label of “religious intolerance”. What, like that’s supposed to be an insult? I’m wear the “religious intolerance” label pretty proudly. I spent about 40 hours a week being actively intolerant of religion and the rest of my time being passively intolerant.
The fact is that these would be apologists are defending the side that makes good people kill other good people. To that I simply say, “You should be ashamed of yourself. You’re not, so I’m ashamed of you for you.”
HEADLINES:
Joining me for headlines today is my freelance confessor Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to hear my sins?
As long as you don’t show me video again, like the one when you <<<Bleep>>> all using just the one cup.
I was young and I needed the protein.
In our lead story tonight, churches around the country celebrated their unconstitutional and illegal tax exemptions last Sunday by telling the IRS to go fuck itself. Yes, once again it’s that time of year; the time of year when preachers and pastors and priests go in front of their congregations, deliver politically charged addresses that prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that their tax exemptions are unlawful, videotape these sermons and send them to the IRS.
This doesn’t set any unreasonable precedents. I’m pretty sure the Confederacy still does slavery one day a year. Although I doubt they send the videos to the White House.
They call this ritual “Pulpit Freedom Sunday”, and it’s a reaction to that miswired portion of the Christian brain that sees “unrivaled societal privilege” and calls it “persecution”. By law, churches lose their tax exempt status if and when they endorse a political view. As their exemptions are based on the antiquated notion that a church’s primary function is the public good; using that institution to endorse a candidate or tell parishioners how to vote on an upcoming proposition is a clear violation of that societal contract.
The tax exemption for churches is especially egregious to me. Religious groups taken as a whole, own about 7% of habitable land on the earth. In this country, they don’t pay property tax on any of that. Lots of shenanigans where personal homes are somehow also tax exempt houses of worship, but nobody lets me in when I knock really loud late at night wanting to pray.
And somehow, that’s not enough for over 1000 religious leaders across the nation. They feel that they deserve tax exemption just because “up yours”. What’s more, they shouldn’t have to do anything to earn it, they shouldn’t have to conform to any laws or regulations and they should get a magical pony.
They’re already getting away with this. Having their sky-cake and eating it too. Churches are getting the exemptions, and they’re clearly helping organize votes for politicians that share their distaste for science.
“All you have to do, is shut up and take your impossibly over-generous status. Just don’t make a sex tape showing your greedy dicks in the taxpayers’ asses”
And yet they can’t manage that. They instead opt for the “do somethin’ muthatucka” approach. They provide the IRS clear evidence that they’re in violation of the law and dare them to act on it. The IRS, herein referred to as “Religion’s prison bitch”, responds by doing absolutely nothing and continuing to allow these leeches to flaunt their refusal to abide by even the most cursory attempts to limit their undeserved dispensation.
Christianity prefers syrup, and the IRS has obliged.
I also find it interesting, that without batting an eye at the thick ropes of irony on their face, the Christian vote went to Romney, whose religion defines marriage less like “one man and one woman” . . . and more like the porn industry.
Pulpit Freedom Sunday: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/06/09/today-is-pulpit-freedom-sunday-when-christian-pastors-dare-the-irs-to-revoke-their-tax-exemption/
And in “It’s-Just-a-Bench-You-Bloviating-Condom-Malfunction” news, we turn our eyes to north Cuba, also known as south New York City also known as the national death-queue, also known as Florida. This story begins with a six ton granite monument sitting in front of the Bradford County Courthouse in Starke, Florida, proudly displaying a list of secular values like “Thou shalt not kill” and “Thou shalt have no other gods before me”.
Now that god’s dead, can we have other gods after him? There’s gotta be some good midrash about this . . .
Anyway, maybe they’ll be able to find a Christian church somewhere in Florida. A place like that might be able to use six tons of propaganda to put out front.
And when American Atheists challenged the legality of it that’s probably what they should have done. Instead, they opted for the “fix-slavery-by-making-everyone-a-slave” approach and said that it was fine for Christians to put a monument up because anybody could put a monument up. So the atheists opted for the second best solution and offered a monument of their own.
This is great, because a whole bunch of Christians are going to be terrified of the secret Trojan Horse Satan sculpture us vile secularists are conjuring up.
Unfortunately they set aside your “Trojan Horse Satan” proposal and opted instead for a 1500 pound granite bench adorned by secular quotes from the likes of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Madalyn Murray O’Hair. And, in an effort to complement the existing ten commandments structure, it will also include a list of Old Testament punishments for violating said commandments, including being stoned, beaten or burned to death.
Fantastic – I’m sure the Christians will appreciate a nice homage like that built into the otherwise entirely demonic bench.
Actually, in a stunning display of cognitive dissonance, Christians are outraged. They manage a paradoxical simultaneous outrage that someone would dare to question the legitimacy of a monument endorsing a particular belief system and that someone would dare to assert the legitimacy of a monument endorsing a particular belief set.
Probably the same mental trait that allows them to engrave the words “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven images” without recognizing the irony. And again, there are thick, arcing ropes of irony in the room.
Atheists give satan a place to rest his cloven feet: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jun/7/atheists-set-unveil-first-public-monument-florida-/
Our next story takes us to Liberty, South Carolina, a town known for it’s upscale retailers like Family Dollar and nothing else. Because that’s honestly the only store in the whole fucking town.
Situated about 30 miles from anywhere you’d ever intentionally be, Liberty was home to a recent row between the ACLU, the FFRF and a bunch of Christian turd nuggets that liked to open their city council meetings with prayers.
We’ve been circulating that memo about the 1st of those 10 particularly important amendments since around Christmas of 1791. I know these people aren’t the most intelligently designed beings, but come on…
Yeah, you’d think they’d have heard it by now, but not so for high school valedictorian Roy Costner. Incensed by the sudden political pressure from folks what ain’t ever from ‘round here, Costner decided to use his valedictory speech to send a clear message against the ACLU and their damned Constitution of these United States.
Costner sounds like he’s bound for greatness. Valedictorians from Liberty are pretty much guaranteed admittance to North Northwest South Carolina Community College, and that’s like the Oral Roberts of North Northwest South Carolina community colleges.
And Costner proved that he’s got what it takes to stand in the proud ranks of North Northwest South Carolina’s fightin’ Fry Cooks by cleverly employing a surreptitious tactic called “lying”. He submitted one speech to the school for approval but then, upon taking the podium, dramatically ripped up his prepared speech and instead offered the Lord’s prayer. Because he’s an asshole.
“I had this whole speech prepared, but <DRAMATIC RIP> I’m going to improvise something entirely original . . . Follow along if you know the words . . . Our Father…”
What we have here is the specter of Christian persecution once again rearing it’s imaginary head. This podunk redneck can’t see beyond the Wal Mart on 93 up toward Greenville and actually thinks he’s part of the oppressed minority. The fact that nobody can get elected to national office in this country without swearing fealty to Jesus somehow fails to permeate his shell.
When a town in the pioneer Confederate State is called Liberty, the Christian white dudes there ABSOLUTELY DO NOT get to complain about oppression.
Douche-bag valedictorian delivers prayer for speech: http://www.christianpost.com/news/interview-valedictorian-roy-costner-iv-on-ripping-up-his-approved-speech-reciting-lords-prayer-97552/
And in the “There-are-only-atheists-in-foxoles-because-we’re-not-discriminating-hard-enough” news, the House armed services committee recently struck down a measure that would have created humanist chaplains to serve the near one in four American soldiers who have no religious affiliation.
Those atheist soldiers should have thought about this before they went and died before finding the lord. Of course the chaplains don’t tell the surviving parents that their atheist child is in hell outright. But they’re required to at least address how nice heaven would have been if they weren’t atheist, which is always awkward.
Arguing that humanists chaplains don’t believe anything, Republican pubic louse John Fleming of Louisiana said that humanists would make (quote) “A mockery of chaplaincy,” adding that if an atheist chaplain had to tell a family that their child had died they would tell them (quote) “You know, that’s it. Your son’s just worms.” And then he corrected himself by adding, “I mean, worm food.” Because he was too stupid to be that stupid correctly the first time around.
“You can’t talk to people about death without mass opiates to distribute.”
But don’t worry, it’s not like republicans hang their political hat on loving the troops or anything.
Also, to be fair, not all pubic lice are Republican Christians.
House Armed Services Committee kills humanist chaplaincy bill: http://www.goddiscussion.com/110407/house-armed-services-committee-kills-humanist-chaplain-amendment-for-military-service-members-by-a-vote-of-43-18/
And in military news this week, Jesus has declared war on the porn. We know because Pastor Jay Dennis told us so, and if anybody knows about the use of pornography, it’s apparently Pastor Jay Dennis, of Lakeland, Florida, whose infatuation with pornography has become his life’s work.
Well he’s gonna run into some opposition from the pastor-bation campaign known as “BCB” or “Bishops Choking Bishops”. They argue that if priests were to be denied access to porn, you might start hearing about rape scandals one day.
Even though he totally doesn’t stroke his own dick because, you know, that’s sinful, he presents himself as something of an expert on the sinful autoerotic stimulation of penises. He also doesn’t look at porn and only knows so much about it because he has vowed to obsessively take on the evil specter of pornography even if it means that he has to think about naked people fornicating all the time, day and night, forever.
Yeah I only go on the internet for the articles too. The reason that typing any single letter will autocomplete to a porn site is because I get my news on those sites.
Pastor Dennis is calling his single-minded preoccupation with men fondling their own genitals, “One million men porn free” and to end the evils of pornography, he often spends upwards of 16 hours a day thinking about all those poor men stroking their engorged, throbbing cocks; occasionally choking themselves a little bit at the end or maybe working in some ass play.
The fact that we can’t blow ourselves clearly disproves intelligent design. And the fact that we keep trying anyway indicates even less intelligence.
Calling pornography (quote) “the new bubonic plague in the church”, Pastor Dennis vows to figuratively “beat” every bishop that doesn’t take on the evils of pornography. To figuratively choke every chicken that doesn’t have the guts to take on this issue. To figuratively spank every monkey that covers its ears, eyes and mouth to the problem of pornography.
He should look into my new browser censorship software called “Stroke Ward”
Something about “Hand of God Job”
Pastor seeks one million porn-free men: http://www.christianpost.com/news/so-baptist-convention-2013-one-million-men-porn-free-among-featured-programs-at-annual-meeting-97526/
And in this week’s crucifix masturbation report, former Catholic student and current second cumming joke waiting to happen Valerie Dodds enraged officials at her former school, St. Pius X High School when she published nude videos of herself on school grounds masturbating with one of those little Jesus on the cross action figures that Catholics like so much.
We need to get this girl on our staff . . . And we should hire her too.
Basically, she just out scathed us by a mile; we just got served . . . We might need to dance back. “So you guys do a podcast about atheism? . . . That’s pretty cool . . . I just broke into a house of worship and came on the messiah’s face . . . Your move assholes . . . “
And then she just dropped the mic and walked off stage.
And while we here at the Scathing Atheist have occasionally been guilty of failing to fully vet our stories, you can bet your ass that I researched this one until I ran out of lotion. Because she’s smoking fucking hot. And she’s got a crucifix in her vag.
This is a way better take on the “pussy riot” concept. So did she cum or what?
I never made it that far into the video, honestly. She was later cited for public nudity for the stunt, so Dodds retaliated by returning to the school dressed in nothing but the legal minimum of a pair of panties and nipple covers, because she apparently entered the world by first escaping from a fourteen year old’s wet dream.
Also a 31-year-old’s wet dream during a post-shit nap earlier today.
Monsignor Perkinton, a representative of the school told the media that the school would respond by praying for the young woman. And I’d like to think that when you have a 19 year old porn star constantly showing up at your door in her panties, you should be done praying.
Her site should be called porn-huskers.com
Now that we’re not really on the subject, Jesus works well for several fetishes. My favorite is post-crucifixion necrophilia combined with the stigmata orifice thing. Any chance you have a snappy title for that genre? Must make pun . . .
A dirty Cristos? The holiest of holies? A wrist-job?
Former Catholic student breaks into school to videotape herself masturbating with a crucifix: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/06/07/nebraska-catholic-school-praying-after-former-student-masturbates-with-crucifix/
That does it for headlines tonight, Heath, thanks for joining me.
And when we return, we’ll be back.
SKIT:
Narrator: In the beginning, there were two gods. And while many know the story of the more ambitious brother, Jehovah, only a few know the story of his twin brother Mikey. Both were gifted with omnipotence, but only Jehovah was gifted with ambition.
This is the story of Mikey:
(angelic choir, door opening)
“Whoa! What the hell is that?!”
I call it light.
Well… don’t you think it kind of blows? I’m blinded over here.
Oh, bro, you haven’t seen anything yet.
That’s cause I’m fuckin’ blinded.
I’ve got a whole plan… heavens, seas, animals…
Dude, unless this is at least tangentially related to Super Smash Brothers, I’m not interested.
Mikey, this is really important stuff.
(dismissively) Whatever, man. I’m going to bed.
Narrator: And as Mikey slept, his brother continued with his momentous plan…
(Snoring sounds, Splashing water)
(grumbling) Now what?!
(Sloshing through water, door opens and closes)
What the fuck are you doing?
I call it water.
Well, you think you could make it suck a little less?
Don’t worry, I’m going to create solid ground next.
Well can you hurry the hell up? It’s kinda hard to sleep with all this churning and rolling and salty crap getting sprayed in my face.
Yeah, I should be done with the ground tomorrow sometime.
Tomorrow!? What’s wrong with now?
This is a lot of work, bro. I promise… I’ll get to it as soon as I can. I’m still separating all these seas.
Fine… just hurry the hell up.
(door slams)
Narrator: And on the second day, Mikey rested… And on the third day, Mikey continued to rest. And on the fourth day he mostly just smoked bong hits.
(Bong sound effect)
PART TWO:
Narrator: Four days after the first intrusion of Jehovah’s light, Mikey awoke within a sealed wooden enclosure he’d used to avoid his brother’s twisted machinations. Beyond the wooden walls he could hear strange sounds and his curiosity eventually bested his lethargy. Mikey ventured once more into Jehovah’s new creation.
(Door opens)
Yo, Joey!
(mutters) My name’s Jehovah
I’m digging that big orange ball of flame… it’s nice. I’d have put it a little higher up, but hey, that’s just me.
It actually rises and falls back over on that side. It moves kind of slow. I’m trying to get it to exactly 24 hours but it’s a pain in the ass.
How close are you?
I’m within a minute.
Close enough.
(mutters) Isn’t that always your answer…
Loving what you did with the sky, little bro. Little white patches floating by… nice touch.
Clouds, I call ‘em. You should see it at night. I did stars and everything.
Nice. So what are you planning with this whole thing?
(slightly maniacal laugh) Well… I still gotta finish the moon, but then the next couple days I’m working on animals.
What the fuck are animals?
Little living, sentient things that’ll eat each other and compete for limited resources. It’ll be fun to watch.
Sounds like a pain in the ass. Are you gonna take care of all those things? You know… take ‘em for walks and stuff?
Nope. They’re on their own in a cruel world, bro. But hold on, I haven’t told you the…
Wait… a cruel world? Why would you create a cruel world?
Cruelty will act as a lesson about the vastness of my power. I’ll creating suffering so that they can enjoy bounty in its absence.
That doesn’t make a lick of sense.
No… it does. See, you can’t have good without evil.
Yes you can. You’re omnipotent, remember? You can have anything you want.
Anyway, don’t worry about it. That’s not even the best part. I haven’t told you about ‘man’ yet.
(skeptically) What are mans?
Men.
Okay, what are mens?
No, man, but when you pluralize it, you say ‘men’.
This is already weird and you haven’t even told me what they are.
I work in mysterious ways, Mikey.
Whatever… fine. So what are ‘men’?
Okay… this is so cool… They’ll be like little versions of us. My own image and everything. And I’ll give them free will and I’ll stick them in a garden paradise…
Well that’s nice of you. I was afraid…
… but I’ll put a tree in there with really delicious fruit on it and I’ll tell them not to eat it and when they do… and you know they will… anyway, when they do, I’ll curse them for all of eternity.
… what?
And then I’ll fuck with ‘em for a few centuries and totally remove myself from their world. And if they don’t believe I exist after that, I’ll condemn them to spend eternity burning in a fiery pit.
What’s a fiery pit?
It’s something I’m going to create just to be a miserable ass place to spend eternity in.
Um …Why?
Because I want them to see how awesome I am. They’ll love me or they’ll burn in hell in an unending orgy of tragic pain for all of time. It’ll be great!
Dude… you’ve lost your fucking mind. I’m sorry to just lay it out there like that, but you’re fucking crazy. That’s the weirdest shit I’ve ever heard. Seriously… I should create mental asylums just so I could lock you in one.
Go ahead. See if you ever figure out how magnets work, dick.
Narrator: God turned his back on his brother and Mikey retreated to his ark to play some video games. It would be centuries before he came out again and by then, his brother had so irrevocably fucked up his experiment that he’d simply given up on it and moved on to a new project.
Thus ends the gospel of Mikey.
OUTRO:
Before we snuff the candles this week, I wanted to respond to a few concerns a fan of the show raised on an otherwise very complimentary review on iTunes. Il Divertente points out that the show is funny, well-written, thoughtful and great, all of which are true. He then goes on to share two minor irritants:
One is my persistent mispronunciation of atheist as atheist instead of atheist. He or she is, of course, correct and as she or he is not the first person to point it out, and I hope he or she noticed the concerted effort I’ve been making to get it right. I’ve got a bit of a lisp I have to work around and there’s something about the word “Atheist” that always trips me up.
The second concern was that of my hidden identity. He or she correctly points out that my name is not actually “Noah Lugeons” and wonders what I’m hiding from. Well, Il Divertente, I would direct your attention to another person who hid behind a secret identity and redeemed humanity through his suffering. And that person’s name was Batman.
Now clearly, Batman had a way cooler car than me because who needs a car in New York, but I think we can all admit that Noah Lugeons is a way funnier pseudonym than Batman.
I should also point out that if you’d like to unmask the Scathing Atheist, an easy way to find out my secret identity is to give us money. Because of the way paypal sets up its donation system, everybody who donates to the show actually sees my name on the confirmation email they receive.
Which brings us to a quick recognition of the unparalleled awesomeness of this week’s most exceptional carbon based lifeforms, Richard and April. Already among the pantheon of the world’s greatest people for having donated to the show in the past, these two transcendently admirable and admirably transcendent individuals have earned a spot within the pantheon of the pantheon by doubling down and donating to our show not once but twice.
We make a lot of jokes about pretty much everything, but we are truly humbled by the generosity of our listeners and thanks you sincerely, even if it means having to be sincere for a few seconds. If you, too, would like to join the pantheon of the world’s best people, you’ll find the donate button on the right side of the page at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.
And if you want to help but all your money is tied up in Linguini-based energy, you can always help us out by leaving us a glowing review on iTunes, telling someone about the show and then forcing them to download it at gunpoint.
That does it for us tonight but we’ll be working hard to earn another half hour of your life next week. If you can’t wait that long, be sure to check out our erratically published blog, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook and subscribe to us on YouTube.
I want to thank Heath for everything he does to make this show possible. I also need to thank Lucinda for narrating the skit and putting up with the mostly unpaid second full time job I’ve decided to take on. I also need to thank Wesley from Atheist Nomads for providing this week’s Farnsworth quote. He’s got a really fun and rowdy podcast going on over there. If you haven’t checked it out yet, I highly recommend you give him and Dustin a day in court. You’ll find a link to their podcast on the shownotes for this episode.
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 your truly and yes, I did have my permission.
A Non-Trivial Problem
by Noah Lugeons
I’ve been trapped in an endless and ultimately pointless debate on this blog for over a week now. It all began when a pseudo-theistic pseudo-apologist commented on one of my “Live Blogging the Bible” posts with something that amounted to
“Tee-hee, yeah, this is a pretty silly part of the bible. I agree. But still, man is that book incredible and divine.”
Of course, I haven’t read the whole book and have barely crested the “preface” stage, but I still have to take issue with this assertion. The book cannot be more than the sum of its parts. If there are any genuinely meritorious parts of the book, one would still have to weigh them against the unscrupulous horrors in other parts of the book. And honestly, the rest of the book would have to pretty damn good to make up for the misguided anti-morality of the first three books.
The crux of the apologists argument was that my cursory reading of the bible was worthless as I wasn’t taking the time to understand it in context. I was also focused only on the bible and not the rich theology that has evolved through the ages. Christianity, he argued, is not the bible. The bible is just a starting point and the theology of the faith had advanced so much since the days of Moses’ foreskin aided wrestling match.
I pointed out that it’s not really possible to say that theology “advanced”, as one can no more say that theology of today is in accordance with the divine than the theology of yesteryear. It’s like talking about a breakthrough in homeopathy or phrenology. If the endeavor has no measurable value, it can’t be said to advance. Advance suggests a destination.
Instead of answering that charge, my esteemed opponent instead accused me of “religious intolerance” as though I did not boast of it. He suggested that I’d simply divided the world into the good people who are against religion and the bad people who are in favor of it. It was a thinly veiled charge of anti-theistic bigotry that rested on my continued insistence that without a goal one can draw no nearer to the goal. How dare I be so intolerant of people making bold and demonstrably false truth claims while insisting that they’re point of view should be respected and accepted without the burden of evidence?
This is a common tack from the “liberal” theist (and by liberal I refer here to their theology, not their politics). Atheists are bullies that are every bit as dogmatic as the believers. We’re intolerant of religious people (which is true) which means we’re just like the Muslims who are intolerant of the Jews (which is bullshit). They, on the other hand, are agnostics with a property-less god and the only honest position: self-imposed ignorance. We should just live and let live and who cares if fundamentalists stand in the way of science or oppress gays or mistreat women? That’s not religion’s fault.
It is an intellectually dishonest position and what’s more, anyone smart enough to take this position is also smart enough to see why it’s bullshit. Religious extremism is (as the name would suggest) simply a point on the spectrum of religiosity. Some people have benign tumors but that doesn’t mean tumors aren’t a problem. Fundamentalism is a problem that (a) all religions share and (b) cannot be found outside of a religious context. This would suggest that fundamentalism is a necessary byproduct of religion. And it really doesn’t matter what a bunch of Muslim scholars say about peace and love if the true believers are hacking people to death in the streets.
This is not a “live and let live” situation. This is a situation that demands intolerance. Religion is a non-trivial problem.
No rational person would wish for the destruction of the world. Such a proposition is as irrational as any you might propose. What’s more, no person irrational enough to wish for the destruction of the world could possibly acquire the means and assistance he or she would need to make it happen. While technology does give us the means to global catastrophe, it is hard to imagine that anyone with the stated goal of world destruction could find anyone willing to lend a hand. Sure, a clever statesmen could use nationalism and deceit to trick enough people into helping him, but the very nature of logic forbids any large scale attempt to bring about the end of one’s own species.
But, of course, if logic can be removed, there is no such safeguard. If one can be convinced without evidence that a whole different universe exists after you die that is way better and way more important than this petty world, you could overcome your natural survival instinct and happily march the planet toward the apocalypse that your god has promised you.
No doubt the liberal defender of theism would roll their eyes at this nightmare scenario. They would pretend it is ridiculous. They would pretend that there aren’t large, organized, multi-national groups with exactly this goal. They would pretend that somehow reason can prevail amid a group that has outlawed reason.
And of course they would. They have to. They can’t accept that the same thing that gives them their own personal love-Jesus might also have a dark side. And they certainly can’t accept that the dark side eclipses the bright side.
Religious extremism is just religion without constraint. No religion has ever voluntarily tempered itself. No religion has ever neutered its own power. It is the job of the secularist, the job of the scientist and the job of the atheist to castrate religion every time it thrusts its scrotum into the rest of the world. As fond as religion is of mutilating it’s own genitals, they still leave that job to us.
Adventures From the Bible Belt
After reading the post I wrote the other day about people sending me their stories, my wife felt the urge to share her own. As a rational person sentenced to an adolescence in the bible belt, her atheism was born of one of religion’s uglier and more terrifying faces; that of the Southern Baptist.
My Run in With Religion
by Lucinda Lugeons
Episode 16 – Partial Transcript
by Noah Lugeons, Heath Enwright and Lucinda Lugeons
(Note: Transcript may contain material edited from the final episode for time purposes)
Sponsor:
Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the new brand of perforated Catholic Condoms, Kingdom Cum. These confusingly labeled condoms are no more contraceptive than cheesecloth, but we’re willing to wager we’ll catch a few drunken fornicators with this ruse.
What, you think that’s immoral? You should see what Catholics do when they take over a hospital.
And now, the Scathing Atheist:
Intro:
It’s Thursday, it’s June 6th and I know Jake Farr-Wharton has already opened up the show once, but the dude sent the quote to me in six different voices and I’m not letting good shit go to waste.
I’m your host Noah Lugeons and from abbreviated NY, NY, this is the Scathing Atheist.
On this week’s show,
-
We’ll add contractual obligation to the list of reasons not to get addicted to meth,
-
I’ll try desperately to come up with another nickname for Pope Francis,
-
And Heath and Lucinda will join me in discovering that Leviticus is every bit as fucked up as you think it is.
But first, the Diatribe.
Diatribe:
I’m sick and goddamned tired of hearing about where people fall on the “Dawkins Scale”.
Before I go any further, I should note that I’m a big fan of Dawkins and I admire his non-sexist parts… he’s like the Benny Hill of atheism in that way. And what’s more, I completely understand the rhetorical utility of his sliding scale of theistic probability. In the hands of a skilled debater like Dawkins, it’s a valuable asset. But in the hands of a lay-atheist, it’s often a hell of a lot less than that.
For those who aren’t familiar with the term, the “Dawkins Scale” refers to a seven point scale Dawkins proposed in The God Delusion. A one on this scale represents absolute certainty that god exists, a seven is absolute certainty that god doesn’t exist. The point he’s making is that atheists generally fall on the “6”, not the “7”. It’s a useful explanation of the fact that atheism is the product of doubt, not certainty.
But certainty appeals to a lot of people, so when Dawkins talks about this publicly there’s often a backlash. People in the media stammer about how Dawkins is uncertain and concedes that there might be a god afterall. They don’t seem to understand that he’s not actually conceding that in any way. They just see two guys in a debate where one is saying he’s absolutely sure and the other’s saying he holds a tentative position that’s in accordance with the observable evidence. Somehow they don’t see this as an idiot vs. a responsible thinker, but rather they see it as confident guy vs. indecisive guy.
In the context of the book and in the context of some debates, employing this scale makes perfect sense. But before we lean too heavily on it, we should probably point out that this scale can also be applied to any other belief. Does gravity exist? Well, I’m pretty damn sure it does, but as a responsible thinker, I’ve got to go with a 6 on the scale, because if convincing evidence arose to the contrary, I would change my mind. I am not an immutable “7”. We could be part of a computer simulation titled “what if there was gravity?”, so as a proper logician I have to carve out a little, tiny, itsy-bitsy “margin of error” on the gravity thing.
Same thing for evolution, right? I mean, just because all the available data suggests and confirms it, that doesn’t mean that I’m absolutely certain beyond the shadow of a doubt, irrespective of future data. I’d have to hold the responsible position of “6” on the scale. But why hamstring oneself in debate by pointing this out only with respect to the thing you’re arguing about?
I feel the same way every time I hear Dillahunty, or anyone else for that matter, talk about Agnostic Atheism vs. Gnostic Atheism. Before we start making this distinction, somebody show me one of these gnostic atheists. Show me somebody who says that no matter what level of convincing evidence could be offered to the contrary, they would never believe in god. Show me somebody who says he would still be an atheist if god appeared in the sky before the whole world at once and said, “I am god, sorry about all the mysteriousness and shit and to prove my godness you’ll note that all the people who had cancer are now cured.” Show me that guy and then let’s start carving atheism up into gnostic and agnostic.
This isn’t just a semantic thing. And it’s not just a “trip-you-up-in-an-argument” thing either. The use of these devices is actually fucking this movement up internally. I can’t tell you often I see atheists offering up false-equivalency compromises with this nonsense. Search “Dawkins Scale” on Twitter and it won’t take long to find an atheist saying something like, “I’ll admit that being a 7 on the Dawkins scale is as ridiculous as being a 1”
What? No the fuck it isn’t! That’s a complete misreading of the point of the rhetorical device. Keep in mind that on this scale, 7 actually represents the thing that is right. 1 represents the thing that is wrong. The point of the Dawkins Scale is to point out the flaw in “Absolute Certainty”. But if you’re going to be absolutely certain of something, it’s still way better to be certain about the thing that conforms to all the known evidence.
Substitute anything else for the god assumption and it becomes painfully obvious. Somebody who is absolutely certain that the earth is round should, for the proper employment of scientific thinking, concede that overwhelming evidence could sway him… from a pedantic, vulcan, it’s-an-oblate-spheroid-bitch point of view. But that doesn’t mean that he’s exactly as wrong as somebody who is absolutely convinced that the earth is flat.
There’s a cat on my lap right now. If I was pressed, I’d admit that it could be a hallucination, it could be a robot, it could be a phantasm from another dimension taking the form of my cat. But if I say, “No, damn it, this is definitely my cat”, it may be technically wrong, but it’s certainly not as wrong as “No, damn it, this is definitely a phantasm from another dimension.”
The problem is with 7 point scales and binary choices like gnostic and agnostic is that there’s no way to truly express the 6.999999-ness of one’s atheism. If god appeared before me right now and we had a twenty minute conversation, I’d assume I’d lost my fucking mind before I’d assume that it actually happened. It would take a hell of alot more than than personal experience to overturn my conviction. I’d need tangible evidence that could be verified by multiple sources and, in addition, I’d need volumes of refutations for the hundreds of logical contradictions his existence entails. I’d need a world-overturning amount of evidence. I’d need an amount of evidence that one can reasonably assume will never exist.
So as to where I fall on the Dawkins Scale, it ultimately comes down to the question of how many 9s you can put after the decimal place before you run out of 9s.
Headlines:
Joining me for headlines tonight is my fellow skeptic, Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to sharpen Occam’s Razor?
Is another old book club making outrageous claims?
I’m starting to think god is worse than Oprah.
In our lead story tonight, Oxford University researcher and author Kathleen Taylor made waves this week when she suggested that religious fundamentalism may one day be a curable mental illness. Now, when you and I hear this statement, the only new information is the word “Curable”, but when the religious folks hear it they’re once again forced to confront the fact that believing in magic people in the clouds is, technically, fucking nuts.
I hope the cure for religion comes out in some sort of weaponized form. I’m picturing a reality dart, and you can heal the radically ignorant right in the side of the neck with a blowgun.
This is only the latest in a long line of academics accidentally forgetting that we’re supposed to publicly ignore the fact that extreme religiosity and mental illness spend a lot of venn diagrams spooning.
Definitely got a shared region in the extra-wide vagina shape. That’s more like scissoring than spooning, I guess.
The media reports it like it’s a scandal and then they dig up a bunch of peacemaker psychologists who dutifully point out that technically it’s not a mental illness until it interferes with your day to day life and at the same time they’ll dutifully not point out that by the same argument believing that you’re Napoleon and your left testicle reminds you to water the house-plants is also not de-facto crazy.
And the Napoleon left testicle belief system is VASTLY more likely to be true than those of any major religion.
Worst thing that happens if insane people become radically orthodox about science is they make an atheist podcast. Nobody’s ever protested a theist funeral, or bombed a fetus rescue clinic, in the name of Darwin or Dawkins.
But don’t worry, it’s not like we’re going to now have a rational conversation about this topic, as the major media outlets have reported that, in fact, the pachyderm droppings on the loveseat were likely man-made and placed there intentionally.
Pay no attention to the Republican mascot behind the curtain, taking a shit on society’s couch.
Could religious fundamentalism be treated as a mental illness? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/31/kathleen-taylor-religious-fundamentalism-mental-illness_n_3365896.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular
And speaking of fundamentalism and mental illness, our next story brings us to Kentucky and Ken Ham’s ailing “Ark Park” where Ham is inadvertently demonstrating the absurdity of the Noah story by showing how hard it is to get an ark of that size built when you’ve got modern shipping channels and $25 million dollars at your disposal.
Well Noah had the old-man strength going. You know how the best softball players are 45-year-olds? Noah did all the ark stuff between the ages of 480 and 600, so unfair advantage.
Plus, Ken Ham probably has far fewer Jewish slaves at his disposal for the project.
In addition to not having enough money to build the ark that will fail to serve as the centerpiece for this not-likely-to-exist theme park, Ham’s team is also not building other Old Testament attractions, including not breaking ground on a Tower of Babel observations deck and not moving ahead on a planned “Ten Plagues” themed ride.
I think they need to reread Genesis 11. They’re constructing a replica of the tower whose construction got god to smite everyone. That’s like re-airing the seizure-inducing anime clip.
Many atheists will remember hearing a lot about this park a couple of years ago when the state of Kentucky agreed to award it huge tax incentives to build it’s testament to credulous stupidity. It would seem now that the “Ark Encounter” has found a clever way to circumvent that controversy by failing to raise the requisite funds for construction until the proposed tax incentives expire in May of next year.
So Kentucky said, “Yeah, you guys can have these huge tax breaks, as long as you can build an impossible boat and an entire infinite tower to heaven before next May.”
Ark Park having trouble: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/31/noahs-ark-theme-park_n_3367579.html?utm_hp_ref=religion
And in “Are-They-Still-On-About-That-Shit?” News, a number of prominent Baptist leaders have called for a mass withdrawal of support for the Boy Scouts of America after they slight and decades overdue backpedaling of institutionalized of bigotry. Arguing that we can’t allow gay people to learn how to tie such good knots, homophobic pastors across the nation are urging their flocks to cut their ties with the Boy Scouts.
“I know this seems like it’s about the gay thing, in the standard cause and effect sense. But we’re just uncomfortable – in general – of a dozen 10-year-old boys and a weird adult in a tent, wearing matching short shorts and ascots. Whether or not there are any actual homosexuals present, it’s just too faggoty.”
Pastor Tim Reed of Arkansas forestalled that argument when he told a CNN reporter that (quote) “It’s not a hate thing here”, adding a bunch of other thinly veiled lies and bullshit that he has to tell himself to continue to believe that he’s not a bigoted anal-wart that cherry picked through one of the most egregiously horrific parts of the entire bible, bypassed laws against tattoos, fabric mixing and crustacean eating and selectively chose to enforce the one line he found that reinforced his hateful bigotry.
“It’s not that they’re gay, it’s that they’re evil BECAUSE they’re gay. It’s all in the book, you can check. Our hands are tied.”
“We’d also be this pissed if they endorsed uncovering your wife’s daughter’s nakedness!”
Sorry Pastor, but it’s still racist when you say hockey players are better than basketball players at water polo.
Baptists plan exodus from Boy Scouts: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/05/31/southern-baptists-to-urge-churches-and-members-to-cut-boy-scout-ties/
And in quasi-constitutional legislative acrobatics this week, we’ve got the state of Ohio hoping to pass a bill that would award high school credits to kids for going to church and learning about how evil gay people are and stuff.
I’d be willing to give PE credit to altar boys, especially if, you know . . . they swallowed.
Proponents of the bill argue that (quote) “It’s an attempt to reinstall some of the same things that made this country great”, which, in the mind of Democratic representative Bill Patmon, include religious indoctrination and rewarding people for knowing things that are wrong. Patmon went on to complain that we’ve taken prayer out of the schools, we’ve separated religious demonstration from learning areas, we’ve taken religious displays out of schools, I mean, it’s getting to where there’s hardly any way at all to exploit the public schools to evangelize.
“Some of these kids are going 7 . . . 8 hours in a row at school, in the middle of December, without seeing a single piece of visual Jesus propaganda. Do the math. You just can’t brain rape kids under these conditions. I thought this was America.”
Opponents of the law point out that giving educational credit for things that aren’t actually “education” kind of defeats the purpose and then they just kind of stare at the proponents and wonder why this isn’t enough to persuade them.
I got my health credits in high school by interning with a psychic chiropractor who cured headaches with leeches. And now look at me. I run a lucrative wishing well business.
Shifty payouts for religion by state of Ohio: http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20130601/NEWS/306010059/Ohio-may-OK-public-school-religion-credits?gcheck=1
And from the “Who-Will-They-Molest-Now?” file, Las Vegas’ oldest Catholic School will be shutting its doors permanently at the end of the academic year. The St. Joseph Catholic School has been instrumental in Vegas’ international reputation as a paragon of chastity and virtue since 1948, but a steep drop off in people gullible enough to entrust their children to Catholics has led to the school’s inevitable demise.
I think it’s telling, that the oldest Catholic school in Las Vegas, is named after Jesus’ stepdad, the patron saint of some other dude fucking your wife…the patron saint of “cuckolded by god’s dick”
Over the past decade about a quarter of all Catholic schools have been shuttered nationwide leading many to believe that god has abandoned us and no longer cares about the travails of mankind, instead focusing his divine attention on beating Contra without using the cheat code.
It’s all about the spreader gun. Maybe the laser near the end. The flamethrower didn’t get the good blast radius effect until Contra 2.
Beating Contra without the cheat code is like god… I’ll believe it when I see it.
Oldest Vegas Catholic school to close permanently: http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2013/may/30/citys-oldest-catholic-school-falls-victim-low-enro/#axzz2UqCW1wru
And in this week’s forecast on international demon activity we find that despite papal intervention, the guy who thought that he was filled with devil spawn is still fucking crazy. Despite the Pope Frankenberry’s exorcism that wasn’t, a wheelchair bound man identified in the press as Angel V. insists that he is still possessed by demons.
Looks like he has a malpractice case, at the very least. They seem to have botched a fairly routine procedure. But I’ve seen a lot of spinals, dude, and it sounds like this Angel guy is a fake.
The fucking goldbricker claims to have undergone more than 30 exorcisms and somehow no matter how much holy water they throw at him while intoning latin platitudes, his clearly malfunctioning brain refuses to be miraculously cured.
What’s the problem, he’s hearing demonic voices, telling him to kill babies and eat them? Everyone get those sometimes, right? We don’t all have to act on them every time.
Instead of responsibly suggesting he seek psychiatric help, prominent Catholics affirm his harmful delusions by saying things like (quote) “the demons that live in him do not want to leave,” and (quote) “God exists”.
Man exorcised by Pope still possessed by demons: http://www.newsmax.com/edwardpentin/pope-excorcism-possessed-angel/2013/05/29/id/506975
And finally tonight, a story that comes to us from Friendly Atheist, prolific author and inaugural Farnsworth quoter Hemant Mehta and his Friendly Atheist blog. It would seem that a couple of parents in Utah have finally found the secret to instilling the importance of good moral judgement on their children: Cold hard cash.
Mother Katie Hughes had her daughters sign a contract that promises a reward of $1000 at the age of 20 if the now pre-pubescent girls can refrain from the use of drugs, alcohol and premarital sex between now and then.
“We’re willing to pay as much as 34 cents a day for you to have a shitty, sheltered childhood.”
Seems like a non-binding legal contract might not be the best way to tackle the subject. Are kids gonna need to start bringing legal counsel to have “the talk” ?
So yeah, setting aside the obvious fact that in another eight years these girls could earn that much in a night by breaking the pledge, one also has to doubt that the paltry sum of a thousand 2026 dollars will remain a sufficient carrot to forestall teen angst.
So, nine days of future minimum wage later . . . or drunken orgasms and cocaine now…
Mother offers daughter $1000 to stay a virgin: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/06/05/christian-mother-to-daughter-if-you-remain-abstinent-until-youre-20-ill-give-you-1000/
And since there’s nothing better to close on than drunken orgasms and cocaine, that’ll do it for headlines tonight, Heath, thanks as always for joining me.
And when we come back, Lucinda will join us to bust open our bibles and dig into the dirty parts.
Song:
After writing poems for Genesis and Exodus, I felt obligated to the Herculean task of capturing the mind-raping insanity of Leviticus in two rhyming minutes. To complicate matters, I used a weird rhyme scheme and upon recitation it had this really awful “middle aged white guy rapping” feel to it.
In an effort to counterbalance that I put a little music behind it, but I want to apologize to any musicians who might be listening. I was really under the gun on this thing so it’s basically A minor and E the whole way.
So without further ado, I present the book of Leviticus in rhyme:
Leviticus in Rhyme:
Let me tell you how to sacrifice a goat, bitch; First you cut it’s throat which,
seems a little mean and maybe more than a little gross, it’s
Nothing when compared to; What the Levites bear through,
Details of the entrails should be plenty enough to scare you.
The fat goes on a pyre; Set that shit on fire,
The smell’s a rancid hell but it’s the odor god desires.
How to kill a bird now; Case you hadn’t heard how,
Twist it’s little heard until it’s dead and when it’s burned, bow.
This is for atonement; Offer no postponement,
Couple jugs of blood is a critical component.
Now a proclamation; Regarding ordination,
light the candles right or you might risk assassination …From the Lord.
Thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not lie,
Thou shalt not do it guy on guy,
Thus unto Moses spoke the Lord.
Let me tell you what to eat bitch; Tell you who to sleep with
Tell you how to burn the heretics about that bewitch.
Tell you ‘bout your penis; And all it’s uncleanness,
For someone all-knowing I’m not much of a hygienist.
Oh, and if it pleases; Quickly on diseases,
Sacrifice a turtle dove if anybody sneezes.
Menstrual blood and semen; Need a lot of cleanin’
Best I never catch you whorin’ with all those goat demons,
Tell you ‘how to shave, man; Who you can enslave, man,
Tell you how to stone the motherfucks who misbhave and,
If you disobey me; I will not just slay thee,
Many generations I’ll be all up in your game, see …I’m the Lord.
Thou shalt be pure, thou shalt be true,
Thou shalt not get a damned tattoo,
Thus unto Moses spoke the Lord.
Thou shalt speak up, Thou shalt not cheat,
Thou shalt not dine on rancid meat
Or stick your dick in things that bleat.
Thou shalt not mix thy rye and wheat.
Thou shalt be just, thou shalt be kind,
Thou shalt not trick the deaf and blind,
Or touch cadavers left behind.
Or let two fabrics be combined.
Thou shalt fear god, thou shalt be straight,
Thou shalt not look to kin with hate,
Thou shalt not ever masturbate,
Thou shant put weasel on your plate.
Thou shalt not rob, thou shalt be bold
Thou shalt rise up before the old,
Don’t get your daughter’s pussy sold,
Thou shalt give all my priests your gold,
…Thou shalt be easily controlled.
Thus spoke the Lord.
Outro:
That brings us to a quick recognition of this week’s most astonishing vertebrates, Steven, Lindsay, Ward and other Lindsay. These four vampire hunting, ninja decimating, time bomb deactivating, bus jumping heroes have distinguished themselves above all other carbon based lifeforms this week by giving us money. Drawing on stupendous reserves of tenacity, intelligence and spare cash lying around, these four fine folks have provided an example that all tenacious, intelligent people with spare cash lying around should aspire to.
If you’d like to join these noble few in the pantheon of Scatheist glory, you’ll find the donate button on the right side of our homepage at Scathing Atheist (dot) com. Oh, and Lindsay, if you’re listening, I was talking about the other Lindsay when I said, “other Lindsay”, not you.
That does it for tonight’s show, but we’ll be back in 168 hours with some hastily put together shit that’ll keep me up until 2 in the morning at least twice this week. But if you can’t wait that long without risking a stress induced seizure, be sure to check out our erratically published blog and our erratically Tweeted Twitter feed.
Oh, and please help us spread the word about the show. If you know any atheists that have auditory canals, please give us a plug when you can. I put every diatribe up on YouTube and I’ll be putting the Leviticus song up this week as well, so if you wouldn’t be risking will-altering alienation from your family, I’d humbly ask that you give one of our videos a share on Facebook or whatever.
A quick thanks to Heath and Lucinda for joining me tonight and to a bunch of dead Israelites for making the jokes so easy on the Holy Babble segment. And a quick thanks to you, dear listener, for giving us half an hour of your life. We’ll be working really hard to earn another thirty minutes next week.
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 T-Shirt Conundrum
by Noah Lugeons
As I mentioned at the end of this week’s show, we’re going to be commissioning the design of three “Scathing Atheist” T-shirts in the near future. We’ve been getting a lot of requests for merch and people are giving us money anyway, so we figured we might as well have something to give them in return.
Our idea on the shirts was for the back to simply say “Proud Sponsor of ” and then have the Scathing Atheist logo beneath it. The front of each shirt would be an advertisement for one of our many fine sponsors.
We’re trying to get as much input as possible before we invest any cash in it, so we’re asking our listeners to let us know which sponsor they’d most like to see on a shirt. We’re taking suggestions from Twitter (@Noah_Lugeons), on Facebook (/ScathingAtheist) via email (noahlugeons(at)yahoo.com) or here on the blog in the comments section. Feel free to choose as many as you’d like when you tell us your preference (even if the stupid FB poll only lets you select one).
And to save you the trouble of double checking all the show transcripts, we’ve compiled all the eligible sponsors here:
- Jesus Pieces (Chocolate Covered Eucharist)
- 5 Hour Piety (Pious Energy Drink)
- Papalbee’s Neighborhood Restaurant
- Ameri-Quran-Line (Muslim Internet Provider)
- Tequila Savior (Anti-Semetic Liquor)
- Jeru-Salem Cigarettes
- Mormon Hammer (LDS Baking Soda)
- Let There Be Light Bulbs
- Penta-Douche (Biblical Feminine Hygiene Product)
- Homo-Momo.Com (Gay Mormon Dating Service)
- Jew P.S. (Jewish Delivery Service)
- Orthodoxy-Contin (Holy Book Analgesic)
- Celiba-Cyalis (Anti-Viagral Formula)
It’ll probably be a few weeks before we lock any of this down, so feel free to vote early, vote often and share. Ask your atheist friends who don’t listen to the show. Which of these T-shirts could they most see themselves in? Ask your religious friends which one would most offend them. We’re looking for all the data we can muster.
And we thank you for your help.
The Scathing Atheist 
Live Blogging the Bible: Numbers 11:19-33
by Noah Lugeons
I’m only four books in and already I’m amazed at how many crazy stories that I’ve never heard are hidden in the bible. Why does nobody ever talk about Simeon and Levi? Or Gershom’s magical foreskin? Or the naked Noah story? Or, as I recently discovered, the retributive quail tsunami?
The first ten chapters of numbers deal with the Israelites getting ready to move to the promised land. After a considerable time putzing around Sinai with nobody to keep them company but the occasional golden calf, they get ready to move camp, Tabernacle and all, and march against all those assholes that are currently living in the land god clearly intended for them to inherit.
For the first quarter of the book the Jews are very well behaved. They camp where Moses tells them to camp, they enlist when Moses tells them to enlist and they sacrifice bulls and goats when Moses tells them he’s hungry. But once they start the march, Moses’ underlings get really bitchy, really fast. Every time he turns around their moaning about how they might as well have just died in Egypt as slaves where at least they didn’t have to spend years wandering through the wilderness with nothing to eat but manna.
So god hears their cries and he decides to be merciful and send them plenty of food. So much so, in fact, that he promises that all 600,000 of them can eat meat for a month. So he sends a month long tsunami or quails all around them. And just when you’re starting to think that maybe god has turned another leaf and stopped being a complete douche bag, you find out that the quail were a backhanded gift. It comes at the cost of a plague that kills thousands of the assholes. Oh yeah, and they lose their claim to the promised land. So no, god’s still an asshole.
But god being a dick isn’t anything new. He’s been consistent since Genesis so god pulling a dick move is hardly worth blogging about. I just thought I’d hop on to point out what a counterintuitive dick he was being. After all, if he’d just lighten up on the demands for bulls and goats and lambs and turtle doves and donkeys, there would be plenty of meat to go around. You know, the old “stop burning the food for an omnipotent god and start eating it” gambit.
I suppose god is all-knowing (or at least that’s what the people who didn’t write the bible seem to think) so he probably already thought of my solution and rejected it for one of his mysterious reasons. But I thought it was worth pointing out anyway.