Christian | The Scathing Atheist

Episode 20: Partial Transcript

July 4, 2013 Noah Lugeons Leave a comment

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And now, the Scathing Atheist…

Intro:

It’s Thursday, it’s July 4th and I only like snakes and sparklers.

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

On this week’s episode:

We’ll learn why gay sex makes Jesus cry,
Buddhists will weigh in on all that blasphemous YOLO shit
And I’ll put the opening of the second chapter of the God Delusion to music

But first, the Diatribe.

Diatribe:

I had about half a dozen listeners email me the same article from the CNN Belief Blog this week. The headline read “Christians are happier than atheists… on Twitter.” Before I even clicked the hyperlink I was already salivating, ready to skewer the shit out of this pseudo-scientific nonsense. So I read the article and I took a look at the research and I read their conclusions.

And unfortunately, as much as I’d love to unleash both barrels of my verbal-ought-six on this thing, it turns out that there’s just nothing to criticize. The research was sound, the methodology was solid and the conclusions were perfectly defensible. It turns out they’re right. We’re a bunch of miserable, hateful, unhappy fucks.

I know this may come as a surprise to you, because you might often mistakenly think that you’re happy, but you can’t argue with science. In fact, you might as well just stop arguing altogether and dive head first into a tub of Caramel-Sutra laced with Xanax, for you will never know joy.

So quick before you slit your wrists while sitting in a running car and drinking bleach, let me explain how the advanced new science of Twitter-ology works. The first step is, of course, to draw a conclusion. As you’ll see later, if you don’t start with a conclusion, the data’s gonna be too messy to interpret later. So start off with a firm conclusion and hold on to it no matter what.

Step two is generating sample groups and remember, this is no time to worry about precision. To study atheists and Christians, for example, all you need to do is randomly select five prominent atheists and five prominent theists and call all of their followers your two groups. I know that not everybody who follows Dinesh D’Souza is a Christian and not everyone who follows Richard Dawkins is an atheist, but this is science… it doesn’t have to be exact.

So once you have your suspect samples, you analyze the words usage. Whatever words are used more often are indicators of deep psychological truths about the people using them. And we know this, because we just do. It doesn’t matter that there’s no credible research or even logical reason to believe in the core assumption behind this research. The people doing it wore lab coats or had pocket protectors or something and that makes what makes it science.

So with our rock solid assumption that people who say “happy” a lot are happy, people who say “family” a lot love their families and people who say “food” a lot are fat, we can go to work on our pseudo-data. And when we do we discover our conclusion, which, you’ll recall, we decided on before we started the research.

In this instance, we’ve proven that atheists aren’t as happy as Christians and they don’t love their families as much. Viola, conclusion reached, thesis proven, Nobel prize is in the mail.

Admittedly, some atheists have been a bit more critical about the research than I am. They point out that there’s no reason to assume that people who follow prominent Christians and people who follow prominent atheists are using Twitter for the same purpose. They point out that many atheists have multiple Twitter accounts and keep their atheism on one and their family stuff on the other. They point out that even with a perfect sample the study would still be nonsense, as the average Christian is older than the average atheist, more likely to have children and more likely to come from a large family and any one of these covariances would render all the data worthless. They point out that even if the data wasn’t useless, the conclusion still would be, considering that what they’ve proved is that a privileged majority is happier than the unprivileged minority.

But I think these critics are looking at it the wrong way. So before you toss out this study just because it’s poorly constructed, obviously biased, impossible to blind, poorly conducted, unscientific and stupid, I should point out some other things this study finds.

Consider the fact that atheists were shown to be far more likely to use words like “reason”, “think”, “idea” and “knowledge”, so if we accept the flawed premise of this flawed study it also proves that atheists are smarter than Christians. In addition, it shows that atheists are more likely to use words like “dick”, “fuck” and “pussy”, so clearly we’re also getting laid more often than the Christians.

After all, if we accept the first conclusion and the others are reached through the exact same process, it’s hard to ignore… not so hard that the researchers didn’t manage to ignore it, but hard to ignore nonetheless.

And if you need any further proof that this is sound science, consider the alternative. If this study isn’t legitimate scholarship, CNN just ran an article that used unproven science and half-ass conclusions to reinforce a hurtful stereotype that has no basis in fact and wouldn’t be newsworthy even if it did. And we all know that could never happen.

Song

“The God Song”

Well Jesus is great, he’s my best friend.

He’s the kinda fella who would die for your sins.

He says women should obey their men,

And ownin’ slaves is fine every now and again.

Well Jesus is my buddy and I’m really glad.

He’s the best buddy that a guy ever had.

And if you think some stuff he said was bad,

At least it’s nothing when compared to Jesus’s dad:

“Now let me tell you about that fella…”

He’s a homicidal, genocidal, pestilential, filicidal,

Petty jealous racist full of rage and spite.

Wicked and misogynistic, he’s a sado-masochistic

Homophobe that massacred Amalekites.

And Midianites.

And Sodomites.

And Perizzites and Moabites and Philistines and Benjamites,

Syrians, Assyrians, Ethiopians and Amorites.

And Egyptians.

“But we’re not yet, because he’s also…”

A Maleficent, Malevolent, Omnipotent, Irrelevant,

Megalomaniacal vindictive beast.

He’s ruthless and he’s useless; he’s an evil, brutal, futile nuisance.

Turned a chick to salt just for looking east.

Heartless, inexorable, rancorous and horrible,

He’s got a torture chamber and a thirst for blood,

He’s a fictitious, injudicious, vile, vicious, angry bitch;

His temper’s like a two year old with global floods.

He’s capricious and malicious and flagitious and pernicious

And an ethnic-cleansing bully of the highest sort,

Injurious, Inglorious, Nefarious, Notorious,

And when he raped a married virgin? Paid no child support.

Headlines:

Joining me for headlines tonight is my consiglieri Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to con-siggle?

I’d be happy to.

Well, not according to those Twitter-ologists, you aren’t, but I’ll overlook it.

In our lead story tonight, we’re one step closer to legalized goat-sex thanks to the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on the Defense of Marriage Act.

According to Rick Santorum, it’s not just one step closer… We’ve actually legalized the equivalent of goat sex.

As all but one of our listeners know, the nation’s highest court recently struck down a 17 year old piece of bigoted legislation that denied federal benefits to same-sex spouses.

And just fucking barely. The highest court in the land, which should be 9 of the most rational and intelligent people in the country, came as close as possible to a tie on this issue. Which is almost as embarassing as the fact that gay marriage and gay rights in general are even an argument that’s still on the table.

“If we could have made no decision on gay rights, we would have, but there’s fucking 9 of us, so we couldn’t tie. And since Kennedy’s not a complete asshole, gays are people … according to 55.6% of us here at the highest court.”

The reaction of America’s religious leaders was surprisingly muted and tolerant:

(SOUNDCLIP)

The ruling was even enough to prompt scientifically-anomalous unhappy Tweets from Christians, calling the decision a “Tragic Day for Marriage and Our Nation”, declaring that the “Supreme Court Overrules God” and that “Jesus Wept”.

But don’t worry, it’ll only be a few decades before the prominent Christian voices are taking credit for this.

We’re forgetting the real victim here . . . the good people over at Merriam-Webster, who will now have to work tirelessly around the clock to go through every dictionary, and cross out the part that says, ‘between a man and a woman’.

No, trust me, I’ve read the Tweets, Jesus is the real victim here. Now, in honor of the DOMA ruling I put together my three favorite insane overreactions. My number three was Rick Santorum and you already beat me to the punch on that one. But I will say, in Rick’s defense, what is the difference between two consenting men or women entering into a legal bond of love and raping a donkey?

Mostly just the consent of the ass, I guess.

Number two was the verbal gymnastics of the guy with the most Christian name ever, Monsignor Charles Pope, who proposed the “freedom fry” option, suggesting that Christians just drop the word “marriage” altogether and switch to “Holy Matrimony”

Shit, yeah that would entirely disempower us f-word-lovers. Is that really what he’s going for?

But the gold medal goes to the head of the Catholic Church’s matrimonial court, Archbishop Oscar Cruz, who answers the question “Can gay men get married?” with “To lesbians, sure.”

What is he, multiplying negative numbers in his weird little head?

Supreme Court Decision on DOMA and bigoted reactions from churches: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/06/26/religious-reactions-to-scotus-decisions/ & http://wordnews.org/2013/06/26/reactions-from-christian-organizations-swift-to-supreme-courts-overturning-of-doma/

Catholic Priest: It’s okay for gay men to marry lesbians: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/428951/catholic-church-has-no-problem-with-marriage-between-gay-man-lesbian & Catholic Priest Suggests that in the wake of DOMA they should drop the word “marriage” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/28/marriage-holy-matrimony_n_3517019.html?utm_hp_ref=religion

And in a follow up to a story we talked about in episode 17, American Atheist president David Silverman unveiled America’s first monument to atheism in Fuckville, Florida last week. And, in the humble, deferential manner we’ve come to expect from Bible Belt Christians, a number of Evangelicals showed up to help us dedicate what inaugural Farnsworth quoter and blogger Hemant Mehta has deemed a “Non”-ument.

I was gonna say Skepti-Couch . . . or Secu-Lounger . . . or Seat of Doubt.

Protesters blasted Christian music and carried signs that read “Honk for Jesus”, “Preserve Florida’s Christian Culture” and “The South is a Christian Nation”.

Where the fuck do southern, conservative Christians get the balls to have pride as a group? And how does Christianity get southern blacks on board so well? Shouldn’t there be more awkward guilt around the South? You don’t see conservative Germans flying Third Reich flags . . .

And as if to lend validity to your point, according to our friends at Bar Room Atheist one of the signs actually read “Hook for Jeses”.

One lover of the lord tried to place a toilet seat on the bench during the ceremony, but not to be out-douched, prominent creationist and son of a felon Eric Hovind jumped on top of the monument to scream about how awesome Jesus was. Hovind said that he was happy that the American Atheist had provided him a platform to preach from that was 48 inches high; ten inches short of being one inch tall for every felony conviction for which his father is concurrently serving time.

So the genius who – at one point – was carrying around a toilet seat in public . . .

I’m just guessing, but he probably wasn’t making an artistic philosophical statement relating to Marcel Duchamp, was he?

I really hope somebody out there gets that.

The big news out of the unveiling ceremony is that the show was so popular they’re taking it on the road. Silverman announced that American Atheists are prepared to put up as many as 50 similar monuments all over the country in a social counter-offensive to the fundamentalist assholes who put Christian monuments on public property.

Excellent . . . Looking forward to The Seat of Doubt Tour <bunch of assholes>

Atheist Bench Unveiled in Starke, FL: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/atheists-unveil-monument-nonbelief-god-article-1.1386919 & http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/06/29/american-atheists-unveils-godless-monument-in-front-of-florida-courthouse-and-announces-many-more/

And in this week’s “How many felonies can the Catholics fit into one Scandal?” report, the Milwaukee Archdiocese was recently forced to release 6000 pages of Sexual abuse documents due to allegations of bankruptcy fraud stemming from some financial shenanigans allegedly intended to shield money from abuse victims.

Atheist Podcasters are already – as I speak – calling this the “Anal Leaks Scandal”.

Depends . . . but this could get messy.

And as it happens, Cardinal Timothy Dolan appears to have his hands about elbow deep in the anal leakage, too, as included in the documents is a deposition where he suggests moving money to a “cemetery maintenance fund” to keep it shielded from future claims.

So if it wasn’t obvious to everyone already, the Catholic Church is officially – financially . . . and morally – bankrupt.

“Ok, yes . . . we raped a bunch of kids, but if the courts make us pay for it, that would be prostitution, which is wrong. We didn’t want to make whores out of these kids, just innocent rape victims. Rape victims go to heaven. Think about that trade. Rape victim for several decades on earth, but then eternal bliss. We’re doing favors, here. We’re raping stairways to heaven for these kids.”

To Dolan’s credit, most of the documentation I’ve seen up to this point shows him impotently trying whatever he can to get these pedophiles the fuck out of the priesthood and while I’m not sure I’m in love with his proposed solution of paying them to leave and never turning them into the cops, he’s made to seem far less villainous by the merit of the people writing him back and saying, “No, pedophile or no, we need all the priests we can get.”

Milwaukee Archdiocese releases sexual abuse files: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/01/milwaukee-priest-sex-abuse-records_n_3527980.html

And in “We’re-worse-than-we-thought” news, a new international religion poll from German non-profit Bertelsmann Stiftung makes me want to swim with toasters.

So I take it we didn’t do that well?

The survey compared religious views of 13 nations and if you’re grading this thing fairly, the US lost to pretty much everyone on pretty much everything.

Among the study’s findings:

Americans lead all 13 nations in believing that (quote) “Only politicians who believe in god are suitable for public office”.
The very first amendment clearly says, “Don’t do that.”
Americans are the most willing to make sacrifices for their religion
It’s really just happiness and societal progress . . . so not THAT big a sacrifice.
And 50% of Americans find atheists (quote) “threatening”.
They fucking should. We’re expediting their inevitable removal from the political decision-making process.

The survey doesn’t offer any answers to the obvious follow up question: “Is it too late to un-secede from England?”

I’d be down for an Evolutionary War, where we get back with England for atheist reasons, by taking them back over. And then give away Northern Ireland for spite. Maybe drop the South on waivers.

I’d also like some answers on what, exactly, that 50% is afraid we vile secularists are going to do. Are they afraid we’re gonna incur the wrath of their petty god? Are they afraid we’re gonna make it legal to gay-marry a harem of chinchillas? Or are they afraid we’re gonna prove they don’t get to go to eat sky-cake when they die?

Well I probably shouldn’t even be talking about this, but Phase 2 of our plot IS complete. That’s all I’ll say, but they should certainly be threatened.

Or . . . Is it that everyone on the wrong, backwards, misinformed side of every argument ever, is threatened by the truthier side? The 50% number would be higher if more theists were smart enough to recognize their obsolescence.

New Survey: 50% of Americans find atheists “threatening”: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/06/26/new-survey-50-of-americans-find-atheism-threatening/

And from the “How-Much-Will-You-Give-Me-For-This-Golden-Rule?” file, Australian priest, Anglican opportunist and shining example of Christianity in practice Terry McAuliffe got a little unwanted press last week over an incident involving a lost bracelet and an asshole.

Please tell me this dude found a bracelet in his asshole.

…or in his gay lover’s asshole.

No, were that the case it would have been the lead story.

Oh, so instead we’re sticking it somewhere in the rear?

The story goes like this; he finds a bracelet valued at around $6,500. He tracks down the owners and offers to sell it back to them for half the price. But don’t worry, he wasn’t only trying to fuck them on the deal. He also suggested that they continue to claim it as lost and recover the money by scamming their insurance company.

“Wait… you’re telling me I get the bracelet that demonstrably belongs to me and I get to pay you $3000 and all I have to do is commit felony insurance fraud? What’s the catch?”

Yeah, if it sounds too good to be true…

The one good thing he does here is suggest screwing the insurance company, but that doesn’t exactly make him Robin Hood here. He’s stealing from the rich, and stealing from the poor.

Once the story hit the news the good reverend had a quick change of heart and offered instead to return the bracelet at no cost, stop being an asshole and wonder why he hadn’t just raped some kids instead.

Anglican Priest finds bracelet, tries to sell it to owners: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/26/reverend-bracelet-terry-mcauliffe_n_3503644.html?utm_hp_ref=religion

And in “God-Hates-Your-Jiggly-Bits” news, the Christian Post brings us the story of two Christian ministries in Southern California who are willing to bravely venture deep into the heart of the satanic underworld of strip clubs and porn conventions to win souls back for Jesus.

Among those brainwashed into doing Christian charity work, I imagine a “missionary position” like that is highly prized, so they probably only have a couple of holes to fill at once.

With names like (I shit you not) “JC’s girls” and “XXXChurch”, the ministries go to strip clubs armed with gift baskets that contain things like (I still shit you not) “Lotions, lip gloss and hot pink bibles” these groups send their crew to (again, I still shit you not), “strip clubs, brothels and between 8 and 11 porn conventions a year”

“If just one hooker find solace in her new pink bible, after getting sodomized for money, then we’ve done our job. And if just one porn star uses her pink bible to block a money shot, we get some good free product placement.”

Ok let’s put 20 seconds on the clock – Church Porn Titles . . . Go!

Lord of the Thighs

Cream Piety

How about Nympho Nuns Nine: The Naughty Nazarite?

Missionary Impossible

12 Apostles, One Cup

Numbers Colon 69

Can you reach the colon, in a 69?

Sheri Brown, lead coordinator of the San Diego Chapter of JC’s Girls told the Christian Post that god calls them to “reach out in love”, “form bonds with desperate women”, “offer them fulfillment” and “bring them to their knees for Jesus”; and then honestly expects us not to make fuck jokes about it.

Ok so what you’re saying is, “Last call for missionary fucking jokes.” . . .

“The Consu-Matrix” immaculate conception porn, starring Holey Trinity as the Virgin Mary. . .

It’s a threesome with Mary, Joseph, and God.

I love the concept of immaculate conception porn.

Yeah, kind of looks like masturbation… you can’t really tell.

Christian Outreach focused on Strip Clubs and Porn Conventions: http://www.christianpost.com/news/christians-outreach-into-strip-clubs-porn-conventions-to-share-love-of-jesus-98899/

And with those sexy images swimming through your head we’ll close out the headlines for the night. Heath, thanks as always for joining me.

And when we come back, you’ll realize that we never really left.

Bible Story:

Run grab the young ‘uns, folks! It’s time for Lucinda Lugeons’ Bible Stories for Kids!

——————-

Gather around boys and girls. Today we’re gonna open the bible up to Genesis and talk about the story of Lot’s daughters.

Now once upon a time there was a man named Lot. Lot had two daughters whose names weren’t important enough to record in the bible, because they were women.

Lot and his family grew up in a town called Sodom, a town where a lot of daddies loved a lot of other daddies in the butt. God hates gay people so he really, really hates whole towns of gay people. So one day he decided to destroy the town and all the people who lived in it.

But don’t worry, kids. Lot’s daughters were safe. God loved them more than the other people who lived there, so he sent two angels to warn them. They wouldn’t have to die. It would only be their sisters, all of their friends and all the little dogs and cats and hamsters that lived there that would perish in a fiery catastrophe. And trust me, boys and girls, the hamsters that lived in Sodom were begging for death.

But when the two angels showed up to warn Lot and his family, all the villagers, young and old gathered around because they wanted to anally rape the angels. But anally raping angels is very naughty so Lot said “No villagers! Don’t rape the angels! You can rape my daughters instead.” And he threw his two virginal, innocent daughters to a mob of diseased, rape-starved perverts.

But luckily for Lot’s daughters, the villagers really wanted to rape the angels instead, so the angels struck them blind.

“Hooray!”

Lot and his family had to move very quickly because death and torment was about to befall everyone they’d ever known. So mommy, daddy and their two daughters ran away. But mommy looked back at the town, so god killed her by turning her into salt. Because if you look in the wrong direction, sometimes god kills you.

So with their mommy dead and all of their friends and pets burned alive, they hid in a cave and slept on rocks with nobody to keep them company but their drunken daddy. And what’s even worse, they had nobody to have sex with except their daddy. Of course, daddy wouldn’t want to have sex with them because daddy’s having sex with their daughters is naughty, so they got daddy really drunk and they force-fucked him several times.

They both got pregnant with inbred rape-children who they loved very much and the few people who lived through the story lived happily ever after.

The End.

Skit:

Henchman: “Heath, Noah… SCOTUS has overturned DOMA.”

(Sinister Laughs)

It’s all proceeding exactly according to plan.

Gather the others. We must meet tonight.

(Scene Switch Sound Effect)

I hereby call this meeting of the League of….

Um… Doctor Myers, Mister Dillahunty… The buffet is supposed to be for after the…

Whatever, I now call… you’re really gonna just take all the baby-bacon? The whole platter. No… that’s fine. Um… yeah. That’s fine.

Like I was saying, I hereby call this meeting of the League of Sinister Secularists to Order. The honorless Noah Lugeons presiding.

Thank you, Heath. Now obviously we all know there’s big news this week, but first things first. Heath, can you read us the minutes of the last meeting?

We all started off pledging allegiance to Darwin, we hated America for a little while, Greta gave us an update about her cats, Doctor Myers and Mister Dillahunty ate all the baby-bacon before I got to the buffet, and we decided to go with the bench instead of the Trojan-Horse Satan Sculpture I submitted.

Thank you, Heath. Now if there’s no new business, I’d like to move on to the… Um, Hemant, can you practice your sinister finger steepling some other time? This is important. Thank you. And um… Tom, Cecil… We’re all still really impressed that you can both do that with your testicles, but if you don’t mind, we’re trying to have a meeting here.

Now, as you all know, we’ve received word that the Supreme Court has struck down DOMA, leaving marriage completely defenseless.

(Hooray!)

Yes, we should all be proud of the job we’ve done, but this is no time to rest on our laurels. The family isn’t destroyed yet.

You can’t even legally marry a sheep yet.

That’s right! Polygamy, bestiality, child-sacrifice; none of that is legal yet. And nevermind gay adoption… why aren’t those kids being aborted in the first place?

Or made into bacon? Or both? Fetus bacon is like the pre-veal filet mignon of atheist cuisine. In French, ‘mignon’ means cute, so this makes sense. If babies are cute, then fetuses are fucking adorable. And small strips of that tender, undifferentiated fetus meat, slowly smoked, and then fried in its own almost babyfat . . . fucking delicious.

Exactly. We’ve won an important battle, but we can’t lose sight of the war. Heath, what are we doing to further cement the destruction of traditional American values?

We’re drafting legislation now that would make happiness illegal in the month of December. We’ve got some of our top agents planting more apocryphal evolution fossils. And we’re still looking into that end-of-the-world-building from Ghostbusters, see if that’s for real, but it’s not looking good..

That’s not enough! Is it still legal to be heterosexual!? Why haven’t we fixed that yet? Is it still legal to love your neighbor and be moral? We’ve been fighting against that for centuries to no avail.

I think it’s time to enact phase 3 of the plan.

Is that the one where we cease human births and turn to cloning just to piss god off?

No… that’s phase 6.

Oh, right. Three is the one where we kidnap Anna Kendrick and chain her up in your basement.

No, that’s phase 13 and that one was tentative. Phase three is the part where we make Christians get UPC symbols tattooed on their wrists and foreheads. I tell you, I’m starting to think nobody’s reading my memos but Glenn Beck. And how the hell did he get a hold of those anyway?

Yeah, we’re still looking into that.

Hemant, the steepling. Don’t get me wrong folks; I don’t mean to downplay the significance of this ruling, but as long as happiness, democracy and virgins are still out there, we can’t afford time to celebrate. Remember, we can’t take away their ignorance, but we can damn sure take away their bliss!

Outro:

Before we cash in our chips tonight, we need to take a few seconds to recognize this week’s most exceptional mammals; Lindsay, April, Jason, Douglas and Geoff spelled the cool way. The quintessence of non-quiescent quercine qualities, this quick-witted quintet quietly quelled the quarrelsome quandary about quartering our quirky, quodlibetical quest by quantifying their appreciation and giving us money.

If you, too, would like to be the subject of some archaic alliteration and earnest appreciation, you can help keep this whole experiment going by clicking on the donate button on the right side of our homepage at Scathing Atheist (dot) com and giving til it hurts. And then continuing to give because you can take it.

All jokes aside, in all seriousness, we really do want your money. But if we can’t talk you out of your hard earned dollars, you can always help us out by leaving us a glowing review on iTunes because that’s free.

That’s all we’ve got for you this week but if you want more, there’s more. Frank and Dan at Thank God I’m Atheist invited me over to defend the utility of acerbic atheism the other day. It was a really good discussion and you can find it on episode 85 of their show, which will be linked on the shownotes for this episode.

TGIA Archive: http://www.thankgodimatheist.com/podcast/archives.php

I also need to thank Heath once more for all he does to make this thing possible, and of course, my lovely wife Lucinda for providing the bible story this week and, of course, for performing adult services for me for 17 years and counting. I also want to offer a concurrent thanks and apology to my muse Richard Dawkins, whose voluminous vocabulary acted as the inspiration for the song this week, as anyone who’s read the God Delusion probably already figured out.

I should also point out that I’m in a constant state of scrambling for Farnsworth quotes so if you have a blog, a podcast, a facebook page or even a consistently interesting Twitter feed, I’d be happy to throw you a plug in exchange for a 5 second audio clip of you quoting the 22nd century’s most stylish professor.

And finally tonight, I want to thank you, dear listener, for giving us 30 minutes of your life. We’ll be hard at work trying to earn 30 more minutes next week but until then, you can also check out our erratically published blog and get occasional nuggets of Scatheism by following us on the Twitter, liking us on the Facebook and subscribing to us on the YouTube.

If you have question, comments or death threats, you’ll find all the contact info on the contact page at Scathing Atheist (dot) com. All the music used in this episode was written and performed by yours truly and yes, I did have my permission.

Episode 18 – Partial Transcript

June 20, 2013 Noah Lugeons Leave a comment

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.

Episode 10: Partial Transcript

April 25, 2013 Noah Lugeons 2 comments

by Noah Lugeons & Heath Enwright

Sponsor:

Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the new brand of Christian Compact Fluorescents “Let There Be Light Bulbs”. Are you tired of seeing all the benefits that godless scientists have brought to your life? Are you sick of facing all the perfectly obvious physical evidence that your beliefs are wrong? Well try a little less illumination and a little more enlightenment with “Let There Be Light Bulbs”. Each bulb contains our patented “Through a glass darkly” technology that will allow you to easily blind yourself to everything that isn’t happening inside your head.

And now, the Scathing Atheist.

Intro:

It’s Thursday, It’s April 25th and we’re going for an hour tonight, so hopefully you hit traffic.

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

On this week’s episode,

Heath, Lucinda and I will dig through 80 pages of Bible without encountering a single moral,
I’ll rudely correct my wife when she says, “boringest”,
and Heath will spend 4 minutes making God glad he doesn’t exist;

But first, the Diatribe.

Diatribe:

I got a very compelling email from Dan in Toronto a few days back and I started to draft a response, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought I should address Dan’s concerns in a wider venue.

It was a pretty long email, but I pulled a quick excerpt that I think sums up the point. Dan starts off by admitting that he really enjoys the show and it makes him laugh, but he wonders what the cost of those cheap laughs really are in the following paragraph:

“The problem is one of productivity. What do we, as a movement, gain by being so antagonistic toward religion? It’s hard to imagine a believer that listened to your show having any reaction but a calcification of their dogma. Ultimately you’re providing the caricature that religious leaders need to smear atheists as cruel, angry and uncaring. And to what end? Have you done more in the end than simply affirm opinions already held? Have you done more than preach to the choir?”

As to providing a caricature to the opposition, well, that may or may not be true. I’m sorry, but those Christians would find something to be pissed off about regardless of what I do. But I don’t want to be dismissive. I have a lot of respect for Dan’s opinion here and he’s not the first person to bring it up. Hell, Heath, Lucinda and I discussed it in depth before we recorded episode one. Clearly, we fell on the good-outweighs-the-bad end of the argument, but I do feel that people like Dan still deserve an explanation.

The question is basically one of purpose and the tone of Dan’s email suggests that he believes that the purpose of an atheist show should be outreach to the religious community. I don’t mean to oversimplify the objection, but the implication is there that the first goal of an atheist show should be one of PR. That does make sense when you belong to a group seen as less trustworthy than rapists, but I also think it sells us short.

There are plenty of great atheist outreach podcasts. The Atheist Experience, the Thinking Atheist, Reasonable Doubts, An American Atheist Podcast… these are all great shows that I could recommend to a religious person if they wanted to know more about atheism. But that doesn’t mean that the only purpose an atheist show can serve is outreach.

I don’t mean to downplay the importance of outreach, but I fear that if we focus on it too much, we lose sight of an equally important element of the movement: Mobilization. It’s not enough to sway minds if we can’t also sway the feet they’re connected to.

So when we started this show, we tossed “outreach” out the window and I try to make that clear in the first 12 seconds of the show. In fact, I tried to make that clear in the first two words of the title. I’d have called it the “Fuck Jesus Show” if I thought iTunes would still promote it.

Religious people are welcome to listen to this show, but they aren’t invited. This show isn’t for them. They’ve got enough.

I’ve gone to church before and I’ve never complained afterwards that the pastor didn’t include the atheist point of view in his sermon. I’ve never written an angry letter to a televangelist for not being nicer to atheists when he tells them they’re all going to hell. If a Christian listens to this show and gets pissed off about it, I look at it like a neighbor showing up at your barbecue uninvited. You welcome him in and give him a beer anyway and then he starts complaining because there’s no vegetarian menu.

There is a time and a place for nice, but there’s a time and a place for fuck you as well. And in this movement we need both. Nice is good for outreach. Nice is good for PR. Nice is good for winning converts and softening our image. But fuck you has its uses, too. Fuck you is good for rallying the troops. Fuck you is good for boiling the blood. Fuck you is good for reminding people why they got active about atheism in the first place. And what’s more, when people are trying to shove their religion into your schools, your government and your life, Fuck You is not only useful, but it’s the only correct response.

The end result it that I spend a lot of time preaching to the choir. But what’s wrong with that? Keep in mind that despite the connotations implied in the expression, the preacher man does still preach to the choir! You have to. You can’t just assume that somebody who read The God Delusion back in 2009 is still as fired up about as she was when she put the book down. We all have to be reminded from time to time that these battles are still being fought and we still need all hands on deck.

So thanks for the email Dan, and if you’d like to continue the conversation I look forward to your response. But keep in mind that you started your email with the words, “I really enjoy your show…”, and I would argue that that’s enough.

If I make some atheists laugh, I’ve really done as much as I need to do to justify the effort. I don’t think it’s fair to judge everything done in the name of atheism solely through the lens of its effect on religious people. Singing hymns help Christians convince atheists that there’s a god, but that isn’t the point of singing hymns. We accept that Christians can do Christian things for Christian reasons. Why can’t an atheist do the same?

Headlines:

In our lead story tonight, Pope Francesca shows exactly how paper thin that whole “reform and focus on the people” thing was when he voiced support for the Holy See’s crackdown on the “Nuns on a Bus” movement in the US.

Basically, the issue here is that these nuns have threaten the authority of the Vatican by proving that you can do good works without hating gay people and demonizing abortion, positions which the Catholics actually refer to as “radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic Faith”.

First of all, I wouldn’t call the abortion issue a feminist cause. I know lots of dudes who are psyched about Roe v Wade for good reason. Women as a whole want to be moms a lot more than men as a whole want to be dads.

Also, if you’re calling a group of nuns radically liberal, your organization is falling off the conservative side of a world you still think is 6000 years old and flat.

Yeah and the “radical” ones apparently comprise about 80% of all US nuns. The group says that the Vatican has reached “flawed” conclusions based on “unsubstantiated accusations”, though it wasn’t clear if they were referring to their own condemnation or the whole doctrine of Catholicism when they said that.

But I think this story really highlights the divide between what the Vatican is saying and what Catholics, at least here in the US are actually doing and believing. When 80% of your representatives are doing it one way and you’re still insisting that they do it the other way, you’re not allowed to then sit around and ask yourself, “Why are people leaving our church?”

But if they did want to sit around and ask that, it wouldn’t take too much brainstorming to recall a few other hiccups in their PR campaign of late.

Right, and here these nuns are with a slice of redemption on a silver fucking platter. If Pope Frankincense embraced their movement or even refused to condemn it, even people like me would have to stand back and say, “Hey wait a minute, this guy might actually be ready to bring the Vatican into the modern world”, but no. Status quo. Shut them women up so us men can get to important things like deciding what women should do.

You have to admit, the oppression of women as a group, has been successful on a global scale since Genesis 3. And it’s been good. Yes, we do a lot better job of hiding it in secular America than in Vatican City or Tehran, but we participate nonetheless.

http://news.yahoo.com/pope-francis-supports-crackdown-us-nuns-150211781.html

And in other news, the ephemeral nature of Pope Frankenstein’s “reforms” haven’t stopped a bunch of Catholic fundies from getting pissed off about them. The Society of Saint Pius X, a group that is described as “ultra-traditionalist” in comparison to the Catholic Church, charges that Pope Francophile is so focused on people not starving to death and shit that he’s forgetting to brainwash them.

These guys are lobbying the Catholic Church to stop being so progressive. They’re like the devil on the shoulder of the devil on the shoulder of the devil saying “I know the pitchfork is suspicious, but trust me you’re the angel. Pass it on.”

Pyschomachia cubed.

The leader of the group, Bishop Bernard Blowjob… I mean, Fellay, has made a habit of sharply criticizing the Vatican since Pope Benny was rockin’ the big hat. I’m all for sharply criticizing the Vatican of course, but unlike myself, he’s been arguing that the Vatican hasn’t been bat-shit crazy enough.

So I’m trying to decide what’s the ultimate example of politically untenable, and I settled on comparing these guys to holocaust deniers. Then I found out one of their prominent members for years was famous holocaust denier, Bishop Richard Williamson.

(THIS GUY WAS BORN IN THE UK IN 1940, AND DENIES THE HOLOCAUST!!!)

You can’t make this shit up. Granted he WAS recently expelled from the SSPX, but NOT because of publicly denying the holocaust.

At least when it comes to the holocaust, they’re equal opportunity appeasers.

The SSPX, which sounds like a group of British Special Ops Roller-Bladers, by the way, fears that the Vatican is modernizing too quickly, which is kind of like fearing that Rush Limbaugh might be too healthy. In an email that Fellay boldly nailed to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenburg, he accused the Pope of “man-centered philanthropy” rather than “true religious leadership”.

What kind of philanthropy isn’t “man-centered”?

You’d think these guys might know a little bit of Latin and Greek. Doesn’t philanthropy mean “love of humanity” ?

http://news.yahoo.com/catholic-rebel-group-begins-criticizing-pope-173638858.html

And in the former Soviet Union, former sane person Vladimir Putin looks ready to enact a law that would make it illegal in Russia to “offend religious feelings”. The current bill limits the offended parties to Christians, Muslims, Jews and Buddhists and trust me on this one, at least 75% of those people are pretty easy to offend.

Blaspheming at Buddhists is tricky . . .

“Nothing isn’t not always or never everythingness!!!”

“Things matter and I am.”

Yes, much easier to offend is the craziest non-vampiric Vlad of all time. This bill is a reaction to the literal riot that followed Pussy Riot’s 2012 performance in which they criticized hang-gliding, bear-wrestling, hockey-phenom Vladimir Putin; for which each member of the group was given a two year sentence in a remote prison camp for (quote) “Hooliganism motivated by religious hatred”. So yeah, hard to imagine how this law might get abused.

I’m actually kind of surprised with the punishment. I would have assumed Putin would have something a little more theatrical, like a slow-moving crotch laser, or a shark tank dipper.

Well, if it helps, I’m sure he spelled out the details of his evil plan before he sent them to the Gulag.

But it’s not exactly a James Bond level situation here, is it? If an all-girl band, dressed like Fat Albert characters, is your arch enemy, then you might be the bad guy in a cartoon show for girls on Disney Afternoon.

Well if that’s the case somebody better get Princess Luna and Ms. Harshwhinny on the line because we’re seeing more and more of these blasphemy laws being enacted all over the world. As Americans, the idea of free speech is so sacrosanct that it immediately makes us queasy and this is one of those few areas where I think we Americans actually have it right. Blasphemy laws get the whole thing backwards to begin with. If you’re offended by what I say, that shouldn’t be my problem.

If you’re offended by hearing blasphemous things like science, stop hanging out around reality where all the science happens.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/04/10/176783877/russian-parliament-moves-ahead-on-anti-blasphemy-law

And moving so far south it’s practically north again, our next story lands us in the land of Hobbits and Hobbit-references, New Zealand. This story comes to us from Paul Fidalgo at the Friendly Atheist blog. Kiwi teacher Christopher Scott Roy alleges that he lost his job as a teacher at Tamaki College in Aukland for the egregious infraction of not believing that there’s a little man in your head somewhere that drives your body like Voltron.

Nice – 80’s cartoon reference # 2 for you on the day. My Little Pony, and now the Defender of the Universe.

I’m planning to squeeze Inspector Gadget in for the trifecta. Roy, who left the school back in 2010, alleges that the school had an outlook that (quote) “saw Christian [and] Mormon faith as a core responsibility”.

This story gets a little tricky, as he actually settled his grievances with the school a while back and is now claiming that he did so “under duress and had no access to legal advice at the time the… settlement was signed”.

What’s the atheist dramatic act for protesting this? Maybe a really pushy science fair occupying the college’s chapel space. With people reading text books really loud, like a baptist minister: “Endoplasmic Reticulum”

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/04/20/new-zealand-teacher-claims-he-was-fired-for-being-an-atheist/

And in exploding dildo news, a Spanish “anticlerical pro-sex toys group” is claiming responsibility for a series of amateur bombings, many involving vibrating rubber penises. Several packages containing vibrators and what the article called “mini-bombs” were sent to prominent Catholics around Spain.

This is great . . . Normally we have to make unsolicited dick jokes and those can get confused with rape jokes.

But these guys really just teed up the dick jokes for us this time. This is such a perfect piece of news for our tiny niche of offensively humorous atheist podcasts. It’s like the day when the midget actor community heard the news that Willow was being cast.

Do you think when they read the article anybody said, “Hey, the bombs weren’t that mini”?

Shipping was free, but they probably had to pay extra for handling.

The only injury mentioned in the article was a minor injury to a postal worker who was handling one of these packages when it exploded prematurely.

Somehow, the driver got the shaft, and no tip.

Well, in their defense, the group apologized for that incident in an email later where they said that nothing like this had (quote) “ever happened to them before”.

The delivery person probably found it flattering. He should have just waited 10 minutes, adjusted his grip, and tried to deliver it again.

So far this group has been responsible for a largely comedic series of fuck ups so we’re making jokes quick while we still can, but it looks like pretty soon they’re going to actually blow some people up and then this shit won’t be funny anymore.

Must continue dick joke . . .

Ummmmmm . . . Toma-Cock Missiles . . .

One more . . . The Uni-Corn Bomber . . .

Ok I’m done . . .

Would a joke about oversize black dildo’s be stretching it . . .

Ok last one . . . Penis bombs for priests is one thing, but carpet bombs for nuns . . .

Ok really the last one. . . Instead of sending UPS, they should have dropped them with “sexual predator drones”.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/19/spanish-anarchists-catholics-explosive-vibrators

And in domestic news, a surprisingly rational decision from the Virginia Supreme Court confirms that you can’t sue your church for liking gay people. This story actually begins back in 2006 when a large contingent of the congregation at the Falls Church in Fairfax, Virginia started getting worried that the church was getting a little too lovey-dovey with the homo-butt sexers.

If I was donating money to the KKK, and they started tolerating blacks and jews all of sudden, I’d want my money back.

The group voted to leave the church but when they were faced with the daunting task of starting their own new gay-hatin’ church, they decided it would be easier to just sue the leadership at their old church and try to get the property in a homophobic coup.

That’s like paying for a homeopath to heal you magically, and then suing them after you get better, when you find out they cheated and learned to use some real medicine.

You know that actually happened with Zicam? I shit you not, they got in trouble for putting medicine in their medicine.

Anyway, somehow this shit got all the way to the Virginia Supreme Court and might yet go higher, but at the moment the court sides with the people who actually own the church and affirms their rights to not be bigots. Odds are high that we haven’t heard the last of this story though, as even if this one is settled, there are plenty of similar lawsuits going on all over the country.

“Put his hand on a bible and ask him how much he hates fags on a scale from 1 to 10. Anything under 7, and he’s clearly not fit to run a proper church.”

http://www.christianpost.com/news/va-supreme-court-rules-against-departing-congregation-in-property-dispute-94328/

And in a combination of foreign, domestic and interdimensional news, the Vatican has confirmed a miracle in Colorado Springs. In the ongoing beautification of German nun Mother Teresia Bonzel, the vatican’s rigorous standards of evidence have confirmed beyond a reasonable doubt that the unexpected recovery of a four year old with cancer could only be attributed to the intervention of a dead nun from Germany.

Germany could really use this. Curing cancer is just about the only way to start getting the country a nice nod in the history books again.

Apparently the young man, who makes no claim whatsoever to having been cured miraculously, resents the assertion and isn’t a Catholic, had a tumor in his colon and despite a pretty miserable outlook, he got better. What distinguishes this from the all-too-infrequent but still plentiful stories of people suddenly recovering from grave illnesses? Why two nuns were reciting a magical incantation on or about the day that the illness reversed course.

This doesn’t seem like smart engineering by god here. Why not just get rid of cancer? But I guess that’s like everyone getting a trophy.

The then-boy, now-man at the center of this whole thing is skeptical of the Vatican’s claims, pointing out that God must spend a lot of time deciding to kill other kids whom nuns also prayed for, but that didn’t stop the Vatican from putting their seal of approval on it.

Every good thing is a prayer-induced miracle, and every bad thing is a mysterious oversight. Well, I can make up tautologies too. Heads, I fuck you . . . Tails, you fuck me.

http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_23012962/vatican-declares-miracle-after-prayers-colorado-springs-nun

And from the “Right-for-the-Wrong-Reason” department, Christian author Anna Ariel has a new book coming out titled, “Oprah Winfrey, The Most Dangerous Woman on the Earth” where she warns Christians about the dubious spiritual messages hidden within Oprah’s seemingly benign declarations.

Did “On the Origin of Species” finally get the Oprah Bump?

Not sure, but I know one book that won’t. Interestingly, the press release suggests that the author isn’t pissed at Oprah for promoting dangerous, pseudo-scientific, superstitious bullshit; she’s pissed at Oprah for promoting the wrong dangerous, pseudo-scientific, superstitious bullshit.

And look, I’m all about the “Most Dangerous Woman on the Earth” title for Oprah. She’s made a career of giving demonstrably incorrect medical advice to people too stupid to know any better and she’s made gazillions by pretending to be a philanthropist. Hint to Oprah viewers, by the way, if you’re getting rich off your philanthropy, you’re doing it wrong.

Yeah she’s like a mega-church without the guise of religion.

Now, I’m gonna tactfully avoid any potentially racist sounding references to kettles and pots here, but a book that claims the problem with Oprah’s promotion of pseudo-science is that it’s un-Christian is like attacking drone strikes because they’re noisy.

Like unborn children suing AIDS for the condom problem?

http://www.christiannewswire.com/news/3962071903.html

And finally tonight, in dry, dull and terribly unsatisfying news, a Christian couple is proudly proclaiming that they’ve managed to go two full years post-matrimony without having sex. After fourteen months of sexless courtship, Topeka couple Jon and Darla Crocker celebrated by not fucking for a further twenty five months and counting.

I think all Christians should take a cue from these wonderful role models.

They say they plan to continue to obscenely ignore their biological programming indefinitely, dedicating their sexual misfunction to their Lord and Savior in what they’re calling “Blue Balls for Jesus”. According to the seemingly real “Lark News” the couple occasionally has (quote) “bedroom thoughts”, but always pulls back. Among the tactics used to insure their unnatural state continues, the article lists poor Jon “eating a whole raw potato” to keep his sinful urges at bay.

You know what else is helping them? Jon being a gay, and Darla being a lesbian.

Talk clean to me, baby!

I loved the quote where Darla says that their abstinence was holy before marriage but it’s double-holy now. Look, since we got married, my wife and I have gotten “double hole-y” a time or two, but I’ll guarantee you it was more fun our way.

They could get double holey without breaking their streak, if they pulled off the “Finger-Cuff 69”, a very advanced maneuver in the poop-hole loophole toolbox.

http://www.larknews.com/archives/217

That’ll do it for headlines. When we come back Lucinda will join us and probably bitchslap me for the anal sex reference there.

Poem: Genesis in Two Minutes

by Noah Lugeons

In chapter one God makes the universe and it takes seven days.

In chapter two he makes it again… in a contradictory way.

By chapter three he’s made Adam, here he makes Eve,

Then he kicks them out of Eden cause they’re covered in leaves???

In chapter four God’s a dick to Cain, but not Abel,

So Cain strikes down his brother like he’s the tower of Babel.

In chapter six we meet Noah; God says “Get ready for bruises,

You’re going on the worst boat ride there’ll be until Carnival Cruises.”

Noah praises God for this unspeakable act,

But glancing at his cock’s an unforgivable act.

Then we spend an entire fucking chapter or two,

Learning ad nauseum who begat who.

By chapter twelve we meet Abraham and he uproots his life,

Takes his shit to Egypt and starts pimping his wife.

He fucks a slave, she has a kid and they exile that one,

But then at ninety-nine Sarah bares him a legitimate son.

Abraham tells God there’s at least ten in Sodom with class,

So he sends a couple angels that they try to fuck in the ass.

And when you try to ass-rape angels, what comes is your fault,

Whether your town’s burned down by brimstone or you’re turned into salt.

In chapter seventeen Abraham makes a crazy decision,

Regarding all his sons and slaves and adult circumcision.

In Twenty-Two he gets all screwy, and takes Isaac, his tyke,

Up a mountain and almost sacrifices him before the angels say, “Psyche!”

Later Isaac meets Rebekah, they have Jake and Esau,

The big brother’s got the muscle but the brains of a cow.

Jacob tricks him from his birthright for a warm bowl of soup,

And his old near-sighted daddy’s just as easy to dupe.

Jacob takes two wives, fucks both of them and their maids.

I swear a chapter’s dedicated to Jake getting laid.

In thirty four a dirty whore? No that’s Dinah, Jake’s daughter.

They demand the Hivites foreskins before commencing the slaughter.

Jake has a dozen sons in all but he liked Joseph the best,

So his bro’s conspire against him and they steal his vest.

They sell him as a slave and tell daddy he’s dead.

He winds up a slave of Pharaoh for not performing in bed.

Here he goes all psychic, starts interpreting dreams.

It takes a couple years but at last he’s redeemed.

He stores up food for famine and he gets filthy rich;

His bros come needing munchies and he makes ‘em his bitch.

Joey shows back up much to daddy’s surprise,

And Jacob, now called Israel, eventually dies.

Chapter fifty’s so uplifting, all the tribes makes a truce;

And by now god’s promised the entire known world to the Jews.

Calendar:

It’s time for the atheist calendar portion of the show where we set aside a few minutes to talk up some of the great atheist and secular meetups going on around the country and around the world.

We’ll start in Anaheim on the weekend of May 3rd when the Orange County Freethought Alliance Conference will be bringing in all my favorite atheists for a spectacular weekend of godlessness. PZ Myers, Greta Christina, Matt Dillahunty, Darrel Ray, Jamy Ian Swiss, Jessica Ahlquist and yes, I’m naming the speakers, not just all the prominent atheists I can think of.

MAY 3rd: Orange Country Freethought Alliance Conference in Anaheim, CA

http://freethoughtalliance.org/fta/annual-conference/

The friendly atheist Hemant Mehta would like to remind you that Sunday, May 5th is “Interview an Atheist at Church Day”. This is an experimental project but I love the concept. Atheists are volunteering to be interviewed at churches across the nation for a bit of outreach and while most pastors would rather eat glass, a few are taking the challenge. We’ll have notes and links on how to get involved in the show notes.

MAY 5th: Interview an Atheist at Church Day: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/04/18/interview-an-atheist-at-church-day-is-growing/

Looking beyond the borders of my homeland, we’ve got the 22nd Skeptic’s Congress coming up on the 9th of May in Cologne, Germany. I’d tell you more about it, but I don’t speak German. If you do, though, feel free to check the link.

MAY 9th: 22nd Skeptics Congress in Cologne, Germany

http://www.gwup.org/

We’ve got a double whammy on May 17th with the Women in Secularism Conference taking place in DC and Imagine No Religion 3 ramping up in Kamloops, British Columbia. We’ll get to that in a second, but ladies first:

Women in Secularism 2 features a phenomenal lineup of speakers including but not limited to Susan Jacoby, Greta Christina, Ophelia Benson and the lovely, witty and talented Rebecca Watson. And if you don’t go, you’re a sexist, so there’s that.

MAY 17th Women in Secularism Conference in Washington DC:

http://www.womeninsecularism.org/

And finally in Kamloops we’ve got yet another mouth-watering list of secular speakers including Horseman number 3 Dan Dennett, Aron Ra, Victor Stenger, DJ Grothe and Mr. Diety. From everything I’ve heard about last year’s event, the folks putting this on put together a show you’ll never forget so if you’re anywhere near the area, it’s going to be worth the trip.

MAY 17th-19th Imagine No Religion 3 in Kamloops, British Columbia

http://inr3.eventbrite.ca

That does it for this week’s calendar, but remember, if you’re involved with an atheist, secular or skeptical event that needs a little free publicity, let me know. You’ll find all the contact info along with links to all the events discussed on this episode on the “Contact Page” at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.

Roast:

Ladies and gentleman, welcome to the Roast of God!

I’m your roast master, Heath Enwright. Before we talk about the big guy in the sky, let’s meet our dais:

First, we have a Muslim prophet, who wishes to remain anonymous, appearing over Skype, with his image blurred to protect his identity. We’ll hear from him later.

We also have Mary Magdalene . . .

Where is that slut? . . . There she is; the Bible’s own Penny Lane. The filthy groupie whoo-err of Jesus and his crew. You must have been passed around the last supper like a side dish. You belong at a Duke lacrosse party.

Speaking of disgraceful fraternities, the apostles are here . . . The roadies for Jesus and his Judaism cover band.

And speaking of God’s fuckup-of-a-son, that’s right, he’s here tonight too, the Fredo Corleone of the Bible, the Red-Handed Stepchild” . . .

Give it up for Jesus Christ.

I heard this guy was a carpenter. Here’s a lesson you obviously missed . . . Carpentry 101: “Here’s your hammer and nails . . . Whatever you do, don’t get crucified.”

Dumbass . . . How’d that work out for you?

How does dying for my sins taste? Bitter?

You’re like a less interesting, more fictional version of the guy from the Dos Equis commercials.

What does Jesus have in common with the women he fucks? Without a first coming, neither of them can have a second coming.

If your genealogy is described by a Greek tragedy like the New Testament, you might be a redneck.

Y’all belong on a daytime talk show . . . “Were you conceived when your dad magically raped a virgin and secretly impregnated her? Were you almost the first justified abortion? Do you live in the greater Jerusalem area? You could be on our next show.”

All this attention for the man of the zero hour!

I’ll be honest . . . when they asked me to come here and roast God, I was surprised. I thought he was dead. I was sure I had read that somewhere.

But he’s not . . . Look at this bastard. Doesn’t look a year past omega. God is so old, he’s gathering dust to dust. God’s so old, he was here when quote “it was bad”. God’s so old, he lost his virginity to Pandora’s box.

Hey God: How’s your particle, by the way? You know, that boson, that has nothing to do with you? That secret particle you’ve been hiding? You can’t be too happy it’s already named after an atheist, who postulated that shit in 1964.

Caught your ass imbuing fundamental particles with mass? Nobody found that particle right? Cuz that would be embarrassing. I know you love those gaps, but scientists are gonna keep finding stuff. You’re losing real estate faster than Israel.

In closing, I’d like to say on behalf of creation. This isn’t a roast, as much as it’s an intervention. That’s enough with all the mysterious ways, already. You’ve gotta stop being so fucking mysterious; cancer, terrorism, rape, genocide. We all love a good plot twist, but you’re really pushing it.

All I’m saying, is the reveal better be god-damn amazing.

Song:

(G, Emin, G, Emin, G, Emin, C, Emin)

Atheists eat babies, that’s just the way God made ‘em;

I heard it on the news, that’s what that feller said verbatim.

He said lock up all yer young ‘uns and that feller’s never lied;

He said their Girl Scout cookies have Girl Scouts inside.

Them godless motherfuckers’ll never cop to what they done;

But if you turn your back a second, they might julianne yer son.

If you think that they smell good it’s all the baby breath they’re fartin’

Pourin’ milk over a cereal made from the baby on the carton.

(C, Dmin, Emin)

Well Atheists eat babies yes they do.

They’ll put ‘em in a pot and make a stew.

(C, Dmin, G, Emin)

And if you lost yer faith in Jesus you would eat them, too.

So I’ll see you ‘gain next Sunday in that pew.

Atheists eat babies, don’t tell me it ain’t so.

You say you want some proof? Well they proof ‘em in their dough.

I reckon that explains why they hate them Catholic priests.

Those pedophilic bastards always tenderize their meats.

So be careful if yer kids are ripe for atheist cuisine.

And remember that agnostics eat ‘em up to age thirteen.

Cause folks what don’t fear god eat kids with every meal;

There ain’t nothing they like better than the taste of human veal.

Well atheists eat babies, yes they do.

I swear to god and Jesus that it’s true.

Them grumpy goats in their blue housecoats eat kid fondue,

and maybe sometimes orphan cordon bleu.

Or roast them little tykes for barbecue.

For dessert they’ll have a toddler cobbler, too.

They don’t mean the same thing as me and you,

When they ask their waiter for a kid’s menu.

Cause Atheists… Eat Babies… Yes they do.

Outro:

We’ve got time to respond to one quick email before we close things out for tonight. From the “You say tomato, I say it correctly” department, Jordan from Birmingham writes to tell me that she would love the show if it weren’t for the “nails on a chalkboard” reaction she has every time I say the word atheist.

Now, before I dismiss the criticism, I’ll admit that Jordan is correct. It’s not pronounced atheist, it’s atheist, and I am definitely guilty of mispronouncing the shit out of it constantly. That being said, I’ve tried to get that hard T-H in there and when I do I get all lispy. Sorry. I talk fast and sometimes pedantic pronunciation is the first victim. I hope that in time you can come to forgive me.

We’ll be back in 168 hours with the “Did Jesus Masturbate” Edition. We’ll be back to our thirty minute format for that one, but we promise to be doubly funny to make up for it. If you’re one of those people that falls into a Ben & Jerry’s induced comatose depression when this show ends though, fear not, there’s more. You can get us in bite-sized doses on our erratically published blog at Scathing Atheist (dot) com. We’ve also got bonus content there including an extended version of last week’s interview with Carl from Post Rapture Looting.

You can also find us on Twitter, Facebook and You-Tube. Be sure to like us and/or follow us and/or subscribe to us and/or share us as you see fit. And don’t forget to swing over to iTunes and give us a review and if you haven’t checked us out on Stitcher yet, get on that shit. My patience is wearing thin.

A lot of people to thank. Obviously I want to thank Heath and Lucinda again for joining me tonight and helping me get through this tome of nonsense. I want to thank everybody who left us a review on iTunes, those really do make my day. I also want to thank everybody who sent us emails. There’s too many to thank by name, but I really appreciate your feedback and at this point I still respond to every email so if you want to drop me a line, you can find the email address on the Contact page of our website.

Most of all, tonight, I want to thank our very most favorite listener of the week, Laura, who gave us money. Only the best people give us money, and they deserve recognition for both giving us money and for being among the best of people. If you feel that you, too, are one of the best people, you can prove it by clicking on the “donation” button on the right side of our home page. In the interest of full disclosure, we’ll keep doing the show one way or the other, but Heath is way funnier if I buy him pizza before we record.

If you have questions, comments or death threats, you’ll find all the info on the aforementioned Contact page. All the music used in this episode was written and performed by yours truly and yes, I did have my permission.

My Least Favorite Meme

February 10, 2013 Noah Lugeons 4 comments

by Noah Lugeons

I find it disheartening the way that Christians (and those affiliated with other brands of idiocy) think that a perfectly acceptable answer to the debate is:

I am ignorant of your side of the argument and refuse to learn.

While the atheists I know tend to me more knowledgeable about religion than the religious, the Jebus-lovers love to flaunt there nescience by making points like:

If we descended from monkeys, how come there are still monkeys?

Not only does this reveal them to be feeble-minded dolts, it also betrays an utter refusal to actually understand what they’re arguing about. And if they haven’t betrayed it yet, they certainly will when you try to explain the notion of a common ancestor.

Which brings us to one of the most ubiquitous and ridiculous of Christian memes, which I have answered in a way that I have to imagine many have answered before:

Categories: General Bitches and Gripes Tags: atheism, atheist, Christian, jesus, religion, religious memes, stupidity

The ACLU: Banner Banners

May 27, 2011 Noah Lugeons Leave a comment

by Noah Lugeons

Gotta love the ACLU.

The ACLU announced yesterday that they would be filing a lawsuit to force a Boston area school to remove an explicitly Christian banner from the school’s auditorium. Apparently just pointing out that the law expressly forbids it hanging there wasn’t enough to convince the school, who voted to keep the banner up when the same issue was brought before them last year.

The ability of Christians to play “repressed” never fails to amaze me. In a nation where virtually every position of power in the government is controlled by a Christian, every president through our nation’s history has been Christian (unless you believe Bradlee Dean) and Christianity enjoys a cornucopia of privileges not granted to other faiths, still the holier-than-me of the world will claim oppression whenever they are expected to play by the same rules as everyone else.

Keep in mind that when atheists put a harmless sign on a bus with the pussy-footing message of “There’s probably no God”, the Christians get apoplectic. They sue, they protest, they write angry letters to the editor and eventually vandalize the signs. This is their reaction to a message so watered down it’s drowning. This is their reaction when we simply say “by the way, we also exist”.

And yet, somehow in the miswired mind of the faithful, it’s perfectly okay to indoctrinate the children of atheists (not to mention Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and those of any other faith). So much so that it will require action by the courts just to get them to stop flaunting their majority in a way that is expressly forbidden in the Constitution.

I’m okay with Christians claiming oppression, but shouldn’t we at least get the joy of oppressing them first? If they were complaining because they were being fed to lions, I would completely understand that. I’d also be on You-Tube searching every derivative of the words “Christian”, “Lion” and “Disemboweled”.

I’ll never understand how the Christian brain manages to overcome the inherent paradox of saying that they are being treated unfairly because they are being treated the same way as everyone else.

By the way, I double checked… there are no You-Tube results for Christian, Lion, Disemboweled. All for the best… it might have been a video of CS Lewis’ Jesus allegory getting ripped open.

Categories: Uncategorized Tags: ACLU, atheist, athiesm, boston banner, Christian, church and state, faith, godless, religious banner in boston

Crucifying Straw Men

May 22, 2011 Noah Lugeons Leave a comment

by Noah Lugeons

The collective voice of the non believers cried out in a chorus of criticism this week as a small contingent of Christian kooks camped out to await the rapture. Twitter was alive with jokes like “No rapture? Don’t sweat it. It’s not the end of the world”, “If the rapture doesn’t happen Saturday Christianity’s cancelled right?” and “So can I have the Vatican when you’re gone?” We laughed at their gullibility. We laughed at their mindless adherence to a numerological interpretation of a poorly written compendium of ancient mythology. But between the jokes and insults, we also roundly criticized them for perpetuating such a moronic belief.

Of course, Saturday came and went with the same number of raptures as the Saturday before that and now as Harold Camping’s disillusioned followers slowly start to reassemble their lives. Largely we’ve stopped picking on them and moved back to picking on Christians and faithful folks in a more general sense.

But there’s also been a backlash against our criticism. Many within the religious community are now faulting the atheists for “attacking the extremes”. This is a pretty common critique; that non believers find the most outlandish and ridiculous examples of Christianity and then hold them up as examples as though they represented the average Christian. When Bill Maher’s film Religulous debuted, the majority of critics accused him of only showing the lunatic fringe of faith without mentioning that it was not an accurate representation of Christians in general.

But is that a fair criticism? Do we really only attack straw men? And if we do, is that really a bad thing?

This weekend provides the perfect example. Sure, an overwhelming majority of Christians were not expecting the rapture to occur yesterday. They correctly predicted that Harold Camping and his ministry were full of shit. So is it fair to paint all Christians with the same brush strokes you use to cover these religiou-tards?

Well, I would argue that it is. The rational people rejected Harold Camping because he was an idiot numerologist that thinks the bible is the word of god. The religious people rejected Harold Camping because they thought he had the math wrong.

Christians expend a lot of effort trying to distance themselves from the more extreme end of their spectrum. When Fred Phelps protests at military funerals, the Jesus-ites are quick to remind us that he is doesn’t speak for them. He is a small and insignificant extremist with a warped view of Christianity and they cannot be judged by his nonsense any more than atheists can be judged by the random mental ejaculations of Joe Rogan.

On its surface, that seems like a fair argument. After all, you can’t say Catholics are murderers just because Hitler was a Catholic. You can’t say that scientists are all full of shit just because Andrew Wakefield was a scientist. If you don’t bother to examine it very deeply, the charge that we attack straw men seems fair.

But it isn’t. Fred Phelps didn’t decide that God Hated Fags. It’s written right there in the Christian instruction book. Harold Camping didn’t decide that the world was going to end like the intro to a Michael Bay movie, it’s a major tenet of their faith. These people are simply taking the accepted beliefs of the larger group and carrying them to their logical conclusion.

When Christians faulted Camping by quoting Matthew 24:36 they acted as though this was somehow less stupid than Camping’s original claims. But polls show that the majority of Christians do believe in the same fanciful crap that he was selling. How can you fault one man for assigning it a date without also faulting the moronic set of beliefs that got him there?

Socially conscious Christians do their best to sweep the fundamentalists under the rug. They like to pretend that these are just the insane ramblings of someone who “doesn’t get” Christianity. But all the fundamentalists do is take the crap that mainstream preachers pretend to believe seriously. Some pastors and parishioners might tell these stories with a nod and a wink, but how can they fault someone for taking them seriously when they say that to do otherwise is a ticket to eternal damnation?

Fundamentalism is a predictable and even necessary offshoot of religion. Anyone who endorses the bible as the “word of god” is guilty of fostering them. Anyone who has ever given a dime to a church is guilty of harboring them. Anyone who ever told their children that there was a lake of fire where the bad people spend eternity is responsible for creating them.

Christianity cannot divorce itself from the extremists until they admit publicly that the bible is just a collection of prehistoric essays. Until they admit that Jesus has no more substance than Santa Claus, they are just as guilty as the people holding the protest signs or giving away their worldly belongings in time to get raptured.

You can’t blame an idiot for being an idiot. The only recourse is to stop feeding the stupid.

Categories: Uncategorized Tags: atheism, atheist, Christian, Christianity, faith, Fred Phelps, godless, Harold Camping, rapture, religion

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528: Banned Wagon Edition March 30, 2023
In this week’s episode, book banning bites the butts of the city of Brigham, God visits a town in Connecticut to serve unlimited breadsticks made of his son, and Don Ford visits a podcast in Jersey, Michigan, and Georgia and doesn’t bring any breadsticks at all. --- To make a per episode donation at Patreon.com, click here: http://www.patreon.com/ScathingAth […]
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527: Marshtacular Edition March 23, 2023
On this week’s episode: Virginia gives a whole new meaning to periodic investigation ... The religious zealots of the Taliban will find they’re not cut out for clerical work ... And Gwyneth Paltrow experiments with putting noxious gas INTO her butthole. --- To make a per episode donation at Patreon.com, click here: http://www.patreon.com/ScathingAtheist To b […]
Puzzle in a Thunderstorm, LLC
526: Elevated Edition March 16, 2023
In this week’s episode, we head to Seattle, so we leave you with a whole bunch of headlines we recorded over the last six weeks so you wouldn’t miss us. --- To make a per episode donation at Patreon.com, click here: http://www.patreon.com/ScathingAtheist To buy our book, click there: https://www.amazon.com/Outbreak-Crisis-Religion-Ruined-Pandemic/dp/B08L2HSV […]
Puzzle in a Thunderstorm, LLC

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