Archive
Episode 49 – Partial Transcript
by Heath Enwright and Noah & Lucinda Lugeons
Note: Transcript contains elements that were removed from the episode due to time constraints
Warning: This podcast contains explicit language in three… two… fuck.
Sponsor:
Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Pro-Scripture Strength Biblenol. Perfect for those biblically inspired headaches. It’s stronger than Prayer-Bayer and longer lasting than Bibliuprofen.
Biblenol; because somehow the Historical Books are even worse than the Pentateuch.
And now, the Scathing Atheist.
Intro:
It’s Thursday,
It’s January 23rd,
And the extra week before the Superbowl is worse for the NFL than Junior Seau.
I’m Noah Lugeons,
I’m Heath Enwright and from pro-federate enclave New York, New York,
And forcibly de-federate, Podunk, Georgia, this is the Scathing Atheist
On this week’s episode,
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We revel in the joy of getting piss drinking and nun fucking in the same news cycle.
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We’ll learn how to rape like a Muslim,
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And Lucinda will join us to put on our Monocles to read One Chronicles
Beating me to the poem, I see. But first, the diatribe…
Diatribe:
My inbox is full of idiots.
As you may know, the other day I went on the most excellent Cognitive Dissonance podcast and gave Tom and Cecil a Tarot card reading. And since then I’m getting a vodka-piss stream of woo-merchants and dipshits emailing me to tell me just how wrong I’ve got it.
To their credit, these aren’t people who are actively out there scamming people and telling them “you’re grandma is gonna get cancer if you don’t donate a hot tub to the next person they lay eyes on… hey, hey, I’m over here” or anything. They almost certainly aren’t charging for their services, and they’re not consciously deceiving anyone. These are just people who have gotten really good at deceiving themselves.
The way they justify their pseudo-scientific hobby is by pointing out that Tarot isn’t about fortune-telling, it’s about divination; it’s about helping people through their problems with universal symbolism. It’s a way to reinforce positive messages and give people hope. It’s just a structured way for someone to try to see their problems from a new angle. What’s the harm in that?
Well, as I pointed out last Monday when I did the reading for Tom and Cecil which you can hear on episode number one hundred and thirty-four of their fine program, there’s plenty of harm. If your goal is to help people through their problems and aid them in seeing things from a new angle, don’t you think you should have some kind of qualification to do that beyond a spare fourteen bucks when you were at Spencer’s Gifts?
It’s belittling to psychologists and psychiatrists to think that any jackass who memorized the Zodiacal influences of some pretty pictures can step in and do their job with no chance of fucking it up. It’s the human psyche, for fuck’s sake; the most complicated thing that we know about. And you’re just gonna dive in there with nothing but the Idiot’s Guide to Vague Verbosity and ask me what’s the harm?
Now that should be all the answer I have to give, but it isn’t all the answer that I can give. Whatever spiritual caveats you might offer, as soon as you start shuffling your deck, you’re putting yourself in a position of authority that you didn’t have to do anything to earn. And it’s gonna be damned easy to take advantage of the person across the table. Even if you don’t succumb to that temptation, you’re just priming the pump for the less principled person that comes after you. And for what? So that you can spend half an hour giving them what DJ Groethe calls your “Aw shucks advice”?
You may think you’re giving them a positive message, but how the fuck do you know? You tell somebody to focus on what makes them happy, but you don’t know how much they love torturing rats with hacksaws. You tell them to never give up on love but you don’t know about the restraining order. You tell them to follow their dream but you don’t know if they dream about disemboweling postal workers.
People who are looking for help shouldn’t be pissing away time checking with sorcerers first. That goes for Tarot card readers, psychics, necromancers, astrologers, palm readers and crystal gazers and pastors, priests, bishops, reverends, rabbis, mullahs and monks. They should instead go to somebody who is qualified to help them through science-based means and they shouldn’t have to navigate a complicated menu to find them.
And yes, I group all of the above in the same category. I’ll freely admit that religious leaders are almost universally better trained to help people with personal crises, but at the same time they’re deferred a lot more authority because of it. For every person who would discount their doctor’s advice on the word of their cartomancer, there are a million who would do so on the advice of their priest. They’re given even more authority and even more opportunity to abuse it. And just like I’d say of the Tarot reader, the honest ones are just priming the adolescent buttocks for the dishonest ones.
Consider the strict licensing and regulation on psychiatrists and psychologists. If it came to light that a psychologist was sleeping with one of their patients, it would probably be a career ending scandal. But as Dr. Darrel Ray points out in both The God Virus and Sex and God, anybody who stays in a church long enough will hear about some pastor sleeping with some congregant. Sometimes the pastor is quietly moved to another church. Sometimes they’re not. But no horny pastor has ever lost his license to past over it.
And I don’t think I need to tell you that nobody ever lost their license to read tarot cards over any abuse of any kind ever.
There is no “harmless bullshit”. And I don’t really care how many paragraphs you can cram into an email, you’re never going to convince me that your faith is quantitatively better that the other faiths just because yours has playing cards.
Headlines:
Joining me for headlines tonight is hyperborean Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to migrate?
It is fucking freezing here. But I’m like an African swallow. The bird, not the ebony porn title. Non-migratory.
Don’t worry, I’m sure if the Weather Channel had an eleven day forecast there would be a high above freezing on it.
In our lead story tonight, from the “Sister Cum Mother” file, a nun working in Italy failed to plan her parenthood very well and recently gave birth, opting instead for termination of her job, for breaking the vow of chastity. According to her account, God secretly fucked her while she was masturbating on an airplane, but despite the well-known Joseph v. Mary precedent, her immaculate conception alibi was ignored.
Because it couldn’t just be that some nun fucked a dude multiple times. Because how the hell could that be international news, right? Nun fucks wouldn’t make ink on four continents, would it? So clearly there was some divine vine involved.
The ‘Last Scion’ released the following statement: (quote) “It was God’s dick … and I was married to God at the time. Just wait … My half-brother Jesus is gonna be right back, and he’ll tell you.” (end quote)
And apparently putting her money where her mouth is on the issues of contraception and abortion didn’t earn her any favor in the eyes of the Holy See.
As a tribute to the Scathing Atheist, and our mocking nicknames for Pope Francesco Rinaldi, the new mom named her son Francesco. Despite this revelation bringing down the average severity of their scandals considerably, the church feels like this has been a public embarrassment. And once again, Catholic leaders have a tail between their legs because of a child.
Well, I’m not just gonna come out and say that the Pope’s her baby-daddy, but he has shown a recent interest in tits.
Nun gives birth after seemingly immaculate conception: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/vaticancityandholysee/10581481/Nun-gives-birth-to-baby-named-after-Pope.html
And moving on to the “Ringing Endorsement From the Voices in my Head” file we bring you an update to a story we covered back in episode 38. You’ll recall Pennsylvania State Representative Rick Saccone from Heath making jokes about how his last name kind of sounds like a reference to testicular amputation.
And we all learned a valuable lesson: Buy your anal beads from the store.
And remember he said buy… not rent. In addition to Saccone’s lopsided nuts, we also discussed his braindead brainchild HB 1728, a proposal that calls for the words “In God we Trust” to be prominently displayed in every Pennsylvania classroom. While trying to justify this crevasse-wiping use of the constitution on a local television show last Sunday, Saccone claimed that the bill had the backing of the atheist community. He cited the off-the-record support of the unnamed head of “Pennsylvania Atheists”, a group that neither speaks for all atheists, nor exists.
Saccone’s running a board meeting: “We’re losing numbers. Gotta do something. Now keeping in mind I already printed a bunch of these … You guys think it’s all the hating women and fags, or you think it’s not enough propaganda posters?”
Of course, we’re all used to religious people taking advice from people who don’t exist so that came as no surprise. What really caught my eye on this story was his claim that “god” isn’t a divisive term since atheists can make it (quote) “whatever god they worship in the form of maybe […] materialism”. So yeah, we atheists can just pray to materialism so what are we so pissed about?
PA state rep makes up some atheists, pretends they support his proposal: http://www.examiner.com/article/atheists-demand-state-representative-apologize
And in “The Other Santorum” news, the Maldives has added ‘tape’ to the list of sticky red stuff that goes with rape. Abdulla Yameen, president of the Islamic theocracy, has vetoed a proposed law that would make it illegal to rape your wife while she fills out divorce paperwork. He called the rape ban (quote) “un-Islamic”.
Well good for it. What higher ethical standard can a law aspire to than “un-Islamic”?
This means two things … 1: Islam has justified rape! … and 2: The Islamic idea of justified rape specifically includes those awkward months before the woman gets tried for divorce. So just to be clear … You’re a woman, and you find out the hard way that you married a righteous rapist, and now you want a divorce. Getting your consent back, is harder than getting a gun. There’s a trial and a lengthy waiting period. Fortunately for women, the divorce settlement process itself, does not take very long, because women don’t own property.
In some cases, though, I think the husband can get visitation rights to the vagina on weekends.
According to the Religion News Service: (quote) “The bill says a husband cannot force his wife to have sex if the couple have filed for divorce, dissolution or mutual separation, and if the intent is to transmit a sexual disease.” (end quote) … So the bill didn’t even target rapists with AIDS, unless they were actively intending to infect their victim. Am I crazy, or did someone just use religion to defend the rights of AIDS-spreading rapists?!? Do we really need to keep making this podcast?!?
Maldivian President declared law against marital rape “un-islamic” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/17/marital-rape-bill-maldives_n_4611006.html?utm_hp_ref=religion
And from the “Golden Calf Showers” file, a Hindu cult in northern India is touting the medicinal benefits of drinking pre-dawn virgin cow urine. So they’re not complete idiots … At least they don’t go out there in the middle of the fucking day, and drink piss from slutty octo-mom cows, like a crazy person. Slutty cow piss burns when you drink it from the herpes. Either way, they’re giving a new meaning to the term India Pale Ale (or IPA).
Of course, it’s worth noting that this story comes to us from the paragon of journalistic integrity that is the Daily Mail, so we’ll take it with a grain of creatinine, but we’re reporting on it anyway because they had pictures. And honestly, if the real story here is “unscrupulous Daily Mail photographer coaxes Hindu man into catching cow urine with a drinking glass” it would still be newsworthy enough to make piss puns about.
According to the cult – and the studies they didn’t perform – the hot champagne helps fight cancer, diabetes, tuberculosis, stomach problems, and baldness. So even if drinking cow piss upsets your stomach, these guys have the cure for that … which is literally made up of the piss they made you drink.
See, that’s what I was wondering. Like, if you drink the cow piss and then drink your cow piss piss and then drink your cow piss piss piss, and so on, is that like Hindu homeopathy?
Jairam Singhal, a decade-long urinalcoholic, said the following about the undeniable success of the placebovine excrement remedy: (quote) “I had diabetes, but ever since I have started drinking cow urine, my diabetes levels have been under control” (end quote).
Basically: “I got a bunch of Diabetes about 10 years ago, and I immediately started drinking urine every morning. Thanks to the magic pee, I’ve completely avoided getting more Diabetes since. My levels haven’t gone up by a single Diabetus.”
I so want to see Wilfred Brimley doing a cow piss commercial now. And I’d point out that he is still alive to do it, but we record on Wednesday and release on Thursday so I don’t want to take any chances.
Large numbers of people dumb enough to buy urine, are lining up at local cow shelters. To keep up with surging demand, a successful “Milk, Milk, Lemonade Stand” has popped up in the city of Agra. Obviously, thanks to these honest-to-god piss-sippers, we’ll need 30 seconds on the clock … ‘Slogans for the Medicinal Urine Restaurant’ … GO!!!
“Not on the rug, man…”
“Eat shit and die. Drink piss and live.”
“Would you like to take a piss, or will that be for here?”
“The mens room and the dessert menu have Urinal Cakes!!!”
“Got cancer? Well urine luck!”
“Milk, Milk, Lemonade: Number One in your mouth, Number One in your heart.”
“Milk, Milk, Lemonade: Never avoid a void.”
“Home of Mixology’s first ever cure-all beverage: the Nitro-Gin and Tonic.”
“Why settle for McDonalds’ special sauce when you can have McTurated special sauce?”
“Milk, Milk, Lemonade: Drinking straight from the Bed Panacea.”
“Urinary Tract Perfection”
“Our famous Urine Sampler combo appetizer features assorted cheese whiz, golden drench fries, and potato leak soup.”
“The best leak since Snowden”
“We cross streams like Peter Venkman.”
“Bladder ingredients; Bladder Pizza”
Mop a Johns … What about: “The New Drinkable Cure For Cancer: Pittle. Yellow. Different. Better.”
Hindu cult thinks drinking cow piss cures cancer: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2538520/Urine-drinking-Hindu-cult-believes-warm-cup-sunrise-straight-virgin-cow-heals-cancer-followers-queuing-try-it.html
And finally tonight, in “Stimulate your clit for Jesus” news; wayward youth, dildo dealer and c-list porn star Farrah Abraham has announced a forthcoming book on Christian parenting; set to publish after the completion of her trilogy of erotic fiction. Or, as she actually said, (quote) “My next trilogy – so three books – is an erotic sex novel.” (end quote) Because, you know, she’s, like… a wordsmith and stuff.
And based on my extensive C-List research, she’s one of those dealers who’s also a user. She must go through dildos like a wood chipper.
You might remember Farrah from the MTV exploitation of soul-crushing adolescent mistakes and tragedies, “Teen Mom” but I’m kind of hoping you don’t. If you remember her at all I’d hope it was from the sex tape that she accidentally sold to a porn distributor for over a million dollars. Or perhaps you remember her from that awkward toe in the trigger guard of the shotgun moment you had when you realized that a teen mother cum porn actress cum sex toy seller wrote a book and it was a fucking NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER.
They say write what you know. And she knows getting knocked up at 15, the father dies in a redneck accident, “Lord of the Cock Rings” Trilogy, and finally Christian parenting. That’s a story people can relate to. Lots of dudes are thinking: “You just described my wife.”
And as sad as this story is for every piece of literature ever penned, I should note that it is a powerful reminder that someone can rise up out of poverty, teen pregnancy and untimely widowhood as long as they’re white and have great tits.
Good to know I’ve got potential.
Teen mom and B-list porn star to author Christian parenting book: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/01/17/teen-mom-who-leaked-her-sex-tape-announces-shes-writing-a-christian-parenting-book/
And on that reference to Heath’s moobs, we’ll close out the headlines tonight. Heath, thanks as always for joining me.
I’m holding a rocks glass of scotch in my cleavage.
And when we come back, Lucinda will join us to learn that books of the Bible apparently have reruns.
Poem:
1 Chronicles in Rhyme
Have I told you the story about the crappy king Saul?
The ass-hunting bastard who squandered it all?
The Philistine fighter who lost many men?
Oh, I have? Well fuck you, I’m gonna tell it again.
Have I told you the story about the other king David?
Who defeated the Moabites and left them enslaved?
Whom god loved in battle and whom won every war?
I have? Oh well, fuck you, I’m gonna tell it some more.
How about Solomon? Did I tell you his tale?
The palace he built at incredible scale?
Oh, I told you he’s wise, super-fertile and rich?
Well I’ll tell you again, cause I’m First Chronicles, bitch.
That’s right, I’ve got nothing unspoken to say;
God said “read this book” and you have to obey.
So consider the previous four books as primers,
And consider this one to be god with Alzheimers.
You don’t care who begat Hezron, or who Hezron begat?
Or maybe you do, but you’ve got it down pat.
After all, we’ve discussed it, and I’ll even admit
This isn’t even the first time we’ve repeated that shit.
We’re just assuming our readers have piss-poor retention,
And clearly the editors aren’t paying attention,
So we’ll just repeat repetition and duplicate verse,
We’ll restate and rehash and reprise and rehearse.
And rework, and remind and reform and redo,
And resay, and revert and recast and renew,
Reconstruct, recrudesce, reproduce and rewrite
Refashion, reiterate, relive and recite.
Cause fuck it, it’s biblical and that all that counts.
So here’s nine chapters of names that no one can pronounce.
And maybe a chapter with a god praising song;
That’s a rip-off of Psalms and is two pages long.
I find describing how dull this book is rather challenging,
But in hopes that I can, here’s my nearest analogy;
Your at grandma’s and there’s this adorable clip that she found,
On YouTube of dogs chasing lasers around.
It’s twelve minutes long and it sucks and what’s more,
She’s shown you this same fucking montage before.
So you sit through it all and she says “Here’s another thing!”
Well First Chronicles is like the parts where the next one is buffering.
So sure, this books useless, and just makes the thing thicker,
And inspires those reading it to put bleach in their liquor,
But they need to remind you that like it or not,
The bible suck’s monkey nuts, in case you forgot.
Babble:
If, like me, you make it through the first twelve books of the bible and say, “well that was crap”, don’t feel alone. It turns out the people writing this shit felt the same way, as One Chronicles is basically an alternate account that retells the entire fucking story to this point with a few minor tweaks and additions.
Yeah, apparently biblical reboots come faster than Spiderman reboots. Somebody read this thing and said, “It needs more exactly the same stuff again”.
So joining us to reiterate and rephrase is my lovely wife Lucinda. Lucinda, thanks for coming back for more.
Well, I tried the old “not tonight, honey, I have a headache” thing, but you weren’t having any of that shit so here I am with fucking bells on.
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Apparently the people charged with summing up the first dozen books read them and said to themselves, “You know what parts suck? The ones that aren’t soul-crushing genealogies,” because they elected to start the book out with nine straight chapters of begats. So not much to summarize there, basically Adam was born and everyone who existed from then to the postexilic period is named there somewhere. What’s say we start in chapter ten?
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Yeah, in case anybody forgot what a horrible fuck up Saul was, we rehash how the Israelites got their asses kicked under his command. Again.
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And with Saul’s last words, he asked his gay slave to kill him, (quote) “lest these uncircumcised come and abuse me.” So the gimp refuses, and Saul falls on his own sword, to avoid capture and the inevitable lifetime of … apparently some sort of legendary Phillistine foreskin slap torture.
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But then at the end it reminds you that it was because Saul consulted a medium instead of the Lord; so calling miss Cleo justifies the massacre and displacement of god’s chosen people. Got it.
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Chapter eleven is a brief list of ancient Jewish badasses, and a few vainglorious accounts of the ass they kicked.
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Yeah, at a certain point it just starts reading like a really long, rambling acceptance speech at the Oscars. You know, somebody who just won best costume design in a foreign language documentary is holding up the show thanking everyone they’ve ever met: “And I’d like to thank all the Benjamites and the Judahites that came to the stronghold of David; and I want to thank Ahiezer, Joash, Jeziel and Pelet for bringing David bread when he was unable to move about freely, and where all my Manassites at? Adnah, Jozabad, Jedial, Mikey, my main man Elihu…”
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Yeah, so to summarize what Noah just said there, this book is boring compared to the Oscars. That should tell you all you need to know.
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Then there’s the groovy remix of “Uzzah gets killed for touching the ark”
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It’s like the book itself is admitting that it’s too boring to read. It’s saying “Yeah, this dude Uzzah exploded when he touched the ark but we can’t imagine you weren’t skimming when we talked about it before”
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This book is sounding more and more like the Chris Farley show: Remember…Remember when “Seven And they carried the ark of God on a new cart, from the house of Abinadab, and Uzzah and Ahio were driving the cart. Eight And David and all Israel were celebrating before God with all their might, with song and lyres and harps and tambourines and cymbals and trumpets.” … That was awesome … Stupid- I’m such an idiot!!!
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And so that you know we’re not overstating the boring here, consider this; we’re not just reading unpronounceable lists of bronze age Jewish royalty; we’re re-reading unpronounceable lists of bronze age Jewish royalty.
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Well, re-skimming…
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And in case you somehow managed to miss the entire central theme of the last four books we just fucking read, One Chronicles reminds us that David is awesome and kicks much ass.
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I can’t help but think of the profound disappointment that people must have felt when Luther translated this thing. You know, it’s supposed to be this magical book of intrigue and answers that all the priests refer to, so you finally get a vulgar masses, Reader’s Digest translation, you leaf to a random page and land in One Chronicles. And it’s a list of the members of some ancient choir that sang at the “Ark Relocation” party.
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Chapter seventeen reminds us that god liked David the bestest of everybody. Ever.
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Yeah God is pleased with David for carrying his exploding death-box around, and also for fucking anything with three holes, so he gives him a really nice house for his harem of 3000 women and their shitty red-headed step-children. Bottom line: God’s happy and David’s getting more ass than Muhammad Ali aiming for pussy.
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I get the feeling like this whole book was inspired by somebody reading the last four books and saying, “I can’t imagine a more boring way to present the history of Israel” and another guy saying, “I can”
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It’s like listening to a kid tell a joke they don’t get over and over again.
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Yeah reading One Chronicles is like listening to your shitty five-year-old nephew tell a joke on the phone. First you get 30 seconds of what sounds like … a litter of puppies fighting to lick bacon grease off the receiver … while the stupid kid gets the phone in his hand. And then they put italics and question marks in there for no reason … “Yeah and then Abishai? the son of Zeruiah? Killed 18,000 Edomites in the (breathe) Valley of Salt-okay-bye.”
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In nineteen we revisit the whole Ammonite servant-shaving war… because… I don’t even know. Ancient Israel must have just been that boring.
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Right? A few emissaries get wedgied by Hanun and they’re gossiping about it for four god damn centuries? Seriously?
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Here’s a quote: “So Hanun took David’s servants and shaved them and cut off their garments in the middle, at their hips, and sent them away.” I think we made an ass-less chaps joke when they told this exact same story the first time. Which was hilarious … Ass-less chaps on dessert-dwelling Jewish midgets is just about 24-carat comic gold … But we didn’t mention the genius wardrobe suggestion for a Koran-friendly compromise on Muslim porn. The women can trade in their eye slit, for a tit slit, or a slit slot.
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And you can tell there’s an inferiority complex driving this whole thing. It all reads like some subjugated motherfuckers sitting around going, “remember when Jews kicked ass?”
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There’s a reason “Knocked Up” wasn’t two hours of Jonah Hill and Seth Rogen getting drunk and talking about the movie “Munich”.
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And then we’re reminded of the evils of census taking. Which is weird, because Moses did it twice in Numbers and nobody had to be plagued to death over it. But yeah, the trip down memory cul-de-sac continues.
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Yep. We relive all the excitement of counting the cedar trees used to build the temple as we transition from David to Solomon in chapter twenty-two.
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Yes, and lest we forget, Levites don’t have to do work.
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Probably the single most oft repeated edict in this book so far; Levites are special and don’t have to do shit that’s sweaty.
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And chapter twenty-four is probably the current leader for the most boring individual chapter in the bible. It’s a detailed genealogy of Moses and Aaron, which we already read once in the Pentateuch, once at the beginning of this same book and again in the directly antecedent chapter!
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And it holds that title until chapter twenty five, where we get a detailed twenty-four part genealogy of the lyre, harp and cymbal players. Fuckeringfuckatash.
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I don’t get it. Jews are a musical people. But a possessed frontman having spasms and speaking in tongues … accompanied by lyre, harp, and cymbals … would be the worst band ever!!! First of all, lyre and harp are almost the same thing, so how is that two thirds of the instrumentation?!? And then add people smashing metal discs together. That’s not a reasonable composition.
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And then they follow up the biblical “This one time at band camp” story with an even more detailed genealogy of all the bouncers that worked the temple door.
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…And then one for all the civil servants.
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I feel like an ass even covering this book. It’s just Samuel again. It’s the whole two fucking books retold. We honestly could have done this book as a “greatest hits” mash up of our last four Babble segments. In twenty eight we’re reminded of just how fucking gilded this temple Solomon was building was.
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The temple of our housewife of Beverly Hills
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And then David dies again, Solomon is anointed again, they kill a bunch of bulls again and holy shit this reading the bible shit was a horrible idea.
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I’m so excited there’s another Chronicles coming up after this one … Like Hayden Christensen excited. Annakin was the bomb in Phantom Menace, so…
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Word, bitch, Phantom Menace like a motherfucker!!!
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I feel like a rape victim at half-time. It’s confusing … poignant moment.
I don’t know, I feel like we should apologize to our listeners for how boring the Bible is. An encyclopedia would be more fucking entertaining. I can’t imagine how we’re gonna keep from putting them to sleep when we do Second Chronicles.
Well, look on the bright side; at least you don’t have to write a fucking poem about it.
Alright, so after all that this is hard for me to say, but the Holy Babble will be back in episode 52 with Second Chronicles, but don’t worry, I’m sure that one will be awesome.
Outro:
Before we close the hood tonight I wanted to thank everyone for their ideas for mash-ups and flashbacks for our fiftieth episode next week. We’re still taking suggestions so if you have a favorite skit, moment, interview or vulgarity from our first forty-nine shows, let us know. You’ll find all the contact info on the contact page of our website.
And if you just can’t get enough me, you can find me all over the podcasting world this week. Tom and Cecil were kind enough to invite me back on Cognitive Dissonance to give them a Tarot reading; Cash and Love from Atheists on Air invited me on their show last Monday to talk about sex and circumcision and John and JD at Rational Talk invited me on to chat about this program and all the behind-the-scenes stuff it takes to pull it off every week. You’ll find links to all these shows on the shownotes for this episode at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.
Cognitive Dissonance; Episode 134: http://dissonancepod.com/?p=702
Rational Talk; Homepage: http://www.therationaltalk.com/
Atheists On Air; Episode 29: http://mythunderstoodalliance.com/029-sexpisode-iv-scathing-atheist-steve-wells-sab/
Of course I need to thank Heath for all his wit and wisdom. I need to thank Lucinda for suffering through probably the most boring book of the bible so far with us. I also really, really need to thank McKenzie and McKenzie’s mom for providing the hand’s-down cutest Farnsworth Quote to date. Lucinda and I listened to it four times in a row when we got it. Thanks, it was awesome.
But most of all, of course, I need to thank this week’s most stellar exemplifications of sentient stardust, Shelby, Vinnie, John, Geoff (Jeff), Magnus, Thomas, Ramesh and Ben. Shelby, who’s so kick ass they named a Mustang after her back when Mustangs looked cool; Vinnie, whose mighty member is worshipped by island peoples throughout the Pacific; John, whose legendary sexual prowess echoes on the lips of carnal professionals the world over; Geoff (Jeff), whose IQ has exponents; Magnus, the supreme chancellor of the intergalactic defense federation; Thomas, whose humility forced Time Magazine to settle for the Pope last year; Ramesh, whose so classy he gets his whoop-ass from a bottle; and Ben, whose ejaculations are measured on the enhanced Fujita scale.
This octuple of brave, soulless individuals have tested their mettle against the unforgiving crucible that is our donation page and returned stronger, smarter and more appealing to members of the opposite sex. If you think that you, too, have the psychological acuity required to become a sponsor of our show, you’ll find the donate button on the right side of the homepage at Scathing Atheist (dot) com. And remember, Lucinda and I need to buy a new timing belt and all the other requisite auto-parts that constitute a full vehicle, preferably all pre-assembled and fully functional, so every dollar helps.
And of course, if you want to help but you’re afraid we’ll just use the money to buy booze, you can also help us a ton by leaving us a glowing review on iTunes and telling your friends about the show, especially the ones who might listen to it. You can also find us on all the finest social media sites and Facebook and don’t forget to listen to us on Stitcher if you’re into that kind of thing.
If you have questions, comments or death threats, you’ll find all the contact info on the contact page at Scathing Atheist (dot) com. All the music used in this episode was written and performed by yours truly and yes, I did have my permission.
Episode 42 – Partial Transcript
by Heath Enwright and Noah Lugeons
Warning, this podcast contains explicit language and obscure SAT words.
Sponsor:
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And now, the Scathing Atheist…
Intro:
It’s Thursday,
It’s December 5th,
And non-sequiturs have NO rules!!!
I’m Noah Lugeons,
I’m Heath Enwright,
And from mostly harmless New York, New York, this is the Scathing Atheist.
On this week’s episode
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New Mexico offers a 90-day return policy if your god is broken,
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We’ll bring a towel,
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And Kansas City finds a way to escape the Matrix and get to Zion.
But first, the diatribe…
Diatribe:
So I was watching football last week, and no, you limey bastards, I don’t mean soccer. Clearly the word “football” belongs to the people who hijacked it for a game where kicking the ball is against the rules in almost every situation, despite the nearly global agreement to the contrary, led by the people who both coined the term and invented the language it was coined in. Because America, damn it. And sometimes Canada, damn it, too.
And speaking of damn it, damn it if the postgame interviews weren’t brought to you by Jesus. And Subway.
Some reporter is interviewing the paragon of intellectualism that stuffed the run on 4th down and ended the game and in response to the question; “Do you have to play the run differently when you’re dealing with a mobile quarterback?” This nincompoop prefaces his answer with “First of all, I want to thank Jesus Christ; it all starts with him.”
Yeah, run-blitzing starts with Jesus. Because how the fuck are you supposed to wrap up a tackle if nobody had died for your sins? And wasn’t it Christ the savior stuffing the A gap and forcing the runner inside? No? That was a real human that exists? Then fuck you and answer the question you blathering neanderthal. Nobody tuned into the broadcast this afternoon saying, “Boy, I hope we get some sage-like theological nuggets from the nose guard once this is over.” Your a linebacker. We don’t even want to hear you talk about football, let alone your lord and savior, baby Jesus.
This stuff pisses me off and not just for the obvious reason that it only goes one way. As Carlin points out, you never hear “The good lord tripped me up behind the line of scrimmage”. Except for Bills Wideout Stevie Johnson who once lamented over a dropped ball that cost his team a game by Tweeting, “I praise you 24/7 and this is how you do me!!!”
And beyond that, there’s the implication that god loves you more than the other team. When future hall of famer and probably murderer Ray Lewis talked to the media after last year’s Superbowl, he actually said, “If god is for you, who can be against you?” Implying that god personally decided that the Ravens would win and, in a roundabout way, that the 49ers are the minions of the devil.
And if that’s not enough, consider the insult to everybody who actually did something. Think about how many people directly impacted the team’s victory more than Jesus. He could have thanked his teammates, his coaches, his trainers, his mom, his fluffer… all of those people deserve the thanks more than some nomadic Jewish felon from the iron age.
But more than all of that; more than the selective application, the egocentrism and the corporeal snubbing, what pisses me off most when I hear these impromptu benedictions is that the Jesus-groupies have no idea that they’re being assholes. And even after that extensive but not exhaustive list of why it pisses me off, plenty of Christians would hear this diatribe and say “He’s just expressing his opinion! Why shouldn’t he be allowed to express his views? Why, Noah, you’re allowed to express your views every week on this podcast. Doesn’t he deserve the same liberty?”
No and fuck you rhetorical voice of opposition. It’s just another special privilege that religion gets and nothing else gets. If he wants to start a Christian podcast or thank Jesus at his church I’m not gonna bitch about it… as much. But we were talking about football and all of a sudden we’re on to the lord almighty.
Can you imagine if people were like that about their political views or… anything else at all? Some sideline reporter says, “How does this win affect your playoff chances?” and somebody says, “First of all, I just want to say that embryos aren’t babies, it all starts with that,” or “Before I answer that, I just want to thank Xena for all the erections,” or “Well, it all starts with the fact that the X-Men would fuck the Avengers up in a fight” I don’t care if I agree with what you’re saying or not, you’re still being an asshole. We’re not talking about politics or comics or warrior princesses or god-damned god, we’re talking about football.
But they don’t see it that way. They think they’re doing a good thing. They think they’re being humble and most of the people who hear it think the same thing. They ignore all the theological implication of a god who answers mid-third quarter prayers from millionaire athletes and ignores the kids with cancer and the people who had money on the other team. Something good happened, so it was Jesus. Thanks Jesus!
But I’m willing to bet they’d recognize the problem damn quick if he’d said, “I just want to thank Allah for being the real god” or even something like “I’d just like to thank Darwinian evolution for the genetic mutations that made me six foot eight, 330 pounds and able to withstand bovine doses of steroids.”
And besides, football has already disproven the existence of god. Just ask Tebow.
Headlines:
Joining me for headlines tonight is my equally atheistic about ancient Japanese gods co-host, Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to blaspheme against Fujin, Shinto god of the wind?
Love these opening segments. I feel like an atheist with Tourette’s. Fuck Fujin, Shinto god of the wind. Fuck him and the Akabeko he rode in on.
Well done. In our lead story tonight the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit against the US Conference of Catholic Bishops for the offence of owning hospitals while being a group of callous, misogynistic cock-warts.
Hospitals 101: Doctors should avoid cock-warts, and related calluses.
The lawsuit centers around the medical mistreatment of one Tamesha Means by the Catholic owned “Mercy Health Muskegon Hospital” back in 2010 and the story is almost fucked up enough to be Irish. Means made several trips to the emergency room due to complications in an 18 week pregnancy and, of course, medical procedure and human decency would suggest that the doctors should inform her that unless she terminated the pregnancy she was risking permanent damage, her own survival and, by the way, the baby would almost certainly not survive. But medical procedure and human decency were, in this case, trumped by Catholic doctrine.
Did they at least offer her the option of paying more for a real doctor, with a second opinion about maybe avoiding the double-murder scenario?!?
No and they didn’t have to because until now, no lawsuit has successfully challenged the deplorably insane concept of having men trained in nothing but superstition and bullshit setting medical policy. With 13 percent of American Hospitals already owned by Catholic organizations and more being gobbled up all the time, many have accused the Catholic church of trying to circumvent the laws they don’t like by taking over the medical industry, and in case I’m wrong about that, “Hello! They’re trying to circumvent the laws they don’t like by taking over the medical industry!” There. Now I’m right.
I’d be willing to allow the existence of Catholic hospitals like this, as long as they have a huge surgeon general’s cigarette warning on the building, and also doctors get to rewrite the Bible.
ACLU sues Catholicism for owning hospitals while being heartless pricks: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/aclu-sues-us-bishops-catholic-hospital-ethics-21074634
And in “Holy Craps Free Roll” news, Sagebrush Community Church of Albuquerque, New Mexico is offering a 90-day risk-free trial on their wishing well service. If you wager 10% of your paycheck as tithing, and God fails to answer your prayers during that quarter, you can request your money back, as long as you’re willing to literally take it from the collection plate held by the poor kid that would otherwise get the money.
God: As trustworthy as the slap-chop and the Turbie-Twist. Somehow that still doesn’t quite do it for me.
Here’s how the guy explained it to me, before trying to sell me a timeshare in Vegas: (quote) “That’s right, if you’re willing to pay up front, we’ll let you pray for free!!! If anything good happens like not dying, that was us, and we keep the money. If you die, that was also us, sending you to heaven, and we keep the money. In all other circumstances, we’ll issue a refund.” (end quote) So it’s basically after-life insurance, that pays off if you go to hell.
And there’s probably eternal lifetime limits, or they’ll say you were damned before you started tithing or something.
Albuquerque church offers refunds if the god you buy is broken: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/11/30/church-offers-a-90-day-money-back-guarantee-to-tithers-if-god-doesnt-reward-them/
And in “It’s Only Okay If I Fart in the Elevator” news tonight, Christians are incensed about a plaque that is now hanging on the walls of the Illinois Capitol Building courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. The plaque reads, in its entirety:
At this season of THE WINTER SOLSTICE may reason prevail.
There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell.
There is only our natural world.
Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.
Wow that’s WAY more tame than the atheist plaque we proposed.
Yeah, apparently they wouldn’t allow one made entirely of human fecal matter either. FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor explained that prosthelytizing atheism in a courthouse wasn’t exactly their goal. (quote) “We don’t think that religion, or irreligion, belong at the seat of the state government. But if religious displays are going up in state capitols, then our display representing the freethought point of view will be there, too.”
And incredulous religious people aren’t even aware that their anger proves our point … If religion thinks they can fart in the elevator, atheists are gonna take it a step further, and give them a dirty sanchez. For the uninitiated, I’m describing a shit mustache.
Which would not be the rudest behavior I’ve ever seen on a New York elevator. While some atheists have complained that the plaque is too strongly worded, though others have complained that it isn’t made out of fecal matter with the words “Fuck Jesus” printed in 666 point type.
FFRF places atheist plaque in Illinois Capitol building: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/12/01/atheist-sign-goes-up-in-illinois-capitol-building/
And in “Glory Hole-llelujah” news, Kansas City residents are flocking to public phone-prayer booths, complete with a kneeler bar, where they can comfortably and discreetly say prayers, blow God, and get wishes granted.
We’re in for a lot of cocksucking jokes, aren’t we?
Saw that coming?
No, I closed my eyes just in time.
The city originally planned to buy everyone a magic lamp . . . but there was the big genie strike, and it went over-budget. Realizing how ridiculous the lamp thing was, they installed the God Phones as a more realistic alternative.
It’s like the mailbox for Santa letters, only instead of cute, it’s tragic. They even have the little prayer hands on the side of them so you know you’re surrounded by stupid even if nobody’s in the act of immaculate felatio at that moment.
There’s a disclaimer, warning that although not required, (quote) “Religious actions may take place within these prayer booths.” They also mention that (quote) “Improper use will result in a penalty or fine.” So no trickery . . . No praying for more prayers. And secular hope is technically permitted, but highly frowned upon.
Although if you have a note from your Wiccan high priestess, I’m sure you could get away with beating off in one of those things.
One KC resident – and avid Chiefs fan – prayed for a Peyton Manning ankle injury in week 13. Instead, it turned out he was NOT physically injured by her phone call, he put up 403 yards, 5 touchdowns, and led the Broncos to a win. So results may vary … to include complete failure. If she really wanted the Chiefs to win, she probably needed to swallow.
Okay, that’s only five and a half pole-smoking jokes so far. I don’t think we’ve quite drained all the on-your-knees for Jesus, cum-guzzling potential out of this story yet.
No we haven’t. And we strive for every last drop. So according to an ad campaign by the new phone company: “God’s hung like Dr. Manhattan: Big, blue, and everywhere.” And speaking of too much blue tooth, it’s possible the Chiefs fan didn’t read the instructions. That’s right, the blowjob prayer phone . . . has instructions. Instruction Number 1: “No Blue Tooth, and Cradle Ma Bells.” So right there . . . And Instruction Number 2 (no pun intended): “Feel free to put your mouth on both ends of the receiver.”
Kansas town adds “prayer booths” to “call god”: http://topekasnews.com/kansas-town-installs-phone-prayer-booths-residents-can-call-god-whenever-need/
Quota achieved. Well handled. And in Strategic Gay-Bashing news tonight, Cardinal Timothy Dolan’s consolin’ the colon patrolin’ souls in his folds but he scolds them and holds that the souls with their poles in dude’s holes aren’t controlled because his goals were outsold. And if you were lost in the rhythm there, I he said that Catholics were “out-marketed” on the gay marriage issue.
They weren’t OUT-marketed. They were marketed . . . correctly . . . for free. Gays haven’t been left wondering what the Catholics have to say about the cosmic risks of misusing the word “marriage”.
Yeah, I think he’s wrong here, but it’s fair to say that as a whole, they’re getting their vatic-asses handed to them in the marketing department. They’re still reeling from the “institutionally butt raping children for generations” kerfuffle after finally getting over the “Conspiring with the Nazis” faux pas. It’s clear to me that the Catholic Church is, indeed, in need of a new PR department. Hell, when you can’t sell your bigotry in America, you’ve gotta be phoning it in.
Well they could stop raping kids, abetting holocausts, and hating gays. But I suppose a new marketing solution makes the more sense. If only there was something that was worth a thousand homophobic slur words.
And that’s why good bigots need good logos. Swastikas, burning crosses, the word “Fags” with the ghostbusters symbol over it… these have all proven effective in the past. The skinheads need something to tattoo on their faces and Leviticus 18:22 is too long for a prison tat.
Nothing says the N-word, the K-word, the F-word, the D-word, the sword, the T-word, the TR-word, the TH-word, and the Z-word, better than bigoted graphic design.
Cardinal Dolan: Catholics were “Out Marketed” on gay marriage: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/11/29/catholics-outmarketed-on-gay-marriage-cardinal-dolan-says/
And from the “Young Man-Slaughter” file, after God demonstrated his existence by allowing an infant to sustain traumatic brain injuries during a car crash in St. Petersburg, Russia, the confident theist parents rushed their bleeding baby to an emergency baptism. Unfortunately, the priest – despite being a talented holistic brain surgeon – was unable to revive the child, as the only water available on short notice was normal secular di-hydrogen oxide.
So what, are you saying the homeopathic medicine didn’t work either? And did he even rebuke the demon of brain trauma? Pat Robertson would have rebuked the demon of brain trauma.
After doing some extensive research, Russian authorities confirmed the existence of several medical doctors in the St. Petersburg area, and will prosecute the parents. When asked why they didn’t head straight for a hospital, the infanticidal maniacs explained how they were on the way to get a new brain from a scarecrow, but the Yellow Brick Road was jammed with rush hour traffic.
And in the minds of the parents they did the more important thing. If he might have died either way, at least this way Jew-god-cum-Christian-god wouldn’t burn him in hell forever as he is wont to do with unmoisturized babies. The only silver lining in this story is that the baby didn’t live long enough for the priest to rape him.
That would be a 50 shekel silver lining?
Russian parents jailed after choosing baptism over hospital for post car-crash infant: http://www.richarddawkins.net/news_articles/2013/11/29/baby-dies-after-parents-trade-hospital-for-church-after-crash
And in “If it works for Chia-Pet, it work for Jesus” news tonight, a Pennsylvania church is showing off the marketing savvy that Catholicism sorely lacks. In an effort to appeal to their core audience of stupid rednecks that are easily entertained and don’t go in for all that critical thinkin’ shit, they’ve announced an upcoming “Duck Dynasty” themed all-camouflage service.
Not sure how much more redneckitude them can cram into their clown car. This is a Catholic service in northwest Pennsylvania, so I imagine lots of parishioners will continue wearing the same camo tuxedo they had already been wearing every week.
Fictional church representative Jim Bob Leghorn explained (quote) “Well, we figgered what with the folks watchin’ that on the TV and us all havin’ our huntin’ gear and what-not, we might as well go a-huntin’ for some Jesus.”
Sounds like they aren’t aware that camo doesn’t work unless you paint the whole church interior camo too. The atheist swat team snipers are gonna pick them off way too easily.
And if you think about it, it makes sense to have these dress up days at church. You could have “Star Wars Service” or “Dress as yer favert NASCAR Driver Day”… I don’t know, “aborted fetus Wednesdays”? It’s all about filling those pews. And who doesn’t love dress up?
Every NASCAR driver looks the same to me . . . Like Jane Lynch with a mustache. With the track suit … and the mullet.
Pennsylvania church to attract with Duck Dynasty inspired “camo” service: http://www.christianpost.com/news/penn-church-targets-duck-dynasty-fans-hunters-with-camo-sunday-service-109919/
And from the “More embarrassing than Benghazi” file, the United States may have diminished Catholic God from all-powerful to mildly-powerful by relocating it’s Vatican City embassy to atheist Italy. Praying to Jesus was already working not at all, and Catholics everywhere are worried this embassy debacle could make those numbers even worse.
Or, the crazy right wing zealots who fail to recognize that the new embassy is actually gonna be closer to the actual Vatican than the old embassy and instead of maintaining two embassies we’re just consolidating two into one building… it’s not like we actually stopped pretending that this one city is a whole country all by itself because the reincarnation of Jesus lives there.
The other side of the story comes from American Ambassadors to the Holy See, who are relieved to be relieved of their impossibly awkward job. How many ways can you diplomatically ask someone, “Are you guys SURE . . . that you’re not a multi-national pedophilia conglomerate, involved in an elaborate sinister cover-up?!?”
Considering how infrequently we hear about sexual abuse in the church, this is a rare opportunity. Do we have time for some embassy pedophilia slang?
This is the Scathing Atheist! We’ll cut relevant information from another story if we have to. 30 seconds on the clock. Diplomatic child rape euphemisms. GO!!!
Visiting Pope Fran-dusky’s Happy Valley
How have I missed Fran-dusky all this time!? Damn it… wait, um… what’s the one they actually use? “Coming onto the children”… Yeah, that’s too direct. How about Spicing up confession?
Delivering Pee Wee’s Sermon on the Mount
Playing a game of “Kansas Prayer Booth”
Happy Meals in the Rectory
Taking the lord’s name and vein.
Wading Balls Deep in the Shallow End
Oh, I’ve got one… A Catholic Youth Retreat… and then advance… and then retreat.. and then advance…
Bang Cocks with Youth in Asia? Bang Cocks in Asia Minor? … Quaalude Prelude in A Flat Minor
Dipping your body of christ in milk?
Box Seats for Little Orphan Fanny … And I’d like to add that this gay pun’ll come out, tomorrow at 8am?
Bet your bottom dollar… which is my response to you and my last diplomatic child-rape euphemism.
America removes embassy from Vatican city: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/11/27/vatican-knocks-down-controversy-over-u-s-embassy-move/
But to make the 8 o’clock release happen, we’ll have to close out the headlines there. Heath, thanks as always for your wit and wisdom.
Glory Hole-llelujah!!!
And when we come back, we’ll make more jokes about dicks.
Skit:
It’s time once again to look into the perplexing plethora of pious commemorations from around the world in a segment we call “How the Hell is this a Holiday?”
Tonight, Noah and I will be answering the ten most commonly asked questions about the Jewish festival of diligent lamp oil, Hanukkah.
Question One: What does the word Hanukkah mean?
While it’s often referred to as “The Festival of Lights”, the word actually means “To Dedicate”… sort of. But who the fuck really knows when it comes to Jew words? After reading the first few “historical” books of their bible I’m even doubting what they say about etymology.
Question Two: What does Hanukkah commemorate?
It commemorates the re-dedication of the Holy Temple after the Maccabean revolt in the 2nd century BCE, when a flask that only had enough oil for one day miraculously kept burning for eight days, which was just long enough to make more magical Jew oil.
Question Three: Seriously? That’s it?
That’s Hanukkah in a nutshell.
Question Four: How do Jews celebrate Hanukkah?
They light eight lights and other than that they just pretty much make it up as they go along. They’ll do some family shit, pray a little. You know… have a Hanukkah dinner, buy a gift maybe. Whatever. For eight days.
Question Five: Seriously? That’s it?
Look, you’re lucky they aren’t living in huts and waving palm fronds around. We’re celebrating the longevity of kosher lard. What the hell do you want?
Question Six: Well if the holiday is that lame, why does everybody make such a big deal about it?
It was forced into prominence because of Hanukkah’s proximity to Christmas. Jewish parents couldn’t otherwise buy expensive sneakers for their middle school kids during the month of December. And that would make them falsely appear less athletic.
Question Seven: But… it happened at Thanksgiving. How the hell is that close to Christmas?
Yeah the Jew calendar and the Gregorian calendar don’t line up so Hanukkah can fall anywhere from late November to late December, which spans the latter third of what advertisers call “The Christmas Season”. Interestingly enough, Thanksgiving and Hanukkah are done coinciding altogether for another 70,000 years plus.
Using the word “interestingly” a little loosely…
Question Eight: So what’s the deal with the dreidel?
You have to spin the dreidel when Hanukkah starts. If it falls, it means you’re in the real world, but if it keeps spinning it means you’re dreaming about less shitty holidays.
Question Nine: I know this is a big off topic, but why don’t Jews tip?
Great non-Hanukkah question. It turns out that half of them offered a tip once at 8 days old and that didn’t work out so well for them, so they’re hesitant to try again.
Question Ten: How did the Jews manage to make Hanukkah music worse than Christmas music?
Generally, the Jews are a very musical people, but they did that to spite Christian parents at public-school holiday concerts.
So hopefully that clears up any questions you have about Hanukkah, but if not, feel free to send them to us by email or leave a question on the Facebook page because originally we planned on doing a feedback segment this week but we didn’t have enough emails so we had to do this bit instead.
Outro:
Before we cash in our chips tonight I wanted to congratulate Mark Nebo from BeSecular (dot) org, Cecil from the Cognitive Dissonance Podcast and our very own Heath Enwright, all of whom, barring something nearly as unlikely as Jonah surviving for an extended period inside a fish; will be joining me in the postseason of the Fantasy Football League of Sinister Secularists. I’d also like to thank all the other participants who tragically fell short of this chance at supremacy, who I won’t name out of respect. Except Carl from the Post Rapture Looting Podcast, who I will name out of disrespect because, damn does his team suck balls.
I also wanted apologize to our audience for a tragic oversight in last week’s program. Astute listener Jon Ownbey points out that when Heath and I were positing Christian euphemisms for masturbation, we missed the low hanging fruit of “Casting Out the Semens”, and also the ripe potential for low-hanging fruit jokes. Sorry about that, won’t happen again. Oh, and sorry if I’m mispronouncing your name, Jon.
Of course I need to thank Heath for finding something productive to do with his frighteningly twisted sense of humor, I need to thank Lucinda for opening the show up and for other things she’d rather I not spell out in detail and I need to thank Daniel from Atlanta for providing this week’s Farnsworth quote. Daniel didn’t have anything in particular to plug, but since he’s a truck driver, I’ll just say on his behalf that if there’s a truck behind you that wants to go faster, just get the fuck out of the way. He or she has shit to do and a family to get home to. Not something he expressed directly, but I’m willing to bet he’s yelled it into an empty cab once or twice.
But of course, above all things, I need to thank this week’s most enviable envoys of enlightenment; Dee, Magnus, Alan, Daniel, Willie, Søren and Torrey. Dee, whose philanthropy has inspired a petition to promote her titular letter 3 spaces up in the alphabet; Magnus, who’s so virile and well-endowed that they named a condom after him; Alan, whose angelic physique is consistently ranked as the number one reason for surreptitious time travel to the twenty-first century; Daniel, whose greatness can only be described through pharthindelical neology; Willie, whose variegated talents will all coalesce in act three, proving that he was the chosen hero all along; Søren, whose name I’m pretty sure I’m pronouncing correctly despite the fact that it has an alchemical symbol in the middle of it and who also slays ice-giants by the phalanx; and Torrey, who wishes to forego any adulation for his enormous intellect and member and would rather I throw a shout out to his little brother in Australia whose name he probably intended to include in the email, and who I would totally still give a shout out to by name in a future podcast upon receiving said moniker.
These seven magnificent magnates have magnified the magnitude of their magnanimity this week by giving us money. It takes bold and decisive clicking and typing of account information to give us money, but if you think you share Dee, Magnus, Alan, Daniel, Willie, Søren and Torrey’s finger dexterity and commitment to obscene podcasting, you’ll find the donate button on the right side of the page at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.
And if you’d love to give us money, but not enough to actually do it, you can also help us a ton by leaving us a stellar review on iTunes, liking our Facebook page, following us on Twitter, checking us out on YouTube, sharing the show with a friend, listening to us on Stitcher, purchasing a beautiful Scathing Atheist t-shirt on our Cafe Press site or just being there for us in our hour of need.
If you have questions, comments or death threats, you’ll find all the contact info on the contact page at Scathing Atheist (dot) com. All the music used in this episode was written and performed by yours truly and yes, I did have my permission.
“Messiah of Steel” – A Movie Review
by Noah Lugeons
I’m a fan of movies, but I won’t pretend to be qualified to critique them. Sure, in the “everyone’s a critic” sense, I can tell you if I liked a movie (I usually didn’t) and why (or why not). But I’m not going to be able to comment intelligently on the cinematography or the score or the nuances of the performances. But I like to think of myself as something of an expert at critiquing irritating Christian themes that sneak their way into otherwise non-Jesus-things, so it is in that capacity that I’d like to take on Zack Snyder’s latest in a series of brain-splitting computer-generated testosterone-vomit films, “Man of Steel”.
This is the same guy that brought us “300”, which you’ll recall for its endless sequences of computer generated abs moving in alternately really slow and really fast motion. This is the same guy that managed to stay relatively true to the graphic novel when he made “Watchmen”, but still somehow managed to make it suck. And now Warner Brothers has given him Superman to artistically rape.
I was nervous as soon as I saw that Snyder was attached to the picture, but I hoped that producer Christopher Nolan would be there to hold his leash and keep him from fucking it up too bad. And while I hated everything beyond the first 30 minutes or so, I’m sure that Summer audiences will eat this crap up with a spoon and we’ll be treated to a couple more of Snyder’s feeble attempts at film-making in the inevitable trilogy to come.
So the big summer blockbuster Superhero movie sucked. Not exactly a blog worthy occurrence. I’d have left my bitching on Facebook and Twitter if it weren’t for all the heavy handed, brutally overdone Jesus allegories that plagued this movie that was managing to suck plenty enough by itself without Jesus.
I should admit up front that I’d already been researching a story about how this movie was being marketed to Christians, so I did go into it looking for the Jesus stuff. I was primed to find Jesus allegories and I did. But Zack Snyder has never been accused of subtlety and I’d venture that blind people who were hard of hearing could have picked up on the Jesus allegories in this flick just by smelling the print.
And before I’m accused of projecting these onto the film, let me give you a couple of examples of what I’m talking about (and don’t worry, no spoilers):
- Superman is conflicted. He’s sitting in a church talking with a priest. The priest is telling him about the importance of sometimes taking a “leap of faith” in something you don’t trust. When we see Superman, the background is a stained-glass window of Jesus wearing a red cape. When we see the priest the background is just a big crucifix.
- Superman is in a spaceship and he punches the wall out. A friendly character tells him “You can save Lois,” and then, as he continues the line with the words, “You can save all of them”, Superman holds out his arms in a crucifixion pose for no fucking reason at all and floats out into space. He holds this pose, which is completely pointless and counter-intuitive when one is floating through a jagged hole in a spacecraft, for a couple of seconds in case anyone was looking down at their popcorn.
These were the worst offenders that I noticed, but there were plenty more.
So one can’t help but wonder why all this Jesus crap got stuck into a Superman movie. Is Superman a particularly Christ like character? You’d have to really stretch to say that he was. Sure, he performs miracles and he’s moral, but Jesus can’t fly and Superman can’t make wine. Plus, martyrdom is sort of the key to the Jesus thing and Superman doesn’t die. Is Superman more Christ-like than Spiderman or Martian Manhunter? I think not.
Christ allegories aren’t really a signature of Snyder’s work. This movie had all the things we’ve come to expect from Zack; more CGI than reality, long and horribly unsatisfying action sequences, a crappy script, a disappointed audience… but where’s all this Jesus coming from?
I can’t help but feel that ultimately it was a marketing ploy and the way that the film is being marketed through churches backs me up on this. The studio wagered that if they got the Christians talking this movie up they’d make a lot of money even if it sucked (and it did). They saw all those Passions dollars rolling in and they said, “why go to the trouble of making a good movie when you can just make a good preview and stick some Jesus stuff in there?”
Sadly, they’ll win the bet. I absolutely hated the movie, but I’m sure I’ll be in the minority. I’m sure I’ll spend the next month hearing how it was “almost as good as the Avengers” (a sentiment I actually agree with, but that’s another story for another day) and everyone involved in making the Jesus gambit will see it pay off. And in the sequel, I’m sure Lex Luthor will be the anti-christ and in the third one Braniac will nail Superman to a kryptonite cross.
This isn’t much of a problem if it’s just the Superman franchise they’re fucking up with it. But we do have to consider the consequences if this becomes a trend. Will we get more religious figures sneaking their way into super hero movies? Will the Hulk ride upon a winged horse? Will Ironman force all his servants to get circumcised? Will Wonder Woman immaculately conceive? Will Will Gleek the Monkey die for our sins?
It’s hard to imagine that there’s a way to make the “superhero” genre suck more, but it’s comforting to know that they’re working on it.
Episode 6: Partial Transcript
by Noah Lugeons
Sponsor:
Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Jeru-Salem Cigarettes; because an addictive substance that gives cancer to you and all the people closest to you is exactly the kind of thing a loving god would create.
And now, the Scathing Atheist…
Intro:
It’s Thursday, it’s March 28th and guess which Sunday after which full moon after which equinox in which hemisphere’s coming up…
I’m your host Noah Lugeons and from profligate New York, New York, this is the Scathing Atheist.
On this week’s episode (and yes, I said that on purpose)
- Baptist Leaders pledge to civilly disobey gay marriage by not getting gay marries even just a little bit,
- Reasonable Doubts’ co-host Justin Schieber will join us to help me masturbate… er, master debate.
- And it turns out the Catholic Church agrees that when you have problems with somebody who has a checkered past with the Nazi party you turn to Argentina.
But first, the diatribe…
I’m often accused of cherry-picking the Bible and rightly so. They say, “Noah, there’s some really good stuff in the Bible, but you overlook all of it and obsess over the parts with genocide and rape and divinely sanctioned baby-murder and people being turned into salt and nut-grabbing prohibitions and scores of children being massacred by bears.”
I suppose it would be fair to point out that Christians are at least equally guilty of overlooking all the genocide and rape and infanticide and homicidal salinization and ursine bloodbaths and obsessing over the good stuff. In fact, I submit that when there’s a prophecy of a zombie apocalypse in your book, focusing on anything other part of it is off target.
But I have to admit that both atheists and Christians are guilty of cherry-picking the Bible. In a book that long and rambling, I suppose that there’s going to be something to support any view you have. That being said, I think that atheists can justify the assertion that the bible is, overall, an evil, horrible, demonically misguided book.
And I think we can make that case even if we have to set aside all the aforementioned butchery and carnage. Hell, let’s just look at the most sanitized selection of biblical nuggets we can find. Let’s just look at the Bible stories that they tell their kids:
– Jesus died for your sins. Because it’s never too early to learn about politically motivated accusations that lead to brutal capital punishment.
– The Exodus. Because it’s never too early to get your historical perspective from a slave narrative that makes Django Unchained look like a fucking documentary. And oh yeah, God likes to kill brown people.
– Job. Because your life and happiness might hinge on a bet between god and the devil and it’s okay if one set of kids dies as long as god gives you a new set later.
– Jericho. Where the heroic Joshua kills all the men, women, children and fucking animals except a family of turncoats that helped the Israelites in the aforementioned holocaust against her own neighbors… and their pets.
– And lastly, the most ubiquitous of all the “kid friendly” bible stories, Noah’s Ark, the single most horrible story ever imagined by humankind:
Here we have a story where God throws a temper tantrum so bad that it ends up killing all but a high school basketball team’s worth of people. He was so pissed at the humans that he killed all but two of the Patagonian screaming hairy armadillos.
And we’re not just talking about everyone dropping dead one day. God could’ve done that if he wanted to, but he decided to do it by flooding the whole goddamn world. Some of them are smashed to death with logs and debris, others drown quickly, still others get to swim for hours or float for days before eventually succumbing to dehydration or being pecked to death by scavengers.
Think about what a horrible vision this is for a child. They love the pictures of the two giraffes and two elephants and two lions walking into the ark together, sure, but what about the mental picture of every other giraffe, lion and elephant on the planet dying amid a horrible torrent of flood water tens of thousands of feet high. And it’s not like the evil genius that enacted this global catastrophe gets what’s coming to him in the end or anything. He’s the fucking good guy!
Consider legendary director Michael Curtiz who reenacted this disaster in a 1928 film. He decided that the coolest way to get the shot would be to tell all the extras to just act casual and then dump millions of gallons of water into the set without warning. He managed to capture the genuine horror of such a moment. Three of the extras were so inspired by this directorial decision that they improvised their own deaths.
Granted, we’ve largely forgiven Curtiz because Casablanca was so fucking good, but I think we can all agree that flooding that set was the work of a deranged psychopath. And he killed 3 people. And I should point out that none of them were infants. I’m not saying this excuses what he did, but it makes him less evil than god by at least 7 orders of magnitude. More if you count all the animals.
And keep in mind that the story doesn’t end with the flood either. It goes all 50 Shades of Incest a few chapters later when dad starts with the drinking again. Aronofsky is working on a new cinematic retelling of the Noah narrative and I’m thinking it could be brutal even compared to Requiem For a Dream.
Noah’s Ark is a horrible, awful, disgusting, repugnant story but it’s the one that makes the cover on most books of Children’s Biblical Stories. Now I ask you, if that’s the best you can do for a children’s story, how can you possibly argue that this book is anything but terrible?
Headlines
Joining me for headlines tonight is my co-conspirator Heath Enwright, Heath, are you ready to co-conspire?
Okay, so apparently there’s a new pope. I just heard about it and unfortunately the major media outlets have kind of ignored the story so I wasn’t able to find any real details. I guess we’ll have to skip that item until we can find some news coverage on it.
Moving on…
In our lead story tonight, a recent study shows that the more religious a country is, the more it sucks. Researcher Gregory Paul demonstrates a strong correlation between a nation’s religiosity and a host of negative descriptors including poverty, homicide rates, infant mortality and teen pregnancy and found that the more generally dysfunctional a nation is, the more religious it is likely to be.
Paul’s goal in publishing the research was to counteract the ridiculous notion that godless societies are somehow doomed to an inevitable decline into sybaritic dystopia but critics of the study point out that it makes religion look really, really bad so maybe we should just talk about baseball or something.
The major outlier in this study, of course, is good ol’ ‘Merica with a whopping 80% of the populace still believing in Aesop’s Fables despite our relatively high score on the scale of social success. But don’t worry, lawmakers in Washington are hard at work lowering that score to match our religiosity.
http://www.epjournal.net/wp-content/uploads/EP07398441_c.pdf & http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2013/03/05/f-religion-economic-growth.html
In other news, the ACLU has recently filed suit against the Puerto Rico Police Department on behalf of officer Alvin Marrero Mendez, an open atheist who was demoted, ostracized and publicly belittled by his supervisors for his lack of superstition.
The suit alleges that during a constitutionally dubious “closing prayer” after a briefing, Mendez politely excused himself. In response, his commanding officer publicly humiliated him, his service weapon was confiscated, he was taken off the street and given a new job in the department washing cars.
Clearly, the issue here is baseless discrimination, but if I was a Puerto Rican, I’d be far more concerned about losing a 14 year veteran police officer for the crime of being rational.
In more seditious news, Southern Baptist leader Richard Land has called for civil disobedience over same-sex marriage and the birth control mandate in the affordable care act. He and a group of like-minded Christ-ies explain that these issues are ‘non-neogtiable’ and worth the cost of paying fines and going to jail.
Yes, the Christians are actually claiming with a straight face that equality is a violation of their rights. Giving everyone else the same rights they have is a violation of their rights. They warn that they may soon lose their right to refuse to hire non-believers, their right to make medical choices for their female employees and their right to act on the belief that gay people are icky.
The first question I had when I read this is how exactly one goes about civilly disobeying something like gay marriage. I mean, civil disobedience is refusing to follow a law, so how exactly does a straight person civilly disobey gay marriage? When a married man introduces his husband to they just go “la-la-la, I hear nothing”? Do you go to gay weddings and pretend you can’t see anyone?
It makes no sense to me at all, but then again, this doesn’t make it at all unique amongst things Baptist Leaders say.
http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/us/2013/March/NRB-Christians-May-Have-to-Choose-God-over-Govt/
And what headlines segment would be complete without a facepalm prompting trip to the bible belt? This one comes to us from listener “Bad Teeth Alan” on Twitter. Back in episode 3, we marveled over the stupidity of a proposed Mississippi law that would allow student-led prayer in schools.
And on Thursday, March 14th, Governor Phil Bryant signed the fucking thing into law. Bryant admitted that a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the law is inevitable but seems confident that the law will stand up to the legal challenge. What’s more, he seems confident that one way or the other, the defense of this law is a worthwhile expenditure of Mississippi taxpayer’s money saying, I shit you not, (quote) “If we’ve got to spend taxpayers’ money, I think we would be honored to spend it defending religious freedoms…”
The more legally savvy politicians are careful to cloak their support for this law in the official story crap about protecting students’ already well-established rights to wear pro-Jesus shirts and organize religious groups on campus, but the less savvy religious leaders aren’t as shy about talking about the bill’s true purpose. Take for example superintendent for the Mississippi District of the United Pentecostal Church and person whose name sounds like it was directly lifted from a Cohen Brothers’ Script, Reverend David D. Tipton Jr. who attended the bill-signing and was quoted later as saying, “We have listened to the argument of the separation of church and state for too long.”
Mississippi law about school-led prayer (from bad teeth Alan on Twitter):
In other Bible Belt insanity, Tennessee resident and suspected incubator of demons Andrew Byrd has filed suit against his pastor, his pastor’s wife and a deacon for injuries sustained in what sounds like a WWE inspired exorcism.
I couldn’t find a hell of a lot on this story, but from what I can gather, the lawsuit alleges that Reverend Joel Arwood asked Byrd to attend a meeting at the church because he had a demon that needed casting out. Unfortunately the part of the brain that you and I have that would trigger a ‘fight or flight’ response if a backwoods pastor asked us to attend a special, after-hours exorcism was malfunctioning in Byrd so he went.
And from what I can gather, Reverend Arwood’s notion of an exorcism is just beating the fuck out of this dude while his wife screams encouragement and eats popcorn from the first row. I just envision this poor guy getting tag-teamed by a pastor and a deacon and muttering “shouldn’t you be throwin’ holy water on me or speakin’ Latin or somethin’?”
Anyway, by the end of it, he’d suffered a broken tooth, bruises on his face and additional injuries to his back and his legs. He’s suing for $200,000 in compensatory damages and 3.5 million in punitive damages but has indicated that he might be willing to settle out of court for fifty cents and some envelopes.
http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/weird/NATL-Man-Sues-Church-After-Botched-Exorcism-196844971.html
And finally tonight, proving that secular people are way better at protesting than religious people, the nonprofit group “Planting Peace” has enacted my favorite protest of the decade. 31 year old LGBT activist Aaron Jackson has purchased a house in Topeka, Kansas and painted it with the ROYGBIV rainbow of gay pride.
No official word on how the neighbors feel about it, but I think we can take a pretty educated guess as the neighbors are the Westboro Baptist Church.
Jackson purchased the house for apparently no reason but to antagonize the notoriously gay-obsessed Fred Phelps and had no trouble at all finding some local volunteers to help him paint it. Planting Peace has dubbed the place the “Equality House” and intends to use it as a resource center for LGBT equality and anti-bullying initiatives.
That’ll do it for headlines tonight, Heath, thanks for joining me.
And when we come back, Justin Schieber will join us for a public debate on the merits of public debate.
Calendar:
It’s time for the atheist calendar portion of the show. I haven’t had to dedicate a whole segment to a single weekend before, but it looks like if you missed the American Atheist’s convention in Austin, there’s a really good chance that there’s an awesome secular conference much closer by on the weekend of April 6th.
We’ll start in the Northeast with NECSS, the Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism. They’ve really outdone themselves this year with a phenomenal slate of speakers including Leonard Mlodinow, Simon Singh, Michael Shermer, Mariette DiChristina, Massimo Pigliucci and at least a dozen others worth mentioning.
There’s a lot to look forward to, but I’m most excited about a podcasting workshop I’ll be attending with Dr. Steven Novella and Doctor of Funk George Hrab. You can expect to see a marked improvement in the quality of this podcast after that weekend and if you don’t let me know so I can ask for my money back.
NECSS: http://necss.org/
If you’re in the North but not the east, fret not, as the Northwest Freethought Conference is taking place over the same weekend. Friend of the show Hemant Mehta will be the keynote speaker there but he’ll be sharing the stage with some other notable names like Darrel Ray, Valerie Tarico and more. It’ll be taking place at Portland State University and includes three action-packed days of events and speakers.
Northwest Freethought Conference http://www.nwfreethought.org/
If you’re in the North but kind of in the middle, I’ve still got something for you. In Minneapolis, the SkepTech conference will be bringing in Greta Christina, Jesse Galef, the seemingly omnipresent Hemant Mehta and the Doctor Octopus of Atheism, PZ Myers. There are plenty more great speakers all themed around skepticism and technology.
Also keep in mind that April 6th and 7th are also “Just Pray No to Drugs” weekend where a bunch of superstitious yahoos will call upon the power of their invisible space-rapist to end all drug use so if you were concerned about the ongoing meth-epidemic, don’t worry, the Christians have it under control.
And finally, of course, this weekend also marks the celebration of Easter, when Christians believe that baby Jesus rides his sub-mammalian, egg-laying lagamorph down from heaven to give cavities to all the boys and girls.
That’ll do it for the calendar this week, but as always if you’re involved with an atheist, secular or skeptical event that’s in need of some free publicity, let me know. You’ll find all the contact info, along with links to all the events discussed on the program at Scathing Atheist dot com.
Interview Links:
Reasonable Doubts Blog: http://freethoughtblogs.com/reasonabledoubts/
Reasonable Doubts You-Tube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/Doubtcast
Outro:
Interview ran a little long so I’ll have to close the show out pretty quickly, but he have really big announcement before we cue the music. Since we’ve started this thing, the most prevalent theme in our feedback has been “more please”, so I’m happy to announce that we’re doubling our workload and moving to a weekly schedule.
And from now on, I’m dedicating all the odd numbered episodes to all the awesome people who sent encouraging emails and tweets, left complimentary comments on the blog, gave us positive reviews on iTunes and otherwise helped us get this whole thing started. Thanks for all your support and we’ll be working hard to keep earning it every week.
We’ll be back in 168 hours for our “We’re Weekly Now” edition with co-host of an American Atheist podcast Tom Beasley for a pre-autopsy of religion, but if you can’t wait that long, be sure to follow us on Twitter @Noah (underscore) Lugeons and check out our erratically published blog.
Before we close it out, I want to thank author and indispensable activist Darrel Ray for providing this week’s Farnsworth quote… er… paraphrase. I also want to thank Lucinda for teaching me how to be a homo, Justin Schieber for being the world’s most patient interviewee and, of course, my partner in crime Heath Enwright for all of his numerous contributions to the show.
If you like the show, please help us spread the word by leaving a positive review on iTunes or adding us to your favorites on Stitcher. And if you don’t have the Stitcher app yet, get on that shit or the kids on the street will think you’re a square.
If you have questions, comments or death threats, you’ll find all the contact information along with links to all the events and headlines discussed on this program at Scathing Atheist (dot) com. All the music used in this program was written and performed by yours truly and yes, I did have my permission.
Papal Media Cock-Slobber-Fest
by Noah Lugeons
Wow, what a successful first 48 hours Pope Francine has had. He’s already transformed the image of the Catholic church, righted centuries of racial bigotry, cured global poverty, refocused the Catholic religion on the core of Christ’s message and made everyone completely forget about the child rape and torture thing.
What’s that you say? He hasn’t done any of that? Oh, sorry, I was getting all my information from the American television media.
I’m already sick of hearing about what a transformative figure Pope Franky is. It’s not just the fallacious notion that anybody can be considered “transformative” after two days on the job (much of that spent sleeping). We went from a sexist, scandal-plagued, geriatric, mentally-antiquated man of European decent to a sexist, scandal-plagued, geriatric, mentally-antiquated man of different European ancestry and this was a transformation? We went from a backwards thinking jackass to a backward looking jack-off and that was a transformation?
But you’d never doubt it if you were just listening to the mainstream media. They just can’t seem to get a big enough mouthful of papal cock. He’s going to rededicate the church, you see, to dealing with global poverty. The guy that’s moving into the golden palace built on crusade booty, confiscated Jewish fortunes and the tears of tortured children is going to rededicate the church to global poverty.
Well, I suppose the first step in that direction would be to lift the nonsensical, anti-scientific contraception ban that even the vast majority of Catholics think is stupid right? No? Not going to move on that one, huh? Despite the fact that it would be the single most significant thing you could possibly do to combat global poverty and it would be free, easy and instantaneous. Still not going to do it, eh?
Well don’t worry, I’m sure that in the absence of action the hard-hitting media will continue to pretend you’re transforming something despite the fact that you head the most static, moth-eaten, obsolete, perpetually pertinacious institution in the history of the world. After all, we’re all getting bored with the whole “kid fucking” narrative and as long as the media isn’t talking about that, I suppose Pope Francesca is transforming something.
My Least Favorite Meme
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:
Christians are Like Raisins
by Noah Lugeons
I had occasion to visit Dollywood this summer. I was there about four days before the now infamous T-shirt scandal in which a lesbian couple was barred entrance for wearing a shirt with a pro-gay marriage message. To be fair, they were allowed in when the woman agreed to turn the T-shirt inside out. They have a stated policy against clothing with what they consider “offensive” messages and I frankly agree with such a policy in a theme park that largely caters to children. The Disney parks would hardly let me in wearing my “Fuck Jesus” shirt and well they shouldn’t.
The problem, of course, stems from their failure to define “offensive”. The hill billy working the ticket counter was offended by their lesbian-ness and the T-shirt was a reflection of that. God does, undeniably, say that gay people should die (though you can read it as though this only applies to gay men) in the bible so it probably seemed to this bible-thumping centurion that this shirt was against company policy. She was just executing the duties of a Dollywood Ticket Taker and sometimes that includes making the tough calls.
I would submit that the job of deciding which shirts to let in and which to keep out is probably pretty challenging. I often found myself amidst a sea of Christian propaganda shirts and they offended the hell out of me. One offered a Staples-style “Jesus Button”. One helpfully inquired if I “Got Jesus?”. My personal favorite was one that was cleverly disguised as a Mountain Dew logo that actually said “Meant to Die”.
I had to include this or you'd have thought I was making this shit up.
While that one may have earned top honors in my mind, the most popular one in the park seemed to be a plain black T-shirt that proudly proclaimed that “This Shirt is Illegal in 51 Countries” with a little red cross above in case you thought the bible passages on the back were too subtle.
Lest you think I’m exaggerating the ubiquity of these Jesus shirts, I attest that I saw all of the following common corporate logos bastardized to include some ham-handed reference to Jesosity:
- Staples (as mentioned above)
- Mountain Dew (as pictured above)
- Starbucks
- Reese’s Candies
- Dr. Pepper
- Fender Guitars
- Intel
- Arm & Hammer (It was “Armed and Ready” and the hand was holding a cross)
- Coca Cola
Keep in mind that I went before the whole T-shirt fiasco. I wasn’t cataloging the shirts as I saw them. Those are just the ones I remember.
If this surprises you then you’ve clearly never been to Dollywood. It’s a Christian theme park and it must do a healthy percentage of its business in church groups and bible camps. It’s Christian enough to have church slap in the middle of the park… with services. You can actually stop in after lunch and pray that you don’t barf on the next roller coaster.
To be sure, there are plenty of far more religious theme parks out there. The evangelicals already have the “Holy Land Experience” in Orlando (as featured in Bill Maher’s Religioulis) and all of us in the atheist blogosphere eagerly await new reason’s to make fun of Kentucky’s Ark Encounter, but at least these parks are upfront about their religious slant. Dollywood is a “subversive” Christian theme park. It’s not called “Jesuswood”. It’s advertised as simple, wholesome Dolly Parton-themed family fun.
But in the mountains of Tennessee, the word Christian is more or less assumed when the words “wholesome” and “family” are invoked. Along the drive into the park you’ll be greeted by a number of Christian themed dinner theaters, one of which (I shit you not) will allow you to watch a reenactment of Christ’s brutal death while you eat.
I should explain that when I say that Dollywood is “subversive” about its Christianity, I don’t mean that they hide it. If you check the “Core Values” they list on their website, you’ll see the words “All in a Manner Consistent with Christian Values and Ethics” in red, bold letters along the bottom. There’s nothing about Jesus on the homepage, but if you go digging for him, you’ll find him.
And that’s often my largest complaint about Christian intrusion into the secular world. I have no issues with fundamental-cases building their own life-sized ark (though the tax money they’re building it with kind of pisses me off). But if you’re going to build a Christian theme park, make damn sure everyone who walks in knows what they’re in for. Don’t try to disguise a creationist museum as a real one.
Christians are subversive in the way that raisins are subversive. You’ll be eating a pastry and enjoying it when along comes this unexpected was of dead-fly (or whatever they make raisins out of). You spit it out and stare angrily at the pastry, wondering who stuck dead-fly fruit in your breakfast. You check the package and sure enough it says “raisins” on the front in tiny little letters under “Cinnamon Bun”. The information was there if you looked for it, but you had to be looking for it.
I’m reminded of a gift I bought my nephew several years ago at Christmas (yes, even we atheists celebrate buy-shit-day). They were these little plastic things that you slid over your shoes so that you could slide along on the carpet. Of course he could have gotten the same effect by wearing wool socks on tile but the fact that it was a crap product isn’t why I bring it up. As I’m wrapping these little suckers up, I notice that tucked away on a little margin of the packaging was a bible verse. It’s just snuck into the side of an otherwise secular purchase. Only a careful scrutiny of the package would have revealed this discreet attempt at evangelism.
The goal here was to sneak the passage in. The goal was to get it before the eyes of children without their parent’s knowledge or consent. If they were trying to attract more Christian customers, they would have prominently displayed the verse, but instead it was tucked into a corner where only the eyes of a child examining a new toy would be likely to see it.
It is always in the best interest of the atheist activist to remember the mind-set of the Christian. In their eyes something like this is perfectly acceptable. If they can’t sneak biblical passages into your home, your child is in danger of spending eternity in Hell. When the stakes are that high things like respect for your beliefs are inconsequential.
So I implore you to treat Christians just like you treat raisins: Always be on the look out. Always check the package carefully before you commit. Those dry, disgusting, tasteless, shriveled, out-dated bastards are always looking for a way in.
Harold Camping: 3rd Time’s the Charm!
by Noah Lugeons
This is why I’ll never understand the faithful. Harold Camping predicted the rapture would happen on September 7th of 1994. When that didn’t happen, he predicted it again in 2011.
So let’s try to get beyond that first. You fail in predicting something as grandiose as the fucking rapture, you shouldn’t be qualified to guess weight at a carnival from that point forward. If a scientist predicted the end of the world and then it failed to pass, nobody on this planet would listen to anything that scientist said again but to mock it.
But religion doesn’t work that way. Harold Camping got a mulligan.
And it wasn’t even like his followers were slightly less credulous the second time around. It would be easy to say that after being burned once you’d at least accept the possibility that he was going to come up short again this time. But if you look at the results from this latest failure it seems that if anything, their faith in their leader increased. At the very least their financial support grew if the national advertising blitzkrieg is anything to judge by.
From my rational, atheistic point of view it seems like the idea of going out to witness the end of mankind again would be a red flag in itself. But not for these unquestioning Camp-ites. They are doubly sure this time because they were wrong the time before.
Different year, same result. No rapture. And Camping gets a mulligan.
That’s right. Camping has spoken. Turns out that the rapture did occur on Saturday. I figured as much… as though he might suggest that us linen-wearing, indiscriminate meat-eaters weren’t good enough to be spared, but he chose the more “loving Jesus” approach to the whole thing.
Camping’s explanation for why the rapture failed to happen is simple. Jesus reappeared and took a look at humanity and his big-old Jesusy heart just couldn’t bear to put us through all that torment. But have no fears, Camping isn’t backing off from his original October deadline for the actual end of the world. He’s just saying that Christ didn’t have the heart to rapture his loyal followers up to sky-candy land. Seems that this pang of conscience didn’t extend to not actually killing everyone and sending the vast majority to an eternity of suffering in Hell.
I’m sure Camping lost some of his flock, but if even one person is still clinging to the ramblings of this deranged old kook it is one too many. Come to think of it, I feel the same way about Jesus.
Atheist Tithing Option:
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