Pope Francis | The Scathing Atheist

Episode 23 – Partial Transcript

July 25, 2013 Noah Lugeons 3 comments

by Heath Enwright, Lucinda Lugeons and Noah Lugeons

(Transcript may contain material edited out of the final version)

Sponsor:

Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Fox’s new reality talent show, American False Idol. Watch as cult-leader contestants from around the country compete against each other and against god in feats of talent and existence.

The last prophet standing wins their own religion and a lifelong tax exemption. American False Idol, because even when Fox puts the name of the sin in the title, Christians still watch it.

And now, the Scathing Atheist…

Intro:

It’s Thursday, it’s July 25th and it’s not too late to wave some popcorn under a Muslim’s nose tomorrow afternoon.

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

In this week’s episode;

Former celebrity Kirk Cameron is told by Facebook to cease and desist the fuck up,
A new law in Louisiana won’t not make it not not legal to obey the law.
And we’ll make fun of Fred Phelps’ dead mother,

But first, the diatribe.

Diatribe:

Boy, this new pope sure is awesome. He’s a reformer. He’s a radical. He’s a beacon of light illuminating the dimmest hour of Catholic decline. He’s beloved by all, Catholic and otherwise. He’s approachable, off-the-cuff and lovable. He’s the antithesis to Pope Palpatine the second. He’s a game-changer.

Except for all the places that matter.

The major-media outlets are suffering from a bit or “Protestant Guilt” after spending two decades covering stories about Catholics butt-raping children so I guess I understand why they’ve been so quick to cram into the papal-fellatio waiting room, but in their eagerness to finally have something good to say about the Vatican, I think they’ve forgotten that balanced doesn’t equal honest.

So let me make something clear about Pope Franks-but-no-Franks: He hasn’t done a fucking thing.

Despite the publicity juggernaut to the contrary, carrying your own bags and posing for a photo-op in a jalopy doesn’t count as reform. Living in a palatial guest house instead of a palatial palace doesn’t count as reform. Washing feet and ad libbing shit about atheists going to heaven doesn’t count as reform. To reform something, you have to actually do something.

Let’s face it, during the reign of Pope Bene-dickhead we had some pretty legitimate complaints about the papacy. And none of them were, “That old fucker won’t even carry his own luggage!”

So where does Pope Frankly-my-dear-I-don’t-give-a-damn stand on the big issues?

He’s against condoms. He fully endorses the genocidal opposition to contraception that exacerbates the AIDS epidemic in Africa. It would take nothing but waving his magic pope wand to halt these detrimental policies, and yet he’s done nothing.

He’s against ordaining women. Not only has he made no moves on that, but he also left a long line of politically motivated misogyny behind him on the way to the Vatican… not to mention a few allegations of war crimes.

He’s staunchly homophobic. He’s actually described the move in Argentina to legalize gay marriage as “a war against god” and shows no signs whatsoever that he’ll be moving the Vatican into the twenty-first century with regard to gays.

He staunchly supports celibacy for priests despite the fact that it isn’t biblical (and actually directly contradicts the biblical prescription for priests and their sex lives) and could give a damn less if it’s harmful psychologically.

Come meet the new pope, same as the old pope. In all the ways that matter, he hasn’t done a fucking thing. And yet everyday I hop onto a religious news site and read about all these great “symbolic” reforms he’s making. Symbolic actions are great unless they’re coming from somebody who has the authority to make real change.

But the media is so desperate to paint him as a reformer that I’ve seen him extolled for coming out “strongly against the financial misdealings of the Vatican bank.” Like there was some other pope who was all about publicly endorsing money laundering for the mafia?

Look, maybe the media is right and I’m wrong. Maybe Pope Franky-Doodle-Dandy really is planning on reforming the Vatican from the ground up. But he hasn’t started yet. And when you take over as the head of the most corrupt institution on the planet you don’t get any extra credit for dressing less flamboyantly than the last guy.

Headlines:

Joining me for headlines tonight is my fellow expositor Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to exposit?

I’m all about exposition. Whenever I need extra cash, I make an exposit at the sperm bank. That’s what that means, right?

In the interest of getting the sperm jokes started early, we’ll say yes.

Sperm gags are all about coming early.

The Spanish Inquisition of sexual events.

In our lead story tonight the state of California is considering a bill that would help child abuse victims receive compensation if they were otherwise unable to file suit because of time or age restrictions. Obviously, this bill enjoys wide, bipartisan support because who on earth would actually oppose allowing victims of child sexual abuse to pursue long overdue justice?

Catholics.

That’s right. The Los Angeles archdiocese made the mistake of taking the high road on justice for sex abuse victims back in 2002 and the bill California passed back then almost wiped them out. So this time they’re fighting against justice for abused children with everything they’ve got.

So a whole bunch of those tax-deductible donations to churches, are going to pay for pedophile advocacy experts. There’s a positive social externality in there somewhere.

Yeah, one has to imagine the lobbyists are all hoping not to get the “maintain strict statutes of limitations on child rape” assignment.

They’re trying to argue that “A certain day needs to exist, on which these people wake up, and they’re no longer a rape victim.”

Usually it’s the other way around in Christianity … Fall asleep a virgin, and wake up a rape victim. That’s how it went for Jesus’s mom, and lots of slutty altar boys, I imagine.

The archdiocese recognizes the public relations tightrope one must walk when vociferously siding with pedophilic rapists, so they’re hard at work trying to sell this bill as a prejudicial witch-hunt against Catholics.

If the tightrope represents the right way to side with pedophilic rapists, then I wouldn’t say the church is walking it. I don’t think they can see the tightrope from where they’re standing. I’m not impressed by “The lord rapes kids in mysterious ways.”

Well, they point out that the bill would not allow victims to sue public schools for abuse that had passed the statute of limitations, so clearly they’re just going after Catholic child rapists. After all, allowing victims to sue for tax dollars is directly analogous to allowing them to sue a private institution that is still largely governed by people who were and are actively involved in covering up the details of child rape and torture, isn’t it?

I don’t think the public school system could have pulled the same moves to cover for pedophile teachers . . .

“What?!? We sent the rapiest ones to teach Nazi grandchildren in Argentina.”

Catholic Church fighting child abuse bill in California: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/07/17/catholic-church-private-schools-lobby-against-california-childhood-sex-abuse/

On now to the ever-burning question “Could we have freed the slaves but not kept the South?”, we turn to Louisiana where Democratic state senator Mary Landrieu has introduced a piece of legislation called the “Freedom to Pray” bill, which would, in her words, “protect American’s right to pray.”

Was that part of the larger, “Right to Being and Nothingness Bill”?

This might mean the end of the atheist psychic nanobot thought police.

And as we long ago learned, making legal shit legal is a favored strategy for sneaking bullshit religious laws through the legislature and this one is no different. If you dig even a little, you’ll find that the intent of the bill is clearly to allow state and federal funds to go to programs that are explicitly religious in nature.

Does the legislation explain exactly how The Bill of Rights no longer applies in Louisiana? And if the church needs more money, they should just pray for it, hold their breath, and die.

Amen. Anyway, this all comes as a response to a recent hullabaloo about a quasi-military religious indoctrination camp being run by a Louisiana Sheriff’s department. The program was denied $15,000 in federal funding due to the ubiquity of prayer within the program along with pledges to “attend the church of my faith” and to “Love god”.

Bible Camp for redneck cops makes me nervous. Like ‘venerated obsoivances and rituals’, ‘Waco, Texas’ nervous.

Well hopefully you’ll be reassured by the evangelists running the program, who insist that the prayers are voluntary and a whole room full of people praying around you isn’t coercive at all. And that’s enough for senator Landrieu, who would clearly have no problem with a state run, federally funded program encouraging her children to bow to Mecca, as long as it was voluntary.

In theory, this would create an awkward, alienating situation for any Jewish or Muslim officers. But Jews and Muslims certainly don’t get hired by police departments – or sold property – in Louisiana, so in practice, it’s a moot point.

Louisiana Senator proposes bill to protect religious groups that receive federal funding: https://www.au.org/blogs/wall-of-separation/prayer-posturing-la-officials-seek-taxpayer-support-for-religious-program

And in satanic lesbian news tonight, Fred Phelps’ dead mother is now gay thanks to the efforts of the New York based Satanic Temple. Person whose name left him no career options except arch-villain or spokesman for the Satanic Temple Lucien Greaves explained that the action was meant to convey (quote) “a message of love in the face of hate”.

Like a money shot all over hate’s face. Chicken fried hate smothered in white country gravy. Phelps needs a Chia Pet, so people everywhere can put sticky seed all over his face.

6 sperm jokes already. He’s going for the record!

Anyway, the ceremony, which the Satanic Temple refers to as a “Pink Mass” was performed by Greaves and two same-sex couples and took place at the Mississippi grave of Phelps’ mother. The goal of the ritual was to turn the mother of the notoriously sodomy-obsessed preacher’s spirit into a posthumous lesbian.

This strategy makes sense, given the way shit works in the bible. This can even get her expelled from heaven. Jesus stops having pre-emptively died for your sins if you posthumously witness gay sex near your gravesite. Plus, that bitch natured and nurtured her bile duct of a son.

The ceremony was, of course, tongue in cheek, as in some dude’s tongue in some other dude’s cheek.

Jelly? Syrup? Rusty Trombone? What does a party like that cost? I guess if I have to ask, I probably can’t afford it.

Apparently the ritual called for two prolonged homosexual makeout session over the headstone along with some divine cock-stroking. Phelps’ mother, who died as the result of god’s retribution over our butt-sex loving culture, could not be reached for comment.

Satanic church holds same-sex ceremony at Fred Phelps’ mom’s grave: http://www.thegauntlet.com/article/28311/The-Satanic-Temple-Performs-Same-Sex-Ceremony-At-Westboro-Baptist-Church-Leaders-Family-Gravesite

And in “Apparently there’s a snooze button on your 15 minutes of fame” news tonight, Kirk Cameron, who you’ll remember from trying to remember where you remember him from, is in a tizzy because people can tell the difference between him being earnest and spam.

Who could forget about Mike Seaver and his best friend Boner? Classic member of the shitty 80’s sitcom canon. And let’s not ignore Cameron’s illustrious film career, including “The Growing Pains Movie” in 2000, and of course the Godfather 2 of sitcom movie sequels, “Growing Pains: Return of the Seavers” in 2004.

Cameron, who has used his post-C-list celebrity decline to promote creationism, has a new movie coming out and he’s been having a bit of trouble promoting it on social media. It began when Facebook blocked promos for his movie and called them “abusive”, “unsafe” and “spammy”.

It’s good to hear that Facebook is using algorithms that can sniff out abusive, unsafe, spammy shit like religion. Software that can process content, and then quantify its level of malignant wrongness – love it. Or maybe they just noticed Kirk Cameron’s name on it.

Facebook later apologized when almost dozens of Cameron’s fans made a fuss but just as Facebook unblocked him, YouTube gave him the boot calling promos for his film, “spam”, “scam” and “deceptive”. This block was later lifted as well, though promos for his film are still “spam”, “scam” and “deceptive”.

Spoiler alert: God did it. He was the rapist in the end.

Which end?

I was impressed by Cameron’s unflinching optimism when he boldly used the plural form of theater in describing the film’s upcoming release.

Further proof that you were never really a celebrity if people could say of your solitary known vehicle, “The star of that show was really Alan Thicke”

Kirk Cameron’s movie blocked on Facebook: http://radio.foxnews.com/toddstarnes/top-stories/facebook-blocks-kirk-camerons-new-movie.html & http://www.examiner.com/article/facebook-apologizes-to-kirk-cameron-for-blocking-new-movie

And in this week’s papal back-walking report, the Vatican is offering time off from purgatory for his Twitter followers, unless you ask Catholic pundits, in which case they definitely aren’t, because that would be stupid.

And if you retweet a papal bull in the next 10 minutes, the Pope will personally murder you, and send you directly to the good part of heaven with the comfy chairs for all the rape victims.

The latest in an illustrious Catholic tradition of trading imaginary favors for real ones, this story reminds us all that Catholics still kind of endorse the antiquated notion that you can earn perdition vouchers for climbing certain stairs and attending certain parties in Rio.

Also, if you duck for 3 seconds while standing on a white platform, you can fall into a 3rd dimension, and get a whistle that takes you to a warp zone that bypasses purgatory altogether.

The story begins when the Apostolic Penitentiary issued a document offering a plenary indulgence for those who attend the upcoming World Youth Day in Brazil. And because the Apostolic Penitentiary is known for being cutting edge and hip, they extended the indulgence to those who follow the event on Twitter.

For those who don’t want to be kidnapped by a dance-fighting cocaine cartel, they decided to allow the Twitter exception to participate without actually entering Brazil. . . I’m okay with that. But why not just go all the way, and put up some indulgence buy-it-nows on eBay?

That sentence may very well have contained earth’s first capoeira joke. Well done.

Recognizing that everyone loves a good “Damn is Catholic theology stupid” story, headlines like “Follow Pope online and reach heaven sooner” started popping up all over the place. Because, you know, that’s exactly what they said. But the accuracy of these mocking headlines didn’t stop Catholics from getting pissed off about them.

When your group is regularly offended by things that are true, it’s your group’s fault, not truth’s.

Try explaining that to Reverend James Martin who wrote a lengthy blog for CNN where he explained that you can’t get time off from purgatory for following Tweets, as that would be silly. It doesn’t count unless you follow those Tweets contritely.

Pope offers indulgences for following him on Twitter: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/07/17/sorry-you-cant-get-out-of-hell-by-retweeting-the-pope/

And finally tonight, in lubricated jew dick news, we bring you the story of Trigg laboratories where a congregation of rabbis from the Rabbinical Council of California have recently declared their “Wet” brand of personal lubricants to be Kosher, making it the first sex lube that is approved for orthodox jews.

Unless you count the fact that “Moses parting the Red Sea” was code for using menstrual blood as a lubricant.

Check out the mid-rash on that one . . . is what they would say about an unkosher vagina.

It’s important to note the implications of this move. Kosher laws are dietary laws. There is no requirement that suppositories, cosmetics or vaginal cleansers be approved by rabbis unless somebody plans on eating them. So this sex lube hasn’t been cleared for use as a sex lube, it’s been cleared for use as a condiment.

Yeah I could see marinating a chicken in that . . . and then shoving it up a Jewish girl’s ass, if she was into that sort of thing. I mean I wouldn’t suggest it, but if she asked, I’d step up.

And this is great for the Jews . . . They can finally go ass to mouth without worrying about the dietary repercussions.

You never go ass to mouth!

Ass to mouth notwithstanding, this does open up a wide range of new orifice/object permutations for Jews.

Yeah, just what are the rules about sucking orthodox cocks?

In other words, is it okay for women to kneel before the wailing balls?

Can Hassi chicks suck Hassi dicks?

This new lube opens the door to some easier Schindler’s fisting.

Maybe now they can finally put a glory hole in the wailing wall.

Gives new meaning to “Torah new one”

I guess it’s just the latest in the ongoing rabbinical debate on whether or not it’s okay to suck a dick that isn’t eight days old and recently mutilated.

To be fair, when CAN YOU suck an eight day old dick, if not right after you mutilate it?

Also to be fair, whose recently mutilated dick CAN YOU suck, if not that an eight day old boy?

Kosher lube opens orthodox jews to oral sex? http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2013/jul/17/kosher-lube-oral-sex-jews-lubricant

That does it for headlines tonight, Heath, thanks as always for joining me.

You’re not gonna trim the end of those circumcision jokes off in post are you?

And unlike Jesus, we’ll be back soon.

Calendar:

It’s time for the atheist calendar portion of the show. This is the time we set aside once a month to talk up some of the great atheist, secular and skeptical events going on around the country and around the world.

We’ll start in Toledo, Ohio on the weekend of August 18th where the Great Lakes Atheist Convention is welcoming JT Eberhard, Zack Kopplin, Jerry DeWitt and many more, including the Mayor of Toledo, which I find encouraging. And let’s face it, if a speaker lineup can get me thinking “I wish I was in Toledo”, it’s gotta be pretty damn impressive.

http://lanyrd.com/2013/great-lakes-atheist-convention/

Moving 7 days ahead and 7 thousand kilometers away, we’ve got the 15th European Skeptics’ Congress in Stockholm, Sweden on the weekend of the 23rd. Even though parts of the website are in Swedish, the conference itself will be in English

The speakers list includes DJ Grothe, Max Maven and a bunch of Europeans I’ve never heard of that have really interesting topic lines for their talks.

http://euroscepticscon.org/

We talked up the Atheist Alliance of America’s upcoming National Convention in Boston last week, but it seems like every time I look at their website they’ve added more awesome speakers. Aron-Ra, Ed Buckner, Seth Andrews, Steven Pinker, Greg Epstein, Sean Faircloth and the list keeps going.

That one’s taking place in Boston over Labor Day weekend.

http://www.aaaboston2013.com/

Lastly, of course, over that same weekend in Atlanta you’ve got DragonCon, which isn’t an atheist or humanist convention, but it’s awesome and it has a hell of a skeptical track so definitely worth checking out if you’re going to be anywhere near Atlanta. Michael Shermer, David Silverman, Rebecca Watson, Mythbusters Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage.

http://www.skeptrack.org/

If you want to know more you’ll find links to the homepages for all these events on the shownotes for this episode. And, of course, if you’re involved with or aware of an atheist or secular event that needs a plug, you’ll find all the contact info at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.

Top Ten:

Ah, Ramadan, the only holiday that could also be considered a war-crime. It’s that desultory time of year when Muslims gather together in misery so that they can be reminded that sometimes being a Muslim really sucks. Considered to be one of the five pillars of Islam, Muslims work hard to ensure that Ramadan will never be commercialized like Christmas by making it as miserable as possible.

But knowing that our listenership might not be as familiar with the Muslim customs as they are with the Christian ones, we decided to dedicate a few minutes to answering the top ten most often-asked questions about Ramadan.

Number ten: How do you celebrate Ramadan?

You don’t. This isn’t the kind of holiday you celebrate exactly. In fact, it’s kind of the opposite of celebrating. During Ramadan, all post-pubescent Muslims are required to observe a month long daylight fast. From sunrise to sunset, they aren’t allowed to eat, drink or smoke and are also expected to refrain from sex and foul language throughout. This is in addition, of course, to the lifelong Islamic prohibitions against alcohol, pork and critical thinking.

Number nine: Does everyone have to fast during Ramadan?

Not everyone. Pregnant women, people who are ill, women who are breast feeding and people who are travelling are allowed to forego the fast as long as they make up the days later in divine detention.

…writing “I will not comprehend” on the chalkboard.

And while Muslims are quick to point out that little kids aren’t required to fast, because in most of the world that would be considered child-abuse, they are certainly encouraged to as practice for later in life.

Number eight: Why?

Because the month of Ramadan is believed to be the month that Allah first revealed himself to Mohammed so Muslims mark the occasion by hating life.

Number seven: When is Ramadan?

Easier asked than answered. Because Muslims use a lunar calendar, Ramadan moves around in the year. Each year it begins 11 days earlier than the year before, so sometimes they fast in the short days of the winter when you need food the most, and sometimes it falls in the summer when not drinking water is borderline suicidal in most of the Muslim world.

Number six: What does the word “Ramadan” mean?

Yeah, even the word itself foretells of the general shittiness of this custom. It comes from the Arabic word ‘Ramida’ or ‘ar-radam’, and while there is no direct English translation, the gist of the word is “Heat and scorching dryness”.

Number five: Why the hell would anyone do this?

Because religion makes people do dumb shit. Muslims justify it by pointing out that it helps them focus on the spirit rather than worldly things, as though ignoring reality in favor of imagination was a virtue. They also claim that it helps them master self-control without recognizing the irony that by doing it they’ve explicitly surrendered control of themselves to a fictitious autocrat.

But most of all, they say it helps them empathize with the less fortunate

Number four: Well what about the sex part? Are they also trying to empathize with ugly fuckers?

Yeah, they never really address the fact that even people who are starving and thirsty are still allowed to jerk off.

Number three: Is fasting like that unhealthy?

No… how could foregoing all the life giving sustenance for absurd amounts of time possibly harm you? And what’s more, how could believing that failing in this Herculean task would offend god himself damage a 14 year old psychologically?

Of fucking course it’s unhealthy.

Which leads us to the Number two most often asked question about Ramadan: Seriously?

You bet your ass seriously. And we’re talking about Mulsim seriously. They’ve got levels of seriously we can scarcely comprehend. In fact, it’s even encoded in the laws of many Muslim countries.

The ones that have laws, that is.

Right, like Kuwait, where publicly eating, drinking or smoking during the day carries a heavy fine during Ramadan. Or the UAE, where it’s punishable by hundreds of hours of community service and in Algeria daylight mastication during Ramadan can land you in jail for years.

And finally, the number one question asked about Ramadan…

How the hell do they get away with calling this a holiday?

It’s only a holiday in the technical sense of being an annual observance. In all other ways, it’s a punishment for being religious. The only real “holiday” part comes at the end of the month with a celebration called Eid al-Fitr, which means “festivity of breaking the fast”. It’s a day when Muslims reflect on the fact that if you hit your testicles with a hammer over and over again for long enough, the act of not hitting yourself in the testicles with a hammer seems like a reward.

Bible Story:

Gather ‘round boys and girls. Today we’re going to open our Bibles to Exodus and read about Moses’ wife, Zipporah.

Now Zipporah was a very important person in the bible. She was so important that we know her name, even though she was a woman.

She grew up in a desert with her six sisters and spent all day doing whatever her father told her to do or getting beaten because that’s what women do in the bible. One day her and her sisters took their sheep to a well so that they could drink, but a bunch of mean men told them to go away so that they could water their sheep first.

Zipporah was sad and angry, but there was nothing she could do because she didn’t have a penis. But luckily, there was somebody around who did: Moses.

Moses was sitting by the well wondering if the corpse of the man he’d recently murdered was starting to stink yet when the bad shepherds shooed Zipporah and her sisters away. Moses decided to step in and help Zipporah water her sheep.

“How can I ever repay you?” she asked.

“A hand job?” Moses suggested.

So she invited him back to her tent so she could tug on his cock for a while, but when they got there her dad was home so she married him instead.

(Hooray!)

Moses loved Zipporah so much that he didn’t marry any other women even though he could have because that was okay back then. He took a job tending her father’s flocks, but one day he came home and told her that God had spoken to him and ordered him to free all the Jews in Egypt.

His eyes were red and he wreaked of burning bush, but Zipporah was a woman so she had no choice but to do what her husband said. So she grabbed their newborn son and left for decades of aimless wandering and random smitings.

But one night, on the way to Egypt, god decided to come to earth in human form and wrestle Moses to death at an inn. God was winning because he was god, so Zipporah decided she would have to help her husband out. But she couldn’t out-wrestle god, so what could she do?

Luckily, there was a baby weiner nearby, so she chopped a little piece of it off and touched it to Moses’ foot so that he could wrestle better. Then Moses suplexed god and everyone lived happily ever after. The end.

Outro:

Before we call it quits for the night, I have a very important apology to make to one of the most adept, admirable, altruistic, adroit, awesome, amazing, accommodating, astonishing, astounding, awe-inspiring anthropoids in the animal kingdom, April. April, I am so sorry that I neglected to thank you last week for your generous donation. Because of the extreme level of your magnificence, I had originally thanked you separately from the rest of last week’s best people, and then in a hasty, late night edit I cut it out without realizing it.

And to those of you who aren’t April, I should note that April told me she and her husband were competing to see who could get more mentions on the podcast through their extraordinary generosity and because of my mistake, April spent a week unjustly occupying the lower portion of the leaderboard in that noble competition. So to make up for that, I’d like to point out to April’s husband that I’ve now mentioned her 6 times in the last 33 seconds.

And in keeping with the “A” themed opening to this outro, I’d also like to thank two more prime examples of human DNA in action whose names also begin with A. Andrew, whose transcontinental philanthropy serves as a shining example of godless morality and another person who would rather remain anonymous but is also a biological exemplification of wit, wisdom and selfless magnanimity.

And while we’re on the topic of apologies to people whose names start with A, I’d also like to apologize to Ann who sent us a very eloquent and well-reasoned email a few weeks ago that deserves an on-air answer. And unfortunately I don’t have time to give it the response it deserves so for the time being I’ll simply say sorry about not making more pimp jokes. We’ll work on that.

That’s all the blasphemy we have for you tonight, but if you want more, there’s more. Tom and Cecil over at Cognitive Dissonance invited me on to chat with them and while it’s not available yet because it hasn’t actually even happened yet, I have reason to believe that you’ll find our conversation on episode 109 of their program, which I have reason to believe will be out on Monday.

And if you can’t make it until Monday, you can find occasional nuggets of Scatheism on our erratically published blog, our Twitter feed @Noah (underscore) Lugeons or our Facebook page at (slash) Scathing Atheist. And people who leave us 5 star reviews on iTunes are better than people that don’t. I also have it on good authority that the Flying Spaghetti Monster will give them mansions closer to the beer volcanos in the afterlife so Pascal’s Wager guys, might as well leave us a 5 star review.

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

Categories: Show Transcripts Tags: antitheism, atheism, atheist, atheist podcast, Christianity, faith, Fred Phelps, Fred Phelps gay mom, Jew Lube, Kirk Cameron, Kirk Cameron "Unstoppable", Mary Landrieu, Pope Francis, Ramadan, religion, religious podcast, Senator Mary Landrieu

Episode 16 – Partial Transcript

June 6, 2013 Noah Lugeons Leave a comment

by Noah Lugeons, Heath Enwright and Lucinda Lugeons

(Note: Transcript may contain material edited from the final episode for time purposes)

Sponsor:

Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the new brand of perforated Catholic Condoms, Kingdom Cum. These confusingly labeled condoms are no more contraceptive than cheesecloth, but we’re willing to wager we’ll catch a few drunken fornicators with this ruse.

What, you think that’s immoral? You should see what Catholics do when they take over a hospital.

And now, the Scathing Atheist:

Intro:

It’s Thursday, it’s June 6th and I know Jake Farr-Wharton has already opened up the show once, but the dude sent the quote to me in six different voices and I’m not letting good shit go to waste.

I’m your host Noah Lugeons and from abbreviated NY, NY, this is the Scathing Atheist.

On this week’s show,

We’ll add contractual obligation to the list of reasons not to get addicted to meth,
I’ll try desperately to come up with another nickname for Pope Francis,
And Heath and Lucinda will join me in discovering that Leviticus is every bit as fucked up as you think it is.

But first, the Diatribe.

Diatribe:

I’m sick and goddamned tired of hearing about where people fall on the “Dawkins Scale”.

Before I go any further, I should note that I’m a big fan of Dawkins and I admire his non-sexist parts… he’s like the Benny Hill of atheism in that way. And what’s more, I completely understand the rhetorical utility of his sliding scale of theistic probability. In the hands of a skilled debater like Dawkins, it’s a valuable asset. But in the hands of a lay-atheist, it’s often a hell of a lot less than that.

For those who aren’t familiar with the term, the “Dawkins Scale” refers to a seven point scale Dawkins proposed in The God Delusion. A one on this scale represents absolute certainty that god exists, a seven is absolute certainty that god doesn’t exist. The point he’s making is that atheists generally fall on the “6”, not the “7”. It’s a useful explanation of the fact that atheism is the product of doubt, not certainty.

But certainty appeals to a lot of people, so when Dawkins talks about this publicly there’s often a backlash. People in the media stammer about how Dawkins is uncertain and concedes that there might be a god afterall. They don’t seem to understand that he’s not actually conceding that in any way. They just see two guys in a debate where one is saying he’s absolutely sure and the other’s saying he holds a tentative position that’s in accordance with the observable evidence. Somehow they don’t see this as an idiot vs. a responsible thinker, but rather they see it as confident guy vs. indecisive guy.

In the context of the book and in the context of some debates, employing this scale makes perfect sense. But before we lean too heavily on it, we should probably point out that this scale can also be applied to any other belief. Does gravity exist? Well, I’m pretty damn sure it does, but as a responsible thinker, I’ve got to go with a 6 on the scale, because if convincing evidence arose to the contrary, I would change my mind. I am not an immutable “7”. We could be part of a computer simulation titled “what if there was gravity?”, so as a proper logician I have to carve out a little, tiny, itsy-bitsy “margin of error” on the gravity thing.

Same thing for evolution, right? I mean, just because all the available data suggests and confirms it, that doesn’t mean that I’m absolutely certain beyond the shadow of a doubt, irrespective of future data. I’d have to hold the responsible position of “6” on the scale. But why hamstring oneself in debate by pointing this out only with respect to the thing you’re arguing about?

I feel the same way every time I hear Dillahunty, or anyone else for that matter, talk about Agnostic Atheism vs. Gnostic Atheism. Before we start making this distinction, somebody show me one of these gnostic atheists. Show me somebody who says that no matter what level of convincing evidence could be offered to the contrary, they would never believe in god. Show me somebody who says he would still be an atheist if god appeared in the sky before the whole world at once and said, “I am god, sorry about all the mysteriousness and shit and to prove my godness you’ll note that all the people who had cancer are now cured.” Show me that guy and then let’s start carving atheism up into gnostic and agnostic.

This isn’t just a semantic thing. And it’s not just a “trip-you-up-in-an-argument” thing either. The use of these devices is actually fucking this movement up internally. I can’t tell you often I see atheists offering up false-equivalency compromises with this nonsense. Search “Dawkins Scale” on Twitter and it won’t take long to find an atheist saying something like, “I’ll admit that being a 7 on the Dawkins scale is as ridiculous as being a 1”

What? No the fuck it isn’t! That’s a complete misreading of the point of the rhetorical device. Keep in mind that on this scale, 7 actually represents the thing that is right. 1 represents the thing that is wrong. The point of the Dawkins Scale is to point out the flaw in “Absolute Certainty”. But if you’re going to be absolutely certain of something, it’s still way better to be certain about the thing that conforms to all the known evidence.

Substitute anything else for the god assumption and it becomes painfully obvious. Somebody who is absolutely certain that the earth is round should, for the proper employment of scientific thinking, concede that overwhelming evidence could sway him… from a pedantic, vulcan, it’s-an-oblate-spheroid-bitch point of view. But that doesn’t mean that he’s exactly as wrong as somebody who is absolutely convinced that the earth is flat.

There’s a cat on my lap right now. If I was pressed, I’d admit that it could be a hallucination, it could be a robot, it could be a phantasm from another dimension taking the form of my cat. But if I say, “No, damn it, this is definitely my cat”, it may be technically wrong, but it’s certainly not as wrong as “No, damn it, this is definitely a phantasm from another dimension.”

The problem is with 7 point scales and binary choices like gnostic and agnostic is that there’s no way to truly express the 6.999999-ness of one’s atheism. If god appeared before me right now and we had a twenty minute conversation, I’d assume I’d lost my fucking mind before I’d assume that it actually happened. It would take a hell of alot more than than personal experience to overturn my conviction. I’d need tangible evidence that could be verified by multiple sources and, in addition, I’d need volumes of refutations for the hundreds of logical contradictions his existence entails. I’d need a world-overturning amount of evidence. I’d need an amount of evidence that one can reasonably assume will never exist.

So as to where I fall on the Dawkins Scale, it ultimately comes down to the question of how many 9s you can put after the decimal place before you run out of 9s.

Headlines:

Joining me for headlines tonight is my fellow skeptic, Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to sharpen Occam’s Razor?

Is another old book club making outrageous claims?

I’m starting to think god is worse than Oprah.

In our lead story tonight, Oxford University researcher and author Kathleen Taylor made waves this week when she suggested that religious fundamentalism may one day be a curable mental illness. Now, when you and I hear this statement, the only new information is the word “Curable”, but when the religious folks hear it they’re once again forced to confront the fact that believing in magic people in the clouds is, technically, fucking nuts.

I hope the cure for religion comes out in some sort of weaponized form. I’m picturing a reality dart, and you can heal the radically ignorant right in the side of the neck with a blowgun.

This is only the latest in a long line of academics accidentally forgetting that we’re supposed to publicly ignore the fact that extreme religiosity and mental illness spend a lot of venn diagrams spooning.

Definitely got a shared region in the extra-wide vagina shape. That’s more like scissoring than spooning, I guess.

The media reports it like it’s a scandal and then they dig up a bunch of peacemaker psychologists who dutifully point out that technically it’s not a mental illness until it interferes with your day to day life and at the same time they’ll dutifully not point out that by the same argument believing that you’re Napoleon and your left testicle reminds you to water the house-plants is also not de-facto crazy.

And the Napoleon left testicle belief system is VASTLY more likely to be true than those of any major religion.

Worst thing that happens if insane people become radically orthodox about science is they make an atheist podcast. Nobody’s ever protested a theist funeral, or bombed a fetus rescue clinic, in the name of Darwin or Dawkins.

But don’t worry, it’s not like we’re going to now have a rational conversation about this topic, as the major media outlets have reported that, in fact, the pachyderm droppings on the loveseat were likely man-made and placed there intentionally.

Pay no attention to the Republican mascot behind the curtain, taking a shit on society’s couch.

Could religious fundamentalism be treated as a mental illness? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/31/kathleen-taylor-religious-fundamentalism-mental-illness_n_3365896.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

And speaking of fundamentalism and mental illness, our next story brings us to Kentucky and Ken Ham’s ailing “Ark Park” where Ham is inadvertently demonstrating the absurdity of the Noah story by showing how hard it is to get an ark of that size built when you’ve got modern shipping channels and $25 million dollars at your disposal.

Well Noah had the old-man strength going. You know how the best softball players are 45-year-olds? Noah did all the ark stuff between the ages of 480 and 600, so unfair advantage.

Plus, Ken Ham probably has far fewer Jewish slaves at his disposal for the project.

In addition to not having enough money to build the ark that will fail to serve as the centerpiece for this not-likely-to-exist theme park, Ham’s team is also not building other Old Testament attractions, including not breaking ground on a Tower of Babel observations deck and not moving ahead on a planned “Ten Plagues” themed ride.

I think they need to reread Genesis 11. They’re constructing a replica of the tower whose construction got god to smite everyone. That’s like re-airing the seizure-inducing anime clip.

Many atheists will remember hearing a lot about this park a couple of years ago when the state of Kentucky agreed to award it huge tax incentives to build it’s testament to credulous stupidity. It would seem now that the “Ark Encounter” has found a clever way to circumvent that controversy by failing to raise the requisite funds for construction until the proposed tax incentives expire in May of next year.

So Kentucky said, “Yeah, you guys can have these huge tax breaks, as long as you can build an impossible boat and an entire infinite tower to heaven before next May.”

Ark Park having trouble: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/31/noahs-ark-theme-park_n_3367579.html?utm_hp_ref=religion

And in “Are-They-Still-On-About-That-Shit?” News, a number of prominent Baptist leaders have called for a mass withdrawal of support for the Boy Scouts of America after they slight and decades overdue backpedaling of institutionalized of bigotry. Arguing that we can’t allow gay people to learn how to tie such good knots, homophobic pastors across the nation are urging their flocks to cut their ties with the Boy Scouts.

“I know this seems like it’s about the gay thing, in the standard cause and effect sense. But we’re just uncomfortable – in general – of a dozen 10-year-old boys and a weird adult in a tent, wearing matching short shorts and ascots. Whether or not there are any actual homosexuals present, it’s just too faggoty.”

Pastor Tim Reed of Arkansas forestalled that argument when he told a CNN reporter that (quote) “It’s not a hate thing here”, adding a bunch of other thinly veiled lies and bullshit that he has to tell himself to continue to believe that he’s not a bigoted anal-wart that cherry picked through one of the most egregiously horrific parts of the entire bible, bypassed laws against tattoos, fabric mixing and crustacean eating and selectively chose to enforce the one line he found that reinforced his hateful bigotry.

“It’s not that they’re gay, it’s that they’re evil BECAUSE they’re gay. It’s all in the book, you can check. Our hands are tied.”

“We’d also be this pissed if they endorsed uncovering your wife’s daughter’s nakedness!”

Sorry Pastor, but it’s still racist when you say hockey players are better than basketball players at water polo.

Baptists plan exodus from Boy Scouts: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/05/31/southern-baptists-to-urge-churches-and-members-to-cut-boy-scout-ties/

And in quasi-constitutional legislative acrobatics this week, we’ve got the state of Ohio hoping to pass a bill that would award high school credits to kids for going to church and learning about how evil gay people are and stuff.

I’d be willing to give PE credit to altar boys, especially if, you know . . . they swallowed.

Proponents of the bill argue that (quote) “It’s an attempt to reinstall some of the same things that made this country great”, which, in the mind of Democratic representative Bill Patmon, include religious indoctrination and rewarding people for knowing things that are wrong. Patmon went on to complain that we’ve taken prayer out of the schools, we’ve separated religious demonstration from learning areas, we’ve taken religious displays out of schools, I mean, it’s getting to where there’s hardly any way at all to exploit the public schools to evangelize.

“Some of these kids are going 7 . . . 8 hours in a row at school, in the middle of December, without seeing a single piece of visual Jesus propaganda. Do the math. You just can’t brain rape kids under these conditions. I thought this was America.”

Opponents of the law point out that giving educational credit for things that aren’t actually “education” kind of defeats the purpose and then they just kind of stare at the proponents and wonder why this isn’t enough to persuade them.

I got my health credits in high school by interning with a psychic chiropractor who cured headaches with leeches. And now look at me. I run a lucrative wishing well business.

Shifty payouts for religion by state of Ohio: http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20130601/NEWS/306010059/Ohio-may-OK-public-school-religion-credits?gcheck=1

And from the “Who-Will-They-Molest-Now?” file, Las Vegas’ oldest Catholic School will be shutting its doors permanently at the end of the academic year. The St. Joseph Catholic School has been instrumental in Vegas’ international reputation as a paragon of chastity and virtue since 1948, but a steep drop off in people gullible enough to entrust their children to Catholics has led to the school’s inevitable demise.

I think it’s telling, that the oldest Catholic school in Las Vegas, is named after Jesus’ stepdad, the patron saint of some other dude fucking your wife…the patron saint of “cuckolded by god’s dick”

Over the past decade about a quarter of all Catholic schools have been shuttered nationwide leading many to believe that god has abandoned us and no longer cares about the travails of mankind, instead focusing his divine attention on beating Contra without using the cheat code.

It’s all about the spreader gun. Maybe the laser near the end. The flamethrower didn’t get the good blast radius effect until Contra 2.

Beating Contra without the cheat code is like god… I’ll believe it when I see it.

Oldest Vegas Catholic school to close permanently: http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2013/may/30/citys-oldest-catholic-school-falls-victim-low-enro/#axzz2UqCW1wru

And in this week’s forecast on international demon activity we find that despite papal intervention, the guy who thought that he was filled with devil spawn is still fucking crazy. Despite the Pope Frankenberry’s exorcism that wasn’t, a wheelchair bound man identified in the press as Angel V. insists that he is still possessed by demons.

Looks like he has a malpractice case, at the very least. They seem to have botched a fairly routine procedure. But I’ve seen a lot of spinals, dude, and it sounds like this Angel guy is a fake.

The fucking goldbricker claims to have undergone more than 30 exorcisms and somehow no matter how much holy water they throw at him while intoning latin platitudes, his clearly malfunctioning brain refuses to be miraculously cured.

What’s the problem, he’s hearing demonic voices, telling him to kill babies and eat them? Everyone get those sometimes, right? We don’t all have to act on them every time.

Instead of responsibly suggesting he seek psychiatric help, prominent Catholics affirm his harmful delusions by saying things like (quote) “the demons that live in him do not want to leave,” and (quote) “God exists”.

Man exorcised by Pope still possessed by demons: http://www.newsmax.com/edwardpentin/pope-excorcism-possessed-angel/2013/05/29/id/506975

And finally tonight, a story that comes to us from Friendly Atheist, prolific author and inaugural Farnsworth quoter Hemant Mehta and his Friendly Atheist blog. It would seem that a couple of parents in Utah have finally found the secret to instilling the importance of good moral judgement on their children: Cold hard cash.

Mother Katie Hughes had her daughters sign a contract that promises a reward of $1000 at the age of 20 if the now pre-pubescent girls can refrain from the use of drugs, alcohol and premarital sex between now and then.

“We’re willing to pay as much as 34 cents a day for you to have a shitty, sheltered childhood.”

Seems like a non-binding legal contract might not be the best way to tackle the subject. Are kids gonna need to start bringing legal counsel to have “the talk” ?

So yeah, setting aside the obvious fact that in another eight years these girls could earn that much in a night by breaking the pledge, one also has to doubt that the paltry sum of a thousand 2026 dollars will remain a sufficient carrot to forestall teen angst.

So, nine days of future minimum wage later . . . or drunken orgasms and cocaine now…

Mother offers daughter $1000 to stay a virgin: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/06/05/christian-mother-to-daughter-if-you-remain-abstinent-until-youre-20-ill-give-you-1000/

And since there’s nothing better to close on than drunken orgasms and cocaine, that’ll do it for headlines tonight, Heath, thanks as always for joining me.

And when we come back, Lucinda will join us to bust open our bibles and dig into the dirty parts.

Song:

After writing poems for Genesis and Exodus, I felt obligated to the Herculean task of capturing the mind-raping insanity of Leviticus in two rhyming minutes. To complicate matters, I used a weird rhyme scheme and upon recitation it had this really awful “middle aged white guy rapping” feel to it.

In an effort to counterbalance that I put a little music behind it, but I want to apologize to any musicians who might be listening. I was really under the gun on this thing so it’s basically A minor and E the whole way.

So without further ado, I present the book of Leviticus in rhyme:

Leviticus in Rhyme:

Let me tell you how to sacrifice a goat, bitch; First you cut it’s throat which,

seems a little mean and maybe more than a little gross, it’s

Nothing when compared to; What the Levites bear through,

Details of the entrails should be plenty enough to scare you.

The fat goes on a pyre; Set that shit on fire,

The smell’s a rancid hell but it’s the odor god desires.

How to kill a bird now; Case you hadn’t heard how,

Twist it’s little heard until it’s dead and when it’s burned, bow.

This is for atonement; Offer no postponement,

Couple jugs of blood is a critical component.

Now a proclamation; Regarding ordination,

light the candles right or you might risk assassination …From the Lord.

Thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not lie,

Thou shalt not do it guy on guy,

Thus unto Moses spoke the Lord.

Let me tell you what to eat bitch; Tell you who to sleep with

Tell you how to burn the heretics about that bewitch.

Tell you ‘bout your penis; And all it’s uncleanness,

For someone all-knowing I’m not much of a hygienist.

Oh, and if it pleases; Quickly on diseases,

Sacrifice a turtle dove if anybody sneezes.

Menstrual blood and semen; Need a lot of cleanin’

Best I never catch you whorin’ with all those goat demons,

Tell you ‘how to shave, man; Who you can enslave, man,

Tell you how to stone the motherfucks who misbhave and,

If you disobey me; I will not just slay thee,

Many generations I’ll be all up in your game, see …I’m the Lord.

Thou shalt be pure, thou shalt be true,

Thou shalt not get a damned tattoo,

Thus unto Moses spoke the Lord.

Thou shalt speak up, Thou shalt not cheat,

Thou shalt not dine on rancid meat

Or stick your dick in things that bleat.

Thou shalt not mix thy rye and wheat.

Thou shalt be just, thou shalt be kind,

Thou shalt not trick the deaf and blind,

Or touch cadavers left behind.

Or let two fabrics be combined.

Thou shalt fear god, thou shalt be straight,

Thou shalt not look to kin with hate,

Thou shalt not ever masturbate,

Thou shant put weasel on your plate.

Thou shalt not rob, thou shalt be bold

Thou shalt rise up before the old,

Don’t get your daughter’s pussy sold,

Thou shalt give all my priests your gold,

…Thou shalt be easily controlled.

Thus spoke the Lord.

Outro:

That brings us to a quick recognition of this week’s most astonishing vertebrates, Steven, Lindsay, Ward and other Lindsay. These four vampire hunting, ninja decimating, time bomb deactivating, bus jumping heroes have distinguished themselves above all other carbon based lifeforms this week by giving us money. Drawing on stupendous reserves of tenacity, intelligence and spare cash lying around, these four fine folks have provided an example that all tenacious, intelligent people with spare cash lying around should aspire to.

If you’d like to join these noble few in the pantheon of Scatheist glory, you’ll find the donate button on the right side of our homepage at Scathing Atheist (dot) com. Oh, and Lindsay, if you’re listening, I was talking about the other Lindsay when I said, “other Lindsay”, not you.

That does it for tonight’s show, but we’ll be back in 168 hours with some hastily put together shit that’ll keep me up until 2 in the morning at least twice this week. But if you can’t wait that long without risking a stress induced seizure, be sure to check out our erratically published blog and our erratically Tweeted Twitter feed.

Oh, and please help us spread the word about the show. If you know any atheists that have auditory canals, please give us a plug when you can. I put every diatribe up on YouTube and I’ll be putting the Leviticus song up this week as well, so if you wouldn’t be risking will-altering alienation from your family, I’d humbly ask that you give one of our videos a share on Facebook or whatever.

A quick thanks to Heath and Lucinda for joining me tonight and to a bunch of dead Israelites for making the jokes so easy on the Holy Babble segment. And a quick thanks to you, dear listener, for giving us half an hour of your life. We’ll be working really hard to earn another thirty minutes next week.

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

Episode 15 – Partial Transcript

May 30, 2013 Noah Lugeons Leave a comment

by Noah Lugeons & Heath Enwright

Sponsor:

Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the new anti-erection medication for all of your overnight camping trips with known pedaphiles and children needs. The flaccidating power of new Celibacyalis will tame even the most immaculate ejaculate.

Celibacyalis, because only the Pope can be infallible, but anyone can be in-phallus-able.

And now, the Scathing Atheist.

Intro:

It’s Thursday, it’s May 30th and what the fuck Detroit? You were up 3-1 in that goddamned series.

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

On this week’s episode:

A recent law change in Texas will make it legal to not break the law,
Iowa takes concrete steps to be dumber and less vaccinated,
And we’ll make you laugh so hard a little bit of pee comes out,

But first, the Diatribe:

Diatribe:

I’d like to start off tonight with, an update on the soundclip that opened our show last week. And for the apparently sizable percentage of our audience with bong related memory deficiencies, it was the one where Wolf Blitzer makes almost as much of an ass of himself as he did when he went on Jeopardy and proved himself to be biologically fungal in mental function. And if you somehow missed that clip on the YouTube, the Twitter and the Facebook, the story goes like this:

Man means woman, woman’s holding baby in front of a house recently destroyed by a tornado, man is a salivating news whore so he puts a camera in front of her. So here’s this feeble-minded simpleton who managed to score a negative $4600 on the dumbed down Jeopardy they give to celebrities and he’s vamping for questions so he asks the poor woman if she remembers to thank god.

Now, I can’t really blame Wolf Blitzer for assuming that the random Oklahoman he was talking to was Christian. You’re gonna win that bet a lot more than you’re gonna lose it. Hell, it’s not like answering “What is Jerusalem?” when the clue was “Jesus hailed from this town”, but it’s still a stupid thing to ask someone about whom you know nothing. But it’s Wolf “which appendages do the pants go on again?” Blitzer so you expect shit like that.

But what followed is something you wouldn’t expect. Instead of looking at her shoes and muttering “well… yeah, whatever, I thank him, sure” she very politely and somewhat timidly said, “well, no, because I’m an atheist”. And then Wolf laughs. Like retarded people getting pudding .

The woman he was talking to at the time, now identified as one Rebecca Vitsmun, didn’t have to self-identify as an atheist. She could have just shrugged. But she used the A word. She said on national TV (albeit a channel nobody watches) that no, she doesn’t thank God because she doesn’t believe in God. And if anyone had been watching, they might have said, “Hey look, there’s a regular person with real problems and an adorable baby that isn’t religious and seems like a normal human.”

Keep in mind that normally there’s no reward for saying, “No, I’m an atheist”. In fact, when you live in Oklahoma there’s often something quite antipodal to a reward. If she was doing it with any end goal in mind it was probably a subtle reminder to Wolf and the other newscasters out there that they shouldn’t assume people are religious. It’s a bit of a sacrifice to send a very important message.

Wolf Blitzer won’t learn, of course, because he’s so stupid that he doesn’t even know he’s too stupid to go on Jeopardy, but I’m willing to bet that a number of other news anchors are taking notes. But not Wolf. Because it was rainy that day and his crayons don’t work in the rain. And I’m sorry if it seems like I’m focusing too much on Wolf’s mental-impairments, but we are talking about a guy who once looked at a bowl of penne on a television screen and said, “What is fettucini?” I mean, fettucini Wolf? Are you fucking kidding me?

So I heard this silly little soundclip and decided to open the show with it. And I wasn’t the only one who thought it deserved a share because within 24 of the live broadcast it was all over the atheist blogosphere and all over the english speaking world atheists were giving Rebecca an enthusiastic fist pump. But the story doesn’t end here, because it turns out that wasn’t all we were giving her.

Enter comedian and secular church co-founder Doug Stanhope who sees this thing and realizes that it’s a perfect time to show the world the benefit of putting your faith in the faithless. So he started an Indiegogo campaign called “Atheists Unite” to raise money to help our latest viral celebrity rebuild. And it turned out that we atheists thought it a fantastic idea.

So thanks to the efforts of Stanhope, the inexplicable morality of non-believers and the power of the atheist blogosphere, the secular community was able to raise $50,000 for Vitsmun in less than three quarters of a day with more pouring in to help her and other recently smited people in Oklahoma.

Now, originally I was going to tack this update on to the end of the headlines section, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this story represented every single step between now and secular majority. It begins with normal people standing up and proudly (if timidly) proclaiming their atheism. It ends with secular humanism stepping in and serving those functions that we’ve left to churches for so long.

Christians have a lot of places to go when shit hits the fan. Within hours of the storm clouds clearing there were religious missionaries there to help the religious people cope. And most of these people are probably just good people that want to help. They’d be happy to help the atheists too, but they’re not equipped. They can only exacerbate the stress by talking about god’s plan and asking us if we remembered to thank Super Jesus.

In researching for this show, I come across a lot of shit that makes me wonder if there’s any point in fighting this fight. I see laws being passed today that the 18th century would be embarassed by. I see world leaders justifying their actions with Aesop’s fables. I see people being killed by the hundreds for believing in the right imaginary friend the wrong way. And it makes me want to start a podcast about hockey or something.

But once in awhile I come across a story like this and it gives me hope. And it reminds me that there’s really some power in this community even if we are a bunch of unherdable pussies. It reminds me that even our weird, nebulous, infrastructureless, leaderless movement can still get things done. And it reminds me that Wolf Blitzer is verifiably nine thousand, two hundred Jeopardy-dollars stupider than NANCY GRACE. And I like being reminded of stuff like that.

Atheist Community raises money for Wolf Blitzer’s surprise Oklahoma atheist: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/05/24/has-the-oklahoma-atheist-been-saved/

And Proof that Wolf is really that stupid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVC28oemocA

Headlines:

Joining me for headlines tonight is my fellow ignorance wrangler, Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to corral the flock?

I’m trying really hard to be the shepherd.

In our lead story tonight, it looks like we’re all going to heaven, unless, of course, the infallible guy was wrong, which, according to the people who believe him to be infallible, he was. The story begins at morning mass where the new, controversial pontiff controversially declared that everybody could get into heaven even if they’re not Catholic… and there was controversy.

I love when the pious get meaningless news…that they believe to be terrible news. Turns out they’ve spent their entire seratonin-deprived lives hedging their bets on the losing end of Pascal’s Wager. What’s wrong? You been completely wasting your time confiding your darkest secrets to an asexual man in the next stall every Sunday?

Could have just as well been going to a Minnesota airport mens room, and getting more than just your ego stroked?

Couldn’t be less productive than confession. Anyway, the atheist community, who, truth be told, could give a shit less what some senile old coot thinks about our chances of making it to space paradise, welcomed the statement and gave the pope a pat on the back for trying. In fact, many people of a number of different faiths welcomed the statement, but you can bet your ass that none of them were Catholic.

As quickly as they could rev up the holy-laptop…

Is that a Gateway… to Heaven?

No, they’re pretentious so it’s probably an I-Maccabees.

Wouldn’t they spring for the Adonai-Pad?

Well, whatever they used, the underlings that pull the pope’s strings took to the series of tubes to clarify the statement and assure faithful Catholics that what he really meant was the exact opposite of what he said. Despite infallible rumors to the contrary, only Catholics get sky-cake.

Nope, too late. You heard him, and like you said he’s infallible. “All my atheist sins of reason done been warshed away . . . Come on in boys, the water is fine.”

It’s gotta hurt to find out from Megatron that the heathen Autobots can have real cake, and sky cake, and eat it too. That’s like blowing someone for drugs that you’re not going to take, and then finding out they’ve been giving away free drugs to atheists the whole time.

Pope Decides Atheists Can Go to Heaven: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/05/23/heaven-for-atheists-pope-sparks-debate/

And in “It’s-Not-Praying-If-I-Don’t-Agree-With-You” news, Arizona legislator Steve Smith called for a metaphysical mulligan last week after atheist representative Juan Mendez profaned that body’s ritual of morning incantations by offering his own prayer to start the session. Steve Smith, who, in addition to being two washed up NFL wide-outs, is apparently also an old, white, bigoted fuck-plunger, was incensed by the audacity of equality and offered a second prayer in (quote) “repentance” for the godless heathen’s prayer.

That’s weird, because normally Representative Mendez arrives very late to these sessions, as Arizona law requires that he show his ID to any white person that sees him along the way.

Sounds like Smith is being fairly open-minded. He’s willing to allow anybody – even an atheist – to deliver a Christian prayer before the session?

Smith offered this hilariously stupid analogy to justify his actions, “If you don’t love this country… don’t say ‘I want to lead this body in the pledge’ and stand up there and say… ‘You know what, I love England’.”

Yeah we can’t have politicians wasting their time dwelling on societal problems. We need them focused on old books.

So apparently the constitutionally dubious opening prayer is okay and doesn’t endorse a particular faith group, but if you don’t pray to Mary’s Baby-Daddy, the Christians still get to pray anyway.

Michael Richards isn’t racist . . . We had Chris Rock open for him.

Atheist Prayer Not Good Enough For Arizona Lawmaker: http://news.yahoo.com/arizona-house-non-prayer-sparks-christian-213521848.html

And in military news, the state of Texas has issued a preemptive strike in the war on Christmas with House Bill 308, which protects a teacher or student’s rights to say “Merry Christmas” without repercussions. It also gives the districts the right to put up Christmas decorations, too. So apparently they can open the gates of the prisons and let all those “Merry Christmas” wishin’, mistletoe-hangin’ hoodlums back out on the streets.

I heard this legislation is just a piggy back on another larger bill, re-affirming that under Texas law, murder is still frowned upon. The amended murder ban would also include an exclamation point at the end. Texans want to show how serious they are about not murdering, unless of course, you’re paid by the government to inject people with poison.

Now, as an atheist, my ears always perk up when I hear about state legislators making things legal that are already legal and you don’t have to dig too deeply into this one to see what the real goal is. The bill doesn’t change a single letter of any law anywhere. What it does is send a firm message that atheists can go fuck themselves if they think they’re comin’ after the baby Jesus and our manger scene.

Well, if they’re worried about somebody stealing the baby Jesus from their tax-embezzlement-funded, life-sized shoebox diorama, why don’t they just nail him down?

Are they sensitive about that for some reason?

And just to clarify the visual gag I was using during a podcast, my arms were extended outward as I made that suggestion.

Who says sight-gags don’t work on audio? The bill specifically states that Christmas decorations are fine as long as there is at least one symbol from one other faith somewhere. Like, a menorah in the closet or a buddha in the attic or something.

Like a Jew under the floorboards?

…at least you didn’t say in an urn.

…or oven.

In fact, it even says that “at least one secular scene or symbol” is sufficient to offset the Christian-ness of a nativity scene leading one to ask, what the fuck is a “secular” symbol? I mean, are they saying as long as there’s a cross and a non-cross object, it’s okay?

Crosses are all about perpendicular, so they must mean secular objects like 2 lines that are extremely parallel.

“I mean, sure, that’s a diorama of Christ on the cross, but look at this secular umbrella stand next to it, so… you know?”

I guess representations of factual a priori knowledge would be secular objects.

I’m sure when questions like these come up, the highly-educated members of the Texas legislature routinely discusses Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, and the concepts behind the (analytic / synthetic) and (a priori / a posteriori) distinctions.

Yes, I’m sure that Rick Perry can both comprehend and spell those concepts.

Texas mounts preemptive strike in the War on Christmas: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/05/24/texas-set-to-pass-bill-protecting-the-phrase-merry-christmas-from-well-no-one-really/

And in morbidly-obese-gubernatorial news, New Jersey governor Chris Christie has decided that they’re pretty much recovered from that hurricane shit and now they’ve got a spare 11 and a quarter million dollars to give to seminaries for capital improvements. And no, I don’t have to be fucking kidding you, because I’m not.

You’ve must have been fucking kidding me when you said “I don’t have to be fucking kidding you”.

I wasn’t.

The appropriations are tucked away amid 174 less questionable grants going to 44 less questionable colleges around the state. But if you go a-diggin’ you’ll find two line items totalling $11.25 million going to two religious schools. And I’m not talking “We’re Notre Dame and we love Jesus and we’re religious” religious schools, I’m talking about “We’re training religious people to be more religious and only people of our religion can come here” religious schools.

First of all, I’m not ok with Notre Dame getting any public money if they’re going to teach students about fictional characters like god and Manti Teo’s girlfriend. Also, after doing some google images research on this, I’m fairly certain that former Notre Dame head football coach Charlie Weiss is the same person as governor Christie.

Hard to believe considering that when Sandy hit, Christie was able to mount a defense.

The two grants include a $650,000 grant to Princeton Theological Seminary and a stereotype reinforcing $10.6 million to the Beth Medrash Govoha rabbinical school. I think it’s worth noting that the latter of the two not only excludes non-Jews, but non-men as well so one must invoke exponents to express the unconstitutional nature of these grants.

Really?!?! $11.25 million dollars going to teach clergy? How much does it cost to build a new pseudo-science lab? Are they demonstrating scripture concepts with large hadron colliders now?

Something strikes me odd about a rabbinical school modernizing anyway.

Chris Christie Wants to Funnel Millions in Taxpayer Dollars to Seminaries: https://www.au.org/blogs/wall-of-separation/paying-for-praying-nj-governor-seeks-to-award-taxpayer-millions-to

And in “If-We-Stop-Testing-These-Kids-They’ll-Stop-Failing” News, the Iowa state legislature recently passed House File 215 in an effort to lower the bar of homeschooling standards so far that a person might theoretically trip over it. HF 215 ensures the success of every child by removing any standard that would require them to learn or do anything.

Is this in response to an outcry that Iowa parents were making their homeschooled children too smart?

Or maybe too healthy, as among the standards on the chopping block here is the requirement that homeschooled children be vaccinated

Most homeschooled children in Iowa are baptised, so why would they need vaccinations?

What’s worse is that some of this other shit is worse. This thing goes from relaxed to catatonic with revisions like:

Homeschooled children no longer have to spend a set number of days a year learning things
Homeschooled children no longer have to learn any things
Homeschooled children never have to demonstrate knowledge of things

What is this, “No Child Pushed Ahead? Can parents get vouchers to cover the costs of not teaching?

Just the latest in Iowa’s aggressive strategy to end Mississippi’s reign as the stupidest state in the country.

And that’s a competitive category.

Iowa deregulates home-schooling: ttp://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/05/27/new-legislation-will-allow-iowas-homeschooling-parents-to-not-teach-their-children/

And in “We-Can-No-Longer-Afford-To-Be-Picky” news, the Church of England recently unveiled plans to allow people with vaginas to become bishops. After decades spent debating something the rest of the world had figured out so thoroughly it had long been encoded in law, the Church of England had decided that women have functional brains, too.

The Catholic Church needs to take a cue here. This would put a huge dent in the rape case numbers. I’m not saying female priests wouldn’t be capable of abusing their power, but it would end up being consensual way more of the time. When I was a 12-year-old boy, I would have happily taken a BJ from a toothless old nun.

12 years old? I’d still take a… oh, nevermind.

So perhaps it was for the toothless blowjobs,, perhaps it’s because you can’t fuck something up if it never has any actual results anyway or maybe it was spurred on by a genuine change of heart, the important thing to note is that they’re not going to rush into this. They’re only one full century behind modern thought on this so they’re gonna give it a couple more years before they revoke their bigotry.

This sounds a lot like the way the Republican Party is being forced to reluctantly embrace colored people.

And estrogened people at the same time.

Now, I have to point this out: In every article I saw on this they say that the church made “concessions” to the people who opposed women bishops, but I couldn’t find any details on that and I’m dying to know what that would entail. I mean, what, they can be bishops but I can still call them “Toots” and they have to make me a sandwich if I ask?

Listen guys, the female bishop thing is happening, but as a concession . . . From now on, “No” means “Yes”, and “Yes” means “Anal”.

Church of England to Allow Women Bishops in 2015: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/24/us-britain-church-bishops-idUSBRE94N0RV20130524

And finally tonight in our international forecast on demonic activity, we turn to Madrid where the devil seems to be winning one fiddle-battle after another. An anonymous spokeswoman for the archdiocese of Madrid told the Associated Press that they had only one priest who was fully trained in devil-wrestling and that just wasn’t enough.

Is a spokeswoman like a female spokesman? Like a woman talking?

I doubt it… they’re Catholic.

Now, apparently you can only make the normal water turn into magic devil-kryptonite if you’ve been authorized by a bishop to do so and, of course, the Vatican is well aware of how silly the whole exorcism thing looks to everyone except idiots. As evidence, I offer the recent shit show that erupted when stories got out that one might have been performed in St. Peter’s Square last week by Pope San Francisco Treat.

You’ve been managing to get lots of mileage out of Pope Francis nicknames. This time you’ve got him as gay rice.

Thanks you. I project that by episode 24 I’ll be using shit like Pope Fart-rancis so enjoy it while you can. But anyway, this leaves Spain in a delicate position because they’ve got one exorcist Bruce Lee-ing his way through the Spanish demon-hordes here and he’s in desperate need of reinforcements, but nobody’s coming to help. And somebody please tell Michael Bay that I’d sell him that script cheap if he wants it.

So I would normally make a Michael Bay joke here, but where does one find anything to criticize in films such as Pearl Harbor, Bad Boys 2, The Island, Transformers, Transformers 2, Transformers 3, and Untitled Transformers Sequel?

I think that’s the most offensive thing you’ve ever said on this show, so I guess we can close it out there. Heath, thanks for joining me.

And when we come back, we’ll HTTP colon… oh wait, that’s the link.

The Holy Babble Supplement:

I got an email the other day about our Holy Babble segment and it accused us of just cherry picking out the bad shit and ignoring the good shit.

Well that’s the point of our segment. We’re not fact checking the bible line by line to see how bad their batting average is; we’re out to make circumcised dick jokes at its expense.

And boy does this thing have dick jokes, but I’d still respectlessly disagree with the dink who sent this email because we really haven’t had to do that at all. We’ve really just been telling the story as it’s written and it really is that fucked up. In fact, if anything, we’ve left out some of the most fucked-up stuff so that we’d have time to talk about the spattering of good stuff.

Non-evil stuff anyway.

Right. So as evidence of that, we’d like to offer you the top five horribly fucked up things we didn’t talk about when we broke down the first two books of the Bible in a segment we like to call…

The HOLY BABBLE… SUPPLEMENT

5) Genesis 6.

Now, we skimmed over the whole Noah’s Ark bit because plenty has been said about what ridiculous horseshit it is, so when we talked about it, we never even mentioned what an implausible concept it is. Who feeds what to who? What are they drinking? And who’s shoveling all the shit?

Sounds like an impossible to solve LSAT question. If you have a bag of grain, and 2 foxes, and 2 hens, and 2 of every other animal, on one side of the river, and an impossible ark on the other side . . . Also, why did the birds need an ark to survive a flood?

And what about the amphibians? And where did Noah go to pick up two polar bears? And how did they keep everything from fucking everything?

Seems like if FEMA had hired this Noah guy before Katrina, blacks might not be extinct in New Orleans.

Yeah, they definitely needed a few more cubits of emergency housing. Now, to keep things fair, I did look at what the apologists had to say about these questions and according to AIG, the ark would have produced about 11 metric tonnes of shit a day, a quota that Answers In Genesis can only aspire to.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v2/n2/caring-for-the-animals

4) Exodus 21:7

This is a verse that starts with the words, “When a man sells his daughter as a slave,” and doesn’t then go on to say, “you will castrate him with a rusty mayonnaise lid and let him bleed to death in the public square.” How could we possibly be cherry picking the worst stuff if we skipped over the bit where it outlines the ethical way to sell your daughter as a slave?

Actually, I assumed I would cherry pick something from this, but their guidelines on this are surprisingly reasonable. It even includes guarantees the whores won’t be sold to foreigners . . . so that’s nice.

True. It even encourages you to continue to feed her after you get bored of fucking her.

It also says that if you buy her for your son and she marries the slave you have to treat the slave like your daughter. Which sounds good until you consider that one book earlier Lot was tossing his daughters to rape-starved sodomites.

Which brings us to…

3) Genesis 19:30-38

Here we have a lovely little story about those same daughters repeatedly force-fucking their dad. It doesn’t set anything up or connect anything to anything. It’s just there to give perverse goat-herders an image to jackoff to and insult Moabites.

I guess the lesson here is “Dad’s dick is better than no dick at all.”

That’s the moral, yeah. So in this passage, Lot, after escaping from Sodom with his two date-rapist daughters and his favorite salt-lick, unwillingly impregnates his daughters with two inbred, incestuous, polydactyl prison babies.

Must have been legitimate rape.

Well, the Jews were probably worried about future persecution on account of their genetic superiority, so a few extra fingers and chromosomes just made sense. Nobody figured every single Moabite would settle in the same 3-block radius in Brooklyn.

I guess the one good thing about being gang raped by sodomites is that you won’t get pregnant…

I wouldn’t say that’s the ONLY perk about being gang-raped by sodomites.

2) Exodus 21:20-21

There’s no way to dress this one up worse than it comes off in the actual bible, so here it is from the NIV version:

“Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property.”

I can’t help but picture a Jewish version of a Southern plantation owner. Like Woody Allen instead of Don Johnson in Django.

Yes, Exodus was full of fair and equitable treatment of one’s slaves. For example, while one was encouraged to regularly beat one’s slaves and children, the gouging out of a slaves eye was frowned upon. In fact, the rule says that if you knock out the slaves eye you have to let him go, so I figure if I was a slave, I’d just be moving my eyes in front of the whip constantly.

1) Genesis 9:20-27

And finally, the most perplexing parable in the book to this point, we didn’t even mention the crazy post-deluvian antics of Noah and his dancing weiner.

This is the “If your dad’s a drunk, you need to walk around your house backwards wearing a cape” chapter.

Right, apparently they were supposed to walk around shading the lower half of their vision like the Bela Lugosi double in Plan 9 From Outer Space.

Not sure how the fuck we forgot to mention this part, considering I plan to be an alcoholic father one day.

As it turns out, if I want to smite my son and get him sent to hell, all I have to do is get wasted and pass out while hanging brain. Or more directly, just wake him up with a tea bag.

I guess that really shows the concern my dad had for my soul. When I was a kid he would only take his dick out when he was behind me.

I think this chapter is the basis for the penis game in “Waiting”

I never saw that flick. How does that game work? … Oh fuck dude!

Outro:

I had one quick but important announcement before we close things out for the night. In response to a number of requests for Scathing Atheist shwag, Heath and I are commissioning the design of three Scathing Atheist T-Shirts that will be available soon if you’re willing to interpret the word “soon” in a geological sense.

But between now and then, we want your help deciding exactly what to put on those shirts. We’ll be doing shirts for three of our many fine sponsors. I’ll be posting a poll on our blog and on Facebook, so if there’s a particular sponsor you’d wear on a T-Shirt, let us know. You can let us know over Twitter, on Facebook, via email or, if you want to make absolutely sure your vote is counted, you can add your preference to the end of a 5 star review on iTunes.

That’s all the time we’ve got for tonight’s show, but we’ll be back in 168 hours to tackle one of the most infamous books in the bible. If you can’t wait that long, be sure to check out our erratically published blog at Scathing Atheist (dot) com. You’ll also get your daily fix of Scatheism by following us on Twitter and liking us on Facebook. And don’t forget to check out our You-Tube channel, even though everything on it is just a segment pulled from the podcast which you’ve probably already heard.

I want to thank Heath for all his help this week. I also want to thank Reap from the Angry Atheist for providing this week’s Farnsworth quote. Hard to believe he had the ten seconds to spare with all the content that dude is producing in a week, so if you haven’t checked out the Angry Atheist yet, I definitely recommend it along with ReapSow Radio, which you’ll find linked on the shownotes for this episode.

http://angryatheist.info/

http://www.reapsowradio.com/

But finally and most importantly, we have to take a minute to honor this week’s most sexually attractive human beings, Paul, Dee, Kevin and Graham, who distinguished themselves this week by giving us money. Paul, whose clever inventions and godlike nunchaku skills will one day save humanity; Dee whose wit and sharp mind are the very metric by which future robot generations will measure their intellect; Kevin, whose agility, fearlessness and ability to banter well with supervillains are the envy of masked-vigilantes everywhere and Graham; whose very presence soothes children, moistens vaginas and lengthens telomeres even over Skype. These truly superlative citizens have all earned their place in history and in my heart with their stolid generosity. And we love them all equally, except Graham who we love just a little more because holy shit, the dude donated a hundred bucks. Which was fucking awesome and totally made my week. Thanks bro.

If you, too, would like to earn your eventual spot beside these exceptional bipeds on the Mount Rushmore of altruism and erudition, you’ll find the donate button on the right side of our homepage at Scathing Atheist (dot) com. Remember, not every donation goes straight to booze and weed. Some of it goes to hosting and stuff.

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

Categories: Show Transcripts Tags: antitheism, antitheistic, atheism, atheist, atheist podcast, biblical criticism, biblical satire, faith, Holy Babble, Iowa Home Schooling Laws, Pope Francis, religion, spanish demon hordes, Texas Christmas Laws, the ballsack of Heath Enwright, Wolf Blitzer Atheist, Wolf Blitzer idiot, Wolf Blitzer Jeopardy

Episode 13: Partial Transcript

May 16, 2013 Noah Lugeons Leave a comment

by Noah Lugeons and Heath Enwright

Sponsor:

Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the Hebrew delivery service, “Jew P S”. When you’ve got Hebrews that absolutely must be delivered out of bondage tonight, turn to Jew P S. Remember, not hail nor boils nor falling frogs shall stay our couriers from their appointed rounds”

Jew P S, all package, no foreskin.

And now, the Scathing Atheist…

Intro:

It’s Thursday, It’s May 16th and either this show is moving to Comedy Central next week or Sylvia Brown is full of shit.

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

On this week’s episode,

We’ll meet a liberal Muslim fighting for women’s rights to be publicly beaten
Jesus backs a loser in Miami
And Lucinda will join Heath and me to discuss the only book of the bible named after a Bob Marley album

But first, the Diatribe.

Diatribe:

There was a time in human history when religion served a purpose. It was a doctrine of culture, a subset of knowledge, an honest attempt to know what was, at the time, unknowable. The earliest assertions of religion were based on empirical evidence and we can hardly fault early humans for not quite figuring out shit like lightning and earthquakes.

So they pointed to the nearest place they couldn’t reach and said god was there, tossing down thunderbolts and shaking the ground. He was just up on that mountain there, you know, the one we can’t reach the top of? Yeah, that one. He’s up there making all this shit happen so now we understand it and we can control it. If the earth shakes, we offer some goat’s bladders or something and it’ll stop shaking.

And as misguided as it was, it wasn’t malicious. It was a synthesis of the best available information. The problem, of course, is that there wasn’t really any god up there so we had to rely on people to tell us what god was so pissed off about. And once you become the conduit of god, it’s gotta be damn tempting to decide god’s pissed off about how many virgins you’re not boning, or how many feasts you’re not eating. At the very least god probably wants you to spend the day in quiet contemplation while all the other saps plow the fields.

So at some point between the question and the answer, religion became something else entirely. It abandoned its desire to find truth in favor of a new desire to dictate truth. After all, the idea that god wants you to have more money and nicer clothes might not stand up to objective scrutiny so fuck objective scrutiny.

So when we got to the top of the mountain religion just pushed god further back. Turns out he was on the clouds, see… the really, really high up ones. But don’t worry, we might have been wrong about where god was but we were definitely right about him wanting us to bone more virgins and eat more food. What’s that you say? You build an airplane and checked on the clouds and he wasn’t there? Did I say clouds? I meant… what’s that stuff above clouds? Space! That’s what I meant. God was in space this whole time. What? Checked there too, did you? Well, when I say space, of course, what I mean is “alternate dimension that you can never get to no matter where you look” so quit asking so many questions and trust me on the nicer clothes and more food stuff.

Because when your power comes from your ability to dictate the truth, the real, actual, “doesn’t-give-a-shit-what-you-say” truth necessarily becomes your enemy. You have to be an impediment to discovery, a nemesis of knowledge. You have to literally set yourself in opposition to reality. To reality!

So sure, it’s fine to map the heavens as long as you didn’t notice a major hole in church doctrine while you were doing it. It’s fine to examine all god’s creatures as long as you didn’t figure out how they got there. It was fine to study every word of the bible as long as you didn’t notice the ones that contradicted each other.

There is a large swath of history where I’m perfectly willing to forgive religion for existing. Hell, even the first few centuries of the scientific revolution could have left an educated person in doubt. But nobody who is alive today was alive when anybody was alive who was alive when religion could justify its own existence. Today it’s degenerated into nothing but a disease; a cancer that exists only to perpetuate itself. A tumor that doesn’t know when to die.

And to turn a blind-eye to it and say, “well that’s just what those people believe and that’s perfectly alright” is to intellectually subsidize the equivalent of the DoDo preservation society. They’ve had enough time to find a reason to exist. We’ve given religion at least eight centuries to find something useful to do, but they haven’t. Instead, they’ve become a stumbling block on the path toward knowledge. In a lot of ways they didn’t have a choice, but that doesn’t make the sin any more forgivable. Faith is the exact opposite of science and they peddle it as a virtue.

Religion has nothing to offer the world but more religion. Give it another thousand years or another thousand centuries and it’ll still have nothing more to offer. But imagine what science could do with that time… especially if there was no religion there to stand in the way.

Headlines:

Joining me tonight for headlines it my color commentator, Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to comment on colors?

I don’t care for whites. It’s getting embarrassing for us.

Well done, sir. And now on to the news. Our lead story tonight takes us to a state known for comedically sized hats, giant hunks of dead cow and long stretches of highway with nowhere to take a shit, Texas, where a state judge recently declared the establishment clause optional.

Yeah they like to conveniently forget about the 1st Amendment, but the entire state can recite the 2nd one word for word. I picture an entire state populated by the bad guys from “A Time To Kill”.

Fairly accurate from my experiences with the state. Tonight’s story begins about 250 miles east of the part of Texas that doesn’t suck in a small town called Kountze where the high school cheerleaders are fond of holding up banners with wholesome messages like “But thanks be to God, which gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ”, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me” and, “Fuck atheists, people of non-Christian faiths and proper grammar”.

“And fuck you for already having come up with several Cunts jokes.”

Cunts is a small enclave, laying between Woodville and Lumberton, on Highway 69!!!.

I’m not even slightly fucking with you. All those things are actually true.

It’s also adjacent to the “Big Thicket National Preserve” and it’s due south of “Beaver’s Bend National Park”. Nice when geography just writes the jokes for you isn’t it?

The shape of the town on google maps even vaguely resembles a vagina with an oversized clit pointing up Highway 69 toward Woodville.

Priceless.

And with a tip of the cap to Kevin Smith, I’ll mention that an oversized clit is a lot like a small dick, and we can check off dick joke and vagina joke on story 1.

And a Kevin Smith reference so you’ve damn near hit for the cycle in the first inning. So anyway, back to the story here, the Freedom From Religion Foundation politely pointed out that their football team isn’t allowed to directly endorse a particular religion, but a state judge disagreed, citing his eventual need to get re-elected. The FFRF convincingly argues that this is tantamount to declaring an official school-religion. Obviously we’ll have more on this as it develops.

Kountze needs to be told what to do.

I’m sure they would agree.

Texas Cheerleaders allowed to raise Biblical banner: http://ffrf.org/news/news-releases/item/17683-official-school-religion-ok%E2%80%99d-by-texas-court

Our next story takes us to the number one state in: agricultural non-point source nutrient reduction, per capita tornado deaths and prescription drug abuse, Oklahoma, a state which, despite having Seth Andrews in it most of the time, sucks.

If you take your state name, and add an exclamation, and you get the title of an old-timey musical, it doesn’t bode well for progressive politics in the region.

As evidence of that assertion, I offer one Muldrow high school, where a freethinking student recently complained about ten commandment plaques that hung in every fucking classroom. The school was told to take them down and in a show of just how vapid the Christian comprehension of the whole minority consideration concept is, the students started a petition to revoke separation of church and state.

Can’t we just compromise and have a wall with plaques from all different religions . . .

So that atheist kids can vandalize the wall, and everyone can get all symbolically incredulous.

Yeah, well this just proves once again that Christianity can’t stand on it’s own in a free market of ideas. Christians have responded with threats against the complaining student and his family, some online bullying and a jackass pastor offering students free “ten commandments” T-shirts to remind kids that plaques or no, non-Christians are still a hated minority round these a’ here parts..

Isn’t there something about thou shalt not steal tax revenue for fictional purposes?

Student faces backlash after alerting FFRF to 10 Commandments displays in classrooms: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/05/12/oklahoma-high-school-student-seeks-removal-of-ten-commandment-displays/

And from the “Bet-You-Can’t-Collect-Em-All” file, Pope Frankie-Panky canonized over 800 saints all at once last weekend. It’s not clear if this is related to poor dashboard-sales projections for the 2nd quarter, but I like his focus on productivity.

In a move that can have no outcome at all but to piss off Muslims, the Pope went ahead with Ex-Benedict’s plan to Canonize the 813 “Martyrs of Otranto” who were beheaded by Ottoman soldiers for refusing to convert to Islam.

This would be 813 good candidates for the Darwin Awards. Choosing to die in the name of Catholic god – instead of pretending you like Allah – is borderline window-licker. Why does an omnipotent god need people to die for him? Either Catholic god is real and the martyrs don’t matter, or Allah is real and the martyrs don’t matter, or neither is real and the martyrs REALLY don’t matter.

And you know what else doesn’t matter? Being a saint. Sure, back in the 15th century it was a pretty exclusive club, but now they’re letting everybody in. Aren’t you supposed to have 2 miracles before you can be a saint? Even if we accept that getting a Pope who’s trying to patch things up with the Muslims to canonize you when all you ever really did was say “Fuck Muslims” back in the 1400s counts as one miracle, what’s the other one?

People caring 600 years later.

Pope names 800 new saints: http://news.yahoo.com/pope-francis-names-800-saints-one-235904106.html

And in “Fuck-The-Children” news, two elementary schools in Lake City, Arkansas cancelled sixth grade graduation ceremonies because a bunch of atheists wouldn’t let them include prayers. Rather than adjusting the ceremony to Constitutional standards, the school district elected to rob their student body of the coming-of-age milestone that is a 6th grade graduation.

“Sorry kids, the uppity negro that runs the federal government stopped letting our backwards town embezzle tax revenue for the tooth fairy, so you’ll all have to get your meaningless ceremony fix at church on Sunday like usual.”

Yeah, because for the record, I’d be fine with this if they’d just cancelled it because a 6th grade graduation is stupid.

School in Arkansas cancels graduation because atheists won’t let them pray: http://www.takepart.com/article/2013/05/09/arkansas-school-prayer-wrecked-graduation

In other news tonight, we hear from the all-too-often silent progressive wing of Islam. Controversial cleric Shaikh Isam Talimah says that stoning women for adultery is a practice that Muslims should abandon… in favor of whipping them.

I think it’s a personal preference thing. The stoning is more murdery, whereas the whipping is more rapey. So you’ve gotta decide what kind of Muslim husband you want to be.

That’s right, Talimah isn’t arguing with the idea of physically abusing women publicly for consensual sex, he’s arguing with the method of physically abusing women publicly for consensual sex.

This is going to hurt the image of Islam as a peaceful religion, as it so clearly states in their subway literature.

Controversial Cleric claims that women should not be stoned… should be lashed: http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/qatar/stoning-is-not-shariah-says-qatar-scholar-1.1178703

And finally tonight, from the “Tell-Me-This-Is-Real,-Tell-Me-This-Is-Real,-Holy-Shit-It’s-Real” department, North Miami Mayoral candidate Anna L. Pierre recently put out a campaign flyer claiming an endorsement from none other than Jesus Christ.

And I can’t emphasize enough that this is a real thing that actually happened, despite the fact that this woman’s name is “Anal Peer”, which is exactly the kind of name we’d have given her if we were making this shit up.

How much clergy dick do you suppose she sucked to get JC Bump in an election?

And I should point out that that joke isn’t sexist. Heath would have made the same joke if she were a dude.

In unrelated news, from now on, the Marlins and the Dolphins, will both be known as the Jesus Fish.

Well, not so fast because of the 8 candidates on the ballot, Pierre somehow managed to finish 8th despite the fact that in addition to Christ, the Savior, she also boasted endorsements from the “Bladder Health and Reconstructive Urology Institute” and “Sunset Ranches” over on Palmetto Expressway just past Popeye’s. Some, including herself, blame her poor election day results on evil voodoo spells being used against her. And again, this is all actually happening in the real universe that you and I live in.

Next week on Awful TV Show, God’s savior son and a dick doctor team up in support of a former Haitian pop star overcoming voodoo spells to contend in her mayoral race.

Sounds better than the “Teeny-Bopper Vampire” crap my wife watches…

North Miami Mayoral Candidate claims endorsement from Jesus: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/05/13/north-miami-mayoral-candidate-says-she-is-endorsed-by-jesus-christ/

Well, that does it for headlines tonight. When we return, my aforementioned wife will join us to discuss a book that sucked even more than Twilight.

Poem:

Exodus in Two Minutes

by Noah Lugeons

The lord said unto Moses, “An Egyptian’s what you pose as,

But just look at all their noses, and you’ll see that you’re a Jew.”

Unto the Lord then replied Moses, “So what do you suppose is,

gonna happen when they know this? Just what am I to do?”

So he wandered as he pondered, of the Hebrews he grew fonder

So when he saw one get dishonored he attacked the perpetrator.

The dude was dead so Moses fled but in his head what Yahweh said

Still gave him dread as off he sped, telling Egypt “See you later.”

So when he finished with his fleein’ he wound up in Midian,

And he found a priest agreein’ to give up his daughter’s hand.

But the crazy shit he started seein’ left him guaranteein’

That his purpose would be freein’ all the Hebrews in the land.

See, he was tending Jethro’s flocks, when on some holy ground he walks,

He finds a burning bush that talks, and it tells him of his fate.

He asks god to choose another, since when he speaks he gets all buggered

God says, “Sure I guess you stutter, but your brother would be great.”

So upon this holy edict, they headed back to Egypt

And needed Gershom’s wee-dick when Moses wrestled god,

The Hebrews didn’t dare go, so Moses talked to Pharoah

With his eyes enraged and narrow and both his hands on Aaron’s rod;

He said, “LET MY PEOPLE GO!” But the Pharaoh just said “No”,

And fearing that might be so, tossed down the staff that god empowered,

It became a snake but those Egyptians, also had magicians,

Both of their staffs started hissin’, but quickly got devoured.

Still the pharaoh, unimpressed, left this grievance unredressed,

And as you might have guessed, the plagues are here unveiled.

The bloody waters soon arise, frogs start falling from the skies,

He sends a bunch of gnats and flies; epidemics, boils and hail

Still, the Hebrews were unpardoned, when God’s locusts ate their gardens,

Since the pharaoh’s heart was hardened, Moses needed one last card to play.

Now with the firstborns lying dead, the pharaoh finally said,

“Take your unleavened bread, and go the fuck away!”

They rejoiced with sounds like thunder, when the pharaoh knuckled under,

They grabbed a bunch of plunder and followed smoke that god provided;

But soon doubts about the route came out, unto Moses the devout would shout,

“I guess god’s no fucking eagle scout, just look where we’ve been guided!”

You see, pharaoh sent his men of war, in hopes of settling the score,

And here the Jews are on the shore, trapped and ripe for slaughter;

So Moses, feeling like a schmuck, says, “God I think you got us stuck”

It looks like they’re completely fucked, until God divides the water.

Forty years of eating manna later, Moses talks to his creator,

So he could act as God’s translator and carve commandments into stone,

And on the impatient Jews behalf, Aaron makes a golden calf,

Which they then pray to, bringing wrath, for which no mercy would be shown.

Then starting in chapter twenty four, we mostly just discuss decor,

Despite their being plenty more, important things to tackle,

Important shit just gets ignored, as we spend the last sixteen chapters bored,

Learning exactly how the Lord, wants his tabernacle.

Outro:

Before we close out the show tonight, I want to remind everyone that Heath and I are pretty good at this speaking shit so if you’re involved with an atheist or secular group in the vaguely New-Englandish area and you’d like us to address your group with our off-color wit and topical critiques, you’ll find all the contact info on the Contact page of our website.

And before we cue the music, we have to spend a minute recognizing the generosity, ethical fortitude and enormous penises of this week’s best people; Matthew, Richard and Mr. Blue who proved their bravery this week by giving us money. Only the most intelligent and righteous people give us money and I hope that Matthew, Richard and Reservoir Dogs Deleted Character Mr. Blue fully appreciate that even if they should together cure cancer one day, their support for this program will still probably rank as the most benevolent action of their lives.

If you, too, would like to guarantee yourself a front row seat in atheist heaven, you’ll find the donate button on the right side of our homepage at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.

That’s does it for tonight’s show but if you want more, there’s more. You’ll find occasional nuggets of Scatheism on our blog, our YouTube Channel, our Facebook page and our Twitter Feed. You’ll also find more than 11 and a half episodes in our archives, which you should really listen to on Stitcher because we’re on Stitcher and Stitcher likes it when I tell you to listen on Stitcher.

And if you enjoy the show, please help us out by leaving us a good review on iTunes and be sure to tell everyone at church about us. And before we run out of time, a big thanks to Heath and Lucinda for joining me tonight, Justin Schieber for providing tonight’s Farnsworth quote and, of course, Matthew, Richard and especially Mr. Blue, who is addition to donating this week, also sent along some headlines for us and the great chemo bit I used after the diatribe.

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.

Categories: Show Transcripts Tags: antitheism, atheism, atheist, atheist biblical commentary, atheist podcast, canonization, Christianity, Exodus, Exodus poem, faith, Kountze Texas, lessons of exodus, Moses, Pope Francis, religion, ten commandments

Episode 9: Partial Transcript

April 18, 2013 Noah Lugeons Leave a comment

by Noah Lugeons

Sponsor:

Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the new line of Christian feminine hygiene products, Penta-Douche. Remember, when you have that not-so-fresh feeling, it’s because you’re unclean in the eyes of God. So when you’re being shunned for seven days, as is proscribed in all of the Abrahamic faiths, be sure to use our new Adam & Summer’s Eve brand.

Penta-douche; because women are cursed and responsible for the fall of man.

And now, the Scathing Atheist

Intro:

It’s Thursday, It’s April 18^th and due to an increase in promiscuity, Allah has cut it back to 54 virgins per Jihadee.

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

On this week’s episode,

Pope Frankie names a group of 8 mini-bosses you’ll have to defeat before entering his lair,
Carl from Post Rapture Looting joins me for some atheist Easter Egg hunting where we look for eggs we know aren’t there,
And Representative Joe Barton moves to tackle global warming by first gathering two of every unclean species and seven of every clean one

But first, the Diatribe.

Diatribe:

A lot of theists have trouble accepting that we really don’t believe in god. They like to think that deep down we’re just suppressing our faith but when we find ourselves in a really tough situation, we’ll revert to our programming, we’ll drop to our knees and we’ll start praying. After all, when they look at the world, they see god. So how could we look at the same world and not see him at all?

Similarly, a lot of atheists have trouble accepting that theists really believe in god. We like to think that deep down they know good and damn well that it’s all a myth propagated by power-hungry shamans and that when the shit hits the fan, they’ll abandon their superstitions and turn to a secular solution. After all, when we look at the world, we don’t see a god. How could they look at the same world and see one?

Clearly part of this is just a lack of intellectual empathy. They think we’ve got a ‘god shaped hole’ in our hearts and we think they’ve got a ‘reason shaped hole’ in their heads. It’s a defense mechanism like the one where we demonize the opposite side of the political spectrum. It’s harder to Accept that they’ve looked at the evidence and come to a contrary conclusion than it is to create a caricature of their opinions and pretend that they’re all heartless or stupid.

And I suppose a lot of people would tell me to leave it there. I said something bad about one side and then I said something bad about the other and now can’t we all just get along?

But I think it’s too neat and tidy to write it all off as a self-delusion. After all, when I listen to somebody tell me that they believe that god’s in heaven and Jesus loves them and grandma and Sparky are at the pearly gates waiting for them, I don’t wonder how they believe it. I wonder why they’re not in a bigger hurry to die.

If I ask them, they’ll tell me that god has a plan for them on earth and that they’d miss their kids or their grandkids or their friends or whatever, but if you balance the time we spend on earth with the eternity they expect to spend in heaven, it’s an insignificant blink of the eye. Ten billion years from now your grandkids won’t even remember that you weren’t there while they were learning to poop.

And why aren’t they more eager for their loved ones to die? It seems to me that once mom has arthritis or even a persistent headache she’d be better off in heaven where she wouldn’t have to suffer anymore. How selfish is it for me to hope she lingers on in minor pain for decades just so that I can have her around to babysit the kids? Hell, it seems like as soon as your folks start hitting financial troubles you’d be hoping they’d die so they could move into that mansion god has for them in heaven.

I’ve watched friends grieve the loss of a loved one; both theist and atheist. And I can tell you from a statistically insignificant, unblinded anecdote that one didn’t seem to have any easier a time with it than the other. Somehow the person who professed to believe that their beloved was living in a mansion with a golden driveway in paradise was every bit as bereaved as the person who professed to believe that their loved one no longer existed at all. How could that possibly be?

When I say that I don’t think theists believe their own bullshit, it’s not something I’m basing on my own psychology, it’s something I’m basing on their behavior. If you honestly believed, all the way to your core, that you were going to meet the people you lose in a perfect world in the clouds, how could you possibly mourn their passing? How could a funeral be anything but a joyous occasion?

The religious dingbats of the world like to express their disbelief in atheists with one of the most pervasive and insulting clichés ever coined to smear rationalists; “There are no atheists in a foxhole.”

The idea is that even we heathens will turn to god if things get bad enough. Included, of course, is the unspoken assumption that when we experience this instantaneous conversion, it’ll be their god we’ll start praying to. It never seems to occur to them that if that’s how it worked, all the Christians in the foxhole would start praying to Allah, Shiva and Odin just to be on the safe side.

But I’d like to submit the opposite. When you’re in the proverbial foxhole, myths and superstitions are cold comfort. When the bombs are raining down, nobody’s saying “Shit, I sure hope that one hits us!” and if they were, we’d rightly assume that they’d lost their fucking minds. I submit that when we’re facing the uncertainty of our own deaths, we are all atheists by default.

Contrary to the adage, when it comes down to it, there are no theists in a foxhole.

Headlines:

Joining me for headlines tonight is my kemosabe Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to Lone Range?

In our lead story tonight, California legislators are subtly suggesting that perhaps the Boy Scouts of America should stop being bigots. A proposed law would strip the Boy Scouts of their tax exempt status along with any other nonprofit that excludes members based on sexual orientation, gender identity or religious affiliation.

There’s been a real outcry surrounding this proposal and strangely enough it’s not because this wasn’t done decades ago. How common sense is this proposal?

I’d like to read a quote from christiannewswire.com: “Should SB 323 become law it would break new ground in using the tax system to punish those who are disliked by LGBT activists.” Those who are disliked by LGBT activists are called bigots. So the the tax system punishes bigots. Is that unreasonable?
I’d like a tax system that punishes all sorts of shitty people. That’s actually the whole point of certain taxes. To discourage things with negative externalities, like the actions and opinions of the ignorant.

Yeah, hard to imagine why religious groups would be threatened by a law that strips tax exemptions from groups that institutionalize discrimination, huh?

While most of the major media coverage has focused on the gay stuff, this law would also force the Boy Scouts, and any other group seeking tax exemption, to allow the dreaded atheists to walk amongst them.

Much like a black person disrupts the front of a bus, an atheist clearly disrupts a lesson in the tying of a bowline knot.

What’s their problem?

The bill is saying, you can still be an asshole, and you can still have your asshole club.

The government just happens to offer extra credit on the test for clubs that are not assholes . . . So you assholes don’t get those particular bonus points.

We’re bending over backwards to be tolerant of assholes. We’re just taking away the asshole subsidy they’ve been getting. And we’ll give it right back if they stop being assholes.

California pushes bill to end State tax exemptions for Boy Scouts because of anti-gay, anti-atheist policies:

– From a real news source: http://news.yahoo.com/calif-tax-bill-seeks-punish-scouts-gay-ban-193252719.html

– From Xian Newswire: http://www.christiannewswire.com/news/2250071876.html

From the “Should we call it the Reform Council or the Council on Reform” Department, the Pope has assigned 8 cardinals to advise him on thinking about talking about thinking about reform. While major media headlines like “Pope Makes First Big Decision Naming Advisory Board” and “Pope Makes Tough Decisions as Reforms Loom” would suggest that he’d actually done something, the actual meat of this story is downright vegan.

So Pope Frankfurter has commissioned an advisory panel to look into overhauling the Vatican Bureaucracy. Vatican officials point out that it’s been a quarter century since the bureaucracy was updated, somehow missing the irony that it’s been two millennia since any-damn-thing else about their church was updated.

Yeah their literature could use a few retractions. Maybe a new edition, in light of all this new shit.
I heard the advisory panel has a small delegation scouring the woods to confirm or disconfirm the presence of bear shit.
Maybe the panel can also look into whether there will ever be some way to create individual cross-sections that divide up an entire loaf of bread into convenient pieces.

But the collective media cock-guzzle around Pope Frank-n’-Beans continues and everything he does from washing a foot to wiping lefty is dutifully reported as proof that he’s a real reformer and things are gonna be different under his watch. He’s not like that old creepy pedophile-protecting Palpatine lookalike. He’s an old creepy, pedophile-protecting Droopy Dog lookalike.

He reminds me of Elmer Fudd, but with a sillier hat . . . doing the “Kill the Wabbit” song to Wagner’s “Flight of the Valkyries”.
Sidenote: I’m thoroughly impressed by the lefty wiping. I tried to jerk it lefty one time, and I suffered an elbow injury and an eye injury.

Pope names 8 advisors to think about talking about thinking about reform: http://news.yahoo.com/pope-taps-cardinals-advise-governing-reform-124612388.html

And in earth-shattering international news, women are wearing man-clothes at the Western Wall. This news comes to us from the 1300s via modern day Jerusalem. Several female activists were arrested at the holy site last Thursday for wearing man-shawls and praying out loud.

The man-shawls don’t help the sexual roles platform, and they definitely muddle the homophobia stance a little.

And as much as my liberal heart wants to stand behind the women involved in this protest, my rational mind says, “you’re trying to pray to an imaginary being whose very existence was largely manufactured to oppress your gender”, so it’s hard for me to rally behind them too much. If you want to advance women in these silly cultures, leave all the talking-to-walls to the men and maybe try reading or something. Just a suggestion.

Yeah, why the hell do they want to go there or do that in the first place? They must have got Tom Sawyered.
“Don’t even think about wearing that man-shawl and whitewashing this prayer wall with me.”

Clash with religious authorities at the Western Wall because women are wearing the “man shawls” http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/04/12/battle-of-the-sexes-at-western-wall/

And in “No-when-to-fold-em” news, a NY nun has admitted stealing more than an eighth of a million dollars to cover her gambling expenses. She now faces six months in prison, which, for the record, I would do in a heartbeat for $128,000. I mean seriously? Six months?

But before you go thinking the sentencing was light because she was a 68 year-old nun, I should mention that her attorney says she’s really, really sorry. And if we were more like Jesus we wouldn’t be so worried about the past.

I guess you gotta support the habit somehow.

Vinnie “Knuckles” Malone, a source close to the case was quoted as saying, “That bitch just lucky she still has all her fingers. Nun or not, I’ll fuck that whore up.”

The Knuckles brand of justice sounds surprisingly well-informed on the 1st Amendment.

NY nun admits to stealing $130,000 from churches to pay for her gambling addiction: http://news.yahoo.com/gambling-nun-pleads-guilty-theft-york-churches-224339427.html

And earning the honor of the stupidest politician in the national spotlight this week is Texas Republican… and I’d just like to point out that those two words very often precede the naming of the stupidest politician in the national spotlight on any given week…

Texas Republicans making political decisions, are like the youngest brother in a big family getting to choose what everyone has for dinner on their birthday. You end up having to appease them once in awhile, so you try to take them seriously that one day, and they’re like “Deep Fried Chocolate Baloney Hot Pockets!!!”

Anyway, Texas Republican Joe Barton was trying to justify a bill to force Obama’s hand on the Keystone pipeline. And atheists, I’m sure, have differing opinions on the issue of this controversial energy project. But I think we can all agree that it takes a class A jackass to use the issue to write off climate change on the grounds of God’s predilection for flooding the whole world.

The gradual melting of polar ice caps would be the lamest Great Flood ever. Not exactly an awe-inspiring demonstration of omnipotence.
“Does the water look a couple inches higher to you? That’s it . . . I’m devoting my life to Jesus.”
Decent amount of slavery in the bible, so that must not have been a man-made phenomenon either. Just pious plantation owners fulfilling their destiny. Somebody’s gotta get enslaved.

Now, if I quoted him directly, I’d probably get accused of making it sound stupider than it actually sounded, so here it is, in all it’s glorious fucktardary: [SOUNDCLIP]

Rep. Joe Barton cites the great flood as evidence that global warming is not man made: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/04/10/rep-joe-barton-biblical-great-flood-shows-climate-change-isnt-man-made/ (grab soundclip on this one, too!)

And finally tonight, the intrepid radio host and fundamentalist activist Bryan Fischer has uncovered our secret, homofascist plot to make Christians wear Christian badges like ghetto Jews in Nazi Germany.

We ended up going ahead with that plot? I was thinking thorny crowns though. The sleeve patches are a little too subtle.
Didn’t Fischer seem strangely preoccupied with the design of the Christian ghetto patch?

Our nefarious strategy had managed to stay so well-hidden over the years that not even the key players instrumental in its implementation knew about it, but despite this nearly preternatural level of secrecy, Fischer’s mind was able to twist through the various corridors of our labyrinth and figure out our plans even before we did. And he did so amidst the following random assemblage of gibberish: [SOUNDCLIP]

Of course, you never want to hear about a holocaust. Of course. But if another one HAD TO HAPPEN, I’d say Christians are the logical victims. Hold on, what am I talking about? Muslims, obviously. What, it’s a fucking roast!

I’d say that the most surprising thing I learned when I was researching this story is that spellcheck has no issues at all with the word “homofascist”.

Bryan Fischer discovers our homofascist plot to make Christians wear badges like ghetto Jews: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/04/12/bryan-fischer-homofascists-will-treat-christians-like-jews-in-the-holocaust/ (grab soundclip!!)

That does it for headlines, when we come back, Carl from the Post Rapture Looting Podcast will join us to discuss all the fun he had over Easter Weekend.

Skit:

Normally I save emails for the end of the show but I got one from a celebrity the other day and it got me really excited. I’m not sure if I he would want me to mention his name, but you know what? Fuck it, I’m pretty stoked, I’m gonna go ahead and tell you. It was from God.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. It’s an email and anybody could say there were God, but the way I figure it, I’ve got exactly as much evidence that this email was written by god as Christians have that the bible was, so I’m rolling with it.

Anyway, it’s pretty cool, so I thought I’d share it with you:

Dear Noah,

This email is intended as official notice that you have been damned.

This action was taken against you by me, the Lord Almighty on April 13th in the year of our me 2013 for trespasses including, but not limited to:

Taking my name in vain while suggesting that I, Father of Abraham, Granter of Life, Alpha and Omega, am physically comprised of fecal-pornography,
Making it sound on your show like Jesus is bad at finding keys when, if fact, he is damn good at it, and
Making a blasphemous exclamation while masturbating on the Sabbath to impure thoughts about your neighbor’s wife in mixed garments.

As a consequence of your damning, the standing invitation of your immortal soul to return to heaven upon its earthly passing has been revoked. Alternate accommodations will be provided. In addition, your prayers will be ignored separately from those of believers, you will not be permitted to use a crucifix to ward off vampires and Jesus says from now on you can find your own fucking keys.

If you feel that you have been damned in error, please reply within 30 days with an explanation of any extenuating or mitigating circumstances along with heaps of sanctimonious praise and obsequious adulation. Failure to remit in the time frame outlined above will result in your damnation being converted to eternal status.

Praise and adulation will be judged at the discretion of the damning party and may or may not be deemed sufficient for salvation.

May God have mercy on your soul… Oh wait, too late for that Bitch.

Jehovah.

Calendar:

It’s time for the atheist calendar portion of the show. Normally we try to keep things light hearted and funny on this show, but sometimes there’s nothing funny about what we’re doing. And once in a while we need to step back and recognize that.

That’s why I’m dedicating this week’s calendar to the atheist bloggers and activists in Bangladesh that are risking their lives to do exactly what I’m doing. Freedom of speech is something I blithely accept as my birthright as an American, but not everyone is as fortunate.

I can’t possibly cover all the details of this story in such a short format, but I strongly encourage you to learn more about it. We’ll have links all over the shownotes and if you follow us on Twitter we’ll keep you abreast of the story. Suffice to say that a well-organized group of Islamic militants are trying to use their bully pulpit to divert attention away from their wrong-doing and a group of atheist bloggers have become their unwitting scapegoat.

Two bloggers have already been killed and Islamic leaders are calling for the execution of 84 more named atheist activists.

In response, atheist and humanist organizations all over the world have declared April 25^th a day of action to stand with our fellow non-believers. And you can make a difference here. Write a blog, send a letter, join one of the many protests being organized across the country, or, if nothing else, take to social media and let people know what is happening.

Regardless of our beliefs, we can all agree that nobody should die for theirs. I urge you to check out the links at Scathing Atheist (dot) com and learn more.

And now, back to the fart jokes and stuff.

April 25^th, stand with the atheist bloggers in Myanmar: http://freethoughtblogs.com/maryamnamazie/2013/04/11/on-25-april-2013-we-stand-with-bangladeshi-bloggers-and-activists/

Outro:

There was one email I wanted to respond to before we closed things out for the night, but first a quick correction. You’ll recall that last week Heath and I discussed a nincompoop that wrote an article about how Steven Hawking proved the bible correct by referring to dust. Anyway, I identified the numb-skull as Paul Hitchins, his name is actually Paul Hutchins. So I wanted to apologize, not to the Christian dingle-berry, but rather to the name “Hitchins”. So sorry about that, I owe you more respect.

Okay, so first email comes to us from Renee in Clemsdale and I’m not sure what state or country Clemsdale is in. Renee was very polite in his or her full condemnation of everything we’ve done on the show and, in a round-about way, everything I’ve ever done in my life. But I just wanted to tell Renee that I did love the email, especially the contradictory notion of condemning me to hell in one paragraph, but then hoping I have a lovely day in the next.

Sorry to end on such a somber note, but that does it for our show this week. We’ll be back in 168 hours, when we’ll crack open our bibles and tackle Genesis in the “Holy Babble”. If you can’t get enough of us, be sure to check out our erratically published blog and follow us on Twitter.

I want to throw a big thanks to Carl for joining me early on a Sunday morning for that interview. He had to miss church and everything, so I want to thank him for making the sacrifice. If you haven’t checked out his show, be sure to do that. Once again, it’s the Post Rapture Looting Podcast and we’ll have links to it on the shownotes for this episode. (http://postrapturelooting.net/PRL/)

I want to thank the person who gave us our first donation. Haven’t figured out how to find out who you are so I can thank you by name, but thanks. Really means a lot to us. If you’d like to join this exclusive group of one person, you can donate to the show as well. You’ll find the link on the right side of the page at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.

If you want to help us out but don’t want to part with any of your hard earned cash, you can always swing by iTunes and give us an awesome review. We really appreciate everyone who does that and we love them more than the other audience members… except the ones who give cash, who we love the most.

Of course, a huge thanks to Heath for everything he does to make the wheels of this podcast turn and a big thanks to everyone who decided to give us thirty minutes of their lives. We’ll be hard at work earning thirty minutes next time. Until then, check out the backlog and do it on Stitcher because seriously, our Stitcher rank sucks balls.

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.

Categories: Show Transcripts Tags: agnostic, atheism, atheist, atheist comedy, atheist podcast, Christianity, faith, Noah Lugeons, Pope Francis, religion, religious bigotry, religious satire

Papal Media Cock-Slobber-Fest

March 15, 2013 Noah Lugeons 1 comment

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.

Categories: General Bitches and Gripes Tags: agnostic, atheism, atheist, Catholicism, Child Rape and Torture, Christianity, faith, jesus, Pope Francis, religion

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