Archive
Episode 62: Partial Transcript
by Heath Enwright and Noah Lugeons
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Note: Transcript contains elements that were removed from the final edit due to time constraints.
Warning: I’m guessing these motherfuckers are gonna cuss.
Sponsor:
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And now, the Scathing Atheist.
Intro:
It’s Thursday,
It’s April 24th,
And Hitler shared a rebirthday with Jesus last Sunday.
I’m Noah Lugeons,
I’m Heath Enwright. And from “Au Juicy” New York, New York,
And “Freedom Dipped” Podunk, Georgia, this is the Scathing Atheist.
In this week’s episode,
- Goys R Us and FaoSchwitz Toy Stores inexplicably fill up with Jews not seeking toys,
- The earth will be destroyed in a fiery catastrophe,
- And Paul from Quranify Me will join us to help earn that elusive fatwa.
But first, the diatribe.
Diatribe:
I got an email a while back from a listener named Howard that expounded on what he called “Igtheism”. The concept breaks down like this: The question on the test reads “Do you believe in God?”. Option A is yes, which is a theist, of course. Option B is no, which is an atheist. For the purposes of this example, Option C is “insufficient information” and that’s your layman’s-definition agnostic. Option D, the one for Igtheist, would basically be “What the fuck are you talking about?”
The point is that I can know enough about your religion to reject it without having the blindest clue exactly what I’m rejecting. What the hell does it even mean to “believe in god?” What is god? I asked a Christian to define god and his first answer was “well, he’s not an old man sitting on a cloud somewhere.” And until then I had no idea that the definition of god was interchangeable with the one for pancakes and butt-lube, which are also not old men sitting on clouds somewhere.
So let me share with you my latest “Igtheist” moment. I was at an “Ask an Atheist” event last week and, of course, we’re talking about morality. In particular, there’s a Muslim girl asking why we don’t rape and murder people if god isn’t there to punish us for it. Now, obviously the question was disingenuous… either that or she hated her life so much she just knowingly walked into a room of murdering rapists, but during the discussion I pointed out that in the Christian religion there’s nothing that forbids murderers and rapists from going to Heaven. I pointed out that, in fact, one need not do a single decent thing in their life provided they take Christ as their personal savior and sincerely ask to be forgiven… and then just to be an asshole I turned to the Christians in the room and said, “Right?” And they reluctantly agreed and it was awesome.
So the Muslim girl is carrying on undeterred and during the “No True Scotsman” portion of her act she turned to a Christian girl and said, “To you, what does it mean to be a Christian?” and apparently she expected a succinct answer. And what she got, to the surprise of not one single atheist in the room, was neither succinct nor an answer.
Instead she launches into the whole “It’s not a religion, it’s a relationship” spiel and offers up this stuttering, disjointed, imperfect recollection of the thing her preacher was saying that day when she got all tingly. There was a mountain in there somewhere and god was on top of it and we couldn’t get to him so he sent Jesus down to put together some kind of HOV bypass lane or something. And there was some stuff about love, maybe a series of random “Family Circus” captions and a Captain Planet monologue. And Jesus loved her.
And if there had been a mildly polite way of saying it, I’d have loved to ask her at the end, “Now, did that actually make sense to you? All of those words that you just used… in the order you used them? That represents a coherent thought to you?”
Think about this for a second. If you ask the average Christian what it means to be a Christian, not a single fucking one of them can explain it sensibly. And when you try to get some detail out of them, they get frustrated and angry.
What does it mean that Christ died for my sins? How does that even make sense? And doesn’t that mean I should sin like crazy so Jesus gets his money’s worth?
What do you mean God is Love? Can I apply the reflexive property and make sweet god by the fire? And does the transitive property mean that God is a battlefield?
And despite this universal inability to attach a meaningful definition to their proposal, they defend it passionately… and get pissed at you for not accepting their nebulous assertion.
Imagine some guy out on the street with a petition to… whatever… to ban animal testing, let’s say. And you ask him “what is animal testing?” and he says, “well… animal testing is… it’s love, you know? It’s like, sort of… um… imagine there’s a mountain…”
And yet right now there are countless people vociferously defending a religion they can’t explain. But how the hell can you be passionate about something you can’t even define?
Headlines:
Joining me for headlines tonight is horrible role model Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to inspire kids to drink and do drugs?
Remember kids, drugs and alcohol make you funnier and more popular. Is a few hours of euphoria worth becoming funny and popular over?!?
In our lead story tonight, Hobby Lobby’s theological dictator is one step closer to actualizing his plan of forcibly Christianizing the nation this week now that the Mustang, Oklahoma school board has voted to adopt the controversial “Everyone should agree with my religion” course that he’s trying to implement in American schools.
I remember that class … It was right between recess … and lunch.
It was surveys, yeah… The course, as outlined, brilliantly blurs the lines of church/state separation by promising to focus on the composition and history of the bible. Green insists that this is not about evangelism, because we all know how Southern Baptists love to forego evangelism in favor of academic and secular critiques of the bible.
We already have a secular critique of the Bible … called history class. It’s an entire class about all the things that actually happened. But everything in the Bible is true, so I don’t know what Christian parents are worried about? If it happened, it’s gotta be in the history books, right?
A number of people disagree with Hobby Lobby president Steve Green’s assertion that this course is not intended to indoctrinate children, including Hobby Lobby president Steve Green. In a 2013 speech that he’s desperately trying to distance himself from, Green said that the his goals for the curriculum were to show that bible is true; that the course would one day become mandatory and that it will teach students that (quote) “when we apply [the bible] to our lives in all aspects of our life, that it has been good.” (end quote), which he probably didn’t realize was a tacit approval of the Inquisition, the Crusades and Justin Bieber’s career.
There’s a reason history class doesn’t need a 4-year sister course called “No seriously, history is true”.
The curriculum itself is not yet available for review but some details have already been revealed, including the fact that it contains a section on how later scientific discoveries confirm biblical accounts and how Jesus worship led to gender and racial equality. No word yet on how they will deal with the mountains of evidence that disprove almost every detail in the biblical narrative or the parts about buying your rape victims.
Hobby Lobby head promotes new biblical curriculum for public schools: http://www.religionnews.com/2014/04/15/hobby-lobbys-steve-green-another-project-public-school-bible-curriculum/
And in “Snape Shot First” news, six people who turned out not to be evil sorcerers were killed when several hundred angry villagers in Papua New Guinea ambushed a neighboring town, hoping to lynch some residents they believed to be evil sorcerers. Two important lessons here: 1) Faith continues to cause murderous posse activity, and 2) Nobody likes magicians – even the ones that don’t exist.
With the exception of friend of the show “Eli Bosnick”, whom everyone loves, I agree. That being said, I don’t think we should jump to conclusions here. Since these brutal murders, there hasn’t been a single recorded case of necromancy on the island.
And documented cases of alchemy are down too, so I guess it’s working. Torches and pitchforks are Allah-Kazaam’s worst nightmare. The Mind Freak stops levitating and starts talking real fast: “Sorcery?!? No, no, no, no. Look, there’s a mirror under the table. And it’s joined in the middle, and there’s a spring around it … It pops it open when it’s inside the tube. Yeah, I’m a complete fraud.”
Which reminds me, I haven’t plugged my “Send Uri Geller to Papua New Guinea” Kickstarter for a while…
There is no Spooooon Man!!! I’m okay if Soundgarden goes with him.
Six killed in witchhunt in Papua New Guinea: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-16/an-png-sorcery-killings/5395726
And in “Separation of Church and Do What Now?” news tonight, state representative Thomas Carmody has pulled his controversial bill that sought to make the King James Bible the official “state book” of Louisiana. The bill faced strict opposition for not being inclusive; with representative Stephen Ortego pointing out that the state book should be inclusive to all Louisiana citizens who accept Jesus Christ as their lord and savior; not just the ones who use the King James version of the inerrant and unchanging word of god.
So scores of Muslim families continue converging on Louisiana, but now when they look up the state book, they’ll drop their Korans for Esperanto Bibles?
Carmody eventually withdrew his divisive bill, though he was careful to point out that it had nothing to do with respecting secular boundaries or not thinking Jesus was the shit. Instead, he realized that Louisiana’s 49th ranked state education system means most of his constituency can’t read anyway.
49th in state education … The new Ignorance-Betraying Chant of Louisiana should be : “Pen-Ultimate! Pen-Ultimate!”
Sorry, the survey in question included DC so it’s actually “Ante-pen-ultimate”… but they won’t know the difference. Anyway, we’ve now turned state fossils and state books into proxy wars for church state separation. If some republican ass-bubble introduces a bill that somehow incorporates religion into the decision on the official state soil, I have bingo.
Louisiana lawmaker withdraws proposal to make the bible the state book: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/04/21/lawmaker-shelves-proposal-to-name-bible-as-louisiana-state-book-says-had-become/
And in “You pray for oxygen, and I’ll breathe” news, Oregon parents Travis and Wenona Rossiter think medicine is for suckers, but more importantly they’re also terrible at praying, so their 12-year-old daughter died of treatable diabetes and complications related to negligent filicide.
To be fair, their entire religion is based on the virtue of filicide.
Their fundamentalist church teaches that prayer is the only kosher cure for anything, but during their manslaughter trial (which is a really nice way of saying murder-your-child trial), they don’t want the jury to know their motive was Jesus. Because it would be unfair to prejudice the jury with truths. And for some reason Judge Daniel Murphy has already ruled that past incidents of almost killing their daughter are irrelevant to this case, because this one is about actually succeeding in killing their daughter.
And what the hell is their secular excuse for disregarding their kid to death, exactly? I mean… do they think that the jury will be more sympathetic to sentencing a child to a slow and painful death as long as they weren’t praying?
Should we also be allowed to do other equally helpful things, like NOTHING?!? Since the success rates are exactly equal, you should also be allowed to sit there and watch the child die while you do absolutely nothing, or play Nintendo, or throw handfuls of sugar pills at them. They must use a different placebo in diabetes research.
Yeah, but you have to wonder if they learned that the hard way. You know, for years there were these two diabetes researchers who thought they had the midas touch. “Everything we think to test is performing better than sugar pills! We’re geniuses!”
This type of absurdity shows one of the biggest problems with religion, as manifested in today’s society. Yes, in some stupid technical sense, everyone has a right to their bullshit opinion … But you don’t get to smear your bullshit on other peoples faces. And you DEFINITELY don’t get special privileges for being wrong … extra-confidently. And also you can’t murder kids.
Do religious exemptions include murdering children?: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/04/22/faith-healing-parents-who-let-their-daughter-die-dont-want-jurors-to-know-about-their-religious-motive
And from the “Yeah, it’s probably bullshit but we’re reporting on it anyway” file tonight, the award noticing website “Black News (dot) com” is reporting that a new religion was recently founded in Atlanta that replaces tired old Jesus with the equally musically talented Beyonce. Church founder Pauline Andrews insists that Beyonce is divine, adding, “no seriously”.
She’s divine, but she can’t even beat Taylor Swift on award night?
Or write a song. But other than that, omnipotent. Pauline, who is either a dude or the victim of a poorly proofed pronoun, asks us to (quote) “consider what is more real; an invisible spirit on high or…” and it doesn’t really matter what he said after that because nothing sounds stupid when you compare it to theistic beliefs. The National Church of Bey is believed to be the first religion to crowdsource the writing of their holy book, which they’ve cleverlessly titled “The Beyble”.
What about “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying: From J to Z” ???
Well, he is the Iota and the Zeta. So based on what I know of Beyonce, I’m guessing that some other god actually created the universe, but her contract stipulated she be listed as a “co-creator” so that she can get all the credit at the grammys without actually doing any of the work… fucking talentless bitch. I’m sorry, but you’re a god damn underwear model that kind of sings good. Be happy with that.
New church believes Beyonce to be God: http://www.blacknews.com/news/does-beyonce-really-have-her-own-church-it-appears-so-well-sort-of101.html#.U1aa1vldWa9
And finally tonight, from the “Take it in the Asteroid” file, Pat Robertson – chief astrophysicist for the 700 Club – announced that an asteroid will hit earth either next week, 1000 years from now, or in 1995 when his booked predicted it. And in case we laypeople aren’t clear on whether an enormous rock hitting Earth would be bad, Robertson explains (quote) “I did the science on it … Once (the asteroid) hits the Earth’s crust, all kinds of bad things happen.”
It’s a funny story, but it’s harmless. An evil old crazy guy with a vast fortune gleefully anticipating the destruction of the planet and the extinction of all life? What could possibly go wrong?
As much as everyone would love to see Ben Affleck die in a nuclear explosion <<He was the bomb in phantoms, yo>>, Pat Robertson and Kirk Cameron would be even better. These guys need to make some big-budget end-of-the world block busters together. So let’s give them some ideas … 30 seconds on the clock for “Religious Propaganda Doomsday Movie Titles” … GO!!!
How about… Crouching Tiger, Seven Headed Dragon
End Times at Ridgemont High
Ju-Rapture Park II: This Time it’s Cataclysmic
Father Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Squirming and Love Jesus
How about Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill in “This is the unending, preachy, poorly improvised splooge joke”
Armageddon it on with a Priest
Doomsdazed and Confused
Guess Who?: Black Jesus is Coming to Dinner
The Six-Six-Sixth Sense? I loved the surprise ending in that one… remember? Where the seemingly talented director went on to never make anything worth watching again in his career? Never saw that coming.
Sperminator 2: Judging Gays
Locust Pocus
Deeply Impacted Bowels
The Mark of the Beastmaster
Apocalypse Now- no Now- no Now!
Pat Robertson warns world may be destroyed by an asteroid next week: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/21/pat-robertson-doomsday-asteroid_n_5189084.html?utm_hp_ref=religion
Well I guess we should wrap the headlines there, quick before Pat’s asteroid destroys the earth. Heath, thanks as always.
Cholla…
And when we come back, we’ll learn that other holy books also suck.
Outro:
Before we power down the generators tonight, I wanted to give you a quick reminder that I’ll be on Atheist Hangouts with David (aka Gamma Atheist) on Saturday at 10pm eastern time. It’s a live video chat, we’ll be talking tarot and other such new agey nonsense. If you miss the live event, fear not, as archives will be available and we’ll be sharing links on all our various social media repositories.
Also wanted to let you know that I had to cut out a big chunk of the interview but if you want to hear the full version you can find it under the “extras” tab on our website, which is full of great extended interviews if you haven’t checked it out already. And is, in fact, full of great extended interviews even if you have checked it out already.
I need to thank Heath, as always, for being a twisted fuck in such an endearing way; I need to thank Lucinda for everything she does both on and off the mic; I need to thank PK for providing this week’s installment of the Ken Ham blame shifting Farnsworth Quote wars and, of course, I need to thank Paul for giving us some of his time this week. If you want to learn more about his show, you’ll find links to it on the shownotes for this episode.
But most of all, of course, we need to thank this week’s most amiable atheists; Phillip, Tim, Other Phillip, Javier, Shelby, Lindsay, Adam, Reva, Erik, Josh, Richard, Oliver, Steve, Lise, Other Other Phillip, DL, Michael and Konrad. Phillip, Tim and Other Phillip, whose testicles have cleared the debris from their orbital path; Javier, Shelby and Lindsay, who have enough gravitas to read a menu poignantly; Adam, Reva and Erik, whose ninjutsu is considered a nuclear deterrent; Josh, Richard and Oliver who would be more likely to call the doctor if their erections lasted less than four hours, Steve, Lise and Other Other Phillip, who are so rich they hired a maid to clean up after their maid; and DL, Michael and Konrad who are so sexy pastors exclude them by name when they say homosexual attraction is a sin.
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