religion | The Scathing Atheist

Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the new faith based tire sealant Cruci-fix-a-flat. Every twelve ounce can comes complete with no ingredients, because if god wanted you to get to work, he wouldn’t have put that nail in the road. Now get on your knees and thank him for not giving your children boils.

Cruci-fix-a-flat, because who needs a spare, when you’ve got a prayer?

And now, the Scathing Atheist

Intro:

It’s Thursday,

It’s June 12th,

And this big soccer thing is already getting in the way of NFL training camp coverage.

I’m Noah Lugeons,

I’m Heath Enwright, and from modern day Gomorrah, New York, New York,

And almost as modern as Gomorrah, Podunk, Georgia, this is the Scathing Atheist

In this week’s episode,

The FFRF will make Iowa sit in the corner and stare at the wall for the rest of the period,
Catholics will buttfuck kids and lie about it… again…
And India still refuses to get down with the Sikhness.

But first, the diatribe.

Diatribe:

I saw one of the most epic beat downs in the history of theological debate last week and you may have seen it, too. If not, I’ll have a link for it on the shownotes and even though it’s long as fuck and your blood will boil every time the Christian sperm flake opens his mouth, it’s totally worth the two hours.

The title of the debate was “Is it reasonable to believe in god?”. Arguing in the negative was Matt Dillahunty of Atheist Experience fame. Arguing in the “La-la-la, I can’t hear you” was presuppositionalist testicle laceration Sye Ten Bruggencate. And his position was even more ridiculous than his name.

So after watching Bruce Lee fight the ensign in the red shirt for an hour and a half they do a Q&A in this overwhelmingly atheist audience. And the whole reason I bring this up is that one person sets up his question by asking, “Do you agree that democracy is the best system in a civilized society?” and Bizarro world Gandolfini shakes his head; “The best form of government is a theocracy”, and then he adds, of course, “A Christian theocracy.”

The whole audience gasped, but I doubt any of them were shocked that he believed that. I think they were just surprised he admitted it. Sure. I think democracy is the second best form of government behind a complete dictatorial monarchy that I’m in charge of. But I recognize that the latter isn’t practical so I settle for democracy.

And make no mistake, that exactly what the theocrats are proposing. When Sye Bruggencate says he thinks “God” should be in charge of our government, he’s obviously talking about his interpretation of his religion’s god, who conveniently feels exactly the same way that Sye Bruggencate does on every issue. We’re not electing Jimmy Stewart, we’re electing Harvey. We just need Jimmy Stewart to tell us what the invisible rabbit says.

Now, most Christians wouldn’t have been so honest, but you’re lying to yourself if you think they don’t agree. They love separation of church and state when it keeps them from having to pay taxes or provide comprehensive health care, but that’s where their love ends. They may pay lip service to it and if they’re part of a minority religion they might really believe in it, but when it comes down to it, they all want to put their god in charge of your country.

Everywhere you look in America, the Christians are fighting for their theocracy, and not just in honest ways. Can’t win the abortion issue through the courts or the ballot boxes? Well then just buy up all the hospitals and cut out the service. In the meantime, bullying, harassment and open calls for violence should suffice.

Your ideas don’t hold up to in academic fields? Well then just sneak them into classrooms every chance you get. And between now and then, just make your own schools and museums and seminars and colleges and peer-reviewed journals.

Can’t win in the court of public opinion? Well just make your own TV channels, radio stations, magazines, books and amusement parks and hide the real world from your children. With a little luck, you can just outbreed those socially responsible secularists one litter at a time.

You and I can disagree… hell, we probably do disagree on a lot of shit. But we can have a conversation about it and work out our differences and compromise. Hell, we can even change our minds. But if the person you’re debating thinks they’re a proxy for god then there’s no room for accommodation. Their opinion is infallible.

You can see this same MO in any number of issues… contraception, gay rights, science education, stem cell research, gender equality… doesn’t matter what the rest of the country has to say about it. Or the rest of the world. How could they possibly be swayed by the opinion of people who disagree with god? It doesn’t matter if it’s a small majority like it is with gay marriage or an overwhelming majority like we have with contraception. They will stand against demonstrable science, archaeological evidence and the laws of logic themselves! So why would we ever think something as insignificant as the majority will slow them down?

Headlines:

Joining me for headlines tonight is Turing Test Champion Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to mimic genuine human speech?

That’s very an interesting point. Perhaps I should, too.

Well, by the Facebook standard, I guess you nailed it.

Like Pontius Pilate … In our lead story tonight, House Majority Leader and “Worst Jew Ever” Eric Cantor was defeated in the Republican primary for Virginia’s 7th district by Tea Party prospect Dave Brat. This is extremely embarrassing for a few reasons: 1) Dave Brat is fucking awful … 2) It’s the first time a House Majority Leader has lost a party primary since the position was created in 1899 … And 3) The GOP just lost it’s “Token Congressional Jew”, so they’ll need to grow another one in the stem cell lab they just shut down. Awkward conversation …

Yeah, but if he rises again three days later, he gets his own religion. As far as consolation prizes go, that’s pretty solid.

Normally I’d be all about a conservative asshole like Cantor getting ousted in humiliation. But he lost because he wasn’t enough of a conservative asshole for Virginia 7. That’s right! … Eric Cantor – who supports legislative control of Fallopian tubes but not assault rifles – was too liberal for them. And “liberal” in this case, is Virginian for “killed Jesus”.

Of course, the main issue Brat exploited was Cantor’s inability to sufficiently hate Mexicans, but the Messiah-cide certainly didn’t help. He also took hits for raising the debt ceiling and eventually agreeing to end the government shut down, and that really played into Brat’s “Thunderdome 2014” platform.

Right … So Dave Brat – unlike Cantor – “unflinchingly” supports the Republican Creed, which includes the belief that: (quote) “Faith in God, as recognized by our Founding Fathers[,] is essential to the moral fiber of the Nation.” (end quote) …

And the last thing we need is moral constipation.

Not sure why it would matter what 18th century slave owners with wooden teeth thought, but just for the record, our founding fathers were secularists. Actually, that was the whole point. So faith in god as they recognized it, was – at best – something personal, that you shut the fuck up about when dealing with real-life things like organizing a society.

Eric Cantor not Republican enough: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/06/10/dave-brat-who-just-unseated-house-majority-leader-eric-cantor-believes-faith-in-god-is-essential-for-morality

And in this week’s installment of ridiculous bullshit excuses for Catholic child-fucking, we have Archbishop Robert J. Carlson, who claims there’s too much gray area about when you can and can’t legally stick your dick in a kid’s ass. <Yeah, it’s fuzzy…> Not at the age Catholic priests like them, but yeah, eventually they’re fuzzy. Now you’ll recall that last week we had the story of a lawyer arguing on behalf of the New Jersey diocese that priests are definitionally off the clock whilst diddling children. In a blatant display of one upmanship, Archbishop Carlson said during a deposition last week that he was unaware that there was a law against child-rape.

So as we often must qualify … This actually happened. Carlson was asked if he knew that pedophilia was illegal in the 70’s, and he responded: (quote) “I’m not sure whether I knew it was a crime or not. I understand today it’s a crime.” (end quote) … Then he was asked when he picked up this important nugget of wisdom, and he couldn’t recall … “They send out so many memos. We’re raping kids. Now we’re not. Now we’re catching, but not pitching. Now mouth stuff only. It’s impossible to keep track.”

Yeah, well the Memento guy of pedophelia probably questioned his lawyers advice on this one, to which his lawyer says, “Either you get some damn broad amnesia or you admit publicly that you knowingly allowed one of your priests to sexually torture children without exhibiting the slightest pang of humanity. So at that point sociopathic perjurer is actually the better option from a PR perspective.”

Archbishop not sure whether child-rape was a crime: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/06/10/catholic-archbishop-tells-lawyer-he-wasnt-sure-whether-raping-a-child-was-a-crime-back-in-the-1970s/

“Law?!? Child rape?!? Against?!? These are just meaningless mouth noises.” … Moving on … In “What if everyone carried a sword?” news, the Sikh relgion did the exact opposite of dispelling stereotypes, when an actual large-scale sword fight broke out during what appears from photographs to be a brightly-colored scarf-hat convention, at the Golden Temple in Amrisar, India.

But yeah, they should totally be allowed to carry those fuckers onto public transit. Because I’m sure Sikhs are way more respectful on buses than they are in the holiest shrine in their entire fucking religion.

From what I gather, the mustard yellow guys wanted to give their speech to the crowd first, but cornflower blue wasn’t having it. <No they weren’t> And since they were right there, on the set of Aladdin, with a staircase, a barrel, and an apple cart ready to go, they settled the dispute with a blatantly choreographed stage fighting sequence. Mustard yellow finally won after doing a backflip and yelling: “Haha!!! I’m not left handed either!!!”

Yeah, as cool as a group of elderly zealots swinging scimitars at each other sounds, this was the worst swordfight since the second Legend of Zelda.

So they were actually gathered to honor key martyrs for their now-booming religion, on the 30th anniversary of Operation Blue Star – a 1984 raid by Indian troops that killed over 400 Sikhs who were suspected armed separatists. They were at least armed, because part of the Sikh uniform for dudes, is one of those enormous curved bad guy swords.

But it makes you wonder if there’s some infinite regress of dead Sikhs going on here. You know, they make a holiday to mark this battle too, and then a swordfight breaks out at that one, so they make another holiday to mark that battle and so on… there’s gotta be a more efficient ways of ridding the world of Sikhism.

I’m sure we can think of something. In fact, 30 seconds on the…

Sorry, bro, there’s a line. No 30 seconds’ bits for genocide strategies.

You’re such a tease!

Swordfight breaks out in Sikh temple during ceremony: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/06/sikhs-clash-golden-temple-amritsar-india

And in “Iowa don’t owe-a you nothing” news tonight, the state of Iowa’s “Vision Iowa” program has seen the light and decided not to invest $140,000 of taxpayer money in the construction of a Christian themed park in Sioux City. “Shepherd’s Gardens” boasts $5000 worth of crosses, five designated “prayer spaces” and a website that loads up like AOL dialup.

What the fuck is a prayer space?!? When you’re talking to God, do the acoustics really matter?!?

Upon hearing of the state’s intent to partially fund a park intended to (and I quote) “[Counteract the] rise of secular influence in our culture”, the secular influence in our culture told them to fuck off. Specifically, the FFRF sent a letter explaining that this was (quote) “…one of the most egregious grants for a religious purpose FFRF has encountered” (end quote).

Yeah this seemed like a secret shopper testing the FFRF guy who’s in charge of Iowa … “We’d like to impose a tax on being Jewish, Muslim, and atheist to account for the terrible weather and school shootings they cause. And we want them to buy us a park. And a shrubbery.” No. We’re not doing that.

After first proposing that the state pay only for the non-Christian aspects of the entirely Christian park, a solution on par with pointing out that six out of seven orifices weren’t raped, legal counsel for the state and part time toilet paper tensile integrity guardian Timothy J. Whipple informed the FFRF that the board ultimately rescinded the grant.

Iowa capitulates on planned $140,000 grant for Christian themed park: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/06/07/christian-themed-park-will-no-longer-be-getting-a-140000-boost-from-iowan-taxpayers/

And in “Goldman Sacks Entire SEC” news, the financial watchdog agency that monitors the Vatican … is employed by the Vatican!!! And it seems Pope Fransparency felt the meaningless group of Italian people he hireld to ignore Nazi gold transactions, should be fired and replaced by an equally meaningless group of international people … that will ignore Nazi gold transactions.

The WWE referees of financial watchdogs. But as inept as these guy are at detecting fraud, I’ll do them the credit of saying that even they would have called that fucking goalie interference in game 2 of the Stanley Cup Finals. I mean… are you fucking kidding me!? He was butt-raping Lundqvist mid shot! For fuck’s sake…

So the Vatican has been blatantly and egregiously violating international anti-money-laundering standards for centuries. People just now realized this apparently, so to alleviate all the concern, Catholicism hired it’s own watchdog in 2010. Not surprisingly, this accomplished nothing. So in 2012, they put Swiss anti-money-laundering expert Rene Bruelhart in charge. Surprise twist … Turns out anti-money laundering experts are almost always also pro-money-laundering experts. And when the board members complained about being kept in the dark by the new transparency guru … they got fired.

In Pope Frandelay Industry’s defense, though, he’s already seen that the international media doesn’t see any difference between empaneling people to do something and doing something, and doing something is hard.

Pope Francis fires entire financial watchdog panel: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/05/pope-francis-bank-watchdog-board_n_5451637.html?utm_hp_ref=religion

And in “The only people who talk about ducks more than my autocorrect” news tonight, Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson has announced the imminent publication of a new bible that will focus on the core values of faith, family, fellowship and fag-hating. In addition to the regular bible, this version will include more than one hundred articles written by a man who thinks “Whoo hee hee” is a word and that the term “A real man” can precede the word “don’t”.

Do you wish poor people would just die already, but found that Atlas Shrugged was way too many pages??? Do you hate gay people, but couldn’t even get to Leviticus??? Then you’ll definitely be able to struggle through our new book … “I’m Borderline Illiterate, but God is my Ghost Writer” – by Phil Robertson

Publisher “Thomas Nelson Bible Group” is excited about the new project, pointing out that Wal-Mart just can’t keep the Duck Dynasty merch in stock. Vice President and Associate Publisher Robert Stanford told reporters, (quote) “We are honored and excited to be working with Phil and his son on this new Bible. Our demographic research shows that as long as the cover art contains these filthy rednecks and a cross, the rest can be Ipsum Lorem… it’s not like these fuckers can read.”

People who bought this book also bought “Mass Opiates for Dummies”, “Learn to Read”, and unreasonably large firearms … And a book by that same title.

Now, in case Robertson is listening, I think we should toss out some ideas for him, so 30 Seconds on the clock; proposed changes for the redneck bible. Go!

Like a more clear cut stance on homosexuality?

That would be a good start, but I was thinking about stuff like Jesus turning the water into Old Milwaukee.

The Book of John Deere

The lying down with beasts thing is more of a guideline than a rule.

As long as it’s a girl sheep …

I’m picturing The Last Supper at Cracker Barrel … And Jesus has the power mullet.

Say what you will about Cracker Barrel, but their gravy-fried gravy is awesome. Okay, so… Instead of Damascus, Paul was on the way to Dollywood.

When Jacob wrastles God, he wins by using a folding chair when the ref’s not looking.

They only have six commandments because they needed room in the ark for a couple beers and some bait.

For the Appalachian folk, God breathes life into the mouths, not the noses. They never learn the nose version, but now they know why.

Three words: Bandana of thorns

Twist ending: Jesus was dead the whole time. So was his dad. And the guy from Die Hard.

And of course, in this one Lot’s daughters don’t have to trick him.

Duck Dynasty stars to release their own redneck bible: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/05/duck-dynasty-bible_n_5452828.html?utm_hp_ref=religion

Jesus of NASCAReth … Awful!!! Who writes this fucking stuff?!? Puns aren’t funny!!! … And finally tonight, in a follow up to a story from last week, from the “Have your Cock, and your KKKake and Eat it Too” file, Richard Land – of the Southern Evangelical Seminary – has come to the defense of the homophobic Colorado bakery owner Jack Phillips, who refused to make a drag bundt cake for a gay wedding.

It’s about time somebody spoke up on behalf of the straights. And to be honest, I’ve been wondering where the Southern Evangelical Seminary falls on the “rights of gays to eat cakes” issue.

Well to help everyone understand his position, Land decided his thoughts would be best expressed with a hate group analogy … Because people get those. He claimed that laws against bigotry are unfair because they wouldn’t allow black bakery owners to refuse KKK pastry requests. Not sure if there’s any particular DNA sequences for hating blacks and Jews, but regardless, being gay … and Klanning … are at least slightly different.

They’re just two different ways of getting the sheets dirty if you ask me. Seriously. They both have parades, they both ride steeds, they both appreciate a well hung black man…

Earlier this year, Dick Land also dropped this science brilliant bomb: (quote) “A high percentage of adult male homosexuals in America were sexually molested when they were children […] Anybody who’s a counselor […] will tell you that.” (end quote) … So if kids would just avoid getting molested, and spend more time in church where that can’t happen … they wouldn’t keep catching the GAIDS, and we wouldn’t even have this cake problem.

Pastor: “Forcing a Christian to bake cake for gays is like forcing blacks to join the KKK”: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/05/pastor-gay-wedding-cake-kkk_n_5453277.html?utm_hp_ref=religion&ir=Religion

Well I guess that’s as close to an AIDS joke as we’re gonna get tonight, so we’ll close the headlines there. Heath, thanks as always.

Why is it so hard to cure AIDS?

Guess I begged for that. I don’t know, why is it so hard to cure AIDS?

It’s hard to get the mice to butt-fuck.

And when we come back you’ll pretend you didn’t miss us, but we’ll know you did.

Calendar:

It’s time for the Atheist Calendar portion of the show; this is the sporadic few minutes we set aside every 4 to 10 episodes or so to bring you up to speed on all the great secular, atheist and skeptical meetups going on around the country and around the world.

We’ll just assume it’s too late to talk you into hitting up a June conference and start off this week in Minneapolis on July 4th weekend, where SkepchickCon will be taking place within the larger umbrella of ConVergence. Debbie Goddard, Surly Amy, Rebecca Watson and PZ Myers to name a few and what the fuck else would you be doing in Minneapolis?

http://skepchickcon.com/

The following weekend we have an even cooler con in a much cooler place. The Amazing Meeting is the biggest annual skeptical conference in the country, they’re in their sixteenth year and it gets better every time. This year’s speakers include Daniel Dennett, Steven Novella, Julia Galef, Richard Wiseman, Eugenie Scott and if you haven’t been keeping up, they’ve recently added Bill Nye to the guest list. So yeah. Beg, borrow, steal, hitchhike, whatever.

http://www.amazingmeeting.com/

For our listeners in Brisbane, you’ve got a Skepticamp event coming up next month with friend of the show Jake Farr-Wharton from the Imaginary Friends show, Ross from Skeptically challenged and a host of other people I’ve never heard of that will probably still be awesome. That’s coming up on the 19th of July.

http://brisskepticamp.org/

The Atheist Alliance of America will be holding their annual convention in Seattle this year. That’s August 7th through the 10th and includes Sean Faircloth, Steven Pinker, Richard Carrier and more. I heard great things about their con last year and look forward to hearing great things about this one in the near future.

http://www.aaaseattle2014.com/speakers.html

As always, you can find more information about any of these events on the shownotes for this episode at Scathing Atheist (dot) com. And if you’re involved with an event that needs a little PR, I’m happy to plug it. You’ll find the contact info on that very same website I was just telling you about.

Poem – Proverbs

There’s a pamphlet’s worth of wisdom buried deep within the Bible.

Between condemning all this random shit and killing Jewish rivals,

Between the stoning and the genocide, and the fifty-shekel price,

One pays for raping women, there’s a bit of good advice.

Though the majority of what’s in this lengthy book is quite unsavory,

Like the sexist, racist, homophobic stuff and nods to slavery.

There’s a begrudging bit of decent stuff speckled here and there,

But it’s as hard to find as black people in films by Peter Weir.

So I forgive you if you give up in a state of disenchantment,

When they miss a moral statement with two thirds of their commandments.

But I assure you if you read enough, and keep an open mind,

You’ll be surprised by bits of noble stuff you’ll occasionally find.

Take Proverbs, for example; with it’s nine hundred fifteen lines,

Most of which are useless shit, that you could see if you were blind.

A couple more are awful, and some are quite misleading,

But the twelve or so left over are certainly worth reading.

Like Proverbs Fifteen One, for instance, which reminds us to ask nicely,

And despite the verbose shit so far, it says this one concisely.

Or Twenty Seven; Two, in which it tells you not to gloat…

Which makes you wonder if god ever even read the book he wrote.

In chapter fourteen it explains that to believe on faith makes you a fool

And at the end of twenty four it all but states the golden rule.

Or chapter thirty one, which says to drown your grief in wine

Or the nineteenth verse of chapter five which says that titty fucking’s fine.

It’s relative, of course, as this books filled with vile spite,

But after Joshua, Mein Kampf is only kind of impolite.

But compared to all the books that don’t approve of genocide,

Proverbs is a sorry choice for someone’s moral guide.

Take for instance chapter one, verses twenty six through twenty eight;

Which reminds us that the lord will mock your broken-hearted fate.

In two and five, six, seven, nine and twenty one through thirty;

We learn you can’t trust women, as they’re odious and dirty.

Those filthy floozy harlot sluts, maliciously malign;

So make sure to choose a modest girl for your two-hundredth concubine.

Owning slaves is fine as long as you, abuse them all to hell.

Just treat them like your kids whom you, I guess should beat as well.

Yes, even in this relatively good part of the book,

I’d forgive someone for thinking that the translator mistook

The Hebrew for pinata for the english word for child.

So even when it’s better, the Bible’s still to be reviled.

Outro:

Before we slip into our PJs tonight, we’ve got a big announcement to make. After only twelve weeks, we’ve reached our Patreon goal of five hundred dollars per episode which means that starting next week, this show is going to be an hour long.

Now, we recognize that that’s gonna take a lot more work and we don’t want to risk lowering the overall quality of the show, so if we find that we can’t record an hours worth of podcast for you every week without sacrificing the level of quality you’ve come to expect from us, we’ll rethink this thing and find another way to fulfill our obligation to our patrons. So over the next four weeks, bear with us as we make the transition and by all means, drop us a line and let us know what you think of the changes.

I also want to let everyone know that just because we reached that goal, it doesn’t mean you have to stop donating to us on Patreon. We’ve set up a new goal that will allow us to significantly improve the quality of the show and churn out a lot more content for you. If we can reach $850 an episode on Patreon, Heath has agreed to quit his job and join me in my sub-Bible-Beltian exile. So if you haven’t already signed up for a per episode donation at Patreon (dot) com, please do exactly that and help reunite Heath and me.

That’s all the blasphemy we have for you tonight, but we’ll be back in 168 hours with more. If you can’t wait that long, you can always find little nuggets of Scatheism on our blog, our Twitter feed and our Facebook page… and I might as well say that there’s stuff on our Google Plus page too since nobody will ever know that there isn’t.

Can’t close things out without thanking Heath for begrudgingly succumbing to my relentless pressure to double the length of the show. I need to thank Lucinda for all the work she’s gone through to get back to fucking strength, of course I need to thank Pastor Roy of the Catfish Creek Trailer Park for begrudgingly providing this week’s Farnsworth Quote. He’s a regular guest on the Atheists On Air podcast which is absolutely phenomenal if you haven’t checked it out. You’ll find it linked on the shownotes for this episode, of course.

But most of all, of course, I need to thank this week’s most crucial chordates; Aaron, Bryce, Chad, Mike, Jason, Erik, Sakura, Jen, The Just, Kim, Crystal, Paul, Alex, Sonja, Jerry, Anne, Pascal, Henk, Raymond, Dan, other Mike, John, Kevin and Frank. Aaron, Bryce, Chad, Mike, Jason and Erik, whose tongues are ribbed for her pleasure; Sakura, Jen, The Just, Kim, Crystal and Paul, who have enough gravitas to bend light; Alex, Sonja, Jerry, Anne, Pascal and Henk, whose IQs have parentheses and greek letters in them; and Raymond, Dan, other Mike, John, Kevin and Frank, who have to schedule their erections with air traffic controllers.

These twenty-two selfless, soulless, sinless specimens of secularity have earned their way into my heart, my outro and my zombie bunker if that ever becomes necessary this week by giving us money. If you too would like to earn my love, my outrageous flattery and your share of those freeze dried legumes, you’ll find the donate button on the right side of the page at Scathing Atheist (dot) com, or you can make a per episode donation and that website, again, is Patreon (dot) com (slash) Scathing Atheist, which you’ll also find linked on our website.

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, Uncategorized Tags: atheism, atheism podcast, atheist, atheist podcast, belief, Christianity, faith, religion, science, skeptic, skeptical podcast

Episode 68 – Partial Transcript

June 5, 2014 Noah Lugeons 3 comments

by Heath Enwright and Noah Lugeons

(Note: Transcript contains elements that were removed due to time constraints)

LINK TO EPISODE

LINK TO DONATE TO THE SHOW ON PATREON

LINK TO BUY THE BOOK

Warning: Eli’s on this episode so you might want to pee before you listen.

Sponsor:

Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Christian Mingle (dot) com, because as far as we can tell, there’s no law against advertising for a company against their will. So try Christian Mingle (dot) com, because when I say “Fuck Christians”, it’s not always metaphorical.

And now, the Scathing Atheist.

Intro:

It’s Thursday,

It’s June 5th,

And there’s no such thing as “well done but juicy”.

I’m Noah Lugeons,

I’m Heath Enwright. And from “Ballgame over! Yankees win!” New York, New York,

And “Rebels Trail at Halftime” Podunk, Georgia, this is the Scathing Atheist.

On this week’s episode,

We’ll wonder why Easter candy is being sold in Malaysia,
We’ll learn that Hitler’s not as bad when you compare him to god,
And Eli Bosnick will join us to discuss that guy who hosted Later With Greg Kinnear.

But first, the diatribe…

Diatribe

Ever since I moved to Georgia, I’ve been looking forward to the missionaries. I could hit the nearest church to my house with a frisbee and the next nearest with about a 3 wood. I see roving bands of Jesus proxies everywhere I go in this town so I knew it was only a matter of time.

And when it finally came it was like a perfect storm of anger and rage. It should have been a thing of beauty. After the surgery, my wife was up and down and tossing and turning so I slept on the couch for the first couple of post-op weeks and it’s pretty okay for a couch but it’s still a couch.

Right about that time the AC goes out in my house. So, of course, we get highs in the mid-nineties the whole time. And for our international listeners, ninety five fahrenheit is three hundred and eight point one five Kelvin. So it’s fucking hot.

Anyway, I wake up in the morning to a knock on the door that I hope is the repairman but instead it’s a couple of used afterlife salesman. I’m wearing nothing but a pair of gym shorts and a sheen of sweat, the perspiration in my hair has congealed into this reverse pillow mold and at that point I’d have been pissed if it was the Publisher’s Clearing House guys unless one of them had a background in AC repair.

All the ingredients were there for an epic, heartless, misanthropic beat down, but there was one problem. The missionaries in question were three girls, ranging in age from fourteen down to nine. The eldest is muttering something about an island and a boat and she’s clearly forgetting the last half of her sales pitch midway through the first half, so after a bit of stammering she asks me if I’ve made room in my life for Jesus.

So I consider it for a second and I say, “I liked some of his early stuff.”

This clearly wasn’t in their flowchart so it earned me a few seconds of blank stares and I added, “but once he got into that ‘Papa Don’t Preach’ phase, I tuned out.”

And apparently preteen Baptist girls don’t watch Reservoir Dogs because it clearly didn’t ring a bell. But undeterred, Jesus’s groupies went on to the next line, which was something about some dead carpenter or another. But I was done making fun of them and it was too hot to try to explain the concept of “incorrect” at that point so I told them I had important Messiahs to ignore but they were free to come back some other time.

It’s hard for me to imagine how that was supposed to go in their minds. Do groups of socially awkward teenie-boppers have high conversion rates? Are they concerned that somebody in town missed the church signs and giant crosses and “Christian Owned Business” stickers and bible verses and Christian book stores and yard signs and the bumper stickers and t-shirts and the eleven religious channels on basic cable and hadn’t heard the news about his sins having been died for? Did the preacher think to himself, “If anything will subdue the skepticism of the wayward masses, it’s the wisdom of One Direction fans?” And did mom and dad think to themselves, “What a great time to send the girls out unsupervised to the homes of middle aged men that we’ve never met! I know it’s ninety five degree out, but it’s a wet heat.”

But, of course, I know that they know they’re not gonna convert me. I’m just a prop in this game. The preacher didn’t send them out to spread their faith, he sent them out to strengthen it. It’s all about cramming as much Jesus as he can into every nook and cranny of their lives. I’m a vaccine against all the people that might challenge their beliefs later in life. I’m an unwitting pawn in their indoctrination.

Nothing betrays the depravity of religious leaders like their willingness to exploit children, and I’m not just talking about the ones that molest them. I just don’t see how anyone can resolve this in their own heads. How can you believe that teaching kids that there really are monsters under their beds is anything but unconscionable?

Headlines

Joining me for headlines tonight is treif enthusiast, Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to scare some swine-o-phobes?

So here’s what I’ve been doing … I carry a strip of bacon with me everywhere I go in New York City, and touch every surface I can. That includes every straw in every restaurant if possible. So if pig molecules irrationally frighten you, don’t come to New York any more.

In our lead story tonight, a Utah high school has taken decisive action against inappropriate shoulder-inspired erections this week by photoshopping modesty onto the floozies in their yearbook. Officials at “Watch Snatch” high school in South-Central Heber City, Utah enraged a number of their female students by adding sleeves to tank tops and camisoles to the pre-cleavage chest area.

I can understand where these girls are coming from. You’ve gotta look good when you’re 16-years-old, and have eight other younger wives to compete with.

Though they stopped short of going full hijab on these chicks, several of the students were outraged by the changes. To their credit, the school later apologized for not altering more of the photos! When this was brought to their attention, they were devastated by the fact that some of those little harlots got away with showing bare necks on their yearbook pictures after all.

Blasphemy!!! Might as well be the “Clavicle Fetish” section of a porn site!!!

I think it’s worth noting… and this is coming from a guy that grew up in the scrambled-porn whacking era… I can assure these school officials that no amount of digital remastery is gonna slow down a teenage boy looking to rub one out.

Yeah porn on dial-up was rough, but we certainly still made it work. The girl would show up in small horizontal bars, about once a minute, so by the time it got down to the upper shoulders, it was usually too late. I’d finally see some snatch while I was cleaning up.

“And we liked it!”

Utah High School modifies girl’s yearbook pics to look more modest: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/05/28/utah-high-schoolers-furious-over-selective-alteration-of-girls-yearbook-photos/

And from the “Still in Denial” file, Life Savers Ministries of Alabama recently put up – and then immediately had to take down in public embarrassment – a billboard in Auburn with the following two quotes … #1: “He alone, who owns the youth, owns the future.” … And #2: “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” … These particular brainwashing tips were taken from two sources: Proverbs 22:6 and … wait for it … Adolph Hitler.

And it’s not like they just didn’t know who said that. They actually had the attribution on the billboard! It was written in red and it was bigger than the biblical attribution so there was no possible way you could drive by and not realize you were getting parenting advice from Hitler.

So let’s set aside the Holocaust thing … Who even knows whether- … Just ignore that for a moment … The message of the billboard is insane. First of all, it admits that Hitler and God use the same recruiting strategy. Not a selling point. And it also suggests that brainwashing people from birth to be religious zealots hasn’t lead to nearly every single genocide campaign in human history. Which it clearly has.

You’d think at least the ad company would have said something. The guy designing the thing? “Hey guys… I know it’s your ad and everything, but are you sure you want to associate yourself with the Nazis? I mean, I agree that at least it’s an ethos and all…”

So yes … Somehow, nobody foresaw any negative reaction to the name “Adolph Hitler” printed in huge letters, on an enormous highway poster. Turns out several people in Alabama know someone that’s seen a Jew, and they were – of course – mildly offended on their behalf.

“I seen me a jew once! Had one a ‘em little hats and everthang.”

Following the very subtle public outcry, Ministry founder James Anderegg admitted that – in retrospect – it might have been better to use a Herbert Hoover quote instead. Which clearly betrays his knowledge of “Anyone But Hitler”, and really only makes it worse.

“But Hitler’s mom let’s him do it”: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/06/03/christian-ministry-quotes-adolf-hitler-on-billboard-not-realizing-thats-a-bad-idea

And in “Don’t try this at home” news tonight, we have a fucked up story about a crazy person murdering a kid. Raging psychotic Kimberly Lee Lucas, after being told repeatedly by the sane people around her that Abraham was commendable for the whole “willingness to murder his kid for god” thing, decided to emulate this biblical hero. And it turns out that, no, killing children on the command of the voices in your head isn’t all the bible makes it out to be.

“Yeah I stabbed my 2-year-old with a knife. But I didn’t think it would work!!!” … Where are the censors now? At least Grand Theft Auto has you murdering hookers, not your own child. And by the way, the Bible also has you murdering hookers, just for the record.

Now, we generally try to avoid stories about baby murder and crazy people on this show because by and large you can’t blame religion for its adherents being mentally ill… and baby murder jokes stop being funny if you’re talking about actual murdered babies. But when you are arm crazy people with stories that glorify attempted infanticide you have to accept at least some of the blame.

Yeah to be fair, I’d say the blame is spread out evenly, across all the holy books that glorify attempted infanticide.

Now let me stave off a few emails right now by making it clear that I’m not saying that people shouldn’t be allowed to buy bibles or that all bibles should be banned. I’m just endorsing waiting periods and background checks. And maybe we should rethink our policies on assault bibles.

Woman kills child while reinacting Abraham and Isaac story: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/05/30/inspired-by-abraham-and-isaac-bible-story-woman-murders-two-year-old-girl-in-religious-test-god-didnt-stop-me/

And from the biggest file we have … Reverend Terence McAlinden – while employed as a youth group leader at the Diocese of Trenton in the 1980’s – sexually assaulted Chris Naples numerous times during church-sanctioned trips. Naples has filed suit, but according to the diocese lawyer, the church is not responsible because the rapist was technically “off the clock” during those particular incidents.

Yeah, well in their defense, the Catholic Church has had a long standing “Who you fuck on your own time is none of our business” policy, haven’t they?

Indeed they have … The ‘off duty’ excuse prompted one of the justices to ask: “How do we determine when a priest IS and IS NOT on duty?” … The defense lawyer replied: “You can determine a priest is not on duty when he is [abusing] a child, for example” … So they have a Pedophile Scotsman Policy. “Clock out if your cock’s out.”

I feel the need to point out that that was a real quote. The lawyer really said that. He wasn’t a priest at that time because, by definition, priests don’t have their dicks in kids. He was a priest between thrusts, sure…

Running out of clever titles for pedophile stories: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/06/03/church-deflects-blame-for-pedophile-priest-by-arguing-that-he-was-not-on-duty

And in “Spiritual Death by Chocolate” news tonight, several raging Muslim lunatics are left with creme egg on their faces this week when it turned out their fatwa against a candy bar may have been premature. The story began last month when the Malaysian Ministry of Health demanded a recall that led to a fatwa against Cadbury. At first I thought it was inspired by the fact that there’s no logical place to start eating those fucking creme eggs without splurting sugar sperm all over your chin, in which case I’d have been behind it entirely, but it turns out it was actually prompted by the detection of a few molecules of pork.

What I like to do for breakfast, is break two or three creme eggs over bacon and toast. That way you can wipe up the sugar sperm with the extra toast.

Every sperm is sacred… Now, I know it’s hard to imagine Muslims getting the science wrong, but it turns out they didn’t adequately control for contamination. Upon rectifying that oversight, the tests came back negative. So yes, Malaysia is safe from spiritually deficient demon swine once again. Now maybe the country that ranks between Libya and Syria on the human development index can move on to removing the piss from the tap water.

Or maybe they can spend a few days finding that fucking airplane!!! It’s not as if it’s a tiny packet of fucking peanuts.

These new data have done little to slow down boycotts and demonstrations against the company. When asked if the new findings were enough to exonerate the chocolatier, a spokesman for the Association of Islamic Consumers said (quote), “If we were the kind of people that changed our positions because of evidence, we wouldn’t be religious.”

Fatwa issued against Cadbury chocolate: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/02/cadbury-malaysia-pork-halal_n_5432136.html?utm_hp_ref=religion

And finally tonight, in “Have Your Cock and Eat it too” news, the Colorado Civil Rights Commission has ruled that Jack Phillips – owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop – must stop discriminating against gay people by refusing to make wedding cakes for same-sex marriages. Incidentally, such marriages don’t technically exist in Colorado yet, despite their very liberal stance on what can and can’t be put into baked goods. And just to be clear, they draw the line after marijuana, but before a second cock. Jason Biggs would have been safe.

I bet he never thought fucking that pie would be the high point of his career.

Dude wouldn’t have lasted a day on The Creek … So let’s recap: Phillips puts flower-shaped dollops of pink icing on cakes for a living, but refuses to be involved with gay stuff in any way whatsoever. Sounds like the demand for homosexual food service isn’t being met in Colorado … So let’s put 30 seconds on the clock … “Ideas for a Gay Catering Business” … GO!!!

Circle Jerked Chicken

“Pie a la Mo”

Adam’s Apple Upside Down Cake? Made with fresh tranny apples?

Don’t mix up the tops and bottoms … What about: “Five Guys Sharing Ass…Burgers and Fries”?

I think you could have just stopped at “Five Guys”… how about “Squeals on Wheels: All the pillow you can bite for one low price”

Tossed Fruit Salad … Some people prefer jelly … Most likely “Felch’s Grape”

I only like it with Peanut Bugger.

Like those gay cream pies … What are they called? … FlufferNutters in the Butter

How about Santorum-balls?

Man on Manchester Tart??? … Queer-a-misu???

A little “Queef Brisket” for the Lesbian menu

BrownEye Rounds: Donut-Shaped Fudge-Packed Brownies

Chubway Footlongs? Or you can get the really big ones and circumcise a little bit at a time.

“Epstein’s Barbecue: Smokin’ Pole Food”

“Rusty Trombone Appetit”

“Two Guys, One Cupcake”

If I’m not mistaken, two girl-one cup references are to our headlines as fat ladies are to operas, so I guess that does it for tonight. Heath, thanks as always.

And when we come back, Eli Bosnick will be here to discuss the new film “Little Mister Monkeyshines”

Outro

Before we abdicate the throne tonight I wanted to let everyone know we’re getting damn close to our five hundred dollar an episode Patreon goal. For those who don’t know, when we hit $500 we’re gonna make a go at doubling the length of the show so if you want more us, we’re only about thirty three bucks shy now, you can get us closer by visiting Patreon (dot) com (slash) Scathing Atheist and making a per episode donation.

Also want to remind everybody that I was on the most recent episode of The Imaginary Friends Show podcast, that’s episode one eighty two of Jake’s fine show, which you’ll find linked on the shownotes for this episode. Had a blast with Pete Darwin and Ross from the Skeptically Challenged Podcast, and you’re invited to listen to that blast at your convenience.

I also wanted to remind everyone that every time somebody buys a copy of “Diatribes, Volume One: Fifty Essays from a Godless Misanthrope”, an angel gets his wings… and then gets them thumbtacked to a cork board for a fourth grade science project. You’ll find links to buy both the ebook and the paperback at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.

Can’t shut it down without thanking Heath for boldly going where no abortion joke has gone before; I need to thank Lucinda for inexplicably failing to divorce me by now, I want to thank Paul from the Quranify Me podcast for providing this week’s Farnsworth Quote… and if you haven’t checked out his show yet, be sure to check the shownotes for a handy link.

But most of all, I need to thank this week’s most interesting persons of interest, Dave, Wayne, Derrick, Andrew, David, Mark, Allen, Matthew, Richard, Michael, Z and other Michael. Dave, Wayne and Derrick, whose strength would be the standard unit of measurement horses would use if horses built cars; Andrew, David and Mark, whose erections are engorged with enough blood to feed a family of vampires on Thanksgiving; Allen, Matthew and Richard, whose cocks are so big even Galactus just works the tip; and Michael, Z and other Michael, whose names god calls out when he comes.

These twelve well-meaning, well-endowed well-wishers have swelled our well-being this week by giving us money. Giving us money takes courage, dedication and two and a half to three minutes, but if you think you’ve got what it takes, you can make a per episode donation at Patreon (dot) com (slash) Scathing Atheist, or a one time donation by clicking the “donate” button on the right side of our homepage at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.

And if you want to help but you forgot the combination to your mattress, you can also help us out by leaving us a review on iTunes or Stitcher or other places as you see fit. Also, sharing our show on Facebook and Twitter and stuff is a great way to prune the humorless asshats.

Categories: Show Transcripts, Uncategorized Tags: agnostic podcast, atheism, atheist, atheist podcast, Christianity, Eli Bosnick, Heath Enwright, Noah Lugeons, religion

Episode 67 – Partial Transcript

May 29, 2014 Noah Lugeons 5 comments

by Heath Enwright and Noah & Lucinda Lugeons

Note: Transcript contains elements that were removed due to time constraints.

LINK TO EPISODE

LINK TO SUPPORT US ON PATREON AND GET BONUS SHIT

LINK TO BUY THE BOOK

Warning: The book of Proverbs says you shouldn’t listen to people of my gender… but fuck that book.

Sponsor:

Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Prostate Farm: Anal Virginity Single Prayer Health Insurance: Where you can bet your ass that we’ll pay your claim. Are you worried about the rectal risk of sending your children to church but still insist on sending them to church anyway? Are you afraid they might turn the other cheek the wrong way?

Well then let Prostate Farm cover your ass.

And now, the Scathing Atheist.

Intro:

It’s Thursday,

It’s May 29th,

And whole milk is still better.

I’m Noah Lugeons,

And I’m Heath Enwright. And from the city nicknamed after the fruit that brought you gravity; New York, New York,

And the state nicknamed after the one that looks like an ass, Podunk, Georgia, this is the Scathing Atheist.

On this week’s episode,

Redneck preachers getting bit by poisonous snakes will get so common we don’t even bother to cover it in the headlines,
God will punish me for that time I had an abortion,
And Lucinda will join us to discuss Proverbs in this week’s Pope-rah’s Book Club

But first, the diatribe.

Diatribe:

I’ve got an analogy for you. Imagine you’ve got an aunt named Millie. And you were close to her when you were a kid, but in the last decade you only ran into her once at a wedding or something. And now imagine that Aunt Millie dies.

But your cousin Bob, who’s Millie’s only child, decides that he doesn’t want you to go through all the grief of losing your beloved aunt so he doesn’t tell you she died… ever. In fact, he goes out of his way to mislead you. He makes excuses for why she never shows up at family reunions, he tells you she doesn’t answer her phone any more because she’s convinced it’ll give her cancer, he sends you Christmas cards with her signature forged onto them. All in an effort to keep you from grieving.

So the question is; is Bob doing you a favor?

Now before you answer, let me add another layer to it. Imagine after a while the charade gets so wacky that you’re on the phone with Bob and you’re saying, “Wait a minute… she went back to pan more gold in Brazil even after the ocelot attack?” and it suddenly occurs to you that Bob might be full of shit. So you start having doubts and you ask him point blank; “Is Aunt Millie dead?”. But even then, he keeps lying to you. Doesn’t matter how elaborate of half-ass his answers get, he keeps up the act.

So I’ll ask you again, is Bob doing you a favor?

And I’ll also interrupt you again before you have a chance to answer, because to be thorough, I need to add one more layer to the analogy. Bob has to get something out of this for himself. So now imagine that up until now, every year you’ve sent Aunt Millie a really nice present on her birthday and on Christmas; and Bob’s been selling the gifts on Ebay and pocketing the money. He justifies it by telling himself that he works really hard to keep you from grieving and it’s a small price to ask for all his effort.

Now, I don’t need to ask you again because even before I started adding all the layers to it, you already knew that Bob was being an asshole… a well meaning asshole, maybe, but an asshole nonetheless. It’s not for him to decide if you can handle Aunt Millie’s death. He’s robbed you of your ability to grieve for her. What’s worse, he’s taken away the quintessential reminder of the impermanence of the people we love. What if knowing about Aunt Millie’s death would have driven you closer to Uncle Paul and Aunt Gretchen? What if you’d have otherwise been inspired to start a charity in her name, or take care of her favorite dog… or live in the comfort of knowing she’ll never break into your house again and molest your ferret. Whatever. Doesn’t matter.

Look, if we want to spread atheism we need to confront the issue of death. Not only do we need to confront it; we need to embrace it. We need to fall in love with mortality and sell it.

Of course, if you have no interest in spreading atheism, feel free to disregard everything I’m saying. You’re under no obligation to devangelize. But if that’s your goal, you need to find ways to help people put away their immortal security blanket. Because when we say, “Your religion is stupid”, what they hear is, “that hope that you’ll see your favorite dog and your grandma and the son you lost to leukemia is stupid.”

Now, I don’t think that means we should say their religion is stupid, because the idea that you’re gonna see your dog and your grandma and your kid is stupid, but we need to understand why so many people are so scared to agree. One way we can do this is by pointing out that religion doesn’t actually help you grieve, but the other is to help people understand that mortality is a good thing. It’s the greatest motivating factor on the planet. It’s the only reason we sometimes have to forgive and to reconcile.

Obviously we can’t offer them eternal life in paradise with virgins and mansions and shit because we’re limited to the truth. But it’s like Sam Harris says; when you learned that [spoiler alert] Santa Claus wasn’t real the truth that replaced it was nowhere near as fun, but at least there was a truth to replace it. We can’t afford to avoid this topic.

Think about all the people that you love, that you plan on outliving. And next time you say goodbye to them, remind yourself that this could be the last time. And next time you say hello to them, treat them like they just returned from the dead. That’s something you can only do if you let go of the afterlife; when we keep mortality in the front of our minds instead of burying it behind religions and superstitions and pithy bravado. Imagine how beautiful the world would be if we all just admitted that we’re all going to die.

Headlines:

Joining me for headlines tonight is stickler with a smart phone, Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to share your latest fact-bomb victory?

You must be referring to how I “Snopes-ed” the shit out of some guy at the bar the other day. He was trying to impress this woman talking about being a scientist. He used the general term “scientist”. Already suspect.

He’s a “Just Scientist?” Really? “Oh, I study sciencography… you know, the science of… things and stuff”

And, he bothered me earlier by ordering a drink using well above the 10-syllable max for dudes. And then he mentioned he was a devout Christian, and loved how science coincides with the Bible.

You know, those rabbits and their cud

So I absolutely couldn’t let him go, when he started talking about “glass actually being a liquid, which they discovered by looking at the window panes at cathedrals, that were thicker on the bottom.” No – it’s a solid. it’s technically an “amorphous solid”, but you didn’t even know that, so it doesn’t count. But it has a melting point, so it’s clearly not a liquid!!!

But as if he wasn’t already wrong enough, the whole thing about the cathedral windows being thicker at the bottom is bullshit anyway. So even if we grant him the bullshit on both sides of his bullshit equation, it’s still bullshit.

In our lead story tonight, from the “Shady Antebellum” file: Reginald Wayne Miller – president and founder of the totally-real-sounding Cathedral Bible College in South Carolina – was placed under house arrest, after receiving charges of felony-level ‘slavery and exploitation’.

I guess at a certain point you’ve really gotta do some crazy shit to stand out. Reggie’s sitting around thinking, “fucking kids has been done to death… the Vatican has money laundering, the Pentecostals have snake felatio, the Muslims have throwing acid on innocent women… What about slavery? Is anybody else doing slavery?”

Wow really??? Baby slavery’s taken?!? What about regular slavery? Yeah- Shotgun!!! Whip!!! … So Miller’s legal defense team plans to argue that the Bible and the free exercise clause justify the slavery and exploitation. The prosecution – on the other hand – plans to argue that the Bible and the free exercise clause justify slavery and exploitation … So those clearly don’t count, right?!?

And here’s the most fucked up thing… if the allegations are true (and he’s white so they probably are) there wasn’t even an actual college. He sets up this faux school for the express purpose of bringing exchange students over, putting them to work for between a buck fifteen an hour and nothing an hour, and revoked the student visas of the kids that complained. And I only point this out because biblical apologists like seem to think there’s good slavery and bad slavery so you have to be specific about what kind of slavery you’re dealing with. In this case; bad.

Now to the untrained South Carolina eye, Miller was simply running a legitimate indentured servitude Christian agri-business. However, his 2006 charge of exposing himself to an undercover agent at a bath house doesn’t help bolster his “At least it wasn’t sexual slavery” defense. “Human trafficking sex plantation?!? Who’s talking about HTSP’s?!? You brought that up!!! You guys knew that acronym.”

South Carolina Bible College president placed under detention for slavery and exploitation: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/05/25/south-carolina-bible-college-president-is-placed-under-detention-for-slavery-and-exploitation

And in “I’ll Render Unto Whoever I Want” news tonight, a federal judge in Kentucky has ordered the secular nonprofit American Atheists to go fuck themselves this week by dismissing a lawsuit that sought to hold the IRS accountable for its prejudicial policies regarding churches. This is not a “tax the churches” suit; though I’d be behind it every bit as much if it was. Rather, this suit challenges the preferential treatment and lack of transparency that the IRS exclusively affords to religious nonprofits.

Oh, right … The single most important political issue on the atheist platform!!! The hole we could plug, and save billions in stolen tax revenue every year!!! Are the employees of God really claiming they won’t take a pay cut? Are they supposed to get paid?!?

As is often the case in lawsuits like this, the question is one of standing: Is American Atheist harmed by this policy? U.S. District Judge William O. Bertelsman says no, and in a remarkable display of cognitive dissonance he justifies it by pointing out that American Atheist might be able to gain classification as a religious organization. <<So?>> Right! That’s like dismissing a racial discrimination suit on the basis of the plaintiff being pretty light skinned for a black dude.

“Dude just lie about your heritage, and learn to (talk like this) … You’ll be fine. Case dismissed.”

Further demonstrating their impressive “getting it” deficit; lawyers for the IRS pointed out that it couldn’t be a discriminatory policy because it was available to all people who are religious, regardless of their preferred space-dessert.

Federal judge dismisses atheist suit against IRS: http://www.kentucky.com/2014/05/23/3255571/judge-dismisses-atheists-challenge.html

And in “The asshole doesn’t fall far from the tree” news, Senator Ted Cruz’s father, pastor Rafael Cruz – in his expert capacity as the sphincter tree in that analogy – was a featured Tea Note Speaker at a conservative political conference held by a certain society … I don’t believe I have to mention it’s name … I will anyway … It’s the “Family Research KKKouncil”.

Okay, so the dude who spawned self-identified “proud wacko bird” Ted “The UN is coming for the golf courses” Cruz, speaking to a group of bigots on behalf of a hate group? I bet he said something poignant. Was it poignant?

I do not think that word means … what you think it means. Here’s Cruz the Elder’s inconceivably poignant thesis: Ever since we stopped forcing Christianity on public school students, it’s led to nothing but moral decay and teen pregnancy. No question 1963 was a tough year for many white Christians in the South. Bible study was out the door at public schools, and black people were in the door … Maybe not the same door, but baby steps.

Who knows… in another hundred years, maybe they’ll even desegregate the churches.

Now the ensuing decade of moral decay must have been great … And I don’t doubt the teen pregnancy numbers were high … But the teen parent numbers must have levelled off after Roe v. Wade, just nine years later … So it’s all good. We did that for you!!! Irresponsible pregnant teens can get abortions now. You’re welcome!!!

Yeah, there should really be a rule that you’re not allowed to be against both the problem and the solution.

Ted Cruz’s dad is also a dumbfuck: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/05/24/ted-cruzs-father-blames-the-end-of-public-school-bible-readings-for-increased-teen-pregnancy-and-moral-decay

And from the “Right Wing Hobby-Lobbyist” file, we’ve got a quick follow up to a news item we covered in episode 62 of this fine program. As you may or may not recall, Hobby Lobby president Steve Green is peddling a bible curriculum for public schools which, despite being a bible curriculum for public schools has been adopted by the school district closest to his company’s headquarters. They claim it’s a “bible as literature” course, and therefore legal, but those possessing cognition doubted that assertion.

I wouldn’t say the “as literature” part is the problem, although that’s ridiculous too, because it’s terrible literature. But does it really matter if it’s “Bible as Literature”, or “Bible as a Treasure Map”, or “Bible as a Way to Win Friends and Influence People”???

Well, look, maybe we should learn about the Bible in school… it’s important to our history, our literature, our culture… but among the extensive but far from exhaustive list of church/state violations the FFRF discovered in the textbook were things like chapter headings like “How do we know that the Bible’s historical narratives are reliable?”, claims that the bible created feminism, the inclusion of Christian apologetics around the nastier bits, the complete lack of recognition of non-Protestant Christianity, and a fundie-friendly rewriting of America’s founding.

Leading the Jehovah’s Witness a little bit there … “How do we know the Jews stopped beating their wives, only a few short centuries after they created feminism?”

Now, if you’re one of our many listeners that studies Oklahoma state regulations in their spare time, you may be wondering how the hell this curriculum is only now coming to light, despite the fact that it has already been adopted by a school board. After all, by state law, all school board meetings must be open to the public. Well, as it turns out, it only counts as a meeting if more than 50% of the school board is present, so on the advice of the morally upstanding Steve Green, they just split them into two groups when they discussed it. Because as any orthodox Jew will tell you, god loves him some loopholes.

Follow up on Hobby Lobby Bible curriculum: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/05/21/more-problems-with-the-hobby-lobby-public-school-bible-curriculum-as-ffrf-exposes-district-emails/

And in “Bible Belt Turniquet” news, after three recent heroin smuggling incidents at Daviess County Jail in Owensboro, Kentucky, Sheriff Keith Cain and Jailer David Osborne – not wanting to get their hands (and lower arms) dirty being thorough – opted instead for wishing the drug away really hard. But this time, the wishing took place in a church … and this is a new strategy … so we’ll see what happens.

See, this is where Baptists just fails. When you’ve got a problem with people hiding things in their ass, what you really need is a Catholic.

So ‘Prayer’ loses to everything in “Rock, Paper, Scissors, Prayer” … But even if these guys were doing this on their own time without technically wasting taxpayer money (and that’s not really true) … They certainly are selling Christianity pretty hard at their “Church and State Pen”, to a very captive audience. And you probably don’t wanna give Bibles to convicts too much.

Yeah, cause they’ll hide their rock hammer in it.

500 yards of bullshit doesn’t compare though … I’m reading it now, and the morality in the Old Testament so far is fucked up!!! If anything, we should be forcing a peaceful religion on inmates, like what’s the opposite of Judaism? … Islam.

Christians solve heroin problem with prayer: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/05/26/these-kentucky-officials-think-they-can-pray-the-heroin-away/

And in “Didn’t he used to run England?” news tonight, former celebrity Toni Braxton has scribbled a new autobiography, in which she explains that her son’s autism is almost certainly a punishment from god for having an abortion. Strangely, she didn’t comment on what god was punishing her son for by giving him a mother that’s such a horrible bitch that she would publicly describe her child as retribution.

The dude you’re thinking of … who used to be King of England … Pretty sure that’s Margaret Thatcher.

I know it’s hard to believe that something so stupid could come from the inimitable wordsmith that penned such brilliant lyrics as “Oh baby, oh baby, I can hardly wait to see your face; Oh baby, oh baby, heartbreak is gonna be the case,” but she goes on to explain that her parent’s divorce and her own lupus diagnosis were also divine vengeance.

Divorce and lupus?!? Really?!? Do you hear that? It’s the world’s shittiest violin, playing shitty, sad Toni Braxton music for shitty, sad Toni Braxton. Birth a child that isn’t too logical to love you, and we’ll talk. Oh, you can’t???

Braxton walked back the comments amid a firestorm of criticism, saying, (quote) “When my youngest son was diagnosed with autism I feared that I was being punished for my earlier actions. I have since realized what a calloused scut that makes me look like,” (end quote)

Toni Braxton: My Autistic kid is punishment from god for having an abortion: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/24/toni-braxton-autism-son_n_5385477.html?utm_hp_ref=entertainment&ir=Entertainment

And finally tonight, Atheist rappers Greydon Square and Tombstone da Deadman will perform in concert on July 26 in Temple Hills, Maryland, staging the event in collaboration with Grand Unified – a science-spreading artist collective.

Seems like more of a “calendar” segment than a “headline” segment”. Unless, of course…

Well that is pretty much the whole story, so I could vamp for 30 seconds … And that could go downhill really quick … Or instead, we could spend that same amount of time listing “Ideas for Atheist and Religious Music Festivals” … GO!!!

Oh good… I was afraid you were gonna say “Rappers” and I’d have to reveal just how white I was. How about the “Apostate Fair”?

I’ll start by cheating. Had these already. These are my personal hypothetical atheist rapper aliases: Notorious BIG Bang and Scientific Method Man

Maybe a Buddhist fest called “Nirvana-roo”…

Lots of big, naked, buddhists with eightfold paths, listening to KoAni DiFranco … Free Tibetter Than Ezra …

Coac-hellbound.

All-4-One With Everything?

Maybe William Lane Craig could have an Apologetics Festival and call it “South by Northwest”

I heard Fitty Shekels and Kanye West Bank were gonna be at “Gathering of the Tribes” … Jewish …

Fitty Shekels… love it. “Oy vey can you see?” Anyway, how about the “Warped Logic Tour”?

What about a Puritan music fest? … Burning Woman at the Stake …

“We wanted to see Motley Crucifix, but we ended up getting stuck with a set of Three Nine Inch Nails.”

Or Ray Comfort could host a creationism one; “Bananaroo”.

Phil Collins and the … I Can’t Dancers in Genesis ???

Or maybe… and we should maybe actually do this one… a festival to raise money for secular education for women in Muslim countries called, “Malala-palooza?”

Gotta assume there’s already some kind of shitty lute fest and humus mash-off called “Halal-apalooza”.

I thought there was no true festival but “Allah”-palooza.

And despite being completely irrelevant now, I’m sure they’ll bring up “Benghazi Ozbourne” …

Maybe the Arab gangsta rap giants “Sand NWA” …

By the way ladies, be careful to avoid the acid at Allah-palooza.

Atheist Rapper Concert: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/05/26/concert-event-featuring-atheist-rappers

Alright, well now that we can be sure we’ve offended everyone, I think we can close out headlines for the night. Heath, thanks as always.

And when we come back, we’ll learn that after Psalms, we can take just about anything.

Babble – Proverbs

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines a “proverb” as “a brief, popular saying that gives advice about how people should live”, but the biblical definition is more like a “statement of indeterminate length that expresses a notion that is either common-sense, true by merit of definition, or painfully, ridiculously wrong.” Chocked full of important nuggets like, “The clever do things intelligently, while the fool displays folly”, Proverbs does distinguish itself for being, at best, the least horrible book in the bible so far.

And it’s basically a lucky famous person giving stupid advice, because he confused covariance and causality. It’s King Solomon explaining how if we all heed the lord’s wisdom, then everyone will become the extremely wealthy King of Israel, just like him. See – it works!!!

So joining us to discuss a book that spends about 8% of its words warning us about the dangers of listening to women is a woman. Specifically, my lovely wife Lucinda. Lucinda, welcome back.

I am woman, hear me roar!

So despite being recently told by an inerrant book that the true purpose of a wife is to make sure that I (quote) “let your breasts satisfy me at all times” (end quote), we’re gonna talk about the bible instead. You mind starting us off?

At first I was thinking to myself, “Who named this book? Alanis Morissette? Aren’t proverbs supposed to be short?”
- Right and instead we get unnecessarily long restatements of the same thing over and over again. They’re more like… con-verbs, or whatever.
So these are ancient words of wisdom, and the very first one basically says: “If a bunch of dudes invite you to go ambush and murder some innocent people with them … Don’t do that.” So right off the bat, Solomon really drops some insight on us.
And even when you shave it down to a pithy sentence, it’s still bad advice. Chapter two, for example, tells us that as long as we fear god and seek wisdom <<which are mutually exclusive goals>> we’ll never have to worry about having raunchy, sinful naked time.
And chapter three teaches us that the true goals of wisdom should be living a really long time and getting rich.
“Lean not on your own understanding, do not be wise in your own eyes, and pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.” So basically, don’t let judgment cloud your … judgment.
Yeah, something of a pattern emerges right away. About 90% of the proverb is reminding you to pay attention to this proverb because it’s really, really important, and the other 10% vaguely tells you not to be wicked… without really defining wicked.
- Right. It’s like the verbose Leviticus.
I don’t know, though, chapter five is pretty on message. It says, “beware vaginas”.
- But it also expressly endorses titty-fucking.
As long as you “push in” at the last second.
And I want to point out that whoever wrote chapter six was very familiar with the price of a hooker.
- Yeah, and it was only a loaf of bread back then, so I guess the ancient world wasn’t all bad.
These days, with Atkins, it’s a meatloaf. Also in this chapter: (quote) “There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to him” (end quote) … Weird fucking way to present a list of 7 things … Anyway, most of them are pretty bad things like spilling innocent blook, lying, scheming, etcetera. But one of them … One of the seven things God could is capable of hating … is “haughty eyes”.
This book is so obsessed with who you do and don’t fuck that through the first seven chapters it reads like the dorky guy who’s trying to explain why he never gets laid, “Well, yeah, there were a bunch of hotties down at the square begging me to fuck ‘em again tonight… you know, they’re all ‘I perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloe and cinammon; come let us take our fill of love until morning’… but I stayed righteous.”
I fucked this girl from Moab at camp last summer. You wouldn’t know her. She lives a few tribes over.
Then in chapter eight we meet god’s wife, I think.
And apparently she has a nice house and she invites stupid people in.
And then finally, after nine chapters of, “I swear I’m really smart and you should listen to me” bullshit, we get some actual proverbs.
- And apparently god sucks at proverbs. I mean, George Lucas wrote better wisdom than this. Couldn’t the guy that made Confucius come up with a few that would stick?
There’s no puns, no rhymes, no wordplay of any kind. It’s a long, terrible, completley unclever version of Animaniacs’ “Good Idea, Bad Idea” segment … “Good Idea: Don’t be a mocker. Bad Idea: Mock.” Unforgettably eloquent stuff like that.
Right. Chapter Eleven has 31 proverbs and they’re all variations on “Being righteous is preferable to being wicked.” Really? You’re divinely instructing your people and that’s all you bring?
Yeah, you even get tautological shit like Chapter 12, verse 5 “The thoughts of the righteous are just; the advice of the wicked is treacherous.” So… evil people are evil. Thanks for clearing that up. No room for oral hygiene in this book, but we cleared up the whole, ‘are evil people evil?’ question.
Thirteen has some really good advice on beating your children…
Yeah, the advice is: “Beat your children with a rod.”
- Yeah, but just in case you didn’t get it then, they restate the pro-child beating case in chapters 19, 22, 23 and 29.
- And also there’s some good slave-beating advice in chapter 29.
Perhaps my favorite, though, is 14:20 which states… (I shit you not) “The poor are disliked, even by their neighbors, but the rich have many friends.” That’s the whole thing. Be rich and people will like you more.
Seems to be working for the Jews quite nicely ever since. Who doesn’t like the Jews? They’ve got all that gold.
And a lot of focus on the “wise people are smart, fools are stupid” proverb. It’s restated maybe 50 times in the first fifteen chapters.
Yeah, I’m willing to say that the tales of Solomon’s wisdom were greatly exaggerated.
- Well, he was the king… so who’s gonna argue. “Split a baby in half? That’s a great idea, your highness.” I picture him gorging on a turkey leg and a virgin, yelling, “Scribe! I have another one of those smart thingies for you. ‘Sometimes there is a way that seems to be right… but… um… in the end it is the way to death.’ Write that down. And put a little skull next to ‘death’… or no, make that the E in death… a little skull.”
And he continues to be the inept minstrel that keeps missing the rhyme. “Good is good, and bad is bad. Evil stuff makes God real … pissed- SHIT!!! I suck at this!!! I’m such and idiot!!!”
In seventeen we learn that it’s immoral to flog people for having integrity and we also learn that people in general should shut the fuck up.
Apparently living alone is wicked, by the way. Never realized that, but it is.
Every morning, I take a naked shit, with the door open, while drinking milk from the carton … Then it gets ugly. Didn’t have a google suggestion this week. Figured I’d just leave you with that image.
Here and there there’s a weird one and a couple of times you get actual good advice, but most of them fall into one of three themes: Sit down and shut up; Stupid people are even worse than poor people; and evilness is evil.
- A lot of “god will fuck your shit up”, too.
And since these are all attributed to kings, there’s also a lot of, “How awesome are kings?” ones too.
We also learn repeatedly that lying is bad.
It’s so boring, in fact, that if you’re not careful, you’ll miss the good blow job jokes. For instance, after the enigmatic proverb that tells us that lazy people say that the streets are filled with random lions, we get this gem, Chapter 22, verse 14 “The mouth of a loose woman is a deep pit.”
Or a shallow pit, but it’s really wide. I don’t judge. They also mention that you’re not supposed to fuck with the property lines by moving ancient boundary stones. “Maybe I wasn’t clear earlier. I’m God … And I’m giving all the oil to the Jews … So it’s very important that they get to keep all this shitty-seeming dessert land, that I’ve marked off here.”
And then we’re back to stupid shit like warnings that stingy people’s bread will make you puke and kids who don’t get beaten regularly will burn in hell.
- It also says that prostitutes are deep pits and adultresses are narrow wells, so apparently they’re saying if you’re gonna fuck around, try to get the tighter vagina of an adulteress before settling for a hooker.
And in twenty four… or actually about halfway through chapter twenty three, we made a hard left out of the realm of pithy and onto just somebody saying something.
Oh, and by the way, and apparently this is important, when you start eating honey, stop before you vomit.
If you vomit, or hit the East River, you’ve gone too far. That’s helpful.
- Good thing god was around to inspire Solomon to tell Hezekiah to write this shit down.
By chapter twenty six they’ve entirely run out of shit to say and start repeating earlier proverbs verbatim.
- Yeah, but if I’m not mistaken, chapter twenty six also has the bible’s first reference to dog vomit… so there’s some new shit sprinkled in there as well.
And it’s such a weird mix of shit. Like in twenty seven we get a bit of generally good advice about not being a dick to your friends and then we close off with god telling you not to worry about the goat’s milk, because he’s got that covered.
And even the stuff that sounds wise isn’t. Like 28:1, “The wicked flee when no one pursueth…” right, but they also flee when people do pursueth. Because if they weren’t fleeing, you couldn’t exactly pursue them. You’d just walk over there or something.
And righteous pitchfork mobs don’t just “walk over there”. So correctly anticipating a lynch mob attack and going somewhere else, is evil???
And sometimes it seems like they don’t understand that the two clauses in a proverb should be at least tangentially related. In 29:3, for example; “A child who loves wisdom makes a parent glad, but to keep company with prostitutes is to squander one’s substance.” Fucking what!? We go from making our parents proud to not wasting perfectly good semen in prostitutes?
If you’re not getting A’s in school, you might as well be coming on a hooker’s back. Useful, everyday, false duality to guide your study habits and sperm targeting behavior.
In 30 we learn that if you disobey your parents, vultures will eat your brains.
- In the King James it’s ravens plucking out your eyes and feeding them to eagles.
And then after they finished the whole book, King Lemuel shows up with a poem that his mom wrote and said, “I want this one to be in the book, too.”
- And the whole thing is a ridiculous stereotype of Jewish moms. It starts off with her saying, “Don’t drink too much”, moves on to her asking when he’s gonna find a nice Jewish girl to settle down with and then ends by telling him how awesome he is.

And then it mercifully ends a hundred and nineteen chapters earlier than Psalms did. And while it seems more like something that belongs in a book of wisdom, it did leave me wishing god would go ahead and genocide somebody again or something. This book is getting boring even for this book.

I’d just like to point out that this book ends with an Epilogue about a wife of noble character… which is basically a list of shit she has to do with a smile on her face. She may not be charming and she may not be pretty but if she fears the lord you should praise her…. because apparently fear will make her get shit done.

So that does it for the Babble. We’ll be back in three weeks with Ecclesiastes, which I hear is by far the least bad book in the Bible, so that one might be harder to make fun of, but we’ll make due, I’m sure.

Outro:

Before we reach for the washcloth tonight, I wanted to congratulate a friend of mine on a pretty significant milestone. Carl from the Post Rapture Looting Podcast is about to record his 100th episode. Among his many podcasting accolades is the fact that he was the first person to ever interview Heath and me about this show. So huge congrats to him on number one hundred, which I recommend you download and listen to when it’s available and not just because he invited us back on to temporarily join in the festivities.

And speaking of shows that I’ll be on soon that you should be listening to even when I’m not on them, rumor has it that I’ll also be joining Jake Farr-Wharton on the Imaginary Friends Show this week, should be available over the weekend.

That’s all the blasphemy we’ve got for you this week, but we’ll be back in 168 hours with the incomparable Eli Bosnick to discuss the new film “Heaven is For Real” so be sure to have your popcorn ready for that one. Until then, you can keep up with us on the blog, on Facebook, on Twitter and on Google Plus.

I need to thank Heath once more for always having 190 seconds to spare for a segment called “30 seconds on the clock”; I need to thank Lucinda for powering through books of the bible post-op; and, of course, I need to thank Shawn from Alberta for providing this week’s Farnsworth Quote and Ukulele solo.

But most of all, I need to thank this week’s most bestest people in the whole wide world; David, Wally, Greg, Steve, Colin, Laura, Goran, Troy, Jeff with a “J”, SharpestOne, Tammy and Geoff with a “G”. David, Wally and Greg, whose cocks are available by prescription only in the state of Georgia; Steve, Colin and Laura, who are so intelligent that the next incarnation of personal communication devices might be referred to as “Steve, Colin and Laura”-phones; Goran, Troy and Jeff with a “J”, who are so legendary they named a planet, an ancient empire and a Lebowski after them, respectively; and Sharpest One, Tammy and Geoff with a “G”, who intergalactically notorious ninjutsu solves the Fermi Paradox.

These twelve paradisaic paragons have helped us paralyze a few more paragraph of paranoid parables from parasitic paranormalists this week by giving us money. Not everyone has the altruism, benevolence and discretionary income needed to give us money, but if you’d like to join the ranks of our financial supporters, you can make a per episode donation at Patreon (dot) com (slash) Scathing Atheist; or make a one time donation by clicking the “Donate” button on the right side of our homepage at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.

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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 except Shawn’s ukulele bit was written and performed by yours truly and yes, I did have my permission.

Categories: Show Transcripts Tags: agnostic podcast, antitheism podcast, antitheist, atheism, atheism podcast, atheist podcast, belief, Christianity, faith, religion

Episode 66 – Partial Transcript

May 22, 2014 Noah Lugeons Leave a comment

by Heath Enwright and Noah & Lucinda Lugeons

(Note: Transcript contains elements that were removed due to time constraints)

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Warning: These guys use the F word like motherfuckers.

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Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the new walk-in circumcision service, Adjust the Tip.

Are you planning to celebrate the birth of your infant son by mutilating his genitals, but you don’t want to get blood and herpes all over your living room? Wouldn’t you be more comfortable bringing your child to a Rabbi’s house, that has a dungeon for that specific purpose? Then come on down to Adjust the Tip: Adjust for a second … Adjust to see how it feels.

And now, the Scathing Atheist.

Intro:

It’s Thursday,

It’s May 22nd,

And according to our sources: Tucan Sam leaps on the back of the wind.

I’m Noah Lugeons,

I’m Heath Enwright, and from the unofficial capital of the world, New York, New York…

And home of the world’s second largest kumquat, Podunk, Georgia, this is the Scathing Atheist.

On this week’s episode,

Sudan decides to murder a hostage in response to “Draw Mohammed Day”;
We’ll learn the dil-dos and dildon’ts of life in rural Georgia;
And an autistic kid is back on the subway posters. Could this be the work of the Rain Man Maker?

But first, the diatribe.

Diatribe:

So it’s Sunday afternoon and it’s gorgeous outside and I hadn’t settled on what to do this week’s diatribe about yet, so when I wandered out of the store and saw the little church group set up in the parking lot, I said, “what the hell?” and I mosied over. Three women and an old man, all wearing matching teal shirts with something about Jesus on the breast of them. And they had a little sign that said, “Do you have questions? Let us help you find the answer in Christ,” so technically, they were asking for it.

Cause I do have questions. I wasn’t going over there to fuck with them… or, more accurately, I wasn’t just going over there to fuck with them. I really do have questions. I didn’t grow up in a particularly religious household so there’s fundamental shit about the Christian doctrine that makes no sense to me at all.

So I smiled and said hi. And I told them in advance that I was an atheist. I even warned them that I wasn’t looking for a religion or anything, but I did have a lot of questions about the tenets of Christianity. And three of them smiled and the other lady went to get a Coke. And bifocal lady was really nice at first and she said, “We’ll answer you if we can.”

So I lead off with what I considered a softball. I asked them, “What does it mean that Jesus died for my sins?”

She launches into the whole original sin thing and tells me about how we’re all born with sin and we all fall short, but lucky for us god made the ultimate sacrifice and sent his only begotten son to die for us so that we could be redeemed.

And I agreed that yes, those were all words and all, but they didn’t really answer my question. And while we’re on the subject, how, exactly, is god making a sacrifice here? He lives in Heaven. When Jesus died, he ascended to god’s house. So… where’s the sacrifice? It’s like Jesus was active duty.

But she wasn’t quite tangled in her theological web yet so she kept weaving. See, Jesus was god and all the suffering he went through on the cross was actually god suffering. So not only did he have to let his kid go to camp for a really long time, but he also had to be brutally murdered. Ergo, ultimate suffering.

So I reminded her that murder doesn’t really count if you get to come back to life three days later so at best, he was brutally tortured. But even if we call it murder, it’s not like Jesus’s crucifixion makes the top billion of the worst suffering of all time, does it? If you gave me the choice between being crucified or dying of pancreatic cancer I’d bring my own nails. And I that’s even if I don’t get to rise again at the head of a zombie army after three days. So what’s so ultimate about Jesus’s suffering? Fuck, Caligula used to have people executed by having them cut a thousand times over several days. Nero used to crucify people and set them on fire. So Jesus’s suffering wasn’t even all that bad compared to what Romans were doing around that time.

And really, when you consider that he didn’t actually die, his suffering is basically on par with an elbow tattoo. I’d argue that Jesus suffered significantly less than, say, that dude in Iowa that had the hiccups for sixty years. And nobody goes around saying “Charles Osborne hiccuped for your sins” or anything.

And how does one guy suffering abdicate another guy from responsibilities for his sins? And just who set up all this “humanity redeeming” red tape that god had to navigate? And if the sins are preloaded software, what’s god so pissed about? Didn’t he write the software? Does this even make any sense to the people selling it?

But, of course, I never made it that far into my questions. At a certain point the old guy cut bifocal lady off and explained at a certain point you have to set your questions aside and just have faith. At which point I reminded them that their sign specifically asked for questions. And then he politely asked me to leave. And then he impolitely asked me to leave. And then he told me I was going to burn in hell if I didn’t change my evil ways.

So asked for one parting question, and he granted it. I said, “If you’re not allowed to ask these questions, how do you know you have the right religion.” He didn’t answer. But that’s okay… it was rhetorical anyway.

Headlines:

Joining me for headlines tonight is atheism’s most eligible bachelor, Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to woo the lovely ladies out there?

I’m just looking for a girl who appreciates both abortion jokes, and abortion (pause) the procedure … Not her, though. I mean, like … poor people, in general.

In our lead story tonight everyone who keeps saying there’s nothing wrong with Islam needs to shut the fuck up already. This story comes to us from a nation that’s been in a steady decline since the Canaanites were running the show, Sudan; where a recent court ruling sentenced a pregnant woman to death for the charge of switching allegiance to the wrong hypothetical celestial dictator.

What kind of sentence did the fetus get? … Besides “Lifetime Semi-Orphan”? While the court decides this stuff, we’ve got this cool “Schroedinger’s Pussy Cat” thing going on in her box.

Wow… a quantum abortion joke with multiple vaginal puns. That’s, like, eighteen points. Well played, sir. Anyway, Meriem Ibrahim was convicted of marrying a Christian man despite being preordained a Muslim at birth, but as a show of civility, they’re going to let her have the baby before they hang her… and in a show of barbarism, they’re also gonna flog her 100 times for fucking her husband first.

Ok good – I was wondering if they were going to address that. But if you believe she’s going to hell, you don’t give her floggings before a death sentence … That’s a reward, idiots!!!

When you see articles on this story a lot of them get hung up on whether she should really be considered a Muslim at all since she was raised by her single Christian mother, despite the state’s patriarchal system of religious affiliation. But I don’t want to discuss any of that because it detracts from the only thing that should matter about this story, which is that somebody’s going to die because Allah is as fragile as a fourteen year old when it comes to getting dumped.

Pregnant Sudanese woman sentenced to death for apostasy: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/15/sudan-woman-apostasy_n_5331117.html?utm_hp_ref=religion

And in “Montana has 2 Senators that are Democrats?” news … Yes it does, and unfortunately the state will continue having 2 such extremely powerful seats, despite Republican Steve Daines, and his sudden ascendance to landslide favorite status against incumbent John Walsh, after said challenger talked six people into voting for him at the Walmart. And if it was just the Republican thing, that would be fine … I’m a de facto racist too … But this guy is on record preaching for creationism in public schools.

And that’s the problem with letting Montana have senators. No offense, Montana, but the fucking Bronx doesn’t have two senators and they’ve got more humans than you.

Here’s what Daines had to say during a 2012 interview on Montana Public Radio: (quote) “I think we should […] teach students that there are evolutionary theories, there’s intelligent-design theories, and allow the students to make up their minds.” (end quote) … Evolution and Genesis aren’t two sides of an argument. One is a proven narrative of biology on Earth. The other is a very specific baseless claim about metaphysical origins of existence. It’s like comparing apples and oranges … to decide which one is better food for unicorns.

But it’s actually worse than that. It’s like deciding whether you should feed your kids apples or oranges… or unicorns.

Daines added, (quote) “Personally I’d like to teach my kids both sides of the equation there and let them come up to their own conclusion on it.” (end quote) … Now I’m not sure if he subscribes to “Math Theory”, but he just put two completely different things on either side of an equals sign, and wants kids to impossibly choose the better side, using historical calculus or something.

“And I’d also like to teach them about proper genital hygiene and teach them to bleach their dicks every night and let ‘em figure out for themselves…”

As I understand it, some of them eventually learn to clean up after they jerk off.

Montana still allowed to have Senators: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/05/18/rep-steve-daines-possibly-the-next-senator-from-montana-supports-teaching-creationism-in-public-schools

And in “What about the eight commandments I didn’t break?” news tonight, a recent survey adds an exponent to Christian hypocrisy by demonstrating that, to a large extent, Christians are even full of shit about being full of shit. The study, cleverly titled “I Know What You Did Last Sunday” asked two groups of Americans about their church attendance; one through an online survey and the other over the phone. And as it turns out, the easier you make it to lie, the higher their self-reporting of church attendance rose.

So they’re also clearly lying about really believing in God. Or they do believe in God, but they’re so fucking stupid that a temperamental, omnipotent hell-banisher doesn’t scare them enough to tell the truth about stuff.

Of course, we’ve long known that religious people tend to exaggerate their piety on surveys, but these researchers found a clever way to demonstrate this fact. People are much better at lying when they don’t have to do it to a person. And the results are unmistakable: the online group reported regular church attendance almost 50% more than the phone survey.

This is just some anonymous survey … They don’t even have anything to gain by lying. They’re not even good at being bad Christians!!! If you’re gonna sin and let Jesus retroactively die for it, at least get some bang for your buck.

The survey broke the numbers down by denomination and it turned out that Catholics were slightly more full of shit than protestants, though to their credit, Catholic services are both more boring and more likely to end in anal rape, so who can blame them?

Study shows Americans lie about church attendance: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/05/16/new-study-shows-that-americans-lie-about-how-often-they-really-go-to-church/

And in “Bring out your dead!” news, the Amish – and their refusal to follow basic personal and public health procedures – are behind a measles and mumps revival in Ohio. Considering the group appears to live in 14th-century Europe, plague isn’t far behind. Unvaccinated missionaries contracted the diseases while passing out “books to read while dying” in places like the Phillipines, which aren’t lucky enough to have entirely cured those yet, like we have here …

I know this is off subject and all… but how the fuck did Amish people they get to the Philippines? Did they caulk the wagons? Wire together half a port-o-potty, some sticks and an anthropomorphized volley ball? Anyway, you were saying… fully preventable outbreak of potentially fatal disease caused by intentionally antiquated doctrine?

Let’s put this particular instance of mass stupidity in perspective … According to the Center for Disease Control: (quote) “Before the measles vaccine became available in 1963, the virus infected about 500,000 Americans a year, causing 500 deaths and 48,000 hospitalizations.” (end quote) … Now that ‘half a million’ number is down to well under 300 cases per year. But it only works if people take the fucking panacea!!! Why is that hard to sell?

It’s like a genie asking if you’re sure you don’t want to go for more wishes. “No, I’m happy with thisy-here eight slice toaster and the new spark plugs for my ridin’ mower.”

I’m curious about one particular facet of this story … What do Amish missionaries do? What hermetically isolated aboriginal tribe is begging to learn the miracles of their fancy linkin’ log technology? … They’d show up, and have African kids teaching them how to use soap, and dial-up. Mormons should be visiting the Amish … teaching them to build modern reclusive inbred compounds.

Ohio measles outbreak blamed on Amish missionaries: http://www.religionnews.com/2014/05/14/ohio-measles-outbreak-tied-amish-missionaries/

And in “But who will feed the chupacabras?” news tonight, it appears the Vatican has already solved all its real problems and can now move on to addressing imaginary ones. Sources that have websites that look for real and shit report a sharp increase in the training and certification of Catholic exorcists. The Vatican explains that this is in response to an equivalent rise in demonic possessions. So despite the nonexistent nature of demonic possession and the ubiquitous knowledge of mental diseases, they’ve elected to stick to the throwing water and chanting school of human psychology.

And the Vatican also noted that “Impostor Exorcists” were becoming a big problem … “Bunch of charlatans who never completed the Vatican’s rigorous exorcism safety course. We’re trying to sell Sky Cake over here, and these assholes start popping up out of nowhere with unlicensed Sky Baklava!!! This is bullshit!!!”

The Vatican blames this rise in nonexistent things on another rise in nonexistent things called “the dark arts” that include a mixture of things that do and don’t exist, including black magic, Satanic sacrifices and Ouija boards. So, yes, according to one of the wealthiest and most influential institutions on earth, Milton Bradley is casting demons.

Good, this exorcist army should work out just fine. We’ll get a bunch of priests running around the woods at night, tackling groups of 10-year-olds, just about to spell a word with vector addition. What could go wrong?

Earlier in the year a Catholic exorcist explained the desperate need for more water throwing medicine-chanters by stating that he’d personally assisted in at least 160,000 exorcisms in his career, which basically means one every hour and twenty-eight minutes of his waking life. So apparently they get their understanding of math and neurology from the same century.

Vatican to churn out more exorcists due to rise in demonic possession: http://www.examiner.com/article/catholic-church-increases-exorcism-training-due-to-a-rise-of-demonic-possession

And from the “Secular Healing” file, Melissa Davenport – of Sandy Springs, Georgia – filed suit against the city for enforcing a church-state entanglement law that prohibits the purchase of sex toys without a medical prescription. In my script it says “(insert dildo … joke here)”, so I’ll let you handle that, while I go ahead and get the clock warmed up …

That would be easier if you hadn’t paused so long between dildo and joke. Hold on a second…

Davenport suffers from MS, and sex toys allow her to enjoy naked time despite nerve damage. Despite this obviously counting as an exception to their stupid rule, many Georgian lawmakers – still clinging to the very creepy “Vaginal Paternalism” doctrine – figure she probably just has Pre-MS … Their reasoning goes something like this: “Whether or not God decided to kill her axons and dendrites, and whether or not the clit’s real, he made her a woman, so he clearly didn’t intend for her to cum.”

Dude walks into a store going, “I need a ball gag… I brought a note from my dentist…” Cops breaking down doors… “Do you have a license for that showerhead, ma’am?” This fucking state… Where’s William Tecumseh Sherman when you need him?

I’m confused though … Do you need a doctor’s note to buy a banana, or several large grapes and a string??? … “I’m sorry ma’am, your insurance covers these gerkins, but the cucumbers are considered elective. I think you need to check your dill-dosage again.” … OK no segue needed … 30 seconds on the clock … “Ideas for the Medicinal Sex Shop” … GO!!!

Alright.., quick visit to the RXXX shop… I guess “Prickorette Phallic Cessation Device” is too easy, huh?

The oral fixation is the hardest part – cigarettes or pole, I assume … Ok, what about …

The Strap-Oncology Ward: “Our Ream-O-Therapy leads to Spray-diation, or your money back.”

How about some kind of blood pressure cuff (slash) penis pump… Engorged with blood-pressure cuff, I guess?

That’s what those things at Duane Reade are for. Makes a lot more sense. We’re getting off track. This is serious! Medical Dildo Store! Focus! … H2O-Face: Colon Hyrdrotherapy Kits

Pepcid AC/DC. It would be… I don’t know, like a lubicidal antacid or something.

The Happy Rear-Ending Personal Massager

How about something for ejaculatory incontinence? A French Trickler of some sort.

“Semi-Colon Tool Softener” … For that gay erection that lasts more than 4 hours.

Did you just say, “gay erection”? They have different erections? Those lucky bastards. Anyway, how about “Per-vert Devil Anal Hamster-Vacs”?

6 Million Dollar Manhood: Prosthetic Third Legs … Better, Longer, Slower

Golden shower curtains? They probably have a whole aisle for anti-piss-tamines.

The new analgesic anti-inflammatory suppository: “Benadryled in the Aspirin”

Yeah, but at KY Mart all the suppositories are ribbed. Um… Bausch and Come spermicidal eye drops.

“The Phallus Chalice Buyers Club” … And yes, that breaks the ice on AIDS jokes, in case you were being a gentleman.

Let’s face it, if I was gentleman I wouldn’t know about the spermicidal eye drops. How about Spermometer brand vibrating rectal thermometers?

The DVDAids Cocktail: By Magic Johnson & Johnson & Johnson & Johnson

Woman sues Georgia town over “Dildo by prescription only” law: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/05/16/georgia-woman-sues-town-for-banning-sale-of-sex-toys-without-a-doctors-prescription/

And finally tonight, in “Patriarching Ropes of Jism” news, a seventeen year old attendee at a homeschool prom in Richmond, Virginia was kicked out of the dance last week because she was wearing a prom dress. The alleged immoderate temptress was told that her dress, while meeting the prom’s guidelines for length, was none the less giving some of the boys (quote) “impure thoughts”. The organizers said they’d explored some other methods of keeping the boys at the prom from having impure thoughts, including anesthetics and murdering them, but ultimately landed on kicking the hot chicks out.

Yeah it’s the dress that’s the problem … “That dress may go down to her ankles, but I’d still put my needle in her fabric.” … 17-year-old home-schooled boys could see a girl in sweatpants and t-shirt – covered in vomit – and they’ll be glad they aren’t in sweatpants too.

In a guest post on her sister’s blog titled “Fuck the Patriarchy”, Clare pointed out that if she’s being ogled by a bunch of grown men because her legs are showing, it should really be the responsibility of the grown men to get the fuck out. Fucking perverts. Look, I saw the pictures on her website. She’s underage. Two and a half months from now it would be perfectly okay to beat off of a video of her pissing on a midget, but until then, it’s perverse.

But if the person masturbating is under 17, and the midget is under 17 (do they live much longer than that anyway?), it should be all good … As important as it is for “audience building” to discuss the gray area related to the Legal Lolita Line … interrupt me whenever you- …

17 year old girl kicked out of home school prom for wearing a prom dress: http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/05/13/3437464/teen-girl-prom-impure-thoughts/

And that’ll bring the headlines to a screeching halt for this week. Heath, thanks as always.

Jew-manji!

And when we come back, Lucinda will be here to make jokes about assplay.

Pitch:

In 2014 alone, god will murder 24,000 people with fully preventable bolts of lightning.

He’ll kill another 10,000 by causing the earth to tremble with his rage.

In the time it takes you to listen to this episode, he’ll have starved four hundred and thirty eight children to death.

…unless you listen to us on “fast”, in which case he save-killed only, like three fifty, but still …

In fact, this year alone, god will kill 350 Americans by drowning them in their own toilets.

…but most of them are toddlers, so it’s not actually that funny.

In fact, God is the number one, two, three and four killer in the world right now. And nobody’s fighting back.

…Until now.

We at the Scathing Atheist are committed to bringing this sadistic war criminal to justice.

We’ll stop at nothing to hold god accountable or, failing that, we’ll make jokes about how small his penis is.

…and it must be pretty small if he’s that worried about us praising him all the time.

God and his earthly minions have billions of dollars and billions of adherents on their side. And all we’ve got is a bit of Laphroaig-inspired scatology.

And you can help!

That’s right. By going to Patreon (dot) com (slash) Scathing Atheist, you can make a per episode donation that helps us take the fight to Jesus.

That’s right. For one dollar an episode you’ll get longer episodes, you’ll get them before everyone else and we’ll promise to kick god in the nuts in your name if we ever happen across him.

“That’s from Jerry in Astoria, bitch!!!” But for two dollars an episode you’ll get all that stuff, plus a free digital copy of our new book, Diatribes: Volume One, 50 Essays From a Godless Misanthrope

…and we’ll hammer another nail into Jesus if he ever returns to earth.

That’s also right. But for five dollars an episode, you’ll get all that stuff, plus an autographed paperback copy of that very same book, which you’ll also have a digital copy of.

That continues to be right. And for just ten dollars an episode we’ll pretty much do anything you want except butt stuff.

That’s not exactly right, but we’ll roll with it anyway.

So “yes” on the butt stuff? We’ll pitch. Tell your wealthy atheist catcher friends.

So remember, Patreon (dot) com (slash) Scathing Atheist. Because god is a dick.

Poem – Psalms

At first I was at a loss for what to do for the Psalms poem. I mean, there’s no story or anything to work with, so how was I gonna write a poem about a bunch of crappy poems? So I decided to go with sort of a meta-Psalm. I shot for one poem that would hit on all the major topics of the various Psalms, distilling the essence of 150 shitty poems into one that actually rhymes. So without further ado; Psalms… in rhyme.

Oh god, my god, dear god, you’re god; and a god to be adored

Your ways, Yahweh, I’d say that they; betray a gracious lord.

Just look at all the gifts you gift upon your loving flock;

You’re strong and wise and clever, and you’ve got a massive cock.

Your brilliance can’t be measured, by we mere mortal men;

So when you do stuff that seems dumb to us, we must not comprehend.

Your mercy is unmeasurable, except when you get pissed,

And woe to those who anger you, as you’ll fill their assholes with your fist.

Oh god, my god, dear god, you’re god; and a god to be revered.

You’re filled with clemency and love, and thus you should be feared.

So thank you god, for though you could, you haven’t struck me down.

You haven’t boiled or sauteed me, or let my children drown.

You could have ripped my eyeballs out, and filled my skull with bees.

You could have filled my face with boils, ‘til it looked like cottage cheese.

You could have lopped my testes off, with a rusty bastard sword,

You could have filled my throat with glass, but you didn’t. Thank you, lord!

Oh god, my god, dear god, you’re god, and a mighty god indeed,

So when my foes rise up against me, please make those fuckers bleed.

Please burn their homes to ashes, and rape their kids and wives,

And strike them with big anal warts, that itch throughout their lives.

Give them blistering urethras, then turn their piss to viscous slime;

And when the burning vesicles explode, please add a twist of lime.

Please smite them and their children, with some cancerous disease.

After all you’re so forgiving, so you’ll forgive yourself with ease.

Oh god, my god, dear god, you’re god, and god dammit, you’re the shit.

I don’t mean to be a fanboy, here; but you wrote the holy writ.

And in the book you wrote we learn, that you’re the best thing that exists.

And I think I see a tiny spot; of your ass that’s not been kissed.

So let me tell you once again about how impressed we are down here.

And we forgive you for the debacle of a world you’ve engineered.

Your great and good and wonderful, and to you, I tip my hat.

For though you are omniscient, you need me to tell you that.

Bible Story

“Run gather up the young ‘uns folks! It’s time for Lucinda Lugeons Bible Stories for Kids.”

Gather round boys and girls. Today we’re going to open up our bibles to Esther and learn about one of the bible’s lesser known sadistic bitches. Now, Esther was born into a Jewish family at a time when it wasn’t very fun to be a Jew… which is most of the time, historically speaking.

She was raised by her cousin, Mordecai, and looked forward to a life of dejected servitude until one day she got her big break. The king of the whole land of Persia decided that he wanted to have sex with her. So he took her for his harem.

Now, a harem is a big group of women that only the king was allowed to fuck. And every night the women would take turns riding the royal cock, sometimes two or three of them at a time. So Esther patiently waited her turn to wow the king with her sexual acrobatics. You see, boys and girls, all the harem girls knew how to work the shaft and some of them knew how to work the balls, but only Esther knew how to get the prostate involved.

So one night the king called for her, and she fucked him every way but sideways. And he was so impressed he made her the queen. He still kept all the harem girls and boned them on the side, but of all the women he was having sex with, she was his favorite.

And she was happy with this arrangement because it sucked less than being a slave, and she didn’t want to risk her new sugar daddy by telling him she was a Jew, so she didn’t.

But while she was teaching the king about joys of having his salad tossed, some other people were plotting against him. But luckily, Esther’s cousin Mordecai heard about the plot and warned the king, who then had all the people who were going to overthrow him brutally executed before throngs of jubilant masses.

(Hooray!)

And everybody was happy except for one brutish anti-semite named Haman. He was a very successful soldier and had a lot of money and a nice house, but he couldn’t enjoy any of it because he really, really hated Jews. So one day he hatched a plan to kill all the Jews and asked the king if it would be okay.

The king approved the Pogrom but asked if he could do it later. After all, if you’re going to massacre a populace, you should at least give them some warning. And when the Jews found out, they were really scared, so they got weapons and waited for Haman to attack.

But when Esther found out, she decided to do something about it, so she asked the king and Haman to have a banquet with her and they agreed. And while they were eating, Esther said to her husband, “You know how Haman wants to kill all the Jews?”

And he said, “Mm-hmm.”

And she said, “Well I’m a Jew, so that means he wants to kill me!”

And he said, “That’s funny… you don’t look Jewish.”

And she said, “That’s not the point. Either you have Haman killed or you can lick the syrup out of your own asshole.”

So the king had Haman killed and instead of recalling all the soldiers, he just let the Jews kill them. And a relatively high percentage of the people in the story lived happily ever after. The end.

Outro:

Before we snub out the roach tonight, I wanted to recognize a few of the people who make are job easier every week. A lot of our listeners help out in the research department by sending us news items, suggesting diatribe subjects and tossing out ideas for skits and stuff. We always appreciate that and we thank everybody who does it, but there are three people who really go above and beyond, one of whom doesn’t like hearing her name on the podcast and the other two of whom are Paul and (at) WorkMX on Twitter, so to these three valiant and astute listeners, I sincerely thanks you for making my life that much easier.

Also, once more, a huge thanks goes out to all the people who continue to wish Lucinda a speedy recovery… and we also really appreciate the sudden influx of donations while she’s out of work. She’ll be back to work on June 2nd, so if you wanted to keep that influx of donations coming, we sure wouldn’t mind.

That’s all the blasphemy we’ve got for you tonight, but we’ll be back in 168 hours to do Proverbs, which can’t possibly be as bad as Psalms but no doubt still sucks. If you can’t wait that along, be sure to check out some bonus Scatheism on our Facebook page, our Twitter account and our YouTube channel… and yes, I’ll be posting an assload of backlogged stuff on YouTube in the next couple of weeks.

Of course I need to thank Heath for continuing to be an offensive bastard in an endearing way. I need to thank Lucinda for powering through the pain to make dick jokes with us tonight. And, of course, big thanks to Steve for this week’s Farnsworth Quote (slash) exploration of atheist podcast taglines. And believe it or not, he actually had more than that when he sent it, I just had to trim it down to fit into the intro. Anyway, thanks for that, and glad to be in the company of so many fine podcasters… as well as Carl from the Post Rapture Looting Podcast.

But most of all, I need to thank this week’s most valuable hominids, Peter, Ted, Ullrich, Dave, Danny, Donovan, Jonathan, Matt, Cat, David, Michael and Kenny. Peter, Ted and Ullrich, whose intellects make smartphones self-conscious; Dave, Danny and Donovan, who attract pussy faster than a pen-laser; Jonathan, Matt and Cat, whose cocks outrank Donald Sterling on the “World’s Biggest Dick” list; and David, Michael and Kenny, who are so sexy even their own pheromones want to fuck them.

These twelve exceptional examples of excellence have expedited our expletives this week by giving us money. And since we just did a whole two minute bit about donating to us on Patreon (dot) com (slash) ScathingAtheist, that’s all I’ll say about that. Except thanks.

And if you want to help out but you spent all your money on something frivolous like insulin or ransom, you can help us out for free by leaving us a glowing review on iTunes or Stitcher and telling your friends about the show.

Categories: Show Transcripts Tags: agnostic podcast, antitheist podcast, atheism, atheist, atheist podcast, Childrens Bible Stories, Christianity, faith, religion, science, skeptic, the Book of Esther

Episode 65 Partial Transcript

May 15, 2014 Noah Lugeons 4 comments

by Heath Enwright and Noah Lugeons

Note: Transcript contains elements that were removed from the episode due to time constraints

LINK TO SUPPORT US ON PATREON

LINK TO BUY THE BOOK

LINK TO EPISODE

Warning: Lucinda isn’t feeling quite up to recording so this episode won’t even have that typical shred of innocence.

Sponsor:

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And now, the Scathing Atheist.

Intro:

It’s Thursday,

It’s May 15th,

And Johnny Football gets media attention for taking a shit. Imagine if he takes the Browns to the Super Bowl.

I only have so much imagination. I’m Noah Lugeons,

I’m Heath Enwright. And from “A black guy, a Puerto Rican, and Jew walk into a bar” New York, New York,

And “Oh hell no they don’t” Podunk, Georgia, this is the Scathing Atheist.

In this week’s episode,

We’ll discuss Noah’s rash,
A Tennessee college will stand up for cousin-fucking,
And Cash from Atheists on Air will join us for a ReasonCon-versation.

But first, the diatribe.

Diatribe:

I get this message on the Scathing Atheist Facebook page the other day. It’s from a Catholic dude who’s going way out of his way to be an asshole politely. The message asks if we support “free speech” on our page, because he would like to politely hop on the page and politely counter some of the arguments that are being made.

Now, this struck me as odd because there’s really no argumentation on our Facebook page. I mean… did he want to dispute the fact that the show notes and transcripts for episode 64 were available? Did he want to refute the fact that we would be interviewing Cash from Atheist on Air this week? Did he want to disagree that I was finally done reading Psalms?

So I responded with an analogy I was proud of; it was one that I thought succinctly made my point in a language he could understand without being rude. I said, “suppose your church put up a Facebook page where you coordinated the bake sale and posted upcoming mixers and stuff. How polite would the atheist that came on the page to dispute the existence of god have to be before you wouldn’t think he was being an asshole?”

I went on to explain the debating religion isn’t really the purpose of our Facebook page. We maintain it to keep our audience up to speed with what’s going on with the show; I use it to share information on atheist events or share new stories that I think our audience will find interesting. That being said, there are no shortage of Facebook pages set up specifically for atheists and theists to debate. I offered a few links and told him to knock himself out.

I even went on to say that he was, of course, perfectly welcome to post anything he wants on our Facebook page, but I warned him that he may not get polite, respectful responses.

I thought it was a good answer. I thought, for some reason, that he might realize that not every atheist venue is designed to engage religious people… some of them are for atheists. But apparently he missed all the words but one. I wrote three paragraphs of explanation, but all he saw was that I used the “a-hole word”.

So rather than engaging me on any of the points I made, he sends a follow up message where he politely psychoanalyzes me and the anger issues that drive me to use naughty words so much. He admitted that sometimes he (and I quote) “uses the F word and regrets it”, but only when he’s really, really angry. So why was I so angry at god?

And if you follow us on Facebook, you may have already seen my response, but if you haven’t, it went a little something like this:

Dear Polite Asshole (except I actually used his name),

I should start off by pointing out that your idiosyncratic aversion to profanity is of absolutely no concern to me. If you strictly use “fuck” as an expression of anger, you’ve obviously overlooked the multifaceted utility of this wonderful syllable. I use the word “fuck” for a variety of reasons and an expression of anger is only one of them. Often I use it because (when you’re not dealing with people who are irrationally prudish) it gives the discussion an air of informality that allows it to be more familial. This is probably not true for most practicing Catholics, but as neither my show nor its ancillary Facebook Page is for practicing Catholics, I am under no obligation to give a shit.

Additionally, I often I use the word “fuck” because it has a vulgar explanatory power that no other word has. If I were to refer to the systematic rape and torture and consequent global cover-up that you financially supported by giving to the Catholic church, for example, I could refer to it as “child molestation” but that has such a clinical feel to it. It fails to have the emotional impact of “child fucking”. When discussing such horrors, I feel obligated to do so in a way that doesn’t sugar coat it.

But it’s true that I also use “fuck” as an expression of anger. When, for example, you hear from a person who has funded a worldwide cabal of child rapists that thinks he deserves an explanation for filthy language on the internet, it is tempting to tell that person to go fuck themselves. Any lesser expression would fail to properly encapsulate the aversion I have to such petty nonsense.

Respectfully, Noah

So once more, to any masochistic theist who is listening; you’re an uninvited vegan at a barbecue. Eat some chips and shut the fuck up.

Headlines:

Joining me for headlines tonight is the Rush Limbaugh of good, Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready for some justified assholery?

Right – I’m a bigot, but for the left.

Annie Hall reference for the win.

In our lead story tonight, in “Goodell Without God” news, despite the best efforts of an allegedly omnipotent being, this year’s NFL draft made the league less Christian, and more openly gay. For many Amyrrhicans, it might as well be soccer at this point.

And for our British listeners, soccer is what we call that sport you guys pretend is hardcore even though you don’t need any padding to play it. And for our Australian listeners, think Australian rules football only it makes sense and Colonel Sanders isn’t there.

This story has two parts: First, we have San Diego State running back Adam Muema, who skipped this year’s scouting combine at the last second because he was (quote) “following God” (end quote). Muema claims God told him that if he skipped the event, he would definitely get drafted by the Seattle Seahawks. Turns out a bunch of players – even Christian ones, oddly enough – did show up for the combine, so he obviously went undrafted.

He must have received his divine instructions out of context.

On the other side of the coin – the tails side I guess – we have former Missouri defensive end (he’s a power bottom) Michael Sam, who is now a St. Louis Ram, and the first openly gay player in the NFL. I especially enjoyed that in the process, Sam made millions of Christians squirm with bigotry when he kissed his boyfriend on national television after being drafted. Many congratulations are in order here …

Most of all to the Rams head office. Because anybody could have drafted him, but only the Packers and Browns would have offered up an easier slate of buttsex jokes. So go Rams.

And congrats for taking a roster spot from Adam Muema, who tweeted about talks with the Rams pre-draft. And most importantly, congrats for ensuring that the first openly gay player is a Rams Defensive End!!! You can’t make this shit up!!! The only way this gets better, is if he moves to the other side of the ball, and learns to play tight end.

God’s #1 pick still on waiver wire: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/05/10/nfl-prospect-who-skipped-out-on-scouting-combine-because-god-told-him-to-doesnt-get-drafted

And in “Exiting two by two” news tonight, a Christian college in Dayton, Tennessee has lost nearly a quarter of its full-time professors in the last couple of months after the board of trustees insisted on glorifying incest. Faculty at Bryan College…

…”Go Lions”…

… were responding to a recent update to the school’s statement of belief, which added an assertion that (quote) “Adam and Eve were historical people that were not created from previously existing lifeforms” (end quote)

“Have we ever observed evidence of Adam or Eve? No. But like I said, they’re not observational people … They’re historical people.”

School president Stephen Livesay insists that these minor “just how seriously do we want to pretend to take this doctrinal horse shit?” type dust ups are common in Christian Colleges, oblivious to the mathematical result of repeatedly losing a quarter of one’s faculty.

How much faculty do they need to study 2 books?!? And you know they skim over Psalms.

Students have joined in the protest by signing petitions, writing letters to the board of trustees and wearing black armbands. Their message is clear, “We want some true stuff sprinkled in with the wacky bullshit we want you to teach us.”

Christian college loses nearly a quarter of it’s professors after insisting on biblical literalism: http://www.timesnews.net/article/9076475/bryan-college-losing-nearly-25-of-faculty-after-adam-and-eve-controversy

And from the “Clergymen in Black” file, Pope Franetarium finally weighed in on whether Catholics should splash Martian space travelers with heaven water, if said aliens sprung to existence, came to Earth, and asked nicely. And yes, they should.

I mean, sure, this sounds silly, but promising to baptize Martians might be the most substantive thing he’s done in his pontificate.

Along with letting atheists apply for Catholic heaven … Apparently the Pope isn’t the first church official to consider hydro-fracking souls on other planets. Vatican scientist Guy Consolmagno made a similar suggestion about baptizing aliens in 2010. But let’s just pump the brakes here … There’s something called “Vatican Scientist”?!? What’s this guy been doing all this time?!?

Here’s my guess. Day one they sit him down and say, “justify transubstantiation with your fancy science words.” Like a Manhattan project of futility there. Bunch of brilliant scientists that didn’t read the fine print on the employment contract.

So here’s a real statement from the Pope: (quote) “If – for example – tomorrow an expedition of Martians came […] Martians, right? Green, with that long nose and big ears, just like children paint them … [Just like vaguely racist children paint them] … And one says, ‘But I want to be baptized!’ What would happen?” (end quote) … They would bathe those green men, is what would happen! Useless counterfactual parsed! We are Catholicism! Good night Vatican City!

Pope Francis would baptize martians: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/12/pope-francis-aliens_n_5310935.html?utm_hp_ref=religion

And in “What about the Father and the Holy Ghost of Sam?” news tonight, Jesus has forgiven the slightly infamous underachieving serial killer David Berkowitz for murdering the same number of people in his entire serial killing career as die every year from fatigue.

Son of Sam, one one hundredth as dangerous as auto-erotic asphyxiation.

So despite being an unrepentant murderer, and such a crappy one that more that half of his victims survived, Berkowitz was able to exploit the little known loophole in Christianity known as the “we’ll take whoever we can get at this point contingency” and earned his way into Heaven. Me? Still going to hell. Son of Sam? Golden-fucking-ticket. Great theology you guys have going there, by the way.

Just reinforces the terrible message that everyone should be working the Saint Augustine strategy … Which goes something like, “Lord: Grant me chastity and virtue, but not just yet.” Just let me finish this murder spree, and then I promise I’ll get all saved up, right after that.

Berkowitz explained his application of apostolic white-out this week while being denied parole for his feeble little serial killer career. And I’m sorry to keep talking up what a crappy serial killer he is, but I think New Yorkers need to hear this shit. He’s ranked right up there with such well known serial killers as Robert Berdella and some crazy chick that killed her family. And you guys were scared shitless of this dude for a whole year. Seattle’s had seven Son of Sam’s in the last three weeks or something and they aren’t pussing out about it.

It was probably that thug Richard Sherman … And like 6 other guys.

Son of Sam claims Jesus has forgiven him: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/13/son-of-sam_n_5314336.html?utm_hp_ref=religion&ir=Religion

And in “Blue Waffle Ridge” news, school offi- (Google that by the way) School officials at Blue Ridge High School in Greenville, South Carolina decided to censor a painting by senior Tracie Holtzclaw entitled Rape Culture, removing it from the district art exhibition two days prior to the event. The student artist is a victim of rape herself, and says that the piece explores frustration with the reaction of her Christian community, most of whom told her she was probably dressing too slutty.

Well the painting was kind of asking to be force fucked by a passing art patron.

Holtzclaw disputed the decision to remove the piece, and despite playing her permanent rape victim card that trumps everything, still no love … So what’s their problem with Rape Culture?

They seem okay with it when it’s not a painting…

Well, not only did the title have a scary word like ‘culture’, the painting of a topless, tattooed woman has a pre-censor bar painted over what the district assumes would have been a nipular side boob area. And this particular brand of whimsy was a little too nuanced, even for the art historians and museum curators that run the censorship program in Greenville, South Carolina.

Proof that she kind of nailed the whole concept of “art” if you ask me. I don’t know why people think “art” is so hard to define. If it pisses off conservatives in Greenville, South Carolina and it isn’t a black person voting, it’s art.

Seems like at the very least, they could have allowed the piece, but with the word ‘rape’ blacked out. (Or maybe hang a hijab over it.) Or just call it Nonconsensual Attempted Fatherhood Culture that day … Or some other clever title that two offensive atheist assholes could come up with on the spot right now …

So 30 seconds on the clock … “Sexually Explicit Artwork Titles” … GO!!!

I wanna start with the Hymen Pop-Art master Glandy Warhol… hm… something about some soup… in the can… Shit, I pass…

Botticelli’s “Girth of Penis”

Same subject as the “Penis de Milo”… also known as Venus on the half-stock. Cautionary piece on the dangers of repeated handjobs, I think.

With the arms falling off … That’s a highbrow lowbrow reference … Very hard to pull off … What about: “Permanent Scarry Night”?

That one’s by Unmarked Van Gogh, right?

Yeah same guy that did that famous mugshot of himself … “Self-Portrait of a Rapist as a Young Man”

Girl with a Pearl Necklace?

Generous lovers give you the necklace and the earrings … Was she wearing those when we walked into the museum earlier? … What about: “Dogs Playing Poker in the Rear”?

Little too highbrow for me. How about the Arc de Triomphent Ropes of Jism.

Yeah better high brow than right in the eye … Black Snake Mona Lisa … You always notice that bored look in her eyes, no matter where you stand.

Two girls, one fur-lined teacup? …two art history majors laughed out loud just now.

The Procreation of Adam … Touching portrait of the time God fingered his first man.

Should have called it “Adam squealing on the ceiling.”

Art show censorship in South Carolina school: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/05/10/sc-teens-rpe-culture-artwork-reflecting-her-own-sexual-assault-banned-from-art-exhibit

And finally tonight, from the “Itchy Rash on my SCOTUS” file, Roanoke County Supervisor Al Bedrosian reminded everyone this week why the recent Supreme Court ruling regarding official prayers at government meetings is fucking stupid. In the wake of the ruling he called for revisions to the county’s policies to ensure that only Christian prayers would be heard since, of course, his religion is the right one.

Which divergent sect of the right one is he, again? Baptist? Because someone recently told me very confidently that God was a Methodist. And he sounded pretty sure.

Somebody’s full of shit…

At least one of them… maybe both…

In one of earth’s greatest examples to date of not getting it, Bedrosian promised to reject any non-Christian invocation, explaining that (quote) “That does not infringe on their freedom of religion. The truth is you’re trying to infringe on my right, because I don’t believe that.” (end quote). So yes, it is clear from that statement that Al Bedrosian actually thinks that the founders of this nation specifically meant freedom of Al Bedrosian’s religion.

So this was a preemptive strike against people praying for God to convert to Islam? Which he thinks might have worked?

I think you’re giving him a lot of credit when you say “thinks”.

In wake of SCOTUS ruling, Virginia asshole promises Christian-only invocations: http://www.centerforinquiry.net/newsroom/cfi_warns_roanoke_supervisor_of_legal_action_if_christians-only_prayer_poli/

Well, I guess we’ll have to take a break from infringing on Al Bedrosian’s rights because that’s all we’ve got for headlines this week. Heath, thanks as always.

Jew-Manji!

And when we come back, Cash from Atheists On Air will be here to talk about herding cats.

Outro:

Before we clock out for the night, I wanted to thank everybody who sent my wife well-wishes this week. If you follow us on Facebook or Twitter you might know that the lovely Lucinda lost 4 ounces the hard way last week when she had her gallbladder removed. She’s recovering nicely and all the love she got from all of you really made her smile when she had no other good reason to. She’d be thanking you herself but she’s still a little dopey so on her behalf and mine, thanks a ton. Too many to mention everybody by name, but specific thanks to Dee, Bill, Suzy, Deb and Vinny. And then nonspecific thanks to a lot of other really awesome people.

That’s all the blasphemy we have for you tonight but we’ll be back in a hundred and sixty eight hours with more. If you can’t wait that long, though, you can catch me on a recent episode of the Quranify Me podcast as well as an upcoming episode of “An American Atheist”, you’ll find a link to the former in this week’s shownotes and link to the latter on our Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus accounts as soon as it’s available.

Quranify Me Podcast

And speaking of awesome podcasts that’ll be linked on this week’s shownotes, another quick thanks to Cash for giving us a bit of his time. If you haven’t checked out Atheists on Air yet, I highly recommend it. Cash is hilarious, he gets great guests and because it’s a newer show, there’s a damn good chance you can chat with his guests live if you call in. Anyway, he’s on blogtalkradio but you can also find him on this week’s shownotes.

Atheists on Air Podcast

And speaking of speaking of awesome podcast that’ll be linked on this week’s shownotes, I also need to thank David from the “My Book of Mormon” podcast for providing this week’s Farnsworth Quote. Basically giving the Book of Mormon the Thomas and the Bible (slash) Quranify Me treatment and doing it in a baritone that damn near makes me come; again, shownotes, links, et cetera.

My Book of Mormon Podcast

And at the risk of overthanking this week, I need to thank Heath for keeping the rape jokes classy. I need to thank Lucinda, who should be back to her regular Scathing Atheist duties next week. But most of all I need to thank this week’s best people, Shelly, Chuck13, Lawrence, Jamie, Donovan, Bill, Quinn, Vadim, Vinny, Ken, Jason, and Rizado. Shelly, Chuck13 and Lawrence, who are so quick-witted their neuronal pathways have onramps; Jamie, Donovan and Bill, who are mild mannered by day, but ninja-cidal by night; Quinn, Vadim and Vinny, who saw and conquered before they came, which is better; and Ken, Jason and Rizado, whose erections will be the undoing of the Extenz Hose guy’s patent..

These twelve paragons of altruism have beaten back the forces of destitution that constantly threaten our noble effort to combine secularism with the finest in flatulent humor this week by giving us money. Only those with the most impressive genitals and/or intellects have the genitals and/or intellect to give us money but if you think you’ve got the aforementioned genitals and/or intellect, you can make a per episode donation to the show at Patreon (dot) com (slash) Scathing Atheist, whilst simultaneously scoring yourself some cool Scathing Atheist shit.

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Categories: Show Transcripts Tags: agnostic, agnosticism, atheism, atheism podcast, atheist humor, atheist podcast, Christianity, faith, religion

Episode 64 – Partial Transcript

May 11, 2014 Noah Lugeons 3 comments

by Heath Enwright and Noah & Lucinda Lugeons

(Note: Transcript contains elements that were removed from the episode due to time constraints)

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Warning: It would take a lot more than Orbitz Gum to keep these guys from saying Fuck.

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And now, the Scathing Atheist.

Intro:

It’s Thursday,

It’s May 8th,

And believe it or not, when black people play golf, they’re great chippers.

I’m Noah Lugeons,

I’m Heath Enwright. And from “De-Segregated Golf Club” New York, New York,

And “Deep Fat Friar’s Club” Podunk, Georgia, this is the Scathing Atheist.

In this week’s episode,

California students deny the holocaust, and support their thesis with examples of Jews.
We’ll knock out a whole episode in less time than it takes for an Oklahoman felon to die of a lethal injection,
And theologians are still stumped by issues surround pre-op tranny weddings.

But first, the diatribe.

Diatribe:

I’m gonna do my level best tonight not to just say “ReasonCon” over and over again for thirty minutes because DAMN what a good time. Holy shit, all in one weekend, I get my first chance to hang out with our listeners, I get my first chance to hang out with other atheist podcasters in person, I get my ass handed to me in a debate with Tracie Harris, I get a private lecture on Hitler’s Table Talk monologues from Dr. Richard Carrier and I get to make masturbation jokes at the expense of a former pastor.

Okay, yes, I’m blatantly name-dropping and shamelessly bragging. Sorry about that, but DAMN what a good time. Holy shit what a good time. Had a blast.

This was actually my first time going to an atheist convention. I’ve been to some skeptical cons and some science cons and I’ve been to Comic Con and shit like that, and I’ve always had a great time. But it’s nothing compared to the knowledge that at any moment I can actually just say what I’m thinking without first planning an evacuation route. I can make the Jesus joke that occurs to me as it occurs to me. Not something I’m used to experiencing in public.

But I don’t want to make the weekend seem like it was all open bars, captivating conversations, hedonistic debauchery and brilliant lectures. There was way more to it than just that. I got something while I was there that I needed. Something I’ve never gotten before and probably couldn’t get anywhere else.

See, I was lucky when it came to religion. My parents were nominally religious but they were okay with me exploring spirituality in any whacky way I chose. I got beat up a few times for being a “devil wor’shupper” and I got ostracized by a few teachers for standing up for the First Amendment once in a while, but by and large I got through life with no religious scars. I started this podcast because religion annoys me and it’s bullshit. But that’s all it was for me; an intellectual annoyance.

And sure, I’m aware of the real victims of religion. I’m aware of the oppressed women and the abused kids and the sexually dysfunctional adults and the estranged children and the suicidal gays and the destitute marks, but I’ve never met them. I’ve never spoken with them. I’ve never looked into their eyes while they told me those stories.

This weekend I met Phoebe; an amazing young woman who is somehow filled with confidence and strength despite being dragged from one sexist cult to another through her youth. I met Derrick, whose mother hasn’t returned a message from him for three years because she’s so ashamed to have raised an atheist. I met Chris who spent years contemplating suicide because he couldn’t stop jerking off. I met Ryan whose stepfather couldn’t possibly have been abusing him and his brother the way he claimed because his stepfather was a good Christian man. I met Bobby whose father sexually abused him and used the Bible to justify it.

But the crimes of religion aren’t always so grandiose and they don’t have to be. Because I also met Ben, who was a well-adjusted, super-bright dude that almost gave up on his Chemistry major to pursue a career in pretending that space-Jesus was for real. He thought better of it, but he told me about a friend who didn’t. A bright, promising mind foregoing scientific advancement in favor of promoting ignorance.

Now don’t get me wrong here. I don’t think pursuing theology or biblical studies is necessarily a waste. I also met Richard Carrier this weekend and I’m damn glad he’s devoted his brilliance to examining the Bible. Every pursuit has value as long as it’s as the pursuit is honest. But what is the societal cost when intelligent people devote themselves to perpetuating a lie? How many chemists do we lose? How many doctors or biologists or engineers never got to do anything useful because they were busy turning crackers into zombified Jew-flesh?

Every college degree in divinity is a college degree in not-something-else. Every church is taking up space that could be used for a not-church. Every pastor who pounds a pulpit could be hammering a fucking nail. It’s silly to pretend that society doesn’t pay for this shit. Every time you see a nice church surrounded by shitty houses, you’re looking at the societal cost. Every time you see a wealthy preacher next to a struggling teacher, you’re looking at that cost.

And if you ever feel like you’ve seen it so many times your eyes have grown numb to it, I suggest hitting up an atheist convention. From what I understand, they have a way of opening eyes.

Headlines:

Joining me for headlines tonight is escaped ReAsonConvict, Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to regale us with tales from the event?

ReAsonCon in Hickory, North Carolina was the real deal!!! Plenty of free-range, locally-sourced, Hickory-smoked baby bacon. The best pork comes straight from the stork!!! MMMM GODLESS BITCHES!!! Big thanks to the everyone involved, including the dedicated, talented, and hilarious hosts of Atheists on Air … Cash and Love!!!

Along with Gene and everybody else from Hickory Humanists… It was a phenomenally awesome time, which was good, because I needed all the pre-existing good mood I could get when I woke up Monday and read our lead story for the week. Normally I’d try to write some witty headline to describe it or something, but I really don’t think I could do better than Andy Borowitz from the New Yorker, so in our lead story tonight “In Landmark Decision, Supreme Court Strikes Down Main Reason Country Was Started.”

Or in other words: “Roberts Court digs up James Madison’s grave and shits in his mouth.”

Okay, yeah… that was better than Borowitz. And of course we’re talking about the controversial 5-4 decision that upheld the right of the Town of Greece, New York to wrap the Bill of Rights around a pile of dog shit and then light it on fire and leave it on some old dude’s porch to see if he’ll stomp it out. Writing the Majority opinion, Anthony “What the fuck ever happened to you, you bumbling tit?” Kennedy said, and I’m paraphrasing here, “Fuck the first amendment. Ya’ll keep bringing up old shit.”

Can’t local politicians in Greece, NY just pray for their job to matter in the car, before they walk into the meetings? … That’s literally the trade-off here. We had to either scrap the First Amendment, or ask people to shit before the meeting. And we decided on diapers in the meeting.

Well, the majority opinion actually claimed that the prayers didn’t violate the first amendment because they didn’t (quote) “denigrate nonbelievers or religious minorities, threaten damnation or preach conversion.” Because isn’t that what the Constitution says? I believe the exact portion he’s referring to is the part that reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion unless everybody’s really nice about it. And then it’s okay.”

But they’re not even being really nice about it!!! In what sense is threatening damnation, and preaching conversion capable of being friendly?!?

Now in the aftermath of the decision, the American Humanist Association announced a program that will help train people to give secular invocations while the Freedom From Religion Foundation has offered a reward to the person who gives the best one. Because, let’s face it, if we were supplicant, we would be religious, which is why eventually we always win fights like this.

If the Scathing Atheists are allowed to make invocations before redneck town meetings, they’ll stop praying real fast.

I’ll be adding links to more info on the AHA and FFRFs efforts on the shownotes for this episode and I strongly encourage everyone who listens to this to take this one seriously. This is some activism we can all do in our hometowns that will really make a difference.

Supreme Court upholds prayer before public meetings: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303647204579543572388368040?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303647204579543572388368040.html

LINK TO AHA SECULAR INVOCATION INFORMATION

LINK TO FFRF SECULAR INVOCATION REWARD INFO

And from “The Most Dangerous Game Theory” file, one of Oklahoma’s tax-paid executioners botched a routine iocane powder procedure, and witnesses were forced to see that awkward, prolonged, death seizure look on the perp’s face for about 20 minutes. This is why atheists only murder unborn children. No eye contact.

Yeah, I hate it when state sponsored barbarism is so barbaric. If the two terms weren’t mutually exclusive, I’d suggest we execute prisoners like a civilized society.

In order to avoid bureaucratic ineptitude like this in the future – and keeping in mind they still want to continue murdering people – many Republican Christians are calling for privatization of the capital punishment industry, making it more efficient, and profitable at the same time. Or … instead of no-bid contracts for domestic vigilante Halliburton death squads, we could realize that capital punishment costs taxpayers more than life in prison … and also murder is probably wrong.

Just when you think the Republican irony meter can’t go any higher. As it turns out, they only had issues with the “state sponsored” part of “state sponsored death panels.”

I know it’s not a top priority like “Don’t whittle figurines”, but something along the lines of “Shalt not Kill” is in the 5-7 range depending on how you mistranslate the perfect word of god and his ten most important commandments. But more importantly – just in general – if somebody asks you if you should murder people … and you have to consult a textbook … that’s problematic … REALLY pedantic at best.

Death Penalty Sort-of Works Eventually: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/05/02/what-it-was-like-watching-the-botched-oklahoma-execution/

And in “Defrock ‘em in the ass” news tonight, the Vatican has finally released details of exactly how they’ve disciplined priests accused of child rape and torture. Before we get to the sanctions, I’d like to point out that they did so while being questioned by the UN committee that monitors the implementation of the UN Treaty against torture, so for the assholes that email me and tell me calling it torture is hyperbolic, fuck you. It is absolutely torture; it’s torture of the worst kind and the people doing the torture no longer dispute that fact. So stop standing up for child torturing rapists.

Yeah, let’s just take a moment and consider one more time, that Christianity is appearing before the UN Anti-Torture Committee. Must be a few awkward moments … “So this last part’s just a formality … Embarrassed to even ask, but it’s our last checkbox here … You guys keep the pedophiles away from kids after you find out, right? You’re not still setting them up with jobs as Chuck E Cheese bathroom attendants, right?”

The numbers also cast enormous suspicion on the whole “Yeah, sure, back in the 50s we fucked the hell out of some kids, but now we’re cool” argument the Vatican’s been peddling for the last couple years. More than 3400 credible accusations of abuse have been referred to the Vatican in the last ten years including more than 400 cases just last year.

If they’re gonna equate institutional pedophilia to cigarette smoking, then we get to put a Surgeon General’s warning on every bible from now on. Because they’re still smoking boy pole!!!

Warning: Do not use while operating civic machinery. I like it. So in 848 of the nearly 3500 cases, the priests ID card and his super-saver discount card were revoked. And that represented the tough punishment. They didn’t get to be priests anymore. Which means that in more than 2,500 instances they did get to be priests anymore! The Rapists!

Vatican releases stats on punishments for molester priests: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/06/vatican-figures-disciplined-priests-sex-abuse

And in “@GOP + @GOD = #BFF” news, the Republican National Committee tweeted the following over the weekend: (quote) “Religious freedom is our God-given right.” (end quote) … Also included was a link to a strongly-worded petition demanding that President Obama stop helping Satan by refusing to fill the crucially important position called: Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom. Rumors on the Hill suggest the currently serving Traveling Secretary to the Assistant Quidditch Game Warden is perfect for the job … But then you get Harry Potter fans petitioning Obama about the free exercise clause.

Right. The guys that have the judiciary running on fumes and dryer lint are worried about this unfilled post?

Knowing that Jesus was less about public well-being, and more about deadly weapons, the GOP recently bolstered it’s Christ-Cred even further, when it blocked the selection of an extremely qualified Surgeon General nominee, for his role in angering the NRA by suggesting bullet wounds may be harmful to your health. Doesn’t the First Amendment say Christians can’t vote because that would be crazy?

Yeah, but as of this week we’re not doing the First Amendment anymore.

RNC tweets about being the god party and Obama oppressing religious freedom: http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/republican-party-announces-it-is-officially-the-party-of-god/politics/2014/05/05/86744

And in “63% of Respondents said “Ungh….”” news tonight, a new study finds that Evangelicals are still stunningly stupid. (Stunningly?) A new survey by The Associated Press looked into America’s willingness to accept established, fully demonstrated scientific fact and to the surprise of nobody, we flunked miserably. The survey showed that the Evangelicals were leading the way, proudly marching toward hegemonized stupidity, but kind of running into each other and falling down a lot.

Like chickens proudly marching to the KFC factory … It’s okay to be stupid, but when all the smartest chickens do shitloads of research on KFC, and show you videos of the Fargo Chipper, you halt the fucking procession!!!

Yes, but this study casts doubt on any analogy that assumes Evangelicals have intelligence equal to that of a chicken. Okay, so the numbers. They looked at four key scientific facts and asked people if they were confident that these demonstrable, unambiguous FACTS were true. More than three quarters of Evangelicals expressed doubt in the big bang and evolution; with more than half doubting anthropogenic climate change and the established age of the earth.

We finally have actual evidence suggesting a flood, and the Christians are denying it???

This is further proof that we didn’t need that religion stifles scientific advancement and it’s not the sporadic influence the apologists would have you believe. I’d argue that if this was the only negative influence of religion, that would be enough to justify this show and my outrage. And it’s not. Because they also fuck kids.

Oh, right I forgot about that, since we covered it two stories ago!

Study: Evangelicals are still stunningly stupid: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/01/ap-survey-faith-science_n_5249154.html?utm_hp_ref=religion

And in “Wiles E Coyote Ugly” news, conservative North Carolina Senate candidate Steve Wiles – whilst campaigning on the gay-marriage-ban platform – was recently outed as a former drag queen emcee at a Winston-Salem gay bar, performing under the stage name, “Miss Mona Sinclair”.

The greatest part of this story is that when they asked the staunchly anti-gay rights candidate if he himself was gay, he said, and I quote, “I really won’t make any comment on that.” So yeah, he really dodged a bullet there. They almost figured him out.

Yeah close one … So after being fired from his/her job as a promoter for the 2011 Miss Gay America pageant, for (quote) “conduct unbecoming” to the organization, it seems Wiles decided he/she was better suited to perform conduct unbecoming to a politician.

What kind of a tease is it to mention “Conduct unbecoming of a Miss Gay America promoter” and then not give details. Motherfuckers…

Obviously we’ve already got 30 seconds on the clock for this one … “Republican Drag Queen Bar Names” … GO!!!

Forged Bush

The GOP Spot

I was gonna says the “Trans Old Party”

SantoRum and Coke

I don’t mind admitting, that place gives me a Boehner. How about “Gippers & Strippers: The Home of Trickle Down Your Back Economics.”

Ted’s Gay Cruise?

Colon Pow!

Tap That Ashcroft

Chris (equals) Christie? Great place to get your tunnel jammed.

Kind of like “Vicar/Victoria” …

The Oral Majority

The Dick Army Gravy Train

Prostate’s Rights?

Entrance in the Back Tucker Carlson’s

The LGBT Party.

Adam’s Applebees

Anti-gay politician once worked as drag queen at gay bar: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/anti-gay-north-carolina-republican-candidate-worked-drag-queen-gay-bar-report-article-1.1779271

And finally tonight, in “Holocaust of Living” news, a high school in Rialto, California learned the stupid way that you shouldn’t assign kids to write a paper entitled “Did the holocaust really happen?” Eighth grade students in the school were asked to do some research and write a paper explaining whether they believed the holocaust was (a) the holocaust or (b) a political scheme concocted to influence public emotion. And they somehow failed to know in advance that they’d reached “drooling into your soup” levels of idiocy here.

If I remember high school correctly, that means I could have gotten an A on a holocaust denial essay, as long as I used transition words like “moreover”, and somewhere included the phrase “encompassing a wide swath of cultural mores”.

I should point out that I don’t think the topic should be off the table for discussion or anything. If somebody wants to research the historical evidence on that one I invite them to do so because the historical evidence is FUCKING OVERWHELMING. I mean… just… what else happened to all the fucking Jews? There are censuses before the holocaust and there’s all these jews. And then there’s now. And all those Jews are gone. So sure. Look into it. Start with some of Michael Shermer’s excellent work on the subject. But don’t make a fucking history assignment out of it! And especially don’t do that if… and I don’t give a shit if this is unrelated… but especially don’t do it if the superintendent of the school is sporting the “I shit you not” name of Mohammad Z. Islam. That’s actually the dude’s name.

That was also the #2 answer when Family Feud asked 100 Texans to name the President of the United States. And the #1 answer: … George Bush.

Anyway, after fucking-duh complaints from the Anti-Defamation League, a number of other groups and most of the parents who weren’t assholes, the school apologized and scrapped the paper and replaced it with a less controversial sociology assignment entitled, “The Blacks: Do They Really Love Them Some Cornbread?”

“Rape: Legitimate Gripe or Bid for Attention?”

California School debates historical legitimacy of the holocaust: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/05/rialto-holocaust-assignment_n_5268840.html?utm_hp_ref=religion

Well I guess now that we can chalk up the rape joke we can close out the headlines tonight. Heath, thanks as always for joining me.

If they downloaded our podcast, they were asking for it.

And when we come back, Lucinda will be here to make excuses for not reading all the way through Psalms.

Babble:

Holy shit… which was, I believe, the working title for Psalms.

They also kicked around “Better Off Dead Poet’s Society” …

We had the supreme displeasure this week of reading by far the longest book of the bible and the only task less desirable than reading this shit is figuring out a way to break it down in a 10 minute segment.

Which is only slightly less desirable than Anne Coulter’s personality

Indeed. Not only is this book way too long for a meaningful overview; it’s also just a random anthology of needy, whining jews. There’s no story to talk about… it’s just a collection of crappy and often cadaverous prayers about random shit. So joining us to try to find a way to sum this sucker up is my lovely wife Lucinda. Lucinda, welcome back.

Good to be back… I’ve missed me.

As have I. So to give this discussion some kind of structure we’re gonna look not to the individual psalms, but rather to the five sections within the book. So Lucinda, why don’t you start us off with part one:

Part one:

So Basically you have two types of Psalms right off the bat. They’re either saying “Hey, you can tell how glorious god is because everything is going right for us” or they’re saying, “I know things aren’t going right for us, but that doesn’t mean that God’s not glorious.”
Right. A lot of “Damned if I do, damned if you don’t” stuff… and it’s so funny coming right off of Job. The very first psalm basically negates the entire previous book.
- And they make sure to point out that good Christians are always prosperous because their parents own valuable coastal properties. So choose your parents wisely.
And then there’s a bunch of “My god could beat up your god” and “Dear god, don’t let anybody fuck me in my sleep” shit for the next hundred and fifty chapters.
Interspersed with some serious shit talk about atheists.
Yes, apparently we’re cannibals and do only wicked acts. But that’s just because of the dude we sent back in time to terminate the Jesus pregnancy, or “Project: Hasta la vista, Baby Jesus”. That’s a nice brunch right there: Bacon, Egg, and Jesus, and a Bloody Mary with stem celery garnish.
It worked better in part two, but they’re still waiting for the second coming anyway.
Yeah, 18 is a weird one, too. It’s a mile and a half longer than all the other ones around it, but it’s about a scene where basically God kills a bunch of ninjas, so I didn’t mind so much.
I liked 22, which I call “The prayer of the pantsed nerd”
Yeah, right before the “The lord is my sheppard bit” we get the whole “My mom says you guys are only persecuting me because you’re jealous” Psalm… which was fun.
And then in Psalm 35 we get the prayer of the RoadRunner… it’s all about my enemies getting caught in their own nets and accidentally strapping themselves to their own Acme rocket…
- “And God made the law of gravity, and the coyote fell, and it was good.”

Part Two:
- Then we get to part two and it’s worth pointing out that there’s nothing that divides book one from book two except a header that says, “book two”. There’s no substantive difference between the content of either book.
- Right. The Psalms continue to basically fall into two themes: (a) Our enemies just got their asses kicked, how about god, huh? and (b) Our enemies just kicked our asses so what the hell?
- Is that what you guys were getting? I swear at a certain point I was just reading “goddy-goddy-god-god… god god ‘selah’”
- Yeah, lot of that too. But there was also plenty of backhanded praise in this one. A lot of “God, I know it seems like you’re fucking up all your godding and what not, but we know better.”
- And then there’s all the flattering, obsequious, “I sure hope god fucks my daughter” stuff … “God. God. God. Dad. Daddy. Yahweh. Hashem. Lois. Are you watching? Are you looking?”
- I giggled at Psalm 47, which was basically the biblical version of the Hokey Pokey.
- And I think it’s worth noting that Psalm 53 is basically identical to Psalm 14. They were hoping we wouldn’t notice, but we did.
- Probably not a coincidence that they doubled up on the Psalm that talked shit about atheists. Literally claims that every single atheist is evil. So all babies are evil.
- A lot of justifications for racism and genocide too. Psalm 58, 60, 63, 68… basically all the ones that aren’t telling god how massive his dick is.
- Yeah, 58 was particularly egregious. I believe that was the one where you ask god to rip out the teeth of your enemies children. Or at least make sure nobody is allowed to provide them with affordable medical coverage.

Part Three:

Then we get to part three. And I’m hoping that we’re gonna see some kind of change in theme or something, but I’ve been burned once before. Book One and Book Two were just randomly separated. But this time Book Two actually ends by saying, “Okay so that’s all of David’s shit.” So I got my hopes up one more time. Would something finally be different?
No.
Right. No. First Psalm in book three? Same “Damn is god awesome and damn do wicked people suck” nonsense for another 16 Psalms.
Right, but this book is shorter so it feels like you’re getting somewhere. It’s like driving through New England. Every few minutes you’re going over another state line and even though you’re not actually getting anywhere any faster, you feel like you are.
I wanted to point this one out, by the way, because I could be mistaken, but I’m pretty sure that in 74:11 god says he can’t help the Israelites because he’s busy fondling his own tits…. or whacking off or something.
That’s how I read it.
- If I remember correctly – and I rarely do – in King James, God was giving himself a Rusty Trombone.
And as you’re slogging through this thing, once in a while you get shit like Psalm 78, which is five Psalms long and basically rehashed all the highlights from Exodus through Second Samuel.
But here and there you’ll come across a nugget of gold. Like verse 81:10 where god says to the Jews, “Open your mouths and I shall fill them…” and then starts talking about them sucking up his dripping honey. We’re all adults here. You hear milk and honey … You think arcing ropes of jism. God made us this way.
Then you get a whole bunch of “when are you gonna get around to incinerating my enemies, god?” to wrap up book three.
I was actually pretty fond of Psalm 89, which says, and I’m paraphrasing here, “Dear god, pretty sure you fucked up the last couple years of earth. Feel free to take a mulligan.”

Part Four:

And then there’s book four, which is just more kissing of the holy holey.
And these fucking poems… when did the bible turn into a recently dumped highschool girl? “You want to read some of my poems?” “Of fucking course I don’t! Nobody ever honestly answered ‘yes’ to the question ‘Do you want to read some of my poems’!”
But at least teenage girl poems have some important themes like slitting your wrists or getting finger fucked. These ones are all about how Jews are invincible and god is such a snappy dresser. Yeah I’d love to hear those, but maybe I can read the new unedited manuscript of that novel you’ve been working on, right here on the spot. And then you can play us that song on guitar you’re halfway through writing. And then the poems, right after that.
Right, so moving on, we get another generous helping of “Hey god, did you notice how much more moral I was being than everybody else? That’s because they all suck and need a good smiting.”
And I thought Psalm 96 was an interesting one. It basically says that god is great and he knows everything… but we still have to remind him how awesome he is constantly.
Yes and in the following Psalm I believe we learn that if you have the right Poke-Ball, god can breathe fire, which is a pretty cool trick.
Put perhaps my favorite of all of them was Psalm 101 which says, and again, paraphrasing here, but it basically says “God is peace and love and justice and I’ll kill any motherfucker who disagrees.”
And you thought the Muslims made that shit up. Just another Jewish cover band like the Christians.

Part Five:

And then you mercifully get to Part Five and you’ve been through so much that you think it’s almost over… but you forget that just this part of this book is basically the length of Exodus.
And it starts off right, with a Psalm that reminds us that if you starve or rot in prison or get sick and die or drown… it’s because god hates you and you’re evil.
And we keep getting all the mixed messages. Like take Psalm 111 for example. It tells us that the lord is forgiving and trustworthy and infinitely just… and because of that, you should be scared shitless of him.
Yeah, that’s something of a running theme in this book.
But Psalms also has my favorite thing in the bible so far… the middle. Psalm 118 is the midway point so we’re definitely getting somewhere.
And interestingly enough it’s sandwiched between Psalm 117, which is the shortest chapter in the entire bible, and Psalm 119, which is the longest chapter. And believe me, this meaningless coincidence has been the subject of billions of words worth of religiotic babbling.
- And 119 was clearly written by a 5-year-old learning the Hebrew alphabet with an acrostic poem.
One of our listeners said on Facebook that he actually had to memorize that motherfucker in school. 3 pages of divine felatio… What a waste.
I think it’s interesting that in Psalm 122 they specifically call for peace in Jerusalem. So… Jews and Christians have been praying for this for how many millennia now? And they still haven’t given up on praying?
Seems clear that this god dude is a slacker.
Yes, but as Psalm 123 explains at length, as much of a pathetic fuck up as god is, you’re even worse.
And was it just me or was there a ton of thanking god for the wrong shit? Like in 126 where they thank god for no longer requiring them to be enslaved. Thanks for not hitting me in the dick with that weed eater again! Thanks for not fucking me in the ass between each pump!
Or 135, which basically says, “As evidence of god’s infinite compassion, I submit the following list of people he’s killed…”
And, of course, we have to talk about the most notorious of all the Psalms, number 137.
- Which essentially says “If a foreigner asks you to sing them a psalm, you refuse. Non-Jews can’t hear Psalms. They can listen to them, but they can’t hear them.”
It’s probably a good idea to have this Psalm at the ready, though, if you think about it. Just in case somebody captures you and tells you to sing a song, it’s nice to have a song at the ready about not wanting to sing songs for your captors and smashing their children’s skulls. That’s just prudence.
Not many songs about smashing baby skulls these days.
A lost art, indeed.
Then we get a bunch more “Have you ever met a starving kid in Africa? Bunch of assholes. Quit blaming god” type Psalms, and it draws to an overdue but merciful close.

And thus ends the longest book in the Bible and the only legitimate competitor to Vogon poetry. Next up is Proverbs which is still stupid long but it’s gonna seem like a cakewalk compared to Psalms.

Getting baptized by Sarah Palin would seem like a cakewalk after Psalms.

Yep. So no Bible for the next three weeks. Between now and then I’m just gonna read Billy Collins until my eyes hurt.

Thanks for soldiering through it, guys. Halfway and then some.

Aww, Only halfway? ( Shit.)

Halftime Score: Jews 1, Christians and Muslims 0

Outro:

Before we settle the tab tonight, I wanted to throw a huge thanks out to all the listeners that made it out to ReasonCon last weekend. It was our first chance to actually hang out with our audience a bit and it turns out we’ve got a hell of an audience. Thanks so much for making it an unforgettable weekend. Too many people to thank by name… and I’d probably fuck up and leave someone out… so just in general, thanks a ton. Really meant the world to us that so many of you were able to make it.

I also wanted to thank Paul from the Quranify Me Podcast for inviting me to take part in a skit he did for his show. Tom and Cecil, Adam Reakes and me all popped in for a few minutes and I believe you can hear that on his most recent episode. I’ll link to it in the shownotes.

LINK TO QURANIFY ME PODCAST

Obviously, I need to thank Bobby C from the No Religion Required Podcast for providing this week’s Farnsworth Quote. I hate to admit that I still haven’t had a chance to check out his show, but I’ll be rectifying that today and with good reason. While we were at ReasonCon he caught some audio that was either one of the greatest moments in atheist podcasting history or we were all so shit-faced we just thought it was. What started off as a few minutes with Heath and I eventually turned into several hours with us, Cash and Love, Bill from Bar Room Atheists, Tracie Harris from The Atheist Experience, Dr. Richard Carrier, “Year Without God” pastor Ryan Bell… along with a dozen other hilarious drunken atheists. Not sure how good the audio quality will be, but if it’s even remotely good it will be well worth your time to check it out. If nothing else, it includes Heath and Cash competing for the most off-color abortion joke so that should be enough to get you there.

LINK TO NO RELIGION REQUIRED PODCAST

Speaking of Heath, need to thank him once more for all he does both on and off the air. Need to thank Lucinda for toughing it out all the way through Psalms. And speaking of Psalms, I also want to thank all our Twitter followers for all the words of encouragement during my one hundred and fifty hour Psalm-a-thon last week. Happy to have that over and done with. Thanks to everybody who favorites or retweeted or responded or whatever.

But most of all, of course, we need to thank this week’s most honorable hominids; Robert, Andrew, John, Mark, Kilburn State Records, Shane, Eric with a C, Robives (dot) com, Don, Daniel, Jonathan, Robert, Nicholas, Scott, Liam, Erik with a K and Steven. Robert, Andrew, John and Mark, whose erections give railroad crossing arms feelings of inadequacy; Kilburn State Records and Robives (dot) com, which would have made the list if it was the Fortune 502; Shane, Eric with a C, Don and Daniel; whose archery skills are too much for even the nimblest of neutrinos; Jonathan, Robert and Nicholas, who aren’t the droids you’re looking for; and Scott, Liam, Erik with a K and Steven, who make Mother Teresa look like a miserable bitch and not just because Mother Teresa really was a miserable bitch.

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Categories: Show Transcripts Tags: agnostic, atheism podcast, atheist podcast, belief, Christianity, faith, Islam, religion, science, skeptic

Episode 61 – Partial Transcript

April 17, 2014 Noah Lugeons 1 comment

by Heath Enwright and Noah & Lucinda Lugeons

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Note: Transcript contains elements that were edited from the episode due to time constraints.

Warning: On the Scathing Atheist it’s always “Ask an Atheist” day, but sometimes the answer is “Fuck off.”

Sponsor:

Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by PassoverStock.com, Online purveyors of seasonal religious bullshit

Are you about to celebrate the day an Egyptian guy sort of helped out the Jews that one time? Tired of the annual price gouge on bitter herbs, manischewitz, and enormous flat crackers? Well we liquidated the shit you didn’t consume last year, so we can offer the best prices.

And now the Scathing Atheist…

Intro:

It’s Thursday,

It’s April 17th

And a whole bunch of libertarians just paid income tax, even though the IRS is illegal.

I’m Noah Lugeons,

I’m Heath Enwright and from urban planning New York, New York…

And rural klanning Podunk, Georgia, this is the Scathing Atheist.

On this week’s episode

We’ll be burdened by Job,
The Pope will accept his apology for all the kid fucking on our behalf,
And Christians find a way to re-purpose hamentaschen vagina cookies.

But first, the diatribe.

Diatribe

So I guess Ayaan Hirsi Ali can add “honorary Brandeis drop out” to her impressive list of accomplishments. Member of Dutch parliament, award winning human rights advocate, author, world renowned opponent of female genital mutilation and one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world. But not good enough for an honorary degree from Brandeis university?

And why, pray tell, did Brandeis balk on their plans to give her an honorary degree? Well, as it turns out, her lifelong crusade against Islamic institutionalization of violence towards women hurt some Muslim’s feelings.

They pointed to comments she made that sound mean, especially when taken completely devoid of context. And the university said, “well shucks, we can’t have mean people here, so fuck her. No soup for you.”

So whatever, doesn’t matter. If anything, her being denied this honorary degree has brought a hell of a lot more attention to her cause that actually receiving the honorary degree would have, but the principle of it still pisses me off and it’s something I’m seeing more and more. What’s worse, a huge chunk of the secular community seem to be just fine with it.

What I’m talking about here is this notion that attacking a religion is somehow equated with racism. People talk about “Islamophobia” alongside homophobia or racism as though the two things come from the same place. I reject the term “Islamophobia” altogether, but if we’re gonna use it, can we at least agree that there’s a difference between hating gay people because you’re a bigot and fearing Muslims who are actively trying to harm you?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali was the victim of female genital mutilation. She was beaten in the name of Islam. She was the victim of a forced marriage. The guy who directed the movie she wrote was murdered by Islamic militants and she’s received countless death threats from the same people. When she talks about the dangers of Islam, she’s not some backwoods yokel spouting off about how the Jews is controllin’ the werld through them UPS satellites. She’s an exceptional, brilliant human being speaking from personal experience.

And what were the remarks that Brandeis couldn’t be associated with? Well, she’s said plenty of shit to piss off Muslims, but the quote I keep seeing in relation to the story comes from an interview in “Reason’ magazine back in 2007. When asked about the path toward peace in the middle east, she said of Islam:

(quote) “Once it is defeated, it can mutate into something peaceful. It’s very difficult to even talk about peace now. They’re not interested in peace.”

I should point out, she was offered a chance to back that off a bit in the interview and made it very clear that she wasn’t just talking about “radical” Islam, she wasn’t just talking about “militant” Islam; she was talking about the religion.

Sounds horrible, right? Sounds bad enough to almost justify all those Muslims getting so pissy about it, right? Unless, of course, she’s right.

The multicultural crowd loves to spout on about how this is motivated by xenophobia when it comes from a middle-aged white dude like me, but what about when it comes from the victim herself? They like to act like it’s a cardinal sin to suggest one religion is more destructive than another, but considering that’s an indisputable fact, maybe we should be allowed to talk about it, eh?

But when Sam Harris says, “Well, they do spawn way more than their fair share of international terrorists” he’s shouted down as a racist even though, you know, Islam isn’t a fucking race.

When Dawkins points out that, “Well, you know, the countries they control sure don’t contribute much to science” he’s shouted down as a bigot because how dare he point out that easily demonstrable fact?

And when Ayaan Hirsi Ali says that this religion; the religion she was born into and victimized by throughout her life; really does represent an existential threat to the rest of the world, she’s shouted down by the people she’s speaking out against and a bunch of multicultural, politically correct assholes.

Raping kids and covering it up is wrong. And every Catholic that gave money to the church in the last 100 years had a hand in that and should be ashamed of themselves. I can say that all I want and I don’t get accused of any kind of bigotry.

Chopping off a girl’s clitoris and then forcing her to marry someone and supporting acid attacks and honor killings while refusing to allow women access to education is wrong. And every Muslim who continues to support the existence of the faith that embraces that shit should be ashamed of themselves. And clearly, I say that because I’m a racist or something; even though there are a hell of a lot more clerics supporting honor killings and FGM than there are Catholic’s ass raping kids.

Headlines

Joining me for headlines tonight is guy returning from a long weekend of bachelor party debauchery, Heath Enwright. Heath, are you feeling recovered yet?

I’m happy to say that I have facial sensations again, and I’m not a father!!!

Well, judging by the fundamentalist definitions you were a father, but yeah, doesn’t count if you’re an atheist.

In our lead story tonight, the Spanish town of Castrillo de Matajudios, is considering a name change, after someone finally pointed out to the ignorant tannish people there, that they might want to avoid the phrase “Jew Killer” in their title.

Yeah, because ignorant tannish people should stop being such prejudicial racists.

So the excuse goes like this … Out of nowhere, the Spanish Inquisition starts.

Never would have expected that.

And to appease the Hitler of 1478, everyone in town decided that a quick repaint of their highway sign, and “Castrillo Hill” could easily be “Castrillo Kill the Jews”.

Well, you don’t want to change it all at once; they can start by toning it down to “Jew Maimer”, then “Jew Raper” and eventually just “Jew Insulter” or something.

Quantitative Easing – Spain knows all about that stuff … And even if they do get rid of the Nazi-Ville title, many Spaniards will still be using the phrase “matar hudios” to reference their Easter ritual of drinking spiked lemonade; a practice that they affectionately call “Killing Jews”. Apparently this tradition dates back to the very first Pog-Rums, when medieval Christians would get wasted, and publicly lynch Jews to punish them for alleged deicide.

I was gonna say that there are worse things to spike that lemonade…

Spanish town considers changing its name to something other than “Jew Killer”: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/11/matajudios-jew-killer-town_n_5133302.html?utm_hp_ref=religion

And in “At least he weren’t gay” news tonight, an article in the Harvard Theological Review strongly suggests that the notorious gospel fragment about Jesus’ wife is not a modern forgery. Their data confirm that it was written between the sixth and ninth century; leading to yet more centers of advanced learning weighing in on the question of who a fictional character was boning.

What does it say about your religion if the son of god doesn’t get laid?

The fragment in question has Jesus referring to his wife and saying that she can be his disciple. While this whole debate has a Thor’s hammer versus Captain America’s shield feel to it, I think it’s worth reflecting on the vitriolic opposition to the science we’re seeing from bitter old sexists who are arguing that it’s impossible that someone writing at least 600 years after the disputed existence of this clearly mythologized character would assume he was getting some pussy.

Would this mean priests could start fucking adult pussy, instead of whatever arrangement they have now? Even just pussy … Baby steps. Or better yet, I suppose, just adult. Orifice TBD.

Yeah, that’s better. Anyway, scientists arguing for the authenticity of the fragment point to radiocarbon testing of the ink, the chemical composition of the papyrus, patterns of oxidation on the fragment, as well as archaeological analyses of the handwriting and grammar. Opponents dismiss this evidence, citing the widely confirmed consensus that Jesus would never use his dick recreationally.

Ancient reference to Jesus’ wife found not to be a forgery: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2014/04/10/study-jesus-wife-fragment-not-a-fake/

And in “Kettle One Morality” news, a new study on societal perception of atheism by psychologist Will Gervais manages to prove simultaneously, that people are fucking stupid, and that people think atheists are immoral.

Yeah, at that Ask an Atheist thing I did it Georgia Southern tonight I got a Muslim girl to admit that (1) the only reason that she doesn’t kill people is because god said it was bad and (2) that if god changed his mind she would kill people. It scares the shit out of me that it wasn’t harder.

Gervais sets up the experiment by giving people a general description of a terrible, evil, sociopathic person named Dax, and then asks them a multiple choice question. One entire experimental group got this question: Which is more likely? A) Dax is a teacher … or B) Dax is a teacher that is atheist.

Or C, he’s a teacher who’s an atheist with green pubes that have crabs that draw Venn Diagrams.

Other groups got the same question, but with choice B as a different religion or race, instead of atheist. Choice B) is a subset of A) in every case, so the answer is obviously fucking A) !!! … But the group given the option to demonize atheists, did so far more than any other group demonized their option B) demographic.

Yeah, but to be fair, religious is a subset of stupid and stupid people all have trouble with this one.

Sadly, this study shows that still – even today – society associates reason with evil. But it was even worse as you go back through the centuries. So just about every great scientist – despite being falsely claimed as an adherent by some religion – was probably a silent atheist trying to avoid a lynch mob or a guillotine, while they did evil shit like forward human understanding of the universe.

People think atheists are more likely to be evil: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/04/16/new-study-shows-that-even-atheists-think-atheists-are-immoral

And in “Why you keep bringin’ up old shit?” news, Pope Fran-Sisyphus asked for forgiveness for all the kids his church has tortured over the past couple of centuries. So if you were still waiting on the new pontiff to take some concrete steps towards fixing the problem, I think it’s time to exhale. He’s asked for forgiveness, which is almost as good as saying you’re sorry. So, you know, problem solved.

I assume Pope Frankle Grabber’s going for the Lord’s forgiveness, right? I would imagine it’s much easier to get forgiveness from the Lord, than centuries of rape victims.

Well, I don’t know… rape victims do exist. So critics point out (or, are about to point out) that despite his contrite attitude, the church he heads is still… right now, this very moment… sheltering accused priests, contractually silencing it’s victims as a prerequisite to compensation and refusing to discipline bishops who demonstrably covered up the crimes. So yeah, “Terribly sorry about that time I hit you with that baseball bat. And the next time I hit you with it.” Doesn’t do it for me.

It’s like the horrible tourist saying “Sorry” AS they try to smash onto a crowded rush hour subway with twelve suitcases, a stroller, a large ficas plant, and a tandem bicycle. You’re obviously not that sorry!!! … A surfboard AND skis?!?

Pope Franarchy in the UK made the comments on the Vatican radio last friday, adding that (quote) “You don’t play around with the lives of children… their scrotum’s sure, but not their lives.”

Pope asks for forgiveness for pedophelia, still shields perps from prosecution: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/11/pope-francis-sex-abuse-forgiveness_n_5132019.html?utm_hp_ref=religion

And in “Southern Belle Curves” news, Mississippi schools teach SexEd about as well as they teach all the other subjects. Thanks to the signature maturity and wisdom of Christians, students are being taught ‘abstinence-only’ versions of the real curriculum, in which crucial public health information – like how to use condoms – is forbidden. Local teens still buy them, but only for keister-smuggling crank, like God intended.

I don’t get this shit… The bible says nothing at all about condoms and obviously God used protection every time but that one.

This is literally the argument … On the one hand, communities that teach Bible-inspired “abstinence-only” sex education in their schools tend to have grossly higher rates of teen pregnancy and STD’s. On the other hand, God’s dick has literally been everywhere, and he knocked up Mary when she was like thirteen …

Religious people with logically incoherent views? I don’t know…

Considering the entire lesson plan for a semester of abstinence-only SexEd is “Don’t do that” … One wonders: What the fuck are they teaching?!? How to build a bridge out of a witch?!? …

No – they decided to spend the time slut-shaming females, by passing a peppermint patty around the room to show how multiple handlers ruins candy, just like it ruins a vagina.

These abstinence only guys need to make up their mind. Is a vagina a cookie, a chewed piece of gum, a cup full of spit? Quit confusing these kids with new analogies!

And they’re obviously setting up the lesson wrong. It would make a lot more sense to have all the students finger the same prostitute. And then smell each others Lady Fingers. And of course that means we’ll need 30 seconds on the clock for “Genital-Themed Snack Foods” … GO!!!

That’s a tough one, though… So many snack foods are already named after genitals… Mounds, Twinkies, Almond Joy, Creampies, Juicy Fruit, Honey Buns, Fudge Rounds… But I guess, considering the headline, we should start with Pepper-Minge Patties.

Love those girlscouts, and their thin minges …

What about: Slit-O-Honey?

Clit Kat Bars? Muslims love to break ‘em off a piece of that…

Putz’s Pretzels? … Fold Golds?

Hostess Hoo-Has. Wait, you did 2 so… um… 3 Muff-keteers.

Golden Clams Cereal: “How do they cram all that clam?!?”

Famous Anus

Charleston Cooze

Double Muffed Whore-e-Os… the part the censors didn’t show you from Total Recall

What about … twatchamacallit? … Milky Spray Bars?

I don’t know, but it makes me vertically smile. How about Slutter-Fingers?

And every anatomy teacher needs a set of Wax Labia.

And in the sense you’re using the term, we’re all anatomy teachers.

Mississippi sex ed teaches that sexually active girls are like used cookies: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/04/11/this-is-how-bizarre-and-ineffective-sex-education-is-in-mississippi-schools/

And finally tonight, from the “Vicious Killers Out Toddling the Streets” file, Pakistani authorities have dismissed attempted murder charges against Mohammad Musa, who was wanted on multiple felony accounts including the attempted murder of a police officer. When the charges were dismissed, Musa had no comment for the press, because he’s a nine month old baby.

To be fair, that’s an 18-month-old, in religion years. Full year and a half. Why don’t they celebrate their zygote day, instead of their birthday, if that’s when life began?!?

I tried and tried to discover that this story was satire, but it turns out, not so much. And we’re not talking about a case where this baby just happened to have the same name as some wanted murderer or anything. The cops literally said this infant was part of a mob that attacked police in January when he was going through his rebellious 6 month old phase. They even fingerprinted the little guy for fuck’s sake.

I’m picturing the defendant in bronzed shoes, shackled together, for the hearing.

Admittedly, this story has absolutely nothing to do with religion, but holy shit, how could I pass up on an opportunity to close on, “That’s one mean baby”?

Pakistani courts drop attempted murder charges against 9 month old baby: http://www.ctvnews.ca/world/pakistani-judge-dismisses-charges-against-9-month-old-accused-of-attempted-murder-1.1772973

So Heath, thanks as always.

Evil Babies!!

And when we come back, we’re gonna try to figure out why they named Blow Jobs after such a miserable dude.

Poem – Job

My name is Job and I’m righteous;

Of all the people on the globe I’m the nicest;

When you come to my abode, I’ll show kindness;

The tales about my moral code? They’ll be timeless.

I’m rollin’ in goats; I got camels, see?

I could fill a motherfuckin’ boat; when I travel; Be-

Cause it’s way too much to tote; all my mammals; Please

Don’t think I mean to gloat; but my family?

I got ten kids and they’re rich as hell;

There’s mom’s a pretty hot bitch as well;

It’s a motherfuckin’ mountain from which I fell.

Cause I gotta story about a switch to tell… You see,

There’s a fella named God; and he’s heinous;

You might have heard about all his flawed views on gayness;

Anyway, he told the devil to applaud; cause I’m blameless

But the devil said I was a fraud; what an anus.

So the devil offered him a deal and he took it,

Forgive me if I kinda feel it was crooked,

Even though my life was lived ideal, he forsook it,

So he put me through every damn ordeal in his book, it…

Started when he sent a burglar to take my shit.

Then he decides to murder my fucking kids;

Any impartial observer’d have to admit,

My righteous ass didn’t deserve all the stuff he did.

The devil said I hadn’t had enough; that Satanic whore.

So in addition to this stuff, god adds even more.

I guess he had to leave me suffering on the floor;

So he covered me in rough, cracked and bleeding sores.

But I wasn’t dissuaded at all, my friends;

My life has surely been downgraded, all but condemned,

But I never was persuaded to fall to sin,

My misery left me jaded, and small, and then…

All my pals showed up to console me; ostensibly.

You see they kept trying to cajole me offensively.

Into thinking this was all a toll that god sensibly

Was exacting from my soul quite expensively.

But I insisted that my suffering was undeserved.

And still they went on muttering undeterred.

This, that and another thing, so absurd…

“Motherfucker was I stuttering? Mark my words!”

“I didn’t do shit to have earned this fate!”

But they never seem to get that there’s no debate.

So eventually they quit and I’m left to wait

Until god decides he won his bet. I say, “Bitch, you’re late.”

He said he was the alpha and the omega and all that jazz.

I said “Did you hear me when I begged you to make this pass?”

He said “Motherfucker, I’m your maker, which means, alas,

That if I decide I wanna break you, I’ll break your ass.”

And that’s the closest that he comes to explaining why;

Gives me all new young, what a stand up guy.

If there’s anything to take from this book and apply,

It’s that life is probably gonna fuck you before you die.

Babble

The book of Job is dense; morbid; repetitive and dull, but on the bright side, it’s the first thing I’ve read in the bible that left me thinking “Yeah, okay, I can see having that in your book of morals.” Not too rapey, not too xenophobic… no begats.

I’ll save everyone some time. Skip Job, and go see Fiddler on the Roof, which is an allegory in musical form. Better yet, skip both, and just remember to nod, smile, and bend over so God can smite you.

I was gonna recommend perusing a “Shit Happens” bumper sticker. Anyway, joining us to tackle this infamous tale of perverse gambling addiction is my lovely wife Lucinda. Lucinda, what did you think of this one?

It was weird. Parts of it were good but it didn’t seem like it belonged there… or made any real sense. It was kinda like the Tom Bombadil part of Lord of the Rings in that way.

Fair enough. So get us started if you don’t mind.

Job doesn’t fuck around. We get action quick. So in chapter one we learn that Job is rolling in sheep and donkeys and loves him some god. But Satan shows up and says, “Well sure, you’re giving him camels. But if you didn’t give him camels he’d go all Noah and Heath on you.”

And apparently hypothetical challenges like that work on omnipotent gods.

Right so god says, “Oh yeah?” and all at once he kills all his donkeys and camels and sheep and kids. All ten of his kids. But all Job does is shave his head and say, “Fuck it. God is still awesome.”

So we get full confirmation that God’s a degenerate gambler in the first chapter. When some guy walks in and immediately starts instigating this elaborate bet about human nature … Oh, and the guy is the SATAN you created … You should maybe think twice.

But Satan points out (and rightly so) that God didn’t actually do anything to Job. I mean, having your kids and your donkeys killed sucks and all, but it sucks a lot more for the donkeys and kids than the dude who possesses them.
1. So once again god goes all “Oh yeah?” on him and covers Job with festering sores.

And to provide comfort, from his festering body sores, his three male friends show up, tear off their robes, cover themselves in sand, and lay with him silently in a naked pile for an entire week, likely creating a pearly white mass.

Then Job spends a chapter poetically wishing he’d never been born.
1. Yes and I think that it’s worth pointing out that the thing that distinguishes biblical poetry from biblical prose is that in the poetry each line is followed by another line that says exactly the same thing. So yes, the poetry is even more repetitive than the prose.

Repetetive, boring, and creepy. At one point in his poem, Job wishes he had been a miscarriage, or at the very least for his mom to have no breasts so he would die of MIDS, or Milk-less Infant Death Syndrome.

Right. So boo-hoo, I’m covered in festering sores and my kids are dead…

So his friend Eliphaz finally speaks up: “Would you feel better if I told you … it’s impossible to understand the decisions of an imperceptible deity? … No?”

And all Job’s buddies are telling him, “You should look into this god thing, cause, you know, he can sort this shit out for you.”

Yeah, we’re a modern nomadic desert tribe. People don’t just get skin problems unless they broke a god rule. You must have broken a god rule.

But Job says… a whole bunch of shit, but basically it’s a really drawn out “Fuck off.”
1. And it’s more tedious than you can imagine. It’s page after page of shit like: “In times of heat they despair; when it is hot, they vanish from their place. The caravans turn aside from their course; they go up into the waste and perish. The caravans of Tema look, the travelers of Sheba hope. They are disappointed because they were confident; they come there and are confounded”… Brutal.
—
But despite Job’s poetic bellyaching to the contrary, his friends are insistent. They tell him, “look dude, for your life to suck this bad, you must have done something to piss god off.”

You must have worn a tassle with no sub-tassles or something.

And Job says, “Well what am I gonna do? Call his 800 number? Tell him he fucked up and hit the wrong guy with all those boils and calamities?”
But he can’t just say it like that. Instead we get three straight chapters of melodramatic teenager Facebook posts.
1. Teenagers don’t use Facebook.
2. Okay, MySpace. Whatever.
3. I think they’re dialing up to those Prodigy newsgroups now.
And still his friends insist he’s gotta be fucking the babysitter or something.
—
Please stop terrorizing me. And can you send me a copy of the parking ticket, just so I know what I did. Or just do anything. Flash your brights.
And damn is this thing dense. I read through whole chapters and then stopped and said, “what the fuck did I just read?” It’s like a middle-schooler trying to be Shakespearean.
Then Eliphaz brings up a good point… in 35 verbose stanzas. He basically says, “Job, how can you say you didn’t do anything to piss off god when pretty much everything pisses off god?”
Then Job answers… in thirty eight verbose stanzas, “Woe is me, woe is me and fuck off, the lot of you.”
–
And despite his relentless bemoaning, his buddies are still trying to cheer him up, so Bildad chimes in.
1. Yeah and he tells Job to quit his bellyaching. And Bildad wants to say, “God punishes people who do bad shit.” Why can’t he just say that? Can’t he just say that.
And then Job bitches and moans some more anyway .
—
And it just goes on like that for a long time. Job will say “Shit happens” then one of his friends will say “shit doesn’t happen” and then he’ll say “shit happens” and so on.
And it really demonstrates the problem with the whole god concept. Because at a certain point his buddies are just throwing shit at the wall to see if it’ll stick. In chapter 22 Eliphaz says, “Have you tried giving away all your shit? That’s a good idea when you’re covered in boils and unemployable, right?”

Maybe you’re saying the prayers wrong? Or maybe it was your whore-daughter? Did you forget to stone your whore-daughter?

—
And Job actually makes some pretty good arguments for atheism in it… or at least deism. He’s pointing out to everybody how wicked people don’t always get what’s coming to them and good people like himself get ass raped by fate from time to time. But his buddies aren’t buying it.
And then we get chapter 25 which is my favorite and not because it’s a sixth as long as the other chapters. But Bildad is rebutting Job’s claim that he’s living a pure life and he basically says, “Well… you did come out of a vagina.”
1. Right, Job 25:4 “How can one born of a woman be pure.”

That’s why a lot of Jewish communities are now hatching their kids, like in “Aliens”.

—
—
As I’m reading this thing I was dreading doing this segment. Because what is there to say, “And the friends say ‘the exact same shit again’ and then Job says, ‘the exact same shit again’”?
Yep. Either Job is saying he wishes he was dead or he’s pining for the good old days.
…fucking tedious.
I love that in chapter 31 Job’s talking about how moral he is and he says, “Have I not been good to my slaves?”… Yeah, what possible immoral act could you be doing here?

Yeah it said he addressed all their grievances fairly, as long as their grievance wasn’t “I’m a fucking slave.”

He also says, “If my heart has been enticed by a woman let other dudes rape my wife, for that would be just”. So yeah, Job was a stand up guy.

I think Job 31:31 is relevant here … (quote) “[…] Those of my household have never said ‘Who has not been filled with Job’s meat?'”

Then this YouTube comments debate between Job and his buddies draws to a merciful close; but as soon as it does, Elihu chimes in.
1. Just in case you hadn’t gotten your fill of repetitive poetic debate.
And Elihu is basically pissed at all of Job’s friends for not proving that he was a sinful asshole.
—
And this goes on for chapters and chapters. And for all of those people who tell me that there’s some deep beauty to this book… look, chapter 36 contains the phrase, “Truly my words are not false.” That’s shit writing. I’m sorry.

Yeah that’s the second line of an 7-year-old’s first haiku. Granted a 7-year-old that can count up to their age, but they’re not bringing much more to the table … “And-Po-Em-Is-Done.”

And the whole Elihu bit was clearly added after somebody read through this book and realized it made a great case for telling the clergy to fuck off. I mean, the clear message in this whole thing is “You can do everything god wants and he’ll still kill your kids and fill your rectum with boils,” so the prolonged Elihu speech is inserted to mitigate that a bit.
And his whole argument could basically be summed up as “Sure, Job’s getting ass fucked here, but look at trees!”

And Job’s like: “What about trees?” … “Bend over, and I’ll show you.”

Then finally God shows up, late to the comment thread as always.
1. And his answer is no better than Job’s buddies.
2. Yeah, he basically tells him to rub some dirt in it.

Pour some Jobitussin on it.

So god goes on with a checklist of everything he’s ever done from making horses jump to putting stars in the heavens in this perpetual “I’m the Juggernaut, bitch” speech.

Right – God clearly doesn’t want to admit that Satan tricked him into another bet, like he’s Nathan Detroit from Guys and Dolls … So he goes on a rant that ends with Zach Galifinakis describing the eagle: (quote) “It dwells on a cliff and stays there at night; a rocky crag is its stronghold. From there it looks for food; its eyes detect it from afar. Its young ones feast on blood, and where the slain are, there it is.” (end quote) … So God’s big final reveal is that he invented birds that eat decomposing dead animals.

And he gets so carried away listing his accomplishments that he starts making shit up. I mean, what was all that behemoth shit about?

I guess the Bible needed some science cred, so they wrote in some cryptozoology. And as it turns out, God has some weird bestiality issues … Because he’s clearly sexually attracted to the enormous liquid-metal land beast he created. And all the descriptions were weird, loins-region body parts that should really be pointed to on a doll.

Yeah, and the fire-sneezing leviathan… God’s challenging Job and he might as well be saying, “Well what right do you have to question me? You can’t even catch a snipe.”
1. Guessing from my knowledge of 80s action movies, I think that’s the thing Jesus will have to fight at the end. Like, the boss villain.

I can already picture Charlton Heston, standing in the middle of the Jordan river, shooting a whale in the face with an AK-47.

And in the end god gave Job new camels and children and he lived happily ever after.

And he’s not even Jewish!!! They better be careful giving whole books to a gentile … Or else someone’s gonna hijack your protagonist, get him killed, and blame you for the murder.

Job is generally held to be the oldest book in the bible, but it’s certainly not the longest. That honor goes to the insanely long fucker we’ve got coming up next; Psalms. A hundred and fifty of those motherfuckers.

I quit.

Instead, can we listen to 150 hours of Ted Nugent singing? Or 150 hours of Ted Nugent talking? While he gives us a sandpaper colonoscopy?

Too late. But the good news is that buried somewhere in the midst of all that crap is the midway point of the bible so we’re getting there.

Outro

Before we retreat to our coffins tonight, I wanted to offer a quick thanks to everyone at the Georgia Southern Secular Student Alliance for inviting me out to chat with them for Ask an Atheist Day. I had a blast, we’ll have to do it again sometime. We recorded a Farnsworth Quote while I was there… or at least we thought we did, but I didn’t double check the settings on my recorder so we didn’t, which pisses me off because it was a good one, but other than that, hell of a night. Thanks to Don, Craig, Brendan, Wendell, Zach, Chris… the long haired dude… the two girl’s whose name I never caught and everybody I’m forgetting to name.

That’s all the blasphemy we have for you for the night, but if you want more, there’s more. You can catch me for a few seconds on the latest episode of the Herd Mentality with Adam Reakes, and if that’s not enough (and it’s not), you can also catch me on Atheistically Speaking with Thomas and special guest CJ Werleman on Monday. I’ll also be on Atheist Hangouts with Gamma Atheist next Saturday, that’s the 26th and that’ll be live; I’ll have the links for it on the shownotes for this episode.

Herd Mentality

Atheistically Speaking

Atheist Hangouts

Of course I need to thank Heath for not making it too obvious how much funnier than me he is, I need to thank Lucinda for taking the bible like a champ, and of course, I need to thank Katja for providing this week’s Farnsworth quote, though I think we’ll need more than that before we’re willing to forgive you for Ken Ham. I’m thinking the Southern Cross and that big ass rock you guys have.

But most of all, of course, I need to thank this week’s most dedicated deuterostomes; Steve, William, Leo, Alden, Ryan, Aiden, Andrew, Matt, Jeff, Cameron, James, Keovar, Stuart, other Steve, Nick, Adam, Alan and Joel. Steve, William and Leo, whose testicles have lagrangian points; Alden, Ryan and Aiden, whose intellects are so powerful their brains eat zombies; Andrew, Matt and Jeff, whose nunchaku skills are the only thing Putin truly fears; Cameron, James and Keovar, who are so sexy even blind people masturbate to their pictures; Stuart, Other Steve and Nick, whose erections would make Spiderman feel acrophobic; and Adam, Alan and Joel, who are so cool they’re measured in Kelvin.

Together, these eighteen sexy bastards earned the right to call themselves super-atheists this week by giving us money. Only the most heroic and virtuous listeners have what it takes to give us money, but if you were looking for an excuse to wear a cape anyway, you can help support our efforts by making a per episode donation at Pateron (dot) com (slash) Scathing Atheist or you can make a one time donation by going to Scathing Atheist (dot) com and clicking on the “donate” button on the right side of the homepage.

And, of course, if you want to help us but your money’s still tied up in that reversible condom concept, you can always leave us a review on iTunes or download the Stitcher app, check us out there and show us some love in the comments. And oh yeah, we’re really close to our 2000th Twitter follower so be sure to volunteer for that honor, too. And oh other yeah, but the book on Amazon.

Categories: Show Transcripts Tags: agnostic podcast, atheism, atheism podcast, atheist podcast, Christianity, religion

Episode 54 – Partial Transcript

February 27, 2014 Noah Lugeons 3 comments

by Heath Enwright and Lucinda & Noah Lugeons

Link to Episode

Warning: This podcast contains at-symbols, ampersands, pound signs and exclamation points.

Sponsor:

This week’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the new Christian flavored brand of lion food; Kibble and Twits. Every bag is fortified with 9 denominations and minerals.

Kibbles and Twits: Because Christians are gonna act like they’re being persecuted one way or the other.

And now, the Scathing Atheist.

Intro:

It’s Thursday,

It’s February 27th

And Dunkin’ Donuts has a new donut filled with cookie dough. My stomach cancer just got diabetus.

Im Noah Lugeons,

I’m Heath Enwright, and from “Ray Felton can point and shoot” New York, New York

And “Anyone can point and shoot” Podunk, Georgia, this is the Scathing Atheist

On this week’s episode:

Drive-by baptists hold super soakers sideways gangster style.
Malaysia does something dumb even for a country that arrests coconuts,
And gay people will go to hell.

But first, the diatribe.

Diatribe:

If you were ever curious what Heath, Lucinda and I look like, we can now offer you an answer to that question. We appeared on the vlogcast “Holy Crap!” with friend of the show Shujin Tribble last week, and the episode is archived on You Tube and you can find a link to it, of course, on the shownotes for this episode. I should warn you, though, that according to the feedback we’ve gotten so far, we’re younger, older, thinner, fatter, better and worse looking than you think we are.

But the reason I bring it up is that one of the questions that came up deserved a little more reflection than I could offer on the show. Shujin was hosting a panel discussion and he posed us all a common question amongst atheists: What evidence would it take to convince you that there was a god?

I’ve heard all manner of answers to this question in the past. Usually atheists offer some universally (or near universally) observable phenomenon; something that can be scientifically tested; something that would be unambiguous. And when we offer this, we’re falling into the theists trap. I remember listening to friend of the show and master-debater Justin Schieber answering this question by challenging god to write something in the sky by realigning stars.

This seems a reasonable request of an omnipotent being, but it elicited a laugh from the audience. To the religious onlookers, it seemed like he was asking for a ridiculously high standard of evidence, even if they believed that what he was asking for was well within the purview of their god.

One of my favorite answers, and I’ll apologize in advance to whoever originated it, as I can’t recall where I first heard it, is that it’s a pointless question. I might not know what evidence it would take to convince me that there is an all-powerful god, but by definition, god would. He would obviously be capable of revealing his existence in a way that would convince me, even if no ready example of such an act comes to mind.

Normally I’d have gone with an answer similar to this, but I’d been mulling something over all day that I’d heard on the Thinking Atheist. Seth Andrews, who has one of the best atheist podcasts on the interwebs, by the way, was doing an episode about “divine protection”. He started by talking about that nincompoop snake-handler Heath and I discussed last week, and then went on to catalogue all manner of maladies that had befallen priests and preachers in churches; often during service.

He was pointing out, of course, that god was failing in his charge to protect the faithful. Why wouldn’t god tell the snake handler “not tonight, bro”, or turn the poison into hemoglobin or something? Why would a tornado hit a church full of devout worshippers and miss the crack house down the street?

I was thinking about all that while the other panelists offered the typical answers. All good answers, mind you; things like running a chemical process in reverse; stopping all aircraft in flight at the same time; speaking to everyone in a language that they could all understand.

But when it came to my turn, I lowered the bar of evidence. Instead of looking for what it would take to make a believer out of me, I looked at what it would take to move me into the “maybe” category. What would it take to give me pause. And when you look at the question like that, god’s job gets pretty damn easy.

So god, if you want me to stop doing this show, here’s all it would take: Show me evidence that churches are less likely to be hit by lightening. Just show me unambiguous, verifiable data that shows that a place of worship is statistically less likely to get hit by lightening. Or earthquakes. Or hurricanes. Show me evidence that devout people are less likely to get cancer than heathens. Show me that people who are prayed for recover quicker than people who aren’t. Show me just one tiny shred of statistically significant evidence that there’s a reason to even ask the question, “Is there a god?”

Look, I’m asking for almost nothing here. Eternal life is something I’d be thrilled to be wrong about. But even when you lower the bar of evidence all the way to the floor, god can’t slither over it.

Skit:

Ooh… slither over it, he says… that son of a bitch. I hate that podcast so much!!

Don’t be so filled with hate, dad. You’ve gotta learn to let go. And I told you that adding free will in the beta version was gonna be trouble.

Shut up, Jesus! Man, if I had some brimstone, I’d splatter that little twerp.

I told you not to use so much on the dinosaurs.

They were eating meat on Fridays! I’d already shortened their arms to keep ‘em from beating off and they were still sinning!

I’m just saying you shouldn’t get yourself so worked up.

Jesus, I’ll crucify you again if you don’t back off.

Well it you’re so pissed about it, why don’t you just provide some evidence? You know, divinely cure cancer or something? Or any other single, tangible thing.

Oh yeah, Jesus… really mysterious. You’d make a terrible god.

(under his breath)…you make a terrible god.

What was that?!?

Pretty sure you heard me.

I’ll beat you like a red-handed stepchild!

You’re not my real dad!!!

It’s complicated. I’m God. And you’re my son. And you’re also God. And then there’s this holy ghost. And then there’s that guy Joseph I cuckolded. But as long as you live in my universe, you live under my rules…

Headlines:

Joining me for headlines tonight is armchair intactivist Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to fight for the Jewish baby dicks?

Hey, circumcise matters.

In our lead story tonight, Denmark has passed a law banning the barbaric practice of Kosher and Halal slaughter in favor of the nominally less barbaric practice of knocking their brains around with that thing Javier Bardem had in No Country for Old Men. The move has been applauded by animal rights minimalists all over the world, though vegans are still being kind of douchey about it.

And in Vonnegutian headline format: “On the scale of animal cruelty, a Kosher-One is a Slaughterhouse-Five.” … And yes, vegans are correct in pointing out that almost every meat supply chain is completely disgusting … But that sickly, feeble voice ruins everything they say. Vegan Babies – Breakfast of Champions!!!

Kosher practices stipulate that an animal can’t be stunned before slaughter, must be killed with a single slit to the throat and must bleed to death afterwards. According to primary sources, failing to meet with these strict dietary requirements can lead to being smited by brimstone, stricken with leprosy or condemned to wander in deserts for decades at a time.

How does a Jewish person even know that they’re getting legit Kosher stuff? What if the cow has a coronary while it’s waiting on line? Does the steakhouse give you an autopsy report?!?

Critics of the ban call it anti-semitic because you might as well play the cards you’re holding, but supporters point out that Denmark’s new law forbids the Kosher slaughter of Jewish cows and chickens as well. Muslims, of course, are also getting all stupid about this because Allah copied his homework off of Jew-God.

Denmark bans Kosher and Halal animal torture: http://www.richarddawkins.net/news_articles/2014/2/19/halal-kosher-slaughter-banned-in-denmark-as-minister-insists-animal-rights-come-before-religion

Who copied it off that Asian kid … And in “Charlatan North Carolina” news, Pastor Steven Furtick – of Elevation Church in Charlotte, North Carolina – has written up a playbook for tricking large groups into getting baptised. Wanting to up his scientific street cred, he borrows his techniques largely from Las Vegas stage hypnotists. God is a numbers game for multi-national mega-church conglomerates like this one, so they keep track of these baptism stats like serial rapists keep notches on a headboard.

You told me that your cat did that…

I don’t have a cat- I mean I sometimes catsit for people- It doesn’t matter. Moving on. Among other disingenuous strategies, Furtick suggests that the church set up plants in the audience, to help start the momentum of consent to the pier pressure. And to falsely inflate the apparent pious stupidity of younger generations, he suggests that the youngest plants run to the front of the “disgusting public bath line”, when the pastor announces the Mass Baptism Ambush. This is also logistically better – he notes – because old people take forever to get changed into their water rape attire, which will tend to hold up the line.

Why not a secret trap door like Sweeney Todd or Jabba the Hutt? Or just have a pool party and when nobody’s looking you can bless the shallow end and dump in some of that fecal-matter infested holy water they love so much.

Considering how much they love to brainwash young people, I’m surprised they didn’t go with more of a Nickelodeon theme. You ask everyone at the service a simple trivia question about Jesus, to which every baptised Christian would know the answer. And then anyone in the audience who said “I don’t know” would have green slime (made with holy water) dropped on their head from above their pew.

I am automatically friends with anybody who gets that joke.

Spontaneous Baptisms: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/02/26/is-anyone-really-surprised-by-elevation-churchs-spontaneous-baptisms

And in other North Carolina licking monkey spunk news tonight, Kalei Wilson, a 15 year old high school student in Canton, North Carolina, has been forced to abandon plans to start a secular student’s club after receiving death threats from all those “other cheek” turners we hear so much about.

Death threats?!? Except for church, every club is a secular club.

Good point, but that didn’t stop the school from blocking her attempt to start the club on account o’ Jesus wouldn’t approve, but Wilson fought back with the help of the Secular Student Alliance, the Freedom From Religion Foundation and the ACLU. Eventually the school realized they couldn’t win this legally so the Christians went with what they know; bullying.

They could have burned her at the stake. The womens’ movement has taken small steps in this area.

In the latest chapter of this saga, the following message appeared on the group’s fundraising page yesterday: (quote) “It saddens us to report that due to the numerous threats and verbal attacks on Kalei along with the vindictive witch-hunt to hurt the reputations of affiliated groups and our family, Kalei will not be continuing with the group.”

So congratulations, Christianity. You’ve bullied a teenage girl into abandoning something she fought tooth and nail for and has a legal right to. Because, like Jesus said, “What you do to the least of my children is all good if it keeps some atheists from doing a bake-sale for the Foundation Beyond Belief”

What do these people think kids would do at a secular club?!?

Well our Canton, North Carolina, listeners should be on the look out for a great deal on a cancelled baby buffet.

15 Year old receives death threats and cancels planned Humanist club: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/02/26/after-long-battle-to-form-high-school-atheist-group-student-bows-out-after-numerous-threats-and-verbal-attacks/

And in “How Many Lepers Do I Have to Hug to Counteract This?” news tonight, MedStar Washington Hospital Center’s Catholic Chaplain Brian Coelho is a callous bastard with a heart of lumpy pigeon shit. According to heart attack patient Ronald Plishka, the Reverend refused him last rites upon learning that Plishka was gay.

Sorry but I have ZERO sympathy here. If you believe in the teachings of Christianity, and you’re gay, then you already know that you’re going to hell. So the deathbed slam poetry from the bigoted Reverend shouldn’t really matter to you, should it?!?

The lumpy pigeon shit hearted bastard has refused opportunities to respond to these allegations, though the hospital has made it clear that if they prove true it would mean that Coelho is an asshole.

Okay, but I do see where the asshole’s coming from. The gay guy’s about to die, and he’s trying to make some bullshit last-second promise to stop being gay for the next 10 living minutes. If I’m the chaplain there, I’d be pissed about the loophole. Maybe blow the guy at the last second before he dies for spite.

Well as much as I’d love to join you in the sympathy boycott, there was a particular quote that tugged at my heartstrings. Apparently Plishka got pissed off right afterwards and cussed at the priest on his way out the door. Upon reflecting on this and the fact that he didn’t receive his cracker or whatever, he told reporters that (quote) “I’m thinking I’m going to rot in hell now […] I’m not perfect, believe me. And I wouldn’t wish [being gay] on anyone.” (end quote). So it wasn’t enough for this religion to ruin this dude’s life with their bigotry… they’re also hell bent on ruining his death.

Catholic Priest denies last rites to a gay dude: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/gay-patient-says-catholic-chaplain-refused-him-last-rites/2014/02/19/35d163f6-99b1-11e3-80ac-63a8ba7f7942_story.html

And from the “Nobody Cares About Malaysia Comma However” file: Newspaper printers in Malaysia averted disaster by censoring several images of entire naked pigs, that almost went to press in an International New York Times article. Instead, the otherwise riot-inciting pig pics appeared with their faces blacked out. Despite hearing the black face thing totally out of context, Al Sharpton, Nat X, and Jesse Jackson have already made angry, public, rhyming responses.

Nat X, huh? The man so black fireflies follow him around in the day time? Awesome. I love that it was the pigs faces they blacked out. Were they looking particularly “come hither”? Were they concealing the pig’s identities in case of retaliation? I mean look, if they were censoring their pig-tits and pork swords that would still be fucking hilarious, but the eyes!?

There are rumors suggesting this may be a spiteful response by the Malaysian Muslims, to a recent incident in which a respected jihadist was denied entrance into a particular house of bricks, that even his explosives couldn’t blow down. Reports suggest the inhabitant even made a derogatory remark, about the ridiculous pubic-like bush of hair on his (quote) “chinny chin chin” area.

Yeah, but I hear that dude’s under suspicion as well. In Malaysia it’s illegal to huff, puff and blow, so…

Crafty swine … Here’s a statement from the printing company: (quote) “This is a Muslim country so we covered the pigs’ eyes. We usually do that for the International New York Times – also for pictures of cigarettes, weapons, guns and nude pictures.” (end quote) … Censorship is stupid in general, but how did they come up with that list of exactly 4 things?!? … Can everyone fill in the bubble under the one that doesn’t belong? Cigarettes, weapons, porn, Charlotte’s Web.

Weapons, cigarettes, and porn, eh? Like I said, huff, puff and blow.

Malaysian Printer puts black censor bars over pig’s faces. And yes, really: http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2014/jan/23/censorship-malaysia

And in “Rock out with your flock out” news tonight, we bring you the story of Allen Parker, a Virginia pastor who prefers to praise Jesus with his metronome swinging. Parker has invited his congregants to worship with him each Sunday in the nude, citing biblical justifications like the story of Adam and Eve and, I shit you not, the fact that Jesus was born naked.

But Jesus was born an atheist, so …

Guess he didn’t think of that. Parker, whose body is less of a temple and more of a stupa, explains that in his church (quote) “there’s not a feeling that you have to be better than one another, physically” (end quote), a point that he drives home by being as physically imperfect as one can be and still be ambulatory.

When they go to Waffle House after church, these must be the only Christians with a tip for the waitress.

And since they laid down the gauntlet when they named their church full of naked, pasty caucasians the “White Tail Chapel”, I say we up the ante. So 30 seconds on the clock, “Alternate Names for the Nudist Church”. Go!

The Assless Chapel

Nice. How about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Taints?

Home of the all-nude Mormon Flabernacle Choir

Motor Boat-re Dame

Well played – I was thinking … Scrotre Dame Cathedral: Let Your Buttresses Fly

Missionary Position Baptist

The Testi-Clesiastical Church: Baal’s Sack Religious

Baby Got Saddleback

Follow the fold … What about … Young Girth Creationists: Hung Wide Like Jesus

Saint Catheter’s Cathedral

Westminster Grabby

Well, St. Peter’s works already, but I’m gonna go with St. Peter’s Ba-silicone Implants.

Nudist church: http://www.atheistrepublic.com/news/church-promotes-nude-worship-because-jesus-was-born-naked

And finally tonight, in “Zoro-Astronaut” news, a fatwa committee in the United Arab Emirates has proclaimed it immoral and therefore illegal to travel to Mars. Because of all the immoral acts committed by Muslims, their ambitious, meteoric rise in the space travel community is clearly the most troubling.

In defense of the Islamic Space program, they’ve been trying to get bits and pieces of their followers into orbit for years.

According to Khaleej Times, the committee released the following statement: (quote) “Such a one-way journey poses a real risk to life, and that can never be justified in Islam. There is a possibility that an individual who travels to planet Mars may not be able to remain alive there, and is more vulnerable to death.” But the same could be said of New York City, for a Muslim immigrant, so …

No, the NYPD keeps a close eye on them… makes sure they’re safe.

I think the legislation needs some clarification. Will a Muslim wishing to kill himself on Mars still be required to purchase a round-trip ticket? Can he perform exorcisms on possessed Martian Unicorns? And as long as they’ve got that committee together, and they’ve already come out against the suicide part of suicide bombing … maybe go that extra mile. The bombing part is pretty bad too. Just saying.

Fatwa forbids Muslims from living on Mars: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/20/mars-fatwa_n_4823059.html?utm_hp_ref=religion

I guess we’ll have to close on that conundrum. Heath, thanks as always for joining me.

Messiah-nara, Bitches!

And when we come back we’ll push the limits of how many things rhyme with Chronicle.

Calendar:

It’s time for the atheist calendar portion of the show. This is the few minutes we usually remember to set aside every month to talk up all the great atheist, skeptical and otherwise secular meetups going on around the country and around the world.

A lot of really good stuff coming up in the spring, so I’ll go quick:

Aron Ra; Matt Dillahunty and Seth Andrews are teaming up for the “Unholy Trinity Tour”; they’ll be in Amarillo on March 22nd, Albuquerque on May 3rd and San Antonio on June 28th. Hopefully they’ll be adding dates and venues, so we’ll try to keep you abreast of that.

http://unitedcor.org/nm/page/unholy-trinity-tour

For our British listeners, the AHS National Convention is coming up on the weekend of March 7th in London. AC Grayling and Simon Singh top a fantastic guest list.

http://ahsstudents.org.uk/convention/

Also ThinkCon is coming up on March 15th in Cambridge. The lineup is a great mix of comedians and science popularizers and the topics look fantastic.

http://thinkoutreach.org/ThinkCon/

Back in the states. Reasonfest welcomes Darrel Ray, Matt Dillahunty, Ed Brayton and many more to Lawrence, Kansas April 4th and 5th,

http://kusoma.org/reasonfest/

You’ve got Freethought Fest 3 coming up in Madison, Wisconsin April 11th to the 13th. Mythbuster and rationalist extraordinaire Adam Savage is gonna be there this year, which is pretty awesome.

http://freethoughtfestival.org/

But of course, I left out the biggest one of the season. And no, I’m not talking about the American Atheists National Convention in Salt Lake City on Easter weekend. http://www.atheists.org/convention2014

And I’m not talking about the Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism or “NECSS” going on April 12th and 13th in New York City. http://necss.org/necss-2014/schedule/

And I’m also not talking about QED in Manchester on the same weekend. https://qedcon.org/

All those are sure to be fantastic, but the one that the atheist world will be abuzz about is the inaugural ReasonCon in Hickory North Carolina on Saturday, May 3rd. They’re keynote speaker is Dr. Richard Carrier, (PhD); they’ve also got Tracie Harris of Atheist Experience fame, Cash and Love from the hilarious “Atheists on Air” podcast and more.

But perhaps least notably, they’re also the first secular convention that had the guts to invite Heath, Lucinda and myself so we’ll see if we can make ‘em regret that a little. That’s Saturday, May 3rd, it’s just outside of beautiful Asheville, North Carolina and it’s free

http://mythunderstoodalliance.com/announcing-reasoncon-free/

If you want more info, check the shownotes for episode 54 for links to the homepages of all of these events. If you’re involved with an atheist event that could use a free plug, let me know. You’ll find all the contact info on the contact page at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.

Poem:

2 Chronicles in Rhyme

Run and grab your monocles, it’s time to read 2 Chronicles,

The fucking thing’s canonical, so we have to read it through.

The task is astronomical, ‘cause it just goes on and on, it’s bull,

So grab a gin and tonic-I’ll, hope that Adam Sandler doesn’t sue.

So when we finished with First Chronicles, David’s kingship was phenomenal,

But now he’s up and gone and all, so Solomon ascends.

He was wise and philosophical, with a penchant to be prodigal,

So he built a house for God with all, the golden odds and ends.

The dedication was symphonical, with musicians all harmonical

It was downright histrionical; it could not be overstated.

But I find it quite ironical, that they praise him as so logical,

His designs weren’t economical, even the gold there was gold plated.

He soon became iconical, so the queen of Sheba thought it optimal

To see if god remembered anatomical, when selecting what to bless.

So she got all theosophical, and he was cooler than a popsicle.

Was the visit conjugal? Well that’s anybody’s guess.

Rehoboam’s reign was volatile, there was rift damn near tectonic-You’ll,

See the fights were periodic ‘til, the whole kingdom split apart.

Then Abijah got sardonical, and god goes pathological,

He gets divinely gastronomical and kills a million with his fart.

So we’ll keep things chronological, Asa died for trusting hospitals,

Jehoshaphat was nominal, and Ahaziah’s reign was short,

Then his mother went psychotic-All, the heirs were killed methodical,

And though he was nearly embryonic, (a l)ittle kid took royal court.

Amaziah was hedonic, y’all, Uzziah’s death was comical

Ahaz was demonical, Hezekiah had the blues.

Through a devout and patriotic, stall, he slowed the diabolical,

but inevitable obstacle, that would exile all the Jews.

So that’s my poem for Second Chronicles; Sorry it got so neological,

But I’m not hooked on phonics so I’ll, Just say I’ve done my due.

Now my bong needs marijuana, call it dank or hydroponic, hell,

At this point just narcotic’ll be enough to get me through.

Bible Story:

“Run grab the young-uns, folks. It’s time for Lucinda Lugeons’ Bible Stories for Kids!”

Gather round boys and girls! Today we’re gonna open our Bibles up to Second Samuel and meet one of the Bible’s most powerful superheroes. Did you know that the Bible had superheroes, boys and girls?

Does it have Spiderman?

No, but some of the superheroes in the bible are even more powerful than Spiderman.

Does it have Batman?

No, because Batman is a lecherous heathen bound for an eternal torment in hell.

Does it have Superman?

Only according to Zac Snyder. But today we’re gonna talk about a different superhero. One that you probably never heard of before. Today we’re gonna talk about Elisha.

Was he bitten by a radioactive spider?

No, Elisha was bitten by a radioactive god. He was the disciple of another biblical superhero named Elijah and they weren’t gay lovers, even though the bible kind of makes it sound like they were.

Elijah was very powerful, but one day he died and god decided to give all his superpowers to Elisha. What’s more, god decided to give Elisha even more superpowers.

Could he fly?

No, but he could part rivers like Moses. He could make a normal spring into a magical healing well and he could cause whole plains to flood when he came across thirsty horses.

Did he have laser vision?

No, but he could strike people blind and he could heal blind people. And he could turn one loaf of bread into a lot of loaves.

Did he have a cybernetic suit with laser guns and missiles?

No, but he could make a little bit of oil turn into a lot of oil and he could bring people back from the dead. And if that’s not enough, he could also makes axe-heads float.

Did he fight crime?

Yes he did. Loitering, to be exact. You see, one day Elisha was walking by a group of kids not much older than you and they were loitering. What’s worse, they were also picking on Elisha for being bald.

My mommy says when people call you names, you should walk away.

And that’s exactly what Elisha did. He walked away… and then used his god powers to summon a few bears to take horrible, bloody vengeance on the kids by ripping their arms and legs off and devouring their torsos while they bled to death screaming in horrible agony.

Because remember, boys and girls, sticks and stones might break your bones, but bears will fucking kill you.

The End.

Outro:

Before we put her in park for the night, I wanted to congratulate our friends over at Secular (dot) FM who raised over two grand for the Foundation Beyond Belief last weekend during their marathon 24 hour live broadcast. And if you’d like to help add to that February total, you’ll find a handy link on the shownotes for this episode.

Donate to the FBB: http://foundationbeyondbelief.org/

That’s all the blasphemy we’ve got for you tonight, but if you want more, there’s more. We all got to be podcast whores this week so there’s plenty of us to go around. Heath and I did a guest spot with Jake Farr-Wharton on the Imaginary Friends Show, Bill and Suzy invited Lucinda and me onto the latest episode of Bar Room Atheists and, of course, all three of us appeared in fits and starts on the most recent episode of the Holy Crap video cast; you’ll find links to all three on the shownotes as well.

Imaginary Friends Show: http://imaginaryfriendsshow.com/2014/02/22/ifs-170-nice-fantastic/

Bar Room Atheists: http://barroomatheist.podbean.com/

Holy Crap! Vlogcast: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGiA6ZwdeLM

And as if that’s not enough, you can also find all over social media. Be sure to check us out on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and subscribe to us on YouTube. If you’re feeling generous with your time, please take a minute to give us a glowing review on iTunes and if you haven’t checked out Stitcher yet, download the free app, listen to us there and add us to your favorites.

Of course, we can’t close things out without thanking Heath for taking time out of his enervating sex life to join us tonight. Huge thanks to Lucinda for yet another hilarious Bible story and a big thanks to the prodigal daughter and extremely patient Farnsworth quoter tonight, Tiny Tribble. She doesn’t have a blog or anything and I already promoted her dad’s vlogcast twice in this episode, so I’ll just use this time to thank everyone that’s sent us a Farnsworth quote in the past and is wondering if we’ll ever use it. Believe me, I really appreciate it and I’m using them more or less in the order they were received.

But of course, most of all I need to shower praise upon this week’s most exceptional hominids, Sakura, Jennifer, James, Cameron, Andrew, Michael, Cat, Richard, Joanna, Caroline, other Richard and Cherie. Sakura and Jennifer, whose ninjutsu has saved the American coast from more than one hurricane; James and Cameron, who aren’t the dude who made Avatar so I’m still waiting on a refund for that; Andrew and Michael, whose massive cocks will one day unlock the key to space elevator construction; Cat and Richard, whose gravitas compels dogshit to move out of the way of their shoes; Joanna and Caroline, whose wisdom makes Solomon look like a baby-bifurcating bozo; and Richard and Cherie, whose brilliance is so evident that statues are being carved in advance of their historical accomplishments..

This dynamic dozen donors, known throughout the interwebs as the Twelve Apostates, have proved the depth of their apostasy this week by giving us money. Only the most valiant, noble, silky smooth atheists have the disbelief it takes to give us money, but if you think you can handle the praise, you’ll find the donate button on the right side of the homepage at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.

And remember, donating to our show is like sex; the more practice you get, the better it feels. So if you’ve donated to the show in the past, please consider doing it again; this time I’ll swallow.

Episode 45 – Partial Transcript

December 26, 2013 Noah Lugeons 1 comment

by Heath Enwright and Noah Lugeons

Link to Episode

Link to Hemant’s Blog

Link to Foundation Beyond Belief

Warning: This podcast breaks between 50 and 70 per cent of the commandments, depending on who you ask.

Sponsor:

Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Fox’s new “holistic programming” channel: Placebo FX; featuring an all-star line up of pseudo-scientific programming including hits like “Grey’s Astrology”, Chiropractor Who and Sons of Anthropometry.

Placebo FX: Because TV execs stopped trying when they realized people would watch American Idol.

And now, the Scathing Atheist…

Intro:

It’s Thursday

It’s December 26th

And we can finally listen to elevator music in public places again.

I’m Noah Lugeons,

I’m Heath Enwright,

And from city waiting for it’s balls to drop, New York, New York, this is the Scathing Atheist

In this week’s episode,

Belgium puts the youth back in euthanasia,
Optimus Prime will die for your sins,
And Hemant Mehta rejoins us to spackle some cracks in the wall of separation.

But first, the diatribe…

Diatribe:

Last week I was doing a little Insufficiently-Executed-Jew-Mas shopping at one of New York’s fine Fifth Avenue retail establishments when I happened upon 5 white haired little old ladies in matching smocks. And on these smocks they’d written, in glue and glitter, the words, “Granny Peace Brigade”. And unlike me, they weren’t giving in to seasonally induced mindless-consumerism. No, quite the opposite in fact. They were there to protest. And of all the evils that face our world, they’d chosen to invest their efforts of protestation on fucking video games.

And I stood there and regarded them with anthropological curiosity. Because clearly they’d put some time into this. They’d spent the money on matching yellow smocks and they didn’t half ass the glitter. They’d clearly each made their own, but each one had the team name written in block letters of approximately the same height. And they’d all met up for crafts and maybe some lunch or something and then headed out to show those evil retailers how they felt about them filthy computer whats-its with the blood and guts in ‘em.

So it’s not the they weren’t willing to put in the time to research it. They just didn’t do it. Do violent video games correlate with violence? There’s mountains of good data out there and much of it is available for free on the internet. The consensus seems to be almost certainly no and while there’s some indication that violent people tend toward violent video games, there’s no compelling evidence to suggest that violent video games lead to increases in violent behavior.

But these ladies didn’t bother to check. They’d already invested time and passion and glitter in this shit. You think they were gonna do some independent research that might have proved them wrong? Hell no! Obviously research wasn’t on the menu or they would have picked a store that sold video games.

Research, shmesearch. They looked at video games, saw violence, looked at the news, saw violence and they put two and two together. Sure, they got thirteen, but the important thing is that they had an excuse to get together with the bridge club and make a trip to Ben Franklins.

And when I see these misguided geriatric “blood”ites and their fruitless campaign to impact violence through good intentions and stupidity, I can’t help but think back to four mandatory years in high school of English lit with no classes on critical thinking. No pre-requisites about psychology or epistemology or formal logic. And nothing against English Lit, but so far in my adult life the ability to spot bullshit has been far handier than even the best of quatrains.

But thanks to religious fundies, critical thinking isn’t on the school menu. Because think of all the shit teachers get when they teach redneck kids about evolution. Imagine if the kids were coming home asking where Noah got his Patagonian pumas. Or how Moses wrote the parts about his own funeral. Or why we should thank god for sacrificing himself to himself in the first place.

I’m not going to say that religion is the reason people are stupid, but it helps. It fosters a stupid, overly-accommodating culture that says there are multiple ways to arrive at truth and the ones with evidence and data aren’t any better than the ones without. We have different ways of evaluating the truth and sure, yours uses your brain, but mine uses my heart. Or my pancreas, since that’s just as logical a place to say my thoughts come from as my heart. And my pancreas thoughts are as good as your brain thoughts because science can’t tell us everything and nobody knows for sure.

And meanwhile, if we could just set all that shit aside and agree on a consistent and logical way of evaluating claims (we could call it science) then we could figure out what matters and what doesn’t and put our time toward something more productive than protesting video games, but we’d rather not do that because we don’t like being wrong… and we’ve already made the smocks.

Headlines:

Joining me for headlines tonight is reigning Champion of the InKredulous Podcast, Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to throw down some of that award winning incredulity?

Why are we even talking about this?!? This entire podcast should go without saying!!!

If god existed, I wouldn’t win at anything!!!

Well done; now how about some of that award-eligible headline delivering?

In our lead story tonight, A&E suspended ‘Duck Dynasty’ star Phil Robertson, after the release of a GQ interview, in which he made several unoriginal homophobic remarks, including a hackneyed comparison of gay sex to bestiality. As a result, God-fearing, Christian, heterosexual sheep fuckers everywhere, are up in arms. And that means Westboro Baptist Church is up in arms.

Yeah, when the Westboro Baptist Church is coming to your defense, it’s a good sign your career is over.

So the heir to the “synthetic quacking fortune” released a statement…

Did it just say, “I’m a 67 year old Christian redneck from Louisiana that kills small animals for a living; of course I hate queers you idiots.”

No, it actually explained how he’s super tolerant of gays: (quote) “We just give ’em the good news about Jesus – whether they’re homosexuals, drunks, terrorists. We let God sort ’em out later.” (end quote) …

So that’s nice. He doesn’t put arbitrary labels on people, like gay … alcoholic … suicide bomber.

And as for that ‘good news’ … those groups are all equally going to hell fairly. So good news gay drunks who’ve been dying to get into terrorism: Nothing holding you back now!!! And good news lesbian Al Queda soldiers: Drink up!!! And good news bi-curious alcoholic suicide bombers: Might as well suck a dick while you’ve got the chance!!!

“Might as well suck a dick while you’ve got the chance”… okay, so when we get them to take “In God We Trust” off the money, we’ve got a ready replacement.

Along with the WBC, several other professional bigoted assholes have voiced support for Robertson’s traditionally acceptable hate speech, including the Family Research Council, and Quran-burning Pastor Terry Jones. They argue that A&E “not H-eight-ing fags”, denies Robertson’s First Amendment Right to exercise Christianity in a world where all corporations H-eight fags.

The Duck Dynasty Guy getting from the Westboro Baptist Church: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/20/westboro-baptist-duck-dynasty_n_4479995.html?utm_hp_ref=religion

And from the “Now Where Will We Crucify Voltron?” file tonight, a San Diego federal judge has decided that a 43 foot tall concrete cross on public property could be interpreted as a government endorsement of Christianity.

Or at least government persecution of Jews, Muslims, and Transformers.

Don’t say that around Michael Bay or I swear Optimus’ll be hanging from this thing in part seven. Now I think it’s worth noting that this is only the latest in a long series of judges ruling the Mount Soledad cross unconstitutional. Legal wrangling over the status of the controversial eyesore has been ongoing since 1989 and it was already found to be unconstitutional once in the nineties and again in 2011. Because it’s a giant, gaudy cross sitting on top of a mountain on public property and it doesn’t take a seasoned magistrate to see what’s wrong with that.

I’d say the best way to get rid of the cross would be burning it. Shouldn’t be too hard to find some Christians to get on board with that.

Proponents of the cross have tried everything from making the surrounding space a memorial to selling the land to transferring it to federal jurisdiction to avoid complying with the constitution, and despite the fact that a church a few hundred feet from the present location has offered to keep it on their property, proponents fight on because what’s the point of having a 29 foot tall cross on a 14 foot base if it isn’t on the summit of a mountain?

Judge orders that Mount Soledad cross be removed: http://marksilk.religionnews.com/2013/12/13/why-the-mt-soledad-cross-and-its-like-are-unconstitutional/

And in “Salvation Arms Race” news, the War on Christmas rages on, as bell-ringer Kristina Vindiola was punched really hard in the arm, while collecting donations outside an Arizona Wal-Mart. Reports indicate she provoked the violence when she started shouting anti-Christian epithets like “Happy Holidays”.

This may be the stupidest example of Christian dominionism. Set aside that before they started getting all uppity about it most people thought of “Happy holidays” as a way of getting Merry Christmas and Happy New Year out in 5 syllables; even if it means what they think it means, they’re getting pissed off at people for publicly acknowledging the fact that some people have a different religion than them. How dare some?

So an un-named “Merry Christmas Fundamentalist” heard Vindiola use slurs like the “H-words” several times, as well as other inflammatory synonymous phrases like, “BLANK-cember 25th”. The Christian shopper obviously became incensed, and shouted back something like: “Don’t you believe in God? It’s Merry Christmas, you godless cunt!” – and then assaulted Vindiola for being a terrible Christian.

Salvation Army volunteer punched for saying “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/17/kristina-vindiola-punched-happy-holidays_n_4460525.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003

And in equal opportunity genital joke news tonight, the Russian Punk Band Pussy Riot was released from a Russian prison last week when it was deemed that the national threat that their metronomic cadence and scaled down barred chords presented had sufficiently expired.

And the feminist movement takes another blow … which they hate. The most famous all-female band in history still has “Pussy” in their name. Pussy Riot surpassed the illustrious Pussycat Dolls on their climb to the top of the … tiny area below the glass floor.

The members of the all-girl band were originally imprisoned after recording a music video that criticized the Russian church’s support of Putin and in a theoretically abnormal abuse of anti-blasphemy laws, Putin incarcerated the group after painstakingly revealing the details of his evil plan.

And I suppose now that we’re this deep into the Pussy story, it’s inevitable that we put 30 seconds on the clock…

I can usually go twice that long.

Names for Vaginal Tribute bands. Go!

Bled Zeppelin

Johnny Gash and Tennessee Twat

Cooze Traveler

Cleft Leppard

Blue Oyster Cunt

Queef Latifah

Molly Hatchet Wound

And for the ladies who like in the Jazz; Cunt Basie and the Kansas Titty 5

Phish … Tacos

Queen Crimson, maybe? More like a gay joke than a pussy joke, I guess…

Grand Master Gash

Labio-Head?

Meat Loaf Wallet

Fleetwood Crack

Pink Void: featuring Roger Twatters

Hoo-Hah and the Blowfish

Snatch Box Twenty

I have a few more, but I think that’s enough feminism for the time being.

Amazing that in 17 vagina puns we never used “clit”

I looked for one but I couldn’t find it.

Pussy-Riot members released from prison: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/12/20/pussy-riot-rockers-convicted-of-religious-hatred-are-released-from-russian-prison/

And just a few quick items before we close the headlines . . .

Item One: 61 years after UK courts convicted math and computer genius Alan Turing of being too gay while cracking Nazi cryptography, and 59 years after his related suicide, the living Queen pardoned the dead queen, and apologized that he was offered chemical castration via female hormone sex-change injections in lieu of jail.

So soon?

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/24/world/europe/alan-turing-enigma-code-breaker-and-computer-pioneer-wins-royal-pardon.html

Item Two is a quick update on the would be Satanic monument on the Oklahoma Statehouse steps that we talked about a couple of episodes ago. After receiving additional requests from Hindus and animal right activists, the state has declared a moratorium on new monuments, that will, of course, not affect the ten commandments monument that got this ball of shit rolling.

Oklahoma declares “moratorium” on displays at Statehouse: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/12/19/okla-wont-allow-new-requests-for-capitol-monuments-after-satanists-others/

Item Three: Human veal supply will spike after euthanasia was approved for youth in Belgium. And it’s about time . . . When you eat Chinese children, you just want to adopt another kid thirty minutes later.

http://www.religionnews.com/2013/12/19/belgium-debates-allowing-gravely-ill-children-right-die/

And quick, before it gets worse, we’ll close out the headlines. Heath, thanks as always.

And when we come back, I’ll be rejoined by Friendly Atheist Hemant Mehta to talk about what students can do to keep god out of their high schools.

Outro:

Before we apologize awkwardly and claim it’s never happened to us before tonight, I wanted to direct you to a hilarious episode of the InKredulous Podcast featuring Jay Novella of the Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe, our very own Heath Enwright and our very own me. You can Google InKredulous (with a “K”) or you can look for a handy link on the shownotes for this episode. Huge thanks to Andy for the invite.

http://www.merseysideskeptics.org.uk/category/podcast/inkredulous-podcast/

I also need to thank Lucinda for opening the show for us, I need to thank Heath for his humorous lack of a moral compass, I need to thank Hemant Mehta once again for a really productive and interesting conversation and I want to remind you that you can find links to his website and the Foundation Beyond Belief on our homepage and on the shownotes for this episode.

Of course, I’ve also gotta thank Dustin from the Atheist Nomads podcast for providing this week’s Farnsworth quote. His partner did one before but Dustin made more of the rock star entrance. If you haven’t checked out their podcast yet you have noone to blame for it but yourself. Again, links can be found on the shownotes.

http://www.atheistnomads.com/

I need to congratulate Cecil from Cognitive Dissonance for Grinching all the joy out of Christmas for me this year by defeating me by less than four points last week in the Fantasy Football League of Sinister Secularists, thus earning the first ever championship title in said league.

But of course, most of all we need to thank this week’s most exceptional vertebrates; Steve-O, Chester, David, Ryan, James and Magnus the Great Dane. Steve-O, who’s so cool they measure him in Kelvin; Chester, who’s fortified with 13 essential vitamins and minerals; David, whose athletic prowess is so great he hold records in sports he’s never played; Ryan, who is second only to the Hokey-Pokey in being what it’s all about; James, who shall one day inherit a kingdom and make a killing with it on ebay and Magnus the Great Dane, who is, by default more correct on the god question than more than three-quarters of the world’s human population because even a species that eats it’s own poop knows better than to believe in god.

These six notable and noble humanitarians and caninatarians have justified the proterozoic leap into multi-cellular life this week by giving us money. Not everybody has the compassion, composure and competence to compensate us, but if you think you share Steve-O, Chester, David, Ryan, James and Magnus the Great Dane complementable competence, you’ll find the donate button on the right side of the homepage at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.

And if you got duped by that old “better to give than to receive” line again this year and blew all your cash, no worries. You can also help us a ton by leaving us a review on iTunes and checking us out on all the various social media places you frequent. Oh, and check us out on Stitcher because I forgot to mention that the last couple weeks and our Stitcher ranking dropped so do that.

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, antitheism podcast, atheism, atheist, atheist podcast, Christianity, friendly atheist, Heath Enwright, Hemant Mehta, Lucinda Lugeons, Noah Lugeons, religion

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