Archive
Episode 16 – Partial Transcript
by Noah Lugeons, Heath Enwright and Lucinda Lugeons
(Note: Transcript may contain material edited from the final episode for time purposes)
Sponsor:
Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the new brand of perforated Catholic Condoms, Kingdom Cum. These confusingly labeled condoms are no more contraceptive than cheesecloth, but we’re willing to wager we’ll catch a few drunken fornicators with this ruse.
What, you think that’s immoral? You should see what Catholics do when they take over a hospital.
And now, the Scathing Atheist:
Intro:
It’s Thursday, it’s June 6th and I know Jake Farr-Wharton has already opened up the show once, but the dude sent the quote to me in six different voices and I’m not letting good shit go to waste.
I’m your host Noah Lugeons and from abbreviated NY, NY, this is the Scathing Atheist.
On this week’s show,
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We’ll add contractual obligation to the list of reasons not to get addicted to meth,
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I’ll try desperately to come up with another nickname for Pope Francis,
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And Heath and Lucinda will join me in discovering that Leviticus is every bit as fucked up as you think it is.
But first, the Diatribe.
Diatribe:
I’m sick and goddamned tired of hearing about where people fall on the “Dawkins Scale”.
Before I go any further, I should note that I’m a big fan of Dawkins and I admire his non-sexist parts… he’s like the Benny Hill of atheism in that way. And what’s more, I completely understand the rhetorical utility of his sliding scale of theistic probability. In the hands of a skilled debater like Dawkins, it’s a valuable asset. But in the hands of a lay-atheist, it’s often a hell of a lot less than that.
For those who aren’t familiar with the term, the “Dawkins Scale” refers to a seven point scale Dawkins proposed in The God Delusion. A one on this scale represents absolute certainty that god exists, a seven is absolute certainty that god doesn’t exist. The point he’s making is that atheists generally fall on the “6”, not the “7”. It’s a useful explanation of the fact that atheism is the product of doubt, not certainty.
But certainty appeals to a lot of people, so when Dawkins talks about this publicly there’s often a backlash. People in the media stammer about how Dawkins is uncertain and concedes that there might be a god afterall. They don’t seem to understand that he’s not actually conceding that in any way. They just see two guys in a debate where one is saying he’s absolutely sure and the other’s saying he holds a tentative position that’s in accordance with the observable evidence. Somehow they don’t see this as an idiot vs. a responsible thinker, but rather they see it as confident guy vs. indecisive guy.
In the context of the book and in the context of some debates, employing this scale makes perfect sense. But before we lean too heavily on it, we should probably point out that this scale can also be applied to any other belief. Does gravity exist? Well, I’m pretty damn sure it does, but as a responsible thinker, I’ve got to go with a 6 on the scale, because if convincing evidence arose to the contrary, I would change my mind. I am not an immutable “7”. We could be part of a computer simulation titled “what if there was gravity?”, so as a proper logician I have to carve out a little, tiny, itsy-bitsy “margin of error” on the gravity thing.
Same thing for evolution, right? I mean, just because all the available data suggests and confirms it, that doesn’t mean that I’m absolutely certain beyond the shadow of a doubt, irrespective of future data. I’d have to hold the responsible position of “6” on the scale. But why hamstring oneself in debate by pointing this out only with respect to the thing you’re arguing about?
I feel the same way every time I hear Dillahunty, or anyone else for that matter, talk about Agnostic Atheism vs. Gnostic Atheism. Before we start making this distinction, somebody show me one of these gnostic atheists. Show me somebody who says that no matter what level of convincing evidence could be offered to the contrary, they would never believe in god. Show me somebody who says he would still be an atheist if god appeared in the sky before the whole world at once and said, “I am god, sorry about all the mysteriousness and shit and to prove my godness you’ll note that all the people who had cancer are now cured.” Show me that guy and then let’s start carving atheism up into gnostic and agnostic.
This isn’t just a semantic thing. And it’s not just a “trip-you-up-in-an-argument” thing either. The use of these devices is actually fucking this movement up internally. I can’t tell you often I see atheists offering up false-equivalency compromises with this nonsense. Search “Dawkins Scale” on Twitter and it won’t take long to find an atheist saying something like, “I’ll admit that being a 7 on the Dawkins scale is as ridiculous as being a 1”
What? No the fuck it isn’t! That’s a complete misreading of the point of the rhetorical device. Keep in mind that on this scale, 7 actually represents the thing that is right. 1 represents the thing that is wrong. The point of the Dawkins Scale is to point out the flaw in “Absolute Certainty”. But if you’re going to be absolutely certain of something, it’s still way better to be certain about the thing that conforms to all the known evidence.
Substitute anything else for the god assumption and it becomes painfully obvious. Somebody who is absolutely certain that the earth is round should, for the proper employment of scientific thinking, concede that overwhelming evidence could sway him… from a pedantic, vulcan, it’s-an-oblate-spheroid-bitch point of view. But that doesn’t mean that he’s exactly as wrong as somebody who is absolutely convinced that the earth is flat.
There’s a cat on my lap right now. If I was pressed, I’d admit that it could be a hallucination, it could be a robot, it could be a phantasm from another dimension taking the form of my cat. But if I say, “No, damn it, this is definitely my cat”, it may be technically wrong, but it’s certainly not as wrong as “No, damn it, this is definitely a phantasm from another dimension.”
The problem is with 7 point scales and binary choices like gnostic and agnostic is that there’s no way to truly express the 6.999999-ness of one’s atheism. If god appeared before me right now and we had a twenty minute conversation, I’d assume I’d lost my fucking mind before I’d assume that it actually happened. It would take a hell of alot more than than personal experience to overturn my conviction. I’d need tangible evidence that could be verified by multiple sources and, in addition, I’d need volumes of refutations for the hundreds of logical contradictions his existence entails. I’d need a world-overturning amount of evidence. I’d need an amount of evidence that one can reasonably assume will never exist.
So as to where I fall on the Dawkins Scale, it ultimately comes down to the question of how many 9s you can put after the decimal place before you run out of 9s.
Headlines:
Joining me for headlines tonight is my fellow skeptic, Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to sharpen Occam’s Razor?
Is another old book club making outrageous claims?
I’m starting to think god is worse than Oprah.
In our lead story tonight, Oxford University researcher and author Kathleen Taylor made waves this week when she suggested that religious fundamentalism may one day be a curable mental illness. Now, when you and I hear this statement, the only new information is the word “Curable”, but when the religious folks hear it they’re once again forced to confront the fact that believing in magic people in the clouds is, technically, fucking nuts.
I hope the cure for religion comes out in some sort of weaponized form. I’m picturing a reality dart, and you can heal the radically ignorant right in the side of the neck with a blowgun.
This is only the latest in a long line of academics accidentally forgetting that we’re supposed to publicly ignore the fact that extreme religiosity and mental illness spend a lot of venn diagrams spooning.
Definitely got a shared region in the extra-wide vagina shape. That’s more like scissoring than spooning, I guess.
The media reports it like it’s a scandal and then they dig up a bunch of peacemaker psychologists who dutifully point out that technically it’s not a mental illness until it interferes with your day to day life and at the same time they’ll dutifully not point out that by the same argument believing that you’re Napoleon and your left testicle reminds you to water the house-plants is also not de-facto crazy.
And the Napoleon left testicle belief system is VASTLY more likely to be true than those of any major religion.
Worst thing that happens if insane people become radically orthodox about science is they make an atheist podcast. Nobody’s ever protested a theist funeral, or bombed a fetus rescue clinic, in the name of Darwin or Dawkins.
But don’t worry, it’s not like we’re going to now have a rational conversation about this topic, as the major media outlets have reported that, in fact, the pachyderm droppings on the loveseat were likely man-made and placed there intentionally.
Pay no attention to the Republican mascot behind the curtain, taking a shit on society’s couch.
Could religious fundamentalism be treated as a mental illness? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/31/kathleen-taylor-religious-fundamentalism-mental-illness_n_3365896.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular
And speaking of fundamentalism and mental illness, our next story brings us to Kentucky and Ken Ham’s ailing “Ark Park” where Ham is inadvertently demonstrating the absurdity of the Noah story by showing how hard it is to get an ark of that size built when you’ve got modern shipping channels and $25 million dollars at your disposal.
Well Noah had the old-man strength going. You know how the best softball players are 45-year-olds? Noah did all the ark stuff between the ages of 480 and 600, so unfair advantage.
Plus, Ken Ham probably has far fewer Jewish slaves at his disposal for the project.
In addition to not having enough money to build the ark that will fail to serve as the centerpiece for this not-likely-to-exist theme park, Ham’s team is also not building other Old Testament attractions, including not breaking ground on a Tower of Babel observations deck and not moving ahead on a planned “Ten Plagues” themed ride.
I think they need to reread Genesis 11. They’re constructing a replica of the tower whose construction got god to smite everyone. That’s like re-airing the seizure-inducing anime clip.
Many atheists will remember hearing a lot about this park a couple of years ago when the state of Kentucky agreed to award it huge tax incentives to build it’s testament to credulous stupidity. It would seem now that the “Ark Encounter” has found a clever way to circumvent that controversy by failing to raise the requisite funds for construction until the proposed tax incentives expire in May of next year.
So Kentucky said, “Yeah, you guys can have these huge tax breaks, as long as you can build an impossible boat and an entire infinite tower to heaven before next May.”
Ark Park having trouble: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/31/noahs-ark-theme-park_n_3367579.html?utm_hp_ref=religion
And in “Are-They-Still-On-About-That-Shit?” News, a number of prominent Baptist leaders have called for a mass withdrawal of support for the Boy Scouts of America after they slight and decades overdue backpedaling of institutionalized of bigotry. Arguing that we can’t allow gay people to learn how to tie such good knots, homophobic pastors across the nation are urging their flocks to cut their ties with the Boy Scouts.
“I know this seems like it’s about the gay thing, in the standard cause and effect sense. But we’re just uncomfortable – in general – of a dozen 10-year-old boys and a weird adult in a tent, wearing matching short shorts and ascots. Whether or not there are any actual homosexuals present, it’s just too faggoty.”
Pastor Tim Reed of Arkansas forestalled that argument when he told a CNN reporter that (quote) “It’s not a hate thing here”, adding a bunch of other thinly veiled lies and bullshit that he has to tell himself to continue to believe that he’s not a bigoted anal-wart that cherry picked through one of the most egregiously horrific parts of the entire bible, bypassed laws against tattoos, fabric mixing and crustacean eating and selectively chose to enforce the one line he found that reinforced his hateful bigotry.
“It’s not that they’re gay, it’s that they’re evil BECAUSE they’re gay. It’s all in the book, you can check. Our hands are tied.”
“We’d also be this pissed if they endorsed uncovering your wife’s daughter’s nakedness!”
Sorry Pastor, but it’s still racist when you say hockey players are better than basketball players at water polo.
Baptists plan exodus from Boy Scouts: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/05/31/southern-baptists-to-urge-churches-and-members-to-cut-boy-scout-ties/
And in quasi-constitutional legislative acrobatics this week, we’ve got the state of Ohio hoping to pass a bill that would award high school credits to kids for going to church and learning about how evil gay people are and stuff.
I’d be willing to give PE credit to altar boys, especially if, you know . . . they swallowed.
Proponents of the bill argue that (quote) “It’s an attempt to reinstall some of the same things that made this country great”, which, in the mind of Democratic representative Bill Patmon, include religious indoctrination and rewarding people for knowing things that are wrong. Patmon went on to complain that we’ve taken prayer out of the schools, we’ve separated religious demonstration from learning areas, we’ve taken religious displays out of schools, I mean, it’s getting to where there’s hardly any way at all to exploit the public schools to evangelize.
“Some of these kids are going 7 . . . 8 hours in a row at school, in the middle of December, without seeing a single piece of visual Jesus propaganda. Do the math. You just can’t brain rape kids under these conditions. I thought this was America.”
Opponents of the law point out that giving educational credit for things that aren’t actually “education” kind of defeats the purpose and then they just kind of stare at the proponents and wonder why this isn’t enough to persuade them.
I got my health credits in high school by interning with a psychic chiropractor who cured headaches with leeches. And now look at me. I run a lucrative wishing well business.
Shifty payouts for religion by state of Ohio: http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20130601/NEWS/306010059/Ohio-may-OK-public-school-religion-credits?gcheck=1
And from the “Who-Will-They-Molest-Now?” file, Las Vegas’ oldest Catholic School will be shutting its doors permanently at the end of the academic year. The St. Joseph Catholic School has been instrumental in Vegas’ international reputation as a paragon of chastity and virtue since 1948, but a steep drop off in people gullible enough to entrust their children to Catholics has led to the school’s inevitable demise.
I think it’s telling, that the oldest Catholic school in Las Vegas, is named after Jesus’ stepdad, the patron saint of some other dude fucking your wife…the patron saint of “cuckolded by god’s dick”
Over the past decade about a quarter of all Catholic schools have been shuttered nationwide leading many to believe that god has abandoned us and no longer cares about the travails of mankind, instead focusing his divine attention on beating Contra without using the cheat code.
It’s all about the spreader gun. Maybe the laser near the end. The flamethrower didn’t get the good blast radius effect until Contra 2.
Beating Contra without the cheat code is like god… I’ll believe it when I see it.
Oldest Vegas Catholic school to close permanently: http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2013/may/30/citys-oldest-catholic-school-falls-victim-low-enro/#axzz2UqCW1wru
And in this week’s forecast on international demon activity we find that despite papal intervention, the guy who thought that he was filled with devil spawn is still fucking crazy. Despite the Pope Frankenberry’s exorcism that wasn’t, a wheelchair bound man identified in the press as Angel V. insists that he is still possessed by demons.
Looks like he has a malpractice case, at the very least. They seem to have botched a fairly routine procedure. But I’ve seen a lot of spinals, dude, and it sounds like this Angel guy is a fake.
The fucking goldbricker claims to have undergone more than 30 exorcisms and somehow no matter how much holy water they throw at him while intoning latin platitudes, his clearly malfunctioning brain refuses to be miraculously cured.
What’s the problem, he’s hearing demonic voices, telling him to kill babies and eat them? Everyone get those sometimes, right? We don’t all have to act on them every time.
Instead of responsibly suggesting he seek psychiatric help, prominent Catholics affirm his harmful delusions by saying things like (quote) “the demons that live in him do not want to leave,” and (quote) “God exists”.
Man exorcised by Pope still possessed by demons: http://www.newsmax.com/edwardpentin/pope-excorcism-possessed-angel/2013/05/29/id/506975
And finally tonight, a story that comes to us from Friendly Atheist, prolific author and inaugural Farnsworth quoter Hemant Mehta and his Friendly Atheist blog. It would seem that a couple of parents in Utah have finally found the secret to instilling the importance of good moral judgement on their children: Cold hard cash.
Mother Katie Hughes had her daughters sign a contract that promises a reward of $1000 at the age of 20 if the now pre-pubescent girls can refrain from the use of drugs, alcohol and premarital sex between now and then.
“We’re willing to pay as much as 34 cents a day for you to have a shitty, sheltered childhood.”
Seems like a non-binding legal contract might not be the best way to tackle the subject. Are kids gonna need to start bringing legal counsel to have “the talk” ?
So yeah, setting aside the obvious fact that in another eight years these girls could earn that much in a night by breaking the pledge, one also has to doubt that the paltry sum of a thousand 2026 dollars will remain a sufficient carrot to forestall teen angst.
So, nine days of future minimum wage later . . . or drunken orgasms and cocaine now…
Mother offers daughter $1000 to stay a virgin: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/06/05/christian-mother-to-daughter-if-you-remain-abstinent-until-youre-20-ill-give-you-1000/
And since there’s nothing better to close on than drunken orgasms and cocaine, that’ll do it for headlines tonight, Heath, thanks as always for joining me.
And when we come back, Lucinda will join us to bust open our bibles and dig into the dirty parts.
Song:
After writing poems for Genesis and Exodus, I felt obligated to the Herculean task of capturing the mind-raping insanity of Leviticus in two rhyming minutes. To complicate matters, I used a weird rhyme scheme and upon recitation it had this really awful “middle aged white guy rapping” feel to it.
In an effort to counterbalance that I put a little music behind it, but I want to apologize to any musicians who might be listening. I was really under the gun on this thing so it’s basically A minor and E the whole way.
So without further ado, I present the book of Leviticus in rhyme:
Leviticus in Rhyme:
Let me tell you how to sacrifice a goat, bitch; First you cut it’s throat which,
seems a little mean and maybe more than a little gross, it’s
Nothing when compared to; What the Levites bear through,
Details of the entrails should be plenty enough to scare you.
The fat goes on a pyre; Set that shit on fire,
The smell’s a rancid hell but it’s the odor god desires.
How to kill a bird now; Case you hadn’t heard how,
Twist it’s little heard until it’s dead and when it’s burned, bow.
This is for atonement; Offer no postponement,
Couple jugs of blood is a critical component.
Now a proclamation; Regarding ordination,
light the candles right or you might risk assassination …From the Lord.
Thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not lie,
Thou shalt not do it guy on guy,
Thus unto Moses spoke the Lord.
Let me tell you what to eat bitch; Tell you who to sleep with
Tell you how to burn the heretics about that bewitch.
Tell you ‘bout your penis; And all it’s uncleanness,
For someone all-knowing I’m not much of a hygienist.
Oh, and if it pleases; Quickly on diseases,
Sacrifice a turtle dove if anybody sneezes.
Menstrual blood and semen; Need a lot of cleanin’
Best I never catch you whorin’ with all those goat demons,
Tell you ‘how to shave, man; Who you can enslave, man,
Tell you how to stone the motherfucks who misbhave and,
If you disobey me; I will not just slay thee,
Many generations I’ll be all up in your game, see …I’m the Lord.
Thou shalt be pure, thou shalt be true,
Thou shalt not get a damned tattoo,
Thus unto Moses spoke the Lord.
Thou shalt speak up, Thou shalt not cheat,
Thou shalt not dine on rancid meat
Or stick your dick in things that bleat.
Thou shalt not mix thy rye and wheat.
Thou shalt be just, thou shalt be kind,
Thou shalt not trick the deaf and blind,
Or touch cadavers left behind.
Or let two fabrics be combined.
Thou shalt fear god, thou shalt be straight,
Thou shalt not look to kin with hate,
Thou shalt not ever masturbate,
Thou shant put weasel on your plate.
Thou shalt not rob, thou shalt be bold
Thou shalt rise up before the old,
Don’t get your daughter’s pussy sold,
Thou shalt give all my priests your gold,
…Thou shalt be easily controlled.
Thus spoke the Lord.
Outro:
That brings us to a quick recognition of this week’s most astonishing vertebrates, Steven, Lindsay, Ward and other Lindsay. These four vampire hunting, ninja decimating, time bomb deactivating, bus jumping heroes have distinguished themselves above all other carbon based lifeforms this week by giving us money. Drawing on stupendous reserves of tenacity, intelligence and spare cash lying around, these four fine folks have provided an example that all tenacious, intelligent people with spare cash lying around should aspire to.
If you’d like to join these noble few in the pantheon of Scatheist glory, you’ll find the donate button on the right side of our homepage at Scathing Atheist (dot) com. Oh, and Lindsay, if you’re listening, I was talking about the other Lindsay when I said, “other Lindsay”, not you.
That does it for tonight’s show, but we’ll be back in 168 hours with some hastily put together shit that’ll keep me up until 2 in the morning at least twice this week. But if you can’t wait that long without risking a stress induced seizure, be sure to check out our erratically published blog and our erratically Tweeted Twitter feed.
Oh, and please help us spread the word about the show. If you know any atheists that have auditory canals, please give us a plug when you can. I put every diatribe up on YouTube and I’ll be putting the Leviticus song up this week as well, so if you wouldn’t be risking will-altering alienation from your family, I’d humbly ask that you give one of our videos a share on Facebook or whatever.
A quick thanks to Heath and Lucinda for joining me tonight and to a bunch of dead Israelites for making the jokes so easy on the Holy Babble segment. And a quick thanks to you, dear listener, for giving us half an hour of your life. We’ll be working really hard to earn another thirty minutes next week.
If you have questions, comments or death threats you’ll find all the contact info on the Contact page at Scathing Atheist (dot) com. All the music used in this episode was written and performed by yours truly and yes, I did have my permission.
Episode 15 – Partial Transcript
by Noah Lugeons & Heath Enwright
Sponsor:
Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the new anti-erection medication for all of your overnight camping trips with known pedaphiles and children needs. The flaccidating power of new Celibacyalis will tame even the most immaculate ejaculate.
Celibacyalis, because only the Pope can be infallible, but anyone can be in-phallus-able.
And now, the Scathing Atheist.
Intro:
It’s Thursday, it’s May 30th and what the fuck Detroit? You were up 3-1 in that goddamned series.
I’m your host Noah Lugeons and from bohemian New York, New York, this is the Scathing Atheist.
On this week’s episode:
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A recent law change in Texas will make it legal to not break the law,
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Iowa takes concrete steps to be dumber and less vaccinated,
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And we’ll make you laugh so hard a little bit of pee comes out,
But first, the Diatribe:
Diatribe:
I’d like to start off tonight with, an update on the soundclip that opened our show last week. And for the apparently sizable percentage of our audience with bong related memory deficiencies, it was the one where Wolf Blitzer makes almost as much of an ass of himself as he did when he went on Jeopardy and proved himself to be biologically fungal in mental function. And if you somehow missed that clip on the YouTube, the Twitter and the Facebook, the story goes like this:
Man means woman, woman’s holding baby in front of a house recently destroyed by a tornado, man is a salivating news whore so he puts a camera in front of her. So here’s this feeble-minded simpleton who managed to score a negative $4600 on the dumbed down Jeopardy they give to celebrities and he’s vamping for questions so he asks the poor woman if she remembers to thank god.
Now, I can’t really blame Wolf Blitzer for assuming that the random Oklahoman he was talking to was Christian. You’re gonna win that bet a lot more than you’re gonna lose it. Hell, it’s not like answering “What is Jerusalem?” when the clue was “Jesus hailed from this town”, but it’s still a stupid thing to ask someone about whom you know nothing. But it’s Wolf “which appendages do the pants go on again?” Blitzer so you expect shit like that.
But what followed is something you wouldn’t expect. Instead of looking at her shoes and muttering “well… yeah, whatever, I thank him, sure” she very politely and somewhat timidly said, “well, no, because I’m an atheist”. And then Wolf laughs. Like retarded people getting pudding .
The woman he was talking to at the time, now identified as one Rebecca Vitsmun, didn’t have to self-identify as an atheist. She could have just shrugged. But she used the A word. She said on national TV (albeit a channel nobody watches) that no, she doesn’t thank God because she doesn’t believe in God. And if anyone had been watching, they might have said, “Hey look, there’s a regular person with real problems and an adorable baby that isn’t religious and seems like a normal human.”
Keep in mind that normally there’s no reward for saying, “No, I’m an atheist”. In fact, when you live in Oklahoma there’s often something quite antipodal to a reward. If she was doing it with any end goal in mind it was probably a subtle reminder to Wolf and the other newscasters out there that they shouldn’t assume people are religious. It’s a bit of a sacrifice to send a very important message.
Wolf Blitzer won’t learn, of course, because he’s so stupid that he doesn’t even know he’s too stupid to go on Jeopardy, but I’m willing to bet that a number of other news anchors are taking notes. But not Wolf. Because it was rainy that day and his crayons don’t work in the rain. And I’m sorry if it seems like I’m focusing too much on Wolf’s mental-impairments, but we are talking about a guy who once looked at a bowl of penne on a television screen and said, “What is fettucini?” I mean, fettucini Wolf? Are you fucking kidding me?
So I heard this silly little soundclip and decided to open the show with it. And I wasn’t the only one who thought it deserved a share because within 24 of the live broadcast it was all over the atheist blogosphere and all over the english speaking world atheists were giving Rebecca an enthusiastic fist pump. But the story doesn’t end here, because it turns out that wasn’t all we were giving her.
Enter comedian and secular church co-founder Doug Stanhope who sees this thing and realizes that it’s a perfect time to show the world the benefit of putting your faith in the faithless. So he started an Indiegogo campaign called “Atheists Unite” to raise money to help our latest viral celebrity rebuild. And it turned out that we atheists thought it a fantastic idea.
So thanks to the efforts of Stanhope, the inexplicable morality of non-believers and the power of the atheist blogosphere, the secular community was able to raise $50,000 for Vitsmun in less than three quarters of a day with more pouring in to help her and other recently smited people in Oklahoma.
Now, originally I was going to tack this update on to the end of the headlines section, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this story represented every single step between now and secular majority. It begins with normal people standing up and proudly (if timidly) proclaiming their atheism. It ends with secular humanism stepping in and serving those functions that we’ve left to churches for so long.
Christians have a lot of places to go when shit hits the fan. Within hours of the storm clouds clearing there were religious missionaries there to help the religious people cope. And most of these people are probably just good people that want to help. They’d be happy to help the atheists too, but they’re not equipped. They can only exacerbate the stress by talking about god’s plan and asking us if we remembered to thank Super Jesus.
In researching for this show, I come across a lot of shit that makes me wonder if there’s any point in fighting this fight. I see laws being passed today that the 18th century would be embarassed by. I see world leaders justifying their actions with Aesop’s fables. I see people being killed by the hundreds for believing in the right imaginary friend the wrong way. And it makes me want to start a podcast about hockey or something.
But once in awhile I come across a story like this and it gives me hope. And it reminds me that there’s really some power in this community even if we are a bunch of unherdable pussies. It reminds me that even our weird, nebulous, infrastructureless, leaderless movement can still get things done. And it reminds me that Wolf Blitzer is verifiably nine thousand, two hundred Jeopardy-dollars stupider than NANCY GRACE. And I like being reminded of stuff like that.
Atheist Community raises money for Wolf Blitzer’s surprise Oklahoma atheist: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/05/24/has-the-oklahoma-atheist-been-saved/
And Proof that Wolf is really that stupid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVC28oemocA
Headlines:
Joining me for headlines tonight is my fellow ignorance wrangler, Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to corral the flock?
I’m trying really hard to be the shepherd.
In our lead story tonight, it looks like we’re all going to heaven, unless, of course, the infallible guy was wrong, which, according to the people who believe him to be infallible, he was. The story begins at morning mass where the new, controversial pontiff controversially declared that everybody could get into heaven even if they’re not Catholic… and there was controversy.
I love when the pious get meaningless news…that they believe to be terrible news. Turns out they’ve spent their entire seratonin-deprived lives hedging their bets on the losing end of Pascal’s Wager. What’s wrong? You been completely wasting your time confiding your darkest secrets to an asexual man in the next stall every Sunday?
Could have just as well been going to a Minnesota airport mens room, and getting more than just your ego stroked?
Couldn’t be less productive than confession. Anyway, the atheist community, who, truth be told, could give a shit less what some senile old coot thinks about our chances of making it to space paradise, welcomed the statement and gave the pope a pat on the back for trying. In fact, many people of a number of different faiths welcomed the statement, but you can bet your ass that none of them were Catholic.
As quickly as they could rev up the holy-laptop…
Is that a Gateway… to Heaven?
No, they’re pretentious so it’s probably an I-Maccabees.
Wouldn’t they spring for the Adonai-Pad?
Well, whatever they used, the underlings that pull the pope’s strings took to the series of tubes to clarify the statement and assure faithful Catholics that what he really meant was the exact opposite of what he said. Despite infallible rumors to the contrary, only Catholics get sky-cake.
Nope, too late. You heard him, and like you said he’s infallible. “All my atheist sins of reason done been warshed away . . . Come on in boys, the water is fine.”
It’s gotta hurt to find out from Megatron that the heathen Autobots can have real cake, and sky cake, and eat it too. That’s like blowing someone for drugs that you’re not going to take, and then finding out they’ve been giving away free drugs to atheists the whole time.
Pope Decides Atheists Can Go to Heaven: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/05/23/heaven-for-atheists-pope-sparks-debate/
And in “It’s-Not-Praying-If-I-Don’t-Agree-With-You” news, Arizona legislator Steve Smith called for a metaphysical mulligan last week after atheist representative Juan Mendez profaned that body’s ritual of morning incantations by offering his own prayer to start the session. Steve Smith, who, in addition to being two washed up NFL wide-outs, is apparently also an old, white, bigoted fuck-plunger, was incensed by the audacity of equality and offered a second prayer in (quote) “repentance” for the godless heathen’s prayer.
That’s weird, because normally Representative Mendez arrives very late to these sessions, as Arizona law requires that he show his ID to any white person that sees him along the way.
Sounds like Smith is being fairly open-minded. He’s willing to allow anybody – even an atheist – to deliver a Christian prayer before the session?
Smith offered this hilariously stupid analogy to justify his actions, “If you don’t love this country… don’t say ‘I want to lead this body in the pledge’ and stand up there and say… ‘You know what, I love England’.”
Yeah we can’t have politicians wasting their time dwelling on societal problems. We need them focused on old books.
So apparently the constitutionally dubious opening prayer is okay and doesn’t endorse a particular faith group, but if you don’t pray to Mary’s Baby-Daddy, the Christians still get to pray anyway.
Michael Richards isn’t racist . . . We had Chris Rock open for him.
Atheist Prayer Not Good Enough For Arizona Lawmaker: http://news.yahoo.com/arizona-house-non-prayer-sparks-christian-213521848.html
And in military news, the state of Texas has issued a preemptive strike in the war on Christmas with House Bill 308, which protects a teacher or student’s rights to say “Merry Christmas” without repercussions. It also gives the districts the right to put up Christmas decorations, too. So apparently they can open the gates of the prisons and let all those “Merry Christmas” wishin’, mistletoe-hangin’ hoodlums back out on the streets.
I heard this legislation is just a piggy back on another larger bill, re-affirming that under Texas law, murder is still frowned upon. The amended murder ban would also include an exclamation point at the end. Texans want to show how serious they are about not murdering, unless of course, you’re paid by the government to inject people with poison.
Now, as an atheist, my ears always perk up when I hear about state legislators making things legal that are already legal and you don’t have to dig too deeply into this one to see what the real goal is. The bill doesn’t change a single letter of any law anywhere. What it does is send a firm message that atheists can go fuck themselves if they think they’re comin’ after the baby Jesus and our manger scene.
Well, if they’re worried about somebody stealing the baby Jesus from their tax-embezzlement-funded, life-sized shoebox diorama, why don’t they just nail him down?
Are they sensitive about that for some reason?
And just to clarify the visual gag I was using during a podcast, my arms were extended outward as I made that suggestion.
Who says sight-gags don’t work on audio? The bill specifically states that Christmas decorations are fine as long as there is at least one symbol from one other faith somewhere. Like, a menorah in the closet or a buddha in the attic or something.
Like a Jew under the floorboards?
…at least you didn’t say in an urn.
…or oven.
In fact, it even says that “at least one secular scene or symbol” is sufficient to offset the Christian-ness of a nativity scene leading one to ask, what the fuck is a “secular” symbol? I mean, are they saying as long as there’s a cross and a non-cross object, it’s okay?
Crosses are all about perpendicular, so they must mean secular objects like 2 lines that are extremely parallel.
“I mean, sure, that’s a diorama of Christ on the cross, but look at this secular umbrella stand next to it, so… you know?”
I guess representations of factual a priori knowledge would be secular objects.
I’m sure when questions like these come up, the highly-educated members of the Texas legislature routinely discusses Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, and the concepts behind the (analytic / synthetic) and (a priori / a posteriori) distinctions.
Yes, I’m sure that Rick Perry can both comprehend and spell those concepts.
Texas mounts preemptive strike in the War on Christmas: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/05/24/texas-set-to-pass-bill-protecting-the-phrase-merry-christmas-from-well-no-one-really/
And in morbidly-obese-gubernatorial news, New Jersey governor Chris Christie has decided that they’re pretty much recovered from that hurricane shit and now they’ve got a spare 11 and a quarter million dollars to give to seminaries for capital improvements. And no, I don’t have to be fucking kidding you, because I’m not.
You’ve must have been fucking kidding me when you said “I don’t have to be fucking kidding you”.
I wasn’t.
The appropriations are tucked away amid 174 less questionable grants going to 44 less questionable colleges around the state. But if you go a-diggin’ you’ll find two line items totalling $11.25 million going to two religious schools. And I’m not talking “We’re Notre Dame and we love Jesus and we’re religious” religious schools, I’m talking about “We’re training religious people to be more religious and only people of our religion can come here” religious schools.
First of all, I’m not ok with Notre Dame getting any public money if they’re going to teach students about fictional characters like god and Manti Teo’s girlfriend. Also, after doing some google images research on this, I’m fairly certain that former Notre Dame head football coach Charlie Weiss is the same person as governor Christie.
Hard to believe considering that when Sandy hit, Christie was able to mount a defense.
The two grants include a $650,000 grant to Princeton Theological Seminary and a stereotype reinforcing $10.6 million to the Beth Medrash Govoha rabbinical school. I think it’s worth noting that the latter of the two not only excludes non-Jews, but non-men as well so one must invoke exponents to express the unconstitutional nature of these grants.
Really?!?! $11.25 million dollars going to teach clergy? How much does it cost to build a new pseudo-science lab? Are they demonstrating scripture concepts with large hadron colliders now?
Something strikes me odd about a rabbinical school modernizing anyway.
Chris Christie Wants to Funnel Millions in Taxpayer Dollars to Seminaries: https://www.au.org/blogs/wall-of-separation/paying-for-praying-nj-governor-seeks-to-award-taxpayer-millions-to
And in “If-We-Stop-Testing-These-Kids-They’ll-Stop-Failing” News, the Iowa state legislature recently passed House File 215 in an effort to lower the bar of homeschooling standards so far that a person might theoretically trip over it. HF 215 ensures the success of every child by removing any standard that would require them to learn or do anything.
Is this in response to an outcry that Iowa parents were making their homeschooled children too smart?
Or maybe too healthy, as among the standards on the chopping block here is the requirement that homeschooled children be vaccinated
Most homeschooled children in Iowa are baptised, so why would they need vaccinations?
What’s worse is that some of this other shit is worse. This thing goes from relaxed to catatonic with revisions like:
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Homeschooled children no longer have to spend a set number of days a year learning things
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Homeschooled children no longer have to learn any things
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Homeschooled children never have to demonstrate knowledge of things
What is this, “No Child Pushed Ahead? Can parents get vouchers to cover the costs of not teaching?
Just the latest in Iowa’s aggressive strategy to end Mississippi’s reign as the stupidest state in the country.
And that’s a competitive category.
Iowa deregulates home-schooling: ttp://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/05/27/new-legislation-will-allow-iowas-homeschooling-parents-to-not-teach-their-children/
And in “We-Can-No-Longer-Afford-To-Be-Picky” news, the Church of England recently unveiled plans to allow people with vaginas to become bishops. After decades spent debating something the rest of the world had figured out so thoroughly it had long been encoded in law, the Church of England had decided that women have functional brains, too.
The Catholic Church needs to take a cue here. This would put a huge dent in the rape case numbers. I’m not saying female priests wouldn’t be capable of abusing their power, but it would end up being consensual way more of the time. When I was a 12-year-old boy, I would have happily taken a BJ from a toothless old nun.
12 years old? I’d still take a… oh, nevermind.
So perhaps it was for the toothless blowjobs,, perhaps it’s because you can’t fuck something up if it never has any actual results anyway or maybe it was spurred on by a genuine change of heart, the important thing to note is that they’re not going to rush into this. They’re only one full century behind modern thought on this so they’re gonna give it a couple more years before they revoke their bigotry.
This sounds a lot like the way the Republican Party is being forced to reluctantly embrace colored people.
And estrogened people at the same time.
Now, I have to point this out: In every article I saw on this they say that the church made “concessions” to the people who opposed women bishops, but I couldn’t find any details on that and I’m dying to know what that would entail. I mean, what, they can be bishops but I can still call them “Toots” and they have to make me a sandwich if I ask?
Listen guys, the female bishop thing is happening, but as a concession . . . From now on, “No” means “Yes”, and “Yes” means “Anal”.
Church of England to Allow Women Bishops in 2015: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/24/us-britain-church-bishops-idUSBRE94N0RV20130524
And finally tonight in our international forecast on demonic activity, we turn to Madrid where the devil seems to be winning one fiddle-battle after another. An anonymous spokeswoman for the archdiocese of Madrid told the Associated Press that they had only one priest who was fully trained in devil-wrestling and that just wasn’t enough.
Is a spokeswoman like a female spokesman? Like a woman talking?
I doubt it… they’re Catholic.
Now, apparently you can only make the normal water turn into magic devil-kryptonite if you’ve been authorized by a bishop to do so and, of course, the Vatican is well aware of how silly the whole exorcism thing looks to everyone except idiots. As evidence, I offer the recent shit show that erupted when stories got out that one might have been performed in St. Peter’s Square last week by Pope San Francisco Treat.
You’ve been managing to get lots of mileage out of Pope Francis nicknames. This time you’ve got him as gay rice.
Thanks you. I project that by episode 24 I’ll be using shit like Pope Fart-rancis so enjoy it while you can. But anyway, this leaves Spain in a delicate position because they’ve got one exorcist Bruce Lee-ing his way through the Spanish demon-hordes here and he’s in desperate need of reinforcements, but nobody’s coming to help. And somebody please tell Michael Bay that I’d sell him that script cheap if he wants it.
So I would normally make a Michael Bay joke here, but where does one find anything to criticize in films such as Pearl Harbor, Bad Boys 2, The Island, Transformers, Transformers 2, Transformers 3, and Untitled Transformers Sequel?
I think that’s the most offensive thing you’ve ever said on this show, so I guess we can close it out there. Heath, thanks for joining me.
And when we come back, we’ll HTTP colon… oh wait, that’s the link.
The Holy Babble Supplement:
I got an email the other day about our Holy Babble segment and it accused us of just cherry picking out the bad shit and ignoring the good shit.
Well that’s the point of our segment. We’re not fact checking the bible line by line to see how bad their batting average is; we’re out to make circumcised dick jokes at its expense.
And boy does this thing have dick jokes, but I’d still respectlessly disagree with the dink who sent this email because we really haven’t had to do that at all. We’ve really just been telling the story as it’s written and it really is that fucked up. In fact, if anything, we’ve left out some of the most fucked-up stuff so that we’d have time to talk about the spattering of good stuff.
Non-evil stuff anyway.
Right. So as evidence of that, we’d like to offer you the top five horribly fucked up things we didn’t talk about when we broke down the first two books of the Bible in a segment we like to call…
The HOLY BABBLE… SUPPLEMENT
5) Genesis 6.
Now, we skimmed over the whole Noah’s Ark bit because plenty has been said about what ridiculous horseshit it is, so when we talked about it, we never even mentioned what an implausible concept it is. Who feeds what to who? What are they drinking? And who’s shoveling all the shit?
Sounds like an impossible to solve LSAT question. If you have a bag of grain, and 2 foxes, and 2 hens, and 2 of every other animal, on one side of the river, and an impossible ark on the other side . . . Also, why did the birds need an ark to survive a flood?
And what about the amphibians? And where did Noah go to pick up two polar bears? And how did they keep everything from fucking everything?
Seems like if FEMA had hired this Noah guy before Katrina, blacks might not be extinct in New Orleans.
Yeah, they definitely needed a few more cubits of emergency housing. Now, to keep things fair, I did look at what the apologists had to say about these questions and according to AIG, the ark would have produced about 11 metric tonnes of shit a day, a quota that Answers In Genesis can only aspire to.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v2/n2/caring-for-the-animals
4) Exodus 21:7
This is a verse that starts with the words, “When a man sells his daughter as a slave,” and doesn’t then go on to say, “you will castrate him with a rusty mayonnaise lid and let him bleed to death in the public square.” How could we possibly be cherry picking the worst stuff if we skipped over the bit where it outlines the ethical way to sell your daughter as a slave?
Actually, I assumed I would cherry pick something from this, but their guidelines on this are surprisingly reasonable. It even includes guarantees the whores won’t be sold to foreigners . . . so that’s nice.
True. It even encourages you to continue to feed her after you get bored of fucking her.
It also says that if you buy her for your son and she marries the slave you have to treat the slave like your daughter. Which sounds good until you consider that one book earlier Lot was tossing his daughters to rape-starved sodomites.
Which brings us to…
3) Genesis 19:30-38
Here we have a lovely little story about those same daughters repeatedly force-fucking their dad. It doesn’t set anything up or connect anything to anything. It’s just there to give perverse goat-herders an image to jackoff to and insult Moabites.
I guess the lesson here is “Dad’s dick is better than no dick at all.”
That’s the moral, yeah. So in this passage, Lot, after escaping from Sodom with his two date-rapist daughters and his favorite salt-lick, unwillingly impregnates his daughters with two inbred, incestuous, polydactyl prison babies.
Must have been legitimate rape.
Well, the Jews were probably worried about future persecution on account of their genetic superiority, so a few extra fingers and chromosomes just made sense. Nobody figured every single Moabite would settle in the same 3-block radius in Brooklyn.
I guess the one good thing about being gang raped by sodomites is that you won’t get pregnant…
I wouldn’t say that’s the ONLY perk about being gang-raped by sodomites.
2) Exodus 21:20-21
There’s no way to dress this one up worse than it comes off in the actual bible, so here it is from the NIV version:
“Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property.”
I can’t help but picture a Jewish version of a Southern plantation owner. Like Woody Allen instead of Don Johnson in Django.
Yes, Exodus was full of fair and equitable treatment of one’s slaves. For example, while one was encouraged to regularly beat one’s slaves and children, the gouging out of a slaves eye was frowned upon. In fact, the rule says that if you knock out the slaves eye you have to let him go, so I figure if I was a slave, I’d just be moving my eyes in front of the whip constantly.
1) Genesis 9:20-27
And finally, the most perplexing parable in the book to this point, we didn’t even mention the crazy post-deluvian antics of Noah and his dancing weiner.
This is the “If your dad’s a drunk, you need to walk around your house backwards wearing a cape” chapter.
Right, apparently they were supposed to walk around shading the lower half of their vision like the Bela Lugosi double in Plan 9 From Outer Space.
Not sure how the fuck we forgot to mention this part, considering I plan to be an alcoholic father one day.
As it turns out, if I want to smite my son and get him sent to hell, all I have to do is get wasted and pass out while hanging brain. Or more directly, just wake him up with a tea bag.
I guess that really shows the concern my dad had for my soul. When I was a kid he would only take his dick out when he was behind me.
I think this chapter is the basis for the penis game in “Waiting”
I never saw that flick. How does that game work? … Oh fuck dude!
Outro:
I had one quick but important announcement before we close things out for the night. In response to a number of requests for Scathing Atheist shwag, Heath and I are commissioning the design of three Scathing Atheist T-Shirts that will be available soon if you’re willing to interpret the word “soon” in a geological sense.
But between now and then, we want your help deciding exactly what to put on those shirts. We’ll be doing shirts for three of our many fine sponsors. I’ll be posting a poll on our blog and on Facebook, so if there’s a particular sponsor you’d wear on a T-Shirt, let us know. You can let us know over Twitter, on Facebook, via email or, if you want to make absolutely sure your vote is counted, you can add your preference to the end of a 5 star review on iTunes.
That’s all the time we’ve got for tonight’s show, but we’ll be back in 168 hours to tackle one of the most infamous books in the bible. If you can’t wait that long, be sure to check out our erratically published blog at Scathing Atheist (dot) com. You’ll also get your daily fix of Scatheism by following us on Twitter and liking us on Facebook. And don’t forget to check out our You-Tube channel, even though everything on it is just a segment pulled from the podcast which you’ve probably already heard.
I want to thank Heath for all his help this week. I also want to thank Reap from the Angry Atheist for providing this week’s Farnsworth quote. Hard to believe he had the ten seconds to spare with all the content that dude is producing in a week, so if you haven’t checked out the Angry Atheist yet, I definitely recommend it along with ReapSow Radio, which you’ll find linked on the shownotes for this episode.
But finally and most importantly, we have to take a minute to honor this week’s most sexually attractive human beings, Paul, Dee, Kevin and Graham, who distinguished themselves this week by giving us money. Paul, whose clever inventions and godlike nunchaku skills will one day save humanity; Dee whose wit and sharp mind are the very metric by which future robot generations will measure their intellect; Kevin, whose agility, fearlessness and ability to banter well with supervillains are the envy of masked-vigilantes everywhere and Graham; whose very presence soothes children, moistens vaginas and lengthens telomeres even over Skype. These truly superlative citizens have all earned their place in history and in my heart with their stolid generosity. And we love them all equally, except Graham who we love just a little more because holy shit, the dude donated a hundred bucks. Which was fucking awesome and totally made my week. Thanks bro.
If you, too, would like to earn your eventual spot beside these exceptional bipeds on the Mount Rushmore of altruism and erudition, you’ll find the donate button on the right side of our homepage at Scathing Atheist (dot) com. Remember, not every donation goes straight to booze and weed. Some of it goes to hosting and stuff.
If you have questions, comments or death threats, you’ll find all the contact info on the contact page of our website. All the music used in this episode was written and performed by yours truly and yes, I did have my permission.
Religion, Atheism and False Equivalency
by Noah Lugeons
I’m so tired of hearing it that I’m tired of saying that I’m tired of hearing it.
Christians and their cohorts are desperate to seize the middle in the culture wars and that’s damn hard to do when you’re still dragging your heels on subjects like birth control, gender equality and premarital sex. The tenets of religion are so far behind the mainstream that the only hope they have of appealing to the masses is taking the focus off how medieval and fucked up their beliefs are.
You can see this in their constant attempts to publicly back-pedal everything their religion stands for. They’ve already distanced themselves from God, from all the crappy stuff Jesus said, from the entire history of their religion’s expression and practice, from the current hierarchy that controls it, from almost every passage in the bible and from almost every major precept of their faith. They try to water it down so much that god just means love and there’s no way to disagree with them.
And that public face is, of course, contradicted by almost everything that the majority of the faithful do and say, but it doesn’t matter. It’s a PR campaign and if you’re trying to sell a product that everyone knows breaks immediately, the first words you’re going to attach to it our “long lasting”. Think about how often you hear about Islam being a “religion of peace”, Judaism being “modern” or Christianity being a “religion of tolerance”. The hope is that if you can put your slogan on the complete opposite side from the truth, people’s opinions will land somewhere in the middle.
Which brings us to the false equivalency. Because the Christians have no good answer for “your religion is insane, unverifiable and it’s a tool to justify bigotry, sexism, child abuse and ignorance”, they have to deflect. They can’t reasonably stand there and try to pretend that their religion isn’t insane, unverifiable, bigoted, sexist, abusive and ignorant, so instead they opt for the “Oh, yeah?” tactic and say, “Well, atheists are even worse!”
Think about how often you hear a Christian imply (or directly say) that atheism:
- Takes just as much faith as religion
- Is just as militant as religion
- Is just as unverifiable as religion
- Can be used to distort morality just like religion
- Is just as “bad” as religion
This seems to be the Argument Du Jour with online apologists right now. They say that “Dawkins is just as bad as…” and then they’ll insert the name of somebody who just said something about how gay people should be beaten to death or that women should learn to shut up and listen to their men… in the name of the son, the father and the holy ghost, amen.
And as Dawkins recently responded via Twitter;
Yes, I’m just as bad as the fundamentalists. Now excuse me while I throw acid in a woman’s face and then behead someone with a machete for disagreeing with me.
Shall I bother to refute it further? Should I bother to point out that nobody has ever been killed in the name of atheism? (And remember apologists, being killed by an atheist isn’t the same thing) Should I bother to point out that there is no doctrine or authority that can alter morality within atheism? Should I bother to point out that the most “militant” atheist you can find has never called for the killing of anyone anywhere? Should I bother to point out that even the really sexist atheists never talk about covering women from head to toe and then stoning them to death?
The answer to all of these questions is, of course, no. The very act of refuting this type of argument gives it more credit than it deserves. I’m an atheist blogger, podcaster and from what I hear, I’m one of the most vicious atheists out there. And the worst thing I’ve ever done to a Christian is made him cry because I used potty words and talked about Jesus’ naughty parts. I’m an “atheist extremist” and the only weapon I own is a thesaurus.
Episode 13: Partial Transcript
by Noah Lugeons and Heath Enwright
Sponsor:
Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the Hebrew delivery service, “Jew P S”. When you’ve got Hebrews that absolutely must be delivered out of bondage tonight, turn to Jew P S. Remember, not hail nor boils nor falling frogs shall stay our couriers from their appointed rounds”
Jew P S, all package, no foreskin.
And now, the Scathing Atheist…
Intro:
It’s Thursday, It’s May 16th and either this show is moving to Comedy Central next week or Sylvia Brown is full of shit.
I’m your host Noah Lugeons and from pollen-plagued New York, New York, this is the Scathing Atheist.
On this week’s episode,
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We’ll meet a liberal Muslim fighting for women’s rights to be publicly beaten
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Jesus backs a loser in Miami
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And Lucinda will join Heath and me to discuss the only book of the bible named after a Bob Marley album
But first, the Diatribe.
Diatribe:
There was a time in human history when religion served a purpose. It was a doctrine of culture, a subset of knowledge, an honest attempt to know what was, at the time, unknowable. The earliest assertions of religion were based on empirical evidence and we can hardly fault early humans for not quite figuring out shit like lightning and earthquakes.
So they pointed to the nearest place they couldn’t reach and said god was there, tossing down thunderbolts and shaking the ground. He was just up on that mountain there, you know, the one we can’t reach the top of? Yeah, that one. He’s up there making all this shit happen so now we understand it and we can control it. If the earth shakes, we offer some goat’s bladders or something and it’ll stop shaking.
And as misguided as it was, it wasn’t malicious. It was a synthesis of the best available information. The problem, of course, is that there wasn’t really any god up there so we had to rely on people to tell us what god was so pissed off about. And once you become the conduit of god, it’s gotta be damn tempting to decide god’s pissed off about how many virgins you’re not boning, or how many feasts you’re not eating. At the very least god probably wants you to spend the day in quiet contemplation while all the other saps plow the fields.
So at some point between the question and the answer, religion became something else entirely. It abandoned its desire to find truth in favor of a new desire to dictate truth. After all, the idea that god wants you to have more money and nicer clothes might not stand up to objective scrutiny so fuck objective scrutiny.
So when we got to the top of the mountain religion just pushed god further back. Turns out he was on the clouds, see… the really, really high up ones. But don’t worry, we might have been wrong about where god was but we were definitely right about him wanting us to bone more virgins and eat more food. What’s that you say? You build an airplane and checked on the clouds and he wasn’t there? Did I say clouds? I meant… what’s that stuff above clouds? Space! That’s what I meant. God was in space this whole time. What? Checked there too, did you? Well, when I say space, of course, what I mean is “alternate dimension that you can never get to no matter where you look” so quit asking so many questions and trust me on the nicer clothes and more food stuff.
Because when your power comes from your ability to dictate the truth, the real, actual, “doesn’t-give-a-shit-what-you-say” truth necessarily becomes your enemy. You have to be an impediment to discovery, a nemesis of knowledge. You have to literally set yourself in opposition to reality. To reality!
So sure, it’s fine to map the heavens as long as you didn’t notice a major hole in church doctrine while you were doing it. It’s fine to examine all god’s creatures as long as you didn’t figure out how they got there. It was fine to study every word of the bible as long as you didn’t notice the ones that contradicted each other.
There is a large swath of history where I’m perfectly willing to forgive religion for existing. Hell, even the first few centuries of the scientific revolution could have left an educated person in doubt. But nobody who is alive today was alive when anybody was alive who was alive when religion could justify its own existence. Today it’s degenerated into nothing but a disease; a cancer that exists only to perpetuate itself. A tumor that doesn’t know when to die.
And to turn a blind-eye to it and say, “well that’s just what those people believe and that’s perfectly alright” is to intellectually subsidize the equivalent of the DoDo preservation society. They’ve had enough time to find a reason to exist. We’ve given religion at least eight centuries to find something useful to do, but they haven’t. Instead, they’ve become a stumbling block on the path toward knowledge. In a lot of ways they didn’t have a choice, but that doesn’t make the sin any more forgivable. Faith is the exact opposite of science and they peddle it as a virtue.
Religion has nothing to offer the world but more religion. Give it another thousand years or another thousand centuries and it’ll still have nothing more to offer. But imagine what science could do with that time… especially if there was no religion there to stand in the way.
Headlines:
Joining me tonight for headlines it my color commentator, Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to comment on colors?
I don’t care for whites. It’s getting embarrassing for us.
Well done, sir. And now on to the news. Our lead story tonight takes us to a state known for comedically sized hats, giant hunks of dead cow and long stretches of highway with nowhere to take a shit, Texas, where a state judge recently declared the establishment clause optional.
Yeah they like to conveniently forget about the 1st Amendment, but the entire state can recite the 2nd one word for word. I picture an entire state populated by the bad guys from “A Time To Kill”.
Fairly accurate from my experiences with the state. Tonight’s story begins about 250 miles east of the part of Texas that doesn’t suck in a small town called Kountze where the high school cheerleaders are fond of holding up banners with wholesome messages like “But thanks be to God, which gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ”, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me” and, “Fuck atheists, people of non-Christian faiths and proper grammar”.
“And fuck you for already having come up with several Cunts jokes.”
Cunts is a small enclave, laying between Woodville and Lumberton, on Highway 69!!!.
I’m not even slightly fucking with you. All those things are actually true.
It’s also adjacent to the “Big Thicket National Preserve” and it’s due south of “Beaver’s Bend National Park”. Nice when geography just writes the jokes for you isn’t it?
The shape of the town on google maps even vaguely resembles a vagina with an oversized clit pointing up Highway 69 toward Woodville.
Priceless.
And with a tip of the cap to Kevin Smith, I’ll mention that an oversized clit is a lot like a small dick, and we can check off dick joke and vagina joke on story 1.
And a Kevin Smith reference so you’ve damn near hit for the cycle in the first inning. So anyway, back to the story here, the Freedom From Religion Foundation politely pointed out that their football team isn’t allowed to directly endorse a particular religion, but a state judge disagreed, citing his eventual need to get re-elected. The FFRF convincingly argues that this is tantamount to declaring an official school-religion. Obviously we’ll have more on this as it develops.
Kountze needs to be told what to do.
I’m sure they would agree.
Texas Cheerleaders allowed to raise Biblical banner: http://ffrf.org/news/news-releases/item/17683-official-school-religion-ok%E2%80%99d-by-texas-court
Our next story takes us to the number one state in: agricultural non-point source nutrient reduction, per capita tornado deaths and prescription drug abuse, Oklahoma, a state which, despite having Seth Andrews in it most of the time, sucks.
If you take your state name, and add an exclamation, and you get the title of an old-timey musical, it doesn’t bode well for progressive politics in the region.
As evidence of that assertion, I offer one Muldrow high school, where a freethinking student recently complained about ten commandment plaques that hung in every fucking classroom. The school was told to take them down and in a show of just how vapid the Christian comprehension of the whole minority consideration concept is, the students started a petition to revoke separation of church and state.
Can’t we just compromise and have a wall with plaques from all different religions . . .
So that atheist kids can vandalize the wall, and everyone can get all symbolically incredulous.
Yeah, well this just proves once again that Christianity can’t stand on it’s own in a free market of ideas. Christians have responded with threats against the complaining student and his family, some online bullying and a jackass pastor offering students free “ten commandments” T-shirts to remind kids that plaques or no, non-Christians are still a hated minority round these a’ here parts..
Isn’t there something about thou shalt not steal tax revenue for fictional purposes?
Student faces backlash after alerting FFRF to 10 Commandments displays in classrooms: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/05/12/oklahoma-high-school-student-seeks-removal-of-ten-commandment-displays/
And from the “Bet-You-Can’t-Collect-Em-All” file, Pope Frankie-Panky canonized over 800 saints all at once last weekend. It’s not clear if this is related to poor dashboard-sales projections for the 2nd quarter, but I like his focus on productivity.
In a move that can have no outcome at all but to piss off Muslims, the Pope went ahead with Ex-Benedict’s plan to Canonize the 813 “Martyrs of Otranto” who were beheaded by Ottoman soldiers for refusing to convert to Islam.
This would be 813 good candidates for the Darwin Awards. Choosing to die in the name of Catholic god – instead of pretending you like Allah – is borderline window-licker. Why does an omnipotent god need people to die for him? Either Catholic god is real and the martyrs don’t matter, or Allah is real and the martyrs don’t matter, or neither is real and the martyrs REALLY don’t matter.
And you know what else doesn’t matter? Being a saint. Sure, back in the 15th century it was a pretty exclusive club, but now they’re letting everybody in. Aren’t you supposed to have 2 miracles before you can be a saint? Even if we accept that getting a Pope who’s trying to patch things up with the Muslims to canonize you when all you ever really did was say “Fuck Muslims” back in the 1400s counts as one miracle, what’s the other one?
People caring 600 years later.
Pope names 800 new saints: http://news.yahoo.com/pope-francis-names-800-saints-one-235904106.html
And in “Fuck-The-Children” news, two elementary schools in Lake City, Arkansas cancelled sixth grade graduation ceremonies because a bunch of atheists wouldn’t let them include prayers. Rather than adjusting the ceremony to Constitutional standards, the school district elected to rob their student body of the coming-of-age milestone that is a 6th grade graduation.
“Sorry kids, the uppity negro that runs the federal government stopped letting our backwards town embezzle tax revenue for the tooth fairy, so you’ll all have to get your meaningless ceremony fix at church on Sunday like usual.”
Yeah, because for the record, I’d be fine with this if they’d just cancelled it because a 6th grade graduation is stupid.
School in Arkansas cancels graduation because atheists won’t let them pray: http://www.takepart.com/article/2013/05/09/arkansas-school-prayer-wrecked-graduation
In other news tonight, we hear from the all-too-often silent progressive wing of Islam. Controversial cleric Shaikh Isam Talimah says that stoning women for adultery is a practice that Muslims should abandon… in favor of whipping them.
I think it’s a personal preference thing. The stoning is more murdery, whereas the whipping is more rapey. So you’ve gotta decide what kind of Muslim husband you want to be.
That’s right, Talimah isn’t arguing with the idea of physically abusing women publicly for consensual sex, he’s arguing with the method of physically abusing women publicly for consensual sex.
This is going to hurt the image of Islam as a peaceful religion, as it so clearly states in their subway literature.
Controversial Cleric claims that women should not be stoned… should be lashed: http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/qatar/stoning-is-not-shariah-says-qatar-scholar-1.1178703
And finally tonight, from the “Tell-Me-This-Is-Real,-Tell-Me-This-Is-Real,-Holy-Shit-It’s-Real” department, North Miami Mayoral candidate Anna L. Pierre recently put out a campaign flyer claiming an endorsement from none other than Jesus Christ.
And I can’t emphasize enough that this is a real thing that actually happened, despite the fact that this woman’s name is “Anal Peer”, which is exactly the kind of name we’d have given her if we were making this shit up.
How much clergy dick do you suppose she sucked to get JC Bump in an election?
And I should point out that that joke isn’t sexist. Heath would have made the same joke if she were a dude.
In unrelated news, from now on, the Marlins and the Dolphins, will both be known as the Jesus Fish.
Well, not so fast because of the 8 candidates on the ballot, Pierre somehow managed to finish 8th despite the fact that in addition to Christ, the Savior, she also boasted endorsements from the “Bladder Health and Reconstructive Urology Institute” and “Sunset Ranches” over on Palmetto Expressway just past Popeye’s. Some, including herself, blame her poor election day results on evil voodoo spells being used against her. And again, this is all actually happening in the real universe that you and I live in.
Next week on Awful TV Show, God’s savior son and a dick doctor team up in support of a former Haitian pop star overcoming voodoo spells to contend in her mayoral race.
Sounds better than the “Teeny-Bopper Vampire” crap my wife watches…
North Miami Mayoral Candidate claims endorsement from Jesus: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/05/13/north-miami-mayoral-candidate-says-she-is-endorsed-by-jesus-christ/
Well, that does it for headlines tonight. When we return, my aforementioned wife will join us to discuss a book that sucked even more than Twilight.
Poem:
Exodus in Two Minutes
by Noah Lugeons
The lord said unto Moses, “An Egyptian’s what you pose as,
But just look at all their noses, and you’ll see that you’re a Jew.”
Unto the Lord then replied Moses, “So what do you suppose is,
gonna happen when they know this? Just what am I to do?”
So he wandered as he pondered, of the Hebrews he grew fonder
So when he saw one get dishonored he attacked the perpetrator.
The dude was dead so Moses fled but in his head what Yahweh said
Still gave him dread as off he sped, telling Egypt “See you later.”
So when he finished with his fleein’ he wound up in Midian,
And he found a priest agreein’ to give up his daughter’s hand.
But the crazy shit he started seein’ left him guaranteein’
That his purpose would be freein’ all the Hebrews in the land.
See, he was tending Jethro’s flocks, when on some holy ground he walks,
He finds a burning bush that talks, and it tells him of his fate.
He asks god to choose another, since when he speaks he gets all buggered
God says, “Sure I guess you stutter, but your brother would be great.”
So upon this holy edict, they headed back to Egypt
And needed Gershom’s wee-dick when Moses wrestled god,
The Hebrews didn’t dare go, so Moses talked to Pharoah
With his eyes enraged and narrow and both his hands on Aaron’s rod;
He said, “LET MY PEOPLE GO!” But the Pharaoh just said “No”,
And fearing that might be so, tossed down the staff that god empowered,
It became a snake but those Egyptians, also had magicians,
Both of their staffs started hissin’, but quickly got devoured.
Still the pharaoh, unimpressed, left this grievance unredressed,
And as you might have guessed, the plagues are here unveiled.
The bloody waters soon arise, frogs start falling from the skies,
He sends a bunch of gnats and flies; epidemics, boils and hail
Still, the Hebrews were unpardoned, when God’s locusts ate their gardens,
Since the pharaoh’s heart was hardened, Moses needed one last card to play.
Now with the firstborns lying dead, the pharaoh finally said,
“Take your unleavened bread, and go the fuck away!”
They rejoiced with sounds like thunder, when the pharaoh knuckled under,
They grabbed a bunch of plunder and followed smoke that god provided;
But soon doubts about the route came out, unto Moses the devout would shout,
“I guess god’s no fucking eagle scout, just look where we’ve been guided!”
You see, pharaoh sent his men of war, in hopes of settling the score,
And here the Jews are on the shore, trapped and ripe for slaughter;
So Moses, feeling like a schmuck, says, “God I think you got us stuck”
It looks like they’re completely fucked, until God divides the water.
Forty years of eating manna later, Moses talks to his creator,
So he could act as God’s translator and carve commandments into stone,
And on the impatient Jews behalf, Aaron makes a golden calf,
Which they then pray to, bringing wrath, for which no mercy would be shown.
Then starting in chapter twenty four, we mostly just discuss decor,
Despite their being plenty more, important things to tackle,
Important shit just gets ignored, as we spend the last sixteen chapters bored,
Learning exactly how the Lord, wants his tabernacle.
Outro:
Before we close out the show tonight, I want to remind everyone that Heath and I are pretty good at this speaking shit so if you’re involved with an atheist or secular group in the vaguely New-Englandish area and you’d like us to address your group with our off-color wit and topical critiques, you’ll find all the contact info on the Contact page of our website.
And before we cue the music, we have to spend a minute recognizing the generosity, ethical fortitude and enormous penises of this week’s best people; Matthew, Richard and Mr. Blue who proved their bravery this week by giving us money. Only the most intelligent and righteous people give us money and I hope that Matthew, Richard and Reservoir Dogs Deleted Character Mr. Blue fully appreciate that even if they should together cure cancer one day, their support for this program will still probably rank as the most benevolent action of their lives.
If you, too, would like to guarantee yourself a front row seat in atheist heaven, you’ll find the donate button on the right side of our homepage at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.
That’s does it for tonight’s show but if you want more, there’s more. You’ll find occasional nuggets of Scatheism on our blog, our YouTube Channel, our Facebook page and our Twitter Feed. You’ll also find more than 11 and a half episodes in our archives, which you should really listen to on Stitcher because we’re on Stitcher and Stitcher likes it when I tell you to listen on Stitcher.
And if you enjoy the show, please help us out by leaving us a good review on iTunes and be sure to tell everyone at church about us. And before we run out of time, a big thanks to Heath and Lucinda for joining me tonight, Justin Schieber for providing tonight’s Farnsworth quote and, of course, Matthew, Richard and especially Mr. Blue, who is addition to donating this week, also sent along some headlines for us and the great chemo bit I used after the diatribe.
If you have questions, comments or death threats, you’ll find all the contact info on the “Contact” page at Scathing Atheist (dot) com. All the music used in this episode was written and performed by yours truly and yes, I did have my permission.
The Moral Lessons of Exodus
by Noah Lugeons
Exodus is a good guide for morality only if you compare it to Genesis. I’ll give the book of Exodus the credit that it did seem that on some level the authors were aware that this book would one day be used as a moral guide. In Genesis we basically got a bunch of morally dubious just-so stories but in Exodus at least we get a haphazard, antiquated, random list of dictates.
Granted, that only comprises a small portion of the book. The majority of Exodus is consumed with god’s sick revenge fantasy against all things Egyptian and some really detailed instructions on how he wants his tabernacle (which are repeated no fewer than four times in the fucking book). So it seemed that the authors figured all moral enigmas could be taken care of in about four chapters but we need at least a dozen chapters to hammer down how many cubits of tanned rams’ skins and goat hair each curtain around the tent around the altar get.
So despite the fact that god spends the first half of Exodus breaking many of the commandments he’s going to lay down later, the book does manage to squeeze in a few good moral nuggets. It’ll make for a kind of long list, but I’m going to break all of the “commandments” down here and we’ll rate them all on a moral scale with the following grades:
- (M, +2) for truly moral,
- (A, +-0) for ambiguous and/or meaningless,
- (AM, +1) for ambiguous but leaning moral,
- (AI, -1) for ambiguous but leaning immoral,
- (I, -2) for immoral and
- (H, -4) for horribly immoral on several levels.
We’ll start with the eight and a half commandments:
- (AI, -1) You shall not make an idol or worship any god before me (fuck Jewish tradition, that’s one commandment).
- (AI, -1) You shall not take the lord’s name in vain (fuck Catholic tradition, this is a different commandment).
- (AM, +1) Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.
- (AM, +1) Honor your mother and father.
- (M, +2) You shall not kill. (Hey, they finally got one that really is moral!)
- (AM, +1) You shall not commit adultery.
- (M, +2) You shall not steal.
- (M, +2) You shall not bear false witness.
- (A, +-0) You shall not covet your neighbors shit (fuck Protestant tradition, this is one commandment).
So far we’ve got 3 genuine moral ones, three that lean that way and two that lean against. That gives Exodus a +7 on the moral scale, so that’s not too bad. But then we get into all the sub-commandments and it gets pretty wonky.
- (I, -2) You shall make me an altar and kill sheep and ox for the fuck of it.
- (A) If you make me an altar of stone, don’t carve on it.
- (A) And don’t make steps that lead up to it or people will see your junk.
- (H, -4) When you buy a male Hebrew slave… (does it really matter what it says after that?)
- (H, -4) When a man sells his daughter as a slave... (and again, unless the next words are “he should get ass raped by porcupines, it’s not moral)
- (AI, -1) Whoever strikes a person mortally should be put to death. (Not having the capital punishment debate, but I’m only counting it as somewhat immoral to placate everyone)
- (H, -4) Whoever strikes mother of father should be put to death. (Regardless of your stance on capital punishment, that’s fucking harsh)
- (AI, -1) Whoever kidnaps a person should be put to death. (Can’t we just say, “thou shall not kidnap”? I’d give him a +2 for that)
- (H, -4) Whoever curses mother and father should be put to death. (So by god’s standards, you might as well hit them, too)
- (M, +2) Don’t hit people with stones when you argue (paraphrased)
- (I, -2) When a person beats his slave to death, he should be punished. (I hold back on the -4 because at least the asshole gets punished in this one, but…)
- (H, -4) If you beat him to death but he lingers on for a few days before dying, you’re all good.
- (I, -2) If you injure a pregnant woman so that she miscarriages, you owe her husband money. (I don’t know what to do with this shit, but I know it isn’t moral)
- (I, -2) If you take out your slaves eye you have to free him or her. (Well isn’t that nice of you…)
- (AM, +1) If your ox gores somebody it’s not your fault unless you knew the ox liked to gore people. (Okay, so that’s kind of moralish but holy shit, compared to the bad stuff it’s pretty light)
- (M, +2) If you leave your pit uncovered and somebody’s goat falls in, you owe them a goat.
- (M, +2) If your ox kills my ox, we sell the living ox and split the profits.
- (M, +2) Don’t steal other people’s livestock (but since we already covered this one, it should hardly count)
- (A) If you beat a thief to death who broke into your house, you don’t get in trouble. I’d count that as moral, except that it stipulates that he has to be breaking in at night, so if he breaks in during the day you have to use colorful language or something.
- (M, +2) Don’t let your ox eat my vineyard.
- (M, +2) Don’t catch my vineyard on fire.
- (AI, -1) If you steal something from somebody’s house that they were holding for somebody else, you’re in more trouble than if had been their thing. (No indication as to why, but no positive points since I’ve already awarded 4 points for the self evident notion of not stealing other people’s stuff)
- (AI, -1) If we’re arguing over who owns something, we should let god decide.
- (AI, -1) If I sell you a donkey and it’s sick, I’m in no trouble as long as I swear before god that I had no idea.
- (AI, -1) If your donkey dies while I’m borrowing it, I owe you a donkey.
- (H, -4) If you seduce a virgin you have to give her dad money and marry her. (and she, of course, has not choice in the matter and doesn’t even get a cut of the money)
- (H, -4) Kill witches. (This should really be at least a -8 if you consider the actual result of this passage)
- (H, -4) Kill people with other religions.
- (M, +2) Don’t oppress immigrants (Shame those conservative right-wingers don’t read the bible or they’d know this one)
- (AI, -1) Don’t charge interest to Jews. (The implication is that it’s okay to charge interest to others, but one way or the other I think it’s a dubious position to stake out as a “moral” one)
- (AI, -1) Don’t revile god or curse a leader of your people. (To which I say fuck god and the leaders of my people)
- (AI, -1) Don’t hesitate to give god good shit.
- (I, -2) Give your firstborn everythings (ox, sheep, children, etc.) to god.
- (A) Don’t eat meat that was mangled in the field.
- (M, +2) Don’t spread rumors.
- (M, +2) Don’t act as a malicious witness or follow a majority in wrong doing.
- (M, +2) Don’t steal donkeys even if you really hate the person who owns the donkey.
- (M, +2) Seriously, don’t steal the motherfucking donkey.
- (M, +-0) Remember that thing I just said about not oppressing resident aliens? yeah, exactly that again in the exact same words. Again. (No points for making the same moral point twice within eight paragraphs)
- (AM, +1) Leave your land unplanted one year out of seven.
- (AM, +-0) Again, repeating the Sabbath bit. (Again, no points for repeating the same shit over and over)
- (AM, +1) Hold three feasts for god each year. (I give them partial credit because celebrating with the community is a good idea… not exactly a moral imperative, but a good idea)
- (AI, -1) Don’t appear before god empty-handed. (To be fair, you’re not gonna appear before god anyway)
- (A) You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with anything leavened. (WTF?)
- (AI, -1) Give the priests the best fruits.
- (AM, +1) Don’t boil a kid in it’s mother’s milk. (Sure, cause that seems pretty fucked up)
And that’s pretty much all god offers in Exodus in the way of moral instructions. If you add up the 47 sub-commandments, you get a whopping negative 28 (negative 21 if you factor in the 8 and a half commandments). Even if you quibble with a couple of my scores, you have to admit that we’re dealing with a pretty crappy source for ethics.
It also bears mention that of the 15 things that I rated moral, 11 of them are meaningless if you don’t have any goats, oxen or vineyards, so even a negative twenty eight is probably too high a score. I mean, there’s no way I know of to quantify the relative morality of an act, but if there was, I’m willing to bet beating a slave to death would be way more than twice as immoral as spreading rumors.
Live Blogging the Bible, Exodus 22:28
by Noah Lugeons
So I’m at the part of the bible where God gives Moses the 10 commandments, which, by the way there aren’t ten of. I don’t give a shit how you decide to count those fuckers, there aren’t ten. I can see a reasonable argument for 9, 8, 11 or even 12, but to get to 10 you’ve got to start cutting these suckers up mid-sentence at some points and adding whole paragraphs together at others.
But after the 8 commandments, God carries on and it really seems like he just lost his train of thought. He keeps spouting out moral dictates, but they’re as haphazard as you can imagine. He’ll go straight from a details proscription for who pays who what if a donkey falling into an uncovered pit to a command to kill female sorcerers. A couple of these things do seem reasonably moral, but some of them actually start out with stuff like, “When a father sells his daughter into slavery…” and end with something other than him be punished mercilessly.
I suppose I should sit back and enjoy, as I know I’m in for a lot more of these schizophrenic lists of archaic morals and some of them are hilarious. These tend to be the parts of the bible you most often hear atheists alluding to, as they are the quickest proof that this book is a horrible source for morality and as I come across the little nuggets I’ve quoted before this whole endeavor seems momentarily less pointless.
Most of the best shit is in Leviticus, to be sure, but I was quite pleased to come across this one tonight. I’ll be sure to toss it out next time I see one of my Christophile friends or neighbors bitching about Obama. Exodus 22:28;
You shall not revile God or curse a leader of your people.
I can see how that one gets lost, as it is sandwiched between a pointlessly involved explication of why you shouldn’t borrow your neighbors cloak and then not give it back to him if he’s cold and a warning not to delay in making offerings from the fullness of your harvest, so I can see how maybe it got tossed out as archaic. I mean… who sleeps in a cloak any more, right?
But to all of those Obama-haters that actually believe in this silly little book, it might be a conflict worth losing sleep over. At the very least, I can hope.
Live Blogging the Bible, Exodus 4:24-26
by Noah Lugeons
Even after only a book and 3 chapters, the title of “weirdest part of the bible” is a tough one to earn. I’m only 100 pages in or so and already I’ve had to stop, scratch my head, re-read, re-scratch my head and sigh in frustrated confusion approximately one time for every 3 chapters.
If pressed, up until this morning I’d have listed the curse Noah lays on his grandson when his grandson’s dad sees his pecker as the weirdest part of the bible, though I’d have hemmed and hawed a bit between that and the part where Jacob wrestles god on the river.
But now there is a brand new contender and I actually think it might remain the bible’s weirdest passage no matter how much of this crap I read. For those familiar with the bible, this is the part where Moses’ wife gives him magical foreskin powers so he can kick god’s ass. And for those of you unfamiliar with the bible, that part actually exists and if you don’t believe me, check out Exodus 4:24-26 and tell me what the fuck is going on there then:
On the way, at a place where they spent the night, the Lord met him [Moses] and tried to kill him. But Zipporah [Moses’ wife] took a flint and cut off her son’s foreskin and touched it to his feet and said, “Truly you are a bridegroom of blood to me!” So he let him alone. It was then she said, “A bridegroom of blood by circumcision.”
For a little context (and I’m afraid a little is all you’re gonna get), this is shortly after God charges Moses to go to Egypt and free the Israelites in bondage. God appears in burning bush form, tells Moses to go to the pharaoh, loads him up with a few magic tricks and tells him to meet Aaron along the way. And then, for no reason the bible bothers to explain, god appears and tries to kill Moses. But not very hard. Because of Zipporah’s clever foreskin maneuver.
There are so many fucking questions here, I don’t know where to start. Why would god try to kill Moses? How omnipotent is this guy if he can’t handle a Jew and his foreskin wielding wife? If god can appear in a form that can ineffectually assassinate Moses, why the burning bush crap a few passages earlier? And, most importantly, what the fuck?
This is some seriously crazy shit and the bible carries on like none of it happened a few verses later. God just got thwarted by a piece of baby-dick and we’re just supposed to move on like this was no big deal? And just how many of the early Jewish fathers have defeated god in a wrestling match?
I hoped that the annotations would help, but they just made it worse. They refer to this whole thing as an “Enigmatic Episode” and point out that when it says that Zipporah touched the foreskin to Moses’ feet, that may have been a euphemism for his nuts. Seriously.
So as I’m reading it, the scene from Zipporah’s perspective has to go something like this:
- Awakened in the middle of the night by sounds of a struggle.
- Wipe the sleep out of her eyes and glances through the moonlight to see her husband getting his ass kicked by God, Almighty.
- Says to herself, “If only I had something to mutilate my son’s cock with!” Finds flint.
- Hastily circumcises her infant with a random, unsanitized stone in the dark.
- Disrobes Moses’ while he’s fighting god.
- Touches his cock with bleeding ring of baby genital.
- God says… “Gross! I don’t even want to wrestle any more!”
- Says, “Truly you are a bridegroom of blood to me!”
I’m no closer to understanding this book, but at least now if I’m ever tasked with making an Exodus video game, I know what the power-ups will be.
AIG Responds to the Dinosaur Quiz
by Noah Lugeons
I’d start by asking if you’d seen the dinosaur quiz yet… But you’ve seen the dinosaur quiz, right? It’s been everywhere the last few days. I didn’t find it all that surprising, as I’m quite familiar with what “Answers in Genesis” is teaching children, but judging by the buzz this quiz got, I’m in the minority there.
For the 3 people and the spam-bot who haven’t seen it yet, it’s this ridiculous shit:
At first people couldn’t decide if it was a parody or not, but eventually the name of the school popped up, the facts were verified and yes, this is precisely the kind of shit that AIG promotes in religious schools.
And now, of course, AIG is crying foul. They’re weeping themselves to sleep about how mean the atheists have been about it. After all, what’s wrong with pushing demonstrably false bullshit on children under the guise of science, thus ensuring that they have no chance in hell of succeeding in any intellectual field after graduation? What’s wrong with arming children with ignorance and finishing a test by making sure they know exactly how to pass their ignorance on and reinforce it? What’s wrong with lying? It’s not like there’s a commandment against it or anything.
So on his website, Ken Ham is pissing and moaning about it. He’s upset because atheists are getting so aggressive. He even has a list of “Evidence” that supports the claim that atheists are increasingly “intolerant”:
How Are Atheists Becoming More Aggressive in America?
-
Billboards promoting atheism and attacking Christianity have popped up across the country.
-
The American Humanist Association has launched a special website for children to indoctrinate them in atheism.
-
An atheist rally in Washington DC last year had a special promotion to encourage kids to attend their atheist camps.
-
Atheists have been increasingly using terms like “child abuse” to describe the efforts of Christians who seek to teach their children about creation, heaven, and hell.
-
Many atheists claim that children belong to the community, not to their parents.
-
Atheists have actively opposed any effort in public schools to even question a belief of evolution or suggest there are any problems with it.
Heath is on his way over to record and I’ve gotta get prepped, so I’ll trust the comments section to provide the editorial on these, but I just wanted to hop on really quick and let everyone know that they’ve noticed. Keep up the good work.
Public Bible Study
by Noah Lugeons
I spent the day yesterday doing my civic duty. I did jury duty once before in a small town down south and I was in and out in two hours, but in NYC it’s a bit different. Here you go into a large room and sit there for eight hours while they play bad movies so loud it’s hard to read. They call names and you leave and go do something, but I’m not entirely sure what it is, as my name was never called. So I basically sat in a large, uncomfortable room where I wasn’t allowed to use my phone for eight hours.
Luckily, I had some reading I needed to catch up on. We won’t be covering Exodus on the show until episode 13, but that’s no excuse to slack off. So I brought my Oxford 4th Edition Annotated NSRV Bible and I brought a notepad in case jokes or segment possibilities occurred to me while I was reading and I brought a highlighter, as I’ve taken to highlighting every passage in the bible where god does something horrible. And for some reason, it never occurred to me what kind of reaction this was going to draw.
So there I am, whittling away very long hours at a table with a bible that I’m clearly studying intently. I shouldn’t have been at all surprised when a very friendly Christian woman (or, as I would discover, a Christian woman with a very friendly facade) walked up to me, pulled up a seat and said, “I don’t want to interrupt your bible study, but if you don’t mind, are you in seminary?”
For the record, I could not possibly look less like I was in seminary without the addition of facial tattoos.
Now, three answers occurred to me, but none of them seemed socially acceptable:
- “Atheist. Just reading it to make fun of it later,”
- “Oh please,have a seat. Anything to interrupt me from this horrible fucking book” and
- “I’m boning up for an interview for the new anti-Christ position.”
And honestly, there are a lot of situations where I would have run with any of those, but in this instance it wouldn’t have been appropriate. After all, I was inviting the conversation by publicly reading a bible to the point of highlighting and taking notes. It was a fair question and she was probably a really nice person and I was going to be stuck in a room with her for most of the rest of the day, so I scratched all of those answers.
Then my mind started automatically looking for excuses. I was clearly reading and writing in English so I couldn’t go with the old, “¿Que?” and it would be hard to pretend that I actually had porn hidden inside it unless I could actually make with some porn (and remember, I wasn’t allowed to bring in my phone).
Ultimately I opted for the truth and that pissed her off so much I wish ended up wishing I’d just been a dick.
“Actually I’m an atheist and I’m studying it for debate purposes,” I said in as friendly a way as possible.
“So you don’t believe a word of it?” she asked incredulously.
“Well, I mean… I believe some of the geography and stuff.”
She made several false starts at speech at this point. She clearly wanted to say several things that Jesus wouldn’t let her say. Finally she settled on something like, “Well I hope you find some answers in there because I don’t envy your soul.”
“Okay, well… you know… have a nice day or whatever,” I offer back and she welcomes the opportunity to end the conversation. She takes a seat well across the room and kind of half-ass glares at me a bit.
At this point I realize that unless I want to do this a few more times, I should put the bible away and read something else. I suppose she took it as a personal insult that the other distraction I brought was “The God Virus”.
The Scathing Atheist 
Live Blogging the Bible: Leviticus Preface
by Noah Lugeons
On the suggestion of a professor that Carl interviewed on the Post Rapture Looting Atheist Podcast, when I set out to read the bible, I purchased the 4th Edition New Oxford Annotated Bible. It was a bit more of an investment than many of my other bible options, but the annotations, reading guides, maps, apocrypha and summaries made it well worth the investment.
Each book in the New Oxford is preceded by a series of short essays that deal with authorship, interpretation, structure, history and a short “reading guide” aimed to help the student appreciate exactly what they’ll be reading. Thus far these essays have been rather useful in structuring the discussions we have on the books as well as giving me a bit of a life raft while I’m drowning in the prehistoric insanity of this tome.
The reading guide for Leviticus contained a rather interesting suggestion that basically said the best way to read Leviticus is to not read it. After a brief and desperate attempt to downplay the raving lunacy of this section of the bible, the scholars offered the following advice:
In keeping with the theme of our “Holy Babble” segment, of course, I ignored this advice and dove right in. And it didn’t take long to figure out why they discourage such activity. I would submit that it’s all but impossible to maintain the internal fiction of divine authorship after reading even the first several verses in Leviticus.
It’s also no wonder to me that while most of us our familiar with many of the stories in Genesis and Exodus, we don’t know a damned thing about Leviticus. It certainly wouldn’t do well for the “divinely inspired” camp to try to rationalize the crazy shit in this book. Let’s just say it’ll be a long damn time before some creationist group opted for the moniker “Answers in Leviticus”.
I’m sure it’s not the most fucked up book in the bible (I hear tell that Deuteronomy trumps it early and often), but it is certainly the most fucked up thing I’ve ever read. There can be little doubt that this is a simple amalgamation of horribly misguided, pre-scientific tribal customs codified in a time before we understood medicine, meteorology, biology or succinctness.