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Episode 19 – Partial Transcript

June 27, 2013 1 comment

by Noah Lugeons, Heath Enwright & Lucinda Lugeons

Note: Transcript contains portions that were removed from the show due to time constraints.

Sponsor:

Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the new off-Broadway musical, “Joseph Smith and the Amazing Technicolor Underpants”.  Because Matt Stone and Trey Parker made mad bank lampooning Mormons in a play, why the hell shouldn’t we?

And now, the Scathing Atheist…

Intro:

In Thursday, It’s June 27th, and sorry about all that money you pissed away accidentally expediting a binding legal ruling in favor of gay marriage, Mormons.

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

In this week’s episode:

  • We’ll couch domestic abuse in a bunch of feel-good Jesus talk,

  • A new poll shows that Americans are as dumb as everyone thinks we are,

  • And God will kill an enormous number of people,

But first, the Diatribe…

Diatribe:

When I was 13 years old, my older brother gave me a copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and told me to read it.  I was more of a climb trees, play sports, be sweaty and grass stained kid than a sit still for more than 30 minutes and read stuff kid, but it was short so I gave it a go.

It was the first time I’d seen religion treated with such brazen mockery.  I was already doubting the conflicting messages from my Mormon dad and my Catholic mom, but when I read the Hitchhiker’s Guide I realized that it was okay to just call bullshit on all of it.  After all, this dude wasn’t getting struck by lightening or brimstone and he certainly didn’t seem too worried about hell, so why should I?

And there’s a question that Adams poses in that book that’s been stuck in my craw for two dozen years: “Just who is this god person anyway?”

You’d think that in 5000 years of trying, the Abrahamic faiths would have come up with a concise definition, or, if not concise, at least consistent.  But as we all know, if you ask 20 Christians to define god, you’ll get 20 definitions.  Sure, there’ll be a few commonalities, but it’ll be clear pretty quickly that all these Christians are worshipping a different guy.

And none of them, none of the Christians, none of the Jews and none of the Muslims are worshipping the guy from the bible.  The all-powerful, all-loving, all-knowing, moral, caring, forgiving, judicious, benevolent dude they talk about might make a cameo at some point, but he’s nowhere to be found in the first 4 books.

What’s worse, the guys who wrote the first four books of the bible, or more precisely, the guys who wrote the unrelated, independent sources that would later be woven together to become the first four books of the bible,  also aren’t working from a coherent definition.  Is god the dude who shows up in the Garden of Eden in Genesis or is he the guy that nobody can survive seeing from Exodus?  Or is he the disembodied spirit they talk about in the gospels?

Is he the all-knowing guy from Jeremiah and Acts or if he the bumbling idiot from Genesis and Numbers?  Is he the hard to anger guy they sing about in Exodus or is he the unjust, wrathful bully that was killing people for no reason right before they started singing that shit?

And if he’s all-powerful, why does he need Moses to do everything?

And if he’s all-loving, why is he such an asshole to virtually everyone he encounters?

And if he’s all-knowing, why do people have to keep reminding him of shit?

And if he’s moral why does he champion slavery so damn much?

And if he’s caring why does Moses have to keep talking him out of killing people?

And if he’s forgiving why does he punish kids for their parents crimes?

And if he’s judicious why can’t I find any Amalekites around these days?

And if he’s benevolent why does he have so much blood on his fucking hands?

Of course, these Christians that are so quick define god don’t know what the bible says because they’ve never read it.  If you press them, they’ll often claim that they’ve read “most” of it, but then you start quizzing them and it turns out they don’t know that there’s a talking donkey in the 4th book.  How much could you have possibly read?  It’s the 4th fucking book!  That’s like saying “I’ve seen most of the movie, but I missed all the parts after the opening credits.”

If I believed a book to be inspired by the all-knowing creator of the universe, let alone directly revealed by him, I’d know the damn thing by heart.  But these dingbats, even the “literal word of the bible” folks, can’t be bothered to crack it open.

And I don’t think it’s because they’re too lazy, either.  I’m willing to bet that many if not most of them started it at some point.  And I don’t think they turned away because of the genealogies or the archaic language or the repetition or the bulk.  I think they met their god and he scared them.  I think they turned away because they started to realize that the more they knew about their religion, the harder it would be to believe.

Headlines:

Joining me for headlines tonight is my pan-racial color commentator who’s therefore allowed to say all the N-words, Heath Enwright.  Heath, are you ready to use otherwise-offensive slurs in the proper satirical context while berating believers in the absurd?

Cracka please!!!  Let’s get started.  Which confederate states are violating the first amendment this week?

We’ll get to that, but in our lead story tonight, recent polls show that 34% of Americans would vote for Jesus in 2016.

Another white guy?!?!

Yeah, but he’d be the first Jew.  According to HuffPo columnist and author Fred Rich, a recent YouGov poll had more than a third of Americans answering yes to the question “Would you favor establishing Christianity as the state religion,” with the majority of those saying they would be “strongly” in favor of such a move.

What percentage thought we had already clearly established Christianity as the state religion?

It’s like polling plantation owners on their views about the economic modalities of the southern colonies.  

“De facto segregation ain’t enough.  We need to get this stuff on paper.  Maybe we should make a grand public statement . . . a Proclamation of Demancipation . . . we’ll work on the name.”  

32% favored taking this beyond their individual state and support an amendment to the Constitution that would make Jesus-worship the national religion as well.  So basically a third of our country has seen how well theocracy is working in Saudi Arabia and want a piece of the action.

Strange how closely this number mirrors the percentage of people that identify as evangelical . . .

However most of this group couldn’t spell theocracy, and probably couldn’t find Saudi Arabia on google maps.

As Rich points out in his column, this was a national poll, so the heathens in New England and California were skewing the numbers.  Imagine what a poll like this looks like in just the stupid states.

Poll shows one third of Americans want a theocracy: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/fred-rich/breaking-news-34-of-your-_1_b_3461262.html

And speaking of the stupid states, our next story takes us to Kentucky, where Ken Ham seeks to rekindle the flagging attendance at his Creationism museum by adding… wait for it… zip lines.

After finding that dinosaurs and bullshit weren’t enough to bring in the kiddies, Ham and his knowledge-abhorring cohorts are turning to the time-tested technique of completely unrelated touristy shit like zip lines.

I bet the conservative group within his ultraconservative group are up in arms about this.  Might not go over well with the physicists in the Christian Science Department.  Aren’t there several bible passages that declare gravity an abomination?  

“The Lord didn’t say Let there be heavy – He said Let there be light”

To unveil this new attraction, he invited Kentucky state representatives, Kim King, Bart Rowland, Tim Moore, Tweedle Dee and Foghorn Leghorn for the ribbon cutting, which hopefully involved safety scissors.  Representative King showed just how little she cared about definitions and shit when she posted on Facebook that the (airquote) “museum” was (airquote) “educational”.

These guys are awful at this.  How hard is it to get attendance when nearly everyone in a 5-state radius is brainwashed from birth about the theme of their museum?  

If Mickey Mouse was in the bible, there would be Mini Disney Worlds in every WalMart.  

Kentucky Creationism Museum unveils zip line attraction, complete w/ State reps: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/06/21/kentucky-state-representatives-visit-the-creation-museum/

And from Mickey Mouse to “Mecca-Mouse”, our next story takes us to the middle-east where Dubai will see Kentucky’s stupidity and raise them billions of dollars because Dubai is rollin’.  In a probably-horribly-misguided attempt to combat the nation’s reputation of irreligion, the Dubai General Projects Department recently announced a Qur’an based theme park that will, I’m sure, be every bit as fun as that sounds.

I’m looking forward to “The Ideologue Floom” and “Twin Towers of Terror”

I believe that was our first 9/11 joke.  Well done.

Anyway, Dubai apparently has a “Vegas of the Middle East” reputation that prompted a popular Saudi cleric to order women not to visit the city… because you know how women are about succumbing to temptations of the flesh.

How the women manage not to rape all those burka-less men is beyond me.

But Dubai officials hope they can counter this image by taking the only thing these rabid, undereducated fundamentalists give a fuck about and treating with the culture and sanctity we’ve come to associate with theme parks.

I think Islam is just angry as a whole, not about Western domination, or the Israeli Magic Act of 1948, but about being that 3rd guy out that nobody really cares about.  They’re like Chris Bosh, Graham Nash, and the Green Party all rolled into one sad little box called “worst monotheists ever”.  

Judaism and Christianity get all the attention, and little brother Islam gets ignored again.  Historically, this leads to occasional bouts of radical attention-getting behavior.   

Dubai plans Qu’ran based theme park: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/23/quran-theme-park-dubai-religious-pilgrimage

And from the “remind-me-why-they-venerate-the-murder-weapon-again” file, the city of Evansville, Indiana has approved a public art exhibit that will contain no fewer than 2 and a half dozen eight foot crosses all over the city’s waterfront.

Is this one of those avant garde things where the public interacts with the art, and they leave out hammer and nails to see what happens?  Like a social experiment type of thing?

I wish… Unfortunately it’s one of those run-of-the-mill “I love the bible and the constitution almost enough to read them” things.  Recognizing the constitutionally problematic nature of this project, the city insisted that the crosses not be overtly religious crosses, but rather secular crosses.

Sounds like a perfectly secular homage to the lowercase letter T.

City Attorney Ted Zeimer Jr. couldn’t agree more, explaining the rock-solid legal authority of the city to violate the first amendment by pointing out that the United Way was allowed to put up statues in this very same spot once.

So because Evansville, Indiana has a long, proud history of violating the 1st Ammendment, they’re claiming squatters rights to ignore the Bill of Rights.  

Essentially, yes.  Zeimer went on to explain that (quote) “We told them they could not have any writing of any kind on them so they’re statues.  They might be a religious symbol to someone or they might be attractive statues to someone else.”

Yeah without the word Jesus actually written on them, they’re just an interesting demonstration of perpendicularity.  

“If it ain’t a right wing angle, it’s a wrong wing angle.”    

Let’s sell that T-shirt to Newt Gingrich.

City of Evansville, Indiana approved “30 Crosses” public art exhibit: http://www.courierpress.com/news/2013/jun/20/old167/

And moving on to our final story of the night, two weeks ago we talked about a Christian who was obsessed with men spanking their monkeys and this week we’ll turn to some Christians that are obsessed with men spanking their wives.

I’ll keep saying this until it starts happening . . .

How is every womens’ group not also an outspoken atheist group?!?

Well maybe this’ll help: The Christian Domestic Discipline movement’s website goes to great lengths to explain that they’re not a fetish site.  So stop asking, damn it.  They’re not interested in the type of spanking that both of the people involved enjoy, that’s satanic.  They’re interested in the type of spanking where men physically abuse their wives until they do as they’re told… but only if it’s consensual, of course.

Right, because biblically, the women you marry, and the blacks you own, are entitled to similar privileges.  Except the black aren’t guaranteed the consensual part . . . And really neither are the women.

Yeah, God doesn’t do consensual.

We should get down there and hand out some atheist-themed rape whistles.  

Maybe setup some womens’ crisis centers called “Planned Penetration”.  We probably won’t get bombed by evangelicals.

I’d be worried about them discovering and attacking our secret podcast HQ here in New York City, but the atheist trolls at each bridge into the city ask a series of logic riddles that slow-witted theist spies never seem to answer correctly.  

Which is nice, but it fucks traffic on the GW all up.

The CDD Lifestyle also advocates other forms of infantilization and punishments like time-outs, writing sentences like “I won’t disobey my master” and being humbled by (quote) “some sort of nude humiliation”.  But, and I can’t state this enough, this isn’t about being an abusive, misogynistic, felonious, psychopathic, cowardly, demonic piece of shit that should have his head drilled open and his cerebrospinal fluid sucked out by poisonous leeches wrapped in barbed wire because Jesus.

Christian group promotes spanking your wife: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/06/19/spanking-for-jesus-inside-the-unholy-world-of-christian-domestic-discipline.html

And on that mental image, we’ll close out headlines tonight, Heath, thanks again for joining me.

Fantastic time.

And when we come back, Lucinda will join us to regret suggesting we all read the bible.

Calendar:

It’s time once again from the Atheist Calendar portion of the show.  This is the now monthly portion of the show we set aside to talk up some of the atheist, skeptical and otherwise secular events going on around the country and around the world… only this time just around the country.

On the weekend of July 4th (and for our international listeners, July 4th is the day that Americans celebrate the 4th of July), the Skepchicks will be taking over the Science & Skepticism Track at ConVergance in Minneapolis.  Not sure about the rest of the conference, but the Skepchick part looks awesome.  Rebecca Watson and her team of Skeptical female superheroes team up with PZ Myers which would make for an awesome conference and an even more awesome comic book.

http://skepchickcon.com/

Of course, the big one gears up on the 11th in Vegas.  It’s called The Amazing Meeting, and if you’re listening to this podcast you’ve heard of it, so all I’m gonna say is if you register before the 1st of July it’s $125 cheaper.

http://www.amazingmeeting.com/

But if Vegas is there and you’re here, perhaps you can make it out to SSA East, the other half of the Secular Student Alliances bicoastal conference extravaganza this year.  Except that it’s in Columbus, Ohio, which certainly isn’t coastal.  So if you’re secular and you’re a student, it starts on the 12th and runs through the weekend.

https://secularstudents.org/2013con/columbus

And finally, I wanted to toss out a plug for the CFI’s upcoming leadership conference in Amherst, New York on the weekend of the 25th of July.  If you’re a student and have any plans or aspirations to start a skeptical, secular or freethought group on campus, CFI is a phenomenal resource.

http://www.cfileadership.org/

You’ll find more details about this conference and all the other events I just outlined on the shownotes for this episode at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.

Poem:

NUMBERS IN RHYME

by Noah Lugeons

1 is the number of gods and he gives

2 shits about who gets killed and who lives.

3 times Balaam and his donkey have spats

be-4 god starts talking out of that Midianite’s ass.

 

5 chapter in things get scary for chicks,

6-tuff’s prescribed if they’re getting side-dick.

And 7’s for resting unless you need stones,

To break some stick gathering heathen’s skull and his bones.

 

8 too much Manna? Should you voice your critiques?

God will plague you and kill you, but he’ll send quail for weeks.

And that asi-9 bastard may invoke some damned clause,

To show you what a 10-uous promise that promised land was.

 

11 Tribes conscribe all their fighting age men,

but the 12th tribe (the Levites) just carry the tent.

20 is war-age, but like most things, you’ll notice,

The tribe that’s exempt is the one that has Moses.

 

30 Days mourning when god kills Aaron on high,

Then 40 years waiting for all the bad jews to die.

50 percent of this book we spend bored

Counting jews and the booty they offer the lord.

 

We get a couple of censuses from all of the tribes,

Enumerated offerings are in detail described,

As the name would suggest, the book’s obsessed with amounts,

But no number gets higher than god’s body count:

 

We could start with the animals, who are killed by the score,

Each time the tabernacle opens its doors.

Bulls, rams and donkeys, pigeons and sheep,

And a pile of quails about three cubits deep.

 

Israelites?  Oh yeah, he kills them by the thousand.

He opens the earth and swallows whole houses.

He burns their encampments, sends serpents and plagues,

And what heinous encroachments elicit god’s rage?

 

Being hungry or thirsty, doubting Moses’ clout,

Going to the tabernacle once the candles are out,

Being honest when scouting, gathering sticks,

Complaining to Moses and acting like dicks.

 

Whoring with Moabites, lighting incense all wrong,

Being treated like shit and not just going along;

Thinking manna tastes nasty, being slow to obey

Or living in cities that stand in his way.

 

But it isn’t like God is always a villain;

When he orders Moses to murder all the Midianite children,

He says if they’re virgins and if they behave,

He can spare the young women and keep them as slaves.

Holy Babble:

The Book of Numbers rests between two of the most notorious books in the bible and, perhaps because of that, it doesn’t get as much attention as Leviticus and Deuteronomy.  And sure, Numbers doesn’t have the homophobic flare of Leviticus or the “Thank God the Pentateuche is over” satisfaction of Deuteronomy, but if you were to insert it into any other book ever written, Numbers would almost certainly be the most fucked up portion of that book.

But mostly it’s just a horribly boring book that details one leg of the trip from Sinai to the promised land, punctuated with moments of brutal insanity that might just be there to keep you awake.  Joining Heath and me to discuss this strange little hybrid of bookkeeping and genocide is my beautiful wife Lucinda.  Lucinda welcome back.

I’d say I’m happy to be here, but after reading Numbers, I don’t think god would want me saying that without getting my husband’s permission first. So I’ll just say hi.

Yeah, this is probably the most sexist book we’ve come across yet and we’ll get to all of that.  But first things first.  If the jews are gonna take over the holy land, they’re gonna need an army.

  1. Right, so we start with the original Schindler’s Enlistment.

  • Then they lay out the structure for the Judaism pyramid scheme, or Tetra-Hebron.  

  • “Why are the Levites at the top of the pyramid, considering they already run the IRS?  Because they used all the goat taxes to become job creators.  Somebody has to start the game with the reds and oranges, plus all 4 railroads.”

  1. And on top of that, none of the people in Moses’ tribe have to join the army and when they camp in the wilderness, they get to set up their tents smack in the middle of 11 armies.

  • Would you want rabbis in the front lines of your army?  No, you want badass, Israeli-Commando-type Jews like Adam Sandler . . . Not pale, bearded, shitty drivers that started the Crown Heights Riots by running over a black pedestrian.  

  1. And of course, god needs money to go with his army.

  • Right, so in chapter 3 Aaron loses about 1365 shekels in a card game, and sets up the most ridiculous, elaborate, nonsensical story to get the money back, from his flock of ancient nomadic tribes that apparently all carry reasonable amounts of fungible hard currency at all times.  

  • “So technically, 273 extra babies that should have been righteously murdered.

  • Which sounds a lot like an endorsement for abortion.

  • No it’s not abortion right after birth – that’s just righteous murder.  

  • “What had happened is, God was gonna kill all your kids, but me and my family of 22,000 agreed to live a life of purported divine privilege, in exchange for saving them.  But you all had 22,273 firstborn children, so God’s gonna need 5 shekels apiece for the accounting discrepancy.  Us Levites will collect the cash here and write God a check.”        

  1. Then we get god’s overly-elaborate Tabernacle relocation strategy.  Basically he spends chapter four channeling a foul-tempered old lady with alzheimer’s bitching at the moving guys.

    1. “I said wrap it in blue cloth!  No, I want the Gershonites to carry the curtains!  And careful with those lamps or I’ll incinerate you with fireballs!”

  2. And then we get started with the sexism.  In chapter five we learn how to tell the if your wife’s been fuckin’ the goat-milkman using nothing but some dirty water, a handful of flour and misogyny.

  • The old grain offering dirty water miscarriage trick.  Seems like this was just a way for dudes to save face when they had a slutty wife.  Having her drink dirty water might make her sick, but I’m fairly certain it’s never led to an instantaneous immaculate hysterectomy.  So every time they do the ceremony, the dude doesn’t look like an asshole, because his wife’s womb doesn’t fall out on the spot.  

  • Yeah, I was expecting them to break out a scale and a duck at any moment.  

  1. Then we get the rules for the vow of the nazirites, which is spelled “Nazi Rites” which kind of fucks me up in the middle of a Jew book.

  2. In chapter 7 God shamelessly ups the word count by spelling out the exact same 90 word sacrifice 12 fucking times!

  3. The Levites shave all their hair and pubes and become elevated in the eyes of the Lord.

  4. In chapter 9 we learn that god’s a cloud and don’t forget that Passover’s coming up.

  5. Then god adds a brass section and they’re ready to go conquer the promised land.

  • If I’m being a stickler, God should have asked for brass, plated with silver, if he wanted a fuller timbre for those trumpets . . . Nobody’s perfect.  

  1. As soon as they hit the road, the Jews start bitching because they don’t like Manna and they want some meat.

  • Couldn’t god have solved the meat-shortage by not demanding so damn many sacrifices?

  • Sure, but I guess this was supposed to be some grand punishment for not appreciating the triscuit rain, but not too impressive.

  • “Hey, do you guys have a 3-foot-tall pile of quail in your yard?  Ok, I guess since we’re NOMADIC, we just eat a bunch now . . . maybe not so much that quail actually oozes out of my nostrils, but a lot . . . and then start heading toward the next place on Moses’s desert obstacle course.”
  • Yeah what the fuck was he trying to say there?  Did angels force feed their asses like Kevin Spacey’s character in Se7en.

  • And God was like, “Shit, yeah that doesn’t smite them much at all-AND PLAGUE!!! I said the quail thing AND PLAGUE!!! Nobody heard me, but I had said “and plague” at the end as I trailed off.”      

  1. In chapter 12, Aaron and his wife talk shit about Moses so god makes her a leper for a week.

  • And when Moses asks God to go easy on her so she doesn’t turn out like a stillborn baby with it’s flesh half eaten off, he justifies making her skin rot off by saying, “If her father spit in her face, would she not be shamed for 7 days?”  Oh, well when you put it that way…

  1. Next we meet Double “O” Shiv’a scouting out the promised land and they say that all the people already living there are too strong for all the quail engorged Israelites to displace.

  2. And then God throws one of his patented temper tantrums and kills pretty much everybody for bitching too much.  He curses their children, he sends a plague, he marched an army out to die.  

  • And as if that’s not enough, he “unpromises” the promised land to everybody but Joshua and Caleb.

  • Yeah, it’s the part of the act where the hypnotist removes all the free-thinking non-sheep from the stage, leaving only the blindly faithful idiots who are truly qualified for Judaism.  

  1. And then in chapter 15, right in the middle of some proper goat-killing etiquette, we learn that Moses and the gang find a guy picking up sticks on the Sabbath so god commands them to stone him to death.  

  • And in a whiplash inducing subject change, in the next verse after the stoning, God reminds them that he likes fringes on the outfits, so don’t forget to add fringes.

  • “So seriously, it may sound somewhat contradictory, but no faggots on Saturday, and tassles for everyone!!!  Also, lest ye forget, I’m fucking God.”  

  1. Then we get a weird little mutiny.  Some other Levites challenge Moses’ leadership so he challenges them to an incense burning match to the death.  

  • “What?!?  I’m not clearly high priest because of actually talking directly to God?!?  Take out your censers bitches . . . I’ll outsmoke anyone.”

  • “Bitch, you light incense like Michael J. Fox on meth!  You call that a grain offering?  I’ve got more fiber in my stools.”

  • So God goes fucking nuts, opens the earth to swallow whole families along with their slaves and furnishings, he burns 250 people alive and then he kills fourteen thousand more with a plague.

  • And I must say, god is a total badass about it.  He says “Moses, step away from those dudes.”  And Moses says “Why?”  And God says, “So I can burn them to death with giant fireballs.”

  • Right… so why they didn’t all just stand really close to Moses is beyond me.

  1. Anyway, just in case the house swallowing, fireball chucking, plague sending message wasn’t clear enough, God also has Moses write everybody’s name on a stick and only Aaron’s stick grows flowers.

  2. In chapter 18 we reinforce the “the priests get all the best shit” motif.

  3. And in 19 we kill cows and we don’t touch dead people.

  4. In chapter 20 God kills Moses’ brother for expressing a slight hint of doubt.  And in the serial-killer-fashion I’ve learned to expect from deities, he doesn’t just plain murder Aaron, he makes his son watch his naked father die, and then walk back down the mountain wearing his murdered dad’s clothes.   

  5. Then God continues to be an asshole and sends a bunch of poisonous serpents to get the Jews to stop bitching… then finally Moses goes on the warpath and starts killing some motherfuckers.

  6. And then in chapter 22 there was some kind of biblical writer’s strike so they had the folks from Disney step in for a few chapters, because all of a sudden everybody’s breaking into song and there’s a talking donkey.

  • And didn’t Balaam seem strangely nonplussed by it?  He just carried on a conversation with his donkey like it was nothing.

  • Well he thought he was speaking to god earlier, so a talking donkey is far more plausible.

  1. So basically the story here is that Balak is trying to get Balaam to go to war against the Israelites, but Balaam knows god’s on their side so he spends a couple chapters refusing… in song.

  2. ^^

  3. ^^

  4. Then we get another census because, holy shit, it’s been almost twenty two chapters since we counted all the jews.

  • Well God had killed a lot of them since then.

  1. Then we spend 3 chapters going over old shit, but we do finally learn what we’ve suspected all along; God’s been cheating on Moses with Joshua.

  2. ^^

  3. ^^

  4. In chapter 30 we learn the difference between man vows (must be kept) and women vows (must be kept unless a man says so)

  • Yeah, just in case the “women are inferior to men” thing wasn’t clear by now, God hammers it home one more time.

  1. Then they go to war with the Midianites and slaughter them.  All the men of fighting age are killed.  Moses is furious… because they failed to kill the women and children.  

  • “I’m not getting God to divinely inspire our army, for you guys to not fully murder, pillage, and rape everyone.  I’ve gotta be a stickler on this, or my boss yells at me and he’s always watching.  You either murder them . . . or you rape them . . . or both in either order . . . Understood?”

  • Easily the most disturbing moment in the narrative so far.

  1. Then, thanks to the cattle-rustlin’ Reubenites and Gadites, Jews start a long and storied tradition of building settlements in other people’s land.

  2. Then we get a chapter that rehashes every spot where they camped for the last 40 years.

  • Riveting.

  1. Then they divvy up the promised land (before actually possessing it)

  • The first use of short selling.

  1. God takes a minute to spell out exactly what is and isn’t “murder”.  And can I just say, I love the whole “city of refuge idea”…  we should totally bring that back

  • It would make a great setting for a Nicolas Cage movie.

  1. And we finish with a soft close concerning inheritances and marriage.

So what do we learn in Numbers?  We learn, first of all, that God’s a wrathful, vengeful, abhorrent, petty tyrant.

  • Well . . . we re-learn.

  • We learn that women are worthless

  • we learn that donkeys can talk, we learn that genocide is a-okay

And we learn that anybody who read the first four books of the Bible and didn’t become an atheist needs to work on their reading comprehension skills.

So Heath, Lucinda, thanks for suffering through this with me.

We’ll take a couple weeks off of the Holy Babble, but we’ll all meet back here to break down Deuteronomy in episode 22 for those of you playing along at home.

Outro:

Before we shut off the lights tonight I wanted to respond to a slight criticism recently posted in an otherwise extremely complimentary review.  Mr “Something Clever About God” appreciates the toilet humor, the 30 minute format and overall production quality, but offers the following critique:

“The commentary is more ‘witty’ than ‘laugh out loud funny’, so Heath and Noah could use more snickers and less belly laughs”

First of all, thanks for the rating, but I do want to take issue with that minor objection.  Every laugh you hear on this show is genuine and Heath and I would never pretend to laugh at one another’s material and we certainly wouldn’t laugh at jokes that we wrote for the other guy and we certainly wouldn’t cut and paste genuine laughs and drop them into the audio later and I’m certainly not lying right now and it’s certainly not obvious.

We also need to take a few seconds to recognize this week’s most vivacious, tenacious, loquacious, sagacious, perspicacious, papilionaceous, gracious, curvaceous and hellacious people, Benjamin and David, who proved themselves worthy of the kind of praise that can only be fully expressed by Googling “words that end in A-C-I-O-U-S, removing the ones that are insulting and then adding a really obscure term for “butterfly like” by giving us money.

Only the most intelligent and sexually virile specimens of human excellence have what it takes to give us money, but if you think you can live up to my verbose laudations, you’ll find the donate button on the right side of the homepage at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.

And if you love the show but you lost all your money betting on Scotus outcomes, you can still help out by telling a friend about the show or leaving us a glowing 5-star review on iTunes.  I should point out that as of this recording we have 68 reviews so there’s still time to be the sexually significant 69th reviewer if you’re into that sort of thing.

I need to thank Heath and Lucinda for joining me tonight and Remy G for providing this week’s Farnsworth quote.  This is normally the part where I’d tell you that you should check out his awesome Facebook page called “Fuck Your Fucking God, You Ignorant Blinded Dumb Fuck”, which totally makes this podcast sound PG and had an awesome avatar of a nude Jesus giving you this “Hey baby, I’ve got enough orifices for everyone” look, but I can’t because Facebook is run by a bunch of cowardly pube-waxing assholes who took down his page because religious people have fragile feelings and his words make them cry.

So since they won’t let him say it, I’ll say it, “Hey religious assholes on Facebook, fuck your fucking god, you ignorant, blinded dumb fuck.”

Anyway, that’s all the blasphemy we’ve got for you this week, but we’ll be back in 168 hours with more.  If you can’t wait that long, you could always check out our erratically published blog and like (slash) subscribe (slash) follow us on Facebook (slash) YouTube (slash) Twitter.  You can also find our archives at Scathing Atheist (dot) com or you can help us bump up our Stitcher ranking by downloading the Stitcher App and listening to us there.

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 12: Partial Transcript

by Noah Lugeons & Heath Enwright

(Note: Transcript may contain portions that were edited for time reasons)

Sponsor:

Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the new discrete escort service for gay Mormons, Homo-Momo (dot) com.  Our sumptuous escorts will put out the forbidden fire in your magical underpants and pray for your mortal soul when they’re done.

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And now, the Scathing Atheist.

Intro:

It’s Thursday, It’s May 9th and somebody needs to tell people in Kentucky to stop wearing “I ‘heart’ KY” shirts

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

On this week’s episode,

  • Christians will get upset about imaginary threats to their imaginary friend,

  • We’ll learn that in Turkey, you’re autistic,

  • And Darrel Ray will rejoin us to talk about pee-pees and coochies,

But first, the Diatribe.

Diatribe:

I started my post-secondary education at a small state college in rural Georgia.  And while you may not know me that well, even if this is your first time listening to the show you’ve probably already figured out that I’m not exactly right for a small state college in rural Georgia.  Let’s just say that my theological opinions ran counter to the prevailing ones.

You may have also picked up on the fact that I really don’t give two shits who I offend.

As you can imagine, this made for a combustible mix that didn’t take long to ignite.

I all but insured it with what I thought a harmless and excessively hilarious gag.  My dorm number was 174, but with a piece of posterboard and a sharpie, I cleverly changed it to 666.  Now, rural Georgia or no, I didn’t think this would actually piss anyone off.  Sure, they’re all Christian there, but this was college.  We were all a bunch of seditious rebels telling the status quo to go fuck itself, right?

Well, as it turns out, not so much.  Later that day I came back to a 174 where I’d left a 666 and below it there was a handwritten note.  I don’t recall every word of it, but I remember the opening line exactly:

“All the rest of us on this hall are Christian.”

The righteous vandal went on to explain that they didn’t want to see none of my satanic crap any-no-how and if I didn’t love Jesus I didn’t belong in that dorm hall, I didn’t belong in that college, I didn’t belong in that state and, come down to it, I didn’t belong in this country.  I was not welcome.

And, of course, I left a response.  Again, I don’t recall it verbatim, but it was a variation on the following:

“How feeble is your conviction if the very fact that someone doesn’t agree with you threatens it?”

I probably used a lot more words than that and I probably ensured that a few of them would force his ass to the dictionary, but that was the core of my rebuttal.  It’s been twenty years and I’m starting to think he’s not going to respond at all.

But that continues to be my strongest issue with religion as a whole.  If your idea has merit, it doesn’t need you there to defend it.  You can simply place it in the public arena and it can fend for itself.  Hell, how impressive would an omnipotent god be if he needed you to fight his battles for him?

If you want to see the deafening echo of this threat-response, just express your atheism on any social media venue and watch the wagons circle.  They’ll attack your intellect, your motivations, your morals, your conviction and occasionally your penis size (regardless of your gender).  They’ll gather together like white blood cells to defend their precious idea.

But meritorious ideas don’t need white blood cells.  If your ideas need to be reinforced once a week, they’re bullshit.  If you need to read the same book over and over again and hang out with people pre-screened to agree with you, you’re giving the bullshit armor.  If your ideas need to be propagated by an organized group that exists only to propagate your ideas they are bullshit.  And finally, if you’re threatened by people thinking you’re full of shit, it can only be because you’re full of shit.

Nobody ever had to show up at my door on a Saturday morning to convince me that A is equal to C if both are equal to B.  Nobody ever had to sneak a pamphlet into my Halloween candy to convince me that elephants are bigger than gerbils.  Nobody ever woke up early and dressed their kids up so that they could go somewhere and sing songs about cesium atoms having 55 protons.

Nobody ever passionately held a belief because it was true.  If it’s true, you don’t need passion.  Logic is more than enough of a scaffolding to hold up a genuine fact.  You only passion if logic isn’t enough.

Headlines:

Joining me for headlines tonight is the Pythias to my Damon, Heath Enwright.  Heath, are you ready to… be pithy, I guess?

Like Tina Fey if she were a dude?

She’s not a dude?  I feel so much less gay now…

In our lead story tonight, Christians across the internet are screaming themselves hoarse over an almost completely bullshit story about the Pentagon court-martialing people for being Christian.

Christianity pays for an entire staff of dudes who speak loudly about bullshit stories every week.  As a group, not exactly the pantheon of epistemological rigor.  

The tiny nugget of truth buried among this citadel of bullshit involves an April 23rd meeting between Mikey Weinstein, the head of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation and a group of pentagon officials including several generals and a chaplain.  And the very fact that the pentagon had the audacity to sit down with a person bearing legitimate complaints about clear violations of military prohibitions against religious proselytization was more than Christians could bear.

If they’re not careful, all this logic is gonna snowball out of control.  

Don’t worry, the paragons of journalistic integrity at Fox News were quick to put the brakes on it.  They noticed an article about this meeting and asked the pentagon if there were any plans to court-martial chaplains who proselytize.  The pentagon said no, but that wouldn’t piss of their viewers so they pretended the answer was yes.  And before long bloggers were leading off with headlines like “Pentagon Confirms They May Court-Martial Soldiers Who Hold Christian Faith”.

Yeah, court martialing 90% of the armed forces.  That shouldn’t fuck up military readiness, should it?  I mean, who’s gonna remotely fly all these drones?

They manage to inflate a low-level meeting to Weinstein now chairing a panel to reform court-martial procedures, they conclude that this will mean the end of military chaplains and that Obama’s Defense Department was (quote) “promising to bring criminal charges against any military personnel who express or share their faith.”

I’m beginning to think Obama made up all that stuff about being Christian and white, just to get elected.  

So yeah, scant amount of dubious evidence, passionately held conclusion despite overwhelming data to the contrary.  Been there, done that.

Pentagon warns Christian soldiers that proselytization will be met with court martial: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/may/06/blog-posting/bloggers-say-pentagon-may-court-martial-christian-/ & http://nation.foxnews.com/religion/2013/05/03/rear-admiral-says-faith-under-attack-military & http://www.christiannewswire.com/news/2569472030.html

And in other Christians-Being-Furious-Over-Shit-That-Didn’t-Actually-Happen News, a high-school track team in Texas was disqualified from a 4 by 100 meter relay last weekend when a runner made a religious gesture at the end of the race.

Jews are gonna get offended by swastikas . . . Muslims are gonna get offended by Danish cartoons . . .  As an atheist, I’m supremely offended by any trinity-related gesture.  Don’t we get to pick an N-word too?  We’ve got unholy cows.

That sounds fair to me, but it really wouldn’t matter in this case because they weren’t actually disqualified because of a religious gesture, but rather because the judges deemed it “excessive celebration” and backed it up with clearly stated rules that specifically forbade “raising the hands or arms in celebration” after winning because, you know, it’s un-Jesus-y.

Do we really need to sit Christianity down for a quick seminar on what subset means?  Did religion really manage to brainwash away the Venn diagram concept?  That’s like a free built-in piece of brain functionality they’re throwing away.  And don’t they believe that somebody REALLY IMPORTANT designed all the brains?  

Well, I don’t know… if god made man in his own image then most of god is an idiot.  But this is how desperate Christians are to maintain their “help, help, I’m being oppressed” narrative.

Supreme omnipotent power is a mandate from the masses.

Excellent supplementary reference.  So here we’ve got a high school kid who gets disqualified from a track meet and it’s being reported on national news.  Nevermind that he was DQed for “excessive celebration and acting disrespectfully toward officials” and admits himself that there was no oppression of his faith here.

We can’t keep having laws that say “No doing stupid shit, unless you REALLY believe in it, and have a group of people with similar hats.”

Track Team disqualified for making “Religious Gesture” (Officially for “excessive celebration”): http://www.christianpost.com/news/was-relay-team-disqualified-from-state-championships-for-religious-gesture-95251/

Our next story takes us to New York Cities parking lot, New Jersey, where three members of the Trenton Diocese have resigned amid allegations that they knowingly allowed a child-molester to accompany them on overnight youth retreats.

Father Michael Fugee was convicted of fondling a teenage boy in 2003, but the conviction was overturned on appeal despite the fact that he had previously confessed to investigators.  Rather than retry the case, the prosecutors struck a deal with the archdiocese of Newark that would allow Fugee to remain with the ministry provided that he didn’t work with children.

I’m worried we won’t get in a dick joke if we don’t take the opportunity here.  

This show does have a two dick-joke minimum…

So what do you suppose they had in their video library there?  Movies like A Few Good Boys

The Priests of the Southern Child?

Altar Boys on the Side

Rosemary’s Adolescent

The Best Little Rectory in Texas

Super 8… Year Olds

Defrock of Ages (8-12)

And for the Jewish clients maybe Who Fucked Roger’s Rabbi?

It’s worth noting that in 2009 the archdiocese assigned him to the Saint Michael’s Medical Center in Newark and eventually removed him amidst scandal when this unsettling history came to light, so basically they’ve been moving this child-molester from place to place and waiting for somebody to say, “Hey, isn’t that dude a child-molester?” and then moving him somewhere else.

Wonderful . . . they figured out bit torrent for pedophiles.

3 resign from NJ church in pedophile priest scandal: http://news.yahoo.com/3-resign-nj-church-priest-scandal-161033762.html

And in our next story, a Turkish taint-stain has proven that when it comes to autism, one can actually have one’s head further up one’s ass than the anti-vaxers. Fehmi Kaya, the head of the Health and Education Associations for Autistic Children in Adana, Turkey said in a recent interview that atheism is (quote) “a different form of autism”.

If you’re gonna compare atheism to a mental disorder, autism is possibly the most flattering choice.  Rain Man was an awesome dude.  Sometimes autism comes with some super powers.  

On the other hand, theism as a mental disorder, would be something more like addiction to delusional psychosis with an extra chromosome on top.

Arguing that autism is the result of a lack of development in the “faith” center of the brain, he explains that this is why autistic children lack empathy with others, just like we atheists.

Kind of like the way Martin Luther King had an underdeveloped bigotry center of his brain.

Turkish Head of Education Dept. says Atheism is a Form of Autism: http://www.examiner.com/article/all-autistic-kids-are-atheists-and-atheism-is-a-form-of-autism & http://www.timeturk.com/en/2013/04/22/all-autistic-kids-are-atheists.html

And finally tonight, from the “If-God-Existed-He-Wouldn’t-Make-It-So-Easy-On-Me” News, the priest who was in charge of the treatment center where they sent priests accused of inappropriate sexual conduct has resigned amid allegations of inappropriate sexual conduct.

You’ve gotta be a little suspicious of these corporate climber types.  “So I hear you need somebody to head up the new Rape Department.  Look no further.  I’m your guy.  I know rape backwards and forwards.  I know it inside out… coming and going.  I know it like the back of my fist.

What would that resume look like?

Now, in defense of Monsignor Edward J. Arsenault, former president and CEO of the Saint Luke Institute he was accused of more than just sexual impropriety.  He’s also being investigated for some shady financial practices so he’s really proving himself Catholic to the core.

Throw in some Nazi affiliation and you’ve got the holy trinity.

And, of course, to a Monsignor the term “inappropriate sexual conduct” is redundant.  So this could be an inappropriate, consensual relationship with his hand for all they care.  If he’s coming, it’s inappropriate.

What if God blows you in a dream? . . .  An Immaculate Erection scenario . . .

Or Ejaculate Conception…

Would that count as honorable discharge?

Priest who heads top clergy treatment center resigns amid allegations of impropriety: http://www.religionnews.com/2013/05/06/priest-who-heads-top-clergy-treatment-center-accused-of-impropriety/

Well, unfortunately we’ll have to leave you on that puzzler, as that’s all the time we’ve got for headlines tonight.  Heath, thanks once again for joining me tonight.

And when we return, you’ll witness the second coming of Darrel Ray.

Calendar:

It’s time for the atheist calendar portion of the show.  Back and well rested from a hiatus on last week’s episode, this is the part of the show we set aside to keep everyone up to speed on all the great atheist and secular events happening around country and around the world.

We’ve already talked them up a couple of times on the show, but a quick reminder that the weekend of May 17th has two big events; Imagine No Religion 3 in Kamloops, BC and the Women in Secularism Conference in Washington DC.  Details on the lineups are linked on the website.

Imagine No Religion 3: http://inr3.eventbrite.ca/

Women in Secularism Conference: http://www.womeninsecularism.org/

At the end of the month we’ve got the American Humanist Association Annual Conference in beautiful San Diego, California.  They’ll be honoring some of the very best in the Secular Humanist movement including 2013’s Humanist of the Year, Dan Savage.  Other honorees include Greta Christina, Katha Pollitt (I hope I’m pronouncing her name right…), Carl Coon and Richard Leakey.  Oh, and did I mention Richard Dawkins was gonna be there?  So yeah, if you’re in the same hemisphere as this thing (and by that, I mean Western or Northern), you should really try to make it.

American Humanist Association’s Annual Meeting: http://conference.americanhumanist.org/

The following weekend they’ll be doing something pretty similar on the other side of the Atlantic.  The British Humanist Association Annual Conference will be taking place in Leeds over the weekend of June 7th.  They’ll be honoring Terry Pratchett with the 2013 Award for Services to Humanism.  They’ve already got a pretty impressive list of confirmed speakers and they’re promising more to come.

British Humanist Association’s Annual Meeting: http://bhaconference.org.uk/

You’ll find more information, including links to the homepages for all these events under the “Show Notes” for this episode.  Remember, if you’re involved with an atheist, humanist, skeptical or secular event that could use a little free publicity, let me know.  I’d be happy to plug your event to thousands of people who probably live nowhere near it, many of whom will hear it in archives long after it’s over.  You’ll find all the contact info on the contact page at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.

Outro:

Before we wrap things up for the night I wanted to make a quick correction about last week’s episode.  But unfortunately it looks like we didn’t fuck anything up last week so I won’t get to.  I promise to try less hard next time.

Normally I close the show out by thanking all the people who help make it go.  I usually thank all the people who send encouraging emails, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, subscribe to us on YouTube, rate us on iTunes and tell their friends about us.  Then I’ll thank people like Heath Enwright and Darrel Ray who joined me on the show and I’ll usually thank people like Bill and Suzy from the “Bar Room Atheist” podcast for providing the Farnsworth quote this week and for putting together a really fun and relaxed podcast which you’ll find linked on our shownotes.

Bar Room Atheists on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/bar-room-atheist

And I usually thank everybody who could have spent the last 30 minutes listening to any number of awesome things and chose to listen to this show instead.  And above all, I usually thank the world’s most astute, intelligent and discerning people, the one’s who donate money to our show.  People like Justin, this week’s most valuable human.

But I’m not going to do that tonight.  It’s not that all those aforementioned people don’t deserve thanks; they do, especially Justin because he gave us money, but I’ve got a really important thanks this week and I’m afraid it would have overshadow all those other ones.  I want to thank one of the most dedicated, influential and admirable people in the modern secular movement.  Eugenie Scott, long time director of the National Center for Science Education and valiant warrior against creationism and science denialism recently announced her retirement.

So I want to say to Eugenie Scott that we in the secular community cannot thank you enough for all the hard work you’ve done in defense of science and rationality.  After a long and successful career taking on all comers, you’ve earned the right to retire in peace, knowing that you’ve made a substantive difference and that you’ve inspired an army of freethinkers to follow in your footsteps even if none of them will ever quite fill your shoes.  So from the bottom of my heart, thank you.

That does it for tonight, but we’ll be back in 168 hours with the “Out of Egypt” Edition where Lucinda and Heath will join me to pour over 40 more chapters of immoral bullshit in the “Holy Babble”.  But if you can’t wait that long for more us, fear not.  Even in two parts I didn’t have quite enough room for all the good stuff from that Darrel Ray interview so I added a quick bonus question and answer to the “Extras” page on the website.  While you’re there, be sure to check out our erratically published blog and if you want to help me buy a new alternator and a car to put it in, click on the donate button on the right side of the page.

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

Episode 10: Partial Transcript

April 25, 2013 2 comments

by Noah Lugeons & Heath Enwright

Sponsor:

Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the new brand of Christian Compact Fluorescents  “Let There Be Light Bulbs”.  Are you tired of seeing all the benefits that godless scientists have brought to your life?  Are you sick of facing all the perfectly obvious physical evidence that your beliefs are wrong?  Well try a little less illumination and a little more enlightenment with “Let There Be Light Bulbs”.  Each bulb contains our patented “Through a glass darkly” technology that will allow you to easily blind yourself to everything that isn’t happening inside your head.

And now, the Scathing Atheist.

Intro:

It’s Thursday, It’s April 25th and we’re going for an hour tonight, so hopefully you hit traffic.

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

On this week’s episode,

 

  • Heath, Lucinda and I will dig through 80 pages of Bible without encountering a single moral,

  • I’ll rudely correct my wife when she says, “boringest”,

  • and Heath will spend 4 minutes making God glad he doesn’t exist;

But first, the Diatribe.

 Diatribe:

I got a very compelling email from Dan in Toronto a few days back and I started to draft a response, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought I should address Dan’s concerns in a wider venue.

It was a pretty long email, but I pulled a quick excerpt that I think sums up the point.  Dan starts off by admitting that he really enjoys the show and it makes him laugh, but he wonders what the cost of those cheap laughs really are in the following paragraph:

“The problem is one of productivity. What do we, as a movement, gain by being so antagonistic toward religion?  It’s hard to imagine a believer that listened to your show having any reaction but a calcification of their dogma.  Ultimately you’re providing the caricature that religious leaders need to smear atheists as cruel, angry and uncaring.  And to what end?  Have you done more in the end than simply affirm opinions already held? Have you done more than preach to the choir?”

As to providing a caricature to the opposition, well, that may or may not be true.  I’m sorry, but those Christians would find something to be pissed off about regardless of what I do.  But I don’t want to be dismissive.  I have a lot of respect for Dan’s opinion here and he’s not the first person to bring it up.  Hell, Heath, Lucinda and I discussed it in depth before we recorded episode one.  Clearly, we fell on the good-outweighs-the-bad end of the argument, but I do feel that people like Dan still deserve an explanation.

The question is basically one of purpose and the tone of Dan’s email suggests that he believes that the purpose of an atheist show should be outreach to the religious community.  I don’t mean to oversimplify the objection, but the implication is there that the first goal of an atheist show should be one of PR.  That does make sense when you belong to a group seen as less trustworthy than rapists, but I also think it sells us short.

There are plenty of great atheist outreach podcasts.  The Atheist Experience, the Thinking Atheist, Reasonable Doubts, An American Atheist Podcast… these are all great shows that I could recommend to a religious person if they wanted to know more about atheism.  But that doesn’t mean that the only purpose an atheist show can serve is outreach.

I don’t mean to downplay the importance of outreach, but I fear that if we focus on it too much, we lose sight of an equally important element of the movement: Mobilization.  It’s not enough to sway minds if we can’t also sway the feet they’re connected to.

So when we started this show, we tossed “outreach” out the window and I try to make that clear in the first 12 seconds of the show.  In fact, I tried to make that clear in the first two words of the title.  I’d have called it the “Fuck Jesus Show” if I thought iTunes would still promote it.

Religious people are welcome to listen to this show, but they aren’t invited.  This show isn’t for them.  They’ve got enough.

I’ve gone to church before and I’ve never complained afterwards that the pastor didn’t include the atheist point of view in his sermon.  I’ve never written an angry letter to a televangelist for not being nicer to atheists when he tells them they’re all going to hell. If a Christian listens to this show and gets pissed off about it, I look at it like a neighbor showing up at your barbecue uninvited.  You welcome him in and give him a beer anyway and then he starts complaining because there’s no vegetarian menu.

There is a time and a place for nice, but there’s a time and a place for fuck you as well.  And in this movement we need both.  Nice is good for outreach.  Nice is good for PR.  Nice is good for winning converts and softening our image.  But fuck you has its uses, too.  Fuck you is good for rallying the troops.  Fuck you is good for boiling the blood.  Fuck you is good for reminding people why they got active about atheism in the first place.  And what’s more, when people are trying to shove their religion into your schools, your government and your life, Fuck You is not only useful, but it’s the only correct response.

The end result it that I spend a lot of time preaching to the choir.  But what’s wrong with that?  Keep in mind that despite the connotations implied in the expression, the preacher man does still preach to the choir!  You have to.  You can’t just assume that somebody who read The God Delusion back in 2009 is still as fired up about as she was when she put the book down.  We all have to be reminded from time to time that these battles are still being fought and we still need all hands on deck.

So thanks for the email Dan, and if you’d like to continue the conversation I look forward to your response.  But keep in mind that you started your email with the words, “I really enjoy your show…”, and I would argue that that’s enough.

If I make some atheists laugh, I’ve really done as much as I need to do to justify the effort.  I don’t think it’s fair to judge everything done in the name of atheism solely through the lens of its effect on religious people.  Singing hymns help Christians convince atheists that there’s a god, but that isn’t the point of singing hymns.  We accept that Christians can do Christian things for Christian reasons.  Why can’t an atheist do the same?

 Headlines:

In our lead story tonight, Pope Francesca shows exactly how paper thin that whole “reform and focus on the people” thing was when he voiced support for the Holy See’s crackdown on the “Nuns on a Bus” movement in the US.

Basically, the issue here is that these nuns have threaten the authority of the Vatican by proving that you can do good works without hating gay people and demonizing abortion, positions which the Catholics actually refer to as “radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic Faith”.

First of all, I wouldn’t call the abortion issue a feminist cause.  I know lots of dudes who are psyched about Roe v Wade for good reason.  Women as a whole want to be moms a lot more than men as a whole want to be dads.

Also, if you’re calling a group of nuns radically liberal, your organization is falling off the conservative side of a world you still think is 6000 years old and flat.    

Yeah and the “radical” ones apparently comprise about 80% of all US nuns.  The group says that the Vatican has reached “flawed” conclusions based on “unsubstantiated accusations”, though it wasn’t clear if they were referring to their own condemnation or the whole doctrine of Catholicism when they said that.

But I think this story really highlights the divide between what the Vatican is saying and what Catholics, at least here in the US are actually doing and believing.  When 80% of your representatives are doing it one way and you’re still insisting that they do it the other way, you’re not allowed to then sit around and ask yourself, “Why are people leaving our church?”

But if they did want to sit around and ask that, it wouldn’t take too much brainstorming to recall a few other hiccups in their PR campaign of late.     

Right, and here these nuns are with a slice of redemption on a silver fucking platter.  If Pope Frankincense embraced their movement or even refused to condemn it, even people like me would have to stand back and say, “Hey wait a minute, this guy might actually be ready to bring the Vatican into the modern world”, but no.  Status quo.  Shut them women up so us men can get to important things like deciding what women should do.

You have to admit, the oppression of women as a group, has been successful on a global scale since Genesis 3.  And it’s been good.  Yes, we do a lot better job of hiding it in secular America than in Vatican City or Tehran, but we participate nonetheless.  

http://news.yahoo.com/pope-francis-supports-crackdown-us-nuns-150211781.html

And in other news, the ephemeral nature of Pope Frankenstein’s “reforms” haven’t stopped a bunch of Catholic fundies from getting pissed off about them.  The Society of Saint Pius X, a group that is described as “ultra-traditionalist” in comparison to the Catholic Church, charges that Pope Francophile is so focused on people not starving to death and shit that he’s forgetting to brainwash them.

These guys are lobbying the Catholic Church to stop being so progressive.  They’re like the devil on the shoulder of the devil on the shoulder of the devil saying “I know the pitchfork is suspicious, but trust me you’re the angel. Pass it on.”  

Pyschomachia cubed.

The leader of the group, Bishop Bernard Blowjob… I mean, Fellay, has made a habit of sharply criticizing the Vatican since Pope Benny was rockin’ the big hat.  I’m all for sharply criticizing the Vatican of course, but unlike myself, he’s been arguing that the Vatican hasn’t been bat-shit crazy enough.

So I’m trying to decide what’s the ultimate example of politically untenable, and I settled on comparing these guys to holocaust deniers.  Then I found out one of their prominent members for years was famous holocaust denier, Bishop Richard Williamson.  

(THIS GUY WAS BORN IN THE UK IN 1940, AND DENIES THE HOLOCAUST!!!)  

You can’t make this shit up.  Granted he WAS recently expelled from the SSPX, but NOT because of publicly denying the holocaust.

At least when it comes to the holocaust, they’re equal opportunity appeasers.

The SSPX, which sounds like a group of British Special Ops Roller-Bladers, by the way, fears that the Vatican is modernizing too quickly, which is kind of like fearing that Rush Limbaugh might be too healthy.  In an email that Fellay boldly nailed to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenburg, he accused the Pope of “man-centered philanthropy” rather than “true religious leadership”.

 

  • What kind of philanthropy isn’t “man-centered”?

You’d think these guys might know a little bit of Latin and Greek.  Doesn’t philanthropy mean “love of humanity” ?

http://news.yahoo.com/catholic-rebel-group-begins-criticizing-pope-173638858.html

And in the former Soviet Union, former sane person Vladimir Putin looks ready to enact a law that would make it illegal in Russia to “offend religious feelings”.  The current bill limits the offended parties to Christians, Muslims, Jews and Buddhists and trust me on this one, at least 75% of those people are pretty easy to offend.

Blaspheming at Buddhists is tricky . . .

“Nothing isn’t not always or never everythingness!!!”

“Things matter and I am.”

Yes, much easier to offend is the craziest non-vampiric Vlad of all time.  This bill is a reaction to the literal riot that followed Pussy Riot’s 2012 performance in which they criticized hang-gliding, bear-wrestling, hockey-phenom Vladimir Putin; for which each member of the group was given a two year sentence in a remote prison camp for (quote) “Hooliganism motivated by religious hatred”.  So yeah, hard to imagine how this law might get abused.

I’m actually kind of surprised with the punishment.  I would have assumed Putin would have something a little more theatrical, like a slow-moving crotch laser, or a shark tank dipper.

Well, if it helps, I’m sure he spelled out the details of his evil plan before he sent them to the Gulag.

But it’s not exactly a James Bond level situation here, is it?  If an all-girl band, dressed like Fat Albert characters, is your arch enemy, then you might be the bad guy in a cartoon show for girls on Disney Afternoon.

Well if that’s the case somebody better get Princess Luna and Ms. Harshwhinny on the line because we’re seeing more and more of these blasphemy laws being enacted all over the world.  As Americans, the idea of free speech is so sacrosanct that it immediately makes us queasy and this is one of those few areas where I think we Americans actually have it right.  Blasphemy laws get the whole thing backwards to begin with.  If you’re offended by what I say, that shouldn’t be my problem.

If you’re offended by hearing blasphemous things like science, stop hanging out around reality where all the science happens.

 http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/04/10/176783877/russian-parliament-moves-ahead-on-anti-blasphemy-law

And moving so far south it’s practically north again, our next story lands us in the land of Hobbits and Hobbit-references, New Zealand.  This story comes to us from Paul Fidalgo at the Friendly Atheist blog.  Kiwi teacher Christopher Scott Roy alleges that he lost his job as a teacher at Tamaki College in Aukland for the egregious infraction of not believing that there’s a little man in your head somewhere that drives your body like Voltron.

Nice – 80’s cartoon reference # 2 for you on the day.  My Little Pony, and now the Defender of the Universe.   

I’m planning to squeeze Inspector Gadget in for the trifecta.  Roy, who left the school back in 2010, alleges that the school had an outlook that (quote) “saw Christian [and] Mormon faith as a core responsibility”.

This story gets a little tricky, as he actually settled his grievances with the school a while back and is now claiming that he did so “under duress and had no access to legal advice at the time the… settlement was signed”.

What’s the atheist dramatic act for protesting this?  Maybe a really pushy science fair occupying the college’s chapel space.  With people reading text books really loud, like a baptist minister: “Endoplasmic Reticulum”   

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/04/20/new-zealand-teacher-claims-he-was-fired-for-being-an-atheist/

And in exploding dildo news, a Spanish “anticlerical pro-sex toys group” is claiming responsibility for a series of amateur bombings, many involving vibrating rubber penises.  Several packages containing vibrators and what the article called “mini-bombs” were sent to prominent Catholics around Spain.

This is great . . .  Normally we have to make unsolicited dick jokes and those can get confused with rape jokes.  

But these guys really just teed up the dick jokes for us this time.  This is such a perfect piece of news for our tiny niche of offensively humorous atheist podcasts.  It’s like the day when the midget actor community heard the news that Willow was being cast.  

Do you think when they read the article anybody said, “Hey, the bombs weren’t that mini”?

Shipping was free, but they probably had to pay extra for handling.

The only injury mentioned in the article was a minor injury to a postal worker who was handling one of these packages when it exploded prematurely.

Somehow, the driver got the shaft, and no tip.

Well, in their defense, the group apologized for that incident in an email later where they said that nothing like this had (quote) “ever happened to them before”.

The delivery person probably found it flattering.  He should have just waited 10 minutes, adjusted his grip, and tried to deliver it again.  

So far this group has been responsible for a largely comedic series of fuck ups so we’re making jokes quick while we still can, but it looks like pretty soon they’re going to actually blow some people up and then this shit won’t be funny anymore.

Must continue dick joke . . .

Ummmmmm . . . Toma-Cock Missiles . . .

One more . . . The Uni-Corn Bomber . . .

Ok I’m done . . .

Would a joke about oversize black dildo’s be stretching it . . .

Ok last one  . . . Penis bombs for priests is one thing, but carpet bombs for nuns . . .

Ok really the last one. . .  Instead of sending UPS, they should have dropped them with “sexual predator drones”.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/19/spanish-anarchists-catholics-explosive-vibrators

And in domestic news, a surprisingly rational decision from the Virginia Supreme Court confirms that you can’t sue your church for liking gay people.  This story actually begins back in 2006 when a large contingent of the congregation at the Falls Church in Fairfax, Virginia started getting worried that the church was getting a little too lovey-dovey with the homo-butt sexers.

If I was donating money to the KKK, and they started tolerating blacks and jews all of sudden, I’d want my money back.  

The group voted to leave the church but when they were faced with the daunting task of starting their own new gay-hatin’ church, they decided it would be easier to just sue the leadership at their old church and try to get the property in a homophobic coup.

That’s like paying for a homeopath to heal you magically, and then suing them after you get better, when you find out they cheated and learned to use some real medicine.

You know that actually happened with Zicam?  I shit you not, they got in trouble for putting medicine in their medicine.

Anyway, somehow this shit got all the way to the Virginia Supreme Court and might yet go higher, but at the moment the court sides with the people who actually own the church and affirms their rights to not be bigots.  Odds are high that we haven’t heard the last of this story though, as even if this one is settled, there are plenty of similar lawsuits going on all over the country.

“Put his hand on a bible and ask him how much he hates fags on a scale from 1 to 10.  Anything under 7, and he’s clearly not fit to run a proper church.”

 http://www.christianpost.com/news/va-supreme-court-rules-against-departing-congregation-in-property-dispute-94328/

And in a combination of foreign, domestic and interdimensional news, the Vatican has confirmed a miracle in Colorado Springs.  In the ongoing beautification of German nun Mother Teresia Bonzel, the vatican’s rigorous standards of evidence have confirmed beyond a reasonable doubt that the unexpected recovery of a four year old with cancer could only be attributed to the intervention of a dead nun from Germany.

Germany could really use this.  Curing cancer is just about the only way to start getting the country a nice nod in the history books again.

Apparently the young man, who makes no claim whatsoever to having been cured miraculously, resents the assertion and isn’t a Catholic, had a tumor in his colon and despite a pretty miserable outlook, he got better.  What distinguishes this from the all-too-infrequent but still plentiful stories of people suddenly recovering from grave illnesses?  Why two nuns were reciting a magical incantation on or about the day that the illness reversed course.

This doesn’t seem like smart engineering by god here.  Why not just get rid of cancer?  But I guess that’s like everyone getting a trophy.

The then-boy, now-man at the center of this whole thing is skeptical of the Vatican’s claims, pointing out that God must spend a lot of time deciding to kill other kids whom nuns also prayed for, but that didn’t stop the Vatican from putting their seal of approval on it.

Every good thing is a prayer-induced miracle, and every bad thing is a mysterious oversight.  Well, I can make up tautologies too.  Heads, I fuck you . . . Tails, you fuck me.

http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_23012962/vatican-declares-miracle-after-prayers-colorado-springs-nun

And from the “Right-for-the-Wrong-Reason” department, Christian author Anna Ariel has a new book coming out titled, “Oprah Winfrey, The Most Dangerous Woman on the Earth” where she warns Christians about the dubious spiritual messages hidden within Oprah’s seemingly benign declarations.

Did “On the Origin of Species” finally get the Oprah Bump?

Not sure, but I know one book that won’t.  Interestingly, the press release suggests that the author isn’t pissed at Oprah for promoting dangerous, pseudo-scientific, superstitious bullshit; she’s pissed at Oprah for promoting the wrong dangerous, pseudo-scientific, superstitious bullshit.

And look, I’m all about the “Most Dangerous Woman on the Earth” title for Oprah.  She’s made a career of giving demonstrably incorrect medical advice to people too stupid to know any better and she’s made gazillions by pretending to be a philanthropist.  Hint to Oprah viewers, by the way, if you’re getting rich off your philanthropy, you’re doing it wrong.

Yeah she’s like a mega-church without the guise of religion.  

Now, I’m gonna tactfully avoid any potentially racist sounding references to kettles and pots here, but a book that claims the problem with Oprah’s promotion of pseudo-science is that it’s un-Christian is like attacking drone strikes because they’re noisy.

Like unborn children suing AIDS for the condom problem?

 http://www.christiannewswire.com/news/3962071903.html

And finally tonight, in dry, dull and terribly unsatisfying news, a Christian couple is proudly proclaiming that they’ve managed to go two full years post-matrimony without having sex.  After fourteen months of sexless courtship, Topeka couple Jon and Darla Crocker celebrated by not fucking for a further twenty five months and counting.

I think all Christians should take a cue from these wonderful role models.

They say they plan to continue to obscenely ignore their biological programming indefinitely, dedicating their sexual misfunction to their Lord and Savior in what they’re calling “Blue Balls for Jesus”.  According to the seemingly real “Lark News” the couple occasionally has (quote) “bedroom thoughts”, but always pulls back.  Among the tactics used to insure their unnatural state continues, the article lists poor Jon “eating a whole raw potato” to keep his sinful urges at bay.

You know what else is helping them?  Jon being a gay, and Darla being a lesbian.

Talk clean to me, baby!

I loved the quote where Darla says that their abstinence was holy before marriage but it’s double-holy now.  Look, since we got married, my wife and I have gotten “double hole-y” a time or two, but I’ll guarantee you it was more fun our way.

They could get double holey without breaking their streak, if they pulled off the “Finger-Cuff 69”, a very advanced maneuver in the poop-hole loophole toolbox.

http://www.larknews.com/archives/217

That’ll do it for headlines.  When we come back Lucinda will join us and probably bitchslap me for the anal sex reference there.

Poem: Genesis in Two Minutes

by Noah Lugeons

In chapter one God makes the universe and it takes seven days.

In chapter two he makes it again… in a contradictory way.

By chapter three he’s made Adam, here he makes Eve,

Then he kicks them out of Eden cause they’re covered in leaves???

 

In chapter four God’s a dick to Cain, but not Abel,

So Cain strikes down his brother like he’s the tower of Babel.

In chapter six we meet Noah; God says “Get ready for bruises,

You’re going on the worst boat ride there’ll be until Carnival Cruises.”

 

Noah praises God for this unspeakable act,

But glancing at his cock’s an unforgivable act.

Then we spend an entire fucking chapter or two,

Learning ad nauseum who begat who.

 

By chapter twelve we meet Abraham and he uproots his life,

Takes his shit to Egypt and starts pimping his wife.

He fucks a slave, she has a kid and they exile that one,

But then at ninety-nine Sarah bares him a legitimate son.

 

Abraham tells God there’s at least ten in Sodom with class,

So he sends a couple angels that they try to fuck in the ass.

And when you try to ass-rape angels, what comes is your fault,

Whether your town’s burned down by brimstone or you’re turned into salt.

 

In chapter seventeen Abraham makes a crazy decision,

Regarding all his sons and slaves and adult circumcision.

In Twenty-Two he gets all screwy, and takes Isaac, his tyke,

Up a mountain and almost sacrifices him before the angels say, “Psyche!”

 

Later Isaac meets Rebekah, they have Jake and Esau,

The big brother’s got the muscle but the brains of a cow.

Jacob tricks him from his birthright for a warm bowl of soup,

And his old near-sighted daddy’s just as easy to dupe.

 

Jacob takes two wives, fucks both of them and their maids.

I swear a chapter’s dedicated to Jake getting laid.

In thirty four a dirty whore? No that’s Dinah, Jake’s daughter.

They demand the Hivites foreskins before commencing the slaughter.

 

Jake has a dozen sons in all but he liked Joseph the best,

So his bro’s conspire against him and they steal his vest.

They sell him as a slave and tell daddy he’s dead.

He winds up a slave of Pharaoh for not performing in bed.

 

Here he goes all psychic, starts interpreting dreams.

It takes a couple years but at last he’s redeemed.

He stores up food for famine and he gets filthy rich;

His bros come needing munchies and he makes ‘em his bitch.

 

Joey shows back up much to daddy’s surprise,

And Jacob, now called Israel, eventually dies.

Chapter fifty’s so uplifting, all the tribes makes a truce;

And by now god’s promised the entire known world to the Jews.

Calendar:

It’s time for the atheist calendar portion of the show where we set aside a few minutes to talk up some of the great atheist and secular meetups going on around the country and around the world.

We’ll start in Anaheim on the weekend of May 3rd when the Orange County Freethought Alliance Conference will be bringing in all my favorite atheists for a spectacular weekend of godlessness.  PZ Myers, Greta Christina, Matt Dillahunty, Darrel Ray, Jamy Ian Swiss, Jessica Ahlquist and yes, I’m naming the speakers, not just all the prominent atheists I can think of.

MAY 3rd: Orange Country Freethought Alliance Conference in Anaheim, CA

http://freethoughtalliance.org/fta/annual-conference/

The friendly atheist Hemant Mehta would like to remind you that Sunday, May 5th is “Interview an Atheist at Church Day”.  This is an experimental project but I love the concept.  Atheists are volunteering to be interviewed at churches across the nation for a bit of outreach and while most pastors would rather eat glass, a few are taking the challenge.  We’ll have notes and links on how to get involved in the show notes.

MAY 5th: Interview an Atheist at Church Day: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/04/18/interview-an-atheist-at-church-day-is-growing/

Looking beyond the borders of my homeland, we’ve got the 22nd Skeptic’s Congress coming up on the 9th of May in Cologne, Germany.  I’d tell you more about it, but I don’t speak German.  If you do, though, feel free to check the link.

MAY 9th: 22nd Skeptics Congress in Cologne, Germany

http://www.gwup.org/

We’ve got a double whammy on May 17th with the Women in Secularism Conference taking place in DC and Imagine No Religion 3 ramping up in Kamloops, British Columbia.  We’ll get to that in a second, but ladies first:

Women in Secularism 2 features a phenomenal lineup of speakers including but not limited to Susan Jacoby, Greta Christina, Ophelia Benson and the lovely, witty and talented Rebecca Watson.  And if you don’t go, you’re a sexist, so there’s that.

MAY 17th Women in Secularism Conference in Washington DC:

http://www.womeninsecularism.org/

And finally in Kamloops we’ve got yet another mouth-watering list of secular speakers including Horseman number 3 Dan Dennett, Aron Ra, Victor Stenger, DJ Grothe and Mr. Diety.  From everything I’ve heard about last year’s event, the folks putting this on put together a show you’ll never forget so if you’re anywhere near the area, it’s going to be worth the trip.

MAY 17th-19th Imagine No Religion 3 in Kamloops, British Columbia

http://inr3.eventbrite.ca

That does it for this week’s calendar, but remember, if you’re involved with an atheist, secular or skeptical event that needs a little free publicity, let me know.  You’ll find all the contact info along with links to all the events discussed on this episode on the “Contact Page” at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.

Roast:

Ladies and gentleman, welcome to the Roast of God!

I’m your roast master, Heath Enwright.  Before we talk about the big guy in the sky, let’s meet our dais:

First, we have a Muslim prophet, who wishes to remain anonymous, appearing over Skype, with his image blurred to protect his identity.  We’ll hear from him later.

We also have Mary Magdalene . . .

Where is that slut? . . . There she is; the Bible’s own Penny Lane.  The filthy groupie whoo-err of Jesus and his crew.  You must have been passed around the last supper like a side dish.  You belong at a Duke lacrosse party.

Speaking of disgraceful fraternities, the apostles are here . . .  The roadies for Jesus and his Judaism cover band.

And speaking of God’s fuckup-of-a-son, that’s right, he’s here tonight too, the Fredo Corleone of the Bible, the Red-Handed Stepchild” . . .

Give it up for Jesus Christ.

I heard this guy was a carpenter.  Here’s a lesson you obviously missed . . .  Carpentry 101:  “Here’s your hammer and nails . . . Whatever you do, don’t get crucified.”

Dumbass  . . . How’d that work out for you?

How does dying for my sins taste?  Bitter?

You’re like a less interesting, more fictional version of the guy from  the Dos Equis commercials.

What does Jesus have in common with the women he fucks?  Without a first coming, neither of them can have a second coming.

If your genealogy is described by a Greek tragedy like the New Testament, you might be a redneck.

Y’all belong on a daytime talk show . . .  “Were you conceived when your dad magically raped a virgin and secretly impregnated her?  Were you almost the first justified abortion?  Do you live in the greater Jerusalem area?  You could be on our next show.”

All this attention for the man of the zero hour!

I’ll be honest . . . when they asked me to come here and roast God, I was surprised.  I thought he was dead.  I was sure I had read that somewhere.

But he’s not . . . Look at this bastard.  Doesn’t look a year past omega.  God is so old, he’s gathering dust to dust.  God’s so old, he was here when quote “it was bad”. God’s so old, he lost his virginity to Pandora’s box.

Hey God: How’s your particle, by the way? You know, that boson, that has nothing to do with you? That secret particle you’ve been hiding? You can’t be too happy it’s already named after an atheist, who postulated that shit in 1964.

Caught your ass imbuing fundamental particles with mass?  Nobody found that particle right?  Cuz that would be embarrassing.  I know you love those gaps, but scientists are gonna keep finding stuff.  You’re losing real estate faster than Israel.

In closing, I’d like to say on behalf of creation.  This isn’t a roast, as much as it’s an intervention.  That’s enough with all the mysterious ways, already.  You’ve gotta stop being so fucking mysterious; cancer, terrorism, rape, genocide. We all love a good plot twist, but you’re really pushing it.

All I’m saying, is the reveal better be god-damn amazing.

 Song:

(G, Emin, G, Emin, G, Emin, C, Emin)

Atheists eat babies, that’s just the way God made ‘em;

    I heard it on the news, that’s what that feller said verbatim.

He said lock up all yer young ‘uns and that feller’s never lied;

    He said their Girl Scout cookies have Girl Scouts inside.

 

Them godless motherfuckers’ll never cop to what they done;

    But if you turn your back a second, they might julianne yer son.

If you think that they smell good it’s all the baby breath they’re fartin’

    Pourin’ milk over a cereal made from the baby on the carton.

(C, Dmin, Emin)

Well Atheists eat babies yes they do.

They’ll put ‘em in a pot and make a stew.

(C, Dmin, G, Emin)

And if you lost yer faith in Jesus you would eat them, too.

So I’ll see you ‘gain next Sunday in that pew.

 

Atheists eat babies, don’t tell me it ain’t so.

    You say you want some proof? Well they proof ‘em in their dough.

I reckon that explains why they hate them Catholic priests.

    Those pedophilic bastards always tenderize their meats.

 

So be careful if yer kids are ripe for atheist cuisine.

    And remember that agnostics eat ‘em up to age thirteen.

Cause folks what don’t fear god eat kids with every meal;

    There ain’t nothing they like better than the taste of human veal.

 

Well atheists eat babies, yes they do.

I swear to god and Jesus that it’s true.

Them grumpy goats in their blue housecoats eat kid fondue,

and maybe sometimes orphan cordon bleu.

 

Or roast them little tykes for barbecue.

For dessert they’ll have a toddler cobbler, too.

They don’t mean the same thing as me and you,

When they ask their waiter for a kid’s menu.

 

Cause Atheists… Eat Babies… Yes they do.

 Outro:

We’ve got time to respond to one quick email before we close things out for tonight.  From the “You say tomato, I say it correctly” department, Jordan from Birmingham writes to tell me that she would love the show if it weren’t for the “nails on a chalkboard” reaction she has every time I say the word atheist.

Now, before I dismiss the criticism, I’ll admit that Jordan is correct.  It’s not pronounced atheist, it’s atheist, and I am definitely guilty of mispronouncing the shit out of it constantly.  That being said, I’ve tried to get that hard T-H in there and when I do I get all lispy.  Sorry.  I talk fast and sometimes pedantic pronunciation is the first victim.  I hope that in time you can come to forgive me.

We’ll be back in 168 hours with the “Did Jesus Masturbate” Edition.  We’ll be back to our thirty minute format for that one, but we promise to be doubly funny to make up for it.  If you’re one of those people that falls into a Ben & Jerry’s induced comatose depression when this show ends though, fear not, there’s more.  You can get us in bite-sized doses on our erratically published blog at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.  We’ve also got bonus content there including an extended version of last week’s interview with Carl from Post Rapture Looting.

You can also find us on Twitter, Facebook and You-Tube.  Be sure to like us and/or follow us and/or subscribe to us and/or share us as you see fit.  And don’t forget to swing over to iTunes and give us a review and if you haven’t checked us out on Stitcher yet, get on that shit.  My patience is wearing thin.

A lot of people to thank.  Obviously I want to thank Heath and Lucinda again for joining me tonight and helping me get through this tome of nonsense.  I want to thank everybody who left us a review on iTunes, those really do make my day.  I also want to thank everybody who sent us emails.  There’s too many to thank by name, but I really appreciate your feedback and at this point I still respond to every email so if you want to drop me a line, you can find the email address on the Contact page of our website.

Most of all, tonight, I want to thank our very most favorite listener of the week, Laura, who gave us money.  Only the best people give us money, and they deserve recognition for both giving us money and for being among the best of people.  If you feel that you, too, are one of the best people, you can prove it by clicking on the “donation” button on the right side of our home page.  In the interest of full disclosure, we’ll keep doing the show one way or the other, but Heath is way funnier if I buy him pizza before we record.

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