skeptic | The Scathing Atheist

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

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

And now, the Scathing Atheist

Intro:

It’s Thursday,

It’s June 12th,

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

I’m Noah Lugeons,

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

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

In this week’s episode,

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

But first, the diatribe.

Diatribe:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Headlines:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And the last thing we need is moral constipation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You’re such a tease!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Like a more clear cut stance on homosexuality?

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

The Book of John Deere

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

As long as it’s a girl sheep …

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

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

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

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

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

Three words: Bandana of thorns

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why is it so hard to cure AIDS?

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

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

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

Calendar:

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

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

http://skepchickcon.com/

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

http://www.amazingmeeting.com/

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

http://brisskepticamp.org/

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

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

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

Poem – Proverbs

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

Between condemning all this random shit and killing Jewish rivals,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Those filthy floozy harlot sluts, maliciously malign;

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

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

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

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

I’d forgive someone for thinking that the translator mistook

The Hebrew for pinata for the english word for child.

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

Outro:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Episode 66 – Partial Transcript

May 22, 2014 Noah Lugeons Leave a comment

by Heath Enwright and Noah & Lucinda Lugeons

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

Link to Episode

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Link to BUY THE BOOK

Warning: These guys use the F word like motherfuckers.

Sponsor:

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

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

And now, the Scathing Atheist.

Intro:

It’s Thursday,

It’s May 22nd,

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

I’m Noah Lugeons,

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

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

On this week’s episode,

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

But first, the diatribe.

Diatribe:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Headlines:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Happy Rear-Ending Personal Massager

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jew-manji!

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

Pitch:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…Until now.

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

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

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

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

And you can help!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Poem – Psalms

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your mercy is unmeasurable, except when you get pissed,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bible Story

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Hooray!)

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

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

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

And he said, “Mm-hmm.”

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

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

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

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

Outro:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Episode 64 – Partial Transcript

May 11, 2014 Noah Lugeons 3 comments

by Heath Enwright and Noah & Lucinda Lugeons

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

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

Sponsor:

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And now, the Scathing Atheist.

Intro:

It’s Thursday,

It’s May 8th,

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

I’m Noah Lugeons,

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

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

In this week’s episode,

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

But first, the diatribe.

Diatribe:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Headlines:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LINK TO AHA SECULAR INVOCATION INFORMATION

LINK TO FFRF SECULAR INVOCATION REWARD INFO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Forged Bush

The GOP Spot

I was gonna says the “Trans Old Party”

SantoRum and Coke

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

Ted’s Gay Cruise?

Colon Pow!

Tap That Ashcroft

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

Kind of like “Vicar/Victoria” …

The Oral Majority

The Dick Army Gravy Train

Prostate’s Rights?

Entrance in the Back Tucker Carlson’s

The LGBT Party.

Adam’s Applebees

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Rape: Legitimate Gripe or Bid for Attention?”

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

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

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

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

Babble:

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

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

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

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

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

Good to be back… I’ve missed me.

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

Part one:

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

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

Part Three:

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

Part Four:

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

Part Five:

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

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

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

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

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

Aww, Only halfway? ( Shit.)

Halftime Score: Jews 1, Christians and Muslims 0

Outro:

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

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

LINK TO QURANIFY ME PODCAST

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

LINK TO NO RELIGION REQUIRED PODCAST

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

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

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

Episode 63 – Partial Transcript

May 1, 2014 Noah Lugeons 1 comment

by Heath Enwright and Noah & Lucinda Lugeons with contributions by Adam Reakes

Link to ReasonCon Homepage

Link to Donate on Patreon

Link to Buy the Book

Link to Episode 63

Note: Transcript contains elements that were edited out of the final cut due to time constraints.

Warning: This sentence is the only one in the show that has no chance of offending anyone.

Sponsor:

Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the new Catholic work out plan “8 Minute Abs…olution.” Get ready to kneel, stand, sit, kneel and pray your way to a tone butt, rock hard thighs and a deeply rooted shame of your humanity.

8 Minute Absolution; Catholic Calisthenics at their finest.

And now, the Scathing Atheist.

Intro:

It’s Thursday,

It’s May 1st,

And L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling just won a bet with Mel Gibson.

I’m Noah Lugeons,

And I’m Heath Enwright. And from “Racial Hominy” New York, New York,

And “Kiss My Grits” Podunk, Georgia, this is the Scathing Atheist.

In this week’s episode,

We explore the “Land of Milk and Honey Dipping” with 10,000 lakes nearby,
The state of South Carolina will volunteer to be stupider,
And a group of Christians will protest gay marriage by refusing to swallow.

But first, the diatribe.

Diatribe:

You can tell how desperate theists are getting by how deep into the apologetic bag they’re reaching. A listener named Bryan emailed me one the other day that he’d encountered and it may just be the dumbest apologetic you’ve ever heard. I call it “The argument from the properly clotted cock.”

It goes like this. In Genesis, god tells Abraham to circumcise his kids and his slaves and says very specifically that in the future this should always be done when the kid is eight days old. So why eight days? Well, as it turns out, there’s a plasma protein called “prothrombin” that aids in the clotting of blood. Prothrombin comes from Vitamin K and, wouldn’t you know it, is at its peak level in our bodies when we’re (drum roll please) eight days old! Therefore Jesus.

Didn’t follow me there? That’s because you were using logic. Basically, they’re saying that there’s a medical justification for the specificity of Abraham’s proclamation that Abraham couldn’t have possibly known unless god told him so. How could Abraham have possibly known about this peak in prothrombin production thousands of years before science discovered it?

With a little bit of research, this one’s pretty easy to refute. It might not surprise you to learn that the number one complication from circumcision isn’t bleeding to death through your mutilated penis due to a vitamin K deficiency. Now, excessive bleeding is the number one complication and it can, in rare cases, be fatal, but it’s not the one most likely to cause serious problems. That would be glanular amputation, which most of us call accidentally cutting parts off that are regular dick. And, surprise, surprise, the likelihood of that complication goes down the bigger the dick gets. What’s more, it can only be corrected through a surgery that is far more dangerous for an eight day old that it would be for a kid that had more than a week’s experience breathing gasses.

But beyond that, the levels of prothrombin aren’t exactly the single factor in blood coagulation. There’s a host of factors involved and real science informs us that the haemostatic system isn’t fully developed until 3 to 6 months. It also may not surprise you to learn that the neonatal immune system isn’t exactly robust when it comes to fighting off infections.

But all that is pretty secondary when you consider it against the actual ideal time to perform a circumcision, which is fucking never! Maybe god could have divinely inspired them to stop whacking off their baby’s foreskins altogether if he was getting involved anyway. How can there be an ideal time to do something that is neither necessary or good?

So yeah, it’s ridiculously stupid, but that doesn’t mean it’s ineffective. Think about it; from the point of view of a theist who might not be versed in critical thinking, it sounds convincing. And odds are pretty good that if somebody suddenly sprung this one on you, you wouldn’t have the foreknowledge of coagulants and circumcision complications necessary to dismantle it. That’s why apologists love shit that centers around bacterial flagellums or Boltzmann Brains or geological minutia. Odds are nobody in the room can refute it.

So what do you do when you come across something like this? If somebody sprung this on me at a convention I wouldn’t have the pre-googled details or anything for my rebuttal. So what I’d probably do is say “prothrombin” three times with an increasingly incredulous inflection.

Prothrombin. Prothrombin? Prothrombin!? Really? Your proof for god rests in a plasma protein you never heard of before you came across this argument? Are you fucking kidding me? So if prothrombin levels peaked at 10 days, that would disprove the bible, right? Cause isn’t that exactly what god said in Genesis 17:12? “And lo, on the eighth day a vital coagulant will be in abundance in thy infant” No? So you’re admitting that this is a bet you can only win.

Yeah, if you cherry pick both the bible and the science you can assemble a series of unrelated facts and make ‘em sound Jesusy, but that’s not how science works. You didn’t have a group of scientists trying to figure out why the rate of complication from circumcision was so much lower in precisely 8 day old infants; you had a bunch of religiously motivated whackaloons data mining every obscure medical and biblical fact with the hopes that somewhere two of them lined up.

So nevermind the fact that virtually every word of the bible is contradicted by science. Nevermind that I can point to 1000 passages that betray a remarkable lack of knowledge about the world and how it works. You’ve got your one stupid fact and if you dress it up just right and put some makeup on it and make sure we don’t see it from the left or from behind, we won’t realize that you pulled it out of a reeking mound of triceratops shit.

So here’s my advice to Bryan and anybody else who finds themselves at the receiving end of this “Science confirms my holy book” argument. Ask them “So if I could find a place where the science didn’t line up with the bible, you’d admit that it wasn’t divine right? If science is the yardstick we’re measuring by here?”

Believe me, that should end the debate pretty quick.

Headlines:

Joining me for headlines tonight is stalwart defender of the black man, Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to discuss the latest racism scandal in the NBA?

Well I’ve got my finger to the pulse of African American culture, and the word is that Los Angeles Clippers soon-to-be-ex-owner Donald Sterling is an enormous racist. Just look at the Clippers roster … He clearly has some sort of problem with white people. They only have two white dudes on that team, and I’m counting Blake Griffin as one of them.

So yeah, even if you grade him on a lenient curve. I guess it’s a good thing they punished him by removing any obligation he had to sit in an arena full of the mongrel races like whites and swedes.

In our lead story tonight, in “What are atheists good at?” news, the survey says … it’s not raping kids. Demonstrating that the particular brand of religious nonsense doesn’t matter, self-professed Wiccan warlock Jim Irvin of West Virginia promised to perform acts of magic on a sick mother, in exchange for sexual favors from her 3, 9, and 13-year-old children. He will not pass go, nor will he collect 200 dollars on his way to jail, despite his sincerely held religious beliefs otherwise.

And as horrible as it is, I fucking love this story. Because every time I make the point that it isn’t this religion or that religion, it’s religion, somebody invariably emails me and says, “You forgot to exclude Wiccans!” and I have to say, “No the fuck I didn’t!” and now that’ll be followed by a link.

This is tragic. Just think: If the kids were atheist, they would have at least gotten some real medical treatment, in exchange for all those sticky little hand jobs.

And even if it was an alternative medicine guru, maybe he would have let the kids get away with homeopathic handjobs, which are basically just subtle junk-adjustments.

And on the other side of the coin … At least one study shows that when you offer to perform atheist acts on someone’s dying mother, they’re much less willing to blow you.

I’m just gonna tell myself you read it on PubMed and move on…

Now of course, most religions are – at least on paper – against pedophile activity as well. But if, say Christian God changed his mind about that particular issue, millions of people would actually start raping kids. Atheists – as a group – would continue not doing that. How does the morality scale work again??? Did we win??? Did I break it???

I don’t know if it was you, but yes, it is definitely broken.

Wiccans can molest kids, too: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/04/21/police-wv-magical-warlock-coerced-sex-from-kids-by-promising-to-cure-ill-mother/

And from the “Would Somebody Just Persecute Me Already?” file tonight, we bring you the twisted tale of Todd Starnes desperate and shameful attempt to plug his new book by religion-whoring his publicist’s toddler. The story began when the five year old daughter of one Marco Perez allegedly accused a teacher at her school of stopping her when she tried to pray.

Yeah the kid sounds a little ‘precocious’ (read: ‘lying’).

“What did you do at school today, honey?”

“I drank milk, ate paste, and then I debated my Kindergarten teacher on the constitutionality of the landmark Engel vs. Vitale decision.”

Perez did what any parent who is the Vice President of the Christian publishing firm handling Todd Starnes upcoming book about Christian persecution in America would do and made no effort whatsoever to follow up with his daughter’s school. Instead he posted a video on YouTube where his daughter explained the intricacies of legitimate issues of secular encroachment. By a coincidence that smacks of either divine intervention or a despicable lack of ethics, Todd Starnes picked up on this story and ran with it.

What story?!? This is nothing! It’s a kid throwing blocks, and then lying about praying instead. It’s a crotch injury away from a Bob Saget unfunny video.

Upon hearing about this in the local news, the school conducted an investigation and apologized to the parents for the perceived slight, though they pointed out that not only could they not confirm any of the details of the story, but they couldn’t even find evidence that the accused teacher was anywhere near the lunchroom when this supposedly happened.

Did they check Kevin Sorbo’s alibi? Was Hercules, that fucking polytheist, anywhere near the lunch room?

But apparently apologizing and not doing it in the first place wasn’t enough for Perez, who is now threatening to sue the school for… get this shit… publicly pointing out that the public accusation he made was baseless. Because apparently publicly damning someone is only okay if you don’t verify the facts first.

Parents make up bullshit story about kid not being allowed to pray; threaten to sue school: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/04/28/family-threatens-lawsuit-after-fl-school-finds-no-evidence-child-stopped-from-praying/

And in “Invisible Hand Job” news, there’s nothing about badly educating black people in the Bible, so South Carolina Republican Ray Moore – as part of his campaign for lieutenant governor – is proposing that we dismantle the public school system entirely, in favor of free market solutions like government-subsidized tax-exempt church schools. Apparently only creationist science can defeat China.

I was just thinking South Carolinians were too smart for their own good.

Moore believes public schools – or (quote) “Pharoah’s Schools” – and other such distribution centers of true information to poor people – pose a serious threat to Christians. Texas Republican Dan Patrick – campaigning to become Rick Perry’s fluffer – expressed similar sentiments, suggesting that Texas public schools indoctrinate students with anti-American, left-wing, and environmental propaganda.

That explains why all the Texans are such anti-American, left-wing environmentalists, I suppose.

Perhaps these two ‘assistant to the gubernatorial candidates’ aren’t aware that the set of all things not written in the Bible is infinitely large … Especially considering that we did – in fact – evolve from filthy, infinite monkey men. But now that we’re on the subject … I dont remember a single mention in the Bible about Hindu people. Should we legislate them out of existence too???

I checked this afternoon and it turns out that there’s also nothing in the bible that forbids filling Ray Moore’s parlor with hungry hyenas with rabies, so I thought our South Carolina listeners might like to know.

SC Republic wants to end public schools “Cause their ain’t nothin’ in the bible about ‘em” http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/04/25/sc-republican-wants-to-end-public-schools-nothing-in-the-bible-about-state-education/?onswipe_redirect=no

And in “Do I hear 80?” news tonight, a group of Christians in Virginia are calling for a forty day fast in protest of gay marriage. The hate group in sheep’s clothing warns that the coming homo-pocalypse is all but inevitable if Christians don’t stand up against the forces of equality.

Ghandi made it for 21 days, but he wasn’t Christian, so we’ll see what happens. I think it’s gonna backfire. You get to day 30 of a hunger strike, and all of sudden, eating a dick doesn’t sound so bad.

Unsure of how being uncomfortably hungry will influence gays to give up their quest for equality, the group instead compares their struggle to David and Goliath because when you’re trying to oppress a group that’s 40 times smaller than you, it’s good to distract people from that.

But I would love to watch a bunch of delirious, starving Christians attack a gay wedding with pebbles and slingshots.

In their defense, the Family Foundation has a piece on their website that explains that they’re not planning a “hunger strike”, they’re planning a “fast”, which, as they explain tediously, they mean in the 1770s sense of the word, which they then go on to explain has nothing to do with not eating, but instead means “abstaining from Twitter.” And no, I’m not making that up, that’s what they say on their own fucking website.

Christians to stage 40 day hunger strike against same sex marriage: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/04/25/virginia-christians-prepare-for-40-day-hunger-strike-against-same-sex-marriage/?onswipe_redirect=no

And from the “Twin Shitties” file, federal judges in Minneapolis are set to decide whether the United States will officially recognize the self-proclaimed micro-nation called “Kingdom of Heaven”. The imaginary place in question currently has two alleged citizens: Dennis May and his wife Tami.

Didn’t work out so well for Peter Griffin…

And if this story didn’t write itself already, the couple also happens to operate a sewage excavation and treatment company in suburban Coon Rapids. Tami is under indictment for hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax fraud, but insists they don’t have taxes in heaven kingdoms. Then again, she also claims paradise is operating a shit carting business in Minnesota, so …

If it is, I’m perfectly willing to be wrong about the whole atheism thing. If all the religious people walk through the gate and instead of streets of gold or virgins or their own planet or whatever, it’s that fecophelia scene from Jurassic Park, except it was snowing. Like, I would gladly go and spend my eternity in hell as long as I got to see the look on a few of their faces when St. Peter hands them elbow length gloves and a shovel.

When this case is over, and they free up a little manpower, maybe the IRS can send a couple interns to work on getting back the estimated 80 billion dollars in revenue that we already lose every year due to religious tax exemptions. And I’m not saying nobody should be tax exempt, but you have to earn that sort of thing … If religious groups want huge special privileges like that, we get to genocide you like the Native Americans first, and all the churches are required to have slots and poker.

But to be fair, the synagogues just have to add the slots and poker.

Render unto Caesar bitches: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/04/30/i-dont-know-how-the-irs-caught-this-sneaky-tax-evader/

And in “You can have my bacon when you take it from my greasy, dead hands” news, nearly 200 Subway restaurants in the UK have kowtowed to pressure from Muslim groups and removed ham and bacon from their menus entirely. In an effort to be more inclusive to their Muslim customers, they’ve introduced Halal meats in these shops; and in an effort to be less inclusive to everyone else, they’ve taken away all the other shit.

We’re already putting more pigs in the NY subways to keep all the Muslims out.

Ultimately this is a tiny little story and it’s not a huge deal or anything, but it’s worth reporting on for two reasons. One, it demonstrates the fact that it’s not enough for religious people to deny themselves something; they also want to deny you that thing.

…See, for example, orgasms…

And two, our love for bacon will unite Americans against Sharia law in a way that acid attacks against women somehow fail to. And if you don’t believe me consider that stop and frisk was starting up at the same time that New Yorkers were rising up in one voice to protect their right to buy Pepsi by the bucket.

Subway in UK removes Ham from 200 stores to placate Muslims: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/04/30/subway-muslim-customers-fast-food/8507373/

And in “Soul-Crushing Job” news, Italian sculptor Enrico Job’s enormous crucifix in honor of Pope John Paul the 2nd claimed it’s first life besides Jesus, when the 1320-pound savior-portion of the structure may or may not have sprung to life and tackled to death 21-year-old Marco Gusmini. Miraculously, he had a bible in his front pocket, which was only slightly harmed in the crushing incident.

See, I think that to be fair this should count as a minus one on John Paul the 2nd’s miracle count so he should have to be de-sainted or asterisked or otherwise Pete Rosed in some way.

According to his settlement in Outrageous Claims Court, Gusmini goes straight to heaven automatically, his roommate gets a 4.0 GPA for the semester, and he gets to slap God in the face once really hard with everyone watching. And everyone says: “OHHHHHHH!!!”

I wonder, though, because a lot of times when you see this kind of stuff it turns out the dude teased the statue first or provoked it in some way. So I don’t want to rush to blame Jesus on this one.

Besides adding to the list of reasons to avoid “Torture Sculptures”, this story also makes for a good horror movie, with Jesus as the homicidal maniac that can appear wherever there’s a cross. Those assholes in the Bible Belt, with enormous eyesore crosses, get Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man sized Jesus attacking the town. So I guess we’ll call this the “Holy Ghostbusters List” … 30 seconds on the clock: “Religious Horror Movies” … GO!!!

The Burned Witch Project

Good Friday the 13th

The Texas Public Education Massacre… that one scares me to this day.

Pulp Crucifixion … “God’s dead, baby. God’s dead.”

The Chaplain in the Woods? …with the wood?

Incestual Arranged Bride of Frankenstein

Easter Morning of the Living Dead

I Know Who You Fingered at Bible Camp Last Summer

What Ever Happened to Baby Jesus?… and the few people who got that love me for it.

Transformers: Revenge of Alpha Omegatron

I Apostled with a Zombie

The Iraqi Horror Picture Show

Gland of the Dead

Ralien vs. Sexual Predator

A sequel to “Rosemary’s Post-pubescent but still way too young to fuck Kid”, I think.

But no doubt not too young for the old ‘Roman War Helmet’ … And as a trusted source for google suggestions, try out a search for “roman war helmet”.

Live and die by the cross: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27145931

And make sure you turn off safe search. And while you’re doing that we’ll wrap up the headlines. Heath, thanks as always.

Baha’i-anara, bitches!

And when we come back, Adam Reakes from the Herd Mentality Podcast will join Heath and I to decide which one of us should fuck my wife.

Calendar:

It’s time for the atheist calendar portion of the show. This is the theoretically monthly few minutes we set aside to get you caught up with all the great atheist, secular and skeptical meetups going on around the country and around the world. Secular get togethers are in full swing now, so if you want in on some of the events coming up in June and July, you’ll want to start making plans now.

On June 14th in London the Center for Inquiry is hosting an awesome sounding event called “God in the Lab: The Science of Religious Belief”. The topic lines are great and I’m getting shit for not including more British events, so there you go. Definitely check out their website though, because it they sell it way better than I am.

http://centreforinquiry.org.uk/?p=911

The weekend of the 21st of June the SSA will be holding the Western half of their bi-not really coastal but on that half of the country anyway meetings in Phoenix, Arizona. The other half will be in Columbus, Ohio the weekend of July 12th.

https://www.secularstudents.org/2014con

Of course, the biggest of the big and the one I’m desperately hoping to stow aboard some landing gear to get to this year is the Amazing Meeting in Vegas July 10th to 13th. Daniel mother-fuckin’ Dennett is the keynote; but they’ve also got DJ Grothe, Julia Galef, the SGU guys, Michael Shermer and Eugenie Scott, plus the one and only Geo Hrab hosting so holy shit… if somebody donates TAM tickets and airfare and a place to stay while I’m there I will compliment your genitals to unprecedented levels.

http://www.amazingmeeting.com/

Also wanted to throw a shoutout to the North Texas Secular Convention… I believe there’s a bit of a mix up for them and they had to delay the date so I’m not 100% sure when it’s happening, but the last I heard they were gonna have Greta Christina, Elyse Anders and friend of the show Darrel Ray there, so worth keeping abreast of them as well. Should be late July, early August, but right now their website doesn’t have an exact date.

http://www.ntxsecularcon.com/

That’s it for the June/July calendar, but a quick reminder on the May calendar. This weekend is ReasonCon and they moved to a larger venue so there may still be free tickets available by the time this episode airs. Hope to see you there. You can find a link to more info on ReasonCon and all the events discussed in the shownotes for this episode at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.

Skit “The RadioCarbon Dating Game”

Hello ladies and Gentlemen! I’m your host Chip Shipley and it’s time for another episode of “The RadioCarbon Dating Game”! We’ve got three eligible but religiously bigoted bachelors who will only date a woman who shares their taste in omnipotent daddy figures and one religiously unaffiliated bachelorette. So without further ado, let’s meet our contestants!

First, straight from Williamsburg, New York and representing the oldest of the Abrahamic faiths, Chacham Leibovitz. Chacham, how do you feel about your chances?

As a Jew I’m obligated to assume the worst.

Very well. And representing the Islamic faith is Al Ma’ahi Almuk. Al Ma’ahi, are you excited?

No, because my faith forbids all forms of joy.

Huh… I expected you to sound less white.

Cat Stevens was a white Muslim, you racists!!! … And I don’t do voices.

Alrighty then. And lastly, representing Christianity is Ray… Shmomfort?

That’s right.

Shouldn’t that read Ray Comfort?

Don’t be ridiculous. That guy’s married and adultery is a sin. So I’m some other bloke, definitely not me.

It’s not premarital sex, if you don’t marry the girl.

That’s right, Deuteronomy 22:28 and 29…

Are you sure you’re not Ray Comfort? Because you have the porn mustache and everything.

Look, I’m Shmomfort, got it? Just call me Ray.

Whatever helps you sleep at night. And of course, these three questionably eligible gentlemen will be vying for the hand of tonight’s lovely bachelorette, so let’s give a round of applause to the beautiful Fannie Phillup!

Fannie, you look lovely tonight.

Thanks, Chip.

Now as I’m sure you’re aware, all three of our bachelors told our producers they would only date a woman who shares their religious conviction so you’re here tonight not just to choose a date, but to choose a god. Are you ready to do that?

I’m ready, Chip! And I’d appreciate it if you stopped staring at my boobs.

Well I’m not going to, but you’ll get used to it. So feel free to question our bachelors in any sexy way you choose.

Okay, my first question is for Al Ma’ahi (butchering name). Al Ma’ahi, if I was your Muslim girlfriend, where would you take me on our first date?

I don’t recall giving you permission to speak.

Oh… well, may I have your permission to speak?

I suppose.

Fuck you. My next question is for Chacham. If I was your Hasidic girlfriend, where would you take me on our first date?

To my mother’s house for approval.

Hm…Right. Ray, same question.

I’d take you somewhere I would be revered as a God amongst men. So it could be pretty much anywhere. Crematoriums, supermarkets… Probably a church, though, so we could share in our mutual love for Jesus.

Wow (sarcastically) this just keeps getting better. My next question is also for Ray. What kind of music would you listen to while we made love.

Well hold on now… our relationship would be restricted to intimate handholding and me “accidentally” brushing my hand across your boobs now and again until we were married.

…Good, because I otherwise I would have to throw acid at her…

But to answer your question, probably Nickelbuck.

Wait, Al Ma’ahi, you didn’t bring acid with you today, did you?

I feel like you want me to say … No?

Um…

My next question is for Chacham, I guess. What’s the craziest place you would ever make whoopie?

What the hell is the “whoopie”?

Um… making love.

And you want to know what now?

Where is the craziest place you’d ever do it?

The craziest in what way? You want we should have sex in an asylum or something?

I just mean the most unusual.

Oh… Sheboygan, I suppose.

Nevermind. My next question is for Al Ma’ahi. If we got married and had kids, what would you want our kids to grow up to be?

Boys.

Wow…

(interrupting) …Males…

Alright… Ray…

(interrupting) … Y chromosomes all the way…

Alright! Anyway, Ray, if I was your Christian girlfriend, where would you see us in ten years?

Raptured to Heaven watching all the sinners burn in torment for not taking me more seriously about the bananas.

What?

Oh, I mean for not taking Ray Comfort more seriously about the bananas.

Okay, Al Ma’ahi, if one of my friends flirted with you, would you tell me?

How would I know it wasn’t you, given the veil?

Alright, Fannie, we’ve got time for one more question before you make your decision, so make it an important one.

Okay, Chacham, if I was your jewish girlfriend, could I expect a lot of oral?

Urgh… only if you washed it before and during and never on the Sabbath.

Hm. Al Ma’ahi, same question.

I only eat that stuff if it’s from a Halal butcher. Would you consider circumcision?

Wow. Seriously dude!? And Ray? Oral sex?

Sinful and debaucherous and worthy of an eternity of torment in hell.

Alright, Fannie, time to make your choice.

Hm… how about you Chip? You go down?

I’m an atheist and I can breathe through my ears.

I guess I’ll pick you then.

What!? That’s not fair! You can’t do that. My faith is easier to pick than a broken nose, let alone that guy!

Ray, I’d like you to very carefully hand me that glass. And don’t drink from it or let it touch your skin.

This one?

Yeah, the ‘Halal Clear Liquid’ … The one that says HCL.

Nope. I’m the host and I make the rules. Don’t hand him that glass. Excellent choice, Fannie. Well that’s it for our show this week. I’m Chip Shipley reminding all the ladies out there to support women’s rights by fucking an atheist.

Outro:

Before we blow our load this week, I need to thank the incomparable Adam Reakes from the Herd Mentality podcast for channeling Ray Comfort for us tonight; but I also wanted to make you aware of a very cool fundraiser he’s doing. There’s too much detail to squeeze into the outro of this show, but here’s the elevator pitch: Adam is trying to help raise money for an atheist in need by auctioning off a hand-crafted wooden cow.

Here’s hoping that sentence piqued your curiosity. I strongly encourage you to get more details at Herd Mentality Podcast (dot) com; it’s for a really good cause, it’s a really cool cow and I know from experience that we have extraordinarily generous listeners. You can listen to episode 56 of his show to get the long and short of it and if I haven’t already convinced you, I should point out that right after he spills the beans about the cow auction, he interviews Lawrence Krauss… so there’s plenty of reasons to listen to that show.

I also wanted to let you know about a Twitter project I’ve got going this week. As you may know, we’re about to hit the halfway mark in the Bible in preparation for Psalms next week. Now, the book is way too long for us to go into our customary “Holy Babble” level of detail, so leading up to that, I’ll be tweeting an atheist’s summary of each of the 150 psalms starting at midnight tonight. I’ll tweet one every hour, which means I’ll be finishing up a couple hours before next week’s episode is released.

And if that’s not enough of a reason to follow us on Twitter, I’ll also be Tweeting from ReasonCon this weekend to let you know what an awesome time you’re missing out on. That’s (at) Noah (underscore) Lugeons, L-U-G-E-O-N-S. And if you don’t want to sift through the tweets, I’ll also be releasing a full list of the 150 Tweets on the blog shortly after the episode airs.

Alright, so one more quick thanks to Adam. I need to thank Heath for leaving some of the dick jokes for the rest of us. I need to thank Lucinda for being so cute and charismatic that she’ll make up for my socially-awkward misanthropy this weekend when we’re meeting our listeners for the first time. And of course, I need to thank Don and the Secular Student Alliance at Georgia Southern University for (a) providing this week’s Farnsworth quote and (b) having the nerve to be part of the Secular Student Alliance at a university in South Georgia. Well done guys and gals.

But most of all, of course, we need to thank this week’s best people; Max, Adam, Richard, Dan, CincyPharmer, Alfred, Taben, Graham, Cherie, Magnus, AJ and Rachel. Max, Adam and Richard whose ejaculations can only be described as Vesuvian; Dan, CincyPharmer and Alfred, whose posters Kryptonian kids have on their walls; Taben, Graham and Cherie, who are so secular god knows better than to fuck with them after they sneeze; and Magnus, AJ and Rachel, who are so fast they make Mr. Miyogi look like a pansy for needing that second chopstick.

These twelve laudable listeners, also known as the Spotless Dozen, have helped to postpone the impending dick joke famine this week by giving us money. Not everyone has the mortality, vitality and sensuality it takes to give us money, but if you think the world needs more secular healing, you can donate to us at Patreon (dot) com (slash) Scathing Atheist. You can make a per episode donation there and in return you get every episode earlier, you get ten to thirty per cent more episode every week and, depending on how much you donate, you get a bunch of other cool shit, too. And if you want to forego the cool shit and make a one time donation, you can do that by clicking on the “donate” button on the right side of the homepage at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.

And if you’d like to help but spending money isn’t your style, you can also help us a ton by giving us a five star review on iTunes, and thanks, by the way, to all the lovely listeners that heeded our call for more iTunes reviews last week. It really means a lot to us.

Oh, and if you like to get your podcasts on the go, check out the Stitcher App and listen to us there. That helps us out, too.

Categories: Show Transcripts Tags: Adam Reakes, antitheism, atheism, atheism podcast, atheist, atheist podcast, Ray Comfort, science, skeptic

Live Blogging the Bible: Deuteronomy 10:21

July 16, 2013 Noah Lugeons 1 comment

by Noah Lugeons

Deuteronomy is boring compared to the other books of the bible.

That’s like saying someone is fat by sumo standards; ugly for a game show contestant; stupid for a CNN anchor. This thing is painfully, brutally, nut-crunchingly boring.

The book consists of three speeches that Moses gives and they have the feel of speeches you would give if there was no clock running on your last words. It has all the intrigue of a filibuster. It’s like reading about people studying people watching paint dry.

And if anything, I’m overselling the intrigue.

So when I say that I found verse 10:21 interesting, I feel that I should begin by qualifying the broad spectrum of relative application of the word interesting one must employ to apply it to something in Deuteronomy. We’re in the first act of Moses’ second speech where he’s rehashing the rehashing we were doing earlier and he’s reminding all the Israelites just what a bad mother fucker god is.

So he drops this line:

He is your praise; he is your god, who has done for you these great and awesome things that your own eyes have seen.

This is not the first time Moses appeals to empirical evidence to convince people of his holiness. God was more than happy to devour houses in Numbers or send gnats and flies in Exodus or make rocks bleed Aquafina in Leviticus whenever anybody started doubting his royal godness. Granted, he would then curse them, plague them and bury them in pheasants or something, but he wasn’t shy about appearing as a mountain of fire or wandering around the encampments in cloud form.

Clearly, then, god understands that we need to see some proof.

It seems reasonable to me to ask why it was reasonable for this one minuscule sliver of humanity to demand proof from god, but now that we have cameras and science and a million ways to verify the miraculousness of a miracle, god can’t be bothered. It’s somehow beneath him. Now that it’s easier than ever to communicate with the whole world at once. Now that it’s easier than ever to prove himself in a way that would satisfy even the most skeptical among us.

The standard retort of the theist is that god wants us to have faith, but that doesn’t sound like the genocidal ass-stain I know and love from the bible. He was all about flexing his muscle. What, did he mature? Was he imperfect back then and then grew up? Hard to imagine a timeless being maturing significantly in the eye-blink of human existence, but it seems like the strongest thread they have to hold onto.

Anyway, back to work. Somehow we’ve still gotta figure out how to do a segment about a book that does nothing but rehash shit we’ve already made fun of.

Categories: Live Blogging the Bible Tags: atheism, atheist bible commentary, atheist podcast, bible skeptic, biblical criticism, Deuteronomy, existence of god, Moses, proof of god, skeptic, skeptical, the ballsack of Moses

Episode 20: Partial Transcript

July 4, 2013 Noah Lugeons Leave a comment

Sponsor:

Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Scott’s new brand of retroactive thaumaturgical fertilizer, Post-Mortem Miracle Gro. Do you have a deceased pontiff a few miracles shy of canonization? Well just dump this fertilizer on that fertilizer and watch the Miracles Grow.

Miracle Grow… making miracles out of bullshit since 1868

And now, the Scathing Atheist…

Intro:

It’s Thursday, it’s July 4th and I only like snakes and sparklers.

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

On this week’s episode:

We’ll learn why gay sex makes Jesus cry,
Buddhists will weigh in on all that blasphemous YOLO shit
And I’ll put the opening of the second chapter of the God Delusion to music

But first, the Diatribe.

Diatribe:

I had about half a dozen listeners email me the same article from the CNN Belief Blog this week. The headline read “Christians are happier than atheists… on Twitter.” Before I even clicked the hyperlink I was already salivating, ready to skewer the shit out of this pseudo-scientific nonsense. So I read the article and I took a look at the research and I read their conclusions.

And unfortunately, as much as I’d love to unleash both barrels of my verbal-ought-six on this thing, it turns out that there’s just nothing to criticize. The research was sound, the methodology was solid and the conclusions were perfectly defensible. It turns out they’re right. We’re a bunch of miserable, hateful, unhappy fucks.

I know this may come as a surprise to you, because you might often mistakenly think that you’re happy, but you can’t argue with science. In fact, you might as well just stop arguing altogether and dive head first into a tub of Caramel-Sutra laced with Xanax, for you will never know joy.

So quick before you slit your wrists while sitting in a running car and drinking bleach, let me explain how the advanced new science of Twitter-ology works. The first step is, of course, to draw a conclusion. As you’ll see later, if you don’t start with a conclusion, the data’s gonna be too messy to interpret later. So start off with a firm conclusion and hold on to it no matter what.

Step two is generating sample groups and remember, this is no time to worry about precision. To study atheists and Christians, for example, all you need to do is randomly select five prominent atheists and five prominent theists and call all of their followers your two groups. I know that not everybody who follows Dinesh D’Souza is a Christian and not everyone who follows Richard Dawkins is an atheist, but this is science… it doesn’t have to be exact.

So once you have your suspect samples, you analyze the words usage. Whatever words are used more often are indicators of deep psychological truths about the people using them. And we know this, because we just do. It doesn’t matter that there’s no credible research or even logical reason to believe in the core assumption behind this research. The people doing it wore lab coats or had pocket protectors or something and that makes what makes it science.

So with our rock solid assumption that people who say “happy” a lot are happy, people who say “family” a lot love their families and people who say “food” a lot are fat, we can go to work on our pseudo-data. And when we do we discover our conclusion, which, you’ll recall, we decided on before we started the research.

In this instance, we’ve proven that atheists aren’t as happy as Christians and they don’t love their families as much. Viola, conclusion reached, thesis proven, Nobel prize is in the mail.

Admittedly, some atheists have been a bit more critical about the research than I am. They point out that there’s no reason to assume that people who follow prominent Christians and people who follow prominent atheists are using Twitter for the same purpose. They point out that many atheists have multiple Twitter accounts and keep their atheism on one and their family stuff on the other. They point out that even with a perfect sample the study would still be nonsense, as the average Christian is older than the average atheist, more likely to have children and more likely to come from a large family and any one of these covariances would render all the data worthless. They point out that even if the data wasn’t useless, the conclusion still would be, considering that what they’ve proved is that a privileged majority is happier than the unprivileged minority.

But I think these critics are looking at it the wrong way. So before you toss out this study just because it’s poorly constructed, obviously biased, impossible to blind, poorly conducted, unscientific and stupid, I should point out some other things this study finds.

Consider the fact that atheists were shown to be far more likely to use words like “reason”, “think”, “idea” and “knowledge”, so if we accept the flawed premise of this flawed study it also proves that atheists are smarter than Christians. In addition, it shows that atheists are more likely to use words like “dick”, “fuck” and “pussy”, so clearly we’re also getting laid more often than the Christians.

After all, if we accept the first conclusion and the others are reached through the exact same process, it’s hard to ignore… not so hard that the researchers didn’t manage to ignore it, but hard to ignore nonetheless.

And if you need any further proof that this is sound science, consider the alternative. If this study isn’t legitimate scholarship, CNN just ran an article that used unproven science and half-ass conclusions to reinforce a hurtful stereotype that has no basis in fact and wouldn’t be newsworthy even if it did. And we all know that could never happen.

Song

“The God Song”

Well Jesus is great, he’s my best friend.

He’s the kinda fella who would die for your sins.

He says women should obey their men,

And ownin’ slaves is fine every now and again.

Well Jesus is my buddy and I’m really glad.

He’s the best buddy that a guy ever had.

And if you think some stuff he said was bad,

At least it’s nothing when compared to Jesus’s dad:

“Now let me tell you about that fella…”

He’s a homicidal, genocidal, pestilential, filicidal,

Petty jealous racist full of rage and spite.

Wicked and misogynistic, he’s a sado-masochistic

Homophobe that massacred Amalekites.

And Midianites.

And Sodomites.

And Perizzites and Moabites and Philistines and Benjamites,

Syrians, Assyrians, Ethiopians and Amorites.

And Egyptians.

“But we’re not yet, because he’s also…”

A Maleficent, Malevolent, Omnipotent, Irrelevant,

Megalomaniacal vindictive beast.

He’s ruthless and he’s useless; he’s an evil, brutal, futile nuisance.

Turned a chick to salt just for looking east.

Heartless, inexorable, rancorous and horrible,

He’s got a torture chamber and a thirst for blood,

He’s a fictitious, injudicious, vile, vicious, angry bitch;

His temper’s like a two year old with global floods.

He’s capricious and malicious and flagitious and pernicious

And an ethnic-cleansing bully of the highest sort,

Injurious, Inglorious, Nefarious, Notorious,

And when he raped a married virgin? Paid no child support.

Headlines:

Joining me for headlines tonight is my consiglieri Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to con-siggle?

I’d be happy to.

Well, not according to those Twitter-ologists, you aren’t, but I’ll overlook it.

In our lead story tonight, we’re one step closer to legalized goat-sex thanks to the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on the Defense of Marriage Act.

According to Rick Santorum, it’s not just one step closer… We’ve actually legalized the equivalent of goat sex.

As all but one of our listeners know, the nation’s highest court recently struck down a 17 year old piece of bigoted legislation that denied federal benefits to same-sex spouses.

And just fucking barely. The highest court in the land, which should be 9 of the most rational and intelligent people in the country, came as close as possible to a tie on this issue. Which is almost as embarassing as the fact that gay marriage and gay rights in general are even an argument that’s still on the table.

“If we could have made no decision on gay rights, we would have, but there’s fucking 9 of us, so we couldn’t tie. And since Kennedy’s not a complete asshole, gays are people … according to 55.6% of us here at the highest court.”

The reaction of America’s religious leaders was surprisingly muted and tolerant:

(SOUNDCLIP)

The ruling was even enough to prompt scientifically-anomalous unhappy Tweets from Christians, calling the decision a “Tragic Day for Marriage and Our Nation”, declaring that the “Supreme Court Overrules God” and that “Jesus Wept”.

But don’t worry, it’ll only be a few decades before the prominent Christian voices are taking credit for this.

We’re forgetting the real victim here . . . the good people over at Merriam-Webster, who will now have to work tirelessly around the clock to go through every dictionary, and cross out the part that says, ‘between a man and a woman’.

No, trust me, I’ve read the Tweets, Jesus is the real victim here. Now, in honor of the DOMA ruling I put together my three favorite insane overreactions. My number three was Rick Santorum and you already beat me to the punch on that one. But I will say, in Rick’s defense, what is the difference between two consenting men or women entering into a legal bond of love and raping a donkey?

Mostly just the consent of the ass, I guess.

Number two was the verbal gymnastics of the guy with the most Christian name ever, Monsignor Charles Pope, who proposed the “freedom fry” option, suggesting that Christians just drop the word “marriage” altogether and switch to “Holy Matrimony”

Shit, yeah that would entirely disempower us f-word-lovers. Is that really what he’s going for?

But the gold medal goes to the head of the Catholic Church’s matrimonial court, Archbishop Oscar Cruz, who answers the question “Can gay men get married?” with “To lesbians, sure.”

What is he, multiplying negative numbers in his weird little head?

Supreme Court Decision on DOMA and bigoted reactions from churches: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/06/26/religious-reactions-to-scotus-decisions/ & http://wordnews.org/2013/06/26/reactions-from-christian-organizations-swift-to-supreme-courts-overturning-of-doma/

Catholic Priest: It’s okay for gay men to marry lesbians: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/428951/catholic-church-has-no-problem-with-marriage-between-gay-man-lesbian & Catholic Priest Suggests that in the wake of DOMA they should drop the word “marriage” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/28/marriage-holy-matrimony_n_3517019.html?utm_hp_ref=religion

And in a follow up to a story we talked about in episode 17, American Atheist president David Silverman unveiled America’s first monument to atheism in Fuckville, Florida last week. And, in the humble, deferential manner we’ve come to expect from Bible Belt Christians, a number of Evangelicals showed up to help us dedicate what inaugural Farnsworth quoter and blogger Hemant Mehta has deemed a “Non”-ument.

I was gonna say Skepti-Couch . . . or Secu-Lounger . . . or Seat of Doubt.

Protesters blasted Christian music and carried signs that read “Honk for Jesus”, “Preserve Florida’s Christian Culture” and “The South is a Christian Nation”.

Where the fuck do southern, conservative Christians get the balls to have pride as a group? And how does Christianity get southern blacks on board so well? Shouldn’t there be more awkward guilt around the South? You don’t see conservative Germans flying Third Reich flags . . .

And as if to lend validity to your point, according to our friends at Bar Room Atheist one of the signs actually read “Hook for Jeses”.

One lover of the lord tried to place a toilet seat on the bench during the ceremony, but not to be out-douched, prominent creationist and son of a felon Eric Hovind jumped on top of the monument to scream about how awesome Jesus was. Hovind said that he was happy that the American Atheist had provided him a platform to preach from that was 48 inches high; ten inches short of being one inch tall for every felony conviction for which his father is concurrently serving time.

So the genius who – at one point – was carrying around a toilet seat in public . . .

I’m just guessing, but he probably wasn’t making an artistic philosophical statement relating to Marcel Duchamp, was he?

I really hope somebody out there gets that.

The big news out of the unveiling ceremony is that the show was so popular they’re taking it on the road. Silverman announced that American Atheists are prepared to put up as many as 50 similar monuments all over the country in a social counter-offensive to the fundamentalist assholes who put Christian monuments on public property.

Excellent . . . Looking forward to The Seat of Doubt Tour <bunch of assholes>

Atheist Bench Unveiled in Starke, FL: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/atheists-unveil-monument-nonbelief-god-article-1.1386919 & http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/06/29/american-atheists-unveils-godless-monument-in-front-of-florida-courthouse-and-announces-many-more/

And in this week’s “How many felonies can the Catholics fit into one Scandal?” report, the Milwaukee Archdiocese was recently forced to release 6000 pages of Sexual abuse documents due to allegations of bankruptcy fraud stemming from some financial shenanigans allegedly intended to shield money from abuse victims.

Atheist Podcasters are already – as I speak – calling this the “Anal Leaks Scandal”.

Depends . . . but this could get messy.

And as it happens, Cardinal Timothy Dolan appears to have his hands about elbow deep in the anal leakage, too, as included in the documents is a deposition where he suggests moving money to a “cemetery maintenance fund” to keep it shielded from future claims.

So if it wasn’t obvious to everyone already, the Catholic Church is officially – financially . . . and morally – bankrupt.

“Ok, yes . . . we raped a bunch of kids, but if the courts make us pay for it, that would be prostitution, which is wrong. We didn’t want to make whores out of these kids, just innocent rape victims. Rape victims go to heaven. Think about that trade. Rape victim for several decades on earth, but then eternal bliss. We’re doing favors, here. We’re raping stairways to heaven for these kids.”

To Dolan’s credit, most of the documentation I’ve seen up to this point shows him impotently trying whatever he can to get these pedophiles the fuck out of the priesthood and while I’m not sure I’m in love with his proposed solution of paying them to leave and never turning them into the cops, he’s made to seem far less villainous by the merit of the people writing him back and saying, “No, pedophile or no, we need all the priests we can get.”

Milwaukee Archdiocese releases sexual abuse files: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/01/milwaukee-priest-sex-abuse-records_n_3527980.html

And in “We’re-worse-than-we-thought” news, a new international religion poll from German non-profit Bertelsmann Stiftung makes me want to swim with toasters.

So I take it we didn’t do that well?

The survey compared religious views of 13 nations and if you’re grading this thing fairly, the US lost to pretty much everyone on pretty much everything.

Among the study’s findings:

Americans lead all 13 nations in believing that (quote) “Only politicians who believe in god are suitable for public office”.
The very first amendment clearly says, “Don’t do that.”
Americans are the most willing to make sacrifices for their religion
It’s really just happiness and societal progress . . . so not THAT big a sacrifice.
And 50% of Americans find atheists (quote) “threatening”.
They fucking should. We’re expediting their inevitable removal from the political decision-making process.

The survey doesn’t offer any answers to the obvious follow up question: “Is it too late to un-secede from England?”

I’d be down for an Evolutionary War, where we get back with England for atheist reasons, by taking them back over. And then give away Northern Ireland for spite. Maybe drop the South on waivers.

I’d also like some answers on what, exactly, that 50% is afraid we vile secularists are going to do. Are they afraid we’re gonna incur the wrath of their petty god? Are they afraid we’re gonna make it legal to gay-marry a harem of chinchillas? Or are they afraid we’re gonna prove they don’t get to go to eat sky-cake when they die?

Well I probably shouldn’t even be talking about this, but Phase 2 of our plot IS complete. That’s all I’ll say, but they should certainly be threatened.

Or . . . Is it that everyone on the wrong, backwards, misinformed side of every argument ever, is threatened by the truthier side? The 50% number would be higher if more theists were smart enough to recognize their obsolescence.

New Survey: 50% of Americans find atheists “threatening”: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/06/26/new-survey-50-of-americans-find-atheism-threatening/

And from the “How-Much-Will-You-Give-Me-For-This-Golden-Rule?” file, Australian priest, Anglican opportunist and shining example of Christianity in practice Terry McAuliffe got a little unwanted press last week over an incident involving a lost bracelet and an asshole.

Please tell me this dude found a bracelet in his asshole.

…or in his gay lover’s asshole.

No, were that the case it would have been the lead story.

Oh, so instead we’re sticking it somewhere in the rear?

The story goes like this; he finds a bracelet valued at around $6,500. He tracks down the owners and offers to sell it back to them for half the price. But don’t worry, he wasn’t only trying to fuck them on the deal. He also suggested that they continue to claim it as lost and recover the money by scamming their insurance company.

“Wait… you’re telling me I get the bracelet that demonstrably belongs to me and I get to pay you $3000 and all I have to do is commit felony insurance fraud? What’s the catch?”

Yeah, if it sounds too good to be true…

The one good thing he does here is suggest screwing the insurance company, but that doesn’t exactly make him Robin Hood here. He’s stealing from the rich, and stealing from the poor.

Once the story hit the news the good reverend had a quick change of heart and offered instead to return the bracelet at no cost, stop being an asshole and wonder why he hadn’t just raped some kids instead.

Anglican Priest finds bracelet, tries to sell it to owners: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/26/reverend-bracelet-terry-mcauliffe_n_3503644.html?utm_hp_ref=religion

And in “God-Hates-Your-Jiggly-Bits” news, the Christian Post brings us the story of two Christian ministries in Southern California who are willing to bravely venture deep into the heart of the satanic underworld of strip clubs and porn conventions to win souls back for Jesus.

Among those brainwashed into doing Christian charity work, I imagine a “missionary position” like that is highly prized, so they probably only have a couple of holes to fill at once.

With names like (I shit you not) “JC’s girls” and “XXXChurch”, the ministries go to strip clubs armed with gift baskets that contain things like (I still shit you not) “Lotions, lip gloss and hot pink bibles” these groups send their crew to (again, I still shit you not), “strip clubs, brothels and between 8 and 11 porn conventions a year”

“If just one hooker find solace in her new pink bible, after getting sodomized for money, then we’ve done our job. And if just one porn star uses her pink bible to block a money shot, we get some good free product placement.”

Ok let’s put 20 seconds on the clock – Church Porn Titles . . . Go!

Lord of the Thighs

Cream Piety

How about Nympho Nuns Nine: The Naughty Nazarite?

Missionary Impossible

12 Apostles, One Cup

Numbers Colon 69

Can you reach the colon, in a 69?

Sheri Brown, lead coordinator of the San Diego Chapter of JC’s Girls told the Christian Post that god calls them to “reach out in love”, “form bonds with desperate women”, “offer them fulfillment” and “bring them to their knees for Jesus”; and then honestly expects us not to make fuck jokes about it.

Ok so what you’re saying is, “Last call for missionary fucking jokes.” . . .

“The Consu-Matrix” immaculate conception porn, starring Holey Trinity as the Virgin Mary. . .

It’s a threesome with Mary, Joseph, and God.

I love the concept of immaculate conception porn.

Yeah, kind of looks like masturbation… you can’t really tell.

Christian Outreach focused on Strip Clubs and Porn Conventions: http://www.christianpost.com/news/christians-outreach-into-strip-clubs-porn-conventions-to-share-love-of-jesus-98899/

And with those sexy images swimming through your head we’ll close out the headlines for the night. Heath, thanks as always for joining me.

And when we come back, you’ll realize that we never really left.

Bible Story:

Run grab the young ‘uns, folks! It’s time for Lucinda Lugeons’ Bible Stories for Kids!

——————-

Gather around boys and girls. Today we’re gonna open the bible up to Genesis and talk about the story of Lot’s daughters.

Now once upon a time there was a man named Lot. Lot had two daughters whose names weren’t important enough to record in the bible, because they were women.

Lot and his family grew up in a town called Sodom, a town where a lot of daddies loved a lot of other daddies in the butt. God hates gay people so he really, really hates whole towns of gay people. So one day he decided to destroy the town and all the people who lived in it.

But don’t worry, kids. Lot’s daughters were safe. God loved them more than the other people who lived there, so he sent two angels to warn them. They wouldn’t have to die. It would only be their sisters, all of their friends and all the little dogs and cats and hamsters that lived there that would perish in a fiery catastrophe. And trust me, boys and girls, the hamsters that lived in Sodom were begging for death.

But when the two angels showed up to warn Lot and his family, all the villagers, young and old gathered around because they wanted to anally rape the angels. But anally raping angels is very naughty so Lot said “No villagers! Don’t rape the angels! You can rape my daughters instead.” And he threw his two virginal, innocent daughters to a mob of diseased, rape-starved perverts.

But luckily for Lot’s daughters, the villagers really wanted to rape the angels instead, so the angels struck them blind.

“Hooray!”

Lot and his family had to move very quickly because death and torment was about to befall everyone they’d ever known. So mommy, daddy and their two daughters ran away. But mommy looked back at the town, so god killed her by turning her into salt. Because if you look in the wrong direction, sometimes god kills you.

So with their mommy dead and all of their friends and pets burned alive, they hid in a cave and slept on rocks with nobody to keep them company but their drunken daddy. And what’s even worse, they had nobody to have sex with except their daddy. Of course, daddy wouldn’t want to have sex with them because daddy’s having sex with their daughters is naughty, so they got daddy really drunk and they force-fucked him several times.

They both got pregnant with inbred rape-children who they loved very much and the few people who lived through the story lived happily ever after.

The End.

Skit:

Henchman: “Heath, Noah… SCOTUS has overturned DOMA.”

(Sinister Laughs)

It’s all proceeding exactly according to plan.

Gather the others. We must meet tonight.

(Scene Switch Sound Effect)

I hereby call this meeting of the League of….

Um… Doctor Myers, Mister Dillahunty… The buffet is supposed to be for after the…

Whatever, I now call… you’re really gonna just take all the baby-bacon? The whole platter. No… that’s fine. Um… yeah. That’s fine.

Like I was saying, I hereby call this meeting of the League of Sinister Secularists to Order. The honorless Noah Lugeons presiding.

Thank you, Heath. Now obviously we all know there’s big news this week, but first things first. Heath, can you read us the minutes of the last meeting?

We all started off pledging allegiance to Darwin, we hated America for a little while, Greta gave us an update about her cats, Doctor Myers and Mister Dillahunty ate all the baby-bacon before I got to the buffet, and we decided to go with the bench instead of the Trojan-Horse Satan Sculpture I submitted.

Thank you, Heath. Now if there’s no new business, I’d like to move on to the… Um, Hemant, can you practice your sinister finger steepling some other time? This is important. Thank you. And um… Tom, Cecil… We’re all still really impressed that you can both do that with your testicles, but if you don’t mind, we’re trying to have a meeting here.

Now, as you all know, we’ve received word that the Supreme Court has struck down DOMA, leaving marriage completely defenseless.

(Hooray!)

Yes, we should all be proud of the job we’ve done, but this is no time to rest on our laurels. The family isn’t destroyed yet.

You can’t even legally marry a sheep yet.

That’s right! Polygamy, bestiality, child-sacrifice; none of that is legal yet. And nevermind gay adoption… why aren’t those kids being aborted in the first place?

Or made into bacon? Or both? Fetus bacon is like the pre-veal filet mignon of atheist cuisine. In French, ‘mignon’ means cute, so this makes sense. If babies are cute, then fetuses are fucking adorable. And small strips of that tender, undifferentiated fetus meat, slowly smoked, and then fried in its own almost babyfat . . . fucking delicious.

Exactly. We’ve won an important battle, but we can’t lose sight of the war. Heath, what are we doing to further cement the destruction of traditional American values?

We’re drafting legislation now that would make happiness illegal in the month of December. We’ve got some of our top agents planting more apocryphal evolution fossils. And we’re still looking into that end-of-the-world-building from Ghostbusters, see if that’s for real, but it’s not looking good..

That’s not enough! Is it still legal to be heterosexual!? Why haven’t we fixed that yet? Is it still legal to love your neighbor and be moral? We’ve been fighting against that for centuries to no avail.

I think it’s time to enact phase 3 of the plan.

Is that the one where we cease human births and turn to cloning just to piss god off?

No… that’s phase 6.

Oh, right. Three is the one where we kidnap Anna Kendrick and chain her up in your basement.

No, that’s phase 13 and that one was tentative. Phase three is the part where we make Christians get UPC symbols tattooed on their wrists and foreheads. I tell you, I’m starting to think nobody’s reading my memos but Glenn Beck. And how the hell did he get a hold of those anyway?

Yeah, we’re still looking into that.

Hemant, the steepling. Don’t get me wrong folks; I don’t mean to downplay the significance of this ruling, but as long as happiness, democracy and virgins are still out there, we can’t afford time to celebrate. Remember, we can’t take away their ignorance, but we can damn sure take away their bliss!

Outro:

Before we cash in our chips tonight, we need to take a few seconds to recognize this week’s most exceptional mammals; Lindsay, April, Jason, Douglas and Geoff spelled the cool way. The quintessence of non-quiescent quercine qualities, this quick-witted quintet quietly quelled the quarrelsome quandary about quartering our quirky, quodlibetical quest by quantifying their appreciation and giving us money.

If you, too, would like to be the subject of some archaic alliteration and earnest appreciation, you can help keep this whole experiment going by clicking on the donate button on the right side of our homepage at Scathing Atheist (dot) com and giving til it hurts. And then continuing to give because you can take it.

All jokes aside, in all seriousness, we really do want your money. But if we can’t talk you out of your hard earned dollars, you can always help us out by leaving us a glowing review on iTunes because that’s free.

That’s all we’ve got for you this week but if you want more, there’s more. Frank and Dan at Thank God I’m Atheist invited me over to defend the utility of acerbic atheism the other day. It was a really good discussion and you can find it on episode 85 of their show, which will be linked on the shownotes for this episode.

TGIA Archive: http://www.thankgodimatheist.com/podcast/archives.php

I also need to thank Heath once more for all he does to make this thing possible, and of course, my lovely wife Lucinda for providing the bible story this week and, of course, for performing adult services for me for 17 years and counting. I also want to offer a concurrent thanks and apology to my muse Richard Dawkins, whose voluminous vocabulary acted as the inspiration for the song this week, as anyone who’s read the God Delusion probably already figured out.

I should also point out that I’m in a constant state of scrambling for Farnsworth quotes so if you have a blog, a podcast, a facebook page or even a consistently interesting Twitter feed, I’d be happy to throw you a plug in exchange for a 5 second audio clip of you quoting the 22nd century’s most stylish professor.

And finally tonight, I want to thank you, dear listener, for giving us 30 minutes of your life. We’ll be hard at work trying to earn 30 more minutes next week but until then, you can also check out our erratically published blog and get occasional nuggets of Scatheism by following us on the Twitter, liking us on the Facebook and subscribing to us on the YouTube.

If you have question, 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 11: Partial Transcript

May 2, 2013 Noah Lugeons Leave a comment

by Noah Lugeons & Heath Enwright

(Note: Transcript contains some lines edited from the final version of the episode)

Sponsor:

Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the new brand of non-alcoholic Christian beer, “What Would Jesus Brew?” because who needs alcohol when you have Jesus? After all, like cheap beer, religion tastes bitter going down, sedates you, numbs you to your problems while exacerbating them, makes Sunday morning suck, gives you headaches, explodes violently if you shake it up, reduces your ability to make rational decisions and makes you ashamed of your sexual encounters.

“What Would Jesus Brew?” because alcohol is like liquid religion.

And now, the Scathing Atheist…

Intro:

It’s Thursday, It’s May 2nd and abstinence didn’t work for Mary, now did it?

I’m your host Noah Lugeons and from reluctantly spring-like New York, New York, this is the Scathing Atheist.

On this week’s episode,

The LDS says that the Boy Scouts are still just bigoted enough,
I’ll have sex with Darrel Ray… oh, no wait… I’m sorry, I’ll “talk” sex with Darrel Ray. Which is still good, too, I guess… and
And Benny Hinn will be a cruel, heartless fuck,

But first, the Diatribe:

Diatribe:

So before I tell you what happened on Sunday, let me tell you what didn’t happen on Sunday. In preparation for the show this week, I didn’t go to the “Christian” page on the Guardian’s website and when I wasn’t there, here are a few of the headlines I didn’t find:

Joel O’Steen hates Jews and I have proof
The Pope thinks gay people are gross
Christians must accept that they’re almost certainly wrong, and
I may believe in Jesus, but that doesn’t make me a Christian.

And what’s more, I wasn’t surprised when I didn’t find them there when I wasn’t looking. Because what kind of tampon-stain would print headlines like that on a Christian news aggregator? They wouldn’t. Because they would have to be total assholes.

Alright, so now, for act two, let me tell you what I did do on Sunday.

I went to the “Atheist” page on the Guardian’s website and when I was there, here are the headlines that I found:

Dawkins’s latest anti-Muslim Twitter spat lays bare his hypocrisy
Sam Harris, New Atheists and the anti-Muslim animus
The secular must accept that religion can save
I may not have faith, but that doesn’t make me an atheist

I didn’t cherry-pick the bad ones here, by the way. These were the top 4 headlines on the page. That’s what the Guardian was giving the atheists to read. They have pages for all your major faith groups. The lead headline in “Christianity” was “At Easter, the tortured face of God teaches us to love our fellow man”… almost four weeks after Easter.

The lead story on the “Islam” page was “America’s greatest asset against radicalisation are Muslim Americans” and on the “Judaism” page, their first offering was “Poland’s ‘generation unexpected’ leads resurgence in Jewish culture”. Amazingly, in more than a dozen different faith-by-faith breakdowns, none of them lead off with a story where one of the most prominent and respected members of the group is smeared as a bigot on the thinnest shreds of dubious evidence. But since atheism isn’t a religion, they can lead off with not one such story but two.

As to the accusations against Dawkins, they’re the same ridiculous bullshit as always. He says Muslims are stupid because they believe a human being rode to heaven on a flying horse and that makes him an “Islamaphobe”. The fact that he also says that Christians are stupid for believing a zombie army wandered into Jerusalem doesn’t make him a “Christaphobe”, of course. And the fact that he says Jews are stupid for believing that Jacob outwrestled vampire god doesn’t make him a “Jewphobe”. The fact that he says astrologers are stupid for believing the relative positions of planets will adversely affect their financial situation doesn’t make him an “astrologophobe”. But if you think Muslim beliefs are stupid it’s because you’re scared of them.

The accusations against Sam Harris are only slightly less specious. He’s pointing out that a lot of terrorism comes from Muslim extremists so clearly does so because he hates Muslims. He also points out that when the car is running low on gas it needs filled up, so clearly he hates petroleum producing nations as well. And when he points out that his steak is actually more of a mid-rare than a medium, it can only be because of his irrational and seething hatred of cows.

These accusations aren’t new, of course, and they’re hardly worth refuting. Anyone who achieves prominence in this or any other social movement will be attacked by jackasses who trying to make a name for themselves. There’s nothing new or noteworthy about that.

But there’s something to be said for a major media outlet that runs a page dedicated to atheist readers and loads it up with character assassination pieces from wingnuts. They follow those up with a great op-ed about how secular people need to really accept the fact that the entire core of their movement is wrong and religion is actually right. And finally a piece on how miserable it must be to be an atheist.

It’s nice to have a page of our very own isn’t it?

Look, atheism is not a religion and atheists aren’t a “faith-group”. You’ll never hear me or any other atheist make the kind of absurd, bullshit demands of “respect” you hear from religious people. You’ll never hear us issuing death threats for drawing images of Christopher Hitchins or taking Dan Dennett’s name in vain. You’ll never hear atheists demanding that anyone capitalize the H in her when they talk about Madalyn Murray O’Hair and you’ll never hear us declare war on somebody for not believing that the magical calamari really turns into the body of PZ Myers.

But I do think it’s fair to ask that we’re treated with the same respect that would be afforded to any other group of human beings. There were no stories at all in their other “faith” sections defaming prominent figures as bigots and let’s face it, you wouldn’t have a hell of a lot of trouble finding stories like this if you were looking. Hell, you wouldn’t have to weave together strands of suspect bullshit to get there like they did with Harris and Dawkins.

I was so angry about it that I thought about dropping the Guardian as a news source for this show altogether, but then I remembered that they were the only outlet I saw that covered last week’s exploding Spanish dildo headline, so they’re off the hook. But it still pissed me off.

Headlines:

Joining me for headlines tonight is my hetero life-mate, Heath Enwright. Heath, are you ready to not have gay sex?

Let’s not do it.

In our lead story tonight, the American Humanist Association has filed a lawsuit against Northwest Rankin High School in Flowood, Mississippi.

Go Cougars.

The suit alleges that students endured a mandatory Christian sermon during school hours in an assembly that didn’t even have the decency to pretend it was about science or dinosaurs or something. Instead, a representative from the Pinelake Baptist Church was invited to the school to talk about finding hope in Jesus Christ and even closed the assembly by leading the students in prayer.

Well I’m assuming there was an Imam leading a Muslim show-and-tell the week before. They probably have all kinds of special science classes like that.

Oh, I’m sure they do, and I’m sure they always stop the kids who try to leave, like they allegedly did at this one. William Burgess, legal coordinator of the Appignani Humanist Legal Center, points out that “when a school sponsors an event, the religious speech of the speaker… is attributable to the school [itself] and is therefore subject to the Establishment Clause,” adding, “Fucking duh!”

Are they really worried that kids in Mississippi aren’t getting any exposure to the whole Christianity thing? Like there were kids leaving the auditorium that day, saying “You know what, I’m gonna google this Jesus guy. See what that’s all about.”

Died for my sins you say?

AHA files lawsuit over bullshit Christian Sermon in Mississippi school: http://www.americanhumanist.org/news/details/2013-04-humanists-file-suit-against-public-school-that-held

In other legal news, Pennsylvania judge M. Teresa Sarmina has filed a brief defending her recent decision in the trial and conviction of a Catholic church aide in a child-rape conspiracy case. Monsignor William Lynn, the first Catholic Church official in the US to be convicted in the cover-up of child sexual abuse by priests, is facing a paltry three to six years in prison and is still appealing the decision.

So he’s getting a punishment on par with stealing a car. Systematically covering up a decades-long righteous rape spree, or Geico makes slightly less unfair profit that quarter? Those balance.

Well no, according to Lynn’s attorneys, his crime was way more benign than grand theft auto. They’re appealing the decision because the judge allowed evidence of child abuse cases that predated Lynn’s involvement with the diocese. They argue that these details unfairly prejudiced the jury against their client.

“I didn’t start covering up those rapes until well after they clearly happened.”

Being the defense attorney here is rough . . .

I read they’re claiming that Lynn can’t be guilty of child endangerment because he didn’t actually supervise any children. That’s like blaming the abortion on the coat hanger.

Wow… it’s hard to transition out of a back-alley abortion joke so I’m gonna carry on like it never happened.

Judge defends Church aide’s trial and conviction for child rape conspiracy: http://news.yahoo.com/pa-judge-defends-church-aides-trial-conviction-211500942.html

And turning from Catholic pedophelia to Catholic sexism, the Vatican is now officially even less progressive than Kentucky. Former nun and current maverick, 70 year old Rosemarie Smead was ordained a priest over the vehement objections of the Roman Catholic Church. She faces excommunication for this heinous act, but dismisses the threat as a (quote) “Medieval bullying stick the bishops use to keep control over people…”, though it was unclear whether she was referring to excommunication or Catholicism.

She claims she’s not gonna let octogenarian men tell people how to run their lives.

Instead, she’s gonna start her own church, where a septuagenarian woman will tell people how to run their lives in the same way minus the male priest rule. Can’t exactly use a Bible as a study guide for your feminism class.

And according to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll, you can’t use the Vatican as a study guide for what Catholics believe, either. As many as 70% of American Catholics believe that women should be allowed to be priests if for no reason than they would rather their sons were molested by women, but the church warns that allowing women to be priests might lead to beastiality and hurricanes like gay marriage.

In that sense, I’m all for having priestesses.

Bestiality and hurricanes are both good job creators.

And those donkey shows are another perfect example of where replacing a man with a woman is definitely an improvement.

I bet lesbian marriage becomes legal in red states before gay marriage.

Kentucky woman ordained a priest despite Roman Catholic Church’s objections: http://news.yahoo.com/kentucky-woman-ordained-priest-defiance-roman-catholic-church-005633378.html

And in a follow up to our lead story from Episode 9, the Church of Latter Day Saints has kind-of endorsed the Boy Scouts decision to kind-of lift their ban on gays. Despite the multiple levels of half-assedness involved in this noncommittal pseudo-endorsement, conservative Christian groups are up-in-arms as though something had actually happened.

First, to the compromise. Facing pressure from pretty much everyone but Fred Phelps and the Ku Klux Klan, the Boy Scouts are backpedaling their 19th century stance on homosexuality by allowing gay boys to join the scouts, but not letting gay men serve as scout leaders.

This is great for preventing the hiring of scout leaders who are openly gay pedophiles.

But I think they might be slightly underestimating the amount of in-the-closet gay pedophiles. You know, the ones who are a little bit hush hush about being a gay pedophile during their job interview process.

In the interest of fairness, though, the Boy Scouts make no claim that their bigotry is based on a fear that gays are pedophiles. They just hate fags. And speaking of hating fags, the Mormon church, the largest financial supporter of the Boy Scouts of America, has sort-of endorsed the proposal. Recognizing this as the most anemic action they could possibly take to stem the tide of tolerance that threatens to force the Boy Scouts’ hands they issued the closest thing to an endorsement that they could get away with.

Well if the Mormons are behind it . . .

Surprising though. Those MoMo’s are super hetero.

Having 3 wives is double-plus-ungay.

Well you’re not the only one who was surprised. Among the bloviating, frothing bigots that have voiced opposition to this non-condemnation is one John Stemberger, head of something called “On-My-Honor(dot)com”. He points out that the Boy Scouts resolution doesn’t address how to (I shit you not, quote) “manage and ensure the safety and security of the boys in the program.”

Now, I can’t decide here whether this asshole is wondering how they’re gonna keep the other kids from beating up the gay kids or whether he’s worrying about the gay kids butt-raping the straight kids, but the tone of the message actually suggested the latter.

Based on what I believe to be an accurate depiction of gays on TV, the 11-year-old gay rapist survival expert is definitely KNOT the issue.

Family Research Council President and two-headed-dildo-aficionado Tony Perkins chimed in as well. He warns that this compromise sends the message that “homosexuality is morally acceptable until a boy turns 18” and remarkably, his point wasn’t that after 18 it continues to be morally acceptable.

This guy obviously sucks, but let’s not smear the 2-headed-dildo. Who doesn’t love Jennifer Connelly in the ass-to-ass scene in Requiem for a Dream?

Mormon’s say that Boy Scouts are still just bigoted enough: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/04/25/mormon-church-leaders-say-welcome-boy-scouts-proposal-to-lift-gay-ban-for-youth/ But many Christian groups say “Not so fast”: http://www.christianpost.com/news/lds-church-criticized-for-endorsing-boy-scouts-proposal-on-accepting-gay-members-94835/

And from the “If-you-can’t-beat-’em-join-’em” department, the Vatican has sharply criticized the Vatican for failing to prevent ongoing child rape and torture. Proving that the Catholics are always the last ones to the conclusion, internal reports now admit massive culpability within the Vatican hierarchy for failing to do more to prevent abuse and failing to do less to ensure that it continued.

Sometimes a worldwide intervention and hundreds of millions of dollars in rape damages makes you take a look in the mirror.

And sadly, sometimes it doesn’t. The National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Churches of Ireland couched the horror of the decades of horrendous sexual abuse in terms like “unacceptable delay”, “risky behavior”, “unsatisfactory response” and “double-plus ungood practices”.

An unacceptable delay would be getting raped, and then in order to rape the rapist back and get some money damages, you had to fill out some paperwork at the DMV first. Maybe a few hours.

But the message was clear and it was in keeping with the recent theme of “Internal Catholic Investigations”: We did some horrible shit, but now we’re positively awesome at not raping kids.

“There were a few, minor executive oversights, but we didn’t want to micromanage. All the way in Rome, out of context, who were we to dictate policies to others?”

Catholic Hierarchy had “unacceptable delay” in dealing with serial child-rapist: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/apr/24/catholic-hierarchy-priests-clogher Actual report: http://static.rasset.ie/documents/2fm/clogher-report.pdf

And finally, in “Fuck Pretenses, Just Give me Money News”, Televangelist and hairpiece repository Benny Hinn is asking his listeners for two and a half million dollars to get his ministry out of debt. Or rather, God is asking them to give the money and Benny is just the intermediary… a tool, if you will.

So there’s some mysterious benefactor who will match up to 2.5 million in donations . . . but only during the first 90 days.

And if you donate in the next 10 minutes, he’ll throw in this free slap chop, a 30 dollar value.

Act now, supplies of debt are limited.

Hinn, whose ministry must be about five million dollars in the red, promises his viewers that if they help god wipe out his debt, then God will help them wipe out their debt. So basically he’s saying that if you have financial problems and you’re mired in debt, the best thing to do is give your limited resources to a guy with a private-fucking-jet.

“Yeah I’ll get you some drugs. Give me the money and wait right here.”

We should set up a kickstarter campaign to finance an indulgence factory.

We could mass produce heaven stairways and easily outpace a megachurch.

Benny Hinn is a cruel, heartless fuck: http://www.christianpost.com/news/benny-hinn-asks-followers-for-2-5-million-to-get-out-of-debt-94822/

That’ll does it for headlines tonight, thanks for joining me Heath.

And when we come back, author and activist Darrel Ray will join us to talk dirty to me.

Skit:

(Rustling Papers)

“…hm… who’s next on the list here… oh, Yahweh.”

(Button push, beep)

“Tonya, can you send in Yahweh, please?”

(Door opens)

God, God, come on in… yeah, just leave the door open, that’s fine.. Here, have a seat.

(creaking seat)

Yeah, that chair’s not as comfortable as the throne you’re used to, I’m sure.

Now, I suppose this is going to be kind of an awkward meeting, what with my fragile human form being unable to withstand the awesome power of your voice and all but honestly, in this instance, it’s probably better if I do all the talking anyway.

I’m sure you’ve figured out by now that we’re not very happy with your performance. Your last several centuries of performance reviews have been well below standard and I think we all knew that this day was coming.

I mean… all we have to do is look over your performance history. There was a time when you were first appointed… you were flooding the world, parting seas, turning people to salt, raining down frogs… you were a go-getter! You were a god’s god.

But now what do we get out of you? We’ve got the AIDS epidemic in Africa, we’ve got nuclear proliferation, climate change and what are you doing? You’re taking the wheel! You’re finding people’s car keys. Finding car keys, god, really? Did you think I wouldn’t find out about that? You’re omniscient and you couldn’t think of anything better to do with your time?

I know you work in mysterious ways. You said that in your resume and we accepted it because of the whole omnipotence thing, but I’ve gotta be honest, here lately it seems like you’re resting on all seven days.

I’m looking back over it and I can’t find a significant achievement for you in over 1800 years! You’re averaging less than a miracle a millenia, bro. I’ve got saints doing better than that. You know I’ve always been in your corner. I fought for you since the beginning. Every day’s a thousand years but you still wanted a day off and I fought for you on that one. I’ve been fighting for you since the day we hired you and to be frank, lately you’re just embarrassing me, and I don’t think that’s too harsh a statement.

I think we both know where this is going and I want to make it as easy as possible. You’re still under contract so we’ll pay that off, but we’re gonna have Ricky Gervais step in as interim god until we can permanently fill the position. So just leave your keys to the pearly gates with Tonya and if you need a letter of recommendation, you have my number.

Alright, thank you very much. Close the door on your way out please.

(door closes)

Whew… that went better than I expected. Damn, I should have done that centuries ago.

Outro:

We’ve only got a couple of minutes left and apparently we had a pretty error-ridden show last week so I’ve gotta make a few quick corrections before we close things out. Most of the mistakes came in the Holy Babble segment and most of it was stuff like saying Jacob when I meant Joseph or saying brothers instead of sons. For that I apologize and we’ll try to do better, but one way or the other I wouldn’t recommend using this show as a stand alone source for the bible.

There was one major correction I wanted to make. We got duped into reporting on essentially an Onion headline last week. The story about the Christian couple who maintained their abstinence for years after marriage was a gag piece from Lark News and if I’d made any attempt to vet it I’d have figured that out. That’s a huge fail on my part and I want to apologize for it. We’re not exactly a “hard news” show, but that doesn’t excuse me from my due diligence as a newscaster and I owe you better than that. Without some modicum of journalistic integrity we’ll devolve into CNN reporting in the wake of a disaster.

Also wanted to throw a quick shout out to our incredibly awesome Canadian listeners, who apparently pushed our show all the way up into the top 100 of all podcasts on the Canadian iTunes ranks for a couple of days last month. Excellent job, Canadians. If listening to the Scathing Atheist was an olympic event, you’d be the team to beat.

Obviously I want to extend a huge thanks to Darrel Ray for such an informative and entertaining interview. Also need to thank Jake-Farr Wharton of the Imaginary Friends Show dot Com Podcast for providing tonight’s Farnsworth quote. He’s got a great podcast if you haven’t checked it out. It’s kind of like ours only more informed and in Australian. We’ll have a link to it in the shownotes, but I trust our listeners to be able to puzzle out where to go to find the Imaginary Friends Show dot Com Podcast. Need to thank Heath as always. Also want to thank all the listeners who sent in emails, especially the ones that include news items to make my life easier. Thank so much for taking the time out to help.

But most of all we’ve gotta thank our very favorite listeners of the week, John, Michael and Evan, who gave us money. Giving us money is a noble and moral act that brings peace and joy to all and we are all indebted to John, Michael and Evan for their heroic selflessness. Oh, and Evan, it went to a bottle of Laphroaig, but it was for before we recorded, not after.

Remember, if you’d like to prove your virtuous nature in the only way that really counts anymore, you too can donate to our show by clicking on the “Donate” button on the right side of the homepage at Scathing Atheist (dot) com. Every little bit helps, but every big bit helps a lot more.

And if you want to help but have taken a vow of poverty, you can always help us spread the word by leaving a review on iTunes. Those ratings and reviews do wonders to help us build our audience and they really make my day as well.

That does it for us tonight, but if you can’t get enough of us, be sure to check out our erratically published blog, follow us on Twitter, subscribe to us on YouTube, like us on Facebook and check us out on Stitcher. Seriously. Because all the other atheist podcasts on Stitcher are making fun of us.

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.

Belittling Christians

April 2, 2013 Noah Lugeons 35 comments

by Noah Lugeons

Sometimes people say, “Noah, you belittle Christians a lot.”

And I respond, “Yeah, I do my best.”

So no, I’ll be offering no apology for it here or anywhere else in the foreseeable future. When people point out that I belittle Christians, I respond the same way that an Olympic sprinter would respond if somebody asked her why she was in such a hurry… After all, that’s kind of the point.

Now, there are those that would say that this is counterproductive. They say that the caustic brand of atheism I subscribe to is antithetical to the goals of minimizing the role of religion in society. They present a “circle-the-wagons” mentality that I might inspire if I’m too insulting. They point out that the more attainable goals of keeping religion out of science class and the courtroom can be hamstrung by the more grandiose goal of stamping out organized religion altogether.

And what’s more, they might be right. I still don’t care.

My goal as an atheist activist is to marginalize religion. I work toward a world where anybody who believes in something without evidence is embarrassed to admit it in public. I want reason by way of shame.

I think it’s a sad commentary on our culture that my unwavering belief that all truth-claims should be subjected to the same scrutiny puts me in the extreme wing of a minority. That shouldn’t be a bold stance. It should be nearly unthinkable to take any other stance and that’s precisely what I seek.

To be fair, I’ll concede that it’s entirely possible to take that stance without belittling anyone. A lot of skeptics do yeoman’s work by patiently walking sasquatch hunters, UFOlogists and homeopaths through the ladder of logic without a hint of condescension. I admire that ability but I do not share it.

And of course, many skeptics are crass and dismissive of nonsense like sasquatch hunters, UFOs and homeopathy. They don’t bother to spare anyone’s feelings and simply treat it like the demonstrable bullshit that it is. In the skeptical movement the battle between “soft” and “hard” is a hell of a lot more muted than the one in the atheist movement, but it’s still there. Some people just insist that the “kill-them-with-kindness” approach is the only valid one.

Many much wiser observers than me have pointed out that there probably isn’t one “valid” approach, so I’m not going to spend any time retreading that ground, but there is something I’d like to offer to the kindness camp. Sure, it’s an anecdote and can thus be easily dismissed, but I think it’s illustrative of the justification behind the approach that I share with a number of other scathing atheists.

Arrogance is a powerful force. Those of us who like to think or ourselves as intelligent don’t like to be told we’re stupid. It’s the only insult that really gets under the skin of some people. Now, when somebody says, “you disagree with me so you’re stupid” it’s meaningless, but if someone you respect intellectually lumps your beliefs in with a bunch of the other “stupid” ones, that has an impact.

I’m not saying there’s anyone out there that respects me intellectually, but there are a number of learned men and women in both the atheist and skeptical movements who sport intellects that are beyond reproach. An intellectually arrogant person hearing that his beliefs are stupid from those people will have an effect.

Now sure, some people are arrogant enough to just toss off the insult and say, “what does that ivy-league professor know?”, but those people are all-but unreachable. But for many if not most intellectually arrogant people, the root of the arrogance was real intelligence. And there are plenty of intelligent, arrogant people out there that still believe in some really silly stuff.

Those people are vulnerable to the caustic attack. I know because that’s how I arrived here. I got to atheism through simple observation and the correct application of logic, but I became a skeptic and (more importantly) a skeptical activist because somebody with an intellect I admire told me I was a dumb-ass. And what’s more, he didn’t try to cater to my ego by telling me how okay it was to still believe this dumb-ass belief.

Now I know that the research shows that most people are far more inclined to listen to and consider your viewpoint if you’re non-confrontational and I recognize that, generally speaking, this is the optimum approach. Hell, it’s the one I usually employ when I’m talking to someone in person. But just because it’s the most widely applicable approach doesn’t mean it’s the only correct one. A person like myself would never be swayed by it, as they would take the agreeable demeanor as a sign of intellectual uncertainty. They would toss off anything you said that didn’t crack the armor of their intellectual arrogance and the only way to do that is to be caustic.

My mother told me that if I didn’t have anything nice to say, I shouldn’t say anything. And a lot of people have told me the same thing since. I get it. I disagree. I feel that it would be intellectually dishonest to say anything nice and it would be socially irresponsible to stay silent.

And if you disagree with my approach, that’s fine. I strongly encourage you to get involved and run as far in the opposite direction as possible. We need all the help we can get. And I believe that we also need all the types of help we can get.

Categories: Feedback, General Bitches and Gripes Tags: agnostic, atheism, atheist, Christianity, faith, hard vs soft atheism, religion, religious debate, skeptic, skepticism

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March 31, 2013 Noah Lugeons 6 comments

by Noah Lugeons

The nature of most religious arguments is doomed from the start. It amazes me how often I’ll theoretically concede a point just to point out that even then, they’ve done nothing to prove their point. I will say, in effect, “You’re not right, but even if you were right, you still wouldn’t be right.”

How many religious debates hinge on things that barely crack the 3rd layer of the diagram above? How often does the would-be apologist fail to even break the surface? Arguing against evolution, the big bang, the secular root for morality, the existence of this or that miracle… none of this would even make it into the red.

It’s a really indicator of just how soundly we’re winning the debate. At one time the best we could hope for was to stand in the yellow and argue with the folks in the orange. Before Darwin, most learned men and women (and how woefully few learned women there were then) had to stand in the red and argue against the yellow.

But as empiricism charges forward, the mental-missionaries find themselves in constant retreat. When they pick away at tiny nuggets of their own ignorance about evolution or abiogenesis, they’re breaking their pick-axes against the blue. It’s gotten so bad for them that if they can convince one poor sap to even momentarily doubt evolution, they consider it a victory. Never mind that this does nothing to prove superstition, theism, religion or their own personal religion. They’re breaking out the party hats if they can simply convince someone to think perhaps something someone else told them might be flawed.

Categories: Charts and Graphs, General Bitches and Gripes Tags: agnostic, atheism, atheist, Christianity, evolution, religion, religious debate, religious memes, skeptic, skepticism, theist

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