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Episode 44 – Partial Transcript

December 19, 2013 Leave a comment

by Heath Enwright and Noah Lugeons

 

Warning: I took an Advil PM an hour ago so I can’t remember what I’m supposed to say, but Heath and Noah are gonna say fuck.

 

Sponsor:

Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the new Jesus-themed Chinese Restaurant chain “Wok on Water”; from the team that brought you the delicious Jewish/Asian Fusion Cuisine Cho-Zen.  Come in and try this week’s special, Peking of Kings Duck with Easter Egg Drop Soup.

Wok on Water: The masters of cruci-fried rice.

And now, the Scathing Atheist…

 

Intro:

It’s Thursday

It’s December 19th

And Kickers and Defense shouldn’t count in fantasy football.

I’m Noah Lugeons,

I’m Heath Enwright,

And from bitterly frigid New York, New York, this is the Scathing Atheist

In this week’s episode,

  • We learn humans came on Earth via arcing ropes of panspermia.

  • We find out that reindeer games are more hockey than basketball,

  • And Friendly Atheist Hemant Mehta will join us to rescue a shred of dignity, after the Paul Walker necrophilia jokes.

But first, the diatribe…

 

Diatribe:

This past weekend Heath and I were playing each other in the semi-finals of the Fantasy Football League of Sinister Secularists; a fantasy league we play in with a bunch of other secular podcasters and bloggers.  And I don’t just bring this up so that I have an excuse to mention that I trounced him and will face off against Cecil from Cognitive Dissonance in the Championship Game this weekend.  There’s also a minor detail that clumsily segues into the point of this week’s diatribe.

So I’m watching Eddie Lacy lead an amazing comeback victory amid a burgeoning 24.3 point fantasy performance that would ultimately best Heath and end his fantasy season in crushing defeat and I’m doing so with a couple of friends.  One of them is a nice enough guy, but he’s one of those athletic precog-wannabes that constantly says shit like, “Watch, this next one’s gonna be a touchdown”, or “I bet he throws an interception here”.  He’s wrong as often as odds would suggest he would be but on the rare occasion that he gets one right, he starts planning his future as a psychic crime fighter.

And as I’m listening to Nostra-dumb-ass rattle off his predictions, I can’t help but think of all the easy parallels between that and religion.  This tendency to take credit for shit you obviously had nothing to with even if it means willfully ignoring how often you’re wrong.

We talked about one of the micro-manifestation of this two weeks ago when I bitched for four minutes about athletes thanking god when they win and not sacrificing the appropriate number of bulls when they lose.  Thanks for the win, Jesus, and sorry the desolate one got the best of you in the three consecutive losses that led to it.  Thanks for the parking space, Jesus, and I’m sure you had a good reason for intentionally making me drive around SoHo for 20 minutes before you provided it.

And as much as it pisses me off to adopt the “good thing happened therefore god did it” attitude, it’s nothing compared to the equally common “good thing happened therefore Christians did it” attitude.

Consider it on the historical scale.  There are plenty of Christians that will tell you the church led the charge to end slavery around the world.  But they’ll conveniently leave out the fact that the church also led the opposition to the charge  to end slavery around the world.  They try to take credit for civil rights, for women’s suffrage for fuck’s sake.  In fifty years they’ll be telling us how religion paved the way toward equality for gays.

But now dial it back a bit and consider it on the cultural scale.  And I won’t have to reach too far to find my example.  Consider all the “reason for the season” bullshit that pissed you off on Facebook this week.  Consider the desperate attempts to claim authorship for all the various pagan celebrations that have survived and coalesced  through societal evolution over the years and how jealously they guard their dominion over them.

I know the point’s been made plenty of times before, but none of the good parts of Christmas are Christian.  The gifts, the lights, the tree, the mistletoe, the joy, the charity, the tinsel, the feasts, the family, the elvish reverse-burglar, the emotionally manipulative TV commercials, the caroling, the stars, the remote control helicopters… all of these things have non-Christian origins.  And I’m willing to bet that if you keep all that shit and take out the Baby Jesus stuff and the guilt-induced church attendance, people wouldn’t stop celebrating Christmas.  And if you took out the Pagan stuff it would be as popular as Epiphany or Ash Wednesday.

And as vociferously as they protest anytime somebody makes the claim that Christmas is a secular holiday, they don’t own it.  They don’t have any claim to it.  They don’t have a copyright on presents or Santa Claus or decorated trees.  And while we’re at it, they don’t have exclusive claim to joy, forgiveness, happiness or goodwill.  Hell, they don’t even have a monopoly on fictional guys with beards and magic powers that judge you morally and bestow gifts accordingly.

They started the war on Christmas when they stole in the first place.  There’s nothing at all wrong with fighting back.

 

Headlines:

Joining me for headlines tonight is first runner-up in the semi-final round of the Fantasy Football League of Sinister Secularists, Heath Enwright.  Heath, are you ready to watch jealously as I compete for the title next week?

Fuck Justin Tucker.

In our lead story tonight, Judge Brian M. Cogan of the Federal District Court in Brooklyn has granted the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York a judicial prophylactic against the provision of the Affordable Care Act that would require they provide contraceptive care to the employees of their non-profit affiliates.  Judge Cogan found that giving the church no right to dictate the lawful sexual behavior of people they tangentially employed would be a violation of the first amendment.

Will the insurance cover paper towels to clean up after you pull out?

No, I think that still counts.  Keep in mind that nobody’s asking these bishops to buy condoms and distribute them to their employees.  And nobody’s requiring that anybody buy or use contraceptives of any kind.  They’re just requiring that employers provide healthcare that covers contraceptives without a co-pay; and not just because Satan loves rubbers.  It’s also at least subtly influenced by the fact that contraceptives are way cheaper than pregnancies and all the good kinds of abortion.

Are you sure about the good abortions?  How much could it possibly cost to get all these women one coat hanger each?!?  The ones that work in the same office could even share.

Court sides with Archdiocese in contraception controversy: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/17/nyregion/new-york-archdiocese-wins-ruling-on-contraception.html?_r=0&adxnnl=1&rref=nyregion&hpw=&adxnnlx=1387310059-n3uEUr09A3o8ZSYIdyqc4A

And in “Panspermia” news . . . No I am not talking about the new stir-fry dish at “Wok on Water”.  Nor am I speaking of the penalty for being a shitty customer at Pizza Hut.  I’m talking about the the book by alleged ecologist Doctor Ellis Silver, entitled “Humans Are Not From Earth: A Scientific Evaluation of the Evidence”.  

Oh, well if it says “scientific” right there in the title…

First reaction: Real scientists shouldn’t need to expressly announce in the title, that their studies are (quote) “scientific evaluations of evidence”.  Those are the fucking rules already.  

Yeah, it does have an “I swear I’m not lying” ring to it…

That being said, let’s take a look at some of Dr. Silver’s super-sciencey stuff . . . which he chose not to publish in scientific journals, because he wants to engender non-expert debate on the subject.

Of course…

So he had a bunch of theories, including “Humans just don’t feel at home on Earth”.  But my favorite one is (quote) “The size of babies’ heads present a problem for women when giving birth” (end quote). So he’s saying, if women aren’t aliens, why don’t they have giant vaginas?!? … If anything, the problem isn’t small vaginas . . . It’s our huge penises.  Can’t speak for everyone, but Irish Brothas be performin’ C-Sections.  So apparently aliens from Alpha Centauri are smart enough to travel multiple lightyears between solar systems, but can’t manage to find a planet that matches their snatch size?!?  

Interesting story selection, by the way.  It sounds less like a story we would normally cover on the Scathing Atheist and more like a story Andy would have given you for the InKredulous podcast we recently guested on before switching you out to a different story at the last minute leaving you with a fully written story you didn’t need.  Weird.

Panspermians looking to debunk Darwin: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2507377/Humans-NOT-come-Earth–sunburn-bad-backs-pain-labour-prove-expert-claims.html

And from the “I’m Dreaming of a White Christian” file, Fox News anchor and shrieking bobblehead Megyn Kelly offended people who are and are not white last week when she insisted that despite the perplexing historical and genealogical implications, Jesus was white.  And as if trying to camouflage the stupidity of that claim amid the larger stupidity of another, she couched it as an example to bolster the claim that Santa Claus is also white.

Well he’s giving gifts to a whole bunch of different kids, in different houses on Christmas, so he sounds more like a black guy to me.  Although he is a job creator, so it’s hard to say.

This tangent into xenophobic insanity came as a response to calls for some racial inclusivity in the Santa legend.  After all [spoiler alert] Santa doesn’t actually exist, so why can’t we warm our children’s hearts with stories about black men breaking into their homes once a year?

How about a compromise?  Santa can still be white, but the elves that work for him without compensation can be black.  And instead of reindeer he can have Mexicans.  Hold on, that makes no sense.  The sweat-shop elves should be Mexican, and the reindeer should be black.

On Shizzle, on Nizzle, on T-Bone and Pookie…

But it’s a white dude naming the black sleigh slaves . . .  

So like “On Toby, on Rupert, on Django … on Pookie.”

Jesus can say say cracker: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-brad-hirschfield/santa-is-white-really_b_4433624.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003 <<and>> http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/12/13/the-unbearable-whiteness-of-being-megyn-kelly-jon-stewart-skewers-fox-news-caucasian-persuasion/ <<and>> http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/12/12/tabula-reza-foxs-megyn-kelly-insists-jesus-was-a-white-guy-reza-aslan-responds/

And from the “So Many Holes, So Little Crime” file, Judge Clark Waddoups of the US District Court in Utah, ruled in favor of the polygamous family from the reality show “Sister Wives”, declaring a law against their plural marriages unconstitutional.

And the anti-gay-marriage lobby’s collective echo of “Told ya so!” could be heard throughout the country.  “Next it’s gonna be them fellers what fuck sheep an’ stuff!”

The show documents the life of Kody Brown and his family of four wives and seventeen children.  Clearly wanting to set me up for a “Big Love” joke, Brown is about 6’4″ – 250, and appears to like his women the same way, with matching feathered, blond, David Spade haircuts.

Yeah, if we’re just going by weight, marrying any one of these gals is polygamy.

So now that we’re on the subject of the vagina-heavy sexual exploits of these genius bigamist bastards,

I see where you’re going. 30 seconds on the clock … Mormon Porn Stars and Titles: GO!

Does it have to be shit porn, like last week?- Nevermind doesn’t matter: “8 Wives, 1 Cup”

No it doesn’t have to be shit porn, but if it did, I would lead off with Glenn Pecker starring in “Nobody Swallows Shit Like Mormons”

“Dry County Golden Showers”

Clit Romney in “Nymphos and Nephites”… a follow up to her 2009 hit “Laying the Lamanites”

Brigham Hung in “The Great Salty Lake”

Damn it.  I was gonna go with the “Great Salt Lick” but now I have to change it.  Um… How about “Polygamy, myself and Irene… and Cassandra and Judith and Sharon and Anne”?

Ted Bundy’s Magical Undies … That’s right: Serial killer extraordinaire Ted Bundy was a Mormon.

I’m surprised the momos don’t advertise that more… it would make them seem less like pansies.  Okay, how about Tony “Big Bologna” Moroni in “Brides and Prejudice”?

“Missionary Position: Finger on the Front Buzzer” . . . And of course: “Missionary Position Number 2: Getting Pushy at the Rear Entrance”

Described by critics as a Polyga-must see.  And of course, the homo-momo-erotic classic; Trey Park-it and Matt Blown present “The Book of More-Men”

Utah judge strikes down anti-polygamy law: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/12/14/21903224-federal-judge-strikes-down-key-parts-of-utahs-polygamy-law-in-sister-wives-ruling

So I guess we’ll close it quick before Heath realizes that recently deceased crappy actor Paul Walker was a Mormon and starts suggesting Mormon necrophilia porn titles…

The Recently Passed and the Curious?

Well, they do practice posthumous baptism so they do have experience moistening dead people.

And on that lovely image, we’ll close headlines for tonight.  Heath, thanks as always.

 

And when we come back Friendly Atheist Hemant Mehta will sit down with me for a much tamer conversation about the problems that young atheists face when openly declaring their disbelief.

Interview: Hemant Mehta

Link to Hemant’s Blog: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/

Link to Hemant’s Book on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/The-Young-Atheists-Survival-Guide/dp/1939221072

Link to Secular Student Alliance: http://www.secularstudents.org/

Link to Freedom From Religion Foundation: http://ffrf.org/

Link to Reddit/Atheism: http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/

 

Outro:

Before we set up camp for the night, I wanted to remind everyone that if you hear this before the 21st, you still have time to nominate us for a Stitcher Award at Stitcher (dot) promoTW (dot) com.  You can nominate up to once per day and you can nominate us in multiple categories so we strongly suggest that you do that.

I also wanted to thank Cat and Mouse for giving Heath and I our first opportunity to actually meet a couple of our listeners.  Probably a way bigger deal for us than it was for them so thanks for that and sorry for constantly looking over your shoulders to see how Le’Veon Bell was doing but hey, it’s the fantasy playoffs, you know?

I also need to thank Heath for being funny enough to get away with saying the shit he says.  I need to thank Lucinda for lending us her lovely voice to open the show, I need to thank Hemant Mehta one more time and remind you that as good as the first half of that interview was, the second half is even better.  And you have a week to read his book before you hear that, so if you want to do the homework, you’ll find a link to it and to his blog on the shownotes for this episode

And of course, I’ve got to thank Andy Wilson of the Merseyside Skeptics and the InKredulous Podcast for providing this week’s Farnsworth Quote and for inviting Heath and me to join him on his incredibly hilarious show.  Look for that episode coming in the very near future and look for a link on our Twitter feed and Facebook page as soon as said link is available.

http://www.merseysideskeptics.org.uk/category/podcast/inkredulous-podcast/

But most of all tonight I need to thank this week’s most tremendous terrestrials, Jacqueline, Ward, Bill, Tim, Katja, Jeffrey, Wolfgang and Benjamin.  Jacqueline, whose sexual magnetism carries a court-ordered pacemaker warning; Ward, whose statuesque physique would be a frustratingly persuasive argument in favor of intelligent design; Bill, whose voice is so sexy it makes automated operator’s come; Tim, who chops through flaming, steel girders with his dick; Katja, whose genetic perfection is so absolute they’re renaming a nucleotide after her; Jeffrey, whose legendary swordsmanship and nautical notoriety are the reason so many pirates are missing an eye; Wolfgang, whose name would kick anybody else’s name’s ass in a fight except possibly Magnus and Benjamin, whose inevitable greatness is so palpable that statues have already been commissioned in advance of his world-altering accomplishments.

These eight elegant, admirable and accommodating altruists proved themselves in the only non-Jenga related way that matters this week by giving us money.  Only the atheists that believe in god the least have the incredulity required to give us money, but if you think you share the superlative skepticism of Jacqueline, Ward, Bill, Tim, Katja, Jeffrey, Wolfgang and Benjamin, you’ll find the donate button on the right side of the homepage at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.

And if you’d like to help us out but you have kids and it’s December, you can help us a ton for free by leaving us a five star review on iTunes and telling a friend about the show.  If you need more Scathe in your life you can find us on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and we have a blog and occasionally, there’s shit on that too.

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

Episode 10: Partial Transcript

April 25, 2013 2 comments

by Noah Lugeons & Heath Enwright

Sponsor:

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

And now, the Scathing Atheist.

Intro:

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

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

On this week’s episode,

 

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

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

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

But first, the Diatribe.

 Diatribe:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 Headlines:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pyschomachia cubed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

Blaspheming at Buddhists is tricky . . .

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

“Things matter and I am.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Must continue dick joke . . .

Ummmmmm . . . Toma-Cock Missiles . . .

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

Ok I’m done . . .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Like unborn children suing AIDS for the condom problem?

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

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

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

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

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

Talk clean to me, baby!

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

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

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

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

Poem: Genesis in Two Minutes

by Noah Lugeons

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

Noah praises God for this unspeakable act,

But glancing at his cock’s an unforgivable act.

Then we spend an entire fucking chapter or two,

Learning ad nauseum who begat who.

 

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

Takes his shit to Egypt and starts pimping his wife.

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

In chapter seventeen Abraham makes a crazy decision,

Regarding all his sons and slaves and adult circumcision.

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

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

 

Later Isaac meets Rebekah, they have Jake and Esau,

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

They demand the Hivites foreskins before commencing the slaughter.

 

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

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

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

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

 

Here he goes all psychic, starts interpreting dreams.

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

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

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

 

Joey shows back up much to daddy’s surprise,

And Jacob, now called Israel, eventually dies.

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

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

Calendar:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

http://www.gwup.org/

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

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

MAY 17th Women in Secularism Conference in Washington DC:

http://www.womeninsecularism.org/

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

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

http://inr3.eventbrite.ca

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

Roast:

Ladies and gentleman, welcome to the Roast of God!

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

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

We also have Mary Magdalene . . .

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

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

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

Give it up for Jesus Christ.

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

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

How does dying for my sins taste?  Bitter?

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

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

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

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

All this attention for the man of the zero hour!

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

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

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

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

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

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

 Song:

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

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

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

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

    He said their Girl Scout cookies have Girl Scouts inside.

 

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

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

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

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

(C, Dmin, Emin)

Well Atheists eat babies yes they do.

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

(C, Dmin, G, Emin)

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

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

 

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

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

I reckon that explains why they hate them Catholic priests.

    Those pedophilic bastards always tenderize their meats.

 

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

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

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

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

 

Well atheists eat babies, yes they do.

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

Them grumpy goats in their blue housecoats eat kid fondue,

and maybe sometimes orphan cordon bleu.

 

Or roast them little tykes for barbecue.

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

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

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

 

Cause Atheists… Eat Babies… Yes they do.

 Outro:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Episode 7: Partial Transcript

by Noah Lugeons

Sponsor:

This week’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by all the awesome people who sent encouraging emails and tweets, left complimentary comments on the blog, gave us positive reviews on iTunes and otherwise helped convince us to start doing this thing on a weekly basis.

And now, the Scathing Atheist…

Intro:

It’s Thursday, It’s April 4th, and I’m already tired of changing my fantasy baseball lineup.

I’m your host Noah Lugeons and from decadent New York, New York, This is the Scathing Atheist

On this week’s episode,

  • A Riyadh woman has consensual sex despite overt bicycle riding,
  • God blames his mysterious ways on the lack of a father figure in his life,
  • And Tom Beasley of an American Atheist join us to explain how he gets off naming his atheist podcast after a country that was clearly founded as a Christian nation.

But first, Heath Enwright with the diatribe…

Diatribe:

Many religions believe that the universe is created by an intelligent designer.  Existence is an experimental game and god is the initial inventor of the game and is now an all-knowing spectator watching as we humans misuse the power of choice he gave us. This notion is fucking absurd, but let’s explore it anyway.
If god’s a sports fan, his model sport for humankind is definitely NASCAR. The world he built is a very similar, ridiculously dangerous situation . . . A bunch of crazy rednecks, competitively wasting fossil fuels and god’s just watching from the stands waiting to see the really good wrecks.

The takeaway here, is that if god is a NASCAR fan, he’s can’t be that intelligent.

So if he even exists, intelligent design is not the preferred nomenclature.  I’d call it Military intelligent design at best.  Even GOD didn’t think through his exit strategy.  Intelligently designed games end elegantly, like checkmate in chess. For this game of existence on earth, his exit strategy seems to be nuclear holocaust.

I’m just saying, if religion were to dial back their stance on the intelligence, and just go for the design claim I’d still think they were silly but noticeably less so.  But they don’t do dialing back very well.  Admitting fault isn’t exactly in the church’s wheelhouse.  Granted the faults they’d need to admit are often unspeakable, but I’m pretty sure that actually makes it worse.

The point . . . is that god’s clearly not that smart, and it looks like devoutly religious people agree.  Everyone I’ve ever met who takes a religion really seriously, is always trying to justify absurd ways to bend the rules.  Like god didn’t read his own fine print.

Great example . . . take butt sex.  If you’re willing to bend over the rules a little, anal sex is the #1 virginity preservation method.  I like to call this the poop-hole loophole . . . Like this somehow softens the blow later when you’re married, and trying to make your sexual history sound less bad; “No I’m a legit virgin. I’ve had huge amounts of cock in the hole right next to it, but that vagina is clean virgin territory.”

Bullshit . . . Even then, you know they’ve played, ‘just the tip’, a few times.

Speaking of just the tip, my circumcised friend from college, named Israel, also a firm believer in the validity of the poop hole loophole, was excellent at finding ways to just barely avoid directly breaking all these detailed Orthodox Jew-y rules he had to deal with.

For example, he’s not allowed to use any fire, electricity, or machinery of any kind on Shabas, which is sundown Friday until sundown Saturday.  So if we were all hanging out smoking pot on Friday night, he couldn’t partake.  Unless of course somebody drew a bong hit into the tube without inhaling it, and then happened by chance to leave that random, glass, smoke-filled column sitting on the table with a coaster over it, and then Israel happened to randomly choose to take one of his normal breaths of air while that coaster was quickly removed and that glass tube was on his face.

This would just be a chain of unrelated events.  The fire used to burn the pot to make the smoke to fill the tube was wielded by someone else and the bong water acted as a mystical justification barrier, completely separating the fire from whoever might have, by chance, been breathing too close to the bong afterward.

Like Jew God is up there going, “Shit, yeah that bong water really ties my hands on this one.  My boss – “God God” – will be up my ass about this if I smite this crafty stoner.”  And as far as I know, Israel’s never been smote, so clearly the loophole worked.  And this encourages further abuse of the rules.

So why are we so surprised about priests raping kids?  Bunch of priests sitting around – trying to figure out loopholes:

“God says we can’t have sex, and can’t masturbate. What option does that leave us?  Roll with me on this, keeping in mind, the lord works in mysterious ways.  What if a kid gave me a Dutch Rudder?

“We’re not touching dicks.  I’m touching my dick, and he’s just working my arm.  So I’m not jerking it, and he’s not jerking it, and everybody wins.”

I guess not that many priests are big Kevin Smith fans.  All I’m saying . . . it seems like nobody is telling the priests’ side of the story.  Maybe the rape thing was a little extreme, but clearly the current rules aren’t sustainable.  If I were a priest, I’d be lobbying for glory holes in the confessional booth.  At least slutty sinners could try to buy indulgences with happy endings .

There is another solution.  It’s nowhere near as fun as my glory hole idea, but probably more reasonable.  The church could always just acknowledge that celibacy is ridiculous and goes against the biological instinct to reproduce, or at least the instinct to get laid. But this solution would never happen, because the church would end up having to reconcile its absurd universe view with contradictory things like evidence.

Church’s just don’t do epistemology.  Figuring things out with reason is a giant hassle compared to faith.

Headlines:

Joining me tonight for headlines is the Tango to my Cash, Heath Enwright.  Heath, are you ready to tango?

Alright, in our lead story tonight, Pennsylvania State Representative Tim Krieger has introduced legislation designed to act as an impediment to the first amendment.  There’s a lot going on here, but the important thing to take away from it is that Representative Krieger is willing to boldly stand up to a beleaguered minority, as long as they’re kids.

Our story begins with Moses wandering down a mountain with a couple of tablets and placing them, in a roundabout way, in front of a school near Pittsburgh.  A few secular students pointed out that a giant copy of the Ten Commandments shouldn’t be there.  Officials refused to voluntarily remove it so the students got together with the Freedom From Religion Foundation and sued the school.

Well the judge in the case is trying to let them sue anonymously, but that’s reasonable so the Christians are against it.

Enter Tim Krieger, fanatical Christian blowhard and guy who looks like he would be second-in-command for a plot to take over the world, but not the main bad guy.  He calls bullshit on that and proposes a law that would make it illegal for a plaintiff to sue anonymously regardless of the ruling of the judge in the case.  But don’t worry; this would only apply to cases where religious monuments were being challenged on a Constitutional basis, so at least they’re not trying to pretend it’s fair.

Pennsylvania representative proposes law that would force atheist students to sue publicly: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/03/29/pennsylvania-rep-tim-krieger-doesnt-care-if-atheists-get-harassed-by-christians/

And in other centuries, the morality of Catholicism is in the news again, despite not having changed in generations.  The latest incarnation of their pre-scientific ethics comes to us from Boston, home of the nation’s oldest public park, numerous substandard sports franchises and Boston College where officials have threatened disciplinary action against students for the unspeakable crime of promoting safe sex.

Yes, it’s the fucking condom thing again.

The group BC Students for Sexual Health was hit with a “cease and desist” order saying that the group’s goal of promoting common sense was (quote) “not in concert with the mission of Boston College as a Catholic and Jesuit University”

Boston College stops students from handing out condoms: http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/27/us/boston-college-condoms-dispute/index.html

In other news, our whirlwind tour of bat-shit crazy states makes a long-overdue stop in Utah where the Mormons look to cement their reputation as backwards even compared to other religions.  The Christian Newswire alerts us to a new service offered by a Salt Lake City based Mormon pseudo-clinic that brings cyber-homophobia into the 21st century.

This is another one of those “pray the gay out” type of things where some callous charlatan takes money from a conflicted person whose preacher tells them they’re identity is offensive to god.  In the press release they refer to homosexuality as “same-sex attraction”, which I thought was a nice touch.

Anti-gay web resource for Mormon homophobes: http://www.christiannewswire.com/news/8297071798.html

And from the “Somebody-Had-To-Say-It” department, a new study warns parents that extreme religiosity in a child could be a warning sign of insanity.  Every article I saw on the study was really careful to point out all the beneficial corollaries of faith in kids, such as lower incidence of criminal behavior, higher self-esteem, better academic performance and less trouble fucking the preppy chicks, but the association between religion and crazy is pretty hard to ignore.

The study warns that extreme devotion to a religion could be emblematic of anxiety, unaddressed trauma or stress, obsessive compulsive disorder, bi-polar disorder, scrupulosity, schizophrenia, manic depressive or early onset of being-an-insufferable-dick.

Now, we make a lot of jokes about this, but this is pretty serious because one of the really pervasive side effects of religion is that it gives crazy people something to cloak themselves in.  Everybody has to be at least a little “crazy” to profess some of the beliefs that organized religion demands, so it’s easy to imagine somebody delaying psychological treatment for a child because they don’t want to say, “he’s so religious it’s crazy”.  Faith has been mislabeled a virtue so if something that would be clearly nuts in any other context pops up in the context of religion, people are way less likely to go, “that motherfucker’s crazy.”

Study warns that children who are “too religious” may be crazy: http://news.yahoo.com/child-too-religious-094552602.html

Moving on to some “Other-Countries-Are-Laughing-At-Us” news, an atheist shoe company in Berlin is charging that the US Post Office deliberately discriminates against them and backs up the allegation with an informal study that showed that identical packages with their abominable “Atheist” logo took an average of 3 days longer to arrive at their destination.

To be fair, this wasn’t exactly a scientific study and it wasn’t exactly published in a peer review journal, but the results look pretty damning for the USPS, especially since the whole experiment was prompted when US customers starting asking the company to leave off the telltale tape that said “Atheist-Atheist-Atheist” across it.

The take away, though, is that there’s a company that makes pretty cool looking shoes that say “Ich Bin Atheist” on them and they’re getting some free advertising on our show courtesy of the Post Office being a bunch of miserable dicks.

Atheist shoe company accuses US Post Office of discrimination: http://www.atheistberlin.com/study

And in this week’s living, breathing evidence against intelligent design, Dr. Joseph Mastropaolo has announced that he will impotently wave $10,000 around in the air in a vainglorious, insincere, meaningless publicity stunt.

Mastropaolo, a grown adult with an advanced degree who believes in Noah’s Ark is pretending to offer $10,000 to anyone who can “scientifically disprove” the literal creation account described in Genesis.  And yes, that’s the one where they say god created night and day a full three days before creating the sun.

People with competent navigation of their own brains point out that “scientifically disproving” something is a meaningless term and thus an impossible standard to meet.  They also point out that if Mastropaolo was so confident, he wouldn’t be insisting that anyone trying to claim the prize also put up $10,000.  And of course, they also point out that the generally accepted foundations of biology, astronomy, geology, chemistry, cosmology, anthropology, literature and philosophy all “disprove” a literal interpretation of the bible to any reasonable standard.

Creationist offers $10,000 to anyone who can scientifically “disprove” creationism: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/27/joseph-mastropaolo-creationist-10000-disprove-genesis_n_2964801.html

And finally, in international news, Saudi Arabia makes a bold move to counteract the baseless stereotype that women are mistreated in majority Muslim countries.  In a valiant and unprecedented move that would have made Elizabeth Cady Stanton look like Archie Bunker’s wife, the religious police in Saudi Arabia have lifted the ban on women riding bicycles.

Now, obviously you can’t do this all at once or you’d risk utter chaos, so they’ll be limiting this to specific parks and recreational areas, and, of course, the women will have to be chaperoned by a male relative and covered from head to toe in a potato sack, but I think it’s safe to say that sexism in Saudi Arabia is pretty much over.

Saudi authorities lift ban on women in bikes: http://news.yahoo.com/saudi-religious-police-lift-ban-women-bikes-111923001.html

That’s all we’ve got for headlines tonight, Heath, thanks for hanging out.

When we come back, Tom Beasley will join me to circle religion like a hungry buzzard.

Skit:

Occasionally we get feedback from listeners that really enjoy the show, but think that we sometimes get a little carried away.   For example, in last week’s episode, when discussing the Westboro Baptist Church, my co-host Heath Enwright expressed a desire to savagely penetrate Fred Phelps’ rectum.

We received several comments about the segment but I chose two that represented what I’ve come to think of as the two distinct audiences that this program appeals to.

Jon on Facebook said he really enjoyed parts of the show, but felt that the anally penetrating Fred Phelps portion went (quote) “beyond edgy and made me squeamish”.  On the other hand, we also got an email from Daniel in Plano who said, “Love it! I almost pissed myself when Heath started talking about butt-fucking Phelps!”

So in our ceaseless quest to push the envelope of podcasting, I’d like to offer two explanations of the Fred Phelps comments.  And because the show is only 30 minutes, I’d like to offer both explanations at the same time.

So if you find yourself in the “Jon” camp that feared that segment might make them vomit, please remove your right earphone for the remainder of this segment.  If you’re more in “Daniel’s” spontaneous urination camp, please remove your left earphone.  And if you’re not generally inspired to exude any bodily secretions over our skits, feel free to leave both earphones in and get twice as much podcast for the next few minutes.

*

We live in a world where the walls of censorship are fast falling away.  Where once some government (censor/ cock-stain) stood between your ears and the vulgarities of less (cultured/ prudish) (individuals/ motherfuckers), in the 21st century, you’re no longer protected from words like (George Carlin’s notorious seven/ shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, tits).

There is, of course, one (negative/ positive) consequences  (While/…) it expands the scope of the first amendment to previously unimagined heights, we also (have/ get) to (endure/ enjoy) a lot more (off-color/ dick and fart) jokes and (lewd/ hilarious) social commentary.  As a result, some (refined/ uptight) consumers of new media with little (tolerance/ appreciation) for vulgarity get (offended/ fucked).

As a producer of such content, one must act as one’s own censor and must thus strike a (delicate/ frustrating) balance between being too (vulgar/ boring) and being too (academic/ vulgar).  While I respect and appreciate the concerns of the people who wish I would be (vulgar/ myself) less often, I’m naturally inclined to side with the group that most mirrors my own sense of (propriety/ humor).  The unfortunate result is that I must occasionally ask some members of my audience to (endure in good humor/ go fuck themselves).

Take, for example, our recent headline segment about the (detestable bigots/ spunk-garglers) at the Westboro Baptist Church.  During that segment, our mutual dislike for the group was obvious and my co-host made some (untoward/ hysterical) comments about their leader, Fred Phelps, and things that might be hatefully inserted into his (anus/ asshole), including Heath’s (hateful /throbbing) (member/ dick).

While some (people/ prudes) found this offensive, I think it’s important to keep in mind that Fred Phelps is (despicable/ an ass nugget) and deserves to be (mocked/ gay hate fucked) mercilessly.  What’s more, we should do so with (unapologetic/ un-lubricated), (spite-filled/ splinter-filled) (voracity/ broom handles) in the deepest, most (scornful/ painful) way.

And when we, here at the Scathing Atheist, (comment publicly/ blow our juice) on Fred Phelps, we hope that we can hit him (where it hurts/ in the eyes) and really make it sting.  A gifted few can do so by way of intellectual criticisms, but those of us without the (education/ desire) or the (verbal dexterity/ words and shit) to express such scathing distaste without resorting to (obscenity/ fuck) filled tirades (have/ get) to resort to the (basest/ funniest) type of humor.

The important thing to remember is that regardless of what words we choose, we all agree that if any target is deserving of our foulest utterings, it is the kind of (visceral/ass-brained) (animosity/ fucktardary) and (lunacy/ bullshit) promoted by the Westboro Baptist Church.

Okay, this (segment/ shit) is really hard to edit, so please put your (right/ left) earphone back in now.

Calendar:

It’s time for the Atheist Calendar portion of the show.  This week we’ll be highlighting some of the great secular meet-ups and conventions coming up in April.

We’ll start in Lawrence, Kansas where “Reasonfest 3” will be taking place over the weekend of April 20th.  The lineup is fantastic, led by Seth Andrews, JT Eberhard, Jerry DeWitt plus Matt Dillahunty in a debate called “Moral Combat” and something with the enticing title “The Godless Pervert Story Hour” featuring notable godless perverts Greta Christina, David Fitzgerald and more.

http://kusoma.org/2013/01/reasonfest-2013/

A lot of action the following week in the nation’s capital: The Secular Coalition for America will be hosting a Secular Summit from April 24th to the 26th that’ll include some great instruction on effective secular lobbying.

http://secular.org/lobbyday2013

Also in DC on the 27th of April the Center For Inquiry will be hosting “Why Tolerate Religion”, a day long symposium tackling the contentious issue of religion’s role in our supposedly secular government.

http://action.centerforinquiry.net/site/Calendar?id=103301&view=Detail

And for our West Coast heathens, CFI on Campus will be hosting a Leadership Conference in the City of Angels on the same weekend.

http://www.centerforinquiry.net/oncampus/slcla2013

Of course, wherever you are in the world, don’t forget that according to the Secular Students Alliance, Thursday, April 18th is National Ask an Atheist Day, so check your local listings to see if there’s any way you can get involved.

http://www.secularstudents.org/askanatheistday

If you want to learn more about this or any of the other events discussed on this episode, check the shownotes for episode 7 at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.

That’ll do it for this week’s calendar.  As always, if you’re involved in an atheist, skeptical or secular event that needs a little free publicity, let me know.  And if you’re not involved in an atheist, skeptical or secular event, what the hell are you waiting for?

Interview Links:

An American Atheist Blog: http://anamericanatheist.org/

Outro:

So that’s about all the time we’ve got for tonight.  I want to thank Tom Beasley for hanging out with us, I want to thank Alan Blumlein for inventing stereo sound and also want to give a big thanks for Cecil & Tom from Cognitive Dissonance for providing this week’s circuitous Farnsworth quote.  Those guys put on a really fun podcast, so you should definitely check them out at Dissonance Pod (dot) com.

I also want to thank the lovely Lucinda Lugeons for everything she does behind the scenes, Heath Enwright for everything he does in front of the scenes.  But mostly I want to thank god for making this podcast possible by not existing.

Be sure to check back with us in 168 hours for the “Holy Babble” edition, in which Heath, my wife and I will do something that at least two of us will regret almost immediately.  If you can’t wait that long, be sure to check out our erratically published blog, follow me on Twitter @Noah (underscore) Lugeons and like us on Facebook because apparently people still use Facebook.

If you enjoy the show, please help us spread the word by leaving us a glowing review on iTunes or whatever you use.  Don’t forget to help drive up our Stitcher ranking by listening to us there and if you don’t have the Stitcher app yet, don’t worry, I’m not judging you for it the way all the attractive members of the opposite sex are.

If you have comments, questions 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 4 is Up

February 28, 2013 Leave a comment

by Noah Lugeons

We just polished off episode 4.  It’s recorded, edited, processed, published and awaiting your approval.  You can get it through iTunes (which I recommend if for no other reason than it ups our showing and gets the show in front of more people), but if you can’t wait for all that synching bullshit, you can also listen to it now by clicking here.  And in case you haven’t picked up on this yet, this show is certainly NOT SAFE FOR WORK unless you work in a really cool place.

Enjoy.

Episode 3 Partial Transcript

February 14, 2013 4 comments

Episode 3: The Valentine’s Edition:

SPONSOR:

“Today’s episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the new national restaurant chain for Christian cheapskates and penny-pinching pastors.  If you’ve got a party of 12 rowdy jack-offs who’ve managed to forget Christianity’s central tenant on the drive from the sermon to brunch, bring them down to your neighborhood Papal-bee’s.  Our friendly wait staff will be happy to accept a snarky message on the receipt and a Jesus-pamphlet in lieu of a living wage.  So come on out to Papal-bee’s and enjoy the Last Supper… you’ll ever tip for.

And now, the SCATHING ATHEIST!

INTRO:

It’s Thursday, it’s February 14th and it turns out Catholics get really pissed when you lick your thumb and wipe the schmutz off their forehead.  I’m your host Noah Lugeons and THIS is the Scathing Atheist.

On this fortnight’s episode…

Some ex-Nazi who ran the inquisition is looking for work,

We’ll toss all the legislators in the Bible Belt into the ring and see who can out-stupid who

And apparently I’ll sound like a more smug, more scripted Dennis Miller,

But first, the Diatribe…

DIATRIBE:

This diatribe can be considered a companion piece to an incomprehensibly stupid Op-Ed I found on the Huffington Post the other day.  It’s by one Dr. Peggy Drexler and it’s titled, “Why Kids and Religion Mix”.  If you’d like to get your bearings before I disembowel her argument and strangle it with its own intestines, you can pause the podcast and find the link on the shownotes for this episode at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.

Or better yet, don’t bother because it’s so engorged with stupidity that even a casual encounter with it might actually lower your overall capacity for intelligent thought.

Dr. Drexler, a Research Psychologist, Gender Scholar and bona fide horse’s rectum has decided that even people who don’t believe in God should still get their kids some good church-learnin’ and she makes the case for it in the circuitous way one has to if one intends to justify such a brainless proposition.

We start by meeting Sam, a child of two Catholic apostates who were surprised one night when their son decided to start a meal off by thanking Jesus for providing everything.  They shouldn’t have been too surprised, of course, as we all know that Christians aren’t above proselytizing to children without their parent’s permission.  But regardless, we now find Sam’s parent on the horns of a dilemma.  They don’t want to force their kid to adopt their take on religion (after all, that’s what they’re parents probably tried to do to them) but they also don’t want their kid being indoctrinated by some morally-dubious charlatan either.

Personally, I’m a firm believer that this shouldn’t be a dilemma.  On the one hand you have a group of people actively pushing unverifiable claims about the very nature of the universe and on the other hand you have reality.  You wouldn’t want your kids muddying their minds with alternative forms of mathematics or biology.  You wouldn’t leave it to them to decide if scientific or homeopathic medicines work better, so why would you feel any differently about religion?  Sure, eventually you want your kid to go out into the world and make up their own mind, but shouldn’t you start them with a firm grounding in reality the way you would with every other subject known to humanity?

But as you might have guessed, Dr. Drexler would have you believe otherwise.  She goes to great lengths to list all the perceived virtues of church-attendance, largely by vaguely referencing studies that she fails to cite.

But a lack of data doesn’t stop her from making rock-solid claims like “Participation in a religious community may help kids develop a strong moral core”, “religion seems to be somewhat comforting to kids” and “…[Religion] can provide a certain stability that children welcome in a world that’s full of change”.  Well it’s hard to argue with facts like those.  No, seriously… it’s hard to argue with.  What the fuck does any of it even mean?

Later she says, “In the wake of Newtown and all the other tragedies worldwide, more and more we’ve had to rely on some kind of a God to get us through” and I assume she typed that with a straight face.  I can’t speak for a theist, of course, but as an atheist I find it profoundly comforting that an intelligent, omnipotent god didn’t knowing allow the massacre at Newtown to take place.  I would imagine that thinking otherwise would be a source of stark terror more than comfort, but then again, maybe that’s why I’m an atheist.

But the Op-Ed gets more asinine still.  At one point she launches into a series of sentences that seem to be competing for the title of the stupidest assemblage of words ever accomplished in English:

“News-making men like Lance Armstrong, who cheated and lied over many years …give us reason to increase children’s exposure to people and ideas that will help them develop a strong moral code.”  And with this, cue the pedophilia jokes.

Really Peggy?  You’re really going to put the fucking CLERGY up as your standard for strong, moral behavior?  You’re going to take the only profession in the country that is synonymous with child rape and suggest that they are the moral alternative to Lance Armstrong?

Okay, okay, so maybe I’m being too Vatican-centric here.  Maybe Peggy and her flock would hear that and say, “not all priests are pedophiles”.  This is true, but the very fact that you have to point it out is certainly ammo for me, but for the sake of argument, let’s set all of that aside.  Let’s instead think of all the Baptists and Pentecostals and Evangelicals who manage to keep their dicks to themselves and instead simply instill good, Christian values like hating gay people and women who exercise biological autonomy.

Not good enough?  Alright, let’s even set aside those assholes and consider the most liberal, open-minded, Six-Flags over Jesus church you can possibly imagine with a watered down message, a full time rock band and a fucking Starbucks.  Let’s say that you found a church where the transgendered, pro-choice, anti-gun, pro-sunshine and puppy tails priest is a fucking Nobel laureate and gives 94% of his income to charity.  What happens to the strong moral code when your kid starts reading up on Jesus and finds out that he’s a pro-slavery misogynistic bigoted liar that promised to return 2000 years ago and still hasn’t made good?  In other words, what happens to an edifice built on bullshit when the shit starts to rot?

But wait, Dr. Drexler’s not through being stupid.  Immediately after suggesting that the group of people that brought us the Inquisition, the largest pedophilia scandal in human history and Monsignor Meth are somehow better than a one-testicled cyclist on steroids, she throws out an assertion you couldn’t justify to a retarded sea-monkey:

“…in a world where evil often trumps good, religion can’t hurt.”

She makes no attempt to justify it at all.  She just leaves it standing on the page their like a nerd who was just thrown naked into the girl’s locker room.  RELIGION CAN’T HURT!?  I’m quite certain I heard something about religion being used to start wars, subjugate minorities, justify slavery, inhibit science, oppress women, tyrannize nations, roll back social evolution, rationalize suicide bombings and otherwise validate every morally repugnant institution in the history of human civilization.  In fact, if I’m not mistaken AS I SPEAK someone if being murdered because of it.

No, sorry Peggy, but you’re putting your stuffing your lunch up your ass again.  It’s ATHEISM that can’t hurt.  At its best religion is naïve and arrogant.  At its worst it’s fatal.

HEADLINES:

Our top news item today, John Ratzinger is fallible again.  As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, the Pope has decided to hang up his Mitre and his Zuchetto and call it quits.  When asked why he has chosen to be the first Pope to resign since the death of Joan of Arc, the Pope responded “I’m 85 years old, which is pretty much dead.”

While the Vatican sites his advanced age, the blogosphere is abuzz with speculation that there might be more to it than that.  Some suggest that he’s trying to avoid the fallout from the ever widening child rape and torture scandal; others propose that he’s trying to avoid the fallout from the looming money-laundering scandal; still others submit that he’s trying to avoid the fallout from being indicted by the International Criminal Court; still other suggest that all those atheists on Twitter finally got to him.

In domestic news, the Obama Administration recently proposed updated guidelines for the Affordable Care Act, designed to further placate Christian opposition to the requirement that employers provide insurance coverage for birth control.  Arguing that they shouldn’t be mandated to pay for something they morally oppose, Christian leaders have managed to wring compromise after compromise out of the president.

The latest round of capitulations expanded the definition of “religious based organizations” to include religious hospitals, universities and charities.  While employees of these organizations would still be able to receive contraception through their insurance, the employer would not be burdened by the cost or the unbearable encumbrance of guilt that paying for birth-control pills might incur.

Christian leaders aren’t satisfied with the compromise, of course, and vow to continue to fight the good fight until the exemption includes any-damn-body who wants it including Religious Institutions like Hobby Lobby and Chick-Fil-A.

Common sense, of course, would kindly ask these religious institutions to go fuck themselves as a law that was passed by a democratically elected majority is supposed to trump the prophetic dictates of an infanticidal space-phantom.

We’ll be keeping you abreast of further compromises as they occur.

In other Christians-thinking-they-should-have-special-privileges-and-getting-them news, the Southern California Christian School has filed suit against two former teachers who refused to provide proof of their faith.  The teachers were asked to take their son, whom they love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering or, failing that, provide  a statement of faith and a reference from a pastor.

Two teachers refused and were fired.  When they threatened litigation, the school pre-sued, igniting a case that will challenge a landmark religious ruling by the Supreme Court last year.  The Hosanna-Tabor  (Tay-ber) ruling essentially exempted religious institutions from the laws all other employers have to follow with regards to religious discrimination.  But by failing to specify what constituted a “religious worker”, the court left the status of teachers uncertain.

The school is seeking an injunction to prevent the teachers from suing for $150,000 each.  Regardless of the outcome of the case, one can only hope that the discharged educators can go on to find employers willing to pay for their contraceptive insurance.

Amish defectors can sleep a little easier tonight knowing that the notorious drive-by stylist Samuel Mullet, Sr. will behind bars for at least a decade.  Mullet, the leader of a splinter group considered stringent even by the standards of the Amish, was found guilty of forcibly shaving and barbering at least five Amish people.  He and his fellow maverick Mennonites were sentenced to between 3 and 15 years in prison.

The team of criminal coiffeurs was convicted of conspiracy to violate a federal hate-crime law, which is probably the most sinister way you can possibly describe aggravated hairdressing.  US Attorney Steven M. Dettelbach should be commended for not only procuring the conviction, but also thinking of something poignant to say afterwards to make the case seem way less bizarre and stupid than it actually was.

And in the ceaseless competition for the most pro-Christian, anti-Constitution piece of legislation in the bible belt, we have three worthy contenders this week:

Taking the Bronze medal is Virginia where the Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections recently voted to endorse an amendment to the State’s Constitution that would allow prayer at graduation and allow students to opt out of assignments if the assignment “violates their faith”.

Senator William M. Stanley, a sponsor of the bill argues unconvincingly that this amendment has nothing whatsoever to do with evolution.  He points out that it would allow, for example, a Muslim student to be excused from dissecting a fetal pig in biology class.

This line of argument would be far more compelling if anybody believed for a second that there had ever been a case of a Muslim student being forced to dissect a pig or if we were all spontaneously generated yesterday with no memory or intellect.

Taking the silver is perennial contender Alabama where legislators are pushing for a law that would allow the 10 commandments to be displayed on any building in the state.  The bill, which sports the Orwellian title: “The Alabama Religious Freedom Amendment”, would offer legal protection for a practice that is already pervasive in the state.

Despite the brazenly unconstitutional nature of the law, Alabama tax-payers needn’t worry about the state wasting any money defending it if it’s passed, as third party groups have already stepped up to offer funding when the inevitable lawsuit occurs.

But the gold medal goes to the reigning champion of stupidity, Mississippi, where we find a seemingly innocuous bill that makes it legal to pray before public school groups.  The bill, which passed unanimously through the House Education Committee, would ban teachers from penalizing students for expressing religious views in schoolwork, it would require allowing students to organize prayer groups and religious clubs and it would force schools to allow religious groups to use school facilities in the same way as nonreligious groups.

So what does the law do other than legalize a bunch of shit that’s already legal and force schools to do things they’re already doing?  It also allows for prayers before “limited public forums” in school, which doesn’t sound that bad until they define “limited public forums” as things like football games and the morning announcements.  Apparently, by limited they also mean “all-encompassing and mandatory”.

And while they failed to reach the podium this time around, I thought I should still toss out an honorable mention for Arkansas where the state legislature recently passed a bill with overwhelming majorities in both the house and senate that would allow the carrying of a concealed weapon in church.

While this law is probably every bit as stupid as the other ones, I don’t think it qualifies as pro-Christian or anti-Constitution, but I’m sure Arkansas will try harder next time.

And, lest I get all the way through the headlines only fucking with the Catholics once, German Archbishop Gerhard Ludwig Muller has come under fire for saying that recent criticism of the church leaves [quote] “an artificially created fury… which sometimes reminds one of a pogrom sentiment”.

This statement was quickly condemned by virtually every sentient being on earth; who collectively pointed out that legitimate denunciation of the anti-gay, anti-woman, pro-child rape platform of the Vatican is not really very much like inciting a population to genocide at all.

In Muller’s defense, I’m sure people inciting pogroms probably did occasionally make accusations along the lines of “those Jews are a bunch of conspiratorial child-rapists”, but of course when they were saying it, it wasn’t true.

In other news, the Freedom From Religion Foundation sued florist Marina Plowman on January 25th in Rhode Island.

Atheists who follow the blogs will recall the case of one Jessica Ahlquist, who won a legal battle to remove a prayer banner at her high school and consequently became a target for religious blowhards throughout her community and the nation.  In a show of solidarity with the young woman who was notoriously called an “evil little thing” by Rhode Island State Representative Peter Palumbo, a Madison, Wisconsin based secular group attempted to send the evil little thing some flowers.

Evil bigger thing Plowman refused to deliver to Ahlquist citing “fuck you, that’s why”.

The FFRF seeks a bouquet and an apology in the lawsuit, but they’ve indicated that they might be willing to settle out of court for fifty cents and some envelopes.

And finally today, a new Church in London called “The Sunday Assembly” has quickly garnered a large and enthusiastic congregation.  The brainchild of standup comedians Pippa Evans and Sanderson Jones, this church offers what one attendant described as “a bit of community spirit but without the religion aspect.”

While its creators are careful not to call it an “Atheist Church”, seeming to prefer the term “Cultural Humanism”, it offers a clear and welcome alternative to religious ceremonies in the Western World’s least religious nation.

Services include singing, comedy, readings from books way better than the bible and discussions of science.  While the service is meant to entertain, it also offers inspirational moments designed to invoke the wonders of life and the cosmos without placing any of its authorship in an imaginary being.

That’s it for headlines, when we return I’ll be joined by Lucinda Lugeons and Heath Enwright for a special Valentine’s Day panel discussion.

SKIT:

CARL

“Hi, I’m Carl, I’m the Assistant Manager here at the East 14th Street McDonalds.  Thanks for coming in for the interview.”

POPE

“Yes, Yes.”

CARL

“Here, have a seat.  Would you like something to drink?  A Coke maybe?”

POPE

“No.”

CARL

“Alright, Mr… Rater…”

POPE

“Ratzinger.”

CARL

“Rat… in… zer?”

POPE

“Ratzinger.”

CARL

“Ratzenburger?”

POPE

“No.  That is mailman from Cheers.  I am Ratzinger… like, you sing to mouse, no?  Rat-Singer?”

CARL

“Oh, Ratzinger, got it… now… I’m detecting a little bit of an accent there.  Is English your first language?”

POPE

“No. German”

CARL

“Okay. Do you speak any Spanish?  Because a lot of our guys only speak Spanish.”

POPE

“I speak 7 languages.”

CARL

“Wow… that’s pretty impressive…”

POPE

“9 if you count Ancient Greek and Biblical Hebrew”

CARL

“Okay, well… we don’t.  There’s not a lot of ancient Greeks or biblical Hebrews here in Sheboygan, but still… you never know.  Anyway, I’ve gotta say, this is a pretty impressive application.  It says here that you used to be pope?”

POPE

“Yes.  Was Pope.”

CARL

“Awesome.  Did they do the whole colored smoke thing?”

POPE

“Yes… was colored smoke.”

CARL

“Awesome. And what would you say was your favorite part about that job?”

POPE

“Job come with… infallibility.”

CARL

“Well that’s a nifty perk.  What would you say was your least favorite part about being pope?”

POPE

“…hm… The Hat.”

CARL

“They made you wear a hat?”

POPE

“A silly hat.”

CARL

“Ssss…. Now, you will have to wear a hat to work here.  Would that be a problem for you?”

POPE

“No… I wear normal hat.”

CARL

“Yeah, a hat like mine.”

POPE

“I wear that hat, sure.”

CARL

“Okay. Cool.”

POPE

“So I have job?”

CARL

“Well…”

POPE

“What ‘Well’?”

CARL

“Well… to be perfectly honest, your application had a few ‘Red Flags’”

POPE

“What is Red Flag?”

CARL

“Well, for example, it says here that you’re a former Nazi.  Is that true?”

POPE
“Hitler Youth.”

Carl

“I’m Sorry?”

POPE

“Hitler Youth.  Was member of Hitler Youth.”

CARL

“Wow… See, McDonalds is kind of against the whole Nazi thing I think.”

POPE

“Was mandatory.”

CARL

“Oh… Okay.  Well in that case it might be okay.  I mean, we can’t hold it against you if it was mandatory… I think.”

POPE

“So I have job?”

CARL

“Well, there is one other thing… it says hear that you’re currently under indictment from the International Criminal Court.  Is that true?”

POPE

“You know… is silly.  They are silly.”

CARL

“Sssss…. Can you tell me what you’re under indictment for?”

POPE

(mumble mumble)

CARL

“I’m sorry?”

POPE

“I help cover up with the fondling of thousands of children.  You know… is little stuff like that.  Other charges are even sillier.”

CARL

“Other charges?”

POPE

“You know… inhibiting humanitarian efforts in developing world by opposing use of contraception in AIDS ravaged nations and places plagued by overpopulation.  And parking tickets.”

CARL

“Ssss… See, I think that might really be a problem.”

POPE

“No, I make fry.”

CARL

“Yeah, I’m sure you make great French fries and all… but McDonalds corporate has kind of a policy against hiring people that are under international indictment for crimes against humanity… It’s an image thing, I think.”

POPE

“I… make… fry.”

CARL

“Sorry.”

POPE

“I am good enough to serve as head of world’s largest religion, but not to make fries in your crappy restaurant?”

CARL

“I’m sorry… but at East 14th Street McDonalds, we just have higher standards than the Vatican.”

CALENDAR:

Keeping you abreast of all the major happenings in the world of Atheist meet-ups and conventions, it’s time for the Atheist Calendar portion of the show.  We’ll be skipping ahead a couple of weeks and focusing on some events around the country coming up in the first half of March as we build toward the big one in Austin on March 28th.

We’ll start in the Windy City where the Chicago Skeptics will be hosting a Skepticamp event on March 2nd.  It’ll be held at the Irish American Heritage Center in Shy-Town from 11 am to 6 pm.  If you’re going to be in the Chicago area and would like to meet up with some awesome skeptics, I hear they’ll have a few.

Skipping a week ahead and 150 miles Northwest, we’ve got Freethought Festival 2 in Madison, Wisconsin.  The lineup offers a powerhouse of heavy hitters including Debbie Goddard, Darrel Ray, Dan Barker, Greta Christina, the Friendly Atheist Hemant Mehta, Andrew Seidel and more.  If you’re like me and thinking this sounds way better than your plans for the weekend of March 8th, there’s still time to register.

Hell and gone from Madison?  Perhaps you can attend the National Atheist Party’s first convention in San Francisco on the 9th of March where they’ll feature virtually every prominent atheist speaker that won’t be in Madison that weekend: Aron Ra, Jessica Ahlquist and Jerry DeWitt to name a few.  Should be a good time for a good cause and tickets are available as of this recording.

On the Ides of March the Wichita Coalition of Reason will be hosting an event with the irresistible title, “The Skeptics of OZ” featuring speakers such as JT Eberhard, DJ Grothe and Darrel Ray, who is seems to really be racking up those frequent flyer miles.  It’s an all weekend event and no offense to Kansas, but what the hell else are you going to do in that god-forsaken wasteland?

Finally, don’t forget Pi Day coming up on March 14th.  Almost certainly my favorite math-inspired holiday, the holiday is typically celebrated by telling people that it’s Pi Day and then trying to explain what that means and then trying to explain why you give a shit.

A quick request before I close out this section: Apparently this podcast is getting quite a few downloads down under, so if you’re aware of a good online calendar of atheist and secular events in Australia or if you’re involved with a conference in need of a free plug, email me or send me a tweet.  You’ll find all the contact info on the “Contact Us” page at Scathing Atheist (dot) com.

OUTRO:

Just a quick note before we close out the show.  If you noticed a bit of inconsistency in the sound quality during the program, I apologize for that.  We’re in the process of upgrading our equipment so some segments were recorded on one rig and others on a much better one.  By our next episode everything should be smooth and steady and I thank you for bearing with us through these growing pains.

I also want to thank everyone who took the time to leave us a review on iTunes and everyone who sent us an email.  I couldn’t be more stoked with the response we’ve gotten so far.  I also want to thank everyone who’s listening.  I appreciate you giving me 30 minutes of your life and I’ll work really hard to earn another 30 minutes.

And if you enjoyed the show and you haven’t done it yet, please take a couple minutes to hop on to iTunes and give us a review.  It really helps us spread the word and, if you need a more personal benefit, 8 people left reviews and I bought a new mixer and two dynamic headset mics.  So basically, leave reviews and the sound quality gets better.

Finally, I want to throw out a big thanks to Heath Enwright and Lucinda Lugeons for joining me tonight.  We’ll be back in two weeks with a special farewell in the “Pope-ulation Zero” edition.  Until then, if you can’t get enough of us, check out the blog at Scathing Atheist (dot) com or follow us on Twitter @Noah (underscore) Lugeons.  If you have questions, comments or death threats, you’ll find all the contact info on the Contact Us page of the website.  All the music used in this episode was written and performed by yours truly and yes, I did have my permission.

90% of Americans Believe in Space Fairies

June 3, 2011 3 comments

by Noah Lugeons

In surveying the national tenor, one could be forgiven for believing that the atheists are gaining ground. While it might seem in some areas that reason is outweighing superstition and secularism is encroaching on stupidity, the numbers would like to respectfully disagree.

In a recent Gallup Poll, more than 90% of Americans still believe in god despite the fact that in the same survey, 100% of them had no evidence upon which to base this asinine assumption.  What’s worse is that among the remaining 9% or so, only about a third were willing to go as far as to say they were “convinced that god did not exist”.  4% of the total took the fence-riding position of an agnostic atheist (“I don’t believe in god but I don’t have the guts to own it”) and 2 % actually said they had “no opinion” on the existence of god.

Gallup has been running these religion surveys for upwards of 70 years now and the total number of non-believers has been remarkably flat in that time. It looked for a time like atheists were gaining ground, but in truth this was a surveying error.  When Gallup recently amended their survey to include a question about belief in a “universal spirit”, a solid eighth of all Americans are willing to sign on to that option.

So is this good news or bad news?

Well, the trend lines are a bit tricky but one thing is certain: organized religion is losing ground.  The number of people who express an actual “belief in god” has been in steady decline for more than a decade. But not all of these gains are going to the atheist camp. Many choose to reject bullshit specifically but not in general. This growth of the “spiritual” movement has been rapid enough to all but wipe out any gains atheists might have seen in the past 50 years.  In fact, as recently as 2008, Gallup’s research showed a reversing trend line.  The number of professed atheists actually dropped by almost a full percent which, perhaps coincidentally, was almost exactly the same percent gained by the more Unitarian belief.

The saddest finding is under a category where Gallup asks respondents about the certitude with which they accept god. They allow for 5 potential answers:

  1. Convinced that god exists
  2. God probably exists, but I have some doubt
  3. God probably exists, but I have a lot of doubt
  4. God probably doesn’t exist, but I’m not sure
  5. Convinced God doesn’t exist.

In the results of this question we find that as many as three-quarters of Americans are unwilling to even entertain doubt that god exists. Officially, 73% were counted in that 1st category with only 3% selecting the correct answer offered at the bottom.

Of course, our perception of this is often colored by where in the country we live.  Those in the West (where atheism and “spiritualism” are at their highest) might be tempted to dismiss the findings altogether while those in the South are likely shocked to find so much rationality in the country.

The issue, of course, is a lack of devangelism. Atheists are too damn nice and too willing to pretend to be “agnostic” about the existence of god. Hell, 2% of respondents were so on the fence that they couldn’t even call themselves agnostic and instead chose “no opinion”. It’s hard for me to imagine that anyone more sentient than a potato could have no opinion on the existence of god, but nobody ever went broke overestimating the vacuousness of Americans.