The Scathing Atheist - 247: Raelian Nation Edition

Episode Date: November 9, 2017

In this week’s episode, Hemant Mehta caused a mass shooting, Christians boycott the Disney Channel over its glaring lack of molester programming, and aliens will tell us to have sex. But not like ���us” as in you and these show notes. Come see us in Australia! https://www.thinkinc.org.au/skepticon-australia/ To make a per episode donation at Patreon.com, click here: http://www.patreon.com/ScathingAtheist To buy our book, click there: http://www.amazon.com/Diatribes-Godless-Misanthrope-Scathing-Presents-ebook/dp/B00J53FZFI/ref=sr11?ie=UTF8&qid=1396141562&sr=8-1 To check out our sister show, The Skepticrat, click here: https://audioboom.com/channel/the-skepticrat To check out our sister show’s hot friend, God Awful Movies, click here: https://audioboom.com/channel/god-awful-movies To check out out half-sister show, Citation Needed, click here: http://citationpod.com/ Headlines: GOP tax plan gets rid of the Johnson Amendment: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/11/02/the-gops-tax-reform-bill-would-let-pastors-endorse-candidates-in-church/ Stephen Anderson: Veganism is of the devil: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/10/27/christian-hate-pastor-veganism-is-a-substitute-for-biblical-morality/ P-Robes wants Trump to shut down the Mueller investigation: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/10/31/pat-robertson-trump-should-shut-down-the-entire-mueller-investigation/ Reaction to shooting in TX: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/11/05/at-least-27-dead-in-texas-church-mass-shooting/ http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/11/05/the-texas-church-shooters-religious-history-is-very-confusing/ http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/11/06/the-activist-mommy-is-trying-to-blame-me-for-the-texas-church-shooting/ http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/11/06/christian-extremist-atheists-should-be-put-to-death-for-the-tx-church-shooting/ Preacher: When Trump swears, he’s just acting like Jesus: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/11/04/christian-preacher-when-donald-trump-swears-hes-just-acting-like-jesus/ Atheist group donates $10,000 to help Rohingya refugees: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/11/03/atheist-group-donates-100000-to-help-rohingya-refugees-escape-persecution/ Pastor: No such things as an atheist relief organization: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/11/02/pastor-greg-laurie-theres-no-such-thing-as-an-atheist-relief-organization/ Linda Harvey: Disney’s first gay main character should been molested: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/11/02/linda-harvey-disneys-first-gay-main-character-should-have-been-molested-first/ This Week in Misogyny: Catholic hospital pushed women to bury their fetuses: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/11/04/a-catholic-hospital-pushed-women-to-bury-their-fetuses-no-matter-the-situation/ Notre Dame vows to end no-cost contraception coverage: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/11/01/notre-dame-is-foolishly-ending-no-cost-contraception-coverage-next-year/ Mila Kunis trolls Pence with monthly Planned Parenthood donations: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/11/04/mila-kunis-trolls-mike-pence-with-monthly-planned-parenthood-donations/ How BS Suggested Reading: http://skepdic.com/raelian.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ra%C3%ABlism

Warning, the following podcast contains adult language, in so much as poop jokes are adult. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by ZipRecruiter and by Consensual Oil, the new Consent Oil by Rick Perry. If you didn't get that, Google Rick Perry Fossil Fuels. And now, The Scathing Atheist. I am your robot overlord, and I'm taking charge. You obviously can't be trusted to govern

yourselves. Hell, you're not even willing to admit that you did, in fact, evolve from filthy monk men. It's Thursday. It's November 9th. And by the time you hear this, I'll be in the future. I'm Noah Lusions. I'm Eli Bosnick.

I'm Heath Enright. And from New York, New York, Secret Lair, Pennsylvania, this is The Scathing Atheist. On this week's episode, Hammond Mehta caused a mass shooting. Christians boycott the Disney Channel over its glaring lack of molester programming. And aliens will tell us to fuck more. But first, the diatribe. It's worth stepping back now and again and asking yourself the big questions, the questions you already know the answers to. Now, it might be more important if part of your job is to come up with a new five-minute monologue on the same subject every week for 247 weeks in a

row, but one way or the other, there's value in in it so here's the question i want to focus on today what purpose does religion serve now there are a ton of ways to tackle this one like i said it's a big question so i could go any number of directions here i mean it makes money and covers up rape so there's that it serves the same purpose as the weinstein group in that sense it also serves the requisite dealer and marx's 2 000 year old opioid crisis but that's pretty much just covering the purpose it serves to the church itself and to the governments that collude with it but what purpose does it serve to the churchgoer now think about that that was a much easier question to answer through most of human history it used to be a place you went for instruction but now a school does that used to be a place you went for instruction, but now a school does that. It used to be a place you went for moral judgment,

but now a court does that. It used to be a place you went for healing, but now a hospital does that. It used to be a place you went for answers, but now Google does that. It used to be a place you went to socialize, but now Facebook does that. It used to be a place you went to be inspired, but now cat memes do that. So what's left for religion to claim? Well, I don't know, maybe claim is a bad word choice there. They still claim all that shit, but memes do that. So what's left for religion to claim? Well, I don't know. Maybe claim is a bad word choice there. They still claim all that shit. But what do they actually provide?

In the end, what are you buying with your 10%? Well, I would submit that the real purpose in the modern day is that religion offers wrong a place to hide. And I'm not just belittling it when I say that. They might choose more flattering phrasing, but that's basically the answer you get out of honest religious people that haven't chugged too much Kool-Aid just yet. A lot of people need a place to hide their wrong, and the relentless march of knowledge hasn't left many alcoves. Don't want to vaccinate your kid? Well, arguing that they cause autism isn't going to work because the facts just aren't on your side. Arguing in the arena of science or rationality is a losing game for you because you're wrong.

So what do you do? You hide your wrong in your sincerely held religious beliefs. Religion offers up an asylum to your willful ignorance when nobody else will. Now, I could have used any number of examples for this, but the obvious place to go is bigotry, right? Bigotry is getting harder and harder to defend on every front. Science keeps overturning the malicious attempts to justify racism and homophobia. The culture increasingly rejects the justifications where moral philosophy doesn't offer your bigotry any respite. So what's left?

Well, a lot more now that Trump is president, but mostly it's just religion. There's no scientific or ethical argument against gay marriage. So instead, they crafted a religious one. argument against gay marriage. So instead, they crafted a religious one. And as soon as somebody plays the religious card, all the religious people have to step back for a second, even if they disagree with that person, right? I mean, they might not have anything against gay marriage, but they do have some wrong that needs a place to hide, and they need to make sure the sanctuary is still going to be available later. And those people might have a relatively benign wrong belief that they're trying to protect. You know, they might just really want to believe that they get to see their dead kid again, or that life is significant in the

overall arc of human history, or that they get to keep being alive when they're dead. I mean, those can be super harmful things to believe, sure, but they're not like, they're not God hates fags levels of insidious. They are, however, equally wrong. Science offers up just as much confirmation and comfort to the timid mortal and the slobbering homophobe, so they have to form an alliance. They have to make sure that wrong is still open for business, and if that means crafting and perpetuating a system of beliefs that can be used to justify bigotry, apparently they're willing to do that. Now, obviously, I'm not the first person to notice this. Gould's non-overlapping magisteria

was basically an effort to make peace with this fact. You know, it's basically a prominent scientist offering up terms. We, science, can have all the right stuff, and you, religion, can have all the wrong stuff. And by and large, that's become the status quo. You know, we tell them to stay out of all the fact-based stuff. They promise they will. They invade Poland. We say we really mean it this time.

In fact, in most ways, the whole new atheist moniker grew out of the effort by a few prominent intellectuals to break that cycle. But by and large, despite the fancy new title and the conventions and stuff, this remains the status quo. My inbox is filled with atheist Neville Chamberlain's asking me to back off the more harmless types of religions and keep my focus on the gay hating and the kid raping. They argue that it's wasted motion, as though you could somehow carve out provisional exceptions to the truth. Hell, as though it was inevitable that we would. But when you give wrong a place to hide, all the wrong is going to be jockeying for space in there. And to whatever extent you enable any of it, you enable all of it. So whenever you're asked to weigh the value of telling a sad elderly woman that death isn't final and that her dog's going to be waiting for her at heaven's gate keep in mind that legitimizing bigotry is on the other side of that scale they're talking about

joining me for headlines tonight are two guys who thought mad max was set way further in the future heath enright and eli bosnick fellas are you ready to trade petroleum for underage rape slaves or what? Au contraire, Noah. When it comes to cannibalism, I am way ahead of the game. I don't want to spoil anything. And I'm just trying to help. I was told by the Secretary of Energy that fossil fuels would prevent the sexual assault. Oh, well, there you go.

I'm just happy that the cannibalism joke didn't precede a blue apron spot, I guess. Yeah, I saved it with a sexual assault buffer. You're welcome, blue apron. So instead, we'll pause for a quick word from this week's buzzer, Zip Recruiter. I don't understand. Why can't I order a pizza?

Well, who do I talk to about that, Cheryl? Sir? Do I talk to that, Cheryl? Sir? Do I talk to you, sir? Sir? Tall Tyler, get in here, big guy. How you doing? I'm trying to order a pizza, but Cheryl, up at the front, she says that she doesn't get it. Sir, I'm sorry. We got to interrupt that. We have a bit of an issue here. Oh, I think I have one around here.

Here. Yeah, there you go. Crumpled and from my front pocket. No issue, sir. Not tissue. We need to hire some new people. What people? We have the best people. The best people in the world. Yeah. Well, it turns out a lot of our best people turned out to be Russian spies.

What? Crazy. What an amazing coincidence. I am surprised. Right. Yeah. No, bad luck again. Anyway, we need to hire some new folks.

Okay. I'll call Vlad right now. No, actually, bad luck again. Anyway, we need to hire some new folks. Okay. I'll call Vlad right now. No, actually, actually, sir, I was thinking maybe instead we could use ZipRecruiter.com this time. Well, Tyler, if you want to hire Asians, that's fine, but you cannot use that. No, it's ZipRecruiter.com. With ZipRecruiter.com, you can post your job to over 100 of the web's leading job boards with just one click. So you can rest easy knowing your job's seen by the right candidates. Then ZipRecruiter puts its smart matching technology to work, actively notifying qualified candidates about your job within minutes of posting so you receive the best possible matches. You can even get a head start on the interview process by adding screening questions to your job post to help identify the most qualified candidates.

So you don't have to waste time sorting through a stack of resumes to find the perfect fit. So we could ask people if they've laundered money for the Russian mob before we hire them? most qualified candidates. So you don't have to waste time sorting through a stack of resumes to find the perfect fit. So we could ask people if they've laundered money for the Russian mob before we hire them? Right, exactly. No wonder 80% of employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate through the site in just one day. Just one day? Well, at the rate the indictments are coming down, that's all the time I can spare. It really is.

Find out today why ZipRecruiter has been used by growing businesses of all sizes and industries to find the most qualified job candidates with immediate results. And right now, our listeners can post jobs on ZipRecruiter for free. That's right, free. Just go to ZipRecruiter.com slash scathing. What do you mean our listeners? Are the tapes? I was promised there were no tapes. No, it's this is a podcast. You know what? Never mind. That's ZipRecruiter.com slash scathing. One more time to try it for free. Go to ZipRecruiter.com slash

scathing. ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. Well, second smartest. I use my dad's friends and people who are related to me. And it works out great, sir. That works out great. What's a pop cast and now back to the headlines in our lead story tonight i know it can be tricky these days to

keep track of all the shit you're outraged about and when we're worried about a thermonuclear dick measuring contest concerns like maintaining the wall of separation between church and state can seem almost quaint but it's worth reminding everybody that the GOP effort to dismantle the Johnson Amendment isn't taking a holiday just because the news cycle is busy with other shit. In fact, language that would explicitly eviscerate said amendment was included in

the tax reform bill that House Republicans put forward last week. It's the best. It's like your wife putting a request for a divorce on the shopping list yeah right yeah on a shopping list full of soybeans and textured dust protein a very shitty shopping list now look there's a lot to say about this tax bill but i'm going to set aside the misguided and thoroughly discredited bullshit pseudo theory that undergirds the transparent effort to feed the poor to their

wealthy overlords because trickle down isn't technically considered a religion yet yeah right well it's kind of hard to define it out but still yeah this show's about religion so i'm going to focus on the explicitly theocratic shit that they tacked on at the end. Okay, but can we just point out that Reaganomics and prayer are equally effective? Is that fair? At least. Well, I don't know. In fairness to prayer, prayer does nothing. Good call.

So, all right. So on page 247 of this bill of 249, we get this seemingly benign heading that reads quote section 5201 churches permitted to make statements related to political campaign in ordinary course of religious service and activities end quote what yeah well already we got that familiar red flag where people are trying to make legal shit legal because of god damn course they can they can't mention that there's going to be an elected look if that statement required a legislative fix i could have pastors arrested for telling people where the fucking polling station was but i guess churches be like whatever i do what i want was too transparent even for house republicans yeah members of congress

literally spent time on writing a not touching, can't get mad heading. Right. Followed by an entire clause that we need a doll to show where it touched us. Yeah, right. Like, yeah, exactly. If you read beyond that anodyne heading, you'll see that the subsections make it perfectly permissible for churches to directly endorse or oppose a candidate or proposition without losing their tax-exempt status i should emphasize here that this is a privilege that would be unique to churches as this would not extend to other tax-exempt institutions like say the ffrf the secular coalition for america or lime disease eradicators without borders eli and by borders i mean condoms i don't wear condoms and neither should you it's gross what are you got something no

because you wear condoms so to summarize the gop could turn nearly every church in the country into a beholden super pact that'll put a heavy thumb on the scale of the least secular candidate in any given election and even religious leaders largely recognize that this is a shit idea which is why they have to tuck it into the epilogue of this mammoth tax bill instead of fucking voting on repealing the goddamn amendment. In the meantime, your congressman has a phone. Probably a Facebook page, too. And in hail Satan news tonight. First, he wouldn't take my phone calls.

Then he refused to arm wrestle our female listeners. But this week, hate pastor and personal trainer of bigotry, Stephen Anderson, went too far. This was way worse than all that other stuff. This week, he came for the nearest and dearest ideology to my heart. Veganism.

And if there's something that says wrath more than spurned vegan, I don't even want to know what it is right well uh i'd say it's waiter in texas after dealing with a new york so much wrath it was the greatest he lives in austin he'd never heard of non-dairy milk i could have proposed sex and he would have reacted he'd heard of it he'd heard of non-dairy milk. I could have proposed sex and he would have reacted better. He'd heard of it. He'd heard of it. He just, they don't have that.

There's a coffee shop down the street. Yeah, and I'm sitting here. I don't want to get into it. I don't want to get into it. Anyway, speaking to an argument made, to my knowledge, by absolutely nobody, Anderson took to the pulpit this week to clarify that, quote, by absolutely nobody, Anderson took to the pulpit this week to clarify that, quote,

if you think the Bible promotes vegetarianism of any kind, you are severely lacking in biblical understanding. And yeah, he's right, unless all the burnt offerings were tofu or something. Is he just running out of shit to hate now, you think? Like, fuck, man, I'm in the V's already. God hates...

Bags? This is stupid. Everybody shout out some ideas. There's no wrong answers. Bags was dumb. When all of your bags is dumb, we can do better. Gay people, we already used that one. Take it seriously.

However, unlike gay and trans people, Anderson made it clear in his video he has nothing against vegetarians, explaining that he thinks it's fine if people do it for health reasons, and if he goes out to eat with vegetarians, he was very insistent on this, he doesn't try

to trick them into eating meat. That's nice. Yeah. Angry waiters are happy to take care of the tricking you into eating meat thing. You see the smoldering hate in this guy's eyes. It was amazing.

It's fun to play does this full-grown adult know what words mean every time I go out to eat. Now, when you say dairy, is butter okay? No. I don't believe you don't know what dairy means. What do you think dairy means? Say it now. Say it now. Let's define dairy together.

One, two, three. Nope, that's dairy. I don't want to listen to you anymore. I'm a waiter for a reason. But whether or not he'll trick you into meat, Anderson did have to clarify that his personal forgiveness of not eating bacon aside, the Bible is on his side.

His side. Saying, quote, if a vegetarian starts commanding me to abstain from meat, that's what I'm gonna say. Hey, get thee behind me, Satan. End quote. Not adding, why are you laughing? I don't get it.

They have what? It's called what? Oh, I see. And in trans-specific partnership news tonight, a federal judge has halted the Trump administration's plan to oust all the trans people from the military. A U.S. district judge with the whimsically alliterative name of Colleen Kolar Kotelli ruled on Monday

that a pending lawsuit against the administration was likely to succeed on its merits which effectively halts the trans ban in its tracks the trump administration is likely to appeal the ruling even though the judge promised to change her mind if they could provide any evidence whatsoever why the ban should be implemented it's almost like they don't have any. I didn't do that. She's just like, say a reason. Any reason. Dudes are pretending to be ladies. Nope.

Try again. Try again. You can't just tuck your penis into your butthole. I'm going to stop you. I'm going to stop you right there. I was going to if you didn't. It's very sexually confusing to me now it's worth stressing here that trump doesn't give a rat's ass about trans people serving in

the military but he does care about rallying people who pick their kids up from the school and vehicles with faux testicles and the way to do that is to hate the right people but luckily duck dynasty diehards don't have much of an attention span and he already got the accolades for this so there's a lot of reason to believe that he won't bother to appeal. That being said, nothing seems to motivate Schmuck Alarange quite like telling him he can't do something. So we'll have to wait and see. Yeah, any day now, we're going to get a leaked video of Trump just scrubbing a fence outside the Kremlin. Yeah, right.

Putin and Tom Sawyer just drinking lemonade, watching, smoking cigarettes. Yeah, just to clarify, if we're lucky, the President of the United States has already gotten enough claps from his insane religious followers not to fire all the trans people in our military.

Yeah, right. And before we leave this topic, I want to point out that every fucking time that Trump tries to do something to appease his evangelical base, it turns out to be illegal to goddamn do that. What more do you need to know you're wrong? You finally get somebody in the White House willing to give you your goddamn dream laundry list of policy. And it turns out that everything you want is expressly forbidden by the Constitution or subsequent legislation. You have to be the bad guys now. There's no fucking way to avoid knowing that, folks. Now they've crossed the line. Our show got so political.

I don't know why. It used to be, man, back in the day, all we would talk about was religion. Jews. talk about was religion. Juice. We need to focus on juice more. I have a question. And from the anal P-robes file, it's back.

Most of the 700 Club and guy who looks like Jeff Sessions melted, Pat Robertson, had some advice for donald trump in regards to the robert muller investigation as many of you already know muller handed out the first round of indictments this week it was glorious and they included charges against trump's former campaign manager paul manafort for among other things conspiracy against the United States of America. And the patty melt wants Trump to pardon everyone involved. Just everyone.

I have a hunch he's going to listen. Yes. Remember when crazy shit Pat Robertson said the president should do and shit the president might do were distinct categories? Ah, the every other time but now. I don't follow politics. What happened? The Dodgers though, tied up, right? That's true. Not by the time

this comes out. Future. The Dodgers won. Hooray! Or didn't. Didn't win. We called it. Alright, so here's the actual response from P-Rubs about this. Speaking through what's now become an enormous mouthful of stored acorns,

he announced that Trump has every right to shut down the investigation and then went on to say, quote, Trump can grant a blanket pardon for everybody involved in everything. Really? These are legal terms robertson's a lawyer yes he is legal terms everything and everything uh continuing trump can say i pardoned them all it's all over case closed he's gotta shut this thing down he's just gotta end quote he also might have added that movie spotlight was bullshit why does everyone keep mentioning russia what's that about i'm trying to help out some pastors this is

serious he just needs to sit the country down and say i don't want to hear about who committed treason or who started it as long as you live under my roof you play by my rules that's what needs to be and look as ridiculous as this is the right wing watch hall of fame is starting to fall in line with this and there's been no better predictor of what trump's actually gonna do than what the crazy people are saying he should just taking notes on what the homeless guy who lives on my street is saying lasers you say right china sends laser yeah so robertson's just a barely living flesh puppet at this point but regardless

his remarks definitely reveal a couple of terrifying things about trump's america first of all the principle of christian forgiveness is fucking stupid. Right. Certain things like taking money from Russia to conspire against the United States, they don't get wiped away if you accept Jesus. That's ridiculous. But more importantly, the presidential pardon is now meaningless. If Joe Arpaio got one, hard to argue that pedophiles and Russian spies shouldn't also get one. Right, right, exactly. Not like that would be more ridiculous at this point. Yeah, it's like Chuck E. Cheese tokens, you know?

Maybe pedophiles. That's the worst. I want to be clear that that is probably the worst of the three things I named. We're coming out and saying that pedophilia is not that bad. As a show, it's just letting go. We are not saying that. We are coming out and saying that in the outtakes. And in, we could have pre-recorded

this news tonight. America saw its 307th mass shooting of 2017 this week. And many are asking what's to blame. Guns. Guns. Gun laws. The answer is guns.

Guns. Gun laws. Problem. Nope. Not guns. The answer, of course, is atheism. Are you sure? Well, maybe not me.

Yes. And while all we have at this time is rumors, as we know, whenever a mass shooter is an atheist or might be an atheist or use the word atheist too often we begin the grand tradition of the atheism apology tour where firstly we apologize for the explicit advocacy of violence in the atheist holy books then we make our excuses for the blood-soaked life of daniel dennett and then of course we look inward at the knowledge that, once again, the vast majority of these shootings are pulled off by an atheist. Wait,

no, that's Christians. All of that is Christianity. My bad. Yeah, right. I mean, it's less about denying that any shooter was or wasn't an atheist and more about asking why they're not being described as a Costco member shooter, for example. Wait, was he a Costco member?

Well, I don't... He's a great pricey, sounds like a smart guy. He's a good bargain shopper. I mean, sometimes a civilian needs a 30-pack of assault rifles. So it's important what Costco does. Right, right. Hubba hubba bubba, exactly. However, if we know one thing about Christians,

it's that reality rarely affects their decision-making. So that didn't stop them from blaming atheists for the shooting really yes indeed first up was theodore shubat who took to his youtube channel titled my increasingly depressing bedroom slash background to blame us and say that all atheists it really is it is hey yo buddy i'll buy you some curtains or a poster you like it's like a time lapse photography of sadness if you put them all together yeah anyways he took to that particular background to say that all atheists need to be put to death oh yes lovely the video which has since been taken down because of the whole advocating the murder of a bunch of people thing contained the following quote.

Sodomites and atheists need to be purged from society. Sodomites automatically need to be put to death. There's a no brainer because they've already committed the crime of homosexuality. Yeah. Well, and then, of course, you have to kill all the potentially violent people that makes sense in a related story teddy shoe bat also offered to suck the gay right out all of them guys dicks i'm not 100 sure if that one was a joke or not by the way we're gonna assume that's true it goes on atheists on the other hand they need to be inquisitive bottom line they need to be inquisitive okay well that's just a classic mistake now we're going to be expecting it nobody's supposed to expect it now we're going to expect it idiot he goes on and i think that when you have atheist enclaves in society when you have atheist strongholds in society,

atheist establishments that are very influential, and when you see how fanatic they are, how much they hate Christianity, how much they hate God, how much they hate the church, you really can't tolerate people like that. And those people need the death penalty. Yes, the powerful

atheist enclaves filled with fanatics are a real danger, said the Christian calling for the death of them for the genocide of you two. Well, now, but powerful is a relative thing, Eli. So check your privilege. Look, we can see the roaches moving underneath the wallpaper behind him. All right. From that perspective, our house is a powerful enclave. It's got carpeting.

It's true. And it's not on the walls. It's true. I need to be more aware. But there's one more figure who Christians blamed this week who I personally just have to mention. Atheist blogger, Hemant Mehta.

You know, the guy who calls his blog the friendly atheist yes apparently he is totally blamed for the shooting because the shooter liked his facebook page wow uh well the guy also liked the onion maybe we we should arrest all the area men. And look, this has happened a few times now where a mass shooter likes an atheist Facebook page and I just want to say I think it is absolutely repulsive that none of these people have ever liked

our Facebook page. We post memes on there, episode reminders, got a nice little community. What's it going to take? It's fine. It's fine. It's like, I don't know. You know what, though?

If you think about it, liked by 0.0002% fewer mass shooters than other popular atheist Facebook pages, that's like a selling point. Oh, well, that's one of the memes this week. Now we know. Anyway, the person doling out all this awesome press to Hemet is none other than blogger and the control in a study about whether or not curlers kill brain cells. The activist mommy who listeners will remember for leading a campaign against the print version of Teen Vogue a few months ago because their online edition. Yeah, because if she could just shut them down down there'd be no more butt sex in magazines or the internet yeah just a whole bunch of millennials trying to find the ass on a fold-out

map what is this god i can't even this is ridiculous where's the ass well as i said the activist mommy took to twitter and facebook with a fury, pointing out that killing 26 people in a church is exactly the end of the worldview that Hammond proposes. Saying, quote, these are a couple of her tweets. The TX mass shooter was an atheist whose friends said he was a vocal and weird atheist. Sick. Who followed the friendly atheist Facebook page. No surprise, end quote and quote at hammett meta has no moral compass almost all his blog posts are the letter targeting christians and

god himself his page fuels hatred against christians and cut to jack going you ain't seen nothing yet i think i'm more offended by the letter r than anything else fuck you all right i gotta be clear on this because a hemmant is a math guy and b he's a friend all right there are over 300 mass shootings a year in america hemmant's page has half a million likes we have 300 million people the odds that on any year we're gonna have a mass shooter that likes his page are better than one in two okay so there's that okay and in her defense it's true it is a lot easier to hate christians because all the bullshit they do that the super sweet math teacher points out on his blog i think we've all been left with a lot of questions today. One, will Hammett issue a public apology?

Two, will he do it on our show? Three, will he shut down his blog in the hope of stopping more killers? Four, why won't he answer my emails? We'll keep on the story and we'll let you know. And while I hold my breath, we're going to take a quick break and hand things over to my lovely wife, Lucid. A man wrote the Bible? A whore is what she was. If it's a legitimate rape.

It's a slut, right? Cooking can be fun. Hey, I'm proud of a man. This Week in Misogyny. When you think of misogyny, there are a couple of states that probably come to mind right away. Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia,

basically the Confederacy. And as a natural-born Southern belle, I can tell you that if those are the states you thought of, your assumptions are well founded. But I think we should all take the time to recognize the nearly Herculean efforts made by one state to merit inclusion in the list of America's most backward ass, sexist, bigoted states. And that state is, of course, Indiana. states. And that state is, of course, Indiana. Now, as many of you know, last year, Vice President Pence, while he was still serving as governor of the Hoosier state, signed a law that required all miscarried fetuses be buried. This is, of course, so that us nasty secularists don't get hold of them for our demon ritual scientific breakthroughs and party snacks. But apparently, there was at least one hospital in Indiana that wasn't waiting for government action. According to a recent article in Rewire and a

number of complaints filed with regulators, St. Joseph Regional Medical Center has been pressuring their patients to bury their miscarried fetuses for years. And there's more to this story than just being stupid just to spite science. The article also contains a few anecdotes from poor women who are still recovering from unexpected miscarriages when hospital chaplains come in to berate them for wanting to donate their fetal tissue to science. Again, the words Catholic belong next to hospital as much as it belongs next to daycare center. But St. Joseph's isn't the only Indiana institution eagerly climbing aboard the misogyny train. Starting next year, the University of Notre Dame will end its coverage for contraceptives for both students and staff,

what with all those sincerely held religious beliefs about spending less money and being patriarchal assholes. And I should point out that the university was already doing the bullshit reach around third party thing so that they never had to actually touch any of those filthy whore pill dollars. So they were already not funding it. Now they're just making sure no damn body does. Now the university tries to soften this stance by pointing out that they'll still pay for contraceptives if they're used to treat a specific medical condition and not as a method to prevent pregnancy. So it's not like women can't get reimbursed for them. They just have to go tell their boss and or student advisor all about their menstrual cycles and levels of sexual activity.

But fear not, loyal listeners, because we may just have the hero that Gotham needs. Okay, maybe not, because what they actually need is a liberal governor, and we're light years away from that. But at least we have Mila Kunis, who makes sure that Vice President Mike Pence gets at least one thank you card from Planned Parenthood every month.

She announced as much on Conan O'Brien's show because apparently Conan O'Brien still has a show. So maybe Indiana's increasingly a hellhole for all of the handmaids within it, but at least we know that the poster child of its antiquated fuckery is good and angry even before his wife makes him finish his peas and carrots. And with the hope that I won't have to do 49 similar segments for the other states, I'll hand things back over to Noah, Heath, and Eli.

Thank you, Lucinda. And in Popeye the Savior Man news tonight, the odds that I'm actually Jesus were raised considerably last week when Christian wackalaloon mary colbert came on jim baker's show to point out that jesus cussed like a snake bit sailor in a whorehouse see my grandpa's gone but his euphemisms live on uh my grandpa's euphemisms all involved racial slurs so we're just probably for the best so you're probably wondering where in the bible j says fuck, as was I. But before we get to that, we should tackle the also relevant question of why Mary Colbert was trying to pump up Jesus's profanity cred.

To make him cool for the kids. Just like a school assembly. And Jesus spake unto the Lord, homework is whack, yo. Parents just don't understand. All right. So no, that would have been much better. This came as many of the craziest nuggets

to fall out of prominent pastors this year in defense of Donald Trump. When addressing his tendency to use strong language, i.e. grab her by the pussy, she pointed out that he's really just being Christ-like. After all, quote, Jesus spoke with the Pharisees and said, you vipers, you snakes.

He referred to Herod as a fox, and there was the account of a woman he called a dog, end quote. So, you know, Jesus was more fond of barnyard insults. But other than that, he's just like Richard Pryor, pretty much. Also, the foot washing, how much of that could have been consensual? I'm doing a good thing. I'm the foot washing. How much of that could have been consensual? I'm doing a good thing. I'm the good guy.

Would not surprise me if Trump asked a Russian hooker to put nard cream on his feet or his face or whatever. But believe it or not, her defense got even stupider a few sentences later when she added, quote, The church has had its butt kicked for the last hundred years, end quote. So Jesus naturally chose somebody who could kick some ass, right, to represent him here on the earth. And who can kick more ass than a fat septuagenarian with lifelong debilitating bone spurs? No goddamn body. Just

ask his doctor. He'll send you a note. I'm just saying I am 100% willing for the next election to be decided by boxing match. Better than the electoral college, we can have the same candidates. Hillary could have won. Yeah, probably would have.

Yeah. And in there's no such thing as irony news tonight. Christian, pastor, and gay Frasier Crane Halloween costume Greg Laurie took a moment this week to remind us that he refuses to Google, damn it. During a sermon with an otherwise good message about how Christians shouldn't just care about the afterlife and should do good stuff on Earth, he decided to perform an incredible act of contortionism and throw his foot all the way down his windpipe. When he claimed that there are no atheist relief organizations, and you know what? I think he's probably right.

Atheist for humanity? I think the reason that it's true, more than anything, is that we just don't care about other people. The Beyond Belief Network, Humanist Crisis Response, the Pathfinders Project, Humanist Charities. You know a lot of people in atheism. Kansas City Atheist Coalition. I don't really know why.

Non-believing, giving aid. Neither. It's a weird thing for us all to sort of correlate with. Atheist Alliance America. Secular Coalition for America. United Coalition of Reasons. CFI Institute Online. Cognitive Humanist Education Center.

You got Partners for Secular Activism. Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association. Or LGBT Humanist Council. Council of Ex-Muslims. Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. Center for Freeth and Equality. Secular Coalition for America.

Military Religious Freedom Foundation. Life Ring Secular Recovery. Rational Recovery. Secular Organization. Smart Recovery. Apostasy Project. Atheist Haven. Atheist Helping the Homeless.

The Courage Project. Pre-Beauty on Belief. Hotline Project. Quit Mormon. You know what I'm saying? All filled with secular avenue. The point is,

we don't have a relief organization because we're all vulgarity for charity. A lot of them. Because we're sick from all the butter

that's on the grill at the Waffle House. Anyways, in unrelated news, the FFRF has donated $10,000 to help the Rohingya refugees

escape persecution and someone ought to tell the folks over at the FRFF that that makes them Christian. And finally tonight in Schoolhouse Cock News, Disney Channel continued its amazing work in turning all the kids gay this week

when they kicked off season two of their show, Andy Mack, with a plot that included a boy revealing a crush on another boy i didn't catch the whole episode myself but i watched the clip it was a very nice moment also i'm pretty sure i enjoy a penis now i haven't checked for sure but it seems like i'd want one of those inside me seems fun you hear that skepticon don't even ask my boy is single and ready to meet well now to be, I think you have to enjoy more than one penis

for it to be gay. Well, we're going to find out for science. So, I don't really enjoy the one even. So, whatever. As you might have guessed, the Christian Rite is very much focused on the boy-on-boy action in

children's television, and they're having a meltdown. Of course, this includes blogger Matt Walsh, for example, who stopped trying to morph into a Spanish painter for a couple minutes so he could accuse Disney of being anti-Christian. Matt Walsh, if I didn't use Jesus as an excuse, I'd just be an asshole. Let's see, who else do we have? Ken Ham is another person who follows gay children's programming

and complained about Disney as well. This also gave him the opportunity to mention how he's literally gone crazy and began slashing prices for tickets at the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter, which are great alternatives to Disney or science. So, that's good to know tired of horrifying

lgbt propaganda well come on down to the now as arc where it's all incest all the time right well isn't that just biblical sexual morality right there incest sure but straight incest missionary stuff yeah uh Let's see. Also taking part in the meltdown was one million moms, a group of literally dozens of Christian women who all took some time away from yelling at math teachers about common core arithmetic they don't understand so they could write up a petition to boycott Disney. Yeah. I mean, to be fair, I guess 12,000 unused Curves memberships

was taken for a Facebook page. It doesn't count as unused if you still go there to feel around for trans women. Let me check. A little buff. This was a fun meltdown all around, but the winner for craziest reaction

goes to Linda Harvey of people who are allowed to publish stuff on world net daily she's also the founder of mission america the anti-gay hate group just for the record and here's what she had to say in her latest post quote america's kids deserve better than normalizing sinful high-risk behavior yet there is a storyline that would be helpful what if disney told the truth about the frequent origin of same-sex attractions in youth a heartbreaking but realistic angle could explore what happens when a boy is molested by an adult male or an older teen boy and then finds himself with same-sex desires. Oh, my fucking God.

Okay, I'm back in. You lost me at Halloween, but you won me back with a charming pro-pedophilia love story, Linda. You won me back. I love that she's literally asking for shows about adult men molesting boys to appease the religious. That's what happened. Right? I mean, at least she has the guts to come out and say it, Francis.

Say it, Francis. I mean, at least she has the guts to come out and say it, Francis. Say it, Francis. I would watch. That's what I call a must see TV or must pretend I don't see TV. I'm the good one. Must totally see TV. Yes. So it's a great question. Why doesn't the Disney Channel put something more appropriate on their shows,

like kids getting molested? It's a great point, Linda Harvey. Such a great point that we're going to help you out. Let's put 30 seconds on the clock just for Linda Harvey, because that was a great question. Why not more molesters on Disney TV? Ideas for molester-themed TV shows that would make the Disney Channel way more appropriate.

Go. Phineas and Fogel. Yep, that's a spin-off of Fondalus and Ferb. Tom and Jerry Sandusky. No, Drake and Josh Duggar. Yeah, he's Disney. Yeah, it's Disney.

Girl Meets World, famous director Roman Polanski. Where's Waldo most ticklish? Girl Meets World is actually a really good show. That's weird. You're 37. Don't worry. Boy Meets World and Girl... All right, sorry.

Moving on. Moving on. I just really like both of those shows. That's cool. What about... Warning sign. What about Curious George Pell? Lost in Space.

See's apartment. Oh, Jesus. Dora the Explored. About the magic school bus meets the magic unmarked van. Oh, God. I've been following it around the whole time. And quick, before we give Angelo any more ideas that we're going to regret,

we're going to close out the headlines for the night. Heath, Eli, thanks as always. Condoms are for sailors. And when we come back, God damn it, aliens will ask you to masturbate. Hey, folks, just want to take a moment to remind you that if you like the show there's never been a better time to support us at patreon.com slash scathing for as little as a dollar a show you can keep the show going get an early extended and commercial free version of the show as well as access to our patron only page where we post polls read feedback and more but that's not all Thank you. right don't rush me that's patreon.com forward slash scathing please give us your money please no it worked when we begged on gam please give us your money there it is see

when we first set out to do this show we we realized that Christianity, as the dominant religion in our culture, would wind up with the lion's share of coverage every week. But we wanted to make sure we didn't narrow our focus too much, which is why we set aside a segment of the show to now again stare deeply into the wide-ranging cornucopia of human convictions and ask ourselves, How bullshit is it? So tell us, Heath, what nugget of nuttery do you have for us this time around today we'll be talking about the railions or racist aliens nope no okay but alphabetically speaking shouldn't we be on q yeah yeah we should uh so either we could spend 10 minutes trying to explain what deepak has wrong about superposition, or we could talk about naked alien worshippers with swastikas.

Now, I'm not trying to say that the minutia of quantum physics isn't a boundless wellspring of humor, but I feel like this is a no-brainer. Yeah, no, I tend to agree. I also know what everyone's talking about very much. Everyone knows all of us. So I guess you've kind of already answered this. But what are the Raelians? Well, we've talked about them on the show before.

And I feel like naked alien worshippers with swastikas actually sums it up. Yeah, I know. But I'll do a little refresher anyway. The Raelians are a cult that got started when a French race car driver was hanging out in a volcano. Age-old story. All the good ones start like that, don't they? Absolutely, they do. So along comes a UFO.

UFO, yeah, of course. Right. I mean, it just goes without saying. It's a UFO. And a glowing alien steps out, tells the race car driver from France to start a religion, and dubs him Rael, or Rail, which means messenger in bullshit made up alien language. That's it. Reform Egyptian.

Okay. So how do we go from silly shit insignificant person said happened to him to full-blown religion? Isn't that all of them i feel like that's yeah but it's not all of them that start it's yeah that's true but uh it helped that this was the 70s this happened um well insofar as it happened in 1974 at a time when people were still recovering from the 60s enough to like disco and flared collars. And waterbeds. I like a flared collar. But anyway, Rael, also known as Claude Vaurillon,

to people who think he didn't get rechristened by a luminous alien, he wrote a couple of books. We have The Book Which Tells the Truth, and in case that title wasn't on the nose enough for you a follow-up called extraterrestrials took me to their planet huh those are the titles what were they about okay don't do that say what you will but no boring story ever started like that okay so what do rayaelians believe? They believe that, well, basically that Prometheus was a documentary.

According to Rael, humans were created by an alien species that looks human, so I guess they could have just fucked, but they decided to do science instead. So often comes down to a choice between the two, doesn't it?

Not for me. Bitches love a man who can calcitate. I couldn't think of a real science word. Calcitate. All right. So the alien beings, which they call the Elohim, have visited Earth throughout human history, often passing themselves off as angels or holy beings. And let me guess. which they call the Elohim, have visited Earth throughout human history, often passing themselves off as angels or holy beings. And let me guess, the occasional savior.

Yeah, yeah, like pretty much all the 70s religions. The Raelians try to claim Jesus and Buddha as secretly endorsing their religion more than the ones named after Jesus and Buddha. This sounds unlikely. Yeah, it does not get better um so a couple years later the aliens came back and took him to their home planet of elohim where he met jesus buddha joseph smith and confucius i feel like he was then asked to circle which one didn't belong. And the pale green aliens then declared that Rael would be the final religious prophet would spread a message of peace throughout the world. OK, and did he? No, he did not. All right.

So what important instructions do the aliens have for Rael and his new followers? he did not all right so what important instructions do the aliens have for ray allen his new followers well primarily their message was try to achieve world peace by fucking a lot and i'm a railian yeah no it seems like an easy sell in the 70s that's for sure right right and uh hasn't gotten much harder no it's just that there's a lot more competition now plus eventually people learned you could just fuck a lot and be anti-war without worshiping any aliens you could just do the first things uh really hit their bottom line yeah aliens kind of all right so so tell us more about the fucking oh actually hold on hold on one second all right now tell us more about the fucking all right well uh raelle's fifth book

was entitled sensual meditation and basically it was an intergalactic masturbation guide. That was fun. They believe the key to achieving world peace is found in seeking physical pleasure. Because you know, you can't fire a gun when your dick's in your hand. You can't declare war with

a cock in your mouth. See, now this is how you evangelize. Tell me more. See, now this is how you evangelize. Tell me more. All right. Well, there are some commendable things on the Raelian platform, actually. They're strongly in favor of GMOs. They support LGBT equality.

They reject the concept of gods and souls. They make it super clear that they're not down with kid rape, like the Catholics. And they support scientific education and research. Of course, they want the science to prove we were designed by flower child fuck Martians but you know

research grant is a research grant. At this point I'll take what I can get. Right but I feel like there should be an on the other hand list here as well. Well yeah they reject evolution they promote creationism. And they think that Jews

were made on Saturn and later transported to Earth. Made on the gas giant. Yeah, well, I don't think that's the right thing to object to in that claim. I'm still in. I could be from Saturn.

Who cares? I don't know about science. That could still in. I could be from Saturn. Who cares? I don't know about calcitate. I don't know about science. That could be true. That could not be true. Is there more fucking if this is true? I'm in. Anything else on their divine to-do list there? Yeah, well, since they're

alien-based, they want to make sure the planet is welcoming to our alien overlords, which is why they've invested heavily in the future construction of an embassy for aliens jesus with an estimated cost of about 20 million dollars it would contain a landing pad for even the largest flying saucers and would ideally be located on neutral geographical territory because i think we can all agree that when the aliens show up, we want these idiot Raelians to be the first to taste their death rays. Yeah, I know

that's nice. I feel like we want to put our best foot forward, right? So set it up in Sweden? Yeah, Sweden, right? Sweden's our best foot as a planet? Yeah, I think so. All right, so how's that alien embassy thing coming along for them? All right, well, in 2001, they announced that they raised the full $20 million needed to construct it. And in the last 16 years, they've continued to stand by that story. They've been rejected by a number of countries,

most notably Israel, who was actually surprisingly nice about being dismissive to the swastika guys. In the latest update, I could dig up, they were trying to get built in China. Ah, yes.

A nation known for its openness to religious diversity if ever there was one. So, okay, so how big is this religion? Well, that depends not on so much who you ask, but on who you are when you ask. If you or I asked the Raelians,

they'd say they've got about 90,000 people worldwide. But according to leaked internal documents, they actually think the number is closer to 18,000. Okay, so they, a worldwide religion, pretend they could fill up a football stadium where in reality they'd struggle to fill a hockey arena yeah yeah exactly okay so why have we even heard of them well they've managed to do a pretty good job of keeping themselves in the news despite the anemic numbers and since they have nothing useful to say, they rely on controversy to get there. Okay, can you give us some examples?

Well, I mean, their symbol is a swastika inside a star of David. Yeah, no, that's a good start. Oh, okay, but when I unveil our brand new logo, you guys are all like, no, no, no way. That's technically a hate crime. Why would you spray paint it on the side of a building to show it's not? I don't know what I'm going to do. Eli might be

Banksy, but the thing is with stuff like this, it only keeps people interested for so long, so eventually, the Raelians had to pretend they cloned a human being to get attention. Do what now? Yeah, the announcement came in december of 2002

on the day after christmas brigitte wasselier a railian bishop and ceo for a biotech company called clonaid claimed that the railians clonaid yep the railians had cloned a human being they were calling Baby Eve. Just to be clear, they had not. I think not. But despite how blatant the hoax was, the media paid a lot of attention. This was only five years after Dolly the sheep was first cloned, and reporters were looking for an opportunity to dust off unpublished op-eds about the dangers of human cloning,

so a lot of them ran with it. It earned the Raelians prominent mentions on such prestigious numeral-based news shows as 2020 and 60 Minutes. Some have estimated this stunt netted them publicity that would normally run you something like $500 million.

So, it actually worked pretty well. Wait, I'm sorry. I got to back up. Clone Aid can't possibly be the real name of a biotech company. You have weird objections today. Your objections are weird. Yeah. And it absolutely can be if that company

was created by and for Rayleans. No, okay, that would make sense. Other than pretend to have cloned babies, what does that company do exactly? They scare the fuck out of regulators. All right. Well, I guess there's only one question left to ask.

There are so many questions left to ask. Do they use condoms? If I don't want to use condoms, are they still people then? Only one more that made it into my nose, damn it. So we're going to close off by asking you, Heath. Heath, only Heath. How bullshit is it?

It's integrity of the 2016 presidential election levels of bullshit. Ouch. And with yet another religion firmly in its place, we're going to close out the segment. We'll return next time. You need to know how bullshit it is. Before we go down with the ship tonight, I want to offer up

a quick warning about the next couple of episodes. With the whole team out gallivanting around the southern hemisphere, it's going to be almost impossible for us to get together to record and edit regularly, so a ton of the shit for the next couple of episodes is pre-recorded. We're going to be stepping outside of our normal format a bit for these next few weeks, but everything will be back to normal post-Turkey

Day. Anyway, that's all the blasphemy we've got for you tonight. We'll be back in 10,022 minutes with more. If you can't wait that long, be on the lookout for a brand new episode of our sister show's hot friend, Godawful Movies, debuting at 7 a.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday, and an even newer episode of our half-sister show, Citation Needed, at noon Eastern on Wednesday. Obviously, I'd be in dereliction of duty if I neglected to thank

Heath Enright for being a friend indeed. I need to thank the lovely and talented Lucinda Lusions for being a friend with benefits. And I need to thank Eli Bosnick for being a friend who precludes the need for enemies. Also want to thank everybody that came out to see us in Sydney in advance for coming out to see us in Sydney. But most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's most dynamic diploids. Weston, Zach, Genevieve, Michael, Shannon, Amigo, Stephen, Ben, William, Peter, Richard, and Rod. Weston, Zach, but they did, finally! Together, these 12 elegant elites elected to elevate our eloquent efforts to elucidate the elementary errors and the

elastic elaboration of ecclesiastical elders this week by giving us money. Not everybody has the intergalactically renowned ninja skills it takes to give us money, but if you think you're up to the challenge, you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com slash scathingatheist, whereby you'll earn early access to an extended ad-free version of every episode, or you can make a one-time donation by clicking on the donate button on the right side of the homepage at scathingAdias.com. And if you'd like to help, but you're pretty sure donating money to podcasts is carcinogenic, you can also help

us a ton by leaving us a five-star review on iTunes, liking us on Facebook, learning more about cancer, following us on Twitter, or telling a friend about the show, but make us sound taller. Legal services for this podcast are provided by the law offices of P. Andrew Torres and our audio engineer is Martin Clark, who also wrote all the music that was used in this episode, which was used with permission. If you have questions, comments, or death threats,

you'll find all the contact info on the contact page at skatingatheist.com. You're not a railion, are you, Morgan? He could be a railion. We don't know. That's why we're asking. He's never been, like, super enthusiastic about atheism. He never said he's not a railion. That's true. You have to tell us.

It's in the Constitution. atheism. He never said he's not a railion. That's true. You have to tell us. It's in the Constitution. Let me see your dick. I forgot that was an inside joke between us the other day. And my friend was like, oh, I think I'm being followed by a cop. And I was like, let's ask him to see his dick. And he was just like, uh, what? And I was just like, oh, I think I'm being followed by a cop. And I was like, let's ask him to see his dick.

And he was just like, uh, what? And I was just like, if you're a prostitute. You stop talking. Always podcasting. You might want to give that one one more time. Yeah. You missed the aside there. You had two asides. So I think that one one more time. Yeah. You missed the aside there. You had two asides, so I think that's what got you.

But all not tricking you into eating meat aside, Anderson did have to clarify that his personal forgiveness of not eating bacon aside, the Bible is on his side. Don't say side. I said side. Don't say side again side I said side don't say side again I said side again if you want a second to edit you can edit on the fly if you want

I revisited these notes too this is the second draft of that sentence I read that and I was like this is the second draft of that sentence. I read that and I was like, this is going to be great. I'm going to read that out loud and not seem like a crazy person. All right, here we go.

The preceding podcast was a production of Puzzle and a Thunderstorm LLC. Copyright 2017. All rights reserved.