The Scathing Atheist - 255: Ether Or Edition

Episode Date: January 4, 2018

In this week’s episode, churches are bad and they should feel bad , we learn about how the gay jewish slave traders might affect our weekend, and we’ll be almost not reading the Book of Mormon anymore. 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: Trump’s climate change denial tweet: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/12/29/donald-trumps-climate-tweet-is-a-reminder-that-the-gop-embraces-science-denial/ Survey of top 100 US churches: Churches are sexist, racist, and homophobic: http://religionnews.com/2017/12/29/sexuality-race-and-gender-3-explosive-insights-about-americas-100-largest-churches/ NJ town tries to enact park restrictions to keep out jews, rescinds: http://religionnews.com/2017/12/29/town-rescinds-parks-ban-alleged-to-target-orthodox-jews/ Michele Bachmann waiting for sign from God to run for Al Franken's senate seat: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2018/01/02/if-god-gives-her-a-sign-michele-bachmann-will-run-for-al-frankens-senate-seat/ Swedish Jesus comes out as nonbinary: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/church-of-sweden-gender-neutral-language-he-lord-god-evangelical-lutheran-church-a8073426.html Atheist blogger in Bangladesh faces 14 years for hurting religion’s feelings: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/12/27/bangladeshi-atheist-blogger-faces-up-to-14-years-for-hurting-religious-feelings/ Steven Anderson blames jews for porn and human trafficking: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/12/29/christian-preacher-blames-jews-for-hollywood-adult-films-and-human-trafficking/

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And before we announce the other one, I like to welcome noah and eli to the sponsor segment hello noah and eli you just heard noah i don't know if you're confused you started laughing out of nowhere ridiculous you guys sound stupid fucking relax all right our second sponsor is is Naboo's favorite delivery service for high quality razors. That'd be Amidala Shave Club. Amidala. Now you guys are in the sponsor.

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Now the scathing atheist. Hi, my name's Eno from Lonsdale Cruises in Lake Centres in Victoria. Like Ken Ham, we're Australian. And like Ken Ham, we have a big-ass boat. But unlike Ken Ham we actually paid for our boat and didn't use taxpayer money to actually finance the whole thing mind you if we could have figured out how to we would have

but anyway also unlike Ken Ham we know that we evolved from filthy monkey men It's Thursday. It's January 4th. And this millennium is finally old enough to fuck. No illusions. I'm Eli Bosnick. I'm Heath Enright. New York, New York. Secret Lair, Pennsylvania.

This is Skating Atheist. On this week's episode, Noah wouldn't let me make that joke three years ago. We learn about how the gay Jewish slave traders might affect our weekend. And we'll almost not be reading the Book of Mormon anymore. But first, the diatribe. Guy walks up to you and says, did you know that the element technetium, when heated to 400 degrees Celsius, turns into goblins? And you say, no, it doesn't, because it in fact doesn't. And then he gets all irate, and he says, do you even know where technetium falls on the periodic table, and at least for the purposes of

this hypothetical, you don't, and you admit as much, and he scoffs back at you, he says, its atomic number is 43, it's a transition metal that falls right between molybdenum and ruthenium, obviously, I'm the expert here, here and you respond why you're still talking to this idiot is beyond me but anyway you respond well it doesn't matter if you know about technetium specifically because i know that goblins don't exist and he says do you even know where the term goblin comes from and again for the sake of the second person narrative that i've chosen you don't and he scoffs again and condescendingly explains that it comes from the old French goblin via the medieval Latin gobliness, which in turn comes from the Greek kablos. And given that he knows this and you don't,

he's the expert on both goblins and technetium here. But you respond again, glutton for punishment that you are, that none of that matters. His expertise on the periodic table and the etymology of Goblin are immaterial when the overall claim he's making violates the fundamental laws of physics. So he asks you to cite which laws of physics it would break. And you're like, oh, fuck, man, I don't know. So he says, well, then obviously I know more about physics too.

Checkmate. So eventually you give up, still unconvinced that Goblin is a face of technetium well congratulations you've just had every debate i've ever lost about the bible or global warming or homeopathy or astrology acupuncture karma creationism auras chemtrails reiki chiropractic or whether 9-11 was an inside fucking job. One of the first lessons the budding skeptical debater learns is that just being right is no guarantee of success, even when you're really fucking right.

Odds are pretty good that the dedicated apologist, denialist, or conspiracy theorist, though, is going to know a hell of a lot more about their little slice of crazy than you do. I have seen PhD astronomers lose debates to moon landing denialists because of this error perhaps you have too of course this is a natural byproduct of underestimating your opponent you know somebody throws down some nonsense about technetium turning into goblins it's pretty easy to assume that they're not going to be over familiar with the laws of physics right but conspiracy theorists and apologists aren't stupid well i obviously many many many of them are but a lot of them also aren't and the objections that immediately occurred to you also occurred to

them of course they were armed with motivated reasoning and confirmation bias that you can only dream of so they worked their way around those objections often with mountains of illogic and fallacious conclusions but along the way they picked up a shit ton of knowledge, right? Now, I say that this is one of the first lessons that you learn as a skeptic, but the extent to which people learn this is kind of depressing because in my experience, people are pretty good generally at learning the external end of that lesson, right? They learn to recognize that in the other person way before they learn to see it in themselves if they ever bother to learn that part at all this brings me to an email exchange with a

listener i had recently about a controversial opinion i expressed on one of our shows now i'm not going to get into the details of which opinion it was because that would derail the fuck out of the diatribe but suffice to say i opined on something uh and a person who was way more passionate about that particular issue chimed in to tell me how wrong I was. He sent along an email stating his case and point me towards a ton of new information on the topic. And then when he closed, he gave me a little reminder that I present myself as a champion of rational thought. So I owe it to myself and my audience to reconsider my position without bias. And he's right. So I replied. I thanked him for the email and I admitted that I'd oversimplified the point, kind of a common problem on a fast-paced show.

I also admitted that I didn't share his passion for this particular subject. It was an offhand comment, and there was no way I was ever going to find enough time to read through the 16 libraries of additional information that he has sent. So I agreed to simply withhold my opinion on that matter in the future. But I closed by reminding him that the goal of reevaluation fell on both of us equally. Right? We were both under the same obligation to consider the other guy's side without bias. And then he sent a reply that prompted this diatribe. He explained that it doesn't work that way. Not in this instance,

anyway. He was the guy who had the most information. He was the more knowledgeable about the subject, and thus he could comfortably dismiss the opinions of the less informed like me. And he presented this like it was an intellectual coup de grace rather than the same dumbass fallacy that every global warming denialist has to keep telling themselves as they fall asleep at night. Keep in mind, this dude wasn't an expert in any relevant field, right? He wasn't a lawyer explaining the law to me. He wasn't a physicist explaining science to me. He was just a layman who took more interest in this particular subject than I did, but didn't bring any expertise that I didn't bring. And he just assumed apparently that once he'd gathered enough information, all the logical fallacies would just kind of work themselves out in payroll.

That is not how thinking works. Right. It all has to start with thinking correctly. You can't pound more information into that and get a better result. If you start off with the wrong conclusion, you can spend a lifetime reinforcing that belief with mountains of data. So the amount of information you have can't be any reasonable metric of how correct you are. Expertise is different than information. Knowing is different than learning. thinking is different than concluding you know

we all call ourselves rationalists but for far too many self-proclaimed smart people that's a destination rather than a goal if we're going to call ourselves free thinkers rationalists and skeptics we better be willing to back that shit up we should always be striving to get better at thinking and if you thought you were already good enough at thinking right you thought wrong they're good enough at thinking right, you thought wrong. They're talking about you, Jesus. We interrupt this broadcast to bring you a special news bulletin. Joining me for headlines tonight are two people who made it through 2017, Heath Enright and Eli Bosnick.

Fellas, are you ready to see how this year manages to get worse? I think we're fine. I mean, we have a bigger nuclear apocalypse button yeah korea i don't have anything to worry about plus it's gonna be really like fun ironic that we've been making fun of jim baker when we've been starving in a fallout shelter oh what did you do survivor bosnian well i actually made fun of this. It's a long story. I was right until I wasn't. Can I have a piece of your son? To eat, to eat, to eat.

Everyone's so defensive now that the world is over. All right. Well, when there's any chance at all that Jim Baker might have been right, I need to take a minute and reexamine. So we're going to take a quick break to hear from this week's sponsor, ZipRecruiter. Hi, I'm Karen. And I'm also Karen. And we're young women who inexplicably work in HR.

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But don't. Because this week, I'm making everyone say their New Year's resolutions in a circle. Oh! I was in a sorority. And it just never ended and in our lead story tonight a groundbreaking new survey suggests that american churches may be racist sexist and homophobic yeah right right according to a recent report from churchclarity.org, of America's 100 largest churches, only one is led by a woman, only seven are led by non-whites, and not a single fucking one of them is LGBT confirming. And an equally surprising finding, not a single one of them is a unicorn with a lisp either.

Seems like a lot of work, though, to show that american churches are racist sexist and homophobic i feel like your survey could just be c bible end of survey right i still say rainsey the unicorn would have a much bigger following if he'd put himself out there more he's just it's gonna get on social media you're a brand rainsey you're a brand all right so this information comes from churchclarity.org as i said it's a group formed It's going to get on social media. You're a brand, Rainsey. You're a brand. All right. So this information comes from churchclarity.org, as I said. It's a group formed by liberal Christians who recognize that Christianity's regressive stance on LGBT equality is a fatal flaw if they want to spread their bullshit to the pre-geriatric population. Last two months, they provided reports on the LGBT policies of 537 American churches, specifically whether they're willing to marry, baptize, hire and or ordain LGBT people. Of the churches graded, 372 of them are anti-gay and only 96 fell into the pro category or 20 percent of the churches that were willing to actually answer.

answer yeah and uh i learned anything from nate silver in 2016 you didn't this all means uh donald trump's gonna be the next pope do you think there's like one guy at churchclarity.org or whatever it's called who just keeps bringing up like maybe christianity's and everyone's like suggestion noted kyle thank you kyle We get it. There's a we get. Thank you. Yeah. Well, OK, I have to point this out.

If if one wanted to be cynical about their motivations, one could easily argue that this liberal group is painting Christianity in an unfairly progressive light by loading themselves up with more LGBT affirming churches than are truly representative. And cynical or not not one would be correct right 20 sounds fucking bad but if the total number of gay friendly churches in the top 100 is zero the average is definitely not as high as 20 nope and even that exaggeration has them scoring a negative b on human rights even when you exaggerate it right and i just want to point out that like you hear a lot of atheists say like i'm willing to work with religious people if they're right about certain social issues and it's like no the money all goes back to the people who are wrong yeah it always goes up the chain to the people who are wrong there might be like your progressive

uu church in your neighborhood but they're to give that money to an asshole. I promise. They totally give the money to an asshole. It's like giving money to your cousins. They're going to give it to their uncle, and he's going to get drunk and hit them. Okay, too specific. Too specific. You have a weird one.

There are no progressive religious people. That's all I'm saying. There's no such thing. And in no Jews news tonight, Mahwah, New Jersey, has amended its recent measure that would restrict parks and playgrounds exclusively to local residents because the original measure was meant to keep out Jews. Okay, well, if that's how it works, they're going to have to change a lot of regulations. Not just Mawa.

I grew up right around there. There's a lot of that. Not just Mawa. I grew up right around there. There's a lot of that we don't want. But that's not all. So earlier this month, Mawa had to reverse part of an ordinance that effectively banned a ruse, which for the goyim among us

are magic pieces of plastic that mark a place as safe so God can't tag you for carrying stuff on Friday night. Yeah, fun game by the way. You can hold a family of Jewish people hostage with just like scissor pump fakes, like you're going to cut the magic

boundary. You have a laugh. Let's face it, anytime you're holding a Jewish family hostage, it's pretty fun. They're funny people. But I do want to point out that yes, like we're anti-religion in this but those nazis who started banning people from putting religious paraphernalia on public property in violation of the local ordinances that everybody but them has to follow and doesn't sue

anybody for that was taking it too far okay now i want a satanist just pouring milk on a telephone Nice and equal. Everybody fair. So either way, a year with two ordinances specifically sort of aimed at keeping Jews out of your town, kind of a bad sign. And while council members denied anti-Semitic motivation for both measures, both defenders of the measures cited how many Jews they knew in their defense. So I'm not buying it. You know what I'm saying? Well, hold on. How many was it? How many?

Lots of their friends or like one fugitive attorney who voted for Doug Jones? It depends. It matters. And fundraised for it. Yeah. In fact, we here at Scathing Atheist have received exclusive footage of the commissioner's public apology. And we turn you over now to Lucinda in the field. Thanks, Elon. The scene here is tense as Councilman Solani takes the podium.

Any ideas on what he plans to say? None. I spent time this morning and he said, don't worry, how bad could it go? Hello, everyone. I'm Rick Solani from the town council. Hello, everyone. I'm Rick Solani from the Town Council. Just wanted to take a moment to apologize for the confusion about two recent local ordinances that many of our residents felt were anti-Semitic in nature.

Firstly, the measure banning a roof. We did not know what those were. I made a suggestion that someone maybe label them or something. Not the Jews, the plastic, the plastic. I think we all know the Jews label themselves, if you know what I mean. Not funny, not funny. Sorry. Sorry. Okay. Anyway, as to the second measure, we apologize as well. It was simply an attempt to keep our parks and public spaces clean. It was simply an attempt to keep our parks and public spaces clean. Now that the Jews are dirty, I mean, we're all dirty, but Jews aren't any more dirty than the rest.

Never mind, this isn't going well. So anyway, to make amends, we'd like to invite our Jewish neighbors to a meet and greet workshop at a local campground to really find the root of these problems. We're calling it a two-day concentration camp. Nope, nope, that's not right. And I'm getting word I'm fired. Okay, okay, I'm fired. Thank you very much. Wow, that did not go well, Lucinda.

No, it did not. Well, thank you anyway. Enjoy New Jersey. Physically impossible, Eli. Indeed it is. And in Gertl Escher Bachman news, former U.S. Congresswoman Michelle Bachman gave us further proof of the second law of thermodynamics this week when she went on Jim Baker's show and opened her eyes.

Of course, this caused lightning bolts of pure entropy to shoot out, at which point the ghost of Douglas Adams appeared. He burst into flame and then exploded into a shower of random playing cards, which was actually a great segue into Bachman's announcement that she's going to run for Al Franken's vacated Senate seat. But only if God gives her a sign. Yeah, no, but in a sense, I get it, though. gives her a sign yeah no but in a sense i get it though if you're worried about your senator molesting people it's probably good to elect somebody who's terrifying basilisk like gaze keeps everybody out of grope range see the pessimist in me doesn't want this to happen but the comedian in me already bought a god costume and google mapped her house hard yes so so the sign that bachman's looking for is apparently super tricky to figure out

actually because the last time she got a sign it was god telling her to run for president in 2012 yeah sorry michelle that wasn't god it was bill angvall but you did get a sign well in fairness her campaign did last four entire days into the year of 2012 i've seen most of a universe created in that time but still yeah mysterious ways but bachman explained how it's all part of the plan she said quote i ran for president in 2012 in order to make the repeal of obamacare the central issue of the Republican platform, you know, like Jesus would do. I feel like I was wildly successful.

Do you now? Next sentence, I didn't win, but I moved the debate, end quote. So she might have lost the primary race the day after it started. Let's not forget that she invented not liking Obamacare. That was her. It's like when your favorite band goes mainstream and also turns out to be a bunch of Nazis.

That's what it's like. So it's like Rammstein. It's like Rammstein, yes. We've covered Michelle Bachman many times and just to review in case it wasn't clear enough from today, uh, we cover her because she's a religious fanatic,

a giant bigot and a literal crazy person who sometimes has actual political power. Uh, for example, she claimed last spring that God chose Donald Trump. So, so he could help the cisgender finally take shits again. All right.

Still hasn't worked for me. Just saying. You might also remember that... They're like long bloody worms at this point. Jesus Christ, dude. Go to a doctor. Yeah. Go to a doctor. No. Okay. Signing you up. So, you might also remember her from always

staring at a big black dick, just hovering in space in front of her but like cross-eyed yeah maybe it's two dicks and her right eye prefers to the left dick or vice or the dicks always move towards each other it doesn't matter bottom line the mona lisa of disembodied floating dicks is planning to run for us and given the way shit's going now who the fuck knows d up minnesota tina smith right win that and in taking the dick out of nordic news tonight sweetest jesus declared himself non-binary much to the consternation of people who freak the fuck out when real people do that now this story is actually kind of old but it got new life when christian right bloggers

picked it up and started wringing their hands over it a couple of weeks ago and watching them freak the fuck out about the gender identity of an imaginary being is just too good not to bask in just mashing their jesus action figures against their barbie dolls like see see i told you this makes sense all right so here's what actually happened last summer the church of sweden urged their clergy not to use the term he when referring to God. After all, they're pretty sure he doesn't have a dick. But if he does, he's probably got a vagina, too. Maybe a dick-gina. But he's God.

So these are the kind of important questions that Swedish tax dollars are subsidizing, is what I'm saying. course the crazy american christians also have them refusing to gender jesus and carving tits into all their crucifixes which in all honesty isn't happening but would be a remarkably swedish thing to do okay just uh circling back real quick um what's a dick china like like formation wise what are you picturing when you say i got this it's like a man in a boat but real and not made up by feminists trying to trick you into spraining your jaw it's like a man in a boat, but real and not made up by feminists trying to trick you into spraining your jaw. It's a real man in a boat. Like a guy.

Like a half-peeled banana situation? Yeah, right, right. Like it's a dick with a vagina at the end of it. That's kind of what I was thinking. I was thinking vagina with a dick. Okay. So like a super big pee hole.

See, but that would be a va-dick, I think, if it was that way. Anyway. Draw us what you think a vagina dick-gina looks like and tweet it at Heath. At Heath Enright. All right. Now, of course, not everybody who's pissed about this is a crazy American.

Some of them are crazy Danes. For example, theology professor whose name, spellcheck, is sure I got wrong, Krister Palmbladod told a danish newspaper quote it really isn't smart if the church of sweden becomes known as a church and if it stopped there by the way the statement would be true but he continues it becomes known as a church that does not respect common theological heritage end quote because when you're promoting nonsense in the fourth least religious country the third if you don't count china which you shouldn't the most pressing concern is a failure to maintain theological consistency right that does bring up the

question of what they do think god's dick looks like right like is is he girthy is he grower is he shower circumcised these are the questions These are the questions. These are the questions. And in Bangladesh, pickable news tonight, atheist blogger and YouTuber Assad Noor faces up to 14 years in prison for hurting religion's feelings after being arrested

in a Bangladeshi airport this week. I am so jealous. I have heard a lot of feelings at airports, but i've never managed to emotionally fracture an abstract concept this motherfucker is good this guy's my hero yeah you'll get there you'll get there so nor's arrest follows after hundreds of people in the country demonstrated against him saying stuff they didn't like on youtube and according to the arresting inspector quote the charge against him

is that he hurt religion's feelings by mocking Prophet Muhammad and made bad comments against Islam, the Prophet, and the Quran on Facebook and YouTube, end quote. Okay. If the entire society needs, like,

trigger warning, you're Muslim at the top of, top of like the everything maybe it's not the everything's fault i feel like that's yeah that's you and here's the craziest part many in the media are pointing out how lucky noor is considering in recent years islamic extremists have hacked dozens of like-minded people to death with fucking machetes with absolutely no legal consequence. Yeah. Yeah. Given the track record in Bangladesh,

they could have stabbed him with machetes and been like, not rusty. You're welcome. You're welcome. Progressive now. We should point out, too, by the way, that many of these guys were arrested and then hacked to death with machetes, too. So, Nor's not out of the woods

yet yeah exactly either way this is horrible and we certainly hope for nor's speedy release and safety in the meantime our live show in bangladesh is definitely canceled yeah no shit thomas smith is still gonna go though he's sure it's gonna go it's gonna be fun it's gonna hearts and minds and finally tonight christian hate pastor neckbeard and neckbeard steven anderson broke out his new wily coyote background and his finest driftwood lectern last week for a very important sermon according to anderson the homosexual Jewish conspiracy, or big gay Jew, is controlling Hollywood, manipulating the news media,

and trafficking all the human beings. He also had a new take on why Hitler was wrong, because apparently that needed to be reexamined. Huh? Yeah, spoiler, not the genocide thing. Really? Yeah. Okay, who Not the genocide thing. Really? Yeah. Ooh.

Okay. Who has mustache choice in the pool? Yeah. So, uh, Steve Anderson went to Breitbart.com, did another word cloud, and it wrote him another speech. And here's a few highlights. I guess someone was like, hey, Steve, uh, unironically ranked the races and religion and anderson had already launched into the following rant quote the jews are one of the most wicked nations on the planet are they a nation it's it's a fact that they're behind the

pornography industry that they're behind hollywood that they run the media even anyone in hollywood would tell you that holly run by Jews and homos. And who runs the banking industry? The Jews. Who runs the pornography? The human trafficking. The prostitution rings. It's the Jews.

End quote. Okay. So far, Jews run all the fun stuff. This asshole about to tell me that that isn't the fun stuff? Because that's the fun stuff. Well, right. I mean, running the porn,

the slave trade, and the prost stuff because that's the fun stuff well right i mean running the porn the slave trade and the prostitution that's just vertical integration what do you have against capitalism steve anderson yeah well i know that was supposed to be critical but yeah it was basically a big list of stuff that gay people and jewish people are in charge of that's that's fun mostly i mean the prostitution slavery stuff isn't great but but otherwise big gay jew is crushing it clearly no prostitution's pretty great and two votes for prostitution okay and uh yeah now all i can think of though is is a response video from like a gay rabbi dance troupe just doing beyonce's run the world except it's jews instead of girls same outfits though same outfit. Same outfits. Absolutely same outfits.

I, too, can add a relevant joke interjection to this thing about Bay once. And here's the part where Anderson addresses the Hitler question. Finally. Starting with some guidance on the Jewish question, actually. Quote, the Bible says the wrath of God is on them. The Jews, he's talking about.

Why did it surprise you that they'd be behind a lot of this wickedness? But if you say that, you know, you're a racist. Yeah. But how can I be a racist when I'm white and they're white? Jesus. Those Jews are white as snow. They have red hair and freckles. It's not a race.

It's a religion. Sorry, Adolf Hitler. What? Hitler said it's a race. No, wrong, Hitler. That's a false doctrine. Oh, my God. He's a grammar Nazi and a regular Nazi.

Okay, this guy you can punch. I am so fine with that one. I fixed his grammar comedy. That's what Hitler was doing wrong. The problem with Hitler was that he was hating Jewish people incorrectly. You can't have a good genocide with bad motivations is the point. Also known as the mission statement for just about every major religion ever. And now also Reddit.

Fun fact. All right. Well, now that we finally figured out what Hitler did to piss everybody off, I guess we can finally close the headlines. Heath, Eli, thanks as always.

Yahtzee. And when we come back, we'll finally get the wooden goddamn submarines. Sometimes when you're near the end of a journey, it's long and arduous, even a journey you never wanted to go on in the first place, you start to feel nostalgic about it. You might even find yourself regretting its impending end, but you never have to worry about that kind of shit if the journey in question is reading the Book of Mormon. And holy shit, after this segment, we've only got one more to go. So, fellas, are you ready to get that much closer to done?

Yeah, so what's the opposite of postpartum depression? Yeah, exactly. Ending a bad shit, I guess. It's like we're almost done with a bad shit it really does and and much like all of my shits this one has a worrying amount of blood in it and of course we couldn't do this right without the help of a person who's certainly regretting buying me a saxophone for christmas by now lucinda welcome back well as long as you're practicing your tongue and the gift is doing it. Precisely enough information that was not.

So let's talk about the book of Ether instead, huh? Okay. Yeah, you're probably thinking here, hey, isn't everybody dead now? How is there any book? Congratulations, you've been paying attention. But now we're on to a different narrative. And this is apparently Moroni's translation of the Jaredite plates which you'll recall were found by the people of Limhide

during the days of King Messiah there's no fucking way anyone recalls that I remember Mosiah likes pizza bake that is what I remember so he starts off with a skip ahead attitude he's all like well this first part is just the Bible. So we'll start where it gets interesting. How about the long genealogy? Yeah. Yeah. And he says,

that part of the Bible is had among the Jews. So like gross, Jewy, golf course, skipping ahead. And this 25 verses of genealogy basically uses all the names that joey's made up to this point but he adds a few uh choice new ones like calm lib kib moron and amnagata by the way he uses calm twice yep i'm sorry are we just gonna skate over the character

literally named moron just clearly just mad at skate over the character literally named Moron? Joe's clearly just mad at someone in the room again. Yeah, right. And then there was Moron and his son Asshole and his son Jerkface. Okay, I get it. And his son Dicknose. What I love about this, by the way, is the term Moron and its modern usage didn't exist at this point. So, like, they may have named it after this character but eventually we work our way back to jared you know since these are the jaredite plates

who was apparently one of the dudes at the tower of babel when god went all fuck proto-indo-european right now to give you a full reckoning of what a fuckwit Joseph Smith is, Jared is the one guy who was at the Tower of Babel that was good. So God decided not to confound his language when he did it to everybody else. So that he wouldn't be punished like all the other people who were speaking new and unintelligible language. He got to keep his own. God's like, all right, Jared, you get to keep your ball. Everyone else has no hands, though. You can juggle it.

Right, but to his credit here, Jared realizes right away that that's not going to work. So he asked God if he could also not confound the language of his family and friends. And God agrees. Jared's reward is literally only being able to speak to his mother. So this is a reward. Right. And then Jared says to his brother, who I guess is his conduit to God, he's like, hey, man, this kind of feels like the beginning of the book. Ask God where we're supposed to go next.

Right. And apparently these are the pre-Mormons because God's like, grab all your shit and head north to the valley. I've got an awesome continent that needs some white people. Yeah, right. And we should point out, by grab all your shit, God meant grab a male and female from each of your flocks and every kind of seed on earth. Mm-hmm.

And your family. Yeah, so Joe was just like, that Noah stuff is stupid. Okay, just all the seeds on earth. Just those. That's much more. Yeah, not Joe was just like, that Noah stuff is stupid. Okay, just all the seeds on earth, just those. That's much more. Yeah, not quite. But yeah, so they go north to the valley. They start gathering animals up Noah's Ark style.

Right, but stupider. They bring fish. They bring tanks of fish this time. Yeah, how the hell are they going to get? They also catch birds, but they say they have to get male and female. So what are they, catching them mid-coitus?

Damn it, Dave. I said only catch a bird with a dick. We need a bird with a dick. What are you doing? Sorry, their dicks are small. It's hard to tell. Your dick is small

and hard to tell. Also, honeybees, which he calls deserets, and then he says that means honeybees as though the original language would have had an internal translation of it jeez yeah so the jaredites brought honeybees to america and then uh cryogenically froze them, all of them, until the 17th century. Right. Like Walt Disney.

And in fact, they brought, apparently, according to the book, all manner of bees. Like racist ones, like Walt Disney. And wasps. They brought wasps. Some guy was like, okay, I see you got the bees, but did you get the terrifying nine-inch long Stephen King demon bees for our boat trip? Our enclosed boat trip? So they get to a beach by the ocean and they camp there for a few years. Then God shows up to literally bitch at Jared's brother for not calling.

Okay, so God is my mother. I get it. Yeah, so God forgives them and then he teaches them to build magic super boats that are A as light as a duck B, that's the term he uses. It's like a witch. So B, the

length of a tree and C as tight as a dish. Whatever the hell that means. It's like when you fuck a dish. I think it's code for anal. My birthday, I want my favorite dish. You bring it to me. You bring me my favorite dish.

So yeah, they made us really fucking wait for it, but they built wooden submarines. Wooden submarines! And the tight as a dish thing is not like a one-off. He says tight as a dish four fucking times. Tight as a dish on the bottom. On the top, it was

tight as a dish. On both sides, it was tight as a dish. Stop trying to make tight as a dish happen. It's not going to happen. Joe, God, whoever's talking, it's not clear usually. And I love that the Jaredites look at them and they're all like hey there's no light in here and we're gonna run out of air i feel like we've noticed the only two technical problems that it makes this not work out right right so god's like yeah air um tell you what poke a hole in the top of your submarine

put a cork in it and then when you run out you can go up there and just refill it and it's actually it's actually even dumber than that it is he says make a hole in the top and in the bottom of the boat so row fast i don't know where you're gonna get your oars out, but yeah. The bottom hole. Oh, I see. That's how you row. How are you going to fucking row the boat? You stick one kid's legs out and he just really kicks.

Just like, yeah. Flintstones submarine. A little faster. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, but then they're all like, yeah, but it's still really dark. And God goes, well, what do you want? Windows? Because that would be stupid yeah right

that's not commentary by the way god is like your wooden submarines windows would break and you can't bring fire on the boat so you're gonna be like a whale so they build eight magical submarines, then head to the top of a mountain to chat with God. Yeah, right. They're trying to talk him into giving him some magic rocks. It is inordinately important to Joseph Smith that his

theology includes plenty of magic rocks. Yes. Must be magic rocks. You know, he was just lying in bed going, I need more magic rocks, you know, or the rocks at in bed going, I need more magic rocks. You know, or the rocks at the end are going to feel all MacGuffin-y. Flashlights. Flash rocks.

You're doing good. Flash rocks. You're going to do flash rocks. Well, right. They asked for the dumbest possible magic rock. If you gave me my choice of magic rocks, this wouldn't even make the list. They're like, hey, God, can you make this rock glow in the dark he just reaches down and turns them in the uranium what if you glowed two birds no stones and and then there's this really creepy exhibitionist part

where god keeps offering to show jared's unnamed brother more of his body right so he starts with him seeing his finger and then we get several paragraphs of oh you like that finger huh have you checked out my abs and again we cannot clarify enough how sexual as fuck this scene is makes the bathing scene and witness look like fucking tame it is weird and then jesus reminds jared's brother to never make any record of what just happened but since joey realized that didn't work right after he said it jesus adds like hastily at the end he's like except maybe if you carved it into plates but you but but if you do use a secret language that only you know don't tell anybody well obviously i'm gonna sign your yearbook but don't you and then we spent about seven verses of chapter four with moroni explaining

in detail that he wrote down the words we're not reading yeah but the underlining message is once the book of mormon is written you'll know the end times are right around the corner yeah yeah any minute any minute uh then we get a little quickie chapter full of specific instructions for joey which includes and i love this bit a note on the other plates that joey found right it says by the way there's an extra set of plates buried with these ones but don't translate those ones unless god tells you to which seems like the kind of instruction you don't put in the penultimate chapter of a 600 page book right yeah it would be slightly more subtle for the credits to stop and for us to see jesus's hand bursts out of the ground god also makes it clear that as long as three witnesses testify at the

beginning of this book, it totally counts. Oh, yeah. Yeah, everyone knows three guys can't lie. Right, right. We all have nine-inch penises. We all have nine-inch penises. My penis is nine inches. You hear that, Utah?

And then Joey abruptly remembers this one was supposed to be about Jared and his brother. So we finally go back to that story. Right. So God did make their rocks glow after all so they put them in their submarines stock them full of food water two of everything livestock birds fishes children and and i guess a lot of bags for their shit because i mean i don't know how big the hole in the bottom is but i don't feel like they have any way to get it out and then they set out god was super cool about it too he made sure that a strong wind blew America word throughout this trip.

It would have helped more if maybe their boats were above water and they had sails. It's the thought that counts. Oh, God. I was picturing God with a giant straw blowing the eight-year-old submarine. Well, he was

blowing for quite a while. Must be doing some circular breathing or whatever because the trip took a total of 344 days so that's how much shit they had stored by the time they arrive also i guess piss drenched sawdust i'm not just i don't know how they're storing that see that's why you need an eli eli eats the sawdust boom just more shit everybody the hole in the bottom. Judge my lifestyle. Cinda's talking about tonguing. We all just pass by that.

I want to eat some pea sawdust and all of a sudden you get all judgy. I will not be shamed. Check out my new podcast, Eli Eats Pea Soaked Sawdust. Now on iTunes. Now we need that t-shirt. So they get to America and immediately set eats pea-soaked saunders. Now on iTunes. Now we need that t-shirt. Alright. So they get to America and immediately set about tilling the ground and fucking like

rabbits until they're waxing strong across the land. Look, you lock anyone in a room for 344 days with only one source of light and a year's worth of shit, the first thing they're going to do when they get out is hug. Probably accurate, actually.

Okay, so Jared's brother's getting old. He says, hey, before I die, I feel like we should give everybody a social security number and find out if they want one of my kids to be the king. So they do that. And they quit. Yes. They're like, okay. All right.

One, two, three. I quit the counting. Many. There are many of us. It's fine. And ultimately, the people do choose to make one of Jared's brother's kids king. His eldest, Pagag. But Pagag doesn't want to be king because his name was too stupid.

And neither did any of his brothers. So eventually they crowned Jared's son, Oriah, the slightly less stupid named. Everyone's just running around trying to tag each other with the crown. No, you're the king. No, you. I want to play PlayStation. So Oriah is a great king,

but we fast forward a couple generations here and wouldn't you know it, his grandson, Korihor, is an iniquitous bastard who hates Jesus and rebels against decency. Right, so Korihor, is an iniquitous bastard who hates Jesus and rebels against decency. Right, so Korihor sets up a rival city three generations after the 20-something

odd people showed up in the previously unpopulated land, and then he goes out and kidnaps the king. And somehow Cib, you know, the king Korihor kidnapped, bears another son while in captivity. So somebody should probably explain to Joey how kids happen. Kib's just sitting there in his cell.

It spreads his arms super wide and bam, to Kib. Yeah, that's Hinduism. Right, so the new kid is Shul, who will eventually avenge his father's imprisonment, etc. And here's how badass Shul is. He didn't even need a sword to copy off of he just went into the steel mines and pounded out some swords yeah i'll see your anachronism and raise it by a thousand years if he shows up and cory hor just pulls out a machine gun like grand theft auto i would be zero percent surprised 3D prints it so Shul beats Kori Hora and retakes

the kingdom and Kori Hora apologizes to Shul so they let him live and of course one sentence later Kori Hora has a son who also rebels against the king this is Noah and he too will kidnap the king this time Shul that's gotta be fun though right

hey you know who this reminds me of right so then shul's kids kill noah free their dad noah's kids say okay fuck you we're making our own kingdom um we'll call it lamanites no that's fine um maybe the noah noahites it's right it doesn't matter right but that lasts all of four sentences and then the kingdom is reunited again. Then Shul makes a law that says Joseph Smith, I mean prophets in general,

are allowed to go wherever they want, whenever they want, especially if you're naked when they get there. And no killing them, especially no killing. Yeah, right. And you can tell how awesome chapter 8 is by the way it opens on an unassigned pronoun i mean you know like there are there are little nitpicky things about the

writing that drive me fucking nuts but holy shit the first sentence of this chapter is and it came to pass of course that's how it fucking starts and it came to pass that he begat omer and omer reigned in his stand it's like a nine-year-old trying to write a murder mystery explain it to you on coke at four in the morning and i shit you not we fast forward a couple of generations and yet another rebel king has kidnapped the reigning king yes this is the fourth time that that's happened in the last two chapters. I know this book has just felt long, but I'm getting a Joe had to start transcribing plates from the home vibe. So eventually we end up with a failed usurper named Jared again, because it'd be damned if he's coming up with new names at this point. He tries to take the kingdom.

He fails. I super bummed about it. But luckily, he has a hot daughter who has a plan. Oh, I have seen this porn on a different window right now. Paused. Right. So the daughter's all like, hey, dad, just let me seduce Akish and tell him he can't marry me until he kills the king for you. Oh, I have read this holy book.

It's in a holy book right now paused so they form a secret king killing combat with a little help from the devil uh which means it comes with bonus wickedness and whoredoms which is nice so anyway the plan works and they make jared the king but omer slips away before they can assassinate him because joseph smith sees absolutely nothing wrong with chickening out and running away as a heroic strategy right this murder plot it's like kids who stay inside all winter planning a snow fort and then it's like fuck ah may next next year we'll do it next year right now so akish is all pissed off he's like

you know what i'm the one who killed the last king. So he kills Jared too. He takes the throne. Then he kills one of his sons out of spite, apparently. He's just like, I mean, I have a second knife. So things carry on like this for a while with one king killing another until God finds one he likes and then he uncurses the land. And right. And we learn that they got so rich at this point that suddenly

there were elephants in the Americas. Apparently, like, elephants are just like, you know, that chick that hangs out at the rich dude bar. Wait, I don't know. But they have elephants because they're so rich. They also have curulums and cummums,

which are pieces of bird that Joey just made up. Oh man they had schmuffins and it was great. Joe your face is crooked. Your face is crooked.

Your face is a small dick that's hard to tell. So the regicide continues for a few more generations until we hit upon the evil king Heth. And he's mean to prophets, so God smites everybody with drought and poisonous serpents. And by the way, that's what the book says. So if you have a, like, you mean venomous serpents type correction, send it to the LDS. You heard Noah, send venomous snakes to the Mormons. Yes, not poisonous ones. They might not eat them.

And just to emphasize the techno levels of repetition in this book here, this chapter also has a king whose brother kidnaps him and steals his throne, who had a son while in captivity that avenged his father's throne for the fifth fucking time in the last 10 chapters. In a coma and they all fuck each other. Muhammad and Joseph Smith, boringest writer's room ever. What if he kidnapped the king?

What if he told them about Moses? Kidnap the king. There's also a ton of focus on all the mining that these people did and all the piles of earth they made when they did it. Keep in mind that one of the central questions that Mormonism was trying to answer was the mound builder lore, which was nationwide at this point. Basically,

it was white people asking the question of how there could be great works of ancient architecture in the Americas if there weren't any white people. Mormons and Steve King, same page. Apparently, yeah. Also, we can't pass this one up. Toward the end of the chapter, we meet

King Hartham. Yeah, who by the way, managed to get himself in prison for four and a half generations. Yeah, but finally, the good King Com beats the bad King Amgad and reunites the king to fuck these names.

And then we get another swarm of prophets, which the people reject to their peril once more. Right. So God gets in one of his moods again, I guess, and wars and pestilence breaks out throughout the land. Yeah. He had like six more snakes he didn't release last time. Okay. Cheating at Parcheesi? Really?

There you go. Okay. Poisonous. So then we fast forward through King Aha. We get to King Etham who reigned over yet another prophet swarm. And yes, congratulations. We're now repeating stories from 10 verses ago. It's like the Xenos runner of repetition at this point.

Yeah, apparently. Because the same thing is going to happen again in eight verses. The Book of Mormon. Yada, yada, yada. Exactly. Yada, yada. And then we finally. We finally meet the titular Ether, who this is named after, son of King who gives a fuck,

who was prophet of the Lord that everybody hated and nobody believed in. Yeah. God has the worst HR department. He needs zip recruiters is what God needs. If he just had a zip recruiter, they'd find him a qualified fucking prophet that people believe. Right. In less than 24 hours. And then

Moroni's like, you know, I'm supposed to be telling you this story, but while I've got you here, let me ramble about other shit for a little bit. Yes. And, of course, the diversion that Moroni wants to take is about how important it is that everybody believes in shit they can't see. You know, like God or Golden Place. Could be anything. Whatever it happens to be doesn't matter.

It's like the season fucking finale clip show of the Book of Mormon. Really? it's like the season fucking finale clip show of the Book of Mormon really? it's not a great sign when there's a DS Alcoda in a book the next chapter is a bottle episode I quit the book well there's also a moment where Moroni is making blatant excuses

for what a shitty writer Joe is there's a whole huge bit of that he opens up verse 23 saying, and I said unto him, Lord, the Gentiles will mock at these things because of our weakness in writing. And that's pretty spot on in terms of prophecy. It's nothing else.

That only got right. Right. But God comes in and he's like, don't worry, Joe. I mean, don't worry, Moroni.

I will murder the shit out of anybody who makes fun of your writing. And if you think about it, hey, if I'd made you a great writer, you would have no reason to be humble, would you? Ooh, see, I spell like I do to prove I'm a human like you, like all of you at home. I am one of you. Now, by the next chapter, Joey remembers that he was talking about Ether again and the Jaredites. So he goes back to them rejecting the word of the Lord. Right, right.

So the, the people cast Ether out of, for all his doom prophecies. And then the entire country immediately goes to shit while Ether runs off to live in Iraq. Right. So, so eventually shit gets so bad that when you put your hammer down,

it disappears. Y'all. What? Yeah. Not sure where that falls on the scale of how bad it is. But according to verse one of chapter 14 the scale of how bad it is but according to verse 1 of chapter 14 that's how bad it is now now when it's during your swing jesus fucking with the guy trying to crucify him god so basically this whole chapter is a competition to see which usurper of Coriantum could rebel under the silliest name.

We get Sherrod, Gilead, Lib, and then Shiz. If the soldiers for Shiz don't ride under the banner of for shizzle for rizzle. So Shiz and Coriantum are going to war and pretty much the whole continent dies. And he clarifies here that as silly as the million people being dead and never being found was, this time, two million died.

Not counting women and children. Two million soldiers. Two soldiers died. So he tries to end the war to no avail. They fight again and then he flees to the waters of ripley and come ripley and come yes okay bubbly come that's what we're all talking so then everybody counts off for the big final battle everyone on the continent that is except either declares for one side or the other and they all march out to fight even the women and children

and from the way this reads i think i don't feel like they're putting a downward age limit on children here. Because it's everyone, right? I feel like it's fair as long as the babies fight the other babies, right? It's not like there's one, like Todd, you're against that army of babies. There's hundreds of them, but they're babies. That would be adorable. Mini Ditka versus a thousand babies. And he's like, there's hundreds of them with their babies. That would be adorable. Mini Ditka versus a thousand babies.

I can picture that. Pet cemetery kids. So they battle for several days and after day five, the only living people left in America are 52 guys

in one army, 69 in another, and Ether. And those 190 guys still went back out to battle the next day. Apparently all the infants were dead too. It's like leaving one Oreo in the package that you just ate by yourself

before the whole thing. I get it though. You get diabetes, that's what you get. And by the end of it, the only two living people left on the continent, other than the narrator, are Coriantum and Shiz. And they're still fighting. Coriantum chops Shiz's head off. And since apparently there can only be one, he then gives himself a heart attack from all that effort.

And it turns out that Aether is the last living person. Yeah, so then he writes all this shit down, buries the plates, and jerks off wherever and whenever he wants for the rest of his life. The end. And we finish it. You know how you can tell you're a terrible writer

when literally everyone on the continent is dead at the end of the book? Right. Except for the stand. Yeah, except for the stand. There was a couple of survivors at the end of that one. But the good news is that we're almost done with this terrible writer. So we're going to close for the stand. Yeah, except for the stand. There was a couple of survivors at the end of that one. But the good news is that we're almost done with this terrible writer. So we're going to close for the night, and in three weeks, we'll be back for the final installment of The Book of Morons.

Before we return to our respective keeps this week, I want to remind everybody who hasn't already checked it out to check out our Facebook page, like us, follow us, leave us a message. We've got some really exciting stuff planned for the new year. Going to be running some contests, giving away some free shit, doing some live stuff. Should be a lot of fun. We'd hate for you to miss out.

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, The Skeptic Crat, available at 7 a.m. Eastern on Monday. Our sister show's hot friend, Godawful Movies, 24 hours after that, and our half-sister show, Citation,

needed 29 hours after that. Obviously, this show wouldn't ring true if I didn't thank Heath, Eli, and Lucinda for filling yet another year of my life with laughter. There's no God, but that doesn't mean I'm not blessed. Also need to thank Ian from Lunsdale Cruises for providing this week's Farnsworth quote, but most of all, of course,

I need to thank this week's best bipeds, Alexander, Chris, Christopher, Skippy, Joe, Stuart, Kevin, the Note Train Express, Madeline, Jennifer, Julie, Malcolm, Ryan, Mark, Herb, Patrick, Zachary, Debra, Yes Honey Buns, Nathan, and Robert. Alexander, Chris, Christopher, Skippy, Joe, Stuart, and Kevin, who had more impressive ball drops than Times Square just by going through puberty. The Note Train Express, Madeline, Jennifer, Julie, Malcolm, Ryan, and Mark, who are so bright you have to wear eclipse glasses to fuck them. And Herb, Patrick, Zachary, Debra, Yes Honey Buns,

Nathan, and Robert, whose IQs are so high it's just now legal to have them in California. Together, these 21 people, who normally I'd describe as some alliterative phrasing, but instead I just want to emphasize the fact that the Nope Train Express and Yes Honey Buns donated in the same week, and that's awesome, earned their way into the deepest and most cholesterol-laden chambers of my heart this week by giving us money not everybody has high enough

brows 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 scathing atheist 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 home page at scathingatheist.com or you can buy diatribes volume one and or two which you'll find linked on the show notes and if you'd like to help but you wouldn't feel right sending an atheist money with references to trusting god on it you can buy Diatrips Volume 1 and or 2, which you'll find linked on the show notes. And if you'd like to help but you wouldn't feel right sending an atheist money with references to trusting God on it, you can also help us out by leaving us a five-star review on iTunes,

Stitcher, or wherever else they let you do shit like that. Legal services for this podcast are provided by the Law Offices of P. Andrew Torres and our audio engineer is Morgan 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 skatingidius.com. All right, so now I have to explain what happened because it's not that I was fucking with Heath on the sponsor.

I mean, it was. Obviously, it was. But what happened is as he's saying it, I thought to myself, man, it'd be really funny if I just cracked up after he said zip recruiter. And then I started laughing at the thought of me doing that. So,

uh, yeah. And then I just started to sort of, sort of started naturally laughing and I'm like, well, fuck, I'm going for it now. Whether I like it or not, we're committed now.

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