The Scathing Atheist - 270: Trouble with God Edition

Episode Date: April 19, 2018

In this week’s episode, the Mormons introduce the world to their black friend, we learn on InfoWars that Alex Jones invented the clitoris in 1988, and Chris Matheson will be here to suggest the bible, koran, and book of mormon might just be bullshit. 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/ Guest Links: To pre-order a copy of Chris’s new book “The Trouble with God: A Divine Comedy about Judgement (and Misjudgement)”, click here: https://www.amazon.com/Trouble-God-Divine-Judgment-Misjudgment-ebook/dp/B07BTPWKDS/ref=sr12?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524000056&sr=1-2 To check out Crazy Zach’s YouTube channel, click here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7jw-8dGW13Q6YWszHnAWbQ Headlines: David Silverman removed from AA due to accusations of misconduct: https://www.buzzfeed.com/peteraldhous/david-silverman-atheist-fired-sexual-misconduct?utm_term=.la1wXxnGK#.kb2doO6NE Pope releases pamphlet about how Satan is definitely real: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2018/04/13/speak-of-the-devil-new-pope-document-references-satan-more-than-a-dozen-times/ PA psychic gets charged with "illegal fortune-telling": http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2018/04/09/pa-psychic-scammer-didnt-foresee-criminal-charges-for-illegal-fortunetelling/ Rapture is coming on April 23rd: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2018/04/12/the-rapture-is-april-23-says-man-whose-2017-rapture-predictions-never-came-true/ Mormons pick their first non-white apostle: http://www.newsweek.com/mormons-non-white-apostles-pick-opinion-878223 Alex Jones has been getting stalked by Satan's fuck minions since high school: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/alex-jones-claims-attractive-women-tried-to-date-him-in-high-school-to-convert-him-to-satanism/ This Week in Misogyny: FGM in India: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/mar/06/study-reveals-fgm-india-female-genital-mutilation Saudi women fighting against male guardianship: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/mar/28/saudi-arabia-women-strive-to-bring-male-guardians-to-a-twitter-end

Warning, the following podcast contains explicit language, because implicit language can go fuck itself. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Blue Apron, and by the law firm of Michael Cohen. Nobody will ever know you're a big smelly third. And now, The Scathing Atheist. I'm Crazy Zach from the Crazy Zach YouTube channel. That's crazy with a 4 instead of an A

and Zach with an H instead of a K. Me and my buddy Cody, who helped me leave my cult, went to the zoo the other day. We saw a monkey stick his finger in his ass and smell it. And I do the same thing, which led us to the conclusion that we did in fact evolve from filthy monkey men. evolved from Filthy Monkey Men.

It's Thursday. It's April 19th. And just to be clear, we know who our lawyer is. So do you. I have no illusions. I'm Eli Bosnick. I'm Heath Enright. And from New York, New York, Secret Lair, Pennsylvania, this is Scathing Atheist. On this week's episode, the Mormons introduce the world to their black friend.

We learn on InfoWars that Alex Jones invented the clitoris in 1988. And Chris Matheson will be here to suggest the Bible, Quran, and Book of Mormon might just be bullshit. But first, the diatribe. Psalm 14 tells us, quote, The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God, end quote. It then goes on to say that we non-believers are corrupt have done abominable works and that none of us do with good it even implies we eat people and boy don't those bitchy christians love to remind us of that particular psalm because if anything is going to convince us that the bible really is true it's the fact that it says we're

assholes now i've talked about this on the show before of course and i've admitted that it is true that only a fool says in his heart that there is no God, but it really wouldn't matter what he was saying. I mean, if he's talking into his own heart, that's some foolish shit. As to us not do a thing any good, well, that depends on who you compare us to. I mean, if we get to square off against Catholics, just not funding an international child rape cabal puts us firmly in the lead. But I find this passage interesting not for its argumentation or for its defamation. Rather, I find it interesting because it reminds us that even before we had fancy telescopes and interferometers, before we had the theory of evolution or the Big Bang, before we had explored the depths of the ocean or traveled far enough to capture the entire planet in a single gaze,

people were already calling bullshit on god i mean we tend to think of the olden days as being crazy religious but that's not entirely accurate i mean sure there were times when some places were crazy religious just like some places are crazy religious now and we're more secular than we've ever been before but this monolithic view many of us have of the whole of human history being populated by firm god-believing zealots is obviously wrong otherwise they wouldn't feel the need to address it in fifth century bce well to be fair i guess the same book tells you what to do if you come across witches or seven headed dragons so that's not exactly a concrete argument but still the fact that holy books in

general several of them obsess over non-believers and not just people who deny their particular breed of god but those who deny the existence of gods altogether, is pretty strong evidence that we've always been there. And consider the wording of that particular psalm. I mean, I make jokes about the say into your hardship, but that's more than just an easy setup for future blasphemers because they're very clearly not talking about me. They aren't talking about the guy who goes out publicly and says, hey, this God stuff is bullshit. They're talking about people who say it in their hearts, people who might profess to God belief in the temple, but in their hearts, no, it isn't true. And let me defend that a little too, because the instinct

of the modern person bathed as we are in our overgeneralizations of history is to think that people like us couldn't have existed back in the day. You think, well, yeah, but people weren't exactly allowed to walk around ancient Babylon and do diatribes, but that's not necessarily true. Most ancient cultures were pretty hands-off when it came to religion. There might be like a titular god that's off-limits, and you might be required to make certain sacrifices at certain times of the year. But through most of human history, just disagreeing with religious teachings wasn't the kind of thing that got you in a lot of trouble. And even in the most religious times and places in history, we still find stark evidence of disbelief right to the very top. I mean,

all those mad fucky popes in the 15th century clearly didn't believe the shit they were selling. Right. And if you really thought this book of yours was chock full of divine wisdom and moral teachings, what the fuck wouldn't you want it translated into the vernacular? Hell, in a lot of ways,

the non-existence of God is built into the business plan. You think about all that trial by ordeal shit they were doing back in the medieval days, right? The idea was to put justice in the hands of God, but since they knew God wasn't going to show up, they rigged the game. Like, whatever, you got a guy accused of theft. He says he didn't do it. There were no witnesses. We don't have forensics and video surveillance back then. So when it couldn't pin down a dude's guilt, they'd give him trial by ordeal. Something like, you know, reach into this pot of boiling water and retrieve the stone. If you're innocent, God will protect you. If you're guilty, God will burn your hand. Now we hear about that shit today and we liken it to the shit where they drown women to see if they were witches. But if you're rigging the game, that's actually a pretty good system,

right? I mean, assuming the accused person believes what you're saying, you've got them hemmed in. Imagine you got like a little contraption blowing bubbles into the pot or something, make it look like it's boiling when it isn't. So the innocent man says, well, hey, God's going to protect me. I know I'm innocent. I'm fine. He reaches in, gets the stone. Nobody punishes him. Guilty guy says, fuck this.

I don't want to burn my hand. He won't reach into the pot. You've got it. You solved your problem. And not only did you solve the justice issue, but anybody who witnesses it thinks they just saw a miracle when they really just saw a magic trick and that's a clever solution they did a whole bit about it on freakonomics but it's a solution that you can only employ if you know going in that god is bullshit you have to know that you're lying to even think of that idea what's more it probably led to a lot of folks who weren't in on the secret scalding the fuck out of innocent people before

punishing them for shit that they didn't do uh So, you know, it's got its flaws. But the point is that it's just further evidence of this tacit understanding in the early church that they were telling lies. So yeah, there have always been doubters infecting their congregations, attending the services so that the town's folks would see them there,

you know, singing the praises, saying the prayers, being pious, and saying in their heart the whole time that there is no God. Of course, those people are still there by the hundreds, by the thousands, and probably by the hundreds of thousands. People have all these intellectual advantages over their ancestral doubters, living in an era that's already answered all the questions that drove people into religion in the first place, burdened by mountains of evidence and logic against God, and still dragging themselves to church every day so

that their peers will see them feigning piety. And I get that some people are trapped there. You know, some people's businesses depend on it. Some people's marriages depend on it. If you're in the wrong part of the world, some people's lives depend on it. But that's not everybody. That's not all of them. Some people are trapping themselves there, desperately clinging to that ephemeral piece that religion brought them as a kid or hiding from their mortality behind a pew, just going through the motions and pretending to believe in a God that they gave up a long time ago. And I don't agree with the Bible very often, but in this instance, you know what? We're of one mind. It's more than just a joke. The fool says in his heart, there is no God, because if he was wiser, he'd be screaming it from the rooftops.

They're talking about you, Jesus. We interrupt this broadcast and bring you a special news bulletin. Joining me for headlines tonight are fellow Pulitzer snubs Heath Enright and Eli Bosnick. Fellas, ready to get to work on that hip-hop album of ours? Oh, yeah. You haven't even heard me freestyle. Really? You do hip-hop freestyle? Oh, absolutely.

Okay, I actually want to hear that. Yeah, yeah, go ahead. All right, Morgan, lay down a beat. Racial slur right away. Well, yeah, it's hip-hop. You got to lead. That is not what hip-hop means. Nope, not at all.

Moving on. In our lead story tonight american atheists severed their ties with david silverman last week after receiving multiple reports accusing him of sexual abuse silverman perhaps best known for his tides come in tides go out inspired what the fuck meme has served as the organization's president since 2010 but was abruptly suspended on tuesday with a notice from the organization that was frustratingly vague for those of us who cover atheist news for a living and have to get a show out by Thursday morning. I spent my Wednesday going, please be fraud, please be fraud, please be fraud, maybe murder, please be fraud.

Okay, well, good news? Yeah, partially. All right, and to be honest, the frustratingly vague thing continued on through Friday morning when they announced that Silverman had been fired. The official notice from American Atheists didn't offer up any details other than to say that there had been quote allegations raised regarding mr silverman's conduct end quote uh buzzfeed on the other hand was happy to supply the details an hour or so later in their article they detailed two accusations of horrific sexual misconduct and also alluded to undisclosed conflicts of interest and

quote the appointment to a senior position of a woman with whom he was having a sexual relationship end quote okay uh we still talking about silverman really hard to tell which conservative president we're talking about at this point him and trump should do a psa just like i learned it by watching you yeah right uh now i should note that silverman has denied any wrongdoing and his lawyers claim that both of the encounters detailed in the buzzfeed article were consensual his lawyer then undercut his credibility by pointlessly adding that silverman was in an open marriage at the time as though the adultery part would be the bit that's stuck in our craw yeah we cannot be clear enough as a show we are dismayed and disgusted by polyamory here

as a skating atheist. We will not stand for it. We will not stand for it. Just be clear. Just be clear about the sitch. Maybe a laminated flow chart that you hand out. Make it clear to everybody what's happening. We don't all get it. Now, I've already seen several

people online rushing to Silverman's defense and trying to pre-exonerate him by painting this as like an overzealous witch hunt or painting BuzzFeed as a supermarket tabloid. And I want to remind those people that they haven't seen all the evidence. Right. Like the board, they weren't making multiple accusations, photographs of bruises and injuries, multiple witness accounts from people told about the incidents immediately afterwards, and accusers that they clearly found credible. And upon seeing all that, they unanimously decided to terminate one of the most high-profile and PR-savvy atheists in the country. That doesn't necessarily make them right, but it does make you wrong.

but it does make you wrong. Yeah. And I want to add that, like, in the lights of events like this and information that came up about Lawrence Krauss this year, I know a lot of you, especially women, feel less safe in the movement, feel less welcome in atheism as a result. And if we haven't been incredibly clear already,

you have a place in this movement, even if it's just right here with us you're here and in no you transition away from that news tonight fucking virtue signaling next next after last month's claim by an italian journalist that pope francis on your ovaries told him that hell isn't real, the Vatican released a pamphlet this week clarifying that they do, too, believe in a fallen angel goat demon who makes you unable to find a parking space and rape people. Okay.

Well, if that's the devil, I feel like he's a good guy. I mean, rapists can't find parking and they miss their appointments. We want that, right? I think it's a weird technique, but still, that's good. I feel like you're misunderstanding the order of operations here. I feel like Eli was implying that you'd get so frustrated by the inability to find a parking space that you would rape somebody, right? Oh, Eli speaks in the distributive property? Okay, got it.

This is why you got to give the president his own parking space anyway the apostolic exhortation titled no not even close something like that it's an italian it's not even the letters though no rejoice and be glad is what it translates to like i said it makes it clear that the devil is super real y'all saying quote we should not think of the devil as a myth a representation a symbol a figure of speech or an idea this mistake would lead us to let down our guard to grow careless and end up more vulnerable end quote because apparently the devil is like the Doctor Who weeping angels.

You got to keep an eye on him and he's harmless. You know what I'm saying? And just to be clear, this pamphlet, it's a 20,000 word opus with 125 cited sources. It has a bibliography. All for the purpose of refuting the journalist who caught the Pope like breaking character. Mickey Mouse smoking a cigarette behind the palace at Disney. So doctoral thesis just to say fake news like you might as well have a chapter about how Hillary is a serial killer. Right.

But that's not all. The Pope, with the nope, also added a shot at all who might deny Satan or being a big old fibber and tell everyone what he said at that super best friend sleepover saying, quote, even in the Catholic media, limits can be overstepped. Defamation and slander can become commonplace and all ethical standards and respect for the good name of others can be abandoned. It is striking that at times in claiming to uphold the other commandments they completely ignore the eighth which forbids bearing

false witness or lying and ruthlessly vilifying others end quote not adding your big tattletale gone yeah so for whatever it's worth the conservatives freaked out on him for implying hell was a fiction so he released a thing saying no the devil's totally real because there's no way you guys could be such assholes without the help of a goat demon so begrudging point for frankie i guess okay next up in headlines in misdemeanor cleo news a self-proclaimed psychic from center township pennsylvania was charged with a crime called illegal fortune telling last week apparently that's the thing that exists here in pennsylvania although it's unclear what legal fortune telling looks like or what the fuck that would even mean

um wait sorry never mind it's called religion yeah i guess the illegal part was lying for money while not being a church the fraud has to be sincerely held there you go in the year 2024 all lying without being a church is forbidden all right this has me worried because i live in pennsylvania and at some point i feel like bravado becomes illegal right like how certain do how certain do I have to be that Pittsburgh won't make it out of the first round before I've become a criminal? They're not going to fuck Pittsburgh. So, according to the police, Sophie M. Mills has a business called Psychic and Tarot Readings by Sophia, and she's guilty of fraud. tarot readings by Sophia and she's guilty of fraud. Unlike some other group of psychics who provide real prophecies.

It's really hard to tell. No, I get it because her name is Sophie for it. Sophia is bullshit. Well, regardless, the scam she's been running is absurd and I get the feeling it also might be like a long form improv act. Apparently she'd tell people to start

filling a jar with hundred dollar bills and also put an egg wrapped in a t-shirt in there too and then she'd break the egg and tell the people to run away because of evil spirits and they'd do that they'd run away and if they asked to get back their jar of cash she'd say there was too much evil energy still flying around to return it safely in other news local banks report a crazy influx of yokey money more at 11 yeah i'm not i'm not blaming the victim is what i'm not okay i am so the police decided to set up a sting and send an undercover state trooper to investigate to check if the fortune telling was real yeah right it's not at all clear what they're planning to verify but the female officer

posing as a client was told by the psychic that she was a pedophile rapist in a past life and needed to buy eight candles for a hundred dollars each to get square about being about the yeah which which sounds pretty bad not actually but if we're being fair whether or not this cop is in fact a reincarnated pedophile the psychic is being way more helpful than the church on the pedophile that's true and now that we've established that things more helpful than the church and things that aren't the church are the same list we'll take a quick break and hand things over to my lovely wife lucinda a man. This Week in Massage. So as I'm digging my way through a few of the recent international stories that I missed,

my first thought was, huh, I'm going to have kind of a good news segment this week. And my second thought was, oh, my God, this is what passes for good news when you do what I do. Because after doing this for three years, you do what I do. Because after doing this for three years, you have to start calling slightly less bad good or you'll go fucking insane. So let's start off in India where the government recently declared that there was no data to suggest that female genital mutilation was a problem in their country. And by itself, that would be great news, except that they were lying. See, just a few weeks after they made this claim, a small study indicated that something like 75% of women in the

Bora Muslim community have undergone this horrific practice. And no, that's not some rural community that you can only get to with a bridge carrier and a jetpack. They're spread out all over the country, and the study was conducted in the heart of Mumbai. Nationwide, a UNICEF study estimated that some 200 million women in India are victims of FGM. So where's the good news? Well, there isn't any, but there might be. See, this bullshit about there not being any data to suggest FGM happens was being presented as a reason for the nation's Supreme Court not to ban the practice. And there are high hopes that these data compiled by the

We Speak Out campaign, as well as a petition with over 100,000 signatories, will force them to rethink that excuse. And from there, yeah, that's all the good news you get in that one there. We're going to move over to Saudi Arabia, where we've been seeing a steady drip of women's rights over the last year. Women in the kingdom have recently won the right to drive, which is both a huge step and a potent reminder of how few steps they've actually taken. Well, and yet another reminder that if you give us ladies one right, we'll just come back for more. Women in Saudi Arabia are now tackling one of the most pernicious pieces of national misogyny. The rule that basically says women are owned by men. Riding a wave of social media activism, Saudi women are now taking to Twitter

in hopes of abolishing the system of the legal guardianship that gives men authority over their lives. And I'm mostly bringing this up because there's a lot of negative feelings about social media right now, and for good reasons. But it's worth tempering that with frequent reminders

of all the good shit social media does. Twitter has been instrumental in women's rights advocacy all over the world, and perhaps nowhere has it been as effective as it has been in Saudi Arabia. Here's hoping hashtag abolished guardianship can serve as yet another example of that in the future. So yeah, that's as close to good news as we tend to get here. Two things that might happen, both of which should have happened a century ago or so at least. And with that depressing admission, I'll hand things back over to Noah, Heath, and Eli. Thank you, Lucinda. And in I Feel Fine news tonight, Christian astrologer and End Times prophecy enthusiast David Mead is back in the news this week because, you guessed it, the rapture is coming.

This time on April 23rd. Wait. Well, on the one hand, the death of all you love and care for. But on the other hand, that's a whole chapter of Case for Christ. We don't have to read. I'd call it a push. Now, regular listeners to the show will remember mead for looking like the big boy mascot grew up to be a pedophile but they also remember him from predicting the end of the world last year

on september 23rd and then on october yeah right and then then on november 23rd was it the 23rd at which point we all should have realized he was actually a poorly timed viral marketing campaign for that Jim Carrey movie and stopped listening to him but apparently we didn't. And I think we can all agree that it would not at all be funny for somebody to sneak into David Meade's

house the night before, kidnap his child, and put a little pile of clothes on the floor. Not funny is what we're saying. I am not officially offering 10,000 Heath points if you do that. No, you're not. None of those things I said. Although I will say I'm pretty sure leaving some laundry behind a running lawnmower in his neighbor's yard that morning would be legal.

Well, I'm pretty sure both are legal. No, I don't think so. Nope. That's just my advice. My legal advice on this podcast. Do not take. That you should take. Take it.

Not a joke. Nope, I'm just going to throw in the note myself. Nope. Very serious. However, craziness aside, that didn't stop the Daily Express in the UK and Fox News from reporting on the story both years, last year and this year, which leads us to a much more terrifying conclusion we are running out of news people yeah right nothing i'll tell you what anytime you want a good laugh do a quick switch from cnn to msnbc to fox right it's like the president is actively

mouth raping a goat the president is actively mouth rapingping a goat. The president is actively mouth-raping a goat. What's the deal with this airline food? And in climbing the corporate Latter-day Saints news tonight, Mormonism continues to live up to its reputation as a progressive, diverse religion this week after the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles welcomed its first non-white members ever. Narrowly edged out by the U.S. Congress by a scant century and a half, this move is being hailed as a signal of the religion's growth into a diverse global faith by people who nonetheless expect me

to take them seriously afterwards. Hey, look, we made a door for them. Now they can get in. You're welcome, coloreds. We got waked. Awaked. It's weird, though. People keep ordering coffee and tea from them when they walk in the room yeah so okay they started this thing in 1835 114 people have served on it so far all of them crusty old white dudes but that's about to change

with an addition of off white because the guys in question are garrett gong a second generation chinese american immigrant and ulysses sora as a native brazilian and even that a partially chinese dude and a brazilian is an unprecedented amount of diversity yeah we had a binder full of coloreds. Binder. Right. Yeah. It's just like, sir, whisper, whisper, whisper. Sorry. Sorry. Correction. We have a folder full of coloreds.

Folder is the word. Two pocket. Two pocket. Of course, it goes without saying that no women have ever served on the Latter-day Saints' highest governing body or any of its governing bodies, really. And they still haven't let in anybody whose skin tone wouldn't match some shade of the Colgate whiteness scale. But when you're standing at the bottom, every step is a move up. So go LDS.

And finally, tonight, we have a very important story about how Satan almost lured the savior of humanity into joining the dark side when that savior was still a kid. That's right. The world almost had InfoWars taken away from us before it was even created. And we got to hear the whole epic story last week during a special emergency episode episode yeah of info wars whatever the fuck that means alex jones finished wet coughing ethnic slurs at a high school football referee and explained how he's been getting seduced into having sex with hundreds of beautiful wealthy head cheerleader prom queens since he was 13 years old and all of them tried to convert him to satanism oh of course yes you don't know them they're from hell it was the karate poses that

did it all the ladies like karate they do they do they do heath don't forget that at the next conference they do like karate poses not enough enough karate poses. Just write it down. It wasn't the 12 scotches. It was the not enough karate poses. It's a blend. So according to Alex Jones, well, almost quote, I'm going to paraphrase here, but seriously, almost quote, I was a freshman in high school and all these super hot senior girls would drive me out to their fuck mansions with helicopter pads on the roof and private jets parked out front. And their vaginas were made out of pure diamonds.

But like wet and slippery, whatever adjectives you think vaginas are. You ever fuck a bowl of river stones it was like that but for billionaires anyway i'd fuck them into a coma and then they'd wake up and they'd say wow you just gave me my first 20 vaginal orgasms amazing speaking of which lucifer is god please come to a secret lucifer meeting with me he's thinking of starting a podcast and almost quote okay that is ridiculous i mean why would they have a helicopter pad and a private why why wouldn't you no honestly here's how close that is to a quote the only significant thing you left out is the part where he bragged about how expensive the girls cars were yep and uh in a different quote he claimed to have sex with i

believe 150 women before he was 16 yep that's a claim he is also made anyway like a raped wilt chamberlain like wilt chamberlain was like i got raped by 10 000 women no you didn't but also are you okay that's a lot of questions a lot of questions we'll get back to it okay now uh alex jones also added exact quote they knew the satanic fuck minions they knew interdimensionally because believe me they weren't trying to get the average person to go do that. Everybody thought like, why are you dating the head cheerleader or the head senior? Not a thing. Not a thing. The head senior?

What the fuck are you talking about? Why are you dating the head cheerleader or the head senior when you're a freshman in high school? End exact quote. When asked why nobody in this high school remembers anything about this, Jones pointed out that it was always a few towns over at camp in Canada. Nope. Texas. Canada.

Texas. Look at my nipples. Shucks off. Buy these drugs. Well, you know what they say about men in their mid-40s that spend significant amounts of time desperately insisting they had a lot of sex with girls in high school they had a lot of sex with girls in high school obviously otherwise why would they wow mean heath you do not have to take that from him just for the record okay like joke's a joke but we do not attack each other here on this show i am sorry thank you for. For you. Thank you.

Kind of hurt. I'm just going to push past it. I'm going to push past it. You want to drink some more? Hold on. I'm going to have a little bit more to drink. I have only had eight drinks tonight. That's not true. Twelve drinks tonight. Shut up. And in case you're wondering

how this all fits into God's plan to defeat Satan, don't worry. Alex Jones does address that. Oh, good. Yeah. So, you know how globalism, Bohemian Grove, Christian internment camps, Jade Helm 15, eugenics and nuclear war are all connected? Mm-hmm. Okay.

Well, I guess he was really asking because that was the end of the segment. Yes! He's finished. And now that we can rest assured that Alex Jones has indeed been bare naked with a lady, I suppose we can close the headlines for the night. Heath, Eli, thanks as always. I had lots of sex with girls in high school. And when we come back, Chris Matheson will be here to make us seem less masochistic by comparison.

Why did I let you drag me here, dude? Come on, Noah. This is Lemieux. I still don't understand why I have to wear this little hat. Okay, it's a dining bonnet, and you're lucky I had a spare. If you come in without one, they shoot you for trespassing. Good evening, gentlemen. Welcome to Lemieux. Fragrance?

Yes, please. What? Oh, God, what is that? Today's fragrance, sir. Smoke and ham hock. Oh, that was terrible. Okay. Okay, perhaps the gentleman would prefer butter and horns.

Oh, God, that's worse somehow. Look, I just want some fresh home-cooked food, and Eli says that if I can't... Ah, okay, okay. Then perhaps the gentleman would like to try a blue apron. What's Blue Apron? Blue Apron is the number one fresh ingredient and recipe delivery service in

the country. They deliver fresh pre-portioned ingredients and step-by-step recipes right to your door. They can be cooked in under 45 minutes. The menu changes every week based on what's in season and is designed by Blue Apron's

in-house culinary team. Wow, that sounds amazing. And what do you guys have? Oh, well, we have a coconut-infused rake that we will slap you with. Oh, my God. The rake is back in season. Yes, sir, it is.

Oh, my gosh. I'm getting the rake. I'm totally getting the rake choice. I don't want the rake is back in season Yes sir, it is Oh my gosh, I'm getting the rake I'm totally getting the rake choice I don't want the rake Okay, well for six weeks From April 16th through May 21st Blue Apron is teaming up with Airbnb To bring you the best home cooking

From around the world Each week our menu will feature A recipe delivered in collaboration with an Airbnb Experiences host like Cece, a chef from Shanghai who makes incredible Kung Pao chicken, a beloved, sticky, saucy mix of crispy brown chicken and vegetables.

Yeah, it's really amazing. Wait, Eli, you can eat Blue Apron? Oh, yeah. Blue Apron offers 12 new recipes each week, and customers amazing. Wait, Eli, you can eat Blue Apron? Oh, yeah. Blue Apron offers 12 new recipes each week, and customers can pick two, three, or four recipes based on what best fits their schedule. Oh, awesome. How do I sign up?

Well, you can check out this week's menu and get your first three meals free at blueapron.com slash scathing. Blue Apron, a better way to cook. All right. Are you gentlemen ready for the vapor course? Yes. No.

Vapor. Spray it right in your face. In a lot of ways, the seeds of my atheism were first laid by Douglas Adams when he asked, just who is this God person anyway? Because let's be honest, that's the only thing you have to ask before the whole precept starts to fall apart. But that didn't stop my guest this week from making a good faith effort to answer that question. Chris Matheson is a novelist and a screenwriter best known as the co-writer of the 1989 masterpiece Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, and perhaps just as well known in atheist circles as the author of The Story of God,

a biblical comedy about love and hate, in which he reexamines the biblical narrative through the eyes of that psychotic, misogynistic homophobe at its heart. In the upcoming sequel, The Trouble with God, a divine comedy about judgment and misjudgment, he broadens his scope and draws not only from the Bible, but also from the Koran, the Book of Mormon, Dianetics, and a wide swath of philosophical writings about God as well. Chris, welcome back to The Scathing Atheist. Hello. It's good to be back. It's great to have you back, man. Now, I didn't emphasize this enough in the intro, so let me just say the new book, one of the perks of my job is I get these things before they're available to other people sometimes, and it's

fucking hilarious. It was laugh loud uh funny from start to finish so congratulations another great job there thank you man that's great to hear all right so i gotta ask you you went through the entire bible for the first one you you weaved a narrative through all of that and then after you were done with that you went back for more is it like a 50 shades of god thing or did you feel like that you had left something unsaid in the first book? It seems kind of masochistic, doesn't it? That it does. I finished up and I thought in some strange way, I just love this character. I just love him.

He's so strange. He's so warped. He's so kind of pathetic and bombastic. And I just thought he was a tremendous comedy character. And I thought, I'd like to keep going with this guy. I wonder if there's a way I could do that. And then the obvious answer occurred to me, which is, well, of course I can, because there's more books where the exact same character shows up.

there's more books where the exact same character shows up. And I'm going to dig into those and see whether he's as funny in those books as he is in the Bible. And I thought he was, and in some ways, in context, maybe even more so, because as it goes along, as his big plans continue to really not work, his behavior gets more and more irrational and strange and self-destructive even. So yeah, so I thought I'm just gonna, I'm gonna just keep following this guy all the way. I even followed him into a rather obscure book called The Book of Urantia. I don't know if you've ever read it or heard of it.

I've heard of it. I've, I've, I've, what is it like 9,000 pages long or something? It is about 9,000. It's about, yeah,

it's really, really long. It's really dull. It's, it's very, very bad. It's ostensibly the Bible written by very superior space aliens. And,

uh, but there's God and there's Jesus and they show up again. And I loved it. It's horrible. It's a horrible book, but I thought it was great. I'll follow this guy wherever he goes. He's just a tremendously riveting character from my standpoint. All right. So is there a process for you? How do you get in God's head there? How do you get in God's head? I? How do you get in God's head? I go through the books and I look for things that strike me as ridiculous. That's what I do first.

That's the comedy writer part of me, right? I go through and I just kind of mark everything that seems really stupid, really wrong, really overblown, and kind of laughable. And then after I've done that, I try to pull back and find a way that I can stitch it together. Like, okay, if all of these things are true, right? Because we're being told that all of these things are true. And not just true like small, little t true, but capital T true, like they're really, really true. So if all these things are true, who does this guy have to be in order for all of these ridiculous things to be true? So then that's kind of the second stage is trying to create a narrative for this guy that makes any sense at all. And that's the challenging part, is trying to find a way of looking at it that makes sense.

But usually what I just fall back to is he's really self-hating. This is a very, very self-hating character who doesn't want things to succeed. And that's why things don't succeed. I think that's the only way to get it. And I don't want to spoil any of the surprises in the book, but the ways in which you manage to make the narrative, because like the Bible is contradictory enough just by itself. But then you start throwing in like the Quran,

where it directly denies the divinity of Jesus, which is the whole point of the last one. And then you move on to the Book of Mormon where, once again, Jesus is divine. Like some of the decisions that you made were insanely clever. Because as soon as I saw what you were doing, I see the glossary up front. I see which books you're trying to weave together. And those questions start occurring to me, especially because included among them was Dianetics.

So how did that one get tacked? Because I see the other ones all sort of the Abrahamic faiths in a row there, but how did you decide on Dianetics as well? Well, I wanted to do something contemporary. And that's why I went to Urantia first. And I spent a good chunk of time on reading that 9,000-page book and making notes on it and doing the exact same thing. I have chapters about Urantia. And then I reached a point and I thought, nobody knows the book of Urantia. It's just too obscure. It's way, way too esoteric. And I want to have him, I want to connect the dots with this guy as close to the present day as possible. So I thought, well, what's the most important religious movement of the 20th century? And I think, I mean, I think Scientology would be a candidate. I don't know if that would

be the one, but I think it would be a candidate. And then, so I started reading Dianetics and I loved it. I loved it. I loved it. It's again, it's insane. And God would love Elrond Hubbard. And God would love L. Ron Hubbard. They're such kindred spirits, you know, that I thought, okay, well, he's not specifically a character in this book. But this book would explain from God's standpoint, why are humans so fucking impossible? Why does it never work? Why does his big plan never work? And, you know And L. Ron Hubbard comes up with the big answer. So he digs it until he doesn't. And I have God getting kind of excited for a while, thinking that he's a clear, like he really loves the idea that he's clear.

But then he realizes before too long, of course, that he's not a clear, he's the least clear then he realizes before too long of course that he's not a clear he's the least clear um being imaginable and then he gets really mad and hates he always you know kind of ends up hating in my version of things he kind of always ends up turning on everything he's done and and disliking it yeah i mean that's sort of the biblical version of him as well i think that's a fair characterization yeah well and the thing is too another challenge that I can imagine hits you, not just with Dianetics, but with the Quran as well, is that, you know, these are books that lack narrative. You know, the Quran has a bit of narrative, but it's mostly just Muhammad going, did I ever tell you about that time? Did I ever tell you about Moses? You know, it's just over and over again. So can you speak to sort of some

of the challenges of finding a narrative thread, even in the books that are supposed to have one? Well, you know, the Book of Mormon does have, the Book of Mormon is an alternate narrative. I mean, it's all, it's a whole other story. It's a very boring narrative. It's not a good, well-told story, but it is a big narrative. It's not a good, well-told story, but it is a big narrative. The Quran, as you say, is not a narrative. The Quran is just kind of a big scold for like 300 pages. You better believe or you're going to get punished. You better believe, you better submit or you're going to pay.

I mean, that's kind of the gist of it. However, there are a couple of things. He is, God takes the, I mean, it does seem of the gist of it. However, there are a couple of things. He is, God takes the, I mean, it does seem to me that the big move is like, yeah, Jesus was not his son. That's kind of the big move. Although Jesus has the previous wrong versions of all the Old Testament stories. Well, all the stories. He corrects what happened at the beginning. He corrects what happened with Adam and Eve and with Moses and with Abraham. And it's really ballsy. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. That's not what happened. Let me tell you what really happened. And his versions, Muhammad's versions of things, or I guess we're supposed to take it as like

God's actual truth-telling to Muhammad. For whatever reason, he didn't tell the Jews the truth, but he does tell Muhammad the truth. And the versions of the stories are just ridiculous, and they're just ludicrous, and they're great. So there's some little mini-narratives in terms of the correction. And then the big move he does make is heaven, paradise. That's really different. That's a different kind of version of the narrative. That's a different kind of version of the narrative. He takes what we know about heaven from the New Testament, because we don't know anything about heaven from the Old Testament.

It's not even mentioned. But he takes what we learn about heaven in the New Testament, which is that it's just kind of New Jerusalem, and all you do is you pray. That's all you do. You pray. It sounds like hell, actually. And he takes it, and he says no no

that's not what it is you lounge around on couches wearing a lot of jewelry and drinking non-alcoholic wine and the biggest move of all having as much sex as you want that's that that ends up being his his big move so that's kind of a narrative thing too. But yes, there's an awful lot of scolding. Yeah. And now would you say of the five books here, so Old Testament, New Testament, Quran, Book of Mormon, Dianetics, which would you say was the worst read? Well, okay, let's see. Going from best to worst. I think it's fair to say that they get worse and worse. I think that's right. I think the Old Testament actually has some beautiful things in it, like Ecclesiastes and there's some really, there's some kind of beautiful, and Job, which is crazy, but kind of

great. And the New Testament does have some kind of beautiful things. And then the Quran is worse because it's really strident and it's really angry. And there's not a variety of writers. It's just him. You just get one voice. And he's not a very interesting writer. And then the Book of Mormon is atrocious. And then the Book of Mormon is atrocious. It's absolutely awful. It's jaw-droppingly awful. And then Dianetics is, you know what?

Okay, Book of Mormon's the worst. That's a long way. Book of Mormon's the worst. Book of Mormon is worse than Dianetics because L. Ron Hubbard can write a little bit. I mean, not much, but he can write a little bit. Right, but at the very least, you don't have to suffer through things like, and with the death, did they die to death that Joseph Smith makes you go through?

I swear, I've never wished I was illiterate before, but about midway through them vines being grafted and replanted in the Book of Mormon, if I was cursing Sesame Street for teaching me those ABCs to begin with. Yeah, he's awful. He's absolutely awful. I've had Mormons say to me in the past, like, well, what are you suggesting? That Joseph Smith just made it up himself? I'm like, yeah, obviously. It's horrible.

Well, and as he went along, I mean, he wasn't even working off an outline or anything. Yeah. No, he's just making it up. And so he just circles around and he just ends. It's a really like as a piece of writing, it's a horribly structured story. There's no good character work. Every time he runs out of gas, he just runs back to the Bible and just kind of cribs off it directly for a while. Now, the Book of Mormon is absolutely, absolutely awful. But I will say, weirdly, there is a very strange psychodrama kind of at the center of the Book of Mormon

where the Antichrist shows up and he really has his say. I mean, he really more or less denounces the entire thing. Right at the center, near the center of the book, this character named Korihor shows up. And he really just lays into everything. And for page after page after page. And it's really kind of fascinating that Joseph Smith allows that to happen. I can't quite understand it, but it's great. And of course, he gets punished and

destroyed, but he has his say for about three, four or five pages, I think. Yeah, you really drew a circle around that in the book. And as I'm reading that, in the Quran, you get apologetics and I put air quotes around those, like, oh yeah, well, if it's not for Muhammad, then how does that rain get up there in the sky? And who put the mountains there to stop the earthquakes and stuff like that? But there is that one point where he presents all of these pretty solid arguments against not just Mormonism, but God and Christ's belief in the first place. And then the comeback to that is, oh, can you prove there's no Jesus? And you just kind of wonder how the hell did that not get

excised from the book? I know. In all of these books, there are those moments, though, where you think, what the hell is this doing in here? And those are beautiful moments. Those are just, from an atheist standpoint, oh my God, those moments are just so delightful because they undermine their own book. Like one of my favorite ones, I just think it's magnificent. At the very end of Jeremiah in the Old Testament, and Jeremiah's just been going off, man. He's been going off for, you know, a hundred pages straight, just like they're going to pay, they're going to pay because Jerusalem's going to fall. And they're going to, the Babylon, they're going to pay. Nebuchadnezzar's going to, it's, it's brutal. I'm going to do it because, because, and God's just making threats, just

crazy bombastic threats. I'm going to, I'm going to punish everybody. It's going to happen. It's just about to happen. It's just about to happen. And then the final chapter of Jeremiah is like a police report. It's like a police, it's like, It's like none of this happened. Jeremiah was killed. Jerusalem fell. It's just like, what the hell is that doing in there? Oh my God. It's fantastic. As my co-host Eli is fond of saying, it's your book, right? You can put in there whatever. You don't have to put this part in. Yeah, exactly. What on earth did you leave this in your book for? You know, like maybe Christ was psychotic when date trees wouldn't, you know, bend to his will, but we don't have to hear about that.

That crazy little thing, which makes no sense. Like, okay, he really is kind of a strange, strange cat, isn't he? Like that doesn't make sense, master. Those trees are out of season. Why are you cursing them? Well, and one of the things too that I love is that so much of that is brought out in the book. I just imagine, you know, I can't imagine this book's going to be super popular with evangelical Christians. You don't think so? Well, you know, I don't want to, it's not out yet. I don't want to, you know, pre-condemn them here. They're pretty open-minded.

They are. Yes. Famous for it. Yeah. Yeah. But I can just imagine, like, the evangelicals, because I went to high school in South Georgia, surrounded by Southern Baptists. And I can just imagine some of the imagery in the book and them going, well, that's not in the Bible, is it? Yeah.

You know, the eyeball monsters of Revelation, the talking donkey, et cetera. Yeah, it's all in there. It's their book. That's the thing. One of the things that I think is they're really going to have a very heavy burden. They have a heavy burden already, but I think the burden is going to get heavier in years to come because they have to defend these books of theirs. And if you study these books at all, they're they have to defend these books of theirs. And if you study these books at all, they're very hard to defend. Yeah, I've always felt like, you know, as atheists, just, you know, just on a purely logical perspective, we could probably win this argument, even if their books were really, really good.

Yeah. You know, even if they really were filled with morals like they say they are. But boy, do they make it easy on us. Even if they really were filled with morals like they say they are, but boy, do they make it easy on us. Yeah, they do because the books are stupid and they're ugly. And they're always like really, really pompous and gassy and overblown because they're trying to cloak themselves and make themselves seem really important. But they're not. And their observations are usually banal and obvious there's never any real deep wisdom to them because it turns out there isn't any real deep wisdom to impart

it's all just kind of like obvious how humans are supposed to live it's like people figured it out a long time ago so they're just inherently really pretentious and fake yeah well like how many times does uh muham Muhammad stop to challenge you to find any one sentence in any book that's better than what he's written? Yeah, no, I would say one of the joys of the Quran, and the Quran is not a fun read for the most part, but from an atheist standpoint, he's trying really hard to hide himself. He's trying really hard to hide himself. He's trying really hard to make it feel really lofty and really grand and make it seem like he has nothing to do with it. But if you read it carefully, it's just so obvious how self-serving it is, how much it's just all about him. It's all about serving his interests.

He tries to hide it, but his fingerprints are all over it. Well, sometimes he tries to. Another one that you draw a circle around in the book is like the part where suddenly God starts dictating like proper dinner manners when you're over at the prophet's house and whatnot. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's great. There's times when you don't even have to read it that close to find those things. All right. that close to find those things. So, all right. So sort of as a larger question, is the point of this just a point and laugh at how silly these books are, or is there a larger message to this

project? Well, in the short term, yeah, I think that they have earned mockery, these people. They deserve it. They warrant it. And it's something I feel I can do, and I'm going to do it. In a larger sense, don't we all on our side believe that their books, that these belief systems are not good for the world? I mean, isn't that what we believe? Isn't that kind of the point of our position? We don't think these things are positives, net positives for the world. We think they're dangerous. We think they're destructive. We think that they reduce possibility or shrink possibilities. And I think my sense of a better future for my children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, would be that these things start to shrink back, that their power, their overwhelming power

over human beings is lessened. And if I can play some small role in that by making people laugh at it, because laughter has a certain kind of power to it. Then I want to do that. That's well said, man. I've said for a long time, the, the cure for reverence is irreverence, right? And I know that the things that really did, like I said in the, in the intro, the things that really did start to sit, play at the seeds of atheism for me were the comedy. You know, it was, uh, it was Monty Python and it was Douglas Adams and it was George Carlin telling me it's okay to, to,

to laugh at this. Yeah. I think in a way, if you engage them on their own terms and you have like an intellectual argument with them, they, they can always find some hand wavy way of defending their position. But if you just kind of laugh at it,

well, I think it's pretty powerful medicine for our side. Amen to that, man. All right, so you've been super generous with your time today. I've just got one last question for you, and it requires a little bit of setup, so apologies for that. We've got a segment on the show where we're working our way through Lee Strobel's book, case for christ we couldn't stomach dianetics we when we got done

with book of mormon we changed something totally different so um but in that book strobel argues that the bible has to be true because some of the characters in it are verifiable historical figures so my question is did bill and ted really happen or is Lee Strobel full of shit? No, you know, Lee Strobel is completely correct. Bill and Ted actually exist. It's more or less a documentary. And yeah, damn it. Awesome. You know, it's just a it's a very brilliant argument and irrefutable, I think.

So there you go. Awesome. We lose. Sorry. That's the question I was hoping for. All right. Well, once again, I can't recommend Chris's new book enough. It's called The Trouble with God, a divine comedy about judgment and misjudgment. It's out on May 15th. You'll find a link on the show notes to pre-order your copy now. And by the way, you should do that. Chris, thanks again for joining me today. My pleasure. Thanks, man.

for joining me today. My pleasure. Thanks, man. And now for your listening pleasure, an excerpt from Chris Matheson's upcoming novel, The Trouble with God. Around 500 BC, a man named Sherem had showed up in North America and started to say truly appalling things. You are worshiping a man who won't even live for nearly 500 years, he had said, referring to Jesus. Or that is, a man who you claim will live in 500 years because the truth is you can't possibly know that. Show me some proof, Sherem had demanded of the Nephites and God had whispered angrily to himself,

Oh, I'll show you some proof all right, Sherem. Not long afterwards, Sherem had toppled to the ground and been unable to get up. He'd been kept alive by a sort of ancient feeding tube for a few days, and in that time he had renounced everything wicked he'd said and divulged that he'd been tricked by Satan. Knew it, God had thought. Then Sherem had died. Now that's how you deal with doubters god had crowed to his angels afterwards make him fall down keep him alive through force feeding for a few days have them denounce themselves then kill him gorgeous one thing that had frankly confused god about the story of sherem had been the ending however as jacob was wrapping up the chapter he

had closed with the word adieu which had made no sense obviously because this is the year 500 bc in north america so why the hell is jacob speaking french sometimes things happen in my books which make them seem laughably fraudulent god had noted at the time and that's strange because they are not laughably fraud, obviously they're absolutely true, but still, a do? Sherem's demise, sadly, hadn't put an end to doubt. Around 100 BC, a man named Nehor had showed up and started saying even worse things than Sherem had. Don't be scared, Nehor had told people. Lift up your heads and rejoice.

God created and will redeem all men. In the end, we will all live forever. Bullshit, God had instantly shouted. That is complete bullshit. Yes, I created all men, and yes, they will all live forever. But guess what, knee-whore? Most of them are going to live forever in hell. I don't want humans lifting their heads. I want them to keep their heads down.

And I definitely want them to stop rejoicing, because I hate rejoicing almost as much as I hate singing and dancing. Give Nehor a super humiliating death. God had yelled down and his people had done exactly that, impaling Nehor, then letting horses stomp on him and dogs eat him and poop him out. So that had been satisfying. So, that had been satisfying. Before we get to leaving on a jet plane this week, I wanted to congratulate friends of the show, Tom of the Cognitive Dissonance Podcast and his soon-to-be wife, Haley,

on their upcoming nuptials this weekend. The whole team is flying out to Chicago to share in their special day. And just for Tom, I promised to make sure Eli has clothes on and not the wrestling outfit. Congratulations, guys. Anyway, that's all the

blasphemy we've got for you tonight, but 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 Godolphin movies debuting at 7 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday and an even newer episode of our half-sister show Citation Needed debuting at noon Eastern on Wednesday.

Obviously, I'd be no more able to look myself in a mirror than Dracula if I neglected to thank Heath Enright for never failing to succeed. I need to thank the lovely and talented Lucinda Lusions for never backing down or fronting up. I need to thank the lovely in his own way, Eli Bosnick for never

failing to overcome, though there's plenty of things I don't want to thank him for overcoming on. I also want to thank Crazy Zach from the Crazy Zach YouTube channel for providing this week's Farnsworth quote, as well as a very heartfelt email along with it. Thanks for both of them. Obviously, we'll include a link to his channel in the show notes. Otherwise, you'd have to remember how to spell it. Also, one more thanks to Chris Matheson. I have a lot of authors on this show, but I use the term fucking hilarious selectively, and his new book is fucking hilarious. Again, check the show notes for links to pre-order your copy. But most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's most formidable fornicators,

Dippin' Dot, Jack, Alistair, Jonathan, Heath is more than just puns, damn it, Gabriella, Donna, Paul, Michael, Christopher, and Aaron. Dippin' Dot, Jack, Alistair, and Jonathan, whose cocks were doing deep field way before Hubble made it cool. Heath is more than just puns, damn it. Gabriella and Donna, whose IQs are so high, John Boehner wants to legalize them now. And Paul, Michael, Christopher, and Aaron, who are perfectly endowed to star in a gender-reversal NC-17 version of Rapunzel.

Together, these ten tenacious tenants of tendention tented us with tensility and tended our tenure of turning up the tension on the tendrils of tenuous tenets towards tenability this week by giving us money. Not everybody has the money to give us money, but if you've got money,

we'll take it. 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 scathingatheist.com. 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 skatingadius.com. Breathe through my teeth because my fucking heart is broken, everybody. That's why I breathe through my fucking teeth. You all want to buy me a new heart. Assholes. The preceding podcast was a production of Puzzle & Thunderstorm LLC. Copyright 2018. All rights reserved.