The Scathing Atheist - 275: Cold Comfort Edition

Episode Date: May 24, 2018

In this week’s episode, we learn that the cure for mass shootings could be mass, we learn when the Bible says it's okay to use the N-word ... It's whenever, and America will seem cold and scary again. To see Citation Needed live in Chicago, click here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/citation-needed-live-in-chicago-tickets-45942658729 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: You can find the “The Bible Says What?” podcast here: https://thebiblesayswhat.podbean.com/ Headlines: TX school shooter's atheism probably not relevant: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2018/05/19/santa-fe-school-shooter-may-have-been-an-atheist-but-thats-not-why-he-killed/ Josh Feuerstein talks about school shootings and the Bible: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2018/05/19/joshua-feuerstein-in-gun-tirade-the-second-amendments-actually-in-the-bible/ TX Lt. Governor says video games, abortions, and "too many doors" are the problem: https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/19/us/texas-school-shooting-exits-trnd/index.html https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/guns-part-nation-texas-official-shooting-victims-dad/story?id=55300369 Saudi Arabia lets women drive but arrests them if they talk about gender politics: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2018/05/20/saudi-arabia-ends-ban-on-women-drivers-but-continues-arresting-female-activists/ Unconstitutional bill fails in Louisiana: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2018/05/20/louisiana-officials-approve-watered-down-version-of-permission-slip-prayer-bill/ The Mormon Church Will Cut All Ties with the Boy Scouts of America by 2019 (lead-ish) http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2018/05/09/the-mormon-church-will-cut-all-ties-with-the-boy-scouts-of-america-by-2019/ And Todd Starnes: Since the Boy Scouts Have No Values, They’ll Welcome Atheists Soon http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2018/05/11/todd-starnes-since-the-boy-scouts-have-no-values-theyll-welcome-atheists-soon/ Landmark ruling finds Archbishop of Adelaide guilty of covering up child sex abuse: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-22/adelaide-archbishop-philip-wilson-guilty-concealing-child-abuse/9783612 and http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-22/philip-wilson-landmark-case-likely-to-encourage-others/9786672 Tony Perkins says being trans is like saying you're a bird and flying off a building: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2018/05/17/tony-perkins-being-trans-is-like-saying-youre-a-bird-and-flying-off-a-building/ GOP candidate for Dallas County commissioner is giant religious bigot: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2018/05/19/republican-running-for-office-in-tx-rewards-kids-for-marrying-white-christians/

Warning, we were going to do a profanity-free episode this week, but then we were like, ah, fuck it. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Toys for Tots and Prayers, the newest charity outreach for the mass shooting generation. Toys for Tots and Prayers. We just added an empty box next to the one filled with toys. And now, The Scathing Atheist. Hello, this is Mike Wiseman from the Bible Says What

the podcast, and I assure you that not only does every pastor I talk to worship a documented child killer, but we did in fact evolve from filthy monkey men. It's Thursday. It's May 24th. And I hereby demand a president who doesn't tweet, I hereby demand. Amen, sir.

I'm Noah Lusions. I'm Eli Bosnick. I'm Heath Enright. New York, New York. Secret Lair, Pennsylvania. This is Scathing Atheist. On this week's episode, could the cure for mass shootings be mass? We learn when the Bible says it's okay to use the N-word.

It's whenever, apparently. And Ray Comfort will RSVP the invitation to fuck himself. First, the diatribe. A lot of people assume, given my job, that I really enjoy getting into religious arguments, but in truth, I leave most of that on the audio file. In my normal life, I tend to avoid them, and it's not because I don't think they're useful, and it's not that I don't think I'm good at them, but for the same reason that professional masseuses don't want to give their girlfriends massages after work I don't want to deal with a bunch of religious argumentation on my downtime I mean for fuck's sake I'm reading the case for Christ that's more religious bullshit than any atheist

should have to endure but despite my proclivities at any given time i'm usually in at least say 18 ongoing religious arguments now they might not be happening in the moment but as it happens a lot of religious arguments just never end apparently and if you're the family atheist you probably know exactly what i'm talking about you just got certain relatives or certain acquaintances that seem to be in those long distance chess types of arguments haven't seen them six months, but as soon as fate or national holidays put you together again, they pick up on some ongoing debate thread you've long since forgotten about

and posit their latest, greatest apologetic. And as annoying as those arguments are, I feel like in a lot of ways, those are the most useful ones, right? I mean, if Uncle Bob sees me for the first time in six months and his first thought is, okay, but this time I'm going to ask him why there are still monkeys. That means that whatever the last answer was left an impression, right? I mean, I can't recall what lazy ass apologetic Bob hit me up with last

time, but he sure remembers it. And at some point in the last six months, he's received more YouTube wisdom and he's been dying to unleash it next time he sees me. And this says to me that my last answer really got under his skin. And the more times I smack down his silly little rationalizations, the more likely he is to start thinking that maybe it's more than me just being a silver-tongued devil and consider the possibility that he's actually wrong. So whether or not I enjoy these debates, I feel duty-bound to participate in them. So when I called my wife the other day and I heard her sister's husband go, ooh, ooh, is that Noah on the phone? Can I talk to him?

I already knew what was coming. And rather than spend those precious few minutes a day talking to the woman I love, I steeled myself instead for explaining to a sentient whoopee cushion why eyes don't refute evolution by natural selection. Which is all a really long way of saying, so I was talking to my brother-in-law the other day as filtered through my continued incredulity that I would do something as masochistic as talk to my brother-in-law the other day as filtered through my continued incredulity that i would do something as masochistic as talk to my brother-in-law the other day i mean i know you guys don't know the dude so i don't need to explain it to you but you know from the inside i still feel the need to explain it now of course he's not going to bring anything new to me i already know whatever apologetic he's about to unveil is something we've talked about a dozen times on the show so I'm not expecting to get any good diatribe material from the conversation.

But when he asks this question, it contains a telling little addendum. And it's one I've heard before, one worth discussing. Maybe let's see if you hear the same thing I do. I'm going to do my best to quote it and I'm going to do the accent and everything. But I don't think I can sound overweight enough. So you'll just have to imagine the sounds of Darth Vader having an asthmatic orgasm between my words. He says after the pleasantries and stuff, he says,

so if God's existence was proven, would you go to church? Like if God came down and appeared to you personally. Now, the question is stupid and boring, and I'm not going to spend any time on it, except to say that if you could prove the existence of the Christian God, the last thing I'd want to do is worship that genocidal misogynist. But the key insight in the question comes at the end, because in the first half of the question, he's talking about proof. But then in the second half, he's talking about a personal experience. Whether he knows it or not, conflating the two tells me all i need to know here because look if god was proven

to exist i'd do set of things x right but if god appeared to me and said hey i'm christian god turns out jesus is the right one go to church i'd be a long ways from having proven the existence of god but look when i was 17 years old i saw a dead dog leap off the side of the road onto the hood of a car that was traveling at 60 miles an hour before saying, have a Coke and a soul. Now, one might say I proved the existence of English-speaking zombie dogs, or you could ask me how many mushrooms I'd eaten that night. So if God appeared to me in the flesh and performed some miracles, I'd think to myself, well, hallucinations definitely exist, as do waking dreams, as do mental illnesses. Also, Eli's a magician, and he'd go to insane lengths to pull

off a prank especially if the end result is me having a damn profitable conversion to christianity so before i attributed this apparition to the almighty i'd have to rule out a lot of more likely explanations and even if i ruled out all the ones i could think of i'd still have to accept that there could be explanations that i hadn't thought of any number of which may rely on fewer new assumptions than almighty god of the universe wanted to clarify some shit with me in particular. And since we're talking about a singular event, it's not like I could go back and test shit or anything. So at best, I'd have a single unconvincing data point to counteract all the existing there is no God stuff. Of course, when you and I hear that first part of the question, the what if God was

proven to exist part, we're not thinking of my personal experience alone in my house or anything. We're thinking of God appearing at the UN in front of a bunch of cameras and leaving behind some substance that had not yet been identified by science. Or maybe we could go the other way and consider an increasingly convincing set of data suggesting that prayer works, but only if it's to the Christian God, coupled with evidence of divine influence, coupled with historical data that explains why the Bible is so factually wrong, coupled with theoretical constructs that would allow God to even make sense logically. In other words, we think of the same kind of shit we think of any time you talk about anything else being proven.

Now, of course, not knowing how proof works is all but a prerequisite for Christianity. When most religious people talk about their come-to- jesus moment they tell you about purely internal stuff they talk about a a feeling that in their words couldn't be explained any other way they offer up types of evidence that would be suicidal if you used them to argue that your contraption really could fly and yet armed with nothing but that they just keep leaping off the cliff. They're talking about you, Jesus. We interrupt this broadcast and bring you a special news bulletin. Joining me for headlines tonight are the Laurel and Yanny of atheism, Heath Enright and Eli Bosnick.

Fellas, are you ready to disambiguate? Yeah, okay, so there's still such thing as correct and incorrect. There are. Those didn't stop existing. For example, it's Laurel. That's correct. I don. Those didn't stop existing. For example, it's Laurel. That's correct. There you go.

I don't even know what you mean. Laurel's not even a word. It's like, hey, there's my cousin. There's my cousin. Opposite recorded the word Laurel. All right. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. So we have to bring it up again because people started saying, oh, no, ambient sound was added to the file when they recorded it on their computer speakers.

And I'm like, yeah, but the sound, the ambient fucking sound wasn't a dude saying yanny there actually was a dude so fuck off anyway all right you're insulting the greatest saxophone player of all time but it's fine if you want to use a made-up word like laurel that's just one guy's name in our lead story tonight guns don't kill people. God kills. That's right.

And apparently God's plan to murder American children started falling behind pace recently for the 2018 quota. But don't worry. He managed to get his grand plan back on track last week. another school shooting this time at santa fe high school in texas where 10 people were killed and another 13 were wounded by a student armed with guns and explosives and just for the record that's four school shootings this month jesus and on pace means about two dead kids a week this year not including injured kids. That being said, when we finally get the reveal on all these mysterious ways,

it is going to be amazing. I mean, it has to be. It's got to, it has to be. Ah, God, the only person with worse mysteries than the writer of Lost. Well, now to be fair, all but two of the seasons of Lost

were better than a school shooting. So the shooter is a 17-year-old shooting so the uh shooter is a 17 year old student at the school and is now in police custody and of course the immediate response involved looking up details about this person including his facebook profile where he listed himself as an atheist well that explains it oh trouble we all did it. Well, I mean, I didn't see any media sources listing the other stuff he doesn't believe in. So I guess he believes in everything else. So that's good to know. So first of all, religious people, you're welcome.

We helped with God's plan. But more importantly, stop believing in God's plan. What the fuck is wrong with you? Right. Clearly, it's a shitty plan god's like that friend who starts his hear me out with a felony and then keeps talking he's like we steal my dad's motorcycle and then murder 10 children hear me out no no so uh normally when the atheism tag gets associated with something terrible we get to hear about a month of sermons from people with established ass-based nicknames on our show

but in a refreshing twist we actually haven't seen much of that at least not yet maybe they're having a big rollout meeting i don't know either way there were a few notable exceptions with immediate asshole christian responses and naturally one of them was ray comfort yep who released a movie about how only jesus can prevent school shootings the day after the shooting and uh we're going to talk about all that a little bit later but uh we also got a response from texas lieutenant governor dan pat, as well as fat guy in a red hat, Josh Forstein, who is now a cartoon fat. Isn't he? He's insane.

Look, every pound I lose with Beachbody and now Kinetic Coach, Josh Forstein gains. I'm convinced, or at least, like, that's what the old fortune teller told me. It seems. Well, then you have bulimia, sir. Right. Or a tapeworm. with bulimia yeah yes so uh fat guy in a red hat got so much fatter since his last video that his red hat i'm pretty sure it actually died of internal hemorrhaging and he had to replace it with a gray hat so uh

forstein put up a video about how the second amendment is actually in in the bible he says that and he thinks that means that the bible is good not that the second it's very confusing and he's also literally holding a giant assault rifle and announcing that he brings it with him onto school grounds every day when he drops his kids off in the morning which is illegal in his home state of arizona and most other states i'm most though just most i hope all but i'm assuming it's most i guarantee you fucking like alaska everybody brings yeah you gotta check it or something it's there yeah but uh somebody definitely told him about that law in arizona at which point he deleted the video because you know that's how you permanently destroy evidence on the internet right right josh just

hits control z on his computer all better all better and by the way we should know this is not the first time he's called for felonies on facebook far from i mean he also called on his viewers to fight gay rights with guns, defend the police from atheists with guns, and kill abortion providers. But by all means, Facebook, keep knocking down those women who say men are pigs.

We got community standards and stuff to keep up. Yeah. Okay, so moving on to Dan Patrick. In case anyone's not familiar, he's a former sports radio host and a restaurant chain owner who went bankrupt. Good start. Which means he's

perfectly qualified for his current position as a religious right political commentator and a GOP politician. And his response the day after 10 people were killed with guns was that the problem is video games, abortions, and of course the big

elephant in the room the fact that schools have too many doors we need many doors we need more robust door control that's it yeah or maybe everyone should have a door yeah because if a bad guy has to you need a good guy with a door now he's out i put it past him what or what we need is those bugs bunny doors right where you can just like paint one on the wall yeah that would do it hit him with a train i love if you watch the video i love how he tries to slide into the abortion thing. He's like, we have violence in our streets. Women can't be forced to birth. Gangs everywhere. All the things I just said. All of those equivalent things

that I'm talking about. Also, I will not be addressing itemized positions on that statement. I was wondering. And in women drivers, am I right? News tonight. As regular listeners to the show will remember last year saudi arabia lifted its ban on female drivers causing men across the nation to turn to their

wives start making a joke and then shut right the fuck up yeah hopefully that led to plenty of well-deserved dick punches if nothing else just like right in the middle of the setup like i guess the roads are gonna be okay that's the dumbest fucking preset okay men do 60 of the driving and account for 75 of the accidents and the accidents are worse if there are men behind the wheel right so uh no i it would be like arguing that more religion makes you less likely to commit mass homicide ray it would be that kind of stupid ray no as a chromosome trader that's fine however there seems to be a bit of a catch to this law see women can drive they just can't be all showy about it yeah right right drive but try not to look like you're driving

well according to a report on reuters at least five women activists have been detained in the last month because quote they do not want them publicly to claim success what all right rosa parks you can sit in the front but no smiling right yeah brown i see you curl don't curl the side and look i get it women are like this you give them an inch they take off at 40 miles an hour am i right but how activists who have been fighting the decades long driving ban can take advantage of the new law without being all show-offy about it remains unclear um i recommend driving the way i do like you're a time traveler who just appeared in a car and you have no idea how it works or how you got there it keeps them on their toes yeah

a wheel it seems to affect the motion yeah it does it does and in permission slippery slope news tonight and yet more evidence that napoleon fucked us on that purchase the state of louisiana spent the past month trying to pass a law that would allow parents to sign away their kids constitutional rights with a permission slip is it the 14th because that's just called an internship no no no that was okay yeah no no this is a different one this is sp 512 which passed unanimously through the state senate last month and sought to allow teachers and coaches to lead students in prayer provided parents gave written consent and since the thing that makes teacher-led prayers unconstitutional is the coercive nature of them, not the lack of parental consent. And since sending kids home with a may I participate in class activities like loving my lord and savior note actually exacerbates that problem.

Secular watchdog groups started waking up the neighborhood. Yeah. What do they think was happening like coaches were waterboarding kids before each game until they remembered all the commandments what that's probably happening in alabama and now they're sending home permissions lips that say can we waterboard the muslim right yes pretty much everyone said yes that's democracy you can't just remove the parents of louisiana can't be in charge they can't be in charge of anything well right well okay so luckily for us louisiana is geographically incapable of success and their

206 year history of holistic failure actually worked to our advantage this time because despite the senate's enthusiasm apparently folks in the state house recognized how blatantly illegal this law would be so they administered what i can only describe as legislative homeopathy watering down the bill until there was nothing left of the original substance yeah kind of like what happens to half the state if a boat drives by too fast maybe pray for an elevation above zero would be a good start if you're praying for stuff the whole state jesus all right so the the new bill takes away all the parts about teachers and coaches leading or joining students in prayer and removes all the stuff about permission slips which is everything everything yeah when they finally ended up passing was a bill that

reaffirmed that it's still legal for students to pray in groups. Which finally? Yeah, which was never illegal. So they basically passed a law allowing residents to use ATP as a biological energy currency. But it lets the state legislators go home and gain political capital by implying that they weakened church state separation. Which, if you think about it, is probably as terrifying as what they were actually trying to do. And in Boy Scout of the Closet and Into the Streets news tonight,

America's favorite paramilitary organization and thing that is totally creepy if you think about it for even a second, the Boy Scouts will change their names next year to eliminate the word boy, signaling their new policy that allows both girls and trans youth into the program. And as you can imagine, Christians everywhere are losing their goddamn minds. So, you know what that means. Anna? What are the guys talking about?

It's the newest, the greatest Christian freak out. Thank you very much. Okay, so first up is the Mormon Church, which announced it will cut all ties with the BSA by 2019 and replace it with church-affiliated groups, saying, quote, as a global church with millions of children and youth, we need to address the diverse needs and fortify all children and youth with gospel centered growth and learning experiences now more than ever. Not adding, and by all

youth, we mean separate but equally based on chromosomes or something. It's not clear what we mean. Yeah, and trans kids can't be shitting in the same woods with all the, they're going to rape all the cis kids in the woods. And probably that bear that everyone's always talking about. bear that we need that for the studio no we yeah we need him spice up the show now now that's a pretty big deal uh seeing as the lds currently makes up 20 of all boy scouts but

maybe that's reason enough to let it go anything that's 20 mormons probably not well and if this all sounds familiar by the way it's because they also announced this in 2017 Maybe that's reason enough to let it go. Anything that's 20% Mormon is probably not awesome. Well, if this all sounds familiar, by the way, it's because they also announced this in 2017 over the gay thing. And then they only severed ties with the teen version, so they'd still have a ball to take home this time, I guess. Exactly. But, of course, the Mormons weren't the only ones freaking out. The president of the policy arm of the southern baptist convention russell moore said of the decision quote one cannot even parody 2017 because real life is even more

ridiculous than whatever one could make up end quote adding what do you mean looking in a mirror i'm mad that girls aren't allowed to learn certain knots what mirror i don't understand yeah if your dominance over your wife is based on the fact that she never learned to tie a bowling knot you need to get hog tied and pegged by your wife yeah everybody wins yes i mean that's true of and then divorced yeah exactly there you go all right look guys guys you can't freak out about gay inclusion and threats to boy-only sleepovers in the woods, right? That would be like opposing abortion and birth control. Wait.

Birth control and sex education. Wait. Sex ed and sex before marriage. You know what? Never mind. Never mind. It's hard making less sense than Charlie Kirk, Noah. Do not take that.

And last but not least, right-wing pundit and very angry little boy dressed up as a man, Todd Starnes, mourned the loss of gender-segregated woods fuckery this week, worrying that if today it's girls, it could be atheists next. Yes. Quote, I predict this watered down, culturally compromised version of the scouts will come full circle and lift its ban on atheists. Yes. I predict

they will eliminate the name of God from their once sacred oath because once you turn your back on your values, it's pretty easy to turn your back on the almighty. End quote. What's next? Blacks? What? They aren't? are fuck somebody call a meeting somebody shot the fucking swastika in the sky whatever we do exactly and i want to say i am

with todd on this one i mean look it's been bad enough that religious kids have to get stuck in the woods with a gay guy who knows a bunch of knots but our one comfort was that atheist kids were safe at camp quest they were safe and from the in the southern hemisphere the wilson and the phillips go in the opposite direction file tonight we have the story of philip wilson and of australia continuing to show us what a country that actually wants priests to stop raping children would look like now this comes in the form of a court in new south wales finding archbishop philip wilson guilty of covering up child sex abuse and at a glance that might not seem like a landmark case but despite the global scope of this shit remarkably few catholic officials have been punished for the cover-up of these crimes and wilson is the highest

ranking catholic official to ever even be charged with it hey baby steps. Right. Hopefully without the steps of a priest behind them. Yeah, exactly. Alright, well, now we're all just picturing a naked baby leading all the priests out of town like the Pied Piper, right? Like a sexy baby. That's what we're... Maybe we can make a drone like that does that.

You can keep implying it was to trick priests, but I know good and damn well what Eli was going to do with that thing. Anyway. Send us your designs for a sexy baby drum. We'll send you a t-shirt. Angelo, Angelo, be good. You be good, Angelo.

The hammy between them for Eli. Anyway, the 67-year-old Archbishop of Adelaide was charged with covering up the abuse of a priest named Jim Fletcher. In his ruling, Magistrate Robert Stone dismissed Wilson's claim that the kids saying, hey, Father Jim, rape me, is the kind of thing that sometimes slips your mind and handed down his verdict to reported gasps in the courtroom. Sentencing is set for June 19th, and at most, Wilson faces two years in prison. But at this point, any justice is a lot more than the victims expected to see. And keep in mind, it's not like this dude's retired, right? He's still archbishoping today.

So it's not like this threat is entirely in the past. Locking him up has an effect, too. Yeah, that's right, kids. Hold on to that parking ticket long enough and be poor enough. And you could go to jail for more time than the guy who covered up child. Yeah. How does their scale work? Do bank robbers just, like, they get a 20-minute tour of the jail?

All right. Well, actually, as we learned in our Citation Needed episode we did in Australia, no, they make them national heroes. That's true. They get statues and shit. All right, so co-chair of the Southern Australian Law Society's Criminal Law Committee. Fuck, why do Australians have such long goddamn names for everything uh more chances to show off the accent no more okay no yeah no i get it i get it all right so uh anyway that that dude uh craig

caldicott said in a radio interview that he believes an appeal is unlikely in this case and also points out that the precedent could lead to hundreds of similar prosecutions against catholic officials in the coming years which is good and all but like hundreds when australia has a total of 3 000 catholic priests is also pretty terrifying in the year 2040 half of australia's outback is occupied by mad max s gangs of rapist priests who've been exiled from the waterlands. Don't they have like a no law area, like a zone where there's just like no rules at all? I can't imagine in Australia. I'm pretty sure you're allowed to kill a guy.

You're allowed to do whatever you want. You can purge in certain areas of Australia. Check that. That's real. Double check it. Give it a Google. Tweet us your response. Or just, you know, try it out and see what happens. Yeah, right, right.

Exactly. Don't fuck around with all this internet knowledge. What, are you going to go to Google U? No, you're going to go to the school of hard knocks and kill a dude in the outside. And you're going to go to jail for 20 minutes. Yeah, right. Yeah, right. What are you really risking? High five a rapist on the way out. Just boop.

Did you have some of the cookies now and in chromosome why like an eagle news tonight president of the christian hate group the family research council recent appointee to the u.s commission on international religious freedom and man whose forehead wrinkles constantly look like they're trying to figure out how to spell help tony perkins took to the internet to remind us all how terrifying that second thing I said is this week when he compared being trans to saying you're a bird and jumping off a building. Uh-huh. Yeah. No, he was going to go with and trying to lay an egg, but he's not 100% sure trans people don't lay eggs.

So he went with fly. Smart. Smart. an egg but he's not a hundred percent sure trans people don't lay eggs so so he went with fly smart smart so yeah tony percocet of tiny testicles took to the show washington watch this week where a caller compared being trans to saying you're a cat to which perkins said almost quote no i understand less about genetics and statistics. Followed by actual quote, if you're a male, genetically, you are a male. Biologically, you're a male, says the man who probably thinks a karaoke is a Japanese singing parlor, but fine. And you say, well, I'm not a male. I'm a female. I mean, what's to keep you from saying you're an animal? Think about this for a minute.

Because obviously he hasn't. Right. Yeah. Right. Someone think about this for me. Please. Please. Take my wife.

He goes on. Someone says, well, look, I'm a bird man. All right. I'm a bird man. And I'm going to jump off this building and fly. Spoiler alert. What? Okay.

Okay. Not trying to take attention away from the rabid bigot thing he's doing there but um he seems weirdly preoccupied with the words you might say before jumping off the building if you say i'm not a bird he's cool it's the talking by the trans people that bothers him and anytime air moves in or out of them yes he gets pissed okay so setting aside that 0.6 percent of the united states don't think they're eagles or the countless studies that have been done that people who think they're eagles aren't happy if as long as they're loved and accepted by their families in spite of huge societal biases that they go through or the fact that the dsm didn't recently remove being an eagle as mental illness

aside from all of those things this brings up a very very important question or two does tony perkins think trans people think they have vaginas like in t's head, are they just poking their balls being like, these are my boobs! They're low, but they're boobs, damn it! Secondly, why aren't testicles called penis boobs? Now, we might never know the answer to the latter. But I really hope Tony

unblocks my number so we can at least find out the answer to the first. Tony, it's on you man i want to know what you think and finally tonight we have yet another story about how the voters of texas really need to take a time out and think about what they did right not only are they responsible for door control activist dan patrick they also elected greg abbott and rick perry and ted cruz and george w bush uh lyndon johnson who killed kennedy and even new york's worst ever export who we didn't even vote for so uh d No, no, no.

But they're always looking for the next generation of crazy in Texas. And it looks like Vickers Cunningham is their guy. The former judge just barely lost this week's runoff to be the Republican nominee for Dallas County Commissioner by 25 votes out of over 10,000 total. Jesus. And that's despite being outed last week for being a giant bigot, like using N word levels of bigot right before the runoff in a place with, you know, some modicum of human decency. I'd like to think that would have been pretty much impossible and he would

have had no shot at winning, but you know, uh, Ibid, right. The list I just had no shot at winning. But, you know, Ibid. Right. The list I just had. I was going to say at this point, there's got to be like a bigot think tank for elections under the Mason Dixon line. Right.

Yeah. We'll bigot up your campaign. Right. No, they're calling it the Republican gubernatorial runoff in Georgia. There. yeah so vickers cunningham got exposed as a racist when everyone saw that his name is vickers cunningham yeah right that's second only to jefferson beauregard sessions yeah but uh we all got further proof when his brother bill noticed that the dallas morning news endorsed vickers and bill hand delivered them a whole bunch of very clear evidence that his brother's a horrible bigot this includes vick's living trust that only pays out

his kids if they marry someone who's white hetero and christian that's official right a trust that he's applied by the way like he's already applied this to a child that married an asian person yep uh i'm just saying we can hack this system with a listener who's willing to lie well and and willing to fuck something that spawned from the from the dick boobs of vickers cunningham i feel like that's a bigger ask than bear false witness but yeah we could yeah well the racist homophobic anti-seemitic living trust, that's pretty bad, but it actually gets even worse. According to Amanda Tackett, who worked on Vic's 2006 campaign for district attorney, he was constantly using the N-word all the time. For example, she recalls him talking about a prosecutor being too soft, saying, quote, look at him setting all those N-words free.

He'll never lose an election because all the N-words want their baby daddy out of jail. Oh, for fuck's sake. Real thing he said. Wow. I know he said the actual racial slur, but there's something really funny about the image of him just saying the N-word. something really funny about the image of him just saying the n-word it's just amazing when that word appears twice in your sentence and comprises the second and third most racist parts of it yeah so the the dallas morning news actually deserves some credit for for looking into this and eventually rescinding their endorsement i mean mean, there were signs, so very

little credit. Must have been his name was Victor Scunningham. Very little credit, but they did check. So apparently they got in touch with Vickers after hearing all this evidence and asked him if he's ever used the N-word. At which point, he paused for nine seconds. Nine seconds

of weird silence. Then he asked, you mean in court what then they said no not that it matters but we meant in everyday life do you use it to which he lied and said no wait i i can only imagine being the reporter on the other end of the phone and being like i'm'm sorry, sir. Was that anything but no? Yeah, we're going to go ahead and enjoy someone else. Let me tell you how this goes. Have you ever said the N-word?

No. There you go. How many seconds did you pause? Why would he have the clarification if your answer to all was going to be no? Exactly. Right? I mean, I didn't murder my wife wife especially on tuesday that makes you sound more guilty not less and you're already all the way there it got worse so yeah now i gotta i gotta

admit my favorite part is the spiteful revenge element of this story so vick's brother bill isn't just a good samaritan who didn't want an awful human being having government power although that's all true it turns out bill is also gay and married to a black man, which makes the whole thing that much sweeter. It's just beautiful spite revenge. Although none of this really matters when Vic eventually becomes governor and then president because we live in a racist hellscape. So fair.

Lovely. Fair. All right. Well, since happy endings died in 2017 i guess the headlines are just going to end like that heath eli thanks as always we don't get single when we come back we'll watch a ray comfort video and thereby be immune from school shootings as heath already mentioned in the headlines, Ray Comfort released his latest YouTube stoner-bothering compilation on how inadequate national Christianity causes school shootings the day after a school shooting.

Fuck you. Well, as tasteless as the timing seems, in Ray's defense, if he's going to release that video on any day in 2018, the odds that it would be on the day of or day after a school shooting were pretty much one in three pretty easy greater than one in four that being said it's still plenty tasteless in all the other ways which leads us to yet another god awful mini mini mini Mini. Mini. Mini. Mini. Mini. All right, so we're going to start this one off with the title screen, Living Waters Presents, and the title is

The Cause and the Cure, and then it says, in less than 20 minutes, for those who want to know, the video is 21 minutes and 31 seconds long. Just in case you're curious. And then we get a gunshot we get a little graphic of an old-timey like the musket isn't the problem that dueling pistol that shot alexander hamilton isn't the issue right the ak1 over there no no so okay so we get news clips of some school

shooting reactions and then we get ray comfort man on the street asking people if he if they think that the school shooter now that he's talking about the school shooter in parkland but he's asking people if they think that that shooter was evil which i mean okay the problem of evil isn't does this count as evil that's not what that means but also yes what the fuck are we talking about well right and only the people are like you know they're not willing to condemn a stranger not really knowing the facts or anything like that and ray's just going call him evil you bastard they're like okay fine he's evil jesus also call him squiggly boop that's a word i've made up that has a weird term

because i'm later gonna address his mental illness and since we know that that used to count as evil, what do I mean by evil? Haha, obscure terms. What does evil mean today? Does it mean something tomorrow? Fonzie games. Yeah. He makes a big deal out of trying to get everybody to

define evil as if this is all, like, how is this? I don't understand. He says, like, define evil and then then there's, like, an obvious edit. And he's like, why are you hesitating? Yeah. Like, he might as well pause the video. Like, why are you paused? Can't answer the question.

Checkmate. Not that that even matters. If you could define it. I don't understand how this relates. Nothing relates in this movie. But, like, he even shows, like, a Fox News commentator going, like, even we don't have the answer. It's like, yeah, because you're Fox News and you won't talk about gun control. And because you clearly cut out every time somebody said something about gun control.

It was like, how do we stop all these gun deaths? Well, I felt like we said gun control. There's literally no answer. Moving on. Well, there's an answer. There's only one answer in Ray Comfort's conference mind but we'll get there doors and also there's this weird moment here where he's like trying to convince everyone like like he's trying to convince these people to actually just shank the parkland shooter in prison or he's like should we kill him should we like and then like

wait like you and me like us yeah at one point one of the people's like i don't think that we should be killing people who have men and he's like really what if he was a taking your mom what if i take your mom right there i brought your mom here with me to demonstrate what that would look like you're gonna stop me and i i gotta point out like this isn't just a religious argument but it is one of my favorite arguments of the like do you think that this is an appropriate reaction as a society well what if i did it to your mom oh yes i don't think my mom should get parking tickets but i think parking tickets should exist yeah right this doesn't work under any circumstances also could i ask this where does

he find these fucking rejects that he interviewed oh it is terrifying so one of them jail i'm pretty sure because he's wearing an orange jumpsuit the guy where he's like hey man do you have a dark side and the guy you could see the guy like he seriously considers how to murder this weird man with everyday objects that are in sight and then he's like no i don't have it right i have him as post-prison snot from american dad also uh we're not even going to talk about coked up Ari Stillman yeah let's talk about coked up Ari Stillman okay so it's coked up Ari Stillman when they're like an overworked soccer parent like the kids have been dropped off Ari has nine children living in their house at this point and like they've all gone to soccer practice at the same time they've done like two or four lines they've recorded a gay these manifesto and then ray

caught him and was like do you think evil exists and ari is just like get away from me man the mouth movements alone of that character is enough oh my god yeah the good like all chewing on his gums and shit at a certain point. It's like, dude, you give him coke before the questions? Hey, if Ray gave out cocaine and other drugs before his interviews, all of his movies make sense. Right? Okay, that makes so much sense.

That really, really does. Yeah, alright. Now, you're probably thinking this is all great, but can we talk to someone with a giant neck beard and sharpened teeth? And we can. We absolutely can. Multiple people like that. Are you talking about Lynn

Methamphetamine Miranda or the widest face in the world? Because I don't know. I don't know what you're talking about. I'm pretty sure I'm talking about Wideface. Wideface's worldview is destroyed by every word that comes out of ray's mouth yes ray's like should abortion be allowed and he's just like oh man i turned my head the other day

and i clipped a polar ice cap and so i don't want to i'm sitting on these stairs hello i want to i can't scooch away because I'm on a stair I just curl up alright but now it's time to get to the real question about the proliferation of gun violence that seems to rise commensurate with the proliferation of guns which is of course do you think this nation has lost

its fear of God and the first person he asked this to is I think we can all agree the coolest dude ever wearing sweet shades has a sweet mustache like a 15 year old's genitals it's pretty great oh my god this mustache is the best worst mustache we've ever had it's amazing it looks like a vagina got waxed but only on one side yeah it's It's like, the guy ran out of wax halfway through.

He's like, all right, I did the left. You get, you get right vagina, still a little bit of hair. Yeah, so,

then we cut into the middle of a conversation that I really, really wanted to hear the beginning of. Yes! So, Ray cuts into the middle

of this conversation. He goes, so, are you saying we need a mass die-off and the guy's like yeah i think i was saying that and then ray leads him through it's amazing he's like so you're an atheist then he's like yes he's like okay so say i'm an atheist and i like genocide i'm an atheist that is what we've established he's interviewing hispanic thanos here or something and of course this guy is an atheist yeah of course after he's like yeah no

i'm all for masked eye off he's like atheist right oh yeah yeah yeah uh-huh that's what it said on the card you said i would get cocaine for reading. So you believe that nothing created everything? Well, that's actually insane. I would literally punch him at that point, right? So he just, out of the blue, the guy's like, I'm an atheist. He goes, oh, you believe in a scientifically impossible idea that nothing created everything, do you? Do you? Do you? And I would punch him in the goddamn nose.

That's why I don't do debate. And then the audio gets muted you see that guy's mouth moving and we cut yes right i don't know what he said something atheistic yeah boo next scene he says at one point he goes without the ten commandments our nation has no definition of evil like yeah oh we'd just be making statues willy-nilly without those. Which is why Sweden has so many school shootings. Right, so exactly. Yeah, and speaking of which, Richard Dawkins is a cannibal. I don't know if you guys heard.

Okay, this is... Wait, wait, before we get to this, because this comes up as his amazing list, where he says everything is either acceptable or excusable, and this is his actual list in this order adultery pornography homosexuality fornication blasphemy mass murder or even cannibalism even there is very weird to me right because that means he's like i mean mass occasionally he got a mass murder but of course the granddaddy of them all yeah the really bad one on the list killing plus eating yeah okay and so i'm sure most of our listeners saw that headline where dawkins was talking about

how you could if you grew human meat in the lab there would be no moral qualms about eating it right and there wouldn't be there'll be a human stem cell what does it matter right right exactly and he's just pointing out like look we'd have to get over this silly taboo if we could do this and now obviously look we could we could create cow meat in the same way so we don't we don't have to or whatever but he's pointing out that like the thing that makes it taboo could be removed and it would still be taboo. Right. He was just making that ethical point.

Richie, baby, when you're doing these thought experiments, right, and we all do them, don't tweet them out. Just turn to your wife. That's what I do. Hey, I need a guy. Would you eat a guy? Richie, did you tweet that? No, I didn't tweet that. I tweeted some shit about biology so that we all didn't get in trouble.

I think of bad stuff all the time. I wrote a whole Facebook status the other day about how the royal wedding is important because monarchy reminds us that some people are better than others. And then my wife read it and she pushed the delete button. This is what we need, Richie. You got to turn to the lady. Okay, just someone'll log him out just like he's not gonna log back in he's 90 just log him out maybe just tweet phonetically from now on

yeah right no that works probably works better really well by the way he also said ray comfort here says that slavery the holocaust and the inquisition were the results of atheism also jim crow jim crow yeah jim crow eugenics slavery the holocaust the inquisition the one that threw me yeah all right so back to man on the street videos. We have to go back to Wideface because this is where Wideface says that he's a Christian atheist, which means I've never read a book and I don't want to argue with people. He's a bacon eating vegan. He's a giant shrimp. Yeah. And this is also the part where Ray Comfort tries to convince us that in the 1950s, America was pretty much perfect, which is all the more awkward since he's talking to a minority as he says that.

He's like, come on, man. You could just sit at a lunch counter and not have to worry about. Sorry. Bad example. Bad example. The founding fathers were great people, right? They had. Oh, right.

Slavery. This is where we talked to Helen Fisher. Yeah. From the Kinsey Institute. Yeah. Which was founded by the guy who would shove a toothbrush in his pee hole to orgasm. Brush side first. Pretty sure that's what we're talking about.

Anyway, the point he tries to make is that like evolution's evil. So he's like, so Helen Fisher, adultery is good for making babies? And she's like, yeah, I mean, really all fucking. That's stupid the way you worded it. But yeah, I mean, adultery causes babies. You're kind of slow. It's been like two hours of explaining this. It's all the fucking time.

I just love everybody Ray talks to it's so amazing they all look like they really have to pee or that they're faking that like and they're all trying to just like end that boring phone call by waiting it out with awkward silence between pauses yeah but in person and it's now working. Like, after every cut, it was just like, brrring, brrring. Did you hear that? I have to take this. What? I have cancer, apparently.

No, I'm like, it's too late for that. I have to go to the cancer store. All right. And now it's time for Ray to introduce a music video? What? Because here's the thing. A caption appears on the corner of the screen like a music video that says,

Preaching in the Rain, Ray Comfort Productions, and I'm like, he's about to lay down a sick beat. But no. No, it's... It's just video of Ray... You like being a collada? Preaching in the rain.

Yeah, no, it's just Ray standing in the rain without an umbrella or a rain jacket or anything preaching like a crazy person to like nine people to crazy people who stop on the street during a rainstorm to listen to a crazy person there is this there is this one asian family that seems dressed for the weather and are watching out of just morbid anthropological curiosity and i love them they're amazing they're like see see i told you america was like this yeah and he's just screaming to everyone he can he's doing his whole like you know are you evil have you ever looked at a woman with lust? Stick, which we've seen him do a billion times.

And one guy's like, I fuck my girlfriend. You're a virgin. Weirdly aggressive. Oh, my God. That couple was so uncomfortable because it's like clearly it's like two 16 year olds. He's like, you two are fucking. I can tell. I can tell you two are fucking.

Aren't you? Let me smell your finger. Come here. Let me smell your finger. Come here. Let me smell your finger. Also, there's this fucking amazing moment where Ray is like, come on now. Aren't you married? And he's like, no, we're not married. I'm seven.

And he's like, we can marry you for $5 in Vegas. And his girlfriend, who has very clearly been horrified at talking about her sex life to this crazy person is like see see listen to me we'll go to hell if we don't get married come on my sister is getting married this month I want to have a nicer wedding he's immediately trying

to marry off these 16 year olds he just met that's so fucking sad and right after he says that there's a little disclaimer that pops up and right after he says that there's a little disclaimer that pops up on the screen that says that was hyperbole it's actually 35 yeah right because he didn't want to be inaccurate wouldn't want anything inaccurate in a ray comfort video richard dawkins ate a human baby alive it's actually 35 fact checking done yeah jesus there's also this great moment of like where he starts to get a little bit self-aware because

he's like yelling at the people in the rain. He's like, don't deceive yourself. You could end up screaming at the strangers in the rain. Connie, you're not still filming or you don't still feel me. God example. What the fuck does this have to do with school shootings? What does anything we've talked about? I just wanted a school

shooter to walk past me like he's right you know it's all about jesus man also one other small thing here every single but he could he actually converts three people in this weird rain scene the weird couple and one other girl they like sam they're like yeah i'm gonna go home and read the bible all three of them are holding a wad of cash that's weird visibly in the shot that's weird the cash is in the shot yes yeah exactly exactly i'll give you the pizza after just don't shoot right because you can see right behind them where they're giving away drinks and cookies and shit to people if they'll listen to them in the rain too it's yeah it's pretty sad okay so with that little digression out of the way it's time to get back to bothering stone teenagers at a park and the argument that ray is making now is do you believe in god no nobody's sure 100 i am sure 100

yeah and i just i just wrote in my notes ray is confused about surety versus knowledge t-shirt idea and okay there's also this moment where like ray thinks he gets one over because the atheist guy says to him and says man your god sounds like a real bully to me and i'm like hey that's a good point and then ray says every judge seems like a to a guilty criminal and i'm like no that's not true right like not uh flash cut to ray getting a wedgie by a judge for a parking ticket stuffs his head in the toilet all right and now i know this isn't relevant to anything but it really terrified me there's this weird shot of snot from american dad the guy in the in the jumpsuit the prisoner and he's like yeah man i think if like you see someone crying you gotta like go be nice

to them maybe and ray's like yeah yeah that's not gonna help much though without the jesus i don't know but yeah like it's it's almost like the the guy saying like it's almost like he was crying before Ray showed up and he's trying to hit around like, man, if you see someone in the street that's obviously having a bad time, maybe you shouldn't bring over your camera and start asking about Jesus. Right. Maybe that would be a better thing to do. Maybe you just get them a new ice cream cone. That's what I'm saying. Rum raisin, bro. Rum raisin.

Bullshit flavor. So, yeah, right? Yanny. So, okay. So then we have to establish that this atheist guy might not care about his life, but Ray sure does. Ray's worried about the mortal danger that he's in. And he's so fine with it. He's just like, you're the mortal danger that he's in and he's so fine with it he's just like you're in mortal danger

and he's like uh huh it's like when my wife is next to me while I'm driving she's like you're gonna run into that and I'm like yes I am we're not arguing so I'm listening also I'm sorry but did he start quoting his erotic Jesus fan fiction at one point?

This is an actual quote. We have a secular nation that draws near to God with its lips, and then he just doesn't finish that sentence. And then pushes back with its hips? I don't. and then pushes back with its hips i don't tang tang chicky picky blam blam got a big blank let me work it so where that goes also there's another like ray got him good moment where the guy with like the one he's talking about some shooting and the kid's like uh it wasn't that shooting done in the name

of god and ray's like hey man hitler did what he did in the name of god the guy's like, hey, wasn't that shooting done in the name of God? And Ray's like, hey, man, Hitler did what he did in the name of God. The guy's like, okay, but you're emphasizing my point now. This is not, that's not a rebuttal. That's an emphasis, right? Like you one-upped me on my point about how wrong you were. That's my newest, that's my newest argument tactic is I just start making points for the other side like they're mine until they're confused and they say

yes. And then I edit it later in my head. Yeah, there you go. If you ever do turn to the dark side, you'll be ready. And that's where it all wraps up, right? Like, a crazy eyebrow

dude decides to become a Christian with them, and we don't see what happens to all those other folks. And then we learned that this is only one of seven exciting films. I wrote, where does it rank in terms of the excitement? You get seven movies on one zip disc, guys. Yep. One zip disc comes with seven movies. Like all great movies on a zip disc comes with seven movies, like all great movies, on a zip disc.

All in the next ten minutes, you'll get a blank five and a quarter floppy disc, too. What? I love that of the seven videos, one of them promises to teach you everything Ray has learned in his entire life in under 20 minutes.

Yeah. I agree. And the seventh, the final video, did you guys see the title on that one? It was Divine Justice and the Jehovah's Witnesses. Wait, what? Yes.

Yeah. Oh, God, we have to watch that. So is he anti? Yes. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. It's him and Ken Ham doing this. It's him arguing with people

who do the same street thing as him. It's like the ultimate showdown. Oh, they're going to explode into a fireball of stupids. Exactly. Exactly. I feel like that meme that everyone said is like Civil War is the most ambitious crossover in history. And then it just should be Ray Comfort and the Jehovah's Witnesses. All right.

Well, with all of those exciting C-segment options in mind, we're going to close things off. Of course, if you enjoyed this segment, hey, we do a long version every week over on God Awful Movies, which you'll find wherever you found this one. Before we snuggle up and turn off the light tonight, I want to remind you that you can find a link for tickets to our live show in Chicago in the show notes. That's a live record of Citation Needed on August 11th in the Windy City. There's a VIP event that's selling out fast.

More than half the tickets are already taken. So if you want in on that, get in quick. Anyway, that's all the blast movie 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 Skeptocrat, debuting at 7 a.m. Eastern time on Monday. An even newer episode of our sister show's hot friend, Godawful Movies, debuting at 7 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday. And an even newer episode of our half-sister show, Citation Duty, debuting at noon Eastern on Wednesday. Clearly, I would be all but criminally negligent if I didn't thank Heath Enright for being the mortar that holds this whole thing together.

I need to thank Eli Bosley for offering up something less effective to stick it together with if mortar doesn't work out. Also want to thank Mike Wiseman for providing this week's Farnsworth quote. If you'd like to check out his The Bible Says What podcast, look for a link on the show notes. All I can say is with a title like that, he's never going to run out of material. I also want to send you Lucinda's apologies yet again this week. And if you're bummed about her not being here again, I get it. I'm missing her way more, but we'll have her back on the show as soon as possible. But most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's best people.

Donna Elton, verb not a noun, Dan, Lily, Leslie, Christopher, Andy, Carl, other Christopher, and Ian. Donna Alton, verb not a noun, and Dan, whose nunchuck skills give the Infinity Stones lethality envy. Lily, Leslie, Christopher, and Andy were so amazing they had to downgrade that Christian hymn to adequate grace. And Carl, other Carl, and Ian, whose dicks are so infamous roosters have taken to saying

Carl, other Christopher, and Ian a doodle do. Together these 11 vivacious vixens of veracity evaluated our voracious vendetta against the venal vendors of viperous veneration this week by giving us money. Not everybody has the enviable taste and home decor it takes to give us money. But if you think you're up to the challenge, you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com slash 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 homepage at ScathingAtheist.com. And if you'd like to help but you've been hurt before, you can ease your way into financial support by leaving us a five-star review on iTunes, maybe telling a friend about the show.

We're willing to take it slow for you. You're worth it. Legal services for this podcast are provided by the Law Offices of P. Andrew Torres, our audio engineer is Morgan Clark. We also wrote all the music that was used in this episode, which was used with permission, except for the theme for Gam, which was written by Ryan Slotnick of Evil Drafts on Mars and was also used with permission. If you have questions, comments, or death threats, you'll find all the contact info on the contact page at skatingatheist.com. If the sinkhole had opened closer to the White House and actually started swallowing a piece of the white house that would cost trump his evangelical base that's so fucking sad that there's nothing that he could do but random coincidence could have done the trick anyway yeah the preceding podcast was a

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