The Scathing Atheist - 277: Master POS Edition

Episode Date: June 7, 2018

In this week’s episode, Christian Movie Reviewer continues to be the most secure job in trump’s america, the Supreme Court rules that you can't have your dick and eat it too unless everyone's nice to Jesus, and Andrew Torrez of the Opening Arguments podcast will be here to make sure we bitch about it right. 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: Check out Andrew’s law podcast, Opening Arguments, here: https://openargs.com/ Check out “Man Yells at News” here: https://www.spreaker.com/show/man-yells-at-news Headlines: Masterpiece cake decision: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MasterpieceCakeshopv.ColoradoCivilRightsCommission

Warning, the following podcast may be offensive to people offended by the following podcast. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Simple Contacts. And by the new option for engaged gay couples in Colorado, the LGBTZ Bake Oven. Because when the SCOTUS tells you to fuck yourself, it puts you in a do-it-yourself mood. And now, The Scathing Atheist. This is Larry Yellingman from the Man Yells It News podcast, here to tell you we did, in fact,

evolve from yelling monkey men. It's Thursday. It's June 7th. And the Supreme Court has already overruled this podcast. I have no illusions. I'm Eli Bosnick. I'm Heath Enright. From New York, New York. Secret Lair, Pennsylvania.

This is The Scathing Atheist. On this week's episode, Christian movie reviewer continues to be the most secure job in Trump's America. The Supreme Court rules that you can't have your dick and eat it too unless everyone's nice to Jesus. And Andrew Torres will be here to make sure we bitch about it right. First, the diatribe. Okay, so I'm not going to do a diatribe about the Supreme Court's masterpiece cake decision. Not that I'm not diatribe levels of pissed off about it, but we're going to have andrew on in a minute so there's no need for me to opine on the specifics before the

legal expert gets here but i am going to talk about the festering cancer that undergirds the decision now is that cancer bigotry or is that cancer religion well at this point what's the fucking difference see here's the thing people like to use terms like real Christian, right? They say so-and-so sure isn't acting like a Christian as if acting like a Christian meant something other than behaving the way most Christians do, right? They walk around with some lofty ideal of what it means to be a Christian

that is in no way informed by what Christians are actually like. It's just a cultural stand-in for moral person that invades even atheist commentary. But what does it mean to be a Christian? What is that actually predictive of? Well, it sure as hell isn't predictive of how charitable you are. It's not predictive of humility nor sympathy for the poor and downtrodden or willingness to forgive those who trespass against you.

Christians are no more moral than people of any other faith or no faith by any measure, even the moral measures that only religious people count like divorce and watching porn. If you tell me you're a Christian, statistically speaking, it tells me nothing at all about your morality. Well, I'm sorry, nothing positive about your morality anyway, because over and over again, surveys show that the real glue that binds Christians together is hatred and bigotry. Hell, Christianity is just as predictive of opposition to gay rights as it is of church attendance. I mean, obviously, there are more atheists opposed to gay rights than there are attending church regularly. But Christians are more likely to say yes to do you oppose gay marriage than do you regularly attend church same goes for do you oppose gay adoptions do you oppose trans equality and do you believe lgbt people should be legally

protected from employment discrimination beyond that the more certain a person is that there's a god the more likely they are to oppose all that shit now that's not true of any of the noble ideas that people are talking about when they say so-and-so isn't acting Christian, but it's true of opposition to immigration. It's true of opposition to trans rights. It's true of opposition to women's rights. It's true of opposition to the rights of other religions. Hell, it even crops into their own language.

When American Christians complain about their religion being under fire, what are they talking about? They're talking about gay people being allowed to get married. They're not talking about laws that make it harder to go to church. They're not talking about taxes on crucifixes and Bibles

or zoning restrictions pushing their churches ever further out of town. They're talking about other people getting rights. And if they're not talking about that, they're talking about Muslims being allowed to come to our country

despite having the wrong God. And yet, despite the increasing synonymy of religion and bigotry, our linguistic conventions still act as though there's some perfectly good tree bearing all this rotten fruit. Now, we can argue about whether religion breeds the bigotry or just gives it cover, but one way or the other, religious America is increasingly a haven of regressive ideas that are defined by opposition to equality. And this matters more and more since their weapon of choice has become an increasingly willing judiciary.

Religious freedom is morphing before our eyes to the point where it can be against my religion for you to do shit. And that's legally actionable. And while this latest decision by the Supreme Court doesn't exactly affirm that, it sure the hell doesn't swat it down. Look, when religion becomes defined by its bigotry, all our constitutional efforts to protect religious freedom become cancerous, and they're in the process of metastasizing. Freedom of religion, far from its exalted ideal of creating a level playing field for all the

faiths, has increasingly tilted the table in favor of the majority. The once trivial exemptions we carved out to protect divinely ordained facial hair and headgear are birthing a bludgeon to use against minorities, which means they're now acting against the very ideal they were conceived to defend. Now, a lot of people freak the fuck out when I start talking like this because it sounds like I'm coming out

against religious freedom. But honestly, the less merit religion has, the less merit religious freedom has. And there has to be a point where religion isn't worth protecting, right? I mean, sure, the idea that you can't be forced to belong to a religion is pretty fucking awesome. The fact that I can't be forced to give money to a church, in theory, is awesome. The fact that we don't have a national church is awesome. But those all fall under the religious freedom subheading of freedom from religion. Freedom of religion is a whole other thing.

And as a pie-in- in the sky ideal, it's just keen. Everybody gets to join whatever religion they want and practices they see fit and worship the gods of their fathers or make up their own. And if they make up their own, gee, I sure hope they'll come up with a main symbol that looks like an E or an S or a coexist bumper stickers won't look so contrived. But in practice, it drags the government into inevitable arguments about what is and isn't a religion, what is and isn't a tenant of that religion, which beliefs are sincerely held and which aren't. And let me be super clear here. I'm not saying we should do away with people's freedom to believe whatever they want.

I'm saying you don't need freedom of religion to get there. You have a legal right to believe the earth is flat, hollow or six thousand years old. I don't think the last assertion needs any special legal status that isn't afforded to the other two. I don't think that we need laws that protect certain forms of incorrect more than others. I think we need laws that protect us from religions, but I'm sick and fucking tired of laws that protect religions from us. Religions are sets of ideas, sets of assertions about the worlds that should have to face the same scrutiny as any other but because our laws carve out all these dumb ass exemptions we've created

sort of an intellectual subsidy to go along with a shit ton of financial subsidies that allow religion to limp along no matter how wrong it is of course this is as enshrined in western ideals as anything else so it might seem like i'm tilting at windmills begrudging freedom of religion but there might just be hope because christ Christians have never tried to push their privilege so far. And while the envelope keeps stretching further than I ever thought it would, if they keep pushing, it's bound to break eventually. Joining me for headlines tonight are the pride and joy of atheism, Heath Enright and Eli Bosnick.

Fellas, are you ready to argue over which gets to be pride? Yeah, sure. Eli, describe joy, and you can have both. You can do both. Describe joy. It's like when there's the... Okay, then there's

Aleppo. Aleppo? Toast. there's the trap there was uh okay then there's uh aleppo toast all right good try though in our lead story tonight thanks to a ruling by the supreme court last week gay people are allowed to buy food wait for it maybe sometimes sometimes. That's official. The nation's highest court reached decision on Monday in the case of Masterpiece Cake Shop, the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, in which they ruled in favor of homophobic business owner Jack Phillips, who refused to sell a wedding cake to a same-sex couple in 2012, citing his religious freedom to think gay people don't really exist as far as i can tell so technically he refused service to a confused straight couple so it's not anti-gay discrimination

well that guy just won his case seven to two seven to two was the score which sounds pretty fucking stupid and joining us to decide exactly how stupid is our resident legal expert and dick joke wrangler andrew torres andrew welcome back thanks for having me now guys if you remember before we begin paragraph eight of our new revised agreement you've promised uh that eli in all andrew's here good uh if it ends up saving lives are you able to wholeheartedly recommend killing an elected official? Because...

Oh, and there you go. You guys are formally in breach. Eight seconds. Congratulations. New record. Thanks. Okay, good. Oh, sorry.

One more thing. Fill in the sentence with the most legal thing I can say. Listeners should find an ICE detention center and blank. So if you turn to page 12, you'll see that my remedy here is I get to start releasing privileged documents

from Bungle and the Puppets. We'll talk about this after the show. It'll be fine. Oh man, if the FBI raids Eli's apartment, it's not going to work out well. A lot of child porn. Eli is always kidding.

But it's not mine. That's the thing that I'll get him with. I mean, I bought it, but it's a guy I bought it from. All right. None of this. None of this. Great. So back to something.

I'm zigging. I'm zagging. Also horrible. Yeah. So moving to the plaintiff, the plaintiff in the case we're talking about was Jack Phillips, the bigot cake shop owner, who was asking the Supreme Court to reverse a ruling by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission and the Colorado Court of Appeals in which it was held that you have to sell stuff to gay people. And before you ask, Jack Phillips, yes, also black people and Jewish people. Case that wasn't clear well according to seven out of nine of allegedly america's top legal minds the state of colorado went too far with that but not in terms of the

law no uh more in terms of tone of voice yes and somehow that counts legally apparently the colorado civil rights commission didn't give jack phillips a fair hearing because they were uh pardon the legal jargon big fat meanies about religion andrew pretty sure i was just using some obscure latin just now can you explain that for the lay people i you know i mean all jokes aside right you've just given a much more accurate summary than, for example, Douglas Laycock, who wrote the brief upon which this opinion is largely based, did for SCOTUSblog. Lovely. Yeah, I mean, let's break down every part of this. So first, the most important thing, as you point out, is this is a law that was passed by the majority of the citizens of the state of Colorado.

Nineteen states don't have laws protecting LGBTQ people. So if you're a horrible bigot and you'd like to live in one of those 19 states, go right ahead. And I think we all pretty much know which those 19 states are. And that's all this law says. states are and that's that's all this law says right this says if you serve the public and you're in colorado it's the sense of the citizens of colorado that you shouldn't refuse to serve someone because they're a member of a protected class and it added sexual orientation to that list of protected classes so right you run a restaurant you have to see black people you run a bakery you have to sell your muffins and cakes to gay people it's really really simple so

if you want to be a bigot and still live in colorado like all you have to do is not be in a business that serves the public but as you point out this was not good enough for jack phillips he wanted to live in colorado and be a bigot and be in a business where he was pretending to serve the public and not serve gay people and he thought the constitution guaranteed him the right to all of those things at the same time okay but the problem was they didn't say pretty please don't be a giant piece of shit bigot like would that have done it i don't what happened so so seriously i mean the we're going to delve into the actual law that the Supreme Court just made up in crafting this ruling first. But yes, the portion that they found insufficiently respectful of Jack Phillips' religious beliefs is a paragraph in which, after already ruling on the merits, the Colorado Civil Rights Commission said the following.

I would like to reiterate what we said in the hearing or the last meeting. So again, that intro is important, right? Like they've already made the decision. This isn't even the basis for their decision. This is the commentary from one of the Colorado commissioners, right? Freedom of religion, this continues, and religion has been used to justify all kinds of discrimination throughout history, whether it be slavery, whether it be the Holocaust, whether it be, I mean,

we can list hundreds of situations where freedom of religion has been used to justify discrimination. And to me, it is one of the most despicable pieces of rhetoric that people can use to use their religion to hurt others. I don't know about everybody listening to this show, but that's a factual statement, right? Seriously, like, don't laugh at that, right? Like, that's, legally speaking, that's 100% true, right? That's not any of this. I'm thinking after this week's diatribe, am I allowed to, like,

is anything legally actionable for me? Am I allowed to ever do anything? All right, andrew i feel like you're leaving out some context just to make your your liberal biased point was it like and now fuck this corpse of jesus right now in this court like what what what do they say next like be honest actually the very next sentence which the supreme court leaves out from this transcript but i've gone back and read the original transcript, is, quote, but that's just my opinion, end quote. So it really illustrates the fundamental dishonesty here. Instead of quoting that sentence, what Anthony Kennedy says is, to describe a man's faith as one of the most despicable pieces of rhetoric that people can use is to disparage his religion in a variety of ways it that is anthony kennedy is better at reading

comprehension than that right yeah he's got a sixth grade english teacher who walks over anthony anthony oh yeah okay so justice kennedy is the guy who wrote the majority decision and uh he explained that quote the law must be applied in a manner that is neutral toward religion and okay i'm not sure how the fuck he thinks that's gonna work like if we want a law that says no genocides how do you apply that in a way that's neutral toward Nazis? What the fuck is he talking about? Or Jews or Christians or Muslims or any of the religions, even the Buddhists. We found out last year, even the Buddhists, you go, ah, it's an anti-Buddhist thing. Yeah.

So RFRA should cover genocide. How is he going to handle that? I honestly don't have an answer to that question. I was like, okay, right. So a little neat lawyer tip, right? Like when you're reading a Supreme Court decision, when you're reading any court decision, right? After a sentence that says the law is X, what you want to look for are the stuff in the italics, right? Those are the citations.

It's almost always to other cases, right? So the court will say something like the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equal protection means that you have to do this thing. And then there'll be a citation after it, which will be the case that stands for that. So here's what Kennedy says. He says, Phillips, the plaintiff, was entitled to the neutral and respectful consideration of his claims in all the circumstances of the case. That's in the middle of a six-paragraph portion of the opinion. It stretches for over four pages it's the holding of this case and there is not one single legal citation in it there's a citation of the transcript

but there's a citation in no case so in other words this was not the law until anthony kennedy just made it up so nobody knows what respectful and neutral consideration means, right? That's not a legal thing, right? Well, it's now. It is now. Right. It is now. It was not until Monday. Wow.

Okay. All right. People are calling this a narrow decision, but he just made up a fucking rule. Is that what narrow? Isn't that the opposite? I feel like that's the opposite. Me too. So here's why people are calling it narrow, right?

Because the reason the Supreme Court took this case was to tackle the question of compelled speech, right? And in fact, when they granted cert, I came on the show and we talked about, right, like whether it is the equivalent of, you know, forcing somebody to express something to require them to sell the same stuff they're selling to everybody else to everybody else. And indeed, there is a professional troll in Colorado who went around to all the bake shops and said, I want you to bake me an anti-gay wedding cake and put Psalms 47 whatever on it and leviticus and you know all this kind of terrible stuff um and and and to me like that's the reason that you want this case to come up before the supreme court i mean hoping they come out the right way right you want to say didn't they say the content was the problem with that stuff right yeah exactly it is it is is it compelled speech to just sell somebody a cake

or an arrangement of flowers or whatever right like how far is too far with the uh endorsement argument that that is you know part and parcel of the christian right and the supreme court entirely punted on that question they said we're not going to answer it um they have they have just calendared the uh the arlene's flowers case this week so um you know we we we may get it in the future but but when people are saying the first round of commentators including me so i'm i'm guilty on this but the first review that says this is a narrow decision is based on the word narrow isn't really the right word there it is this is not the decision on the merits of the reason why the Supreme Court took this case in the first place. Okay. Gotcha. So broad

would be the word. Yeah. I feel like there's a word that we have. It's the opposite. It's an antonym. Yeah. Great. You could call it an antonym Scalia. Oh man, if only you made that joke in 1990 that would have been so timely strong

strong sure hope Neil Gorsuch doesn't die okay so two votes that's a perfectly valid thing to say on this show I said doesn't right but i yeah i think i'd be allowed to say whatever okay so wait i have things i hope don't happen

everything eli hopes does not happen is also a joke okay so uh the decisions that were made at the state level said that masterpiece cake shop had to sell the cake to the gay couple right like when the the court of appeals decided this in colorado and and they also decided that they had to officially change their company policy and they had to provide anti-discrimination training to their staff and provide like regular reports for two years that prove they stopped being horrible bigots now does this ruling change all that stuff yeah it does and and so this is another way in which you might characterize the ruling as narrow it applies only for this one particular bigot and

is one particular hate bakery um but but it's it's a weird aspect of this decision, right? So usually when you have a problem with the hearing conducted below, right, what the court will do is they will reverse and remand, right? They'll send it back to the actual, they can send it to the commission itself, right? And say, okay, the administrative agency has to produce new fact-finding here that is consistent with this opinion. This case doesn't do that. It just reverses. It just vacates the lower court opinion and says, nope, you guys were big fat meanies, and so that's no good. You guys were big fat meanies, and so that's no good. So the next time this guy refuses to sell a cake to a gay couple, right, it's going to start this clock all over again. And you know this guy is going to refuse to sell a cake to a gay couple. He's got the ADF.

They went on Fox News and said, oh, yeah, well, you know, boy, we can't wait to tell the next gay couple that comes into the bake shop to just go away. So it resolves nothing and it gets rid of, again, I mean, I just want to emphasize this. This ruling, this is Anthony Kennedy saying the Constitution prevents you from passing a law to make sure that gay people are not discriminated against in food. And that's supposed to be the small government

wing? I don't know. This is a little bit of a technical legal question, Andrew, so feel free to tell me if I'm missing the details. I sure hope nobody goes to a Walmart, buys the easily obtainable ingredients for an acid attack.

Let's stop right about now. Like, that was a weird spot to throw a beep in the middle of our thing. But there you go. So we're back. Question. So they didn't remand it down to the lower court. Like, why wouldn't couldn't they just be like, all right, sincere apology. And now you guys hold hands and walk around the capitol building once together like that seems like the perfect if that was just being mean they couldn't yeah you you'd think

because the underlying claim here get you know remember the the compelled speech part of this argument is the one that i had some trepidation about, right? Like it was the one that I thought was probably going to go 5-4 in favor of the good guys with Kennedy siding up with the court's liberal wing to say that, you know, just requiring bakers to sell their stuff to gay couples the same way they sell it to straight couples. That's where I thought we were going to come out. So the court didn't address the compelled speech aspect of the claim the the part they did address is the part that i thought was going to be six three uh or or maybe even better right like it which is the free exercise claim and the reason for that goes all the way back to a scalia decision in

1990 called employment division versus smith um that is the pey to a Scalia decision in 1990 called Employment Division v. Smith. That is the peyote case, right? And in that case, you had employees who were ingesting peyote. They were part of an Arizona Native American spiritualism that enjoys ingesting peyote as part of their religious rituals. They claimed an exemption to the laws that classified peyote as a controlled dangerous substance. And Scalia, for the court, it's one of his first written opinions, said that a free exercise claim is no good in the face of an otherwise neutral law of general applicability.

And if it happens to incidentally burden your free exercise of religion, too bad, deal with it. It's a pluralistic society. That's the underlying claim upon which Anthony Kennedy has now affixed this sort of, well, in order to be a neutral law of general applicability, that means they have to not be big meanies

to you, that somebody in the commission can't say something that you've accidentally interpreted as likening you to the Holocaust or something. commission can't say something that you've accidentally interpreted as likening you to the holocaust or something like i it it i don't understand it and and that's where i think that this is really dangerous going forward and you're like the holocaust so you should be like there's likening like that or the holocaust your religion is the i don't know there's not like i'm like a podcaster because i am a podcast i don't understand it i don't know. There's not like I'm like a podcaster because I am a podcast. I don't understand it.

I don't know. Right. Again, remember that the the language that Kennedy uses is respectful and neutral consideration. And like to me, when when the guy says, hi, I'd like to discriminate against this gay couple on the basis of my religious beliefs. And one of the commissioners says it's kind of a problem when people use their religious beliefs to discriminate against people, right? Like that's not,

that's neutral, right? That is, I took your words and put the object as the predicate. And I don't, there's no, there was literally no gloss overlaid on top. It was like,

that dude just said that five minutes ago. Do we have to pretend? I mean, and I want to be serious here right like i i think i read this decision as saying that legislatures and commissions have to pretend that bigots aren't so bad when they're trying to control what bigots do like i i i don't know any other way to read that than that. Wow. Okay, so based on the wording that I saw, correct me if I'm wrong, it seemed like they Bush v. Gorded. Like they were basically saying, okay, so we definitely think that gay people are allowed to always buy stuff. One could argue it's extremely dangerous for the future of civil rights that we even heard this.

That being said, this one time the colorado civil rights commission was kind of snippy about the enormous societal institution that's been causing horrible bigotry for centuries so uh bigot guy wins just this one time like is that what happened did they just push v gore this one guy what they they punted on everything else yeah i i think that's fair and and certainly there are aspects of the majority opinion that continue to emphasize the other side of the coin. And I want to say it's something I've said on this podcast a bunch of times. The reason that I thought the case was going to go 5-4 the other way on the free speech issues is that anthony kennedy has been a very reliable vote and voice for lgbtq issues while on the court he's been to the left of stephen breyer since

he's been on the court on on on the narrow subset of those issues so anthony kennedy wanted to get in the like look don't don't don't be concerned that i hate gay people because i still don't but but then you know you've got language like this you know which is on page 14 where he says philip's dilemma was particularly understandable given the background of legal principles and administration of the law in colorado at the time like i it really it was it was particularly understandable i so i don't yeah i'm really good on gay rights but i get it I get it like which one of them is the guy am I right I'm a supreme court justice all right well um I've heard some analysts saying that this

is still somehow like a win or at least a non-loss for equal rights because of like the way they kind of did it narrow and Bush v. Gord Is that true? Because it feels like a loss. And it feels like you're saying it's definitely a loss. I think it's absolutely a loss. This radically changes the law. And the way in which it changes the law is what we don't know. But in many ways, that's the scariest part of it. When lawyers read a Supreme Court opinion and go,

I have no idea what that means. Like that should set off some alarm bells. We're the ones who are supposed to know that, you know? So could there be a positive side? I want to tease, if you listen to this week's opening arguments, that we have Andrew Seidel on from the Freedom from Religion Foundation, and he and I talk about is there maybe a silver

lining? You guys know I'm not a silver lining kind of guy, but if you want to hear what the silver lining is, Andrew at least lays it out. Stormy Daniels might be a Supreme Justice of the Supreme Court! Stormy Daniels, I will say this right here right now stormy daniels is more qualified to serve on the supreme court than neil gorsuch absolutely and she'd really kick up the

ratings too come on donald you're all about the ratings there you go all right well if the final question in your mind is what the fuck check out opening arguments for even more analysis of what might be the fuck. Andrew, thanks for coming on. Guys, thanks for having me. All right. Well, I know that's a little different than our normal headlines, but a ton of people were asking for it. So with hopes that discussion helped everybody out, we'll close the headlines for the night. Heath, Eli, thanks as always. College reunion.

I mean, there's still the C segment to record. But when we come back, Lee Strobel will grab his beaker and his lab coat and make some science. College reunion. I mean, there's still the C segment to record. But soon, soon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But when we come back, Lee Strobel will grab his beaker and his lab coat and make some science. He will hurt himself with drugs that he used to be able to take. And so I said, what if I said whatever means necessary, but didn't like actually say. That sounds pretty obviously illegal. Does it? I feel like that's just.

No, it does. Hey, guys. Jesus. Heath, what are you wearing? Oh, these. These right here. These are my glasses. Okay, but what year are they from?

Sixth grade. You look like Hermione Granger fucked a giant. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Well, here's the thing, though. Getting contacts is a huge hassle. But why not try SimpleContacts.com? Oh, what's Simplecontacts.com? Simple Contacts is the most convenient way to renew your contacts lens prescription and reorder your brand of contacts from anywhere in minutes.

It's vision care for the 21st century. Wait, I can order from anywhere? Yeah, they actually let me try it out and it was super simple and easy. I took the test at home on my own computer. It's how I order my contacts now. I'm sorry, is that a strap? Are your glasses connected by a strap at the back?

Yeah, it holds it. Yeah, you just take a five-minute vision test from your phone or computer. It's reviewed by a licensed doctor. You receive a renewed prescription and reorder your contacts. All you need is your current contacts, an internet connection, and 10 feet of space. Or if you have an unexpired prescription, just upload a photo of your doctor's information and order your lenses. That does sound convenient. They say saved by the bell.

Are they saved by the bell themed? They are. So how do I give it a try? How do I try Simple Contacts? Well, you can get $30 off of your contacts at simplecontacts.com slash scathing or enter code scathing at checkout. This isn't a replacement for your periodic full eye exam, but it's an awesome way to bring eye care into the 21st century unlike your glasses which have lightning bolts in the word fat with a p written on the side yeah i did that i did that in a sharpie i could pretty cool see that was that recently yep yep i was well i was going over it started to fade wanted to make it stay

zach morris is not trash there's a bit of separation in the anti-bullshit community between atheism and skepticism between religious nonsense and pseudoscientific nonsense obviously Obviously, there's a lot of overlap. I'm sure most of the people listening would identify as both skeptics and atheists, but there are some who distinctly wear one label and not the other. But if anyone can bridge that divide of disgust, it's Lee Strobel, who melds religious and pseudoscientific bullshit together

in a slurry of bullshit that everyone can hate in the latest, greatest chapter of The case for christ always building bridges lee strobel is the mlk of skepticism he brought us all together all right so four chapters behind us and now it's time for us to examine chapter five the scientific evidence subtitle does archaeology confirm or contradict jesus's biographies hey quick everyone guess what lee will conclude oh all right so before but before we can talk about that of course we have to get the pointless biographical digression du jour this time in the form of the surreal lunch that strobel had with wife murdering child murdering er physician dr jeffrey mcdonald it's so weird apparently strobel just walks into a guarded room with this killer in shackles and and starts bothering him while the

guy's trying to eat a sandwich and he definitely leaves out the part where the killer's like hey uh question who the fuck are you and why are you asking me obnoxious questions while i'm trying to eat my sandwich and i get the feeling that same thing gets left out of most of Lee Strobel's personal stories. And here's the best part about this being the intro. The McDonald case is an amazing example of everything that's wrong with Lee Strobel. It is a rushed trial where the prosecution had obvious bias, like Lee Strobel. Later scientific proof that made the conviction way more shaky, likely Strobel. And best of all, a reporter who lied about how interviews he did went, likely Strobel.

It's everything. All right, but the point Lee's trying to make here is that even if you have some super clever drug-crazed hippies killed by family type excuse it won't matter if the evidence lines up against you and at first i couldn't tell if this was related to the jesus thing or if he just assumed his readers needed some general family murdering advice but but he does tack on a super lazy and science also works when you're asking about jesus that like an afterthought at the end there well it would have to be because you don't want to get too sciencey with the bible right yeah don't look too closely at the ona and the udflay he's careful to say jesus's biographies here he's a very narrow yeah yeah and then he closes

out the section with a little intro for his next guy. And he doth protest way too fucking much. He's like, so as you recall, I majored in advanced nuclear skeptology at Yale University. Maybe you've heard of it. And I know that archaeology is real, but surely there's no way someone could prove anything with rocks and dust. That's ridiculous. Unless. Or could they suppose we need somebody who's world ranked in digging yeah right and has personal experience dealing with jesus stuff and who definitely jerked off onto the shroud of turin and has the restraint to

acknowledge the limits of science whilst at the same time having perfect confidence in his findings yeah right luckily for us i am very good friends with dr goldilocks archaeologist he's next yeah yeah actually yeah no but his real name though is john mccray phd and by the way when you google this guy you get facebook profiles for guys named john mccray when you look him up on wik, it's sure you misspelled this painter no one's ever heard of. The guy wrote a few apologetics books, but other than that, I can find nothing about him. Right, which is not how Strobel sells him. This is how Strobel introduces him. Quote, when scholars and students study archaeology,

When scholars and students study archaeology, many turn to John McRae's thorough and dispassionate 432-page textbook, Archaeology in the New Testament. Yep. Actually, check that out. The book is ranked 120th on Amazon. His textbook doesn't quite reach the excellence of Chaco Handbook, an encyclopedia guide, which is ranked 93. Yeah, 120th in archaeology. In archaeology, yes. In archaeology textbooks, yeah. Well, and the best credential Strobel manages is that he's a professor at a Christian college, and he was once a technical consultant on A&E's Mysteries of the Bible.

Yeah, I thought any minute he was going to tell us which years he's listed in who's who. Also had a poem self-published. Right, and from there, it takes a sharp turn into the realm of weirdly sexual for a minute. It always does, yeah. Talking about McRae's quite the silver fox in 66 with those extra thick glasses and a big panoramic photo of Jerusalem over his bed.

Really says that with longing in his voice and lust in his eyes. He said, look at those deep holes to me. He casually unbuttoned his musky sport jacket and open neck shirt. Almost exact words, like all those things. He almost said exactly what I said. Just fuck already. Just fuck the guy. I'm just picturing Lee Strobel as the beginning of the Indiana Jones movie. He closes his

eyes. He's got love you written on his eyelids while he's talking. And I love this opening gambit where Strobel's going to like flex his skepticism and ask what archaeology can't tell us. After all, and this is the quote lee plucks from dr mccray's work quote even if archaeology can establish that the cities of medina and mecca existed in western arabia during the sixth and seventh centuries that doesn't prove that muhammad lived there or that the quran is true end quote

why'd you choose that example lee of all the examples i want to show this guy isn't biased towards religion so here's him shitting on islam perfect hates religion so the good doctor admits you can't prove christianity as the right religion with science um and then lee offers that up as proof of this guy's academic rigor great so end of book yeah what the fuck else you're gonna do unless you're gonna prove jesus with some laws of geometry i think we're done here wait wait heath i think the rest of the book might just be this guy naming other things you can't prove with archaeology you know sandwich weights that your wife loves you hat sizes checking them all right so after a prolonged explanation of what lying is and how it can affect your

trustworthiness he points out that if the towns the bible talks about actually exist it's less untrue than it would be if they didn't yeah and his explanation of lying is so wrong and windy like the way he sets it up is all right so i went to the store got a coca-cola coca-cola is real one point bought a newspaper also real two points got abducted by aliens who knows two to one right and i won probably not the best idea for lee strobel to bring up the idea of falsifiability in the middle of his book about what would be admissible courtroom evidence that jesus is the unique son of god right it might as well start with and then i went to carl popper's house and we sat in complete silence back to john mccregg so so now it's time to start drilling down on

specific authors and since the author of luke who lee is acting like was luke even though he admits earlier in the book that it can't be who wrote a full quarter of the new testament needs in there so mccrae starts by saying quote the general consensus of both liberal and conservative scholars is that luke is a very accurate historian end end quote. Is he? Yeah, interesting considering that by chapter two, he's telling us about this absurd bullshit census story.

But no, all scholars agree, of course, on the historicity of the demon pig incident. So all in all, he's super reliable. Hey, you know who you shouldn't listen to? A guy who tries to break down hard scholarship by political leanings. Now, both liberal and conservative mathematicians believe in the number six. The number three, if that's just me. It's the dumbest line of questioning.

Strobel asks, so when archaeologists check up on Lukeke do they find that he's mostly accurate because that's going to tell us if he's careful or if he's sloppy when it comes to describing his buddy as the messianic child of an omnipotent warlock what's the science on that right but leaves no do so he asked the big question he goes okay but in luke it says jesus healed the blind man on his way into jericho but in mark it said he was on his way out of jericho this is a random question i have formulated which in no way is intended to lead you into your next slide and the news answer is basically jericho was moving all over the damn place in out meaningless terms when it comes to cities like jericho was moving all over the damn place in now meaningless terms when it comes to cities like jericho yeah he says that jericho got knocked down and rebuilt in a new spot all the

time so historians don't know what words to use to reference it geographically same thing at yankee stadium i get it like if i say i'll meet you on the way into yankee stadium it's not clear if i mean the entrance to fucking yankee stadium or if i mean the edge of the park where that stadium used to be exactly right and that's why it's impossible to be wrong about any piece of yankee trivia ever at this point everything is true false false derrick derrick cheater is the son of god that's that's the fact pretty sure you get at least one vote about that on this podcast. Yeah, he'd do better than Jesus. And then McRae goes on to say,

and if he got the names of all the cities at the time he was alive correct, what are the odds he was lying about the demon pigs? Oh, God. Don't you wish this was how Christians actually believed things? Just walk up to him and be like hey man two plus two is four four plus four is eight and if you don't let me sleep with your wife your head's gonna explode let's go all right with with luke's cred established uh beyond any reasonable person's expectations we now move on to john and mark and it turns out john is definitely super accurate

what with his correct enumeration of the porticos at the pool of Bethesda, there's no way a person not intimately acquainted with the miracles of Jesus could know how many porches there were around the pool of Bethesda. Yeah, so my buddy Jesus made a guy's amputated legs grow back. Yeah, we were at a gay bathhouse with five porches. I had a salad for lunch wait what what caesar salad check the receipt yeah they keep doing this i mean the receipt doesn't mention a caesar salad but i know receipts exist so yeah there you go all right so then we move

on to mark where strobel says quote atheist michael martin accuses mark of being ignorant of palestinian geography, end quote. Weird how he doesn't present other people's arguments by the number of gods they believe in. Right. I mean, I want that now, though. Right. Like atheist Eli Bosnick will not stop jerking off in the Wendy's bathroom. Sounds so regal. Well, now I feel stupid. I've been running around churches with a map of ancient Palestine,

just like shitting all over those people, shoving it right in the pastor's face. But turns out Mark was right. Mark was right. Kind of fucks up my whole thing. Atheism was wrong. Well, Mark was right if you, and this is really his answer. One, don't care what Greek words mean. That's important.

Two, assume where roads were based on no information right and three don't care where the cities in question are because cities be cities am i right and directions used to happen they didn't order the directions it could go in any yeah exactly exactly so okay so then lee asks well have archaeologists ever found anything that disproves the bible and i want to pause here for a second before we move on to mccrae's emphatic no to ask yourself what a find like that would look like an old tree do i win i feel like it's an old tree must have killed the tree couldn't have killed the tree because here's a tree um and then it's time to start breaking down some of the problems that skeptics like lee strobel have

with the new testament he offers up a few puzzles we start with puzzle one the census and hey he's going to mention one of the real ones finally go lee so he asks mccray about the impossible bullshit nonsensical ahistorical census that explains why a guy supposed to be born in bethlehem was called jesus of naz. And what McRae basically does is prove that censuses definitely existed back then. That's his defense. He quotes this Roman document from some other time and place that says, hey, guys, there's going to be a census. So if you're residing outside your province, please go home that week.

It doesn't say go to the home of your patrilineal ancestor back to the sixth generation and just go to like where you now live. Yeah. And he literally acts like those two things are the same. Yeah. Asking people to return to the city of their fathers, whatever the fuck that means, is the same as go to the province where your house is. Which, again, reminder, primaries were this week so i hope everyone went back to whatever country their great great grandparents were from and voted you know get back to poland and and make that vote everybody and with that swept under an increasingly lumpy rug

lee touches on the fact that the the leaders cited at the time of christ's birth don't line up with christ's birth and mccray's argument here is so rich he's like well maybe there were two quiriniuses so much panicky lying at this point he's like well we found a coin that was micro engraved using a first century mormon laser beam and it said there was another quirinius on the uh grassy knoll so you have a p-tape you're lying well at that point even lee's got to be like well that did sound like bullshit but uh there was a british guy who said it too so uh yeah who was proven to be lying he's literally yeah and uh that's not true in any way shape or form really throws a monkey wrench into my argument about knowing things being a marker for liability.

Spent a large section of this chapter on that. Nazareth. How about Nazareth? Moving on. Okay, so then he hits on this one that the mythicists love, which is the question of whether or not the city of Nazareth even existed

at the time of Jesus' birth. And there is some question about that. And I've got to admit, I've always found it hard to believe that a Messiah that was supposed to be a Nazirite by the prophecies was born in Nazareth, especially since we know how many mistranslations and misinterpretations crept into

early Christian understandings of Hebrew scripture. Right. And again, we learned that atheists write articles about this. Atheists. Yeah. At this point, I thought, Lee might think atheist is a degree. Like he's an atheist, professor of atheism.

All right. And the best McCrae could do on this one, by the way, is, well, there definitely was a town there or somewhere near there. There's a guy in Florida who was later proven to be a liar. A checkmate. Yeah. How the fuck does any of this matter? Like, hello, scientist. I'm looking for data about Bilbo Baggins and his magical ring that makes you invisible.

Okay. Okay. Well, here's a coffee mug that we dug up in the Shire. Well, it says Maiden Mordor on it. Yeah. No, they did a mug census and all the mugs have to go back to their dad's house so it all ties together all right so then we get puzzle three slaughter at bethlehem and as much as that sounds like a horror movie that we'd review on gam

it's actually about herod murdering all the babies because he was afraid of jesus the kind of event one might expect to show up in more than one historical source and by the way another rather telling example choice here he says you know murdering kids tends to get noticed like quote in 1997 and 1998 there was a steady stream of news accounts about muslims extremists repeatedly staging commando raids and slaying virtually entire villages including women and children, in Algeria. End quote. Oh, that's what he meant by kids getting killed.

Yeah, right. As an example of kids being murdered. I didn't understand. He's like, yeah, like Muslims, you know? Kid murder, like Muslims. I feel like this was an editor phone call, right? He's just like, hey, Lee, loving the book. Do you have any examples that aren't about

how wrong slash evil Muslims are in it? I do not. I do not. Okay. Okay, good to know. Just checking in. that aren't about how wrong slash evil Muslims are in it? I do not. I do not. Okay. Okay. Good to know. Just checking in.

Save me a couple more phone calls, I'm sure. And the crazy answer, by the way, is, nah, they didn't have CNN back then. Plus, Herod was all the time killing babies. When was he not killing babies is the real question. Yeah, historians back then didn't have time for stuff like all the babies in a city getting killed. Right. They were, you know, too busy counting the porch areas at the local fuck pond.

No time for mass baby genocide reports. And then it's time to talk about, drumroll please, the Dead Sea Scrolls. Yeah. Oh, these are the time cube of pre-1994. He starts the conversation by going like, now, a lot of people have said some dumb shit about these things, but

not enough. That's where I come in. And he's got this, like, incredulous little bit at the beginning where he says, you know, this asshole thought Christianity started from a Jewish fertility cult on the hallucinogens! Exclamationlamation point but obviously we know it started when a zombie rose from the dead yeah duh duh and that's why i'm here with this expert archaeologist dr mccray has anyone ever dug up a zombie of jesus no exactly rose from the dead science clearly so he asks mccrae he's like uh so do these scrolls many of which date to 40 years after jesus died ever mention him and mccrae's like

well i uh uh not by name they mentioned they mentioned men and any of those men could have been jesus we don't know and then mccray makes a complete non-point about how both the dead sea scrolls and jesus quote isaiah wrong in the same way which is no doubt a byproduct of slightly different versions of all the biblical books going around back then but strobel is like he's floored by this he's like well shit science did prove jesus after all didn't it it's's nuts. He's like, wait a second. You're telling me these incredibly unreliable books, by my own admission, also name a miracle that's in my giant book.

What do these atheists need? Giant blinking sign? Yeah. This is about the story of John the Baptist sending his entourage to go find Jesus in jail and ask Jesus if he's really the Messiah. And apparently Jesus was like, yeah, so tell John I said zombie pants. He'll know what I mean. And Strobel just starts weeping. Then we move on to the wrap up in which Lee Strobel points out that the bible is way truer

than the book of Mormon exactly the yardstick of historical accuracy one would use if one was supremely confident in their book's authenticity but even there even there he's full of shit because like look he asked all those questions at a Christian college something tells me if you head to the like head of archaeology at BYU, they're going to have some special pleading at least as good as McRae's. Right. Or at least have some delicious avocado toast. Like, there'd be something.

Probably both. Oh, my God. He spends so much time talking about how full of shit Mormonism is. Bryce Blankenegel would have told him to move on. Yeah. This whole section, it's just Mormon mascot theory. Like, you might as well go to a bar

and hit on an archaeologist with an overweight, snaggletooth Book of Mormon right next to him the whole time. And then, of course, we have the obligatory couple of paragraphs about how Lee Strobel has to admit he was starting to agree with himself

and was doing a hell of a job writing this book. Then he closes off by teasing us with his next interview where he's going to go toe-to-toe with one of jesus's biggest critics uh his mother and unfortunately for you but fortunately for us that's gonna have to wait for a few weeks but we can't close off entirely until we hit lee's questions for reflection or group study and we get four this time, apparently, too. So, question one. What do you see as some of the shortcomings and benefits

of using archaeology to corroborate the New Testament? Okay. Possible shortcomings. Scientists don't generally use the word corroborate in their abstract. There's a reason for that. Also, hopefully. Those aren are science words yeah two votes not not knowing what either of those words means or how it's used as a

shortcoming kind of right off the bat you know what i'm saying and i'd say one of the biggest shortcomings is the way archaeology disproves what you're asserting you know under benefits i have um atheist podcasters making fun of this later are going to have to keep spelling archaeology correctly in their notes. Like maybe that was a plus for Lee. A before E except after G. Yeah, that's it exactly. And you know what? That's just as useful as the real one.

So, OK, question two. If Luke and other New Testament writers are shown to be accurate in reporting incidental details, does that increase your confidence that they would be similarly careful in recording important events? Fuck you. So, sorry, this morning I had Raisin Bran for breakfast, made coffee, classic blend, thank you, Heath, with my nine-inch penis, put some almond milk in it.

What were you saying? Christ is God. God, God, God. Mike Birbiglia. Nailed it. Okay, but yeah, obviously makes it worse. This entire chapter was basically a giant run-on sentence by somebody reading a murder alibi or penis alibi off of index cards.

And every so often a cop's like, so did you kill that guy? And it's like, papyrus is real. What the fuck? Meaningless. off and a cop's like uh so did you kill that guy and it's like papyrus is real what the fuck yeah i just want to see the version of this where like none of the incidental details are true right the argument from the bible isn't quite jabberwocky all right question three why do you find dr mcrae's analysis of the puzzles concerning the census the existence of nazareth and the slaughter at bethlehem to be generally plausible or implausible uh n slash a not sure i get the question how plausible is completely irrelevant right where does that fall on the plausibility scale uh and more importantly why plausible is completely irrelevant what the fuck is i n slash a them i'm nothing

them like i tried to read this question and i had to stop and be like oh i must have written this no that's just how dumb he fucking phrased it um yeah implausible across the board and i already believe nazareth existed at the time like even when you're defending my position your arguments are so bad i'm unconvinced okay question noah do you and dr mcavoy have any future plans to tear our community apart with your outlandish claims we do we do all right so finally question four after having considered eyewitness documentary corroborating and scientific evidence in the case for christ stop and assess your conclusion so far no on a scale of zero to ten on a scale of zero to ten and he has to really break down what that means for his readers on a scale of zero to ten with zero being no confidence in the essential

reliability of the gospels and ten being full confidence where would you rate yourself at this point? And what are some reasons you chose that number? Okay. This is tricky because sand exists. So that's one. But people don't rise from the dead. Oh. I need more time.

I need more time. It's a tie. How do you rate that? I'm going to go with negative two, two lee you're so bad at this that i'm starting to doubt the existence of people named jesus yeah all right well i mean i'd love to name a score but as we all know much like the location of jericho within the time dimension the number line is an arbitrary circle with no beginning or end. There's no way to tell what I even mean when I say zero. Like, I could be on my way out of zero on my way into infinity.

Or you have no fucking idea. Numbers are meaningless. And with that, I guess we've seen all the science one could reasonably bring to bear on the story of an undead immortal zombie raising leprosy, curing God, man who made the sun stand still. So that's going to do it for chapter five. But we'll be back in three weeks with Lee Strobel flailing and yet more desperation to make the case for christ before we mosey over to your already played list i want to remind you one more time that if you're

having trouble keeping up with all the legal nuances in the news andrew's podcast opening arguments is a phenomenal source you'll find it linked in the show notes anyway that's all the blasphemy we've got for you tonight but we're 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 god novel 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 can't cue the music until I thank Heath Enright for all his various non-height

based qualities that would definitely occur to me if I thought about it a little longer. I need to thank Eli Bostic for not asking Andrew 16 of the 17 things I asked him not to ask. I also want to thank Andrew for refusing to answer that other one. I also want to thank Larry Yellingman from the Man Yells at News podcast for providing this week's Farnsworth quote. Seems like he's got his work cut out for him in

this news cycle. If you'd like to yell along, you'll find a link on the show notes for that as well. But most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's most benevolent beings, Melina, Joshua, James, Oliver, some guy, Nate, and Dogen. Melina, Joshua, and James, whose IQs have more digits than Paul Manafort's legal bills, and Oliver, some guy, Nate, and Dogen, who are so sexy that when I said their names, my cats got moist. Together, these seven savory savants saved our savior-savaging severity sovereignty this week by giving us money. Not everybody has the money to give us money, but if you do,

you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com slash scathingadeus, 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 scathingadeus.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 due to permission. If you have questions, comments, or death threats, you can find all the contact info on the contact page at ScathingAdias.com.

Drugs. Upstate New York, drugs. Oh no, other place drugs, where you went to college. Upstate Massachusetts. Meth. The preceding podcast was a production of Puzzle & Thunderstorm LLC, copyright 2018, all rights reserved.