The Scathing Atheist - 284: Alienated Edition

Episode Date: July 26, 2018

In this week’s episode, Lee Strobel’s back to scientifically prove what Jesus thought but never said, the gay community hides a fuck slave animal inside their acronym, and a dead guy will keep up the good work. To see Citation Needed live in Chicago, click here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/citation-needed-live-in-chicago-tickets-45942658729 To see God Awful Movies live in London, click here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/god-awful-movies-live-in-london-tickets-47591873575 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/ To Contact your senator, check here: https://www.senate.gov/reference/referenceindexsubjects/Directories_vrd.htm Guest Links: Check out the “BS! Hold my Beer” podcast here: http://bshmbeer.libsyn.com/ Headlines: House passes yet another repeal of Johnson Amendment: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2018/07/20/the-gop-led-house-just-passed-another-repeal-of-the-johnson-amendment/ Christian Activist Star Parker Claims the “B” in LGBT Stands for “Bestiality” http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2018/07/17/christian-activist-star-parker-claims-the-b-in-lgbt-stands-for-bestiality/ Domestic Terrorist Pardoned by Trump Will Now Work to Get God in Schools http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2018/07/16/domestic-terrorist-pardoned-by-trump-will-now-work-to-get-god-in-schools/ Richard dawkins makes us all look bad...again... http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2018/07/18/richard-dawkins-tweet-about-muslim-prayers-violates-his-own-stated-principles/ Ethiopian “Prophet” Allegedly Arrested After Failed Attempt to Resurrect Corpse http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2018/07/23/ethiopian-prophet-allegedly-arrested-after-failed-attempt-to-resurrect-corpse/ This Week in Misogyny: Florida man kills girlfriend with Bible: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2018/07/19/florida-man-kills-his-girlfriend-with-a-bible-tells-police-she-was-the-devil/ 10 year old Somali girl dies of FGM: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2018/07/23/10-year-old-girl-dies-after-traditional-female-genital-mutilation-in-somalia/ Christian blogger: Men want debt free virgins with no tattoos: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2018/07/18/christian-blogger-men-want-women-who-are-debt-free-virgins-with-no-tattoos/ Catholic church says ‘consecrated virgins’ no longer need be virgins: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2018/07/18/vatican-says-consecrated-virgins-no-longer-have-to-be-virgins/

Warning, the following podcast is family-friendly, so long as nobody in your family minds hearing us say fuck. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Dollar Shave Club, Stamps.com, 4Hims, and by the new separate but equal laws for churches in Trump's America, the Johnson and Johnson Amendment, because not everyone's God votes right. And now, The Scathing A i'm jacob and i'm patrick from the bullshit hold my beer podcast the epic bar room conversation gone so very very right hey patrick can you believe that some people out there don't believe that we in fact evolved from

filthy monkey men? Bullshit. Hold my beer. It's Thursday. It's July 26th. And it's Uncle Day. So to all those uncles who aren't creepy, we salute you. Not fair. There is no separate Creepy Uncles Day. I'm Noah Lusions. I'm Eli Bosnick.

I'm Heath Enright. From New York, New York, Cincinnati, Ohio, and bumfuck nowhere, this is Skating Atheist. On this week's episode, Lee Strobel's back to scientifically prove what Jesus thought but never said. The gay community hides a fuck-slave animal inside their acronym. And a dead guy will keep up the good work. But first, the diatribe. You know, I bet even if we ended up proving them right, religious people wouldn't believe us. I was thinking about this the other day.

So to get there, let's imagine that you and I live to see the discovery of life on another planet, but not in the Hollywood blockbuster pulp novel manner. In the scientific way, it'll almost certainly happen manner. So it won't be some eureka moment when we find a monolith on the moon or their spaceships park over the White House or something. It'll happen over a period of years. It'll start off with some anomalous readings on some spectrograph, and then headlines will pop up everywhere saying, hey, could this exoplanet harbor life? And that's going to be the first that most of us hear about it and then the scientists will point more and more instruments at it gather more and more data have some arguments have some symposia all the while the headlines will remind us that the question is still being debated and they'll update us on the latest findings and over time doubtful scientists will be convinced journalists will

hedge their bets less and less and by the time they come out and say yeah we're 99.99999 sure that planet 2011 g whatever the fuck has life on it people paying attention will already pretty much know and rather than the agape mouths and agog eyes of a century plus of science fiction we'll get some broad swath of the world dismissing this with little more than pics or it didn't happen we'll find that a disturbingly large segment of society isn't buying all them missing bands and them spectrographic analyses and whatnot. They'll confidently dismiss the findings as the sequel to the infamous moon landing hoax they did back in the 60s.

And it's not like we'll have high-res pictures of a snarf blax to show them. We'll have data. We'll have data that can only be reasonably interpreted in a single way, but reasonably hasn't acted as much of an impediment to these folks in the past. So you and I, dutiful defenders of science and truth that we are, will find ourselves arguing in favor of alien life with the exact same motherfuckers we had to argue with against alien abduction. So what if we flip the script on God like that? Imagine that at some point along the road of scientific discovery, we found God. And not like, you know, some satellite flies by some big dude sitting on a cloud just below Alpha Centauri, but like whatever the equivalent of the

slow roll alien discovery would be. And over time, we poke and we prod at this discovery until no reasonable scientists could look at this data and not see God. You know, they do more and more experimentation. They gather more and more information. And it keeps bolstering the hypothesis that an eternal conscious force of some sort created the universe and interacts with events in the present day. In this imaginary world, how long would it take before you and I were arguing in favor of God to all the people we are arguing against today. I mean, sure, some religious people would embrace the fuck out of something like that, the way they flocked to the Big Bang theory when it suited their purposes, but that wouldn't last long. Religious authorities aren't

going to give up their monopoly easily, even to the one true God, and they're sure as hell not going to let a bunch of scientists determine what their God thinks about things. But beyond that, to keep with the analogy, we have to imagine a degree or two of separation between God and our conclusion, right? A couple of solid inferences and reams of data you'd need a PhD to correctly interpret. And while that's no impediment to you or me, it would present itself to theists as plausible deniability. Because look, nobody I know in the atheist movement is wedded to the idea that God doesn't exist. We conclude that because it's very clearly true, but that's not where we derive our passion. Our passion is for what is true, and the shit that falsities claiming the mantle of real smear over the good name of actual truth

is what emboldens us to action and pisses us off. You ask a theist and an atheist what it would take to convince them that the other guy was right, and you'll know the atheist because he'll be the one that answers. Our loyalty is to reality, and if God was part of reality, our loyalty would extend to him. But the same isn't true for the other side, is it? Hell, most of them wouldn't even claim that it was. See, God is easy. Believing in God takes no intellectual effort at all. It might take intellectual effort to keep believing in him despite all the evidence to the contrary, but that doesn't matter because without a bit of intellectual effort to begin

with, you don't understand the implications of all that evidence. A grown adult and a toddler stand in awe of God with the same cognitive investment. That is not true of any other thing one might stand in awe of. But if you start layering in science, if you start saying, hey, I know God exists because the data we've recovered from these massive electromagnetic devices and the data we've recovered from these geological surveys show that X can't be Y without Z. You know, long since lost most religious people, they know God exists because trees or sunsets or the mirth of a newborn babe. And they don't need or want any of your fancy science words standing between them and their unearned awe. See, in science, you got to work for your awe. Now, I'm not talking about a static awe here, like the awe you get when you see a beautiful landscape or hear a beautiful symphony.

I'm talking about that intellectual awe that you get when you like when you almost understand what you are from the perspective of physics or when you realize how far that photon came from that star to be absorbed in your eye or when you simultaneously consider how big and how small you are. And in science, consistently finding that awe is tough. You got to keep learning new shit. You got to keep up with the latest knowledge. But religion doesn't make any of those kind of demands on you, does it? You're not just allowed to feel awe at the same thing every week. You're required to. No need to ever learn anything new. Nothing will ever change. No need to challenge yourself. It wouldn't pay off anyway. No need to know anything else. God loves you and that's enough. But if science got a hold of God, that would no longer be the case, right? We would learn new shit about God. We'd learn how he worked.

We'd learn to the best of our ability what didn't't didn't matter to him. We'd quantify his love and favor. We'd probe into his motives. And then churches would have to start the day off with all the new stuff we just learned about God. Hell, they might even have to correct misconceptions that we had. Ooh, they might have to explain why God hates abortion, but it might take some effort to understand. And that would defeat the whole purpose. And pretty soon, religion would have its very own God standing in naked defiance of the real one because it was never about the truth for them. And I know this seems like a bit of a superfluous thought experiment. I mean, it's not like any of this shit's really going to happen, but it could have a practical application beyond just understanding the other side i mean at the rate we're going we're never going to find god but we might build him

they're talking about you jesus joining me for headlines tonight are the exposition and climax to my denouement, Heath Enright and Eli Bosnick. Fellas, are you ready to get this action rising? All right. All right. So that means Eli's going to come while I narrate? Is that what we're doing? I feel like regardless of what I'd said in the introduction, it would have meant that.

Okay. Okay. But no color commentary this time, Heath. How frantic something is is objective and while eli and heath work out the rules here we're gonna pause for a quick break from this week's first sponsor dollar shave club greedily frantic thank you wait no okay remember it's it's his first solo place in a while so expect it to be a bit of a bachelor pad. I got it. I got it.

Hey, guys. What's up? Hey, Heath. All right. Welcome to Shea Heath. Sorry, hold on. Just let me just clear the doorway a little bit. Just a second.

Oh, wow. Are you guys doing a recycling drive or something? Uh, no. Why? Never mind. You mind showing us around? Alright. So, this is the living room. Still settling in, you know, but I like it. It's nice.

Is that an entire wheel of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese? Yeah, exactly. Got a sweet deal on it. Plus extra chair, right? I do not think that's

what you're supposed to do. It smells like Shaquille O'Neal fucked a dumpster full of Indian food in here. I cannot. That's me. That's me. Sorry. Single life. Shower when I feel like it. Keith, yeah, that's me. That's me. Sorry. You know, single life, right? Shower when I feel like it. Okay.

Keith, why don't you just try dollarshaveclub.com? Oh, don't those guys just do razors, though? No, Dollar Shave Club delivers everything you need to look, feel, and smell your best. Yeah, they have shampoo, conditioner, body wash, toothpaste, hair gel, all of which i think you need right now literally all of those things okay are you talking about my brows though i mean they are getting a little wild they're getting a little crazy they are covering your eyes okay look guys i appreciate it but i'm on my own now you know so money's a little tight i mean have you guys heard of family cloth no okay do you know how that works? That from my brain forever.

But Heath, there's a great way to try a bunch of Dollar Shave Club's products. For just five bucks, you can get their daily essential starter set. It comes with body cleanser, one wipe Charlies, their amazing butt wipes, their world famous shave butter, and their best razor, the six blade executive. Keep the blades coming for a few more bucks a month and add in shampoo, toothpaste, or anything else you need for the bathroom. Wow, just five bucks? I think I got that in the couch cushions.

Nope, that is soup. Sorry, sorry. It's pretty good. Okay, well, you can check it all out at dollarshaveclub.com slash scathing. Again, that's dollarshaveclub.com slash scathing. How did soup? I fell asleep mid-haveclub.com. How did soup? I fell asleep mid-soup. Sure.

Happens to the best of us. It's not abnormal. You guys want some? And now, back to the headlines. In our lead story tonight, House Republicans remain obsessed with Mike Johnson, as evidenced by their umpteenth effort to legislatively castrate the only thing standing between us and church appointed senators. So quick refresher course, the Johnson Amendment is a provision of the U.S. tax code enacted in 1954 that prohibits 501C3 nonprofits from endorsing or opposing political candidates. You know, the tax free ones. It's basically the threadbare curtain that keeps christianity from being an official fundraising arm of the far right yeah but really it's a

threadbare theater curtain it's really wall of separation theater because taking away the word official from official fundraising arm really means nothing to the gay person who won't be able to buy food thanks to neil gorsuch and bre Brett Kavanaugh or the woman who's forced to give birth. Right. Yeah, I don't think a 19-year-old rape victim getting an abortion from a veterinarian in Texas is going to be like, you know what I appreciated? A veil of neutrality. That made me feel better. I made this better.

More dog tranquilizer, please. That also makes me feel better. So the section in question reads, quote, none of the funds made available by this act, this is all the government's money, may be used by the IRS to deny tax exemptions under Section 501A of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 with respect to a church, an integrated auxiliary of a church, or a convention or association of churches for participating in or intervening in any political campaign on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for public office end quote yeah so i mean i'm cool dropping the johnson amendment and replacing it with everybody has to pay taxes yeah there you go just kind of work itself out in payroll but right now, they're trying to weaken something that's way too weak already.

And again, it's secular theater. It basically says like, all right, take off your belt and raise your hands. Cool, you're not a theocrat. Here's another giant tax break. And Trump thinks he needs to weaken that. Ooh, ooh, I love these questions.

Noah, would you go through airport security every day but you don't have to pay taxes i think you already know the answer to that and and keep in mind that yes this is an atheist relevant story for a lot of reasons but for republicans discriminating against us is just a bonus see on the one hand this provides yet another special right only afforded to religious people and that that fires up their base. But the more important thing is that it fucks poor people out of any meaningful political power forever. And I mention that because the Senate's version of this funding bill doesn't have the same language, and they still have to reconcile the two. So there's still time to kill this fucker dead.

But they need to know that we know. In a related story, your senator has a phone. We'll have the number linked in the show notes. Senators may not have a phone in Oklahoma, Alaska, and Utah. And in LGBTU news tonight, you can't tell, but I spelled U-E-W-E like sheep,

which will make sense in a second. It's a call forward, but if you are reading the notes like we are. Speaking of sheep, Eli, please proceed. Thanks, Senator. Christian activists and tasteless in-living color

character brought to life, Star Parker, took to Vocal Point Radio yesterday to warn listeners of the dreaded LGBTQ acronym. Because the B stands for bestiality. What? Typical bi erasure. Right?

Jokes on Star Parker. Gays and lesbians are fucking goats. Fucking deal with it, Star Parker. Yeah, but I mean, is it okay with her if I fuck lady goats, though? I don't know if I get her thing here. I mean, I've seen a picture of Star Parker. She better hope she's okay with people fucking lady goats. That's all I'm saying.

Racist. Go ahead. So, my extreme... No. No. Don't you try to Roseanne me. Don't you try to Roseanne me. Because she looks like a goat. There's not a racial thing about what race do goats look like. Go. All right.

We'll leave it. Manchu. Thank you. Take that, Manchu listeners. Some guy sitting on a yak slowly takes out his headphones. Fuck the man. I just wanted one place. Okay.

So my extreme disappointment that I missed the pride parade this year aside, this is what Star had to say. Quote, there are some that say this bee is going to bombard us with real vileness in our society. If they get what they want, because it's not about bisexuality, it's about bestiality. End quote. All right. Well, wait until Star Parker finds out it's actually b for black okay but so she actually knows what it means though she just she just changed it can anyone

do that right so here's her reasoning i mean aside from the fact that she's hoping she could join up and fuck a dog she points out that the gay board of acronyms already changed the q in lgbtq from queer to questioning and therefore quote we do know that there is an agenda and we do know that there have been discussions about bestiality in their closed doors. I'm just like in their closed doors. Yep. I'm just saying, don't be surprised if we find out that the B is not what they say publicly, that we just love each other,

that it may in law show up as something else. End quote. Okay. Star Parker real quick, if you're listening and I, I really hope you are a and I really hope you are. Big fan. I really, really hope you are.

Here's the thing. I think you might be projecting a little bit. For most people, acronyms aren't really like a tricky thing. We aren't made to be confused by some letters, thus hiding the secret truth about other letters. That's not how it works for a lot of people. I feel like you're projecting that. Heath, before you mock Miss Parker, we actually have recordings from inside that closed door. Let's have a listen.

Okay, everyone. I call this meeting of the secret cabal of gays dude dude dude you're doing real offensive voice no no this is star parker's insane fantasy so this is how i would talk oh okay well then i talk like this i'm a lesbian lesbians all sound like this so first order of business as you all know in the new mandatory gay wedding cake bill, we've managed to sneak in language legalizing bestiality so Dave and Scruffy over here can finally celebrate their big day. We're so happy.

Now, next up, as you know, our trans bathroom acceptance initiative is about to pass the House and Senate. But the plan is to switch that last second to Tyrannosaurus. So that we can have a bunch of Tyrannosauruses in the women's bathroom. Yeah, I know, it's going to be great, I know. And finally, I know earlier I mentioned that B stood for bestiality now. But today we're announcing that after we get the B officially changed to bestiality, we're planning to switch that to P for pedophile. I know, I know, it's so exciting.

And here to speak on this momentous occasion is our local representative from Nambla. I want to fuck. Well, it looks like that recording cut off there suddenly and for no reason. While I look into that, we're going to toss things over to my lovely wife, Lucinda. But first, a word from our second sponsor this week, Stamps.com. Hey, Noah. You know

what pickled wombat larynx has in common with a convincing apologetic? What's that, Eli? They're literally the only two remaining things you can't get on demand these days. Are you sure about that? What about all the amazing services at the post office? You still have to wait in line for those. Not true. You can just use stamps.com to access them right from your desk. 24 hours a day, seven days a week when it's convenient for you. That sounds too good to be

true. And yet it isn't. You can buy and print official U.S. postage for any letter, any package, any class of mail using your own computer and printer. And then the mail carrier picks it up. Just click print mail and you're done. It couldn't be easier. Are you sure? I am sure. We use stamps.com to send out all the merch for our podcasts. And it's so convenient, I use it for all my personal shipping too. What kind of personal shipping do you do? That's none of your business. And Andrew says I'm not allowed to answer that on the air anyway. But Eli, shipping is expensive enough already. It is, but right now you can use the promo code SCATING for this special offer. It includes up to $55 in free postage, a digital scale, and a four-week trial. Great. I'll wait, and then I'll try that.

No, don't wait. Go to stamps.com, and before you do anything else, click on the radio microphone at the top of the homepage and type in scathing. That's stamps.com, enter scathing. Stamps.com, you know you wanna. I don't think that's their tagline. There was no tagline in the copy. A man wrote the Bible. A whore is what she was.

If it's a legitimate race. If it's a slut, right? Cooking can be fun. Hey, I'm proud of a man. This Week in Masada. Okay, so here's the kind of week I'm having. When I opened my inbox this week to start working on this segment, the first thing I saw was a link to a story about a dude in Florida

who decided to give up on all the pretense and literally beat his girlfriend to death with a Bible. Cut out the middleman, so to speak. And that's not the worst story I'm going to death with a Bible. Cut out the middleman, so to speak. And that's not the worst story I'm going to tell you this week. That honor goes to a story out of Somalia about a 10-year-old girl who died of, shout it out with me if you know this one,

female genital mutilation. And before we go any further, let me dismiss the apologists who try to distance Islam from this shit. It may not be rooted in Islamic scripture, but it sure as hell rooted in Islamic tradition and it's perpetrated by Islamic authorities. And hell, you could even argue

that it is rooted in scripture. And if you don't believe me, just ask the religious leaders of Somalia. Now look, this is a problem in a lot of places, but Somalia is by far the worst. In Somalia, more than 98% of women suffer this torture as a rite of pubescent passage. And one of the reasons those numbers are so high is because Somali mothers are consistently lied

to about the dangers of the procedure. Well, a lot of activists are hoping this death can help change that. See, this is the first death from FGM that the Somali government has confirmed in several years, but it's not the first one that's happened. The procedure is incredibly dangerous, and while it only rarely results in death, it can also result in tetanus, infection, and infertility, not to mention that it's guaranteed to cause severe pain and problems in childbirth.

Sometimes those problems are fatal, but they don't wind up on the government's official list of FGM deaths. And of course, even if you could somehow solve all of that, what you're left with is a medically useless procedure that functions only to rob women of sexual pleasure. Because if women can enjoy sex, these shriveled dick klutzes have to come to terms with how bad they are at it. I mean, is that what men want? A woman physically incapable of enjoying sex? Is that what men want?

A woman physically incapable of enjoying sex? Well, luckily for that rhetorical question and for everybody saying, can you lighten the fucking mood already? Christian blogger Lori Alexander offered up an answer to exactly what men want. And it turns out it's the precise opposite of me. According to Lori, men are really looking for debt-free, tattoo-free virgins. Which seems odd because virgin is a single-use thing. Anyway, I guess I get it in the extreme. Like, if you want a true virgin,

a tattoo needle probably counts as penetration. And how do you collect debt? By getting fucked on contracts. So I guess she's just elaborating on virgin with the other two stipulations. And as an atheist activist, I for one love this as a marketing tool for Christianity. Come to Jesus, guys, or women will suck your dick like they're trying to siphon gas until you explain exactly how to do something you've never done.

Anyway, I've got a pillow that needs screamed into, so I'll take my temporary leave and hand things back over to Noah, Heath, and Eli. Thank you, Lucinda. And in post-pardon depression news tonight, in an effort to improve the president's mood in the wake of accidentally committing televised treason, his advisors let him play with his pardon crayons again. And then they said,

who's exercising dictatorial power now? You are. That's right. Until he stopped holding his breath. And Trump used that time to pardon domestic terrorist and gummy dick sales catalyst dwight hammond jr now you might remember hammond and his son for burning 139 acres of federal land in what the justice department calls a clear effort to destroy evidence of illegal deer hunting

or more likely you might remember them for prompting a different group of jack-off dumbasses to occupy a birding station until they ran out of gummy dicks and had to go home honestly i would pay a pretty good amount of money to see footage of their sovereign rebel army dividing up those rubber dicks when they left they had to do it like they definitely didn't just leave there they brought them home i'm guessing they did like a snake draft like fantasy football. Okay, sure. Now everyone likes licorice. Y'all just want more food.

You ain't fooling me. Now, originally, the 76-year-old arsonist was sentenced to five years in prison, but Schmuck O'LaRange decided that was way too much for an idiotic, septuagenarian, right-wing conspiracy theorist who sets fire to things that are federal protection, inspires terrorism, destroys evidence, and abets anti-American forces, so he freed him with a stroke of his tiny Trump-sized pen. And what will Dwight do with his newfound freedom? Well, according to a recent piece in The Oregonian, he'll be working to put God back in public schools. God fucking damn it. Okay, so we need to send enormous amounts of rubber dicks to any school that lets him in the doors oh sure keith wants to send dicks to his school it's fine but when i do

it i can't direct for disney anymore i hate being the new guy surgeon general suggested that get taught in schools i think it's an important thing already. So Hammond, who seems to think being convicted of domestic terrorism somehow qualifies him to opine on civic responsibility, told the paper, quote, and I'm sorry, you cannot say this quote without doing the voice. I'm going to do the voice quote. We don't stay in a snowball's chance on the slow roll through hell and getting out of this situation until we're willing to let God lead us, end quote. Now, it's worth noting that this situation remains undefined in the interview. And as near as I can tell, it's the oppressive world in which a man can't even destroy the evidence of his crimes against the state government without running afoul of the federal government. And in dick move news tonight, atheist author and man whose phone it can't possibly be that

hard to take away since the stroke richard dawkins well you would be surprised but anyway he took to twitter to prove the age-old adage either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the oh jesus he said he said what? Come on, man. Tweet about microbes or something. God. Yeah, dude, stick to what you know. You know what stroke survivors are super well known for? Audio acuity.

No, no. You should probably not give advice on how to chew with both sides of your mouth either now, dude. Right. So here's the latest tweet. It's picture of ricky sitting in front of winchester cathedral the caption quote listening to the lovely bells of winchester one of our great medieval cathedrals so much nicer than the aggressive sounding alahu akbar or is it just my cultural upbringing yeah quick tip um Maybe don't bring up medieval Christianity when you're trying to say your culture is superior to anything. Right. Right. That's a word to leave out.

So, you know how we have to point out all the time that it's not Islamophobic if you're criticizing ideas. Right. So like saying the Koran is a violent and disgusting book of nonsense is just a true statement about a book. It's just the thing that you say. Well, your music or particularly just this set of words sounds barbaric, isn't a criticism of ideas. It's just kind of Islamophobic. Right. Like, tell me I'm missing something here. All right. I'm thinking a little challenge is going to settle this.

If Richard Dawkins can say God is dead without sounding barbaric or weird, I'll back him up on this one. Okay. Okay. Okay. And I won. See, now he does clarify and it's not better. So here was a follow-up tweet. He said, quote, the call to prayer can be hauntingly

beautiful, especially if the mesoman? Yeah, I'm sure that's exactly it. Muezzin. Especially if the muezzin has a musical voice. So that's better. But he goes on. My point is that Allahu Akbar is anything

but beautiful when it's heard just before a suicide bomb goes off. Oh, for fuck's sake, man. I mean. That is when Islam is tragically hijacked by violence. End quote. See, guys? When he was talking about Islam, he was thinking about suicide bombers. It's much better.

Watch the next Jihad video from ISIS. It's got an opera singer doing an aria while she chops somebody's head off. Just like, fuck you, you stuttery cannibals. Yeah, I got to say, it's the corrupting of a musical tradition that really pisses me off about suicide bombings. It's about time somebody fucking said it. Thank you, brave. And Richie, if you're listening, and I know you are, I get it.

I mean, personally, I prefer the sound of Muslims to atheists, by which, of course, I mean Muslims who don't tweet shit I have to spend my week explaining versus old evolutionary biologists who should have sealed themselves in a library somewhere without internet service

so they could avoid skull fucking their legacy to death in their remaining years. See? All better. I fixed it. And finally tonight, in long jury news, an Ethiopian healthcare worker who has a Christian prophecy business

on the side for extra money is under arrest after he failed to prophesy that he would not be able to resurrect a dead body by digging it up and yelling at it a lot and it looks like he got the part about not going to jail wrong too when he tried to prophesy so guys when I said rise from the grave, I meant get dug up. And we did it. Yes. Rise.

Hoist. What's the difference? So the provident question is, get a yokel a yele. And he really wanted to fuck a corpse. Pretty sure. All been there. It's happened. And when he heard about a motorcycle accident with a fatality in his

hometown he figured it was his big chance to combine his necrophilia hobby with his christian magic hobby which sounds exciting for him i guess but those two hobbies really fit together pretty easily on most days regardless he went over to the victim's family's house and explained how there was this guy in the bible named lazarus who died and then got brought back to life by jesus and uh i'm guessing he also pointed out that jesus was from galilee and so were they they're all they're all from galilee ethiopia I see. At which point the family was like, mind blown. Galilee, get the fuck out of here. Let's dig up our dead son right now. Was this your card?

It was. Cool. Let me dig up your kid's bones. Let's. Yeah. I mean, I mean, this dude's opening sound as he sits down there. He goes, OK, I want to dig up your son. Hold on.

Hear me out. And someone said, yeah, no, we will hear you out. Like at that point, there is no benign resolution. Okay. So normally with absurd headlines like this, you have to keep in mind that they might be fake. And that's definitely possible here. But there is a video. I love it so much.

It's amazing. and i love it so much it's amazing and it's pretty hard to explain what's happening in the video without using the phrase okay that prophet guy is definitely trying to fuck that dead body back to life and it's not just that the whole video is fucking great you get to watch a guy standing in a casket that he just dug up and screaming in the face of a corpse for way longer than it should take to realize the corpse is going to be staying dead. Oh, so long. So good. Ed Harris from the abyss is like, hey, it's not happening. And he's a yelp. Is it?

It's like it's like a wake it's very clearly him saying wake up it's the best but like a dog yelling at itself in a mirror you know it's so good wanna go out of the casket come on

he tries everything does not work but that's not the only prediction he got wrong he also incorrectly saw the future results of dry humping the corpse for a solid two minutes while the dead guy's family watched in i'm gonna say hopeful silence would be the way to describe it um well unless of course his prophecy involved getting the fuck beat out of him by an angry mob and going to jail in which case he eventually nailed it yeah that all happened at the end and of course as weird as this seems to people in our culture given what we know of african

preachers like i'm guessing ethiopia has an exact like a dedicated police code for this or something then you know we got a 481 so the important takeaway here watch this video oh yeah amazing over the course of less than three minutes you get to see a person who genuinely genuinely believes he's magical and then gets forced to abandon that belief in soul-crushing fashion in that three minutes. Like a magician learning the hardest way possible that the sawing the lady in half trick isn't literally, you can't do that. Is murder if he just tries. It's just murder at that point. And that happens while he's literally rubbing his erect penis on a newly dead body

that he talked these family members into digging up that's when he has that realization and then he gets back on his feet this best part inside this open grave and just stands there in literal silence for a while it's so good long it's so complete silence and then he just gives up on thinking and just tries to like walk away slowly. Nothing happened. He just walks away. Slowly. Look, I don't speak Ethiopian, but the end of the video where he does the comedy shrug to the crowd and tries to just walk off into the fucking sunset is universally

it is worth us starting a youtube channel just so we could share that moment with you i want my grave to just have this video playing on my tombstone 24 7 make it happen people well you brainstorm ways to make Eli's grave happen. We're going to close the headlines for the night. Heath, Eli, thanks as always. Trombone player at Eli's grave to make that noise the whole time. And when we come back, Lee Strobel still won't have shut the fuck up. Hi, I'm Randy, the receding hairline.

And I'm Sammy the Skin Rash. the receding hairline and i'm sammy the skin rash and um i'm isaac the impotent penis heath i sorry i don't want to give notes but like i need you to do that in like an impotent penis voice of some sort you know give me an impotent penis um okay uh impotent is probably what you mean okay i'm isaac the all right no no i'm not doing it i'm not i'm not an impotent penis i'm heath enright i'm not doing a voice dude come on it's just for the hymns ad and for hymns is a one-stop shop for hair loss skincare and sexual wellness for men so those are the three mascots we need to make up but i don't want to be an impotent penis. Well, then you should try four hymns. No, no. I mean, I don't want to play

one in the skit. On the last one, you guys acted like I had herpes and I do not have herpes. And this time you're trying to make me tell you what, I promise I'll be the impotent penis next time. I feel like you're lying. Do you promise? I promise. You promise.

Promise. Fine. Fine. And I'm Isaac, the impotent penis. And we're here to tell you about 4hims.com. Did you know that 66% of men lose their hair by the age of 35? 66% of the guys on this podcast sure did. Hurtful. But the thing is, when you start to notice hair loss, it's often too late, and it's a lot easier to keep the hair you have than replace the hair you've

lost. That's right, Randy, and I ask you, do you want a bald spot to pop up, or do you want to do something about it first? Well, why not try 4hims.com? It's a one-stop shop for hair loss, skin care, and sexual wellness for men. With 4HIMS, you won't get bogus herbal supplements and snake oil pills. You'll get well-known generic equivalents to name brand prescriptions to help you keep your hair. And even better, with 4HIMS, you can skip the waiting room and that awkward doctor visit. Just answer a few questions, a doctor will review your information, and their prescriptions can be shipped directly to your door. Order now! Our listeners get a trial month of 4HIMS for just $5 today while supplies last.

See website for full details. This would cost hundreds if you went to the doctor or pharmacy. It sure would. Just go to 4HIMS.com slash scathing. That's F-O-R-H-I-M-S dot com slash scathing. 4HIMS.com slash scathing. That's F-O-R-H-I-M-S dot com slash scathing. 4hims.com slash scathing. Okay, hold on. Hold on a second. If this whole ad was about hair loss, why'd we need an impotent penis character at all?

I feel like that would just... It's for the tagline. Say the tagline. Until your 4hims is coming, I won't be vague. I hate you. I'm going to give you herpes. So it's true. In part one of The Case for Christ, Lee Strobel went in search of the historical evidence for Jesus's divinity.

Lee Strobel went in search of the historical evidence for Jesus' divinity. And I think the fact that he only managed to fill 112 pages with that evidence by augmenting it with 43 pages of pointless reminiscences about how cool his job used to be and languid descriptions of how jaunty his interview subjects were tells you all you need to know about how successful he was in that endeavor. But now we're on to part two, and it's time to start examining the scientific evidence for Jesus. And Lee Strobel is so good, he's going to manage that in only 60 pages. Yeah, and honestly, I was assuming that meant like 60 different pictures of Jesus doing fun poses inside a beaker, just doing wacky faces. But somehow it's actually less scientifically useful than that. Yeah. That's what we get.

The scientific evidence for Jesus. This book is like when you've read a word but never said it out loud, but for meaning. And, of course, joining us for the second act of Strobel's play is my lovely wife, Lucinda. Lucinda, welcome back. I'm just sticking around in hopes it turns into a tragedy, Noah. It's been one the whole time. Now, we've already heard from experts ranging from biblical scholars to different biblical scholars.

But now it's time to consult the most objective possible source on the divinity of Jesus, Jesus himself. And we're going to do that in chapter seven titled the identity evidence. Was Jesus really convinced that he was the son of God? What? No, it's such a stupid opening fucking question. How is that what we're studying right now? It's insane.

Just to preface this whole thing. That's fucking crazy, right? It's insane. Just to preface this whole thing, that's fucking crazy, right? Does the homeless guy outside of my dorm actually think he's Napoleon? Chapter one. So, yeah, we started off learning about John Douglas, the first psychological profiler for the FBI and a universally recognized expert in psychological analysis, who will not be the interview.

By the way, he's just an analogy or something. Yeah. Lee Strobel doesn't even meet the FBI guy, but he definitely thinks he's fucking Hannibal Lecter profiling Jesus. Yeah. Buffalo Bill and Clarice. He's like the significance of the Trinity is changed. The caterpillar to moth to pupa,

father to son to holy ghost. Yeah, and as typical Strabellian style, Douglas is here so that we can firmly establish that one's behavior is influenced by one's personality. In case you needed a primer on cause

and effect before we got into the middle of the chapter yeah and based on this creepy fucking intro he gave us it sounded like we're about to prove that jesus was like a a bedwetter who tortured animals using science to prove that spoiler big letdown right we don't get to any of that, and we don't get any science. No, instead he lays out this central question. A lot of biblical scholars say, look, this whole son of God thing was retrofitted onto Jesus to begin with, and that's the question we're going to be tackling today. So Lee heads to Lexington, Kentucky to meet with the most slave owner sounding interview yet.

Ben Witherington III. Jeff Sessions thinks this dude's name is a little much. Yeah, and apparently this dude wrote a book called The Christology of Jesus, which sounds pretty fucking objective if you ask me. Well, right. No, yeah, he also wrote Jesus the Sage, Jesus Paul and the End of the World, and Women in the Ministry. Plus, his articles about Jesus have, quote, appeared in specialized dictionaries, end quote.

Dictionaries, I tell you! I mean, has he made it into Big D? No. But that shit's so political. Specialized dictionaries. And seriously, though, the Christology of Jesus, really? Really? Look for my book, The Enrighteousness of Heath. The Meitudinousology of I.

Fuck you. What? But meanwhile, Ben Witherington III is making a mixtape of original songs about Jesus. What the fuck? In his dedicated Messiah studio. Trying to animate a crucified hair doll with a car battery. It's creepy as fuck. What the fuck was going on there? He actually has that studio and he tells us about it.

Right. Right. Yeah. There was a really weird moment of, and look what he scrawled in his poop before the interview started. Feel to it. Yeah. Eventually struggle though, does get to the interview and he opens up saying,

so it seems like if Jesus was the Messiah, maybe he would just say, by the way, in case you're curious, I'm the Messiah at some point. Was he too scared or what? And his immediate answer seems to be, no, the Jews were too dumb to get the whole Trinity thing. And that seems so logical and intuitive to us now.

Yeah. The number line is a construct. What is three? What is it really? Fuck. It's a priori knowledge. Fucking stupid hippie if you notice that uh he hasn't answered the question of why jesus wouldn't say he was the

messiah because the trinity doesn't isn't necessary like they already have the concept of messiah you're way ahead of strobel but the closest he comes to actually tackling that question is to say jesus didn't want to be put in a box. He can't fence Jesus in. He's a wild spirit, I tell you. Jesus doesn't like labels. He loves spending time with you. Dying for your sins. Okay, and just to recap, this is Lee Strobel's section about scientific evidence that Jesus is the unique son of God.

And we're talking with a guy who appears to be both a plantation owner and the stalker ex-girlfriend of Jesus. And we're trying to decide if Jesus felt like a Messiah, felt like one with science. That's what's happening right now in this book. I just want to be clear. All right. So the first piece of evidence from Jefferson Beauregard Witherington here is, well, when the disciples were all talking about pussy and cars and stuff, Jesus didn't join in just like he wouldn't have if he was the son of God.

I have no idea what point he was trying to make here. Is Jesus like a magician whose buddies are all chatting about how great his show is and he's just sitting back being cool? What is this supposed to prove? What is this supposed to prove? Okay, so you know how Hootie and the Blowfish, it's four guys and lots of people, they think the lead singer Darius Rucker is Hootie, but he's not because none of them are Hootie and none of them are the Blowfish they're just Hootie and the Blowfish

they're just like a band together with that name so uh Jesus and the Apostles are like the opposite of that I have a PhD there's also this weird bit where he says look if he wasn't the son of God he was being a real asshole to the rabbis.

Are you calling Jesus an asshole? Yes. For a living. Right. He didn't see us coming in a lot of this book, I got to say. He also argues that the Romans wouldn't have crucified him if he wasn't the son of God. wouldn't have crucified him if he wasn't the son of God. Like, just like that time Spartacus, the son of God,

left that army of 6,000 son of gods along the Appian Way in the third survival. It's like that. Right. Plus, he had that T-shirt that said, I am the king of the Jews. And ironic T-shirts didn't exist then. So, like, seriously, the sign over Jesus' head that said, this is the king of the Jews was part of the argument. Like we have no record of Jesus saying, no, no, ignore that sign. Jesus never didn't not dislike the sign.

What? Yeah. And then we get to the argument from if Jesus wasn't God, how did he do all that magic? Oh, right. Yeah, because we're in the argument from if jesus wasn't god how did he do all that magic oh right yeah because we're in the science part exactly and this is especially weird coming from christians because plenty of biblical prophets before jesus performed miracles as did plenty of saints afterwards by their mythology so this has no real choice but to generate into an argument over who would win in a fight between jesus and elisha uh and chris angel well well that would be better than his actual argument here which seems to be ah but those other miracle workers never said if i cure this blind dude dibs on son of god son of god go

fuck now not the son of god yeah to which trumbull says can you add more bullshit words so I can seem harder to convince? And this whole argument is fucking stupid, right? Like Lee Trumbull says, okay, but healing a blind guy and reviving a dead guy and walking on water and magically throwing a demon army into a pig. That wouldn't make you think you were maybe a god though, right? And yes, it fucking would. Of course it would. What? But professor's like no of course not of course not that's why my decades of scientific research were focused on how jesus interpreted emotionally his magical god powers should we hear the mixtape again let's listen to my mixtape again? I'm going to play the mixtape again. Let's listen to my mixtape again. But then Lee hits him with a stumper.

He says, wait, didn't his followers call him rabbi, though? Not son of God? Yeah, and then we get the argument from, no, he put the sincerely at the front of his letters, not the end. So he knew he wasn't going to lie in advance. That's literally the argument. Yeah. Right. Except with prayers instead of letters. Yeah.

Yeah. And when Lee asked for clarification, he says, well, to Jews, you always need a second guy to back you up. But Jesus never had to say, can I get a witness? Because he was three dudes. Right. Right. Yeah. So, you know how the Jews are liars? Like, dirty, dirty, filthy Jew liars.

And they had to have witnesses for everything because of that? Well, Jesus said, I'm not lying. And this was way before it was cool and completely meaningless to say I'm not lying. Well, he also points out that Jesus was allowed to call God by his nickname, and only personal friends can get away with that. Oh, I hate those kids who call their parents by their first name. It's the worst. Yeah, it's not Atticus.

And then we examine what the author of the Gospel of John thought of Jesus. And he also thought Jesus was the bee's knees, by the way. Oh, OK. by the way oh my okay and we should point out that like what john is known for among objective biblical scholars is a being the last of the gospels to be written b being largely based on the ones that were written and c rewriting them in such a way as to make jesus seem as son of goddy as possible it is by far the laziest place to go next in, it's so known for that it was presented as evidence against his divinity at a Nicene Council.

This is like looking for a fact check of Sam Harris' podcast on Sam Harris' Twitter. And then Lee tackles a question on everybody's mind, and he says, hey, Jesus wasn't a dithering pussy like in The Last Temptation of Christ. He wasn't, was he? And then to the last temptation of christ he wasn't with him

and then to which foghorn l withering assures him that no in fact jesus weren't no pussy okay let's keep rolling with the scientific evidence what about martin scorsese and then they hit on one of the dumbest apologetics in all of christianity when he says william lane craig points out in reasonable faith that people were calling jesus god incarnate only 20 years after the crucifixion and if legends can develop in only 20 years how do you explain the holographic airplanes the one world government projected over the missiles that triggered the thermite in the world trade towers huh huh uh also the jews i don't know the actual argument here seems to be nobody lies right away yes and then he says quote frankly as a historian this would not make any sense at all. End quote. And I'm all like, are you a historian?

Yeah. And he says, moving on. Right. And again, I just want to point out that this is this weird Estes Perkle argument nobody is having. Like about which kind of spider bit Peter Parker. He was God, not an accidental God. It was a purposeful God. No one knows he was god not an accidental god it was a purposeful god no one knows this is not an argument also big daddy witherington wants us to know that even without the gospel of john jesus would totally still be the son of god oh yeah yeah then we get the

logically indefensible argument from well if jesus wasn't just some dude why isn't there a huge religion for all the just some dudes which is kind of like arguing against helmet laws because not wearing a helmet ain't never killed you or it's like arguing against helmet laws because everyone not wearing a helmet isn't dead helmet wearers always die so and and then he offers the most effective next chapter tease of the book by far when he says but was jesus just shit scrawlingly insane i'd have to find that out in chapter eight spoiler alert he's gonna popular the phrase, the end is nigh. So. And it'll stick.

That's the good stuff, everyone. And this is where Lee has another one of his little meltdowns here, mid-sentence. It's the best. He's like, okay, so in conclusion, Jesus is so the son of God, he's actually insane. This chapter was so correct that the Messiah of our entire religion absolutely must be lunatic. Is that? I drive a Dodge Stratus. That's the bell. All right.

Well, that was a remarkably short chapter, even by Lee's standards. But we can't get paroled from this shit until we answer his dumbass study questions at the end. You guys ready for the quiz? Ready. All right. Question one. What do you think are some reasons why Jesus was evasive in disclosing who he was to the public? So we're assuming you agree already.

That's question one. But can you imagine some ways in which an early proclamation of his deity could have harmed his mission? Yeah, this is classic PUA stuff. You neg first, then you mention casually you're the son of God, working some touching, some foot washing. Sorry, sorry. I told you fast.

It's just you're so attractive. It's just you're so attractive it's just you're very attractive no you're not fuck fuck oh i'm doing this look at my enormous kentucky derby hat this is true i don't know how i'm doing this really badly but the answer is no by the way because i'm pretty sure omnipotent beings can't harm their mission what the fuck was that exactly yeah i'm just like i'm looking at this question like uh he might have died for mankind since earlier that would have sucked well if he was captured and killed the secretary would disavow any knowledge of his actions well right right no clearly and that would have caused a lot of paperwork. Okay, so what are some of, this is question two,

what are some of the difficulties we face in determining what historical figures thought about themselves? Other than the fact that that's impossible. Other than that. And doesn't matter. What clues would you find most helpful in trying to determine this? Why did the clues offered by witherington convince or fail to persuade you that jesus thought he was the son of god and the messiah oh wow what kind

of evidence um i would have liked to hear a mixtape uh never mind the clues were flawless well what would be super helpful in determining this? Most of all would have been not having a global institution destroying evidence to the contrary and burning people alive for disagreeing for centuries and centuries between then and now. That would have helped. Yeah, no, that would have been nice. I'm going to go with the lack of a single piece of firsthand evidence. It's a bit of a sticking point for me. Okay, but I actually take Lee Strobel's point here.

I mean, think of how many people in history we have not directly asked whether or not they are a three-part wizard ghost god brought to Earth. I can't think of anyone we've asked that just like straight. No, you're right. I tweeted Obama. He will not respond. All right. Finally, question three. Jesus taught his disciples to use the term Abba or dearest father in addressing God.

What does this tell you about Jesus's relationship with the father? Is that kind of relationship attractive to you? Why or why not? It tells me thatesus was a dancing queen so i feel like the way this reads it's it's like lee's hinting around to see if you want to do gay stuff with him later right or a threesome just like so do you have any fantasies you want to act out like maybe that friend from your yoga class or no no you go you go it's cool you go you say i want to kill a homeless guy together on a cross you're you're

going to be the homeless guy so yes attractive that's i find that that's a great father-son relationship they have oh Oh, yeah. Well, you could stick stuff in his muffins and shit. It would be great. All right. So I wouldn't say that the scientific evidence is off to a good start, but it's pretty good for our purposes so far. So with that, we're going to shelf this book for three weeks

and hope it gets better with age. Heath, Eli, Lucinda, thanks as always. Good to be here. Ha ha ha! Before we cue the credits this week, I want to remind everybody that fully half of our podcasts have live shows coming up. We're only a few weeks away from a live double feature of Citation Needed in Chicago, and we're only about three months

away from a live Godawful Movies in London. We'll have links for tickets to both or either of those shows in the show notes. Anyway, that's all the blasphemy we've got for you tonight, but we're only about three months away from a live Godawful Movies in London. We'll have links for tickets to both or either of those shows in the show notes. Anyway, that's all the blasphemy we've got for you tonight, but we'll be back in 10,022 minutes with more. If you can't wait that long, be on the lookout for a brand new episode of our sister show's hot friend Godawful 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, our RSS feed would reject this episode if I neglected to thank Heath Enright for his insight, Lucinda Lusions for her foresight, and Eli Bosnick for his oocyte smoothies. I also want to thank Jacob and Patrick of the Bullshit Hold My Beer podcast for providing this week's Farnsworth quote. If the barguments in your life could use an upgrade, you'll find a link to their podcast in the show notes. But most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's most charismatic coordinates, Vance Caron, the Getting Off podcast, Eliana, Randy, Ryan, Michael, John, Other John, Dwight, Elysium, and another Lego welder. Vance, Karen, The

Getting Off Podcast, and Eliana, whose IQs have more digits than the average calendar. Randy, Ryan, Michael, and John, whose condoms provide aerial footage of sporting events in their spare time. And Other John, Dwight, Elysium, and Other Lego welder, who are so notoriously sexy, it sings about getting jiggy with them. Together, these dozen disproportionately

dizzying disdainers of disinformation dismissed discretion and decided to disperse a distinct disadvantage to the dishonest disseminators disdained in our disruptive disputations this week by giving us money. Not everybody has the cat-like reflex as it takes to give us money, but if you think you're up to the challenge, you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com slash scathingatheist, whereby you'll earn early access to an extended ad-free version of every episode,

or you can make a one-time donation by clicking on the donate button on the right side of the homepage at scathingattheist, whereby you'll earn early access to an extended ad-free version of every episode, or you can make a one-time donation by clicking on the Donate button on the right side of the homepage at ScathingAtheist.com. Legal services for this podcast are provided by the Law Office of P. Andrew Torres. Tim Robertson handles our social media, and our audio engineer is Morgan Clark, who also wrote all the music that was used in this episode, which was used with permission. If you have questions, comments, or death threats, you'll find all the contact info on the contact page at ScathingAtheist.com. contact page at scathingatheist.com. All right, Morgan, I hope your mind is hard right now because I'm about to blow it. The preceding podcast was a production of Puzzle and a Thunderstorm LLC, copyright 2018, all rights reserved.